The Twelve Olympians Read online

  After the relentless attacks on the barbarians and after their expulsion from Greece thanks were offered up to the gods, and not least to Pythian Apollo. If the citizens and shepherds, rather than the priests, had saved the Holy Place, it was still Apollo acting through his people. Victorious states dedicated splendid offerings at Delphi, partly because anything set up there was bound to be seen by other Greeks. Yet amid all the celebrations men sometimes remembered that a Pythia had within living memory been bribed, and that a priesthood had counselled collaboration. For most Greeks such happenings were no reflection on Apollo, nor even on his Pythia; but the wisdom, reliability, and impartiality of the priestly body fell under suspicion, and things were never quite the same for many years to come. The glory and the authority of sixth-century Delphi were departed.

  From this time on, the oracle seems to have been rather less frequently consulted than in former days, partly for the reason just given, partly because among very many of the Greeks a respect for human reason was overshadowing superstitious practices. But, since Apollo was himself the greatest promoter of law and reason, there were still postulants, there were spectators and competitors for the quadrennial games, there were pilgrims and sightseers. Because of this the Delphians, like the population of any famous place of pilgrimage anywhere, presently became little better than profiteers in the faith of simpletons and parasites on God.

  Nevertheless, for the Greeks the first and most important aspect of Apollo was certainly his championship of law and order, an aspect which his famous temple maxims “Know thyself”, “Don’t exceed”, “The Mean is best”, really emphasised. And what has been called his ‘legal activity’ embraced criminal, civil, and constitutional codes, for which reason his help was precious to every newly founded Greek colony in the Mediterranean lands. Politically the small town was assured of the protection of a union of surrounding states called the Amphictionic League, and when in 346 B.C. Philip of Macedon obtained membership of that League the oracle naturally became pro-Macedonian. After Alexander it maintained good relations with all the Successor Kingdoms and later with the neighbouring confederacy of the Ætolians, who appear to have saved the place from robbery and destruction at the hands of a vast horde of Gauls who invaded Greece in 279 B.C. The generals of the Roman Republic treated Delphi well until the ruthless Sulla stripped it of all its remaining wealth to pay his soldiery. A hard period of poverty followed until the reign of Nero, who patronised the oracle and gave it much money, though he offset this by robbing the Sacred Precinct of five hundred bronze statues destined to decorate his ‘Golden House’ in Rome. Yet imperial patronage, which reached its climax in the reign of the magnanimous Hadrian, provided for Delphi an Indian summer of elegant tranquillity before the corrosive action of Gnosticism, Mithraism, and other half-Eastern proletarian beliefs began in the third century of our era to undermine Apolline faith. Early in that century Clement of Alexandria pretended that the oracle was moribund, but for most Christian apologists the oracular powers of the place were never in doubt, and only the emphasis was changed: Pythia and priests were Satanic; Apollo a devil in disguise. The last of all oracular responses is said to have been given in A.D. 363 to the Emperor Julian, philosopher, soldier, and apostate, but a man inadequate to champion or to heal the ancient faith of Hellas:

  Say ye to Cæsar: “Fallen our fair-built columns lie.

  Phœbus hath left his temple, his laurel of prophecy,

  His speaking spring—yea, even the spring that spake is dry.”

  Balance and toleration finally disappeared before A.D. 400, for the Emperor Theodosius was able to close the sanctuary, and the Emperor Arcadius to demolish it; but the actions of those blundering men could not for ever stifle humanism sprung from the worship of Apollo.

  The myths about the god belong to his two main centres of worship, and one can generally tell which are suitable to the Delphian and which to the Delian canon. Naturally, both groups were equally acceptable in both places, since the god had become a Unity as much as Pallas Athene. Here we may note some of his myths that have a Delphic frame, leaving a consideration of the island and Eastern myths until later. Two Homeric Hymns were written: one at the behest of the Delphic priesthood, the other in praise of the holy island where the god was born. The former tells firstly how Apollo came to Delphi, took it for his own, and then got him Dorians from Crete to be the Keepers of his temple. Down from Olympus he came and travelled south through the plains of Thessaly to Iolkos and crossed to Eubœa; thence he struck west over the narrows, into Bœotia, and on into the mountains.

