Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study...

The tale of deities is now almost told. There remain only a few miscellaneous beings, identical or, at the least, comparable with the creations of ancient superstition, who may be classed together under the name of στοιχει̯ά[662] (anciently στοιχεῖα) or, to adopt the exact Latin equivalent, genii.

The Greek word, which in classical times served as a fair equivalent for any sense of our word ‘elements,’ became from Plato’s time onward a technical term in physics for those first beginnings of the material world which Empedocles had previously called ῥιζώματα and other philosophers ἀρχαί. The physical elements however were commonly supposed to be haunted each by its own peculiar spirit, and hence among the later Platonists the term στοιχεῖα became a technicality of demonology rather than of natural science[663]. Every component part of the visible universe was credited with an invisible genius, a spirit whose being was in some way bound up with the existence of its abode; and the term στοιχεῖον was transferred from the material to the spiritual.

But though the Platonists invented and introduced this new sense of the word, its widespread acceptance was probably not their work, but a curious accident resulting from misinterpretation of early Christian writings. In St Paul’s Epistles[664] there occurs several times a phrase, τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου, ‘worldly principles,’ which was apparently a little too cultured for many of those who heard or read it. It conveyed to their minds probably no more than ‘being enslaved to weak and beggarly elements[665]’ conveys to the British peasant of to-day. What more natural then than that the commentator should accept the word in the sense given to it by the Platonists, and that the common-folk who heard his exposition should readily identify the στοιχεῖα whom they were bidden no longer to serve with the lesser deities and local genii to whose service they had long been bound—to whose service moreover in spite of the supposed injunction they have always continued faithful? The Church, they would have felt, acknowledged the existence of these beings; ecclesiastical authority endorsed ancestral tradition; and since such beings existed, it were folly to ignore them; nay, since the Church declared that they were powers of evil, it was but prudent to propitiate them, to appease their malevolence. Thus στοιχεῖα came to be reckoned by every right-minded peasant among his regular demoniacal entourage.

And so they remain—some of them hostile to man, some benevolent, but all alike wild, uncontrollable spirits—so that St Paul’s phrase στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου even appears in one folk-song metaphorically as a description of wild and wilful young men[666].

Thus the very origin of the term rendered it comprehensive in meaning. Even the greater deities of ancient Greece were, in a sense, local—the occupants of prescribed domains; Poseidon might logically be called the genius of the sea, Demeter of the corn-land; while lesser deities were always associated with particular spots and often unknown elsewhere. But mediaeval usage of the word στοιχεῖον and of its derivatives tended to widen the meaning of the word yet more. A verb στοιχειοῦν[667] was formed which properly meant to settle a genius in a particular place—either a beneficent genius to act as tutelary deity, or an evil genius whose range of activity would thus be circumscribed within known and narrower limits; but it was used also in a larger sense to denote the exercise of any magical powers. A corresponding adjective στοιχειωματικός[668] was applied to anyone who had dealings with genii or familiar spirits, and more vaguely to wizards in general. Thus the famous magician Apollonius of Tyana is described as a ‘Pythagorean philosopher with power over genii’ (φιλόσοφος Πυθαγόρειος στοιχειωματικός)[669]; and two out of his many miracles may be taken as typical of his exercise of the power. Once, it is recorded, he was summoned to Byzantium by the inhabitants and there ‘he charmed (ἐστοιχείωσεν) snakes and scorpions not to strike, mosquitoes totally to disappear, horses to be quiet and not to be vicious either towards each other or towards man; the river Lycus also he charmed (ἐστοιχείωσεν) not to flood and do damage to Byzantium[670].’

In the first part of this passage the verb is undoubtedly used in a very lax sense, for snakes, scorpions, mosquitoes, and horses can hardly have been conceived to have their own several genii or guardian-spirits upon whom magic could be exercised; but the charming of the river Lycus certainly suggests the restraining of the στοιχεῖον or genius of the river within settled bounds. This stricter sense of the word however comes out more clearly in relation to good genii who were settled by magical charms in any given object or place. Hence even the word στοιχεῖον reverted to a material sense, and was sometimes employed to mean a ‘talisman[671]’—an object, that is, in which resided a genius capable of averting wars, pestilences, and suchlike. Genii of this kind, we are told, were settled by the same Apollonius in the statues throughout Constantinople[672], where the belief in their efficacy seems to have been generally accepted; for there was to be seen there a cross in the middle of which was ‘the fortune of the city, namely a small chain having its ends locked together and possessed of power to keep the city abounding in all manner of goods and to give her victory ever over the nations (or heathen), that they should have strength no more to approach and draw nigh thereto, but should hold further aloof from her and retreat as though they had been vanquished. And the key of the chain was buried in the foundations of the pillars[673]’ on which the cross rested. The locked chain was probably the magical means by which the tutelary genius of the city was kept at his post.

