and on one vase-painting placed on the top of his capa. On a vase that is earlier in style than any of these we have the remarkable example of a Zeus-Trinity that includes Hades, which has been noticed in a former volume". And the same idea, though expressed with less insistence on the identity of personality, is found on the vase of Xenocles, where the three brothers are represented in animated converse, and Hades is distinguished by no attribute at all, but merely by the gesture of the averted head; and we may accept the explanation that this is an expression in art-language of the name of the 'unseen' who hides his face (Pl. XXXIIb). The latest art-record of this simple and natural conception of a trinity of brothers is perhaps a late coin of Mitylene of the imperial period, showing us the three side by side, and the inscription Oeol aкpaîo Muriλnvalov 22: but it is unsafe to read theological dogma into this, for the type may have arisen from the casual juxtaposition of their three temples on the Acropolis, or on the heights above the sea. However, in the dedication found at Mitylene to feld, no. 388 (published Roscher's Lexikon, 1, p. 1810): Brit. Mus. Cat. Vases, vol. 4, F. 332: Vasensammlung zu Petersburg, no. 426 (the eagle sometimes painted white); cf. the statuette in the British Museum, vol. 1, Pl. I c.

a Brit. Mus. Cat. Vases, vol. 4,

F.277.

b Vol. 1, p. 104, Pl. I. b: the genuineness of this vase has been doubted: vide Roscher, op. cit. 1, p. 1799.

• Mr. Cook, in Class. Rev. 1904, p. 76, is over-rash in tracing this triple cult back to a pre-historic ArgiveLycian Zeus-Trinity. He finds the same trinity in the three male figures enthroned on the Harpy-tomb, ib. p. 74. But it seems idle to draw religious deductions from this mysterious monument, until one can find ground for a decision whether the male and female personages there receiving offerings from the women and from the warrior are the deities of the lower world or the heroic ancestors of the

:

family the question remains open in spite of Milchhöfer's attempt (Arch. Zeit. 1881, p. 53) to prove that they cannot be divinities: one does not see why the Greeks who habitually placed images of divinities in graves should never venture to carve them in relief outside on the other hand, the arguments in favour of the 'hero-worship' theory are strong, and we know such worship was rife in Lycia. It is certainly tempting to detect Demeter and Kore in the seated personages on the west-front, though we have no proof of their worship at this early date at Xanthus (vide Demeter, Geogr. Reg. s. v. Lycia). But if we believe the seated male to be a divinity, a chthonian or other trinity is a hazardous assumption here; for the multiplication of the figures may well be merely a convention of art-language; the same divinity may be intended on each of the three sides of the tomb, though he appears once without his beard. Meantime we may doubt if a Greek god

'Zeus the all-seeing, to Plouton, and to Poseidon, the gods of all salvation,' set up by a lady in gratitude for a safe voyage, we may discern dimly the idea of a divine One-in-Three: for having mentioned the Three, she adds 'that she was saved by the Providence of God".'

The personality of the nether god was strengthened, as we have seen, in Magna Graecia, and the art-type modified, by his fusion with Dionysos. In the Hellenistic period the cult received a further stimulus from Alexandria and the establishment of the worship of Sarapis by the first or second Ptolemy as the religious bond of his Graeco-Egyptian kingdom. The records of this cult and the question concerning the authorship of the cult-image lie beyond our present limits. It may suffice to note that though the name Sarapis is probably Egyptian, the monuments of the worship, which spread itself over a large area of the ancient civilized world, and only in the fourth century of our era yielded in the struggle with Christianity, are entirely Greek; and some of them may reproduce features of the original statue that Ptolemy introduced from Sinope or Antioch. The attributes, such as the calathos Cerberus eagle cornucopia, are derived from the monumental tradition of Hades-Plouton and Zeus the nether god; while the mildness joined with melancholy that we detect in some of the better busts may descend from the original cult-image and accords with the refined conception of the more advanced Greek world concerning the god of death 40.

would keep a small bear under his throne. The precise significance of the Harpy-tomb we may never know: in the main a Hellenic work, its general

religious value lies in its illustration of the belief in the correlation of birth and death.

a Vide Poseidon, R. s. v. Lesbos.

CHAPTER VI

THE CULTS OF THE MOTHER OF THE GODS AND

RHEA-CYBELE

THE primitive earth-goddess has been discovered in various parts of the Hellenic world, under various forms and names; and there still remain certain worships that claim a brief consideration, consecrated to a name of some potency once on Greek soil and of abiding interest in the history of religion, 'the Mother,' 'the Great Mother,' or 'the Mother of the Gods.' We find her cult occurring sporadically about the Greek mainland, and of considerable importance and some antiquity in Boeotia 16, Athens 19, and Arcadia 26, while Akriai in South Laconia boasted to possess her oldest temple 25. Her divinity was prominent in the Attic state church; for besides an altar dedicated to her in the Agora 190, she possessed a temple in the Kerameikos near the council-hall, which came to be used as a record office of the state-archives 19 b, c ; a festival was held in her honour, in which she received a cereal oblation called ǹ Taλagía, a sort of milk-porridge 19. We have also some traces of her cult outside the ancient limits of the city; at least we hear of a Mother-temple at Agrai,' and of 'the Mother in Agrai,' and her images-not apparently of the earliest period-have been found in the cave of Vari on Hymettus". We have nothing that suggests a late date for the introduction of her worship into Attica; only, under this name at least, it does not seem to have belonged to the aboriginal religion; the carliest monument that we possess of

FARNELL. III

6

"Vide Apollo, R. 20.
U

the Attic cult, a terracotta figure of the goddess with a lion in her lap, a work of the sixth century B.C., is no trustworthy chronological datum, for it may have been an object of import 19 m. Finally we may remark, what will appear of importance, that she was indifferently styled in common Attic speech the Mother' or the Mother of the Gods 19b, n'

From Boeotia we have clear evidence of the recognition of 'the Mother' or 'the Mother of the Gods' in some of the leading cities 16-18, but we cannot follow it back under this name to a date earlier than the fifth century B.C.; it is Tanagra 18 b so far that has bequeathed us the earliest monument. At Corinth the temple of the 'Mother of the Gods' on the slope of the Acropolis is described by Pausanias, who mentions also in his account of this state a τελετή Μητρός, 'a mystic service of the Mother,' with which Hermes the ram-bearer was in some way connected, but the context and the phrase are too obscure for precise information 21.

The cult was more prominent in Arcadia 26, and we have reason for believing in its great antiquity here, for it was associated on Mount Azanion with the worship of the mythic ancestor Azan a. She was also honoured with a shrine by the sources of the Alpheios, where two lions were carved as her temple-warders 25 d, giving to the place the name of the 'lions' ford'; and along the banks of this river on the way to Elis there appears to have existed a very primitive and rustic cult of Heracles and the Greek Mother of the Gods,' in which a prophetess gave oracles to the folk of the country-side. Coming into Elis we find an altar and a temple erected not earlier than the fourth century, dedicated to this divinity under this special name 27: and some cymbals of ancient bronze technique discovered at Olympia, though apparently consecrated to the temple of Zeus, may have been associated with the ritual of the Mother "."

We need not for the present follow this cult-appellative further through its other settlements in Greece and the islands,

a Vide Lact. Plac. ad Stat. Theb. 4. 292.

b Vide the long narrative in Dio.

Chrys. Or. 1, p. 59 R.

• Bronzen von Olympia, Text, p. 70.