A Nyíregyházi Jósa András Múzeum évkönyve 47. (Nyíregyháza, 2005)

Régészet - János Makkay: The Miracle Stag in Ancient Greek mythical stories and their Indo-Iranian counterparts

Makkay János — Apparently, Autolykos was a person having magic powers, a sorcerer who knew how to put antlers on the heads of suckling hinds, and also on heads of horses. He also knew how to make black beasts white. We know that white horses had a significant cultic role in Assyria around the middle of the 2

nd Mill. B.C., and this custom can very probably led back to the influence oflndoAryan Mitanni rulers. (WEIDNER 1952. 157a-159b.) In the Indo-Aryan mythology and ritual, the white horse represents the sun, and the black obviously had a special connection with the setting of the sun (OLDENBERG 1988. 4L).

37 The magic power of Autolykos has, as a rule, very early Jndo-Iranian connections. Kerényi continues: At that time, the herds of both rascals pastured on the wide region between Parnassos and the Isthmus. Autolykos could never be caught when he went thieving; Sisyphos saw only that his herds kept growing smaller and the other's larger. Then he thought of a ruse. He was one of the first who mastered the art of letters, and so he engraved the initial letters of his name on the hooves of the cattle. But Autolykos found a way to alter this too (Tzetzes: ad Lycophronem, 344.), because he could alter everything belonging to the beasts. Then Sisyphos poured lead into the hollow of the hooves, in the shape of letters which produced in the footsteps of the cattle the sentence 'Autolykos has stolen me.' (KERÉNYI 1959/1974. 77.) Autolykos was a magician, who had magic powers and could alter everything belonging to the beasts. He could probably alter a horse in a deer. It was only after this piece of evidence that the master-thief owned himself defeated. It was a contest in cleverness, and Autolykos thought so highly of the winner that he immediately concluded an agreement of friendship and hospitality with him. It is not quite clear who was responsible for what took place in his hospitable house. A so-called 'Homeric' drinking-cup shows pretty undisguisedly Sisyphos in the bed-chamber of his host's daughter, the arch-rogue sitting on the bed and the girl with the spindle. Did he secretly have relations with the beautiful Antikleia? It would have been quite worth of him. But also it would be a thought worthy of Autolykos to offer his own daughter to the man who had outdone him in cleverness, so that they might produce the cleverest of all (Sophocles: Aiax, 190.).

38 Thus Antikleia became the mother of Odysseus, it was not by Laertes, whom we know as the father from the 'Odyssey', but from Sisyphos that she conceived the man of many wiles, if we believe this story; Laertes took her when she was already with child (Aeschylos, fr. 175., Sophocles: Aiax, 1 and 189., Sophocles: Philoctetes 417., Sophocles: fr. 142., Euripides: Cyclops, 104., Euripides: Iphigenia Aulidensis, 524., Lycophron 344., 1030.). A vase-painter of Magna Graecia has preserved for us the scene in which the young man displays his bride, in an interesting condition, to his astonished followers. For he was not even deceived; Autolykos, in this picture, shows him the name of Sisyphos on a leaf. It was the evidence which their guest, who loved letters and was responsible for the pregnancy, had left behind. The final victory in the matter was won by Aphrodite, who is also in the picture and is entrusting Odysseus to the care of his foster-father, the still young Laertes (KERÉNYI 1959/1974. 77-78.). When writing on the magic ability of Autolykos - could alter everything belonging to the beasts, knowing how to put horns or antlers on the heads of other animals - Kerényi gave only reference to fable CCI of Hyginus: Mercurius Autolyco

... muneri dedit, ... ut quicquidsurripuisset, in quamcunque effigiem vellet, transmutare

tur, ex albo in nigrum, vel ex nigro in album, in cornutum ex motilo, in mutilum ex cornuto. (Hygini fabulae, ed. Bernhardus Bunte. Lipsiae, 1855. CCI. Autolycus.) There is known, however, one other - fragmentary - source, an ancient Greek legend. According to a scholiast on Pindar, 01. 3.50b, he, Pindar „made it [the Cerynian Hind] female and gold-horned on The sacrificial animal of Poseidon was the white horse, and the wagon of Helios was pulled by white horses: POLOMÉ 1994. 43., 48. According to Odysseus, 'Next came the soul of my dead mother, Anticleia, the daughter of the great Autolykos, ...'. Od. 11.85-86. 34