Acca Laurencia

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ACCA LARENTIAMagna deummater,materqueerarum.Lucretius.

There is little need to outline, for the readers of this JOURNAL,he famous founda-tion legend of Rome: the Twins, exposed immediately after their birth, on the bankof the Tiber, are suckled by a she-wolf (a wide-spread motive of folk-tales 1). Theyare found by a shepherd, Faustulus, adopted by him and nursed by his wife, who isnone other than Acca Larentia, the subject of this inquiry.2A comparison of the story with a well-known parallel legend, the birth of Cyrus,leaves little doubt about the true nature of this Acca. For just as Romulus andRemus were suckled by a she-wolf, so the young Cyrus was reported to have beensuckled by a bitch.3 Subsequent rationalists (Herodotus is one of these) convertedthe bitch into a slave woman bearing the name of Spako, the word spaka (it is theRussian sobaka)meaning "bitch" in the language of Media.4In other words, Accaowes her existence in the Roman tradition to the same rationalist current as theslave woman Spako in the Persian, which is as much as to say that she is a she-wolfjust as Spako is a bitch.5Nor does this exhaust the wolf theme of the Roman legend. The mother of theTwins is called Rhea Silvia. The first part of the name is obviously a Greek borrow-ing, Rhea being but another name for the great Anatolian mother-goddess. Silvia,an adjective meaning "forest," is as obviously an epithet promoted to a propername; it has been plausibly conjectured to be a circumlocution designating theshe-wolf whose true name, lupa, people hesitated to pronounce (as they still do inmany places) from fear of attracting the dangerous animal." Finally, the nameSilvius, which according to the same reasoning would mean "wolf," recurs amongthe names of the kings of Alba Longa, the mythical ancestors of the Roman Twins.7We are, of course, quite aware of their spurious genealogy, but he who compiled itwas certainly acquainted with the importance of the name Silvius in the traditions ofLatium, or else he would have chosen some other name.To return now to the lupine nurse of the Twins. We are naturally led to inquireinto the nature of Acca. Her name cannot be separated from the Greek 'AKKbO,hename of Demeter's nurse, the word dKKCovain female bogey," the Sanskrit akkcd"mother," the Lapp Madder-akka"mother earth," 8 the Finnish U/kko,it. "grand-father," name of the oldest and highest god of the Finns, the Yakut aga "father,"1Cf. E. S. McCartney, "Greek and Roman Lore of Animal-Nursed Infants" Papers of theMichiganAcademyof Science, Arts and Lettersiv, 1924, pp. 15-40, New York, 1925.2 Ovid, Fasti, ed. Frazer, London, iii, 1929, 14, n. 1, where the literary sources are cited.3Justin, i, 4.

4Cf. Her. i, 110, 122; A. Bauer, "Die Kyros-Sage und Verwandtes" Sitzungsberichted. WienerAkad. d. Wiss., phil.-hist. Cl. C, 1882, pp. 501 and 505; McCartney, op. cit., pp. 33 f.5For a comparison of the Roman and Iranian traditions, cf. Bauer, op. cit., pp. 539 ff.6 Sir James G. Frazer, Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, London, 1935, pp. 416 ff.7Frazer, The Magic Art and the Evolutionof Kings, London, ii, 1935, p. 178.8 E. N. Setjalh,Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungenxii, 1912, pp. 208 ff.490

THE ARCHAEOLOGICALINSTITUTEOF AMERICA


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ACCA LARENTIA 491Mong. aka, akha "elder brother," "master." 9 On this showing, Acca would appearto be the Roman equivalent of Mother Earth, the nourishing and life-giving, butalso chthonian, divinity.

