The Twelve Olympians

by Dr Charles T. Seltman

  At this time a new and delightful statue of the goddess was carved in hardwood by a celebrated sculptor of the day named Endoios. It resembled other standing figures of parthenoi made in the sixth century—long-haired, upright, feet together, elbows to sides, forearms held out, the garment clinging. One may compare a superb bronze figure about 9½ inches tall{87} said to have been found near Olympia, depicting Artemis holding a young doe in both hands (Plate V). This is of about 500 B.C., nearly half a century later than the wooden life-size statue with inlaid enamelled eyes made by Endoios. Instead of the young doe in her hands, she was flanked by a pair of stags, made separately, of course; and these could be removed at will and a pair of does substituted.{88} Inspired by the Oriental custom of loading cult statues of the gods with rich metallic decoration, kings and merchant-princes gave, and the temple staff accepted, an ever-increasing panoply of gold and silver clothing for the goddess, who could never wear all her possessions at any one time. Mistresses of the Robes were appointed from among the wealthy and established Ephesian families, to dress and redress the image, of which only the original wooden face, hands, and feet were now visible, and these grew slowly black with age and with the constant application of preservative oil.

  Two kinds of Things belonging to this image were very strange indeed. Coin-pictures and copies of the statue depict her with what at first sight seem to be many udder-like breasts, hanging sometimes well below the waist. But these were no part of the old black wooden statue, for they were put on apron-like above the clothing, and there were many sets of them with protuberances varying in number from eleven up to forty-four. Since they were either gilt or, more probably, golden, they were the colour of ripening dates, and each set of the things represented a date-cluster with large (but not unnaturally large) fruits. In Ephesus the date-palm was definitely sacred to the goddess. The other strange appurtenance of the image was a small temple-like shrine open on three sides and worn instead of a hat on top of the head. It seems probable that this contained the diopet, which represented mystically the infant Artemis herself, and which was thus kept in close contact with the overdressed statue, being both the most ancient and the most holy thing in the Sanctuary. This was not a “godhead like unto gold, or silver, or stone graven by art and man’s device”,{89} but a heavenly supernatural creation.

  Paul of Tarsus lived for three years in Ephesus, A.D. 52–54, long enough to make a considerable number of converts, including members of the middle class as well as proletarians, to what was then called ‘The Way’. Towards the end of his stay trouble started under the leadership of a prosperous silversmith Demetrios, who “made silver shrines of Artemis”,{90} probably silver replicas of the miniature shrine worn on the head of the goddess. A riot ensued, and when a high official had quietened the people he said:

  Men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is Temple-Warden of the great Goddess Artemis and of the ‘Zeus-fallen THING’?{91}

  Two cult-objects are kept distinct in this speech: the statue of the great goddess Artemis and the diopet itself. The former was to be destroyed; the latter perhaps survives.

  Despite all this oddity, the Greeks still imagined the actual goddess as a young athletic huntress, and the young girls who served as her priestesses in Ephesus were dressed as Artemis with skirts girt up to show half the thigh, the right breast sometimes bared, a quiver hanging at the shoulder, high hunting-boots, and a bow in hand.

  The great temple of Artemis Ephesia was the richest and most trusted safe-deposit bank in the whole Greek world. Croesus had honoured it; so did Persian kings and satraps, as well as powerful city-states. Alexander the Great contributed to the reconstruction of the temple after a fire. All the Hellenistic kings, Roman proconsuls and emperors respected and often enriched the place. From the time about 650 B.C. when barbaric Cimmerians had destroyed the old Amazonian shrine to A.D. 250 the temple remained unmolested and unrobbed—a record of some nine hundred years, unparalleled elsewhere. Finally, about A.D. 406 the famous statue was smashed by a deranged Christian named Demeas, who carved a stone inscription to say he had torn down ‘the demon Artemis’.

