212 NOTICES OF BOOKS
Levi-Strauss' conception of mythical thought as
bricolage imply that mythologies are systems of
symbols rather than signs? (D. Sperber, Le symbo-
lisme en general, Paris, Hermann, 1974). Does a
myth—or a particular version of a myth—convey
a message? Where should the boundaries of the
category 'myth' be drawn? What is the relation
between the organisation of conceptual categories in
daily life and practical knowledge, in ritual, and in
myth?
Dealing with Greek myths, V. has had to face the
argument that the Greek material, coming from a
literate culture, is not of the same species as 'primi-
tive' myth and is not amenable to the same type of
analysis. His answer seems to be that what matters
is not the mode of transmission of the myth or the
narrator's consciousness of conveying an original
message (visionaries exist in non-literate societies),
but the frame within which the myth is narrated.
The cosmological myths of Hesiod, the Orphic poets
and Alcman are presented as alternatives to earlier
myths: being intended to replace the latter, they
necessarily stand on the same footing. Pindar's use
of myths to point a moral already begins to make a
change; in tragedy we find a conscious dialectic
between the world of myth and the world of the polls,
and myth is radically transformed by its subjection to
the demands of a new genre. It is surely no accident
that this change develops just in the period when the
Greeks are elaborating their new distinction between
mythos a n d logos.
Hesiod took traditional materials and created a
new 'mythology', a structured set of myths. In
the Greek material we have not only variant versions
of myths, but competing mythologies, implicitly
contraposed to each other. Is this due to the
changing structure of Greek society and culture in
the archaic age? Or is it only that we know, in this
case, the composition and date of 'mythologies' and
something of the personality of the men who com-
posed them? Rather than drawing distinctions
between the myths of the Greeks and those of non-
literate cultures, we should use our knowledge of the
historical context of different versions of Greek myth
to ask questions about the relation between myth as
langue and a particular version of a particular myth
as parole which are in theory relevant to any culture,
even if we do not always have the data with which to
answer them.
In his paper on Hesiod's versions of the Prome-
theus myth V. makes a distinction, which is relevant
here, between three levels of analysis: the logic of the
narrative, its semantic content (the 'paradigmatic'
relations of opposition and homology between
images), and the relation of this content to its
socio-cultural context. The images used in myth
derive their characteristic shape, their set of potential
associations, from a cultural context which includes
social institutions, ritual, technical and ecological
knowledge, moral norms and immoral impulses; but
each version of a myth may select and re-combine its
images, within the limits of association comprehen-
sible to the audience. When we have to rely on
summaries of a myth in late mythographers, as in the
case of Adonis, the emphasis of the analysis must rest
on the relations of the myth to its cultural context;
but with Hesiod we can trace the way in which his
second version of the Prometheus myth is implicitly
adjusted to the first, we know something of his
historical context: we can begin to ask questions about
the transformation of collective categories of thought
into a creative act of communication.
S. C. HUMPHREYS
University College London
DETIENNE (M.) and VERNANT (J.-P.) Les ruses de
l'intelligence: la metis des Grecs.
(Nouvelle bibliotheque scientifique.) Paris:
Flammarion. 1974. Pp. 316. Fr. 58.
Detienne and Vernant do not claim that their book
is complete, nor would we expect it to be when they
say 'notre enquete traverse done l'univers culturel des
Grecs dans toute son etendue' (p. 8). In fact they
open their discussion by considering the advice
offered Antilochus by Nestor at the funeral games of
Patroclus, thereby illustrating the practical applica-
tion and the diversity associated with metis; in
conclusion they state that 'la metis est elle-meme une
puissance de ruse et de tromperie' (p. 29). Oppian
on fishing and hunting reveals that metis is not
confined to humans; the fox and the octopus 'sont
comme l'incarnation de la ruse dans le monde
animal' (p. 41). Here already we see the great
merit and the great weakness of this study: the
authors refer extensively and at length to actual texts,
but in citing the ancients themselves they jumble
everything together with little respect for chronology
or literary genre; there is a lack of historical perspec-
tive, and for this the sheer accumulation of authorities
is no substitute.
Having thus had metis defined and its origin traced,
we pass on to Zeus' struggle to gain supremacy. If
Cronus is succeeded by his son, it is because with the
metis of Cronus Taccent n'est pas mis seulement sur
son inferiorite par rapport a celle de Zeus, mais sur
son aspect inquietant, voire malefique' (p. 101).
Zeus, having married and then swallowed Metis,
becomes nieticta, and subsequently marries Themis,
who, as mother of the Horai and Moirai, represents
stability, continuity and regularity. Magic is
increasingly important as we read of sea-deities
endowed with wisdom and an ability to change their
shape and again as Metis in Orphic theogonies and
Thetis in Alcman's cosmogony are considered. The
two deities to exemplify the practical intelligence and
the technical expertise which the Greeks designated
by the word metis are Athene and Hephaestus. The
authors discuss the former as a warrior-goddess, as a
deity associated with horses, and, more surprisingly,
as a goddess of the sea (e.g. Athene aiihuia). Here
speculation abounds, much being made of rather
little: how significant is it that Athene is linked with
heroes such as Odysseus, Telemachus and Jason who
happen to go on sea-voyages or with the building of
ships? When it is observed that Odysseus, the
favourite of Athene, escapes from Calypso's island on
a craft and proceeds to navigate across the seas, your
reviewer is not impressed. And we also have a
section with the intriguing title 'les pieds d'Hephais-
tos'. The argument is no less fascinating: the
 NOTICES OF BOOKS
Telchines 'sont semblables tantot a des demons,
tantot a des hommes, tantot encore a des poissons'
(p. 252), while the Cabiri, the sons of Hephaestus, are
identified with the crab, all of which goes to explain
the lameness of the craftsman god.
