The Function of Alternatives in Early Greek Tradition and the Ancient Idea of Matriarchy WOMENINCHARGE:THEFUNCTIONOFALTERNATIVES INEARLYGREEKTRADITIONANDTHEANCIENTIDEA OFMATRIARCHY By SimonPembroke Just over a century ago, a book appeared inBasle revealing totheworld a stage ofevolution through whichallmankindhad passed andofwhich nothing hadbeenknownuntilthen:Das Mutterrecht,byJ. J. Bachofen. Matriarchy, as the title came to be translated, was not a simple phenomenon. Itwasanentire epoch, dominatedand virtually contained by a feminine, material principle, to which a whole series of cosmic and terrestrial representa- tions necessarilycorresponded, andwhichthemore spiritualperiod of masculine ascendancy whichsucceeded ithadto combat for every step inits ownadvance. Ata less metaphysical level,matriarchy assumed one quitespecific form. Itwas generally assumed atthetimethathuman society had developed out of the patriarchal family, as it did in the Old Testament. Bachofen, however, drawing his evidence almost exclusively from classical antiquity, succeeded in demonstrating the existence of a form of family organization where the father wasnottheheadofthehouseholdandinwhichdescent wastraced onthe female side, not the male one; and he put forward the theory that the paternal family had everywhere been preceded by a family of whichthemother was thehead.The controversy whichfollowed gave anew subject-matter to anthropology. Families of a similar type were discovered in existing societies, andfor several decadestheclassification ofthese discoveries tookachrono- logical form, backed in each case by a hypothetical system of evolution which led up tothe family ofmodernindustrial Europe and thereby enabledthe various discoveriesto be dated to successive phases in the prehistory of this family. Fewofthese systems havesurvived tothe present day. Modernanthro- pology is scrupulous in distinguishing betweenthetwo phenomena which Bachofen saw as one, the tracing of descent through women, on the one hand, and the power or influence of women on the other; and of these the second is by nomeans necessarily correlated withthe first, besides being a great deal hardertolocate objectively. Itisno longer believedthatthe tracing of descent through womenwasever universal, orthatitis essentially anolder phenomenon thanthatwhichistraced through males.Above all, itisno longer thought that the factors governing social organization are so simple, or so stable, thattheentire history ofthe species canbereconstructed by in- ference; and inference, in these theories, provided not only mortar, but bricks. Antiquity,however, remains a separate problem. Whatever is thought of themethods of Bachofen, the sheer quantity of evidence he couldassemble is impressiveenough. Itcovereda periodextending fromHomertothe Gnostics; and this evidence cannot simply be forgotten along with his theories. Classicalstudieshaveinfacttakentwo separate directionsinthe present century, and the real problem has been by-passed on either side.Onthe one hand, the theory of matriarchy isstill beingpromulgated, but onlyby the followers of Engels, who combined the findings of Bachofen with his own ideas I 2 SIMON PEMBROKE astothe origin of privateproperty; andtheworkofhissuccessors today, amalgamating as itdoes phenomena of totally different kinds and reducing themallintomaterialfora history ofsocial organization whoseoutlineis known in advance, cannot be described as a contribution to knowledge. The phenomenological side of the problem, on the other hand, and the evidence of mythology and religion, are now largely the province of isolated studies deriving from analyticalpsychology and broadly unconcerned with questions ofhis- torical contextand origin. But themain body of classical studies has aban- doned not only the idea of matriarchy but the very extensive range of problems connected with it, and these problems have not ceased to exist.A good many of the connexions which were made inthe last century are unacceptable, but explicit distinctions must beset outinorder tomake itclear why this is so. Thefirst thing tobeestablished is how antiquity itself saw the problem and howclose itcame to making a category outof matriarchy. There is no lack of evidence, andthis needs tobe organized within specific traditions and set against ahistorical background before its significance canbeassessed.The present study is intended as a preliminary investigation of this material, and it concentrates, forthe main, ononeareaforwhichtheGreektraditionis particularly strong yet canatthesametimebecontrolled byindependent evidence.*A strictlygeographicalbasis,however, isnot altogether satis- factory, andtheassessment of this tradition involves an attempt todefine its place inancient ethnology as a whole, torelate ethnology, in turn, toGreek reconstructionsof their own past, and since it is not certain, in either case, how far the simplest categories, suchas past and present, Greek and non-Greek, are effectively operative, to establish a method of confronting this uncertainty inarchaic tradition of all kinds. I About the middle of the sixth century B.c., when Cyrus had completed the conquest of Lydia and was moving on to Assyria, the Persian general Harpagos was given the task of subduing the South-West coast of Asia Minor. Herodotus, recording the fact,gives abrief survey ofitsinhabitants-theCarians, Caunians and Lycians. Hehas most to say about the last of them. Their customs are partly Cretan, partly Carian. They have, however, one singular custom in which they differ from every other nation in the world: naming themselves by their mothers, not their fathers.Ask a Lycian who he is and heanswers bygiving his own name, thatof hismother andso oninthefemale line. Moreover, ifafree womanmarries a slave, their children are full citizens; butifafree manmarries a foreign woman, or liveswitha concubine, even though heisthefirst person inthe State, thechildren forfeit all the rights of citizenship.1 Ashort passage-Herodotushardly mentionsthe Lyciansagain-but one whichhas beendecisive intheformation of modern anthropology. In i86o * TheGreekcolonyofLocriEpizephyriianditsfoundationwillbeexaminedina separate article. 1 Hdt.I,173. THEANCIENTIDEAOFMATRIARCHY 3 Lewis H. Morgan inaugurated a massive survey of kinship systems throughout the world, an undertaking to whichhe hadbeen brought by his study of the American Iroquois, the emphasis which they laidondescent through the mother, andthe peculiar terms inwhich they described andaddressed one another.Ancient Greece, inthis survey, wasoneofthesocietieswhose terminology wasassembled byMorganhimself; buthedidnot regard itas verysignificant. Itadded little, inhis opinion, towhatwas already known from other Indo-European societies, and the stage which these represented in Man's progress from savagery to civilization was well advanced.The work of Bachofen,however, whichmadeHerodotuson Lycia its starting-point, persuaded him otherwise; andhe admitted, inhisnext book, that'descent was anciently in the female line in the Grecian and Latin gentes'.2Through- outthe controversy which followed, thecase of Lyciaepitomized this view. Descentinthefemale line, itwas believed, wasanolder phenomenon than descent throughmales; societiesofthevarious types encounteredoutside Europe hadalsoexisted in antiquity; andthe history ofmankind couldbe reconstructed simply by getting these societies inthe proper order. Morgan's Iroquois,however, had already been investigatedby a Jesuitmissionary, morethana centurybefore;andtheconnexionwhichhehadmadewith Lycia was of a different kind. Quelques cofitumes caractdristiques des Peuples dela Lycie, compardes aveccellesdes Iroquois &des Hurons,m'avoientd'abord persuadd que je ne m'dcarterois pas delaverit6enlesfaisantdescendre lesunsdes autres; et jecroyois avoir trouv6 dans Hdrodote... de quoi assurer mes conjectures. For Lafitau, in fact, the Iroquois werethe Lycians, driven from theancient world by achainreaction whichstarted withtheHebrew expulsion ofthe Canaanites.3 Inthetraditions withwhichthe presentstudy is concerned, thissame passage from Herodotus occupies a unique position, and not simply by being thefirst such statement tosurvive.The point is rather that itconstitutes an intersection between traditions of a different kind; andas this assertion must beestablished in detail, or not at all, it will first be necessary to examineone ofthe headings under whichHerodotus presents thecustoms of a people-a group ofcustoms whichhe calls,straightforwardly enough,'marriage and intercourse'. There are fourteen passages of this kind, if we discount three passing men- tions; and for the present they can be discounted, since they make no pretence 2 AncientSociety,NewYork 1877,p.343; cf. SystemsofConsanguinity and Affnity of the Human Family, Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,xvii,no. 218,Washington 1871, pp.29-31. That Morgan wasfamiliar with Herodotus's description of Lycia before reading Bachofeniscertainfromhis'Laws ofDescentofthe Iroquois', Proceedingsof the American Association for theAdvancement of Science, xi,1858,132-48,p.145; buthe didnotattachthesame importance toitat thistime,andin League of the Iroquois, Rochester 1851, pp.86-87,explained matri- liny in functional terms. 3J.Lafitau, Maturs des sauvagesamericains, compare'es auxmaursdes premiers temps, i, Paris I724, PP. 69, 89-92. 4 SIMONPEMBROKE ata completedescription ofthe society's workings orofhow marriage was organized withinit.Thustheinformationthat girls in Lydia earntheir dowries byprostitution is given notfor itsown sake, butto explain howa schemeofa quite different kind, the building ofa particulartomb, was financed.4 Evenin concentrating onthesefourteen passages, however, we will not get a different custom for each society. In fact it is very nearly true to say thatwiththe exception oftheAsiatic Empires, Herodotus produces nothing but variations ona single theme, so the exception may be considered first. For Herodotus there are three continents-Europe, Asia and Libya; and despite a remarkable attempt to liberate himself from this position and show how arbitrary thenames were,5 thefirst two, at least, remain powerful categories of thoughtthroughout hiswork.Asiastands for slavery, Darius andXerxesforthe attempt toextenditinto Europe.Something ofthese categories canbefelt inthe background whenHerodotus comes todescribe thetreatment ofwomeninPersia and Babylon. Forthe tendency ofthese descriptions, whichcan to some extent be isolated from their factual content, for whichthere is independent evidence, is to represent the highest condition towhichawomancan aspire as inferior tothatof afree womaninGreece. A Persian,according to Herodotus, notcontentwith any numberofcon- cubines, could lawfully bemarriedto any numberofwivesaswell."Is thistobebelieved?AchaemenidPersia hasleftnocodeoflawstomatch those of its predecessors; butthe practice revealed by cuneiform texts, from theirSumerian beginnings downtothelatest Babylonianperiod, is wholly consistent.Onewomanis distinguished as dam, wife-theSumerian word is itselfused ideographicallybyAssyrians, Babylonians andHittitesalike7- from every otherstatusofwomenamancouldlive with, andthereisno reason tothink thatPersia was an exception. What Herodotus is saying, therefore, could almost be rephrased as follows: whatthePersians call marriage is infact concubinage. Thesame tendency can beseen inhis statement thatat least once ina lifetime, every woman in Babylon-notjust a particular classof them,though thisiswhatthe Babylonian texts indicates--has to undergoprostitution ina temple;9 or 4 Hdt. I,93,4; cf. below, nn.6and 67. 