![Editors:
August E. Grant
Jennifer H. Meadows
Technology Futures, Inc.
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![Now this fact in itself, though it may be stated in different ways,
is not much disputed among scholars. But the explanations of the
fact are various. That which seems to me much the most probable is
the theory of Expurgation. As Mr. Lang seems not quite to have
understood what I tried to say about this in my Rise of the Greek
Epic, I will restate it in this way: We know that the great mass of
saga-poetry began to be left on one side and neglected from about
the eighth century on; and we find, to judge from our fragments,
that it remained in its semi-savage state. Two poems, on the
contrary, were selected at some early time for public recitation at the
solemn four-yearly meeting of ‘all Ionians’, and afterwards of ‘all
Athenians’. The poems were demonstrably still in a fluid condition;
and the intellect of Greece was focussed upon them. This process
lasted on through the period of that great movement which raised
the shores of the Aegean from a land of semi-savages to the Hellas
of Thales, of Aeschylus, and of Euripides. And we find, naturally, that
amid all the colour of an ideal past, in which these two epics, like all
other epics, have steeped their story, there has been a gradual but
drastic rejection of all the uglier and uncleaner elements. That is a
very broad statement; it omits both the evidence and the additional
causes and qualifications. But it serves to explain why I treat the
non-Homeric sagas as representing more faithfully the primitive pre-
Hellenic habits of thought, the mere slough out of which Hellas rose.
Now to one lecturing on Anthropology in Homer, the difficulty is
to find enough material. In the case of the early saga outside Homer,
the difficulty is only what to choose and where to stop.
One might begin by discussing the remnants of primitive secret
societies. The remains are fairly rich. Mr. Webster, in his instructive
book,[41] has traced the normal genesis of these bodies which
exercise such an enormous influence over savage life. The first stage
he takes to be the ordinary system of ordeals and puberty rites
through which all males of the tribe have to pass before they can be
admitted as full men. The ordeals of the Arunta and of the various
Red Indian tribes are familiar to most of us. These ceremonies are](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/514-250411233617-b5a068bc/85/Communication-Technology-Update-and-Fundamentals-42-320.jpg)
![often involved in a good deal both of mystery and of charlatanry.
The youths initiated, for instance, sometimes are supposed to die
and be born again. The process is secret. The women of the tribe
are kept carefully away. The neighbourhood is filled with the warning
sound of the Rhombos or Bull-roarer—that ‘whirring of immortal
things’ which Hesiod perhaps means when he speaks of the air
resounding ῥιπᾖ ὑπ’ ἀθανάτων.[42] The next stage begins when this
initiation ceremony ceases to be compulsory. This sometimes
depends on the separation of the War Chief from the medicine-man
or the elders. For of course the initiation ceremonies are specially
the department of the last named. In the third stage we find a full-
flown Secret Society. The initiated form a definite body and work
together for the maintenance of such conduct as is pleasing to the
gods and themselves.
Take the case of Dukduk, a powerful society in the Bismarck
Archipelago, north-east of New Guinea. I will not dwell on its power
nor on the advantages which accrue to its worshippers. But I cite
from Mr. Webster an eyewitness’s account of an epiphany of Dukduk.
Dukduk arrives about six times a year, and always on the day of
the new moon. His arrival is announced a month beforehand by the
Old Men—the Gerontes. During that month great quantities of food
are made ready for Dukduk, and are ‘taken care of’ by the Old Men,
his votaries. The day before the epiphany all women disappear from
sight. It is death to them to look on the divine being. Before
daybreak all the males of the tribe assemble on the beach, most of
the young men looking frightened. At the first streak of dawn singing
and drum-beating is heard out at sea, and as soon as there is
enough light five or six canoes are seen at a distance, lashed
together and with a platform built over them. On this platform are
two Dukduks, dancing and uttering shrill cries. They are got up like
gigantic cassowaries, some ten feet high, surmounted by a
grotesque human mask. At least, says Mr. Romilly, the witness whom
I cite, the body looks much like the body of the cassowary, but the
head is like nothing but the head of a Dukduk. The canoes make the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/514-250411233617-b5a068bc/85/Communication-Technology-Update-and-Fundamentals-43-320.jpg)
![beach. The natives fall back in apprehension, for if Dukduk is
touched he frequently tomahawks the offender on the spot. They
proceed through the settlement, always dancing and screaming, to
the secret house which has been prepared for them in the bush.
They stay about a fortnight. They beat people a good deal, and
exact money from suitable sources, especially plundering the
women; if any one has shown disrespect of any sort to any member
of the Dukduk society, not to speak of Dukduk himself, the
punishment is swift and terrible.
Now Dukduk, like Egbo and Mumbo-Jumbo, is an anti-feminist,
whereas Dionysus was essentially worshipped by women. There are
several West African parallels to this. The Bundu of the Mendi
country is a very powerful woman‘s society.[43] But otherwise is not
the whole of this story curiously reminiscent of the Dionysus myths,
as they occur, for instance, in the early Corinthian epos attributed to
Eumelos? In his native Thrace, very possibly, everybody was initiated
to Dionysus; but in Greece his worshippers form a special society.
Dionysus arrives in a ship from unknown seas: when he moves
inland this ship is set bodily upon a wagon.[44] He makes his
epiphany at various places, claiming worship for himself and honours
for his worshippers. In the regular propagandist legend that comes
down to us, Lycurgus perished for wrongs done to the Bacchic
society and the god himself. He ‘sought to stay the women
possessed of god and the Bacchic fire’.[45] He smote or drove into
the sea Dionysus himself and his Nurses.[46] The same with
Pentheus. In the actual ritual, we can have little doubt, a man
personated Dionysus, exactly as a man personates the Dukduk or
Egbo or Mumbo-Jumbo. And presumably, in just the same way, the
uninitiated, as Mungo Park says, ‘were so ignorant, or at least were
obliged to pretend to be so,’ as to take the figure on the ship for a
divine being.
The Mysteries are all intimately connected with Secret Societies.
The Demeter mystery has an epiphany in it; it has the arrival of
Demeter at Eleusis; it has the Rhombos or Bull-roarer and the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/514-250411233617-b5a068bc/85/Communication-Technology-Update-and-Fundamentals-44-320.jpg)
![exclusion of the uninitiated. And, a sign perhaps of declining
influence in this actual world, it professes, like many of these
societies, to do wonderful things in the next.
There are, to my mind, traces in prehistoric Greece of another
kind of secret society, resembling the Human Leopards or Human
Lions of West Africa. I must refer here to the long expected book of
my friend Mr. Penmorlan Maine on Werewolves. But, to give the
mere outlines of the subject, the members of these societies are apt
to turn, at certain seasons, into leopards or lions, and then kill
human beings in a leopard-like or lion-like way. Their object is partly
to obtain human fat for ‘medicine’, partly to remove or discourage
their enemies. Sir H. H. Johnston[47] tells of a series of murders
committed by an old man, who concealed himself in long grass and
leaped out on solitary travellers. He killed them and then mutilated
the bodies. He confessed the murders freely, but explained that he
at times turned into a lion, and had to act as such.[48] The leopard
societies have special three-pronged forks or gloves with knives at
the end to imitate the wound of a leopard’s claw. And I have seen a
long club ending in claws like a wild beast’s, which I suspect had the
same purpose. My father-in-law bought it in Khartoum from a negro
from the south, who professed not to know what it was. He said it
was a ‘fantasia’—as no doubt it was.
To take a particular instance, the mode of initiation in the
Sherbro leopard society strongly recalls certain pre-Hellenic myths.
The society chooses some stranger and asks him to a dinner at
which human flesh is secretly mixed among the other food. At the
end of the meal they reveal to him what he has eaten, and in proof
(I think) show him the hands, and sometimes the head, of the
murdered human being. He has shared the leopard feast, and is now
a leopard.[49]
Was it not exactly like this that Atreus kept the hands and feet of
the murdered children apart, hidden with a cloth, and at the end of
the feast removed the cloth to show Thyestes what he had eaten?
Lykaon too, though his name can scarcely be derived from λύκος,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/514-250411233617-b5a068bc/85/Communication-Technology-Update-and-Fundamentals-45-320.jpg)
![turned into a wolf because he had ‘sacrificed a child on the altar of
Zeus Lykaios’. As he himself can scarcely be different from Zeus
Lykaios, this must originally have implied some cannibal act. And you
will remember that ever afterwards in the ritual of Zeus Lykaios
legend said that one piece of human flesh was mixed up with the
rest of the sacrificial meat, and the man who unknowingly tasted
that bit was doomed to turn into a wolf.[50]
There are the burning questions of totems and of matriarchy;
there is Earth-magic, there is Purification, there is Fetichism: there
are many other marks of ‘the Religions of the Lower Culture’ to be
found in the ancient pre-Hellenic myths. But I must turn to the
special point which I wish to illustrate in the remainder of this
lecture.
I wish to deal with a most familiar part of the subject, the Divine
King, or, as I prefer to call him, the Medicine-King, and then to apply
the results which we reach to the most obvious remnant of non-
Homeric poetry that has come down to us, the Theogony of Hesiod.
We all know about this medicine-king. If we like we can call him
divine. On his force and his mana—what Hesiod, I venture to
suggest, calls his κράτος τε βία τε—depends the welfare of his
people, in the way of rain and thunderstorms, of abundance of
game, of crops, of success in war. He also affects floods, earthquake,
and pestilence. If he suffers in any way, if his mana is weakened, his
whole people suffers and is weakened too. Consequently he is
encouraged and kept strong as long as possible; if he shows any
weakness, he must be got rid of and a better man found to take his
place. There seem to be three main methods. Either he is set aside
periodically, at the end of five years, or nine years, or the like; or he
is quietly deposed when he shows signs of age, like Peleus, Oineus,
Aison, in the legends; or, and this is our main subject to-day, when
some one else shows superior mana by killing him. At present my
mana is supreme; I am king; my will carries itself out. But if your
mana, your Kratos and Bia, conquer mine, then you are king. If you
can also get my mana into you, so much the better. For κράτος and](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/514-250411233617-b5a068bc/85/Communication-Technology-Update-and-Fundamentals-46-320.jpg)
![βία are tricky things and may desert any one of us, or, according to
Hesiod, any except Zeus: ‘No house of Zeus is without them, no seat
of Zeus, there is no going forth of the god where they do not follow
him, and they sit for ever beside the Thunderer.’[51] Already, in
Hesiod, these mana qualities have become half anthropomorphic;
much more so, of course, in Aeschylus’ Prometheus.
Now in anthropology we are always making fresh efforts at the
imaginative understanding of men far removed from us, and
naturally, therefore, we are always slightly correcting and modifying
our conceptions. I want here to suggest that with regard to this
Divine King the ordinary classical conception is slightly wrong. We
speak of deification; and this deification always remains rather a
puzzle for us. It may be all very well for the mysterious Minos: but
when applied to Julius Caesar or to Hadrian, in the full light and
plain prose of history, it seems such an absurd and gratuitous
blasphemy. I think the mistake lies in applying our highly abstract
conception ‘God’, a conception rarefied and ennobled during many
centuries by the philosophic and religious thought of the highest of
mankind, to a stratum of human ideas to which it does not belong.
In one of the presidential addresses delivered to the recent Congress
of Religions, Mr. Hartland dwelt on a significant fact with regard to
this idea of God, viz. that whenever this word is used our best
witnesses tend to contradict one another. Among the most
competent observers of the Arunta tribes, for instance, some hold
that they had no conception of a God, others that they were
constantly thinking about God. Much may be said about this; but
one thing, I think, emerges with some clearness: that this idea of a
god far away in the sky—I do not say merely a god who is ‘without
body, parts, or passions’, but even a god who is very remote and is a
cause behind the regular phenomena of the world—this idea is one
which practically does not enter their minds at all, or, if by an effort
they can reach and accept it, it has little working value and is soon
forgotten. For most primitive races, I suspect, the medicine-chief,
the βασιλεύς, with his immense mana, is Theos, and equally the
Theos is the medicine-chief. The rainmaker, the bringer of game, the](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/514-250411233617-b5a068bc/85/Communication-Technology-Update-and-Fundamentals-47-320.jpg)
![Review for 1903, and again in his ‘European Sky God’ in Folk Lore,
xv, pp. 371-90. I will run briefly through a few of them.
The clearest of all is Salmoneus. His nature was explained, I
believe, partly by M. Salomon Reinach and partly by Miss Jane
Harrison. ‘He declared that he was Zeus,’ says Apollodorus (i. 9, 7),
‘and depriving Zeus of his sacrifices bade men offer them to himself.
He attached to a chariot leather thongs with bronze caldrons and,
trailing them after him, said he was thundering; he tossed blazing
torches into the air and said he was lightening.’—So he was; at least,
he was doing his best. Mr. Cook shows that he had also some
justification for saying that he was Zeus. For he was an Olympian
victor; and thereby became Basileus, or Zeus, of Olympia, and had
the thunder-making as part of his official duties.
Almost exactly similar is Remulus Silvius, Remulus ... imitator
fulminis, as Ovid calls him. ‘In contempt of the gods he contrived
mock thunderbolts and noises like thunder, wherewith he thought to
frighten men as though he were a god. But a storm fraught with rain
and lightning falling upon his house, and the lake near which it stood
swelling in an unusual manner, he was drowned with his whole
family.’[52] As with Salmoneus, amid his mock thunder-storms came
the real thunder-storm and slew him.
More modest and more in accord with later beliefs was Numa. No
impiety was to be found in his thunder-making.[53] ‘Picus and
Faunus taught Numa many things, including a charm for thunder
and lightning, composed of onions, hair, and pilchards, which is used
to this day.’ You may remember the story told by Livy, Ovid, and
others, how Numa cheated Jupiter of his human sacrifice. He
conjured Jupiter by a spell to come to him and reveal a charm for
thunder. The god came, but was angry at being brought, and meant
to have blood. ‘I want heads’ ... ‘Of onions,’ said Numa. ‘I want
human’ ... ‘Hairs,’ said Numa. ‘I want living’ ... ‘Pilchards,’ put in the
pious king, and Jupiter gave the matter up.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/514-250411233617-b5a068bc/85/Communication-Technology-Update-and-Fundamentals-50-320.jpg)
![Minos in much the same way had the power to thunder, but only
had it by means of a prayer to his father Zeus.
Now observe that most of these early Roman heroes appear both
as men and as gods. The explanation is, I think, that when the
celestial gods were introduced the old Theoi or Basilêes had to be
either condemned, like Mezentius, Remulus Silvius, Salmoneus, or
else deified. Numa and Romulus suggest themselves at once.
