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[image ALT: a blank space] This webpage reproduces a chapter of
The Lupercalia

by Alberta Mildred Franklin

New York, 1921

The text is in the public domain.

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Chapter 2

 p3  Chapter I
Introduction

Within the last few decades the work of the archaeologist and of the anthropologist, revealing the civilization that existed thousands of years ago, has brought about a revolution in the study of Ancient History. Before this time scholars who dealt with the history, the social life, and the religion of Greece and of Italy were concerned preëminently with the Aryan peoples who invaded those peninsulas. The earlier stock was largely disregarded, as being merely the aborigines who had been effaced by the conquering Hellenes and Italians. The falsity of this view has been abundantly demonstrated by the discovery of the marvellous civilization of Crete and of Mycenae. Surely a people so numerous, so powerful, and so cultured are to be reckoned with, if one would understand the later populace of those lands. The Neolithic inhabitants of Italy, too, though far more primitive than those of the Aegean, were possessed of a civilization too clearly marked to be ignored.

In religion more than in any other realm the influence of these pre‑Aryan peoples is of vital significance. The sanctity attaching to religious beliefs and ritual makes them peculiarly resistant to change. The deity of a certain locality is supreme in his limited realm, and his cult must in many cases be received, either wholly or in part, by the new‑comers. Consequently the divine objects of worship and the ritualistic acts of the pre‑Aryans have been of late years increasingly emphasized in investigations dealing with the religion of Greece or of Italy.1

This new method of approach arouses a hope that it may lead to a solution of some of the puzzling practices of Roman ritual. Perhaps the most interesting and the most perplexing of all Roman festivals is the Lupercalia, with its incoherent and fantastic ceremonial, its prehistoric origin, and the varied accounts of it. Consequently, though the Lupercalia has been a subject of speculation since Varro's day, it is worth while, now that we have a new point of departure, to try once more to solve the riddle.

Ethnologists are very generally agreed that the Palaeolithic Age in Europe was terminated by the appearance of a new race, known  p4 as the Mediterranean or Eur‑African. In physique the people of this race were uniformly dolichocephalic, of medium height, and of slight build. At the time of their appearance in Europe they had attained a considerable degree of civilization, using implements of polished stone, and showing a strong tendency to an agricultural, non‑nomadic life. They had developed definite and elaborate funerary rites: the dead were buried, often in a carefully constructed tomb, and were surrounded by the implements which they had used when they were alive. This practice argues a belief in a future life in which the dead continue to exist in the grave, keeping the same needs and interests which they had on earth. This Mediterranean stock gradually spread until it had occupied Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean basin, Western Europe, the British Isles and the lowland portions of Central Europe as far east as the upper Danube.​2 It has been characterized as the most widely extended, the most populous, and the most primitive of European races.3

For the present study our interest must be centered in the branches of the Mediterranean race that settled in the Aegean area and in Italy. To designate these, two ancient terms have been restored to use. The branch that occupied the lands which later formed Hellas is known by most ethnologists as Pelasgians, the one occupying Italy as Ligurians.​4 Along the Mediterranean the ease of communication united with the racial kinship of the people to produce a highly developed and homogeneous civilization. From the oldest culture centers of Egypt and Crete, civilization radiated to the kindred, but less advanced, peoples of Asia Minor, Greece, Thrace, the Danube area,​5 Italy, Sicily, and Spain. Thus there developed in the peoples dwelling near the Mediterranean a similarity of culture which is recognized by all authorities.6

By the beginning of the Bronze Age another ethnic group, generally known as Aryans, Indo-Europeans, Alpines, or Eur‑Asiatics, had occupied the Alpine belt which extends through Europe and Asia. They are generally believed to have had skulls of brachycephalic form and larger frames than those of the Mediterraneans. Their language was Indo-European. From very early times they cremated their dead, usually burying with the ashes little or no funeral furniture.​7 This practice is usually interpreted as indicating a brief that the soul, upon death, was separated from the body and departed to a remote realm, severed from all contact with the  p5 living.​8 The Alpine people were far more inclined to a nomadic pastoral life than were the Mediterraneans.​9 Very early, it seems, bands of Aryans began straying into Greece, though, according to most views, their influence did not become marked until the latter part of the Bronze Age. Then during several centuries, down to the beginning of the Iron Age, a series of Aryan tribes overran Greece, Thrace, the Aegean Islands, and the coasts of Asia Minor.​10 Italy, whose development was later than that of Greece, had just entered upon the Bronze Age when a branch of the Alpines migrated to the Po valley, and there established numerous settlements which are known as terremare. Toward the end of the Bronze Age bands of them moved southward, and one group settled in Latium. At a later period the Umbro-Sabellians, who had been long separated from them,​11 occupied the Apennines and the neighboring valleys.12

