Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University

Grummond has done the same for the Etruscans. 57 It would seem that many scholars who
consider Etruscan and Roman myth do not keep in mind the important truth that myths
…frequently show variations from place to place or from time to time (i.e.
synchronically or diachronically), and to be understood, each myth should be
studied within its own temporal and spatial context.” 58
Another consideration brought up by Feeney is that at a certain point, a Greek import can
become more Roman than Greek. In the proper context, an import can be imbued with meanings
which it did not originally possess. Small also endorses this point of view when she states,
The scholarly tendency to label ancient things as purely Greek, Etruscan, or
Roman has confused the issue by opposing Greek stories to local legends.
Indeed the two formed a continuous whole for both the Hellenistic Etruscan and
Roman. 59
This tendency to appropriate narratives also applies to deities and their iconography, and we
must be mindful of the dynamic interchange of ideas and the shifting nature of paganism when
dealing with theriomorphic and therianthropic deities.
Scholarly works focused on Greek religion dealing with the topic of theriomorphic and
therianthropic deities factor into the current study; even so they labor under the problems I have
just discussed. The cults of these divinities are considered oddities and remnants of
unsophisticated culture. The region of Arcadia seems to be considered a nexus for such
archaism, and M.N. Nilsson repeatedly refers to the cults found there as “backward.” 60 In his
article of 1894, A.B. Cook discussed the many animal “gods” that one can find represented in the
prehistoric Bronze Age and commented upon their connections to cults found in Greece during
historic times. 61 A recent exhibition catalogue, The Centaur’s Smile: The Human Animal in
Early Greek Art ed. by J.M. Padgett, deals with the iconography of human-animal hybrids in
ancient Greece, but it primarily covers “daimones” and “genies” such as satyrs, centaurs, sirens,
and sphinxes and only two deities, Pan and Achelous. Even so, this material remains relevant for
the present study.
57 Feeney 1998, 66-70; De Grummond 2006a, xii.
58 De Grummond 2006a, xii. Along similar lines, Childs (2004, 63) stresses the selectivity of the Greeks in
borrowing elements from the Near East. When the Etruscans or Romans borrow a figure or motif, scholars are not
generous enough to refer to them as “selective” and instead imply that they are derivative or worse.
59 Small 1986, 89-90.
60 Nilsson 1961, 9, 22.
61 Cook 1894, 159.
15