Aeneas, too, while engaged in battle with Turnus, or some say
Mezentius, vanished and became Jupiter Indiges. Latinus vanished
while fighting Mezentius, and became Jupiter Latiaris. In later times
there were numbers of these ‘Humani Ioves’. It is one of the most
important social facts to remember about antiquity, that the spread
of education was very difficult and slow, and in consequence it was
almost impossible for a whole nation at once ever to rise entirely
above that primitive state of superstition which Preuss describes by
the pleasant word ‘Urdummheit’.
Julius Caesar was worshipped as Jupiter, with M. Antonius for his
Flamen Dialis. Caligula was worshipped as Optimus Maximus and
also as Jupiter Latiaris; it was perhaps in this capacity that he put to
death his rival the Rex Nemorensis at Nemi. Domitian is constantly
referred to as Jupiter in the poets. Coins are found inscribed ΛΙΒΙΑ
ΗΡΑ, and HADRIANO IOVI OLYMPIO.
We have further the somewhat mysterious statement of
Macrobius (Sat. iii. 7. 6) that ‘the souls of consecrated men were
called by the Greeks Zânes’, and the express and frequently
repeated statement of Tzetzes ‘that the ancients called all their kings
Zeus and their queens goddesses’. Οἱ γὰρ πρίν τε Δίας πάντας
κάλεον βασιλῆας.[54]
I will not dwell on Zeus-Agamemnon or on Zeus-Minos; nor on
the number of priests of Zeus at Corycus who bear the name Zâs.
But I will just draw attention to one fact. Two classes of people who
are not kings, and I believe two only, are found bearing the title of
Zeus. They are prophets—like Zeus-Amphiaraos and Zeus-
Trophonios; and doctors—like the celebrated Menekrates, who called](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/514-250411233617-b5a068bc/85/Communication-Technology-Update-and-Fundamentals-51-320.jpg)
![himself Zeus and his various attendants by other divine names. That
is to say the old conception of medicine-chief has split up into those
three channels, king, prophet, and doctor; and to all three the name
of Zeus occasionally belongs. It was for a medical miracle at Lystra
that Barnabas was hailed as Zeus and Paul as Hermes (Acts xiv. 12).
Now, as has been observed before now, the history of these
Humani Ioves is written in blood, and that for two special reasons.
First, it is by blood that they come to the throne and by blood that
they leave it. Secondly, they are always appealed to in times of great
strait or danger, when ‘strong medicine’ is wanted. And the strongest
and most favourite medicine in such cases is human blood, of one
sort or another. The main object of the Leopard Societies is said to
be the wish to obtain human fat as ‘medicine’. The same motive
leads to murders in Australia.[55]
We should perhaps add a third cause for the stain of blood which
lies so deep on these primitive medicine-kings. I mean, the mere
wish to inspire terror and obedience and to keep off as long as
possible that inevitable successor who filled their days with dread.
Kyknos, Phorbas, Oinomaos, Kerkyon, Amykos, Philomeleides, Sinis,
and Procrustes, all those ogres of Greek myth who race or wrestle
with all comers and, having defeated them, hang their heads on
trees or tear their bodies asunder or fling them to wild beasts or the
like, have their parallel in many an African king, whose hut is ringed
by heads stuck on poles.[56]
Now I wish to apply these conceptions, as I said, to the most
obvious piece of Greek Epic poetry outside Homer, and illustrate
anthropologically the main legend of the Theogony. You will
remember the outlines of the story. The first possessor of the kingly
office—βασιληίδα τιμήν—is Ouranos. He is afraid of his children, and
‘hides’ or imprisons them. At last his son Kronos conquers and
mutilates him, and he passes out of sight. Kronos becomes king and
is equally afraid of his children; he ‘swallows’ them one after
another; eventually Zeus conquers and ‘binds’ him. Zeus now reigns;](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/514-250411233617-b5a068bc/85/Communication-Technology-Update-and-Fundamentals-52-320.jpg)
![But it is not quite so simple; for Athena was the child of Metis, and
she was obviously not mightier than Zeus. The oracle takes the
curious form that Metis is to bear ‘first Athena, and secondly a child
who shall be mightier than his father.’ Zeus seems to have swallowed
her rather prematurely. But he had a second motive also. He
swallowed Metis ‘that the goddess being inside him should tell him
of good and evil’. The name Μῆτις of course means ‘Counsel’ or
‘Wisdom’.
Leaving this last detail aside for the present, I suggest that the
main motive in this strange story of the swallowing or hiding of the
successive possible pretenders to the crown is the dread which each
king naturally felt of him who was coming after. But this still leaves
much unexplained; the second main element which I find is the
worship of sacred flints or thunder-stones.
When Kronos set about swallowing Zeus, you will remember, Gaia
put a big stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to great Kronos.
And he ‘put it inside his belly’, ἑὴν ἑσκάτθετο νηδύν (487). Then, ‘in
the passing of the years’—whatever that exactly means—‘beguiled
by the counsels of Gaia, great crooked-hearted Kronos spewed up
his brood again, being conquered by the craft and force of his son’.
(Two reasons there, belonging probably to different stories—in one
he was overcome by the craft of Gaia, in the other by the mana of
his son.) ‘And the first thing he vomited up was the stone, which he
had swallowed last.... Then straightway Zeus set loose his father’s
brothers, the Titanes. They were grateful, and gave him three gifts,
thunder and thunder-bolt and lightning; formerly vast Earth had
hidden them away: and it is by them that Zeus rules over mortals
and immortals.’[57]
That is to say Zeus in this story is a thunder-god. The thunder or
lightning is his mana. And not only a thunder-god, he is a thunder-
stone. The identity has been, of course, disguised in our present
version of the myth. It is muddled, like everything else in Hesiod.[58]
But it shows through. When Kronos sets about swallowing Zeus, it is
the stone he swallows. And it is only when ‘by the counsels of Earth’](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/514-250411233617-b5a068bc/85/Communication-Technology-Update-and-Fundamentals-54-320.jpg)
![in the form of a stone; but common-sense Rome did at least
demand that the Great Mother should have a decently
anthropomorphic image, and the stone was then placed in the
image’s mouth.
So far, then, we are clear. But there remain some difficult
questions. Why was the stone in Hesiod wrapped in swaddling
clothes? I do not understand this. But the ritual practice is well
attested. Pausanias tells how this Kronos stone was anointed and
wrapped in wool.[59] A coin in Macdonald’s Hunter Catalogue (ii. 68.
145) represents the Great Mother stone covered with a goat-skin.
This may be merely because of the hagos or taboo, just as the
omphalos on vases is commonly covered with an ἄγρηνον and
Semitic betyls are wrapped in cloths. The actual body of a god would
be dangerous to touch; but it looks as if there was some special
connexion between stones and infants. The Orphic poem called
Lithica is, of course, full of magic stones, which might be cited here.
But take one in especial, the ‘Live Siderite’. This stone has to be
prayed to, like a god; it has also to be washed daily for ten days and
nursed and wrapped in clean robes, like a baby. At the end of that
time it will reward its benefactor by uttering the scream of a young
baby when hungry; then, the poet remarks, the great thing is not to
drop it.[60]
In some Mexican dances, Preuss tells us, the souls of infants
come through the air in the likeness of five stones. Among the
Kaitish and the Arunta there are stones inhabited by infant souls,
which are induced in one way or another to come out of the stones
and be born. And we all remember the stones flung by Deucalion
and Pyrrha, and the race of man which is—or is not—sprung ἀπὸ
δρυὸς ἡδ’ ἁπὸ πέτρης.[61]
But again, why were the stones swallowed? What does all this
swallowing mean? Zeus of course swallowed Metis in order to have
her mana inside him. That is sensible enough. Do medicine men or
Theoi ever actually swallow smooth stones in order to get the fire-
power or other magic inside them? In Mexico the devils which are](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/514-250411233617-b5a068bc/85/Communication-Technology-Update-and-Fundamentals-56-320.jpg)
![sucked out of the body in curing diseases are usually in the form of
stones. For instance, in the ceremony of the Huichol tribe, where the
gods are healed of their weariness by the Dawn-Star, Kaiumari,
sucking ‘stones and the like’ out of them.[62] The same practice is
common among Australian blacks.
Mr. Marett refers me to a still better case. Among the Yuin of New
South Wales the word joïa, which is almost like mana and is used to
denote the immaterial force in sacred animals, is actually the name
of certain stones like these. They are commonly quartz-crystals or
bits of glass, but also we hear of Kunambrun, a black stone,
apparently lydianite. A black stone probably means thunder. The
medicine man often carries these stones in his mouth, and when he
sends out a curse or a blessing he projects them out of himself into
his victim ‘like the wind,’ that is, invisibly and impalpably.[63]
The actual swallowing seems strange, unless it was a mere fraud.
But I used to know an Australian blackfellow—I never thought of
asking his tribe—who used to put stones in his mouth and give or
sell them to the boys of the neighbourhood as bearing a charm in
consequence. They were sure to hit what they were aimed at, unless
the aim was very bad. I suppose he put a lot of his mana into them.
One of the ways in which a Papuan chief causes death, according to
the report of Dr. Bellamy in the White Book for 1907, is to send to a
man a present of a smooth stone. The man recognizes the meaning
of the stone, and wastes away. Dr. Bellamy cured some by the
application of strong smelling salts, which drove away the devils.
Presumably the chief had put his mana on the stone in some very
strong way.
Lastly, there is another element in this story which calls for
explanation from better anthropologists than myself; I mean the
constant reference to ‘hiding’ or ‘concealment’. Ouranos (157) hid all
his children in a secret place of the Earth; this gave pain to Earth,
and she groaned, being squeezed by them. Earth again (482) took
Zeus and hid him in a cave. Kronos put the stone inside him—surely
a form of hiding. The Titans were hidden away—κεκρύφατο, by](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/514-250411233617-b5a068bc/85/Communication-Technology-Update-and-Fundamentals-57-320.jpg)
Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals
- 1. Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals pdf download https://ebookmass.com/product/communication-technology-update- and-fundamentals/ Explore and download more ebooks at ebookmass.com
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- 5. Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals 16th Edition Editors August E. Grant Jennifer H. Meadows In association with Technology Futures, Inc. Routledge Taylor & Francis Group NEW YORK AND LONDON ROUTLEDGE
- 6. Editors: August E. Grant Jennifer H. Meadows Technology Futures, Inc. Production & Graphics Editor: Helen Mary V. Marek Publisher: Ross Wagenhofer Editorial Assistant: Nicole Salazar Production Editor: Sian Cahill Marketing Manager: Lynsey Nurthen Sixteenth edition published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of August Grant and Jennifer Meadows to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Publisher’s note: This book has been prepared from camera‐ready copy provided by the editors. Typeset in Palatino Linotype by H.M.V. Marek, Technology Futures, Inc. [First edition published by Technology Futures, Inc. 1992] [Fifteenth edition published by Focal Press 2016] Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data. CIP data has been applied for. HB: 9781138571334 Paper: 9781138571365 eBook: 9780203702871
- 7. v Table of Contents Preface vii I Fundamentals ix 1 The Communication Technology Ecosystem, August E. Grant, Ph.D. 1 2 A History of Communication Technology, Yicheng Zhu, M.A. 9 3 Understanding Communication Technologies, Jennifer H. Meadows, Ph.D. 25 4 The Structure of the Communication Industries, August E. Grant, Ph.D. 37 5 Communication Policy & Technology, Lon Berquist, M.A. 49 II Electronic Mass Media 65 6 Digital Television & Video, Peter B. Seel, Ph.D. 67 7 Multichannel Television Services, Paul Driscoll, Ph.D. & Michel Dupagne, Ph.D. 77 8 Radio & Digital Audio, Heidi D. Blossom, Ph.D. 97 9 Digital Signage, Jennifer H. Meadows, Ph.D. 107 10 Cinema Technologies, Michael R. Ogden, Ph.D. 117 III Computers & Consumer Electronics 149 11 Computers, Glenda Alvarado, Ph.D. 151 12 Internet of Things (IoT), Jeffrey S. Wilkinson, Ph.D. 159 13 Automotive Telematics, Denise Belafonte‐Young, M.F.A. 169 14 Video Games, Isaac D. Pletcher, M.F.A. 179 toc
- 8. Table of Contents vi 15 Virtual & Augmented Reality, Rebecca Ormond, M.F.A. 189 16 Home Video, Matthew J. Haught, Ph.D. 199 17 Digital Imaging & Photography, Michael Scott Sheerin, M.S. 207 18 eHealth, Heidi D. Blossom, Ph.D. & Alex Neal, M.A. 219 19 Esports, Jennifer H. Meadows, Ph.D. & Max Grubb, Ph.D. 233 20 Ebooks, Steven J. Dick, Ph.D. 241 IV Networking Technologies 251 21 Broadband & Home Networks, John J. Lombardi, Ph.D. 253 22 Telephony, William R. Davie, Ph.D. 271 23 The Internet, Stephanie Bor, Ph.D. & Leila Chelbi, M.M.C. 279 24 Social Media, Rachel A. Stuart, M.A. 291 25 Big Data, Tony R. DeMars, Ph.D. 305 V Conclusions 317 26 Other New Technologies, Jennifer H. Meadows, Ph.D. 319 27 Your Future & Communication Technologies, August E. Grant, Ph.D. 323 Index 327 Glossary and Updates can be found on the Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals website http://www.tfi.com/ctu/
- 9. vii Preface reat changes in technology are coming at a faster and faster pace, introducing new opportunities, challenges, careers, and fields of study at a rate that hasn’t been experienced in human history. Keeping up with these changes can simultaneously provide amusement and befuddlement, as well as economic prosperity and ruin. That’s where you come in. Whether you are trying to plan a lucrative investment or a career in media, or you simply have to pass a particular class in order to graduate, the field of communication technologies has become important enough to you that you are investing in the time to read this book. Be warned: the goal of the authors in this book is to serve all of those needs. To do so, the book starts by explaining the Communication Technology Ecosystem, then applies this ecosystem as a tool to help you understand each of the technologies presented. This is the 16th edition of this book, and most of the book is changed from the 15th edition. In addition to updating every chapter with the latest developments, we have a first‐time chapter exploring eSports (Chapter 19) and a chapter we haven’t seen in more than a decade discussing Virtual Reality (Chapter 15). A few other chapters, including Video Games (Chapter 14), Home Video (Chapter 16), ebooks (Chapter 19), and Computers (Chapter 11) have been rewritten from scratch to provide a more contemporary discussion. One thing shared by all of the contributors to this book is a passion for communication technology. In order to keep this book as current as possible we asked the authors to work under extremely tight deadlines. Authors begin working in late 2017, and most chapters were submitted in February or March 2018 with the final details added in April 2018. Individually, the chapters provide snapshots of the state of the field for individual technologies, but together they present a broad overview of the role that communication technologies play in our everyday lives. The efforts of these authors have produced a remarkable compilation, and we thank them for all their hard work in preparing this volume. The constant in production of this book is our editor extraordinaire, TFI’s Helen Mary V. Marek, who deftly handled all production details, moving all 27 chapters from draft to camera‐ready in weeks. Helen Mary also provided on‐demand graphics production, adding visual elements to help make the content more understandable. Our editorial and marketing team at Routledge, including Ross Wagenhoffer and Nicole Salazar, ensured that production and promotion of the book were as smooth as ever. G p
- 10. Preface viii We are most grateful to our spouses (and partners in life), Diane Grant and Floyd Meadows for giving us this month every two years so that we can disappear into a haze of bits, pixels, toner, and topics to render the book you are reading right now. They know that a strange compulsion arises every two years, with publication of the book being followed immediately by the satisfaction we get from being part of the process of helping you understand and apply new communications technologies. You can keep up with developments on technologies discussed in this book by visiting our companion website, where we use the same technologies discussed in the book to make sure you have the latest information. The companion website for the Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals: www.tfi.com/ctu. The complete Glossary for the book is on the site, where it is much easier to find individual entries than in the paper version of the book. We have also moved the vast quantity of statistical data on each of the communication technologies that were formerly printed in Chapter 2 to the site. As always, we will periodically update the website to supplement the text with new information and links to a wide variety of information available over the Internet. Your interest and support is the reason we do this book every two years, and we listen to your suggestions so that we can improve the book after every edition. You are invited to send us updates for the website, ideas for new topics, and other contributions that will inform all members of the community. You are invited to communicate directly with us via email, snail mail, social media, or voice. Thank you for being part of the CTUF community! Augie Grant and Jennifer Meadows April 1, 2018 Augie Grant Jennifer H. Meadows School of Journalism and Mass Communications Dept. of Media Arts, Design, and Technology University of South Carolina California State University, Chico Columbia, SC 29208 Chico, CA 95929‐0504 Phone: 803.777.4464 Phone: 530.898.4775 augie@sc.edu jmeadows@csuchico.edu Twitter: @augiegrant Twitter: @mediaartsjen
