by Jack Lindsay
Many more similar designs could be cited. An orgiastic cult connected with vegetation is certainly represented; and the prominence given to it shows its central nature in Minoan religion. Because of the ecstatic poses or movements, the participants may be seeking, as has been argued, for herbs or fruits that induce hallucination or frenzy. We are not looking at ordered ceremonials (except on the ring where the women approach the goddess with poppies); short loincloths are not worn in such rites. In the wild scenes there are no horns of consecration, but the objects of adoration or communion are trees, plants, boughs. On a ring from Mochlos with a woman in a boat, a sea-onion seems depicted, a plant which the ancients used medically and magically. In later texts concerned with herbal lore and the gathering of the plants, we also meet songs, dances, alalagmos (babble), incantations, psalmody of liturgic texts and poetic invocations. Some of the Minoan-Mykenean scenes have been taken to show rites of sowing or planting sacred flowers or herbs; in later times we find plants set in pots or closed spaces for magical purposes; important ritual examples are the Gardens of Adonis.[327]
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We find then two opposed elements in the rituals and myths of the Hanged Goddesses or Heroines. On the one hand there are the happy fertility customs of hanging images or masks on trees, of dances and races under the presidence of the tree-mother, of swinging games or leapings to make the plants and crops grow, of sacred marriages enacted in the tree, of many acts of communion with plant and tree-life, which include the gathering of leaf, root, flower and fruit for medicinal and magical purposes. But on the other hand there is the pattern of tragic tales which express defeat in love, misunderstandings of various kinds, rape and murder. The Hanged Goddess represents the tree harmoniously united with human life and its needs; she also represents the twist or blind-alley of murder, division, frustration come inexplicably upon the happy group co-operating in production and at peace with the earth. Both elements are present in Helen. She is the exalted nurse-mother presiding over the dances and games; she is also the hanged heroine (in Rhodes). She is the pure emblem of daimonic beauty, which is an aspect of the fertility principle and which finds its natural end in delighted marriage; she is also the fatality disrupting marriage and provoking murder on a scale that undermines a civilization.
In the mystery religions the dual aspects can be taken in and the conflicts resolved. Dionysos, torn to pieces in his bulls, is perpetually reborn as the child nursed by the nymphs. In the rituals of the sacrificed son, Attis, Adonis, Christ, the terrible death is salved by the resurrection. But, as we saw, in the cults of heroines like Erigonē or Charila there was a break between the legend, which ends in death and disaster, and the ritual of renewal. The ritual became a purification of the group for the wrong turning it had taken, the mistake or crime it had committed. In Helen there seems no direct link between the happy fertility ritual with its arrest at the point of death (the hanging on the tree) and the story of her running away with Paris, her choice of infidelity, the universal calamity she brings about. The one mythic pattern that can be detected in her story is that of the ravished or carried-off earthbride. We shall examine it in a later chapter.
But we may make one last point here. The tragic twist certainly existed in many ritual myths in Homer’s day, perhaps much more so than appears from the epics; but his society could not have produced such works as those epics if the twist had been at all dominant. The tragic note, as it has come down to us in so many tales or artworks, was either the product of the archaic age, when social divisions rapidly increased, or it was at least much strengthened then. That age brought into being a new attitude of pessimism and helplessness as the other side of its individualist defiances and outbursts. ‘Zeus controls the fulfilment of all that is, and disposes as he will. But insight does not belong to men. We live like beasts, always at the mercy of what the day may bring, knowing nothing of the outcome that God will impose upon our acts.’ So cried Simonides of Amorgos, aware of the way in which what men achieved in his world seemed ever less what they had willed. Theognis, aristocrat of Megara, makes the same complaint: ‘No man is responsible for his own ruin or his own success; of both these things the gods are the givers. No man can perform an action and know if its outcome will be good or bad....Humanity in utter blindness follows its futile usages; but the gods bring all to the fulfilment that they have planned.’ There is a split in the meanings of telos. Telos as natural fulfilment and maturity, issuing in rites of completion, such as marriage or initiation, is opposed to telos as supreme power or decision and doom imposed by Zeus, the Kēres, and so on. With Pindar it can mean magistracy. There is an increasing moralization of divine machinery, especially in relation to Zeus. It is not that morality is absent from Homer’s world-view, which includes his gods, their actions and wills; but the interaction of factors occurs within a more organic concept of man’s relation to his fellows and to nature — to the gods. With the speeding-up of the breakdown of tribal elements of cohesiveness in society and in the whole complex of thought and feeling, the moralizing becomes more external and mechanical (legalistic). At the same time, linked with the elements of social struggle which are making for a wider and deeper humanity, a counter-tendency sets in, revealed in its fullness by the dramatists of the fifth century, to place the moralizing tendencies in a yet fuller organic concept of man and nature, in a comprehensive critique of social development.[328]
