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

xi] Kourotrophos and the Kouretes 505
with the title of Laphria, who was, Pausanias 1
tells us, substantially
the same as the Ephesian Mother. At Patrae, which was in-
habited by dispossessed Calydonians, a yearly sacrifice to Artemis
was celebrated. After describing the altar surrounded by a circle
of green logs of wood and approached by an inclined plane of
earth, and also the procession of the virgin priestess in a car
drawn by deer, Pausanias comes to the sacrifice itself, which, he
says, is not merely a state affair, but popular also among private
persons. It is sad reading.
b n
edibi^7 anH
?l^ d CaSt
a Tn ?' alt
f r Iivin § thin § s of a11 sorts > both
also wild boars a"d deer and fawns
I
°
;
V°
fn T 1 u m fu ner ,° f Vlctims '
me b g
, T" T the . CUbs ° f W0lves and bears and others > full gow,
beasts And they lay on the altar also the fruits of cultivated trees. Thin
St J h
out of^fi ! 7°°d ndeed a b6ar -
and 0th6r beasts
get out
struggling
of f\T
to
the first force of the flames and escaping by sheer strength But
those who threw them in drag them up again on to the fire I never heard
of anyone being wounded by the wild beasts 2 .
Such was the savage service of the Kouretes and of the
Mother and of that last survival of the Mother, the maiden <
of Apollo the Kouros.
sister
Of matrilinear structure there is evidence stronger still and
better concealed in an obscure ceremony, the significance of which
has only lately been made out 3 , the festival of Things Insolent or
lhings Unwonted, Things beyond and outside their Moira, the
Hybristika.
The Hybristika.
Plutarch, in his treatise on the Virtues of Women', tells of
the brave fight made by the women of Argos against Cleomenes
under the leadership of the poetess Telesilla. This fight was the
alleged aition of a curious festival.
S me a
was o°n the
^v h fi ht WM 0n the venth day of the month, others
of t lf
, ^ that it
y neW m f the
but which wa s fnfmi u r^
m °nth Which is now called the fourth,
Hermans, on which day they still SSiril celebrate the
z^x?^^\Kzz m mens chitons and chia^des and m- -
The learned Plutarch realises that this festival belonged to a
whole class in which women counterfeited men and vice versa.
He cites as a further instance the Argive law that women who
iv. 32. 6. o
I
vu 18 12
By r W R Ha ida in his
vt «^ «^ , ir ;
-7 illuminating monograph,
vi. ^i
A
83 and
Note on
the
Herodotos newaotos
Hybristika, in B.S.A. xvi. 1909-10, p. 212.
4 De Mulier. Virt. 4.
'