XLIX] Studies in primitive Greek religion. 19 



plants in the same simple way as, for instance, the daughter 

 of the Tliebau gyant of whom Plutarch tells us that after 

 Theseus had slain her father, she concealed herself in the 

 wood where in her distress she devotedly prayed to the trees 

 and bushes for protection ^). That the same belief lingered 

 on among the lower population even in post-classical times 

 may be inferred from passages in earl}' Christian writers 

 where it is stated that the heathen GTreeks worshipped trees, 

 as other lifeless things, considering them as gods ^). 



The mysterious powers of the wood must have attracted 

 the attention of the primitive Greeks all the more as at the 

 time when they settled into their own land probably the whole 

 peninsula was covered with large primeval forests which ren- 

 dered their advance as well as the cultivation of the soil more 

 difficnlt. There is also sufiicient evidence ta show that tree- 

 eult iiourished during the Mycenaean epoch, recent excava- 

 tions having brought into light archaic remnants which give 

 US to understand that during those remote times trees such as 

 pines, palms, figs, and cypresses were regarded as sacred and 

 worshipped *). 



Whereas the plant-worship of the ancient Greeks has been 

 made the subject of thorough inquiries on the part of classical 

 students, far less attention has been paid to their cult of animals. 

 And yet the evidences of such a cult are numerous enough 

 to justify us in concluding that it has played anything but 

 an unimportant part in the religion of the greatest people of 

 Antiquity. Even of animal-worship connected with totemism 

 certain traees have been found among the classical Hellenes *^ 



1) Plut. Thes. c. 8. 



-) So, for instance, Leon. Isaur. p. 82: rå öévöga eig &eovs £vo[xl£ovto, 



*) See Evans, Mycenaean Tree and pillar Cult, in Journ. Hell. Stud. 1901, 

 pp. 101 — 104 etc. Cf. esp. what Mr. Evans says on the fig-tree p. 4: „Both on 

 the score of fruitfulness, and from the character of the spöts where it is found, 

 the fig-tree may well have inspired a special veneration in primitive Aegean 

 cult. In Crete it still grows wild where no other tree can fix its roots, at 

 the mouth of the caves of indigenous divinities and in the rocky mountain 

 clefts beside once sacred springs". 



*) See Farnell, The Cnlts of the Greek states, II, p. 434 (on Arterais). 

 Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, I, p. 274. Cf. also Jevons. Intodudion the 

 History of Religion, pp. 125—6, although many of his instances are most doubtful. 



