Folklore; Manners and customs; Mythology; Religion
In the part of the Dionysiac mysteries at which the toys of the child
Dionysus were exhibited, and during which (as it seems) the [Greek], or
bull-roarer, was whirred, the performers daubed themselves all over with
clay. This we learn from a passage in which Demosthenes describes the
youth of his hated adversary, AEschines. The mother of AEschines, he
says, was a kind of 'wise woman,' and dabbler in mysteries. AEschines
used to aid her by bedaubing the initiate over with clay and bran. {40a}
The word [Greek], here used by Demosthenes, is explained by Harpocration
as the ritual term for daubing the initiated. A story was told, as
usual, to explain this rite. It was said that, when the Titans attacked
Dionysus and tore him to pieces, they painted themselves first with clay,
or gypsum, that they might not be recognised. Nonnus shows, in several
places, that down to his time the celebrants of the Bacchic mysteries
retained this dirty trick. Precisely the same trick prevails in the
mysteries of savage peoples. Mr. Winwood Reade {40b} reports the
evidence of Mongilomba. When initiated, Mongilomba was 'severely flogged
in the Fetich House' (as young Spartans were flogged before the animated
image of Artemis), and then he was 'plastered over with goat-dung.' Among
the natives of Victoria, {40c} the 'body of the initiated is bedaubed
with clay, mud, charcoal powder, and filth of every kind.' The girls are
plastered with charcoal powder and white clay, answering to the Greek
gypsum. Similar daubings were performed at the mysteries by the Mandans,
as described by Catlin; and the Zunis made raids on Mr. Cushing's black
paint and Chinese ink for like purposes. On the Congo, Mr. Johnson found
precisely the same ritual in the initiations. Here, then, not to
multiply examples, we discover two singular features in common between
Greek and savage mysteries. Both Greeks and savages employ the
bull-roarer, both bedaub the initiated with dirt or with white paint or
chalk. As to the meaning of the latter very un-Aryan practice, one has
no idea. It is only certain that war parties of Australian blacks bedaub
themselves with white clay to alarm their enemies in night attacks. The
Phocians, according to Herodotus (viii. 27), adopted the same 'aisy
stratagem,' as Captain Costigan has it. Tellies, the medicine-man
([Greek]), chalked some sixty Phocians, whom he sent to make a night
attack on the Thessalians. The sentinels of the latter were seized with
supernatural horror, and fled, 'and after the sentinels went the army.'
In the same way, in a night attack among the Australian Kurnai, {41a}
'they all rapidly painted themselves with pipe-clay: red ochre is no use,
it cannot frighten an enemy.' If, then, Greeks in the historic period
kept up Australian tactics, it is probable that the ancient mysteries of
Greece might retain the habit of daubing the initiated which occurs in
savage rites.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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