Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/609

 the term [Greek: telos] was commonly used both of the mystic rites and of marriage, and [Greek: teleioi] might denote the newly-wed.

The same thought seems also to have inspired another custom associated with marriage. The newly-wed, we hear, sometimes attended a representation of the marriage of Zeus and Hera , an [Greek: hieros gamos] which formed the subject of mystic drama or legend all over Greece. The widely extended cults of Hera under the titles of Maiden ([Greek: parthenos] or [Greek: pais]) and of Bride ([Greek: teleia] or [Greek: nympheuomenê]) appear to have been closely interwoven; indeed for a full appreciation of the Greek conception of the goddess they must be treated as complementary. They are well interpreted by Farnell. Rejecting the theory of physical symbolism, he suggests 'a more human explanation. Hera was essentially the goddess of women, and the life of women was reflected in her; their maidenhood and marriage were solemnised by the cults of Hera [Greek: Parthenos] and Hera [Greek: Teleia] or [Greek: Nympheuomenê], and the very rare worship of Hera [Greek: Chêra] might allude to the not infrequent custom of divorce and separation .' With, Hera the Widow we are not here concerned, but only with the higher conceptions of Zeus and Hera as expressed in the representation of the 'sacred marriage'; the bride and bridegroom who looked upon that saw in it, we may be sure, not a symbolical representation of the seasons and the productive powers of the earth, but rather the divine prototype of human marriage. It reminded them that deities, like mortals, were married and given in marriage, and it imparted to their wedding a sacramental character, making it at once a foretaste and a gage of that close communion with the gods which, when death the dividing line between mortals and immortals should once be passed, awaited the blessed among mankind.

Other small points too suggest the same trend of thought. The preliminaries of a wedding often comprised a sacrifice to Zeus Teleios and Hera Teleia, and were called [Greek: proteleia] being the 'preliminaries of initiation' into that mystery, of which