The Phoenician god El and his wife at Mallus in Cilicia. Assimilation of native Oriental deities to Greek divinities.
Another town in Cilicia where an Oriental god and goddess appear to have been worshipped together was Mallus. The city was built on a height in the great Cilician plain near the mouth of the river Pyramus.[481] Its coins exhibit two winged deities, a male and a female, in a kneeling or running attitude. On some of the coins the male deity is represented, like Janus, with two heads facing opposite ways, and with two pairs of wings, while beneath him is the forepart of a bull with a human head. The obverse of the coins which bear the female deity displays a conical stone, sometimes flanked by two bunches of grapes.[482] This conical stone, like those of other Asiatic cities,[483] was probably the emblem of a Mother Goddess, and the bunches of grapes indicate her fertilizing powers. The god with the two heads [pg 166] and four wings can hardly be any other than the Phoenician El, whom the Greeks called Cronus; for El was characterized by four eyes, two in front and two behind, and by three pairs of wings.[484] A discrepancy in the number of wings can scarcely be deemed fatal to the identification. The god may easily have moulted some superfluous feathers on the road from Phoenicia to Mallus. On later coins of Mallus these quaint Oriental deities disappear, and are replaced by corresponding Greek deities, particularly by a head of Cronus on one side and a figure of Demeter, grasping ears of corn, on the other.[485] The change doubtless sprang from a wish to assimilate the ancient native divinities to the new and fashionable divinities of the Greek pantheon. If Cronus and Demeter, the harvest god and goddess, were chosen to supplant El and his female consort, the ground of the choice must certainly have been a supposed resemblance between the two pairs of deities. We may assume, therefore, that the discarded couple, El and his wife, had also been worshipped by the husbandman as sources of fertility, the givers of corn and wine. One of these later coins of Mallus exhibits Dionysus sitting on a vine laden with ripe clusters, while on the obverse is seen a male figure guiding a yoke of oxen as if in the act of ploughing.[486] These types of the vine-god and the ploughman probably represent another attempt to adapt the native religion to changed conditions, to pour the old Asiatic wine into new Greek bottles. The barbarous monster with the multiplicity of heads and wings has been reduced to a perfectly human Dionysus. The sacred but deplorable old conical stone no longer flaunts proudly on the coins; it has retired to a decent obscurity in favour of a natural and graceful vine. It is thus that a truly progressive theology keeps pace with the march of intellect. But if these things were done by the apostles of culture at Mallus, we cannot suppose that the clergy of Tarsus, the capital, lagged behind their provincial [pg 167] brethren in their efforts to place the ancient faith upon a sound modern basis. The fruit of their labours seems to have been the more or less nominal substitution of Zeus, Fortune, and Hercules for Baal, 'Atheh, and Sandan.[487]
Sarpedonian Artemis. The goddess Perasia at Hieropolis-Castabala. The fire-walk in the worship of Perasia. Insensibility to pain regarded as a mark of inspiration.
We may suspect that in like manner the Sarpedonian Artemis, who had a sanctuary in South-Eastern Cilicia, near the Syrian border, was really a native goddess parading in borrowed plumes. She gave oracular responses by the mouth of inspired men, or more probably of women, who in their moments of divine ecstasy may have been deemed incarnations of her divinity.[488] Another even more transparently Asiatic goddess was Perasia, or Artemis Perasia, who was worshipped at Hieropolis-Castabala in Eastern Cilicia. The extensive ruins of the ancient city, now known as Bodroum, cover the slope of a hill about three-quarters of a mile to the north of the river Pyramus. Above them towers the acropolis, built on the summit of dark grey precipices, and divided from the neighbouring mountain by a deep cutting in the rock. A mediaeval castle, built of hewn blocks of reddish-yellow limestone, has replaced the ancient citadel. The city possessed a large theatre, and was traversed by two handsome colonnades, of which some columns are still standing among the ruins. A thick growth of brushwood and grass now covers most of the site, and the place is wild and solitary. Only the wandering herdsmen encamp near the deserted city in winter and spring. The neighbourhood is treeless; yet in May magnificent fields of wheat and barley gladden the eye, and in the valleys the [pg 168] clover grows as high as the horses' knees.[489] The ambiguous nature of the goddess who presided over this City of the Sanctuary (Hieropolis)[490] was confessed by a puzzled worshipper, a physician named Lucius Minius Claudianus, who confided his doubts to the deity herself in some very indifferent Greek verses. He wisely left it to the goddess to say whether she was Artemis, or the Moon, or Hecate, or Aphrodite, or Demeter.