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afaruBll Hmoerstta SlibtarH 
 
 jjtltata, Sfeu) ^axk 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891 
 
THE DIOSCURI 
 
 IN THE 
 
 CHEISTIAN LEGENDS 
 
SonDon: 0. J. CLAY and SONS, 
 
 CAMBEIDGE UNIVBESITY PEESS WAKEHOUSE, 
 
 AVE MAEIA LANE. 
 
 (Slaagota: 50, WELLINGTON STREET. 
 
 HeiUjia: F. A. BROCKHAUS. 
 
 J^clB fflarit: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Bombas anS dalcufta : MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 
 [All Rights reserved] 
 
THE DIOSCURI 
 
 IN THE 
 
 CHRISTIAN LEGENDS 
 
 BY 
 
 J. RENDEL HARRIS, M.A. 
 
 FELLOW OF CLARE COLLEGE, CAMEKIDGE 
 
 ILon&on 
 
 0. J. CLAY AND SONS, 
 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, 
 
 AVE MAEIA LANE. 
 
 1903 
 
 1 
 
damlitttific 
 
 PKINTED BY J. AND C. F. OLAY 
 AT THE TINIVEBaiTY PEESS 
 
CHAPTEE I. 
 
 FLORUS AND LAURUS. 
 
 In a recent examination of certain Byzantine calendars of 
 Saints, chiefly of a S. Italian type, I was struck by the 
 frequency of the occurrence of the names of SS. Florus and 
 Laurus : and it was natural to enquire who they were and why 
 they were so popular. The first step in the investigation was 
 the inference from the names that Florus and Laurus were 
 twins. 
 
 All over the world and apparently in every age there has 
 been a tendency to give twin names to twin children, the slight 
 modification in the consonants or the vowels of the two names 
 being sufficient to distinguish one from the other, while the 
 general similarity in the sounds indicates that they are twins : 
 the variation in the sound is the equivalent of the red thread 
 by which one of a certain pair of twins is differentiated from 
 the other in the Hebrew legend. As instances of these names 
 in their simplest form we might take Yama and Yami from the 
 Rig-veda, Romulus and Remus from the Roman Hi'story, or 
 Baltram and Sintram from Germanic mythology. And even 
 where the records or legends do not positively affirm that the 
 persons are twins, we can infer the fact from the names without 
 any direct statement. Thus it is extremely difficult not to 
 believe that Huz and Buz (Gen. xxii. 21) are twins (a hypothesis 
 which is not contradicted by the statement 'Huz his firstborn, 
 and Buz his brother'); the same thing is true of the first two 
 names in the triad, Huppim, Muppim and Ard (Gen. xlvi. 21). 
 
 H. 1 
 
2 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS, 
 
 A more striking case is that of Tryphaena and Tryphosa (Rom. 
 xvi. 12) in the New Testament, for here either form is a 
 feminine to the masculine Tpvjxov, according as the accent falls 
 on the first or second syllable. 
 
 Even where the equivalence of the names is not apparent 
 to the eye nor sensible to the ear, it is often quite clear to the 
 reflecting mind. 
 
 For instance, the famous twins of the Serapeum at Memphis 
 were known by the names of Taues and Taous, and there ought 
 to have been no difficulty in recognizing them as twin-sisters, 
 even if they were not persistently called ai BiSv/nai. But then 
 the same things may be said of the young ladies who were 
 ibis-wardens at Thebes', although one of them was called 
 Tathautis and the other Taeibis; for we can dissect out of 
 their names when the feminine prefix is removed (a) the god 
 Thoth, (b) the sacred ibis which is his outward and visible 
 equivalent. 
 
 A similar case in the Greek mythology is that of the two 
 brethren Lynceus and Idas who kill Castor and Pollux, or 
 rather who kill Castor, for Pollux is one of the immortals. It 
 has been suspected by scholars that the conflict in question 
 relates to a struggle for supremacy between two independent 
 local cults of the Great Twin-brethren ; and certainly when we 
 examine the names of the supposed Dioscuri of Messene, Lynceus 
 and Idas, we find the idea of sharp-sightedness, not only in the 
 well-known Lynceus but also in his brother; and this encourages 
 the belief that they are twins, though the names at first seem 
 to be remote. Probably with a better knowledge of philology, 
 we should be able to make the still desiderated nexus between 
 the names of Castor and Pollux. 
 
 So, without any reference to the Acta Sanctorum, we were 
 able to infer that Florus and Lauius were twins. 
 
 The next step in the investigation occurred when I was 
 reading Tolstoi's Peace and War'', and stumbled on the following 
 conversation between two Russian peasants : 
 
 ' Document known as the ' Money Bill from Thebes ' in the facsimiles of 
 the Paleographieal Society. 
 " Eug. Trans, iv. 49. 
 
FLORUS AND LAUKUS. 3 
 
 ' Certainly I say my prayers,' replied Pierre. ' But what was that 
 about Frola and Laura ? ' 
 
 'Why,' swiftly replied Platon, 'that's the horses' saints. For we must 
 have pity on the cattle.' 
 
 Here we see that in Russian folk-lore, Florus and Lauriis are 
 the "patron saints of horses. 
 
 Putting this statement by the side of the previous sug- 
 gestion that they were twins, we have at once the hypothesis 
 that Florus and Laurus are ' the great tivin-brethren, to whom the 
 Dorians pray.' 
 
 And now it is time to turn to the hagiologists, and see 
 whether we can confirm these statements. The day on which 
 Florus and Laurus are honoured is August 18th. On this day 
 the 'lvva^apLCTTri<;^ begins its discourse with the words, 'These 
 saints were twin-brethren, stonemasons by trade, who had learnt 
 their craft from S. Patroclus and S. Maximus, who also them- 
 selves suffered martyrdom for Christ' {ovrot, ol ayioi rjaav fiev 
 dBeX^ol BiBvfioi,, Xido^ooi, Be ttjv Te'X^vrjv, e/c/ia^wTe? avrrjv 
 irapa rov dyiov UarpoKXov Kol diyiov Ma^ifiov, napTvpijaavrcov 
 Kol avTcov Bid Tov X-piarov). 
 
 This verifies for us our first hypothesis, viz. that Florus 
 and Laurus were twins ; but seems to repel the second sug- 
 gestion that we had to do with patron-saints of horses, for how 
 should stonemasons be in the brotherhood or confraternity of 
 horsemen? They, at all events, even if master-builders, would 
 go on foot. Moreover, the day is not what we should at first 
 expect ; for there have been reasons for believing that the 
 .festival of the battle of the Lake Regillus at Rome, when the 
 Dioscuri are honoured, viz. the 15th of July, is an older festival 
 than the battle itself, the case being perhaps parallel to those 
 occurrences in the Acta Sanctorum where deliverances which 
 occur on a saint's day are credited to the saints 
 
 ' I quote from the popular Greek edition published at Zante in 1868. 
 
 2 Albert in his Etude sur le culte de Castor et Pollux proceeds on the assumption 
 that the battle of the Lake Eegillus is the starting point for the Eoman worship 
 of the Twins : to which we can by no means agree. He is wrong also in his 
 development of the cult from two human heroes. We shall see the matter very 
 differently. 
 
 1—2 
 
4 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 However, let us look around us, before plunging deeper into 
 the Acts of the Martyrdom. 
 
 We shall find from the Roman Mart3'rology that August 18th 
 is the day on which the Eoman Church honour's Helena the 
 mother of Constantine: setting side by side the two statements 
 that on August 18th 
 
 (a) the Greek Church honours Floras and Laurus, 
 
 (b) the Roman Church honours Helena, 
 
 we are encouraged to believe that the Helena referred to is a 
 displacement of the sister of the Dioscuri, and that the two 
 separate cults are part of a single original worship. 
 
 For the worship of Helen along with the Dioscuri in the 
 great centre of their cult, Sparta, we need only quote Euripides, 
 Helena 1666, 
 
 "Orav 8e KafV^jis Koi TeXevTrjtrrjs ^iov, 
 
 6eOS KfKXjJO-fl, KOi AlOITKOVpCOV flCTa 
 
 The same thing is proved for outlying centres, as in the 
 case of Agrigentum, for which we have the testimony of Pindar, 
 01. iii. 1, 
 
 TvvBapiSais re (pCko^elvois aheiv 
 
 KaKkinXoKapa 6^ 'EXeva 
 
 Kk^ivav * A.KpayavTa yepalpaiv e^j^o^ai — 
 
 and is confirmed by numismatic testimony from a number of 
 unexpected quarters. 
 
 But perhaps the most striking case of divided honours 
 between the Twins and their sister, is the common esteem in 
 which they were held all over the Mediterranean by sailors. 
 Thus Euripides says in his Orestes 1636, of Helen, 
 
 Kdaropi re UoXvtevKei T iv aWfpos ■n-TV^cus 
 (TvvQaKos earaij voutlKols o-coTTjptos. 
 
 This common honour was divided under the two heads of 
 fear and trust, and Helen's share was, for the most part, and in 
 spite of Euripides, the former. The electric discharges which 
 are sometimes seen on the masts and yards of ships were 
 named after the twins and their sister. According to Pliny 
 
FLORUS AND LAURUS. 5 
 
 the single discharge was named after Helena, and was dira ac 
 minax, while a divided flame was named after Castor and 
 Pollux and was held to be propitious. In the middle ages the 
 Helena-fire is known as the fire of St Elmo, and it is reasonably- 
 certain that St Elmo is only a corruption of the name of Helen, 
 though some have tried to connect it with a S. Erasmus'. 
 
 Now that we have established the antiquity of the Helena- 
 cult by the side of that of the Dioscuri, we are not at all 
 surprised that the same day (Aug. 18th) should have been 
 marked for the festivals of Florus and Laurus, and of Helen 
 the mother of Constantine. And we are reasonably secure in 
 our conclusion as to the identity of Florus and Laurus with the 
 Twins, in view of the appearance of Helena on the same day. 
 
 We shall, then, assume that the argument, so far, is clear, 
 and we shall be able to turn to the Acta Sanctorum and see 
 what actually happened. 
 
 The general drift of the martyrdom is as follows : Florus 
 and Laurus were twin-brothers, stonecutters, who had learnt 
 their craft from the martyrs Patroclus and Maximus. Leaving 
 Byzantium, they migrated to the province of Dardania where 
 they settled in a city named Ulpiana, and endeavoured to 
 get work as quarrymen from the governor of the province, 
 whose name was Lycion or Lycon. He sends them to Licinius 
 the son of queen Elpidia ; and Licinius engages them to build 
 a temple, of which he draws them a plan and for which he 
 furnishes them with funds. The saints take the money and 
 spend it on the poor; by day they work at the building, by 
 night they give themselves to prayer. When the work is 
 nearly finished, in which they have angelic help, the chief 
 priest of the temple, whose name is Merentius, becomes a 
 believer in Christ, his son Athanasius having been cured of 
 blindness by the twin-brethren. Thereupon the idols of the 
 temple are dishonoured and destroyed. The temple is con- 
 secrated as a Christian church, with many pious hymns and 
 the kindling of many lights. 
 
 1 For the dangers whicli attend the Helena fire, we may compare Solinns 18. 1 
 Helenae sidus navigantibus perniciosissimum : and of course, Horace 
 Fratres Helenae, lucida sidera. 
 
6 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 When Licinius hears of this, he first of all bums alive all 
 the poor people who had received' the charities of the saints, 
 and had helped to break up the statues of the gods. Then he 
 bound Florus and Laurus to a wheel and either flayed or beat 
 them (iSdprjaav). Then he sends them back to Lycion, who 
 pitches them into a dry well where they perish. Some time 
 after their bones are recovered and honoured, and work miracles 
 for the faithful. Such is, in brief, the story of the blessed 
 twin-brethren, Florus and Laurus. 
 
 Now when we read a legend of this kind, we have to 
 separate from it whatever can be directly credited to the 
 invention of the hagiologist, and we have then to try and 
 determine how much history is left, what real characters are 
 involved, how far the places and the people can be identified, 
 and what elements in the martyrdom can be believed. In our 
 case the problem is simplified by our knowledge that the 
 cult of Florus and Laurus replaces some form or other of the 
 cult of the Dioscuri. The recognition of this fact at once 
 affects our judgment as to the historical character of the 
 incidents related. 
 
 For instance, the change of the cult being conceded, it 
 follows at once that there has been a change in the religious 
 building where the cult was practised. The legends tell us so 
 quite plainly ; a pagan temple was converted into a Christian 
 church through the conversion of the chief priest of the temple 
 and his son. The story says that the saints were set to build a 
 temple and that they actually built a church. We may accept 
 as history the statement that in a certain town in Illyricum a 
 temple, perhaps of the Dioscuri themselves, was turned into a 
 Christian church under the patronage of SS. Florus and Laurus. 
 Thus far, there is no need to regard these as real persons : they 
 may be real, but on the other hand they may be only the 
 Dioscuri over again. Along with the Dioscuri their sister 
 Helen was honoured, for S. Helena's day is the same as that 
 of Florus and Laurus. S. Helena is real and historical; whether 
 Florus and Laurus are so, is an open question. 
 