From the fusion of the Mediterranean populace with the invading Aryans arose the Greeks and the Italians of historical times. In such a fusion the race that has, through many centuries of habitation, become adjusted to a region is almost sure to show the greater vitality and, in the end, to absorb the intruding race.​13 Thus, in the case of the Greeks and the Italians, though the mixed peoples adopted the Indo-European language, they soon reverted to the physical type of the Mediterraneans. Even today the southern Italians are the physical counterpart of the people who inhabited Italy before the Aryan invasion.​14 In culture and in religion, as well as in physical type, the Mediterraneans, who vastly outnumbered the immigrants, must have had a very great influence in the development of the united peoples.

For our earliest picture of the religion of the Mediterranean race, we turn to the remains of Minoan Crete and of Mycenae. There we see that the chief object of worship among the Pelasgians was a goddess, who was evidently an earth-deity. Often associated with her was a youthful male, who seems, at least in some instances, to have been a sky‑god. He always appears as a subordinate; the goddess was the all‑important divine being. She was embodied in human form, and frequently had a lion, a dove, a snake, or some other animal in attendance. Numerous representations of monstrous figures, part human, part animal, probably portray the lesser numina of woods and waters. Fetish objects of especial sanctity  p6 were stones, pillars, trees, animals of many kinds, and weapons, such as the shield or the double-headed axe. These cult-objects typified sometimes the varied productive power of the earth, sometimes man's means of defense against his enemies. In primitive times they were probably regarded as incarnations of the deity. Later, when the goddess was fully anthropomorphized, they became her emblems or her attendant animals. The deity was not worshipped in a temple, but upon a mountain, in a forest, beside a spring, or, most frequently of all, in a cave. At her shrine men offered sacrifices of animals or of fruits. Figures of men clad in animal-skins, which frequently appear on gems or on seals, are often taken as representing the worshippers, who are showing honor to the deity by wearing the skin of her sacred animal. The dead, too, were objects of worship, and elaborate ritual acts were performed at their tombs.15

This Pelasgian goddess is believed to have been closely similar in character and functions to the Cretan Rhea, to the Phrygian Cybele, to many forms of the Greek Artemis, and to various other deities of the Aegean area.​16 Each of these later deities typifies the life-giving power of the earth. Every living thing, whether it be a plant, an animal, or a human being, derives its existence from her. She likewise takes them back to herself at the end of life. This goddess is no departmental deity, but has power over every activity of man or of the universe. Each manifestation of nature is sacred to her or is her very embodiment. Thus she may be adored as incarnate in the stone, the tree, the lion, or the goat, her particular form in each locality being determined by the physical features of that place and the character of the people inhabiting it. The sphere of action of the goddess is intensely local, her power and manifestations in each region being inseparably attached to some definite place. She is the goddess of love, and is constantly associated with a lover or a son, as Attis, Adonis, or Dionysus.​17 To him the bull is especially sacred. This male god is not immortal, but shares the seasonal changes of vegetation, dying in the fall and reviving to new life in the spring. These occasions are celebrated by the worshippers with extravagant orgies of mourning and of joy. In the death and resurrection of the deity the people find assurance of human immortality. Much of the homage offered by this agricultural people to its earth-goddess  p7 consists of fertility charms to arouse the dormant powers of productivity or to secure rain for the crops. But often, for some inscrutable reason, the goddess withholds her blessings, and sends barrenness, blight, and pestilence upon her people. To avert these destructive forces and to set free all beneficent activities, the devotees resort to strange orgiastic practices. Often they seek to propitiate the dread goddess by the sacrifice of a human being.​18 Frequently the ill‑will of the deity is attributed to some sin committed by man. Therefore rites of cleansing are of vital importance. Often man seeks guidance from oracles, through which the earth-deity speaks to her people. The earth-goddess, who nourishes the living, also receives the dead. They continue to live on in the tomb, and are, if duly honored, the kindly protectors of their descendants; but, if angered, they become merciless demons, and must be "averted" by ceremonies of riddance. Often the more distinguished dead develop into local heroes and are honored by cult-acts similar to those performed to chthonic deities. This worship of earth-goddess and of local divinities, while it is a religion of fear, and is expressed in barbarous and magic rites, has in it the lofty elements of dependence upon the deity, of the sense of impurity, and of the possibility and cleansing and of communion with the god.​19 Sir Arthur Evans says of this chthonic religion that it is characteristically non‑Hellenic, having nothing to do with the traditions of primitive Aryan religion.20