5 Hdt. 4,45. 6Hdt.I,I35. The language is emphatic, yOptouolcxazro U otcrOav7on&phEv xoupLOtac yuva'ix, unlike e.g.5,5. No particular em- phasis is given toThracian polygamy: at 5,5 itis only mentioned to explain a funeral custom, at 5,I6, 2inconnexionwithhouse- construction. SCf.R.Labat,Manuel d'epigraphie ak- kadienne,3 Paris I959,p.231, no. 557; G.R. Driverand J. C.Miles,Kt.,The Babylonian Laws, ii,Oxford 1955, PP. 46b,57;340 col. iii, I6ff.; J. Friedrich, Diehethitische Gesetze, Leiden 1959,p.140, andforPersiaseethe distinction made in Dinon, FGrHist 690F27 Athen. 13,3, P. 556B. 8 Thevariousclassesofprostitutesin Babylon and Assyria are distinguished inE. Ebeling,Liebeszauber im Alten Orient,Leipzig 1925, P- 5, andB.Meissner, Babylonien und Assyrien,ii,Heidelberg1925,pp.68-71, cf. 435-6. Hierodulesofacertainrankwere permitted not only to marry but to veil them- selves when they did so, whereas the Assyrian Laws prescribe heavy penalties for any street prostitute(harimtu) whoveiledherself under anycircumstances,DriverandMiles, The AssyrianLaws, Oxford 1935, PP. 126-34,406- 411 (??40-4I). Thusthe tendency ofState controlwasnottolowerthestatusoffree womenbuttoraisethatofthe prostitution which itsanctioned. 9 Hdt. I, I99. THEANCIENTIDEAOFMATRIARCHY 5 again, more clearly still, when he says that the Babylonians sell their daughters- as wives, not concubines; this time the distinction is made explicit-by annual public auction.10Inthiscasethere isamass ofevidencefrom Babylon to prove that they did nothing of the kind; but itcan almost be shown from the text of Herodotus himself.When Cyrus received a message from the Spartans ordering him notto interfere with any Greek city, he expressed his contempt for them by saying 'Ihavenever yet beenafraid of any men whohaveaset place in the middle of their city where they come together to cheat each other andforswear themselves'; and Herodotus,havingput thewordsintohis mouth, goes on to explain that unlike the Greeks, who buy and sell in market- places, thePersians donotconductbusiness inthis way andinfactdonot have such things as market-places at all.1A century of excavations has shown thatthis is perfectly true, for Persia and Babylon alike; and the fact has far- reaching implications for our understanding of their economies, whichis still very far from complete.12 Yet marriage in Babylon, as Herodotus describes it, does seem to require a market-place. Even so, he cannot bring himself to set thescenein one; hehasthe girls rather vaguely 'collected together inone place'instead.13 Onhisown showing, theinstitutions neededtomakethe practice feasible were Greek. Herodotus's account of marriage in Asia, then, shows a consistent tendency to exaggerate the subjection of women; andthe Lydians are no exceptions, since Strabo, the writer to whom our knowledge of prostitution in this country is chieflydue, while admitting thatthehierodules ofAkisilene were by no means alldrawn from thelower classes, andthata girl whohadserved her timeinthis temple was not thoughtany theless eligible attheendof it-a stateof things whichdoesmuchto alignLydia with Babylon-explicitly refuses to go so far asHerodotus and represent every womanin Lydia as a prostitute.4 Itisnotthe subjection of women,however, thatcomes tothefore once Herodotus isoffAsiatic ground. The peoples in question all belong tothe more or less remote areas of Libya and Northern Europe; and what he has to say about them centres-withone exception, which will be considered later- on two things. Either they have intercoursein public, or they are systematically promiscuous. Bothofthese apply tothe Massagetai, whoalso practise monogamy; it is one another's wives with whom they are promiscuous.'5 The Nasamones of Libya are polygamous, as wellas promiscuous, althoughthey do not go in for the same kind of publicity and when having intercourse make the fact known less directly, by leaving a stick outside the woman's house.At a wedding, the bride is had by allthe guests; hencethe wedding-presents.'" 10 Hdt. I, I96. 11 Hdt. I,153. 12 Cf.K. Polanyi andConrad Arensberg, Tradeand Marketin theEarlyEmpires,Glencoe (Illinois)1957. 13 ES V Xeptov, Hdt. I,196,I. 14 Str. I I, 14, 16,p.532,cf.12,3,36, p. 559, and for Corinth 8,6,20,p.378. A very similaraccountwas given toatravellerin Madagascar early inthenineteenth century by a Hova prince. 'Chez nous, ajouta-t-il, la prostitution est encouragfe, honoree m~me, etlesfillesdes premieres famillesdu pays fontce que nous appelons karamou (marchC) deleurs charmes,etn'ontaucunehontede vendre leurs faveurs au premier venu',B.-F. Legu~vel de Lacombe,Voyage & Madagascar et aux iles Comores,i,Paris I840, p.145. 15 Hdt. I,216,cf. I, 203. 1HIdt. 4,172. 6SIMONPEMBROKE The Agathyrsi, ontheother hand, havenoformal restrictions whatsoever; they are simply promiscuous, and this means that, in Herodotus's words, 'they arealloneanother's kindred and relatives, andneither envy norhateone another'."7 NotliketheAuseesof Libya: thesedonoteven co-habit, but simply haveintercourse like cattle.Twomonths after any child is born, the menassemble anditis assigned afather onthebasis of physical likeness.18 Finally,among their neighbours the Gindanes, thewomen put a ring round oneankle for every man they have slept with, and the woman withthe most rings is highest inthe general rating.1" Such, in outline, isHerodotus's conspectus ofthesexualbehaviourof foreigners. Thedetails may seem sparse, thedistinctions hazy, but they can by nomeans allbewritten offas pure invention. Nothing inthe wedding- ceremony of the Nasamones is essentially different in kind from those at which the guests allkissthe bride,although inourown society, thekiss neither requires a precedent, norcreates one.Asforthe Gindanes, a very similar custom, which if anything goes a stage further, was reported by Marco Polo for the Tibetan province of Caimul.In this country, he was informed, no girl could get married before she hadhadatleast twenty lovers, andcollected a token from each of them.20 In a less rigidly prescriptive form, the same attitude was already being encountered invarious parts of the world by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century travellers.UlloafoundtheQuito IndiansofSouth America not merely indifferent to, but positively suspicious of,anygirl who had failed to have liaisons by a certain age; and Des Marchais, who met with a similar phenomenon inthe KingdomofJuda,attempted tocorrelate itwith the premium that its inhabitants placed on knowing that a woman was fertile.21 The degree of emphasis varies, but the state of things described is no more than anextension of tendencies whichatsome levelexist inall societies, whether they are formally enactedor not; andthe exception isnotclassical Greece, buttheAtarantes, a people whichlaterin antiquity was represented as valuing women for the length of time they had preserved their virginity, and nothing else.22 It mightappear,therefore, thatthemost productive methodof dealing withHerodotus's descriptions isalsothe simplest andmost straightforward one:to isolate the factual content from the distortion which it has undergone, concentrating attention onthe former and treating thelatter as more or less arbitrary.Despite this, however, there is much to be said for transposing the priorities, and giving pride of place to the distortion.The distorting factor, it can be argued, is a constant, whereas in many of these cases it is impossible to 17 Hdt.4,104. 18Hdt.4,I80. 19 Hdt.4,I76. 20Col.H.Yule,Marco Polo,2,ii,London 1875, p. 35. 21 G. Juan andA.deUlloa,Voyage historique de l'Amirique miridionale, i,Leipzig- Amsterdam 1752, p. 343; Labat [J.G.], Voyage du chevalierdes Marchais en Guinie (1725- 1727), ii, Paris I730, p.222,quoted in TheodorWaitz,Anthropologie der Naturv'lker, i, Leipzig1859, p. 354; cf. e.g.Lahontan, Mimoires de l'Amirique septentrionale, The Hague1703, p. 132: 'lesfemmessont sages etleursmarisde m~me: lesfillessontfolles& les garcons fontassezsouventdesfoliesavec elles.IIleurest permis defairece qu'elles veulent:lesPWres, mdres,freres,soeurs,&c. n'ontrienArediresurleurconduite.' 22 Nic.Damasc.FGrHist 9oF Io3(u) = Stob.Flor. 4,2. THEANCIENTIDEAOFMATRIARCHY 7 becertainastothe identity ofthe peoplesinvolved, orevenwhether they really existed; andthis means thatthedistortion is themost concrete datum that can honestly be elicited from the material.Nicolas of Damascus, writing in the first century B.c., said that it was the Libyrni, not the Ausees, who used physical resemblance todetermine fatherhood; andthe Libyrni livedinthe Northof Europe, nottheSouthern extremities of Libya."23 According tothe same writer, the people whoheld women incommon and called everyone in the society theirkindred and relatives-parents,brothers, sisters andchild- ren-werethe Galactophagi, notthe Agathyrsi; the title,Milk-Drinkers, is taken from Homer.24 For Strabo, writing about thesame time, itwas the Massagetai, andeventhe Arabs, notthe Nasamones, wholeft sticks outside thehouses ofwomen they were visiting,though inthiscasehehadsimul- taneously to cope with a variant tradition that the Massagetai had no women atall.25 Scholars of the last century were inclined to treat this evidence as cumula- tive.Thecustoms weretakenattheir face value, oreven upgraded.They were regarded asevidencefor stages intheuniversalevolutionofsocial institutions; and if ancient testimony attributed the same custom to more than one people, it was concluded that the custom had genuinely been practised by two different peoples. But the form taken by these later descriptions, and the detailed similarities between their language and that of Herodotus, cannot be accounted for by co-incidence alone.26 In a large number of cases, at least, the phenomenon isduetoa process whichcanbetermed localization; andthe nature of this process is most easily illustrated by an analogy. In the Historia Animalium, it is said that during the mating-season of horses, any mares towhichstallions are deniedaccess may become impregnated by the wind instead, and Aristotle mentions the precautions which were taken in Crete to prevent this happening.27 Thestatementmustbeseeninawider setting, though it is not possible to make this a complete one.Anassociation between the windand male sexuality was not uncommon inancient Greece, and might comeoutata variety of levels.At Athens, those aboutto marry madea sacrifice toa group of divinities called theThrice Fathers, whowere also identified as thewinds.Thissacrifice was supposed to bring the couple children.28Again, there isa passage intheMithraic liturgydescribing the visionofatubewhich hangs from thedisc ofthe sun, andthis tubeis'the sourceofthe ministering wind'.29 Andincommon parlance,eggs laid by hens which had not been impregnated were called wind-eggs.30 The analogy of the farmyard, however, is not enough to explain thefurther connexionof thewindwith horses, there being nodatumto correspond tothe egg; and something ofthisconnexion might befoundat Sparta, whereahorse was 23 N1c.Damasc.FGrHist90FIo3(d),ibid. 24Nic.Damasc.FGrHist 90Fio4(3)= Stob.Flor. 3,I,200oo. 25Str. 7,3,4, PP. 296-7(Massagetai);16, 4,25,p.783(Arabs). 