Modern Mythology

ARTEMIS

I do not here examine our author’s constructive work. I have often criticised its logical method before, and need not repeat myself. The etymologies, of course, I leave to be discussed by scholars. As we have seen, they are at odds on the subject of phonetic laws and their application to mythological names. On the mosses and bogs of this Debatable Land some of them propose to erect the science of comparative mythology. Meanwhile we look on, waiting till the mosses shall support a ponderous edifice.

Our author’s treatment of Artemis, however, has for me a peculiar interest (ii. 733-743). I really think that it is not mere vanity which makes me suppose that in this instance I am at least one of the authors whom Mr. Max Müller is writing about without name or reference. If so, he here sharply distinguishes between me on the one hand and ‘classical scholars’ on the other, a point to which we shall return. He says – I cite textually (ii. 732): —

‘The last of the great Greek goddesses whom we have to consider is Artemis. Her name, we shall see, has received many interpretations, but none that can be considered as well established – none that, even if it were so, would help us much in disentangling the many myths told about her. Easy to understand as her character seems when we confine our attention to Homer, it becomes extremely complicated when we take into account the numerous local forms of worship of which she was the object.

‘We have here a good opportunity of comparing the interpretations put forward by those who think that a study of the myths and customs of uncivilised tribes can help us towards an understanding of Greek deities, and the views advocated by classical scholars 136 who draw their information, first of all, from Greek sources, and afterwards only from a comparison of the myths and customs of cognate races, more particularly from what is preserved to us in ancient Vedic literature, before they plunge into the whirlpool of ill-defined and unintelligible Kafir folklore. The former undertake to explain Artemis by showing us the progress of human intelligence from the coarsest spontaneous and primitive ideas to the most beautiful and brilliant conception of poets and sculptors. They point out traces of hideous cruelties amounting almost to cannibalism, and of a savage cult of beasts in the earlier history of the goddess, who was celebrated by dances of young girls disguised as bears or imitating the movements of bears, &c. She was represented as πολυμαστος, and this idea, we are told, was borrowed from the East, which is a large term. We are told that her most ancient history is to be studied in Arkadia, where we can see the goddess still closely connected with the worship of animals, a characteristic feature of the lowest stage of religious worship among the lowest races of mankind. We are then told the old story of Lykâon, the King of Arkadia, who had a beautiful daughter called Kallisto. As Zeus fell in love with her, Hêra from jealousy changed her into a bear, and Artemis killed her with one of her arrows. Her child, however, was saved by Hermes, at the command of Zeus; and while Kallisto was changed to the constellation of the Ursa, her son Arkas became the ancestor of the Arkadians. Here, we are told, we have a clear instance of men being the descendants of animals, and of women being changed into wild beasts and stars – beliefs well known among the Cahrocs and the Kamilarois.’

Here I recognise Mr. Max Müller’s version of my remarks on Artemis. 137 Our author has just remarked in a footnote that Schwartz ‘does not mention the title of the book where his evidence has been given.’ It is an inconvenient practice, but with Mr. Max Müller this reticence is by no means unusual. He ‘does not mention the book where ‘my ‘evidence is given.’

Anthropologists are here (unless I am mistaken) contrasted with ‘classical scholars who draw their information, first of all, from Greek sources.’ I need not assure anyone who has looked into my imperfect works that I also drew my information about Artemis ‘first of all from Greek sources,’ in the original. Many of these sources, to the best of my knowledge, are not translated: one, Homer, I have translated myself, with Professor Butcher and Messrs. Leaf and Myers, my old friends.

The idea and representation of Artemis as πολυμαστος (many-breasted), ‘we are told, was borrowed from the East, a large term.’ I say ‘she is even blended in ritual with a monstrous many-breasted divinity of Oriental religion.’ 138 Is this ‘large term’ too vague? Then consider the Artemis of Ephesus and ‘the alabaster statuette of the goddess’ in Roscher’s Lexikon, p. 558. Compare, for an Occidental parallel, the many-breasted goddess of the maguey plant, in Mexico. 139 Our author writes, ‘we are told that Artemis’s most ancient history is to be studied in Arkadia.’ My words are, ‘The Attic and Arcadian legends of Artemis are confessedly among the oldest.’ Why should ‘Attic’ and the qualifying phrase be omitted?

