Delphi Ka

Delphika.-(A) The Erinyes.
(B) The Omphalos

Author(s): Jane E. Harrison
Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 19 (1899), pp. 205-251
Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies
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DELPHIKA.-(A) THE ERINYES. (B) THE OMPHALOS.
THE material of the following paper falls conveniently unde

headings, but the arguments respecting each are intimately connecte
cannot fairly be appreciated apart. It may be well, therefore, at the
to summarise briefly the conclusions at which I have arrived.
1. The Erinyes at Delphi and elsewhere are primarily local anc
ghosts. The conception of Homer, and in part of the tragedians,
Erinyes as abstract, detached ministers of divine vengeance is compar
late, and belongs rather to literature than to popular faith.
2. The ghosts of important persons are conceived of as locally influ
after death, and, being potent for good or evil, present a sort of neutr
In this neutral aspect they are Kipes, Moipat, TvXa&.
3. This neutral fond of KipeS, Mo?pat, Tvxat, etc., is probably fr
the first conceived of in its dual aspect. The ghosts are pleased or an
white or black, Eumenides or Erinyes-probably from the first the ma
aspect is somewhat uppermost.
4. Among a people who bury their dead, ghosts are necessaril
ceived of as demons of the earth, dwelling below the earth wit
occasional emergence, and especially potent in all matters concerning
fertility and sterility of the earth. Hence the ritual for the dead an
chthonic divinities is practically identical.
5. With the first dawn of anthropomorphism appears the notion
the earth is the mother, and the earth genii tend to be conceived of
daughters. This notion is helped out by the fact that in primitiv
munities, agriculture, and thence the ritual attendant on it, is largely
hands of women. Hence the sex of the Erinyes-a monstrous an
when they are regarded as avengers of blood-is naturally determined.
6. The form in which these earth genii, these local ghosts, were pri
conceived as embodied was, among the primitive inhabitants of It
Greece, that of snakes; the woman-huntress, winged or wingless,
tragedians was a later, complex development.
7. The female snake-Erinys is intimately connected with the Delp
legend of the Python, and survives elsewhere in the worship of female div
e.g., Athene and Demeter; it is part of a wide-spread snake-cultus, wh
emergence is seen in the heretical sect of the Ophites.
8. The primitive haunt and sanctuary of the Erinyes was the omph
206 JANE E. HARRISON.
9. The omphalos was primarily a grave surmounted by a

the centre of a cultus of ghosts and earth genii, whose wo
anthropomorphic days, developed into that of Gaia, Kronos a
divinities.
10. By Homer's time this old cult of ghost and fetich, o

had been overlaid by the incoming, dominant cult of Zeus
result was manifold; the real meaning of the ghost-Erin
though never wholly lost, the malignant side over-emphasise
delocalised, and with this delocalisation the snake form and
the grave-omphalos almost wholly obscured.
11. In the Choephoroi of Aeschylus, dealing as it does wi

tile grave, there is necessarily a literary resurgence of prim
In the Eumenides the conflict of new and old is embodied,
the illusion, that it was possible in a play acted at Athens
Erinyes as immigrant strangers of hideous and unknown fo
by the local Delphic priestess. By a still more remarkable i
it was possible to convince an Athenian audience that these
literary imagination were transformed into the local Se
Semnae being, in fact, the very order of beings from whom th
themselves sprang.
A.-THE ERINYES.
Incertus Geniumne loci famulumne parentis

Esse putet.-VERG. Aen. v. 95.
It will be obvious to any one conversant with the subject t
two of the steps of my argument I lay no claim to originality
remarkable Dissertations on the Eumenides (2nd edition, English
p. 155) C. 0. Muiller states distinctly that the Erinyes 'were neither
nor less than a particular form of the great goddesses who rule the
and the lower world and send up the blessings of the year, namely
and Cora.' This doctrine, with some modification and amplific
substantially that of my Clause 5.
I owe a still more important and fundamental debt to Dr. Erwin R
The main theory of his book, Psyche, I believe to be nmistaken; it is
less full of priceless incidental suggestion. He says of the Erinyes (Ps
247) 'Nur philosophisch-dichterisch Reflexion hat sie zu Helfern alles
in Himmel und auf Erden umgebildet. Im Cultus und begrenzten Gl
der einzelnen Stadt bleiben sie Beistiinde der Seelen Ermordeter .... Und
sieht man genau hin, so scliimmert noch durch die getriibte Ueberlieferung
In the matter of the stratification of cults, jects called Mycenean ?' (J. Hf.S. xvi. 76), has
and especially of the racial affinity of Zeus, been further developed in his professorial lec-
Apollo and Artemis, I owe much mythological tures at Cambridge, which I have had the
light to the views, published and unpublished, privilege of attending, and will, it is hoped,
of Prof. Ridgeway. His position, sketched out shortly be stated il full in his forthcoming
in the article ' What people produced the ob- work on prehistoric Greece.
DELPHIKA. 207
eine Spur davon durch, dass die Erinys eines Ermordeten nichts anderes war
als seine eigene ziirnende, sich selbst ihre Rache holende Seele, die erst in
spaterer Umbildung zu einem den Zorn der Seele vertretenden Hollengeist
geworden ist.' This view Dr. Rohde himself confirms and amplifies in his
'Paralipomena' (Rhein. Mus. 1895, p. 22), Dieterich (Nekuia, p. 55) confirms it,
and Otto Crusius (Roscher, Lex. ii. 1163) in his article 'Keren' says 'Die
K ?9pen 'Eptvve sind die ztirnenden Seelen.' In fact, no serious mythologist1
now controverts this position.
This fundamental truth, that the Erinyes are angry souls, would
doubtless have been recognised long ago but for a certain topsy-turvydom of
method which has, until quite recent years, infected all mythological research.
'In the Homeric poems we find ourselves at the starting-point of all that
has given Greece her place in the world, of Greek history, of Greek art, of
Greek philosophy, theology and myth.' The statement, true of the
one item omitted-literature, is profoundly false of all the rest; the spade
has revealed to us strata underlying the civilization out of which the Homeric
poems sprang. For theology and myth, our only concern here, Homer
represents a complex adjustment and achievement, an almost mechanical
accomplishment, with scarcely a hint of origines. But in England, where
scholarship is mainly literary, the doctrine that Homer is the beginning of the
Greek world is likely to die hard. Its death may possibly be eased and
hastened by the story of the Erinyes.
With respect, then, to the first three clauses ot my argument, I may
refer to the articles by Rohde and Crusius; they have collected ample and
more than ample evidence to prove that the functions and ritual of the dead
and of the beings variously called Potniae, Semnae, Eumenides, Erinyes,
Praxidikae, Maniae, &c., were originally and fundamentally identical. One or
two points, however, in connection with this require to be further elucidated
or emphasised.
First, as regards the number of the Erinyes. In Homer they appear
usually in the plural-e.g. Od. xi. 280, ,irVrpop 'Eptv'es. If we keep to the
idea of ghosts, we must translate the 'angry ghosts of a mother.' Each
mother had of course originally only one ghost, but in Homer's late con-
ception the individual ghosts, each one of which only avenged himself, have
been abstracted into a sort of body corporate of avengers, all of whom
pursued each offender. The final step of the abstraction is to make of the
Erinys a sort of personified conscience, but all this is remote from the
manner of primitive thought. It is interesting to see that the tragedians,
who are often far more local and primitive than Homer, frequently employ
the singular and realise that each dead man has his own separate Erinys.
1 I cannot include in this category the author wolke.' They are /ueAawvaL and they carry
of the article 'Erinys' in Roscher's Lexicon. things away, therefore they are 'das Bild
According to him the attributes and functions der ungestiim dabeifahrenden dunklen Wetter-
of the Erinys are to be derived from the 'in wolke'-by parity of reasoning they might be
Blitz und Donner sich entladelnde Gewitter- black cats.
/I JfMotpa 8apvSr0Te6pa .olyepa

7rOTVIa
'rOtLd T'
T9Ot;rov
OLW olra,
TOV T-Kt'
EXatLv' 'Eptvvf, ?eyaa-evr 7aoer t eZ.-AESCH. Sept. v. 975.
Here the Erinys is surely in apposition to the Ol8ov ou erida, the e'SwoXov of
the dead man. The passage is an instructive contaminatio of two radically
different conceptions, the Homeric phantom shadow idea and the powerful
local ancestral ghost. The notion of the single Erinys also lurks in the
Eutamenides of Aeschylus. Aeschylus, of course, has a chorus of Eumenides, the
Oav,taao-roq Xo6Xo, and he doubtless conceived of them as indefinitely and
Homerically plural, but they are roused from their sleep by Clytemnestra, the
one real Erinys.
Another point remains to be emphasised. It is easy enough even to the
modern mind to realise that the Erinys was primarily the angry ghost, and
a ghost is never so angry as when he has been murdered. The counterface of
the picture is less obvious, i.e. the idea that the ghost of the dead man when
content is a power that makes for fertility, the chief good to primitive man.
The farmer of ancient days had to reckon with his dead ancestors, and was
scrupulous to obey the precept de morttuis nil nisi bene. Hippocrates (7rept
evv7rvlewv ii. p. 14) tells us that if anyone saw the dead in a dream dressed in
white, and giving something, it was a good omen, a7ro 7yap TVv c'ro6avovrwv
at Tpoa tfca avo'a-eet Kac a7-repluara 7yvovrat. It is this, the good, white
side of the ghosts that was suppressed in the Homeric Erinys, but which re-
emerged at once when they, the Erinyes of Aeschylus, were allowed to become
their real selves, i.e. the Sennae, potent alike for fertility and sterility. To
the priestess in the Eumenides they appear ueXatvaL 8' es To 7rav 38eXv/c-
Tpo7rot, but Athene knows better; she knows that they are practically
Moirae, with control over all human weal and woe.
7rractra ap avTra T /r ca avOpwcrov?

eXaXov t&7ret.v.-AESCH. Eum. 930.
Primitive daemons, it may be observed in passing, are apt to be gods of

all work, later they differentiate off into black and white, friendly and
hostile, and finally develop a complete departmentalism.
One salient instance of the primitive dual character of the Erinyes is of
special value because it is connected with a definite ritual practice. Just
seven furlongs out of Megalopolis on the Messene road there was a sanctuary,
Pausanias (viii. 34, 3) said, of certain goddesses (Oewv lepov). Pausanias
himself is evidently not sure who and what they are. 'And they call both
the goddesses themselves and the district round the sanctuary by the name
of Maniae' (Madnesses)-he suggests however that the name may be a 'title
of the Eumenides'; (8oEceev 8e /LO Oew&J Tr&v Ev g eviwv c-rv 'riv rKXC-tL)-
' and they say that here Orestes went mad after the murder of his mother.'
He then describes a monument called the monument of Daktylos or Finger.
To this I shall return later under the heading 'Omphalos.' 'Here too,'
Pausanias says, 'there is a sanctuary to the Eumenides-they say that when
DELPHIKA. 209
these goddesses were going to drive Orestes out of his senses they appeared
to him black, but when he had bitten off his finger they appeared again to
him as white, and he became sane at the sight, and thus Trat /JlV Ev?ytlEV
aTroTpe7rwv To pjvt,La aVT7OV, ras &e eOva'e Ta? XevKalS.' We have no
convenient word to render the difference between 6ev7ytrev and Evo-e but the
distinction is important; evatylw is said of the ritual of dead heroes, and
of chthonic divinities, the sacrifice is offered on or poured into the ground,
it goes down-0vo6 strictly is confined to the ritual of the Olympian gods, the
sacrifice is burnt, it goes up. Here the old ghosts have divided off into
Maniae (i.e. obviously Erinyes-Furies) and Eumenides, and the Eumenides
side has got Olympianised. This is made the clearer by the last and most
remarkable statement of Pausanias, 'Along with these (i.e. ra? Xevca?l) it is
customary to sacrifice (Ovetv) to the Charites,' i.e. practically the white side of
the ghosts; the Eumenides are the same as the Charites, the givers of all
increase. To examine in detail the cult of the Charites would take us too
far; it may at first be somethingofa shock to find that the Charites are practically
only the white beneficent side of the Erinyes, but this passes when we remember
that at Orchomenos, the most ancient seat of their worship, where their
images were mere crude stones, they were worshipped at night, and like all
chthonic divinities with the offering of the honey cake. They were also a
sort of Moirae; the lucky throw at dice was called XaptTe9.
The connection of the Moirae with the ghost Erinyes we have already
noted. Here again cultus came in to strengthen the argument by analogy of
ritual between the Moirae, Semnae and Eumenides. Pausanias mentions
at Titane (ii. 11 4), 'a grove of evergreen oaks and a temple of the
goddesses whom the Athenians call venerable (Semnae) and the Sicyonians
name Eumenides (kindly). On one day every year they celebrate a festival
in their honour at which they sacrifice a sheep with young, and pour libations
of honey mixed with water and use flowers instead of wreaths.' The sheep
with young clearly points to the goddesses of fertility and the absence of
wreaths is curiously paralleled in the cult of the Charites at Paros. Apollo-
dorus p. 3, 15, 7, after telling the story of Minos and Androgeos, says oSev E'T
Kcat 8epo X%opas avX&v /cal a-Tebdfvwv v Hdpw, vova-t rats XCdptL-. At
Titane Pausanias goes on to tell us they perform the like ceremonies (eotKoTra
p&W-tv) at the altar of the Fates-it stands in the grove under the open sky.
In this important passage we have the Semnae identified with the Eumenides
and their ritual with that of the Moirae. This identity of ritual is paralleled
by identity of function. When Prometheus is asked who guides the rudder
of Fate he answers (Aesch. Prom. 515).
Molpat rplpopfpo uJvrjLove' ' 'EpLve9.
Nay more in the Eumenides they are the 7raXatcyeveF MoZpat (Eumn. 172).
Just in the same way the K'peS, the souls, are fates, and as such essentially
SLXOadta L as in Hes. Theog. 217.
cal Moipac /cai Kipas e'yev'ETo vrlXeoTrov'ov,
KXkoOd re Aaxeo-'v re Kaa "Arpowrov, aiTe /3poTolo-i
7etvofevotoa- 3S8ova-tv eXetv ayaSOv sTe taKaKO re'
though with Hesiod, never too optimistic in his view, the Ki

the black side (v. 211).
Nv 6`' TTeece o-Tvyepov Te Mopov /cal Ki^pa /eNXatav.
The idea of a ghost, a double, a fate shadowing a man in

powerful to affect his descendants after death is common to
peoples. It depends on the temper of the people whethe
regarded as benevolent or malignant, white or black. The
tribes according to Miss Kingsley have their Eumenides
West African districts' (West African Studies, p. 132) 'is a cl
called "the well-disposed ones" and this class is clearly differ
"them" the generic term for non-human spirits. These well-
are ancestors, and they do what they can to benefit their part
family Fetish, who is not a human spirit nor an ancestor. Bu
given to ancestors are gifts not in the proper sense of the wor
the well-disposed ones are not gods, even of the rank of a Sas
Omburiri'-here we seem to catch a god arrested in the proce
The Erinyes of the West African are not angry ancestors, but
enemies who are regarded as malevolent-' To insult or neg
disposed ones,' is rude and disreputable, but it will not bring on e.
of small pox. African missionaries have found that the neare
to the word God in our Scriptures is the word 'Mulungu' the
term for spirit. The spirit of the deceased man is called his
all the offerings of the living are presented to such spirits
is here that we find the great centre of the native religion.
the dead are the gods of the living' (Duff MacDonald, A
vol. I. p. 59). As regards the black and white Maniae Mr. Fraz
commentary (citing Callaway), 'The Zulus believe that there ar
(Itongos) and white spirits; the black spirits cause disease and
the white spirits are beneficent. The Yakuts think that b
death become dark ghosts, but good men become bright o
34, 3, Com.)
I have long thought that in the white beneficent aspect of the Eumenides
lies the explanation of the much disputed 'white maidens.' When the
Gauls were approaching Delphi the oracle vouchsafed to the anxious
inhabitants ran as follows: 'I and the white maidens will care for these
things.'
oL ,uEXehXjo eL 'ravra atcal Xeveca' KeopaLc.
It is generally held that the white maidens are Artemis and Athene,
but this view only rests on the opinion of Diodorus (xxii. 9. 5). Surely it is
far more probable that in a moment of extreme peril there should be a
resurgence of the ancient deities of the place, deities half forgotten perhaps
by the educated supreme always in the hearts of the vulgar. At Delphi
there was no need and anyhow it was safer not to name the avovv/o O ea'.
Badness and blackness are synonymous. To-day we talk of a black story,
DELPHIKA 211
and the black man of the chimney still survives. Callimachos in his charming
fashion tells us how Olympian mothers, when one of the baby goddesses was
naughty, would call for a Cyclops to come, and Hermes blacked himself with
coal and played the hobgoblin.
o oS oparoTo dec CLVXadoto

