The White Goddess (79 page)

I began by noting the strange continuance in Christianity of the original pagan title of Chief Pontiff, which the Bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter the Fisherman, assumed two centuries after Christianity had become the Roman state religion. For the Chief Pontiff, in Republican and early Imperial times, was personally responsible to the Capitoline Trinity (Jupiter, Juno and Minerva), for the chaste behaviour of the
Vestals, as his successor now is to the Christian Trinity for that of Roman Catholic nuns. Then I threw my mind back in an analeptic trance. I found myself listening to a conversation in Latin, helped out with Greek, which I understood perfectly. Presently I began to distinguish the voices as those of Theophilus, a well-known Syrian-Greek historian and Lucius Sergius Paulus, a Roman Governor-General of Cyprus under the Emperor Claudius.

Paulus was saying rather heavily ‘My learned friend, a festal system of such complexity cannot have been conveyed from country to country among the bales of merchandize that traders carry in barter. It may have been imposed by conquest, yet had there ever been an Empire of Europe which included all the distant parts you mention –’

‘I should also have included Portugal among them,’ interjected Theophilus.

‘– doubtless we should have heard of it. But Alexander’s conquests were all in the East: he dared not challenge the power of Republican Rome.’

Theophilus said: ‘What I mean is this. I postulate a constant emigration, in ancient times, of tribes inhabiting the Southern coast of the Black Sea, a process that has indeed ceased only in the last century or two. The climate was healthy, the people vigorous and well organized, but the coastal strip narrow. Every hundred years or so, as I suppose, the land grew over-populated, and one tribe or another was necessarily sent away to seek its fortune and make room for the rest. Or it may be that they were forced to move by pressure from the East, when wandering hordes from the plains of Asia broke through the Caspian Gates of the Caucasus mountains. Of these tribes, some took the route southward across Asia Minor and ventured through Syria and as far as Egypt – we have the authority of Herodotus for this; some took the route westward across the Bosphorus and Thrace and into Greece, Italy and Gaul and even, as I say, to Spain and Portugal. Some struggled south-eastward into Chaldaea across the Taurus mountains; some moved northward up the Western shore of the Black Sea and then followed the Danube to Istria, continuing their march across Europe until they reached the north-westerly tip of Gaul; whence, it is said, some crossed over into Britain, and from Britain into Ireland. They took the festal system with them.’

‘Yours is a very daring theory,’ said Paulus, ‘but I can recall no authentic tradition that supports it.’

Theophilus smiled. ‘Your Excellency is a true Roman – “no truth unless hallowed by a tradition.” Well, then: tell me, from what land did your hero Aeneas come?’

‘He was a King of Dardanus on the Bosphorus before he settled in Troy.’

‘Good: Dardanus is three-quarters of the way back from Rome to the
Black Sea. And, tell me, what was the priceless possession that Aeneas brought with him from Troy? Pray forgive the dialectical method.’

‘You must mean the Palladium, most learned Socrates,’ answered Paulus in ironically academic tones, ‘on the safety of which the fate of Troy once depended; and the fate of Rome depends now.’

‘And what, honoured Alcibiades, is the Palladium?’

‘A venerable statue of Pallas Athene.’

‘Ah, but who is she?’

‘You suggested this morning, during our visit to the wrestling-school, that she was originally a Sea-goddess like our local Cyprian deity; and mythographers record that she was born by the Lake of Triton in Libya.’

‘So she was. And who or what is Triton, besides being the name of a once extensive lake which is now shrinking into salt marsh?’

‘Triton is a marine deity with a fish’s body who accompanies Poseidon the Sea-god and his wife Amphitrite the Sea-goddess, and blows a conch in their honour. He is said to be their son.’

‘You give me the most helpful answers. But what does Pallas mean?’

‘How long is this cross-examination to last? Would you send me back to school again? Pallas is one of Athene’s titles. I have never accepted Plato’s derivation of the word from
pallein
,
to brandish; he says, you know, that she is called Pallas because she brandishes her
aegis,
or shield. Plato’s etymology is always suspect. What puzzles me is that Pallas is a man’s name, not a woman’s.’

‘I hope to be able to explain the paradox. But, first, what do you know about men called Pallas?’

‘Pallas? Pallas? There have been many men of the name, from the legendary Pallas the Titan to our present egregious Secretary of State. The Emperor made the Senate snigger the other day by declaring that the Secretary was of the famous Pallas family that gave its name to the Palatine Hill.’