Chapter Ten – Helen and her Brothers
There is another cult-relation in which we find Helen. She appears at times closely linked with her brothers, Kastor and Polydeukes, the Dioskouroi or kouroi-of-Zeus. In myth she is only once an actor with them, when they rescue her from Aphidna where Theseus has left her — an episode with many obscurities. Otherwise they act completely on their own, cattle-raiding or carrying off the Leukippides as their brides. They have no part in the Trojan story and so have to be killed off before the siege began. Though Homer knows of them as Helen’s brothers, the relationship is otherwise most tenuous. Kastor means Beaver; Polydeukes may mean Rich-in-sweetness (deukes, gleukos: sweet young wine). But the names do not help us much. Clearly, in a general way, the Twins belong to a worldwide series, in which one twin often has connections with the sky. We can only assume that a twin-cult existed in Sparta and was drawn in to the Helen-Artemis complex on account of the fertility aspects common in such a cult.[329]
The monuments in which Helen appears with one of the Dioskouroi on either side, generally with their horses, are late; the type in which the Twins have horses is not known before the Hellenistic era. And though the goddess here was clearly Helen at the outset, with the spread of the Dioskouric cult various names were given to her. We find her called Agdistis, and on a lamp from the Fayum, Hera Ourania. In the late period the Dioskouroi become one of the pairs of cosmic stabilizers or assessors who appear in many cults, especially that of Mithras or Zeus Dolichenos. They had their aspects as saviours, mainly in war or in sea-storms; and here too from the fourth century we find Helen at times joining them. At the end of Euripides’ Orestes the trio are named as the helpers of seamen in peril. They were thought to manifest themselves in the lights seen on the masts of ships in tempests. Double fires announced the Twins, a single fire Helen. But in the first centuries AD the double fires were taken as a good omen, the single one as a bad one. A Rhodian crew of the second century, back from a successful sea-voyage, dedicated an offering on Tenos in homage to the trio: ‘To the Dioskouroi and Helen’. At least on Spartan territory she joined the Twins in scaring and repelling the enemy. Aristomenes of Messenia launched an attack and defeated the Lakedaimonians. But ‘there was a wild pear tree growing in the plain, beyond which Theoklos the Prophet forbade him to pass; for he said that the Dioskouroi were seated on the tree. Aristomenes, carried away by his fury, did not hear all that the prophet said; and when he reached the tree, he lost his shield.’ Trying to regain it, he gave the Lakedaimonians time to escape. On his return home the women ‘threw fillets and flower
s over him’, singing. In a cattle-raid he was however wounded by a spear in the buttocks. ‘After waiting only for the wound to heal, he was making an attack by night on Sparta itself, but was deterred by the apparitions [phasmata] of Helen and the Dioskouroi. Still, he lay in wait for the maidens performing the dances in honour of Artemis at Karyai, and captured those of richest and noblest birth, taking them off to a village in Messenia.’ The young men that night, perhaps drunk, tried to rape the girls, and killed some of them; then he returned the girls for a large ransom.[330]
In the full working-out of the Dioskouric cult we find the Twins connected with twin births, springs, hunts, domestic shrines, friendship, the underworld. But their main and original bases seem to lie in the fertility-cult and athletics (initiation). Their sanctuary at Sparta marked the entry of the stadion; their statues were set up in the neighbourhood; they themselves carried out gymnastic exercises. We saw that Kallimachos, describing Athena’s athletic prowess, compares her with ‘the Lakedaimonian Stars beside the Eurotas’. Apollodoros names them as the models of andreia, all the virtues or forces which should make up a man, and which Spartan education had come to concentrate upon. They had become in some way the supervising patrons of Lakedaimon, with their house at Therapne; and they were thought to leave their sky residences and roam about the country. Near the sanctuary of the Leukippides was a house ‘which had been originally occupied by the Tyndaridai [the Twins], but afterwards was acquired by Phormion, a Spartan. To him came the Dioskouroi in the likeness of strangers [xenoi]. They said they’d come from Kyrene, and asked to lodge with him, requesting the chamber they’d most liked when living among men. He replied they might lodge in any other part of the house they wished, but they couldn’t have the chamber; for it so happened that his virgin daughter lived in it. Next day this virgin and all the things connected with her had disappeared, and in the room were found images of the Dioskouroi, a table, and silphion on it.’ There was a custom of setting up, beside loaded tables, couches on which the Twins came to lie down.