sPXETra 'Ep/pelrj ow7ro8ty aeXplue'vo0 aifj,.
aVTtrla rTrv IcoVprv /Poppv-a-ETraL-Callim. Dian. 68.
There is a splendid instance of the hero-bogey gone black in Pausanias

vi. 6. 4. 'O "Hpwl as he appeared in his picture was Xpoav Te SeLVtJ t4eXaq
Cal TO elo? 8' a'7rv sa r T pdXtoiTa <oo3ep Op, XVKOV 8 adL7rio'X ero &ept.a Efo'Ora.
This goes along with the growing feeling that dead heroes were apt to be
hostile and their graves must be passed with precautions of silence lest they
should be annoyed and show it. Hesych. siub voc. Kpelrrovaq says: 7voV9 pcoaq
OVT)O Xeyovotv, 8oK0OV-St Ec aKWrtLcKO TrVE? etvat. ta TOVTO Kal ol 7raptovTre
Tta r7p5a oa^yjrv Xaov0a-t /j T7 /3afi/3âc-. tcal o0 Oeol 86. Alao-XXo9 Alrvala(t)q.
At this point a word is necessary as to the etymology of the word Erinyes;
after what has been said it can scarcely be doubted that the account in
Pausanias is correct. In discussing the Thelpusa cult of Demeter Erinys-
Lusia (viii. 25. 4)-to which I shall return later-he says E7r TOVT,w lca
E7r/IcX'?ELT T% OfCO 7e7o`vartJ, Tro /jLrtaTo4 -ErV evelca Eptvvs^, OT TO Ov,w
xp7-Oat KaXoovTv epwvtetv o0 'ApK/cde. The contrast between the Erinys
and Lusia of the Thelpusian cult is precisely the same as that between the
Black and White Maniae of Megalopolis. Whatever be the precise etymology
of Erinyes we are evidently in that primitive stage of things when the nanmes
of spirits and daemons are not names proper but attributive epithets. We
are very near the West African to whom the spirits are 'them,' and 'them'
may be kindly (Eumenides), angry (Erinyes), venerable (Semnae), grace-
giving (Charites), awful (Potniae), mad ones (Maniae), vengeful (Praxidikae).
We have not yet reached the point where personality is clearly outlined.
Our imagination is so possessed by figures like the Olympian gods, sharply
defined, real, actual, personal, that it is only by considerable mental effort that
we realise the fact-all important for the study of mythology-that there are
no gods at all, no objective facts; that what we are investigating are only con-
ceptions of the human mind constantly shifting with every human mind that
conceives them. Art which makes the image, literature crystallising attributes
and functions, arrest and fix this shifting kaleidoscope. Until the coming of
art and literature, and to some extent after, 7rdvra pel. There is no greater
bar to the understanding of mythology than our modern habit of clear
analytic thought; the first necessity is that by an imaginative effort we
should think back the 7roXXa we have so sharply divided into the haze of the
primitive er.
If the first step in the making of a god is the attribution of human
quality, the attribution of sex will not tarry long. Mother-Earth is a
conception too wide-spread to need comment. Father-Land is a late and
monstrous patriarchalism. The Cretans, often true to primitive tradition,
still said ,urpps, when the rest of Greece said 7raTrpi (i7 e rra
eb Kprre KecaXovart. Plut. an seni sit ger. resp. xvii.). It i
the Danaides appeal in their supreme peril. This poin
laboured, but it is worth noting that the sex of the earth an
connected with the earth, like the Eumenides, must have been
if it did not originate in, the connection between women an
primitive days. Mr. Payne in his History of the New World (vo
observes that formerly women were the only industrial c
engaged in hunting, fishing, fighting. "Agriculture," he says
based on the servitude of women. Primitive man refuses to interfere in
agriculture; he thinks it magically dependent for success on woman and
connected with child-bearing. 'When the women plant maize,' said the
Indian to Gumilla, 'the stalk produces two or three ears. Why? Because
women know how to produce children. They only know how to plant the corn
so as to ensure its germinating. Then let them plant it; they know more
than we know '." Thus it is easy to see how the Eumenides-Erinyes, spirits of
fertility or sterility, came to be regarded as daughters of mother earth,
whereas it is hard to conceive of any state of society so matriarchalised as to
make its avengers of blood of the female sex. Aeschylus, who is anxious not
to allow the fertility aspect of the Eumenides to appear prematurely, makes
them, when formally questioned by Athene, say they are daughters of Night,
7/jel .ya.p eaoJev NVKcro? alaviq Thecva (Eum. 416),
but Hesiod (Theog. 184) long before made them daughters of Earth.
Sophocles compromises; with him they are ri 're xcai :ic6Tov Kopat.
(Oed. Col. 40.)
I have noted already the dualism of black and white, curse and blessing;
it is curious to see how this other anthropomorphic dualism of mother and
daughter fits in with it. When it comes to dividing up functions between
mother and daughter, the daughter gets the stern side, the maiden is
naturally a little farouche. This Aeschylus turns to admirable polemical
account in his carai7rrva7-roT /cpat.
At this point the full significance of C. O. MUller's statement becomes
apparent, i.e. that the Erinyes were neither more nor less than a particular
form of the great goddesses who rule the earth and the lower world, i.e.
Demeter and Kore. This statement inverted would be, to my mind, a just
presentment of the order of development. Demeter and Kore, mother and maid,
are perfectly anthropomorphised, idealised forms of those vague apparitions,
the earth and the spirits of the earth. In this connection it must never be
forgotten that Demeter herself is also Erinys, also Melaina, the earth
goddess, as well as the earth spirits has the black as well as white aspect,
though in later days the dark side of the functions went over to Kore. I do not
dwell on the cult of Demeter Erinys, for its importance has been abundantly
emphasised by all writers from C. O. Miiller downwards. And not only were
the Erinyes forms of Demeter, but the dead, Plutarch says, were in old days
DELPHIKA. 213
called by the Athenians Demeter's people, ca rotovb vexcpovb 'AOnvailo

Ar/vTrpeiovF wvo/wUtaov Tvo 7raXat6v (Plut. de fac. in orb. lun., 28, p. 943).
In order clearly to establish the double black and white aspect of the
earth spirits, I have passed rather prematurely on to their complete anthropo-
morphic development, and must go back to the proposition of the 6th clause,
i.e. that the form in which these local genii were at first embodied was that
of snakes.
This snake form brings together the views of C. O. Muller and Rohde;
it is a connecting link between ancestral ghosts and earth genii, and it is
strange that neither of these writers perceived what would have been his
strongest argument.
To say that in their primary form the Erinyes were thought of as
embodied in snakes may seem at first sight so startling that it may be well to
call attention at the outset to the fact that the idea is no wise foreign to the
tragedians.
When Clytemnestra hears the snoring of the Furies how does she
name them ?
'Trvo 7TO rovo Te KICPLOL oVVWoLOTLat
Aetv S3paKcaivrqj execrpavav tepvos.
Travail and sleep, chartered conspirators,

Have spent the fell rage of the dragoness (v. 126).
Of course it is possible to say that she uses the term 8pdacatva' poetically'
for a monster, but the fact remains that she calls the chorus a dragoness, when
she might quite naturally have called them hounds, as indeed in the next lines
she frankly proceeds to do. It would really have been more 'poetical' to
preserve the metaphor intact. The passage does not stand alone. To Euripides
also a Fury is a Spdacatva.
IlvXdSl S8gopcav T-rvse ; rjvS e 8' ovX opa<?

'AtLov Spdacatvav, &s< ue 1oov\erat tcravetv
Setva 'X1SvraLt eli ed/ ' e-Tro0o/ievr] ; (Iph. Taur. 286 f.)
Here it may perhaps be urged that the conception is borrowed from Aeschylus,
but the stage Furies of Aeschylus were certainly not Spdacatvat and also the
AtSov pdafcatva confuses the effect of the eLval e'4xval that follow. In the
Orestes also (v. 256) the Furies are SpaKcovrcTSeLt Iopat and it is surely putting
a strain on language to say this means they have snakes in their hands
or hair. But the crowning literary illustration on this point is Clytemnestra's
dream in the Choephoroi. Clytemnestra dreams that she gives birth to and
suckles a snake. Dr. Verrall has pointed out (v. 39-41 and 925-927) that
the snake was the regular symbol of things subterranean and especially of the
grave, and he conjectures that the snake was presented to the minds of the
audience by the 'visible grave of Agamemnon, which would presumably be
marked as a tomb in the usual way.' This is most true and absolutely
essential to the understanding of the play, in fact its keynote, but the snake
is more than the symbol of the dead, it is the vehicle of th

Erinys is Orestes, (v. 547):
EKSpaKcovTo)Oek s' r671)
KTErlVW 1tV,
not merely 'deadly as a serpent,' but as a 'serpent Erinys.'

obscured to us in two ways; conventionally and traditionally
regard the Erinyes as the pursuers of Orestes, whereas her
pursues. Moreover the Erinyes are naturally as we have seen
command of the patriarchal Apollo comes the male Eri
was a snake and also as we have abundantly seen a F
when the two notions are firmly grasped that the full me
words appear. Clytemnestra cries for mercy in vain (v. 925
raTrpo tyap at a o a rva T e a- v pi et ,oppov.
Nay, for my father'sfate hisses thy death.
The snake form of the Erinys comes out more clearly p
than in literature. Snakes of course, as the conventional dec
TV/6p3o or arT\ry, abound on vase paintings; good examples are
Patroklos (Brit. iMus. Cat. B 239), and the a-rTXr in the fun
kantharos in the Bibliotheque Nationale (Miliet-Giraudon, 38
and 7rv/U3o are painted white, the snake being blac
probably in a sense prophylactic to warn the passer-by tha
taboo. More instructive for our purpose are the instances i
snake or snakes issue out of the Tvr/,80o to protect it from
receive offerings made by the survivors. On a white lek
(Jahr'buch, 1891, Taf. 4) we have a case in point. From a whi
a /3tOWoetS79 ra<ooj, issue forth two large angry-looking snake
to pursue a youth who flies away in fright. He has no doub
intentionally violated the tomb, and they are the avenging
like this we might share the doubt of Aeneas, but in the n
Erinys' aspect is beyond doubt.
On a Tyrrhenian amphora in the Bourguignon Coll.,
(Jahrbuch, 1893, p. 93), we have a curious and very interesti
of the slaying of Polyxena. Lying absolutely over the very
is the body of Polyxena, her blood just shed on the
Neoptolemos; the tomb is o3/aaXoetS4 , and even has the cov
fillets. To this point I shall return later; for the presen
point is, that out of the Tuz,3os arises a great live snake. Ob
is that the ghost of Achilles in snake form rises up, an Er
receiving the atoning blood. But even in this vase there
confusion, or rather blending of ideas, for Neoptolemos flie
snake is the offended genius loci as well as the satisfied he
indeed mythology in the making, the notion shifts and flic
snake is the actual vehicle of the ghost of the dead man, is
he is the guardian, the familiar spirit of the dead man, the
account of Scipio's grave (Plin. N.H. xvi. 85): subest spec
DELPHIKA. 215
ejus custodire draco traditur; or he is merely the earth daemon: nullus locus
sine genio est qui per anguem plerumque ostenditur (Serv. ad. Verg. Aen.
v. 85). The snake is rPI ra-t, native child of the earth as opposed to the
horse, the enemy and stranger; so was the portent explained that appeared to
Croesus (Herod i. 78). Of these conceptions the genius loci is most familiar
to us, appearing constantly as it does in Latin poets, but the idea of the
serpent as the vehicle of the hero is thoroughly Greek, and belongs to the
stratum of ol rraXatoi obscured to us by Homer--o 7raXalot tiXto-ra 7rwv
c rov 701 spacKOv7a T70O iypWo o-LvvwlKEtwerav (Plut. Cleom. 39). When the
people saw the great snake winding round the impaled body of Cleomenes
they knew that he was a hero. Again, the scholiast on the Plututs of Aristo-
phanes (v. 733) says KOLtvw pfev cKal Tros? a'XoLt9 7pwoLt 8paKovves TrapETlOevTo
e,atp&eor 8e ;,W 'AacX/v7r,tW. Perhaps, most instructive of all is the expres-
FIG. 1.-PART OF DESIGN FROM BOURGUIGNON AMPHORA.
sion Photius records, the 'speckled hero' (Photius, Lex. s.v.) 'rpwo rrotKiXo0
-StaT TOT1O 70; oet 7rot clK\OVI o VTa jpwa X a\elo-at.
As in the case of the ghost-Erinyes, so here we are not without savage
analogies. At Blantyre, in East Central Africa, 'a spirit often appears as a
serpent. When a man kills a serpent thus belonging to a spirit he goes and
makes an apology to the offended god, saying " please, I did not know it was
your serpent."' Here the serpent is perhaps rather the familiar of the god,
but if a dead man wants to frighten his wife he is apt to present himself in
the form of a serpent. Ghost and god are not far asunder (Africana, Duff-
MacDonald, 1882, Vol. I. p. 63). Again (p. 161), it is noted of the Gallas, an
African tribe, that they have no idols, but revere sacred objects and animals,
serpents especially being sacred. One variety of snake they regard as having
been the mother of the human family.
M. Henry Jumod, in his interesting account of th

Barongas, p. 396), notes that among this people the snake
sort of incarnation of an ancestor, and is somewhat dr
worshipped. A native, pursuing a snake that had got into
missionary station, accidentally set the building on fire. A
exclaimed that the fire was due to the snake, and the snak
nembo or ghost of a man who was buried close at hand, an
out of the earth to avenge himself. M. Jumod adds cau
reptiles du bois sacr6 et les petits serpents bleus soient envi
incarnations temporaines des chiko nembo c'est probable. .
statation i la supposition que ces animaux sont des messager
tions transitoires des Dieux il n'y a qu'un pas. Mais jamais ils
i adorer un serpent.' This is clear from the fact that a fre
them will occasionally kill a serpent because he is bore(l by
reappearance of his ancestor, and as he kills it will say, 'Com
had enough of you.'
It is only necessary to recall the frequent mythological a
hero as snake, e.g. Erichthonios and Kychreus, and perhaps m
all the case of Sosipolis, the child who turned into a snake (
Sosipolis had a sanctuary where the snake disappeared into the ground-
he also had the offering of the honey-cake and water for libation, the XovTpov
and the Vepreppot^ ,etXy,/aTra. To the modern Greek peasant his child till
baptized is a SpaKoviXa, and no doubt in danger of disappearing in that form;
the line between animal and human is no wise clearly drawn. As every one
knows, the Erinyes in their conventional art-form from the fifth century B.C.
downwards are represented as maidens brandishing snakes in their hands.
It was this fact that gave me the clue to the primary snake form of the
Erinyes. A god or goddess is apt to hold in his hand or keep by his side
the animal form he has outgrown.
But it may fairly be asked, can the connecting link in the chain be
shown ? We have the complete anthropomorphic form and we have the snake
form; can the transition stage be shown, the customary halfway house of half-
human, half-animal form ? Erichthonios of course, the snake child, became
half-snake, half-man. Cecrops appears on many a monument as the snake-
tailed hero. Malevolent monsters like the Echidna, Typhon and the like
are snake-tailed, so in late art are the earth-born giants. But all these are
somewhat remote analogies. Have we any snake-tailed women genii of the
earth, of fertility or sterility, that we can fairly adduce ? A recently pub-
lished vase (Bohlau, ' Schlangenleibige Nymphen,' Philolog. LVII. NF xi. 1)
supplies the missing link. One side of the design is reproduced in Fig. 2.
As Dr. Bohlau has pointed out,1 the two sides of the vase are definitely con-
1 I venture to differ from Dr. B6hlau on one agricultural purposes. On a vase published by
small but important detail. The object carried Salzmann (Necropole, P1. 54, Figs 2 and 3) a
on the right arm of one of the snake.nymphs sower who follows a team of oxen ploughing
is, I believe, not a shield but a basket of the holds on his arm a basket precisely similar. It
shape ordinarily in use among the Greeks for evidently holds the seed he is scattering.
DELPHTTKA. 217
trasted. On the one side we have the destroyers of the vine, the goats, on
the other its nurturers, snake-bodied nymphs, veritable Eumenides. The
vase is specially important because our modern minds, haunted by the
tradition of the malevolent 'old serpent,' have some difficulty in realizing the
snake as the good genius. These kindly grape-gathering, flute-playing,
snake-nymphs give us a picture of peace and plenty and beneficence not easily
forgotten, they are veritable snake-Charites, a cup might fitly be reserved for
them at the banquet; they are Spa1covTroTSeq Icopat meet to be daughters of
Ophion and Eurynome, the fish-tailed goddess whose sanctuary in Phigaleia
was aytov ecK 'raXato' 1 (Paus. viii. 41. 6, Hes. Theog. 908).
Own daughters to the 8pafcovrT&SeLt copal of the vase are the kindly
Eumenides of the well-known Argos relief (Mritth. d. Inst. Ath. iv. 176, Roscher,
FIG. 2.-SERPENT-BODIED NYMPHS.

