Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/316

290 called "mourning Athena" of the Acropolis "is really," as Lechat argued, "a dedication to her as nursing mother," the child's figure on the relief having been painted in and so in time obliterated (p. 256). Under the head of "Rarities and Valuables" Dr. Rouse includes a very miscellaneous assortment of relics, ranging from an odd-shaped shell found at Delphi to mammoth-tusks preserved at Tegea as those of the Calydonian boar! But it is a little misleading to include in this collection of mere curios the stone of Cronus, the pillar of Oenomaüs, and the sceptre of Agamemnon; for these were, or had been, the objects of actual worship.

Dr. Rouse spares two chapters to votive formulæ, which are carefully classified and illustrated. He tells us that "the verb … and its derivative  are universal for the votive offering" (p. 323), but that in ritual imprecations "the curse itself is sometimes called  (Def. tab., p. xxiii.), a curious opposite of, quite appropriate to the buried lead" (p 338 f.). This suggests that the original force of was "I hang up" or "dedicate on high," i.e. I offer to a deity of the upper world, whereas  meant "I place down" or "dedicate below," i.e. I offer to a deity of the under world. and would thus be offerings dispatched to the di superi and the di inferi respectively. The former would naturally be hung on walls and ceilings or placed high up on a pedestal (Journ. Hell. Stud., xxii. 27 f.); the latter, cast into a pit or buried underground.

In conclusion, it may without injustice to Dr. Rouse be said that the chief, though by no means the only, value of his book lies in its admirable collection of facts. Where he generalises, he is sometimes successful, sometimes unsuccessful: where he particularises, he is always to the point. Finality in a work of this sort is, fortunately for posterity, unattainable. Doubtless the next writer on the subject will include the remarkable series of votive offerings just discovered by Drs.