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

502 Themis [ch.
and again 1
, even more significantly, he links Zeus, Athene, and
Apollo together as the typical happy family:
Would that indeed I were for ever as surely the son of aegis-bearing Zeus,
at.d that my mother were lady Hera, and that I were held in such honour as
Apollo and Athene, as verily this day is to bring utter evil on all the Argives
Apollo and Athena then are linked together as Phratrioi and
this conjunction is found in the patrilinear Homer and in the
Eumenides where all the emphasis is patriarchal. Elsewhere
Apollo is linked with quite another goddess, with Artemis, and in
this conjunction we see a survival, though altered and disfigured,
of matriarchal structure. In Homer a great effort is made to
affiliate Artemis as one of the patriarchal family, but, in her
ancient aspect as Tlorvia 6r]pa>v, she is manifestly but a form
of the Great Mother :
at Delphi, where Apollo reigns supreme, his
' sister ' Artemis is strangely, significantly absent. What has
happened is fairly obvious. Artemis, as Mother, had a male-god
as son or subordinate consort, just as Aphrodite had Adonis. When
patriarchy ousted matriarchy, the relationship between the pair is
first spiritualized as we find it in Artemis and Hippolytos ; next
the pair are conceived of in the barren relation of sister and
brother. Finally the female figure dwindles altogether and the
male-consort emerges as merely son of his father or utterer of his
father's w r ill—Ato