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

ix] The Dragons Teeth 435
their blazon ; they had also marked, probably tattooed on their
bodies from childhood, a lance. Whether the two-fold symbols
of snake and lance were owing to the fusion of two groups or
not we cannot determine, but the fact is certain ; hence the
alternative of dragon or armed man. Aristotle 1
in dealing with
anagnorisis speaks of ' the lance which the earth-born bear.'
Dio Chrysostom' 2 writes of ' the lance which is said to be the
sign of their race among the Spartoi at Thebes'; and Julian 3
even more explicitly says
:
The lance is said to be imprinted on the Spartoi by their mother.
But why the teeth ? In a previous chapter 4 we have noted
the savage custom of knocking out a boy's tooth at puberty
ceremonies and its possible significance. We have seen the
tooth preserved on the Roman pyre. The tooth because it is
practically indestructible, and perhaps also because it looks like
a gleaming white seed-corn, is the symbol and supposed vehicle
of reincarnation.
Jason, as well as Kadmos and Apollo, slew a dragon and sowed
the dragon's teeth. The scene is set before us with a strange and
magical splendour by Apollonios Rhodios 5
. On it a curious light is
cast by the vase-painting 6 in Fig. 135. In the background is the
tree with the golden fleece. Near at hand Athena with her owl,
as guardian of the hero. She should of course be Hera, but the
vase-painter is a good Athenian patriot. A magnificent dragon
ramps up to the left—there will be splendid sowing with that
dragon's teeth. So far all is on sound conventional saga lines,
but where is the dragon-slaying hero ? Where indeed ? The vasepainter
seems to have remembered in some odd haunting way
that the dragon- slayer is of the dragon's seed. He is being born
anew from his jaws.
The slaying of the snake then, based on the ritual death of the
old snake king, gradually got moralized. It came to symbolize
1 Poet. 16 \6yxv V"