(Philologus, N.F. xi.)
Lex. 1330). In the one hand they hold flowers, in the other snakes-there is
'nothing terrible' in their aspect; they are gracious to the man and woman
who approach as suppliants-the snake is not the weapon of terror but
merely the symbol, as the flowers are, of the fertility of the earth. It was only
when the meaning of the snake was obscured that it became a terror.
The Argos Eumenides relief belongs to the well-known type or the
trinity of female goddesses which have long presented a somewhat confused
problem to archaeologists. Familiar examples of this type are the Thasos
relief where on one side are Apollo and three Nymphs, on the other Hermes
food. She had the body of a fish surmoun

1 For a remarkable parallel to Eurynome see
Mr. E. J. Payne (History of the New World, by a rude human head. Her worship co
only be abolished by the substitution of
vol. i. p. 453). The female Dagon or Oceanus
of the New World was the goddess of a lake image of the Virgin. At no great distance
worshipped as mamacota or mother-water, worshipped also another embodiment of t
because she furnished the nation with fish for lake, a figure enwreathed by serpents.
H.S.-VOL. XIX, Q
and three Charites (Rayet, Monuments de l'Art Antique; Bas-

Thasos). But for the inscription Charites and Nymphs would be ind
able. In the Megara relief, at Berlin (Mythology and Mon. o
p. 546, Fig. 8.), Hermes leads three dancing women in the cav
discussion is endless as to whether they are Nymphs, Charites, Ce
Horae. Where there is no inscription, the question is best left un
All are the same at bottom, i.e. they are three co6pat. Nymph is n
marriageable maiden, and Charites is but one of the many K/cXS8VE9
eKcaT-rryv Trv klXticav avTiJV -vavvvvvov rrotlj-aacrOa Oeo /ca 'a Tca
aya,uov Koprjv, Tr]v e: 7rpo? avSpa SeSo/pevrv N vpqcnv, r7rv &e Trec
acap'vlv MTrerpa, Trv 8E 7ra'Sa eKc 7rail&v Etrrsovocav Kara Trbv
1aXe/cTxov Matav co' o-uvrolvov etvat TO cal Trov Xpr'-, ov? ev
Icat A?XÔi? SXovoaOa & ryvvatKo6
(Iambl. Vit. Pyth. 56). The passage
is notable not for the purpose of
evidencing, as Pythagoras intended
the piety of woman, but as showing
that attention is already drawn to the
anthropomorphic habit of reflecting, in
the names of the gods, the various
human relationships of their worship-
pers; at bottom these Horae, Nymphae,
Charites, Eumenides are nothing but
K6pat maidens. In this connection the
relief given in Fig. 3 from the collection
Tyszkiewicz is instructive. The in-
scription runs: oT/riaq K6pa,--with
avetOnKE understood-Sotias dedicated
the Kopat. We have the three familiar
maidens with fruit and flowers, as yet
FIG 3.--VTIVE RELIEF, COLL. TYszRIEWicz. unadorned by any IcKXIJ&Je/ E7r)wvvV,/o
(Frbhner, P1. XVI.) -we have as it were the root idea
from which the anthropomorphic form
of Charites, Horae, Cecropidae, Nymphae, Eumenides, Semnae sprang. In
discussing the origin of the myth of the Judgment of Paris I long ago tried
to show (J.H.S. 1886, p. 217) that the rival goddesses Hera, Athene, and
Aphrodite were only the three Charites or gift-givers at strife-they are
the vague 6copat completely differentiated and departmentalized, but art
represents them frequently without distinctive attributes (see J.H.S. loc. cit.
Plate LXX.).
It may well be asked: why the trinity? If plurality began in Mother
and Daughter, Demeter and Kore, why not mere duality ? I am not sure
that I can answer the question. Something was due no doubt to the artistic
convenience of three; three makes a good group. The number was not
canonical in early days, witness the constant discussion about the number of
the Horae; possibly also when the Mother and Daughter had become
DELPHIKA 219
thoroughly two there was a natural tendency to give to the new-made

couple a mother, and thus create a trinity. It is curious that in the ancient
Greek world the male trinity is wholly absent. Possibly also the seasons,
first two and then three, added strength to
the notion. I would make a final sugges-
tion. In the curious Boeotian relief vase, j\
'ApX. Eb. 1892, wfiv. 9, we have the great Y
Earth mother, the 7roTrva rOpc&v, figured \ (.\
with two women supporters, one at either I\, / I
side. It does not seem necessary to suppose 1_'L
they are di nixi. This looks like the origin \ / )
of the trinity, which must have been origin-
ally not 3 but 1+2.\ i
We have now to return to the Argos /
relief. We have reached the anthropomor-
phic form of the Erinys; the snake remains, I " .
but only as an attribute, held in the hand. l ^ '
This is perhaps the best place in which to i RA
note some other elements that contributed
to the formation of the art type of the FIG. 4.-DESIGN FROM PR
Erinys. VASE.
The first element to be noted is the
eg'8)Xov. The primitive inhabitant of Greece, whom for convenience sake we
call Pelasgian, buried his dead and thought of the dead hero as a snake
genius dwelling in the ground. The Achaean of Homer burned his dead
and believed that nothing remained except the dim and strengthless ghost
the 't&wXov. The e'0oXkov was a little
y~!7YZ iL_iL \kAAk. \winged fluttering thing-a feeble a-Kta
of the living man. The two forms are
admirably seen and contaminated in
the design of an archaic prothesis vase,
Fig. 4 (Ath. Mitth., xvi. 379); in a
grave tumulus are seen a large curled
) ,t ]l ''9 > snake, and above him four fluttering
t \ el'woXa. Similar little winged figures
< x ^f ^~ B~ ~are figured on the remarkable lekythos
in the Jena Museum (Schadow, Eine
Attische Grablekythos, Jena, 1897),
where the winged souls, or Icipe, are
issuing from and returning to a large
FIG. 5.-FROM B.F. AMPHORA. sepulchral pithos. This winged type
(Passerius, Pict. Etrusc. iii. 297). of the soul, this Homeric e'ScoXov,
contributed, I have no doubt, to supply
the Erinyes with wings. Further, when the Homeric imagination had
transformed the Erinys from an angry ghost into a messenger of justice,
wings were doubly necessary. A winged form was not far to seek. The
Q2
Gorgon type was ready to hand, and suited admirably th

of the angry ghost. Such a form we have in Fig. 5
figured amphora in the Museo Gregoriano of the Vatican.
the more instructive, as the artist does not entirely trust th
has adopted. That his meaning may not miscarry he add
Erinys, i.e. the snake.
In the later Erinys form, i.e. the typical 'Fury' of Hades in
and hunting boots, another element enters of unmistakable
art-type of the goddess Artemis-the huntress par excellence
Erinyes develop out of ghosts into avengers the element of p
they lose their double aspect and become all vindictive; they
spdacatvat but ;CVes9.
ovap &Lt)ietL Oipa, IcXarydyavee 8' a$'rep

C;ov cp ept,LwValv OTV7rOT' ecX7rtv 7OVOV (Eum. 131).
In late vases which depict the scene of Orestes and the Eri
krater of the Louvre (Baumeister, Denkmdler, ii. Fig. 1314) t
Erinyes and that of Artemis
identical, save that Artemis
carries her bow and quiver
and two lances. This vase,
it may be noted, is interesting
also from the fact that one of
f, //Qll^ ^ \^ ^the Erinyes is actually rising

out of the ground, only visible
from the breast upwards, just
like the figure of Gaia. The
final form of the Fury on
FIG. 6.M D (().).Lower
FIG. 6.-MAENAD Italy Hades-vases is
(Rosenberg, Die Erinyen.) simply that of a male
Artemis.
The red-figured vase in Fig. 6 is of importance in respec
question of art type. It is figured by Rosenberg (Die Erinyen, fro
and interpreted by him as an Erinys. I incline to think, from the
of the drapery, that the figure more likely represents a Maenad.
is more instructive than any certainty. Maenads in mythology an
are only differentiations of the same fundamental idea. In fact th
are Maniae, earth-born ministrants of Ge, and they hold her snake
the Maniae in later days they are addressed as dogs.
Matzvada OvtaASa coit/Saa Xvva-ada. (Timoth. Frg. 1.)
ITE, Ooal Xvr'arW ieCves, 'r' e ogpo . (Eurip. Bacch. 975.)
I return to the snake-form. The snake-Erinys is only one asp
cultus of earth divinities once widespread in primitive Gree
century ago Gerhard, with an insight extraordinary for his time
that practically nearly all the women goddesses of Greece are
DELPHTK A. 221
fications of one primitive goddess-Mother Earth.1 He says (Ueber Metroon

und Goettermutter, 1849, p. 103): 'Nicht nur fir Dia Dione, fir Ilithyia und
Theia, Themis und Artemis, Tyche und Praxidike, Chryse und Basileia,
sondern auch fiir Demeter und Kora, Aphrodite und Hestia, Hera und
Athene lasst, wenn wir nicht irren, diese Behauptung bis zu dem Grad sich
durchfuihren, dass wir in alien diesen Gotterinen nur wechselnde Namen und
Auffassungen einer und desselben hellenisirten der Gaa gleichgeltenden
Erd- und Schopfungsg6tten zu erkennen haben. . . . Von iberwiegendster
Anwendung ist zur Seite der Gottermutter das Schlangen-symbol, es findet
sich fast alien den Gottinen beigesellt die wir als ortlich wechselnde Aus-
driicke jener urspruinglichen Gottereinheit erkannten, namentlich der thes-
salischen und italischen Here, der kekropischen Pallas, der eleusinischen
Demeter.' It is strange that a conception so fertile, so illuminating, should
have lain barren so long, obscured and paralysed by half a century of sun
and moon myths. I only push Gerhard's argument a step fuirther when
I urge that the snake was not merely the symbol of the primitive earth
daemon, but her actual supposed vehicle. Athene the maiden of Athens
is but the anthropomorphised olicovpO o'bt who dwelt beneath her shield,
she is the tpoipa of her city, and in the city's extremity she refuses to eat
her honey-cake. Cecrops the serpent king is caught half-way in his trans-
formation. We are so accustomed to the lifeless attributive snake of e.g. the
chryselephantine Athene that we forget the live snake of the Acropolis. The
design on a lekythos (Benndorf, Gr. and Sic. Vas. 51, 1; Roscher, Lex. ii.
979) recalls the live snake in drastic fashion. Kassandra takes refuge at the
xoanon of Athene. Athene is represented in the usual (Promachos) fashion,
on her shield a snake. But not only has she a painted snake on her shield,
a great live snake-a veritable Erinys-darts forth from her altar with
open jaws to attack Ajax. In like manner, when Philoctetes profanes the
sanctuary of Chryse, the vase-painter (Baumeister, Fig. 1479) represents
the snake that has bitten him returning complacently to the altar at the
feet of the goddess. It is no accidental snake bite, it is the Erinys of the
goddess-it is the goddess again, the ol0covpbo o'qbt.
a 'v ydp voa'e ' vS' 0 7o09 &K Oela Tv'XVJf

Xpv'o-r9 7reXao'Oeb fvXatcoF os v dTO aa\vfr
orcKOv VXdaat-KeL cepvO>0tosl oVcovpIv of s.
(SOPH. Philoct. 1325).
The two snakes who slew the sons of Laocoon were assuredly the
Erinyes sent forth by Athene-not originally by Apollo. When they had
done their work they disappeared below the earth, a/'u co ca'-rcTOrloav V7ro
XO6va (Q. Smyrn. 12, 480). They were important snakes with special names
1 Since I wrote the above an interesting re- scribed ra rIavrapeTa Karvevs IeLeovrELos. It is
presentation of the Earth Mother has come to now in the museum at Constantinople. Joubin,
light at Zarkos (Thessaly). It is a female bust Rev. Arch. xxxiv. 329, P1. XII.
with long heavy hair, and the pedestal is in-
of their own, Porkis and Chariboia, as the scholiast on Lyc

(ad Alex. 347). In like manner the snakes who attempt t
Heracles are the vehicles of Hera.
Again in the case of Demeter. She became so highly humanized that
the snake at Eleusis is well nigh forgotten, at least as an object of cultus.
But a ceremony in which the snake glided into the bosom of the initiated,
was an integral part of the mysteries (8e'Xiceraa Tov f coXrov rw'v TeXov/evov).1
On a Roman relief in the Uffizi (Overbeck, Kunst. Myth. Taf. xvi. 2) near the
figure of the seated Demeter a sekos is represented, from which emerges a
huge snake, and on one of the Campana reliefs representing a cultus scene at
Eleusis a worshipper is represented caressing the snake in the bosom of
Demeter (op. cit. xvi. 10). Of course, as anthropomorphism prevailed, the
snake became merely the at'trroXo9 of the goddess. Strabo (393) says, ad'
ov oe Ical KvXpeLir8, o'cts t v vc,rtv THaloSo rTpaqe'vTa VTrO KvXpe&o edeXa-
Orvat, V7TroSeaoaOat 8e aVTOr Trlv AVr)pTpa eti 'EXevaoiva cai 7eveo-Oat raV'Tr7
dpu liroXov. Aelian, in his De Natura Animaliumn (xi. 2), gives us an
important, and, for our purpose, most interesting account of snake worship
in Epirus. The passage is so instructive it must be cited in full. ' 06ovot
8e Kcal aXotsA ol 'H7retpwrat Tr' 'AroXXWcovt Kcal avrot Kcai 7rayv o'oV TrWv EVaov
eW7r&oYLov sornC, T cal TovTr fwfS 1-7v /jieyTorTrv eoprTrv atyovcrt utaq r1oepaq TOV
eTroVV 0-eJvrv Te Kcatl f/eyaXo7rpe7r. "Eo-rT 8e aveTOl Tro Oeo caXo-ov, Kcat eXe
KcVKXc) 7repi/3oXov, Katl Evov etlo paKdcovTe%, Tov 0eov a0vpUa VTO't 7y.
'H roivvv rdpeta yv/tv\ 7rapOevo9 Trappeo'tft porv Kai Tpoqfv Totv 8pdaKova-t
Kco,/uet. Ae'yovrrat 8e pa v7ro Trv 'HwretpwToiv gcKyovot Tov eVO AeXToVv
IIv'Owvos elvat. 'Eav pue\v owv ovTro 7rapeXOovo'aV TV lepetav 7rpoaoqv
Oeeda-CvrTai Kai Tap? Tpofda\ 7rpo0v/be) Xd/3oa-tv evOervav Te V7roO8,XOOVv
o1AoXo\yoovTrat icat e'o avocrov, eav 8e EcK7rXG'co-t p\ev avTrrv, pr\ Xad38ourt Be
oboa ope?yee petX7paTa, TavavTta TrV rpoepevcv iavTevoVTat. Here
we have a sacred snake, not slain as at Delphi, but taken on peaceably
as the aOvppia of Apollo. The snake has a maiden for a priestess,
the omen is by food, as in the case of the oi/covpo q o'ts of Athene
Parthenos. Most interesting of all, for the moment, is the fact that
the nation of Epirus recognized the kinship between their own sacred
snake and that at Delphi. So that here we have suggested exactly
what the argument most wants, i.e. the snake form of the Erinys, the earth
goddess at Delphi. The truth has long been disguised by the fact, that,
probably at the coming of Apollo, the Delphic snake changed from female to
male, possibly that Apollo might have a foeman more 'worthy of his steel,'
but the o'^bt 7y? 'ralv, the ancient mantic serpent, Gaia's vehicle, would
doubtless at the outset be female. The Homeric hymn (v. 300) has Spadcatya,
Euripides (Iph. T. 1245) has 7roKtX6vovr'os o0lvwro) 8padcoKv. The snake was
doubtless, as in Epirus, the actual original oracle-giver, later it became
merely the guardian. Apollodorus (i. 4, 1, 2) says, ebo 86 o fpovp&,v ro
pJavreTOV Hlv0'wv 6OO Ofi EccoXvev avrov ('A7roXXwva) 7rapeXOev 7rt rTdo a-pâ,
l For classical references on the snake in the mysteries, v. Dieterich, Abraxas, pp. 114 and 149.
DELPHIKA. 223
TOVTOV aveXWcv so aIavTreov 7rapaXata/3dvet, and Pausanias (x. 6, 6) says of

