Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/142

 1 30 Reviews.

AAOrPAttlA- SeAxtoi' T7^s lXk)]ViKr\% Xaoypa.(fiiK-?]s Iraipetas' ro/ito? y-To/xos 0', a-^'. €V 'A^'^i'at?, tvttois H. A. -ctKeAXaptoi', 1911-13. [Laographia : The organ of the Greek Anthropo- logical Society; Vol. iii.-Vol. iv. 1-2, 191 1-13. Athens: P. A. Sakellarios.]

The Greek Anthropological Society is to be congratulated on the general high level of its publication, for which much of the credit is due to the Editor, Prof. Polites. One of his articles, that dealing with St. George and the Dragon, we have reviewed below. The others treat for the most part of popular beliefs and practices of the modern Greeks and their ancient and mediaeval parallels. (Dream-omens, vol. iii., p. 3 ; pyromancy, p. 345 ; modern churches in their relations to ancient temples, vol. iv., p. 12 ; besides notes and minor articles). His general attitude to the subject is that in these modern ideas we may trace ancient beliefs preserved through medieval times in spite of or with the connivance of the official Church. So far as mediaeval times go he has little difficulty in proving his point ; see especially the very interesting tiojnocanon which he pubhshes in vol. iii,, p. 381, much of which reads almost like an index to some modern work on popular Greek beliefs. But for ancient times we know of no field of research where, without fairly compelling evidence for the par- ticular point in hand, we would be more chary of assuming an actual survival. Thus empyromancy is well established for ancient Greece, and some resemblance between the methods of ancient diviners and those of the modern peasant can be readily made out. But a similar resemblance can be made out if we compare what we know of ancient divination with the popular practices of almost any country; and against the supposition that the actual classical Greek rites have survived we must set the fact that mediaeval Greece was subjected to a very powerful foreign influence. To take a concrete example, we know that the modern Greek peasants divine from the crackling or movements of objects placed on the fire ; we know that this goes back to the Middle Ages ; but, when it comes to ancient times, we are left with a chance remark of Aristotle and a doubtful passage in the Phoenissae of Euripides for all evidence, — the passage of Suidas quoted by