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- 14. 1 The Communication Technology Ecosystem August E. Grant, Ph.D.* ommunication technologies are the nervous system of contemporary society, transmitting and distributing sensory and control infor‐ mation and interconnecting a myriad of interdepend‐ ent units. These technologies are critical to commerce, essential to entertainment, and intertwined in our in‐ terpersonal relationships. Because these technologies are so vitally important, any change in communica‐ tion technologies has the potential to impact virtually every area of society. One of the hallmarks of the industrial revolution was the introduction of new communication technolo‐ gies as mechanisms of control that played an important role in almost every area of the production and distri‐ bution of manufactured goods (Beniger, 1986). These communication technologies have evolved throughout the past two centuries at an increasingly rapid rate. This evolution shows no signs of slowing, so an under‐ standing of this evolution is vital for any individual wishing to attain or retain a position in business, gov‐ ernment, or education. The economic and political challenges faced by the United States and other countries since the beginning of the new millennium clearly illustrate the central role these communication systems play in our society. Just * J. Rion McKissick Professor of Journalism, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of South Carolina (Columbia, South Carolina). as the prosperity of the 1990s was credited to advances in technology, the economic challenges that followed were linked as well to a major downturn in the technol‐ ogy sector. Today, communication technology is seen by many as a tool for making more efficient use of a wide range of resources including time and energy. Communication technologies play as critical a part in our private lives as they do in commerce and control in society. Geographic distances are no longer barriers to relationships thanks to the bridging power of communication technologies. We can also be enter‐ tained and informed in ways that were unimaginable a century ago thanks to these technologies—and they continue to evolve and change before our eyes. This text provides a snapshot of the state of tech‐ nologies in our society. The individual chapter au‐ thors have compiled facts and figures from hundreds of sources to provide the latest information on more than two dozen communication technologies. Each discussion explains the roots and evolution, recent de‐ velopments, and current status of the technology as of mid‐2018. In discussing each technology, we address them from a systematic perspective, looking at a range of factors beyond hardware. C 1
- 15. Section I Fundamentals 2 The goal is to help you analyze emerging technol‐ ogies and be better able to predict which ones will suc‐ ceed and which ones will fail. That task is more difficult to achieve than it sounds. Let’s look at an ex‐ ample of how unpredictable technology can be. The Alphabet Tale As this book goes to press in mid‐2018, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is the most valuable media company in the world in terms of market capi‐ talization (the total value of all shares of stock held in the company). To understand how Alphabet attained that lofty position, we have to go back to the late 1990s, when commercial applications of the Internet were taking off. There was no question in the minds of engineers and futurists that the Internet was going to revolutionize the delivery of information, entertain‐ ment, and commerce. The big question was how it was going to happen. Those who saw the Internet as a medium for in‐ formation distribution knew that advertiser support would be critical to its long‐term financial success. They knew that they could always find a small group willing to pay for content, but the majority of people preferred free content. To become a mass medium similar to television, newspapers, and magazines, an Internet advertising industry was needed. At that time, most Internet advertising was ban‐ ner ads—horizontal display ads that stretched across most of the screen to attract attention, but took up very little space on the screen. The problem was that most people at that time accessed the Internet using slow, dial‐up connections, so advertisers were limited in what they could include in these banners to about a dozen words of text and simple graphics. The dream among advertisers was to be able to use rich media, including full‐motion video, audio, animation, and every other trick that makes television advertising so successful. When broadband Internet access started to spread, advertisers were quick to add rich media to their ban‐ ners, as well as create other types of ads using graphics, video, and sound. These ads were a little more effec‐ tive, but many Internet users did not like the intrusive nature of rich media messages. At about the same time, two Stanford students, Ser‐ gey Brin and Larry Page, had developed a new type of search engine, Google, that ranked results on the basis of how often content was referred to or linked from other sites, allowing their computer algorithms to cre‐ ate more robust and relevant search results (in most cases) than having a staff of people indexing Web con‐ tent. What they needed was a way to pay for the costs of the servers and other technology. According to Vise & Malseed (2006), their budget did not allow the company, then known as Google, to create and distribute rich media ads. They could do text ads, but they decided to do them differently from other Internet advertising, using computer algorithms to place these small text ads on the search results that were most likely to give the advertisers results. With a credit card, anyone could use this “AdWords” ser‐ vice, specifying the search terms they thought should display their ads, writing the brief ads (less than 100 characters total—just over a dozen words), and even specifying how much they were willing to pay every time someone clicked on their ad. Even more revolu‐ tionary, the Google team decided that no one should have to pay for an ad unless a user clicked on it. For advertisers, it was as close to a no‐lose propo‐ sition as they could find. Advertisers did not have to pay unless a person was interested enough to click on the ad. They could set a budget that Google computers could follow, and Google provided a control panel for advertisers that gave a set of measures that was a dream for anyone trying to make a campaign more ef‐ fective. These measures indicated not only the overall effectiveness of the ad, but also the effectiveness of each message, each keyword, and every part of every campaign. The result was remarkable. Google’s share of the search market was not that much greater than the companies that had held the #1 position earlier, but Google was making money—lots of money—from these little text ads. Wall Street investors noticed, and, once Google went public, investors bid up the stock price, spurred by increases in revenues and a very large profit margin. Today, Google’s parent company, renamed Alphabet, is involved in a number of other ventures designed to aggregate and deliver content ranging from text to full‐motion video, but its little
- 16. Chapter 1 The Communication Technology Ecosystem 3 text ads on its Google search engine are still the pri‐ mary revenue generator. In retrospect, it was easy to see why Google was such a success. Their little text ads were effective be‐ cause of context—they always appeared where they would be the most effective. They were not intrusive, so people did not mind the ads on Google pages, and later on other pages that Google served ads to through its “content network.” Plus, advertisers had a degree of control, feedback, and accountability that no adver‐ tising medium had ever offered before (Grant & Wil‐ kinson, 2007). So what lessons should we learn from this story? Advertisers have their own set of lessons, but there are a separate set of lessons for those wishing to under‐ stand new media. First, no matter how insightful, no one is ever able to predict whether a technology will succeed or fail. Second, success can be due as much to luck as to careful, deliberate planning and investment. Third, simplicity matters—there are few advertising messages as simple as the little text ads you see when doing a Google search. The Alphabet tale provides an example of the util‐ ity of studying individual companies and industries, so the focus throughout this book is on individual tech‐ nologies. These individual snapshots, however, com‐ prise a larger mosaic representing the communication networks that bind individuals together and enable them to function as a society. No single technology can be understood without understanding the competing and complementary technologies and the larger social environment within which these technologies exist. As discussed in the following section, all of these factors (and others) have been considered in preparing each chapter through application of the “technology ecosys‐ tem.” Following this discussion, an overview of the re‐ mainder of the book is presented. The Communication Technology Ecosystem The most obvious aspect of communication tech‐ nology is the hardware—the physical equipment re‐ lated to the technology. The hardware is the most tangible part of a technology system, and new technol‐ ogies typically spring from developments in hardware. However, understanding communication technology requires more than just studying the hardware. One of the characteristics of today’s digital technologies is that most are based upon computer technology, requiring instructions and algorithms more commonly known as “software.” In addition to understanding the hardware and soft‐ ware of the technology, it is just as important to un‐ derstand the content communicated through the technology system. Some consider the content as an‐ other type of software. Regardless of the terminology used, it is critical to understand that digital technolo‐ gies require a set of instructions (the software) as well as the equipment and content. Figure 1.1 The Communication Technology Ecosystem Source: A. E. Grant The hardware, software, and content must also be studied within a larger context. Rogers’ (1986) defini‐ tion of “communication technology” includes some of these contextual factors, defining it as “the hardware equipment, organizational structures, and social val‐ ues by which individuals collect, process, and ex‐ change information with other individuals” (p. 2). An even broader range of factors is suggested by Ball‐ Rokeach (1985) in her media system dependency the‐ ory, which suggests that communication media can be understood by analyzing dependency relations within and across levels of analysis, including the individual, organizational, and system levels. Within the system
- 17. Section I Fundamentals 4 level, Ball‐Rokeach identifies three systems for analy‐ sis: the media system, the political system, and the economic system. These two approaches have been synthesized into the “Technology Ecosystem” illustrated in Figure 1.1. The core of the technology ecosystem consists of the hardware, software, and content (as previously de‐ fined). Surrounding this core is the organizational in‐ frastructure: the group of organizations involved in the production and distribution of the technology. The next level moving outwards is the system level, including the political, economic, and media systems, as well as other groups of individuals or organizations serving a common set of functions in society. Finally, the individual users of the technology cut across all of the other areas, providing a focus for understanding each one. The basic premise of the technology ecosys‐ tem is that all areas of the ecosystem interact and must be examined in order to understand a technology. (The technology ecosystem is an elaboration of the “umbrella perspective” (Grant, 2010) that was ex‐ plicated in earlier editions of this book to illustrate the elements that need to be studied in order to under‐ stand communication technologies.) Adding another layer of complexity to each of the areas of the technology ecosystem is also helpful. In order to identify the impact that each individual char‐ acteristic of a technology has, the factors within each area of the ecosystem may be identified as “enabling,” “limiting,” “motivating,” and “inhibiting” depending upon the role they play in the technology’s diffusion. Enabling factors are those that make an application possible. For example, the fact that the coaxial cable used to deliver traditional cable television can carry dozens of channels is an enabling factor at the hard‐ ware level. Similarly, the decision of policy makers to allocate a portion of the radio frequency spectrum for cellular telephony is an enabling factor at the system level (political system). One starting point to use in ex‐ amining any technology is to make a list of the under‐ lying factors from each area of the technology ecosys‐ tem that make the technology possible in the first place. Limiting factors are the opposite of enabling fac‐ tors; they are those factors that create barriers to the adoption or impacts of a technology. A great example is related to the cellular telephone illustration in the previous paragraph. The fact that the policy makers discussed above initially permitted only two compa‐ nies to offer cellular telephone service in each market was a system level limitation on that technology. The later introduction of digital technology made it possi‐ ble for another four companies to compete for mobile phone service. To a consumer, six telephone compa‐ nies may seem to be more than is needed, but to a start‐up company wanting to enter the market, this system‐level factor represents a definite limitation. Again, it is useful to apply the technology ecosystem to create a list of factors that limit the adoption, use, or impacts of any specific communication technology. Motivating factors are a little more complicated. They are those factors that provide a reason for the adoption of a technology. Technologies are not adopted just because they exist. Rather, individuals, organiza‐ tions, and social systems must have a reason to take ad‐ vantage of a technology. The desire of local telephone companies for increased profits, combined with the fact that growth in providing local telephone service is lim‐ ited, is an organizational factor motivating the telcos to enter the markets for new communication technolo‐ gies. Individual users desiring information more quickly can be motivated to adopt electronic information tech‐ nologies. If a technology does not have sufficient moti‐ vating factors for its use, it cannot be a success. Inhibiting factors are the opposite of motivating ones, providing a disincentive for adoption or use of a communication technology. An example of an inhib‐ iting factor at the organizational level might be a com‐ pany’s history of bad customer service. Regardless of how useful a new technology might be, if customers don’t trust a company, they are not likely to purchase its products or services. One of the most important in‐ hibiting factors for most new technologies is the cost to individual users. Each potential user must decide whether the cost is worth the service, considering their budget and the number of competing technolo‐ gies. Competition from other technologies is one of the biggest barriers any new (or existing) technology faces. Any factor that works against the success of a technology can be considered an inhibiting factor. As you might guess, there are usually more inhibiting factors for most technologies than motivating ones. And if the motivating factors are more numerous and