the Python E'r rtJ , avTredp fvXaca V'7r r<? TeTrdaXa.
The existence of snake-worship is further most clearly shown by the
festival of the Stepterion (or Septerion).1 Mr. Frazer (Pausanias iii. p. 55)
has clearly shown that the legend of the purification of Apollo for the
slaying of the Python and the ceremony out of which it arose 'carry us back
to the days of primitive Greek savagery when the killing of certain animals
was supposed to need expiation and the slayer was deemed unclean until he
had performed some purificatory or expiatory rite.' He cites a striking
parallel among modern savages. In Dahomey if a man has killed a fetish
snake he is shut up in a hut of dry faggots thatched with grass; to this fire
is set, and the culprit must escape as best he may to running water. It
seems to me probable that not only the occasional accidental murder of a
sacred snake would be atoned for but, as the Septerion festival was a regular
one, the priest who slew a snake for sacrifice might, as in the case of the
Bouphonia, have to atone for this legalised murder. We have no actual
record of a snake-sacrifice at Delphi, but in the Orphic Lithika, a treatise
abounding in records of ancient custom and ritual, there is a curious and
detailed account of the sacrifice of snakes for mantic purposes. A mantic
stone is melted and snakes are allured by its smell, the snake that comes
nearest to the fire is seized by three boys in white vestments and cut into
nine portions (Orph. Lith. 687).
TroV 8e tafeXedUT\i TaiL'v evvea FLoipa%,
TpEft /LV e7rtK\rfXev 7rav8SepKeo 7e\Xloto,
TpelF 8' eTepactS yahlr ept/,1Xov Xao/oTelpr?J/,
Tpeti 8E 0eo7rpo7rTilr 7roXvlS8ovoS aJfeVrcTOlO'
where the portion for earth, and the mantic intent are germane to the cultus
at Delphi.
It is important for our purpose to note that the myth of the slaying of
the snake, which we are accustomed to think of as exclusively Delphic, was
wide-spread in Greece. Wherever Apollo in the Achaean religion pre-
vailed, there the serpent becomes a monster to be slain; the name varies, but
the substance is the same. At Thebes we have Kadmos slaying the dragon
who guards the well; at Nemea, we have the guardian snake slain by the
Seven. On the other hand, in places where Achaean influence never pre-
dominated, e.g. in Pelasgian Athens, the snake remains the tutelary divinity
of the place. The Thebes and Haliartos legend is especially instructive
because it brings the snake and the Erinys again into such close connection.
1 Mr. Frazer points out (ad loc.) that the the Stepterion was a festival of purification and
MSS. of Plutarch have uniformly the reading expiation and as such connected with the
Stepterion, and that the form Septerion adopted enigmatic ariprln and a-eC^v in A:esch. Choeph.
by Mommsen and others occurs only in Hesy- 94, Soph. Ant. 431, El. 52, 458 (v. Dr. Verrall,
chius (sub voc.). Hesychius explains the differ- ad Aesch. Choeph. 93). The explanation of the
ence as ' KccOapfrs KOuaoLS.' I believe Hesychius Stepterion as a Crown Festival rests only on
to be right as to the meaning, possibly wrong Aelian.
as to the form, and I hazard the conjecture that
.2a2 JANE E. HARRTSON.
When we ask the origin or the parentage of the snake that

the answer is clear: E7e7'YveL O '3pa'do.v "Apew I ata TAOX o-o
(Schol. Soph. Ant. 126) child of Earth, earth-born daemon, for G
are only two forms of each other, e7-reLt77rEp EKc rFi7q xai "Apeo 0 3
(Dindorf, iii. 255; 14). Tilphossa and Delphousa1 are obviousiy th
to them we must add the Arcadian Thelpusa, haunt of Demeter
ordeal-well guarded by a snake, haunted by a ghost-Erinys-t
furniture of Gaia's cult.
This snake-cultus was overlaid by Achaean Homeric conc
widely different origin and import, but though obscured i
out. The 'Arya0O 1 ai1luov never lost his snake form; it did
the conmmentators that he was practically the same as th
snake-genius-gaudet tectis ut sunt a'rya0ot '3ait'love, quos L
vocant (Serv. ad Verg. Geo. iii. 417). The za4ui)v 'A7yaOos
shipped at Lebadea (P. ix. 39, 4) along with 'AryaOi) TVX
who would consult the ancient oracle of Trophonios had to
the joint oi'Ktàa of the two divinities and there purify him
consulting the oracle he was brought back to the same
Hesychiuis tells us that Agathe Tyche was both Nemiesis a-n
Nemesis and Themis are but. by-forms of the Earth goddess. B
LAat4uov and 'AyaO1)7 Tv'Xq are primarily ghost-fates, ancestors
sniake form, only Erinyes under another aspect with the good-fa
emphasized (v. Rohde, Psyche, p. 232 and Gerhiard, Ueber Ag
und Bona Dea). Tyche like Gaia develops into a miatronly Ko
type. The 'cistophoroi' COinS of Asia Minor withi their constantly
type of the snake issuing from the cista sufficiently prove the
snake-cultus in Asia Minor; the snakes of Asklepios were every
actuial vehicle of the god. Perhiaps the most remarkable testim
tenacity of the cult is the existence in Chiristian days of the s
Ophites, lineal descendants of the Pelasgian snake worshippers of
times. We owe it to the rancour of the Christian fathers that an accouint of
their singutlar and no doubt priinitive ritual has comie'down to uts. The
account of Epiphianios is worth citing, in fuill (Epiphan. Haeres. xxxvii. 5): E'xo V'T
,yap OfvoG-et 'oO(fVl 7pe(f)0lTES~ El) KLOT?, TLl)t O1 7Fp0Sq 7T71' wpaXLl Tm aurVTC
/lkVO717p Uol)T 70 vf~ o -7rpo0-(fE0l)7ETC Kcat o-7r/3a'~OVT7E ,7?r\ 7pa7T41s 6p7ov9,
wpKXoiva - 6v Vo~tv. VOXE'TI &6 TOV' fwXeoi) 7rpoEOt..(4..
V v9p \I\ )I 1
av04 eKUo-v a07t

Opies wa noG' n
exPrt essl sa tedb Hipl
note; le saso aise
1Mr. R. A. Neil sugg"

words miay be adject
from a noun (lost in
DELPHIKA. 225
Xdoyov aro 7rwv 7rakXatc v OeoXo'yov Mova-aov ecal Ai'rov tcal TOv ra' TEXETas
fdaXtcra Kcal Taa pUvaTrpta KcaTraeliav' ro 'OpIb&oo). 6yap p I rrep r jtrpas
avTrZv ca& roV ofreO \6Xyo^ tca 0 o/ u aXo9, oTrep eolv p apLovla, ltappj8r]v
ovrOT( ecfrvTt v Ev Tro BaKXtcoîc Tro 'Opbeow. Orpheus was for the non-
Achaean what Homer was for the Achaeans, the name to which all poetical
tradition was referred. If the doctrine of the Ophites was ancient, how much
more their ritual.
Hippolytus mentions conjointly O'bSt and Op14aX0o. I have discussed the
snake, the primitive form of the ghost-Erinys; it remains to consider her
dwelling-place and sanctuary, the omphalos. I reserve to the end the dis-
cussion of the attitude of Aeschylus towards the cult of which both o'^?t
and OtpqaX0o are factors.
B.-THE OMPHALOS.1
'lapidem e sepulchro venerari pro deo.'--Cc. pro Plane., 40, 95.

Trvfi/3o re CrrTj' re' To ryTap ryepa f earT Oavovrov.-HOM. 1. xvi. 457.
14Se K,e,6pw(v s 0t/]8VelEvov %Xotia vopt'e'u&o
v/Pi3oF a9 axodX ov, oeotcffea- 8 ooolw
TrLa-&Ow.-EUR. Ale. 995.
The Erinyes were primarily ghosts; the omphalos was their sanctuary,
the grave they haunted. That in brief is the proposition before us.
It may be noted at the outset that the view here set forth of the
omphalos is in accordance with ancient tradition. The omphalos was
variously reputed to be the grave either of the Python or of Dionysos.
Varro (de ling. Lat. vii. 17) says, 'Delphis in aede ad latus est quiddam ut
thesauri specie, quod Graeci vocant oJpaX6ov, quem Pythonis aiunt tumulum.'
Hesychius s.v. Tol'ov /3ovv6<, says eKcelE /yap (i.e. ev AeX0boZ) o6 8pdacwv care-
Tro,e6Ur Kal6 OpoaXo r0\ S T ^r o rdo00 arlT roV H6Ivwvo. Tatian, adv.
Graecos (8. 251) holds that the omphalos is the tomb of Dionysos (o 8c
o6abaXo rTao9 e&arT Atovvr-ov). The Dionysos view is practically a dupli-
cation of the Python view and need not here concern us; if we were discussing
the origin of Dionysos it would be easy to show that his familiar vehicle is
the snake. The passage of Varro is important; he clearly regarded the
o/pfaXo6s not as a mere white stone but as a structure of the nature of a
beehive tomb (thesaurus). The shape of such a tomb is described by
Pausanias (ix. 38) Xliov pev et'pyao-rat, Or-x,a Se vreptbepe eorTtv avrw c) KOpvqfl
Se ovUK es aOyav o'v alvrfaq/Ev?7.' Tro e & aVwaT Trw X lOwv faorv apr ppowav 7ravrl
eZvat rTo ol/co8o,/ubart. Aristotle (de Mund. vii. 20) says that the keystones
1 Reference to authorities on the omphalos the omphalos and Gaia (Ulrichs, Reisen und
will be found enumerated by Mr. Frazer in his Forschungen. i. p. 77). To the authorities enu-
Commentary to Pausanias, vol. v. pp. 315-319, merated by Mr. Frazer I would only add Otto
with an enumeration of the principal interpre- Gruppe's 'Griechische Mythologie-Delphoi,' p.
tations, and abundant citation of primitive 100 in Iwan von Muller's Handbuch Bd. V. ii.,
parallels. To Ulrichs belongs the credit of and the very learned and valuable article on
having first discovered the connection between Kronos by Dr. Max. Mayer in Roscher's Lexicon.
of these vault-like buildings were called OtbaX0oi' o0l 3tfaX

ol Ev rats #rttaot \Xi0ot, ol keIaol KceliLevoL. This may b
obscure statement of Hippolytus referred to above (p. 2
okaXo6Ss was said to be aploovia; I shall return later t
etymology of the word.
If then the omphalos were a miniature beehive tomb, i
accord in shape and appearance with the ordinary white
frequently seen on vases.' Instances have already been c
familiar to need enumeration. The normal monument amo
bury their dead is a mound of earth, X&wla 7yOi. This ma
surmounted by a stele, a vase, or tripod. Various arrangem
TV4;43oo are well seen in Benndorfs Griechische und Sicili
Taf. xxiv. We have a Tr/U3oo alone-just a grave-mound,
which is a tree that would suffice to indicate the grove; we hav
side with a TVJL/So9; and we have both erected on a basis of th
desired to make the Tr/7/3o? conspicuous, so that the surviv
taboo of contact, the Tr/,U/o0 may be covered with whit
which will serve the further purpose of preserving it from
X\evKcoUa was in use at Athens, as we know from the prescrip
Brueckner, infra); further, of recent years partial remains o
tombs have come to light at Vurva (Jahrbuch, 1891, p. 197
These fragile structures might be copied in stone. If my con
the later form of the omphalos, e.g. such a structure as h
the French excavators (Bulletin de Coqr. Hell. 1894, p. 180)
copy in stone. The omphalos seen by Pausanias he spea
XlOo9, but as Xl8ov 7re7rotLqpEvoq. Another analogy betwe
and omphalos iemains to be noted. In the curious and
(Tyrrhenian' amphora recently published by Mr. Walter
(Vol. xviii. 1898, P1. XV.) we have the scene of the slay
on the grave of Achilles. That the actual grave is repre
be, I think, no doubt. On all other representations of th
slaughter of Polyxena is a sacrifice performed expressly on the
(Overbeck, Gall. her. Bildw. 27, 17), and in the present ins
painter takes the greatest care that the blood of the v
precisely on the tomb. The purport is clear; the Erinys
angry ghost within the tomb, is to be appeased. The moun
contrary to custom it is flattened at the top (see Mr. Walt
TVq/,3o9, but-and this is the interesting part-it is decora
pattern like the well-known ' /,po/b6 ' omphalos of the Mun
A.V. 220 = Munich, 124).
Yet another point. The omphalos was, we know, regard
The scholiast on Eum. 40 says i8ovo-a yap 'OpeaCTrrv C
1 On some vase-paintings the omphalos is Bosanquet in the last num

figured as egg-shaped. At first sight this might Journal (xix. pl. 2) ju
seem fatal to the analogy of omphalos and T-tBUos, rv'/3os is represented.
but in a white lekythos published by Mr. R. C.
DELPHTTK A. 227
Moreover its constant function as a mercy-seat stamps it as an altar; the vase

in question shows us the Tv//3os actually serving as eoPws?. The /3oeLt8r/f
rcfo? is the f/3WoF. Dr. Reichel, in his very interesting monograph on the
Vorhellenische Gottercultur, tries to show that the primary notion of the
altar is found in the seat or throne. I agree with him that the seat came
FIG. 7.-DESIGN FROM KOTYLOS IN MUSEO NAZIONALE, NAPLES.
before the table, but both are late and anthropomorphic, the vague holy
place or thing must have preceded them. That the o/FaX6t? was a seat or
throne needs no demonstration. Apollo is constantly represented on vase-
paintings and coins seated on the omphalos. Gaia was too primitive and
aneikonic, too involved in it to sit on it.
FIG. 8.-KOTYLOS IN MUSEO NAZIONALE, NAPLES.
The three notions of altar, tomb and mercy-seat all merge in that of
holy place, but apparently the tomb is the primary notion. A fourth must
be added-that of f/avrelov. The 3otioerj)iS TaioS as /tavretov is clearly
shown on a vase published (Figs. 7 and 8) for the first time and now in the
Museum at Naples (Cat. 2458). The design is completely m

Heydemann in his description in the Naples Catalogu
central object for a 'Felshohle in der ein weisses Reh steht.'
a tumulus with a coat of Xevf/cwa, decorated on one side
other with a large snake. The technique of the vase ca
comment; it is of good black-figured style, with a liberal
details. The scenes on obverse and reverse are substant
a grove represented by formal trees and foliage stands a
each side of it is seated a warrior, who turns towards
attentively watching it. On the obverse an eagle w
claws is perched on the mound; on the reverse an eagl
Both devices represent well-known portents. The eagles b
3oai6o'jpevo Xaaylvav eptcvtJpova pep,carT /ye'vvav (AESC
. bbb,^^ a acS Dc, x a a ^^ ^^ ' <.'Q C3 Z -Z
FIG. 9.-DESIGN FROM LEKYTHOS IN MUSEO NAZIONALE, NAPLES.
--c~~0 ~41~4 ghQ ~6

are finely paralleled on the coins of Agrigentum (Head, Hist. Num. p. 105) and
both Agrigentum and Elis have also the single eagle devouring the hare. Here
then we have two warriors watching for an omen at a rvft/,%os. It may perhaps
be urged that the omen only accidentally appears on the grave-mound, which
would be a convenient place for the birds to perch, but the warriors have not
the air of casual passers by, and certainly look as if they had taken up seats
intended for systematic observation. It is tempting to see in the two
warriors Agamemnon and Menelaos, and in the tomb decorated by the deer
the grave of Iphigeneia; but this would be rather too bold a prolepsis even
for a vase-painter. It does not, however, seem rash to conclude that a
Trv-03o9 was used as a pavrTeov, though the omen in this case is an external
one. Primitive man is not particular as to how he gets his omens; he might
come to a tomb to hear a voice or see a snake, but if he saw a strange bird
or arnything significant like the eagle and the hare, that would suffice. The
history of the oracle at Delphi reveals many forms of omen-taking. The
DELPHIKA. 229
tomb then, like the omphalos, could be regarded not only as an altar and a
mercy-seat, but also as a puTav'reov; the avTrecov aspect of the omphalos at
Delphi needs no emphasizing.
Another vase hitherto unpublished and also in the Naples Museum adds a
new feature to the rVu'p,8-o-/axwaXo theory. The vase in question, a black-figured
lekythos (Figs. 9 and 10), was acquired by the Museum in 1880 and therefore
does not appear in Heydemann's catalogue.1 Its inventory number is 111609;
its height 0'19 m. The neck and frieze round the top ofthe body are cream-
coloured, the body red with black figures, the face, feet and arms of the
female figure are white, also the ornament on the warrior's helmet and a
portion of the handle of his club, and the grave-mound, the crest on the
shield, two broad stripes representing his sword-
belt, and the end of the sword-sheath; the centre
of the design is occupied by a white grave-mound
surmounted by a black 'baetyl.' To the left, a
male and female figure advance towards the grave-
mound; the man holds an uplifted sword, the woman
stretches out her right hand with a gesture as if she
intended rather to emphasize than to check the man's
act. To the left is a man with a shield on his
left arm; his right hand is hidden, but from the
position of the elbow he seems to hold a spear or
sword, but not to hold it uplifted. Behind, a bearded
man watches, leaning on his sword. The inscrip-
tions are illegible and almost certainly unmeaning.
The design may have some mythological intent; if
so, I am unable to interpret it, nor is any special
mythological interpretation necessary for my argu-
ment.
This much is clear, that some ceremony is being

enacted at a tomb between two men, and presumably
the ceremony is of the nature of a pact ratified by
an oath. It is quite consonant with Greek habits FIc. 10.-LEKYTHOS IN
of thought that oaths should be taken at the tomb MlusE NAZIONALE, NArLES.
of an ancestor, but I am unable to recall any definite
instance. Prof. Ridgeway kindly reminds me that such was the regular
practice among the Libyan tribe of the Nasamones. Herodotus iv. 172
notes their use of tombs for oaths and dream-oracles. 'Opclotot 8e Kcat parTVTL
x%pewvTra roT01 o0v'vov-t Wev TroV; apa oa-lo-i avSpaf licatorarov c Kal
apilrTov9 Xeyo,Uevov9 fyeveoaOat 7TOrov'T TrV Tv,t wv a7ropevot. /iavTevovTra
Se r7rl 7rV 7rpo7ovwov 'OtTEOEvre rT a auaTara /cal carEv a/jevot ertiaracot-
1 My grateful thanks are due to Signor Da Hutton who kindly superintended the necessary
Petra, the Director of the Naples Museum, photographs. The drawing in Fig. 9 was made
for his permission to publish this and the under considerable difficulties by Mr. Anderson.
vase in Figs. 7, 8, and also to Miss Amy
pwvrTar TO ' av tp' e jv Tr Oi't eVvrvtov rovrT7 Xparat. Here t

the laying hold of the tomb, and probably this is a more prim
than the mere uplifting of the sword. It may be urged that a
specially notes the custom, it must have been foreign to Greek
this argument will not hold, as he mentions the dream-oracle a
unaware that the dream-oracles of the heroes, Amphilochos, Am
Asklepios, are cases exactly analogous. It will not be forgo
ancient oracles of Gaia at Delphi are of the order of dream-or
Night which Euripides by a probably wilful inversion represe
tions. Long after the coming of Apollo men still like the Nasa
on the ground that they might hear earth's voice.
6i6e'iv S' ?7rel ryaiwov

