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Cook, Arthur B.
Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 3,1): Zeus god of the dark sky (earthquake, clouds, wind, dew, rain, meteorits): Text and notes — Cambridge, 1940

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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14698#0466

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396 Water-carrying in connexion with marriage

Final felicity for the divinised, but unmarried, dead would be felt to
imply a marriage-union in the house of Hades. The Orphic initiate
in fact carried with him to the tomb, engraved on a golden tablet,
the assurance that he had become the very consort of Despoina ■
And such hopes in less tangible form were certainly entertained by
wider circles2.

But, if the sepulchral loutrophoros is thus reducible to a nuptial
loutrophoros, we have yet to enquire what meaning attached to them
both. Eustathios3, though he does not reach a satisfactory solution
of the problem, at least goes some way towards one.

'The ancients,' he says, 'treat river-water as something solemn____Bridegrooms

had their bath fetched from a river as an omen of fertility....And over those that
died before marriage the so-called bath-carrying pitcher was set, to show that
the deceased took his departure unbathed of the bridal bath and unfei 1
withal.'

This insistence upon the idea of fertility is right. Water-carry1'0"''

whether for the married living: or for the unmarried dead, w'aS

. be

a fertility-charm of a simple and intelligible sort. As such it can
paralleled by a variety of popular customs4. But the employ106
of a holed vessel for the purpose justifies us, if I am not mista^e0'
in defining the fertility-charm more nearly as a rain-charm- ^^j-
as we shall have occasion to note5, was the very means by w 10
Father Sky impregnated Mother Earth.

1 Supra i. 650 n. o, ii. ng n. 2, 132 f.

2 Supra ii. 1163^ _ r05r«

3 Eustath. in II. p. 1293, 6 ffi oi 5e iraXaioi aep.i'uvovcn to iroTap-Lov vypov-> i ipofX0,

TbXovrpbp £k woTapod Tofcvv/xfilois eKo/ilfero, olwvi£ofi4voisroy6vL/i-ot'. SiO Ka ^
fxrjXa tepeuov, Stnrep Tip Hoffetd&vi, ourto Kal Tots iroTap.o'is els tcls irrjyds. y6vtp-a ^f^g^f
appeva. Kai tols irpb ydpov 8e TeXevTUHriv tj \ovTpo<p6pos, (paaiv, eireTtdeTO Ka\irLS e
tou 8tl &\ovtos tcl vvp.<pLKa Kal dyovos aireicL (supra p. 372 n. 7). -prop0* °^

4 F. von Reitzenstein in the Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie 1909 xli. 671 £1 grunnen
' Der Fruchtbarkeitszauber,' writes: ' Neben Waldern haben wir oben besonders r^^.
und Weiher oder—pars pro toto—Gefasse mit Wasser als Kinderheimat erkalintnelizauber'
sprechend ist der Wasserzauber in der verschiedensten Form, besonders als Bran ^ grailt
sehr weit verbreitet. Am dritten Tag nach der Hochzeit geht z. B. die griechisc ^ypft
noch heute an vielen Orten zum Brunnen, aus dem sie mit eigenem Gefass vva j,undta1,z
und verschiedene Esswaren und Brotkriimchen hineinwirft, wahrend zugleicn a ^ \JJoch'
davum vollzogen wird5 (5 [I. von Diiringsfeld und O. von] Reinsberg-Di'irmSs grUnne°
zeitsbuch Leipzig 1871] S. 59). Bei den slavischen Volkern findet dieser Zug z gulg3*'.*'
entweder vor oder nach der Eheschliessung statt' [with examples from <^10.ff^'atei-sp'r'tS
Esthonia, etc.]. See also Frazer Gotten BougA': The Magic Art ii. I59'- '
conceived as bestowing offspring on women').

5 Infra p. 452 ff.
 
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