Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/295

 Greek Votive Offerings. 269

dedicated or in the time and place of its dedication. For this we are hardly prepared by the earlier chapters of the book, which deal successively with such topics as "War," " Games and Contests," "Disease and Calamity," " Domes- tic Life," "Memorials of Honour and Office," etc. In other words. Dr. Rouse first enumerates his materials under headings determined by differences of occasion, and then unexpectedly resumes them in a classification whose differentia are of quite another order. Nor is this all, for he adds by way of appendix alphabetical lists of votive offerings known from inscriptions found at various cult- centres — Athens, Eleusis, Delos, Thebes, Plataea, Samos, Branchidae, Aegina — and in his General Index groups all dedications of the same object under one catch-word. Dr. Rouse thus presents us with classifications based on four distinct principles, viz., those of occasion, purport, provenience, and description. This to the casual reader is a little confusing, and certainly involves some tautology. But for all that it is difficult to see what else the author could have done in pioneer work of the kind. The most obvious method of classification is presumably that of place. Recent German writers on Greek religion have followed this method with conspicuous success. For example, Gruppe's admirable Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte and the excellent articles on the various divinities contained in Pauly-Wissowa's Real-encyclopadie begin by making a local survey of the cults concerned, and are thus enabled to discover and turn to account the kindred and affinity of any particular worship. But this method, though most useful as a preliminary, does not of itself furnish generalisations and is consequently incomplete. If, discarding it for that reason, we prefer a classification based on differences of occasion, we can indeed generalise readily enough ; but our generalisations will be such as appeal to the student of culture rather than to the student of cult, as may be seen from Schomann's Griechische Alterthiiiner or