 The first thing we are told of the twins is that they were 
 stonemasons. We have to ask whether this is historical, or 
 
FLORUS AND LAtTRUS. 7 
 
 whether the hagiologist made them stonemasons in order that 
 they might build the temple which he had in mind. Or, to 
 put another suggestion which comes from the identification of 
 the twins with the Dioscuri, perhaps Castor and Pollux may 
 have been stonemasons and temple-builders. 
 
 If the last supposition can be verified the whole story 
 becomes legend, and all history has evaporated except the 
 single fact of the conversion of a heathen temple into a 
 Christian church. We proceed to enquire whether there is 
 any, foundation for the suggestion that there was a nexus 
 between the Dioscuri and the work of stonecutting or the guild 
 of the stonecutters. 
 
 At the first glance the supposition seems a very unlikely 
 one. We should have expected a breath of the salt sea or a 
 reek of the stable from the neighbourhood of the Dioscuri, but 
 there is no mention of the sea or of sailors, and no allusion to 
 horse-care or horse-craft. On the other hand the Russian folk- 
 lore shows that this pair of Dioscuri could be known by other 
 characteristics than naval ones, and, indeed, when we reflect 
 that the ritual displaced was evidently that of an inland town, 
 the reason for maritime features has disappeared. Moreover, 
 since the legend does not credit the saints with the power to 
 drive or tame horses, but only with the art of stonecutting, we 
 are obliged to enquire whether this may not have been one of 
 the many benevolent arts exercised by Castor and Polydeuces. 
 Is there, then, any evidence for associating the great twin- 
 brethren with the craft which is said to have been practised by 
 the little twin-brethren? Do they work in stone and build 
 temples ? The answer to this question is in the affirmative. 
 We have the authority of Pausanias for the statement that in 
 the southern part of the Peloponnesus there was a temple 
 which had been built by the Dioscuri. The passage is as 
 follows : 
 
 On the right of Gythium is Las, distant two furlongs from the sea and 
 forty from Gythuim. The town is now built between the mountains of 
 Ilium, Asia and Coraoadium, but it used to stand on the top of Mount 
 Asia.... Amongst the ruins is a temple of Athena surnamed Asia; they say 
 that it was made by Pollux and Castor when they came back from Colchis, 
 
8 The DIOSCURI in the christian legends. 
 
 and that there is a sanctuary of Athena Asia in Colchis also. I know that 
 the sons of Tyndareus went on the voyage with Jason; but that the 
 Colchians worshii^ Athena Asia is a statement that I give on the authonty 
 of the people of Las, from whom I had it. 
 
 (Pausanias ill. 24. 5.) 
 
 Here, then, is the first corroboration of the suggestion that 
 in popular belief the Dioscuri were credited with the art of the 
 stonemason and the temple-builder. And we may reasonably 
 infer that the knowledge of their skill in building was not 
 confined to Arcadia or Messene, but that in other places they 
 were honoured for their architectural skill, and perhaps credited 
 with actual proofs of it, in the shape of temples which they 
 were supposed to have constructed'. With this inference the 
 historical element in the legend of Florus and Laurus evapo- 
 rates away, except so far as relates to the change of religion in 
 a certain town in Illyricum. For if the twin-brethren are the 
 Dioscuri, and their craft is also the craft of the Dioscuri, we 
 have nothing left in the legend that can be called their own. 
 Patroclus and Maximus are fictitious, for they too are stone- 
 masons. The story becomes either reminiscences of the ad- 
 ventures of the Dioscuri, or it is mere hagiologic invention of 
 the conventional type. 
 
 And now let us look a little closer into the information 
 which Pausanias gives us as to the opinions and beliefs of the 
 people of Las. Their faith that the Dioscuri had been amongst 
 them and had built a temple near by was associated with 
 another belief that the Dioscuri had sacked their city on their 
 return from the Argonautic expedition. 
 
 This latter belief is an etymological creation, by which it 
 was sought to explain a curious title by which the great twin- 
 brethren were known, viz. the title of Lapersai : this was 
 interpreted to mean 'ravagers of Las.' Accordingly we find 
 in Strabo the following statement : 
 
 1 Something similar, as we shall see presently, occurs in the case of the 
 Theban twins, Amphion and Zethus, who first sack the city and then rebuild it. 
 At least Amphion plays the part of builder, while Zethus makes music ■ in 
 other forms of the legend both brothers are masons. Should we compare 
 Eomulus and Eemus ? 
 
FLOEUS AND LAURUS. 9 
 
 TTjv d€ Aav ol AiocTKoupoi noTe ik TroXwpKias (Xelv IcrTopovvrm, d<f>' ov 
 8ri Xmrepcrai n po(Fr)yopfv6r]iTav , cai 2o(j)OKXfjs \4yei ttow 
 vr] TO) Kanipira, vrj tov 'Evparav Tp'vTOV, 
 VT] Toils iv Apye: Kai Kara '2irdpTr]v B^ovs. 
 
 (Strabo VIII. 364.) 
 
 The same explanation of the name Lapersai is found in Stephanus 
 of Byzantium, sub voce Ad. 
 
 Aa TToKis AaKcoviKTi' AvKocjipmv KOi Aav rrfpri<T€is. TavTTjv eXdi/res ol 
 
 Aioo'KOvpoi Aairipcrm eK\ridr](rav Kslrat 8e eVl nirpas vyjrrjX^s' Sto Aa 
 
 KoXeiTar ol KaroiKovvres Aaoi. 
 
 Aanepa'a drjKvKOiS' opos AaKcoviKrjSj ov pe^vrjrat 'Piavos iv 'HXtaKcSi/ irpwTio. 
 ano Twv Aairep(rS)V Atoo-Kovpiov. 
 
 Here we find the geographer giving the conventional ex- 
 planation ; but he adds another suggestion that the word Aa? 
 or Aa means rock, which is probably correct ; and also gives us 
 the further information of another mountain which bears the 
 name Lapersa and which he absurdly supposed to have been 
 named after the Dioscuri who had themselves been named 
 after the former mountain. Obviously this is nothing but 
 word-spinning. And when we find from Tzetzes on Lycophron 
 that there was an Attic deme named AaTrepcrto?, we are obliged 
 to abandon the early explanations, and ask for some solution 
 which lies a little nearer to nature and a little further from the 
 realm of the mythologist. 
 
 Our suggestion will be that the name Aairepa-ai is the 
 equivalent of stonecutters, XiBo^ooi or Xarofioi. We have 
 already shown from the legends of Florus and Laurus the 
 probability that the Dioscuri were credited with the power to 
 hew stone and to build temples. Is it, however, possible to 
 deduce this meaning from the title Lapersai? If it were, 
 everything would clear up as regards names of places and 
 people : the mountain in Laconia would be named after a 
 quarry in its side, the deme in Attica would be the stone- 
 cutters' ward, or at all events the ward of the Heavenly 
 Twins, and the Dioscuri would be known by the beneficent 
 art which they had taught the human race. 
 
 We observe, however, from the quotation given from 
 Sophocles, that the first a in Aairepaa is short; and it is. 
 
10 THE DIOSCUEI IN THE CHMSTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 therefore, impossible to identify the first syllable with Aa. 
 We must not search for the stonecutter in. that direction. 
 
 Suppose, however, that we divide the word in another way, 
 and make it AaTr+epo-ai. We can at once recognize in the 
 first syllable the root which lies behind the Latin lapis and the 
 Greek XcTra?. So we have only to explain the second part ot 
 the name. Here we have the analogy of the Phrygian name 
 Lityerses, where we are advised to recognize the spirit of 
 vegetation, under one of its many vagrant forms. The story 
 of Lityerses, the son of a Phrygian king, and of his reaping 
 matches against strangers whom he enticed into the harvest 
 field and then wrapped in sheaves and beheaded, has been 
 shown by Mannhardt and others to be the mythological form 
 of an ancient cult of the Corn-spirit, to which parallels can 
 be found all over the world. And it has been suggested, 
 as we shall see presently, that the name Lityerses may 
 mean 'the worker of the tilth,' the first half of the word 
 being a word for ' com,' and the latter the equivalent of the 
 Greek -^6/371?? (as in evepyi]<;, 06/377;?). The main difiiculty 
 here is the introduction of the digamma, which at first sight 
 seems fatal to the quantity of the a in AaTripcrai. But at least 
 we may infer that a common termination -e/atr?;? is in the name 
 of the Dioscuri and in the name of the Phrygian threshing 
 prince. That seems to be, at all events, a reasonable hypo- 
 thesis. 
 
 At this point the argument passes out of my hands, and I 
 am obliged to consult my friends in the region of philology, 
 and ask them whether the presence of the digamma in the 
 Greek fepyov implies a sound of such strength that it would be 
 preserved after p in the Phrygian language or in the closely 
 related Thracian speech. Their verdict is of the nature of a 
 press-censor's nihil ohstat. Dr J. H. Moulton thinks the 
 hypothesis of an equation between Aa-7ripa-r]<; and 'stone- 
 cutter' very attractive, draws the parallel with Lityerses, but 
 thinks the proof must be extra-philological. 
 
 Prof. Conway has examined the suggestion carefully, and 
 writes : 
 
FLORUS AND LAURUS. 11 
 
 After spending some time with the Phrygian and Thracian fragments 
 I think it reasonably probable that Xanepa-rjs is good Thracian for stone- 
 worker. 
 
 XoTT- will be Lat. lap-(id-) and -cpa-tjs will stand for -Ffpyrjs (cf. ivcpyfjs, 
 afpyrjs). All I can be sure of is 
 
 (1) that original Indo-European g became 2 or s in Thracian : e.g. the 
 fairly common suffix zenus-, -sanus (AvXcfavos, Diuzenus) which is certainly 
 parallel to Gr. -yevrjs, Lat. -genus, all meaning ' son of.' 
 
 (2) that orig. F («) i.e. consonant u remained and did not become any 
 more solid sound (not, e.g., a labio-dental t>)....If AiTu-epo-iyr is connected 
 with Xei-f a ' corn,' it might conceivably mean ' worker of the tilth ' : for 
 the -til- cf. Satuiims, Ma-tu-ta, fortuna. But 
 
 (3) I have not found any example which proves that -ttF- would 
 become simply -tt- in Thracian, but on general grounds it is quite hkely, 
 since precisely that same change happened in Greek (i/ijTrior beside vrfTrvrios), 
 Italic and Celtic... It is hard to keep a real w alive after a ^. The moving 
 power for the etymology must come from your side, but I think these points 
 are enovigh to show that there are no phonetic moimtains to be moved. 
 
 Thus far Dr Moulton and Prof. Conway. It will be observed 
 that in my treatment of the fact that Florus and Laurus were 
 stonemasons, and the inference that they are the Dioscuri in 
 disguise, I have practically assumed, in stating the case for the 
 resulting philological speculation, that the cult of the Dioscuri in 
 Greece is a northern cult which has moved southward. Those 
 who hold that Zeus himself has moved in that direction will 
 have no difficulty in that supposition, they will say that 
 Aio<;+Kovpoi implies that the Twins follow the migration of 
 their Sire. But we can easily establish that the cult of the 
 Twins belongs to the northern races from other considerations, 
 as will be seen presently. Meanwhile let it be stated that 
 whether the explanation of Aa^repaa by 'twin stoneworkers ' 
 is correct or not, there is a strong suspicion, apart from all 
 philological speculation, that we have recovered from the 
 Florus and Laurus legend another of the many occupations 
 of the benevolent Dioscuri. And I think we shall be able 
 to show that in the mythological evolution of these benevolent 
 offices the art of building stone-temples is one of the last 
 stages of development. 
 
 It is well known that the legends of the Dioscuri are very 
 widely diffused. For example Tacitus tells us in the Germania 
 
12 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 of a people in Eastern Europe (? Poland, Lithuania) wbo wor- 
 shipped the great twin-brethren : 
 
 Apud Nahaiiai-valos antiquae roligiouis lucus ostouditur. Praosiclot 
 sacerdos muliebri ornatu : sed Jeos iutorprotatioiiQ Roniaiin Castoreui 
 Pollucem momorant : ca vis numiui, uomen Alois. Nulla sinmlacra, niUlum 
 pei'egrinae superstitiouis vestigium : ut fratres tanieii, nt juvouos veuo- 
 rantur. 
 
 I Ixlieve the name Alcis has not yet met with an explanation. 
 Apart from the name, Tacitus' description is sufficient to identify 
 the worship with an early stage of the cult of the Dioscuri. 
 And it will be observed that the worship is in a groxe and not 
 in a temple, a simple trait which recalls the earliest features of 
 the Vedic and Indo-Gernianic religion. 
 
