Chapter II: The Survival of Pagan Deities (2)

For it must not be forgotten that the mother and the daughter were in origin and symbolism one. The idea of life’s ebb and flow, of nature’s sleeping and waking, is expressed in them severally as well as conjointly. It would be impossible to analyse the complete myth and, even if a purely physical interpretation were sought, to express in physiological terms the two persons and the parts which they play: for certain ideas find duplicate expression. Either Demeter’s retirement to some dark cave or the descent of Persephone to the underworld might have represented alone and unaided the temporary abeyance of earth’s productive powers. Yet it was with good reason that the myth expanded as it were spontaneously until the spirit of life, that pervades not only the cornfield but all that is animal and human too, was pourtrayed in double form; not because the mere physical fact of the decay and the revival of vegetation needed larger symbolism for its due expression, but because in the tie of mother and daughter and all that it connotes was fitly represented that by which the life-spirit works among the higher orders of created things, that which goes before life’s manifestations and outlasts its vanishings, the spirit of love.

Of all such ideas as these the modern peasant, needless to say, is wholly innocent. He has learnt from his ancestors of a woman beautiful, reverend, deathless, who dwells within a mountain of his land, and who by her dealings with mankind has proved her real and divine puissance. Her name is no more uttered, perchance because it is too holy for men of impure lips; they speak only of ‘the Mistress.’ She is a real person, not the personification of any natural force. The tiller of the land foresees his yearly gain from cornfield and vineyard; the shepherd on the mountain-side expects the yearly increase of his flock; but by neither is any principle inferred therefrom, much less is such a principle personified; the blessing which rests on field and fold is the work of a living goddess’ hands. Flesh and blood she is, even as they themselves, but immortal and very mighty, nobler than many of whom the priests preach, stronger to help the good and to punish the wicked. Simple people they are, who still believe such things, and ignorant; yet less truly ignorant than some half-educated pedants of the towns who vaunt their learning in chattering of ‘Ceres’ rather than of ‘Demeter’ and, misled by Roman versifiers who at least had an excuse in the exigencies of metre, misinterpret the name as a mere synonym for corn. Happily however the influence of the schools--for it is amongst the schoolmasters that the worst offenders in this respect are to be found--is not yet all-reaching, and in the remoter villages tradition is still untainted. There without fear of ridicule men may still confess their faith in the great compassionate goddess.

It was in Aetolia that I first recognised the popular belief in this deity. There I heard tell of one who was called ἡ κυρὰ τοῦ κόσμου, ‘the mistress of the world.’ Her dwelling was in the heart of a mountain, the means of access to it a cave, but where situated, the peasants either did not know or feared to tell. Her character indeed was ever gracious and kindly, but it may be they thought she would resent a foreigner’s approach. In her power was the granting of many boons, but her special care was the fertility of the flocks and the abundance of the crops, including in that district tobacco.

This revelation convinced me of the accuracy of what I had previously suspected only in North Arcadia and in Messenia. In both those regions I had heard occasional mention among the peasants of one whose title was simply ἡ δέσποινα, ‘the Mistress.’ The word had always struck me as curious, for in ordinary usage it is obsolete and the mistress of a house or whatever it may be is always ἡ κυρά (i.e. κυρία). Knowing however that the Church had preserved the title ἡ δέσποινα among those under which the Virgin may be invoked, I was disposed at first to think that the dedication of some church in the neighbourhood had influenced the people to use the rare name ἡ δέσποινα instead of the ordinary ‘Panagia.’ But when I enquired where the church of ‘the Mistress’ was, the answer was ‘she has none’: and yet, on making subsequent enquiries of other persons, I found that there was a church of the Panagia close by. Clearly then it was not in the ecclesiastical sense that the title ἡ δέσποινα was being used. More than this I failed to elicit--the peasants of the Peloponnese are on the whole more suspicious and secretive than those of northern Greece--but I have little doubt that this goddess is the same as she who in Aetolia bears a title more colloquial in form but identical in meaning.

The existence of this deity among the survivals of the old religion has never, I think, been observed by any writer on the subject of Greek folk-lore. But in Bernhard Schmidt’s collection of popular stories and songs there is evidence, whose value he himself did not recognise, to corroborate it. One of the songs[159] from Zacynthos contains the lines:

Ἔκαμ’ ὁ Θεὸς κι’ ἡ Παναγι̯ὰ κι’ ἡ Δέσποινα τοῦ κόσμου,
καὶ ἐπολέμησα με Τούρκους, μ’ Ἀρβανίταις·
χίλιους ἔκοψα, χίλιους καὶ δυ̯ὸ χιλιάδες.

‘They wrought in me, even God and the Virgin and the Mistress of the world, and I fought with Turks and with Albanians: a thousand I slew, a thousand yea and two thousand.’

The editor of this song omits from his translation and does not even mention in his notes the last phrase of the first line, assuming, I suppose, that the Virgin is mentioned twice over under two different titles; but it is at least possible that three persons are intended. God and the Virgin belong to the category of Christian deities; the third may be the pagan goddess already discovered in Messenia, Arcadia, and Aetolia; if so, the collocation of her name along with those of the highest Christian powers is strong testimony to the reverence with which the people of Zacynthos too were wont, and perhaps still continue, to regard her.

