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 κῶνος,
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, Æschines. The mother of Æschines, he
says, was a kind of 'wise woman,' and dabbler in mysteries. Æschines
used to aid her by bedaubing the initiate over with clay and bran.[24]
The word ἁπομάττων, 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[25]
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,[26] 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, unless it
represents the impure uninitiated condition, cleansed later by
ceremonies of initiation. 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 (μάντις), 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,[27] 'they all rapidly painted themselves
with pipe-clay: red ochre is no use, it cannot frighten the enemy.'
If, then, Greeks in the historic period kept up Australian tactics, it
is probable that the ancient mysteries of Greece might retain the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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