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

440 From Daimon to Olympian [ch.
member of an assembly. Most significant of all Hesychius has
the gloss
and again
a7reXXa/cas'- Upoiv koivcovovs, sharers of sacred rites:
direXXai- crrjKoi, eKuXnaiai, ap^atpetri'at, folds, assemblies, elections.
Is Apollo the god of the fold and those within the fold ? Is he
the Good Shepherd ? or the arch-politician ?
It has long been conjectured, partly from the evidence adduced
and partly from the supposed nature of Apollo Karneios, that
Apollo was the god of flocks and herds. But Apollo is surely not
more, nor indeed half so much, god of flocks and herds as Hermes.
We have no Apollo Kriophoros nor Moschoplioros. Apollo will
prove, I think, to be the god of the fold (0-77*69), but it is a fold of
human sheep. The nature of the fold and the sheep shepherded
by Apollo will be found, I believe, in an inscription 1 found in the
French excavations at Delphi dealing with the organization and
regulations of the phratria of the Labyadae.
The inscription gives us a rare glimpse into the inner life of
an ancient group. It records regulations for the various initiation
ceremonies, the successive rites de 'passage through which a member
of the group must pass, and the offerings that must be made by
him or on his behalf, 'from the cradle to the grave.'
Among the ceremonies prescribed 2 occur certain offerings
called respectively direWala and Bdparat 3 . We
know from
Athenaeus 3 that Bdparos is a kind of unleavened bread made in
Thessaly. The Bdparat then are offerings of cakes. The inscription
further divides these Bdparat into two kinds, ^d/xeXa and
7rai8rjia, that is obviously what we should call wedding-cakes and
christening-cakes. So much for the Bdparat, but what of the
direWala ? On what occasion are they offered ?
1 Homolle, Inscriptions de Delphes, in Bull, de Corr. Hell. xix. 1895, p. 5,
Keglements de la Phratrie des Aafivadat.
2 The inscription at the end of the fifth century b.c. begins Tayc[ii]