7raCS a7revaao'ev l Aa-
-Toso9 aTrO â9(
A !
Xpra7TrIpowvI,
x6Wv 6 eTrecvW
ol 7roXeaLv Lep
ra 7 T6ret' o'r0
v7rvov cara 8v
xa.elvva, (fpar
pavTreov ' Adet
7oil/ov 006vp O
Iphig.
If the omphalos w
Although I am u
was taken at a gr
heroes and it seem
grave. E.g.by Sosipo
oaths were taken on
oaths by ancestor
TOTe evo/oj6VovV 7
erXOp[iovg. In a w
2499) we have a r
above a low /8LCo
Sosippos, the dedi
prayer. Here the
Tado9?. The curio
been a similar str
Olympia 21 ff. T
earth about 0'37
covered over with
I Since I wrote the a

kindly drawn my atte
made by the leader of
DELPHIKA. 231
renewed, and on each successive layer the inscription HP n 0P occurs. There

are over 13 of these inscribed layers. Prof. Curtius quotes the Scholiast on
Eur. Phoen. 274-284-JeXapa gvoa craaytadovoa' ro ic KaTCc, l e'Xovaa v'fro;
aXX' '7rri T7 y ^y ovo-a. In contrast to /3o8olt E Xl80Ov V4w'evot they are 8Bol
iao0re6ot ov' Kc Xl0wv 7Cre7rotL)/Aevot. The erecting of such a 7yrivo /Bco/,go was
expressly prescribed down to late times at certain magical ceremonies
(Dieterich, Abraxas, p. 170). The Erinyes as we have seen are only the ghosts
dwelling in tombs; they are specially the avengers of the violated oath and of
oaths which were taken at tombs; this would lend them a new fitness. We
are too apt to think of an oath as a special judicial ceremony but loosely con-
nected with religion; to primitive man it is only a specially sacred and important
form of invocation. Like most ancient things it had its two sides, for better for
worse; Ical evopxcoivvT ,ev t ot vroXX \\cal darya0a\, e7iopKovvTt 8 ' e't.eLa a'vrz. Te
Ical y/Evet, so ended the oath of the Athenian Heliasts. If we may trust Aristotle,
the oath was the eldest and most venerable of created things. Styx, the
ordeal-water, was from the beginning; 'flceavdv Te yap Kcai Tr8Ovv r7rolro-av
Tr7 fyeveoaeO? 7raTepag Kca opv OpKo v TCeO v oV8op, T\1V KcaXov/Uev7?V V7r
avTrojv rTvrya TrOW 7rOt7T&JV. Tt/ltOTaTOV /LEV yap TO 7rpe?P3UTaTOV, OpKcO' &6
TO rT/tLODTaTOv 0-Ttv (Arist. Metaph. i. 3, 983 b). Finally, the general sanctity
of sepulchres throughout Greece is evidenced by an interesting passage in the
Tusculan Disputations of Cicero, in which he argues with justice that most of
the gods of Greece are but mortals translated. 'Quid ? Ino Cadmi filia nonne
Leucothea nominata a Graecis Matuta habetur a nostris ? quid ? totum
prope coelum, ne plures persequar, nonne humano genere completum est?'
Si vero scrutari vetera et ex his ea quae scriptores Graeci prodiderunt eruere
coner, ipsi illi maiorum gentium dii qui habentur hinc a vobis profecti in
coelum reperientur. Quaere quorum demonstrantur sepulcra in Graecia;
rerniniscere (quoniam es initiatus) quae traduntur mysteriis, tum denique quam
hoc late pateat intelliges, (Cic. Tusc. Disputat. I. 13). Cicero is right, though he
misses a step in the process; dead men went to the sky as gods finally, but
they went as heroes to the lower world first, as chthonic powers, before they
became Olympian.
We have then in the vase before us a scene of worship, invocation, or
adjuration of a hero taking place at an omphalos-grave-mound. I reserve
for the present the discussion of the baetyl stone that surmounts it. It may
fairly be asked at this point, supposing the omphalos to be the tomb of a hero
or heroine, have we at Delphi any evidence that there was a special hero
cultus carried on ? We know from the scholiast to Pind. Nem. vii. 68 that
there was a general festival of heroes at which Apollo was supposed to be
host, yivera ev AeXfo2s i}poo-ot ~evsa dv o0s Soxcei 6 O 7r ' ' evta KcaXe2v TOVrs
fpwaoa, a curious mythological inversion, for undoubtedly the guests were there
long before the host. But fortunately for our argument we know not only of a
general guest-feast for heroes, but of a special festival of great moment, held
every nine years and called Herois. Before passing to the exposi-
tion of this festival, it may be noted that the word {p'o seems originally to
have had an adjectival meaning like Semnae, Eumenides, etc. and this survives
232 232 ~~~JANE E. HARRISON.
in the gloss of ilesychius i'pwog 8vvaTr6q L'-V' yIevvato9 0re/Ltvo,? Dead

men , ol 7rpoTEpot aveSpeq, are regarded as KpELT"rOVE9, 17pcoE9, /.eya"Xot, and
gradually the cultus adjective chaniges to substantive, as in the case of Kore,
Parthenos, Maia, and thle like.
Plutarch in his priceless Qntaestiones Grwctae (xii.) asks Ti; 7' rpa
I \ l
AeX(kot', Xa'ptX
/at V:rTeT' vjto
7rXe1tO-Ta /-MTW
$/X?9am' TtL~
festival but it is enougrh. Dr. Kretschmer has shown (Aus der~ Anomnia,
p. 20) that Semele-XapLViPq is one of the cou-ntless Ge-Demeter earthl-
gfoddesses whoseKa'aWo8o9 and alvo83oq were celebrated throughout Greece in
FIG. 11.-ANODES OF THE, EARTH GODDESS. (Kirater at Berlin.)
most primitive fashion in the Thesmnophoria. The Ica&Oo83oq is the Xa'pLXa,

the buirying, of the girl figure in the chasms or megara, the a'vo8oq or
resurrection festival is the Herois. How that alvo8os?, that resurrection was
figured is seen clearly in a vase painting, (Fig. 11) published and I veniture
to think wrongly explained by Dr. Robert in his Archaiologische Mahbrchen
(P1. 4, p. 196). Dr. Robert takes the picture to represent the birth of a
spring nymph. But the figure half-rising from the earth can be none other
than the earth-goddess, call her Gaia or Demeter or Kore or Pandora as you
will. She rises up through the X&'V/4ca yi^7s, the omphialos, the grave-mound,
which is coated with the usual stucco. We have in this vase painting exactly
what we want, the transitioni from the dead heroine to the goddless, and from
the earth muound itself to the anthropomorphic divinity. A festival of
DELPHItIA.
Herois rather than of heroes takes us back of course to matriarcha

it was in matriarchal days that the cult of Gaia must have em
developed. Wherever inhumation was practised Gaia cultus a
cultus would be closely connected. In Asia Minor, where rock b
vailed, naturally the symbol of the earth mother would be not a X
but a rough hewn rock or some sort of peyob,f xlOo. It is in A
apparently that the eikonic worship of the mother was developed
her image emerging from the block of stone on rock tombs (e.g.
Kaia in Phrygia, as shown in Athen. Mittheiluztmen, 1898, Taf, ii.)
conical stone of the mother is seen on coins of Perga gradually
some semblance of human form (Gerhard, Metroon, Taf. lix.). Wh
tomb was simply a XVt,ua 7y the worship of Gaia seems long
remained aneikonic. The altar served for an eikon, as according to
(De Abst. ii. 56) was the case among certain Arabians, KaT' 'Tro g6
WOvov 7rai8a ov VT7ro /8oWJ0v fta7rTov, c Xpwvra Tac g odvc.
The Xc%,a ryis as the sanctuary of the earth-goddess is
fined to the Greeks. Bastian (Loango, p. 88) gives an accou
visit to the oracle of Bimsi the mother of the Fetishes (Mama
It was enclosed in a thicket difficult of access. Bimsi's dw
consisted of a pyramid of earth rising in somewhat arched fo
the earth beneath a small tree. Unfortunately the place was
that the traveller was not allowed to approach quite near, bu
distinguish a small hut near the mound with a couch in it for Bi
she rose out of the earth to give her oracles. On the couch
spread; in fact, it was a kind of lectisterniulm with the usual a-r
Bimsi gave oracles and instruction to kings on their coronation;
was no king she was silent, which reminds us of the silence at De
Apollo was away. When there was a drought or floods, ceremonie
ment were performed at the sanctuary of Bimsi.
The oracular mound of Bimsi reminds us not only of the omp
Delphi,
O sancte Apollo qui umbilicum certum terrarum obsides

Unde superstitiosa primum sacra evasit vox fera,
Cic. de D)iv. ii. 56,
but also of another uaavreCov, not called by the name of Ge, but belonging, I
think, undoubtedly to her stratum of belief, I mean the ancient oracle of
Trophonios, where the suppliant had to [go actually down into the earth to
obtain his response. 'The shape of the structure,' Pausanias says, 'was like
that of a baking pot,' Tov 8 olCo8oolr080LaTro TOVTOV rTo oaXt,a eiiKacTra
Kpt/aVdVr (P. ix. 39, 10, v. Mr. Frazer ad loc.). The conclusion seems natural
that we have here a structure like a small beehive tomb. The offering of
the suppliant was a honey cake, as to the serpent heroes Sosipolis and
Erichthonios: as noted before, it is probable that here 'Ayah)` TvX,r is the
hypostasis of Ge.
It.S.-VOL. XIX. R
It would carry me too far to examine all the various

of Greece. I can only in passing note my conviction that th
(Hesych., sub. voc.) of Sicyon was taken over by Ap
parallel case to the taking over of the omphalos, and t
7yiv on the summit of Mt. Lycaon (P. viii. 38, 7) had a
remarkable that in front of the Xcfta 7yi? were two eagles
again remind us of the eagles of the omphalos. The gr
Kallisto was a similar case, and a very instructive one. B
Arcadia, Pausanias (viii. 38, 8) saw the tomb (rafo9) of K
X%Wâ 6 i77 vyi7X6v surrounded by trees, and on the top of
sanctuary of Artemis with the title of Kalliste; here veritab
transformation of heroine into goddess. In remote Ame
like X oxaTa 7y?. Mr. Payne in his History of the New Wo
notes the earth worship of the primitive inhabitants of Me
buildings and enclosures included in the great sacred precin
the gods at Mexico, was a mound or group of mounds calle
place of the Divine Earth or Soil. It was a monument of
religion of the Otomis, the aborigines of Anahuac. To the
pathetic prayer was addressed by the people of Callao,
Mother of all things,

Let me (too) be thy child,
which reminds us of the prayer of the priestesses at Dodona
rf xcap7rovs avi,e, 8to KX\'cTre /Treapa yatav.
It is interesting, too, to learn again from Mr. Payne th

advances, the earth goddess developes into the maize go
Demeter.
By the help of the vase painting reproduced in Fig. 12, I venture also
to class the mound on which the Sphinx of Thebes sat as an o/baXos 'y7m,
an oracular tomb-mound. The vase in question in the Vagnonville collection
was first published by Prof. L. A. Milani in the Museo Topografico di Etruria
(p. 69), and there briefly noted. It is further discussed in the first issue of the
Studii e Materiali di Arch. Nrum (vol. i., Part 1, p. 64), by Sig. Augusto Mancini.
Sig. Mancini holds that the mound on which the Sphinx is seated is the
Sphingion or Phikion as it was variously called. Prof. Milani in the same
issue (p. 71) rejects the Sphingion interpretation and maintains that the
mound is a tumulus-' Si tratti di un tumulo e propriamente di un tombe a
tumulo non gia del solito monte Phikion o Sphingion.' To my mind both
interpreters are right; the mound is a Sphingion, it is also a rT/Z3os, for the
Sphingion was a Tv/A/os, and the Sphinx herself is probably the oracular
earth goddess with the vexatious habit of asking questions instead of answer-
ing them. My view is, I think, confirmed by the curious and interesting vase
(Heydemann, Naples Cat. 2840), discussed and brilliantly interpreted by Dr.
Otto Crusius (Festschrift fur J. Overbeck, Leipzig, 1893, pp. 102-108). In
DELPHIKA. 235
this design, parallel with the omphalos mound on which the Sphinx is seated,
a snake uprears itself. I cannot agree with Dr. Crusius that the snake is
a mere 'Raumausfuillung'-the snake is the symbol and vehicle of the earth
oracle. Dr. Crusius adduces the snake behind the well in the Cyrene vase
(A.Z. 1881, P1. XII. 1), but here again I believe the second snake is added
simply because the well is snake-haunted. Euripides regarded the Sphinx
as chthonic,
Tav o Kara xOovo? Al a?
Ka8pueL'ot e77rr6/E7ret.-EUR. Phoen. 810.
Of course almost any monster might by the time of Euripides come from
Hades, but I am by no means sure that the words are not a reminiscence of
primitive tradition rather than 'eine rein dichterische Umschreibung seines
Wesens.' The great Sphinx of the Naxians stood, it will be remembered, in
?&~~~~~x '-....
FIG. 12.--KRATER IN THE VAGNONVILLE COLLECTION.