If such is the case, we should expect the second name, Larentia, to bear out theconjecture. Now Larentia was connected with the feast of the Larentalia, which fellon December 23rd, as we know from the Maffeian and Praenestine calendars and theevidence of Ovid.'o On that day the priests offered her publicly mortuary honors(publice parentant).11 Macrobius (Sat. i, 10, 16) refers to the same honors as anannual parentatio. They would, therefore, seem to have resembled the regular honorspaid to the dead in February and known as Parentalia. In his Roman Questions (34)Plutarch asks, among other things: "Whereas all the other Romans offer libationsand sacrifices to the dead in February, why did Decimus Brutus (as Cicero relates)do this in December?" The conclusion is obvious that Decimus Brutus sacrificed tohis dead on December 23rd, the day of the Larentalia. Plutarch, in asking the ques-tion, duly notes the occurrence of the Larentalia in December. The various philo-sophical reasons adduced by him to account for the habit of Decimus Brutus do nothold water. Neither do Sir James Frazer's, who connected the caprice of Decimuswith his name and the fact that December was the tenth month of the old Romanyear.'2 People are not guided by caprices in matters of this nature, and the trueexplanation must be sought elsewhere.Decimus was one of the heads of the conservative party, and his somewhat osten-tatious manner of differing from the profanum vulgus may simply have its root in thefact that the Larentalia were known (at least to antiquarians) as an old feast of thedead. This is borne out by the striking fact that to this very day Christmas-tide is anAll Souls Day in many parts of Europe and the Near East."' Acca Larentia wouldthen appear to be the mother of the Lares, whose chthonian associations haverepeatedly been suspected.14At all events, the evidence reviewed thus far tends to show that Acca Larentia wasa mother-goddess, very probably Mother Earth, manifesting herself in her usualdouble aspect as the magna parens of mortals and as the great chthonian goddess ofdeath, who mercifully takes men back unto her bosom at the close of their earthlycareers.

Here the question arises: Why should such a divinity be thought to assume theshape of an animal hated and feared as much as was the wolf by all husbandmen andagriculturists? After all, it is not the enemies of Rome who invented the story of theTwins and their lupine nurse.The correct answer to this question was given as early as 1904 by Salomon Rei-9 Cf. Max MUller, Contributions o the Scienceof Mythology,London, i, 1897, p. 262 f.; H. Giintert,Kalypso, Halle, 1919, p. 53; K. Krohn, "Zur finnischen Mythologie," FolkloreFellows Communications,No. 104, Helsingfors, 1932, pp. 33 ff.; Frazer, Anthologiaanthropologica.The Native Races of Asia andEurope, London, 1939, pp. 319 f.; Walde, Lat. etym. Wirterbuch2,p. 5.1o Fasti. ed. cit. iii, 15 f. 1' Varro, De lingua latina v, 23-24; cf. Ovid, Fasti iii, 16, n. 3.12 Ibid., p. 17. 13 Cf. Speculumxiii, 1938, p. 213.14J6r6me Carcopino, "Virgile et les origines d'Ostie," Bibl. Ec. Franc. d'Athenes et de Rome cxvi,Paris, 1919, p. 106; Margaret C. Waites, AJA. xxiv, 1920, p. 247; Lily Ross Taylor, ibid. xxix, 1925,pp. 299 if. On the identity of Acca Larentia with the Mater Larum,cf. Dessau's note 24 on the record ofthe Arvales, Inscr. Sel., 9522.


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492 ALEXANDER H. KRAPPEnach 15and again by O. Gruppe.1bBoth scholars pointed out that chthonian divinitiesfrequently appear in wolf-shape and that Death was originally pictured as a wolfwith gaping mouth, whence such figures as the Greek Kerberos, the dogs watchingthe bridge Cinvat, the dogs of Yama, the wolf-shape of the Celtic Dispater, etc.The wolf-shape of Acca Larentia would then merely confirm her chthonian character.

