Page:Prometheus Bound (Bevan 1902).djvu/31

 We may digress for a moment from Prometheus to speak of his mother. The ideas of the Earth and of Justice (Themis) seem at first so far apart that one might wonder how they could coalesce. But Themis is not primarily goddess of justice: she is primarily an oracular power. At Delphi the local myth knew of a time, when the oracle was that of Themis, not of Apollo, and of a still earlier time, when it belonged to Gaia. (Aeschylus, Eum. 2 f.) Themis and Gaia are not, it will be observed, identified at Delphi, as they are at Athens, but they are closely associated as oracular powers: Themis is the daughter and successor of Gaia. According to a common Greek idea it was out of the earth that prophetic inspiration and dreams mainly came; and not only Gaia herself, but the other earth deities, the chthonic powers, gave men good counsel in oracle and vision, delivered them divine boulai. Even the Pythoness at Delphi was inspired by a vapour arising out of the ground. Euboulos is found as an epithet of Hades (Orph. Hym, 17, 12; 29, 6; 55, 3) and one of the chthonic gods worshipped in Attica was