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

492 Themis [ch.
Now in Homer, once alive to the fact of an earlier background
against which is set the Northern patrilinear family, traces of
primaeval sanctities are not hard to find. When Themis summons
the Olympian agora, we remember 1 that she not only summons
the Olympian family, but she has to ' range round ' to find the
earlier nature-potencies, the gods of spring and stream. Hastily
they do on their human shapes ; we catch them at the very
moment of hurried, uneasy metamorphosis. But, though they do
on human shapes, they are no part of the great human, patrilinear,
family.
Again, ritual is always conservative. In the archaic ritual of
the oath we see the contrast between new and old. When Menelaos
is about to engage with Paris, he says'- to the Trojans
Bring ye two lambs, one white ram and one black ewe for Earth and Sun,
and we will bring one for Zeus.
The Trojans, Southerners of Asia Minor, use the old sym-
pathetic ritual of the Horkos. The primitive Horkos or barrier
or division is between Earth and Sky, and Earth the Mother is,
as we shall presently see, before Sky, the Father. The Achaeans,
the Northerners, have no Horkos proper, but they bring a ram for
the anthropomorphic Zeus.
If then we would understand the contrast between the Olym-
pians and their predecessors we must get back to the earlier
Themis, to the social structure that was before the patriarchal
family, to the matrilinear system, to the Mother and the Tribe,
the Mother and the Child and the Initiated young men, the
Kouretes.
Matrilinear Structure.
We are back where we began. It may be well to recall what
has been so long out of sight. The relief in Fig. 143 from the
Capitoline altar 3 sets the old matrilinear social structure very
clearly before us.
To the left the Mother is seated. Her child has been taken
away from her. Seated on a rock in the middle of the picture he
1 Supra, p. 482. - Horn. //. in. 104.
3 Overbeck, Kunstmythologie, Atlas in. 24.