In Schmidt’s stories again yet another variation of the title occurs. In one, which has already been narrated in full[160], ‘the Mistress of the earth and of the sea’ (ἡ κυρὰ τσῆ γῆς και τσῆ θάλασσας) rewards a poor man, on the recommendation of his good angel, with miraculous gifts, and when he is slain by an envious king, herself appears and sends down the tyrant quick into the pit where punishment for his wickedness awaits him. Another, in which the same ample appellation is used, runs in brief as follows[161]:

‘Once upon a time a king on his return from a journey gave to his eldest son as a present a picture of “the Mistress of the earth and of the sea.” The prince was so dazzled by her beauty that he resolved to seek her out and make her his wife. He accordingly consulted a witch who told him how to find the palace where the Mistress of earth and sea lived, and warned him also that before he could secure the fulfilment of his desire two tasks would be set him, the first to shatter a small phial carried by a dove in its beak without injuring the bird, the second to obtain the skin of a three-headed dragon. She also provided him with a magic bow wherewith to perform the first labour, and with two hairs from the dragon’s head, by means of which he would be magically guided to the monster’s lair. Arrived there he should glut it with a meal of earth which he was to carry with him, and then slay it as it slept.

Thus forewarned and forearmed the prince set out and passing through a cave, of which the witch had told him, came to the palace. The Mistress having enquired of him his errand at once set him to perform the two tasks. These he accomplished, and she returned with him as his wife to his own land. But they did not live peaceably together, and one day the Mistress of earth and sea in her anger bade the waters overflow the whole land, so that all mankind was drowned while she herself hovered above in the air and looked on. Then when the waters subsided, she descended to the earth and made new men by sowing stones; and thereafter she ruled again as before over the whole world.’

Both these stories hail, as does the song of which a few lines are cited above, from Zacynthos, and there is therefore good reason for believing that in that island the same ‘Mistress’ was recently acknowledged as at this very day is venerated in those parts of the mainland which I have mentioned.

Taking the common factors in these several traditions and beliefs, we are led at once to identify the goddess to whom they relate with Demeter.

First, the simplest form of her title, ἡ δέσποινα, of which the others are merely elaborations, is that which Demeter commonly shared with Persephone in old time; and that the title has been handed down from antiquity is shown clearly by the fact that the word is in ordinary usage obsolete. Since then it is unlikely that in the course of tradition such a title should be transferred (save, owing to Christian influence, in the case of the Virgin, who has locally no doubt superseded one of the goddesses twain and appropriated her byname), the word itself declares in favour of the identification of this still living deity with Demeter.

Secondly, her dwelling-place is consistently in the modern accounts the heart of a mountain, and the passage to it a cave. Such precisely, according to Pausanias, was the habitation of Demeter in Mt Elaïon[162]; and the same idea is reflected in her whole cult; for, though in the classical period she had temples built like those of other deities, yet her holy of holies, as befitted a Chthonian deity, was always a subterranean hall (μέγαρον) or palace (ἀνάκτορον), an artificial and glorified cavern.

Thirdly, the modern deity is in character benevolent, therein differing markedly from many of the pagan powers whom we have yet to consider and also from several of the Christian saints. Once only, in the second of the stories from Zacynthos, does she appear in angry mood, when she destroys all mankind by a flood. To the actual means of destruction employed too much importance must not be attached. The _motif_ of the flood is common in modern Greek folk-tales. In the islands of the Aegean I encountered it several times, the fullest version being one which I heard in Scyros. The story as told there was exactly that of Deucalion, save that in deference to biblical tradition he was named Noah and, by a slight anachronism, it was the Panagia instead of Themis who counselled him to create fresh men by throwing stones over his shoulder. I was also taken to see the place where the flood was at its highest, a narrow glen through which runs a small stream, whose high sloping banks are certainly a mass of half-fossilised animal and vegetable matter; and I was escorted to the hill-top on which Noah’s caïque finally rested. Such a theme is easily worked into a story of the deity, usually benevolent though she be, who is ‘Mistress of the earth and of the sea’; and apart from the means of punishment so appropriately adopted by a goddess who rules the sea, this single outburst of somewhat unreasonable anger on the part of the modern deity against all mankind is singularly like the old-time Demeter’s resentful retirement into the depths of her cave, until ‘all the produce of earth was failing and the human race was perishing fast from famine[163].’ Yet otherwise the ancient goddess too was benevolent and gracious to man.

Fourthly, in Aetolia at any rate and probably also in the Peloponnese, where however I failed to extract definite information, the modern goddess is the quickener of all the fruits of the earth, and in functions therefore corresponds once more with the ancient conception of Demeter. On these grounds the identification seems to me certain.

This being granted, the permanence of tradition concerning the dwelling-place of Demeter raises a question which I approach with diffidence, feeling that an answer to it must rest with others more competent than myself in matters archaeological. First, is the tradition as old as that of the personality of the goddess? It is hard to suppose otherwise; for the primitive mind would scarcely conceive of a person without assigning also an habitation; and the habitation actually assigned is of primitive enough character--a cave in a mountain-side. Where then was Demeter worshipped by the Pelasgians in the Mycenaean age? That she was a deity much reverenced by the dwellers in the Argive plain is certain; small idols believed to represent Demeter Kourotrophos have been found at Mycenae[164]; others, of which the identification is more certain, at Tiryns[165]; and at Argos, in later times, Demeter continued to be worshipped under the title Pelasgian[166]. Was a mere cavern then her only home? Or did Mycenae lavish some of its gold on building her a more worthy temple? May not the famous bee-hive structures which have passed successively for treasuries and for tombs of princes prove to be μέγαρα, temples of Chthonian deities such as Demeter?