An equally detailed picture of the religious beliefs of the prehistoric Aryans is, unfortunately, impossible. When the Aryans migrated from their primitive home they went to lands which, in most cases, were already occupied. A racial modification of the Aryans must, accordingly, have begun in the very earliest times.​21 Concerning the original religion of the Aryans, who were already a mixed race when they appeared upon the stage of history, we can draw only general conclusions based upon philology and upon the religious beliefs which were common to the oldest Aryan peoples. Most authorities agree that the sky, with its varied manifestations, was the supreme object of worship among all primitive peoples who spoke the Indo-European language.​22 The sky was early embodied in a god who was called "the father," as "father Zeus," or "Jupiter." There was, perhaps, the conception of the earth as mother, the wife of the sky‑god, but her importance was  p8 slight compared to that of her spouse. There was, therefore, an emphasis exactly opposite to that of the Mediterranean religion, in which the earth-mother was supreme, and the sky‑god her subordinate.23

For the oldest literary picture of the religion of the Hellenes we turn to the Homeric Poems. These cannot be accepted as a portrayal of a purely Aryan religion, for Homer's Achaeans, who had been in Greece for many years, perhaps for several centuries, had adopted much of the civilization of the Pelasgians, and must also have been influenced by Pelasgian cults. But, even so, they had a slighter admixture of Pelasgian blood and ideas than had the Greeks who appear in later literature. Therefore it is reasonable to attribute to Aryan influence the Achaean religious beliefs and cults which are markedly different from those of the Pelasgians, especially if such beliefs and cults are to be found among other Aryan peoples when at about the same stage of development.

The religion which is portrayed in the Homeric Poems is preëminently rational, with only an occasional suggestion of mysticism. Instead of a chthonic deity and a host of vague and nameless numina, the Achaeans worshipped anthropomorphic gods who lived in palaces on Mount Olympus, and were organized into an orderly commonwealth with Zeus, the god of the sky, at their head. These deities were highly specialized, each one having some definite province and function of his own.​24 They had none of the mystery which attached to the Mediterranean gods, but were strongly individual and human, having the might of gods, but all the wicked passions of mortals.​25 Men treated them like human beings, sometimes upbraiding them, or even making sport of them, as is done in the story told by Demodocus about Ares and Aphrodite.​26 The Achaean gods were not, like the Pelasgian, limited in their power to some special spot; they were the gods of the tribe rather than of the place. In their ritual acts Homer's people did not perform mysterious or orgiastic ceremonies, nor did they resort to magic to secure the growth of crops or the increase of their herds; instead, they prayed to the gods and offered sacrifice in decorous fashion.​27 Those acts duly performed, man's whole duty to the gods was done. He had in their presence no consciousness of sin or of the need of cleansing. If he had committed a murder, he was not required to atone to the gods, unless the injured man were,  p9 like the priest Chryses,​28 especially dear to one of them, but he paid a fine to the nearest kinsman of his victim. When he had thus made reparation, he did not need to be purified, as in later times, by the sprinkling of blood, nor did he fear the pursuit of a vengeful ghost. The dread of demons and the worship of heroes is, indeed, almost unknown in the Homeric Poems. When the body of a man had been consumed upon the funeral pyre, his soul was believed to depart to Hades, where he lived a vague shadow existence, remote from the activities of the living. Libations were offered as a part of the burial ceremonies, but there was no cult attached to the grave, as there was to the tombs of Pelasgian heroes.29

In comparison with the Mediterranean religion, the religion of the Homeric Poems was rationalistic instead of occult, a worship of calmness instead of ecstasy, a homage paid to immortal, anthropomorphic, specialized gods with a sky‑god as their chief, instead of to gods who were mortal, of shifting, often of theriomorphic, form, among whom an earth-mother was the supreme deity.