‘I doubt whether the remark was as absurd as it must have sounded. Claudius, for all his eccentric habits, is no mean historian, and as Chief Pontiff has access to ancient religious records denied to others. Come, your Excellency, let us go together through the list of ancient Pallases. There was, as you say, Pallas the Titan, who was brother to Astraeus (“the Starlike”) and Perses (“the Destroyer”) and who married – whatever that means – the River Styx in Arcadia. He was the father of Zelos (“Zeal”), Cratos (“Strength”), Bia (“Force”) and Nicë (“Victory”). Does that not convey his mystical nature to you?’

‘I regret to admit that it does not. Pity me as a stupid, legalistic and practical Roman.’

‘If your Excellency is not careful I shall begin praising your elegiac poem on the Nymph Egeria, a copy of which was lately sent me from Rome by one of our mutual friends. Well, next comes Homer’s Pallas,
whom he calls the father of the Moon. And next another Titan, the Pallas who was flayed by Athene; it was this Pallas from whom she is said to have taken her name.’

‘I never heard that story.’

‘It rests on good authority. And then comes Pallas, the founder of Pallantium in Arcadia, a Pelasgian son of the Aegeus who gave his name to the Aegean Sea; now, he is of interest to us because his grandson Evander emigrated to Rome sixty years before the Trojan war and brought your sacred alphabet with him. It was he who founded a new city of Pallantium on the Palatine Hill at Rome, long since incorporated in the City. He also introduced the worship of
Nicë, Neptune, (now identified with Poseidon), Pan of Lycos, Demeter and Hercules. Evander had a son named Pallas, and two daughters, Romë (“Strength”) and Dynë (“Power”). And I had almost forgotten still another Pallas, brother of Aegeus and Lycos, and therefore uncle to Evander’s grandfather Pallas.’

‘A fine crop of Pallases. But I am still in the dark.’

‘Well, I do not blame your Excellency. And I hardly know where to shine the lantern. But I appeal to you for patience. Tell me, of what is the Palladium made?’

Paulus considered. ‘I am rather rusty on mythology, my dear Theophilus, but I seem to remember that it is made of the bones of Pelops.’

Theophilus congratulated him. ‘And who was Pelops? What does his name mean?’

‘I was reading Apollonius Rhodius the other day. He says that Pelops came to Phrygia from Enete in Paphlagonia and that the Paphlagonians still call themselves Pelopians. Apollonius was curator of the great Alexandrian Library and his ancient history is as reliable as anyone’s. As for the name “Pelops”, it means dusky-faced. The body of Pelops was served up as a stew by Tantalus, his father, for the Gods; they discovered that it was forbidden food just in time. Only the shoulder had been eaten – by Demeter, was it not? – but some say Rhea, and restitution was made with an ivory shoulder. Pelops was brought back to life.’

‘What do you make of this cannibalistic myth?’

‘Nothing at all, except that we now seem to have traced the Dardanians back to the Black Sea, if the sacred Palladium was made of the bones of their ancestor from Enete.’

‘If I suggest to you that Pelops and Pallas are different titles of Kings of the same early Greek dynasty, will that help your Excellency?’

‘Not in the least. Pray, give me a hand out of this quaking bog.’

‘Allow me to ask you a riddle: What is it with a dusky face and an ivory shoulder that comes rushing victoriously up a river, as if to a wedding, full of Zeal, Force and Strength, and whose hide is well worth the flaying?’

‘I am good at riddles, though bad at myths. A fish of sorts. I guess the
porpoise. The porpoise is not an ordinary fish, for it couples, male with female: and how royally it charges into a river-mouth from the sea! It is pale below and dark above, with a blunt, dusky muzzle. And it has a fine white shoulder-blade – broad like a paddle; and porpoise leather makes the best-wearing shoes procurable.’

‘It is not a fish at all. It is a warm-blooded creature, a
cetos,
a sea-beast with lungs, not an
ichthus,
a fish with gills and cold blood. To the sea-beast family, according to Aristotle’s system, belong all whales, seals, porpoises, grampuses and dolphins. Unfortunately in Greece we use the same word
delphis
indiscriminately for both the beaked dolphin and the blunt-muzzled porpoise; and though Arion’s musical mount is likely to have been a true dolphin, it is uncertain whether Delphi was originally named after the dolphin or the porpoise. “Pallas” in Greek once meant a lusty young man, and I suppose that it became the royal title of Peloponnesian kings, whose sacred beast was the lusty porpoise, when the tribe of Pelops came down into Greece from the Black Sea. Do you remember Homer’s much disputed epithet for Lacedaemon –
Cetoessa,
which literally means “Of the Sea-beast”?’