It is true that in some humbler structures of the same type, such as those at Menídi and Thoricus, clear evidences of inhumation have been found; but I question whether it is permissible to draw from this fact the inference that those magnificent structures also, the so-called Treasuries of Atreus and of Minyas, were in reality tombs. It would seem reasonable to suppose that dwelling-places for the dead beneath the earth and for earth-deities may have been constructed on the same plan, but that the abodes dedicated to immortals were more imposing than those destined for dead men. This hypothesis appears to me more consistent with the evidence of the actual sites at Mycenae and Orchomenos than the commonly accepted view that the inner chamber of the ‘Treasury of Atreus’ was a place of burial. ‘In the centre of the Mycenaean chamber,’ says Schuchhardt[167], ‘there is an almost circular depression three feet in diameter and two feet in depth, cut into the rocky ground. In spite of its unusual shape, we must recognise in it the actual site of the grave.’ Was it a royal posture to lie curled up like a cat? And if so, what of a similar depression in the floor of the ‘Treasury of Minyas’ at Orchomenos? ‘Almost in the centre of the treasure-room’--I again quote Schuchhardt[168]--‘was a long hole in the level rock, nine inches deep, fifteen inches broad and nineteen inches long, which’--must be recognised as the sepulchre of a royal baby? No, our faith is not to be so severely taxed;--‘which must have served to secure some monument.’ May we not, with more consistency, extend the same explanation to Mycenae? And what then were the monuments? May they not have been images of the deity set up in the most natural place, the centre of the outer or the inner sanctuary?

Again, the actual shape of the buildings is important. Ethnologists tell us that it is ultimately derived from a type of dwelling commonly occupied by primitive man, a circular wattle-hut with conical top; or even more directly, as some would have it, from a similarly shaped abode which the ancient Phrygians used to excavate in the ground, constructing the top of withies laced over beams converging to the apex and covered over with earth, while they tunnelled out an approach from one side where the ground sloped conveniently away[169]. From this it is argued that the domed chambers of Mycenae must be tombs, on the ground that ‘men in all ages have fashioned the dwellings of the dead in accordance with those of the living; but the dead are conservative, and long after a new generation has sought a new home and a new pattern for its houses, the habitations of the dead are still constructed in ancestral fashion[170].’ I readily admit conservatism in all religious matters; but how does the argument touch Mycenae? Archaeologists, and among them Schuchhardt himself[171], are agreed that the shaft-graves in the citadel are earlier in date than the bee-hive structures of the lower town. There was therefore a breach in the continuity of the ancestral fashion. Reversion to a disused fashion is a very different thing from conservatism in upholding an unbroken usage.

But even supposing that there were good evidence of the uninterrupted continuity of this type of sepulchre, may not the temples of Chthonian deities have been built on the same plan? The use of the old word μέγαρον suggests that the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone, though subterranean, was modelled on the dwellings of men, and, to borrow an argument, religious conservatism may well have preserved for the gods’ abodes the hut-like shape of primitive man’s dwellings long after a new type of house had become general among mortals. Concrete instances of this actually existed in much later times[172]. In Rome the temple of Vesta was of this primitive shape, and so also most probably was the Prytaneum of Athens, which, though not a temple, contained the sacred hearth of the whole community and a statue of Hestia[173]. Demeter then, as one of the deities of primitive Greece, might well have been provided with a temple constructed on the same primitive pattern as that of Vesta, but subterranean, as would befit a Chthonian deity, and thus analogous to the cave wherein she had been wont to dwell. The large domed chamber would be her _megaron_, wherein her worshippers assembled just as guests assembled in the _megaron_ of a prince. The small square apartment, where such exists, opening on one side of the main room, might be the παστάς or ‘bedchamber,’ an inner sanctuary which temples of later ages also possessed. The approach or ‘dromos’ would represent the natural cave which had given access to her fabled palace in the bowels of the earth.

Finally, on such a view of these buildings, it would not be difficult to explain Pausanias’ belief that they were treasuries[174]. Treasuries only, we may be sure, they were not; for they would not have been built outside the walls of the citadel. But temples in later times were used as depositories for treasure; the would-be thief shrank apparently from the further crime of sacrilege; and it is not unlikely that in a more primitive age, when superstitious awe was certainly no less strong, while robbery far from being a crime was an honourable calling, men should have secured their treasure by storing it in some inviolable sanctuary. Indeed it may be to such a custom that Homer alludes in speaking of ‘all that the stone threshold of the archer, even Phoebus Apollo, doth enclose within at rocky Pytho[175].’ If then this practice prevailed in Mycenaean, as it did in later, times, Pausanias would be recording a tradition which was partially right; and it is not hard to see how, when Mycenae’s greatness had suddenly, as it seems, declined and her population perhaps had migrated for the most part to Argos, later generations, familiar in their new settlements with that different type of temple only which afterwards became general, might have forgotten the sacred character of the bee-hive structures and have remembered only the proverbial wealth once stored by the kings of Mycenae within them.