(Milani, Museo Topografico, p. 69.)
the precinct of Gaia at Delphi (Frazer, Paqsanias, x. 12), and if she was but
another form of the oracular earth-goddess, her station there gains in
significance. On the coins of Gergis in the Troad (Head, Hist. Nnum. p. 472)
we have on the obverse the head of the famous Sibyl of the Troad, on the
reverse the Sphinx her counterpart. That the head is the head of the Sibyl
is distinctly stated by Stephanus Byzantinus. In Hesiod's Tleogony the
Sphinx belongs to the earth-born brood, the race of Typhon, Echidna
and the like (Hes. Theog. 326). In her nature she is near akin to the
Kipes--in fact she appears as a sort of personified death. She is also an
Erinys. Haemon, according to one version of his story, had slain a kinsman
and was obliged to take flight (Schol. ad Pind. 01. ii. 14). According to
another version he was slain by the Sphinx (Apollod. 3, 5, 8). What par-
ticular form a monster assumed is really a question of survival. In the
remarkable Berlin vase, where the Sphinx is not inscribed Sphinx, but simply
Kao-oua, i.e. 'the Kadmean one' (Jahrbuch, 1890, Anzeiger, p. 119, Fig. 17),
R2
236 JANE E HARRISON.
she is represented as a curious monster, but not with a

has passed to Oedipus, who stands before her as postulant.
vase published by Hartwig (Philolog. 1897, Taf. I.) th
has no lion's body-she is simply a lean nude woman with
another case: we think of Medusa as a woman, possibly win
customary Gorgon shape, but on a very archaic Boeotian va
(Buzll. de Cor. Hell. 1898, P1. V.) she appears as a Centaur, i
ditional Gorgon head, but a woman's body draped, and the bo
of a horse appended. The Sphinx got the body of a lion, the
out of a snake into an Artemis, but, as we have seen on
(p. 234), she, like the Erinys, keeps the snake as 7rpo7ro
course deny for a moment that there was a real mountain I)K
Mr. Frazer says that the rocky mountain (1,860 ft. high) w
S.E. corner of the Copaic lake still bears the name of Phaga
Sphinx or Phix took her name from the mountain-not the
the Sphinx; the mountain actually existed, the Sphinx pres
What I suppose is this: on the top of Phikeion mountain w
As on the top of Mt. Lycaon, that x%#a 7y0 was a tomb su
sented on the vase-painting in Fig. 11, and it was haunt
Mormo, an Erinys, a Ker called Phix because she lived on P
there was a pestilence it was not unnaturally supposed that
down and carried away the sons of the Thebans. The b
probably oracular, the tomb a /avTc'ov. From answering que
unanswerable ones is not far. As regards the lion shape I m
gestion. I do not think it necessary to go to Egypt for
possibly the art form was borrowed. Cithaeron was tra
haunted. Pausanias (i. 41, 4) tells the story of how Mega
daughter in marriage to whoever would slay the lion of Cit
ravaging the land and had slain even the king's son. Alc
beast. It is possible that we do not require even the pest
Sphinx was a real lion who haunted a tomb, as wild beasts
the tomb is an integral part of the story I am convince
representations on vases and from the funeral characte
I return to the vase-painting in Figs. 9 and 10. So fa
only with the white ra'0bos /3o/oeLSg, marked by the her
mains to complete the argument by considering the black
surmounts it.
That the black stone surmounting the grave mound is a
stone utilised as a kind of rude stele scarcely admits of qu
in colour and shape closely resembles the 'Terpon' stone fo
which we know from its inscription to have been sacred to
Inscr. Gall. 2424). There was in antiquity and is now a
widespread tendency to worship stones of peculiar colo
natural aerolith was usually black and its sanctity was prov
ing from the sky. The whole question of the supposed niger
become of immediate special interest owing to the discover
DELPHIKA. 237
what has been alleged to be the black stone of Romulus (see especially C. Smith,
Classical Review, Feb. 1899, p. 87). This black stone of Romulus or Faustulus
is of great importance to my argument because of its connection with the two
lions and hence with the cult of the mother of the gods. Rhea-Cybele was of
course only the more primitive Asiatic form of the Earth-Mother, Gaia; lions
were her natural sacred beasts as long as there were lions where she was wor-
shipped, and they survived in Asia Minor long after they were practically
extinct in Greece proper. The black stone was the recognised vehicle or fetich
of the mother god. When Pindar (Pyth. iii. 77) is 'minded to pray to the
Mother' for his friend Hiero, it is because the Mother has special power
to heal madness. There is a shrine of the Mother before his very door-
aXX' eTreva?OaL paev et'wov ee)Xco
MaTrp, rav /covpat 7rap' e/rov 7rpopvpov ...
and the Scholiast recounts the occasion of the founding of the shrine; how
there was a great thunder-storm, and a stone image of the mother of the
gods fell at Pindar's feet Kcao *'fbov ibcavov Kca\ Xoya teiSv KaTabepopevr)2v.
Trv 8 a llivsapov 'rraLcr0ofJevov ovvt^86e Mvrpo? 0e&O adya\pa Xlitvov TroFl
7rooalv trepxo6evorv...and when Pindar asked the oracle what was to be done,
Trv Se avet7retv MrTpo? Oecvy iepov iSpvae'-Oat...and the prayer of Pindar
is thus explained: ol' se 0'T KaOaprpTd craT Tr? paaviaq 79 Oe6S . Pindar
addresses the Mother not as Rhea, but simply as crervav 0e60v, reminding us
of the Semnae who are simply her duplications. The Pindar story is impor-
tant because we are apt to think of the worship of the Mother of the Gods
as imported, late and purely foreign. No doubt the primitive orgiastic
Asiatic worship did come in again from without, but the Mother only came
back to her own people who had half-forgotten her.
The kathartic power of the Mother's aerolithic stone is of great import-
ance. The mother had power to drive men mad in her angry aspect as
Erinys, she and her daughters the Maniae; her stone had also power to cleanse
them, for she was Lusia. There is a stone at Dunsany, co. Louth, called the
Madman's Stone, and lunatics are seated upon it to bring them to reason
(Lady Wilde, Ancient Cures, Customs, etc. in Ireland, p. 70). If the stone
was a large one you would sit on it, if a small one you would hold it in your
hand; the main thing was to get in contact with the divine vehicle. All the
various functions of these stones, prophetic, kathartic, prophylactic, etc., are
only various manifestations of its supernatural power. In primitive days a
sacred stone is a god of all work. Thus we have the famous Jupiter lapis
that was good to swear by,1 there was the stone by which an oath was taken in
the Stoa Basileios (Dem. c. Con. ? 26) 7rpo? Trv X\lov2 ayovres Kcal EFopKco,VTre,
1 For the discussion respecting the Jupiter Philolog. 1897, p. 189.

apis and the Ata Aioov of Polybius, iii. 25, see 2 Altered from fBotds to Atoos on the authority
Strachan Davidson, Selections from Polybius, of Harpocration by Dindorf and,Westermann,
Prolegomen. viii. Mr. Strachan Davidson ac- and now confirmed by Aristotle, Ath. Resp. 7:
cepts the emendation AtdXA0o, without hesita- ol 8'evv'a &PXO7Te' tJlUvvwves rpbs Trt AtiOp K.7.A.
tion; but see also C. Wunderer, 'Die alteste Hesychius explains AiOos as foXos, Bw&s Kcal
Eidesformel der R6mer (zu Polybius iii. 25, 6),' ctdo-s,
there was the stone at Athens which had a special priest to carry i
\XtOofopo9 (CI.A. iii. 240) whose seat remains in the Dion
There was the lapis Manalis reputed to be the gate of Orcus a
on certain days that the Manes, the souls, might issue for
grave stone (Preller, Jordan, p. 354). The often cited 'Bethel'
interest because like the omphalos at Delphi it was connected
oracle. The enumeration of all the various wonder-stones even of classical
antiquity would take us much too far. They are discussed in Pauly-Wissowa,
s.v. cpryo XI\0o and ,/alrvXoq, and for savage parallels I may refer to Mr.
Frazer (Comment, Pans. x. 16, 3 and viii. 25, 4). At present I must confine
myself to the more immediate analogies between the vase painting under
discussion and the omphalos.
At the first glance, there will probably occur to any archaeologist the
analogy of a curious monument mentioned by Pausanias. At Megalopolis in
Messene, it will be remembered (p. 208), there was a sanctuary of the Maniae
where, it was reported, Orestes went mad after his mother's slaughter. The
words that follow (Paus. viii. 34, 2) are so important that I prefer to quote them
in the original: ov 7roppo e 7rov0 epov 7y,s XcoJa eortv o0v ..e.ya, etrlti6,/a 'xov
X\Iov re7Trotrnkevov 8a/V rvXod , TVoVca 8 Kab od voJa Tr XopaTt ca -T ALaKTV\ov
/Lvirja. Mr. Frazer translates 'not far from the sanctuary is a small mound
of earth surmounted by a finger made of stone-indeed the mound is nalled
Finger's tomb.' I prefer to render the last sentence, 'Indeed the mound is
named Dactyl's monument.' Pausanias says the story went, that when the
goddesses were driving Orestes out of his wits they appeared to him black;
after he had bitten off his finger, they seemed to him white. Mr. Frazer
cites a number of interesting savage parallels where atonement is made by
the cutting off of a finger or other limb. Spite of these instances I believe
the story about the biting off of the finger to have been late and aetiological.
The supposed finger was in all probability a kathartic baetyl known as Dactyl
and sacred to the Mother. These baetyl stones were called in Crete Dactyls.
Pliny (N.IL xxxvii. 61) says 'Idaei dactyli in Creta, ferreo colore humanumn
pollicem exprimunt' and Porphyry confirms it in his curious account (Por-
phyry vit. Pyth. 17) of the purification of the Cretan mystic, Kp?rTq? 8' er7rtBa
rolq Mop/yov ULveTatl 7rTporet evo 7 rj 'Ialwov AacrKTVXwo vf' Cv Kcat
KcaOaup0r rTr' Kepavvila XtLco. Here there is an obvious fusion of sacrament
and celebrant. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to note that the Dactyls are
everywhere associated with the worship of the Mother. The Argonauts, when
they land in Mysia and invoke the Mother, call also on the name of two
Dactyls, viz. Cyllenus and Titias
oi /tovvoi 'roXrev IJotpayeTrat 1'e rafpeSpot
MrTrepoI 'ISar79/ KEIcK\Xa7at, So-aot eaola
AaKTVXOL 'ISa?ot Kp?7ratle?.-APOLL. Rhod. i. 1127.
The name Cyllenus is possibly of some importance in connection with the
Arcadian Dactyl monument. Immerwahr (Bonner Studien p. 188) has shown
abundantly that primitive cults of the Mother abounded in Arcadia, and the
DELPHIKA. 239
legend of Kronos and the stone was not wanting. It seems to me clear that
Orestes was purified by a mother-stone or Dactyl, and the sanctuary he came
to for purification, here as at Delphi, was an omphalos surmounted by such a
stone and must have looked very like the one represented on the vase painting.
Peloponnesian antiquaries said, Pausanias remarks (viii. 34), that the adven-
ture of Orestes with the Furies of Clytemnestra in Arcadia happened before
the trial at the Areopagos. They were right; an adventure substantially the
same would happen at any time in any part of Greece whenever a kinsman
was slain and the guilty man came to a mother-stone to be purified. At
Troezen (viii. 31, 4) and at Gythium (iii. 22, 1), were stones connected by
legend with the purification of Orestes. I do not deny that their connection
with Orestes may have been late and due to the prestige conferred on
Orestes by Aeschylus, but these widespread purification stones bear witness
to the prevalence of this baetyl worship and its kathartic associations.
It may fairly be urged at this point that the analogy between the vase-
painting and the omphalos fails at one point. The omphalos was, according
to my present theory, originally a X&%cpa ,yi/, covered with XevK/woLa and
finally copied in stone, but we have no evidence whatever that it was sur-
mounted by a baetyl. The sanctuary on the vase-painting is more complex
than the omphalos. It is a T4V/po? vTe a-rTXrj Te, the omphalos is merely a
TVip,9oS. This is perfectly true, and I imagine a sacred baetyl was no wise
necessary to a sanctuary of Gaia. The Xc&opa ryqr was all that was essential.
The story of Alcmaeon is very instructive on this head. Alemaeon, the
Arcadian hero (P. viii. 24, 8) is pursued by 'the avenger of his mother,' Tvv
'Ep VfX?7 adiXkaropa-the Erinys has not become Erinyes,-and Alcmaeon can
obtain no relief there or anywhere till he come to a piece of new unpolluted
land uncovered since the murder, '9 ravT1mv ol p6ov?v X&pav ov a-vvacoXkov-
'Oretv, Tt7 ear67't veWraTr icab 7v7 8dXao'o'a TOV p ao'V tuaypaT'roa adve('fnvev
Vr'6epov aVTrv. Here we liave the real primitive view. All mother earth is
polluted by the blood of a mother. There is no possible release from this
physical fact, no atonement. A new earth is the only possible mercy seat.
Later, no doubt, a special X&wpa 7y^ became the sanctuary of Gaia Erinys,
where she might be appeased, and that X%61a 7y)9 was naturally the tomb of
a murdered hero or heroine. If that Tv/,/S0o was to have a stele, what
better stele could be chosen than a black aerolith, sacred also to the mother ?
It must be noted at this point that, though the aeroliths fell to earth
and belonged to earth, and were vehicles of the earth-mother, they tended,
as anthropomorphism advanced, to differentiate off towards the side of the
male god. A stone, as soon as you think of your gods anthropomorphically,
is not a good symbol of a woman, a X&,pa 7yq is. In many savage races, too,
as the earth is a woman so the sky is a man, and thus stones coming from
the sky tend to be regarded as vehicles of the male god, and specially of
Kronos. Photius (Vit. Isid. Bibl. p. 1048) says, rwv fatTVXv a\XXov a\XX
avaicecrOat Odec, Kpovw, At, 'HXlO),, ca T'o?t aX\Xot. Hesychius says, sub
voce, f3alTvXo' dc\X0rjO 6 Xl0os OV a'r' Atos 6 Kpovos xaT ev, and the
story was popularized in the proverbial saying, Kca /3a'aTvXov av ecaT'retC
-2 4 JANE E. HARRISON.
(Paroimiogr. 2, 468). Zeus doubtless took over the baetyls of

primitive Kronos cult and Kronos has many features in common w
Ouranos. Eusebius (Praep. Eu. 1. 10) makes Ouranos the inven
baetyls. VET & S'xqoa W'niEv&lcre 9eo9 Oi'pavo /3a8atTXta X69ov9
1AYqXav,qlaa-'o9* This association with Helios-Kronos-Ouranos po
to the most primitive stratum of Pelasgian mythology. Kronos is e
the representative of the old order Ta KpovtK6a'. For the full und
of the omphalos, this is, I think, of no small importance. On the
there was, at least in historical times, no baetyl stelM, but at Delph
such a stone, and down to the time of Pausanias it was daily ano
oil, and at every festival fresh wool was put about it (P. x. 24. 6)
does not say what sort of stone it was, he only says it was ov yeryas?,
CTt SE IcaL &0'a E'9 ai'TOv SoOipvat Kpo6vC aT' XiOov aVrT [TOV] 7ratSo
a 9 yAeaev aVTO Kp6vo9. This was no mere late &i4a, for th
tradition appears in Hesiod (Theog. 493).
ErwvnrXoA'vov 8' E'LtaVT6h

Fai`sqq evvelat at 7roXvqpaUeEact 8oXoAe'
ov yov oy ro a E ICE ~ ae'eYas Kp~vo' iryKvXop,l5v?9,
VULCrjOE2' ~eXVNUCt /3'10i TE 7Fata39 o oeo.
7rprTOV 8' 6`.tEUf e, Xt'Oor', to lsaTov KaTa7ripaovn
Topv pev ZEi'Q urTlp4~e KaTa\ XBor'1 eV'pVo0&ir7
fTvOo
Hvo c' 'P
i'p 'ryaeOll 'yCXot,S
a&y ryvaXr 5T avj~Z '?\ Iapvqa'ot-
e/q 61kev / o707a) ao Oa^ a 9ipqTa'O-t IpoTO'rot.
The whole childish, savage myth is transparent enough;

Ouranos or Kronos, disgorges (~4,tt-crE) the aerolith; before he
he must have swallowed it. The stone was wrapped up in woo
like swaddling clothes, therefore it was a child. A baetyl careful
would present an appearance very like a stiff Italian bambino, a
the relief of the Capitoline altar (Roseher, p. 1563, Fig. 14) R
senting to Kronos a swaddled stone which is a very good imitatio
I think, further, that the whole myth was helped out by the fa
stone was probably oracular and supposed to speak. In the Lit
Pseudo-Orpheus we have a curious and interesting account of a X1
given by Phoebus Apollo to Helenos. It could only be consu
fasting and purification; it had to be washed in pure water and
soft rairnent like a child; sacrifice was offered to it as a god
rightly done, andi then the sacred stone dandled in the arms, the
utter its voice
G7T7roTe ,atvY p d rayXv Kalty9 a xEipeUt 7TaXXfl,

