roserose, h.j., prehistoric greece and mother right

Prehistoric Greece and Mother-RightAuthor(s): H. J. RoseSource: Folklore, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Sep. 30, 1926), pp. 213-244Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1256580Accessed: 03/12/2008 15:10

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Jol1kL%ore TRANSACTIONS OF THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY

VOL. XXXVII.] SEPTEMBER, 1926. [No. III.

PREHISTORIC GREECE AND MOTHER-RIGHT.

BY H. J. ROSE, University of St. Andrews.

(Read at Meeting, 21st April, 1926.) IN I9II, when most of us still believed that mother-right was a stage necessarily precedent to father-right, Folk-Lore was good enough to publish an article of mine entitled "On the alleged Evidence for Mother-right in Early Greece," in which I came to the conclusion that no such evidence existed. My results have been accepted, I believe, by Dr. Marett, certainly by Dr. Farnell,1 and also, more or less completely, by Dr. Westermarck, in the third edition of his History of Human Marriage,2 by Renz in his revision of Ploss' classical work, Das Kind,3 and, so far as historical times are concerned, by Dr. Hartland in his

1 Higher Aspects, pp, 25 et seq., I51. 2 The History of Human Marriage, vol. i., p. Io6. Agreement, not with

this article itself but with its conclusions as epitomized in my book, Primitive Culture in Greece (1925), has been expressed by Dr. M. P. Nilsson, Litteris (1926), p. 13.

3 Ploss-Renz, Das Kind3 (Leipzig, 1912), Bd. ii., p. 629. VOL. XXXVII. 0

214 Prehistoric Greece and Mother-Right.

recent volume on Primitive Society 4 and Mr. H. E. A.

Peake, in a characteristic appendix to his provocative book, The Bronze Age and the Celtic World, written with just that combination of courtesy and pugnacity which makes it sheer delight to read him, whatever one thinks of his views. The two last-named gentlemen, one privately and the other publicly, urge me to re-consider the evidence furnished by ancient genealogies. I gladly seize this

opportunity to do so, and also, on the one hand, to correct some crudities and mis-statements in my earlier article, and, on the other, to examine more fully and, I hope, with better understanding and less incomplete knowledge, one or two other pieces of evidence with which my opponents, past and present, make great play.

Firstly, then, I retract my too complete acceptance of

Tylor's view that all matrilineal marriage was originally matrilocal, as expressed in the first paragraph of the article in question; I now side rather with Renz, Hartland,

Rivers, and Peake, in believing that there are in all pro- bability several forms and several explanations of the custom.5 Omnia fert aetas, animum quoque, and I am not

nearly so sure of knowing the true solutions of all mysteries in I926 as I was in I9II. I also no longer imagine that

mother-right is incompatible with either endogamy or

polygyny, for the matrilineal English gipsies have both, and the matrilineal and matrilocal Surinam Bush negroes have the latter.6 Moreover, I see that my argument from the relative paucity of heroines to the unlikelihood of descent having been traced through the female, is no

argument at all, for the matrilineal Nairs worship only male

P. 124, " it is not suggested that in historical times ' any Hellenic tribe was matrilinear.' " The writer much regrets that Dr. Hartland will make no more contributions to our study.

6 Renz, op. cit., p. 627; E. S. Hartland, op. cit., pp. 32 et seq.; H. E. A.

Peake, op. cit., p. 176, and Rivers there quoted. e See Folk-Lore, vol. xxiv. (1913), pp. 318, 331; E. S. Hartland,

Primitive Paternity, vol. i., p. 286.

Prehistoric Greece and Mother-Right.

ancestors, see Man, vol. xx. (I92I), No. 25. This circum-

stance, it seems to me, renders even weaker than before the converse argument, that where a heroine, or a goddess, is worshipped, mother-kin must exist or have once existed.

Worship of a more or less divine female and tracing descent

through human ones have simply nothing whatever to do with each other.

My material, then, in the present study is, firstly, three pieces of inscriptional evidence which I previously neglected, owing to sheer crass ignorance; secondly, two plays of Aeschylus, on which much stress has been laid ever since Bachofen's day, and one at least of which is

strongly championed still as being a " matrilineal" work; thirdly, the genealogies, to which I am now more inclined than I formerly was to ascribe considerable historic value, allowing for extensive interpolation, telescoping, and other

corruptions, deliberate or accidental; lastly, some miscellaneous bits of evidence from historic Greece, which seem worthy of a re-examination.

Sir J. G. Frazer,7 following Rayet, Toepffer, and A. B. Cook, thinks that traces of mother-right may be found in a long inscription discovered in Kos, and several times published with commentaries by various scholars. In this, a cult-association, worshippers of Apollo and Herakles at the town of Halasarna, set up a list of those persons who by their descent are members of the tribes entitled to participate in that particular worship, or who, by adoption or naturalization, count as members of one or another of the tribes in question. Precisely what tribes they were, and how many, is a knotty point which fortunately does not matter for our present purposes. " Let them report in writing," says the decree of the tribes, " to the keepers of the temple their own name, their father's name, their

7 The Golden Bough,3 vol. vi. (Adonis, Attis, Osiris,2 vol. ii.), p. 259, note 4. The inscription is perhaps most accessible in Paton and Hicks, Inscriptions of Cos, Nos. 367-8.

215


tribe, and their mother's name, stating of what citizen she is daughter; or, in the case of naturalized citizens, the relevant law or common decree of the whole people." 8

So far, as it seems to me, we have not only no argument at all for mother-right, but some argument against it. We know what stress all Greek states laid on legitimate birth; so it is necessary not only to state the name of the father, but to produce, so to speak, the mother's marriage certificate. His bare name is enough, for there were any number of public documents to testify to his existence and

citizenship, if questioned. But for the mother, it had to be shown not only that she existed, but that she was the

legitimate daughter of a citizen; otherwise her marriage with a citizen was null and void, and her children, if not

exactly bastards, were no full .citizens, nor members of

any tribe. Now in a matrilineal- community the required pedigree would surely consist of the names of the mother and grandmother, or of the mother alone. We have here, not mother-kin, but what we may loosely call endogamy, or the practice, common to all Greek states, of not marrying outside the political unit.