- 18. Chapter 1 The Communication Technology Ecosystem 5 stronger than the inhibiting factors, it is an easy bet that a technology will be a success. All four factors—enabling, limiting, motivating, and inhibiting—can be identified at the individual user, organizational, content, and system levels. How‐ ever, hardware and software can only be enabling or limiting; by themselves, hardware and software do not provide any motivating factors. The motivating factors must always come from the messages trans‐ mitted or one of the other areas of the ecosystem. The final dimension of the technology ecosystem relates to the environment within which communica‐ tion technologies are introduced and operate. These factors can be termed “external” factors, while ones relating to the technology itself are “internal” factors. In order to understand a communication technology or be able to predict how a technology will diffuse, both internal and external factors must be studied. Applying the Communication Technology Ecosystem The best way to understand the communication technology ecosystem is to apply it to a specific tech‐ nology. One of the fastest diffusing technologies dis‐ cussed later in this book is the “personal assistant,” such as the Amazon Alexa or Google Home—these devices provide a great application of the communi‐ cation technology ecosystem. Let’s start with the hardware. Most personal as‐ sistants are small or medium‐sized units, designed to sit on a shelf or table. Studying the hardware reveals that the unit contains multiple speakers, a micro‐ phone, some computer circuitry, and a radio transmit‐ ter and receiver. Studying the hardware, we can get clues about the functionality of the device, but the key to the functionality is the software. The software related to the personal assistant en‐ ables conversion of speech heard by the microphone into text or other commands that connect to another set of software designed to fulfill the commands given to the system. From the perspective of the user, it doesn’t matter whether the device converts speech to commands or whether the device transmits speech to a central computer where the translation takes place— the device is designed so that it doesn’t matter to the user. The important thing that becomes apparent is that the hardware used by the system extends well be‐ yond the device through the Internet to servers that are programmed to deliver answers and content re‐ quested through the personal assistant. So, who owns these servers? To answer that ques‐ tion, we have to look at the organizational infrastruc‐ ture. It is apparent that there are two distinct sets of organizations involved—one set that makes and dis‐ tributes the devices themselves to the public and the other that provides the back‐end processing power to find answers and deliver content. For the Amazon Alexa, Amazon has designed and arranged for the manufacture of the device. (Note that few companies specialize in making hardware; rather, most commu‐ nication hardware is made by companies that special‐ ize in manufacturing on a contract basis.) Amazon also owns and controls the servers that interpret and seek answers to questions and commands. But to get to those servers, the commands have to first pass through cable or phone networks owned by other companies, with answers or content provided by serv‐ ers on the Internet owned by still other companies. At this point, it is helpful to examine the economic rela‐ tionships among the companies involved. The users’ Internet Service Provider (ISP) passes all commands and content from the home device to the cloud‐based servers, which are, in turn, connected to servers owned by other companies that deliver content. So, if a person requests a weather forecast, the servers connect to a weather service for content. A person might also request music, finding themselves connected to Amazon’s own music service or to an‐ other service such as Pandora or Sirius/XM. A person ordering a pizza will have their message directed to the appropriate pizza delivery service, with the only content returned being a confirmation of the order, perhaps with status updates as the order is fulfilled. The pizza delivery example is especially important because it demonstrates the economics of the system. The servers used are expensive to purchase and oper‐ ate, so the company that designs and sells personal as‐ sistants has a motivation to contract with individual pizza delivery services to pay a small commission
- 19. Section I Fundamentals 6 every time someone orders a pizza. Extending this ex‐ ample to multiple other services will help you under‐ stand why some services are provided for free but others must be paid, with the pieces of the system working together to spread revenue to all of the com‐ panies involved. The point is that it is not possible to understand the personal assistant without understanding all of the organizations implicated in the operation of the device. And if two organizations decide not to coop‐ erate with each other, content or service may simply not be available. The potential conflicts among these organizations can move our attention to the next level of the ecosys‐ tem, the social system level. The political system, for example, has the potential to enable services by allow‐ ing or encouraging collaboration among organiza‐ tions. Or it can do the opposite, limiting or inhibiting cooperation with regulations. (Net neutrality, dis‐ cussed in Chapter 5, is a good example of the role played by the political system in enabling or limiting capabilities of technology.) The system of retail stores enables distribution of the personal assistant devices to local retail stores, making it easier for a user to be‐ come an “adopter” of the device. Studying the personal assistant also helps under‐ stand the enabling and limiting functions. For exam‐ ple, the fact that Amazon has programmed the Alexa app to accept commands in dozens of languages from Spanish to Klingon is an enabling factor, but the fact that there are dozens of other languages that have not been programming is definitely a limiting factor. Similarly, the ease of ordering a pizza through your personal assistant is a motivating factor, but hav‐ ing your device not understand your commands is an inhibiting factor. Finally, examination of the environment gives us more information, including competitive devices, public sentiment, and general economic environment. All of those details help us to understand how personal assistants work and how companies can profit in many different ways from their use. But we can’t fully understand the role that these devices play in the lives of their users without studying the indi‐ vidual user. We can examine what services are used, why they are used, how often they are used, the im‐ pacts of their use, and much more. Applying the Communication Technology Eco‐ system thus allows us to look at a technology, its uses, and its effects by giving a multidimensional perspec‐ tive that provides a more comprehensive insight than we would get from just examining the hardware or software. Each communication technology discussed in this book has been analyzed using the technology ecosys‐ tem to ensure that all relevant factors have been in‐ cluded in the discussions. As you will see, in most cases, organizational and system‐level factors (espe‐ cially political factors) are more important in the de‐ velopment and adoption of communication technol‐ ogies than the hardware itself. For example, political forces have, to date, prevented the establishment of a single world standard for high‐definition television (HDTV) production and transmission. As individual standards are selected in countries and regions, the standard selected is as likely to be the product of po‐ litical and economic factors as of technical attributes of the system. Organizational factors can have similar powerful effects. For example, as discussed in Chapter 4, the en‐ try of a single company, IBM, into the personal com‐ puter business in the early 1980s resulted in funda‐ mental changes in the entire industry, dictating stand‐ ards and anointing an operating system (MS‐DOS) as a market leader. Finally, the individuals who adopt (or choose not to adopt) a technology, along with their motivations and the manner in which they use the technology, have profound impacts on the develop‐ ment and success of a technology following its initial introduction. Perhaps the best indication of the relative im‐ portance of organizational and system‐level factors is the number of changes individual authors made to the chapters in this book between the time of the initial chapter submission in January 2018 and production of the final, camera‐ready text in April 2018. Very little new information was added regarding hardware, but numerous changes were made due to developments at the organizational and system levels.
- 20. Chapter 1 The Communication Technology Ecosystem 7 To facilitate your understanding of all of the ele‐ ments related to the technologies explored, each chap‐ ter in this book has been written from the perspective of the technology ecosystem. The individual writers have endeavored to update developments in each area to the extent possible in the brief summaries pro‐ vided. Obviously, not every technology experienced developments in each area of the ecosystem, so each report is limited to areas in which relatively recent de‐ velopments have taken place. Why Study New Technologies? One constant in the study of media is that new technologies seem to get more attention than tradi‐ tional, established technologies. There are many rea‐ sons for the attention. New technologies are more dynamic and evolve more quickly, with greater po‐ tential to cause change in other parts of the media sys‐ tem. Perhaps the reason for our attention is the natural attraction that humans have to motion, a characteristic inherited from our most distant ancestors. There are a number of other reasons for studying new technologies. Maybe you want to make a lot of money—and there is a lot of money to be made (and lost!) on new technologies. If you are planning a career in the media, you may simply be interested in know‐ ing how the media are changing and evolving, and how those changes will affect your career. Or you might want to learn lessons from the failure of new communication technologies so you can avoid failure in your own career, investments, etc. Simply put, the majority of new technologies introduced do not succeed in the market. Some fail because the tech‐ nology itself was not attractive to consumers (such as the 1980s’ attempt to provide AM stereo radio). Some fail because they were far ahead of the market, such as Qube, the first interactive cable television system, intro‐ duced in the 1970s. Others failed because of bad timing or aggressive marketing from competitors that suc‐ ceeded despite inferior technology. The final reason for studying new communication technologies is to identify patterns of adoption, ef‐ fects, economics, and competition so that we can be prepared to understand, use, and/or compete with the next generation of media. Virtually every new tech‐ nology discussed in this book is going to be one of those “traditional, established technologies” in a few short years, but there will always be another genera‐ tion of new media to challenge the status quo. Overview of Book The key to getting the most out of this book is therefore to pay as much attention as possible to the reasons that some technologies succeed and others fail. To that end, this book provides you with a num‐ ber of tools you can apply to virtually any new tech‐ nology that comes along. These tools are explored in the first five chapters, which we refer to as the Com‐ munication Technology Fundamentals. You might be tempted to skip over these to get to the latest develop‐ ments about the individual technologies that are mak‐ ing an impact today, but you will be much better equipped to learn lessons from these technologies if you are armed with these tools. The first of these is the “technology ecosystem” discussed previously that broadens attention from the technology itself to the users, organizations, and sys‐ tem surrounding that technology. To that end, each of the technologies explored in this book provides de‐ tails about all of the elements of the ecosystem. Of course, studying the history of each technology can help you find patterns and apply them to different technologies, times, and places. In addition to includ‐ ing a brief history of each technology, the next chapter, A History of Communication Technologies, provides a broad overview of most of the technologies discussed later in the book, allowing comparisons along a num‐ ber of dimensions: the year introduced, growth rate, number of current users, etc. This chapter highlights commonalties in the evolution of individual technolo‐ gies, as well as presents the “big picture” before we delve into the details. By focusing on the number of users over time, this chapter also provides a useful ba‐ sis of comparison across technologies. Another useful tool in identifying patterns across technologies is the application of theories related to new communication technologies. By definition, theo‐ ries are general statements that identify the underlying
- 21. Section I Fundamentals 8 mechanisms for adoption and effects of these new tech‐ nologies. Chapter 3 provides an overview of a wide range of these theories and provides a set of analytic perspectives that you can apply to both the technolo‐ gies in this book and any new technologies that follow. The structure of communication industries is then addressed in Chapter 4. This chapter then explores the complexity of organizational relationships, along with the need to differentiate between the companies that make the technologies and those that sell the technol‐ ogies. The most important force at the system level of the ecosystem, regulation, is introduced in Chapter 5. These introductory chapters provide a structure and a set of analytic tools that define the study of com‐ munication technologies. Following this introduction, the book then addresses the individual technologies. The technologies discussed in this book are orga‐ nized into three sections: Electronic Mass Media, Computers & Consumer Electronics, and Networking Technologies. These three are not necessarily exclu‐ sive; for example, Digital Signage could be classified as either an electronic mass medium or a computer technology. The ultimate decision regarding where to put each technology was made by determining which set of current technologies most closely resemble the technology. Thus, Digital Signage was classified with electronic mass media. This process also locates the discussion of a cable television technology—cable mo‐ dems—in the Broadband and Home Networks chap‐ ter in the Networking Technologies section. Each chapter is followed by a brief bibliography that represents a broad overview of literally hundreds of books and articles that provide details about these technologies. It is hoped that the reader will not only use these references but will examine the list of source material to determine the best places to find newer in‐ formation since the publication of this Update. To help you find your place in this emerging tech‐ nology ecosystem, each technology chapter includes a paragraph or two discussing how you can get a job in that area of technology. And to help you imagine the future, some authors have also added their prediction of what that technology will be like in 2033—or fifteen years after this book is published. The goal is not to be perfectly accurate, but rather to show you some of the possibilities that could emerge in that time frame. Most of the technologies discussed in this book are continually evolving. As this book was completed, many technological developments were announced but not re‐ leased, corporate mergers were under discussion, and regulations had been proposed but not passed. Our goal is for the chapters in this book to establish a basic under‐ standing of the structure, functions, and background for each technology, and for the supplementary Internet site to provide brief synopses of the latest developments for each technology. (The address for the website is www.tfi.com/ctu.) The final chapter returns to the “big picture” pre‐ sented in this book, attempting to place these discus‐ sions in a larger context, exploring the process of starting a company to exploit or profit from these technologies. Any text such as this one can never be fully comprehensive, but ideally this text will provide you with a broad overview of the current develop‐ ments in communication technology. Bibliography Ball‐Rokeach, S. J. (1985). The origins of media system dependency: A sociological perspective. Communication Research, 12 (4), 485‐510. Beniger, J. (1986). The control revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Grant, A. E. (2010). Introduction to communication technologies. In A. E. Grant & J. H. Meadows (Eds.) Communication Technology Update and Fundamentals (12th ed). Boston: Focal Press. Grant, A. E. & Wilkinson, J. S. (2007, February). Lessons for communication technologies from Web advertising. Paper presented to the Mid‐Winter Conference of the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication, Reno. Rogers, E. M. (1986). Communication technology: The new media in society. New York: Free Press. Vise, D. & Malseed, M. (2006). The Google story: Inside the hottest business, media, and technology success of our time. New York: Delta.
- 22. 9 A History of Communication Technology Yicheng Zhu, Ph.D. he other chapters in this book provide details re‐ garding the history of one or more communica‐ tion technologies. However, one needs to under‐ stand that history works, in some ways, like a telescope. The closer an observer looks at the details, i.e. the par‐ ticular human behaviors that changed communication technologies, the less they can grasp the big picture. This chapter attempts to provide the big picture by discussing recent advancements along with a review of happenings “before we were born.” Without the un‐ derstanding of the collective memory of the trailblazers of communication technology, we will be “children for‐ ever” when we make interpretations and implications from history records. (Cicero, 1876). We will visit the print era, the electronic era, and the digital era in this chapter. To provide a useful per‐ spective, we compare numerical statistics of adoption and use of these technologies across time. To that end, this chapter follows patterns adopted in previous sum‐ maries of trends in U.S. communications media (Brown Doctoral candidate in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina (Columbia, SC). (Zhu and the editors acknowledge the contributions of the late Dan Brown, Ph.D., who created the first versions of this chapter and the related figures and tables). & Bryant, 1989; Brown, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014; Zhu & Brown, 2016). Non‐ monetary units are reported when possible, although dollar expenditures appear as supplementary measures. A notable exception is the de facto standard of measur‐ ing motion picture acceptance in the market: box office receipts. Government sources are preferred for consistency in this chapter. However, they have recently become more volatile in terms of format, measurement and focus due to the shortened life circle of technologies (for example, some sources don’t distinguish laptops from tablets when calculating PC shipments). Readers should use caution in interpreting data for individual years and instead emphasize the trends over several years. One limitation of this government data is the lag time before statistics are reported, with the most recent data being a year or more older. The companion web‐ site for this book (www.tfi.com/ctu) reports more detailed statistics than could be printed in this chapter. T 2
- 23. Visit https://ebookmass.com today to explore a vast collection of ebooks across various genres, available in popular formats like PDF, EPUB, and MOBI, fully compatible with all devices. Enjoy a seamless reading experience and effortlessly download high- quality materials in just a few simple steps. Plus, don’t miss out on exciting offers that let you access a wealth of knowledge at the best prices!
