Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/611

 been the one supposed to await all unmarried persons in the nether world .' A passage of Lucian, which appears to have been overlooked in this connexion, converts the view of the Danaids which Dr Frazer considers possible into a practical certainty. The passage in point forms the conclusion of that dialogue in which Poseidon with the aid of Triton plots and carries out the rape of Amymone, the Danaid. She has just been seized and is protesting against her abduction and threatening to call her father, when Triton intervenes: 'Keep quiet, Amymone,' he says, 'it is Poseidon.' And the girl rejoins, 'Oh, Poseidon you call him, do you?' and then turning to her ravisher, 'What do you mean, sirrah, by handling me so roughly, and dragging me down into the sea? I shall go under and be drowned, miserable girl.' And Poseidon answers, 'Do not be frightened, you shall come to no harm; no, I will strike the rock here, near where the waves break, with my trident, and will let a spring burst up which shall bear your name, and you yourself shall be blessed and, unlike your sisters, shall not carry water when you are dead ([Greek: kai sy eudaimôn esê kai monê tôn adelphôn ouch hydrophorêseis apothanousa]) .' The whole point of Poseidon's answer clearly depends upon the existence of a well-known belief that the Danaids were punished hereafter for remaining unmarried and that the punishment took the form of vainly fetching water for that bridal bath which was a necessary preliminary to a wedding; Amymone shall have a very thorough bridal bath, and the spring that bears her name shall be a monument of it, while she herself shall be 'blessed' by wedlock with Poseidon; thus shall she escape the fate of the unmarried. Clearly then there was no distinction between the uninitiated and the unmarried; both alike were doomed vainly to fetch water for those ablutions which preceded initiation into the mysteries or into matrimony; and once again the conception of marriage as a mystic and sacramental rite akin to the rites of Eleusis is clearly revealed.