Mr. Max Müller goes on – citing, as I also do, Otfried Müller: – ‘Otfried Müller in 1825 treated the same myth without availing himself of the light now to be derived from the Cahrocs and the Kamilarois. He quoted Pausanias as stating that the tumulus of Kallisto was near the sanctuary of Artemis Kallistê, and he simply took Kallisto for an epithet of Artemis, which, as in many other cases, had been taken for a separate personality.’ Otfried also pointed out, as we both say, that at Brauron, in Attica, Artemis was served by young maidens called αρκτοι (bears); and he concluded, ‘This cannot possibly be a freak of chance, but the metamorphosis [of Kallisto] has its foundation in the fact that the animal [the bear] was sacred to the goddess.’

Thus it is acknowledged that Artemis, under her name of Callisto, was changed into a she-bear, and had issue, Arkas – whence the Arcadians. Mr. Max Müller proceeds (ii. 734) – ‘He [Otfried] did not go so far as some modern mythologists who want us to believe that originally the animal, the she-bear, was the goddess, and that a later worship had replaced the ancient worship of the animal pur et simple.’

Did I, then, tell anybody that ‘originally the she-bear was the goddess’? No, I gave my reader, not a dogma, but the choice between two alternative hypotheses. I said, ‘It will become probable that the she-bear actually was the goddess at an extremely remote period, or at all events that the goddess succeeded to, and threw her protection over, an ancient worship of the animal’ (ii. 212, 213).

Mr. Max Müller’s error, it will be observed, consists in writing ‘and’ where I wrote ‘or.’ To make such rather essential mistakes is human; to give references is convenient, and not unscholarly.

In fact, this is Mr. Max Müller’s own opinion, for he next reports his anonymous author (myself) as saying (‘we are now told’), ‘though without any reference to Pausanias or any other Greek writers, that the young maidens, the αρκτοι, when dancing around Artemis, were clad in bearskins, and that this is a pretty frequent custom in the dances of totemic races. In support of this, however, we are not referred to really totemic races.. but to the Hirpi of Italy, and to the Διος κωδων in Egypt.’ Of course I never said that the αρκτοι danced around Artemis! I did say, after observing that they were described as ‘playing the bear,’ ‘they even in archaic ages wore bear-skins,’ for which I cited Claus 140 and referred to Suchier, 141 including the reference in brackets [] to indicate that I borrowed it from a book which I was unable to procure. 142 I then gave references for the classical use of a saffron vest by the αρκτοι.

For the use of beast-skins in such dances among totemists I cite Bancroft (iii. 168) and (M. R. R. ii. 107) Robinson 143 (same authority). I may now also refer to Robertson Smith: 144 ‘the meaning of such a disguise [a fish-skin, among the Assyrians] is well known from many savage rituals; it means that the worshipper presents himself as a fish,’ as a bear, or what not. 145 Doubtless I might have referred more copiously to savage rituals, but really I thought that savage dances in beast-skins were familiar from Catlin’s engravings of Mandan and Nootka wolf or buffalo dances. I add that the Brauronian rites ‘point to a time when the goddess was herself a bear,’ having suggested an alternative theory, and added confirmation. 146 But I here confess that while beast-dances and wearing of skins of sacred beasts are common, to prove these sacred beasts to be totems is another matter. It is so far inferred rather than demonstrated. Next I said that the evolution of the bear into the classical Artemis ‘almost escapes our inquiry. We find nothing more akin to it than the relation borne by the Samoan gods to the various totems in which they are supposed to be manifest.’ This Mr. Max Müller quotes (of course, without reference or marks of quotation) and adds, ‘pace Dr. Codrington.’ Have I incurred Dr. Codrington’s feud? He doubts or denies totems in Melanesia. Is Samoa in Melanesia, par exemple? 147 Our author (i. 206) says that ‘Dr. Codrington will have no totems in his islands.’ But Samoa is not one of the doctor’s fortunate isles. For Samoa I refer, not to Dr. Codrington, but to Mr. Turner. 148 In Samoa the ‘clans’ revere each its own sacred animals, ‘but combine with it the belief that the spiritual deity reveals itself in each separate animal.’ 149 I expressly contrast the Samoan creed with ‘pure totemism.’ 150

