πολλὴν μὲν ὕλην τῆς βαθυρρίζου δρυὸς κείραντα πολλὸν δ᾽ ἄρσεν ἐκτεμόνθ᾽ ὁμοῦ ἄγριον ἔλαιον, σῶμα τουμὸν ἐμβαλεῖν.
The passage was pointed out to me by my friend the late Dr. A. W. Verrall. The poet's language suggests that of old a sacred fire was kindled by the friction of oak and wild olive wood, and that in accordance with a notion common among rude peoples, one of the pieces of wood (in this case the wild olive) was regarded as male and the other (the oak) as female. On this hypothesis, the fire was kindled by drilling a hole in a piece of oak with a stick of wild olive. As to the different sorts of wood used by the ancients in making fire by friction, see A. Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers und des Göttertranks2 (Gütersloh, 1886), pp. 35 sqq.; The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 249 sqq. In South Africa a special fire is procured for sacrifices by the friction of two pieces of the Uzwati tree, which are known respectively as husband and wife. See Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild, ii. 65.
The goddess Ishtar certainly seems to have embodied the principle of fertility in animals as well as in plants; for in the poem which describes her descent into the world of the dead it is said that
“After the mistress Ishtar had descended to the land of No-Return,
The bull did not mount the cow, nor did the ass leap upon the she-ass,
The man did not approach the maid in the street,
The man lay down to sleep upon his own couch,
While the maid slept by herself.”
See C. F. Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Literature (New York, 1901), pp. 410 sq.; P. Jensen, Assyrisch-Babylonische Mythen und Epen (Berlin, 1900), p. 87.