E~a1rtlvt7 6ipuet Peo7yLXoVr 7raL6io~ aqEveT Xp,
E X?r r KOX7r9 KEICXK 7CoT cl? ryX0\ a'aCt.-Litailka, 372.
A few lines further down the stone is called the koti3'T&wp X&aa, which
brings us face to face with Phoebuis Apollo. The double name savours of
contaminatio. Liddell and Scott say that the epithet Ooi#/og refers to the
DELPHIKA. 241
purity and radiant beauty of youth, which was always a chief attribute of
Apollo. They reject the old notion that Phoebus was the sun god, but I am
by no means sure that the 0fot[38Top Xaas was not a sun or at least an
Ouranos stone. There are many indications that the name Phoebus belongs
to the pre-Apolline stratum, the stratum of Gaia and Kronos-Ouranos. Thus
Antimachus in Hesychius sub voc. has raqtra 4)o,sYv, and Phoebe the Titaness
is recognized by the Delphic priestess as prior to Apollo (Aesch. BEum. 4 f.).
ev Se TC Tppl(T
XaXEl, B?XovaOjq ov'e 7rpbF 3tlav TLV6O?,
TLravi daXXrX 7raf XOovo,s caOe'aero
Q)ool,8n.
This exactly corresponds to the Far7Sa (t8ol/3lv and makes Phoebe a sort
of Kore to Gaia Themis. If we may trust Plutarch (de Ei xx. 1) Phoebus
meant tcaOapo, and alplavTo0; if so Phoebe is as it were the white side, the
opposite to Melaina and Erinys. He goes on to make the interesting state-
ment: Iof/ov Se 8i Trov TO Kca0apobv Kca arvov ol 7raXatol Trav copuaov (0
6'T o ?e?vraXol TOViS lepeaS ev Taf a-o4gpadatv /LepaL' aVrovF e+' avrCv eW
&SaTp,0l/3Ta' o,aat Ootflovopeio-Oat. O irakXatol were more likely to concern
themselves with questions of taboo and ceremonial sanctity than with the
'purity and radiant beauty of youth.' Finally the use of the word cotL/3a by
Euripides should be noted. He says (Hec. 827):
Ij 4?ot8/3s qv /caXovo-i KaaoadvSpav 4Epv<ye9.
Kassandra was a priestess of Gaia Phoebe, hence her official name was
1otl9da, like 7 HIvOW; and here I may quote again the invaluable line of
Timotheos (Frg. 1.)
MaLvdSa Oviada fboi/3dSa Xva-o-da.
Kassandra was prophetess at the /,&o,9-omphalos (Gerhard, A.V. 220) of

Thymbrae, a shrine taken over by Apollo as he took Delphi. The frenzy of
Kassandra against Apollo is more than the bitterness of maiden betrayed, it is
wrath of the prophetess of the older order discredited, despoiled:
xcat vvv o uaLVTt' AavrTtv &e7rrpda?a '/ue.
Finally to clinch the argument there is the ot38oq, the dream-portent of the
Choephoroi (v. 32)
Topb s yap foOto3 O pOOpt:
S6LCpw ovetpoLp6taTt<
which Dr. Verrall (Choephor. ad v. 32) upholds against the emendation S60dog.
The dream portent is of the very essence of the cult of Phoebe and this
dream portent is the ancestral Erinys, i.e. in very truth PCofwv ovetpoJuavrtl.
To return to the fjotfiTjCOp Xaas, the Pseudo-Orphic writers no doubt
thought it got its name from Apollo, but it seems at least probable that Phoebe
or Phoebus, her male correlative, had a prophetic, kathartic stone long before.
Whether it ever actually surmounted the omphalos it is of course impossible
to say; the o-rrpt4e of Hesiod looks like a formal setting up. An

point I plead for is the close analogy and association of the Kp6vo
the rFv O/,uaX6kv; in the light of the vase-painting in Fig.
AarcTvXov AivAj,a, it seems to me at least possible that the two o
one monument in the relation of Tvuf,Soq and orTXr\.
Some slight additional probability is added to this view
consider that the omphalos certainly was moved. If my theory i
must have begun as an actual tomb somewhere in what is no
cinct of Gaia near the Styx-Cassotis well and the rock of t
the time of Aeschylus and Euripides, it was undoubtedly in the
Apollo. The actual grave mound could not be moved as a grav
was a mound plastered with XEvcKweAa and if its significan
lost, it could easily be copied on marble and the marble copy car
temple. The omphalos in the time of Pausanias stood, there is lit
on the terrace in front of the temple, and there the actual omp
covered by the French was found.' This omphalos is obviously
the real cultus object, for the fillets are copied in stone; th
omphalos would of course, like the Kronos stone, be covere
real woollen fillets. If the omphalos was so freely moved about t
may have overtaken the stone of Kronos; it would be smaller an
move. In the place where Pausanias saw it, it had no special signi
proper home was the precinct of Gaia. The incoming worshipper
were obliged to tolerate and even venerate Gaia, but Kronos b
god would have been an inconvenient rival to Apollo, and hence
the worship of Kronos became obscured, though even down to t
Lycophron the tradition that he first held the oracle at Delphi su
ol a' tpq/h /f3O( ov 7To 7rpo,aivrTo9 Kpovov.
On which the scholiast (ad v. 200): ol &8 dvr Trov Kpovov, Kal faao
AeXô4 FaravTEtov 7rporepov Tro Kp6vov 7iv, gv6a e'Xafov 'TOv
"EXXqrve oTt 7' 8elKaTd 'TEt To 'IXtov TroptojaOU'-it.
It remains to say a word as to the primary meaning of
omphalos; as I am no philologist, I can only approach the questio
point of view of tradition and usage, In the Iliad op/aXoS? is use
(a) the actual navel of the human body (Iliad 4. 525, 13. 568), (b)
a shield; there is no necessary implication that the o,uQaaXov is a c
except in so far as anything dome-shaped has necessarily a centr
seems to.be that of bossiness. In the Odyssey the word occurs onc
1, 50); Calypso is said to live
N?i5r e'v Cdjufpvty p 7 'OB o/ ubaX6'? a 0at O daXtra7) ,
'in a seagirt isle where is the navel of the sea.'
1 Bull. Corr. Hell. 1894, p. 180; Pausanias decorated with marble tainiae and
v. p. 318. This omphalos is as yet unpublished wrought condition of the base
but by the kindness of M. Homolle I have been sunk in the ground.
able to see a photograph. It is of white marble,
DELPHIKA. 243
Liddell and Scott say that the order of significance is as follows: (1) the
navel, umbilicus, (2) anything like a navel or boss...umbo, (3) a centre or
middle point, so in Od. 1, 50, and by a later legend Delphi (or rather a round
stone in the Delphic temple) was called 3o aXoS as marking the middle point
of the earth, first in Pind. P. 4, 131. This sort of loose statement is only
tolerated where archaeology is concerned. There is nothing whatever in Od.
i. 50 to imply that Calypso dwelt in the middle of the sea. Any one who
has looked at a solitary island on an expanse of level sea, has seen it rise boss-
like from the level of the sea; if the sea is human an island is its omphalos.
If the land is human, is Gaia, the grave mound is its omphalos. Later, when
mankind concerns itself with theories, cosmical and geometrical, a naive
local egotism sees in the navel of Gaia the centre of the universe, and
stories grow up about eagles meeting in their flight.
That is one side of the question, but the ancients themselves conjectured
another meaning. The scholiast on Eurip. Orestes 321 says, p0akSX0 XdyeTrat r
llv&Wc 7rapa To Tra bd o/pa? ?7 Ta r v eo Xpo paroplaopctevoq Xeetev, and more
decisively and polemically Cornutus (de Nat. Deoqr cxxviii.), eXEX8? 6e Kal o
T07roT0 of>aXo\T7 7'<b aX ovX &cx "ea'ratTaTO &cv aVT7r a 'X o T '7 r va&t8o-
P&vip ev aVT, T(?rf '-T Oovi ffela (cvor. The word cLfOr means especially
a divine oracular utterance, and it seems possible that the two notions of the
speaking oracular mound or stone and the boss-navel blended; which was
prior to the other, is hard to say, but I am inclined to give precedence to the
speaking mound, i.e. the o/,zb derivation.
For this reason. The notion of the boss, the navel, though it did not
necessarily involve, yet early, as we have seen, led on to the notion of
centrality. The notion of centrality is much mixed up with ideas of the
central hearth, the year'opaXoo eo,cria, and the Hestia-Vesta conception seems
to me to belong to a later order of conception than that of Gaia-Erinys, the
order of Zeus and Apollo. It is noticeable that in the Rig Veda (ii. 333,
Wilson) we have 'mighty Agni-the Fire-god-stationed at the Navel of
the Earth... ask what is the uttermost end of the earth, I ask where is the
navel of the world. The altar is the navel of the world. This sacrifice is the
navel of the world. Agni is placed by strength upon the navel of the earth.'
It is possible that the whole idea of the centre hearth stone came in with the
Achaean invasion and Hestia worship. Hestia appears to have assimilated
Gaia, at least, in the cosmogony of the a-oboi:
rca raEa p T/rep, 'Earalav S8 o l o-ool

13porTAv caXoOvatv, jpevryv ev aiept.-EURRIP. Frg. 938.
and Ovid says (Fasti vi. 266),
Vesta eadem est et Terra subest vigil ignis utrique

Significat sedem terra focusque suam.
Cornutus, it will be remembered, gives a conjoint chapter to Demeter

and Hestia (Cornut. de nat. Deor. xxviii.) remarking with more truth than he
was aware of, ecaTrepa 8' EOtKOcev ovX e'epa Ti^? 79 eivac. In fact, theology,
after articulating the gv into the ?roXXa, usually resumes th

hence mutatis mutandis late philosophizing authors are often
use in understanding primitive conditions. An Orphic hym
primitive conceptions than the clear outlines of Homer. With
as with the Erinyes, the difficulty lies chiefly in the analytic hab
minds, our determined and exclusive discriminations. We dis
whether the omphalos was a tomb, an altar, a sanctuary of Gai
of Kronos, a /tavTreov, an ei,ccv, when the real solution to all
is that it was each and all.
I have kept to the end the interesting question of the attitude of
Aeschylus towards this ancient ghost and Gaia cult, the Erinyes and the
omphalos. How far was he conscious that the Erinyes were ghosts and snakes?
Did he know the omphalos was a tomb? If he knew all this, how far did
he, to subserve a theological purpose, intentionally conceal his knowledge?
In a parenthesis it must be noted that any mythological investigation
should end, not begin, with literary conceptions. The last complete mono-
graph on the Erinyes, Dr. Rosenberg's Die Erinyen, a valuable corpus of
material, is a good instance of the wrong order of things: it is divided under
four heads in the following order:-
1. Die Erinyen in der Dichtung.

2. Ueber den Ursprung, den Namen und den Begriff der Erinyen.
3. Der Cultus der Erinyen bei den Griechen.
4. Die Kunstdenkmaler.
The true order is first cultus, which shows us to what order of beings the
mythological figures in question belong, i.e. how they were conceived of by their
worshippers. Next should come the minor arts-vase-paintings and th
like-because these, though not free from literary influence, are less under
the dominance of Homer than e.g. the tragedies of Aeschylus--Aeschylus
who boasted that his dramas were TepaXr7 from the heroic banquet. An
early black-figured vase will often (e.g. Fig. 7) yield up a conception prior
to any poetry has left us. Then should follow the name, with the constant
proviso that the name, if primitive, will probably be no proper name, but an
adjectival cultus appellation. Last will come what is after all the suprem
delight of the investigator-the examination of how far literature embodies
primitive conceptions, how far transforms, what gllosts of ancient thought
and feeling hover round, present but not consciously evoked. The evil
results of Dr. Rosenberg's methods are seen in his first sentence, which
strikes the wrong key-note and vitiates his whole investigation. 'Schon Homer
bietet uns ein fest umrissenes Bild von dem Walten der Rachegottinnen
It is just this 'fest umrissenes Bild ' this literary crystallization that does all
the mischief.
In the case of Aeschylus, it is curious to note that, probably owing to
the subject-matter of the two plays, the religious attitude in the Choephoroi
and the Eumenides is wholly different and even opposite. In the Choe-
DELPHIKA. 245
phoroi the theology is at bottom so primitive as to be no theology at all;

it is daemonology, ghost-worship centred round a tomb. It is not necessary
for me to emphasize this point beyond what I have said at p. 214; for Dr.
Verrall, in his edition of the play, the keynote is the rTIravc ovog (v. 65) the
'avenged blood' of kinsfolk. Earth was literally, physically polluted, and
poisoned the murderer-a notion precisely paralleled by Alcmaeon's story
(p. 239). The Earth is Erinys and implacable. But side by side with this,
almost indistinguishable from it, is the other thought that the ghost is
the Erinys.
cXXa 'rT' &e'Cvet 7rpoo,/3oX\a 'Epitvvov,
EK Triv nraTrpov aTarwav TeXov/jvra%,
opwova Xau,7rpbo'v cv OKOTW VWiO/,VT o.pvv.
'Apparitions of fiends' (I borrow Dr. Verrall's translation) 'brought to effect by

that paternal blood, phantoms which the victim, though his eyebrows twitch
in the dark, can clearly see.' The ' eXov4evas'' shows the transition in the
mind of Aeschylus; he does not say the phantoms are the ghosts, but they
are brought to effect by the murder. As the doctrine is quaintly put in the
mouth of Apollo, with whose religion it had nothing to do, perhaps this is as
as much as dramatic propriety would allow. On the word 7rpoao/oXdi I
would make one remark. Dr. Verrall (ad v. 282) explains that 7rpooa,oX r
signified properly the 'access' of an object to an organ of sense, and vice
versd, and hence here comes to mean something practically equivalent to our
apparition. To cause these 7rpoao3oXai, or, as they are sometimes called,
'foSot, was also one of the functions of 'jpwei, i.e. dead men, who here again
parallel the Erinyes. doro'a 8e Seliara VVTcrOs 7raplc7rarat cal Ofotol Kal
7rapdvota6t cal ava7rrja18eL EK C\ivF. . . . . EK rjS Caaiv etvaL drt/ovX&d
(? C7rtoXas) cal p l co v e 6 8 o v s (Hippocr. 7repi lepJ? vovo-ov, p. 123,
20, v. O. Crusius, Die Epiphanie der Sirene, p. 103).
I have already noted (p. 214) that Orestes recognizes in the snake the
earth daemon, the Erinys of the dead; it is equally clear that to him,
his father's tomb, and earth as a sanctuary are thoughts near akin (v. 588)
atXX' eVXoJlatdy 77 TrfSe Kal 7rarpo9 Tafq),

and again, v. 124,
Kcrpvt ag epfo0
TroV yr7 evepOe 8asovaS KXEvLev e pa\,
I, ' .
?E1X(SL, 7
Kcal <yat
ope*racod
In a word t
scious, pro
attitude is
moralised,
As to the
I have littl
2.46- JANE E. HARRISON.
p. 221). Apollo is preceded by three women divinities, Gaia,

Phoebe. Aeschylus, when he wrote the Prometheus, certainly kne
and Themis were the same (Aesch. Prom. 209):
Elol Se MTrvp OvX 6-7ra: lmFovov oC@ep

ical raia, 7roXX\v oYvopFarwv /opl pla.
but as his great desire is to avoid any mention of unseemly confl

Gaia and Apollo it probably suited his purpose to lengthen out th
How much he knew of who Phoebe was must remain doubtful. Eve
did not dare, spite of the analogy of name, to say that Phoebe wa
Apollo; she is 7ra?? XOovr0. The moment is an anxious one, hence
comedy of the yeve'OXto,; 'o-vs. At all costs there must be no b
mention of the slaying of the serpent.
So far all is fairly plain sailing. Beginning with a complete a
morphism Aeschylus is not required to take cognizance of ghosts
worship. There is only the venerable figure of Gaia and the
sitional but always respectable Titanesses. But the moment has c
the omphalos and the Erinyes must be presented to the audience
that be done ? As to the omphalos I do not think that Aeschylu
suspicion of the truth. By his time it had been completely take
Apollo, moved out of the Gaia precinct and was probably re
portable cultus object of unknown origin and immense antiquity
an altar and mercy seat for suppliants to Apollo. The Erinyes
have seen were really resident in it are only conceived of as
camping round it because Orestes has fled there. It is the sacred o
temple, that is all. I have solght in vain for any passage in Aesc
could fairly be taken to show that he took the omphalos to be a
in one chorus of Sophocles (O.T. 469) the thought is at least subc
present. For Sophocles Apollo has become the minister of ven
of reconciliation-
vo7rrXoT? yap rw' aVrTO ew7revOpa(JcKe
7rvpt cai o"epowa 7r O At0o /yeveTraq.
Here Apollo is but the double of his father Zeus. Yet it is not forgott
who are the ancient avengers though by a mythological inversion they ar
made subsidiary.
ecval u' ad,' '7rovTat
Ki`pe dava7rXlT/c7rot,
where the name KOpe9 points to the ghost aspect-the Erinyes. And these
Kipeg haunt the 0,/faXo9. The Theban elders (Oed. Tyr. v. 475) chant the
misery and loneliness of the guilty man.
()?oLtia ya'p vT7r' ypt'av

vxav va' T' a vYpa Kat
W7rpa; aTe Tavpo%,
DELPHIKA. 247
/eX?eoS /heXe TroS& xrpev,v

