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

x] Olympians reject Animal-form 449
Moschos 1 of course, in his lovely idyll, thinks that Zeus took
upon him the form of a bull, but, in the light of Zeus Ktesios
and the Bull Dionysos, we know this to be a mere late aetiological
inversion. The Sun-God of Crete in Bull-form wooed the moon-
goddess, herself a cow ; their child is the young bull-god the
Minos-Bull, the Minotaur. Kadmos sought Europa in Boeotia, in
Cowland—and what did he find ?
Kadmos hither came from Tyrian town;
Lo ! untired before him laid her down
The heifer, that made clear the god's command
And bade him dwell there in the fertile land 2 .
And, that there may be no mistake, Mnaseas 3 tells us that on
either flank of the heifer was
' a white sign like the circle of the moon.'
Sometimes the animal form of the god lives on as in mytho-
logy ; more often perhaps it survives in the supposed 'attribute' of
the god. Thus on the familiar coin of
Kaulonia in Fig. 139 we have Apollo in
full human form. Standing beside him
is a stag, an animal ' sacred to ' him as to
his sister Artemis. Such sanctities are
not lightly forgotten. On the outstretched
arm of the god is a little winged figure,
usually interpreted as a wind. It is, I
think, more probably the daimon of the FicT"i39
god, his Kratos, his power, his mana
made visible. In his other hand the god as Thallophoros holds
a sacred bough. In high Olympos the gods cease to carry
boughs, instead they carry wine-cups. They feast more freely
than they function.
The shedding of plant and animal form marks of course the
complete close of anything like totemistic thinking and feeling.
It is in many ways pure loss. The totemistic attitude towards
animals may, as based on ignorance, beget superstition, but it is
1 Id. ir. 105.
2 Eur. Phocn. 638.
s Schol. Eur. Phoen. 638
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