If we turn to the lists themselves, we find entry after

entry running in this fashion : " Aristokles ; father, Lysis; mother, Timo daughter of Philondas." " Archias; father, Theudoros; mother, Aristion daughter of Archias; my share in the rites comes from Hypsikles son of Hypson." " Nikomachos son of Nikomachos; I share in accordance with the decree passed when Laertes held office, in (the month) Hyakinthios." 9 This last was clearly a foreigner, naturalized for some reason unknown to us. But there are other entries of a more " matrilineal" character. The

8 Paton and Hicks, op. cit. 367, lines 25 et seq.: &aroypa(eawovw ... . .

ovo/ia racrpfrLTi 7rorl r6s pvaroitas, etayevuvoS Kal Trv vXa&v Kal ras EuaTpbs Tr

Svocua Kail TrvoS rT 7rOX o\Tv OUvYydrp 7rcidpXet ots <6)> d6oraL a roXLreta, KadT&

riv6a vb6ov ) 866y,ca KotVLv troo ravrbs 8daiov. The text is certain throughout. 9 Paton and Hicks, op. cit., 368, col. i, lines 6, i ; col. 8, line 40.


most remarkable omits the father's name altogether, thus, "Epikles, Philinos, and Platon; mother, Hippiche daughter of Epikles." 10 That the father's name has been omitted by accident is highly unlikely, for the inscription, as is natural, considering its importance to those who set it up, is carefully engraved, and the mistakes are few and small. We must therefore look for another reason. Mother- right it cannot be, for why should that stop at one generation ? Not a word is said of the mother of Hippiche. I therefore accept the suggestion of Paton," that the young men's father had suffered a'rTlta, or attainder, which in his case did not extend to his offspring. Therefore his name could not appear as that of a citizen. But there are other entries which state in so many words that the inheritance was from a woman. " Aristobulos ; father, Aristobulos; mother, Anaxipole daughter of Satyros; my share comes from my grandmother, Asklapias daughter of Nikagoras the son of Nikostratos." " Theudoros; father, Lykurgos, but by adoption, Hermias; mother, Theudoris daughter of Euthydikos; my share comes from her." "

Theugenes; father, Gerastiphanes; mother, Zopyris daughter of Theugenes; my share comes from her." 12

To explain this last difficulty it is necessary to go into the question of female heiresses in Greek law, which seems not to have differed much, in this respect, from one state to another, so that it will be possible for me to cut the matter short by using Athenian terminology and illus- trations only; we know that the Dorians had substantially the same rules.13

10 Ibid., col. 2, line 6. 1' Op. cit., p. 256. 12 Paton and Hicks, op. cit., 368, col. i, line 22; 2, 25 et seq. 13 See for instance Miiller, Die Dorier (Breslau, 1824, Bd. ii., p. I97).

He explains i7rKXf\pos and its Dorian equivalent, r7traciaris, very well, " d.h., ihr Besitz war mit dem der Erbschaft nothwendig ver- bunden."

217


In Athenian law, then, an eTr'KX,po9 was a girl left r7t

T' KX/pw, or attached,-that is about the nearest English equivalent,-to her father's estate. That is, she was an

only child, or, at least, one without legitimate brothers. It was the business of her next of kin to marry her (a jury of citizens would decide, if necessary, who her next of kin

was), and thus she was provided with a husband and the estate remained in the family, or at least in the clan. Is not this a case of inheritance through women ? On the con-

trary; it is a case of avoiding inheritance through women, and at the same time avoiding the scattering of the family possessions. Supposing that the e7TrK\rXpo9 might marry whom she or her guardian chose; then, one of two things must happen, as she could not herself possess the property; either she would marry within the circle of her father's kin or she would not. In the former case, trouble might ensue; suppose she married her second cousin, and her first

cousin, as next of kin to her deceased father, claimed the

estate; the materials for a pretty family quarrel were

ready to hand. Or she might marry an outsider; in that

case, all the complications which, under Greek law, arose from the obligation of a husband to give security to his wife's relations for the repayment of her dowry in the case of death or divorce, would arise in an aggravated form, since the amount involved was not a portion of the paternal goods, but the whole of them. But let her next of kin, who was also the natural heir of her father, marry her, and the matter was settled once and for all. At the same time, his and her son was the nearest possible equivalent to a

son of the deceased father; for through his mother he was

the dead man's grandchild, and through his father he was

some relation to him; therefore, he might reasonably be

expected to keep up the family rites, and, especially, to

tend the tomb of his mother's father. This last consideration explains, as I see it, the many

tales in which some wandering hero marries the princess


and inherits the kingdom. I will take one concrete instance, as Mr. Peake quotes it. Kadmos, founder and king of Thebes, was succeeded by no son of his body, but by Pentheus, son of his daughter Agaue. What of his own son, Polydoros ? The answer to this is clearly given by H6fer; 14 Polydoros has no existence outside of genealogies, no legend, no adventures. Clearly, he is an insertion, although an early one, for his name occurs in Hesiod, into the original saga. Kadmos had in reality no sons at all, and so, like Akrisios in the legend of Perseus, he is succeeded by the son of his daughter. In just such a way might an Athenian burgher have his tomb tended by his daughter's son. In the case of a king, the next of kin would hardly be available, as, if the royal family had several branches, it was more than likely that the collaterals would be rulers on their own account somewhere else, and might not always find it practicable to leave their own kingdoms or to combine the two principalities. In some cases, however, there is a next of kin available; this is why Tyro, only child of Salmoneus, is married by her paternal uncle Kretheus; why this genealogy is so insisted upon by supporters of the hypothesis of mother-kin in Greece I cannot imagine, for excepting her adventure with Poseidon, to whom she bore the famous twins Neleus and Pelias, there is nothing in her story which might not have happened in any household of historical Greece.l5 It is true that under a system of pure mother-right she might have married him, for as the father cannot pass on the abusua, to use Ashanti terminology, that is, the relationship in the female line, under that system she was no kin to Kretheus. Had

14 In Roscher's Lexikon, Bd. iii., col. 2643, 44. There is another tradition, rightly explained by Hofer, ibid., that the son was called Pinakos, i.e. rivae, "writing-tablet "! A fit son for the legendary inventor of the Greek alphabet.

15 For the complete story of Tyro, see Roscher's Lexikon, s.v. Her legend is used as an argument by Bachofen, Mutterrecht, p. 287 and elsewhere; Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 35I; and others ad nauseam.

2I9


she been a Khasi girl,16 she could not have married Kretheus' son, for she would have been his parakha or

birth-sister; whether she could have married him or not, I am not clear; had she been an Ashanti, she could not have married him, for he and she would have the same ntoro.l7 Under a system of father-right in which the clan or gens was still important, (for instance, that of Rome before the special legislation of Claudius), again they could not have married. Therefore, we are reduced to three possibilities, only one of which makes against me; (I), that the story is pure fairy-tale, representing things as

happening which could not possibly happen in the real

world, like the tales of gods marrying their full sisters, or the account in Homer of Aiolos' sons and daughters, who

marry each other without anyone being in the least shocked; (2), that it really is a case of mother-kin in a very pure and therefore probably primitive form; (3), that we have here a case of the break-up of the clan and, with it, of the old

system of prohibited degrees. To this solution, which I think to be the true one, I will revert later. As regards the second, I would point out only the extreme improba- bility of any primitive custom whatsoever surviving through the centuries of Achaian civilization, following upon the civilization of Crete, long enough for the historical Greeks to have heard of it.