- 24. Exploring the Variety of Random Documents with Different Content
- 25. civilization; that every house, every funeral, every detail of marriage laws and other laws, is not precisely on the pattern of every other, and that mythology and ideas about the future life are especially various and even self-contradictory, at any given period. For these reasons I agree with Wolf that harmony, unus color, prevails in the Iliad and Odyssey, which must therefore be the product of one age. But to this some adverse critics reply that harmony, indeed, there may be, but that it results, first from the influence of tradition—each new poet adhered to the old formulae without conscious effort—and, next, that the later poets deliberately and learnedly archaized, consciously studied the descriptions, and maintained the tone of their predecessors, while at the same time they as deliberately introduced the novelties of their own time. This is their logic. Their double theory is untenable—first, because it is self-contradictory; next, because in all known early art and literature the poet or painter, treating ancient themes, dresses the past in the costume of the present with which he is familiar. To archaize is a very modern effort in art, as all early literature and every large picture-gallery prove. As for unconscious adherence to tradition, it leads to the repetition of epic formulae and standing epithets; but later poets, and uncritical ages, when they describe a more ancient life, always copy the life of their own time. We see too that late learned poets who archaized—Apollonius Rhodius, Virgil, even Quintus Smyrnaeus —while they do their best to imitate Homer, cannot keep up the unus color, but betray themselves in a myriad details: for example, Virgil arms his Greeks and Trojans with iron weapons, and Apollonius introduces the ritual purification of blood with blood, ignored by Homer. Even in the Cyclic poems, of which only a few fragments and prose synopses remain, Helbig, and Monro, and every reader, find what Helbig calls ‘data absolutely opposed to the conventional style of the Epics’, of the Iliad and Odyssey. We find hero-worship, human sacrifice, gods making love in bestial forms, conspicuous ghosts of men duly burned, and so on. Now, if we believe with Mr. Verrall that ‘Homer’, so called, was a nebulous mass of old poetry, reduced into
- 26. distinct bodies, such as Iliad, Odyssey, Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Nostoi, and so on, for educational purposes, by learned Athenians, about 600-500 b.c., or if we suppose, with others, that the Ionians, for educational purposes, Bowdlerized Iliad and Odyssey, at an earlier date, we ask, Why were Iliad and Odyssey expurgated; why were many ‘devices of the heathen’ cut out of them by ‘educationists’ who permitted these things to remain in the Cyclic poems? Was it because the Iliad and Odyssey alone were cut out of the mass, and selected for public recitation? If so, why was the selection made, and the expurgation done, in these two cases only? And do we know that the Cyclics were not recited? If so, why not? What was the use of them? Again, why was Hesiod not Bowdlerized? Hesiod certainly entered into public knowledge no less than Homer. Finally, if the taste of the seventh and sixth centuries were so pure and austere, why were the poets of the seventh and sixth centuries so rich in matters which the Iliad and Odyssey omit? In no Greek literature of any age do we find the clean austerity of Homer, for example, as regards sins against nature, the permanent blot on the civilization of historic Greece. The theory of educational expurgation in the eighth to the sixth centuries is impossible on all sides. The Cyclics and Hesiod were generally known, yet were not expurgated into harmony with the Homeric tone; the contemporary poets of these educational ages did not conform to the Homeric tone. Moreover, there is no ‘record’ evidence, with Mr. Verrall’s pardon, for all this editing by educationists. There is no inscription bearing witness to it—that, and that alone, would be ‘record’—there is only a late and shifting tradition that, about the time between the ages of Solon and the Pisistratidae, something indefinite was done at Athens for ‘Homer’. For how much of ‘Homer’? For all old epic poetry, or only for the Iliad and Odyssey? If for them alone, why for them alone? I am thus constrained to suppose that the Iliad and the Odyssey, on the whole, are the fruit of a single age, a peculiar age, an age prior to the earliest period of Greek life as historically known to us. If it be not so, if these epics are mosaics of life in four or five centuries of change, compiled for purposes of education by learned Athenians,
- 27. it seems that they are worthless to the anthropologist and to the historical student of manners and institutions. If the poems contain scores of archaized passages, in which the poets deliberately neglect the life which they know (while at the same time in other passages they deliberately innovate), then the poems are of no anthropological value. The statements of the critics are self- contradictory, which I still think proves them to be illogical; and in speaking of Homer I shall treat him as a witness to a genuine stage of society in prehistoric Greece and Asia. As to date, the poems quite undeniably are derived from that late stage of Mycenaean or Minoan civilization which has been revealed by the excavations of Mr. Arthur Evans in Crete, and Dr. Schliemann at Mycenae, and of many other explorers of Homeric sites. The decoration of the palaces of Alcinous and Menelaus; the art of the goldsmith, the use of chariots in war, the shape and size of the huge Homeric shield; the cuirass, zoster, and mitrê of the warriors, the weapons of bronze described in Homer, all correspond with objects discovered or delineated in works of art of the late Minoan period in Greece and Crete. But Homeric customs of all sorts also vary much from the facts of the Minoan archaeologist. The monuments of the late Minoan Age reveal modes of burial wholly unlike the Homeric practice of cremation and interment of the bones in lofty tumuli or barrows. They prove the existence of sacrifice to the dead, which Homer ignores. They display fashions of costume quite alien to the Homeric world. They yield none of the iron tools of peaceful purpose with which Homer is perfectly familiar. They furnish abundance of stone arrowheads, which are never mentioned in the Epics. The conclusion suggested is that Homer knew a people living on the ancient Minoan sites, and retaining much of the Minoan art, much of the military material, but advanced into a peculiar form of the Early Bronze Age; clad in quite a new fashion, practising another form of burial, entertaining other beliefs about death and the dead, but still retaining the flowing locks often represented in pictures of men in Minoan art.
- 28. The use of body armour too is in the Iliad and Odyssey universal in regular war; from the rarity of delineation thereof in Minoan art this appears to be another innovation. Homer is quite conscious that he is singing of events gathered from legends of a time long before his day, a time with which he is in touch, which has bequeathed much to his age, but which, we see, is in some respects less advanced than and in many ways different from his own. He attributes to the old legendary heroes, however, the institutions with which he is familiar—institutions that are not those of any known period of historic Greece. They are no figments of fancy. They closely correspond, as far as form of government is concerned, with the early feudalism described in the oldest Irish epical romances, and in the French chansons de geste of the eleventh to the thirteenth century a.d. We find an Over Lord, like the Celtic Ardrigh, or the Bretwalda in early England, ruling over Princes (Ri), with an acknowledged sway, limited by unwritten conventions. He holds, as Mr. Freeman says of the Bretwalda, ‘an acknowledged, though probably not very well defined, supremacy.’ His rule is hereditary; the sceptre is handed down through the male line. Zeus has given him the sceptre, and he confessedly rules, like Charlemagne even in the later chansons de geste, by right divine. He has the Zeus-given sceptre, and he has the θέμιστες, a knowledge of ‘a recognized body of principles and customs which had grown up in practice’ (Iliad ix. 99). The origin of the Over Lord, as of all kingship, may be traced to a combination of sagacity, courage, and experience in war, in an individual, and to his consequent acquirement of property and influence, plus the survival of the prestige of the medicine man, to whom the ruling supernormal Being of the tribe is supposed to speak. A very low example is the Dieri medicine man inspired by Kutchi; an elevated example is the Homeric Minos, who converses with Zeus. Even the dream of Agamemnon is worthy of respect, says Nestor, ‘because he has seen it who boasts himself to be the best of the Achaeans’; another man’s dream might be disregarded (Iliad ii. 80-83). However, Agamemnon does not lay stress on such
- 29. communications; Calchas is the regular interpreter of omens and the will of the gods. A divinity doth hedge Agamemnon, though Achilles half draws his sword against him. He has the right to summon the whole host, and to exact fines for absence; he has the lion’s share of all spoils of war; he is war leader, but always consults his peers, the paladins of Charlemagne. From him much that is not easily tolerable is endured, but, if he goes too far in his arrogance, a prince or peer has the recognized right, like Achilles, to throw up his allegiance. By due gifts of atonement, of which the rules are ceremonially minute (Iliad xix. 215-75), the Over Lord may place himself within his right again, and he who refuses the atonement is recognized to be in his wrong. The whole passage about the minutiae of atonement in Iliad xix delays the action, and is censured by critics as ‘late’. But it cannot be late, it could only have been composed for a noble audience keenly interested in the customary laws under which they lived, laws unknown to historic Greece. We are accustomed to similar prolixity and minuteness about points of law in the Icelandic sagas. It has been said that Homer, an Asiatic poet of the ninth century b.c., lived imaginatively in, say, the thirteenth century, b.c. as Mr. William Morris imaginatively ‘lived in’ the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries a.d. But Morris came after Sir Walter Scott, who introduced the imaginative archaeological reconstruction of past ages by poets and artists. Shakespeare did not ‘live in’ any age but his own. His Hamlet fights with the Elizabethan long rapier, not with short sword and axe. Homer, too, lives in his own sub-Minoan age, and in that alone. The poets of this age of loose feudalism are always partial to the princes rather than to the Over Lord. The Irish romance writers much prefer the chivalrous Diarmaid, or Oscar, to Fionn, the Over Lord, and the later writers of chansons de geste in France utterly degrade Charlemagne in favour of his paladins. Greek, Irish, or French, the poets have a professional motive: there are many courts of princes wherein they may sing, but only one court of the Over Lord. In this partisanship Homer is relatively
- 30. moderate; his Agamemnon is perhaps the most subtle of all his portraits; unsympathetic as is the Over Lord, his Zeus-given supremacy always wins for him respect. The whole picture of Over Lord and princes is a genuine historical document, a thing of a single age of culture, far behind the condition of the Ionian colonists. The princes themselves owe their position to birth, wealth, and courage. Except Aias and Odysseus, chiefs of rocky isles, all own abundance of chariots. They are surrounded by a class of gentry (the Irish Flaith) who are also fighters from chariots, and stand out above the nameless members of the host. It is they (Iliad ix. 574) who promise to Meleager a demesne out of the common land. I conceive that such a τέμενος, or demesne, was much more than a κλῆρος, or ‘lot’; he was a very poor man who had no lot (Odyssey xi. 490). Probably the gentry, or γέροντες, had their gift of a τέμενος, or demesne, ratified in the popular assembly, which, I think, did no more than ratify their decisions. The gentry held rich fields, ‘very remote from any town’ (Iliad xxiii. 832-5). Society was feudal or chivalrous, not democratic. It is true, as Mr. Ridgeway says (J. H. S., vi. 319-39) that we do not hear of land in the lists of a man’s possessions, but of livestock, gold, iron, and chariots and arms. On the other hand, the gentry certainly held rich fields remote from the cities. We have no clear light on Homeric land-tenure, but land was held by individuals, in firm possession, if not in property; a prince like Menelaus has whole cities to give away. If a prince lent stock to the owner of a lot, and if the owner became bankrupt, the lot, legally or illegally, would glide into the possession of the prince. The people were free, like the lotless man who employs labourers —their situation is not clear—and like the artisans—smiths, carpenters, workers in gold—and the slaves, men and women, were captives in war, or persons kidnapped by pirates—though they may have been of high rank at home, like the swineherd Eumaeus. In war it was open to a man to kill a prisoner or to set him at ransom, as in the Middle Ages. The various crafts had their regular
- 31. professors, though it pleased Odysseus to be a master of all of them, from ploughing to shipbuilding. It was a very tolerable state of society; slaves were well treated; women, of course, held a position high above what was theirs in historic Greece. True, they were usually purchased with a bride- price; but the lofty level of their morality, infinitely above that of Europe in the age of chivalry, suggests that men allowed a free choice to their daughters. No woman sells herself; there is not a harlot in Homer, common as they are in the earliest records of Israel. No doubt they existed, but the poet eschews mention of them. Here, as everywhere, the austerity of his tone, though he is not a Puritan, makes him far from an exhaustive authority on manners and customs. To him, as Mr. Gissing well observes, the stability of the home, typified by the wedding bed of Odysseus, made fast to a pillar of a living tree, is very sacred. In camp, and in wanderings, the men live as they will; at home, as we learn from the cases of Laertes and the father of Phoenix, a good man keeps no mistress, and the wife soon gives a worse man cause to rue his laxity. All this is very unlike the morals of historic Greece. The bride-price is, indeed, a barbaric survival; but the purity of the morals of the married women proves that it was modified in practice by the benignity of fathers to ‘well-loved daughters’. The highest tender was not necessarily accepted. We hear of no amours of maids and bachelors; the girls do not sleep, like the young men and like fair Margaret of the ballad of Clerk Saunders, in bowers in the court, but in rooms of the upper story, where only a god can come unnoticed. Nausicaa is most careful not to compromise herself by being seen in the company of a stranger. Naturally, in a society that carries arms always, the tone of courtesy, where deliberate insult is not intended, is very high, and rude speech, like that of Euryalus to Odysseus in Phaeacia, is atoned for with an apology and the gift of a sword. Except the Over Lord, no man is habitually rude.
- 32. As to warfare, as in the Tain Bo Cualgne, the Irish romance based on the manners of the late Celtic period (200 b.c. to 200 a.d.), the gentry fight from chariots, dismounting at will, while the host, with spears, or with slings, bows and arrows, follows or exercises its artillery from the flanks. Except when the rain of arrows does execution, we hear next to nothing of the plebeian infantry. The age of hoplites was as remote as the age of cavalry, and the phalanxes are only mentioned when they are broken. The chariot age is familiar in Assyrian, Egyptian, and Minoan art, as among the Britons and Caledonians who fought with Rome. The chariot was extremely light; a man could lift a chariot and carry it away (Iliad x. 505). Probably the chariot came into use for war, as Mr. Ridgeway supposes, in an age when a pony was unequal to the weight of a man in armour; the Highlanders, with their Celtic ponies, used chariots in Roman times; never did they acquire a breed of horses fit for chargers, hence they lost the battle of Harlaw. To judge by Homer’s description of horses, the chariot survived the cause of its origin; steeds were tall and strong enough for cavalry purposes, but human conservatism retained the chariot. A speech of Nestor, in Iliad, Book iv. 303-9, shows that Homer knew by tradition the Egyptian custom of charging in serried squadrons of chariotry, while in his own day the lords of chariots usually fought dismounted, and in the loosest order, or no order. Nestor naturally prefers ‘the old way’; no late poet could have made this interpolation, for, in the Greek age of cavalry, he could have known nothing of chariotry tactics. The Egyptian chariotry used the bow, while their adversaries, the Khita charioteers, fought with spears, in loose order, as in Homer —and had the worst of the fight. The Homeric retention of the huge body-covering shield, familiar in Minoan art, was more or less of a survival of a time when archery was all-important. The shield, as among the Iroquois and in mediaeval Europe, was suspended by a belt. The same shields, among the Red Indians, and in the Middle Ages (eleventh and twelfth centuries), were, so to speak, umbrellas against a rain of arrows; as the bow became more and more despised, the historic
- 33. Greeks adopted the round parrying buckler, good against spear- and sword-strokes. The body armour, as far as greaves are concerned, was an advance on Minoan practice. In Minoan art the warriors are usually naked under the huge shields; happily, one or two seals found in Crete, and a pair of greaves in Cyprus, prove that greaves, cuirass, zoster, and mitrê, the mailed kirtle of Homer, were not unknown even before the earliest age at which one could venture to place the Epic (see Note). The use of the metals, in war, is peculiar, but not unexampled. Weapons are, when the metal is specified, always of bronze, save one arrow-head of primitive form (Iliad iv. 123), and a unique iron mace (Iliad vii. 141). Implements, including knives, which were not used in war, were of iron, as a rule, of bronze occasionally. The only battle-axe mentioned is of bronze (Iliad xiii. 611); axes, as implements, are usually of iron, so are the implements of the ploughman and shepherd. No man in Homer is said to be ‘smitten with the iron’, it is always ‘with the bronze’; but trees are felled ‘with the iron’ (Iliad iv. 485). Odysseus shoots ‘through the iron’, that is, through the open work of the iron axe-heads, which were tools. This curious overlap of bronze and iron, the iron being used for implements before it is used
- 34. for weapons, has no analogy, as far as I am aware, in Central and Northern Europe. But Mr. Macalister has found it perfectly exemplified in Palestine, in certain strata of the great mound of Gezer. Here all weapons are of bronze, all tools of iron (Palestine Exploration Fund, 1903, p. 190). This state of affairs—obviously caused by military distrust of iron while ill-manufactured, when bronze was admirably tempered—is proved by Mr. Macalister to have been an actual stage in culture, ‘about the borders of the Grecian sea.’ We find no archaeological evidence for this state of things in tombs of the period of overlap of bronze and iron in Greek soil. But then we have never excavated a tumulus of the kind described by Homer, and, if we did, the tumulus (which necessarily attracts grave-robbers) is likely to have been plundered. This is unlucky; we have only the poet’s evidence, in Greece, for the uses of bronze and iron as they existed in Palestine. But I think it improbable that the poet invented this rare stage of culture. Again, if we believe, with most critics, that late poets introduced the iron, it is to me inconceivable that they could abstain, in rigorous archaism, or unconscious adherence to tradition, from occasionally making a warrior ‘smite with the iron’, or from occasional mention of an iron sword or iron-headed spear, while they did not archaize or follow tradition when they spoke of iron knives, axes, tools, and so on. In tradition of the bronze age, the tools, no less than the weapons, must have been of bronze. Why, then, did late archaizing poets make them of iron, while they never made the weapons of anything but bronze? The great objection to my opinion is Odyssey xvi. 294, xix. 13, the repeated line in which occurs the proverbial saying, ‘iron of himself draws a man to him.’ Here iron is synonymous with ‘weapon’, the weapons in the hall of Odysseus are to be removed, on the pretence that ‘iron’ draws a man’s hands, and may draw those of the intoxicated wooers in their cups.