 The statement of Tacitus is curiously confirmed by an ex- 
 amination of Lettish folk-songs, which constantly refer to certain 
 'Sons of God' who ride upon a chariot and set free the daughter 
 of the Sun. These dewa deli or Sons of God have naturally 
 been equated with the ^loa-Kovpoi, and the daughter of the Sun 
 whom they pursue and liberate is in the Greek mythology the 
 captive Helena. 
 
 But these Lettish folk-songs furnish us with another link 
 with the Dioscuri in a direction that had otherwise been 
 suspected. Theii: language and ideas arc strikingly parallel to 
 those of the Vedic Hymns, in which we again find the great 
 twin-brethren, under the name of A9vin (dual A^vinau). 
 Their name shows that they have something to do with horses. 
 Mid the mythology of their birth and life brings this out in all 
 kinds of fantastic forms. It should, however, be understood 
 that they are not horsemen in the modern sense (as we find the 
 Dioscuri at the battle of the Lake Regillus) but horsemen in 
 the ancient sense, when the horse was driven in a chariot. 
 And indeed the same thing is true of the earliest forms of Greek 
 legend; the horse-taming Castor means a horse-breaker, but 
 not for riding, and when the pair are described as Tu'x^euv eVt- 
 ^rjTope'i "-mrav as in the Homeric Hymns, it has long been 
 recognized that this means chariot-riders and not horse-riders 
 in our sense of the word. 
 
FLORUS AND LAURUS. 13 
 
 Assuming then that the A9vins of the Rig-veda are twin 
 charioteers, we see at once that they are the Dioscuri; they 
 appear also in the Persian religion under the name agpind 
 yavinS, the two youths the A(;pins. Their Indo-Germanic 
 character is thus completely established^. 
 
 In the Vedic hymns they are accompanied on their chariot 
 by the virgin Siirya, who is the daughter of the Sun. Here we 
 have Helena appearing along with the twin-brethren. 
 
 What was the origin of the legend of the Dioscuri is not so 
 important for us, as the question of the offices which they 
 discharged to men, after they had been recognized as the deol 
 crcoT^pe?, from whom various forms of help were to be expected. 
 It is, however, interesting to observe that the Vedic legends 
 connect the twin-brethren with the sunrise, and that the 
 proper time for prayer to them is just before the dawn. And 
 the best explanation that has yet been given of their origin is 
 that they are personifications of the morning and evening star, 
 considered as a pair of stars, one being immortal, viz. the 
 morning star, and the other mortal, as sinking with the sun 
 into the dark. Hence the difference in Greek legend between 
 Castor the mortal and Polydeuces the immortal, and hence also 
 certain mythical inventions with regard to their birth. This 
 identification, which is said to be due in the first instance to 
 Bollensen^, received an extraordinary confirmation from Mann- 
 hardt's study of the Lettish sun-myths ^ for here the Sons of 
 God who ride upon horses are actually described as the morning 
 and evening star. Here are one or two specimens from the 
 Lettish songs, in a German translation : 
 
 Warum stehen die grauen Eosse 
 An der Hausthiir der Sonne ? 
 Es sind des Gottessohnes graue Rosae 
 Der freit um die Tochter der Sonne. 
 
 ' Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, p. 43. " Nicht bios aus der vedisohen Ueber- 
 lieferung, sondem auch aus derjenigen der anderen verwandten Volker, lasst sioh 
 der siohere Beweis fuhren, dass unsere Gottheiten ein Gemeingut aller indoger- 
 manisoher Volker waren. " 
 
 2 ZDMG. 41. 496. 
 
 3 Zeitschriftfiir Ethnologic, Vol. vii. (1875). 
 
14 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 (Notice here how the 'Sons of God' in the plural have 
 turned into the ' Son of God ' in the singular.) 
 
 Wessen sind die graueii Ebsschen 
 
 An Gottchens Havisthiir ? 
 
 Das sind des Mondes Eosschen 
 
 Derer die da freien um die Sonnentochter. 
 
 Here the moon is said to own the horses : but in the 
 following stanza it is expressly said that the moon has no horse 
 of his own. 
 
 So sagen die Leute, 
 
 Der Mond habe kein eignes Eosschen ; 
 
 Der Morgenstern und der Abendstem 
 
 Sind des Mondes Eosschen. 
 
 The frank dififerentiation of the morning star from the 
 evening star, and the connexion of the pair thus imagined as 
 horses or horsemen, should be sufficient to indicate the con- 
 clusion which Mannhardt arrives at, after an analysis of great 
 minuteness and scientific precision^. As we have said above, 
 our concern is to find out what were the friendly offices which 
 the young heroes discharged to humanity. It may be conceded 
 at once that we must not expect to find in the earliest mythology 
 any traces of the building of stone temples. The Rig-veda, for 
 example, belongs to an earlier stage than that of temple building 
 and of temple worship. 
 
 Accordiag to Macdonnell (Vedic Mythology p. 49), the 
 A^vins are celebrated in more than fifty entire hymns and in 
 parts of several others, while their name occurs more than 
 400 times. 
 
 In the Eig-Veda they have come to be typically succouring divinities. 
 They are the speediest helpers and deliverers from distress in general. 
 They are constantly praised for such deeds. In particular, they rescue 
 from the ocean in a ship or ships... Their rescue from all kinds of distress 
 is a peaceful manifestation of divine grace, not a deliverance from foes in 
 
 1 Mannhardt, 1. «. p. 309. " Der Kundige muss bald gewahr werden wie 
 genau mit den lettisohen Mythen von den Gottessbhnen und den Sonnentoehter 
 oder Gottestochter die grieohischen von den beiden Dioskuren und ihre Schwester 
 Helena (ibereinstimmen. Ihr Mythus ist zwar bei Homer sowohl, als auch in 
 den Kyprieu (bei Pindar), bereits dureh verschiedene fremdartige Motivirungen 
 verdunkelt, &a." 
 
FLORUS AND LAURUS. 15 
 
 battlei, as is generally the case with Indra....Thus they are also character- 
 istically divine physicians, who heal diseases with their remedies, restoring 
 sight, curing the blind, sick and maimed. 
 
 lu Myriantheus {Die Agvins), a work which wrongly attempts 
 to prove that the A9vins are originally the personification of 
 the twilight, as against the identification with the morning and 
 evening star, will be found an excellent summary from the 
 Vedic literature of the miracles with which the Twins were 
 credited ; as for example that 
 
 (1) they deliver from darkness: 
 
 (2) they are the authors of rejuvenescence (hence their 
 help is sought by the aged and the emasculate) : 
 
 (3) they protect in battle : 
 
 (4) they act as physicians (healing the blind, the lame &c.): 
 
 (5) they are the patrons of the bride-chamber and bestow 
 benedictions upon the newly-married : 
 
 (6) they promote happiness in wedlock and are generally 
 Gods of increase (under which head they are credited with 
 the invention of the plough and with the descent of rain from 
 heaven^ and with the falling of the dew) : 
 
 (7) they save men from storms (under this head there 
 are numerous appeals to the Brethren as having saved from 
 drowning a certain Bhuyyu, whom they brought to land after 
 three days and three nights, when his friends had thrown him 
 into the sea. He called on the Agvins and walked on the sea, 
 without wavering. They came and took him on their chariot). 
 
 To this list of benevolences we propose to add, for a later 
 period in the history of the cult, and not necessarily for India, 
 the feature of their activity which came out in the foregoing 
 analysis ; viz. 
 
 (8) they teach men how to work and build in stone. 
 
 We will now apply a test to the foregoing results, by 
 examining the Greek Menaea in order to see whether they 
 betray any traces of acquaintance with the meaning of the 
 legend of Florus and Laurus. If they do, we shall have a 
 
 ^ But cf. what is noted below under (6). 
 
 ^ E.g. "You, Acjvina, that lay enemiea low, sow grain with the plough, 
 and milk out the quickening streams of water for men." 
 
16 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 confirmation of the correctness of our views that will be very 
 valuable. We premise that the hymns of the Greek service 
 in the Menaea usually incorporate the leading features in the 
 accounts of the martyrdom, so that it will be necessary, for the 
 test to mean anything, that the hymnologist should go beyond 
 the accounts of the Synaxarium, by way of expansion or of 
 explanation. 
 
 In the first place, we shall find that the saints are regarded 
 as two luminaries in the firmament of the Church : thus : 
 
 Auo (fiaxTT^pes (otpSrjTc votjtm (TTepeafiaTi t« T^ff iKK\r]<rLas lepS)S efiirpe- 
 ■^avTcs, /cm Traaav (jxari^iTe nepic^avays Trjv kti(tiv dfi BavfiaroTrouas a.ff\o(f>6pot 
 
 Here the saints are regarded as stars, in language partly 
 borrowed from Aeschylus Agam. 6, 
 
 \ap,7rpovs dwdaras ip.TvpeiTovTas alBipi. 
 
 In the next passage that we q\iote, they are not only stars, 
 but a pair equated with the evening star, or with some con- 
 spicuous pair of stars. 
 
 'H 6eia Km (j>a(r(j>6pos ovtios 8vds, Aavpe $XSpf KaWivLKOi fiaprvpes 
 €v ovpavoLS TrdvTQTe TptdSt rfj rravTovpya irapearrjKOTe^) XvTpcoo'iv ruiv du.ap- 
 Trjpdrayv Koi tSjv diti'SiV aLTrjcrairSe rots TriVrei vpwv rrjv Beiav p.vr]p.jjv cVt 
 rrjs yrjs TravTjyvpt^ova-t. 
 
 In a third passage- the hymnologist draws on the legend 
 of their death when thrown into the well, but immediately 
 turns from this to say that they have been discovered and shine 
 out again like stars in heaven. 
 
 AaxKffl o-u-yKXeid/iei/oi Kol vno yTjv KaXvirropLfvoi aTT-qvela hiKd^ovros, Bdais 
 (la-rjyrin-ea-i /cm ajTOKaXv^jfa Hi/fv/xaror ' Aylov e(f)avspii,6r]T£ ripXv ma-irep dcTTi- 
 pcs eTj-avaa-rpdwTovTcs, (rrjp.ela /cm repda-Tia cm Lap.dTaiv x^pto-p-ara, dBXoipdpoL 
 aiir«6eX(^ot ^, rSiv 'AyyeXo)/^ opoaKrjvot. 
 
 That the martyrs should be stars might be explained from 
 popular figures (such expressions being common enough in the 
 Menaea), but that the two particular stars should be called a 
 
 1 Note that this word in this connexion and in this literature often means 
 diSv/ioi, especially such Sldv/ioc as are sons of one mother but of different sires, 
 like Castor and Pollux. 
 
FLORUS AND LAURUS. 17 
 
 <}}(oa-(j)6po<; owTO)? Sua? suggests that the Greek prayers and 
 hymns have preserved for the saints the traces of their previous 
 history as demigods. It is, however, quite possible that the 
 parallels adduced may be conventional. 
 
 We have now traced Florus and Laurus to their origin in 
 Pagan ritual. Our investigation has identified them with some 
 form of the cult of the great twin-brethren. We assumed 
 that these were Castor and Pollux, but it must be remembered 
 that the twin-brethren turn up under various names. They 
 might have been, for instance, Amphion and Zethus. If we 
 had started from these, the argument would have been 
 strengthened, as regards the recognition of the Twins as 
 builders, as the following considerations will show. 
 
 We have alluded to the variety of forms in which the cult 
 of the twin-brethren existed ; and this variety will be sure to 
 be reflected upon the cult of the saints that replace them. 
 There must be an adaptation of the displacing religion to that 
 which is displaced. It is not likely that the same saints would 
 replace the pair Castor-Polydeuces, and the pair Amphion- 
 Zethus : and even when we allow for the general assimilation 
 of the different forms in which the Twins were worshipped 
 locally, there will still be enough variety in their names and 
 in their ritual to ensure a corresponding variety in the 
 calendar. 
 
 Now, with regard to Amphion and Zethus, we have reason 
 to believe that they are the Dioscuri of Thebes. We are told 
 by John Malala, that amongst the architectural gifts of the 
 Emperor Tiberius to the city of Antioch, there were two monu- 
 ments which were set up in honour of the Dioscuri sprung 
 from Antiope whose names are Amphion and Zethus. We 
 shall have occasion to refer again to this important tradition 
 which Malala has preserved ; for the present we simply quote 
 it to show that the very term Dioscuri was applicable to 
 Amphion and Zethus. And although their names do not seem 
 to betray relationship, it is well known that they are twins 
 from one mother. The parallel with the Dioscuri of Sparta 
 at this point is very close ; for here also the paternity is divided 
 and the pair is a conjunction of mortal and immortal. In 
 
 H. 2 
 
18 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN L^EOENDS. 
 
 some verses which Pauaanias quotes from the poet Asius W(i 
 are told : 
 
 And Antiopo bore Zotlius and divine Amphion, 
 
 She the daughter of Asopus, the deep-eddying river, 
 
 Having conceived by Zeus and by Epopeus, shepherd of peoples. 
 