This way of regarding the story of the stranger who marries the princess and succeeds to the kingdom is not

mine; it is Greek, and Greek of too late a date for any possible reminiscence of mother-kin to enter into the matter. Of all worked-over, untrustworthy legends, that of Aineias is about the worst. His career as a genuine hero of saga lasts no longer than the fall of Troy; after

16 See J. Gurdon, The Khasis, p. 78. 17 So I gather from the table at the end of Rattray's Ashanti; the list

of prohibited degrees, p. 37, does not mention this particular relation-

ship.


that we get neither consistency in the main facts of the story nor any other evidence of genuine early tradition. Now he is one of the adventurers in question; he marries Lavinia, daughter of Latinus, and so inherits the kingdom of his sonless father-in-law. The story is extant in Vergil and many other authors, and Dionysios of Halikarnassos, who tells it, clinches the matter by calling Lavinia E7rlc'rXpos

r7-? aPXrj (" heiress of the kingdom "), in the sense in which a Greek spoke of an heiress (Ant. Rom., i., 70. 4). Here then we have a tale put together by patrilineal Greeks and patrilineal Romans, which invents as a perfectly reasonable incident this inheritance or quasi-inheritance of property through a woman; for on Lavinia's heiress-ship is based the claim, not only of her husband Aineias, but also of her son Silvius, to the disadvantage of his half- brother Askanios, the son of Aineias by his former wife.

To return to our Koan tribesmen, it would seem, by all analogy, including Dorian analogy, (and the Koans, as I have said, were Dorians), that what had happened was this; the ladies from whom the men in question inherited were

E7rl-X rpot or whatever the local equivalent may have been; their next of kin, who did not themselves directly inherit the right to participate in these sacra, had married them; and so the sacral rights had passed on with the rest of the family property. This is also the opinion of Paton, with whose commentary I find myself in full agreement.

But even if the Koan evidence be taken to imply mother- right in some form, this proves little for early Greece. Kos lies, culturally as well as geographically, near Asia Minor, which has much that is matrilineal about it in several districts. The date of the inscription is well on in the third century B.c.18 That is, it is not very far removed from that of the Mimes of Herodas, the text of which

18 " About one generation later than No. io," Paton-Hicks, op. cit., p. 260; and No. io probably dates from the Chremonidean War, i.e., from about 260 B.C., ibid., p. 21. Hence about 230 B.C. for our inscription.

221


contains many references to Asiatic cults (see Headlam- Knox on v, 77, and my article in Class. Quart., vol. xvii., pp. 32 et seq.). It is possible, although I think it unlikely, that we have here a bit of Oriental mother-right obtruding into a somewhat mixed Greek population.

I turn now to another and more famous inscription, the

great Code of Gortyn, first published in Monumenti Antichi, vol. iii.,pp. 103 et seq., but most accessible in Collitz-Bechtel's Dialektinschriften, No. 4991. This great monument, which on the most probable dating was set up in the fifth century B.C., contains some enactments which at first sight, or if read by themselves without regard to the context, seem to smack of mother-kin. " If there be no personal estate

(KpOssara)" says the Code, "but only a house, this shall be inherited by the daughters." 19 This reminds us that there still exists, or did in the nineteenth century,20 a custom in some of the Greek islands by which all secular property was inherited by the women of the family, dotis nomine, if it had been originally acquired by a female member of the family. " Daselbst nimmt die einzige Tochter sogar die ganze Dos ihrer Mutter zu sich wenn diese das ganze Vermogen der Familie umfassen sollte. Nur die Kapellen machen davon eine Ausnahme." If the modern custom is

rightly stated, it is a very understandable development of the purely patrilineal arrangement of antiquity by which the dowry continued to be the property of the wife's clan, only the usufruct going to the husband; and the Cretan custom is also patrilineal, but developed and enlightened patrilineal. That the Gortynians had father-right is clear from the insistence of their code on patria potestas, col. ii. 20

19 Col. 4, 46 et seq. 20 Bachofen, Mutterrecht, p. I5I B, citing Maurer, Das griechische

Volk, Bd. i., p. I44; E. S. Hartland, Primitive Society, p. 124, note I, who quotes H. Hauttecoeur, Le Folklore de l'Isle de Kythnos (Brussels, I898), p. I24. The latter gives an account of matrilocal marriage, developed apparently out of the stress laid on the dowry. Neither Maurer nor Hauttecoeur is available as I write.

Prehistoric Greece and Mother-Right. 223

et seq., col. iii. 44 et seq., and most explicitly col. iv. 23, and from the order in which the kin of a dead man inherit, his sisters succeeding only in default of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, brothers, and descendants of brothers to the third generation. That they were enlightened is

clearly proved by the large provision, surprisingly large for backward Crete, which they made for the protection of the weaker members of the community, including resident aliens and serfs. These latter were guarded against false imprisonment and personal assault,-(in the latter case, a slave-woman's own evidence might be taken, as if she were free),-in a way which would have made the hair of a republican Roman stand on end with horror; the first and second columns of the inscription are in part concerned with these matters. With similar enlighten- ment, and strong common sense, they saw the necessity of leaving orphaned girls at least a roof over their heads; their brothers would be better able to fend for themselves.

But there is another enactment in this same code which looks very matrilineal at first. The children of a free mother and a serf father may or may not be serfs; a contravention ?of the usual maxim that status is inherited from the father under father-right. The words of the law are curious: 2

"If the serf come to the free woman and wed her,"-(the verb is 07rvtlw, used throughout these statutes of legal marriage; unlawful connection is expressed by o'lro),-" the ,children shall be free; but if the free woman go to the serf, the children shall be serfs." This puzzled me until I noticed that similar arrangements exist, or did until recently, in Serbia, and also existed in Rome under Hadrian.22

21 Col. vii., i et seq., the first four words being a restoration, but a perfectly certain one: [at K' 06 6aXoS] erl Trav XevOepav d\XOv 6ruvet, 'Xeu0eOp'

peLv Ta rTKVa ' al be K' ac eXeuvOpa E7rl rb6v 6ov, 6w\' t/Aev ra Te'Kva. I have rendered 3cXoT by " serf" rather than " slave," as the latter suggests a person with no rights at all.

22 See, for the Serbs, I. N. Smirnov, Outline of the Cultural History of the Yugoslavs (Kazan, I9oo), (in Russian); for Hadrian's legislation, Gaius, Institutiones, i. 30, 8o.

224 Prehistoric Greece and Mother-Right

The former people certainly are patrilineal, traces, if

any, of mother-right among them being very faint and dubious; but they allow a landless man to marry the

only daughter of a man of property, subject to the condition that the property is hers, not his, and that she

may turn him out if she chooses; the children of the

marriage inherit their mother's goods. Still more certainly were the Romans patrilineal in Hadrian's day; but he enacted that the offspring of a union between Latin father and Roman mother should be Roman, not Latin. For all these marriages, which we may perhaps call

ulye,, from the Serbian term for the husband in such cases, I have elsewhere proposed23 the following ex-

planation : "If the inheriting daughter follows the usual custom

and marries a man of another clan or family, her father has the chagrin of seeing the property on its way to pass out of his direct line. ... But if his daughter remains un-

married, either the line becomes wholly extinct, or her children are illegitimate and cannot inherit. The natural

way out of the difficulty, and one which I fancy was often adopted, was to marry her to a broken man, who

being free could beget lawful children, but being landless could be kept in proper subjection. . . and not interfere with property or sacra, and who had no family to make a claim for him."