  And thence he went speeding swiftly to the mountain ridge,

  And came to Crisa beneath snowy Parnassus,

  A foot-hill turned towards the west: a cliff hangs

  Over it from above, and a hollow rugged glade runs under.

  There the lord Phœbus Apollo resolved to make his lovely temple.

  It was then that he met the she-dragon, Python, and killed her, taking over the ancient oracle of Earth.

  Then Phœbus Apollo pondered in his heart

  What men he should bring in to be his ministers

  In sacrifice and to serve him in rocky Pytho.

  And while he considered, he became aware of a swift ship on the wine-like sea,

  In which were many men and goodly Cretans from Cnossos,

  The city of Minos, they who do sacrifice

  To the prince and announce his decrees, whatsoever Phœbus Apollo,

  Bearer of the golden blade, speaks in answer

  From his laurel below the dells of Parnassus.

  These men were sailing in their black ship for gain and profit to sandy Pylos,

  And to the men of Pylos. But Phœbus Apollo met them:

  In the open sea he sprang upon their swift ship, like a dolphin in shape,

  And lay there, a great and awesome monster, and none of them gave heed so as to understand

  But they sought to cast the dolphin overboard. But he kept shaking

  The black ship every way and making the timbers quiver.

  Then in the end he brought them to the port of Delphi in the Corinthian Gulf, and led them up to the shelf of rock upon the mountain-side so that they and their descendants might be his servants from generation to generation.

  Another favourite Delphic story is about the Hyperboreans, or the ‘Folk-beyond-the-north-wind’, or the ‘Over-the-mountains-people Every year for at least three of the winter months Apollo left his younger brother Dionysos in charge of Delphi while he himself flew north in his swan-drawn chariot to the ‘never-never’ land of those fabulous folk who know neither disease nor old age, toil nor war, but they dance and make music, sing and feast, and betimes they sacrifice hecatombs of wild asses to Apollo, “who laugheth as he looketh on the brute beasts in their rampant lewdness”. All this is mainly fairy-tale of a familiar type, which, however, holds some small foundation of fact concerning some fortunate folk living, possibly, in a rich Danubian plain among corn and orchards, who worshipped a god of Apolline semblance.

  Many girls were loved by the god, but several of them rebuffed or cheated him—to their own undoing, like Daphne, who was changed into a bay-tree, and Cassandra, who, though he gave her the gift of prophecy, refused him her favours, wherefore (since he could not take back his gift) he added another: that no one should ever believe her. Coronis—whom he dearly loved—was, while pregnant, unfaithful to him, and Artemis slew her and her lover. But Apollo snatched from her dead body the infant, his son Asklepios, at first a hero and later the God of Healing. Enamoured of the girl Marpessa, he took her from her bridegroom, Idas, who, being the strongest of mortals, drew his bow against the god. Zeus made peace, giving Marpessa the choice between them, and she preferred Idas. Apollo was more fortunate with Akakallis, a Cretan girl, who bore him twins; and most of all with a huntress-nymph called Cyrene, whom he found one day in Thessaly as she was strangling a young lion with her bare hands. The happy god carried her off to that part of Nort
h Africa which was presently named after her, and of which she became in time the patron goddess, and she bore him Aristaios, a hero and protector of cattle and fruit-trees.

  Among painters and sculptors Apollo was through long centuries one of the favourite subjects of all in Greek art, from his primitive, pillar-like image in Laconia to the latest Græco-Roman polished marble representing him as an effeminate youth. By far the finest statue of Apollo—many would say the finest surviving marble statue of any god—is the giant figure from the centre of the west gable of the temple of Zeus at Olympia (Plate IV).