26 Cf.M.Rostowzew,Skythien undder Bosporus, i, Berlin 1931,pp.4-12 and 76-I04, whereoneareais fully documented. 27Arist.HA 572a 13- 28 DemonFGrHist327F2,cf.ibid. 325F6;J.andL. Robert,REG68 (I955),p. 195,no.30. 29 A. Dieterich,FineMithrasliturgie, Leipzig 1903,p.6,9f. 30 P1. Theaet. 151e;Arist.HA 559b2o; Soph. fr. 436 TGF2 Nauck. 8SIMONPEMBROKE sacrificed to the winds onMount Taygetus,31 or even in the Homeric poems: Xanthosand Balios, thedivinehorses of Achilles, werethe offspring ofthe West Wind.32 The background ofAristotle's statement,therefore, isatleast partly obscure.Inlater writers,however, the phenomenon becomesnotauniversal factof nature, buta purely local oddity. FromAristotle'shintthatthe troublewas particularly commonin Crete, wecometo Varro,Columella, Pliny and Solinus, all describing itas something which happenedregularly, but only in Lisbon-until finally, Augustine moved it back again, beyond the Cretan end of the Mediterranean, and placed it in Cappadocia.33 Biology and ethnology are not altogether distinct fields inthe tradition of antiquity. Onewriter says thattheSouthernmost inhabitants oftheworld wereanimalsofa species outwardlyindistinguishable from mankind; else- where, and with apparent seriousness, a corresponding incursion is made by the description ofa people calledthe Gorillas.34 Andthefirst conclusion to bedrawn from thehorse-wind syndrome is equally applicable tobothfields. The phenomenon reported by these various writers is not biologically possible, butthe reports themselves constitute a phenomenon of adifferent kind, and this belongs to the study of popular tradition.There are excellent reasons for attempting to analyse the phenomenon, and plotting itssuccessive localiza- tions onthe map, andit may evenbethatthese conform toa recognizable pattern, butthe pattern cannotbea biological one. Anthropology, inthis instance, is necessarily less certain of its facts than biology, and the anthropo- logist cannotassert withthe same confidence thatthere is no genuine know- ledge of foreign societies behindhismaterial.Butthe knowledgeactually possessedbyantiquity isseldom directly accessible through the literary tradition.Noone confronted witha series of fragmentary, and insome cases much-travelled, descriptions of isolated customs, can begin to reconstruct the various types of society compatible with each custom, without giving constant attention tothe place of each description inthe literary tradition whichhas preserved it.The biological equivalent of this evidence is not a fossil, but the description of a fossil; and from the very beginning of the tradition, descrip- tions of this kind are likely to owe as much to preconceptions about the nature of animals as they do to the nature of the object in question. As the tradition developed, inaccuracy, andeven plain invention, were facilitated by the fact that there was never any need to produce material evidence, as there was with thePiltdown skull. People of the type standardized by earlier writers could simply be planted onthe map, and reports of fresh anomalies assimilated to the existent categories. Thefinal description is often the same, in both cases, which makes it impossible, without independent evidence, to say which route the description has taken.The problems in an assessmentof ancient ethnology, therefore, areatleastassubstantialas any whichcouldarise fromfossil- hunters seeing purely inanimate configurations as living matter. 31Festuss.v.Octoberequus,cf.for Tarentum Hesych., s.v. &VEE ATO, i.169 no. 4886 Latte. 32 I1. 16, 149ff. 33Varro RR2, I; Colum.6,27;Plin. NH8,166; Solin. 23,43;Aug. CD 21, 5. 34 Agatharchides inDiod. 3,31,4(GGM i,p.152, ?60 Miller); Hanno ?18, GGMi, PP.13-14. THEANCIENTIDEAOFMATRIARCHY 9 Thatlocalizations of thesame kind weremade by ancient ethnologists is not open to dispute. The practice of lamenting thebirthofa child, and celebrating deceases witha general merriment, whichHerodotus records for the Trausi, is later attributed to the Kausiani, to the Krobyzi, and even to one city whoseinhabitantswere Greek.35 Evenwhenthefieldisnarrowedto sexual behaviour, theaccounts givenbyHerodotus, andthe categories which he employed, arefoundtohaveseta pattern towhich nearly alltheethno- logicalwritings oflater antiquityconformed, andthe conformity isclose enough forsuchrareinnovationsasdo appear, like incest, tostandout by contrast.36Thecombinedevidenceofthese writings, whichconstitutesa considerable bulk, was given a great dealof weight inthenineteenth century, and anthropologists ofthis period laid particularemphasis oncertainfeatures whichcouldnotbe directly corroborated by accountsof contemporary societiesandwhich provided a uniqueauthority forcurrentreconstructions ofthatstateofnaturewithwhichtheGardenofEdenhadtobe replaced. A careful assessment,therefore, of thedistancewhich lay betweenHerodotusand thesocietieshe described, is important for understanding the ethnology ofthe last century aswellasthatof antiquity; andforthisreasonthe remaining passages mustbeexaminedin greater detail. Onecustomwhich may drawimmediateattentionfrom anthropologists isthatofthe Agathyrsi, allofwhomarerelatedtooneanother.Itcould fairly be suggested thatthis description isbasedonthe classificatorysystem of kinshipwhich,just overahundred yearsago, wasfound by LewisH. Morgan to prevail ina verylarge numberofsocietiesindifferent parts ofthe world, andinwhichtermssuchas mother,father,brother,sister, sonand daughter are applied to categories of persons whoarenot physically relatedinthis way. Today itis generallyaccepted thatthesetermsdenotesocial relationships, not physical ones, and that they are more or less metaphorical in form; Morgan, however, believedthatthetermshadsurvivedfromanerawhenhuman societies were systematically promiscuous-a stateof things for whichthere is no direct evidence and which is today generally regarded as an impossibility for anysociety whichis governedby human speech. Itis quitepossible, therefore, thatcontactwitha genuineclassificatory system doesliesome- where behind Herodotus; but that his explanation of the phenomenon should anticipate that of Morgan is no coincidence, since the latter was quite certainly influenced,directly and perhapscrucially,by this description ofthe Agathyrsi.37 AndthereisnoreasontothinkthatHerodotusknewthe Agathyrsi as wellas Morgan didthe Iroquois. 35 Hdt. 5,4; seethereferencesin Jacoby onFGrHist 90FI 17 [Dummler, K1. Schr. i, 212,1], andaddHerakleid.Pol.20,FHGii, p.221, ?20o = Arist.fr.6 I, 60Rose (Locri). 36SofirstEur.Andr. 1 7off., cf. below, n. 6i.Brother-sister marriage in Egypt, which wasnotconfinedtoa governingclass,is well-attested,but only indocumentsfromthe Roman period, H.Thierfelder,Die Ge- schwisterehe imhellenistisch-riimischen Agypten, Miinster 1960,pp.90-96, andfor Caria, wheretheevidenceisrestrictedtothe ruling family, cf.W. Judeich, Kleinasiatische Studien, MarburgI892,PP.248-55. Thecaseof Persia,wherea persistent tradition repre- sentssonsas marrying their mothers,isa more complex oneandwillbestudiedelse- where. 37J. H. McIlvaine, towhom Morgan dedicatedhis magnumopus andwhomhe acknowledges as havingprovided theclueon whichhisown theory wasbased (Systems, p. io SIMONPEMBROKE Later in antiquity, systems of the same kind are encountered in a different role. They have become not survivals from an older order of things, but blue- prints for a new one.Thus in the ideal Republic of Plato, all the members of a generation are brothers and sisters to one another, children toall members ofthe previous generation, and parents toallthoseofthe succeedingone; and although Aristotle was scornful of the dilution of human affection which this scheme would involve, it was taken upagain by the Stoics.38This is not to say,however, thatthe system hadinthemeantime disappeared from ethnological reports. Nicolas of Damascus is found attributing the same type of organization totheThracian Galactophagi, centuries after Herodotus; he is explicit that the terms in question are used to denote relationships between members of age-groups, andadds thefurther information thattheGalacto- phagi livedina state of complete communism, holding not only womenbut all other property in common.39 Whatever the immediate data of Herodotus, therefore, the promiscuity with which they have been overlaid in the tradition has transferredthem to the Golden Age; and this Age, to which the end pro- ducthas belonged ever since, isnotonefrom whichhistorical facts canbe elicited. The Agathyrsi wereassured of posterity, butthesituation oftheAusees was a more precarious one.The assignation of children on the basis of physical resemblance is also reported in Arabic tradition, and the story in question has never, to my knowledge, been systematically aligned with the Herodotean one. Al-Bukhiri described four types of marriage which had existed in the Timeof Uncertainty, beforethe coming of Mohammed, andwhichthe Prophet hastened to abolish.One of these involved a number of men consorting with a single woman, apparently a prostitute, who had a flag over her door indicating that she would turn no one down.When the woman became pregnant, and a childwas born, themenwereall summoned, andanofficial physiognomist was called in to decide which of them most resembled the child.Theman in question was formally declared the father, and had no choice but to acknow- ledge the child.40 InIslamic times, physiognomists were called in only in highly exceptional circumstances, where the paternity of a child was being actively disputed; and these arose whenthemother was a slave, andhadbeensold by onemanto another recently enough for the former tobeable tocontest the paternity of the latter.41 Other sources say thatbefore Mohammed, itwas possible for a 479, n. I), wrotehimaletterin I864, part of whichis printed inCarl Resek,Lewis Henry Morgan, AmericanScholar, Chicago960,p.94, drawing hisattentionto passages fromclassi- calauthorsinwhich promiscuous societies arementioned.Prof.LeslieA.White (letter of 3.vii.65)kindly informsmethatthe omitted paragraph runsasfollows:'With respect tothe Agathyrsi Herodotus says, "They havetheirwivesin common,sothat theymay beallbrothers (kasignetoi) and being allakin,may befreefrom envy & mutualenmities."' 38P1.Rep.461B;Arist.Pol. I261 b24ff.; Zenoand Chrysippus inD.Laert. 7,131 = SVFiii. 183 no. 728 Arnim. 