In the case of the Cretan serf, it must have been that he was somehow given a quasi-free status; while at the same time the interests of morality and normal inheritance were subserved by disallowing and penalizing any irregular connection formed by the woman " going to " him, that is, I take it, entering upon an illicit union without the consent of her family or clan.

23 " Sidelights on the Early History of Marriage," (Queen's Quarterly, Kingston, Ontario, I92I), p. i6i, to which I would refer for a fuller discussion of this matter.


The last inscription is very short and much mutilated. It comes from Amphissa 24 in Western Greece, and mentions one "... idamas son of Demokrateia." The editor of the Inscriptiones Graecae, Dittenberger, declares that it is quite without parallel for that part of the world (in illis quidem regionibus singularis). I have already given a similar example from Kos, and would add another possi- bility, since we know nothing of the man's social standing, namely that he was a bastard and therefore could name no father.

Inscriptional evidence, then, furnishes no warrant for the assumption of mother-right in any part of Greece, including Crete, which ever since Bachofen's day has been claimed as a seat of that institution, on most frivolous grounds, such as the fact that the Cretans, like ourselves, talked about a motherland, not a fatherland (,xaTrp[s, not 7ra-rpl, see Plato, Rep. ix. 575D) together with the tradition 25 that Lykia was settled from Crete, the Lykians being certainly matrilineal. If anyone likes to say that Minoan Crete was matrilineal, I know of nothing to prove him wrong; he may point to the tendency of Greek authors to ignore mother-right 26 or grossly to misrepresent it,27

24 Bull. corresp. hellenique, xix. (1895), p. 391, No. 5; I.G. Ix. i. 1072. The inscription is on a cubical grey stone, obviously separated from a larger block or taken from a wall; the letters on it are in three lines, thus, IAAVACOAH I KPATEIAC I THNCYNTPO, probably originally... c6d/uas 6 A-rlOKtpaTreLa ri7v rvvrpofov, " .. idamas son of Demokrateia (erects a statue of ?) his foster-sister." The letters C and C cannot be earlier than the fourth century B.C., and are probably a good deal later; see S. Reinach, rpigraphie grecque, p. 208.

25 See Bachofen, Mutterrecht, pp. 28 et seq.,; Herodotus, i. I73, I. 26 For instance, Diomedes in Homer (Iliad, vi. 215 et seq.) pays no

attention to any but the paternal line of the Lykian Glaukos. 27 So Theodoros apud Proklos in rem publicam, p. 253. Kroll represents

the Cantabri as doing everything upside down, all the women's work being in the hands of the men; contrast the sober account of Strabo, iii. 4. I8, p. 165 Casaubon, I37, 30 Didot, which simply says they were matrilineal.

225


and say that in like manner they have misrepresented or ignored matrilineal Cretan traditions; but, equally, I know of not one scrap of proof that he is right. I pass now to the

supposed evidence from Tragedy. The Suppliants of Aeschylus is the oldest surviving

Greek play, and fate has decreed that it should come down to us " maimed and battered " in its text and without its companion pieces, the Thalamopoioi and Danaides, lacking which it is but a first act. But the story is well

enough known; Danaos and Aigyptos were brothers; the former had fifty daughters, the latter fifty sons; after a quarrel, which resulted in Aigyptos, the stronger brother, forcing Danaos to leave their native country, the territory known in later days as Egypt, a reconciliation was arrived

at, which on Danaos' part was a mere sham. The sons and the daughters married, and then, by Danaos' orders, all but one of them, Hypermnestra or Hypermestra, killed their husbands on the marriage night. Hypermestra was

imprisoned by her father for letting her husband, Lynkeus, go free; according to one version of the story Danaos killed her, according to another Lynkeus was reconciled and settled down happily with his wife, according to another he killed Danaos and the too-obedient forty-nine daughters. In Aeschylus the play opens with the arrival of Danaos and his daughters at Argos, hotly pursued by the sons of Aigyptos, who apparently are determined to marry their cousins. Danaos and his daughters alike protest that such a marriage would be impious,

"How can that bird be pure that eateth birds, And he that weds a maid against her will, Her sire unwilling, how can he be pure ?"

asks Danaos,28 and the Chorus of daughters repeat the same sentiment again and again.29 But when asked by

28 Suppl. 226. 29 Ibid., IO, where see Tucker's very sensible note; 38, 79, and

elsewhere.


the King of Argos why they are sitting as suppliants, they answer,3-

"Lest I be thrall unto Aigyptos' line. King. Hatest thou them, or say'st it is not lawful ? Chor. Why, who would deem his master was his friend ?"

In other words, they have no reason but pure hate for

refusing the Aigyptiadai. Later, the King very reasonably says,-31

"But if Aigyptos' children be thy lords By thy state's law, claiming the guardianship As next of kin, how disallow their plea ? On thine own native laws defend thy case, Prove thee no ward of theirs, and they no guardians."

Whereat the Chorus have nothing better to reply than the generality, " May I never, oh never, fall beneath the men's rule." It is very clear that they are not thought of as living under mother-right at the time of the play; but are they under that survival of mother-right which leads to a dislike for marriage with an ortho-cousin ? for that, if anything, is the meaning of Ridgeway's theory of the plot.32 If so, it is very late in the day for them to object. By good luck we have their genealogy, in more or less the form in which Aeschylus knew it, for it occurs in a fragment of his contemporary, the " very excellent genealogist " as Dionysios of Halikarnassos calls him, Pherekydes of Athens.33 Here it is :

30 Ibid., 335. XO. ws u ye yJPwaL Bt ovos Aiyln7rou 'yEve. BA. rrorepa Kar' exOpav i) 7i t7O O9e'us XEyeis; XO. ris 8' av ai\Xovs o'otro (so I would read, civoLro the MSS.) robs KeKTr1LE'VOUS; (for KEKT7cr7tYoS, master, in Tragedy, cf. Sophokles, frag. 695, Nauck 2).

31 Ibid., pp. 387 et seq. 32 Origin of Tragedy,-pp. 187 et seq. 33 Frag. 21, Jacoby, with Jacoby's note, F. Gr. Hist., vol. i., p. 398;

Dion. Hal., Ant. Rom., i., 13, I.

227


POSEIDON. (I) NEILOS.

Argiope-Agenor. Belos. I I

Kadmos. Europa. Damno. Aigyptos. Danaos.

(2) AGENOR-DAMNO.

Phoinix. Isaie. Melia.

(3) AIGYPTOS-ISAIE and others. DANAOS-MELIA, etc.

Fifty sons. Fifty daughters.

Therefore, Danaos has married his own niece, who is also his first cousin on the father's side; Aigyptos has done the same; their uncle Agenor has likewise married his niece. Some of the Danaids are ortho-cousins only of the Aigyptiads, some are both ortho- and cross-cousins to them. Incidentally, they are, in some cases, the grandchildren of their paternal aunt. It surely is much too late in the day for them to object to marrying a rather near relation on either side of the house.