There remains one point to which I may for the moment direct attention here, reserving the development of the religious idea contained in it for a later chapter. The main theme of the second of the stories from Zacynthos was the seeking of the Mistress in marriage by a young prince. Now if this story stood alone, it would not be right to lay much stress upon it; for the adventures of a young prince in search of some far-famed bride form the plot of numerous Greek folk-tales; and it would be possible to suppose that the real divine personality of the Mistress had been partially obscured in the popular memory before such a story became connected with her name. But the same _motif_ as it happens is repeated in two stories, one Greek and the other Albanian, in von Hahn’s collection[176]. The name of ‘the Mistress’ does not indeed occur; the deity is called in both ‘the beautiful one of the earth[177].’ But her identity is made quite clear in the Albanian story, which evidently must have been borrowed from the Greek and is therefore admissible as good evidence, by the mention of ‘a three-headed dog that sleeps not day nor night’ by which she is guarded. This is undoubtedly the same monster as the hero of the Zacynthian story was required to kill--the three-headed snake; and while the Albanian story, in making the beast a guardian of the subterranean abode whom the adventurer must slay before he can reach ‘the beautiful one,’ is better in construction and, incidentally, more faithful to old tradition[178] than the Greek version which makes the slaying an useless task arbitrarily imposed, yet in both portraits of the monster we can recognise Cerberus--half dog, half snake. But of him more anon; ‘the beautiful one of the earth’ whom he guards can be none other than Persephone.

Thus there are three modern stories which record the winning of Demeter or Persephone in marriage by a mortal lover. Is this a relic of ancient tradition? There was the attempt of Pirithous to seize Persephone for his wife; but that failed, and moreover was judged an impious deed for which he must suffer punishment. Yet there is also the story of Iasion who was deemed worthy of Demeter’s love. Wedlock then even with so great a deity as Demeter or her daughter was not beyond mortals’ dream or reach. Thus much I may notice now; when I come to examine more closely the ancient worship of these goddesses, I shall argue that the idea of a marriage-union between them and human kind was the most intimate secret of the mysteries, and that in such folk-tales as those which I have here mentioned is contained the germ of a religious conception from which was once evolved the holiest of ancient sacraments.

§ 6. CHARON.

There is no ancient deity whose name is so frequently on the lips of the modern peasant as that of Charon. The forms which it has now assumed are two, Χάρος and Χάροντας, analogous to the formations γέρος and γέροντας from the ancient γέρων: for in late Greek at any rate the declension of Χάρων followed that of γέρων[179]. The two forms do not seem to belong to different modern dialects, for they often appear in close juxtaposition in the same folk-song. The shorter form however is the commoner in every-day speech, and I shall therefore employ it.

About Charos the peasants will always, according to my experience, converse freely. Neither superstitious awe nor fear of ridicule imposes any restraint. They feel perhaps that the existence of Charos is one of the stern facts which men must face; and even the more educated classes retain sometimes, I think, an instinctive fear of making light of his name, lest he should assert his reality. For Charos is Death. He is not now, what classical literature would have him to be, merely the ferryman of the Styx. He is the god of death and of the lower world.

Hades is no longer a person but a place, the realm over which Charos rules. But the change which has befallen the old monarch’s name is the only change in the Greek conception of that realm. It is still called ‘the lower world’ (ὁ κάτω κόσμος or ἡ κάτω γῆ), and even the name Tartarus (now τὰ Τάρταρα, with the addition frequently of τῆς γῆς) still may be heard. Nor is the character of the place altered. Its epithet ‘icy-cold,’ κρυοπαγωμένος, is well-nigh as constant in modern folk-songs as was the equivalent κρυερός in Homer’s allusions to Hades’ house, while the picturesque word ἀραχνιασμένος, ‘thick with spiders’-webs,’ repeats in thought the Homeric εὐρωείς, ‘mouldering.’ Such is Charos’ kingdom, and hither he conveys men’s souls which he has snatched away from earth.

Here with him dwells his mother, a being, as one folk-song tells[180], more pitiful than he, who entreats him sometimes, when he is setting out to the chase, to spare mothers with young children and not to part lovers new-wed. He has also a wife, Charóntissa or Chárissa, who as the name itself implies is merely a feminine counterpart of himself without any distinct character of her own. A son of Charos is also mentioned in song, for whose wedding-feast ‘he slays children instead of lambs and brides as fatlings[181],’ and to whose keeping are entrusted the counter-keys of Hades[182]. Adopted children are also counted among his family, but these are of those whom he has carried from this world to his own home[183]. The household is completed by the three-headed watch-dog, of whom however remembrance is very rare. Yet in two stories in the last section we recognised Cerberus, and even the less convincing of the embodiments there presented, that which represented him as a three-headed snake rather than dog, is not devoid of traces of ancient tradition. The hero who would slay the monster has to cross a piece of water--the sea instead of the river Styx--in order to reach an island where is the monster’s lair; and there arrived, he sees ‘looking out from a hole three heads with eyes that flash fire and jaws that breathe flames[184].’ This is Cerberus without doubt; and if the story calls him ‘serpent’ rather than ‘dog,’ ancient mythology and art alike justify in part the description; for his mother was said to be Echidna, and he himself is found pourtrayed with the tail of a serpent and a ring of snakes about his neck. Schmidt himself appears to have overlooked the testimony of this story and of that also from the collection of von Hahn in which, as I have pointed out, we have a modern picture of Cerberus guarding the realm of Persephone; for he speaks of some remarkable lines from a song which he himself heard in Zacynthos as an unique mention of Cerberus, and questions the genuine nature of the tradition. All doubt is however removed by the corroborative evidence contained in the two stories already mentioned and by the fact that a three-headed dog belonging to Charos was recently heard of by a traveller in Macedonia[185]. The lines themselves are put in the mouth of Charos:--