  Three great cities looked to Artemis—usually a goddess of the countryside—-as their chief deity. The second of them was Marseilles. Founded about 600 B.C. by men of Phocaea, an Ionian city of Asia Minor, it was strengthened by a fresh body of colonists who travelled west in 540 B.C. These men took with them a replica of the newly carved wooden statue of Ephesian Artemis, and it seems likely that it, too, was the work of Endoios himself, or of one of his colleagues, for coin-pictures of the figure in Marseilles prove it to have had the closest resemblance to the Ephesian type. But the replica which went to Marseilles retained its old simplicity unencumbered by orientalising metallic trappings. The colonists also took with them the olive-tree, which from then to the present day has been of importance in the south of France; and therefore in Marseilles it was the olive-tree, not the palm, which became the special tree of Artemis. In the fourth century B.C. the goddess was thought of as a very young girl, for there are charming coins of the place with her olive-crowned head based on Syracusan models.

  In the third great city in which her deity was dominant, Syracuse, she was known by the double name Artemis Arethusa, even as the goddess of Athens was frequently called Pallas Athene. It was said that the nymph Arethusa roaming in the land of Elis went to bathe in the River Alpheus, which flows past Olympia. The river-god of that big stream sought to violate her, and she dived into the sea, nor did she come up to breathe again until she was within the harbour of Syracuse, wherefore there exists, even today, a spring of fresh water surrounded by the briny sea. But this Arethusa was but another name for Artemis, and her importance in the city is proved by the fact that her head, surrounded by dolphins, became the principal type of the splendid coinage of Syracuse. The people of that brilliant and wealthy city were often able to employ some of the most gifted engravers and metal-workers in the world to make their coins, still justly famed today.

  Besides the three great cities where her worship was all-important, there were other townships and large villages where a like cult existed. Zeus, a poet said, was so devoted to his daughter that he wished to give her thirty cities. But her happiness was ever in the meadows and mountains.

  Mythology embraced Leto and her twin children Artemis and Apollo as a single holy family, but this doctrine was really centred in Delos, which, though essentially an Ionian islet, had adopted stories of a somewhat Eastern character. It has already been noted{92} that Apollo may have had a half-Dorian origin as Apellon, and a half-Hittite derivation from Apulunas, a Central Anatolian deity; .while his name Lykios refers to his worship in Lycia, a land early affected by the Hittites. Yet by the time his worship in Delos comes within our knowledge he is a perfectly Greek god, for he is ancestor of the Attic nobility and of the Ionians. Zeus, the story said, was greatly enamoured of Leto; but Hera—madly jealous—determined to make her confinement as difficult as possible. First Leto bore Artemis under a palm-tree at Ortygia close to Ephesus; and then, after much suffering, Apollo beside a palm-tree on the island of Delos. The story is told in one of the oldest Homeric Hymns, written perhaps as early as 700 B.C.—the Delian Hymn—which is exclusively Ionian and insular in style and in sympathy, for Delos and no other is Apollo’s chosen seat.

  I will remember and not be unmindful of Apollo who shoots afar. As he goes through the house of Zeus the gods tremble before him and all spring up from their seats when he draws near, as he bends his bright bow. But Leto alone stays by the side of Zeus who delights in thunder; and then she unstrings his bow, and closes his quiver, and takes his archery from his strong shoulders in her hands and hangs them on a golden peg against a pillar of his father’s house. Then she leads him to a seat and makes him sit: and the Father gives him nectar in a golden cup welcoming his dear son, while the other gods make him sit down there, and queenly Leto rejoices because she bare a mighty son
and an archer. Rejoice, blessed Leto, for you bare glorious children, the lord Apollo and Artemis who delights in arrows; her in Ortygia, and him in rocky Delos, as you rested against the great mass of the Cynthian hill hard by a palm-tree by the streams of Inopus.

  Far roamed Leto in travail with the god who shoots afar, to see if any land would be willing to make a dwelling for her son. But they greatly trembled and feared, and none, not even the richest of them, dared receive Phoibos, until queenly Leto set foot on Delos and uttered winged words and asked the isle:

  “Delos, would you be willing to be the abode of my son Apollo and make him a rich temple? For no other will touch you, as you will find: and I think you will never be rich in oxen and sheep, nor bear vintage nor yet produce plants abundantly. But if you have the temple of far-shooting Apollo, all men will bring you hecatombs and gather here, and incessant savour of rich sacrifice will always arise, and you will feed those who dwell in you from the hand of strangers: for truly your own soil is not rich.”