So far, I have been treating the genealogy as if it were

historical; but when one adds, (what Mr. Peake rightly points out), that it is clearly artificial, consisting largely of the eponyms of the chief peoples in the Mediterranean world,34 it becomes obvious that the Danaids and their

relationships are as fabulous as their number, fifty, is

mythologically interesting, and also that they are relatively late, far too late to incorporate bits of prehistoric sociology

34 In the above table, Neilos is simply the river Nile; Belos, i.e., Ba'al, seems vaguely to represent Oriental, perhaps specifically Semitic

peoples (Syria ?) ; Kadmos is the famous Phoenician hero, the founder of Thebes in Boiotia; Europa is the eponym of the continent, Aigyptos of the Egyptians, Danaos of the Danaoi, one of the Homeric Greek

peoples. Equally transparent are Phoinix, Kilix, and Thasos, not shown above but belonging to the family of Agenor.


in their story. As a matter of fact, I am convinced that the plot of the trilogy turned on a moral question, the conflict between a woman's rights over her own person and her duty of becoming a mother; a view essentially in accord with that of M. Masson.35

I pass now to the other supposedly matrilineal play, the Eumenides, which has often been confidently appealed to as showing that Aeschylus knew of and was interested in the transition from one system to the other. If he was, he dissembled very well, for his Erinyes go no further in the direction of mother-kin than to recognise that a mother and her son are related. "Beware," cries Klytaimestra as her son advances to strike her down, " have a care of the raging hell-hounds of thy mother" (i.e., the Erinyes, Lucan's stygias canes). "And if I neglect this, how shall I escape those of my father? " he replies.36 This reminds us that within a hundred and fifty lines of Homer, (in a passage which on any conceivable theory is all by one hand),37 we find the curses of a mother and of a father embodied in the Erinyes. The Erinyes themselves sing, when they fear that Orestes will be snatched from their pursuit,-

"Never more let any cry In the hour of bitterness, ' Justice, hear ! Hear, Erinyes enthroned ! '

Many a father, many a mother Newly wronged, will thus lament, Since the house of Justice falls." 38

There is, here as elsewhere in Aeschylus, a conflict of ideals, and as he himself sufficiently indicates, it is a conflict

35 Sschyle, t. i., pp. 7 et seq. 36 Choephoroe, 924, a passage which Sidgwick (notes on Eumen.

600 et seq.) wrongly supposes inconsistent with that passage. 37 Iliad, ix., 453 et seq., 57I. 38 Eumen., 508 et seq.

p

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between old and new. I have elsewhere suggested 39 that Greek jurisprudence advanced partly by extending to the whole circle of citizens the sanctity of clan-fellowship; in the Eumenides we seem to have a part of this process, the extension to connections by marriage, at least to the married pair, of the mutual inviolability of blood kin. The Eumenides insist doggedly that, as Orestes has killed his

mother, that settles the matter. Apollo, Orestes' advocate and protector, urges on the other hand that Klytaimestra, in killing her husband, had done something worse than, or at least as bad as, patricide, and therefore that Orestes was a just avenger, not a murderer.40 To this he adds, as a last argument to influence the wavering jury, that the mother is not really akin to her son, the father being the one true parent; a bit of contemporary physiology, not of

sociological import for Greece.41 The main interest of the play is in another way also connected with the development of jurisprudence, for whereas the Erinyes uphold the old view that the act alone matters, Apollo insists that the motive be examined.

Before passing on to genealogies, I wish to examine a bit of evidence on which the late Dr. Rivers 42 was inclined to lay some stress as an indication of Greek mother-right. Why might a Greek marry his half-sister, if she was not his sister uterine ? Because, answer the advocates of mother-

right, under that system the sister-german is no kin, but the sister uterine is, just as much as the full sister. In the first place I would point out, for what it is worth, that

apart from such fairy folk as the children of Aiolos in

Homer, there is a tradition that now and then marriage 39 Primitive Culture in Greece, p. 205. 40 See especially the debate between Apollo and the Chorus, Eumen.,

lines 208 et seq.; and cf. Masson, op. cit., t. ii., p. 129. 41 Ibid., 658 et seq. 42 Art. " Motherright " in Hastings' Dict. Rel. and Eth., p. 856B; re-

ferences to the custom in Blaydes' note on Aristophanes, Clouds, 1372.


with a half-sister uterine did take place. Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus, married twice, first Perieres, by whom she had a son Aphareus, and secondly Oibalos, to whom she bore a daughter Arene. These two afterwards married, according to Pausanias.43 But so manifestly unhistorical a figure as Gorgophone is too frail a foundation to base any conclusions on. I prefer, therefore, to note that the usual reason in Greece for marrying a near relation was to keep the family property together; for this reason, it would

seem, Kimon married his sister Elpinike, if he really did

marry her.44 Now the brother uterine was not only no near kin, so far as inheritance of property went, but a member of a different family altogether. Why then should he be expected to overcome the natural repugnance which most people have against sexual relations with those

closely akin to them, when no material advantage was to be gained? That this repugnance was by no means

strong in Greece is to me good evidence of the early disappearance, for practical purposes, of the undivided

family. Coming now to genealogies, I must confess that I have

not read and carefully noted every genealogy that Greek tradition has left us, for they are innumerable, and many are so patently late as not to be worth examining. Still, I think that the examples I have collected are sufficient, for

they consist of all those recorded in the oldest historians, Hekataios of Miletos, Akusilaos of Argos, Pherekydes of

Athens, and Hellanikos of Lesbos, so far as any fragments of these writers have been preserved ; their remains occupy 177 pages of F. Jacoby's collection. Homer has nothing in the least matrilineal, and I know of nothing to the

purpose in the surviving Hesiodic poems. In addition, I have noted everything in Pausanias which looks matri-

43 iv. 2. 4. 44 See Plutarch, Cimon, 4; Nepos, praefat. 4; Cimon, I. 2-4. Kimon

on the death of his father Miltiades was left poor and in debt.

23I


lineal, and here I have found a much richer harvest than in the older writers ; a fact of some significance.

In all the earlier genealogies, then, I find not one which I can call matrilineal, that is, in which women are the

chief, or the only, medium through which the line is traced. Here are the nearest approaches to it: Akusilaos, frag. 44, traces a genealogy thus, Hyperoche-Eurypylos-Ormenos -Pheres-Amyntor-Astydameia-Tlepolemos. It occurs in a scholion on Pindar's words (Olymp. vii. 23),

" The descendants of Amyntor are from Astydameia on the mother's side." For the purpose of illustrating Pindar's

statement, then, it is of no importance whom Astydameia married. It does not follow that her husband was un-

known, or even that Akusilaos did not mention him. All that the fragment, or the words of Pindar which it explains, can prove is, that the Greeks remembered their descent on both sides, which we know they did from Homer down. There is a pretty Aesopic fable of a mule who in times of his prosperity boasted that his mother was a thoroughbred mare, but in misfortune could only recollect that his father was an ass. But I am not aware that mules, real or fabulous, are supposed to have mother-kin. And

straining Akusilaos' genealogy to the utmost, we get but two "matrilineal" generations to four "patrilineal."