- 35. I am opposed to regarding a line as ‘late’ merely because it contradicts one’s theory. The critics have no such scruples, they excise capriciously. But this line not only contradicts my theory, it contradicts the uniform unbroken tenor of both epics. It is a saying of the Iron Age, when ‘iron’ has become a synonym for ‘weapon’, as in Thucydides and Shakespeare. But everywhere else in the epics the metallic synonym for ‘weapon’ is ‘bronze’. The metallic synonym for ‘tool’ is ‘iron’. Men are ‘smitten with the bronze’, trees are ‘felled with the iron’. I think that, in these circumstances, it is not inconsistent to doubt the line’s antiquity. If we accept it, we must suppose that one solitary late minstrel out of hundreds (on the separatist theory) let the cat out of the bag and enabled us to be sure that an indefinite amount of the epics was composed in the full-blown Age of Iron, though all the other later poets firmly kept the secret by invariably giving to the heroes weapons of bronze. Mr. Ridgeway is against me. He writes: ‘The Homeric warrior ... has regularly, as we have seen, spear and sword of iron.’ He may see it so, but Homer saw it otherwise, and never gives a warrior an iron sword or spear (Early Age of Greece, vol. i, p. 301). No early poet, perhaps no poet, can avoid, in religion and myth, barbaric and savage survivals, owing to the nature of the legendary materials on which his works are based. Nobody, we may almost say, invents a plot: all borrow from the huge store of world-wide primaeval Märchen, or folk-tales. In the Odyssey, Marmion, and Ivanhoe, the plot rests on the return of the husband or lover from unknown wanderings, unrecognized, except in Ivanhoe and the Odyssey, by the faithful swineherd. This is a plot of Märchen all over the world. Gerland, and, recently, Mr. Crooke and others, have studied the Märchen embedded in Homer. One such story is that of the Shifty Lad in Dasent’s Tales from the Norse, and the Shifty Lad is only a human representative of the shifty beast, Brer Rabbit or another, who is so common in savage folklore. Now Homer, in the character of Odysseus, merely combines the Returned Husband with the Shifty Lad. It would not be hard to show that Odysseus is really
- 36. the hero of the Iliad, as well as of the Odyssey, the man whom the poet admires most, and he is the real ‘stormer of the city’ of Ilios. He is the type of sagacious, resolute, indomitable courage; the thoroughly well-balanced man, the most tenacious in war. But, in the Odyssey, the nature of the original Märchen, as in the encounter with the Cyclops, and the necessity for preserving his disguise, when he returns to Ithaca, compel the poet to make Odysseus foolhardy and an ingenious liar. The sentiment of Homer’s audience and of Homer is with Achilles when he says that he ‘hates a lie like the gates of hell’. But the given material does not permit Odysseus to cherish this chivalrous disdain of falsehood, and Athene, the most ethical of the Olympians, applauds his craft. The materials of legend also yield the cruelty of Achilles; like a hero of the Irish epic, the Tain Bo Cualgne, he drags a dead man behind his chariot; and, ‘with evil in his heart, he slays twelve Trojan prisoners with the bronze,’ at the funeral of Patroclus. This is not, to the poet’s mind, a case of human sacrifice, nor does Achilles intend the souls of the men to be thralls of Patroclus. Homer regards Achilles as slaying the captives merely to glut his fury with revenge, ‘anger for thy slaying’ (Iliad xxiii. 23). This is the explanation which he gives to himself of an incident which he finds in his traditional materials, probably a memory of human sacrifice. Historic Greece was familiar enough with such ritual; but it is a marvel of evil to Homer; he clearly fails to understand it. He is most embarrassed by his materials in matters of religion. Unlike Hesiod he does not love to speak of what the gods did ‘in the morning of time’, things derived from a remote past of savage mythology; the incest, the amours in animal form, the cannibalism, the outrage of Cronos on his father, the swallowing of Zeus. But he cannot get rid of the ancient mythological element in the Olympians. Though the Zeus of Eumaeus is ethical, just, benignant, a truly religious conception; though Homer has almost a bitter sense of the dependence of men on the gods; though ‘all men yearn after the gods’; the Olympians, as they appear in the story, are the freakish beings of myth, capricious partisans, amorous, above all undignified. Only among the
- 37. gods has married life its sad, if humorous, aspect, as in the bickerings of Zeus and Hera; only among the gods is adultery a joke. Among men it is the direst outrage of sanctity of the home. So alien to Homer is the mythology which he inherits that he finds it easiest to treat the gods humorously, save where they guard the sacredness of the oath (Iliad iii. 275), and are protectors of strangers, suppliants, and of the poor. The mythological survivals are, to Homer, inevitable, but distasteful. As to a belief in a future life, in Homer there is a prevailing idea, but it is mixed with the other ideas which, however contradictory, always exist in this mysterious matter. The prevailing idea is that the dead, if they receive their due rites of fire and interment, abide, powerless for good or evil, in a shadowy sheol in the House of Hades. If they do not get their dues of fire they wander disconsolate, and may become ‘a cause of wrath’ to men, may appear to them in dreams, or in the margin grey, ’Twixt the soul’s night and day. In the House of Hades is neither reward nor punishment (if we take Odyssey xi. 570-600 for a late interpolation), but mere lack of vigour and of the sun. Only the prophet Tiresias, like Samuel in Sheol, ‘keeps his wits’ and his faculty of precognition. Yet, in the scene of the Oaths (Iliad iii. 278-9), certain powers are appealed to which ‘beneath the earth punish men outworn’. I do not think this a late interpolation, because the formula of the sacrifices connected with the oath is likely to be very ancient, to be pre-Homeric, and to reflect an old belief no longer popular. In these matters all contradictory notions may coexist, as when the hymn of the Euahlayi tribe of New South Wales prays Baiame to admit the soul of Erin into his paradise, Bullimah, while the myth says that Erin is now incarnate in a little bird. Many of the lowest savages believe in a future of rewards and punishments, but the doctrine of the efficacy of fire has all but driven this faith out of Homer’s ken.
- 38. Cremation is the great crux of Homeric anthropology, cremation, and the consequent absence of ghost-feeding, and of hero-worship. Archaeology shows that these practices went on unbroken in Greece, and archaeology cannot show us a single example of the Homeric barrow and method of interment. Yet the method is a genuine historic method in Northern Europe of the Age of Bronze. Homer did not invent it; he mentions no other mode of disposing of the dead, but we have never found its traces in Greece. The shaft graves and tholos graves of late Minoan times have left no vestige of tradition in the Epics, and the cremation and barrow are equally absent from the view of the archaeologist. I cannot venture on any guess at an explanation. We are precluded from supposing that cremation arose in the wanderings after the Dorian invasion, for the purpose of concealing the remains of the dead from desecration by alien foes. The shaft grave might conceal them, the tumulus and pillar above only advertise their whereabouts to the ruthless foe. It is plain that, on many points, Homer, with his austere taste, is not a very rich source for the anthropologist in search of savage survivals. In Homer no human beings work magic; a witch, like a harlot, is not to be found in the Epics. Both are familiar in the Old Testament. There is a second-sighted man, but his was a natural faculty. Homer never alludes to the humbler necessities of our animal nature; unlike Shakespeare, he never makes old Nestor cough and spit, when roused, as in the Doloneia, by a night alarm. Nobody coughs in Homer. He sings for an audience that has lived down the ape, though the tiger has not wholly died. He knows nothing of our instruments of torture, rack and boot and thumbscrews, which, in Scotland, outlasted the seventeenth century. Historic Greece was not very successful in expelling the beast from human nature. The poets of historical Greece were never so successful as Homer. I infer that the Iliad and the Odyssey are prehistoric, the flowers of a brief age of Achaean civilization, an age when the society of princes and ladies had a taste extraordinarily pure and noble. The poems were framed for an aristocratic, not for a popular audience, though I am perfectly ready to grant that the
- 39. popular audience to which our best ballad minstrels sang also desired a tone of singular purity in the serious romantic lays. It is the nature of the highest objective art, whether in epic or ballad, to be clean: the Muses are maidens. NOTES Page 47. The reference to Mr. Verrall refers to his article on Homer in The Quarterly Review, July, 1908. I myself suppose that some editorial work was done for the Iliad and Odyssey at Athens, before the Persian war. There is plenty of smoke in literary tradition, and ‘where there is smoke there is fire’. But the smoke-wreaths are vague and multiform as the misty ghosts in Ossian, and I cannot, with Mr. Verrall, regard the words of a fourth-century orator. Page 48. Lycurgus is not ‘record’. By ‘record evidence’ for Greece I understand inscriptions, nothing more and nothing less. Page 57. ‘cuirass, zoster, and mitrê.’ See figure, a copy of a clay seal, of which nearly a hundred impressions have been published in Monumenti Antichi. See for further particulars my article on Homer in Blackwood’s Magazine for January, 1908, also Mackenzie, Annual of the British School at Athens (1905-6, p. 241). Page 59. Odyssey xvi. 294, xix. 13, for αὐτὸς γὰρ ἐφέλκεται ἄνδρα σίδηρος a friend suggests αὒτως γὰρ ἐφέλκεται ἀνδράσι δῆρις. This emendation I leave at the mercy of the learned.
- 40. LECTURE III ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE GREEK EPIC TRADITION OUTSIDE HOMER In the remains of the earliest Greek poetry we are met by a striking contrast. As Mr. Lang has told us, ‘Homer presents to the anthropologist the spectacle of a society which will have nothing to do with anthropology.’ By Homer of course Mr. Lang means the Iliad and the Odyssey; and we may add to those poems a stream of heroic tradition which runs more or less clearly through most of our later literature, and whose spirit is what we call classic, Homeric, or Olympian. But there is also in the earliest epic tradition another stratum, of which this Olympian character does not hold. A stratum full of the remains, and at times even betraying the actuality, of those ‘beastly devices of the heathen’ which are dear to the heart of us anthropologists—if a mere Greek scholar may venture to class himself among even amateur anthropologists: ceremonies of magic and purification, beast-worship, stone-worship, ghosts and anthropomorphic gods, traces of the peculiar powers of women both as ‘good medicine’ and as titular heads of the family, and especially a most pervading and almost ubiquitous memory of Human Sacrifice. This stratum is represented by Hesiod and the Rejected Epics—I mean those products of the primitive saga-poetry which were not selected for recitation at the Panathenaea (or the unknown Ionian archetype of the Panathenaea), and which consequently fell into neglect—by the Orphic literature, by a large element in tragedy,
- 41. most richly perhaps by the antiquarian traditions preserved in Pausanias, and in the hostile comments of certain Christian writers, such as Clement and Eusebius. Now the first thing for the historian to observe about this non- Homeric stratum is this: that non-Homeric is by no means the same thing as post-Homeric. We used to be taught that it was. We used to be taught that Homer was, practically speaking, primitive: that we started from a pure epic atmosphere and then passed into an age of romantic degradation. The extant remains of the non-Homeric poems frequently show in their form, and sometimes even in their content, definite signs of presupposing the Iliad, just as the Iliad here and there shows signs of presupposing them; and it is not until recently that we have been able to understand properly the nature and the method of composition of an ancient Traditional Book. I will not go into that point in detail here. Even supposing that the Cypria, as a poem, could definitely be called ‘later’ than the Iliad, it is enough to say that a later literary whole may often contain an older kernel or a more primitive mass of material, and in the case of the non-Homeric saga-poems it is fairly clear that they do so. Two arguments will suffice. First the argument from analogy. Few anthropologists, with the knowledge now at our command, will regard the high, austere, knightly atmosphere of the Iliad as primitive when compared with that of Hesiod. In the second place, a great proportion of our anthropological material is already to be found in prehistoric Crete. The an-iconic worship, the stones, the beasts, the pillars, and the ouranian birds: the great mother goddess of Anatolia, the human sacrifices, and the royal and divine bull. I speak under correction from those who know the Cretan finds better than I; but to me it seems that there are many bridges visible from Crete to Hesiod or Eumelus or even Pausanias; but the gulf between Crete and Homer seems, in certain places, to have no bridge. Thus the later literary whole contains the more primitive modes of thought, the earlier religion.