Since, in the foregoing pages, we have been guided by facts which cannot claim tooclose a connection with the prehistoric cults of Italy, the conclusion will not appearunnatural that Acca Larentia, so far from being an isolated figure peculiar to Italy,is likely to have parallels elsewhere in Europe and even in the Near East, and it willbe useful to review these. Quite naturally, we begin our inquiry in Greece.Acca Larentia was the nurse of the Roman Twins, while her alter ego, Silvia, wastheir mother. On Hellenic soil we also find a twin couple, or rather twin couples: theyare Apollo and Artemis, Kastor and Polydeukes; they are the children of Leto oirLeda respectively. Leto, whose Lycian name means simply "woman," is unquestion-ably a mother-goddess, whose fertility is sufficiently indicated by her twin birth.There also existed a tradition attested by Aristotle,'7 to the effect that on one occa-sion Leto assumed wolf-shape. Whether or not we accept this tradition as old, Leto,Mother Leto, was certainly merely a special form of the great Anatolian mother-goddess, the T76Tvtia p~cv, whose chosen home was the Anatolian mountain world,with its wild animals. Her chosen companions are lions, or stags, and her servants,while engaged in her worship, transformed themselves (by masks) into the semblanceof these holy animals of hers: stag, cow or bear.18 She is addressed, in the words ofAeschylus: T6ooV rrEpEUq)pc)v, Kad\a

8pootactOETrr-roiaNEPCAovO6VTCOV

TrITovrT 'dypov6pacov tho\pa'TrotserlpC'v 6pptKadAotatTEpTr~a,T-roTCrV ETx-ra?1l3poca KpaVctI85Et?I lEV,-- KCaT1IaOICa5E Qaa8crCTaocrco.She appears to have been also a lunar divinity, as may be judged (1) from her

epithets vuXia and lPKOPos; (?2) rom the fact that she is the mother of the Anatoliansun-god, Apollo - the moon is frequently thought older than the sun and night olderthan day 19; (3) from her Etruscan equivalent, Lala,20 who is characterized by the15RevueCeltiquexxv, 1904, pp. 208-24; reprinted in Cultes,Mythes et Religions i, 1922, pp. 279-98.16GriechischeMythologieund Religionsgeschichte,Miinchen, 1906, p. 769. Cf. also G. Welter, RA. iv(17), 1911, pp. 55-61.17Hist. anim. vi, 35. Mr. R. P. Eckels, in his recent book, GreekWolf-Lore,Philadelphia, 1937, pp. 66ff., tried to whittle down the evidence and to show that the traditions are aetiological tales of relativelylate date; his reasoning is not very convincing.18Sir William M. Ramsay, The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, Oxford, i, 1895, p. 89 f.19Snorri, Gylfag., c. 10; Alexander MacBain, Celtic Mythology, Stirling, 1917, p. 64; J. Dutoit,Jatakam iv, 73; E. Siecke, "Ueber einige mythologisch wichtige Tiere," Leipzig, 1916, Mytholo-gische Bibliothekviii (4), p. 62. At Nemea, Selene was fabled to be the mother of the sun lion; Aelian,De nat. anim xii, 7; Schol. Apol. Rhod. i, 498; Plut. De facie in orbelunae xxiv, 6.20 Lala is the Etr. form of Dor. Lada. On the change of d to 1 (and the reverse) cf. Michel Breal,


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ACCA LARENTIA 493crescent;21 (4) from the name of her mother, Doi3lP, commonly applied to lunargoddesses (this genealogy simply indicates that the old moon gives birth to the newmoon 22); 5) from the fact that her sister is Asteria, i.e. the planet Venus;23 (6) fromher starry veil, shown in a vase-painting,24and from her connection with the olive, atypical lunar plant.25As an ancient Anatolian divinity, Leto was identified, after the Persian conquest,with AnaYtiswho, if Porphyry (De abst. iv, 16) is to be believed, was called by theMagi a she-wolf.26But Analtis was decidedly a lunar divinity, as is indicated by herfunction as a divine midwife, a Persian Eileithyia.27On this showing one would expect Leto's daughter, Artemis, to have been likewisea she-wolf; but the existing evidence on this point is weak.28 On the other hand,Artemis is closely associated with another of Europe's large carnivora, the she-bear.The bear-Artemishas been discussed so frequently and by such a large number ofcompetent critics that there is no need to revert to the subject.29 Her lunar origin isalso admitted: her ro1le s divine midwife, her function as KovpoTp6pqos,er fertility-granting powers, all point in the same direction.30 A chthonian she certainly was not,at least not in the classical period; the last scene of Euripides' noble play Hippolytoswould remove all doubt on the subject. But as a sender of the plague she had achthonian aspect. The latter feature might perhaps explain her ursine shape, for thebear, like the wolf, might easily become a personification of Death. Some doubtmight arise about the association of the animal with the moon; but this association issusceptible of proof.As is well known, one of the most prominent constellations of the northern sky,the Dipper, is known as Ursa major. This term is a literal translation of the Greek"ApK-ros.The Greeks explained this strange name by the following stories. Accordingto some, this she-bear had been a fair mortal who, by helping the father of gods andmen to while away his hours of idleness (which must have lain heavily on him), drewupon herself the wrath of Hera, who transformed her into a she-bear, which was then