  Then the isle of Delos consented to receive the dread god, but Leto was racked nine days and nights with pangs because Hera was using her wiles to keep the birth-goddess away from the isle. Yet at last Iris found her and brought her there, and

  the pains of birth seized Leto, and she longed to bring forth; so she cast her arms about a palm-tree and kneeled on the soft meadow while the earth laughed for joy beneath. Then the child leaped forth to the light, and all the goddesses raised a cry. Straightway, great Phoibos, the goddesses washed you purely and cleanly with sweet water, and swathed you in a white garment of fine texture, new-woven, and fastened a golden band about you...

  And you, O lord Apollo, god of the silver bow, shooting afar, now walked on craggy Cynthus, and now kept wandering among the islands and the people in them. Many are your temples and wooded groves, and all peaks and towering bluffs of lofty mountains and rivers flowing to the sea are dear to you, Phoibos, yet in Delos do you most delight your heart; for there the long-robed Ionians gather in your honour with their children and gentle wives: mindful, they delight you with boxing and dancing and song, so often as they hold their gathering. A man would say that they were deathless and unageing if he should then come upon the Ionians so met together. For he would see the graces of them all, and would be pleased in heart gazing at the men and well-girded women with their swift ships and great wealth. And there is this great wonder besides—and its renown shall never perish—the girls of Delos, handmaidens of the Far-shooter; for when they have praised Apollo first, and also Leto and Artemis who delights in arrows, they sing a strain telling of men and women of past days, and charm the tribes of men. Also they can imitate the tongues of all men and their clattering speech: each would say that he himself were singing, so close to truth is their sweet song.

  And now may Apollo be favourable and Artemis; and farewell all you girls.{93}

  Some four hundred years later Callimachus wrote his charming Hymn to Artemis. It was a scholarly work in imitation of the grand manner of the old Delian masterpiece; and for such an attempt it was not ill done.

  Artemis we hymn—no light thing is it for singers to forget her—whose study is the bow and the shooting of hares and the spacious dance and sport upon the mountains; beginning with the time when sitting on her father’s knees—still a little maid—she spake these words to her sire: “Give me to keep my girlhood liberty, Father, for ever: and give me to be of many names, that Phoibos may not vie with me. And give me arrows and a bow—stay, Father, I ask thee not for quiver or for mighty bow: for me the Cyclopes will straightway fashion arrows and fashion for me a well-bent bow. But give me to be the Bringer of Light and give me to gird me in a tunic with embroidered border reaching to the knee, that I may slay wild beasts. And give me sixty daughters of Oceanus for my choir—all nine years old, all maidens yet ungirdled; and give me for handmaidens twenty nymphs of Amnisus who shall tend well my buskins, and, when I shoot no more at lynx or stag, shall tend my swift hounds. And give to me all mountains; and for city, assign me any, even whatsoever thou wilt: for seldom is it that Artemis goes down to the town. On the mountains will I dwell and the cities of men I will visit only when women vexed by the sharp pangs of childbirth call me to their aid.”

  So spake the child and would have touched her father’s beard, but many a hand did she reach forth in vain, that she might touch it. And her father smiled and bowed assent. And as he caressed her, he said: “When goddesses bear me children like this, little need I heed the wrath of jealous Hera. Take, child, all that thou askest, heartily. Yea, and other things therewith yet greater will thy father give thee.”

  There follows a long account of how the child’s wishes were fulfilled and of the places that found favour with her, until she is brought to Ephesus.

  For thee, too, the Amazons, whose mind is set on war, in Ephesus, beside the sea established an image beneath an oak trunk, and Hippo performed a holy rite for thee, and they themselves around the image danced a war-dance—first in shields and in armour, and again in a circle arraying a spacious choir.{94}

  And so the hymn ends with four warnings: let none disparage Artemis, nor let anyone vie with her in archery, neither let any man woo the parthenos, nor let any person shun his part—or her part—in the yearly dance.

