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 to Mycenae. It belonged to the goddess of Oinoe, but tried to hide even from Artemis on the rocky hill of Keryneia in Arkadia (Kallimachos: Hymnus in Dianám, 109.)- It ranged the whole wild region of Arkadia and also the goddess' mountains in the neighbourhood of Argos. From there it is said to have visited and laid waste the peasants' fields (Euripides: Hercules ferens, 377.), but assuredly it was not merely for that reason that it became the third monster in the series of those hunted by Herakles, after the Nemean lion and the hydra of Lerna. Hinds had no antlers even in those days, and if one of them actually had golden antlers it was no ordinary beast, but a divine being. It is also told (Euripides: Helena, 382.) that a companion of Artemis, the Titaness Taygete, after whom Mount Taygetos was named, was obliged to take the form of this hind, because she had accepted the love of Zeus. That was how Artemis punished her. According to others (Pindaros: Olymp. 3.53.), she meant thus to save her. But when Taygete had later on enjoyed the attentions of Zeus, by way of atonement she dedicated the hind into which she was to have been turned to Artemis Orthosia (Pindaros: Olymp. 3.30.). It is not easy to differentiate between the divine beast, the heroine, and the goddess. When Artemis was pursued by the outrageous giant twins, the Aloadai,

[l0] she was herself the hunted hind." A divine creature with golden antlers, the hind of Keryneia, let itself be hunted by Herakles - that if the right expression here. The difficult, dangerous and uncanny thing about the hind was not its unusual wildness (Hyginus 30.), which would enable it to offer resistance to the hunter, as many believed, but that it fled and the pursuer could not stop trying to make this strange game his prey. The danger lay in the pursuit, which took him beyond the known region of hunters into another country, from which no one ever came back. Therefore, Herakles was to catch the hind, not shoot it down, which would have been easy for so great an archer, and which he actually did in one much too novel variant (Euripides: Hercules ferens, 378.). It was again no common hunt that he had to engage in. The hind began by running away from him out of Oinoe into Mount Artemision, then further through the whole of Arkadia to the river Ladon. As the hero was neither to kill nor hurt it, he followed it for an entire year.

12 Where the creature he pursued led him in all that time we are told in Pindar's ode about the branch of wild olive which Herakles brought to Olympia to be the garland of the victors, and we learn of it from an ancient vase-painting. In Istria, the poem states (Pindaros: 01. 3.26.), Artemis met the pursuer; there, at the most northerly extremity of the Adriatic Sea, by the mouth of the Timavus, the goddess had a sacred grove of which it was told that deer lived peaceably with wolves in it (Strabón 5.1.9.). She was called Reitia by the inhabitants ofthat country, the Veneti, and that can be a translation of Orthia or Orthosia. Pursuer and pursued arrived there through the country of the Hyperboreans (Pindaros: 01. 3.31.), Apollo's holy people, whom the name Istria 10 The Aloads (Ephialtes and Otus), two giants, were the children of Poseidon and Iphimedia or Aloeus (king of Alus, a city of Aetolia) and Iphimedia. They sought to pull down heaven itself with their bare hands, and to unseat Zeus from his throne above. When they wished to assault Artemis, she could not resist their strength, and Apollo sent a deer between them. Driven mad by anger in trying to kill it with javelins, they killed each other. For the sources see Od. 11:305-320. Apollodorus I.vii.4. (FRAZER 1954.1. 59-61.): Ephialtes wooed Hera, and Otus wooed Artemis: moreover they put Ares in bonds. However, Hermes rescued Ares by stealth, and Artemis killed the Aloads in Naxos by ruse. For she changed herself into a deer and leaped between them, and in their eagerness to hit the quarry they threw their darts to each other. Compare Hyginus: Fab. 28. " Here immediately comes to mind the Hun story about the twin (or only two) brothers Hunor and Magor pursuing the hind trying to escape. This is another element of the Hun story which goes back to very ancient - Old Greek - prototypes. 12 Apollodorus' story (II.v.3). is contradictory from this respect, since according to his first variant, the hero shot the deer: the Cerynitian hind was alive „at Oenoe; it had golden horns and was sacred to Artemis; so wishing neither to kill nor wound it, Hercules hunted it a whole year. But when, weary with the chase, the beast took refuge on the mountain called Artemisius, and thence passed to the river Ladon, Hercules shot it just as it was about to cross the stream and catching it put it on his shoulders and hastened through Arcadia". The further part of this story changes this beginning, because Hercules, by the end, did not kill the shooted hind but carries the beast alive to Mycenae. (FRAZER 1954. 191.) 12