In the religion of classic Greece these two strains seem to have been united. There are, on the one hand, the Olympian gods and the state ritual substantially as they are portrayed in Homer. But along with them are many cult-practices which are attested by archaeology and by literature​30 that correspond to Pelasgian instead of to Homeric religion. The rite of inhumation, which seemed almost unknown in Homer, has again become common. The Homeric indifference to chthonic deities and to mysticism has disappeared, and the worship of gods of the earth and the performance of magic rites of the most primitive kind is widespread. The homage paid to the Brauronian Artemis, the sanctity attaching to the Eleusinian Mysteries, and the human sacrifice offered to Zeus Lycaeus, all seem far removed from the sanity of the Olympian religion. Not only in remote places like Arcadia did these relics of savage belief persist, but they found a stronghold even in intellectual Athens. Orphism, which took as its chief deity Dionysus, a god having all the characteristics of a nature-spirit of the Mediterraneans, and which derived its ritual acts from the most primitive practices of Crete, developed a theology that was the loftiest expression of Mediterranean creeds. This Orphic theology profoundly influenced some of the greatest minds of Greece.31

It seems an anomaly that a people which, in about the ninth  p10 century before Christ, was almost free from occultism, witchcraft, and hero worship, should afterward revert to the beliefs of a remote past. The natural and the generally accepted explanation is found in the dual origin of the Greeks, composed, as they were, of Pelasgians and of Aryans.​32 The assumption that the presence in Greek religion of chthonic deities and of chthonic cults is due to the Pelasgian strain of the populace seems almost inescapable in view of the fact that these cults were most marked in the places that had the smallest infusion of Aryan blood. These regions were Crete, whose Pelasgian civilization was too deep-rooted to be effaced by the invaders;​33 Arcadia, whose people were regarded as the most typically Pelasgian of any Greek populace, and whose cults, the most primitive in all Greece, show a close affinity to those of Minoan Crete;​34 Attica, whose Pelasgian stock was less adulterated than that of any other land of continental Greece except Arcadia;​35 Boeotia, which was influenced more deeply by Crete than by the Aryans;​36 Lycia, which in prehistoric times seems to have been closely connected with the Cretans, and which remained dominantly Mediterranean in race and cults;​37 and the Ionians of Asia Minor, who had the largest infusion of Pelasgian blood of any Hellenic stock.​38 In all these lands the religion was strongly chthonic.​39 From these facts Andrew Lang concludes that the Achaeans imported a new, lofty, and brief-lived set of ideas and customs.40

In the union of the two religions, compromises of every kind were effected. Frequently the local god was absorbed by, or was regarded as identical with, one of the Olympian deities. Under this influence, the Pelasgian cult was often purged of its wild excesses and its cruel rites. On the other hand, the Mediterranean god frequently changed his name, but not his character, and continued to receive the same primitive homage as before. Often the animal in whom the earth‑god was incarnated became attached to the Aryan god. This god appears at times, therefore, in guise of the animal, or attended by it. Often this animal is the most acceptable sacrifice that can be offered to the god. In every possible manner the new ideas are seen mingled with the old.

In the religion of the Romans it is vastly harder than in the religion of the Greeks to disentangle Mediterranean beliefs from Aryan creeds. There was no Italian Homer to portray the religious ideas of the Latins or of the Umbrians. The dominant position of  p11 Rome tended to smooth down the local differences in religious practice which are often a valuable guide in Greek religion. Archaeology tells us, however, that before the invasion of the Aryans every part of Italy was occupied by the Ligurians, whose civilization was in the essentials markedly similar to that of the Pelasgians,​41 and had been, indeed, to some extent inspired by them.​42 Traders and, perhaps, colonists from the lands of the Pelasgians caused the Neolithic civilization of Southern Italy and of Sicily to become more closely associated with Crete and the Aegean world than with Northern Italy.43

When the Ligurians were overrun by the Aryans, a mixture of race and of culture similar to the mixture which we have observed in Greece seems to have occurred in Italy. In many localities of Italy are found inhumation-tombs and cremation-urns belonging to the same period.​44 In this fusion the terremara folk could hardly have failed to be profoundly influenced by the earlier inhabitants of the land. Professor Pinza holds that the civilization of Latium borrowed from the Stone Age its rites, its technical processes, its habitations, its tomb architecture, and its artistic taste.​45 Professor Modestov goes so far as to say that we might consider the population as not Latin at all, except for a certain number of incineration-graves. He regards it, therefore, as wholly natural that the Latins and the Romans had in their religious beliefs been deeply influenced by the Ligurians.46