- 42. Now this fact in itself, though it may be stated in different ways, is not much disputed among scholars. But the explanations of the fact are various. That which seems to me much the most probable is the theory of Expurgation. As Mr. Lang seems not quite to have understood what I tried to say about this in my Rise of the Greek Epic, I will restate it in this way: We know that the great mass of saga-poetry began to be left on one side and neglected from about the eighth century on; and we find, to judge from our fragments, that it remained in its semi-savage state. Two poems, on the contrary, were selected at some early time for public recitation at the solemn four-yearly meeting of ‘all Ionians’, and afterwards of ‘all Athenians’. The poems were demonstrably still in a fluid condition; and the intellect of Greece was focussed upon them. This process lasted on through the period of that great movement which raised the shores of the Aegean from a land of semi-savages to the Hellas of Thales, of Aeschylus, and of Euripides. And we find, naturally, that amid all the colour of an ideal past, in which these two epics, like all other epics, have steeped their story, there has been a gradual but drastic rejection of all the uglier and uncleaner elements. That is a very broad statement; it omits both the evidence and the additional causes and qualifications. But it serves to explain why I treat the non-Homeric sagas as representing more faithfully the primitive pre- Hellenic habits of thought, the mere slough out of which Hellas rose. Now to one lecturing on Anthropology in Homer, the difficulty is to find enough material. In the case of the early saga outside Homer, the difficulty is only what to choose and where to stop. One might begin by discussing the remnants of primitive secret societies. The remains are fairly rich. Mr. Webster, in his instructive book,[41] has traced the normal genesis of these bodies which exercise such an enormous influence over savage life. The first stage he takes to be the ordinary system of ordeals and puberty rites through which all males of the tribe have to pass before they can be admitted as full men. The ordeals of the Arunta and of the various Red Indian tribes are familiar to most of us. These ceremonies are
- 43. often involved in a good deal both of mystery and of charlatanry. The youths initiated, for instance, sometimes are supposed to die and be born again. The process is secret. The women of the tribe are kept carefully away. The neighbourhood is filled with the warning sound of the Rhombos or Bull-roarer—that ‘whirring of immortal things’ which Hesiod perhaps means when he speaks of the air resounding ῥιπᾖ ὑπ’ ἀθανάτων.[42] The next stage begins when this initiation ceremony ceases to be compulsory. This sometimes depends on the separation of the War Chief from the medicine-man or the elders. For of course the initiation ceremonies are specially the department of the last named. In the third stage we find a full- flown Secret Society. The initiated form a definite body and work together for the maintenance of such conduct as is pleasing to the gods and themselves. Take the case of Dukduk, a powerful society in the Bismarck Archipelago, north-east of New Guinea. I will not dwell on its power nor on the advantages which accrue to its worshippers. But I cite from Mr. Webster an eyewitness’s account of an epiphany of Dukduk. Dukduk arrives about six times a year, and always on the day of the new moon. His arrival is announced a month beforehand by the Old Men—the Gerontes. During that month great quantities of food are made ready for Dukduk, and are ‘taken care of’ by the Old Men, his votaries. The day before the epiphany all women disappear from sight. It is death to them to look on the divine being. Before daybreak all the males of the tribe assemble on the beach, most of the young men looking frightened. At the first streak of dawn singing and drum-beating is heard out at sea, and as soon as there is enough light five or six canoes are seen at a distance, lashed together and with a platform built over them. On this platform are two Dukduks, dancing and uttering shrill cries. They are got up like gigantic cassowaries, some ten feet high, surmounted by a grotesque human mask. At least, says Mr. Romilly, the witness whom I cite, the body looks much like the body of the cassowary, but the head is like nothing but the head of a Dukduk. The canoes make the
- 44. beach. The natives fall back in apprehension, for if Dukduk is touched he frequently tomahawks the offender on the spot. They proceed through the settlement, always dancing and screaming, to the secret house which has been prepared for them in the bush. They stay about a fortnight. They beat people a good deal, and exact money from suitable sources, especially plundering the women; if any one has shown disrespect of any sort to any member of the Dukduk society, not to speak of Dukduk himself, the punishment is swift and terrible. Now Dukduk, like Egbo and Mumbo-Jumbo, is an anti-feminist, whereas Dionysus was essentially worshipped by women. There are several West African parallels to this. The Bundu of the Mendi country is a very powerful woman‘s society.[43] But otherwise is not the whole of this story curiously reminiscent of the Dionysus myths, as they occur, for instance, in the early Corinthian epos attributed to Eumelos? In his native Thrace, very possibly, everybody was initiated to Dionysus; but in Greece his worshippers form a special society. Dionysus arrives in a ship from unknown seas: when he moves inland this ship is set bodily upon a wagon.[44] He makes his epiphany at various places, claiming worship for himself and honours for his worshippers. In the regular propagandist legend that comes down to us, Lycurgus perished for wrongs done to the Bacchic society and the god himself. He ‘sought to stay the women possessed of god and the Bacchic fire’.[45] He smote or drove into the sea Dionysus himself and his Nurses.[46] The same with Pentheus. In the actual ritual, we can have little doubt, a man personated Dionysus, exactly as a man personates the Dukduk or Egbo or Mumbo-Jumbo. And presumably, in just the same way, the uninitiated, as Mungo Park says, ‘were so ignorant, or at least were obliged to pretend to be so,’ as to take the figure on the ship for a divine being. The Mysteries are all intimately connected with Secret Societies. The Demeter mystery has an epiphany in it; it has the arrival of Demeter at Eleusis; it has the Rhombos or Bull-roarer and the
- 45. exclusion of the uninitiated. And, a sign perhaps of declining influence in this actual world, it professes, like many of these societies, to do wonderful things in the next. There are, to my mind, traces in prehistoric Greece of another kind of secret society, resembling the Human Leopards or Human Lions of West Africa. I must refer here to the long expected book of my friend Mr. Penmorlan Maine on Werewolves. But, to give the mere outlines of the subject, the members of these societies are apt to turn, at certain seasons, into leopards or lions, and then kill human beings in a leopard-like or lion-like way. Their object is partly to obtain human fat for ‘medicine’, partly to remove or discourage their enemies. Sir H. H. Johnston[47] tells of a series of murders committed by an old man, who concealed himself in long grass and leaped out on solitary travellers. He killed them and then mutilated the bodies. He confessed the murders freely, but explained that he at times turned into a lion, and had to act as such.[48] The leopard societies have special three-pronged forks or gloves with knives at the end to imitate the wound of a leopard’s claw. And I have seen a long club ending in claws like a wild beast’s, which I suspect had the same purpose. My father-in-law bought it in Khartoum from a negro from the south, who professed not to know what it was. He said it was a ‘fantasia’—as no doubt it was. To take a particular instance, the mode of initiation in the Sherbro leopard society strongly recalls certain pre-Hellenic myths. The society chooses some stranger and asks him to a dinner at which human flesh is secretly mixed among the other food. At the end of the meal they reveal to him what he has eaten, and in proof (I think) show him the hands, and sometimes the head, of the murdered human being. He has shared the leopard feast, and is now a leopard.[49] Was it not exactly like this that Atreus kept the hands and feet of the murdered children apart, hidden with a cloth, and at the end of the feast removed the cloth to show Thyestes what he had eaten? Lykaon too, though his name can scarcely be derived from λύκος,
- 46. turned into a wolf because he had ‘sacrificed a child on the altar of Zeus Lykaios’. As he himself can scarcely be different from Zeus Lykaios, this must originally have implied some cannibal act. And you will remember that ever afterwards in the ritual of Zeus Lykaios legend said that one piece of human flesh was mixed up with the rest of the sacrificial meat, and the man who unknowingly tasted that bit was doomed to turn into a wolf.[50] There are the burning questions of totems and of matriarchy; there is Earth-magic, there is Purification, there is Fetichism: there are many other marks of ‘the Religions of the Lower Culture’ to be found in the ancient pre-Hellenic myths. But I must turn to the special point which I wish to illustrate in the remainder of this lecture. I wish to deal with a most familiar part of the subject, the Divine King, or, as I prefer to call him, the Medicine-King, and then to apply the results which we reach to the most obvious remnant of non- Homeric poetry that has come down to us, the Theogony of Hesiod. We all know about this medicine-king. If we like we can call him divine. On his force and his mana—what Hesiod, I venture to suggest, calls his κράτος τε βία τε—depends the welfare of his people, in the way of rain and thunderstorms, of abundance of game, of crops, of success in war. He also affects floods, earthquake, and pestilence. If he suffers in any way, if his mana is weakened, his whole people suffers and is weakened too. Consequently he is encouraged and kept strong as long as possible; if he shows any weakness, he must be got rid of and a better man found to take his place. There seem to be three main methods. Either he is set aside periodically, at the end of five years, or nine years, or the like; or he is quietly deposed when he shows signs of age, like Peleus, Oineus, Aison, in the legends; or, and this is our main subject to-day, when some one else shows superior mana by killing him. At present my mana is supreme; I am king; my will carries itself out. But if your mana, your Kratos and Bia, conquer mine, then you are king. If you can also get my mana into you, so much the better. For κράτος and
- 47. βία are tricky things and may desert any one of us, or, according to Hesiod, any except Zeus: ‘No house of Zeus is without them, no seat of Zeus, there is no going forth of the god where they do not follow him, and they sit for ever beside the Thunderer.’[51] Already, in Hesiod, these mana qualities have become half anthropomorphic; much more so, of course, in Aeschylus’ Prometheus. Now in anthropology we are always making fresh efforts at the imaginative understanding of men far removed from us, and naturally, therefore, we are always slightly correcting and modifying our conceptions. I want here to suggest that with regard to this Divine King the ordinary classical conception is slightly wrong. We speak of deification; and this deification always remains rather a puzzle for us. It may be all very well for the mysterious Minos: but when applied to Julius Caesar or to Hadrian, in the full light and plain prose of history, it seems such an absurd and gratuitous blasphemy. I think the mistake lies in applying our highly abstract conception ‘God’, a conception rarefied and ennobled during many centuries by the philosophic and religious thought of the highest of mankind, to a stratum of human ideas to which it does not belong. In one of the presidential addresses delivered to the recent Congress of Religions, Mr. Hartland dwelt on a significant fact with regard to this idea of God, viz. that whenever this word is used our best witnesses tend to contradict one another. Among the most competent observers of the Arunta tribes, for instance, some hold that they had no conception of a God, others that they were constantly thinking about God. Much may be said about this; but one thing, I think, emerges with some clearness: that this idea of a god far away in the sky—I do not say merely a god who is ‘without body, parts, or passions’, but even a god who is very remote and is a cause behind the regular phenomena of the world—this idea is one which practically does not enter their minds at all, or, if by an effort they can reach and accept it, it has little working value and is soon forgotten. For most primitive races, I suspect, the medicine-chief, the βασιλεύς, with his immense mana, is Theos, and equally the Theos is the medicine-chief. The rainmaker, the bringer of game, the
- 48. possessor of the power to make dead and to make alive—there he is, the visible doer of all those things which later races have delegated to higher and more shadowy beings, walking palpably before you with his medicine and perhaps his pipe, his grand manner, his fits, and his terrific dress. The Basileus, the possessor of great mana, wants people to obey him, and by will-power, by force of character, aided by impressive ritual, he makes them. In the same way he makes rain; he says so vehemently ‘It shall rain’ that it cannot help itself. It does. This lies at the back of what we somewhat erroneously call mimetic magic. For the real rainmaker does not imitate rain, he just makes it. One must bear in mind always the extreme sensitiveness of savages to suggestion—to hocus-pocus, to bullying, to paroxysms of rage. When Kyknos-Ares, who presumably belonged to this class of Basileus, was waiting for Heracles to attack him in his temenos, he did not simply make suitable arrangements and stay on guard; no, περιμαίνετο, he ‘raged round’, working up his mana and inspiring all the terror possible. Think of the scolding priests of the Middle Ages. Think even of the Bull ‘Ausculta Fili’. Think of the rages that are characteristic of ancient prophets, such as Tiresias, just as they are of modern yogis and Maroccan saints. In the first place, then, on sociological grounds, I think we should not conceive this primitive king as a man deified, but rather as a pre- deistic medicine-man possessed of those powers which more cultured ages have relegated to the gods. In the second place, though I know that etymological arguments are often like broken reeds and pierce the hand of him who leans thereon, I cannot but remember that Curtius derived θεός from the root thes- which appears in πολύθεστος, ἀπόθεστος, θέσσασθαι, perhaps θεσμός, the Latin festus and feriae, and which has the special connotation of ‘spell’ or ‘magic prayer’. Professor Conway, who prefers another derivation (Lith. dvãse, ‘spirit, breath,’ MHG. ge-twas, ‘ghost,’ see Brugmann, Gr. Gr. s.v.), writes to me that the fatal objection to the thes- derivation is that θεσός could not mean God; it could only mean ‘prayer’ or ‘one who prays’. Now, except that the word
- 49. suggests ‘spell’ rather than ‘prayer’, that is exactly what I want it to mean. If the word θεός was originally neuter it meant magic or medicine, like φάρμακον. If masculine, it was the medicine-man or magic-man—not very far from φαρμακός. The process of thought, if I may over-simplify it a little, seems to be like this. First the Theos or Rainmaker on earth makes his rain. Then it is found that he does not always or unconditionally make the rain, and you reach the hypothesis that a greater rainmaker lives far away, on some remote mountain, or perhaps in the sky. That is the true Theos. The Theos on earth only knows his ways, belongs to him, partly controls him; sometimes indeed he can only humbly pray to him. The so-called Theos on earth, in fact, is not Theos at all. Here comes one of the strongest antitheses between Homeric and non-Homeric, between the reformed Olympian religion and the old savage stuff from which it was made. Homer drew clear the line between mortal and immortal, between God in Olympus and man here. And most early Greek poetry rings with the antithesis. Μὴ μάτευε Ζεὺς γενέσθαι. θνητὸν ὄντα θνητὰ χρὴ φρονεῖν. By the fifth century the time was long past when ‘gods and mortal men strove in Mêkônê’, and the gods had carried the day. Yet even Sophocles makes his Thebans go with prayer and supplication to a Basileus, to stop the plague; and it seems significant that he makes the priest explain θεοῖσι μέν νυν οὐκ ἱσούμενόν σ’ ἑγὼ οὑδ’ οἴδε παῖδες ἑζόμεσθ’ ἑφέστιοι ἁνδρῶν δὲ πρῶτον ἔν τε συμφοραῖς βίου κρίνοντες ἒν τε δαιμόνων συναλλαγαῖς (O.T. 31 ff.). The suppliant comes to him not exactly as a God, but as the first of men and as holding some special intercourse with the δαίμονες. A great collection of these medicine-kings, especially of rain and thunder-makers, is to be found in Mr. A. B. Cook’s very remarkable articles on ‘Zeus, Jupiter and the Oak’, published in the Classical
- 50. Review for 1903, and again in his ‘European Sky God’ in Folk Lore, xv, pp. 371-90. I will run briefly through a few of them. The clearest of all is Salmoneus. His nature was explained, I believe, partly by M. Salomon Reinach and partly by Miss Jane Harrison. ‘He declared that he was Zeus,’ says Apollodorus (i. 9, 7), ‘and depriving Zeus of his sacrifices bade men offer them to himself. He attached to a chariot leather thongs with bronze caldrons and, trailing them after him, said he was thundering; he tossed blazing torches into the air and said he was lightening.’—So he was; at least, he was doing his best. Mr. Cook shows that he had also some justification for saying that he was Zeus. For he was an Olympian victor; and thereby became Basileus, or Zeus, of Olympia, and had the thunder-making as part of his official duties. Almost exactly similar is Remulus Silvius, Remulus ... imitator fulminis, as Ovid calls him. ‘In contempt of the gods he contrived mock thunderbolts and noises like thunder, wherewith he thought to frighten men as though he were a god. But a storm fraught with rain and lightning falling upon his house, and the lake near which it stood swelling in an unusual manner, he was drowned with his whole family.’[52] As with Salmoneus, amid his mock thunder-storms came the real thunder-storm and slew him. More modest and more in accord with later beliefs was Numa. No impiety was to be found in his thunder-making.[53] ‘Picus and Faunus taught Numa many things, including a charm for thunder and lightning, composed of onions, hair, and pilchards, which is used to this day.’ You may remember the story told by Livy, Ovid, and others, how Numa cheated Jupiter of his human sacrifice. He conjured Jupiter by a spell to come to him and reveal a charm for thunder. The god came, but was angry at being brought, and meant to have blood. ‘I want heads’ ... ‘Of onions,’ said Numa. ‘I want human’ ... ‘Hairs,’ said Numa. ‘I want living’ ... ‘Pilchards,’ put in the pious king, and Jupiter gave the matter up.
