DOI chapter:
The mythology of Athenian local cults
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61302#0049
OF ANCIENT ATHENS
xxxvii
an interpolation; and the myth tells that, for he never came
to the throne, and died childless.
After Cecrops came, not his son, but Kranaos, an epony-
mous shadow-name, king of the stony hill country ; then a
more violent interpolation, that of Amphictyon. Amphictyon
is again merely an eponymous shadow-king, the representative
of the Delphic Amphictiony. Some called him son of Deu-
calion and Pyrrha; anyhow, he is no Athenian, and therefore
has no son to succeed him. With a certain sense of mythical
appropriateness tradition told that in the reign of this foreigner
Amphictyon the stranger god Dionysos came to Attica. This
story Pausanias alludes to briefly (p. 5), but it is of sufficient
importance to be told fully from other sources.
The legends about the introduction of the worship of
Dionysos into Attica vary considerably, but on one point they
all agree. Dionysos came from without; he came as a
wanderer, his godhead unknown, for a while rejected and mal-
treated, and went from place to place till he was hospitably
received at last. This notion of the incognito of a god is
common to many tales and many lands. As a wanderer
Dionysos is well shown on an archaic terra-cotta (fig. 5) in
the museum at Berlin. He is seated side-ways—as every
peasant rides now-a-days in Greece—on a mule; in fact, he
is half slipping from it, for he is clearly a victim to his own
divinity. In his left hand he clasps even in his drunken sleep
a thyrsus, in the right his typical wine-cup, the two-handled
kantharos. A horse-tailed Satyr, with an anxious crumpled
face, dutifully supports his master, and a small slave-boy leads
the mule on its way. To ancient Greek thinking, there would
be no irreverence in such a picture. No doubt the terra-cotta
is an offering, and an acceptable one, to the god himself.
The Greek of modern days is no unworthy descendant. Mr.
Bent, in his book on the Cyclades (p. 373), notes that in Paros
“ there is a church dedicated to the Drunken St. George. On
the 3d of November, the anniversary of St. George’s death,
the Pariotes usually tap their wine and get drunk ·, they have
a dance and a scene of revelry in front of this church, which
is hallowed by the presence of the priests.”
xxxvii
an interpolation; and the myth tells that, for he never came
to the throne, and died childless.
After Cecrops came, not his son, but Kranaos, an epony-
mous shadow-name, king of the stony hill country ; then a
more violent interpolation, that of Amphictyon. Amphictyon
is again merely an eponymous shadow-king, the representative
of the Delphic Amphictiony. Some called him son of Deu-
calion and Pyrrha; anyhow, he is no Athenian, and therefore
has no son to succeed him. With a certain sense of mythical
appropriateness tradition told that in the reign of this foreigner
Amphictyon the stranger god Dionysos came to Attica. This
story Pausanias alludes to briefly (p. 5), but it is of sufficient
importance to be told fully from other sources.
The legends about the introduction of the worship of
Dionysos into Attica vary considerably, but on one point they
all agree. Dionysos came from without; he came as a
wanderer, his godhead unknown, for a while rejected and mal-
treated, and went from place to place till he was hospitably
received at last. This notion of the incognito of a god is
common to many tales and many lands. As a wanderer
Dionysos is well shown on an archaic terra-cotta (fig. 5) in
the museum at Berlin. He is seated side-ways—as every
peasant rides now-a-days in Greece—on a mule; in fact, he
is half slipping from it, for he is clearly a victim to his own
divinity. In his left hand he clasps even in his drunken sleep
a thyrsus, in the right his typical wine-cup, the two-handled
kantharos. A horse-tailed Satyr, with an anxious crumpled
face, dutifully supports his master, and a small slave-boy leads
the mule on its way. To ancient Greek thinking, there would
be no irreverence in such a picture. No doubt the terra-cotta
is an offering, and an acceptable one, to the god himself.
The Greek of modern days is no unworthy descendant. Mr.
Bent, in his book on the Cyclades (p. 373), notes that in Paros
“ there is a church dedicated to the Drunken St. George. On
the 3d of November, the anniversary of St. George’s death,
the Pariotes usually tap their wine and get drunk ·, they have
a dance and a scene of revelry in front of this church, which
is hallowed by the presence of the priests.”