The View of Classical Scholars
They (ii. 735) begin by pointing out Artemis’s connection with Apollo and the moon. So do I! ‘If Apollo soon disengages himself from the sun . . . Artemis retains as few traces of any connection with the moon.’ [{143e}] ‘If Apollo was of solar origin,’ asks the author (ii. 735), ‘what could his sister Artemis have been, from the very beginning, if not some goddess connected with the moon?’ Very likely; quis negavit? Then our author, like myself (loc. cit.), dilates on Artemis as ‘sister of Apollo.’ ‘Her chapels,’ I say, ‘are in the wild wood; she is the abbess of the forest nymphs,’ ‘chaste and fair, the maiden of the precise life.’ How odd! The classical scholar and I both say the same things; and I add a sonnet to Artemis in this aspect, rendered by me from the Hippolytus of Euripides. Could a classical scholar do more? Our author then says that the Greek sportsman ‘surprised the beasts in their lairs’ by night. Not very sportsmanlike! I don’t find it in Homer or in Xenophon. Oh for exact references! The moon, the nocturnal sportswoman, is Artemis: here we have also the authority of Théodore de Banville (Diane court dans la noire forêt). And the nocturnal hunt is Dian’s; so she is protectress of the chase. Exactly what I said! [{144a}]
All this being granted by me beforehand (though possibly that might not be guessed from my critic), our author will explain Artemis’s human sacrifice of a girl in a fawn-skin—bloodshed, bear and all—with no aid from Kamilarois, Cahrocs, and Samoans.
Mr. Max Müller’s Explanation
Greek races traced to Zeus—usually disguised, for amorous purposes, as a brute. The Arcadians had an eponymous heroic ancestor, ‘Areas;’ they also worshipped Artemis. Artemis, as a virgin, could not become a mother of Areas by Zeus, or by anybody. Callisto was also Artemis. Callisto was the mother of Areas. But, to save the character of Artemis, Callisto was now represented as one of her nymphs. Then, Areas reminding the Arcadians of αρκτος (a bear), while they knew the Bear constellation, ‘what was more natural than that Callisto should be changed into an arktos, a she-bear . . . placed by Zeus, her lover, in the sky’ as the Bear?
Nothing could be more natural to a savage; they all do it. [{144b}] But that an Aryan, a Greek, should talk such nonsense as to say that he was the descendant of a bear who was changed into a star, and all merely because ‘Areas reminded the Arcadians of arktos,’ seems to me an extreme test of belief, and a very unlikely thing to occur.
Wider Application of the Theory
Let us apply the explanation more widely. Say that a hundred animal names are represented in the known totem-kindreds of the world. Then had each such kin originally an eponymous hero whose name, like that of Areas in Arcady, accidentally ‘reminded’ his successors of a beast, so that a hundred beasts came to be claimed as ancestors? Perhaps this was what occurred; the explanation, at all events, fits the wolf of the Delawares and the other ninety-nine as well as it fits the Arcades. By a curious coincidence all the names of eponymous heroes chanced to remind people of beasts. But whence come the names of eponymous heroes? From their tribes, of course—Ion from Ionians, Dorus from Dorians, and so on. Therefore (in the hundred cases) the names of the tribes derive from names of animals. Indeed, the names of totem-kins are the names of animals—wolves, bears, cranes. Mr. Max Müller remarks that the name ‘Arcades’ may come from αρκτος, a bear (i. 738); so the Arcadians (Proselenoi, the oldest of races, ‘men before the moon’) may be—Bears. So, of course (in this case), they would necessarily be Bears before they invented Areas, an eponymous hero whose name is derived from the pre-existing tribal name. His name, then, could not, before they invented it, remind them of a bear. It was from their name Αρκτοι (Bears) that they developed his name Areas, as in all such cases of eponymous heroes. I slightly incline to hold that this is exactly what occurred. A bear-kin claimed descent from a bear, and later, developing an eponymous hero, Areas, regarded him as son of a bear. Philologically ‘it is possible;’ I say no more.
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.