agriculture. He is not called Kourotrophos, but the Young Sun returning
after winter is himself a Kouros,[30:1] and all the Kouroi have some
touch of the Sun in them. The Cretan Spring-song of the Kouretes prays
for νέοι πολῖται, young citizens, quite simply among the other gifts of
the spring.[30:2]
This is best shown by the rites of tribal initiation, which seem
normally to have formed part of the spring Drômena or sacred
performances. The Kouroi, as we have said, are the initiated young men.
They pass through their initiation; they become no longer παῖδες, boys,
but ἄνδρες, men. The actual name Kouros is possibly connected with
κείρειν, to shave,[31:1] and may mean that after this ceremony they
first cut their long hair. Till then the κοῦρος is ἀκερσεκόμης--with
hair unshorn. They have now open to them the two roads that belong to
ἄνδρες alone: they have the work of begetting children for the tribe,
and the work of killing the tribe's enemies in battle.
The classification of people according to their age is apt to be sharp
and vivid in primitive communities. We, for example, think of an old man
as a kind of man, and an old woman as a kind of woman; but in primitive
peoples as soon as a man and woman cease to be able to perform his and
her due tribal functions they cease to be men and women, ἄνδρες and
γυναῖκες: the ex-man becomes a γέρων; the ex-woman a γραῦς.[31:2] We
distinguish between 'boy' and 'man', between 'girl' and 'woman'; but
apart from the various words for baby, Attic Greek would have four sharp
divisions, παῖς, ἔφηβος, ἀνήρ, γέρων.[31:3] In Sparta the divisions are
still sharper and more numerous, centring in the great initiation
ceremonies of the Iranes, or full-grown youths, to the goddess called
Orthia or Bortheia.[32:1] These initiation ceremonies are called
Teletai, 'completions': they mark the great 'rite of transition' from
the immature, charming, but half useless thing which we call boy or
girl, to the τέλειος ἀνήρ, the full member of the tribe as fighter or
counsellor, or to the τελεία γυνή, the full wife and mother. This whole
subject of Greek initiation ceremonies calls pressingly for more
investigation. It is only in the last few years that we have obtained
the material for understanding them, and the whole mass of the evidence
needs re-treatment. For one instance, it is clear that a great number of
rites which were formerly explained as remnants of human sacrifice are
simply ceremonies of initiation.[32:2]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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