Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/552

 544 Recent Greek Archeology and Folk-lore.

in fact, " the majority" ; the actual expression occurs in the Ecclesiaztisce (1073), of the old woman who has arisen " from the majority" (irapa tmv TrXecovwv), and we have this usage more than once in the epigrams of the Anthology. This euphemistic expression is only one more evidence of that nameless fear of the dead which in so many savage nations finds expression in numberless ways.

If we wish to study the later developments of Hellenic thought it is to Asia Minor that we must look, where the researches of Ramsay, Sterrett, Hogarth, and others have, during the last decade, opened up an entirely new world of research.^ Specially interesting it is to get, as we do here, an occasional glimpse of the beginnings of the early Christian Church ; we have the legends of Avircius and Antemon, showing, as Ramsay has remarked, the process by which remarkable natural phenomena, hitherto the pro- perty of the pagan gods or heroes, were speedily transferred by the Christians to their saints. We see, in the towns especially, where liberty of thought was not always enjoyed, that the Christians were forced to conceal their religious opinions. In these towns around the old religion had grown up an extensive ramification of societies and guilds, more or less connected with a pagan deity: and the Chris- tian communities are consequently found obtaining legal recognition under the guise of burial societies, and alluded to in much the same terms as the guilds of Dionysos. One curious phrase occurs on an inscription of A.D. 200, where such a society is supposed to be alluded to as that t^v TTop^vpo^a^oiv ; this phrase would for the world in general imply "purple dyers", but to the initiated Christian "washed in blood". And, lastly, we have the epitaph of the sceptic who has finished with belief of any kind : " I was not; I be- came ; I am not ; I care not" ; finishing with a curiously

^ It is interesting to note, in reference to Prof. Jevons' paper, that in Sterrett's inscriptions (ii, 31) Helios in conjunction with Selene protects the grave from desecration.