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

xi] Peirithoos, Sisijphos, the Danaids 529
rise again. Each and all of them must say with the initiated
Qrphic
:
'I have sunk beneath the bosom of Despoina, Queen of the Underworld V
Each and all must be born anew with the New Birth of the
world. Such is the Way.
In Fig. 146, beneath the palace of Plouton, are the Erinyes
with snakes in their hair. But they are not ministers of Vengeance.
The inscription calls them (Eu)menides, and near them
the goddesses of new life, is a little upspringing tree. Plouton
himself is not the sullen terror of the underworld, he is the
Wealth that rises up from the Earth in spring. Hekate with
her torches, is not the spectre of the night, she is the life-giving
Fig. 151.
moon that waxes and wanes, the very spirit of palingenesia.
lheseus is made by the orthodox to sit for ever on the rock, but
Dike, the Way, lets Peirithoos, the Wheel, return to the upper air.
Ixion on his wheel is not tormented ; by the might of Dike he,
the Sun-God, is ceaselessly turning. It is his function, not his
fate. Herakles goes down to Hades, not once to fetch up
Cerberus, but day by day at sunset, that he may rise again on
the morrow 2 .
This notion of Dike explains sometimes a grouping of criminals
that might otherwise be unmeaning. In Fig. 151 we have a design
from a black-figured amphora 3 . The Danaides are filling their
cask, and by their side is Sisyphos rolling his pitiless stone up
1
A4