39 Nic.Damasc.FGrHist 90FIo4 = Stob. Flor. 3,I, 200oo. 40O. Houdas (tr.), El-Bokhdrf,iii, p. 565 = ed. Krehl, ii, p. 427; known to me from G. A. Wilken, DasMatriarchatbei den alten Arabern, LeipzigI884,pp. 25ff. 41 E.Sachau, 'Muhammedanisches Recht nachSchafiischerLehre',Lehrbiicher des Seminars fir Orientalische Sprachen zu Berlin XVIII (1897),pp.89-90; Th. Juynboll, Handbuch desIslamischen Gesetzes nachder Lehreder Schdfi'itischen Schule,Leipzig I910o, p. THEANCIENTIDEAOFMATRIARCHYII man to acknowledge, or to reject, the child of a prostitute just as he pleased;42 andwhetheral-Bukhari was exaggerating in representing paternity as com- pulsory, orwhetherhehad genuine accesstoanearlier tradition,and misunderstoodthesituationin representing thewomanasa prostitute,43 his story mustcontainsubstantialelementsof imaginative reconstruction. ThatHerodotus had heard something similar is not impossible, and the art of physiognomics is certainly mucholderthanthis.Butthe only situationin which itcanarbitrate inthis way is one where men outnumber women; and itishere thatthemost important implication of al-Bukhari's story must lie. Because if a situation of this kind were extrapolated to take in a whole society, that society wouldbe formally polyandrous;"44 andthisraisesthefurther possibility thatHerodotus deliberatelyunderplayed this aspect ofthedata with which he was confronted. Physical resemblance is an idea which occupied adefinite place in purely Greek tradition, andthis willbereturned to later. Inthe meantime,something of the same possibility may bediscerned behind thetwo remaining customs whichHerodotus describes. Promiscuity is not formally compatible with monogamy, and his account of the Massagetae cannot be dealt with on its own.But there are more details for the Nasamones, andofthese onein particular stands outwitha special clarity: the practice of leaving sticks outsidewomen'shouses.Furthermore there isnoreason why this custom should notbea genuineone; andsome- thingvery similar is reported by MarcoPolo. Throughout the province of Caindu, hewas told, menwouldallowtheir guests free access totheir own womenfolk.The guest could stay three or four days,'enjoying himself with the fellow's wife or daughter or sister, or whatsoever woman it best likes him'; and for the indication of this preference there was an established code. As long as heabides there heleaves his hator some other token hanging atthe door, toletthemaster of thehouse know thathe is still there.As long as the wretched fellow sees that token, hemust not go in.45 Hospitality ofthis kind iswellattested in manyparts ofthe world, andSir Henry Yulewasableto quote one verystriking parallel inhiseditionof MarcoPolo almost a century ago. Earlier inthe century, atraveller visiting the Hazaras of Abyssinia was told that there were parts of the country in which husbands would lend their wives to the embraces of their guests, and that 'if a 188, n. I, quoted inD.B. MacDonald,art. 'Kiyafa',Encyclopedia ofIslam,ii (1927),p. I048. 42 H.A. Schultens,MeidaniiProverbiorum Arabicorum Pars,Leiden 1795,p.50. Al- ShahrastinI's Religious and PhilosophicalSchools (p.442 Cureton -= Th.Haarbrucker (tr.),ii, Halle 1851,p.351) has a lacunaatthis point.Acknowledgment isduetoDr. A.I.Sabraforhisassistancewiththis passage. 43 Anothercaseof polyandrybeing mis- taken by aMohammedanobserverfor prostitution isnotedin Montesquieu, De L'Espritdes Lois,Book XVI,ch. 4, wherethe referenceis probably toAnciennes relations des Indes etde la Chine de deux VoyageursMahome'- tans,qui y allerent dansleneuvidme sikcle[ed. Eusbe Renaudot], Paris 1718,pp.56-58. IamindebtedtoDr.R.Walzerforthis identification (Abu Zaidal-Hasan as-Sirafi). 44 So alreadyChristophMeiners,Unter- suchungen ueber dieVerschiedenheitenderMen- schennaturen,ii,Ttibingen1813,p.26,n. 1. 45 H.Yule (ed.), Ser MarcoPolo,ii,p. 45- 12SIMONPEMBROKE husband of that part of the country finds a pair of slippers at his wife's door, he immediately withdraws'."4 Guests are not regular members of the societies they are visiting; and in this sensethe analogy isnot whollysatisfactory, since Herodotus,rightly or wrongly,represents the promiscuity oftheNasamonesasa purely internal affair.It may therefore beworth citing twocases inwhichasimilar use of tokens is confined tomembers of the same society as the women in question. There are,however, important further qualifications ineach case,although the first one, an explorer's description of the Ladrone Islands, which is again taken from Yule, was written over four hundred years ago. Intheseilandsthereisonethe strangest costumethateuerhathbin heard of or seene in all the whole world, which is, that vnto the young men there is a time limited for them to marrie in (according vnto their costume), inallwhichtime theymayfreely enterintothehouses ofsuchasare married, andbetherewiththeir wiues, without beingpunished for the same, although their proper husbands should see them: they doo carrie in their handes astaffe or rodde, andwhen they doenter intothemarried mans house they do leaue it standing at the doore, in such sort, that if any do come after they may plainly see it: which is a token that, although it be her proper husband, hecannot enter intill itbe taken away. Thewhich costume is obserued and kept with so great rigour and force, that whoso- euer is against this law, all the rest do kill him.47 As canbe seen, there are two significant restrictions inthis account.Inthe first place, access toother men's wives is confined toa particular age-group. However, there is no sign of any further restriction within this age-group, and more emphasis may be placed on the fact that the whole business applies only to a specific period of time.It cannot fairly be made to represent the everyday workings of this society, any more than the Saturnalia can be made to repre- sent those of ancient Rome; and if this period was associated with marriage, it may wellhavecomeroundwithless thanannual frequency. Thereisa distinct possibility, therefore, thatHerodotushas generalized thebehaviour sanctionedata particular festivalinto something normalandsecular-a possibility further reinforced by hisownreference to wedding-ceremonies; anda description of ancient Greece founded onsimilar evidence wouldhave beenatleast equally surprising tohis readers.This beingso, itisas wellto examine the workings of one society of whicha more detailed description has survived from antiquity and in which rights of the same kind were recognized all the year round. The people in question were the inhabitants of Arabia Felix; and the one account of this society which we possess, which was written by the geographer Strabo, in the first century B.c., claims to be based on information which had only becomeaccessible to the West inhis own lifetime.'Brothers are held in morehonourthan children,' it begins; andthemostcoherent part ofthe 46 Hon.Mountstuart Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdomof Caubuland its Depen- dencies,3ii, London I839,p.209(Yule,op. cit., p.48, n. 3). 47 Gonzalez de Mendoza,The History of the Greatand MightyKingdomof China,ii, London: HakluytSociety,I853-54,PP.253-4(Yule, loc. cit.). THEANCIENTIDEAOFMATRIARCHY 13 description whichfollowsdoes appear tohaveasits subject a formally re- gulated system of adelphic polyandry. 'All kinsmen hold property in common, but control is held by the eldest.One wife is shared by all, and when one man goes in tohave intercourse with her, he leaves a stick outside her door(all of them have to carry sticks). At night-time, however, she sleeps with the eldest of them. Consequently, everyone is the brother of everyone else... Adultery is punishedbydeath,though tobean adulterer, amanmust belong to another family.'48 Thereis only oneother attempt inclassicalsourcestodescribethework- ings ofa polyandroussociety, andthisis Julius Caesar's description ofthe ancientBritons.Here too, themeninvolvedarerelatedtoone another; and thecontrolretained by theeldesttakesamore specific form.'Wivesare sharedbetween groups oftenortwelve men,especially betweenbrothersand betweenfathersand sons; butthe offspring oftheseunionsarecountedas the childrenofthemantowhomthe girl wasfirst betrothed.'49 Onthis analogy, itseems probable thatStrabo has misinterpreted cause andeffect in calling everyone thebrotherof everyoneelse, as though the relationship werea purelymetaphoricalone; buttherearetwofurther difficulties. First, itis stated that the Arabs have intercourse with their mothers.Here the explana- tion may bethat insome cases not only brothers butalso (like the Britons of Caesar) fathers andtheir sons, couldhaveaccess tothesame woman, and thatStrabohasfailedto distinguish betweenmothers andotherwivesofa father.50 But theadditional information that women were, literally or other- wise, the sisters of their husbands, appears to be no more than a mistake; and the simplest explanation wouldbethatatsome stage, asituationinwhich women have husbands who are brothers has been transformed into one where the women'have' brothers as husbands. Itcould fairly be objected, however, that this is special pleading. Strabo claims tobe reporting from somewhere very near thehorse's mouth,yet the contradictions whichhavefoundtheir way intohisaccountcould equally wellbe due to literary tradition, and specifically, to the categories in terms of whichso many othersocieties hadbeendescribed.Brother-sister marriage wasonesuch category, intercourse betweenmotherandson another; and metaphorical brotherhood isknownto go allthe way backtoHerodotus. Furthermore, Strabo's description of this society concludes withan anecdote, whichis directly relevantto Herodotus; and although itis impossible to prove thatthe story isnotanArabian one, its sophistication is perhaps 48 Str.16,4,25,p.783. 49 CaesarBG 5,14,4-5. H. Zimmer,ZSS xv (R6m. Abt.), I894, p.224,argued that this descriptionappliesonly totheinteriores mentionedin ?2 and separated fromthe presentpassageonlyby the tattooing of omnes Britanni describedin ?3. 50 W.Robertson Smith, 'Animal Worship andAnimalTribes among theArabsandin theOld Testament',JournalofPhilology,ix, I88o, pp. 75-I00oo, suggested aconnexionwith theinheritanceoffather'swidowsattested bothintheOldTestamentandtheKoran. TheHittite Lawcode, totakeanother example,explicitlypermitted brothersto haveintercoursewitha single freewoman (fathers andsonscoulddothesamewitha prostitute),provided thatnoneofthemwas marriedto her;butintercoursebetweena manandhisbrother's wife, inthelifetimeof her husband,constitutedan offence, Friedrich,Diehethitische Gesetze, pp.84-85, ??80-8I*(a), lines 45-50. 14SIMONPEMBROKE sufficient to suggest that the distance between this society and the description whichhas reached us is greater thanStrabo admits. One exceptionally attractive woman,according tothis story, whohad fifteen husbands, found that she was inalmost incessant demand.So she had the idea of acquiring a set of sticks on her own account.Each of these closely resembled one of those carried by her various husbands, and with good timing she was able to postpone their respective visits by leaving the appropriate stick outside her owndoor.Inthe end,however, oneof her husbands was ledto suspect her of adultery, because he found a stick at the door one day when he had just left all his brothers together in the market-place; and in this way, the trick was discovered. There is very littleoutside Strabo whichcan today be said to confirm his picture of Arab society.51 The only criterion by which it can be judged is that ofitsinner coherence; andiftheincestuouselementis passedover, this coherence certainly gains a great deal from the distinction made between the eldest husband andalltheothers.Thesame distinction is made byCaesar; and although thereis again no independent evidencefromancientBritain which can corroborate this description,52 a fair number of societies have been recordedinthe presentcentury towhichasimilardistinction applies.53 Furthermoreboth descriptionsimply a patrilinealsystem, with property 51 TheMinaeaninscriptionsreferredtoin W.Robertson Smith,Kinship and Marriage in EarlyArabia,2 London 1903, p. 316, Addi- tionalNoteG,whereanindividualis designated asthe'son' (kinsman) ofmore thanone man,cannot legitimately beinter- preted inthis way, cf.M. Hartmann,Der IslamischeOrient,ii:Diearabische Frage, Leipzig1909, PP. 197-202: N.Rhodokanakis, 'Katabanische TextezurBodenwirtschaft', SBAW(phil.