Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

Zeus Pandmaros, Panemeros^ Panemerios 23

One odd rite deserves to be noticed. Many of the inscriptions
found at Ba'iaca record the dedication of
human hair1. The custom was for the
dedicator to erect, either inside the temple
of Zeus or outside it in the sacred precinct,
a small stele of stone containing the tress
or tresses in a cavity sometimes closed
by a thin marble lid (fig. y)2. Those that
could not afford such a stele would make
a hole in the stone wrall, or even in the
corner of another man's slab, and inscribe
their names beside it. MM. Deschamps
and Cousin point out that the dedi-
cants were invariably men—not a single
woman's name occurs3; that the dedica-
tion was always made to Zeus, never to
Hera; that the occasion is sometimes
specified as the Komyria and the place
once at least as the Komyrion—the Heraia and the Heraion are
not mentioned at all; that slaves were allowed to participate in
this act of devotion; and that the act itself might be repeatedly
performed by the same person4. These scholars suggest that the
votive hair may have been offered by those who were initiated into
the mysteries of the Komyria5.

If we may judge from analogous customs existing here and
there throughout the Greek world6, the rite was probably connected

Helbig Guide Class. Ant. Rome i. 151 f. no. 221= A. J. B. Wace in the Journ. Hell.
Stud. 1905 xxv. 94f. ('a priest of the cult of one of the later Diadochi') = Amelung Sculpt.
Vatic, ii. 475 ff. no. 275 pi. 63; Helbig op. cit. i. 309 f. no. 425 (an archigallus);
D. Simonsen Skulpturer og Indskrifterfra Palmyra i ATy-Carlsberg Glyptolhek Kjo'benhavn

1889 P- 16 f- P1- 7 f-

1 Bull. Corr. Hell. 1888 xii. 487 ff. nos. 60—120.

2 lb. p. 480.

3 The conjecture of Frazer Pausanias hi. 280 f. is, therefore, in part mistaken.

4 Bull. Corr. Hell. 1888 xii. 486. 5 lb. p. 487.

6 lb. pp. 481—484, Daremberg-Saglio Diet. Ant. i. 1358, 1362, Frazer Pausanias ii.
534f., iii. 279 ff., iv. 128, Golden Boughz: The Magic Art i. 28 ff., Gruppe Gr. Myth.
Rel. p. 913 f. The fullest collection of evidence from the Greek area is that of W. H. D.
Rouse Greek Votive Offerings Cambridge 1902 pp. 240—245. See too G. A. Wilken
' Ueber das Haaropfer und einige andere Trauergebrauche bei den Volkern Indonesien's '
in the Revue Coloniale Internationale 1886 iii. 225 ff., 1887 iv. 353 ff.

Dr Wilken explained the rite as a substitute for human sacrifice, the hair being
deemed the seat of the soul. Dr Frazer suggests that the gift of hair was tantamount to
a gift of virility or fertility. Dr Rouse regards hair-offering as a ' practice connected
with puberty.' Dr Gruppe concludes that the rite was originally ' vorzugsweise eine
Initiationszeremonie.'

I incline to think that we have in this custom the relics of a puberty-rite once