Detienne and Vernant can be agonisingly prolix
and wildly speculative, but at the same time they
never fail to provoke further thought. A summary of
major contents with the occasional comment does not
do justice to the wealth of material they have assem-
bled. Methodology remains the crucial problem
for those with an interest in myth: too neat a formula-
tion in which everything finds its own place and
contributes to the overall picture can arouse suspicion
rather than carry conviction.
P. WALCOT
University College, Cardiff
CLINTON (K.) The sacred officials of the
Eleusinian mysteries. (Transactions of the
American Philosophical Society, n.s. vol. 64,
Pt- 3, '974-) Philadelphia: American Philo-
sophical Society. 1974. Pp. 143, 17 text figs.
S12.00.
This is a preliminary study which arose in the
preparation of a collection of all the epigraphic
evidence relating to the Eleusinian sanctuary. The
evidence is organised round lists of the known holders
of the various offices. As Toepffer's lists date from
1889, those of us who from time to time need to be
sure of the present state of the evidence have had to
make our own lists, and it is a substantial relief to find
the work so carefully done here, with full reconsidera-
tion of relevant texts. The interest of the work is not
merely prosopographic and institutional. Iconog-
raphers will need to consider the sections on priestly
dress and on representations of the naideq ay eorlag
(pp. 32-5, 101-8). There is a useful discussion of the
development of Eumolpid exegesis (pp. 90-1) and an
important contribution on the arrangement of seats
in the Theatre of Dionysus (pp. 120-1).
Significant error and omissions are rare. The
discussion of the Alexandrian Eleusis (pp. 8-9) lacks
the crucial P.Oxy. 2465. The view that Lys. xix 48
shows that Hipponikos (II) is recently dead (p. 48)
is incorrect; the contrast is between the past and
present prosperity of Kallias (III); we may agree that
the belief that Hipponikos (II) was daidouch is
insufficiently grounded. The use of coin evidence to
date the careers of the late second century dai-
douchs (pp. 54-5) lacks my observations, Num. Chron.
1962, 291-2; I see that I over-simplified, but am not
sure that I was wrong.
D. M. LEWIS
Christ Church, Oxford
HORNBOSTEL (VV.) Sarapis: Studien zur tjber-
Heferungsgeschichte, den Erscheinungs-
formen and Wandlungen der Gestalt
eines Gottes. (fitudes preliminaires aux
religions orienlales dans l'empire romain, 32.)
Leiden: Brill. 1973. Pp. xx + 482. 220 plates.
2 maps. Fl. 280.
This work stands out among the present flood of
monographs and ex-dissertations on Sarapis, Isis and
213
other oriental deities, mainly published in M. Ver-
maseren's hospitable Etudes preliminaires aux religions
orientales dans I'Empire romain, by reason both of its bulk
and of the complexity and difficulty of the theme. It
is the fullest treatment yet given to the familiar
problem of the original type and the subsequent
evolution of the 'Bryaxean' statue of Sarapis that
stood in the Alexandrian Serapeum, and it may be
said with confidence that even if it does not solve the
mystery as certainly as the author hopes, it will
remain the standard work on the subject for a very
considerable time. The arguments are worked out
soberly and in detail, and are supported by a remark-
able photographic documentation of all shapes and
sizes of the ubiquitous god. The bibliographies are
replete with references to all manner of sales-cata-
logues, and also to large numbers of recent German
dissertations.
H.'s main aim is to controvert the thesis of L.
Castiglione {Bull. Mus. Nat. Hongr. 12, 1958) that, of
the two familiar Sarapis-types, that in which the hair
of the god is represented in Anastole-form, i.e. rising
from the brow, and that in which it hangs down in a
fringe of (usually) five locks over the brow (the so-
called 'Fransenfrisur'), the former represents the
feature of the 'Bryaxean' or early hellenistic original,
and the second the Hadrianic and post-Hadrianic
'canonical' type, which, according to Castiglione,
emerged after the original cult-statue had been
damaged or destroyed at the time of the Jewish
Revolt in A.D. 115-17; and to substitute for it a
parallel stylistic pattern in which in Imperial times
the two styles existed side by side from the time of
Claudius onwards, the 'Fransenfrisur' predominating.
H. shows beyond doubt that there was no break in
types on Alexandrian bronze and billon issues between
Trajan and Hadrian, as Castiglione's thesis required
and that there was an overall parallelism in the use of
the two types from Nero to the late third century
A.D. The datable hellenistic material is very scanty,
and H.'s main concern in this area is to establish the
identity of an early and relatively uncontaminated
sculptural copy by means of comparison with dated or
datable non-Sarapic statues. He believes that the
original statue had a 'Fransenfrisur' and that this
unusual feature was soon submerged owing to the
need for popularisation of the new god, on account of
which the Anastole-type, with its reminiscences of
Zeus, was introduced (pp. 79-80; 351), and trium-
phed in the Hellenistic age. The earliest datable
busts of Sarapis, those of the jugate Sarapis and Isis
on coins of Philopator, are of the Anastole type (see
fig. 68), whereas the earliest datable 'Fransenfrisur'
are apparently of the reign of Augustus (see H.'s list
of pre-Hadrianic examples, pp. 210-12).
The difficulty of assigning a chronology on stylistic
grounds to objects made, as most of the innumerable
Sarapis-heads are, from moulds in greatly reduced
size, and the absence of any demonstrably early
plastic copies in the round, combine to render this a
task of singular difficulty, and H. shows himself
throughout, and especially in his 'Conclusions'
(pp. 389 ff.), well aware of this. H. accepts the
principle that he can retrace the steps to the 'Bryaxean'
original through various stable features of the copies,
such as the position of the seated figure, the form of