-hist. K1.),194,ii. Abh., 1919, p.66, n. 4; furtherreferencesin Repertoire d'tpigraphieSemitique, v,Paris 1928, no. 2999. 52 Totalpromiscuityisattributedtothe Caledoniansinclassicalsourcesfromthetime of DioCassius (70,6,12 and 76,16)onwards; butlittlemorecanbemadeofthisthanthe reportstentatively recorded by Strabothat theIrishhadintercoursein public withtheir mothersand sisters,14,4, p.201.TheIrish legend thatthePicts originally camefrom Scythia andon crossing toScotlandwere given300women,havingbrought noneof theirown (so first Bede,hist.eccl. gent.Angl. I,I, whereitissaidto explain acontem- porary custom:'easolumcondicionedare consenserunt (sc.Scotti), utubires per- veniretin dubium,magis defeminea regum prosapiaquam demasculina regem sibi eligerent:quodusque hodieconstatesse seruatum'), hasforovera century been takentoindicate matriliny, whichisnot reportedby Caesar (J. H.Todd,Leabhar Breathnach, Dublin 1848, Addit. Notes,pp. lv-lviii;J. F.McLennan, Primitive Marriage, Edinburgh1865,pp.126-30). One striking factwhichhasbeenusedto support this theory isthatinthePictish King-List, almost nofatheris succeeded by hisson,butthiscan be explained inother ways.JamesHogan, 'TheIrishLawof Kingship',Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, xl,1931-32, Section C,p.254,pointed outthattheelaborate system of agnatic rotationwhich prevailed inIrelandatthistimewouldhaveasimilar effect; andmore recently,MarjorieOgilvie Anderson, 'TheListsofthe Kings', Scottish Historical Review,28 (1949),pp.108-19 and 29 (I1950), pp.13-22, has produced evidence thatthe patronymics intheselistswerenot genuine but simplysuppliedby the copyists fromelsewhereinthelist,pp. IIO-I and p. 19. Thenatureofthe phenomenon towhich Bedeattachedhis story isnotclear,butlater sourcesusethesame story to explain different customs;thus according to theScalaChronica (W. F.Skene,Chronicles of the Pictsand Scots, Edinburgh1867,p.199), thePictsreceived theirwomenfromtheIrish, 'surecondicioun qe lourissu parlascentIrrays,qelpatois demeurtaiourde huy', andthe story is attachednottoinheritancebutto language. Itis hoped tomakeafuller study ofthis traditionelsewhere. 56 Cf.E.R.Leach,Rethinking Anthropology, London 1961,pp. I05ff, THEANCIENTIDEAOFMATRIARCHY 15 transmitted through males only; andthistoomakes perfectlygoodsense, whichismorethancanbesaidfortheBukhari tradition,sinceherethe acquisition of an heir, andhencethetransmission of property, is represented as dependingentirely onchance. Despite this, however, it is not easy to draw firm conclusions from Strabo's description and apply them to the Nasamones of Herodotus.It might perhaps besaidthat stick-carrying, like physical likeness in al-Bukhari, refers most naturally to a situation in which a number of men have access to one particular woman; andtheanecdotelends some support tothis view.Itis not easy to imagine a simpler versionofStrabo's story whichcould apply tobilateral promiscuity, since adultery wouldbe impossible ina society ofthiskind. Against this, however, must be set the custom recorded by Marco Polo, since here it is a number of women who are accessible to one particular man, and it isthe former, notthe latter, whose identity iscommunicated by thestick. Above all, evenifthe patrilineal biasmanifested by theArabs does give a certain verisimilitude to Strabo's description, it is certainly not true that there is any further coherence between patrilineal inheritance andthe carrying of sticks.Analmost identicalcustom has been reported, again and again, over a period ofseveral centuries, among the Nayar ofSouthern India; andthis society isamatrilineal oneinwhichchildrenare regularly recruited tothe lineages oftheirmothers.Awoman may haveanumberof recognized lovers, as well as one ritual husband, but none of these has any rights over her children, and thenotion of fatherhood is entirely lacking.54 Fromthefifteenth centuryonwards,European travellers haverecorded the fact thatthe Nayar left their swords and shields outside the houses of the women they were visiting; and until a comparatively recent date, the accounts given by these travellers have almost always drawn this picture in far greater detail than any other aspect of the society. NicolodiConti described Nayar womenas takingany numberofhusbands theyliked; themenlefttheir shields outsidethewoman's door, andtheirown property wasinherited by their nephews.55 The Portuguese Joho diBarros wentfurther thanthis only to specify(wrongly) thatthe nephews in question werethechildrenofa brother.5s Cesaredei Federici, inthesixteenth century, describedthe principles of succession inthe Royalfamily, butclaimedthatthe remaining Nayars heldwomenin common;57 andmuchthesame goes for theaccount givenby theDutchman PhilipBaldaeus, almosta century later, sincehere there are several pages between his description of regal succession and what he has to say aboutthe Nayar as a whole.Thesecond of these passages is here quoted infull. If they meet any ofthecommon people inthe streets, theycry out,Po, Po, i.e.Give way, Give way.They seldom appear without their scymetars and shields, which they leaveatthedoor when (by a peculiar privilege) 54 SeenowE.Kathleen Gough in (ed. with D.M. Schneider) Matrilineal Kinship, Berkeley 1961,pp.298-404. 55G. B. Ramusio,'Viaggio diNicolo Contivenetianoalle Indie',Navigationi et Viaggi, i," Venice 1553, fol. 378a. 56 L'Asia del S.GiovannidiBarros, nuoua- mente di lingua Portoghesetradotta, Venice 1562, fol. I76. 57 CesaredeiFederici,Viaggio nell'Indiaet oltre l'India, Venice 1587, p.57. 16SIMONPEMBROKE theygo to give a private visit tooneof their neighbours wives, as a sign thatnobodymust enter there inthemean whiletodisturb them.58 Itcould hardly be inferred from such passages thata Nayar could be put to death for consorting withthe wrong class of woman.59 Atthis point it may be thought thatthe proportion of commentary to thetextsfromHerodotushasbecome excessive, buttwo thingsmay be regarded as established.The first is that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to prove that the societies which lie behind Herodotus's descriptions were not matrilineal; andthe significance ofthis factwilllater be heightened by the caseofanother society whichwasdescribed by thesameauthor andwhose interest lies precisely inthe fact that hedidnotrecord its marriage customs. Thesecondisthatwhateverthetruenatureofthesevarious Libyan and Thracian societies, they have all, in Herodotus, been assimilated toa state of complete promiscuity, and although this state can manifest itself ina number of different forms, itis not essentially restricted byany of its manifestations. Promiscuity, unlike matriarchy, is symmetrical; andwhatever meaning is attached tothe second of these terms-itsGreek equivalent willbediscussed presently-therings worn by the Gindanes are no exception to the rule.The approval metedouttothese girls comes from themen every bitas muchas from the women; and the society is not ultimately directed by an oligarchy of prostitutes. The tendency whichhas converted these various customs intomanifesta- tions of promiscuity may bedescribed as anadditive one.In attempting to make sense of his data, Herodotus has set theminawider context, andthe contextisineachcaseattributed wholly tothe society in question. Inthis sense, therefore, the tendency canbecontrasted withonewhichwas atleast equally important inancient ethnology and whose effect was the subtractive oneof isolatingforeign customs fromtheir societies, insteadof inventing a social context for them.This process may be termed reversal, and it is again Herodotus who provides the model, withtheintroduction tohis description of the'marvels' of Egypt. The people, inmostoftheirmanners and customs,exactly reverse the common practice ofmankind.Thewomenattendthemarkets anddo business, while the men sit at home at the loom.Themen carry loads on their heads, while the women carry them on their shoulders.Thewomen pass water standingup, themen sitting down. They relievethemselves indoors, buttake their meals inthestreets.Sons neednot support their parents unless they choose to, but daughters must support them whether they choose to or not... Doughthey knead withtheir feet; but they mix mud, andeventake updirt, withtheirhands...When they writeor calculate, instead of going, like the Greeks, from left to right,they move 58 PhilipBaldaeus,'ADescriptionofthe most celebrated East-India Coasts of Malabar and Coromandel',translatedinChurchill's Collection ofVoyages andTravels,iii, London 1732,PP.501-96, at p.579, cf. pp.561-2. 59Voyage de Francois Pyrard de Laval,4, Paris I679, P. 274 = tr.Albert Gray andH.C.P. Bell,HakluytSociety, London I887, i,p. 283; F.Buchanan in JamesForbes,Oriental Memoirs, i, London 1813,P.385. THEANCIENTIDEAOFMATRIARCHY 17 their handfrom right to left; and theyinsist, despite this, thatitis they whogotothe right, andtheGreeks whogotothe left.60 T'here is no sign, inthis passage, of a specific purpose to which, in the time of Herodotus,oppositions ofthiskindwere alreadybeingput-asystematic moral relativism, whichdrew up listsof divergent customsasasortof dialectic,designed to produce nothing. Themarvels of Egypt havenosake but their own; and the story about Egyptian men sitting at the loom while the womenwentout reappears inwhat is, on anyview, oneof themost serious of the plays of Sophocles.61 Even Xenophon, whocanseldombeconvicted of any ulterior motive, unless itisone directly connectedwith himself, can ad lib. in the same way when describing foreign customs.Thus after reporting thatthe Mossynoeci have sexual intercourse in public, hemoves on, without warning, toamore general proposition: they doin public the things which other peopleonly dowhen alone, whereas whenoneofthe Mossynoeci is alone, hedoes things whichelsewhereare onlypossible in company, like laughing and dancing.62 More important, there are signs inHerodotus him- self of the same tendency in a less fully elaborated form.When he says that the Persians make their important decisions when drunk and then reconsider them inastateof sobriety, heis doing littlemore than exaggerate in making the drunken preliminary an institution.But hecannotresist adding, 'sometimes they are sober at their first deliberation, but in this case they always reconsider thematter under the influence of drink'.63 Itis symmetry, not relativism, at whichtheaddition is aimed. Abouttheendofthefifth century,however, there appeared a pamphlet known as TheTwo Arguments(Dissoi Logoi), of whichthesole purpose was relativism.Its author, likethedialectinwhichhe wrote, hasnotbeen identified; andall further interest couldbe discouraged witha single quota- tion.'Diseaseisbadforthe sick,good forthedoctors.'64One section, however, deals withthecustoms of cities and nations; and although alotof thesecustomsarederivedfrom Herodotus, thereare significantadditions, particularly for Persia, wheremenare saidtowear women's clothesandto haveintercoursewiththeir mothers, sistersand daughters.65 Andone passage has an outstanding importance. TheMacedonians think it fine for girls to have lovers and sleep with them before they are married, buta disgrace after marriage; theGreeks think both disgraceful. In Thrace,tattooing isanadornmentfor women; everywhereelse, itisa punishment for wrongdoing.66 60Hdt. 2,35. 