So much for our author’s success in stating and criticising my ideas. If he pleases, I will not speak of Samoan totems, but of Samoan sacred animals. It is better and more exact.

They (ii. 735) begin by pointing out Artemis’s connection with Apollo and the moon. So do I! ‘If Apollo soon disengages himself from the sun.. Artemis retains as few traces of any connection with the moon.’ 151 ‘If Apollo was of solar origin,’ asks the author (ii. 735), ‘what could his sister Artemis have been, from the very beginning, if not some goddess connected with the moon?’ Very likely; quis negavit? Then our author, like myself (loc. cit.), dilates on Artemis as ‘sister of Apollo.’ ‘Her chapels,’ I say, ‘are in the wild wood; she is the abbess of the forest nymphs,’ ‘chaste and fair, the maiden of the precise life.’ How odd! The classical scholar and I both say the same things; and I add a sonnet to Artemis in this aspect, rendered by me from the Hippolytus of Euripides. Could a classical scholar do more? Our author then says that the Greek sportsman ‘surprised the beasts in their lairs’ by night. Not very sportsmanlike! I don’t find it in Homer or in Xenophon. Oh for exact references! The moon, the nocturnal sportswoman, is Artemis: here we have also the authority of Théodore de Banville (Diane court dans la noire forêt). And the nocturnal hunt is Dian’s; so she is protectress of the chase. Exactly what I said! 152

All this being granted by me beforehand (though possibly that might not be guessed from my critic), our author will explain Artemis’s human sacrifice of a girl in a fawn-skin – bloodshed, bear and all – with no aid from Kamilarois, Cahrocs, and Samoans.

Greek races traced to Zeus – usually disguised, for amorous purposes, as a brute. The Arcadians had an eponymous heroic ancestor, ‘Areas;’ they also worshipped Artemis. Artemis, as a virgin, could not become a mother of Areas by Zeus, or by anybody. Callisto was also Artemis. Callisto was the mother of Areas. But, to save the character of Artemis, Callisto was now represented as one of her nymphs. Then, Areas reminding the Arcadians of αρκτος (a bear), while they knew the Bear constellation, ‘what was more natural than that Callisto should be changed into an arktos, a she-bear.. placed by Zeus, her lover, in the sky’ as the Bear?

Nothing could be more natural to a savage; they all do it. 153 But that an Aryan, a Greek, should talk such nonsense as to say that he was the descendant of a bear who was changed into a star, and all merely because ‘Areas reminded the Arcadians of arktos,’ seems to me an extreme test of belief, and a very unlikely thing to occur.

Let us apply the explanation more widely. Say that a hundred animal names are represented in the known totem-kindreds of the world. Then had each such kin originally an eponymous hero whose name, like that of Areas in Arcady, accidentally ‘reminded’ his successors of a beast, so that a hundred beasts came to be claimed as ancestors? Perhaps this was what occurred; the explanation, at all events, fits the wolf of the Delawares and the other ninety-nine as well as it fits the Arcades. By a curious coincidence all the names of eponymous heroes chanced to remind people of beasts. But whence come the names of eponymous heroes? From their tribes, of course – Ion from Ionians, Dorus from Dorians, and so on. Therefore (in the hundred cases) the names of the tribes derive from names of animals. Indeed, the names of totem-kins are the names of animals – wolves, bears, cranes. Mr. Max Müller remarks that the name ‘Arcades’ may come from αρκτος, a bear (i. 738); so the Arcadians (Proselenoi, the oldest of races, ‘men before the moon’) may be – Bears. So, of course (in this case), they would necessarily be Bears before they invented Areas, an eponymous hero whose name is derived from the pre-existing tribal name. His name, then, could not, before they invented it, remind them of a bear. It was from their name Αρκτοι (Bears) that they developed his name Areas, as in all such cases of eponymous heroes. I slightly incline to hold that this is exactly what occurred. A bear-kin claimed descent from a bear, and later, developing an eponymous hero, Areas, regarded him as son of a bear. Philologically ‘it is possible;’ I say no more.