[491] All that we know about her is that her true name was Perasia, and that she was in the enjoyment of certain revenues.[492] Further, we may reasonably conjecture that at the Cilician Castabala she was worshipped with rites like those which were held in honour of her namesake Artemis Perasia at another city of the same name, Castabala in Cappadocia. There, as we saw, the priestesses of the goddess walked over fire with bare feet unscathed.[493] Probably the [pg 169] same impressive ceremony was performed before a crowd of worshippers in the Cilician Castabala also. Whatever the exact meaning of the rite may have been, the goddess was in all probability one of those Asiatic Mother Goddesses to whom the Greeks often applied the name of Artemis.[494] The immunity enjoyed by the priestess in the furnace was attributed to her inspiration by the deity. In discussing the nature of inspiration or possession by a deity, the Syrian philosopher Jamblichus notes as one of its symptoms a total insensibility to pain. Many inspired persons, he tells us, “are not burned by fire, the fire not taking hold of them by reason of the divine inspiration; and many, though they are burned, perceive it not, because at the time they do not live an animal life. They pierce themselves with skewers and feel nothing. They gash their backs with hatchets, they slash their arms with daggers, and know not what they do, because their acts are not those of mere men. For impassable places become passable to those who are filled with the spirit. They rush into fire, they pass through fire, they cross rivers, like the priestess at Castabala. These things prove that under the influence of inspiration men are beside themselves, that their senses, their will, their life are those neither of man nor of beast, but that they lead another and a diviner life instead, whereby they are inspired and wholly possessed.”[495] Thus in traversing the fiery furnace the priestesses of Perasia were believed to be beside themselves, to be filled with the goddess, to be in a real sense incarnations of her divinity.[496]
A similar touchstone of inspiration is still applied by some villagers in the Himalayan districts of North-Western [pg 170] India. Once a year they worship Airi, a local deity, who is represented by a trident and has his temples on lonely hills and desolate tracts. At his festival the people seat themselves in a circle about a bonfire. A kettle-drum is beaten, and one by one his worshippers become possessed by the god and leap with shouts round the flames. Some brand themselves with heated iron spoons and sit down in the fire. Such as escape unhurt are believed to be truly inspired, while those who burn themselves are despised as mere pretenders to the divine frenzy. Persons thus possessed by the spirit are called Airi's horses or his slaves. During the revels, which commonly last about ten days, they wear red scarves round their heads and receive alms from the faithful. These men deem themselves so holy that they will let nobody touch them, and they alone may touch the sacred trident, the emblem of their god.[497] In Western Asia itself modern fanatics still practise the same austerities which were practised by their brethren in the days of Jamblichus. “Asia Minor abounds in dervishes of different orders, who lap red-hot iron, calling it their ‘rose,’ chew coals of living fire, strike their heads against solid walls, stab themselves in the cheek, the scalp, the temple, with sharp spikes set in heavy weights, shouting ‘Allah, Allah,’ and always consistently avowing that during such frenzy they are entirely insensible to pain.”[498]
§ 9. The Burning of Cilician Gods.
The divine triad, Baal, 'Atheh, and Sandan, at Tarsus may have been personated by priests and priestesses.
On the whole, then, we seem to be justified in concluding that under a thin veneer of Greek humanity the barbarous native gods of Cilicia continued long to survive, and that among them the great Asiatic goddess retained a place, though not the prominent place which she held in the highlands of the interior down at least to the beginning of our era. The principle that the inspired priest or priestess represents the deity in person appears, if I am right, to [pg 171] have been recognized at Castabala and at Olba, as well as at the sanctuary of Sarpedonian Artemis. There can be no intrinsic improbability, therefore, in the view that at Tarsus also the divine triad of Baal, 'Atheh, and Sandan may also have been personated by priests and priestesses, who, on the analogy of Olba and of the great sanctuaries in the interior of Asia Minor, would originally be at the same time kings and queens, princes and princesses. Further, the burning of Sandan in effigy at Tarsus would, on this hypothesis, answer to the walk of the priestess of Perasia through the furnace at Castabala. Both were perhaps mitigations of a custom of putting the priestly king or queen, or another member of the royal family, to death by fire.