61 Soph.O.C. 337-41. 62 Xen.Anab. 5,4,34. 63 Hdt.I,I33,cf. I,I40, 2. 64Textin Diels-Kranz,5 no. 9o,ii,pp. 405ff. 65 ii,15p.408 D-K.Thestandardlater treatmentofincestisthatofSext. Emp. pyrrh.3,205, cf. e.g. Bardesanes inEuseb. PE6, I o, 6.Methodiusof Patara, Convivium decem virginum, ?3 (Patrologia Graeca XVIII, 4IBC Migne),anticipates Lewis H. Morgan witharemarkable evolutionary schema inwhichthecircumcisionofAbrahamis made to symbolize the rejection of incest, and isthenfollowed by a period of polygamy whichlastsuntiltheenforcement ofmono- gamyby the Prophets, butIhavebeen unabletofind thisa predecessor inclassical sources. 66 Dissoi Logoi ii,I2. 18 SIMONPEMBROKE Marriage does not figure among Herodotus's Egyptian marvels-it receives, in fact, only the barest of passing mentions in the whole of the Second Book- andthenearest hecomes to reversing acustom of this kind, inthe passages discussed so far, is the duty laid upon Egyptian girls to look after their parents. ButtheDissoi Logoi are strikingly closetowhathehasto say aboutthe Thracians: They sell their children totraders. Theykeep nowatchover their girls, andletthem sleep with any man theylike; but theykeep amost strict watchover their womenfolk, whom theybuy from the parents ata great price.Tattooing, for them, isa sign ofnoble birth, andthewantofit indicates lowbirth.67 AstheauthoroftheDissoi Logoi pointsout, the contrasting treatmentof womenandunmarried girls isnot symmetrically opposed tothe practice of the Greeks, since these keep watchover both; and in structure, at least, itis the Massagetai who would come closest to fitting this role, since here promis- cuity is referred explicitly to their wives.The opposition made by Herodotus, therefore, which (as withthePersians' twomethodsof deliberation) isa purely internal one, is brought out for its own sake; and although it would be unwise, in this instance, to suggest that the permissive attitude of the Thracians towards their daughters has simply been fabricated by Herodotus as a pendant totheir severity withtheir wives, the passage is enough todemonstrate that sexuality andreversal are not always keptapart inHerodotus's mind.And withthis weare brought back to the Lycians. Could itbe said that the'one custom inwhich they differ from allmankind' isnot merely different from, butthedirect antithesis of, Greek practice? II The question canbeanswered without anypremature verdicts astothe factual content of Herodotus's description. Andthefirst point to benoted is that Herodotus describes notone custom, but two.'Ask a Lycian whohe is' does not, taken on its own, refer to anything more significant than behaviour inthe street; anditisthemother'smotherthatlinksthetwocustoms. Patronymics, inancient Greece, hadafunction comparable tothatofsur- names, though theyclearly lacked the impersonal and generic quality which makes itso hard toask any further questions about a surname.Even so, the questioner, notcontentwithhisvictim's patronymic, wouldbemore likely toask wherehecamefromthanwhathisfather's father was called, since except in the case of younger sons, this would most often be the same name as thatofthe victim;"68 and 'X, sonof Y, fromSuch-and-sucha place' isa commonformula inofficial documents.Butthesecond Lyciancustom,the filiation of children whose parents are of different status, or to be more precise thestatus of these children, seems to indicatea familiarity, however indirect, withthe workings ofthe society asawhole.Itcannotbetreatedasan isolated oddity, and here theanswer is more complex. 67Hdt. 5, 6. 68 Is.2,36;2,41;P1.Lach.I79a;Dem. 39,27;[Dem.]43,74. THEANCIENTIDEAOFMATRIARCHY19 Greek practice, inthis respect, was notstandardized.IntheLawcode of Gortyn, in Crete-roughlycontemporary with Herodotus, though neither he nor any other ancientauthor shows much knowledge of the society whichit reflects-thereoccurs a passage which is at first sight remarkably close tohis versionof Lycia,69 andwhichisworth quoting herebecauseitshows how muchmore complex the real criteria were. [if the slave] goes tothe free womanand marries her, thechildren are to be free, but if the free woman goes to the slave, the children are to be slaves.7o Hereitwas possible for thechildren ofafree womanandaslave father to count as free, but an additional factor was involved, locality, and this covers a wide range of possibilities. Itis not enough todescribe thefirst marriage as matrilocalandthesecondas patrilocal, since anythingmight beinvolved from the thoroughgoing residence-unlikely inthecase ofthe father, whose status is apparently unchanged-to mere access at night."71 For thechildren it was presumably crucial where, and hence how,they were brought up. Cretewas exceptional-the Lawcodemakes lengthyprovisions for marriage between slaves, using exactly the same term as for marriage between free persons-but itwasnotNever-neverLand.Furthermore wherestatus and politicalrights were involved, thesituation mightvary not only from place to place butfrom day to day, as Aristotle observed; andthedecisive factors were political. There were some democracies, he said, in which a man couldhave citizenship if his mother hadit-thatis to say, withoutreference tothestatusofhis father; andin many citiesthesamewentforaman's illegitimate sons.Itall depended onthe size of the population: such persons might be tolerated on the citizen lists as long as the numbers were low, but as these rose,qualifications wouldbecome correspondingly restrictive.The first to be struck off would be the children of a slave father or a slave mother (Aristotle does not break the sequence down further than this); they would be followed by thosewhosefathers werenot citizens, until finallycitizenship was restricted tothose whohadcitizendescent onboth sides.72 Allthe same, if Aristotle's series is accepted-and itdoes not involve any dogma as to the general course of human evolution-weare left with maternal descentasoneextremeanddescent through thefather as somethingpretty close tothe other.Herodotus's description of Lycia,therefore, represents the 69SofirstE.Szanto,'Zumlykischen Mutterrecht',FestschriftO.Benndorf, Vienna 1898,pp.259-60. 70 M.Guarducci (ed.),InscriptionesCreticae, iv, Rome 1950, no. 72, col. vi,56ff. The verbfor 'marry',6muLv, isstandardforall classesof persons intheCode (cf. col. iii, 4off. and vii,I5ff.),although lateritceased beinganything likea legalterm,LSJ, s.v. Butitdoes appear tohavebeenusedina similarsenseinthelawsofSolon (Hesych., s.v. LvE'Lv, i. 322no.466Latte) andmis- interpretedby Plutarchasakindofdroit du seigneur (Sol.20,2). 71 Cf. Audrey RichardsinA.R.Radcliffe- Brownand Daryll Forde (ed.),African Systems ofKinship and Marriage, Oxford 1950, pp. 208-9. 72 Arist.Pol. I278b26ff.; for illegitimate sons cf. Ar. Av. I660ff., [Dem.]43, 51, Dem. 57,53, Athen.vi. 234E andoutsideAthens Ditt. Syll.3 I2I3(Boeotia), SGDI 3624(Cos). 20SIMONPEMBROKE customsofthe country astheantithesisofGreek ones, anditremainstobe seen what was made of them by his successors. Thefirstofthese goes underthenameofHerakleidesLembos.His identity, and date, donotmuch matter, because although the authorship of thework in question is disputed, itscontents are generally agreed to derive, pretty directly, from the great collection of monographs on the constitutions of Greek cities which was inaugurated by Aristotle and which also included one dealing withBarbarianCustoms.Inthe presentcontext,however, the authority of the name Aristotle need not be taken too seriously, since with one exception, the monograph on Athens, allthatsurvives of this collection isa number of short quotations in later authors; and the quotations consist almost entirely of local traditions to which no comment is attached.Furthermore the entire world, except for Greece, was compressed into a single volume, so that there is little reason to suppose that the original was much less summary than is Herakleides: The Lycians are all pirates.They have no written laws, only customs, and have long since beenunder therule of women. They sell false witnesses, together withtheir property."3 WhatIhave translated, rather ponderously, as the rule of women, is a single Greek word,gynaecocracy, aformation exactly like democracy,though withoutthesame footing inthe English language. Herakleides wasthefirst authortoattributethisstateof things to Lycia, anditisnot altogether clear that it belonged there, since it was not a legal or constitutional term, and there wereno institutions, public or private, whichitcouldbesaid necessarily to involve.Like the word matriarchy, which despite its mixed descent has fared betterin English,gynaecocracy wasmoreanevaluativethana descriptive term.Theword is not attested before the fourth century B.c., but we possess oneauthoritative definition, whichwas made by Aristotle. Gynaecocracy is 'women getting out of hand'; and the situation in which this is said to happen isevenmore revealing.Everything ina democracy, he argues, tendsin- evitably towards tyranny, 'with gynaecocracy in domestic affairs, so that wives inform against their husbands, and slaves getting outofhandforthesame reason'.7"Itwas axiomatic, for Aristotle, thatslavesandwomenwere naturallyinferior.75 Thenextauthortodealwithlifein Lycia isNicolasof Damascus, who livedinthefirst century B.c. and wrote,among other things, atreatiseOn Customs.Thistreatise appears tohaveconsisted of amaximumtwo or three sentences oneachof thenations described. Among themwerethe Lycians, who honour women more than men, take their second name from the mother's side, and leavetheir property to their daughters, not their sons. Any free manwhois caughtstealing isenslaved.Incourt cases, evidencecannot be given untilamonthhas elapsed.7" 73Herakleid. Pol. I5 (FHGii,217 - Arist. fr. 611, 43Rose). 74 Arist.Pol. I269b40,I313b32. 5Arist.Pol.I254bi3,cf.Poet.I454a21. 