Surely the Greeks did not alternate between the two

systems ? Pherekydes, besides one instance of naming the mother before the father, (frag. 4, " Diktys and Polydektes were the sons of Androthoe. . . and Peristhenes"), has

one case of inheritance through the female, which is worth

looking at, frag. 117, " Neleus . . .founded Pylos, and

married Chloris the daughter of Amphion the son of Iasos and of Persephone daughter of Minyas, and ruled not only the people of Pylos but those of Minyas' city Orchomenos." The pedigree is interesting. This Amphion is not the famous musician, but a different and much more obscure

figure. He was king of Orchomenos, and appears to have


had several daughters, but no sons. In Pherekydes' version of the story his son-in-law inherits the kingdom; but in Homer 45 we hear of no such thing, for there Chloris is queen of Pylos only (of course queen-consort, not queen- regent). As to how Amphion became king of Orcho-

menos, no surviving authority seems to know. When some

agreement has been reached as to whether Orchomenos was Minyas' father or his son, how many children Minyas had, and of what sex, the matter may be settled.46 The

saga of Minyas is so complicated, and his existence as

anything but the imaginary ancestor of the half-fabulous

people of the Minyai so very doubtful, that nothing can be proved from him. It is open to anyone to follow Bachofen and make out a case for mother-right by neglecting part of the evidence, or to make one for father-right by neglecting another part of it. I prefer to agree with Drexler47 that the whole legend is folgenschwer. The same authority points out that the most decidedly matri-

lineal-sounding statement in this connection, the dictum of

Apollonios of Rhodes 48 that the Argonauts were called

Minyai because the most and best of them descended in the female line from Minyas, is lacking in proof.

One feature of these genealogies which may give us pause is the fact that we can in some places actually see " matrilineal" elements intruding where the earlier tradition knows nothing of them. The only conclusion I can draw from this is, that these elements are not matrilineal at all in origin, the resemblance being accidental. Thus, Apollonios Rhodios says 49 that Jason's maternal uncle

'5 Odyssey, xi. 281. 46 See, in Roscher's Lexikon, the arts. " Iasos," " Minyas." 47 In Roscher, Bd. ii. 30I9, 27. 48 Argonautika, i. 229 et seq., rois #LV dapLoTnra Mtwva 7trepzvaaeTd

ovreS | KIKX7)cKOV caiaXa 7rv,res, ieel MIiv'ao Ovyarpwv [ ol TrXeioroL Kal &ptarot

do' a'ituaros e6xerT&ovro ei/yevatY. See Bachofen, Mutterrecht, p. 213 et seq. 49 Argon., i. 45 et seq.

233


lphiklos took part in the famous expedition to Kolchis; but the scholiast here points out that Apollonios is contra-

dicting the ancient tradition, as represented by Hesiod and Pherekydes, which gives Iphiklos no share in that

enterprise. Take again that very fruitful source of

ancestresses, the feminine names of cities, which are

commonly provided with an eponymous female founder, or at least the female relation of a founder. Thus, Sparta and Mycenae were sometimes said to have been founded

by the heroines Sparte and Mykene, at least in later times. But the older mythologists had a closer grip on

reality, and remembered that women do not found cities.

So, while later authorities say that the city Phalanna in Perrhaibia is named after Phalanna daughter of Tyro, Hekataios knows of no such daughter; he provides Krissa with no foundress but a founder, Krissos.50 Akusilaos names Sparton and Mykeneus, sons of Phoroneus, as founders of Sparta and Mycenae, and, most curious of all since later generations celebrated Aphrodite as Aeneidum

genetrix, he brings father-right into the very territory of the Great Mother, and represents the goddess as anxious to have a child by Anchises, because it was fated that the latter's descendants, whoever they were, should rule.51

I have said enough, I think, to indicate on what principles genealogies must be criticized. We are not dealing with the simple traditions of an unlettered race, like the drum-

history of the Ashanti,52 but with a literary tradition, often much worked over. Therefore it is well first to make sure that we have a really early account at all. This consideration at once disposes of the famous " tradition" that Kekrops invented marriage, for instance. It goes back to Klearchos of Soloi, a pupil of Aristotle, from whom

by the way Bachofen has the learning and honesty to 50 Hekataios, frags. 5 and II5B, Jacoby. 51 Akusilaos, frags. 24 and 39, Jacoby. 52 Capt. W. Rattray, Ashanti, pp. 266 et seq.


quote it (Mutterrecht, p. 2IB), and not merely in the pseudo-historic form which Pompeius Trogus gives it, as epitomized by Justin.53 If we consult Klearchos, we find that he is trying to rationalize the story of Kekrops being twy-formed, half man and half snake; some think, he says, that it was because he invented marriage, and so joined the two different natures of man and woman. As Wilamowitz-Moellendorf well points out,54 this miserable figment is not even consistent with itself; for, as Kekrops was the first king of Athens, and himself the son of Earth, who was there before him to be either matrilineal or promiscuous? He is a sort of Athenian Adam. The famous tale in Varro 55 about the Athenian woman taking part in the government in old days again betrays itself as a late figment, so late that its author, whoever he was, had no idea what early Greek government was like; for he imagines not merely an assembly, which is Homeric at least, but one which voted in the modern way, one member one vote, which was still not in use in historic times in the backward and old-fashioned Apella or folk-moot of Sparta.

There is no space to analyse all the later genealogies, or even all those in Pausanias; but I give one or two by way of specimens.

Kings of Sparta (Pausanias, ii. I8, 6). I. Tyndareos.

Atreus. Atreus.

Agamemnon-Klytaimestra. Helen-2. Menelaos-(slave- I I I women).

3. Orestes Hermione. I I | Megapenthes. Nikostratos.

4. Tisamenos. 53 Klearchos, ap. Athenaios, xiii., p. 555D; Justin, Hist. Phil. Epit.,

ii. 6, 7. 54 Class. Rev., I906, p. 446B. 55 Ap. Augustine, de ciuitate Dei, xviii., 9. For the ancient method

of voting, see Thucyd. i. 87, 2 (/o%7 Kat o0 V?Oy, by acclamation, not voting-tokens).

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This needs little comment. Neither Tyndareos nor Menelaos has legitimate heirs male; naturally the bastard sons of the latter are passed over in favour of his nephew, the son of the powerful Agamemnon. Incidentally, in earlier versions of the story, Orestes does not become king of Sparta. Mr. Peake suggests that the Atreidai rule their kingdoms iure uxorum; if he or anyone else likes to

suppose so, I know of no direct proof that they are wrong; but if so, it is very odd that Homer, Hesiod, and the

tragedians alike seem ignorant of so interesting a fact.