  The master who carved this figure showed the god in the semblance of a perfectly developed—but not over-developed—man of about forty years still in perfect training. Around him is the fight of civilised Lapiths against savage centaurs, and the god trails an idle bow because he can over-come lawlessness with weapons of the spirit. Because he is present—the god of law and right—to help those who know him, we can understand that goodness and fineness of spirit will prevail. And now, when we reflect on his worshippers in the ancient world, we are made aware that those who followed the way of Apollo had need of fine qualities: lucidity, moderation, courage, and tact, as well as wisdom born of self-knowledge and an experienced acceptance of the physical world wherein man is not all inner conflict but a unitary whole.

  X—ARTEMIS

  MIDWAY between Delphi and Ephesus—between the holiest oracle of Apollo and the holiest shrine of Artemis—lay Delos, where, according to the commoner legend, their mother Leto gave birth to the younger twin—Apollo. This story and the hymns to Delian Apollo and to Artemis will be discussed later; Delos, however, was something of a half-way house for both gods. Artemis, like her brother, had a dual aspect, seeming a purely Greek concept of young godhead when she is Huntress Artemis, but also carrying some powers of the age-old nature goddess of Asia Minor when she is Artemis Ephesia. Despite the fact that in the Homeric poems she is a partisan of the Trojans, she is pictured as a purely European type of goddess, for she is a huntress roaming the woods and mountains, delighting, like her brother Apollo, in music and the dance; in fact, leading the life of many an unmarried daughter among the gay and brilliant feudal families pictured by Homer.

  This concept had come down from an earlier, more primitive society when she—or her like—was first worshipped by wandering or nomadic tribes whose livelihood came mainly from hunting and fishing. As they were not agricultural, and probably not yet patriarchal, they gave their women great freedom, perhaps because some of the actual burdens of food-finding fell upon them as well as upon the men. Artemis was first the goddess of such energetic women as these, who held that the wild beasts belonged to her, and especially their cubs, so she became known as ‘Mistress of Animals’, a title which helped her gradual merging with the Asiatic Artemis. Hare and stag, wolf and boar, bear and lion, all were hers, yet her favourites were the wild deer. Since fish are valued food, they too came under her care, and in the uplands of Arcadia—her special country—there was an image of her fish-shaped from the waist down; but she was not of the sea, rather a fresh-water mermaid. Lakes, marshes, streams, and rivers were her care, and all the wild-growing trees of grove and forest. Here was the fleet young Huntress whose followers so much resembled her. No better type of the goddess can be found than the famous Atalanta, who would hunt and wrestle with the men and get the better of them, though she was unwilling to wed any of them.{78}

  Perhaps the ancient Greeks and Romans of the late Hellenistic period thought of Artemis-Diana as a ‘chaste huntress’ who preserved her virginity. Romantic Europe certainly adopted that belief. But it was not the earlier Greek view, according to which, although she practised celibacy, she was no rigid upholder of chastity, which, indeed, no sun-burnt, free-living, huntress girl of the heroic age would have held as either needful or pertinent. The Greek word parthenos, normally translated as ‘maid’ or ‘virgin’, has not really got such a meaning. In the Iliad{79} and in Pindar{80} it is used of unmarried girls who are not virgins, while in Sparta the children of concubines were called partheniai, implying that the mother remains a parthenos in name. The word, indeed, has a wide range, and can denote maid, girl, young woman, mistress, but not wedded wife who is a mother. Possibly the simplest English word to carry a like meaning is ‘wench’. A usage similarly indeterminate has been observed in Hebrew, for it is interesting to note that parthenos is used in the Jewish-Greek version of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint, to translate the Hebrew almah in the famous and controversial verse of Isaiah, vii, 14: “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son”.{81} Yet “the word almah means a girl or young woman above the age of childhood and sexual immaturity...it asserts neither virginity nor the lack of it”.{82}