Ἔχω ὀχτρὸ ἐγὼ σκυλὶ, π’ ούλους μας μᾶς φυλάει,
κῂ ἄντας με ἰδῇ ταράζεταικὴ καὶ θέλει νά με φάῃ.
εἶναι σκυλὶ τρικέφαλο, ποῦ καίει σὰ φωτία,
ἔχει τὰ νύχια πουντερὰ καὶ τὴν ὠρὰ μακρύα.
βγάνει φωτιὰ ’φ’ τὰ μάτια του, ἀπὸ τὸ στόμα λάβρα,
ἡ γλῶσσα του εἶναι μακρυά, τὰ δόντια του εἶναι μαῦρα[186].

‘A savage dog have I, who guards us all, and when he sees me he rages and fain would devour me. A three-headed dog is he, and he burns like fire; his claws are sharp and his tail is long; from his eyes he gives forth flame and from his mouth burning heat; long is his tongue and grim his teeth.’

Here at least recognition of Cerberus must be immediate; every detail of the description, save for the characteristically modern touch which makes Charos afraid of his own dog, is in accord with classical tradition.

Such is the household of Charos, so far as a description may be compiled from a few scattered allusions; his own portrait varies more, in proportion as there are more numerous attempts in every part of Greece to draw it. Sometimes he is depicted as an old man, tall and spare, white of hair and harsh of feature; but more often he is a lusty warrior, with locks of raven-black or gleaming gold--just as Hades in old time was sometimes κυανοχαίτης, sometimes ξανθός,--who rides forth on his black steed by highway or lonely path to slay and to ravage: ‘his glance is as lightning and his face as fire, his shoulders are like twin mountains and his head like a tower[187].’ His raiment is usually black as befits the lord of death, but anon it is depicted bright as his sunlit hair[188], for though he brings death he is a god and glorious.

His functions are clearly defined. He visits this upper world to carry off those whose allotted time has run, and guards them in the lower world as in a prison whose keys they vainly essay to steal and to escape therefrom. But the spirit in which he performs those duties varies according as he is conceived to be a free agent responsible to none or merely a minister of the supreme God. Which of these is the true conception is a question to which the common-folk as a whole have given no final answer; and the character of Charos consequently depends upon the view locally preferred.

Those who regard him as simply the servant and messenger of God, find no difficulty in accommodating him to his Christian surroundings; for, as I have said, the peasant does not distinguish between the Christian and the pagan elements in his faith which together make his polytheism so luxuriant. We have already seen Charos’ name with the prefix of ‘saint[189]’; and though this Christian title is not often accorded him, yet his name appears commonly on tomb-stones in Christian churchyards. At Leonídi, on the east coast of the Peloponnese, I noted the couplet:

καὶ μένα δὲν λυπήθηκε ὁ Χάρος νά με πάρῃ,
ποῦ εἴμουνα τοῦ οἴκου μου μονάκριβο βλαστάρι.

‘Me too Charos pitied not but took, even me the fondly-cherished flower of my home.’

So too in popular story and song he is represented as working in concord with the Angels and Archangels, to whom sometimes falls the task of carrying children to his realm[190]. Indeed one of the archangels, Michael, who as we saw above has ousted Hermes, the escorter of souls, and assumed his functions, is charged with exactly the same duties as Charos in the conveyance of men’s souls to the nether world, so that in popular parlance the phrases ‘he is wrestling with Charos’ (παλεύει μὲ τὸ Χάρο)[191] and ‘he is struggling with an angel’ (ἀγγελομαχεῖ)[192] are both alike used of a man in his death-agony.

This Christianised conception of Charos has not been without influence in softening the lines of the character popularly ascribed to him. The duties imposed upon him by the will of God are sometimes repugnant to him, and he would willingly spare those whom he is sent to slay. One folk-story related to me exhibits him even as a friend of man:--

‘Once upon a time there were a man and wife who had had seven children all of whom died in infancy. When an eighth was born, the father betook himself to a witch and enquired of her how he might best secure the boy’s life. She told him that the others had died because he had chosen unsuitable godparents, and bade him on this occasion ask the first man whom he should meet on his way home to stand sponsor for the child. He accordingly departed, and straightway met a stranger riding on a black horse, and made his request to him. The stranger consented, and the baptism at once took place; but no sooner was it over than he was gone without so much as telling his name.

Ten years passed, and the child was growing up strong and healthy. Then at last the father again encountered the unknown stranger, and reproached him with having been absent so long without ever making enquiry after his godson. Then the stranger answered, “Better for thee if I had not now come and if thou neededst not now learn my name. I am Charos, and because I am thy friend[193], am come to warn thee that thy days are well-nigh spent.” Thereupon Charos led him away to a cave in the mountain-side, and they entered and came to a chamber where were many candles burning. Then said Charos, “See, these candles are the lives of men, and yonder are thine and thy son’s.” Then the man looked, and of his own candle there were but two inches left, but his son’s was tall and burnt but slowly. Then he besought Charos to light yet another candle for him ere his own were burnt away, but Charos made answer that that could not be. Then again he besought him to give him ten years from the life of his son, for he was a poor man, and if he died ere his son were grown to manhood, his widow and orphan would be in want. But Charos answered, “In no way can the decreed length of life be changed. Yet will I show thee how in the two years that yet remain to thee thou mayest enrich thyself and leave abundant store for thy wife and child. Thou shalt become a physician. It matters not that thou knowest nought of medicine, for I will give thee a better knowledge than of drugs. Thine eyes shall ever be open to see me; and when thou goest to a sick man’s couch, if thou dost see me standing at the bed-head, know then that he must die, and say to them that summoned thee that no skill can save him; but if thou dost see me at the foot of the bed, know that he will recover; give him therefore but pills of bread if thou wilt, and promise to restore him.” Then did the man thank Charos, and went away to his home.

