Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

ix] The Snake as Well and Tree-Daimon 431
slay the snake. Above is seated to the right Thebe ; above
Kadmos, and rather inappropriately remote behind a hill, is
Krenaie the well-nymph; above
Athene the old river-god Ismenos
stands holding his sceptre. All
about the snake are blossoming
trees and plants. This is not I
think mere landscape painting., it
marks the snake as a fertility-
daimon.
But the fertility character
of the snake comes out most
clearly in the snake who guards
the golden fruit of the Hesperides.
On the vase-painting 1 in Fig. 130
we have the tree and the great
snake coiled round it, and at the
foot wells out from a cave in
the earth a spring with double
mouths. Here we have the real
old cultus-complex, tree and well
and snake-daimon guarding both.
Fig. 130.
The tree and all green things come from the earth bedewed
by living water. So on the Acropolis at
Athens there was an olive tree, a holy snake,
a well. Snake and tree are seen on the
familiar Athenian coin in Fig. 131. The well
is not yet there, for when Poseidon took it
over he had to create it with his trident and
to salt it.
Another vase-painting in Fig. 132 is in-
structive, because it shows how easily, once
Fig. 131.
the story-telling instinct is at work, the meaning and the
conjunction of the old sanctities is forgotten. We have the
garden and the Hesperid nymphs, the great tree with the golden
fruit, and the snake twined about it. But the holy well is sun-
dered from the tree and the snake, the Hesperids are just
1 I regret that I am unable to trace the sources of the vases in Figs. 130
and 132. They are reproduced from lantern slides long in my possession.