Myth, Ritual And Religion, Vol. 2 (of 2)Lang, Andrew
Religion
Myth, Ritual And Religion, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Lang, Andrew
Myth; Mythology; Religion; Rites and ceremonies
Müller, on the other hand,* believes the Greeks found in Tauria (i.e.,
Lemnos) a goddess with bloody "rites, whom they identified by reason of
those very human sacrifices, with their own Artemis Iphigenia". Their
own worship of that deity bore so many marks of ancient barbarism that
they were willing to consider the northern barbarians as its authors.
Yet it is possible that the Tauric Artemis was no more derived from the
Taurians than Artemis Æthiopia from the Æthiopians.
The nature of the famous Diana of the Ephesians, or Artemis of Ephesus,
is probably quite distinct in origin from either the Artemis of Arcadia
and Attica or the deity of literary creeds. As late as the time of
Tacitus** the Ephesians maintained that Leto's twins had been born in
their territory. "The first which showed themselves in the senate were
the Ephesians, declaring that Diana and Apollo were not born in the
island Delos, as the common people did believe; and there was in their
country a river called Cenchrius, and a wood called Ortegia, where
Latona, being great with child, and leaning against an olive tree which
is yet in that place, brought forth these two gods, and that by the
commandment of the gods the wood was made sacred."***
* Mythol. de la Grece, ii. 9, 7.
** Annals, iii. 61.
*** Greenwey's _Tacitus_, 1622.
This was a mere adaptation of the Delian legend, the olive (in Athens
sacred to Athene) taking the place of the Delian palm-tree. The real
Artemis of Ephesus, "the image that fell from heaven," was an Oriental
survival. Nothing can be less Greek in taste than her many-breasted
idol, which may be compared with the many-breasted goddess of the
beer-producing maguey plant in Mexico.*
The wilder elements in the local rites and myths of Diana are little if
at all concerned with the goddess in her Olympian aspect as the daughter
of Leto and sister of Apollo. It is from this lofty rank that she
descends in the national epic to combat on the Ilian
plain among warring gods and men. Claus has attempted, from a comparison
of the epithets applied to Artemis, to show that the poets of the Iliad
and the Odyssey take different views of her character. In the Iliad she
is a goddess of tumult and passion; in the Odyssey, a holy maiden with
the "gentle darts" that deal sudden and painless death. But in both
poems she is a huntress, and the death-dealing shafts are hers both in
Iliad and Odyssey. Perhaps the apparent difference is due to nothing but
the necessity for allotting her a part in that battle of the Olympians
which rages in the Iliad. Thus Hera in the Iliad addresses her thus:**
"How now! art thou mad, bold vixen, to match thyself against me? Hard
were it for thee to match my might, bow-bearer though thou art, since
against women Zeus made thee a lion, and giveth thee to slay whomso of
them thou wilt. Truly it is better on the mountains to slay wild beasts
and deer than to fight with one that is mightier than thou."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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