- 51. Minos in much the same way had the power to thunder, but only had it by means of a prayer to his father Zeus. Now observe that most of these early Roman heroes appear both as men and as gods. The explanation is, I think, that when the celestial gods were introduced the old Theoi or Basilêes had to be either condemned, like Mezentius, Remulus Silvius, Salmoneus, or else deified. Numa and Romulus suggest themselves at once. Aeneas, too, while engaged in battle with Turnus, or some say Mezentius, vanished and became Jupiter Indiges. Latinus vanished while fighting Mezentius, and became Jupiter Latiaris. In later times there were numbers of these ‘Humani Ioves’. It is one of the most important social facts to remember about antiquity, that the spread of education was very difficult and slow, and in consequence it was almost impossible for a whole nation at once ever to rise entirely above that primitive state of superstition which Preuss describes by the pleasant word ‘Urdummheit’. Julius Caesar was worshipped as Jupiter, with M. Antonius for his Flamen Dialis. Caligula was worshipped as Optimus Maximus and also as Jupiter Latiaris; it was perhaps in this capacity that he put to death his rival the Rex Nemorensis at Nemi. Domitian is constantly referred to as Jupiter in the poets. Coins are found inscribed ΛΙΒΙΑ ΗΡΑ, and HADRIANO IOVI OLYMPIO. We have further the somewhat mysterious statement of Macrobius (Sat. iii. 7. 6) that ‘the souls of consecrated men were called by the Greeks Zânes’, and the express and frequently repeated statement of Tzetzes ‘that the ancients called all their kings Zeus and their queens goddesses’. Οἱ γὰρ πρίν τε Δίας πάντας κάλεον βασιλῆας.[54] I will not dwell on Zeus-Agamemnon or on Zeus-Minos; nor on the number of priests of Zeus at Corycus who bear the name Zâs. But I will just draw attention to one fact. Two classes of people who are not kings, and I believe two only, are found bearing the title of Zeus. They are prophets—like Zeus-Amphiaraos and Zeus- Trophonios; and doctors—like the celebrated Menekrates, who called
- 52. himself Zeus and his various attendants by other divine names. That is to say the old conception of medicine-chief has split up into those three channels, king, prophet, and doctor; and to all three the name of Zeus occasionally belongs. It was for a medical miracle at Lystra that Barnabas was hailed as Zeus and Paul as Hermes (Acts xiv. 12). Now, as has been observed before now, the history of these Humani Ioves is written in blood, and that for two special reasons. First, it is by blood that they come to the throne and by blood that they leave it. Secondly, they are always appealed to in times of great strait or danger, when ‘strong medicine’ is wanted. And the strongest and most favourite medicine in such cases is human blood, of one sort or another. The main object of the Leopard Societies is said to be the wish to obtain human fat as ‘medicine’. The same motive leads to murders in Australia.[55] We should perhaps add a third cause for the stain of blood which lies so deep on these primitive medicine-kings. I mean, the mere wish to inspire terror and obedience and to keep off as long as possible that inevitable successor who filled their days with dread. Kyknos, Phorbas, Oinomaos, Kerkyon, Amykos, Philomeleides, Sinis, and Procrustes, all those ogres of Greek myth who race or wrestle with all comers and, having defeated them, hang their heads on trees or tear their bodies asunder or fling them to wild beasts or the like, have their parallel in many an African king, whose hut is ringed by heads stuck on poles.[56] Now I wish to apply these conceptions, as I said, to the most obvious piece of Greek Epic poetry outside Homer, and illustrate anthropologically the main legend of the Theogony. You will remember the outlines of the story. The first possessor of the kingly office—βασιληίδα τιμήν—is Ouranos. He is afraid of his children, and ‘hides’ or imprisons them. At last his son Kronos conquers and mutilates him, and he passes out of sight. Kronos becomes king and is equally afraid of his children; he ‘swallows’ them one after another; eventually Zeus conquers and ‘binds’ him. Zeus now reigns;
- 53. but Zeus took the precaution of swallowing Metis, when Metis was about to give birth to Athena. I omit details for the moment. I refrain also from discussing the Maori parallel, first pointed out, I believe, in Mr. Lang’s Custom and Myth. This series of conflicts has been explained as referring to a change of religion, an early Pelasgian worship being ousted by that of the incoming Achaeans. There may be that in it: but such an explanation obviously does not explain the whole series of swallowings. There were not three, certainly not four, different religions in question. Analysing the story I find in it the following elements. First, the medicine-king, or Theos, is afraid of his successor. In this case the possible successors are represented as his children. That may be a mere piece of convenience in story-telling; it may be the influence of a time when kingship was hereditary. In all three cases the motive assigned by Hesiod seems to be the fear of a successor. The motive of Ouranos, indeed, is not very clearly stated. He began by hiding his children in the earth because they were ‘the most dangerous of sons’ (155). They ‘were hated of their father’, and ‘he rejoiced in the evil work’. Kronos arose and conquered him: the exact meaning of the mutilation I leave aside. Kronos proceeded to swallow his children ‘intending that none other of the proud sons of Ouranos should have king’s rank among the immortals; for he had heard from Gaia and Ouranos that he was destined to be vanquished by his son’ (461 ff.). Here the motive is clearly given. As for Zeus and his strange act in swallowing Metis when she was about to give birth to Athena, two quite distinct motives are attributed to him. First, that which we have met with before. ‘He was determined that none but himself should have the king’s rank, βασιληίδα τιμήν, over the immortals. He had heard an oracle that Metis was destined to give birth to’—one expects the motive of the Marriage of Thetis—‘a child who should be mightier than his father.’
- 54. But it is not quite so simple; for Athena was the child of Metis, and she was obviously not mightier than Zeus. The oracle takes the curious form that Metis is to bear ‘first Athena, and secondly a child who shall be mightier than his father.’ Zeus seems to have swallowed her rather prematurely. But he had a second motive also. He swallowed Metis ‘that the goddess being inside him should tell him of good and evil’. The name Μῆτις of course means ‘Counsel’ or ‘Wisdom’. Leaving this last detail aside for the present, I suggest that the main motive in this strange story of the swallowing or hiding of the successive possible pretenders to the crown is the dread which each king naturally felt of him who was coming after. But this still leaves much unexplained; the second main element which I find is the worship of sacred flints or thunder-stones. When Kronos set about swallowing Zeus, you will remember, Gaia put a big stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to great Kronos. And he ‘put it inside his belly’, ἑὴν ἑσκάτθετο νηδύν (487). Then, ‘in the passing of the years’—whatever that exactly means—‘beguiled by the counsels of Gaia, great crooked-hearted Kronos spewed up his brood again, being conquered by the craft and force of his son’. (Two reasons there, belonging probably to different stories—in one he was overcome by the craft of Gaia, in the other by the mana of his son.) ‘And the first thing he vomited up was the stone, which he had swallowed last.... Then straightway Zeus set loose his father’s brothers, the Titanes. They were grateful, and gave him three gifts, thunder and thunder-bolt and lightning; formerly vast Earth had hidden them away: and it is by them that Zeus rules over mortals and immortals.’[57] That is to say Zeus in this story is a thunder-god. The thunder or lightning is his mana. And not only a thunder-god, he is a thunder- stone. The identity has been, of course, disguised in our present version of the myth. It is muddled, like everything else in Hesiod.[58] But it shows through. When Kronos sets about swallowing Zeus, it is the stone he swallows. And it is only when ‘by the counsels of Earth’
- 55. Cronos vomits up the stone that Zeus can take any action; and that action takes the form of thunder and lightning, the special property of a thunder-stone. In the word ‘thunder-stone’, or κεραυνία, the ancients seem to have mixed, and perhaps confused, two ideas: that of a meteorite, which seemed to be the actual bolt which fell in the thunder, and that of an ordinary flint, nephrite, jade, or the like, which has its mysterious fire inside it. The fire is the soul, or indwelling mana, of the flint. A careful reading of Hesiod’s story will, I think, convince most anthropologists that Zeus is the stone. And as a matter of fact it is not uncommon for both Zeus and Jupiter to appear as stones. In the temple of Jupiter Feretrius, the oldest temple of Jupiter in Rome, founded by Romulus, there was a sacred flint which was called Jupiter Lapis—it was not Jovis Lapis. It was used for killing the victim in solemn treaties. It must have been one of those ‘thunder-stones resembling axes’ of which Pliny speaks; what we should call neolithic axe-heads. There seems to have been more than one Jupiter Lapis; for in 201 b.c. the Senate sent several such with the fetiales to Africa. I need not dwell on other cases; the Zeus Kappôtas at Gythîum, apparently a bigger stone, as Orestes could sit upon it; the Zeus Kasios or Keraunios at Seleucîa; the stone of Zeus Sthenios, on the road from Trozên to Hermione; or the thunder-stone on Mount Ida, in Crete, with which Pythagoras was purified by the Idaean Dactyls, the attendants of Zeus. They are all in De Visser’s book. The best known of these stones is perhaps that which was believed to be—not to belong to, but actually to be—the Mother of the Gods. Livy (xxix. ii) tells of the embassy sent from Rome to Attalus to fetch the Great Mother; and how the king took the legates to Pessinûs in Phrygia and handed over to them the sacred stone which the natives affirmed to be the Mother of the Gods. Arnobius describes its appearance: ‘a stone not large, which could be carried in a man’s hand without noticeable weight, in colour black and furvus, in shape more or less round with projecting corners, which is now to be seen in the mouth of the image of the Great Mother.’ Superstitious Rome was ready to accept and to worship the Mother
- 56. in the form of a stone; but common-sense Rome did at least demand that the Great Mother should have a decently anthropomorphic image, and the stone was then placed in the image’s mouth. So far, then, we are clear. But there remain some difficult questions. Why was the stone in Hesiod wrapped in swaddling clothes? I do not understand this. But the ritual practice is well attested. Pausanias tells how this Kronos stone was anointed and wrapped in wool.[59] A coin in Macdonald’s Hunter Catalogue (ii. 68. 145) represents the Great Mother stone covered with a goat-skin. This may be merely because of the hagos or taboo, just as the omphalos on vases is commonly covered with an ἄγρηνον and Semitic betyls are wrapped in cloths. The actual body of a god would be dangerous to touch; but it looks as if there was some special connexion between stones and infants. The Orphic poem called Lithica is, of course, full of magic stones, which might be cited here. But take one in especial, the ‘Live Siderite’. This stone has to be prayed to, like a god; it has also to be washed daily for ten days and nursed and wrapped in clean robes, like a baby. At the end of that time it will reward its benefactor by uttering the scream of a young baby when hungry; then, the poet remarks, the great thing is not to drop it.[60] In some Mexican dances, Preuss tells us, the souls of infants come through the air in the likeness of five stones. Among the Kaitish and the Arunta there are stones inhabited by infant souls, which are induced in one way or another to come out of the stones and be born. And we all remember the stones flung by Deucalion and Pyrrha, and the race of man which is—or is not—sprung ἀπὸ δρυὸς ἡδ’ ἁπὸ πέτρης.[61] But again, why were the stones swallowed? What does all this swallowing mean? Zeus of course swallowed Metis in order to have her mana inside him. That is sensible enough. Do medicine men or Theoi ever actually swallow smooth stones in order to get the fire- power or other magic inside them? In Mexico the devils which are
- 57. sucked out of the body in curing diseases are usually in the form of stones. For instance, in the ceremony of the Huichol tribe, where the gods are healed of their weariness by the Dawn-Star, Kaiumari, sucking ‘stones and the like’ out of them.[62] The same practice is common among Australian blacks. Mr. Marett refers me to a still better case. Among the Yuin of New South Wales the word joïa, which is almost like mana and is used to denote the immaterial force in sacred animals, is actually the name of certain stones like these. They are commonly quartz-crystals or bits of glass, but also we hear of Kunambrun, a black stone, apparently lydianite. A black stone probably means thunder. The medicine man often carries these stones in his mouth, and when he sends out a curse or a blessing he projects them out of himself into his victim ‘like the wind,’ that is, invisibly and impalpably.[63] The actual swallowing seems strange, unless it was a mere fraud. But I used to know an Australian blackfellow—I never thought of asking his tribe—who used to put stones in his mouth and give or sell them to the boys of the neighbourhood as bearing a charm in consequence. They were sure to hit what they were aimed at, unless the aim was very bad. I suppose he put a lot of his mana into them. One of the ways in which a Papuan chief causes death, according to the report of Dr. Bellamy in the White Book for 1907, is to send to a man a present of a smooth stone. The man recognizes the meaning of the stone, and wastes away. Dr. Bellamy cured some by the application of strong smelling salts, which drove away the devils. Presumably the chief had put his mana on the stone in some very strong way. Lastly, there is another element in this story which calls for explanation from better anthropologists than myself; I mean the constant reference to ‘hiding’ or ‘concealment’. Ouranos (157) hid all his children in a secret place of the Earth; this gave pain to Earth, and she groaned, being squeezed by them. Earth again (482) took Zeus and hid him in a cave. Kronos put the stone inside him—surely a form of hiding. The Titans were hidden away—κεκρύφατο, by
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