Now it chanced that the only daughter of the king lay grievously sick, and all the doctors and magicians had been called to heal her, but they availed nothing. Then came the poor man whom Charos had taught, and went into the room where the princess lay, and lo! Charos stood at the foot of her bed. Then he bade the king send away the other physicians, for that he alone could heal her. So he himself went home and mixed flour and water and came again and gave it to the king’s daughter, and soon she was recovered of her sickness. Then the king gave him a great present, and his fame was spread abroad, and many resorted to him, and soon he was rich.

Thus two years passed, and at the end thereof he himself lay sick. And he looked and saw Charos standing at the head of his bed. Then he bade his wife turn the bed about, but it availed nothing; for Charos again stood at his head, and caught him by the hair, and he opened his mouth to cry out, and Charos drew forth his soul[194].’

Again the unwillingness of Charos to execute the harsh decrees of God is illustrated in numerous folk-songs. Most often it is some brave youth, shepherd or warrior, a lover of the open air, who excites his compassion; for the same notes of regret which Sophocles made melodious in the farewell of Ajax to the sunlight, to his house in Salamis, even to the streams and springs of the Trojan land which brought his death, ring clear and true in modern folk-song too from the lips of dying warriors. Such were the last words of the outlaw-patriot (κλέφτης) Zedros:

‘Farewell, Olympus, now farewell, and all the mountain-summits,
Farewell, my strongholds desolate, and plane-trees rich in shadow,
Ye fountains with your waters cool, and level plains low-lying.
Farewell I bid the swift-winged hawks[195], farewell the royal eagles,
Farewell for me the sun I love and the bright-glancing moonlight,
That lighted up my path wherein to walk a warrior worthy[196].’

Such laments are not lost upon Charos, the servant of God, but he must needs turn a deaf ear to prayers for a respite. Clear and final comes his answer, almost in the same words in every ballad[197],

δὲν ἠμπορῶ, λεβέντη μου, γιατ’ εἶμαι προσταμμένος,
ἐμένα μ’ ἔστειλ’ ὁ Θεὸς νὰ πάρω τὴ ψυχή σου.

‘No respite can I give, brave sir, for I am straitly chargèd;
’Tis God that sent me here to thee, sent me to take thy spirit.’

Sometimes then the doomed man will seek to tempt Charos with meat and drink, that he may grant a few hours’ delay, but against offers of hospitality he is obdurate. Or again his victim refuses to yield to death ‘without weakness or sickness’ and challenges him to a trial of athletic skill, in wrestling or leaping, whereon each shall stake his own soul. And to this Charos sometimes gives consent, for he knows that he will win. So they make their way to the ‘marble-paved threshing-floor,’ the arena of all manly pursuits; and there the man perchance leaps forty cubits, yet Charos surpasses him by five; or they wrestle together from morn till eve, but at the last bout Charos is victor. One hero indeed is known to fame, whose exploits make him the Heracles of modern Greece, Digenes the Cyprian, who wrestled with Charos for three nights and days and was not vanquished. But then ‘there came a voice from God and from the Archangels, “Charos, I sent thee not to engage in wrestlings, but that thou should’st carry off souls for me[198].”’ And at that rebuke Charos transformed himself into an eagle and alighted on the hero’s head and plucked out his soul.

The other and more pagan conception of Charos excludes all traits of kindness and mercy; and men do not stint the expression of their hatred of him. He is ‘black,’ ‘bitter,’ ‘hateful’ (μαῦρος[199], πικρός, στυγερός). He is the merciless potentate of the nether world, independent of the God of heaven, equally powerful in his own domain, but more terrible, more inexorable: for his work is death and his abode is Hades. Thence he issues forth at will, as a hunter to the chase. ‘Against the wounds that Charos deals herbs avail not, physicians give no cure, nor saints protection[200].’ His quarry is the soul of man; ‘where he finds three, he takes two of them, and where he finds two, takes one, and where he finds but one alone, him too he takes[201].’ Sometimes he is enlarging his palace, and he takes the young and strong to be its pillars; sometimes he is repairing the tent in which he dwells, and uses the stout arms of heroes for tent-pegs and the tresses of bright-haired maidens for the ropes; sometimes he is laying out a garden, and he gathers children from the earth to be the flowers of it and young men to be its tall slim cypresses; more rarely he is a vintager, and tramples men in his vat that their blood may be his red wine, or again he carries a sickle and reaps a human harvest.

But most commonly he is the warrior preëminent in all manner of prowess--archer, wrestler, horseman. Once a bride boasted that she had no fear of Charos, for that her brothers were men of valour and her husband a hero; then came Charos and shot an arrow at her, and her beauty faded; a second and a third arrow, and he stretched her on her death-bed[202]. Often in the pride of strength have young warriors laughed Charos to scorn; then has he come to seize the strongest of them, and though the warrior strain and struggle as in a wrestling-match, yet Charos wearies not but wins the contest by fair means or foul: for he is no honourable foe, but dishonest above thieves, more deceitful than women[203]: he seizes his adversary by the hair and drags him down to Hades. Even more striking is the picture of Charos as horseman riding forth on his black steed to the foray, and it is this conception which has inspired one of the finest achievements of the popular muse:--

Why stand the mountains black and sad, their brows enwrapped in darkness?
Is it a wind that buffets them? is it a storm that lashes?
No, ’tis no wind that buffets them, nor ’tis no storm that lashes;
But ’tis great Charos passing by, and the dead passing with him.
He drives the young men on before, he drags the old behind him,
And at his saddle-bow are ranged the helpless little children.
The children cling and cry to him, the old men call beseeching,
“Good Charos, at some hamlet halt, halt at some cooling fountain;
There let the young men heave the stone, the old men drink of water,
There let the little children go agathering pretty posies.”
“No, not at hamlet will I halt, nor yet at cooling fountain,
Lest mothers come draw water there and know their little children,
Lest wife and husband meet again and there be no more parting.”

Such is the more pagan presentment of the modern Charos, a tyrant as absolute in his own realm as God in heaven, a veritable Ζεὺς ἄλλος[204] as was Hades of old, but hard of heart, heedless of prayer, delighting in cruelty.

At first sight then the Charos of modern Greece would seem to have little in common with the Charon of ancient Greece beyond the name and some connexion with death: and Fauriel, in the introduction to his collection of popular songs, pronounces the opinion that in this case the usual tendencies of tradition have been reversed, in that it is the name that has survived, while the attributes have been changed[205]. To this judgement I cannot subscribe. I suspect that in ancient times the literary presentation of Charon was far more circumscribed than the popular, and that out of a profusion of imaginative portraitures as varied as those seen in the folk-songs of to-day one aspect of Charon became accepted among educated men as the correct and fashionable presentment. Hades was, in literature, the despot of the lower world, and for Charon no place could be found save that of ferryman. But this, I think, was only one out of the many guises in which the ancient Charon was figured by popular imagination; for at the present day the remnants of such a conception are small, in spite of the fact that there has remained a custom which should have kept it alive--the custom of putting a coin in the mouth of the dead.

Only in one folk-song, recorded from Zacynthos, can I find the old literary representation of Charon as ferryman of the Styx unmistakably reproduced. The following is a literal rendering:--‘Across the river that none may ford Charos was passing, and one soul was on the bank and gave him greeting. “Good Charos, long life to thee, well-beloved; take me, even me, with thee, take me, dear Charos! A poor man’s soul was I, even of a poor man and a beggar; men left me destitute and I perished for lack of a crumb of barley-bread. No last rites did they give me, they gave me none, poor soul, not even a farthing in my mouth for thee who dost await me. Poor were my children, poor and without hope; destitute were they and lay in death unburied, poor souls. Them thou did’st take, good Charos, them thou did’st take, I saw thee, when thy cold hand seized them by the hair. Take me too, Charos, take me, take me, poor soul; take me yonder, take me yonder, no other waiteth for thee.” Thus cried to him the poor man’s soul, and Charos made answer, “Come, soul, thou art good, and God hath pitied thee.” Then took he the soul and set her on the other bank, and spreading then his sail he sped far away[206].’

In another song[207] of the same collection, hailing also from Zacynthos, there may be a reminiscence of the same old tradition. In it Charos has a caïque with black sails and black oars and goes to and fro--whence and whither is not told--with cargoes of the dead. But more probably the imagery is borrowed from seafaring; the Greek peasant would hardly imagine a caïque plying on a river; the streams of his own country will seldom carry even a small bark. A sea-voyage on the other hand is, especially in the imagination of islanders, the most natural method of departure to a far-off country. From the sea certainly comes the metaphor in a funeral dirge from Zacynthos in which the mourner asks of the dead,

σὲ τὶ καράβι θὰ βρεθῇς καὶ ’σ τὶ πόρτο θ’ ἀράξῃς;[208]

‘In what boat wilt thou be and at what haven wilt thou land?’

This too is claimed by Schmidt[209] as a reminiscence of Charon’s ferry--somewhat unfortunately; for the next line continues,

γιὰ νἄρθῃ ἡ μανοῦλα σου νά σε ξαναγοράσῃ,

‘That thy mother may come and ransom thee again.’

Now in another dirge[210] also heard by Schmidt in the same island, this idea is worked out even more fully: the mother cries to the master of the ship that bears away her lost son not to sell him, and offers high ransom for him; but the dead man in answer bids her keep her treasure; ‘not till the crow doth whiten and become a dove, must thou, mother mine, look for me again.’ Clearly the imagery is borrowed not from the ferry-boat of Charon plying for hire, but from a descent of pirates who carry men off to hold them to ransom or to sell them for slaves. In neither dirge is Charos actually named, but doubtless he is understood to be the captain of the pirates; for in more than one dirge of Laconia and Maina he is explicitly called κουρσάρος, a corsair[211].