Perhaps in their role as the perfect young Spartans, the initiates who had triumphantly passed all tests and contests, they took their place at the side of Helen, the spirit embodiment of the young girls running and dancing by the Eurotas. One odd characteristic of the Twins was the extent to which they were thought to manifest themselves. At the theoxenai, the banquets offered to them by towns or individuals, they made regular epiphanies. In an Olympic ode Pindar sings of Theron of Akragas in Sicily, a colony of Sparta, and how he received the Tyndarids at his hospitable table, so as to gain the favour of Kastor, Polydeukes, and Helen with the lovely hair; but in the lines dealing with the theoxenai only the Twins are mentioned. At Athens the presence of Helen is better attested. On the Day of the Anakes (Lords), celebrants honoured the three images that rested in the Anakeion; they held a horse-race and sacrificed three victims. Helen, says Pausanias, got a part of the sacrifice, whether it took place once or was thrice repeated. Euripides at the end of his Helena thinks of these festivals when he makes the Twins announce to the heroine that she will get libations with them and sit at the table of hospitality. Athenaoios cites the Beggars, attributed to Chionides, as saying that the Athenians set before the Dioskouroi ‘cheese and a barley-puff, ripe olives and leeks’ — in memory of their ancient way of life.[331]
Artists show the table set, the repast served, the bed dressed; there are soft cushions, lyres, fan or fly-flap. The Twins generally arrive galloping in the air. Once on earth, they wait at the door to be introduced. We also see them stretched side by side, phialē in hand. Helen is never represented; she must have had a secondary place in the rite, even when she did accompany her brothers. However she had her banquets at Sparta, all on her own. Reliefs which depict her illustrate catalogues (lists, enumerations) of religious fraternities who had banquet meetings. But whereas the theoxenai of the Twins were celebrated over a wide area, Helen’s cult-banquets seem to have occurred only at Sparta. That she was recognized generally as the goddess between the Twins in works of art, despite her lack of distinctive attributes, is shown by an occasional reference. Ampelius (second century AD), author of a Liber Memorialis, says that at Ambrakia in Epeiros an image of Helen was painted on a wall with Kastor and Pollux. Synesios has the line: ‘The Three Tyndarids: Kastor, Helen, Polydeukes’. A stēlē from the valley of the Strymon was set on the tomb of three brothers accompanied by their sister; the brothers, one of whom is Dioskourides, are depicted in heroized form; as a Dioskouric triad, while their sister Kalliope (the name also of a muse) must be taking the role of Helen.[332]
There are a few more points about the Twins and their reliefs to be noted. Among the symbols that accompany them is a large jar or amphora, which represents their fertility aspect, especially related to domestic plenty; and a pair of pillars joined at the tops by a transverse beam, the dokana, which was said to stand for their union. Certainly the dokana harmonizes well with their later aspects as world-stabilizers and is itself a sort of cosmic symbol; but it also suggests such devices as the Roman jugum or yoke, two spears set in the ground and joined at the top by a third spear set transversely. Conquered enemies were made to pass under it, and sometimes the Romans passed under it themselves. Here the structure is a sort of door and the movement through it is a passage rite, purifying and getting rid of evil influences, which are left on the other side. The primitive meaning of the dokana at Sparta would then seem to have been connected with some passage rite or initiation over which the Dioskouroi presided. The two posts or pillars through which the young men or others passed would then represent the Dioskouroi themselves in the same heraldic pose as we find them on the reliefs with Helen. Eggs or cocks were their special offerings, for they decorate the gable or the lower part of their stēlai.[333]
We have noted their close relation to horses. This fact suggests Anatolian connections. There is, for example, the link of the mounted Amazons and the Troad in legend. Horses for long seem to have been used mainly in chariots. To ride horseback was unknown in Crete throughout Minoan-Mykenean civilization. The first tentative appearance of the motif occurs on a cinerary urn from Mouliana, coming from the very end of the Mykenean period, or rather from the sub-Mykenean. Till this time there were no depictions of riders also on the Greek mainland. In Greek protogeometric art, though chariots occur, there is no representation of a warrior fighting on horseback. ‘In Egypt representations of riding figures are not found before the fourteenth century BC, when they can be seen, infrequently, on a certain amount of monuments, and especially in representations of battle of the Ramessids. It has been pointed out, however, that no Egyptian warriors are shown fighting on horseback, but probably mounted messengers, or more often isolated figures of enemies turned in flight, Asiatic foreigners and perhaps slaves, represented without weapons and almost naked, confirming in all certainty the derivation of this custom from the neighbouring land of Asia. Here, too, however, the custom of riding horseback appears equally exceptional before Assyrian times’ (Levi). It seems sure then that the cult of the Dioskouroi in anything like its later form belongs to the sub-Mykenean period.