But these wide and vague usages of the word and its derivatives have now for the most part disappeared. Leo Allatius[674] still used στοιχειωματικός in the sense of ‘magician,’ but I have not found it in modern Greek. A remnant of the verb στοιχειοῦν[675] is seen in the past participle στοιχειωμένος, which at the present day is applied in its true sense to objects ‘haunted by genii.’ And the word στοιχειά, though locally extended in scope so as to become in effect synonymous with δαιμόνια or ἐξωτικά[676], comprising all non-Christian deities irrespectively of their close connexion with particular natural phenomena, still maintains in its more strict, and I think more frequent, usage the meaning of genii.

The term thus provided by the Platonists and popularised accidentally by the Church is a convenience in the classification of demons; for the ancient Greeks had no popular word which was exactly equivalent; they had to choose between the vague term δαιμόνιον which implied nothing of attachment to any place or object, and the special designation of the particular kind of genius. The Latin tongue was in this respect better supplied. It must not however be inferred that the introduction of the useful term στοιχεῖα into the demonological nomenclature of Greece marked any innovation in popular superstition. The Greeks no less than the Romans had from time immemorial believed in genii. That scene of the Aeneid[677], in which, while Aeneas is holding a memorial feast in honour of his father, a snake appears and tastes of the offerings and itself in turn is honoured with fresh sacrifice as being either the genius of the place or an attendant of the hero Anchises, is throughout Greek in tone; and the comment of Servius thereupon, ‘There is no place without a genius, which usually manifests itself in the form of a snake,’ revives a hundred memories of sacred snakes tended in the temples or depicted on the tombs of ancient Greece. Moreover several of the supernatural beings whom I have already described, and whose identity with the creatures of ancient superstition is established, are essentially genii.

The Lamia is the genius of the darksome cave where she makes her lair; the Gorgon, of the straits where she waylays her prey; and, most clearly of all, the Dryads are the genii of the trees which they inhabit. For the life of each one of them is bound up with the life of the tree in which she dwells; and still as in old time, so surely as the tree decays away with age, her life too is done and ‘her soul leaves therewith the light of the sun[678].’ The woodman of to-day therefore speaks with the utmost fidelity to ancient tradition when he calls the trees where his Nereids dwell στοιχειωμένα δέντρα, ‘trees haunted by genii’; such innovation as there has been is in terminology only.

One word of caution only is required before we proceed to the consideration of various species of genii not yet described. It must not be assumed that all genii, on the analogy of the tree-nymphs, die along with the dissolution of their dwelling-places; the existence of the genius and that of the haunted object are indeed always closely and intimately united, but not necessarily in such a manner as to preclude the migration of the genius on the dissolution of its first abode into a second. The converse proposition however, that any object could enjoy prolonged existence after the departure from it of the indwelling power, may be considered improbable.

The genii of buildings are universally acknowledged in Greece. The forms in which they appear are various; this may partly be explained by the belief that they possess the power of assuming different shapes at will; but it is certain also that their normal shape is in some measure determined by the nature of the building—house, church, or bridge—of which each is the guardian.

The genius of a house appears almost always in the guise of a snake, or, according to Leo Allatius[679], of a lizard or other reptile. It is believed to have its permanent dwelling in the foundations, and not infrequently some hole or crevice in a rough cottage-floor is regarded as the entrance to its home. About such holes peasants have been known to sprinkle bread-crumbs[680]; and I have been informed, though I cannot vouch as an eye-witness for the statement, that on the festival of that saint whose name the master of a house bears, he will sometimes combine services to both his Christian and his pagan tutelary deities, substituting wine for the water on which the oil of the sacred lamp before the saint’s icon usually floats, and pouring a libation of milk—for the older deities disapprove of intoxicants—about the aperture which leads down to the subterranean home of the genius. If it so happen that there is a snake in the hole and the milky deluge compels it speedily to issue from its hiding-place, its appearance in the house is greeted with a silent delight or with a few words of welcome quietly spoken. For on no account must the ‘guardian of the house,’ νοικοκύρης[681] or τόπακας[682], as it is sometimes called, be frightened by any sound or sudden movement. Much less of course must any physical hurt or violence be done to it; the consequences of such action, even though it be due merely to inadvertence, are swift and terrible; the house itself falls, or the member of the family who was guilty of the outrage dies in the self-same way in which he slew the snake[683].