Here then we have yet another presentation of the modern Charos; but of Charon the ferryman there is no sure remembrance except in one song from Zacynthos. Nor again, save in that one song, is the river of death imagined as an impassable barrier; it is rather a stream of Lethe: no boatman is needed to carry the dead across; but mention is made only of ‘the loved ones, that pass the river and drink the water thereof, and forget their homes and their orphan children[212]’--just as in the mountains there are ‘springs in marble grots, whereat the wild sheep drink and remember no more their lambs[213].’ It is the drinking of the water, not the passing of the stream, which frees the dead from aching memories: the picture is wholly different from that of a river which cannot be crossed but by grace of the ferryman.

The general oblivion into which the ancient conception of Charon has fallen is the more remarkable, as I have said, in view of the survival of a custom which in antiquity was closely associated with it. In parts of Macedonia, Thrace, and Asia Minor the practice prevails[214], or till recently prevailed, of placing in the mouth (or more rarely on the breast) of the dead a small coin, which in the environs of Smyrna is actually known as τὸ περατίκι, passage-money[215]. In the Cyclades and in parts of the Greek mainland I myself have met aged persons who could recall the existence of the custom: a century or two ago it was probably frequent. But there is less evidence that the coin was commonly intended for Charos. Protodikos indeed, the authority for the existence of the custom in Asia Minor, writing in 1860, says expressly that the coin was designed for Charos as ferryman; and the name of ‘passage-money’ locally given to the coin tends to confirm the statement of a writer whom I have found in some other matters inaccurate. Another authority[216] moreover, writing also in 1860, states that at Stenimachos in Thrace ‘until a short time ago’ the coin was laid in the mouth of the dead actually for Charos; nor can there be any question that the classical interpretation of the custom survived long in Zacynthos, as is evidenced by the complaint of the poor man’s soul in the song translated above,

’στερνὰ ἐμὲ δὲ μοὔδωκαν, δε μοὔδωκαν τσῆ καϋμένης,
μήτε λεφτὸ ’στὸ στόμα μου γιὰ σὲ ποῦ περιμένεις,

‘No last rites did they give me, they gave me none, poor soul, not even a farthing in my mouth for thee (Charos) who awaitest me.’

Yet Schmidt, who recorded these lines from Zacynthos, found that the actual custom was barely remembered there. He met indeed, in 1863, one old woman aged eighty-two, who as a child had known the practice of putting a copper in the mouth of the dead as also that of laying a key on the corpse’s breast; but of the purpose of the coin she knew nothing; the key she believed to be useful for opening the gates of Paradise. For myself, though I have heard mention of the use of the coin, I have never known it to be associated with Charos. I incline therefore to the opinion that in most places where the custom is or has recently been practised, it has outlived the interpretation which was in classical times put upon it.

But was the classical interpretation a true index to the origin of the custom? Was it anything more than an aetiological explanation of a custom whose significance even in an early age had already become obscured by lapse of time? One thing at least has been made certain by the modern study of folklore, namely that a custom may outlive not only the idea which gave it birth but even successive false ideas which it has itself engendered in the minds of men who have sought vainly to explain it. When therefore Lucian[217] stated that ‘they put an obol in the dead man’s mouth as boat-fare for the ferryman,’ it is possible that he was recording a late and incorrect interpretation of a custom which had existed before the rôle of ferryman had ever been invented for Charon. Further if that interpretation had been in the main a literary figment, it would have been natural for the original meaning of the custom to be still remembered among the unlettered common-folk of outlying districts. There are plenty of cases in modern Greece in which different explanations of the same custom are offered in different localities. In spite therefore of the fact that one view only found expression in classical literature, there is no antecedent improbability in the supposition that an older view may have been handed down even to recent generations in the purer oral traditions of the common-folk.

Once only, from a fellow-traveller in the Cyclades, did I obtain any explanation at all of the use of the coin, εἶναι καλὸ γιὰ τἀερικά[218], ‘it is useful because of the aërial ones.’ This sounds vague enough, but nothing more save gestures of uncertainty could I elicit. Was the coin useful, in his view, as a fee to be paid to ‘the aërial ones’ on the soul’s journey from this world to the next, or as a charm against the assaults of such beings? That was the question to which I sought an answer from him, but in vain. For myself I cannot determine in which sense the dark saying was actually meant. The former would accord well with one local belief of the present day, if only my informant had specified one particular kind of aërial beings who are believed to take toll of departing souls; but to this I shall return in a later section of this chapter[219]. The second interpretation of the words, however, whether they were intended in that sense by the speaker or not, furnishes what will be shown by other evidence to be the key to the origin of the custom.

A coin is often used as a charm against sinister influences[220]. In this case then it may have been a prophylactic against aërial spirits. Why then is it generally put in the dead man’s mouth? Not, I think, because the mouth is a convenient purse, as seems to be assumed in the classical interpretation of the custom, but because the mouth is the entrance to the body. The peasants of to-day believe as firmly as men of the Homeric age that it is through the mouth that the soul escapes at death. The phrase μὲ τὴ ψυχὴ ’στὰ δόντια, ‘with the soul between the teeth,’ is the popular equivalent for ‘at the last gasp’; and in the folk-songs the same idea constantly recurs; ‘open thy mouth,’ says Charos to a shepherd whom he has thrown in wrestling, ‘open thy mouth that I may take thy soul[221].’ Now the passage by which the soul makes its exit, is naturally the passage by which evil spirits (or the soul[222], if it should return,) would make their entrance; and, as we shall see later, there is a very real fear among the peasantry that a dead body may be entered and possessed by an evil spirit. Clearly then the mouth, by which the spirit would enter, is the right place in which to lay the protective coin.