Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/66

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 a.m. JAN. 20, 1917.

fl0IL 1.

"Gale, F. R., Lieutenant, Army Ordnance Department. Gladstone, Hugh S., Captain, 2 /5th King's Own Scottish Borderers, Nov. 9, 1914 ; attached

to Imperial General Staff, the War Office, Nov. 30, 1914. Hirst ,*SW. A., Private, West Kent Yeomanry. Hogg, Percy F., Lieutenant, R.G.A., O.C. Minster Battery. Montresor, F. M., Major, R.G.A., Comdg. 142nd Siege Battery. Stevens, J. H., Second Lieutenant, R.E.

on

The^Origin of the Cult of Aphrodite. By J. Bendel Harris. (Manchester, University Press ; London, Longmans & Co., Is. net.)

IT is always with pleasure that we come upon

one of these grey-coated monographs awaiting . attention upon our shelves. We do not invari- ably agree with their learned authors, but we

enjoy their speculations, admire their erudition, and gladly acknowledge the stimulating quality of their vigour. We ventured, in a recent review of a monograph of Dr. Bendel Harris's, to suggest that his account of the origin of the cult ^of Artemis had about it a hint of the jeu tT esprit ; this present essay has yet more markedly the appearance of something in that vein. He is exceedingly good in his illustration of the con- nexion between Aphrodite and the mandragora

or mandrake. He has accumulated data from all possible quarters ; followed up the numerous and sometimes subtle links, philological, topo-


 * graphical, mythological, and traditional ; and

drawn forward out of obscurity a number of curious, ha If -forgotten items of ancient lore and

custom, which he uses with a brilliant ingenuity both to illuminate and be illuminated. For the sake of just that much the legendary connexion between the Goddess of Love and the mandragora this brochure should have a place among the /books of the classical student.

But when Dr. Bendel Harris asks us to believe that in her origin Aphrodite was " the virtue

of a plant," of this particular plant, the common sense of mankind cries out against him. There is surely a ludicrous narrowness of view in the supposition. After all, good or bad, wanton or majestic, lovely or dreadful, the power known as Aphrodite is one of whose sway primitive man together with the whole universe of living things had direct experience, without recourse to witch- doctors or herbs. That, given the power, it could be exploited ; given the goddess, she could be induced to intervene where she seemed to be neglectful or hostile, undoubtedly follows from the very principles of early religion in a certain sense, of

. any religion ; and it also followed, as a matter of fact, that numerous and grotesque were the methods of invocation, and the supposed instru- ments of the activity of the power invoked. Undoubtedly, through their use as machinery in literature, the so-called "attributes" of the various deities of old mythologies have become, in our conception of their relation to their owners, .-far too otiose, decorative, conventional. ' Theories which restore the intimate vital connexion between

the two are, therefore, of very great value. But the common - sense line of primitive ignorant investigation would, we fancy, be guided chiefly by the analogies of a great man and his possessions and the hunter or craftsman and his tools it being always remembered, that the said connexion, between a man and the inanimate objects which belonged to him, was conceived of in primitive times as immeasurably stronger and closer than it is now. A man has possessions of many sorts, and if you get hold of one you may in some sort get hold of him. He may even, if he is a privileged person, put " himself " for a time into something external, animate or inanimate. All the same he did not originate in that ; nor is he strictly identical with it, seeing he is equally and in the same sense the owner of many things besides. So with the gods : if you get hold of something known to be an attribute of one of them you may get hold of hi m ; but that does not mean that Aphrodite is identical with the mandragora or came second to the mandragora, any more than the bow and arrow came first and the archer grew out of them though, to be sure, if you find out that a man has arrows and get hold of one, and know exactly what to do with it, you may make things very uncomfortable for that ma.n till he does what you want of him. This, it will be said, is by no means new ; and- it is the obvious. We quite admit that it is so : without, however, admitting that it is any the less likely to be true.

The Athenceum now appearing monthly, arrange- ments have been made whereby advertisements of posts vacant and wanted, which it is desired to publish weekly, may appear in the intervening weeks in *N. & Q.'

QUILL- PEN. Is not 'The Dauntless Three' a selection of the narrative about Horatius on the bridge in Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome'? The whole ' Lay ' would make a cumbrous recitation.

SOUTHWELL. Forwarded to Mr. J. W. Brow and Mr. Willis Watson.

MR. E. S. DOPOSON and MR. RAY SANBO (Yale). Forwarded.

CORRIGENDUM. Ante, p. 24, col. 2, 1. 22, de " D. not 1774-1711-"