‘The dances of the maidens called αρκτοι, would receive an easy interpretation. They were Arkades, and why not αρκτοι (bears)?’ And if αρκτοι, why not clad in bear-skins, and all the rest? (ii. 738). This is our author’s explanation; it is also my own conjecture. The Arcadians were bears, knew it, and possibly danced a bear dance, as Mandans or Nootkas dance a buffalo dance or a wolf dance. But all such dances are not totemistic. They have often other aims. One only names such dances totemistic when performed by people who call themselves by the name of the animal represented, and claim descent from him. Our author says genially, ‘if anybody prefers to say that the arctos was something like a totem of the Arcadians.. why not?’ But, if the arctos was a totem, that fact explains the Callisto story and Attic bear dance, while the philological theory – Mr. Max Müller’s theory – does not explain it. What is oddest of all, Mr. Max Müller, as we have seen, says that the bear-dancing girls were ‘Arkades.’ Now we hear of no bear dances in Arcadia. The dancers were Athenian girls. This, indeed, is the point. We have a bear Callisto (Artemis) in Arcady, where a folk etymology might explain it by stretching a point. But no etymology will explain bear dances to Artemis in Attica. So we find bears doubly connected with Artemis. The Athenians were not Arcadians.

As to the meaning and derivation of Artemis, or Artamis, our author knows nothing (ii. 741). I say, ‘even Αρκτεμις (αρκτος, bear) has occurred to inventive men.’ Possibly I invented it myself, though not addicted to etymological conjecture.

THE FIRE-WALK

As a rule, mythology asks for no aid from Psychical Research. But there are problems in religious rite and custom where the services of the Cendrillon of the sciences, the despised youngest sister, may be of use. As an example I take the famous mysterious old Fire-rite of the Hirpi, or wolf-kin, of Mount Soracte. I shall first, following Mannhardt, and making use of my own trifling researches in ancient literature, describe the rite itself.

Everyone has heard of Mount Soracte, white with shining snow, the peak whose distant cold gave zest to the blazing logs on the hearth of Horace. Within sight of his windows was practised, by men calling themselves ‘wolves’ (Hirpi), a rite of extreme antiquity and enigmatic character. On a peak of Soracte, now Monte di Silvestre, stood the ancient temple of Soranus, a Sabine sun-god. 154 Virgil 155 identifies Soranus with Apollo. At the foot of the cliff was the precinct of Feronia, a Sabine goddess. Mr. Max Müller says that Feronia corresponds to the Vedic Bhuranyu, a name of Agni, the Vedic fire-god (ii. 800). Mannhardt prefers, of course, a derivation from far (grain), as in confarreatio, the ancient Roman bride-cake form of marriage. Feronia Mater=Sanskrit bharsani mata, Getreide Mutter. 156 It is a pity that philologists so rarely agree in their etymologies. In Greek the goddess is called Anthephorus, Philostephanus, and even Persephone – probably the Persephone of flowers and garlands. 157

