Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 1).djvu/302

 heroes, in whose names the names of the ancestral beast apparently survived. In Attica the Crioeis have their hero (Crio, "Ram"), the Butadæ have Butas ("Bullman"), the Ægidæ have Ægeus ("Goat"), and the Cynadæ, Cynus ("Dog"). Lycus, according to Harpocration (s. v.) has his statue in the shape of a wolf in the Lyceum. "The general facts that certain animals might not be sacrificed to certain gods" (at Athens the Ægidæ introduced Athena, to whom no goat might be offered on the Acropolis, while she herself wore the goat-skin, ægis), "while, on the other hand, each deity demanded particular victims, explained by the ancients themselves in certain cases to be hostile animals, find their natural explanation" in totemism. Mr. Evelyn Abbott points out, however, that the names Ægeus, Aegae, Aegina, and others, may be connected with the goat only by an old volksetymologie, as on coins of Aegina in Achaea. The real meaning of the words may be different. Compare, the sea-shore.

As final examples of survivals from the age of barbarism in the religion of Greece, certain features in the Mysteries may be noted. Plutarch speaks of "the eating of raw flesh, and tearing to pieces of victims, as also fastings and beatings of the breast, and again in many places abusive language at the sacrifices, and other mad doings." The mysteries of Demeter, as will appear when her legend is criticised, contained one element all unlike these "mad doings;"