Eros the Child Author(s): A. D. Nock Source: The Classical Review, Vol. 38, No. 7/8 (Nov. - Dec.

, 1924), pp. 152-155 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/700806 Accessed: 18/12/2008 05:49
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THE CLASSICAL REVIEW

Theselinesrepresent the trueposition of affairs. Augustus was the firstman in the empire, Agrippa the second; and next to them stood Tiberius, aged twenty-two,son of Livia, stepson of Augustus,son-in-lawof Agrippa,and well Etted by natureand educationto hold such a position. He had at this time no rival for the succession: Marcellushaddied threeyearsbefore, while GaiusCaesar andLuciusCaesar, grandsons of Augustusand sons of Agrippa and Julia, were not yet born. Gaius, indeed,was bornin this same year, zo, but the exact date is unknown. Bornin 42 B.C., threeweeksafterthe battle of Philippi, Tiberius made his Erst public appearanceat the tender age of nine, when he pronounced the funeraloration over his father in the forum. In August of 29 B.C., being then twelve years old, he took part in the triumphfor Actium,riding on the left side of Augustus' chariot, while Marcellusrode on the right. At the time of those ceremonieshe still wore the b?sllaand psaetexta of childhood. The firstpublicappearance of his manhood is thus described by Suetonius (Tiberigs 8):

argument thereput forward to drawan inference here-viz. thatthe firstspeech deliveredby Tiberius in a law court wasin defence of KingArchelaus. The date when he put on the toga vxrilis is not recorded, but it is probabIe that he delivered the speech on the sameday. We knowfromDio (LVII. I7) that the charges againstArchelaus werebrought by his own subjects. Augustus was a puristin style,and we maybe surethat the young orator's compositionwas, like a later workof a similarnature,a ' very prettypiece of Latinity.' Anytrial of an independent princeat Romemust have excited interest; but this trial, in which Augustus himself acted as judge and Tiberiusmadethe firstpublicappearance of his manhood, must have been an event of the first importance fromthe social anddynastic point of view; and any allusionin contemporary, or nearly contemporary, literatureto 'the king of the Cappadocians' mustat once have recalledthe circumstances to the mindsof Roman readers. It seems thereforea reasonableinferencethat Horacehererefersto some incident familiarto his readers which Ciuiliumoiciorum rudimentis, regem Arche- was concernedin some way with that trial. The actual incident laum, Trallianos, et Thessalos, uaria quosque memorable de causa, Augusto cognoscente, defendit. it is impossibleto determine. But if 'Tiberius began his public life by speaking we supposethat Archelausbroughta in court in defence of three separate defendants, King Archelaus, the people of Tralles, the great train of attendantswith him to in payThessalians: Augustus sat to hear each of the Rome, and yet found difficulty trials.' ing the bills of the tradesmen who supIn a previous paper(Jogrnal of Phxlo^ plied him during his residencethere, logy XXXIII., pp. I66 f.) I have ex- this would account very well for the amined the method of composition sneer: observed,and very strictly observed, Mancipiis locuples eget aeris Cappadocum rex. J. D. DUFF. by Suetonius; and I shall use the
EROS THE CHILD.
I N a papyrusfragmentof a Greek novel a certainMetiochos ridiculesthe popular conceptionof Eros as a child with wings,a bow, and a torch.l The ridicule is unoriginal ;2 its insertion hereis an earlyexample of the diversifying of a storyby the introduction of a

rhetoricaldeves,an expedientdear to AchillesTatius.3 But we may well ask ourselvesthe

3 The use of this subjectas a schoolexercise is directly attested by Quintilian,Inst. Orat. II. 4. 26. A decrls was a discussionof some general topic as sL Rya rsov (Hermog.prog. i., 1 p. BeroS.7927 (saec. ii. A.D.); a revised p. 50, NValz;Theon, i., p. 242 fl ROstext is given by B. Lavagnini, EroZicoram reveras lrofos (Theon, p. 246),st 7rpOYOOV(JL graecorus fragsnenZa paCiyrscea, p. 2 I -. rov KOt(THOV (p. 2 50), c1 faFpos8ns o KoaHos 2 C7. Eubulus ap. Athenae. 562 C. (Hermogenes, p. 52).
MTalz)>
fOa

