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

Zeus superseded by Saint Elias 173

Similarly Demeter changed her sex, but retained her sanctity,
in the cult of Saint Demetrios1; Eileithyia in that of Saint

fructifying and nourishing properties of the Ephesian Artemis has been transferred to her
Christian namesake. We found traces of the worship of Artemis having existed in Keos
along with that of Apollo in ancient times, for Barba Manthos had a little image of the
Ephesian Artemis in his collection, which he had found in a temple at Karthaia.' See
further J. T. Bent in The Jotimal of the Anthropological Instittite 1885-6 xv. 392,
J. C. Lawson Modem Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion p. 44, Miss M. Hamilton
Incubation London 1906 p. 174, in the Ann. Brit. Sch. Ath. 1906—1907 xiii. 352, and in
Greek Saints and Their Festivals p. 17 f.

1 At Eleusis the cult of Demeter was hard to kill, as will be admitted in view of the
following facts. In the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge is the upper half of a colossal
Ki<TTO(p6pos in Pentelic marble, referable to the fourth or third cent. B.C. (pi. xv). It was
found at Eleusis in 1801 by E. D. Clarke and J. M. Cripps 'on the side of the road,
immediately before entering the village, and in the midst of a heap of dung, buried as
high as the neck, a little beyond the farther extremity of the pavement of the Temple.
Yet even this degrading situation had not been assigned to it wholly independent of its
antient history. The inhabitants of the small village which is now situate among the
ruins of Eleusis still regarded this Statue with a very high degree of superstitious veneration.
They attributed to its presence the fertility of their land; and it was for this reason that
they heaped around it the manure intended for their fields. They believed that the
loss of it would be followed by no less a calamity than the failure of their annual
harvests; and they pointed to the ears of bearded zvheat, among the sculptured ornaments
upon the head of the figure, as a never-failing indication of the produce of the soil'
(E. D. Clarke Travels in various countries of Europe Asia and Africa^ London 1818
vi. 601). 'The Eleusinians, whose superstitionsb [bIt was their custom to bum a lamp
before it, upon festival days.] respecting it were so great that Dr. Chandler paid a large
sum for permission to dig near it, relate, that as often as foreigners came to remove the
statue, some disaster ensued. They believed that the arm of any person who offered to
touch it with violence, would drop off; and said, that once being taken from her station
by the French, she returned back in the night to her former situation ' (E. D. Clarke
Greek Marbles brought from the shores of the Euxine, Archipelago, and Mediterranean,
etc. Cambridge 1809 p. 32 f.). On the evening preceding the removal of the statue
an ox, loosed from its yoke, butted with its horns against the marble and then ran
off, bellowing, into the plain of Eleusis. This roused all the terrors of the peasantry,
whose scruples were not removed till the. priest of Eleusis arrayed in his vestments
struck the first blow with a pickaxe. Even then the people maintained that no ship
would ever get safe to port with the statue on board. Curiously enough the Princessa, a
merchantman conveying it home from Smyrna, was wrecked and lost near Beachy
Head, though the statue itself was recovered. As to the notion that the absence of
the statue would cause the crops to fail, E. D. Clarke adds : ' The first year after the
departure of the Goddess, their corn proved very abundant, and they were in constant
expectation that Ceres would return. The next year, however, was not so favourable;
and they begin to fear she has deserted them.' He justly cp. Cic. in Verr. 2.4. 114 Cerere
violata, omnes cultus fructusque Cereris in his locis interiisse arbitrantur (id. ib. p. 35 ff.).
The statue—on which see also A. Michaelis Ancient Marbles in Great Britain trans.
C. A. M. Fennell Cambridge 1882 p. 242 ff.—has been called successively Demeter,
a Kavrjcpopos, a Ka\adr]<p6pos, and more accurately a KLGTo<pbpos. Lenormant states that
the inhabitants of Eleusis spoke of it as 'Ayia ArjfjLrjrpa and, in order to secure good
harvests, used to present it with garlands of flowers (F. Lenormant Monographie de
la voie sacrie dleusinienne Paris 1864 i. 398 n.). In i860, when he undertook his
excavations at Eleusis, he made careful enquiries concerning this 'Ayia Arj^Tpa—a
saint unknown to the calendar. An Albanian papas or priest, who was said to be