  Apart from the birth, childhood, and hunting stories there were few myths about Artemis. She helped her brother to kill the giant Tityos, who tried to rape their mother Leto, and to slay the children of Niobe because their mother vaunted her superior fecundity over Leto. A giant hunter named Orion boasted that he was about to kill all living creatures, and Artemis, as Mistress of Animals, very properly slew him; whereupon he became the famous constellation. Finally, there was Actæon, another keen hunter, who came upon Artemis bathing. Offended at being seen naked by a man, the goddess turned him into a stag, and he was killed by his own hounds. Here was one of the most popular of all themes for art, not only in ancient times but also in the Renaissance and for long after. The offence lay in seeing any deity naked without her permission, and one remembers how a similar incident concerning Athene brought disaster on another youthful hunter;{95} but only blindness, not death. A streak of cruelty was imputed to Artemis, as it was to her brother in Greek Asiatic legends. There was, after all, the Apollo and Marsyas story in which the latter, beaten in a musical contest by the god, was flayed alive.

  The worship of Artemis conceived as a living goddess lasted longer perhaps at Ephesus than it did elsewhere. Nevertheless, in that very city one parthenos was slowly eclipsed by another, and it happened in the following manner.

  St John the Divine, presumed author of the Apocalypse, or Book of Revelation, was mistakenly identified with St. John the Apostle, who received from the Cross instructions to cherish the mother of Jesus. Since the former St. John is held by many scholars to have written his work at Ephesus—precisely as Christian legend maintained—one can understand that his confusion with the Apostle John led to the view that he must have brought the Virgin Mary to live there.{96} Hence her dormition and assumption were localised in the place, and when Artemis was finally annihilated the Virgin Mary took over much of her cult and kept the right of sanctuary, or of asylum, which had been so important a feature of the great shrine and sacred precinct of Artemis Ephesia.

  Since the latter, by giving sanctuary, had been the especial favourite deity of outlaws and thieves, and since the Virgin Mary succeeded to all these rights and privileges, she automatically became in Ephesus, and afterwards in other places, Patroness of Thieves; and that may account for the evidence in Winchester Cathedral of her assistance to them.{97} Thus it may happen in religious belief and practice that one situation fraught with absurdity leads to another.

  XI—POSEIDON

  ANALYSIS along critical and scientific lines of what is called belief-formation has at times been condemned by the devout as something hostile to ethics as well as to faith. Since they resent its application to current religion, they may regard such an
alysis as in itself undesirable. Yet, as beliefs take form in the minds of men, what comes to matter is the way in which they are held, for it is the manner of believing which determines the duration and value of belief. A survey of the different ideas and beliefs held over many centuries concerning Poseidon is certainly of great interest, and there is perhaps no other Olympian god whose arrival we can so clearly envisage and whose development we can so well observe.

  Five or six thousand years ago a number of kindred peoples were living in a huge area of pasturelands in that part of South-eastern Europe which is watered by the lower reaches of great rivers like the Danube, Dniester, Dnieper, and their tributaries. It is likely that they had remained for long self-contained, cut off from the rest of thinly peopled Europe and Asia by mountains, by immense forests and, towards the sea, by wide belts of swamps and marsh. They had once had a common tongue, which gradually produced varied dialects, until each dialect in turn was so far altered as to become a language, which, at a certain point of maturity, began to spawn more dialects due in time themselves to become languages. The ‘parent’—the common tongue—has long vanished, though its descendants are evidence that it once existed. The whole group of languages are what we call the Indo-European or Aryan group, of which the oldest known tongues are Sanskrit, Iranian, ancient Greek, Hittite, and the Latin-Celtic language blocs as well as the old Norse-Germanic tongues. Dwelling in an area of wide pasturelands, these Aryan peoples succeeded in domesticating the wild horse of the Eurasian steppes and invented the wheel. Consequently, when ultimately they found themselves driven to migration because they were multiplying too quickly, they were able to break out of their confines and to overrun vast regions of the habitable globe at a speed far greater than had ever previously been possible to any wandering races and nations. Possessed of locomotive animals and wheeled transport, they became a wagon-dwelling culture which moved in search of pasturelands;{98} and since they carried women, children, and chattels with them, they were enemies far more formidable than anybody of brigands and pirates which the civilised Mediterranean communities had sometimes to fear. Theirs was the earliest big ‘folk-wandering’ for which we have historical evidence, and numerous others have occurred since, always bringing disaster to the occupants of the invaded lands, the latest example being one of the most romantic of recorded adventures, the movement of the covered wagons across the great plains of the American continent in the last century.