Melanges de mythologieet de linguistique, Paris, 1877, p. 178; Paul Kretschmer, Einleitung in dieGeschichtedergriechischenSprache,G6ttingen, 1896, pp. 280 ff.; J. Schrijnen, Zeitschrift . vgl. Sprach-forschungxlvi, 1914,pp. 276-80; P. v. Bradke, UeberMethodeund ErgebnissederarischenAlterthumswis-senschaft,Giessen, 1890, p. 245; R. S. Conway, IndogermanischeForschungen i, 1893, pp. 157-67.21 W. H. Roscher, "Ueber Selene und Verwandtes" Studien zur griechischenMuthologieund Kul-turgeschichtev, Leipzig, 1890, p. 15.22 Ibid., pp. 18, n. 50; 99 f. 23 Cicero, De nat. deor.iii, 18, 46.24 E. Gerhard, A V. Berlin, 1840-58, plate 26. 25 Strabo, xiv, 1. 20; Cat. xxxiv. 7.26 Ramsay, op. cit. i, 90. This feature proves conclusively (if proof be required)that the cult of Anaitisfalls outside the Zarathustrian religion; we learn from Plutarch (De Is. et Os., c. 46) that among thePersians the wolf was a chthonian animal which played a r6le in the nightly sacrifices made to Ahriman;cf. E. Benveniste, The Persian Religion according o the Chief GreekTexts, Paris, 1929, p. 74.27 Cf. my book La Genesedes Mythes, Paris, 1938, p. 108.28 Gruppe, op. cit. ii, 1294, n. 4.29 Ibid. ii, 1270; cf. S. Reinach, Cultes, Mythes et Religions iii, 39: Son nom-Artemis rapproched'arktos-joint a des temoignages litteraires et figures, prouve que 1'Artemisprimitive, celle d'Arcadieprobablement, a 6t' une ourse.30H. Usener, Kleine Schrifteniv, 1914, p. 14; Jane E. Harrison, Mythology (Our Debt to GreeceandRome), Boston, 1924, p. 120; cf. also K. B. Stark, Berichteiiberdie Verhandlungend. Kgl. SdchsischenGesellsch.d. Wiss. zu Leipzig, philol.-hist. Cl. viii, 1856, p. 71.


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494 ALEXANDER H. KRAPPEplaced in the starry sky by Zeus.31According to others, she was a fair nymph in theretinue of Artemis who, having been seduced by Zeus, was transformed into a she-bear by her angry mistress, but transposed among the stars by her lover.32Now thenames of the fair heroine, KaNla-rcbor KaNNia-rrlre nomsparlants and epithets ofArtemis herself. As such they do not designate the constellation, but the moon.33The she-bear, in the original version of the myth, was then transposed into the moon,an extremely widespread story motive.3"The bear-Artemis has a striking parallel figure in Asia Minor. In that countryflourishedthe cult of the Magna Mater, a divinity frequently equated with Artemis.The bear was one of her sacred animals,3" nd she, too, was probably a she-bear. Inher procession figures ursa mansues, quaecultu matronalisella rehebatur.36his con-nection of the animal with a cultusmatronalisleads us back to the powers of fertilitywith which the great goddess was credited. Nor is it probably an accident that in theTroad we find the tradition of Paris being suckled by a she-bear."3 t is an exactparallel of the continental Greek story of Atalanta, the alter ego of Artemis, beingsuckled by a she-bear.38Nor must it be forgotten that bears occupy a prominentplace among the animals which enjoy the special protection of the -6Trvlcirlpc)v.39We now understand the reason why the alteregoof Acca Larentia, the mother ofthe Roman Twins was called Rhea Silvia by the antiquarians responsible for theelaboration of the Romulus legend: they were aware of the fact that the mother ofthe Twins was but a special form of the Fl6TrviaOfrlppv,worshipped in prehistoricGreece and Anatolia and best known, in Italy, by her Cretan name.