In the religion of historical Rome are found two strains that are similar to those of Greek religion. There were, on the one hand, the sky‑god Jupiter and the other gods of the state cult, who, until they fell under Greek influence, were little more than highly specialized abstractions, their power and nature being defined instantly by their names. The Indigitamenta of the Romans offer one of the best examples of the Sondergötter of the Aryans. The religious ceremonial of the Romans was orderly and unimaginative, similar in its type of that Homeric cults. On the other hand, there were chthonic deities, whose origin was lost in antiquity, and whose ritual consisted largely of fertility charms and magic rites. There were many cult-survivals that recall the characteristic features of the Mediterranean religion. Veneration of springs, trees, and sacred animals was widespread, and ceremonies to avert evil and to secure purification were common.47

 p12  This dual strain in Roman religion seems most naturally interpreted by an analogy with the religion of Hellas. In Italy and in Greece the basic stock was Mediterranean, the subdivisions that settled in the two peninsulas being closely related. In both Greece and Italy the Aryan invaders showed the same skeletal structure, followed the same practice of cremation, spoke kindred dialects of the Indo-European language,​48 and worshipped a sky‑god called by the same name. In each land archaeology proves that a fusion of races took place. In Greece the honor given to earth-deities seems almost inevitably traceable to the Pelasgians. Consequently the parallel conclusion for Rome seems reasonable.​49The Romans themselves felt that chthonic gods were alien to them, for they constantly remarked on the affinity of such deities to some earth‑god of the Greeks, or, in many cases, held them to be a Pelasgian importation.​50 Furthermore, the localization of many of the chthonic cults of Italy gives cause for connecting them with the ancient inhabitants of the land. If a cult is strongly associated with some prominent natural object, such as a mountain, a river, a cave, a spring, or a tree, we have a strong reason for believing that it was a product of the race that had been longest established in that place. Later invaders find the spirits of these places exalted by a homage that has been developing for centuries. Inevitably they desire to secure the favor of these gods of their new abiding place, and so they accept the established cult. Mr. Gomme says: "Let us once clearly understand that the local fetishism to be found in Aryan countries simply represents the undying faiths of the older race".51

In the present study of the Lupercalia, the attempt will be made to learn the origin of its various cult-features by comparing them with similar cults or beliefs among the Romans and the Greeks. In this investigation the localization of a cult — that is, the people by whom it was first practised, and its association with some natural feature of the country — is a point to be kept constantly in mind. Moreover, far more illumination is to be obtained from Greek religion than from Roman. The individuality of the Greek states offers in many cases a reasonable degree of certainty for discrimination between the cults of the Aryans and those of the Pelasgians. When, therefore, we find a cult in Greece that is Pelasgian, and a similar cult of Italy which has been from ancient times closely attached  p13 to some prominent object of the landscape, and which was by the Romans themselves assigned to a non‑Roman populace, the logical conclusion is that the Italian cult belonged to the religion of the Ligurians.

In the study of a subject like the Lupercalia, one cannot hope to arrive at an incontrovertible conclusion. The antiquity of the festival and the scanty evidence concerning certain parts of it preclude so ambitious a hope. We must, therefore, be content with the modest aim of establishing a reasonable theory.


The Author's Notes:

(The first time a book is cited, the title is given in full;
after that, an abbreviation is used.)

1 This point is stressed by Sir Arthur Evans, The Minoan and Mycenaean Element in Hellenic Life, in J. H. S., vol. XXXII, 1912, 277. See also Schrader, Die Indogermanen, 132, 153; id. Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, IV; Farnell, in The Year's Work in Classical Studies, 1908, 71; Lang, The World of Homer, 2.

2 For the theories about the Mediterranean race, see Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, 30‑40, 247‑65; Ripley, The Races of Europe, 461‑70; Keane, The World's Peoples, 307‑12; id. Man, Past and Present, 446‑54; Taylor, The Origin of the Aryans, 54‑69, 92‑101; Myres, The Dawn of History, 39‑43; Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I.2.809‑34; Hawes, Crete, The Forerunner of Greece, 22‑5, 144‑6; Mackenzie, Myths of Crete and Pre‑Hellenic Europe, 57‑8, 164; Peet, The Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy, 111, 163‑77; Modestov, Introduction à l'histoire romaine, 110‑13.

3 Ripley, 451; Keane, W. P., 312; Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 149.

4 These terms, as used by modern authorities, include all the pre‑Aryans (See Schrader, Aryan Religion, in Hastings, Ency. Rel., vol. I, 35; Hall, The Oldest Civilization of Greece, 83‑4). Thus Minyae, Leleges, Carians, Eteocretans, and other less important groups are now all known as Pelasgians; while Siculi, Ausonians, and others are grouped together as Ligurians.

5 Some authorities prefer to regard the civilization in the Danube area as an independent northern development. See J. Hampel, Neuere Studien über die Kupferzeit, in Zeitschr. für Eth., vol. XXVIII, 1896, 57‑91.

