XLIX] Studies iu primitive Greek religion. 23 



dead ancestors '). Bufc there are also some instauces of direct 

 ophiolatry. Thus the Atbenians, accordiiig to Herodotus, had 

 in their Acropolis a huge serpent which was the guardian of 

 the whole place and was fed every month with honey-cakes ^). 

 The same writer tells us that in the neighbourhood of Thebes 

 there were some sacred serpents of a peculiar kind, having 

 two horns growiug out of the top of their head. These snakes 

 when they died, were buried in the temple of Zeus ^). AVhat 

 is peculiar and uncommon is, of course, always environed by 

 a supernatural halo. In a similarway in Epidauria, near Co- 

 rinth, serpents of a special yellow hue, which were supposed 

 to breed nowhere but there, were considered sacred to Ascu- 

 Japius and fed in his temple by the visiters *). In the Pelo- 

 ponnes, as we are told by Aelian, the Argives considered 

 snakes in general sacred aud did not kill them ^). 



It is not very surprising to find that even many fishes 

 and other creatures living in the sea were bj- the Greeks re- 

 garded as supernatural beings. Their mere silence appears to 

 have been looked upon as something mysterious and awful; 

 at an}'- råte it seemed so to the Pythagoreans who from this 

 reason considered them sacred and abstained from eating fish ^). 

 The most important sacred iish were the dolphin and the 

 pompilos ''), the latter so called by the Greeks because it used 

 to foUow in the wake of the ships. The pompilos especially 

 was regarded with great veneration by seamen and was con- 

 secrated to difiPereut gods *). To eat of its flesh was a sacrilege 

 to be punished. Of a fisherman in the island Icarus me are 

 told that having once cought fish of this kind and eaten of 

 them with his son, the divine creature wreaked vengeance 



^) Cf. on this point Harrison, Prolegomena, ch. 1 : The Diasia ; p. 326 sqq. 



^) Herod. VIII, 41. 



3) Ibid. II, 74. 



*) Paus. II, 28, 1. II, 11, 8. 



^) Aelian De nat. anim. XII, 34. 



«) Plut. Quest conviv. VIII, 8, 1. 



~) Åthen. VII, 18: . . . IsQOvg cpijniv tlvav Ixvas bekq^lvas xa\ 7io[i- 

 niXovs. 



*) Athen. loc. dt.: nåpLniKoi, o v xaXéovai åXinXooi leQÖv Ix^vv . . . 

 ötrfyeiTai mg ov [lövov rm Iloaeiöcovt 6 nöiiniXos éoxl öcä tt^ris, åXK on xal 

 rols rfjv 2a[io&Qä}(i]v -naTéyovai &eois. etc. 