 Here Amphion is evidently of a higher birth than Zethufl : 
 and this tradition appears to have been widely accepted. 
 
 We observe further that the Theban twins are horsemen, 
 like those of Sparta. The word used to describe them is 
 XevKOTTcoXo^ : it is the same word which Sophocles Ajaoc 67-S 
 uses to describe the 'white-steeds of the morning" ': 
 
 i^lcrraTat be uvKrtis alavfjs kvkXos 
 Tjj XfVKOTrdiXa <j>eyyos rjnejia (jiKcyeLV. 
 
 Thus also in Euripides' Fhoenissae 606, Thebes, the homo 
 of Amphion and Zethus, is spoken of as 
 
 Bflov TUiv XfUKOTrmXoiv boajxara, 
 
 and in Euripides, Hercules Furens 29, 30, they are similarly 
 described : 
 
 TO) XfUKOTTCoXft) TTplV TVpaVV^(T(U \6nV(l! 
 
 'Aficjildv' r]Se Zr/Bou iKyi'ivo) Aiiir. 
 
 The language suggests that they are connected with the 
 daybreak, in the same way as Castor and his brother: though 
 the daystar does not shine so clearly on the Theban heads as 
 on the Spartan. Further, they are builders ; this was a point 
 to which we were led, in identifying Florus and Laurus with 
 the Dioscuri : the evidence is more abundant for the Theban 
 twins. Not only have we the rich and varied tradition of their 
 building the walls of Thebes, but we find other local references 
 of a similar character. 
 
 Before they built Thebes, they are said to have walled a 
 city whose name is Eutresis. According to Strabo, ix. p. 411, 
 
 Evrprjcnv Kiofxinv 0e(7nu'av ivravBd (j)a<TC Zijdov Kai'AfxCplova nlKrj(Tai irp'tv 
 /3a(riXfU(rat Qr)^(hv, 
 
 The same tradition appears in Stephanus of Byzantium : 
 
 EvTpr]<Tit fjv iTftxia-f Zr/dos Kill 'Ap,(j)iQ)v (KXrjBr) &e JiuTpijcric bin ro 
 iroWcils ttuTrji/ irpitTfpov )(^prjfTtttr6cti pvp-aii^ las EntiCJipubiTos. 
 
FLORUS ANB LAURUS. 19 
 
 There is also a curious tradition (perhaps a direct Theban 
 migration) that they were also the builders of Dyrrachium : 
 of. Anna Comnena, Aleodad III. p. 99 D, 
 
 ev v(rT€poLS 5e )(^p6voi.s (o)r EXXtjvcs <^ao"t kol avra drj Tci ev Tjj TrdXet 
 yXvnra ypafifiaTa fxaprvpovinv) iijr' 'Aii(f)lovos kol ZtjBov dvoiKodofirjde'iira 
 els o vvv cparai (T)(^fia. aiiTLKa Se Tr]v K\rj(rtv peTapeLyjra(ra Avppd^Lov Trpoaij- 
 yopeverat. 
 
 Thus the evidence that the Theban twins were builders 
 with stone is quite conclusive, and the result is a confirmation 
 of the correctness of our interpretation of the meaning of the 
 occupation of Florus and Laurus. 
 
 We have sufficiently established the parallelism between 
 the Theban twins and those of Sparta. The final decision as 
 to which pair immediately precedes Florus and Laurus we 
 leave undecided. Nor have we found the reason for the names 
 of the new objects of worship. According to Albert the twins 
 are represented on a vase from Vulci, along with Leda who 
 holds in her right hand a flower and in her left two branches 
 of laurel. Perhaps this may throw light on it. 
 
 2—2 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 JUDAS THOMAS. 
 
 We now pass on to examine another case of Christian 
 hagiology which appears to reflect the story of the Dioscuri. 
 We may recognize at once that the following principles 
 should guide us in such investigations; first, that if the worship 
 of the Dioscuri were the same wherever the cult existed, we 
 should not be entitled to assume that the cult would be dis- 
 placed everywhere in the same manner. There may be more 
 ways than one of getting rid of the Dioscuri, and besides 
 Florus and Laurus, we maj' stumble upon other pairs of twins 
 who are their equivalents. And second, that since there is 
 every reason to believe that the worship of the Dioscuri was 
 the suivival of a series of local cults, competing inter' se for 
 honours and preeminence, we have an additional reason for 
 expecting variety in the displacement of the cults when they 
 ceased to be Pagan and became Christian. 
 
 In looking over the calendar for possible local cults of the 
 twin-brethren, there is one case of supreme interest which 
 attracts our attention. 
 
 In the city of Edessa, as is well known, the leading saint 
 is S. Thomas the Apostle, and it is universally conceded that 
 S. Thomas is somebody's twin-brother. It is not, however, so 
 commonly recognized that, in Edessa, the definition of the twin- 
 brother had been made in a manner sufficiently startling to 
 modem ears, and that S. Thomas was regarded as the twin of 
 Christ. The proof of this lies, in the first instance, in a study 
 of that remarkable apocryphal work the Acts of Thomas from 
 
JUDAS THOMAS. 21 
 
 whose fantastic pages we conntaaoiy see, starting up before our 
 eyes, the expression ' twin of the Messiah,' although the term 
 is sometimes disguised by feeble corrections of the term Thomas 
 into Tehoma, the abyss or the ocean-flood^. In fact, to the Syrian 
 Church in early times, Thomas was not a name at all ; he 
 was Judas Thomas, i.e. Jude the [Lord's] twin-brother. The 
 confusion is one which can be traced in the oldest copies of the 
 Syriac Gospel, and in the earliest literature of the Eastern 
 Church. (Cf. the Lewis Syriac in John xiv. 22 for the identi- 
 fication of Judas and Thomas.) The writer of the Acts (which, 
 as a study of their language will show, are originally Syriac, 
 and not a translation), has evidently made the assumed relation 
 of the twin-brethren in his story one of the leading motives 
 in his romance; Jesus is constantly mistaken for Judas his 
 twin, and Judas for Jesus. They are perfectly alike ; and it 
 is not surprising that the pious people in the story, as well as 
 the impious, are constantly deceived. 
 
 Without going into detail, at the present time, either as to 
 the peculiar Edessan idea, or as to the way in vsrhich it was 
 reflected on the apocryphal Acts or on the rest of the literature 
 of the Church, we will, for the sake of illustration, give one or 
 two of the statements in the Acts upon which we have based 
 the foregoing remarks, reserving the complete treatment of the 
 subject for another occasion-. 
 
 For example, one of the stories which make up the Acta 
 Thomae is a tale of an ass's colt which, at the commandment of 
 Judas Thomas, opened its mouth and spoke : 
 
 (Ed. Wright, p. 179.) And the mouth of the colt was opened, and it 
 spake like a man by the power of our Lord, and said to him, ' Twin of the 
 Christ; &C.3 
 
 1 E.g. Wright, p. 170 (the speech of the Black Snake), " I do not dare 
 to utter these things because I know that the Ocean Flood (lege, the Twin) of 
 the Messiah will destroy our nature." 
 
 ^ Mr Burkitt has drawn attention to the matter in the Journal of Theological 
 Studies, I. 288. My investigations are entirely independent, and the results were 
 obtained, for the most part, some years ago. I am glad to have the corrobora- 
 tion of his careful study. 
 
 ■> Here the Syriac has made an attempt to correct ctjssot*^* ('twin of) 
 into m=noai^ ('ocean-flood of), evidently with the view of softening the 
 
22 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 and the likeness of Judas to Jesus comes out in such passages 
 as the following from the Story of a Demon that dwelt in a 
 Woman (Wright, p. 185). The demon says, 'What have we 
 to do with thee, Apostle of the Most High?... Why art thou like 
 unto God thy Lord, who concealed His majesty and appeared in 
 the flesh?... For thou, namely, art born of Him.' Thus the 
 Syi-iac, but a reference to the Greek shows a much stronger 
 text: 
 
 Tivos ei/EKa i^Ojioiovirai ra vim Tov GcoC tqj dSiKij(Tai/Tt ij^Sr ; eoiKas yap 
 favTa iravv i)S i^ aiiTov aTroK.vr)6eis. 
 
 Judas, that is to say, is as like to His Lord as if he had 
 been begotten of Him. There is much more of the same kind 
 in the Acta. These statements are emphatic and repeated 
 throughout the book, and they show that the writer not only 
 held a current Edessan belief as to the twin-ship of -Jesus and 
 Judas, but that he made it one of the main threads of his 
 argument, and the leading motive of his fancy. 
 
 In certain Edessan circles, then, whether Christian or 
 Gnostic, a peculiar belief was current as to the twin who occurs 
 in the table of the Twelve Apostles. And in such circles, and 
 in the mind of the writer of the Acts of Thomas, we have to 
 allow that Jesus and Judas stood for a pair of twin-brethren, 
 one of them being presumed to be mortal and the other 
 immortal, if we may argue from the nature of the case and the 
 parallel with the Dioscuri. 
 
 And the question arises naturally whether, as we have 
 found the motive of the likeness between Jesus and Judas 
 running through the Acta, we ought not to find that the 
 legends of the Dioscuri have been imitated, or at all events 
 have affected the invention of the religious novelist to whom 
 we owe the apocryphal work in question. 
 
 text. But the Greek of the passage is quite decided, as the following will 
 show ; 
 
 Acta Thomae (ed. 1, Bonnet, p. 29, ed. 2, p. 156). toO Si atroa-TdXov Sn 
 eartoTQS iv r^ \eujtp6puj Kal dioKeyofihou ry TrXrjdeL ttuJXos oj'aSos rfKdev Kai ^arri 
 ^/j-irpotrdev airoO /cat dvoi^as rb trrd/J^a adroO elirev '0 SiSv^os toO 'X.olcttoD 
 
 6 CtTrioToXos TOV "KpiO-TOU KT€. 
 
JUDAS THOMAS. 23 
 
 The story opens, as is wbU known, with the sale of Judas 
 Thomas by Jesus to a merchant named ^a-bban who is going 
 to India. The purchase having been completed, Habban says 
 to Judas, 'What is thy art which thou art skilled in practising?' 
 Judas saith to him, ' Carpentering and architecture — the business 
 of the carpenter.' Habban the merchant saith to him, ' What 
 dost thou know to make in wood and what in hewn stone?' 
 Judas saith to him, ' In wood I have learned to make ploughs 
 and yokes and ox-goads and oars for ferry-boats, and masts for 
 ships : and in stone, tombstones and monuments and temples 
 aud palaces for kings.' Habban is very pleased with the 
 qualifications of his new slave, and so they set sail. 
 
 Notice how the Christian apostle is introduced as one who 
 can make stone temples* : and recall what we found out with 
 regard to the Dioscuri in the south of the Peloponnesus, and 
 with regard to Florus and Laurus in Illyricum. 
 
 On the journey to India, Habban and his new slave put in 
 at the city Saudaruk, where they happen to come at a festive 
 season, for it is the marriage of the king's daughter. At the 
 feast which the king gives certain miracles are wrought by 
 Judas, which result in his being carried off into the bride- 
 chamber that he may pr-ay for a blessing upon the young people. 
 After Judas has prayed, he leaves the bride-chamber, and in a 
 little while our Lord appears to the bride and bridegroom, who 
 promptly take him for Judas, which evokes the explanation, 
 ' I am not Judas, but I am the brother of Judas.' The rest of 
 the story must be read in the Acts of Thomas. But we have 
 not gone so far without recognizing that the appearance of the 
 twin-brethren in the bride-chamber is borrowed from current 
 ideas as to the blessings bestowed on newly-married people by 
 the Dioscuri^. 
 
 1 The 'ploughs and yokes' might conceivably have come from the tradition 
 of the occupation of Jesus, given by Justin. But this source will not do for the 
 temples. 
 
 2 It is said that the Dioscuri exercised similar influences at Koman weddings. 
 See Myriantheus, Die A<;vim, p. 118, quoting Eossbach, Ramische Grabdenhuiiler. 
 In the same connexion we may recall the Eoman deities Mutunus and Tutunus, 
 who preside over sexual intercourse. Their names suggest twins ; and they are 
 probably a very early form of the cult of the Twins in Italy, which has been 
 
24 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 The incident of the wedding being over (which must have 
 been deliberately introduced by the artist, for there was no 
 need for the travellers to disembark when the main action is 
 evidently to be in India) they proceed on their journey, and 
 arrive at last at the kingdom of Gondafar. 
 
