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

22 The Hymn of the Kouretes [ch.
of a Goat ' is regarded as fit to tend goats, but behind a ceremony
so emphatic and so expensive must, it would seem, lie some
more serious significance 1 .
The Akikuyu rite contains no mimic death. Death indeed
seems scarcely an integral part of initiation, it is only a preparation
for, an emphasis of, the new Life 2 . But an element like this
of a striking and dramatic nature tends in myth sometimes to
swamp the really integral factor. We hear more for example of
the sufferings (irddr]) of Dionysos than of his l'ebirth ; the death
of the child in such myths as those of-^Atreus and Thyestes,
Demeter and Demophon 3 obscures the element of Resurrection.
But there can be little doubt that originally the New Birth and
Resurrection lay behind. Lucian 4 in his account of the strange
solecisms committed by dancers says that he remembers how a
man who was supposed to be ' dancing the Birth of Zeus and the
Child-Eating of Kronos actually danced by mistake the calamities
of Thyestes, deceived by their similarity.' The mistake is at least
highly suggestive ; the ritual dance of the two myths must have
been almost identical.
Anthropologists have been sometimes blamed 5 , and perhaps
with justice, for the fiendish glee with which, as though they were
Christian Fathers, they seize on barbarous survivals in Greek
religion or literature. Zagreus dismembered by the Titans, the
cannibal feasts of Thyestes and Lycaon, Demeter burning
Demophon—these and a host of other stories are ' survivals of
human sacrifice 6 .' It is only a little anthropology that is a
dangerous thing. Men will kill and eat each other and especially
their enemies for many and diverse reasons, but actual Human
Gift-Sacrifice, and especially child-sacrifice, is rare among savages.
Many a cannibal is a kind and good father ; adorned with a
1 For theriomorphs and the inclusion of the animal in the tribe see p. 125 ff.
2 The Orphic Hymn, xxxvm. 14, misunderstanding inverts the sequence. The
Kouretes are ...rpofpees re nai al'T oXerr/pes.
3 Mr W. R. Halliday has shown clearly that the story of Demeter passing
Demophon through the fire is the survival of an infant initiation-rite. See p. 34,
note 2.
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