‘I will try to think along the lines you lay out for me,’ said Paulus. ‘The Peloponnese is, of course, sometimes called the Land of Poseidon, who is the Achaean god of all sea-beasts and fishes. Arcadia is the centre of the Peloponnese, and Pallas the Sea-beast-god reigned there, and in Lacedaemon too. Let me work this out for myself – yes – Pallas is married to the River Styx, meaning that the porpoise comes rushing up the Crathis towards the Styx in his mating season. (At the mouth of the Crathis is Aegae – I once served in that part of Greece – which explains the connexion with Aegeus. Opposite Aegae, across the Gulf of Corinth, stands Delphi, sacred to Apollo the Dolphin-god or Porpoise-god.) Later, Evander a grandson of Pallas, and with a son of the same name, is driven out of Arcadia, about the time of the great Achaean invasion, and comes to Rome. There he forms an alliance with the people of Aeneas, claiming kinship with them in virtue of a common descent from Pelops. Is that how you read the story?’

‘Exactly. And Evander was probably a Pallas too, but changed his name, after killing his father, to throw the avenging Furies off the scent.’

‘Very well. He introduces the worship of the Sea-god Neptune; of Nicë, the daughter of the original Pallas; of Hercules – why Hercules?’

‘His sexual lustiness commended him, and he was not only a great-grandson of Pelops but an ally of the Enetians, the original Pelopians.’

‘And why Demeter?’

‘To rescue her from Poseidon the god of the Achaeans who, it is said, had raped her. You remember perhaps that she retreated from him up the Crathis to the Styx and there cursed the water. Demeter was old Deo, the barley-planting Mother-goddess of the Danaan Arcadians. That some
mythographers call her Rhea proves her Cretan origin. Her famous mare-headed statue at Phigalia, by the River Neda in Western Arcadia, held a porpoise in one hand and in the other a sacred black dove of the sort that is used at the oak-oracle of Dodona.’

‘Why mare-headed?’

‘The horse was sacred to her, and when the Pelopians intermarried with the original Arcadians, this was recorded in myth as a marriage between Pelops and Hippodameia, “the Horse-tamer”, who is also called Danais by some mythographers. And among their children were Chrysippos, “Golden Horse”; Hippalcmos, “Bold Horse”; Nicippe, “Victorious Mare” – new clan-names.’

‘I see. It is not so nonsensical as it sounds. Well, now I can fill out the story. The Mother-goddess was served by the so-called Daughters of Proetus or Proteus,
1
who lived in a cave at Lusi, by the headwaters of the Styx. Her priestesses had a right to the shoulder-blade of the sacred porpoise at a sacrificial feast. Porpoise beef makes very good eating, especially when it has been well hung. And Proteus, according to Homer, became herdsman to Poseidon and tended his sea-beasts. That must have been after Poseidon’s conquest of the Goddess, which he celebrated by calling himself the Mare-tamer. I take Proteus to be another name for Pallas, the Sea-beast: the Achaeans, in fact, enslaved the Pelopians, who were now also styled Danaans, and Poseidon took over the prerogatives and titles of Pallas.’

‘I congratulate your Excellency. You evidently agree with me in dismissing as mistaken the view that Pelops was an Achaean – unless perhaps an earlier Achaean horde had entered Greece many centuries before with the Aeolians; I suppose that the mistake arose from the knowledge that Pelops was once worshipped in the northern province of the Peloponnese now called Achaea. For the enslavement of the Pelopians by the Achaeans is confirmed in another, rather frivolous myth: Poseidon is said to have fallen in love with Pelops, as Zeus with Ganymede, and to have carried him off to be his cup-bearer. Neptune, who emigrated to Italy was, you will agree, also Pallas and must not be identified with Poseidon as the custom is. But I should guess Proteus to be a general name of the god who is the son, lover and victim of the old Mother Goddess; and assumes a variety of shapes. He is not only Pallas, the sea-beast, but Salmoneus the human oak-king, Chrysippos the golden horse, and so forth.’

‘But Pan of Lycos? What had Evander to do with him?’

‘His ancestor Pelops probably brought him from the River Lycos, which flows into the Black Sea not far from Enete. Another lusty god. You
will recall that he danced for joy when Pelops was fitted out with his new white shoulder. By the way, do you recall the various stories of Pan’s parentage?’