7 Nic.Damasc.FGrHist 9oF Io3(k) Stob. Flor. 4, 2. THEANCIENTIDEAOFMATRIARCHY21 Ofthesecustomsthelasttwoarenotatall easy toassess.Itisnotclear whetherthe Lycians are now supposed tobea fullylaw-abidingsociety, or whethertheftis tobe interpreted as honour amongthieves; anditisnotclear whetherthe time-lag before litigationapplies totheftas well, sothatthe relationofthesetwocustoms tooneanother isatleastas problematical as theirrelationtothe corresponding onesinHerakleides. However, itisnot certain, witheither author, thatthefirst part ofthe description(which in Herakleides is the rule of women) is ultimately derived from the same source as the second, and inthecase of Nicolas, attentionmust beconcentrated on this earlier part. There is certainly much more detail thanthere is in Herakleides; butthe mother's nameadds nothing to Herodotus, and although Herodotus didnot describethetransmissionof property in Lycia, itcannotbesaidthatthe way in which Nicolas has filled the gap is altogether satisfactory, or that the terms heuses point todirect observation of the system.They canbe founda very close parallel in the account written by Strabo, at about the same time, of the people knownastheCantabres,in Spain. Inthis society,according to Strabo, 'themen bring a dowry tothe women, anditis the daughters whoare made heirs and whothen give their brothers in marriage'."77 Itisnomorenormalforwomentohavecontroloftheirbrothers ina matrilineal society than it would be in a patrilineal one; and although neither oftheseterms isa particularly precise one, neitherofthemcanbesaidto throwmuch light ontheCantabres. Perhaps the simplest way of dealing withStrabo's accountisto say thattheinstitutions whichhehasattributed totheCantabres are just Greek onesturned upside down.Butthereisa system of inheritance from this part of the world which might perhaps go back to the time of Strabo and if itdid wouldreinforce his description at precisely those points which appear tobethemost far-fetched. The system, which is almost unique in Europe, was brought totheatten- tionofscholars overa centuryago, in I859-twoyearsbefore, and quite independentlyof, the publication ofBachofen's Mutterrecht.The Basques of Northern Spain, itwas discovered, lefttheirentire property totheeldest child, whether this child was a boy or a girl. The practice is fully documented from thetwelfth century A.D.until I767, whenitwas formallyabolished;78 and although no longerlegallypermitted, it appears tohavesurvivedits abolition, insome areas, right down to the present day.79 If theeldest child was a girl, her husband lost his surname and took hers.It was the eldest child by whom 77Str. 3, 4,I8,p.I65. 78EugeneCordier, 'Ledroitdefamille aux Pyrn~nes', Revue historique de droit fran;ais et e'tranger, v, I859,PP. 257-300,353-96, 492-520; furtherreferencesin Philippe Veyrin, Les Basques de Labourd,de Soule et de Basse-Navarre, Arthaud:Collection du Musie Basque, I947,p. 327. A bibliography of Basquecustomary lawinEmile Jarriand, 'Lasuccession coutumier dansles pays de droit6crit',Nouvelle revue historique de droit, xiv, I890, pp.77-79. Dr.E.R.Leachin- formsmethatthelocus classicusfor primo- geniture ofthis type is Polynesia, cf.R.W. Williamson,The Social and Political Systemsof Central Polynesia, Cambridge1924,i,pp.186- 187;iii,pp.200-201, 2o3,374,380,382. A convergence betweenCordier's material and the Japanesesystem describedinLewisH. Morgan, Systemsof Consanguinity and Affinity, p. 428, wasnoted by A. Giraud-Teulon,Les origines de la famille,Paris-Geneva 1874, p. I79. 9 Veyrin,op.cit.,p. 260. 22SIMONPEMBROKE the younger oneswere given in marriage,quiteirrespective ofthesexof either party; andthe younger children, allof whomhadsubstantial obliga- tionstowardsthe eldest, arereferred toinonedialect by awordwhich appears to mean slaves.8s It was quite possible, therefore, for a man to be the 'slave' of his sister; and if Strabo, or his informants, hadencountered a system of this kind, itwould notbe altogether surprising thatthe description should reach us intheform whichithas.Evenifthis isthe case,however, itmust be emphasized that what Strabo has described is not the system, but simply those situations which could be contrasted most strongly with the corresponding situations familiar to the Greeks. Primogeniture, the one principle which explains these situations, hasbeen completelyomitted, andcouldnot possibly beinferred fromthe resulting picture without independent evidence. Thereisno sign of primogeniture in Lycia, andnoancientwriter again describes the system of inheritance as Nicolas did, or indeed in any other way. Strabohimself confinedhiscomments ontheCantabres totheobservation thatthe arrangements hedescribed exhibited'acertain gynaecocracy', and that this was not altogether civilized.But there is no sign that he meant any- thing more technical than women getting out of hand. Primogeniture of the Basquetype isnotamatrilineal phenomenon, andevenwhen property is inherited by the eldest daughter, it is this woman who is assimilated to a male role.Buttheconversedoesnot hold, andher younger brothersarenomore assimilatedtoa femalerolethan they wouldbeif theeldestchildwerea male. InthecontextofNicolas's description of Lycia, thefactneedsadditional emphasis, becauseNicolasisalsotheauthoroftheone descriptionsurviving from antiquity of a society whichwas beyondquestion a matrilinealone.The Ethiopians, he said, heldtheirsistersinmorehonourthantheirchildren. So far, the language is identical, in syntax andeven vocabulary, tothatused by Straboin describing the Arabs,except that Ethiopian sistershaveousted thebrothersof theArabs.ButwhenNicolas goes onto say thatthe Ethiopian kings aresucceedednot by theirown sons, but by thoseoftheir sisters, the valueof his informationis no longeropen tothesamekindof doubt.81Inheri- tance by thesister'ssonistheclassicfeatureofamatrilineal system,just as inheritance by aman'sownsonisthatofa patrilinealone; andinthefirst case,althoughproperty andother rights aretransmitted throughwomen, they arenottransmittedto them, andcontrolofthis property is kept inthe hands of males.82 Thereis noreason to suppose thatcontactwith Ethiopia was lost inthecourse of antiquity, and onereason why Nicolas's description hadno successors, or if it did,whythey havenot survived, might bethatit was not thought sufficiently interesting. 80Coutumesancienneset nouvellesde Bardge, du Pays deLavedan etautres lieux dependant dela Province de Bigorre,Bagn~res1837, art. 16: 'unpuin6 ouune puinfe,appelfs en vulgaire du pays esclau et esclabe, qui sortirontdela maison pourtravailler,trafiquer, ou de- meurervaletouservanteailleurs,sans I'approbation etconsentementdu pare etde lamere,oude l'hfritier delamaison,sont obliges deteniren compte ce qu'ilsont gagnd surce qu'ilepeuventpr~tendre deleur maisontant moins deleur 1lgitime.' 81 Nic.Damasc.FGrHist 90F 103(m) = Stob.Flor. 4,2. 82 Cf.thedistinctionsin JackGoody, Death,Property andtheAncestors, Stamford 1961,pp.3I5-20. THEANCIENTIDEAOFMATRIARCHY 23 Itis quite possible thatthis canalso explain why he hadno predecessors. The Ethiopians hadbeendescribed byHerodotus, several centuries earlier; yet theaccount which is given by Herodotus does nothing to corroborate the description by Nicolas. Their way of choosing a King is different from that of all other peoples, as, itis said, arealltheirotherlaws. They choosefrom among themthat citizenwhom theyjudge tobethetallestandtohave strength in proportion to his stature.83 Ithas been suggested that Herodotus is indicating, by means of this story, the fact that EthiopianKings were notsucceeded by their sons, andthattothis extent the two descriptions can be said to tally.84 But an interpretation of this kind is at best allegorical, and like all allegory, it fails completely to distinguish betweenintentionandresult.NicolashimselfmentionstheHerodotean system as theonetowhichthe Ethiopians resorted intheabsence of sisters' sons; and although this mightrepresent an attempt onhis part toreconcile two discrepant traditions, one of which was not available to Herodotus, there isanother possibility, whichinthe present contextmustbe given a greater emphasis. Itis perfectly conceivablethatHerodotus was familiar withboth versions, andthathechose deliberately toexcludethesisters' sons.In any case, hehasnotincluded them, andthisfactaloneis enough to justify an exceptionally close scrutiny of the descriptions of Lycia which he inaugurated. Furthermore the allegorical interpretation caninawider contextbeseenas self-defeating. It can seldom be proved that the various societies described by Herodotuswerenot matrilineal; butthefactthathedoesnotdescribe the Ethiopians as promiscuous shows how arbitrary itistotreatthe many de- scriptions of promiscuous peoples which were made by later writers as due to the impression of total confusion which would be made on a Greek or Roman observer by amatrilineal society.s5 Ancient descriptions cannot simply be subsumed under the categories of modern anthropology, and it is in every case the precise nature of the relation between fact and description which must be ascertained. 83Hdt.3,20. 84A.Giraud-Teulon, Les origines du mariage et de lafamille, Paris-Geneva I884, p.209, n. I. Str. 17,I,54, p. 822, whofollowsHerodo- tus,gives wealthasanalternative criterion, butdoesnotmentionsisters'sons.Similar inferenceshavebeenmadefromthestate- mentofSolin. interp.(c.6IoA.D.),p.234, 26ff.Mommsen, thatthe King ofthe Hebrideshasnowifeofhis own,but simply borrowsthoseofothermen, 'undeeinec votumnec spes concediturliberorum'.But allthatcanbesaidofthis passage with certainty isthatitis symmetrical tothe description ofthe LibyanTroglodytes in Diod. 3,31, 2 (Agatharchides, GGMi. I53 ?61 MUller) whoholdallwomenincommon except thatofthemonarch, intercoursewith thiswoman being anoffence punishedby a fine. 85 Themost important ofthese descrip- tionsis Theopompus FGrHist II5F2o4 = Athen.xii. 57D-5I8B, where theEtruscans aresaidto bringup theirchildrencom- munally. Thesourceof this description is not certain, but there is no independent evidence to support it (cf. now F. Slotty, 'Zur Frage des Mutterrechts beiden Etruskern', Symbolae HroznV =Archiv Orientalni xviii,3(1950), pp.262-85,esp.p.273, whereitisdemon- stratedthatthe metronymic elementin Etruscannomenclatureisan extremely late phenomenon andcannotbe explained in this way); andmuchof Theopompus's de- scription isdevotedto pornography. 