Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/313

Greek Votive Offerings. 287 393) and concludes that they were all offered as άγάλμaτa beautiful and costly objects. "I can find no authority" he says, "for the dedication of one deity as a deity to another until very late times". . . . "These are an extension of the vicious idea which brought honorific statues into the temples" (p. 392). I would suggest for Dr. Rouse's consideration the possibility that the dedicator meant rather to subject, so far as he could, this, that or the other divinity to his own patron-god. Somewhat in favour of this is the fact that, although a variety of gods is devoted to Zeus, Zeus himself is apparently never devoted to another god: he was ex hypothesi supreme. The golden Zeus dedicated at Olympia (Dr. Rouse on p. 126 says "Delphi" by a slip of the pen) by Cypselus stood in the temple of Hera (Suid. and Phot. s.v. Κνψελίδώυ άνάθημa), presumably as a worthy mate for the goddess.

A very ingenious and probably correct explanation of an Athenian puzzle is offered at p. 75. In the list of the Chalcothece (C. I. A. ii. 721, 15) occurs an odd entry of twenty-one golden letters. "Could this," says Dr. Rouse, "be the old Athenian alphabet (A B Γ Δ Ε Ζ Η θ Ι Κ Λ Μ Ν Ο Π Ρ Σ Τ Ύ Φ Χ), dedicated when Euclides changed the official script in 403?" On p. 354 the famous Delphic conundrum is mentioned: "When Livia dedicated the golden E at Delphi, and probably when the Athenians dedicated theirs of bronze, they simply gave what were meant as ornaments to the sanctuary. What the original wooden E was, who offered it, and why, we have no means of knowing." Some years ago I ventured to propound a view, which Dr. Rouse duly records, viz., that the Delphic E was a sacred relic, being in fact the head of Poseidon's trident. I may here be allowed to add a word or two in support of that view. The sanctuary had at one time belonged to Poseidon, whose altar still stood in it (Paus. 10 24. 4). If, then, one relic of Poseidon-cult survived in the temple, why not another? The original E was of wood,