6 Sergi, 275; Ripley, 130; Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East, 5; Mosso, The Dawn of Mediterranean Civilization, 62. For the characteristics of Mediterranean civilization, see Hall, Aegean Archaeology, 44‑254; id. O. C. G., 83‑104; id. N. E., 56‑61; Hogarth, Authority and Archaeology, Sacred and Profane, 228‑42; Mackenzie, Crete, 191‑292; Burrows, The Discoveries in Crete, 197‑201; Hawes, 27‑45, et passim; Sergi, 266‑315; Myres, D. H., 42; Beloch, Griechische Geschichte, I.1.71‑3, 96‑125; Meyer, I.2.762‑94; Keane, M. P. P., 462‑8, 528‑30; Grant, 153‑5; Worsaae, The Prehistory of the North, 19‑23.

 p14  7 Ripley, 470‑5; Keane, W. P., 355‑6; id. M. P. P., 501‑6; Beddoe, The Anthropological History of Europe, 15; Sergi, 237‑46; Taylor, 69‑92; Peet, 370; Mackenzie, Crete, 151; Kretschmer, Einleitung in die Geschichte der griechischen Sprache, 59‑75.

8 Hogarth, Auth. and Arch., 247; Chadwick, The Heroic Age, 422, 425; Schrader, Ar. Rel., in Hastings, Ency. Rel., II, 30; Mackenzie, Crete, xlvii; Rohde, Psyche, Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen, I.249.

9 Beloch, I.1.80; Taylor, 89, 164‑5; Mackenzie, Crete, 151, 233.

10 Hall, O. C. G., 104; Hawes, 25‑6; Burrows, 201‑2; Keane, M. P. P., 532‑4; Meyer, I.2.804‑8, 815‑34; Cotterill, Ancient Greece, 28, 34‑6.

11 Modestov, 239‑40.

12 Munro, Palaeolithic Man and the Terramara Settlements in Europe, 338‑45, 413‑29; Modestov, 103, 143‑285; Peet, 331‑71, 396‑9; Piganiol, Essai sur les origines de Rome, 15‑22; Sergi, 176‑9; Keane, M. P. P., 528‑9; Dr. Beddoe (129) says that the Aryan waves of immigration largely spent themselves in the north.

13 Ripley, 30‑3; Taylor, 198‑203; Mackenzie, Crete, 146‑7.

14 Ripley, 269‑72; Evans, J. H. S., vol. XXXII, 287.

15 Evans, Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult, in J. H. S., vol. XXI, 1901, 99‑204; Hogarth, Aegean Religion, in Hastings, Ency. Rel., I.141‑8; Dussaud, Les civilisations préhelléniques, 327‑413; Hall, A. A., 145‑77; id. O. C. G., 293‑302; Tsountas and Manatt, Mycenaean Age, 294‑302; Graillot, Le Culte de Cybèle, 1‑4; Burrows, 112‑14, 127; Mackenzie, Crete, xliv‑xlvii, 59‑60, 159‑62, 293‑312; Hawes, 139‑43; Reinach, Orpheus, 76‑8; Meyer, I.2.789; Beloch, I.1.110‑13; Cotterill, 48‑56; Kretschmer, 194‑5.

16 Evans, Scripta Minoa, 291; Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, III.1‑2, 291‑2; Hall, N. E., 52; Dr. Mackenzie (Crete, 61‑9, Myths of Babylonia and Assyria, 101‑4) notes that this Pelasgian goddess was also akin to the great earth-deities of Babylonia, Egypt, Germany, and the British Isles. See also Graillot, 5.

17 Although Dionysus seems to have originated as an Aryan deity (Beloch, I.1.65 n. 1), he is believed to have absorbed very early, under Pelasgian influence, the characteristics of an earth‑god (Hall, N. E., 476; Farnell, Natural and Comparative Religion, 18; Beloch, I.1,165; Dussaud, 392; Campbell, Religion in Greek Literature, 269).

18 The existence of human sacrifice in Crete has not been proven by the excavations (Hogarth, Aeg. Rel., in Hastings, Ency. Rel., I.146), though it may be echoed in the legend of the victims offered to the Minotaur (Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 482; Cotterill, 56; Piganiol, 99). In Arcadia, Attica, and other territories in which the populace was dominantly Mediterranean, both cult and legend give proofs of the practice of human sacrifice. Dr. Westermarck (The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, I.443‑54) notes that it is especially frequent in agricultural rites. See also Mackenzie, Bab., 104; Farnell, III.93.

