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

12 The Hymn of the Kouretes [ch.
young man just come to maturity. Hence it is that Kouros with
a capital is in English practically untranslatable save by peri-
phrasis. ' Greatest of Youths ' is intolerably clumsy, ' Prince of
Youths,' which perhaps might serve, introduces an alien association.
Nothing is more stimulating to enquiry than an untranslatable
word, since underlying it we may hope to find something new,
unknown. We have no sacred Kouros now, we have got to
rediscover what caused the sanctity of the Kouros 1 . We shall find
it in the aetiological myth, but before we examine this, another
statement in the Invocation yet remains and one scarcely less
surprising.
The Kouros, the young Zeus, is hailed as coming ' a t the head
of his daimones '
(Saifiovfov aycofievos). This brings us to a
curious and, for our investigation, cardinal point. Nowhere save
in this Hymn do we hear of Zeus with attendant daimones 2 . He
stands always alone, aloof, approached with awe, utterly delimited
from his worshippers. One god only, Dionysos, and he but a
half-bred Olympian, is attended by daimones. We can scarcely
picture Dionysos without his attendant thiasos, be they holy
women, Maenads, be they the revel rout of Satyrs. We think of
this thiasos of daimones as attendants, inferior persons, pale
reflections, emanations as it were from the god himself. It seems
appropriate that he should be surrounded by attendants {irpoTro-
\ot): superior persons, high officials, always are. If this be all, how
strange, how even unseemly is it that Zeus, the supreme god,
Father of Gods and Men, should have no thiasos, no escort. The
Hymn brings us face to face with the fact that Zeus once had a
thiasos, once when he was a young man, a Kouros. When he
grew up to be the Father, it seems, he lost his thiasos and has
gone about unattended ever since. If we can once seize the
meaning of this thiasos and its relation to the god we shall have
gone far to understand the making of Greek theology.
1 Some survivals of initiation-rites and of the Kouros idea will be considered in
chapters ix. and x.
2 Mr Cook kindly reminds me that this rule has one singular and beautiful
exception. In the Phaedrus of Plato (246 e) we read 6 /xiv drj fieyas r)ye/j.wi> ev ovpav