CHAP. II.
possessing in greater or less degree a talismanic power, but all
manifesting the presence of the essential idea of boundless fertility
which the symbol was specially adopted to denote. The Argo itself
is divine. In was the work of a being akin to, if not identical with,
Argos Panoptes, the all-seeing, who guards the heifer 16. In its
prow Athene, the dawn-goddess, herself places a piece of wood^ from
the speaking oaks of Dodona, and the ship is thus endowed with
the power of warning and guiding the chieftains who form its crew.
This mystic vessel reappears in the shell of Aphrodite, and in the
ship borne in solemn procession to the Parthenon on the great
Panathenaic festival,^ as the phallos was carried before the god in
the great feasts of Dionysos. Over this ship floated the saffron-
coloured robe woven for it by the hands of Athenian maidens, as the
women in the temple of Jerusalem wove hangings for the Ashera
of Baal. This ship again is the bark or boat- shaped vessel of which
Tacitus speaks as the symbol employed by the Suevi in the worship
of Isis. Whether this goddess is to be identified with the Teutonic
Ziza worshipped in the countrj' about Augsburg is an indifferent
matter. It is more likely that the name is given from a resemblance
of attributes, as he calls Wuotan Mercury and Thor Mars. But it
is strange that Tacitus should have satisfied himself with the remark
that the sign pointed simply to a foreign cultus brought across the
sea, when not only was the same symbol used in the Athenian
processions of his own day, but the voyage of Isis was marked in the
Roman rustic calendar on the 5th of March. ^ This ship of Isis was,
however, nothing more nor less than the vehicle of the earth-goddess
Herth or Aerth, whose sacred island Tacitus mentions in the same
treatise.* Here too, as with the Ashera at Jerusalem and the ship of
^ Seemingly the Phallos, which gave her title of Pallas. In the issue this piece of wood, or pole, is as fatal to lason as the Stauros to Osiris, or the Mistletoe to Baldur.
- The connexion of the robe or veil
with the Phallic emblem is brought out, as we might expect, with great promi- nence in the Phrygian or Eastern my- thology. " Nun erziihlt Arnobius, Cybele habe mit ihrem Kleide den abge- schnittenen Phallus des Attes bedeckt, ein Gebrauch, welcher in den Mysterien der Isis gleichfalls vorkam, denn zu Byblos wurde im Tempel der Baaltis (Gottermutter) das heilige Holz ((pas, palus) von der Isis mit Leinwand be- deckt. — F/ut. de Is. c. 16. Nun wird auch die Bibelstelle (Ezech. xvi. 17) klar."— Nork, s.v. "Attes." • The parallelism of these myths was pointed out with singular accuracy by >Ir. Richard Price in his introduction to Warton's History of English Poetry. It is impossible for any student of comparative mythology to read this remarkable treatise, written some fifty years ago, without feeling that, here as elsewhere, other men have laboured, and we enter into their labours.
- Mr. Gould having quoted the
passage from Appuleius in which the goddess says, that yearly her priests dedicate to her a new ship laden with the firstfruits of spring, adds that the carrj'ing in procession of ships, in which the Virgin Mary takes the place of Aphrodite or Astarte, has not yet wholly gone out of use, and notices the prohibitions issued at different times