The cult of the Magna Mater is known to have flourished, in chalcolithic times,over a territory extending from the Indus valley to the Aegean.40True, we have nopositive evidence about the theriomorphicmanifestations of the goddess in each partof this vast region, but it is not likely that this feature should have been peculiar onlyto Greeceand Asia Minor. J. J. Bachofen 41 was right when he surmisedthat the bearcult virtually covered the same territory as the cult of the Great Mother worshippedas Dindymene, Idaea, Kybele, Rhea, Pessinuntia, etc. all over the Middle East,from Trojan Ida as far as Syria. He was equally right in his conclusion that the bear-Artemis is merely a special form of the bear-Kybele.42The bear-Artemis has a close pendant in Celtic lands, where a bear-goddess wasworshipped under the name of Artio "she-bear." It is she who has given her nameto the city of Berne and who is responsible for the coat-of-arms of the capital of theHelvetian republic, as well as for the bears kept in the Zwingerof the city down to31 Pauly-Wissowa, RE. x, cols. 1726-29. 32 Ibid., cols. 1673-74.11 This conclusion was drawn as early as the middle of the last century; cf. H. D. Milller, MythologiedergriechischenStdmme,Gottingen, ii, 1861, 304. 34La Gentse des Mythes, pp. 119 ff.35Lucian, De dea syria, 41; R. H. Klausen, Aeneas und die Penaten, Hamburg-Gotha, i,.1839, 94.n. 236. 36 Apuleius xi, 8. 7 Apollod. iii, 12, 5.38 Apollod. iii, 9, 2; Aelian, Var. hist. xiii, 1.19On the bear-shape of Kybele, cf. also J. J. Bachofen, Urreligion und antike Symbole,Leipzig i,19A6,146.40 J. Przyluski, Revue de l'histoiredes religionscv, 1932, pp. 182-92. 41Op. cit. i, p. 147.42 Cf. also J. Keil, in Anatolian Studies presented to Sir William M. Ramsay, Manchester, 19e8,p. 96.2,n. 1.


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496 ALEXANDER H. KRAPPEamong the Apaches, we are told, "only ill-bred Americans or Europeans who havenever had any 'raising' would think of speaking of the bear . . . without employ-ing the reverential prefix ostin, meaning 'Old One'." 51Similarly, the nations of Si-beria do not like to pronouncethe name of the bear; they call him "Little Old Man,""Master of the Forest," "the Venerable," "He who knows," or simply "He." 52The European bear cult is thus seen to hark back to a very early stage of humanculture, the pre-agricultural stage as we still find it, for climatological reasons, inNorthern Europe and Siberia. It is a stage of scattered settlements inhabited byshepherds, hunters, and fishermen. From this point of view the Hellenic Artemiscult is clearly a survival: Artemis is the goddess of a people in a stage of culturewhich already in Homeric Greece was a thing of the past, except in certain out-of-the-way districts such as Arcadia,untouched by the march of the Ionian civilization.53

