208 



DISCOVERY 



and Baucis is a genuine Anatolian legend, to conduct 

 the reader to the very spot where the legend was 

 originally told, and to indicate the channel through 

 which it reached Ovid in Rome. We shall find that 

 the story contains features derived directly from its 

 Anatolian source. Other features, while germane to 

 Ovid's purpose as a raconteur, are without value for the 

 student of ancient religion. Still other features — there 

 are two of them in the story — are of doubtful import. 

 I shall refer to them, but do not found any part of my 

 argument on them. 



We may pass over what may be described as mere 

 picturesque detail — the simple, uncomplaining poverty 

 of the old couple, the rustic meal with course after 

 course of country fare, all the details which go to the 

 telling of a good tale — and pass at once to the kernel 

 of religious truth underlying the story. First, there 

 are the sacred trees, covered with garlands, and (do not 

 miss this detail) surrounded by a low wall. How is 

 the sacredness of the trees to be accounted for ? For 

 the Anatolian peasant, ancient and modern, such 

 sanctity can only be explained in one way — the spirit 

 of some dead holy man or woman dwells in the trees. 

 Manifestly the sacredness of this oak and lime, standing 

 together, is best explained on the theory that a man 

 and a woman — say, the original priest and priestess 

 of the neighbouring temple — were changed into these 

 trees. The temple itself is of an unusual sort — it is 

 the shrine of two gods, worshipped in common. It 

 stands near a lake, covering what was once habitable 

 land — a sort of Dead Sea, covering the abodes of the 

 wicked. Obviously the two gods were the authors of 

 this local deluge, and we at once, with many analogies 

 in our minds, recognise in Philemon and Baucis the 

 Noah and his wife of a local legend of the flood, the 

 only righteous survivors of a race of sinners over- 

 whelmed in a deluge, meet and acceptable as the priest 

 and priestess in the gods' temple. Next we examine 

 the deluge itself, and we find that it was caused not by 

 rain from heaven, but by water issuing out of the earth. 

 This distinguishes our deluge, which wc shall presently 

 find to be of the normal Anatolian type, from the 

 Semitic flood which is described in Genesis, in 

 which the chief stress is laid on the rain from heaven. 

 But surely Ovid will mention an ark ? Nothing of 

 the sort — in this version of the deluge the righteous 

 are saved by walking up a hill. All these points are 

 of significance to the student of Anatolian religion. 

 There are two other points, referred to above, on which 

 it would be rash to lay stress — the incident of the 

 gander, and the production by the gods' hosts of a chine 

 of pork. The gander reminds us that the Noah and 

 his wife in many flood legends are associated with 

 birds — in Genesis it is the raven and the dove, in the 

 Chaldjean version it is a variety of birds — and we 



wonder whether the gander had not his place in the 

 original legend. But then we reflect that Ovid 

 required a motive for the self-revelation of the gods, 

 and that the gander was a sacred bird at Rome (had he 

 not saved the Capitol in an old cult legend ?), and we 

 feel disinclined to press this point. And when we read 

 of the pork, we are reminded that Asia Minor lay as 

 a debatable land between the " pig-eaters of Europe 

 and the pig-haters of the Semitic East," and that 

 tales of old feuds centring round the use of swine flesh 

 were told in the temple-legends of the country. But 

 here again we feel that we cannot press the argument, 

 and we prefer to assume that Ovid regarded a gammon 

 of bacon as an essential course in such a meal as a 

 rustic would offer to an honoured guest. 



Having thus cleared the ground, we pass on to 

 consider those features in the story which we have 

 provisionally marked as of Anatolian origin. But 

 before doing so, we must glance at another feature in 

 the story, a. feature which it shares, I think, with only 

 one other story in the Metamorphoses. The tale of 

 Philemon and Baucis is connected with the preceding 

 story by the flimsiest of devices ; as Pichon says, Ovid's 

 transitions from story to story in this work often 

 depend on an accidental turn of phrase, sometimes 

 even on a connecting or adversative particle. In this 

 case, a speaker expresses scepticism regarding the 

 preceding story, and is reproved by the teller of 

 this story, who poses as an eyewitness of the trees, 

 temple, and lake. " I saw the place myself," " Truth- 

 ful elders, with no motive for deceiving me, told me the 

 tale, and I saw the garlands hanging on the trees," etc. 

 He would be a blind critic who would miss the signifi- 

 cance of this feature in the story, shared, I repeat, by 

 only one other story in the Metamorphoses, and that 

 story also from the interior of Asia Minor. Ovid is at 

 pains to tell us that his story of Philemon and Baucis 

 is derived from someone who had been to the scene 

 of the legend, and heard it from the lips of the peasants. 

 I may add incidentally that the caution " they had 

 no motive for deception " will be found passim in 

 the writings of all moderns whose business it has been 

 to elicit information from the peasants of Anatolia, 

 who can never understand why they are asked for such 

 information by inquisitive strangers from Europe. 

 This trait is as genuinely Anatolian as any in the story. 



We see then that Ovid, writing about the turn of 

 the centuries, is telling us the foundation-story of a 

 temple of Jupiter and Mercury beside a lake in Asia 

 Minor, reported by an eyewitness of the locality. 

 The lake occupies ground formerly inhabited : the 

 language used in the poem would suit either a marsh 

 or a lake, but for Asia Minor the distinction is im- 

 material. In this land of seasonal rainfall, many of 

 the lakes, and even some large ones, are seasonal, and 