19 For a description of the chthonic cults of the Aegean peoples, see Evans, J. H. S., vol. XXXII, 279‑80; Meyer, I.2.705‑33; Hall, O. C. G., 293‑302; Dussaud, 385‑93; Graillot, 7‑24; Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, 15‑53; Rohde, I.204‑15; 249‑50; Lippert, Allgemeine Geschichte des Priestertums, II. p15 503; Tsountas and Manatt, 302‑12; Mackenzie, Crete, 69‑72, 153‑8, 165‑90; id. Bab., 81‑101; Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion, 529, 536‑9, 562‑9, 576‑90; Cotterill, 44, 48‑57; Myres, D. H., 186‑7; Dieterich, Mutter Erde, 10, 84, et passim; Farnell, III.1‑28, 289‑305; Harrison, 8‑31, et passim.

20 J. H. S., vol. XXXII, 280.

21 Schrader, Indoger., 132; id. Ar. Rel., in Hastings, Ency. Rel., II.36.

22 Schrader, Indoger., 141, 143; id. Ar. Rel., in Hastings, Ency. Rel., II.15, 33; Meyer, I.2.867; Beloch, I.1.152.

23 For a survey of the religion of the primitive Aryans, see Schrader, Indoger., 132‑49; id. Ar. Rel., in Hastings, Ency. Rel., II.30‑8, et passim; Meyer, I.2.867‑73, 915; Beloch, I.1.150‑65. It is usually held that the sky‑god appeared in this early period in the form of a tree or of an animal. But the proof of that statement rests upon the forms of the sky‑god seen in later times, after the Aryans had, in their various new dwelling places, mingled with the older inhabitants. For example, Schrader, to prove that Zeus was embodied in a tree or in an animal, cites Zeus of Dodona and Zeus Lycaeus (Ar. Rel., in Hastings, Ency. Rel., II.45, 37‑8). But Dodona was, according to all ancient traditions, Pelasgian (Hom. Il., 16.233; Herod. 2.52), and is so accepted by modern scholars (Graillot, 7; Campbell, 38; Cotterill, 58); and Zeus Lycaeus, as we shall see later (see pp21‑4) was a Pelasgic deity with whom Zeus had no kinship either in character or cult. Meyer (I.2.915) says that there is scarcely a trace of Baumkultus, nor yet of a cult of actual animals, among the Aryans. Dr. Beloch (I.1.152) believes that various animal epithets of Hellenic deities, such as Βοῶπις Ἥρη, or Γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη, go back, at least in part, to the Mycenaean Age. It seems safer, therefore, to make no attempt to visualize the deities worshipped by the ancient Aryans.

24 This tendency to departmental gods, or Sondergötter, as they are called by Dr. Usener (Götternamen, 75), is accepted as one of the most characteristic features of Aryan religion (Schrader, Ar. Rel., in Hastings, Ency. Rel., II.32; Usener, 122).

25 Dr. Farnell (N. C. R., 13) says: "Of the Hellenic religion no feature is so salient as its anthropomorphism." He believes that the lack of mystic qualities of the Hellenic gods was due to their anthropomorphic form, saying (N. C. R., 16) that theriomorphism lends itself to mysticism because of the need of seeing something back of the crude animal form; whereas the Olympian deities could seem nothing else than glorified human beings.

26 Hom., Odys., 8.266‑366.

27 The sacrifices offered to the gods were regularly domestic animals. The only time that a human being was sacrificed was at the funeral of Patroclus (Hom., Il., 23.23) and that was not an offering to the gods (Lang, Homer and his Age, 95‑6).

28 Hom., Il., I.10‑11.

29 For the religion of the Achaeans, see Adam, The Religion Teachers of Greece, 21‑67; Campbell, 56‑83; Lang, W. H., 132‑4, 266‑7; Leaf, Homer and History, 11‑23; Murray, 57‑99; Rohde, I.9‑32, 43‑8, 97, 126, 271 n. 3; Chadwick, 415‑26; Cotterill, 45‑7; Lawson, 521‑2, 529‑30.

 p16  30 These two strains are noted by Isocrates (Or., 5.117). Occultism, hero worship, fear of ghosts, magic, and rites of purification are mentioned very frequently by Hesiod, the Cyclic Poets, Pindar, and the tragic writers, especially Aeschylus (Lang, H. A., 20; id. W. H., 2, 150; Campbell, 108‑9, 173, 278‑80, 283‑4). For the evidence of archaeology, see Harrison, 166‑82, et passim.