There is yet another line by which we may approach the Twins. Apart from Zeus (Juppiter or Father Dyeus at Rome and Dyaus in India), they are the only Greek deities for whom a good case may be made as Indo-European in character. As Heavenly Twins they have strong affinities with the Vedic Asvins, Nasatya and Asvinau. In the Rig-Veda the Asvins are often accompanied by Surya (female sun), the Dawn, who seems their sister. They are her spouses; she mounts in their chariot and has the name Asvini. If some elements of Surya have come down into Helen, we have a strong argument for identifying the latter as the Aotis of Alkman’s poem. The link between Asvins and Dioskouroi is not refuted by pointing out that the former do not ride horses. They are chariot-drivers; and we have seen it was some time before warriors changed from driving horses to riding them. That they were known to Indo-European speakers in the Near East of the second millennium B
C is proved by an inscription at Boghazkoy in eastern Anatolia, which celebrated the conclusion of a treaty in the fourteenth century between the Hittite king and the Aryan ruler of Mitanni; the text mentions the two Nasatyas, Mitra, Varuna and Indra. (There is another dyad there, for the word ilani precedes the names of Mitra and Varuna, indicating that they must have been so closely linked as to be spoken of in their own lrido-European tongue as a single compound deity, as indeed we find in the Rig- Veda. Indra is the warrior-god of the Indo-Iranians, the Asvins are among other things the divine physicians.) The Asvins survived in Iran, where the prophet Zoroaster reduced the daevas to the rank of demons; and as such, Nanhaitya (Vedic Nasatya) turns up with Indra.
There is no sign of the Dioskouroi in Mykenean times. But Zeus himself, though he appears in tablets of Knossos and Pylos, coupled with Hera, was then still far from the Homeric Thunderer. We may assume that cults brought in by the earlier Greek-speakers were diminished or blotted out by the much stronger Minoan system. But related cults may well have been reintroduced by the more primitive Greek-speakers whose raids and intrusions were lumped together by later tradition as the Dorian invasion. The bringing-in of the Dioskouroi as an Asvin type of twins in the sub-Mykenean period would help to explain away many of our difficulties; the newcomers can hardly have brought Helen along, but they may have found her a suitable goddess to merge with the female consort, whoever that was, of the twins. In India the twins were associated not only with Surya but also with Sarasvati, a mother-goddess whose inexhaustible breasts poured out goods of all kinds, who dispensed prosperity, and who collaborated with the Asvins in healing. She is once called their wife; but she protected her worshippers and was in general ‘wife of the heroes’, sheltered them and destroyed their enemies; by stirring up impulses of piety she destroyed demons and impious persons — ‘all qualities that belong to the Iranian goddess Anahita, sometimes substituted for the Nasatya, or to Armaiti who ruled the earth directly as productive source, nurse, mother, but who also signified piety, devotion, and religiously correct thought, or perhaps even to the Akkadian Allatum of the Boghazkoy treaty, in which, goddess of the underworld, she is given the name Lady of the Earth’ (Merlat).