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question put by Metiochos (1. I3): based on such conceptions as that >55 C.5 how is it that Eros has never grown expressed by Plato, Phaedrus is up ? Why does he remainfor ever a His passionforthe OkeanidRhodope XXXII. boy? The type is in fact old: ,upeyos peculiarto Nonnos,Dtonysiaka art9r/ 52. Bre need not lingeroverthe theory e7r' 7raivoSe aJcp' 8' "Epzs ota qrabs prosays Alcman(fr. 38 Bergk4). that he is the lover of Aphrodite, za,Satvzu, and as poundedby Jules Sourcy,EtgdesHtsIt is frequentin vase-painting, p. 488.) early as the ISfthcentury on coins. toriqxes, the representa- Nor,again,is he parallelto the infant By its sideexists at lSrst byLeukothea whoseeducation tion of Eros as an ephebus. But it DionysosZ Zagreus, inart,ortothe infant that to the Greeks is frequent must be remembered "Epv and spzs were indistinguishable, whom the Titans slew when he was and the god's name clearly covers di- innocentlygazing in a mirror. Moreasthecosmogonical over we cannot, I think, explain him versedivinenatures, certainly Eros of the Orphics,the Priapus-like as due to DorianKnabenliebe; god of Thespiae,2just as it was sus- in Crete,Thera,and Boeotia the gods with that wereother.6 Eros ceptible of multiplication:hence arise associated the duality of Eros and Anteros,the is never broughtinto similarrelations pluralityof Erotes,and the companion with any deity a fact which is surely signiEcantin view of the degradation SguresHimerosand Pothos. With the other types of Eros we are of the pre-DorianHyakinthos to be not here concerned. Our task is to Apollo'sminion. offer some explanationof his eternal We must look ratherto the practice to be connected of Greekritual and to the older ideas boyhood. He is hardly with the Cretandivine child, such as which lie behind it. The child had their Zeus, or Hyakinthos,or Erich- considerable importance in religious view thonios. The Cretandivine child has acts becauseof the quasi-magical a mother,and his birth and deathare of the efficacy of chastity.7 In parcentralpointsin the legend: tnoughhe ticular,the child of livingparents(raFs rites, in harvest wasrequired lives but a year,he growsup so rapidly aU+^8aXqys) in the cutting that he takesa consort.3 Now, though in Ephesianpriesthoods, Eros is commonlyregardedas Aphro- of the wreathfor the Olympicvictor.8 he wouldobviously dite's son, the traditionspeakswith an As beinga,+zSaBrys voice,andcontainsno popular be lucky (and the ancients had a very uncertain story of his birth: his death appears concrete conceptiorlof personal luck, nowheresave on a white Attic lekythos as is illustratedby Cicero,De i"@erto ? 47), he would be suited at Cassel,wherehe has beenassimilated Cn.Pompeii, to Adonis and is representedas an for sympatheticmagic, and he would ephebos;4 and in the form in which 5 Cf.O. Waser,P. W. VI. 534. Reitzenstein's we are consideringhim he is always suggestion of an Egyptianoriginof the myth is too young to have a consort. (His purelyhypothetical; the frequency furthermore, associationwith Psyche in the minor of its earlyrepresentations in Asia Minorand againstthe theory. arts from the fourth centuryonwards the Pontusmilitatesstrongly LX.SV.[I9I9], p. I43-; Cg is probably in origin allegorical and (So Forster,PhiZo/.