If this reasoning is correct, we should expect to find, connected with the cult ofArtemis, certain primitive or barbaric rites, over a large part of the territory oncededicated to her cult. In this expectation we are not deceived.The cult of Artemis is unusually rich in rites which, because of their very crude-ness, hark back to a far past. One of the most curious of these was performed annu-ally at her sanctuary at Patrae in Achaia, where she was worshipped under the culttitle of Laphria.54The festival opened with a gorgeous procession, in which the rear was brought up by her virginpriestess riding in a car drawn by deer. The following day, a great pile of dry wood having been erectedover the altar and enclosed by a strong palisade, deer and many other kind of animals, including wildboars, bears and wolves, were burned alive on the altar. Pausanias relates that on one occasion he hadseen some of the wild beasts breaking through the palisade and escaping by sheer strength; but thepeople dragged them back into the flames.Much the same type of holocaust is described by Lucian, who saw it performedatthe sanctuary of the Syrian Goddess at Hierapolis-Baalbek:55The greatest of the festivals that they celebrate is that held at the opening of spring; some call thisthe Pyre, others the Lamp. On this occasion the sacrifice is performed in this way. They cut down talltrees and set them up in the court; then they bring goats and sheep and cattle and hang them living tothe trees; they add to these birds and garments, and gold and silver work. After all is finished, theycarry the gods around the trees and set fire under; in a moment all is in a blaze. To this solemn rite agreat multitude flocks from Syria and all the regions around. Each brings his own god and the statueswhich each has of his own gods.The opening of spring means the month of Nisan, the month corresponding toApril. On the first three days of Nisan, as we learn from the Fihrist, the Syrians of

51 Harrison, op. cit., p. 117. 52 Frazer, Anthologia,loc. cit.63 Bachofen, Urreligion i, 149 f.; E. Curtius, GesammelteAbhandlungen,Berlin, ii, 1894, 3 ff.; U. v.Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, HellenistischeDichtungin der Zeit des Kallimachos,Berlin, ii, 1994, pp. 48 ff.L. R. Farnell, The Attributesof God,Oxford, 1925, p. 110, rightly observes: "Of the hunting period noreflection remains in our modern religious tradition." But there existed a great many such reflections in

the Graeco-Roman civilization of antiquity.54Paus. vii, 18, 11-13; M. P. Nilsson, GriechischeFeste vonreligiiser Bedeutung,Leipzig, 1906, pp. 218ff.; Ovid. ed. cit. ii, 167. 55Lucian, De dea syria, c. 49.


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498 ALEXANDER H. KRAPPEdivinities filling this general function and being accordingly honored with holocaustsof this type.63In France the ancient rite survived down to relatively modern times, except thatthe victims thrown into the midsummer fires were generally cats.64At Luchon, in thePyrenees, on the eve of St. John, a hollow column, constructed of strong wicker-workwas raised to a height of about 60 feet and interlaced with green foliage. Then thecolumn was kindled, while the chorus of the villagers sang ancient hymns andhurled living snakes into the flames.That cats were the logical successors of wilder animals may also be seen from thefact that the great Anatolian TT-6vlca0rqppv survives to this day in Turkish fairytales, in which the wild beasts of the mountains are referred to as her "kittens." 65

The TTO6rvlcarpcav is a figure whose cult has been traced from prehistoric Cretedown into classical and even Hellenistic times. In the monuments she is frequentlyaccompanied by two male figures, the Dioscuri, or their predecessors.66 This leads usback to the starting point of our inquiry, Acca Larentia and the Roman Twins, andthe question of the true relationship between the Hellenic TT-6vlca0repwv and theold Italian wolf-goddess.According to a well-known passage of Macrobius (Sat. i, 1Q, Q1) the cult of theArval Brethren was dedicated to an earth goddess called Maia, declared to be identi-cal with the Bona Dea and with the Mater Larum, invoked by the same Brethren,while the identity of Acca Larentia with the Bona Dea may be inferred from the fact

that the twelve Arval Brethren in their sacrifices to the Bona Dea represent thetwelve sons of Acca Larentia.67On the other hand, the Mater Larum appears in various monuments of relig-ious art accompanied by two male figures, variously interpreted as the Lares orDioscuri.68 Without deciding the question of the correct or the primary interpreta-tion, we may be sure that these representations are connected with, or derived from,the pre-Hellenic figure of the TT-rvlia rOlppv and the Dioscuri.This important fact brings our argument to a close: Acca Larentia is the Italian

equivalent, or derivative, of the great mother-goddess, the TT-6vlca rjOpCOv,nown tohave been worshipped, in prehistoric times, from the Indus valley to the shores of theAtlantic. She is the great mother of all life, from whom all living creatures derivetheir existence and to whom all must return once their short span of fleeting life hascome to an end.