Once a year a fête of Soranus and Feronia was held, in the precinct of the goddess at Soracte. The ministrants were members of certain local families called Hirpi (wolves). Pliny says, 158 ‘A few families, styled Hirpi, at a yearly sacrifice, walk over a burnt pile of wood, yet are not scorched. On this account they have a perpetual exemption, by decree of the Senate, from military and all other services.’ Virgil makes Aruns say, 159 ‘Highest of gods, Apollo, guardian of Soracte, thou of whom we are the foremost worshippers, thou for whom the burning pile of pinewood is fed, while we, strong in faith, walk through the midst of the fire, and press our footsteps in the glowing mass..’ Strabo gives the same facts. Servius, the old commentator on Virgil, confuses the Hirpi, not unnaturally, with the Sabine ‘clan,’ the Hirpini. He says, 160 ‘Varro, always an enemy of religious belief, writes that the Hirpini, when about to walk the fire, smear the soles of their feet with a drug’ (medicamentum). Silius Italicus (v. 175) speaks of the ancient rite, when ‘the holy bearer of the bow (Apollo) rejoices in the kindled pyres, and the ministrant thrice gladly bears entrails to the god through the harmless flames.’ Servius gives an ætiological myth to account for the practice. ‘Wolves came and carried off the entrails from the fire; shepherds, following them, were killed by mortal vapours from a cave; thence ensued a pestilence, because they had followed the wolves. An oracle bade them “play the wolf,” i.e. live on plunder, whence they were called Hirpi, wolves,’ an attempt to account for a wolf clan-name. There is also a story that, when the grave of Feronia seemed all on fire, and the people were about carrying off the statue, it suddenly grew green again. 161

Mannhardt decides that the so-called wolves leaped through the sun-god’s fire, in the interest of the health of the community. He elucidates this by a singular French popular custom, held on St. John’s Eve, at Jumièges. The Brethren of the Green Wolf select a leader called Green Wolf, there is an ecclesiastical procession, curé and all, a souper maigre, the lighting of the usual St. John’s fire, a dance round the fire, the capture of next year’s Green Wolf, a mimicry of throwing him into the fire, a revel, and next day a loaf of pain bénit, above a pile of green leaves, is carried about. 162

The wolf, thinks Mannhardt, is the Vegetation-spirit in animal form. Many examples of the ‘Corn-wolf’ in popular custom are given by Mr. Frazer in The Golden Bough (ii. 3-6). The Hirpi of Soracte, then, are so called because they play the part of Corn-wolves, or Korndämonen in wolf shape. But Mannhardt adds, ‘this seems, at least, to be the explanation.’ He then combats Kuhn’s theory of Feronia as lightning goddess. 163 He next compares the strange Arcadian cannibal rites on Mount Lycæus. 164

In all this ingenious reasoning, Mannhardt misses a point. What the Hirpi did was not merely to leap through light embers, as in the Roman Palilia, and the parallel doings in Scotland, England, France, and elsewhere, at Midsummer (St. John’s Eve). The Hirpi would not be freed from military service and all other State imposts for merely doing what any set of peasants do yearly for nothing. Nor would Varro have found it necessary to explain so easy and common a feat by the use of a drug with which the feet were smeared. Mannhardt, as Mr. Max Müller says, ventured himself little ‘among red skins and black skins.’ He read Dr. Tylor, and appreciated the method of illustrating ancient rites and beliefs from the living ways of living savages. 165 But, in practice, he mainly confined himself to illustrating ancient rites and beliefs by survival in modern rural folk-lore. I therefore supplement Mannhardt’s evidence from European folk-lore by evidence from savage life, and by a folk-lore case which Mannhardt did not know.

A modern student is struck by the cool way in which the ancient poets, geographers, and commentators mention a startling circumstance, the Fire-walk. The only hint of explanation is the statement that the drug or juice of herbs preserved the Hirpi from harm. That theory may be kept in mind, and applied if it is found useful. Virgil’s theory that the ministrants walk, pietate freti, corresponds to Mrs. Wesley’s belief, when, after praying, she ‘waded the flames’ to rescue her children from the burning parsonage at Epworth. The hypothesis of Iamblichus, when he writes about the ecstatic or ‘possessed’ persons who cannot be injured by fire, is like that of modern spiritualists – the ‘spirit’ or ‘dæmon’ preserves them unharmed.