 And now begins the second Act, when Thomas the Apostle 
 entered into India and built a palace for the king in heaven, 
 ^abban brings Judas before the king, who engages him to 
 build a new palace, supplying him with abundance of gold and 
 silver. All of this Judas promptly puts in circulation as alms 
 to the poor. He went about and ministered and made many 
 afflicted persons comfortable. The king kept on sending money, 
 and Judas kept on spending it, a process which was of necessity 
 terminable as soon as information reached the king. 
 
 We need hardly point out how close is the parallel at this 
 point with the story of Florus and Laurus, who spend the 
 money that is given them on the poor, working all day on the 
 temple and praying all night, until Licinius the governor finds 
 them out. 
 
 In the Acts of Thomas, when the fraud is discovered the 
 king resolves that he will burn Judas, after first flaying him, 
 along with Habban the merchant; he is, however, dissuaded 
 by the spirit of his brother who dies, comes to life again and 
 reports that he has seen the palace in heaven which Judas had 
 built. 
 
 In the Florus and Laurus legend, we are told that Licinius 
 
 preserved amongst that most conservative people the Romans. See Tert. Adv. 
 Nat. 11. 11, Arnob. Adv. Nat. iv. 11. 
 
 Another similar pair are Pilumnus and Picumnus, who are described by 
 Varro as ' dii conjugales ' and ' dii infantium,' see Nonius Maroellus, p. 528. 13 
 and Servius on Verg. Aen. x. 76. 
 
 The following is the description of Picumnus and Pilumnus given in Petiscus' 
 Gods of Olympos (Eng. tr. p. 156). 
 
 " Picumnus and Pilumnus were a pair of brother gods who presided over 
 marriage. When a child was born, a couch was prepared in the house for 
 Picumnus, for he, as god of agriculture, could ensure health and wealth. 
 Pilumnus with his club {pilum), the instrument with which he threshed the 
 corn, warded oft all evil influence from the newborn babe. These two brothers 
 had done many doughty deeds in peace and war, and were often compared loith 
 the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux.'' 
 
JUDAS THOMAS. 25 
 
 burnt alive all the poor people who had taken money from 
 the Twins, and then he bound the brethren to a wheel and 
 flayed them. 
 
 We are evidently dealing with parallel streams of folk- 
 lore : and if we go outside the Syriac Acts into the general 
 body of the Thomas legends, the parallels are even more 
 striking. For example, let us turn to the Ethiopic literature. 
 Here we find in the Gontendings of the Apostles which Budge 
 has published, not only an Ethiopic version of the Acts of 
 Thomas but also a parallel set of legends, called the Preaching 
 of S. Thomas in India. 
 
 As in the ordinary legend, Thomas is sold for a slave to 
 Arbasos, an officer of king Kontaros. The qualifications of the 
 slave are given, much as in the Acta, plus the additional one 
 that Judas can act as a physician (like the A9vius in Indian 
 mythology) and can heal the wounds that work decay in the 
 flesh. He is accordingly brought before the king, and the 
 king sends him to Lukyanos or Lukiyos the governor, with 
 instructions to supply him with everything that he needs (note 
 the name of the governor and compare with Lycon and 
 Licinius in the Florus and Laurus legend). 
 
 Now let us see what happens when Thomas spends his 
 building money on the poor. 
 
 And Lukiyos said unto him in wrath, ' thou wicked slave, where 
 is the fulfilment of the word which thou didst speak uuto me ? ' Then 
 he commanded them to put Thomas in prison and they stretched him out 
 there. And they made a wheel in the ground and bound him upon it, and 
 Lukiyos commanded the executioners to strip the skin from his body. 
 
 The parallels with the Florus and Laurus legend are even 
 more pronounced in the Ethiopic legend than in the Syriac. 
 
 The story goes on to say that Thomas was healed by our 
 Lord, and that he went about working miracles by means of 
 his skin which he earned with him as an aegis. Lukiyos was 
 converted and set over the new church that was formed. 
 
 I have, however, found no parallel in the Thomas legends to 
 the throwing of Florus and Laurus into a well. 
 
 But we are not yet at the end of the suggestive parallels 
 between the Thomas legends and the Dioscuri. In the Rig- 
 
26 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 veda horses and chariots occur constantly, but there is no 
 mention of the ass except in connexion with the A^vins, who 
 clearly are ass-drivers and ass-tamers as well as horsemen ; and 
 in the Thomas legends there are two stories in which the ass 
 finds a prominent place, and one of them is an actual case of 
 ass-taming. According to Macdonnell', "the A9vins' name 
 implies only the possession of horses, there being no evidence 
 to show that they are so called because they ride on them.... In 
 the Aitareya Brahmana the A9vins are said at the marriage 
 of Soma and Surya to have won a race in a car drawn by asses.'' 
 This makes them ovoBafioi as well as iT-'n-oSafiob. They are 
 also said to drive asses in their chariot in the morning twilight^ 
 Now in the Acts of Thomas a whole section is devoted to the 
 miraculous taming of a team of wild asses. The general of 
 king Mazdai drives Judas in his chariot to pay a healing visit 
 to his wife and daughter. [Compare the deliverance of Surya 
 the daughter of the Sun by the A9vins and the rescue of Helen 
 by the Dioscuri.] In such a connexion there was no reason to 
 make the chariot break down : it is an incident deliberately 
 introduced; and the only conceivable reason for its introduction 
 is that the legends of the Dioscuri may be imitated who, at the 
 close of the day, change from a team of bright horses to a team 
 of gray asses, and that Judas may show, like the Twins, his 
 power of taming and driving the wild asses. When the carriage 
 horses are worn out with the journey, and refuse to move 
 further, Judas summons a team of four wild asses from a herd, 
 and finishes the journey with them : ' the wild asses going 
 along gently and quietly and by little and little, that the 
 Apostle of God might not be shaken.' And the colour of the 
 incident is Vedic and early Greek in this respect, that the 
 riding is done in a chariot, and the animals ai-e broken in to 
 drivel 
 
 1 Vedic Mythology, p. 49. 
 
 2 See MyriantheuB, pp. 74, 103. Myriautheus acutely suggests that the 
 appearance of asses in the chariot of the A(?vins where we have ordinarily the 
 red and white horses, is an attempt to express the colour of the sky, vvhose 
 morning-gray is the colour of the ass. 
 
 ' This does not apply to the other story of the ass colt on which Judas 
 is persuaded to ride a little way. 
 
JUDAS THOMAS. 27 
 
 Another striking feature shall be mentioned, connecting the 
 Thomas legends with those of the Dioscuri. When Judas has 
 converted a great many people to the faith, it becomes neces- 
 sary for him to set some one over them ecclesiastically, that the 
 flock may be properly shepherded. For this purpose he selects 
 his deacon Xanthippus^ The name is peculiar, in view of the 
 general prevalence of Persian and Indian names in the legend. 
 But there would be no need to draw attention to the introduc- 
 tion of a Greek name, any more than in the case of the Latin 
 name Tertia which occurs later on, if it wei-e not that Xanthippos 
 is so nearly the name of one of the horses in the team driven 
 by the Dioscuri. More exactly the names of the horses pre- 
 sented by Hera to the Twins are Xanthos and Kyllaros^. 
 
 The name Xanthippos appears to me to indicate, not only 
 that the writer of the Acta had the Dioscuri and their legends 
 in mind, but that he knew these legends in their Greek form. 
 And it should be noticed that this account of Xanthippos^ 
 occurs in the very same part of the legends that is devoted to 
 the taming of the wild asses. Nor should we omit one other 
 feature which is adumbrated, without any special treatment 
 being devoted to it, in the same section. In making his fare- 
 well address to the new converts, Judas commends them to the 
 power of Christ who is able to preserve them waking and 
 
 ' The Greek translator was puzzled over the name, which looks oddly 
 enough in Syriac, and transcribed it Xenophonl 
 
 ^ According to Eoscher, Lex. i. 1156, " Ihren Eossen gab die Poesie Namen, 
 Xanthos (ein sehr gewohnlicher Pferdename) und Kyllaros (auch Name von 
 Kentauren). Diese beiden sollte Hera gegeben haben, die sie von Poseidon 
 hatte." 
 
 3 The thought suggests itself that the charioteers of the Twins may have 
 actually been named Xanthippus and Leucippus in some one of the traditions 
 concerning them. But I have not succeeded in verifying this. According to 
 Strabo (xi. 2. 12) the Spartans founded in Colchis the colony of Heniochia 
 ('B.vwxta) under the leadership of Ehecas and Amphistratos the charioteers of 
 the Dioscuri, the colonists being known as the Heuiochi or charioteers. But 
 there are other variant forms of the names. In Ammianus Marcellinus (xx. 
 8. 24) we have Amphitos and Cercios, instead of Amphistratos and Ehecas 
 (' ' et Dioscurias nunc usque nota cuius auctores Amphitus et Cercius 
 Spartani traduntur, aurigae Castoris et Pollucis, quibus Henioohorum natio est 
 instituta "). The language shows that this is the same tradition as occurs in 
 Strabo. 
 
28 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 sleeping: "and if," says he, "ye sit in a ship and on the sea 
 where no man of you is able to help his fellow, He will walk 
 upon the waves of the sea and support your ship^" It need 
 hardly be pointed out how closely this reflects the sailors' view 
 of the Dioscuri. It is introduced abruptly, and addressed 
 apparently to a non-seafaring people : the reason for its intro- 
 duction lies in the Vedic and Greek parallels, where the 
 Dioscuri walk on the sea to save their worshippers. 
 
 Upon the whole, then, we conclude that the writer of the 
 Acts of Judas Thomas has for his raw material the Acts of the 
 Dioscuri, and just as these underlie the legends of Floras and 
 Laurus in Illyricum, so they also underlie the apocryphal 
 stories of Edessa. 
 
 The next question which presents itself to the mind, in 
 connexion with the recognition of the influence which the 
 legends of the Dioscuri are here held to have exercised over 
 the legends of S. Thomas, relates to the underlying assumption 
 that the cult of the Dioscuri was known and practised in the 
 city of Edessa. That the Acts of Thomas were actually written 
 in Edessa is highly probable. It is practically admitted in the 
 Syriac Acts, as we possess them, by the concluding statements 
 as to the conveyance of the relics of S. Th<jmas from India to 
 the West. Historical and geographical locations of bones that 
 work miracles are usually made by people who claim to possess 
 them. Then we have the Bardesan hymns inserted in the text, 
 or at least one of them ; and other Edessan features can probably 
 be recognized. But why should the Dioscuri have prominence 
 in Edessa ? And if an Edessan writer has his mind so full of 
 the legends of the Twins that he imitates them in a series of 
 Acts of certain other twins, are we not obliged to infer that he 
 was actually displacing a cult, and not merely amusing himself 
 by the adaptation of a piece of folk-lore to a fresh literary 
 statement ? The answer to this enquiry ought, I think, to be 
 in the affirmative. We have almost a right to expect that the 
 Dioscuri in some form or other were worshipped at Edessa. 
 
 ' Cf. Myriantlieus, p. 158. "Bravely did you bear yourselves on the sea, 
 where there is no support nor aught that a man can hold to, when ye brought 
 Bhuyyu home, who stood on the ship with a hundred oars." 
 
JUDAS THOMAS. 29 
 
 But how is this to be demonstrated or at all events to be made 
 probable ? 
 
