Greek Totemism
In C. and M. (p. 106) I describe the social aspects of totemism. I ask if there are traces of it in Greece. Suppose, for argument’s sake, that in prehistoric Greece the mouse had been a totem, as it is among the Oraons of Bengal. [{80}] In that case (1) places might be named from a mouse tribe; (2) mice might be held sacred per se; (3) the mouse name might be given locally to a god who superseded the mouse in pride of place; (4) images of the mouse might be associated with that of the god, (5) and used as a local badge or mark; (6) myths might be invented to explain the forgotten cause of this prominence of the mouse. If all these notes occur, they would raise a presumption in favour of totemism in the past of Greece. I then give evidence in detail, proving that all these six facts do occur among Greeks of the Troads and sporadically elsewhere. I add that, granting for the sake of argument that these traces may point to totemism in the remote past, the mouse, though originally a totem, ‘need not have been an Aryan totem’ (p. 116).
I offer a list of other animals closely connected with Apollo, giving him a beast’s name (wolf, ram, dolphin), and associated with him in myth and art. In M. R. R. I apply similar arguments in the case of Artemis and the Bear, of Dionysus and the Bull, Demeter and the Pig, and so forth. Moreover, I account for the myths of descent of Greek human families from gods disguised as dogs, ants, serpents, bulls, and swans, on the hypothesis that kindreds who originally, in totemistic fashion, traced to beasts sans phrase, later explained their own myth to themselves by saying that the paternal beast was only a god in disguise and en bonne fortune.
This hypothesis at least ‘colligates the facts,’ and brings them into intelligible relationship with widely-diffused savage institutions and myths.