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

xi] Zeus, Apollo, and Athena 501
patrilinear, not the matrilinear structure. When, in the Eume-
nides 1 ,
the Erinyes ask of Orestes, slayer of his mother,
What brotherhood will give him holy water?
Apollo is ready with his answer
This too I tell you, mark how plain my speech,
The mother is no parent of her 'child,'
Only the nurse of the young seed within her.
The male is parent, she as outside friend
Cherishes the plant, if fate allows its bloom.
Proof will I bring of this mine argument.
A father needs no mother's help. She stands,
Child of Olympian Zeus, to be my witness,
Reared never in the darkness of the womb,
Yet fairer plant than any heaven begot.
:
This alliance of the three Olympians of the Eumenides, Zeus,
Apollo, Athena, brings us to a curious point. The bond, we feel, is
non-natural; the three gods stand together not because there is
any primitive link, any common cultus, but as projections, repre-
sentations of patriarchy, pushed to the utmost. They are a trinity
of Phratrioi, Patrooi. Where else, we ask, are these three dis-
parate divinities thus unequally yoked together ? The answer
is clear and brings immediate light ; in Homer and in Homer
only 2 .
Achilles, sending forth Patroklos in his armour, prays 3
Would, O father Zeus and Athene, and Apollo, would that not one of all
the Trojans might escape death, nor one of the Argives.
Hector names Apollo and Athene as linked together for special
adoration 4 :
Would that I were immortal and ageless all my days, and honoured, like
as Athene is honoured and Apollo ;
Itaque eodem patre nati fratres agnati sibi sunt, qui etiam consanguinei vocantur,
nee requiritur an etiam matrem eaudem habuerint.' So subtle and persistent is the
suggestion of name that there are persons even to-day who think that in some
mysterious way they are more descended from their father than their mother.
For the whole question see P. Kretschmer, Die Griechische Benennung des Bruders,
Glotta ii. p. 210.
1 559 Tola 8e x^P vl -i /