31 For these two strains in Greek religion, see Reinach, Orpheus, 78‑91; Rohde, I.200‑2; Campbell, 127‑36, 238‑66; Tsountas and Manatt, 313‑14; Cotterill, 43; Lang, W. H., 117; Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religions-Geschichte, 48‑50, 58‑61, 101‑4, et passim; Farnell, I.261‑2, IV.1‑8, 112‑13, et passim; Harrison, 1‑7, 363‑453, 473‑511, et passim.

32 Hogarth, Auth. and Arch., 243; Hall, A. A., 85; id. N. E., 520; Leaf, 261‑83; Beloch, I.1.92, 150; Evans, New Archaeological Lights on the Origin of Civilization in Europe, in Smithsonian Institute Annual Report, 1917, 444; Myres, D. H., 216. Mr. Lawson has traced in modern Greek religion many survivals of Pelasgian tradition (79‑98, 43‑44, et passim), and shows (5‑52) that these elements had a far more vital hold upon the people than had the Olympian deities. The same survival of pre‑Aryan elements has been noted in the religion of India. Dr. Keane (Aborigines, in Hastings, Ency. Rel., I.35) states that the Aryan deities of that land are all of the sky, that they are on a kindly and familiar footing with their worshippers, and have no gross or cruel forms of worship; whereas the chthonic deities of the Aborigines must be appeased by blood. In the union of the two races, it is stated, these latter gods largely replaced the heaven-gods of the Aryans.

33 Hall, O. C. G., 203.

34 Farnell, II.620, V.9; Hall, N. E., 59; id. O. C. G., 82; Evans, J. H. S., vol. XXXII, 283; Graillot, 7.

35 Hall, O. C. G., 203; Lang, W. H., 141; Meyer, I.2.769; Fick, Vorgriechische Ortsnamen, 129; Grant, 160.

36 Hall, N. E., 59; Gruppe, 59‑61; Fick, 99.

37 Hall, N. E., 60 n. 1; id. O. C. G., 87‑91; Kretschmer, 372‑6; Fick, 125.

38 Hall, N. E., 67, 79; Lang, W. H., 143‑9; Grant, 160.

39 Lang, W. H., 157‑60; Evans, J. H. S., vol. XXXII, 277‑87; Hall, O. C. G., 203‑8; Campbell, 37‑42, 238‑42; Beloch, I.1.144‑76; Meyer, I.2.724‑34; Burrows, 114‑16; Cotterill, 31, 78‑80.

40 W. H., 153.

41 Modestov, 252, 254, et passim.

42 Montelius, Die Vorklassische Chronologie Italiens, 149‑56; Keane, M. P. P., 530; d'Arbois, Les premiers habitants de l'Europe, I.129; Mackenzie, Crete, 247‑8.

43 Peet, 86, 143, 284; Myres, D. H., 221.

44 Myres, D. H., 233.

45 Pinza, Bullettino della commissione archeologica comunale di Roma, 1900, 201.

46 Modestov, 254. See also Sergi, 179, 244; Taylor, 204; Reinach, Orpheus, 95; Myres, D. H., 231.

47 Dr. Piganiol (93‑143) notes many such cult-practices among the Romans.

48 Kretschmer, 154.

 p17  49 Though Dr. Warde Fowler avoids discriminating between Mediterranean and Aryan cults, he devotes two chapters of The Religious Experience of the Roman People (24‑67) to what he calls "survivals." In discussing them, he frequently says of some quaint or magical act that it seems un‑Roman, or that it may have been taken over from an earlier people. He makes this statement about the Lupercalia (ibid. 34; Roman Festivals, 312). Dr. Lippert (II.545) assigns all the cults of the mother-goddesses to the pre‑Romans, and those in honor of Divus Pater to the Romans. Dr. Piganiol (93‑143, et passim) makes a similar distinction, tracing all chthonic cults to Mediterranean inspiration.

50 See page 57. In the following citations, Roman cults are said to be similar to Greek cults, or are derived from them: Saturn, Serv. ad Verg., Aen., 8.319; Faliscan Juno, Dionys., I.21.2; Juno Sospita, Ovid, Fast., 2.55; the rite of the Argei, Fest., 334.

51 Ethnology in Folklore, 71. Professor Rhys, in his study of Celtic religion, discriminates in this way between the greater divinities of the Aryan pantheon and the numerous genii locorum of the pre‑Aryan inhabitants (Celtic Heathendom, 54, 105).


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