There are the burning questions of totems and of matriarchy; there is
Earth-magic, there is Purification, there is Fetichism: there are many
other marks of ‘the Religions of the Lower Culture’ to be found in the
ancient pre-Hellenic myths. But I must turn to the special point which
I wish to illustrate in the remainder of this lecture.
I wish to deal with a most familiar part of the subject, the Divine
King, or, as I prefer to call him, the Medicine-King, and then to apply
the results which we reach to the most obvious remnant of non-Homeric
poetry that has come down to us, the Theogony of Hesiod.
We all know about this medicine-king. If we like we can call him
divine. On his force and his _mana_--what Hesiod, I venture to suggest,
calls his κράτος τε βία τε--depends the welfare of his people, in the
way of rain and thunderstorms, of abundance of game, of crops, of
success in war. He also affects floods, earthquake, and pestilence. If
he suffers in any way, if his _mana_ is weakened, his whole people
suffers and is weakened too. Consequently he is encouraged and kept
strong as long as possible; if he shows any weakness, he must be got
rid of and a better man found to take his place. There seem to be three
main methods. Either he is set aside periodically, at the end of five
years, or nine years, or the like; or he is quietly deposed when he
shows signs of age, like Peleus, Oineus, Aison, in the legends; or,
and this is our main subject to-day, when some one else shows superior
_mana_ by killing him. At present my _mana_ is supreme; I am king;
my will carries itself out. But if your _mana_, your Kratos and Bia,
conquer mine, then you are king. If you can also get my _mana_ into
you, so much the better. For κράτος and βία are tricky things and may
desert any one of us, or, according to Hesiod, any except Zeus: ‘No
house of Zeus is without them, no seat of Zeus, there is no going forth
of the god where they do not follow him, and they sit for ever beside
the Thunderer.’[51] Already, in Hesiod, these _mana_ qualities have
become half anthropomorphic; much more so, of course, in Aeschylus’
_Prometheus_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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