the bronzesfromAmisus[earlyfourthcentury] and Smyrnapublishedby Th. Wiegand,24raI., ZoZzan 1 Cf A. Furtwangler, K/ezne Schwrzffen, I 923, p. 405-,PlateXI I., XII I. 3.) Studzes, p. 45; H. Riggauer, ZeitscAriffffir Asgwismatik, 6 Cg E. Bethe, Rhein. Mus. LXII. (I 907), VIII. (I88r), p. 72 (Eryx, Segesta, Syracuse). 602 to Timaeusap. Athenae. p. 449. According 9 Pausanias IX. 27. I; cf Kaibel, GoZtirg. the practice camefromCrete. Atachr. I90I, p. 506-. im Xeuschheit E. Fehrle,Die kuStiscAe 7 C 3 Pending the appearanceof Nilsson'sAberystVI.), p. 54-, and for ex(R.G.TZ.Z. AZterfuzz wyth lectures (summarised by H. J. Rose, Year's amplesof the belief fromancientmagicaltexts I922-3, p. 45-) cf; Glotz, La CzviZisaZzon A. Abt. Dze ApoZogie Til'ork, (R.G.Z.TZ. des ApuZeius GriechischEgdenne, I923, p. 292. For Zeus' annual birth IV. 2), p. 37, I63, I67; Th. Hopfner, I. (Wessely, OMJenbarungszauber, c! Antoninus Liberalis, ch. I9- for illustrations tzgyptischer of a similar miraculous growing-up of a baby Studien XXI., I92I), p. 235-; Griffith-Thomp( X904),p. 2 I, 5 I y of AlfZicCozzedy, son, DezoZzc PaQyrus MagzcaS cg F. M. Cornford, Ehe Orz,^,^ioz
p. 62-. LX. (I90I), 4 Boehlau, PhiZoS.
p. 32I-.
I59, I65. 8 CE

J. G. Frazer,G.B3.VI., p. 236-.

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THE CLASSICAL REVIEW Greekrites,essentialin marriage ceremonial, as he is essential in various initiations and solemn religious acts. It was an essentialprincipleof much Greek religiouspractice that Spcopezoa should correspond with and reproduce divine doings and sufferings.8 May it not then be reasonableto conjecture that Eros is a boyfor everas the divine counterpart of the qrass a,+ldcw\S in human marriage and human ritual? So he is represented in art as present at the unionof Ares and Aphrodite, or of humanlovers;9on a Roman sardonyx now at Boston depictingthe marriage of Eros and Psyche an Eros leadsthe way with a torch,anotheruncoversthe couch,anotherbearsthe BbKror.l? But there is clearerevidenceeven than this for Eros' character. In the solemn ritualll ode closingthe Birdsof Aristophaneswe read(I738-):

have been safeguardedfrom dangers threatening the young. Very small childrencould thus servethe gods; we know of two seven-year-old priests of Oionysosin Italy.l Such priesthoods commonly terminated at puberty.2 If childrenthus ministeredin initiations,they ministered in marriages also. How completely marriage and initiation wereon a footing has been set forthby Mr.Lawson in his ModernGreekFolklore and AncientGreekReligion, p. 590;3
Up.'4 SE+V7OV Kagops XVpOp

a seXern may well be, as Miss Harrison has urged,' a rite of growing The mystic formula a,uelvozo (Demosth. XVIII. 259)was at marriages uttered by a 7raFs a+laXr}S (Paroemiographz graeci, I ., p. 82). Here Romancustomwas as Greek; two boys patrfrniet enatrimi led the procession, boys of the same sort attended the Arval Brothers, boys and girls thus qualiISed sang the solemnode at Luds o 8' &/l0tSaSi1s''Epxs Saecxlares, which commemoratedthe XPU6rTepOs 7)vtas J@vve gra\vr6vous endingof a periodof the cityrslife and ZXvAs wdpo%os &yxv the expiationof all pollutionsincurred TXS 8 ' eIdayovos "Hpas. therein. New light has been thrown on this At the heavenlywedding Eros iS the a,u+zSakx7s. rdle of the child in marriage by a srezFS Of the divinecounterpart 12of the boy papyrusfragment of the Aitia of Kallimachos, telling the story of Akontios as sacred minister there is perhaps and Kydippe. Kydippe'sparents had 8 Stephanus, Byz. s.v."Aypan, describes the betrothed her to a Naxian, and the Lesser Mysteries as pIllrRfsarcov frept rov /vtowcov; weddingwas aboutto take place. Here Firmicus Maternus, De err. prof rel., ch. vi. (p. I6. 2I, Ziegler), speaks of the Cretans as P. OXY. IOII commences:
wap@dvoS euvdaaro Tg@ytOM US dd\eve vpovvy?ov vrvov lauaaL dpSEVC TXV ra\rv raat ?vv ay0sda\e.
Xotv Kat

