No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
There are flaws in the usual methods of research into religious origins which have become apparent to the writer during several years' work on the cult of one Greek god. It has therefore seemed desirable to restate and to examine these methods so as to demonstrate the merits and the faults of each. To do so is one aim of this paper; another is an elucidation of the many important advantages of the historical approach, and, although it is hoped that the principles herein erected as guides to study are applicable to all ancient gods, the illustrations of these principles will derive very largely from Hermes, the god with whose cult and concept the writer has been most closely concerned.
It would be hard to exaggerate the difficulties which beset a student when he turns to the problem of an ancient god's origin. Even a partial solution demands his utmost caution, for the easy explanation is hardly ever the right one. He must guard himself against the beguilements of the attractive theory which will very often beckon him down the wrong path. To avoid this and to enter upon his task most wisely he will meditate upon two main initial difficulties.
The first one to present itself is, of course, the fact that the origin of most gods worshipped by the Greeks lies in the past far behind Homer. Therefore the student is faced with an almost total lack of literary and epigraphical material—at least which he can understand— to aid him in the search.
Page 98 note 1 See Farnell, , Cults of the Greek States, i, p. 4 f.Google Scholar
Page 98 note 2 Ibid., pp. 2 ff.
Page 98 note 3 Nilsson, , Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and its Survival in Greek Religion, pp. 418 ff.Google Scholar
Page 98 note 4 Ibid., pp. 420 ff.
Page 99 note 1 Grieckische Mythologie, i. 1, p. 385 f., note 5.
Page 99 note 2 My forthcoming article in Hesperia, 1947 gives another interpretation.
Page 99 note 3 Nilsson, , Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, p. 4.Google Scholar
Page 99 note 4 Pausanias ix. 22. 2; Corinna, frg. 11; cf. Edmonds, J. M., Lyra Graeca, iii, p. 13Google Scholar, No. 2; Eitrem, RE. viii. 1, coll. 740, 761.
Page 100 note 1 Iliad ii. 603 f.; Pausanias viii. 17. 1; 47. 4.
Page 101 note 1 Macrobius, Sat. i. 10. 22, who cites Philochorus and quotes Accius (i. 7. 37); for the Hermaia cf. Athenaeus xiv. 639 B.
Page 101 note 2 Quaestiones Graecae, 55.
Page 102 note 1 Roscher, Lexikon der griechischen und rōmischen Mythologie, i, pp. 2342 ff.Google Scholar
Page 102 note 2 Pausanias, vi. 26. 5; Hippol. Ref. Haer. v. 8; Artemid, . Oneirokr. i. 45Google Scholar; Philostr, . Vit. Apoll. vi. 20Google Scholar; Lucian, , Zeus Trag. 42.Google Scholar There is no evidence that the huge agalma on Mt. Kyllene was a phallus, though numerous scholars have hastily assumed it from the sources just cited, where the authors refer only to the Elean cult; cf. Cook, A. B., Zeus, iii, p. 725Google Scholar, footnote 5; Pieske, RE. xi. 2, col. 2456; Preller, , Griechische Mythologie, i. 1, p. 388Google Scholar; Nilsson, , Griechische Feste, p. 391Google Scholar, footnote (o); Immerwahr, , Die Kulte und Mythen Arkadieris, pp. 76 ff.Google Scholar
Page 102 note 3 Scherer, op. cit., 2391 f.
Page 103 note 1 Five Stages of Greek Religion, p. 76 f.
Page 103 note 2 Odyssey xvi. 471 f.
Page 103 note 3 See my forthcoming article in Hesperia, 1947.
Page 103 note 4 RE. viii. 1, s.v. ‘Hermes’, col. 774; also ‘Hermai’, col. 697.
Page 103 note 5 Nilsson, , Griechische Feste, pp. 414 ff.Google Scholar
Page 103 note 6 Xanthus, , Frag. Hist. Graec. i, p. 38, 9.Google Scholar
Page 103 note 7 See Frazer, J. G., The Golden Bough, ix, pp. 8 ff.Google Scholar
Page 104 note 1 Choephoroi, 1 ff.
Page 104 note 2 CGS. v, pp. 11 ff.
Page 105 note 1 572 f.
Page 105 note 2 AJA., 1942, pp. 58 ff.
Page 105 note 3 See Iliad xiv. 490; Theogony 444.
Page 105 note 4 See my forthcoming article in Hesperia, 1947.
Page 107 note 1 See my forthcoming article in Hesperia.