T(d /eo'uJbfaXa 7ya dLrovooc-l'ov
pLavreia ra ' ace
ivrTa 7reptLroTa'at.
Here Prof. Jebb observes 'The haunting thoughts of guilt are objectively
imaged as terrible words ever sounding in the wanderer's ears.' Yes; and
I venture to think more than this, the peo-o/uaXa 7ya9 pavTela are ei'oXa,
they are foi/,at, they are 'Eprvzov 7rpoo-/3oal. Though the guilty man shuns
the actual tomb, i.e. the omphalos whence they rise up to haunt him, it is in
vain
Ta a' 'el
~Cvra 7reptrroTaTat.
I do not say that Sophocles knew the omphalos was a tomb, but I do say that
if his ancestors had never believed it this marvellous chorus would never
have been written.
It is when we come to the Erinyes themselves that the theological
animus of Aeschylus comes out and here we cannot escape the conclusion
that his misrepresentation was wilful and deliberate. All is fair in theology and
war. This misrepresentation is in two directions; first, the new and hideous
form given to the Erinyes; second, the statement by the priestess and the
implication by every one, except Clytemnestra, that the Erinyes are novel
apparitions, strangers to the land and of unknown lineage. The whole
illusion is most skilfully arranged. In the first place, the Erinyes being
7'roXvcvvptvot are addressed by no name in particular, they are vviCrTO' aXataia
7ralSe& they are 0tTrrTVo-roI copal, Oavpaa-To0 Xoxo? and the like. With
great dexterity Aeschylus gives them an entirely new form and then turns
round and says: We never saw you before, we do not know who you can be.
The type he selects is that of the Gorgons and Harpies, shapes not clearly
differentiated in ancient art, and that he has gone to graphic art for his
inspiration is clear from the verses.
6e8Ov 7OT' "r8 tIve&w) ye'pa/ppevas
eT7ryov O fepov'aa.-v. 50.
The whole horrible description is a vociferous protest against the simple
fact that the Erinyes are the same as the familiar Athenian Semnae,1 in whose
imagination, as the candid Pausanias observed, there was ' nothing fearful,'
1 The question of the age of the cult of the opagus cults being essentially chthonic-pre-
Semnae at Athens, and its exact character, can ceded, I believe, the cultus settlements on the
only be dealt with satisfactorily in relation to Acropolis. The Cecropidae, the 'white' side of
the whole group of the Areopagos cults. This the Semnae, passed in part on to the Acropolis,
I hope to discuss on a later occasion. At present but their worship there was always of a sub-
I can only record my conviction that the cult ordinate character. In a former discussion of
of the Semnae is a form of the worship of Gaia the Cecropidae (J.I.S. xii. p. 350) I have tried
intimately related to the very primitive ritual to show that they were originally two not three,
of the Thesmophoria. The Eleusinion, the site and that these two, Pandrosos and Aglauros,
of which within very narrow limits must have represented originally what I should now call
been close to, if not actually on the site of an the ' black' and ' white' side of the Semnae.
ancient Thesmophorion-the whole group of Are-
any more than there was in the images of other underworld

ae daydXa?tv ov7e rov'rotLOVTV
~ .~iydp~ao-vOLJTEECYTtV reTv ovSev
cOfE Va fo3epov, ov're o'a
OevV T7wv vn7royalov (Paus. i. 28. 6). Pausanias knew that the Semnae and th
Erinyes were the same. IXfX-lov 86 iEpOv 0e6v o-7riv &9 caXovlotv 'Affrvato
e?jvad< 'Ho-108o 8E 'Eptvv^s v eofoyov'a. It is noticeable that he refers to
Aeschylus only as an innovator. The literary innovation of Aeschylus was
powerless to touch cultus practice.
Having made these sensational innovations in the visible form of his
Erinyes, and having artfully suppressed their names as though they were un
known and nameless, Aeschylus paves the way for the amazing statement
that the Delphic priestess knows them not.
r' ,i~Xov o0,C ira,a r o'-8' 4 X'
so fvXov ovK o'7rcora va.' o tuXlag
OV' i'TLt ata TOVTr' EreVterTat 7evog.-v. 57
She refers them to Apollo, he being above all things Ica:adpaoto; with
great skill, the taboo of uncleanness that should have rested on the guilty is
shifted to the avengers. Even from the Homeric point of view this is a gros
misrepresentation. It is Orestes who is Oeo/jva7s. Apollo does not feig
complete ignorance; he avoids the issue by dexterously insulting the Erinyes
for their virginity. It would indeed have been dramatically impossible for
Apollo to say he did not know them; a few hours before the same audience
had listened to a full account of Apollo's views on the Erinyes, given by hi
protege Orestes; an account which shows, as has clearly been pointed out,
an intimate and perfect knowledge of their nature and primitive origi
(Choeph. vv. 275-295).
Athene's attitude is, however, perhaps the most instructive of all. She,
officially, in her capacity as president of the Court of the Areopagos, asks th
name and race of the plaintiffs.
Who are ye? this I ask of one and all.
She is conscious that she is officially bound to ask Orestes the question jus
as much as the Furies, but she skilfully emphasizes the exceptional un
familiarity of the Erinyes, carefully insisting on their strangeness as a genus
not as individuals (v. 410).
v,4 a; 6oL' ota ov8ev, aorapTCrv 7yeveC

ovT' v d eaaor-t rpoT Oewv opo' e'va
OVT OVI SpOTE'Ol9 e/MfelpleF fopfbLaaot.
Athene then pulls herself up, none too soon probably for the sympathies
of the audience, and adds with pompous copy-book morality.
Xe"yEL 8' aftojfUov oVTa 'TOV! 7reXa9 Kca/cW

7rpoaco Salcaov 718' a7ro-TaTE& E/'tTu.
The bifurcation of popular theology favoured the position of Aeschylus

technically he is correct, the Erinyes were not 8Eco in the Olympian sense; they
DELPHTK A. 249
were XOovtot, their worship was conducted with the rites of evayt'etv not of
0vetv, in a word they were divinities of the old Gaia-worshipping stock.
The audience must have waited breathless to hear what answer the
Erinyes would make to the question when thus officially challenged; their
answer is skilfully contrived to the same end, though its dignity contrast
strongly with the aggressive discourtesy of Athene.
revaoet Ta 7ravravTa aOvvTroPOW, AltO Cop'

?fij.lE yap ealuev NvACTo9 alavij<s Trecva,
'Apai 8' 'v ocol ytqrs vt rai iceKicXrjlea.
It is the grave lofty courtesy of the dames of ancient lineage arraigned

before the religious parvenue. Aeschylus, prejudiced theologian as he was,
trle to dramatic instinct, but how well contrived it is! 'Children of Night
not of Earth! that would have been too hazardous, it would have broug
them into line with hieratic tradition; 'Curses we are called, Arai, a name
by then of evil omen, and no one remembered that it was on the hill of th
Arai, that judgment was being given.' Did no one remember? it is all b
incredible; Athene is obliged to admit,
y/evo zbev oisa XCr)8oval ' eTr' Wov ovu.

It was by these KX\VSve, 'e7rcvv,vzo that all the theological jugglery w
carried on. Athene and Aeschylus chose to remember the KX/S36ve? that
favoured their cause, remembered the Arai, the Erinyes, the Maniae, perha
the Praxidikae, they forgot the Charites, the Semnae, the Eumenides,
rather they separated them off into new divinities.
Apollo and Athene and the priestess ignore the divinity of the ancient ones,
but there is one of the dramatis personae who knows perfectly who a
what the Furies are and is not ashamed of it. The real truth is put in just
the lips that will most discredit it. Clytemnestra knows the Erinyes a
has worshipped them with the precise ritual of the XOlotot, the Ar/Trpto
the 'peoeq, i.e. with the xoa aOotvot, the vrqd\Xta pfetL\Xry,aTa, offered by nigh
vvT'rlaep,va 8eT,rva, offered on the erodapa, the low hero-altar.
Xoa 'r aoivovs vry,dXta ue?tXiyuara,

Kcal vvicra'epva 8e7rv' e7r' e"apa 7rvpos
'Ovo,, &pav ovSevbo icotv)v Oewv.
Even Clytemnestra is made to imply that there was something shameful

the service by night, roTrvta Nvt. Clytemnestra as we have already seen kno
that the true vehicle of the Erinys is the earth snake, the 8ertlj pdaecacv
but she goes with the times and adopts the splendid imagery of the dog hunting
in dreams.
ovap 8&cKcetl ijpa, /Xaa7yydve?s ' a7rep
KVcwV ,ueptlpwav oivroT' 'ecXt7wrv 7rTTov.
The image of the dog was of course specially useful to any one who
wanted to vilify the Erinyes.
H.S.-VOL. XIX. S
The conclusive proof to my mind that Aeschylus knew pe

who the Erinyes were, is the simple fact that he turned them
into Semnae and restored all their ancient functions. This is
of theological duplicity or-simplicity. Even an Athenian mus
it hard to believe that for the privilege of living in a cave on
the Furies were ready to change in a moment their whole vin
and become the ministrants of
'7ro&a vlKrc q(; 77 Ka/C?7q 4ritoo7ra,

Ktl TavTrca ?7OV EK TE 7r0V7(aV 8p6Crov
E' oipavoiJ Te KAy 1-twV a7r,aura,
EMIX1(04 7rVEOVT1 E7r1UTTIXfEt x9ova,
Kap7JoV 7re 7yataq Kat8 0oTrcw IrrippvTrov
aoTroto-iv evoL'vr /fl Ka/lvetv XPo'"o9
Kal T'rV fTpo' re piiarov o-o'-piav.-903-909.
At Megalopolis it would have been simply impossible to play the piece.
An audience at Megalopolis would have risen in a body and cried out, why
these are ouir own Maniae, the black and white ones. It is noticeable that
as soon as the a'r6 0?rTo-Tot c6cpat have been satisfactorily metamorphosed into
Semnae, i.e. when the chorus has said:
&'ho/tat HlaXXa'o9 4 vvowciav.-916.
Athene is less guarded in speech and sentiment. She frankly calls the
Erinyes, Erinyes, and gives a very complete and satisfactory account, scarcely
tallying with her previouis ignorance of their nature and functions
E,iya ryap &vaTat
7T~67V) ~'Eptv'q 7rapa' T' dOav&rotL
TOt' 9 tfTO 7yatav 7Ept' 7T aVOP('JrFWV
avepw';q TeXo&) ? tawpa'roovaiv,
Tro19 ,eV aot&a'g TOtLV S av 'aKpVWV
fiov at/8Xco7w6v 7rape'Xovaaot.-Eum. 951.
In the background of the play always, in the foreground sometimes,
there is the conflict of cults. It is not over one individual that Apollo and
the Erinyes contend, and this they well remember. There was the parallel
case of Alcestis which they aptly quote (v. 72:3)
Totawr TPae a t KaL 6FptvO~ PV
Mo`paq 6`7reca- a' OO9TovU Oet'vat 8poTOv(.
The Moirae, and who are they? only as we have already seen another of
the KkX?)OVE E'7rCOVVUOt. This is clearly brought out in
7rvaXaqyevedc 8d Moipaq 91uaa9.?-Eum. 172.
The cultus conflict is also most clearly brought out in the plaint of the
Erin'yes, that a grievous innovation has been attempted in matters of ritual,
TOt 'iraXatav Stavoiiv K a7ac9ioas
Q((v 'n7ap7rraT?aa q pXia6aq Oedi.-I.zur. 727,
DELPHIKA. 251
It is the last outrage, despite is done to the ancient ritual of

that dated back to days before the vine-god came, when men
Such was the ritual at Colonos.
TroV ovSe 7rX ro-as cw ; 88ao/ce xcal 7oSE.

ivaroo, ,LeX'o-oq /1 ,urL8 7rpoao'epetv tLCv.-Soph. Oed. Col. 480.
And again,
7rparatcriv vDuiv avreUcvp oSotVropov
v r o v C o iv o t .-Oed. Col. v. 100.
The Eumenides is based on the great racial reality of a conflict of cults, but to
Aeschylus the interest of his plot was that it was a conflict of ideals. Naturally
he did not, could not know that in his veins ran the blood of two different races,
with alien habits of religious thought. He was all for Zeus and King Apollo,
the Father and the Son, with such unification of will and purpose that their
religion was practically a monotheism, but he had to reckon with, to reconcile
at all costs. the ancient cult of the earth goddesses. The ideal of the
Erinyes was the ideal of all primitive moralities, an eye for an eye, and above
all the indissolubility of the bond of physical kinship, especially through the
mother. Aeschylus could not be expected to see that the system was
necessary and highly beneficial in its day and that its passing was attended
with grave social dangers. He fastens on the harsh side of it, its im-
placability, its endlessness
/3oa yap Xoeyov 'Epivtv
7rapa Tr'v 7rpOTEpov >Oi6LevwPv a 7 ) v
EreTpav e7rayovo-av er a rT.
He is all for the new ideal of atonement, for Apollo Katharsios-in itself an
advance, destined of course in its turn to pass. It is impossible to avoid a
regret that he stooped to the cheap expedient of blackening his opponents.
That in doing so he was in part self-deceived only makes of the ' Eumenides'
a still more human document.
JANE E. HARRISON.
s2

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Delphika.-(A) The Erinyes.

(B) The Omphalos

THE material of the following paper falls conveniently unde

9. The omphalos was primarily a grave surmounted by a

10. By Homer's time this old cult of ghost and fetich, o

11. In the Choephoroi of Aeschylus, dealing as it does wi

Incertus Geniumne loci famulumne parentis

/I JfMotpa 8apvSr0Te6pa .olyepa

7rractra ap avTra T /r ca avOpwcrov?

Primitive daemons, it may be observed in passing, are apt to be gods of

though with Hesiod, never too optimistic in his view, the Ki

Nv 6`' TTeece o-Tvyepov Te Mopov /cal Ki^pa /eNXatav.

The idea of a ghost, a double, a fate shadowing a man in

o oS oparoTo dec CLVXadoto

There is a splendid instance of the hero-bogey gone black in Pausanias

7/jel .ya.p eaoJev NVKcro? alaviq Thecva (Eum. 416),

called by the Athenians Demeter's people, ca rotovb vexcpovb 'AOnvailo

Travail and sleep, chartered conspirators,

IlvXdSl S8gopcav T-rvse ; rjvS e 8' ovX opa<?

is more than the symbol of the dead, it is the vehicle of th

not merely 'deadly as a serpent,' but as a 'serpent Erinys.'

FIG. 1.-PART OF DESIGN FROM BOURGUIGNON AMPHORA.

M. Henry Jumod, in his interesting account of th

FIG. 2.-SERPENT-BODIED NYMPHS.

food. She had the body of a fish surmoun

and three Charites (Rayet, Monuments de l'Art Antique; Bas-

thoroughly two there was a natural tendency to give to the new-made

Gorgon type was ready to hand, and suited admirably th

ovap &Lt)ietL Oipa, IcXarydyavee 8' a$'rep

f, //Qll^ ^ \^ ^the Erinyes is actually rising

fications of one primitive goddess-Mother Earth.1 He says (Ueber Metroon

a 'v ydp voa'e ' vS' 0 7o09 &K Oela Tv'XVJf

of their own, Porkis and Chariboia, as the scholiast on Lyc

TOVTOV aveXWcv so aIavTreov 7rapaXata/3dvet, and Pausanias (x. 6, 6) says of

When we ask the origin or the parentage of the snake that

av04 eKUo-v a07t

note; le saso aise

1Mr. R. A. Neil sugg"

'lapidem e sepulchro venerari pro deo.'--Cc. pro Plane., 40, 95.

of these vault-like buildings were called OtbaX0oi' o0l 3tfaX

1 On some vase-paintings the omphalos is Bosanquet in the last num

Moreover its constant function as a mercy-seat stamps it as an altar; the vase

FIG. 7.-DESIGN FROM KOTYLOS IN MUSEO NAZIONALE, NAPLES.

FIG. 8.-KOTYLOS IN MUSEO NAZIONALE, NAPLES.

Museum at Naples (Cat. 2458). The design is completely m

3oai6o'jpevo Xaaylvav eptcvtJpova pep,carT /ye'vvav (AESC

. bbb,^^ a acS Dc, x a a ^^ ^^ ' <.'Q C3 Z -Z

FIG. 9.-DESIGN FROM LEKYTHOS IN MUSEO NAZIONALE, NAPLES.

--c~~0 ~41~4 ghQ ~6

This much is clear, that some ceremony is being

pwvrTar TO ' av tp' e jv Tr Oi't eVvrvtov rovrT7 Xparat. Here t

6i6e'iv S' ?7rel ryaiwov

I Since I wrote the a

renewed, and on each successive layer the inscription HP n 0P occurs. There

in the gloss of ilesychius i'pwog 8vvaTr6q L'-V' yIevvato9 0re/Ltvo,? Dead

FIG. 11.-ANODES OF THE, EARTH GODDESS. (Kirater at Berlin.)

most primitive fashion in the Thesmnophoria. The Ica&Oo83oq is the Xa'pLXa,

Herois rather than of heroes takes us back of course to matriarcha

O sancte Apollo qui umbilicum certum terrarum obsides