' omnia per ordinem facientes quae puer mortuus aut fecit aut passus est ' (in their commemoration of the slaying of the infant Zeus); every year in Cyprus a youth simulated Ariadne's of childbirth ( Paeon Amathusius ap. That is to say, a Naxian maidenhad pangs Plut. Thes. 20); mumming in Dionysiac cults to sleepwith a puver tatrisnus et matrimXus is familiar (cf. Macchioro, Zagre?ws, p. 24). On the night before her marriage.6 This the principlecJIUsener's brilliant paper, Geilzge is a practicerooted in very old socio- Handing ( reprinted KEeine Schriften, IV., p. 42^-). logicalconcept ions.7 9 Pfuhl, MaZerei ?nd Zeichnvng der Griechen, A male child is here, as in other III., Abb. 688 (cf; II., p. 772); Pfuhl, III., Abb. 676 (cf. II., p. 837). 10 Furtwangler, Antike Gernonen, Taf: LVII. 1 I. G. X IV. I 449, I 462. 2 Cf. Fehrle, of.cit., p. I6I-. I I (= Lippold, Gem?nen, XXX. 5). For the LKVOVx Ct Paroeon. 3 For the idea in the mystery religions cf. gr. I., p. 82. 11 Aristophanes may well have in mind the Dieterich, Eine MiZhrasSit24rgie, p. 12I-. Hieros Gamos of Zeus Basileus and Hera 4 CZass. Rev. XXVIII. (I9I4), p. 36-. 5 For their significance cf. Usener, KEeine Basileia at Argos (A. B. Cook, Ridgeway Schriften, IV., p. I I6-. Essays, p. qI3-)6 A. E. Housman, CZass.Quart. IV. (I9IO), 12 For this correspondence we may note that p. II5. the members of a Philadelphian society of Eros7 Cf. D. R. Situart,CZass.Phi1toS. worshippers called themselves tEpzres (KeilVI. (I9II), p. 3o2-, and for another view, Bonner, ibid., Von Premerstein, D^ri/terReisebericht [Wien. p. 402-; also Samter's judicious summing up, Denkschr. LVII. i.), p. 22 n. Ig, Albb.II), jUSt Ne24eJahrb. XXXV.(I9IS), p. go . Cf: J. Roscoe, as Bacchus' adorers called themselves ,SaKxoF Zhe BanyankoZe, p. I32, for a further parallel. (and c/; Usener, Go!ternanen, p. 3 58- ).
KO0pz

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descraption,Paz4sanias, V*,p. I36-; for the vase, H. Winnefeld, A/h. MiZZh. XIII. (I888) ttZf. iX. (reproduced in Roscher,II., p. 2538, Abb. 3; Pfuhl, op. cit., III., Abb. 6I3), and 0. Kern's discussion, Hermes, XX5J. (I890), p. 3-. In view of the admittedly caricaturist intention of the Mitos, Krateia, Pratolaos group of figures it may perhaps be suggested that the act of the IIAIE: is a parody of a drasvingof water for one of the purifications so common in the cult. 2 Macrob. 5at. III. 8. 67 quoted with other texts by 0. Kern, P. W. X. I458. 3 X. I5, p. 470. For the plural cg the designation of the Kabeiro; as AvczKreD Xral8es at Amphissa (Pausan. X. 38 7).