Cross-Cousin Marriage (Pausanius, ii. 29, 4).

Strophios-Anaxibia (sister of Agamemnon).

Pylades. Agamemnon-Klytaimestra.

I Elektra.

Pylades marries Elektra.

But, in the same circle, Orestes married Hermione, who was his ortho-cousin both ways, being the daughter of his father's brother and his mother's sister.

Uncle and Nephew (Pausanias, vii. 4, 5).

(Daidalos goes into exile for killing his sister's son.) " Knowing what the laws of his own country (Athens)

were," says Pausanias, " he went voluntarily into exile." This sounds very like admission of matrilineal relationship. But once more, if we look at the other, and especially at the earlier, forms of the story, the phantom fades in the

daylight. According to Hellanikos (frag. I69, Jacoby) he was tried before the Areiopagos, and no doubt found

guilty. But the Areiopagos did not exist merely to try cases of bloodshed within the clan. By tradition the first case it ever tried was that of Ares, for the slaying of Halirrhothios. The victim then was indeed an illegitimate


cousin of Ares, by some genealogies, but tht next suit after that was when Kephalos was tried for killing his wife

Prokris, and we have seen that this sort of manslaughter was definitely not considered to be the shedding of kindred

blood, for the Erinyes take no cognisance of it. Hence the condemnation of Daidalos does not prove more than that he had committed what we call murder, which by all accounts he had; the story is a variant of the Prentice Pillar tale. Indeed Servius says simply that it was to avoid unpopularity (inuidia) that he went away.56 There is no proof that there was a blood-feud, any more than in the much older case of Tlepolemos,57 who left home somewhat hastily after killing Likymnios, the maternal uncle of his father Herakles. The dead man (whose birth by the way was illegitimate) had been the friend and comrade of Herakles' reputed father and on the friendliest terms with the hero himself; therefore, as Homer says, the " other sons and grandsons of divine Herakles threatened " the slayer, very naturally. Pollution might follow from

killing any friend, related or not, as we learn from the famous tale of the three pilgrims to Delphi,58 and so might natural indignation; pollution Homer does not trouble about.

No paper on this subject would be complete without the

Epizephyrian Lokrians, who occur so regularly in arguments on the other side that it seems a pity to destroy such

simple faith. But truth will out. The Epizephyrian Lokrians, being translated into English, are the Western Lokrians, those who emigrated to Italy, and it is of those alone that Polybios, who knew them at first hand, says that they had all their nobility from their women. Their

56 Servius on Vergil, Aeneid, vi. 14. For references, see Bachofen, Mutterrecht, p. 32A, to which add the above fragment of Hellanikos and the passage in Pausanias.

57 Homer, Iliad, ii. 657; cf. Pind., Olymp., vii. 27 et seq. 58 Aelian, Var. Hist., iii. 44, copied by schol. on Plato, Laws, 865A.

237


story, which he accepts, as Grote did in modern times,59 is that the original settlers were a rabble of slaves etc., who in the absence of the Lokrian warriors (Opuntian or Ozolian?) at the Messenian War, whither they went as allies of the Spartans, formed improper connections with the women, and afterwards went to Italy, taking along some of their paramours. These being the only people of decent family in the colony, it was natural that their descendants should occupy much the same position in the new city as the Smiths did on Orphan Island; especially as some of them belonged to the noble Hundred Houses, which supplied the temple-slaves to Athena of Ilion. That either the Opuntian or the Ozolian Lokrians were matrilineal there is not a shred of evidence. The story is either,- (I), true, or, (2), a malicious fable, based on the fact that the Epizephyrian population was a mixed one, or, (3), mother-right misunderstood, in which case, since the home

country was patrilineal, it must be assumed that the colonists picked up the custom from the Sikels from whom, as Polybios says, they borrowed a good deal.

Finally, why does Plato,60, following Attic law, assign to relatives on both sides the duty of prosecuting for murder ? For the simple reason that he was an Athenian, and therefore used to counting descent on both sides, as we do, and also that he believed more or less in the pollution of bloodshed. No doubt the female kin would act as pro- secutors in default only of relatives in the male line.

59 Polyb. xii. 5, 6 et seq.; (cf. Aristotle, frag. 504 Rose); Grote, Hist. of Greece, vol. iii., p. I9I (London, I904); see also Busolt, Grie- chische Geschichte,2 Bd. i., p. 404 note.

60 Laws, ix., 87IB, where see Stallbaum's note.


APPENDIX.

I have thought it worth while to subjoin an analysis of the remaining genealogies of apparently " matrilineal" type which I have come across, in Pausanias and elsewhere, and also a few miscellaneous arguments from various sources.

I. Kings of Attica (Pausanias, i. 2, 6). 2. Aktaios.

daughter-2. Kekrops.

Herse. Aglauros. Pandrosos Erysichthon (never was king).

3. Kranaos (no relation of Aktaios or Kekrops).

daughter-4. Amphiktyon (usurps throne). 5. Erichthonios (no relation; usurps throne).

The only real names in the above genealogies are those of Kekrops, his children, and Erichthonios. From so late and artificial a pedigree nothing can be concluded, except that what traditions its maker knew were contradictory, and he tried to reconcile them.

2. Kings of Megara (Pausanias, i. 39, 4-6). Pandion.

I I I Aigeus Nisos. daughter-Skiron.

(king of Athens).

Skiron and Nisos quarrel as to who shall be king; after arbitration by Aiakos an amicable arrangement is reached; the latter becomes king, the former war-leader (polemarch). This seems to result from Megarian resentment at the usual account of Skiron as a robber. In their zeal for his respecta- bility they came as near to making him king as they could; but the list of kings being, it would seem, well-established,

239


there was nothing for it but to make him the son-in-law of one of them. See Waser in Roscher, s.u. Skiron, col. I007.

Pausanias, i. 41, 3. Megareus king of Megara is succeeded by Alkathus, husband of his daughter Euaichme. He had no surviving sons, and after the manner of fairy-tale kings had promised his daughter and his kingdom to anyone who would kill a formidable lion.

3. Kings of Sekyon (Pausanias, ii. 5, 7 et seq.; 6, 5 et seq.). The ninth king, Peratos, and the twelfth, Koronos, were

the sons of their predecessors' daughters, the father in the former case being Poseidon, in the latter Apollo. This calls for no remark, as it is not said that there were any heirs male. Incidentally, it is to be noticed that a divine ancestor often means simply no known ancestor at all; compare Akusilaos, frag. 25 Jacoby, where Pelasgos, said

by Hesiod to be born from the ground (frag. 43 Rzach) is

provided with a mother, Niobe daughter of Phoroneus, and a divine father, Zeus.

Sekyon, the sixteenth king, and patently a mere eponym, is the son-in-law of his predecessor Lamedon. The rest of the line is patrilineal, broken at one point by a usurpation, save that the seventeenth king, Polybos, is once more the son of his predecessor's daughter.

