Again Athene offers what was theirs from the beginning. Underworld goddesses presided over marriage: in later days, as Plutarch[654] tells us, it was the priestess of Demeter; earlier we can scarcely doubt it was the Semnae. Here they stand in sharp contrast to the Erinyes, who are all black. Who would have bidden an Erinys to a marriage feast? as well bid Eris who, in form (fig. 57) and function as perhaps in name, was but another Erinys, Eris ‘The Abominable, who uninvited came And cast the golden fruit upon the board.’ The Erinyes transformed to Semnae ask Athene what spells they shall chant over the land. She makes answer[655]: ‘Whatever charms wait on fair Victory From earth, from dropping dew and from high heaven, The wealth of winds that blow to hail the land Sunlit, and fruits of earth and teeming flocks Untouched of time, safety for human seed.’ The chorus accept these functions of health and life, and chant their promised guerdon[656]. ‘No wind to wither trees shall blow, By our grace it shall be so; Nor that nor shrivelling heat On budding plants shall beat With parching drouth To waste their growth, Nor any plague of dismal blight come creeping; But teeming, doubled flocks the earth In her season shall bring forth, And evermore a wealthy race Pay reverence for this our grace Of spirits that have the rich earth in their keeping.’ We are reminded that Ploutos himself, the Wealth of the underworld, had, according to Pausanias[657], a statue in the precinct of the Venerable Goddesses. Moreover it is impossible to hear the words ‘no wind to wither trees shall blow’ without recalling the altar of the Wind-stillers (Εὐδάνεμοι), which stood somewhere on the western slope of the Areopagos. Arrian[658], speaking of the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, says ‘they stand at Athens in the Cerameicus where we go up to the citadel, just opposite the Metrôon not far from the altar of the Wind-stillers. Whoever has been initiated in the Eleusinia knows the altar of the Wind-stillers which stands on the ground.’ A low-lying altar doubtless, an eschara, for, as has already been shown (p. 65), the winds were to primitive thinking ghosts or caused by ghosts and worshipped with underworld sacrifices. Hesychius[659] tells us that there was at Corinth a family called the Wind-calmers. The Areopagos was a wind-swept hill. It was thence, according to a form of the legend recorded by Plato[660], that Boreas caught up Oreithyia. The Semnae claim as their special ‘grace[661]’ control over the winds. As goddesses who bring the blessings of marriage and of fertile breezes, they are but good fructifying Keres like the Tritopatores already discussed (p. 179); the Erinyes are blighting poisonous Keres, who Harpy-like foul the food by which men live. * * * * *