These beliefs and customs are probably all of ancient date. Theophrastus[684] notes how the superstitious man, if he sees a snake in the house, sets up a shrine for it on the spot. The observation also of such snakes was a recognised department of ‘domestic divination’ (οἰκοσκοπική) on which one Xenocrates—not the disciple of Plato—wrote a treatise[685]. They were probably known as οἰκουροί, ‘guardians of the house’ (a name which is identical in meaning with the modern νοικοκύρης), for it is thus at any rate that Hesychius[686] designates the great snake which Herodotus[687] tells us was ‘guardian (φύλακα) of the acropolis’ at Athens, and which, by leaving untouched the honey-cake with which it was fed every month, proved to the Athenians, when the second Persian invasion was threatening them, that their tutelary deity had departed from the acropolis, and decided them likewise to evacuate the city. Thus the few facts that are recorded about this belief in antiquity accord so exactly with modern observations, that from the minuter detail of the latter the outlines of the former may safely be filled in.

The genii of churches most commonly are seen or heard in the form of oxen—bulls for the most part[688], but also steers and heifers[689]. They appear, like all genii, most frequently at night, and, according to one authority, ‘are adorned with various precious stones which diffuse a brightness such as to light the whole church.’ ‘They are seldom harmful,’ continues the same writer[690]; ‘the few that are so—called simply κακά—do not dare to make their abode within the churches, but have their lairs close to them in order to do hurt to church-goers.... Near Calamáta, on a mountain-side, there is a chapel of ease dedicated to St George. The peasants narrate that at each annual festival held there on April 23rd a genius used to issue forth from a hole close by and to devour one of the festal gathering. After some years the good people, seeing that there was no remedy for this annual catastrophe, decided to give up the festival. But a week before the feast St George appeared to them all simultaneously in a dream, and assured them that they should suffer no hurt at the festival, because he had sealed up the monster. And in fact they went there and found the hole closed by a massive stone, on which was imprinted the mark of a horse’s hoof; for St George, willing that the hole should remain always closed, had made his horse strike the stone with his hoof. Thenceforth the saint has borne the surname Πεταλώτης (from πέταλον the ‘shoe’ or ‘hoof’ of a horse) and up to this day is shewn the hoof-mark upon a stone.’

Harmless genii however are more frequently assigned to churches, exercising a kind of wardenship over them and taking an interest in the parishioners. At Marousi, a village near Athens, there is a church which is still believed to have a genius, in the form of a bull, lurking in its foundations; and when any parishioner is about to die, the bull is heard to bellow three times at midnight. A church in Athens used to claim the same distinction, and the bellowing of the bull there is said to have been heard within living memory at the death of an old man named Lioules[691]. Other churches also in Athens, not to be outdone, pretended to the possession of genii in the shapes of a snake, a black cock, and a woman, who all followed the bull’s example and emitted their appropriate cries thrice at midnight as a presage of similar events[692].

Why the genii of churches in particular appear mostly as bulls, I cannot determine. When the genius of a river manifests itself in that form, the connexion with antiquity is obvious; for river-gods, who ex vi termini are the genii of the rivers whose name they share, were constantly pourtrayed of old in the form of bulls. All that can be said is that the type of genius is old, though its localisation is new and difficult to explain.

The genii of bridges cannot properly, I suppose, be distinguished from the genii of those rivers or ravines which the bridges span. They are usually depicted as dragons or other formidable monsters, and they are best known for the cruel toll which they exact when the bridge is a-building. The original conception is doubtless that of the river-god demanding a sacrifice, even of human life, in compensation for men’s encroachment upon his domain. The most famous of the folk-songs which celebrate such a theme is associated with ‘the Bridge of Arta,’ but many versions[693] of it have been published from different districts, and in some the names of other bridges are substituted; in Crete the story is attached to the ‘shaking bridge’ over a mountain torrent near Canea[694]; in the Peloponnese to ‘the Lady’s bridge’ over the river Ladon[695]; in the neighbourhood of Thermopylae to a bridge over the river Helláda[696]; in the island of Cos to the old bridge of Antimachia[697]. The song, in the version[698] which I select, runs thus: