DOI chapter:
The mythology of Athenian local cults
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61302#0096
Ixxxiv
MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS
the Sirens (Apollod., i. 9, 25). Why should the quiet agricul-
tural priest fall before such a temptation ?
Even if Butes be etymologically the ox-man—a point I do
not pretend to settle—that does not sever him from Poseidon.
Was not Poseidon worshipped as vavpeos; might not his
trident serve on occasion as a βουπληξ? Were not the cup-
bearers at the feast of Poseidon at Ephesus (Athen., x. 25)
called ταΰροι ? Did not Poseidon come forth from the sea to
fulfil his own curse, in the person of his vehicle the bull, to
slay Hippolytus ? With Poseidon, however, we have only to
do in so far as he was Erechtheus, and as his priest and
second double was Butes.
Next come the widely different sisters of Butes, not belong-
ing to him in the least, but made his sisters for genealogical
convenience, Procne and Philomela, and with them their real
father, who had also nothing to do with Butes, Pandion.
The story of Procne and Philomela is the most transparent of
nature myths, a legend invented in part, as Keightley {Classical
Mythology, p. 337) says, “to account mythically for the habits
and properties of animals.” Even Pausanias has a suspicion
of the truth; he adds to his account of the grave of Tereus
(i. 41, 8) this reflection—“The tradition of the change into the
nightingale and the swallow is, I think, because these birds
have a melancholy song like a lament.” Procne and Philomela
were honoured as ancestors by the Athenians, but they remain
purely poetical conceptions, they have no cult connected with
them. Only Tereus seems to have been the object of a some-
what ironical ritual. Pausanias (loc. citf tells how, when Tereus,
driven to despair by the contempt of his subjects the Daulians,
committed suicide at Megara, they made him a grave, and
offered him yearly sacrifice, using pebbles instead of barley.
The story, in part transparently a nature myth, got com-
plicated by contamination and accretion, and in its later form
needs some unravelling. It may be best to give the final Attic,
non-original version first. Apollodorus, who, as usual, has got
the matter into neat historical form, tells the story as follows
(iii. 14, 8):—“War having broken out against Labdacus
about the boundaries of the land, he (Erechtheus) called
MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS
the Sirens (Apollod., i. 9, 25). Why should the quiet agricul-
tural priest fall before such a temptation ?
Even if Butes be etymologically the ox-man—a point I do
not pretend to settle—that does not sever him from Poseidon.
Was not Poseidon worshipped as vavpeos; might not his
trident serve on occasion as a βουπληξ? Were not the cup-
bearers at the feast of Poseidon at Ephesus (Athen., x. 25)
called ταΰροι ? Did not Poseidon come forth from the sea to
fulfil his own curse, in the person of his vehicle the bull, to
slay Hippolytus ? With Poseidon, however, we have only to
do in so far as he was Erechtheus, and as his priest and
second double was Butes.
Next come the widely different sisters of Butes, not belong-
ing to him in the least, but made his sisters for genealogical
convenience, Procne and Philomela, and with them their real
father, who had also nothing to do with Butes, Pandion.
The story of Procne and Philomela is the most transparent of
nature myths, a legend invented in part, as Keightley {Classical
Mythology, p. 337) says, “to account mythically for the habits
and properties of animals.” Even Pausanias has a suspicion
of the truth; he adds to his account of the grave of Tereus
(i. 41, 8) this reflection—“The tradition of the change into the
nightingale and the swallow is, I think, because these birds
have a melancholy song like a lament.” Procne and Philomela
were honoured as ancestors by the Athenians, but they remain
purely poetical conceptions, they have no cult connected with
them. Only Tereus seems to have been the object of a some-
what ironical ritual. Pausanias (loc. citf tells how, when Tereus,
driven to despair by the contempt of his subjects the Daulians,
committed suicide at Megara, they made him a grave, and
offered him yearly sacrifice, using pebbles instead of barley.
The story, in part transparently a nature myth, got com-
plicated by contamination and accretion, and in its later form
needs some unravelling. It may be best to give the final Attic,
non-original version first. Apollodorus, who, as usual, has got
the matter into neat historical form, tells the story as follows
(iii. 14, 8):—“War having broken out against Labdacus
about the boundaries of the land, he (Erechtheus) called