The Bear Dance
‘The dances of the maidens called αρκτοι, would receive an easy interpretation. They were Arkades, and why not αρκτοι (bears)?’ And if αρκτοι, why not clad in bear-skins, and all the rest? (ii. 738). This is our author’s explanation; it is also my own conjecture. The Arcadians were bears, knew it, and possibly danced a bear dance, as Mandans or Nootkas dance a buffalo dance or a wolf dance. But all such dances are not totemistic. They have often other aims. One only names such dances totemistic when performed by people who call themselves by the name of the animal represented, and claim descent from him. Our author says genially, ‘if anybody prefers to say that the arctos was something like a totem of the Arcadians . . . why not?’ But, if the arctos was a totem, that fact explains the Callisto story and Attic bear dance, while the philological theory—Mr. Max Müller’s theory—does not explain it. What is oddest of all, Mr. Max Müller, as we have seen, says that the bear-dancing girls were ‘Arkades.’ Now we hear of no bear dances in Arcadia. The dancers were Athenian girls. This, indeed, is the point. We have a bear Callisto (Artemis) in Arcady, where a folk etymology might explain it by stretching a point. But no etymology will explain bear dances to Artemis in Attica. So we find bears doubly connected with Artemis. The Athenians were not Arcadians.
As to the meaning and derivation of Artemis, or Artamis, our author knows nothing (ii. 741). I say, ‘even Αρκτεμις (αρκτος, bear) has occurred to inventive men.’ Possibly I invented it myself, though not addicted to etymological conjecture.