 Every one .who has visited Ourfa (Edessa), that city of 
 saints, scholars and martyrs, will remember its most conspicuous 
 feature, the two colossal pillars which rise skyward from its 
 citadel, and which are unitedly known to the native population 
 as the Throne of Nimrod. Of these twin pillars the more 
 southerly is inscribed in archaic Syriac characters, near the 
 middle of the column, with a statement that some one, whose 
 name has not been deciphered, made this pillar and a statue 
 for Queen Shalmath, the daughter of Ma'nu. The statues, for we 
 should probably read the word in the plural, have disappeared, 
 though they might very likely be recovered by excavation 
 round the base of the pillars on which they once stood. 
 According to Sachau' following the chronicle of Edessa, the 
 citadel was built in a.d. 206 under Abgar VIII. (Severus bar 
 Ma'nu) who reigned from 176 — 213: and the pillars may, if of 
 later date than the citadel, have been erected under Abgar VIII. 
 or his successor Abgar IX. (Ma'nu), the last of the princes of 
 Edessa. But Sachau is disposed to think it possible that the 
 pillars were there long before Abgar VIII. built (or re-built) the 
 citadel. What then are these pillars ? In my judgment they 
 are representative of or votive to the great tivin-brethren. For 
 it should be observed that neither in the inscription nor on the 
 pillars is there any sign of Christianity : and we have, therefore, 
 to look for a cult in which two such pillars would be a proper 
 emblem ^ 
 
 1 Edessenische Inschriften. 
 
 2 The pillars at Edessa are evidently similar in the intention of worship, 
 and in outward appearance, to the pillars which stood in the great temple at 
 Hierapolis (Mabbog), described by Lucian in Dc Syria Dea. It has been the 
 custom to give these latter pillars a naturalistic meaning ; and it may he asked 
 whether, if such a meaning be proper in Hierapolis, we ought to attach any 
 further or other meaning to the neighbouring pair in Edessa. The circum- 
 stances are so like, that the hypotheses explaining the circumstances ought to 
 he similar also. There is some force in this reasoning. It seems, however, to 
 have been forgotten that in both cases we have not only to explain the raising 
 of a votive pillar of unusual height, but of a pair of such pillars. Any explana- 
 tion which ignores that the pillars are pairs, fails to explain them adequately. 
 And this means tha.t the naturalistic hypothesis is insufficient. The only 
 
30 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHBISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 At this point there comes to our aid the tradition which 
 John Malala preserved concerning the citj^ of Antioch^, and its 
 decoration by the Emperor Tiberius. The language of Malala 
 is as follows (p. 234) : 
 
 "Ektio-c Be Koi Uphv Tu Aiovvaco jrpos r<a opei 6 aiiTos Ti/3f'pior /SncriXEvr, 
 o'TTjiras 5vo tmjKas fieydXas TOtv i^ ^AvTLOirrjs yevvrjdevTav AiotTKOvpatv 
 €^<o Tov vaov els Tifirjv avrS)V, 'A/ii(jf)toi'Off re kol ZrjBov. 
 
 Here is a case of the erection of twin-monuments which is 
 exactly parallel to the lofty twin-pillars of Hierapolis and of 
 Edessa : and this time the explanation of the cult is given : 
 the columns are in honour of the Dioscuri : and I do not think 
 we need to hesitate, in view of the Malala tradition, to say that 
 we have found the meaning of the columns at Edessa'^. 
 
 It is unfortunate that this Edessan inscription is so difiScult 
 to decipher on account of its altitude and the paucity of long 
 
 direction in which I see how to throw light upon the structures is to introduce 
 either (i) the Dioscuri or (ii) the Eabiri (Me7ctXoi Qeol). But since these two 
 explanations are separated by a very narrow gulf, and the titles, functions and 
 artistic representations of the brethren very nearly tally with one another, it is 
 hardly worth while introducing the Kabiri. So the real question is whether 
 the Dioscuri have a naturalistic interpretation sufficiently pronounced to meet 
 the description in Lucian. By the way, Luoian will have it that the pillars at 
 Mabbog were an actual dedication to Hera by Dionysos, and he gives the 
 inscription. It must be fictitious or misread. Compare the Edessan inscrip- 
 tion. 
 
 1 For earlier traces of the Dioscuri at Antioch we can go back to the coins 
 of Seleucus Nicator. See Babelon, Inventaire de la Collection Waddington. 
 
 2 It is possible that Nisibis also had the same architectural appointment, for 
 its name means simply The Columns. The present town of Nisibin has little 
 remaining of its former splendour; a few columns are still standing, probably 
 from some ancient building. Badger says two columns, which Sachau corrects 
 to five. It is not likely that these surviving pillars have anything to do with the 
 name of the city or with the Dioscuri. It is worth noting, in passing, that the 
 writer of the Acts of Thomas knows Nisibis. Its Eoman name is Mygdonia or 
 rather Antioch in Mygdonia : and this is the name which is given in the Acts to 
 the wife of the kinsman of King Mazdai. Accordingly we are told that ' a 
 woman, the wife of the king's kinsman, her name was Mygdonia, had come to 
 see the new sight of the new God who was preached. ' Is this an allegorical way 
 of describing the conversion of Nisibis ? 
 
 There was also a temple of the Dioscuri at Seleucia, the port of Antioch, as 
 we learn from Poly bins {Hist. v. 60. 4). But that is natural enough; the case is 
 the same as at Ostia, which also had one. 
 
JUDAS THOMAS. 31 
 
 ladders in Ourfa. There seems to be no doubt as to the name 
 of the queen, Shalmath daughter of Ma'nu. It is justified to 
 some extent by the Doctrine of Addai, where Shahnath the 
 princess appears as the daughter of Meherdates and the niece 
 of Abgar the Black. 
 
 I do not like to abandon the inscription without a further 
 attempt at deciphering its object and intention. The tran- 
 scription of it, so far as I personally attempted it in 1896, did 
 not furnish anything beyond what had already been attained 
 by Sachau in his JEdessenische Inschriften, and I shall therefore 
 use Sachau's readings and comments. 
 
 The crux of the inscription does not lie in the opening lines, 
 which contain the name of the person who set up the pillars, 
 but in the word which follows the description of 'pillars and 
 statue[s]' and precedes the name of 'Shalmath the queen, the 
 daughter of Ma'nu.' The reading of Sachau is as follows : 
 
 Z. 5. Ti'-"'^ ■' ^Lsn'ST^o Oder tt -"^ ^ •' Ob zu lesen ist 
 
 and in accordance with this speculation he translates, 
 diese Saule und Statue, das Bildiiiss der Shalmath. 
 
 Now I am extremely sceptical about this interpretation, 
 which makes the statue to be an image of Shalmath herself. 
 There is no need to add a word after ' Statue,' if Shalmath 
 is meant ; moreover the reading should be ' for Shalmath,' 
 in which case it is some other person's image or statue. At 
 the same time I suspect that Sachau is right in conjecturing 
 that the word which perplexed him is a>^\ijA^ or something 
 very like it. 
 
 Suppose we turn to Land, Anecdota Syriaca i. 32, where we 
 shall find a list of the signs of the Zodiac, as they were current 
 in Edessa in the days immediately after Bardesanes, that is, 
 at the very time when our pillars were erected. We are told, 
 apparently on the authority of Sergius of Res'aina, that "these 
 are the names of the signs of the Zodiac according to the house 
 of Bardesan." The list is reprinted by Noldeke in ZDMG. 
 25. 256, with some corrections, and with the parallel lists from 
 
32 
 
 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 Bar Hebraeus and from the Mandaean litera,ture; it runs as 
 
 follows : 
 
 
 
 
 Syriac 
 
 Mandaean 
 
 Aries 
 
 y^\=ny<: 
 
 ,^i-n>T,-^ 
 
 Taunis 
 
 T^no^ 
 
 ,iino^i> 
 
 Gemini 
 
 Kii^^ ^.Hi\ (Bar Heb. ■xisj^^) 
 
 i<^i-n\i- 
 
 Cancer 
 
 *^Soo 
 
 ^,<i\^^aj 
 
 Leo 
 
 ^^^ 
 
 ^^ri 
 
 Virgo 
 
 ^')U\-,» 
 
 .^V^ .— .-.T^n» 
 
 a 
 
 Libra 
 
 i^^T in (Bar Heb. ■r^^r^m—n) 
 
 ,<:ur;i. 
 
 Scorpius 
 
 i<^'\q2>. 
 
 (sic?) ^-.ni^ 
 
 Arcitenens 
 
 *i=T *i^ - (Bar Heb. t<: \y-v) 
 
 l^»\^» u 
 
 Caper 
 
 ^ni^ 
 
 *iLn,<:i^ 
 
 Amphora 
 
 ,<^on 
 
 *i:^o,<r:( 
 
 Pisces 
 
 *ij(\i 
 
 V^ca 
 
 Now here we notice that two of the signs, namely Gemini 
 and Sagittarius, are described as ' figures,' the former being the 
 ' two figures,' the latter the ' great figure.' For the description 
 'two figures' Bar Hebraeus restores the conventional 'twins'; 
 for the 'great figure' Bar Hebraeus gives 'the archer,' while the 
 Mandaean means either 'bow ' or 'arrow.' The variation shows 
 that the name 'great figure' was not very stable ; it was likely 
 to be replaced. The name for Gemini is a better established 
 one ; for although Bar Hebraeus has replaced it in his list by 
 ' Twins,' in his Chronicon he speaks of ' Mercury being in 
 conjunction with the two figures' (i'^stA- ^Si\=j:( oa.i»^ 
 
 ^>=>«'»^). We should compare the Indian names of the signs 
 of the Zodiac, where Gemini = two faces, and Sagittarius 
 = arrow. The Edessan list is half-way to India. 
 
 Now it seems to me that we should read in the inscription 
 some form like that suggested by Sachau, and interpret it in 
 the sense suggested by the Bardesanian lists of the signs of the 
 Zodiac, viz. 
 
 the pillar and the statue of the Figures (i.e. of the Twins) for Shalmath 
 the queen, the daughter of Ma'nu. 
 
JUDAS THOMAS. 33 
 
 The exact form of the restored word is not quite certain ; 
 but it was probably very near to the Mandaean TtiiinL-. It 
 seems to have been a little longer than the Syriac plural 
 ''^iJil^; not raivirA- (her image), but perhaps ■.<^J[\^3A_. 
 
 We may, I think, conclude that the sign of the Dioscuri 
 ■was in the inscription, and that the road by which we have 
 come to the conclusion was a correct one. The twin pillars 
 were, like the Antioch monuments, dedicated to the Twins, 
 whose Bardesanian name, or some close approximation to it, 
 was actually inscribed. 
 
 But we have now taken the enquiry to a further point : 
 we have not only shown that the worship of the Dioscuri must 
 have been popular in Edessa, but we have almost connected it 
 officially with the royal house. And it becomes proper to 
 ask whether there are any confirmations of the correctness of 
 this view from the Syriac literature or from the numismatics 
 of the country. 
 
 The names of the ruling princes do not, I think, show any 
 trace of the influence of the Dioscuri. There are indications 
 of solar worship. For instance, the mausoleum of one of the 
 princesses of the Abgar dynasty shows in Greek and in Syriac 
 the name of Amassamses (Amath Shemesh). Here we have 
 the name ' Solar Handmaid ' in the royal family, and a pre- 
 valent form of worship is betrayed thereby. We have also the 
 testimony of Julian that Edessa had been from time im- 
 memorial a centre of sun worship (Upov i^ aiwvo^ rjXiov 
 Xa>plov)\ But solar worship does not necessarily involve the 
 cult of the Dioscuri. 
 
 When we turn to the coins of the Abgar dynasty we find 
 amongst the moneys struck in Edessa a number of coins 
 bearing signs, which must be held to have some non-Christian 
 connotation : of these the chief are (i) a star, (ii) the crescent 
 moon. Now the star, whether single or double, is the sign of 
 the twin-brethren. Golden stars were offered in their honour 
 in the temple at Delphi (see Plutarch, Lysander 18). According 
 to Diodorus Siculus (iv. 43) the stars actually fell on the heads 
 1 See also Duval, Journal Asiatique for 1891, p. 228. 
 
 3 
 
34 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 of the Twins after a storm in the Black Sea. The star appears 
 over their heads on coins: for a beautiful example from the 
 coins of S. Italy (Bruttii) see Percy Gardner, Types of Greek 
 Coins, Plate xi. 36, 88, where the Twins appear on both sides 
 of a single coin, in each case surmounted by stars ; the obverse 
 shows them riding, the reverse gives their heads only, with the 
 characteristic half-egg-shaped pilos. For another interesting 
 example in the same volume, we may turn to Plate xiii. 10, 
 which is described by Gardner as follows : 
 
 On No. 10 from Berytus in Troas, is a young head wearing a conical 
 pileus surmounted by a star. If we were guided by considerations of 
 origin, we might probably see in it one of the Cabeiri of Samothraoe, but 
 in the days of rapid spread of Hellenism the people of Troas would probably 
 rather call it one of the Dioscuri. 
 
 Many other instances may be found in Albert's Castor et 
 Polhix en Italie. 
 
 If we turn to Babelon's account of the coinage of Edessa' 
 we shall find all or most of the cases in which the star and 
 the crescent are found. I give the numbers from Babelon's 
 list. 
 
 No. 25. A coin of Abgar VIII. : a star and a crescent on his tiara. 
 
 No. 26. A coin of Abgar VIII. : three stars and a crescent on his tiara, 
 
 one of the stars being within the crescent. 
 No. 27. A coin of Abgar VIII. : two stars and a crescent on his tiara. 
 No. 28. A coin of Abgar VIII. : two stars and a crescent on his tiara. 
 No. 29. A coin of Abgar VIII. : three stars and a crescent on his tiara, as 
 
 in No. 26. 
 No. 31. A coin of Abgar VIII. : a single star on the tiara. All of these 
 
 coins have the head of Septimius Severus on the other side. 
 No. 34. A coin of Abgar VIII. and on the reverse the head of his son 
 
 Ma'nu. Abgar's tiara has three stars and a crescent, as in 
 
 No. 26. 
 No. 35. A similar coin with a single star and a orescent. These two coins 
 
 belong to the time of Caracalla. 
 No. 59. A coin of Alexander Severus ; on the reverse the Fortune of 
 
 Edessa, with two stars. 
 No. 61. A coin of Alexander Severus : on the reverse the Fortune of 
 
 Edessa, with two stars. 
 