another Greek example, the IIAIS, parallel to the infant Dionysos, and who is the youngeror youngestof the Dionysiacinfluencein the Thebancult mysterious Kabeiroi. On a vase found may be regardedas certain; but there in the Kabeirion at Thebes he is repre- is no evidence for his growing up or sented as drawingwine in an oinochoe being slain, and he may surely be refrom a kraterfor the older Kabeiros, garded as a clear type of the divine who is reclining and looks very like boy-minister in heaven. Dionysos the 7rons is clearly a child, Both Eros, then, and the Cabiric not an adolescent,as is furtherillus- IIAIS or Kadmilosmay be considered trated by the offerings of toys madeto as the expressionin terms of deity of him.l To this IIAIS corresponds the the sacralfunctionsof boyhood.4 SamothracianKadmilos,whose name A. D. NOCK. was interpreted as meaning tnintster The AO*K\rRFrFOS fraLs worshipped at Ladon deorum.2 Strabo classes together the in 4 Thelpusa was given the epithet because of Kouretes, Daktyloi, and Kabeiroi as the story of his birth (Pausan. VIII. 25 II; Sat,uores 71 qrpOqrO\Ol 06Z^,8 Kern cf. Kaibel, E5igr. gr., 80sa); 7razsis not the (Orphexs, p 5S-) treats this IIAIS as equivalentof FraFBorp6fos, pace Maass, htermes Xxv. (I890) p. 4?S. Hera was worshipped as 7rass because she presided over each stage of t For the Kabeirion cg.J. G. Frazer's brief

woman's life as 7rals,reXeLaS Xw7pa (so FarnellJ Culfs, I., p.tI90). SO the child Artemis, adored by the children in an Ostian painting figured and discussed by Dieterich in his Sommertag, is not parallel to Eros * she is rather an instance of the way in which a worsbipper assimilated a deity to himself, for which I may be allowed to refer to my forthcoming paper in the Journal of ZelEenicStudies. sNor are we here concerned with the princesses in Egypt who died in onfancy and were worshipped as baby goddesses (Spiegelberg, Archiv fur ReEig7-onswissenschaft, XXI,, P. 228), or with the baby sun there worshipped at the winter solstice (Macrob.
Sat . 18. I0).

DE TALENTO PLAVTINO. THE line eugepae ! Thalem {alenfo non tions of this verseJ I supposeit to be emamMilesium (Catt.274) has worried sound, and the meaning to be, sI me ever since I first read it; and I find wouldn't give threepencefor Thales.' no consolation either in the suggestion That is, I take it that by talentum of Ussing ad Zoc., that a talent would be Plautus means the Sicilian or South a very small price for so super-excellent Italiarltalent worth half a denanus to a slave, or in the sparkling translation six denarEi; see the loci GlMssicis Festus, of Professor Nixon (Loeb edition)> ' I p. 492 Lindsay (359 Muller), Arist. wouldnt buy Milesian Thales at a ap. Pollux IX. 87 (=frag. 547 Rose), thousand thalers.' To express a similar Suidas s.u. vaBarrov, and for modern of its small value (it was feeling in English, and in every other explanations language with which I am acquainted, originally a talent weight of copper, including all other passages in Latin then an equivalent in coined silver, much debasedin value)see which I can think of, one does not afterwards name a large sum, even if it be ridicu- Lenormant in Daremberg-SaglioS art. lously below the market value of the 'Litra,' p I274 sqq.; Lehmann-Haupt article, but a small one; a penny, not in Pauly-Wissowa,Supplem. III. col. a hundred pounds, although we know 603; and Viedebantt, Antike Gewichtsiss that the thing we are speaking of has xormen,p. I44. This interpretation fromthe use of recently changed hands for a thousand. I think,a fairdeduction I do not propose, however, to add the wordtalentumin Plalltusgenerally. another to the fairly numerous emendaIt is not easy in an author as yet