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)

426 The myth of the Danaides

water themselves after death, or at least to have it carried for them
by others. The Danaides undergo this post mortem penalty because
they died unmarried.

The explanation advanced by Rohde and Dieterich is not, m
my opinion, altogether satisfactory. It assumes that the Danaides
were typical spinsters1. But this is not the case. They were duly
married to the Aigyptiadai, and Hypermnestra was the only one of
them who retained her virginity2. Rather, their marriage was, as I
have suggested3, in the nature of a fertility-charm, the operation of
which would be hindered, indeed absolutely nullified, by the guilt
that they incurred through murdering their husbands. The gult
of murder would suffice to bring drought upon the land. Thebes,
for instance, stricken for the unavenged death of king Laios, lS
described as—

Blighted in fruitful buds and grazing kine,
Blighted in throes of barren womanhood,
While, lo, the fiery god, the fever dread,
Has fallen and makes havoc of the town4.

If the Danaides thus frustrated an all-important fertility-char '
they deserved to be punished. And the punishment meted out
them consisted, appropriately enough5, in the perpetual perform*11
of a similar charm6.

tt T.Rose

1 Somewhat different, but exposed to a like objection, is the view taken by n-j ^
in the Class. Quart. 1925 xix. 148 : 'the half-married are clearly in a very parlous ^
belonging neither to one class nor to another, and therefore in a tabu conditi°n> ^js,
which they can release themselves only by fulfilling the rite they have ^eSu"^e
doubtless, is the reason why in Hades we find not only the Danaids, who on ^ ^ut
plausible explanation of their punishment spend eternity in trying to get ^^j^, VI-
also a host of unhappy lovers, who have nearly all this in common, in Vergil ( ^ or
444 sqq.), that at the time of their death they were betwixt and between in some
other.'

2 Supra p. 356. 3 Supra p. 369. ^is son

4 Soph. 0. T. 25 ff. Similarly when Lykourgos, king of the Edonoi, slays r£,coVer
Dryas in a frenzy-fit, his land remains barren and, according to an oracle, cann°;n Vfhen
its fertility till he himself be put to death (Apollod. 3. 5. 1, supra i. 7S)- ^\'0Q n- 3
Orestes kills Klytaimestra and is acquitted of the deed, the Erinyes (supra n.

with fig. 146, a) threaten to bring a blight upon the land (Aisch. Bum. 778 ff-j-^& sChol-

5 There is, of course, no need to bring in the far-fetched symbolism ° to
Aristeid. p. 158, I2ff. Dindorf tG>v 8i Aavatfav 6 rerpritjAvos rWos (sc. &5pdtS
fitfirore ravras [icra rbv tpbvov twv tfiiKr&Twv ttjc avaiptixouerav TavTas «c ^ ^ttf^^
KTjSefiovlas x^-P1" 7raP' <*^w" TVyx&vetv, Trdai yevofitvas vttotttovs 81a to dyos, K

TaXm\v irkqpmiltbrqv eupeiv. clie, are

0 In the Swiss canton of Valais it is believed that old bachelors, when ^ the
bound to live in a certain place and there spend their time bringing up sa ^ tt>>
Rhone in baskets with holes in them (E. L. Rochholz Deutscher Glaube un 3o5
Spiegel der heidtrischen Vorzeit Berlin 1867 i. 155, Haberland in Globus 1 /
cited by O. Waser in the Archiv f. Rel. 1899 ii. 61).