  It has been necessary to stress the fact that, although Artemis later figured as the ‘chaste huntress’, she was originally no specialist in virginity, and was therefore the protectress of all human femininity. Childhood, girlhood, womanhood in every stage was her concern; she was invoked by all women in childbirth, and other birth-goddesses are in a sense only variants of her. When the end came she was said to make death easy for them. With the actual marriage rite she had no association at all, for she had come down from an earlier stratum when hunters and nomads attached little value to such a rite; and unlike Hera, who contracted the Holy Marriage with Zeus, she retained her happy independence of males. Her earlier forerunners, Britomartis and Dictynna, whom the Minoan Cretans worshipped as huntresses, appear to have made a contribution to the early Greek concept of Artemis, since they sprang from a familiar social order. One may observe a parallelism between the growth of the classical Hermes{83} and of the classical Artemis, both with origins part Minoan and part mainland Greek.

  In general, she had less importance as a city goddess than Hera, Athene, or Aphrodite, though women in the towns prayed to her as fervently as did peasants. But there were three important exceptions to this, for she was the chief divinity in three great cities: Ephesus, Marseilles, and Syracuse.

  Tradition said that somewhere about 900 B.C. certain Ionians from Greece, escaping from invading Dorians, founded, under the leadership of an Athenian prince, the Greek city of Ephesus. There had been a Carian township and a temple there before it was annexed, and many of the Ionians took Carian wives and with them certain customs that entailed considerable freedom for women. The same applied in other famous Ionian cities, like Miletus and Clazomenæ, and this accounts for the swift urbanisation of the divinity whom the Greek colonists of Ephesus brought with them, Artemis. All this occurred before Apollo’s oracle at Delphi had taken to itself any political influence in the matter of colonisation, for no important Apolline cult went to Ephesus, though such a cult became very important in many other Ionian states.

  The worship of Artemis at Ephesus centred on the huge, impressive, and fabulously wealthy temple, which later became known as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. We can note several stages in the development both of the temple and of the principal image within it. At some distant date—possibly as far back as 2000 B.C.—the inhabitants possessed a small sacred stone believed to have fallen from Zeus in heaven and known as a diopetes in Greek. This diopet was probably no meteorite, but some neolithic implement—an axe or, more likely, a pounder—and was held in the greatest veneration. Later, when Christians reproached pagans for revering images made by the hands of Man, the Ephesians, at least, could reply “that which we most revere was not made with hands but fell to earth from God Himself”. For that small sacred diopet endured to the end of the ancient religion, when it was hidden away, and it is probably still in existence at the present day.{84}

  The second stage is not yet historical, and involves a story about Amazons. Now Amazons—as is well-known—had a tremendous attraction for the Greeks, to whom the idea of a tribe of man-ruling, battle-fit huntresses was a matter of perpetual interest which provided a theme popular in Greek art for many centuries. Critics until recently have inclined to the
view that all the Amazon legends were merely expansions of travellers’ tales about barbarous nomads living on the remote outer fringes of the ancient civilised world. But we, who not long ago heard much about the actual battalions of women soldiers on the Eastern Front and in China, are bound to be less sceptical, and it is probable that among Phrygians and Carians such people did exist. Anyhow, it was alleged that Amazons founded the first shrine at Ephesus, possibly before the Greeks got there, and had a very primitive image of a goddess, later identified with Artemis. It is likely that this idol was made of a palm-trunk, for that tree continued to be associated with the real Artemis whom the Greeks brought over with them. Moreover, Theophrastus, the founder of scientific botany, described palm-wood as both tough and easy to carve, and therefore popular for making images.{85} About 650 B.C. barbarous Cimmerians destroyed the shrine of Artemis, which lay outside the walls of Ephesus, and almost certainly the image with it.

  Though an attempt at restoration was then begun, it was not until the reign of the famous Croesus, 564–546 B.C., that anything on a big scale was started; and this brings us to our third stage. The munificent gifts of Croesus to Apollo have already been mentioned,{86} and it seems that the King was almost as generous to Artemis of Ephesus as to her brother of Delphi. Fragments, inscribed with his name, of columns which he gave for the temple are preserved in the British Museum, and the ‘Crœsus-temple’ was famous in its day as the biggest of all Greek fanes.