 ' Published in Revue de Numismatique Beige, 1892 and 1893, and afterwards 
 reprinted in his Melanges Ntimisiiiatiques. 
 
JUDAS THOMAS. 35 
 
 No. 67. A coin of Alexander Severus ; on the reverse the Fortune of 
 
 Edessa, with two stars. 
 No. 79. A coin of Alexander Severus and Julia Mammaea : on the reverse 
 
 the Fortune of Edessa, with fora stars, two on each side of 
 
 the figure. 
 No. 84. A coin of Julia Mammaea : on the reverse the Fortune of Edessa, 
 
 with two stars. 
 No. 89. A coin of Gordian ; on the reverse the Fortune of Edessa, with 
 
 two stars. 
 Nos. 96.' 
 
 97. A coin of Gordian, with a star : on the reverse Abgar with a 
 
 98. r star. 
 99.. 
 
 No. 100. A coin of Gordian : on the reverse Ahgar with a star on his 
 tiara. 
 
 From the foregoing instances (and no doubt others might 
 be added), it is clear that the star and the crescent are 
 common features of the Edessan coinage. The usual number 
 of stars is two : in one case this is doubled, perhaps because 
 there are two imperial heads on the coin. In certain other 
 cases the stars are three, but one of them lies in the lunar 
 crescent, and apparently belongs to it. 
 
 Now the crescent appearing with two stars turns up on 
 coins of Asia Minor elsewhere ; for instance, on coins of 
 Termessos and Akalisos in Lycia, and Kodrula in Pisidia. See 
 Imhoof-Blumer, Choix, pi. 5, 172, Moim. Gr. p. 345. On 
 these coins the Dioscuri appear with stars, accompanied by a 
 female figure with a crescent. Imhoof-Blumer in Ghoix 
 identified the female figure with Artemis, but in Monn. Gr. 
 he says : 
 
 La femme placee entre le Dioscures, que M. Wieseler nomme Astart^, 
 est Ha^ne, suivant M. Berndorf (Arch. Zeit. 1868, p. 39) et M. de Duhn 
 {ZeitscJirift fiir Num. ill. p. 39). 
 
 No doubt this explanation of the figures is correct ; and we 
 propose to make a similar explanation of the stars and crescent 
 upon the Edessa currency, in spite of the fact that we some- 
 tiines have an added star along with the crescent. 
 
 It is easy to see from the Parthian and Bactrian currencies 
 how universal was the influence of Western types, and how 
 
 3—2 
 
36 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHmSTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 easily Western deities were identified with their parallels from 
 the Eastern mjrthologies. One of the most curious cases is 
 this very one of the Dioscuri, who come back to the Punjab 
 as mounted horsemen, and as such appear on the coins of 
 Eucratides'. 
 
 So much for the coinage of Edessa, which is certainly not 
 unfavourable to the idea of the worship of the Twins in the 
 city. It is quite possible that Abgar himself may be posing as 
 one of the Dioscuri on his coins, as the Western emperors 
 frequently did. 
 
 We now turn to the literature to see if we can find any 
 traces of such worship. The first impression is discouraging, 
 for the pagan worship of which we know most in Edessa is the 
 survival of the worship of Bel and Nebo, the Assyrian deities. 
 And one would be disposed to say, at first sight, that this 
 must be the state religion. When, however, we turn to the 
 Doctrine of Addai'^, we find that Edessa was very eclectic, or 
 at least very varied, in its religious tastes. Accordingly Addai 
 says 
 
 1 saw in this city that it abounded greatly in paganism, which is 
 against God. Who is this Nebo, an idol made which ye worship, and Bel, 
 whom ye honour ? Behold, there are amongst you who adore Bath Nical, 
 as the inhabitants of Harran your neighbours, and Taratha, as the people 
 of Mabug, and the eagle, as the Arabians, also the sun and the moon, 
 as the rest of the inhabitants of Harran, who are as yourselves. Be ye 
 not led away captive by the rays of the luminaries and the bright star, for 
 every one who worships creatures is cursed before God. 
 
 The allusion to the worship of the 'splendid star' agrees 
 with the evidence of the Abgar coins ; and Payne Smith shows 
 that the splendid star, *^k=iia=>, often stands for the planet 
 Venus, (f>coa-(f)6po<;. 
 
 There is no easy way to explain how the planet Venus 
 should appear double on the coins of Edessa, unless the stars 
 come there to represent the Dioscuri, who were originally 
 
 ' Of this issue, Percy Gardner says (Pi. xiv. 23) " On No. 23 are the Dioscuri 
 the Acjvins of the Indians, charging on horseback, each bearing the palm of 
 victory." 
 
 2 Ed. Phillips, p. 23. 
 
JUDAS THOMAS. 37 
 
 the morning and evening star. I am disposed, therefore, to 
 believe that the combined evidence of the two pillars in the 
 citadel, and the frequent occurrence of the two stars on the 
 coinage, is a sufificient ground for recognizing the worship of 
 the Dioscuri in Edessa as a part of the state religion. It 
 may be an original cult of the city revived under Western 
 influences; but we do not seem to have sufficient evidence 
 for tracing the matter further. We were led in search of such 
 a cult, by the singular literary phenomenon furnished by the 
 Acts of Thomas, where one pair of twins is evidently being 
 ousted by another, and where the beneficent deeds of the 
 Dioscuri are closely imitated: and we could hardly be wrong 
 in assuming that the materials on which the artist was 
 working, when he composed the Acts of Thomas, lay all 
 around him. It is only in a community where the twin- 
 brethren were honoured that such a work could have been 
 produced. The hypothesis has found a certain amount of 
 verification in what precedes, as far as the city of Edessa is 
 concerned, and perhaps more may be forthcoming. 
 
 The road by which we arrived at our main conclusions is 
 somewhat roundabout : we started with the curious fact of the 
 displacement of the worship of the Dioscuri in lUyricum by 
 the cult of a pair of stonemasons, and the transference of 
 honours made it almost imperative that we recognized stone- 
 craft amongst the arts of the Dioscuri. 
 
 We were led to consider certain parallel features in the 
 Acts of Florus and Laurus and the Acts of Thomas, and 
 especially the fact that Thomas also is at once a stonemason 
 and a twin. On examining more closely the earliest traces of 
 the worship of the Dioscuri in India, the hypothesis at once 
 presented itself that the Acts of the Dioscuri underlay the 
 Acts of Thomas, and that the necessary link was thus found 
 for connecting together the scattered stories of Thomas's 
 miracles. But this again made it necessary to assume that 
 the worship of the Dioscuri must have prevailed in Edessa, 
 as it did in Illyricum. Upon examination the confirmations 
 were forthcoming. 
 
 If we had done nothing more than furnish an explanation 
 
38 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 of the genesis of the perplexing Acts of Thomas, it would have 
 been worth while. I have for years been seeking for some 
 such elucidation. At first I thought that the key was the 
 transference of some stories of Buddha and his disciples into 
 the Christian legends. Moreover there were folk-lore parallels, 
 especially in North-Western India, to some of the incidents in 
 the Acta Thomae : for instance the story of the snake that 
 sucks out his own poison and swells and bursts is genuine 
 folk-lore. But what was my main obstacle in the enquiry was 
 the fact that Thomas in the legends appears on the scenes as a 
 builder in stone, and it did not seem that any such action 
 could be predicated of Buddha or his disciples. 
 For as Count Goblet d'Alviella says', 
 
 Les eorivains classiques s'aocordent h dire qu'i I'epoque ou Alexandre 
 penetra dans I'Inde, celle-ci ne possedait pas encore de bdtisses en pierre. 
 
 That single sentence was promptly entered on my Acts of 
 Thomas as a warning against looking in the direction of early 
 Buddhism for the stories in the Thomas legends. And the 
 discouragement was efifective. The matter was put aside, and 
 I did not think of examining further into it ; but by the time 
 the unsuccessful speculation was forgotten, a similar difficulty 
 arose with Florus and Laurus, who seemed to depend upon 
 traditions of the Dioscuri as workers in stone, a thing of which 
 the Rig-veda knows nothing. Fortunately the Dioscuri could 
 not so easily be pushed aside, and an examination of their 
 deeds and powers in Indian literature furnished the necessary 
 ground for establishing the growth and development of the 
 legends of the Dioscuri, as the cult moved westward, and 
 finally for tracing their personalities behind the figures of 
 Christ and His apostle in the Edessan legend. 
 
 All readers of the Acts of Thomas must have been struck 
 with the difficulty of co-ordinating the incidents, and finding 
 the string upon which the legends are arranged. The key, as 
 in so many similar cases, is found by watching for the recurrent 
 ideas : of these the first and foremost is that Jesus and Judas 
 are twins : this is brought out, either by definite statements or 
 
 ' Ge que I'Inde doit a la Grece, p. 42. 
 
JUDAS THOMAS. 39 
 
 by allusions to their likeness or optical equivalence, in every 
 part of the book. The mistakes which are made in the 
 identification, as the two leading figures interchange, are 
 sufficient proof of what was uppermost in the writer's mind. 
 When this is recognized, the next step in the unifying of the 
 otherwise disperse collection of legends is by recognizing that 
 the twins of the Acta Thomae are imitating other twins of 
 whom popular religion had a great deal to say. When this is 
 brought out, much that seems obscure or unnecessary in the 
 Acta becomes significant. A hypothesis which connects to- 
 gether such remote and fantastic incidents as the introduction 
 of Judas Thomas into the bride-chamber and the driving of a 
 chariot drawn by wild asses on the way to rescue the wife and 
 daughter of a general can hardly be destitute of literary 
 validity. 
 
 But then, if this be correct, we have done something more 
 than explain the literary genesis of the Acta Thomae; we 
 have found out also the reason why Thomas is the apostle of 
 Edessa; for the ecclesiastical situation is the same as that of 
 Florus and Laurus in Illyricum. S. Thomas comes to displace 
 non-S.-Thomas ; a twin to eject twins, that is all; and no 
 ecclesiastical history is made by his appearance in Ourfa, any 
 more than by the appearance of other pairs of twins of the 
 Castor-and-Pollux order elsewhere. To this an objection may 
 be raised in the following form. We have the tradition from 
 the Acta (if not from elsewhere) of the preaching of Thomas 
 in India. Now it is noteworthy that the Acta do not place 
 the preaching of Thomas in Edessa, though they bring his 
 relics back thither. Why should Thomas go to India, when, 
 on the hypothesis of the literary creation of the legend, he was 
 wanted in Edessa ? And even if we grant, what Mr Milne Eae 
 has so admirably worked out in his study of the Syrian Church 
 in India, that the preaching of S. Thomas in India is a case of 
 the migration of traditions with the migrating Nestorians, still 
 the migrating traditions must have started somewhere, and if 
 not from Edessa, whence can they conceivably have come ? 
 
 To these enquiries the answer lies in the following direction. 
 
 The fact from which all the legends proceed is the displace- 
 
40 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 ment of the cult of the twin-brethren in Edessa by a cult of 
 Jesus and Thomas. But this fact, which we have shown to be 
 the underlying motive of the Acta, opened up the way for a 
 second literary creation by the side of the one which we have 
 been studying. We have shown that the Zodiac of Edessa is in 
 some respects an Indian Zodiac. In the Indian Zodiac, the 
 Gemini are the first sign : and when the astrological problem 
 comes up, as to what countries are under the rule of particular 
 signs of the Zodiac, India is assigned to the Twins. Let us 
 think for a moment of this astrological fact, and see what 
 Christian problem is associated with it. 
 
 If we turn to the article on the Zodiac in the Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica, we shall find the following statement : 
 
 The influence of the signs, though secondary, was overmastering : 
 Julian called them 6eS>v dwd/ifis, and they were the objects of a corre- 
 sponding veneration. Cities and kingdoms were allotted to their several 
 
 ) ystem fully expounded by Manilius : 
 
 I 
 
 prit in fines orbis pontusque notandus, 
 ;i Deus in partes per singula dividit astra, 
 sua cuique dedit tutelae regna per orbem 
 \ proprias gentes atque urbes addidit altas, 
 In quibus exercent praestantia sidera vires. 
 
 Manil. Astron. iv. 696. 
 
 Syria was assigned to Aries, and Syrian coins frequently bear the image 
 of a ram : Scythia and Arabia fell to Taurus, India to Gemini. 
 
