Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/439

 The European Sky -god. 409

used in early days to send a sacred embassy to Delphi, a custom which having fallen in desuetude was revived in the second century B.C. and thenceforward maintained in accordance with the old eight-year cycle : an extant inscrip- tion ^^^ records a long list of Delian priests who together with certain Attic magistrates paid first-fruits to the god on that solemn occasion. Of more importance is the account given by Proclus '-^^^ of the Boeotian Daphnephoria or " Laurel-bearing." This rite, which is best known nowadays through the noble painting of Sir Frederick Leighton, was enacted in the following fashion. " In Boeotia at intervals of eight years (St' ivve€T7)pi,So<i) the priests used to carry laurels to the precinct of Apollo, extolling him by means of a choir of maidens. The custom sprang from this cause. The Aeolians who dwelt in Arne and its neighbourhood migrated thence at the bidding of an oracle, and laying siege to Thebes, which had previously been occupied by Pelasgians, captured the town. When a festival of Apollo common to them both occurred, they made a truce and, having cut laurels, the one side from Helicon, the other from the river Melas, brought the same to the god. But Polematas the leader of the Boeotians dreamed that a young man gave him a complete set of armour and bade him offer prayers to Apollo along with a company of laurel-bearers once in every eight years. Two days later he attacked and van- quished the enemy. So he himself performed the rite of laurel-bearing, and the custom has been kept up ever since. In it they wreath a piece of olive-wood with laurels and various flowers. A bronze ball is attached to the top ; and from it hang smaller balls. About the middle of the staff

^'* Corp. insert: Attic. II., ii., no. 985, p. 432 riiQ npu)Tt)g fvi'e€T7][picoQ] .... rag aTrapxcig [r]^ 'A7r6[\XfaJvi r(p] UvOUi). See Busolt Griechische Geschichte, i.,- 676 ;?. 2.

^'^ Procl. chrestomathia, 25, p. 352 f. Gaisford, [Cp. the Pindaric da(pvr](popiK6v [^Oxyrhynchus Papyri, iv. 50 ff., no. 659, Berl. philoh Wocheiischr. Nov. 19, 1904, p. 1476 ft'.).] Schol. Clem. Alex., p. 94f. Klotz.