TABOO AND GENETICS 149 



Delphi, Argos, Epirus, Thrace and Arcadia were 

 feminine. Indeed the SibyUine prophetesses 

 were known throughout the Mediterranean 

 basin.* 



The widespread character of the woman-cult 

 of priestesses and prophetesses among the peoples 

 from whom our culture is derived is evidenced 

 in literature and religion. That there had been 

 cults of ancient mothers who exerted moral 

 influence and punished crime is shown by the 

 Eumenides and Erinyes of the Greeks. The 

 power of old women as law-givers survived 

 in Rome in the legend of the Cumosan Sibyl. 

 (5.) An index of the universality of the sibyl- 

 line cult appears in the list of races to which 

 Varro and Lactantius say they belonged : 

 Persian, Libyan, Delphian, Cimmerian, Eryth- 

 rian, Trojan, and Phrygian. (6.) These sibyls 

 were believed to be inspired, and generations of 

 Greek and Roman philosophers never doubted 

 their power. Their carmina were a court of 

 last resort, and their books were guarded by 

 a sacred taboo. 



*Farnell (4) found such decided traces of feminine divinity 

 as to incline him to agree with Bachofen that there was at 

 one time an age of Mutterrecht which had left its impress on 

 reUgion as well as on other aspects of social life. As we have 

 said before, it is now fairly well established that in the transition 

 from metronymic to patronymic forms, authority did not pass 

 from women to men but from the brothers and maternal uncles 

 of the women of the group to husbands and sons. This fact 

 does not, however, invalidate the significance of Farnell's data 

 for the support of the view herein advanced, i.e., that woman 

 was at one time universally considered to partake of the divine. 