4. Kings of Argos (Pausanias, ii. 16, I). Phoroneus is succeeded by Argos, his daughter's son.

Pausanias, ii. 19, I. Temenos, although he has sons, intends to make Deiphontes, husband of his daughter Hyrnetho, his successor. Keisos, Temenos' son, violently opposes this, and in the resulting quarrel the kingship is

stripped of all but the shadow of power. Such as it is, it remains in the hands of Keisos and his descendants.

5. Kings of Sparta (Pausanias, iii. I; cf. above, p. 235). The third king, Eurotas (the name of the local river !) is

succeeded, having no sons, by Lakedaimon (the name of


the country !) husband of his daughter Sparte (the name of the city !). The line is continued through males to Tyndareos. Later, the young kings Prokles and Eurys- thenes, sons of King Aristodemos, are under the guardianship of their maternal uncle, Theras, a very shadowy figure, said to have settled the island of Thera.

6. Kings of Pharai (Pausanias, iv. 30, 2-3).

I. Pharis (founder).

Telegone-Alpheios

2. Ortilochos I.

3. Diokles.

I I Krethon. Ortilochos II. Antikleia-Machaon.

4. Nikomachos with Gorgasos.

Homer (Iliad, v. 54I et seq.) knows only of Krethon and Ortilochos II, who are both killed by Aineias. The local saga continued the line through the children of Antikleia, whose husband was the son of Asklepios.

7. Kings of Elis (Pausanias v. I, 4 et seq.). I find nothing in this late and rationalizing genealogy

worth noting. Where it touches' real saga, the succession is patrilineal.

8. Kings of Aigialos (Achaia) (Pausanias, vii. I, 6-8). King Selinus, having no heirs male, is succeeded by Ion,

his daughter's husband. Later, the descendants of a daughter of Danaos, Skaia, become kings and call the people Achaioi after one of their ancestors in the male line.

24I


9. Kings of Boiotia (Pausanias, ix. 35, I et seq.).

King Halmos is succeeded first by Phlegyas, son by Ares of his daughter Chryse, and, when Phlegyas dies without issue, by Chryses, son by Poseidon of his other daughter Chrysogone. He has no sons, so the succession is a natural one enough; in any case, it is hard to take this or any other

portion of the early Minyan pedigree seriously. Later, the sons (Trophonios and Agamedes) of King Erginos of Orchomenos (Pausanias, ibid., 37, 7 et seq.) are succeeded, since they leave no heirs of their body, by Askalaphos and

Ialmenos, sons by Ares of Astyoche, granddaughter of

Azeus, brother of Erginos. Erginos' other brothers dis-

appear from the pedigree, and nothing is said of what befell their descendants, if any.

As a last example from Pausanias may be mentioned

Aerops, viii. 44, 8, who is named after his mother Aerope, not after his father Ares.

Of inheritance through a woman, to the exclusion of the male line, one or two instances are alleged from early stories. Thus, Neleus the grandson of Tyro offers a reward to anyone who will get for him his grandmother's cattle, which are in the possession of Iphiklos. But as the story is told by Akusilaos, to say nothing of Homer's references to it (Akusilaos, frag. 33, Jacoby; Homer, Odyssey, xi. 281 et seq.; xv. 231 et seq.), Neleus wants the cattle stolen, and makes no sort of legal claim to them.

How the Oedipus legend can be supposed to indicate

mother-right (Hartland, Primitive Society, p. 123), I do not know, unless it be on the theory put forward by Mr. M. A. Potter (Sohrab and Rustum) that stories of a son

fighting his father in ignorance are due to this cause. But, as Potter himself sees (p. 197), for such a story to be

tragic, the background must be patrilineal; and it is mere

special pleading to suppose that the tale of Oedipus, in so far as it relates to Laios, is one told by outsiders. In


any case, the chief tragedy is that he does not know his mother; and this is most naturally derived from the practice of exposure, not from either mother-right or

father-right. I have refrained in this paper from re-discussing some

well-worn arguments derived from statements about the sexual relations of the Spartans, because it seems to me that these have been disposed of once and for all by Dr. M. P. Nilsson (Grundlagen des spartanischen Lebens, in Klio, vol. xii. (I912), especially pp. 331 et seq.).

M'Lennan's Studies in Ancient History 61 contains

nothing which I have not already dealt with except,- (I) P. 2Io, a reference to Isaios (xi. 17) which is suffi-

ciently disposed of by Mr. Wyse, Isaeus, pp. 6I3-4. (2) P. 226. Hyginus (Fab. I74) is misquoted as saying

that Meleager's maternal uncles claimed the spoils of the Kalydonian boar as his next of kin. No such statement is made anywhere in Hyginus.

(3) Herodotus, v. 80, 8I, is cited (p. 229) for the statement that the Thebans considered the Aiginetans their next of kin because their mythical foundresses, the nymphs Thebe and Aigina, were sisters. It is admitted that relationship in the female line was recognised in historical Greece; even by resorting to mythology, the Thebans could find no relationship through males near enough to be of service to them.

Topffer, Attische Genealogie, pp. I90 et seq., adds nothing new.

Lastly, I must mention the learned and vigorous defence of Lokrian mother-right in W. A. Oldfather's article " Lokris" in the twenty-fifth halbband of Pauly-Wissowa- Kroll's Realencyclopddie, col. 1255 et seq. It appears to him "undeniable" that mother-kin is to be found in Greece, although he admits that it is not an Aryan, or, as I would prefer to say, a Wiro custom. But it may have been

61 (2nd ed., i886).

243


adopted by the Greeks from the pre-Hellenic peoples; to

say that mother-right always gives place to father-right, never the other way about, is begging the question. Perhaps so, but until evidence is produced to show that father-

right has, sometime and somewhere, given place to mother-

right, is it not begging the question to say that it may have done so in Greece ?

For the Lokrians, he cites first their traditional kinship with the Leleges, an Asiatic and therefore perhaps a matrilineal people. This, even if Lelegian mother-right were

absolutely certain, proves little for their Lokrian kinsfolk, for two races may be very closely related and yet one be

patrilineal, the other matrilineal. He mentions of course the Hundred Houses, but produces

no new evidence concerning them, merely the assertion that " die Abstammung . . . miitterlichseits gerechnet wird" (col. 1257), which our authorities do not say. Still less is it " past denying" (unleugbar) that the Lokrians of Greece proper ever reckoned so.

His further proofs are the mutilated inscription from the West Lokrian city of Amphissa, already considered, and also the great prominence of women in Lokrian mythology and literature; in particular, the lost poem known as the

'Ho&al, which celebrates, one after another, the famous women of old days, probably originated among them.62 From this it would seem to follow that women were prominent among the Lokrians, as prominent as among the

patrilineal Romans of Cicero's day, the patrilineal Euro-

peans in the time of the Troubadours, or, more to the

point, the patrilineal Homeric Greeks, of whose ways the rather backward Lokrians may well have retained this and other features.

H. J. ROSE.

62 I grant this for the sake of argument only

roserose, h.j., prehistoric greece and mother right

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