*#

63 Paus. iv, 31, 9; cf. Nilsson, Journal, p. 145; Minoan-Mycenaean Religion, pp. 473 f.64D'Arbois de Jubainville, La Civilisation des Celtes,Paris, 1899, p. 245; Frazer, Balder the Beautifulii, London, 1935, pp. 24 ff.; Paul Sbbillot, Le Folk-Lorede France iii, 112.65Ignacz Kunos, Turkish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales, translated from the Hungarian version by R.Nisbet Bain, London, 1901, p. 270.66Ch. Picard, Revue de l'histoire des religionsxcviii, 1928, pp. 60 ff.67Aul. Gell. vii, 7, 8; Pliny, NH. xviii, 6; cf. Carcopino, op. cit., pp. 105 f.68 On the confusion of Lares and Dioscuri cf. Waites, loc.cit., pp. 259 ff.; Taylor, loc. cit., p. 311; Mar-cel Bulard, La religion domestiquedans la colonie italienne de Delos (Bibl. Ed. Franc. d'Atheneset deRome) cxxxi, Paris, 1926, p. 191.


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ACCA LARENTIA 499Inasmuch as the cult of the TT-6Tviarlpcv covered a connected territory, its diffu-sion from some center may be taken for granted and accounted for as the work of

roaming tribes. Still, it is interesting to note that a Mistress of Animals is knowneven to peoples who, in historical and near-prehistorical times, are not known tohave been in communication with Asia or Europe. Thus the Eskimos believe in aMother of Animals, supposed to live at the bottom of the sea and to control thesupply of seals and fish.69Artemis was not only a bear-goddess; she could and did assume many other animalforms. One of the most common of these was the deer. On this showing, and assumingthat our deductions are correct, there should also have existed, in Northern Europeand Central Asia, a deer-goddess of much the same functions. That this inference isjustified was shown, a few years ago, by Mr. J. G. McKay, in a paper read before theFolk-Lore Society.7G

There may still linger, in the reader's mind, the question of how the she-wolf, thelupa, could ever assume maternal characteristics, a development in direct contradic-tion with the general reputation of that evil animal also in Italy - suffice it to recallthe lupa of the first canto of Dante's great poem, such ominous derivatives aslupanar, and the Roman tradition according to which Acca Larentia was a woman ofwhom Puritans do not approve.71The answer must probably be sought in the fact that by the first millennium of thepre-Christian era the bear had already disappeared from the greater part of theItalian peninsula, if it had ever existed there in a wild condition.72 Thus the T6-rTvlc0epWv could not very well be imagined in bear-shape and the only other largecarnivore was accordingly substituted. That this conjecture is not altogether withoutfoundation may be seen from the queer tradition according to which the Lupatreated the Twins in much the same manner in which the she-bear treats her ownyoung: et fungit lingua corpora bina sua 3

ALEXANDER H. KRAPPEPRINCETON, N. J.

69 L. Levy-Bruhl, Le Surnaturel et la naturedans la mentalitgprimitive,Paris, 1931, pp. 448 f.70 Folk-Lorexliii, 1932, pp. 144-74; cf. also J. Whatmough, JRS. xli, 1921, pp. Q45-53; F. R. Schri-der, Germanisch-RomanischeMonatsschriftxvii, 1929, p. 411.71Livy i, 10, 4; Plut. Rom. iv, 3; Serv. ad Verg. Aen. i, 273; Aur. Vict. Orig. Gent.Rom., c. 21.72 Sir George C. Lewis, An Historical Surveyof the Astronomyof the Ancients, London, 1862, p. 65,n. 241,denied the existence of wild bears south of the Alps. On the gradual disappearance of the bearfrom European folk-lore and its replacement by the wolf, cf. Kaarle Krohn, Bar (Wolf) und Fuchs.Aus dem Finnischen iibersetzt von O. Hackman, Helsingfors, 1888, passim.73Livy i, 4; Ovid, Fasti ii, 418.

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