24 SIMONPEMBROKE Nicolas had one predecessor in the Lycian tradition, Nymphis of Heraclea, whowrote inthethird century B.c. andwouldhavedeserved consideration earlier, if itwerecertain howmuchof theanecdote in question is his.Itis quotedbyPlutarch, five hundred years later; andeven 'quoted' isan exag- geration, becausetheformittakesislittlemorethana summary, with variations, ofa story whichPlutarch has just toldinmoredetail.Thefirst story hedescribes as mythical, which the explanation givenbyNymphis, inBook IVof Heraclea, isnotinthe least. According to him, there wasawildboar ravaging the territory of Xanthus,crops and livestock alike, until Bellerophon killed it.For this he received noreward.Soheturned toPoseidon andcursed the people of Xanthus.Andthe whole land was covered with salt, and everything was destroyed, for thesoil became barren; until finally hewas moved by the prayers of the women, and asked Poseidon to avert his anger. And for this reason, itwas thecustom of theXanthianstotake their names notfrom the father's side, but from that of the mother."6 Xanthuswasthe capital of Lycia, andthe exploits of Bellerophon are con- sistently set in this country. What he usually had to fight, however, was not a boarbutacreaturewhichtranscendedthewildest possibilities ofcross- breeding, the Chimaera,partlion,partgoat and partsnake."7 Itisthis animal of which he rids the Lycians in Plutarch's 'mythical' version, along with theAmazons;again he gets norewardand again he prays toPoseidonto makethelandinfertile.This time, theresultsaremore spectacular: an immense wave inundates the countryside, and Lycia is submerged. Themen of Lycia plead with Bellerophon, but in vain; once again it is the women who are successful, not this time by entreaty, but by converging on him with lifted skirts; anditis shame, not pity, thatmakes him leave,taking theseawith him.88 Ahundred years agoBachofen, inabrilliant interpretation ofthis story which anticipatesanalyticalpsychology, sawitsthemeas involving the ambivalent relation of Bellerophon towomen: having defeated them, atone level, intheform of Amazons, he is overcome by them when theyappear to him intheir true guise.s9 Fifty years later, classical scholars were looking for ethnologicalparallels, sincetheGreek onesdidnot appearsatisfactory: in both instances, runaway soldiers are met by women-themother of a Spartan, thewivesof Cyrus's Persians-wholifttheirskirts and cry 'Where are you going to? You can't get back in here where you came from !'90 The significance of this detail,however, isnot sufficiently restricted for usetobemadeofit 86Nymphis FGrHist 432F7 = Plut,mul. virt. 248D. 87 I1. 6,I79ff. 88Plut.mul.virt.248AB. 89 A Doppelverhidltnis:J.J.Bachofen,Ge- sammelteWerke,hrsg. K.Meuli, ii, Basle 1948, p. 87. Whatever his debt to Hegelian dialec- tic, Bachofen seems tohavebeenthefirst to apply the notion of ambivalence to the study of myth, andhis Dionysus, asimilar case, is in manyways more suggestive thanthatof Nietzsche. 90 Plut. apophth. Lac.24 IB; mul.virt. 246A; Nic. Damasc. FGrHist 90F66, ?44; Polyaen.7,45,2;JustinI,6,I3ff. Cf.L. Malten,J. d. L. 40(1925) 126 n. 12, E. Kornemann,Klio19(1924), P. 356. THEANCIENTIDEAOFMATRIARCHY 25 here. Instead, attentionmustbe paid toanotherelementinPlutarch's legend, and that is the flooding of the countryside by Poseidon. ThereisaconsiderablenumberofstoriesinwhichPoseidonlosesto another divinity a part ofGreece which previously belonged tohimself.In one case, he was given something in return; he made Delos over to Leto, but received Calauria in exchange, and for Delphi, whichhe gave to Apollo, he was given Taenarum.Thetransaction wasrecorded by the oracle, intwo lines of verse, whichwere presumably written under its new management.9' Sometimes he wasallowed to stay, butmore as tenantthanas freeholder, as inthecase of Corinth, wherehewasdriven from thecitadel by Heliosand thereafter confinedtothe Isthmus, orthatof Troezen, whichhewascom- pelled toshare with Athena.92 Itis significant, inthe present context, that at some stage he grew angry withTroezenand madethe country barren, by covering itwith salt,thoughfortunately this policy alsowasaverted by prayer."9 Most often,however, he simply lost possession andwasnotcom- pensated for the loss-thatof Aegina to Zeus, of Naxos to Dionysus.94 Argos helost to Hera, and again ventedhis anger on it, this time withan inunda- tion.95 Themost famous case,however, wasthatof Athens, from whichhe was expelled by Athena. As can be seen, there are some details inthese stories whichcoincide with details in the Bellerophon story, and this point will be returned to later.More generally,however, thesestories raise, inaconvenient form, a question of methodwhichisofdecisive importance for all aspects ofthe present study, anda preliminary standmustbe adopted here.Oneattitudetotheinter- pretation of mythology whichhas a very widecirculation inclassical studies is that myths enact stages inthe history of religion. Thebest example is the killing of Pytho by Apollo, at Delphi, and the viewthat this story reflects the replacement of one religious cult by another-aview which has the names of Erwin Rohdeand Martin Nilsson behind it,96although it is older than either of these andstretches wellback intothe eighteenthcentury. Nicolas Frdret, whosestudies inthe interpretation of myth, readbefore theAcad6miedes Inscriptions et Belles-lettres at various times before his death in 1749, still have alotto offer, was exceptionallysceptical astothe possibility of eliciting history from legend. 'La Fable,' he declared, '. . . estle mdlange confusdes songes de l'imagination, des reves de la philosophie et des debris de l'ancienne histoire.'Its analysis, for Frdret, was impossible; onecouldnever arrive at the origin ofeach fiction, letalonethatof thevarious details of whicheach fictionwas composed. One exception,however, hedid make, with Apollo and Pytho as the prime example. On y voitl'histoire de l'6tablissement des Dieux 6trangers dans la Grace: histoiretraduiteen fables, dontlesauteurs prdtendirent apparemment reprisenter en style figur6 les facilitiset les obstacles qu'avoient rencontris 91Ephorus FGrHist 7oFI 5o = Str. 8, 6,14, p.373; schol. Ap. Rhod. 3,I242= Philo- stephanus FHGii. 31, fr. 18; Call.fr. 593 Pf.;Paus. 2,33, 2. 92 Corinth Paus. 2,I,6;Troezen2, 3o, 6. 93 PaUS.2,32, 8. 9 Plut. qu.symp. 741AB. 95 Paus.2,22,4. 96E. Rohde,Psyche(Engl.tr.),8 London 1925,P. 97;Nilsson,Geschichte der griechischen Religion, i,Munich21955, p. 546. 3 26SIMONPEMBROKE lesministresdesnouveaux Dieux, etdonnbrentleursfictions pour des aventuresarriviesauxDieuxmemes.97 Inthis version, theauthors ofthefables are clearly inclose touchwiththe ministers of religion, ifnot actually identicalwith them; andthis thorough- going intentionalism is, in fact, the only basis on which Frdret's interpretation isconceivable.Withoutthe priests,any formal expression oftherelation between one religion and its predecessor is more likely to be the exact opposite of the real relation, as for instance withthe canonization, inmodern Greece, of St.Nicolas the Assassin in Thessaly and of St. George the Vampire inthe Argolid.98 Inthecase of Poseidon, the problem couldbe stated as follows: dothese stories constitute evidence of an earlier period in which Poseidon was supreme? If they do, the fact would have been preserved, on Frdret's view, by the priests ofthevarious deities that expelled him.Asit is,however, inthetwomost striking cases, the information comes from the losing side.Thesalt treatment given toTroezen explains why there isa sanctuary ofPoseidon outsidethe wall; thefloodat Argos accountsforan Argivesanctuary dedicatedto Poseidon.99 Inboth instances, itis the presence of Poseidon, nothis expulsion, that is beingexplained-and thesame thingmay be said of Delphi, because Pytho was buried therel00--the sequence that is arbitrary. What is happening inthese stories is something prescribed by Plotinus: 'myths haveto separate intime things whichare really simultaneous'.1?1 With Poseidon's expulsion from Attica, the process is even clearer, because here we can see what the simultaneous objects were: not the gods themselves, but an olive-tree and a well (the second of these is described as a piece of sea) intheErechtheum, whichPoseidon andAthena put thereas tokens during their quarrel-that is to say, to stake their respective claims. Such, at least, is the version of Herodotus;102 butthelater accounts make Poseidon flood the countryside as well, andoneof these, whichwas givenbyVarro,provides an extra detail which is directly relevant to Lycia. The story is set in the reign of Cecrops. One day, there suddenly appeared atAthensan olive-tree, whileinanother part ofthe city, water was seen to burst from the ground. The King sent someone to Delphi, toask theoracle whatthismeantandwhatshouldbedoneaboutit.Hewastoldthatthe olive-tree stood for Athena, the water for Poseidon, and that it was up to his citizens todecidewhichofthetwodeitiestheir city shouldbecalledafter. Cecrops, accordingly, assembled thecitizens ofbothsexes (for atthis time, womenhadavoteaswellas men); themenallvotedfor Poseidon, the women for Athena, and as there was one more woman than there were men, Athenawonthe day.Poseidon, furious withthe result, performed his usual trick of flooding the whole country, and the flood was notabated until three penalties hadbeenlaidonthewomen. They must lose their vote; nochild 97 NicolasFrdret, Oeuvres,xvii,Paris 1796, pp.149, i56 =Histoirede l'Acadfmie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres, xi, 1770o, pp.31, 36. 98 A. J. B.Wace,Antiquity30,1956,pp. 156-62. 99 Paus.2,32,8;2,22,4. 100VarroL.L.7,17;Hesych.s.v.'oglou pouv6c(Rohde,loc. cit.). 101Plotin.Enn.3,5,9. 102 Hdt.8, 55. THEANCIENTIDEAOFMATRIARCHY 27 born should take his mother's name; and they themselves must notbe called Athenianwomen.103 Theuniversal suffrage essential for this story neednotconcern us, unless as one further instance of a Utopia set in the past and not the future.What is important isthe practice ofchildren taking their mothers' names-whichis apparently what happenedup tothetimeofthe story; andthis practice is exactly symmetrical to that of Xanthus in the story given by Nymphis, where the corresponding change isintroduced.Withtheevidenceinits present state, it is not possible to get much further than this, but the alternatives can at least be outlined. Nymphis may well have written something like the story whichstands in Plutarch, maternal filiation and all; butthis does notmean that he must have derived it from outside the Herodotean tradition.What is certainisthatvariations andcombinationsofthesestories were circulating overa period ofcenturies.Itmakes nodifference whetherthe process was predominantly oral, or literary, and there is no reason why the story in Varro, or an earlier version of it, should not be taken as the model, rather than as the copy. Allthe same, one possibility may be raised which has a wider application: could itbePlutarch himself thatattached the Xanthiancustom to the story? To put this more generally, was the tradition of maternal descent in Lycia so well-knownthatitwouldcometomind every timethe country wasmen- tioned?Halfamillennium separates Plutarchfrom Nymphis, sothereis certainly roomfor intermediaries; butit can, as it happens, beshownthat Plutarch himself didnot always make this association.'The lawgiver of the Lycians,' he wrote, in another context, 'is said to have laid down that citizens in mourning shouldwearwomen'sclothes. By thishemeanttoshowthat mourning is a womanish business and not the thing for a gentleman whohas hadthe advantages of a liberal education.'104 The point at issue is not the origin of the custom, noreventhe reliability of Plutarch, though it is worth observing that the custom in question cannot be correlated witha descent system, matrilineal or otherwise.105 The important thing, forthe presentargument, isthe explanationprovidedbyPlutarch; andthis explanationbelongs withthe story thatat Locri, deserters were publiclyexposed inwomen's clothes,106orwith whattheRomanwriter Aelianhasto say aboutthecrownofwoolwhichadulterers weremadeto wearat Gortyn: 'itmeansheis unmanly,womanish, andlecherouswith 103 Varroap.Aug.C.D.I8,9;notdis- cussedintherecent commentary onPlut. mul.virt. byPhilip A.Stadter,1965. 104 Plut. consol, ad Apoll.I12F; so also Val.Max. 2,6,13, withthesame explana- tion. 105 F.