Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/551

 Recent Greek Archaeology and Folk-lore. 543

which illustrates this subterranean idea ; the charm must be carried to the tomb of one who has died untimely, and after digging placed within : or else may be thrown into an artificial well on a day when no business is done.

The provenance of these dircE is itself a very interesting point. It was in Cyprus that Barnabas and Saul had the fracas with Elymas, which resulted in the sorcerer's dis- comfiture and blindness. It was further currently reported that another noted wizard, Simon Magus, whose exposure fell to Philip in Samaria, hailed from this island ; it was natural that Cyprus, the meeting-place of the seething waters of Eastern and Western thought, should breed many such an one ; this Simon Magus is said to have been the founder of the Gnostic heresy, which already in these Cypriot inscriptions shows its influence in the names of the deities occurring in them and in the mention of the " great ineffable name, at the sound of which all creation trembled for fear".

Among much else that is interesting, Miss Macdonald's paper contains a curious explanation of the word iroXvavSpcoc which is frequently used in the Cyprus inscriptions ; the only analogous word in the dictionaries is irdXvdvBpLov, which is used first for a " place where many men assemble", and so of a tomb in which many lie buried ; from this, Miss Macdonald presumes a usage of the word simply as "tomb"; and thus TroXvavSpioc would be equivalent to " the tomb men", and so a general name for the dead. I would suggest, however, that " the place of many men" is more likely to refer to Hades, the populousness of which is a universal idea. It is scarcely necessary here to refer to the well-known Virgil passage (^;/., vi, 706) of the inniimerce gentes, populique, who fly like bees in summer around the visitor, or the "like autumn leaves in Vallombrosa" of Paradise Lost. The TroXvdvBpioi are the people of the place where many men are ; as the fairies are the " little people", so the dead are the " many people"