 Now the parallel problem in ecclesiastical lore is the division 
 of the world amongst the twelve apostles, so that each shall 
 have his own sphere of labour. The writer of the Acta knows 
 this problem. He opens his story with it : lots are cast : India 
 falls to Thomas. The ecclesiastical division of the world has 
 been subordinated to the astrological. The Gnostics of Edessa 
 were students of the starry heavens : they knew not only their 
 Zodiac, but the potencies of the signs : this knowledge is 
 betrayed by the author of the Acta in his literary creations. 
 The genesis of the Thomas story is now reasonably clear, both 
 as regards Edessa and India. 
 
 In conclusion I will add some considerations which suggest 
 that the Greek Church had the same doctrine as the Syrian 
 
JUDAS THOMAS. 41 
 
 Church with regard to the equivalence of Judas and Thomas. 
 I mean that either they used the translated Acts of Thomas 
 as an authority for the equivalence, or they had arrived at 
 the same result by some other means. The calendar shows 
 traces of the belief. 
 
 On June 19th the Greek Church keeps the memory of 
 S. Jude the Apostle, who is declared to be one of the Seventy. 
 That he is meant to be regarded as the Lord's brother and as 
 the apostle of some city or country is evident from the language 
 of the Synaxarium, 
 
 ovTos nap' avTov tov XpitrToO irejj/ftBels a>s ade\(j)6s koL fiviTrayayos . . . 
 
 On the 20th of June is the festival of the translation of the 
 relics of S. Thomas. Obviously there stood once side by side 
 the festival of S. Thomas and of his relics. Thus S. Jude is 
 S. Thomas in the Greek point of view. The festival of Judas 
 Thomas is therefore the 19th of June. We shall see presently 
 that another important displacement of the Dioscuri in the 
 Western Church occurs on this very day, as well as a displace- 
 ment of less importance on the previous day. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 PROTASIUS AND GERVASIUS. 
 
 Let us now pass on to examine a third case of twin saints 
 in the Christian calendar, and test it, as in the previous instances, 
 for Dioscurism. We will take the case of S. Protasius and 
 S. Gervasius, the martyrs of Milan. The history of these saints 
 is especially important in the discussion of the so-called ecclesi- 
 astical miracles, inasmuch as the marvel of the discovery of the 
 bodies of the saints is attested by S. Ambrose, to whom their 
 locality was revealed in a vision, and the extraordinary cures 
 wrought by the relics are emphasized by S. Augustine as well 
 as by many others. So that a disbelief in the miracles of 
 Protasius and Gervasius might involve suspicion as to the 
 veracity and reputation for good sense of the most famous 
 doctors of the Church. 
 
 Now in approaching the subject we begin in the same way 
 as we did with Floras and Laurus. We suspect from the 
 assonance of the names that the saints are twins\ 
 
 In order to verify this point, we must turn to the history of 
 the martyrs. Here the main authorities are two, (i) a letter 
 from Ambrose to his sister, explaining how he made the 
 discovery of the relics, (ii) another letter, or discourse, ascribed 
 to Ambrose, but commonly removed by the editors as being 
 due to another hand, and printed as a supplement to the 
 genuine works of Ambrose. In this latter composition we shall 
 find many interesting statements belonging to the legendary 
 development of the history of the martyrs. We shall not need, 
 
 1 This suggestion is due, in the first instance, to my friend Mr T. E. Glover, 
 to whom I am indebted for a number of valuable hints and references. 
 
PEOTASIUS AND GERVASIUS. 43 
 
 for our present purpose, to make any strong line of demarcation 
 between the two writings : but, for convenience, we will call 
 the second writer pseudo-Ambrose. 
 
 Now the description in. ps.- Ambrose' records how with the 
 bodies there was found a document from the hand of a Christian 
 named Philip, who had stolen the bodies of the martjTS from 
 Ravenna, where they were actually put to death, and brought 
 them to Milan, where he buried them in his own garden if not 
 in his own house. The document begins. 
 
 Ego servus Ckristi Philippus intra domum meam sanctorum corpora, 
 quae cum filio meo rapui, sepelivi. Quorum mater Valeria et pater 
 Vitalis sunt dicti : quos uno ortu geminos genuere, et unum Protasium, 
 alterum Gervasium vocaverunt. 
 
 Here we have our suspicion as to the names justified. 
 In a similar manner we may interpret the description of the 
 saints which we find in the Arabrosian Liturgy : 
 
 Aeterne Deus qui militibus tuis pro tui nominis amore certantibus 
 virtutem fidei contulisti, inter quos et pios fratres BB. Protasium et 
 Gervasium aggregare dignatus es, quos pater dudum praecesserat, adeptus 
 martyrii palmam. Hi sunt qui vexillo coelesti signati, victricia apostoli 
 arma sumpserunt....O quam felix germanitas ! quae sacris inhaerendo 
 eloquiis, nullo potuit interpolari contagio ! O quam gloriosa certaminis 
 caiisa, ubi pariter coronantur, quos unus uterus maternus eff'udit. 
 
 Here again the terms 'brotherhood' (germanitas) and 'born 
 of one womb ' are not to be understood in the general, but in 
 the special sense. Cf. uno ortu geminos genuere in the letter of 
 Philip quoted above. 
 
 Having settled that Protasius and Gervasius are twins, we 
 must next examine for the characteristic features of the 
 Dioscuri. 
 
 According to ps. -Ambrose, the vision which was seen by the 
 Milanese saint was such that he beheld with his eyes open 
 " duos iuvenes ephebos vestibus candidissimis, id est colobio et 
 pallio indutos, caligulis calceatos, manibus extensis orantes." 
 Ambrose describes the bodies which were found as follows : 
 
 Inveuimus mirae magnitudinis viros duos, ut prisca aetas ferebat 
 Ossa omnia integra, sanguinis plurimum. 
 
 1 Migne, P.L. xvii., ool. 744. 
 
44 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 Now suppose we compare with these descriptions of the 
 martyrs, dead and living, the account which Dionysius of 
 Halicarnassus gives of the appearance of the Dioscuri at the 
 battle of the Lake Regillus. (Dionys. VI. 13.) 
 
 eV TavTTj Xe'yovrai t^ I^^XV nooro/it'o) re ra SiKTaropi koL toIs irepi airbv 
 TCTayfxevots LTTTrels fiuo (f)avijvaiy KaXXet re kol fieyedet liOKpta KpcLTTOvs cov 
 fj Ka8' rj/ias (j)viTis eK(j)€peL- ivapxop-evot yevcLav, rjyoipfvoi re rrjs 'PafiatK^s 
 innov. 
 
 And again when the Brethren appear in the Forum at the 
 close of the day, we are told that 
 
 eV TTJ Pa)/xatcoi/ dyopa Tov avrov rponov otpdrjvai dvo veavlo-Koi Xeyovrai, 
 7roKep.iica.s evBedvKores oroXa?, prjKtaTol re Koi KoKXio-TOt koX ttjv avrrjv rjKiKtav 
 
 Here we have a secure series of parallels, of which the most 
 interesting perhaps is Ambrose's 
 
 mirae magnitudiuis, ut prisca aetas ferebat 
 
 with Dionysius' 
 
 fieyedei fxanpa Kpelrrovs cuv r/ Kad' f/pas (j>v(rK CK^e'pei. 
 
 We may also compare for the size of the saints the description 
 of the theophany of the Dioscuri given by Plutarch', 
 
 a(p6T]tTav aTTO (rrparov piKpov varepov avdpes Bvo KaXoi Kol p^yaXor tovtovs 
 eiKOcrav elvai Atoo-xopouy, 
 
 and the similar account in Valerius Maximus^ when, in the 
 Macedonian war, P. Vatinius thought he saw "duos iuvenes 
 excellentis formae albis equis residentes," who said that PauUus 
 had captured King Perses^ 
 
 There can be no doubt, I think, that the descriptions of 
 both Ambrose and ps. -Ambrose are reflections of the Roman 
 conception of the Dioscuri : and from the military touches in 
 the accounts, as well as from the coincidences in the language, 
 the martyrs are copied from the great twin-brethren of the 
 battle of the Lake Regillus, and are meant to be regarded as 
 soldiers. 
 
 ' Aemilius PauUus, 25. 
 
 " De Miraculis, i. 8. 1. 
 
 3 See also Aug. De civ. Dei, iv. 27. 
 
PROTAStUS AND GERVASIUS. 45 
 
 And indeed Ambrose betrays the same thought elsewhere, 
 and enables us to see that when the martyrs were recovered 
 it was for polemical purposes, and not, as at first sight appears, 
 in order that he might have bones of sufficient sanctity to place 
 under the high altar of a new basilica. 
 
 He gives thanks that the martyrs have come to life to 
 protect and defend the Church ; 
 
 Cognoscant omnes quales ego propugnatores requiram, qui propugnare 
 possint, impugnare non soleant. Hos ego acquisivi tibi, plebs sancta, qui 
 prosint omnibus, nemiui noceant. Tales ego ambio defensores, tales milites 
 habeo [1. aveo] : hoc est, non saeculi milites, sed milites Christi. 
 
 This is part of one of the sermons delivered by Ambrose 
 immediately after he had brought the relics of the martyrs to 
 light ; and it shows pretty clearly that Ambrose himself had 
 the Dioscuri in mind, when he recovered the martyrs and put 
 them in the forefront in the battle with the Arians. That this 
 is the meaning of the military figures and language may be 
 gathered from what Ambrose says about the strife which was 
 immediately provoked between the Arians and the Catholics 
 over the supposed relics and the miracles which were wrought 
 over them. The martyrs would have nothing to do with the 
 Arians, and the Arians would have nothing to do with the 
 martyrs. To their credit it should be said that the Arians 
 denounced both the discovery of the relics and the miracles 
 as frauds ; and to the credit of S. Ambrose it should be said 
 that he tells us plainly that the Arians were not taken in by 
 his visions nor by his gigantic bones nor by his sarcophagus 
 with its miracle-working blood in which the people were, by 
 thousands, dipping their pocket-handkerchiefs. 
 
 I do not mean that Ambrose in thus emphasizing the 
 military character of his proteges did not want to find martyrs ; 
 on the contrary it had been matter of lamentation to him that 
 the Church at Milan was short of the means of grace. And 
 in the fervour of the discovery he writes to his sister, in order 
 to inform her on the point : 
 
 lam in numervim martyrum diu ante ignorati Protasius Gervasiusque 
 praeferuntur, qui sterilem martyribus ecclesiam Mediolanensem iam pluri- 
 
46 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 morum matrem filiorum laetari passionis propriae fecerint et titiilis et 
 exemplis. 
 
 But the martyrs did much more than cause the Church 
 at Milan to multiply: they made the increase at the cost of 
 the Arians, and the discovery has, therefore, the highest theo- 
 logical value. The Arians were like the Latin forces at the 
 battle of the Lake Regillus : they suddenly found opposed to 
 them two men in white who were leading the Roman line of 
 advance. And Ambrose who put them in the front of the 
 battle knew that he was parading the Dioscuri in a Christian 
 dress. 
 
 The first sermon that he made to the excited populace over 
 the newly found relics was on the 19th Psalm (Caeli enarrant). 
 He explains how ' night unto night showeth forth knowledge.' 
 First of all he allegorizes that ' night unto night ' means ' flesh 
 unto flesh,' the flesh being apparently the recovered bodies. 
 Then he breaks out : 
 
 Bonae noctes, nootes lucidae, quae hahent Stellas. Sicut enim stella 
 a Stella differt in olaritate, ita et resurrectio mortuorum. 
 
 He then proceeds to explain that the resurrection is the 
 recovery of the martyrs, who have come to light to defend the 
 Church. In my judgment, both the selection of the Psalm and 
 the allusion to the martyrs as stars is a further suggestion that 
 he had the Dioscuri in mind'. 
 
 But there is another curious confirmation of the correctness 
 of our interpretation in the calendar itself. We have pointed 
 out that Protase and Gervase in the East are celebrated on the 
 14th of October. Now suppose we look at the previous day 
 in the calendar, and see who is commemorated. We shall find 
 amongst the saints for the day a certain Bioscoros : and upon 
 examination of his record, we shall find little more than that 
 he confessed the Christian faith before a governor named 
 Lukianos : we have already met this gentleman in the legends 
 
 ' I see that some writers are disposed to treat the recovery of the bodies as a 
 happy accident : "a chance excavation might easily be rewarded by a discovery 
 of two bodies " (v. Diet. Christ. Biog. s. v. Gervasius and Ambrosius). Not 
 if two bodies were being looked for, and big ones. 
 
PROTASITJS AND GERVASIUS. 47 
 
 of Thomas. So we shall conclude that Dioscoros stands for the 
 Dioscuri, and the probability is that he has been pushed back 
 a day to make room for Protase and Gervase. His appearance 
 in their neighbourhood is significant. Upon the whole, then, 
 the genesis of the festival of Protasius and Gervasius is clearly- 
 made out. They are good Christians, no doubt, but they were 
 once saints in a different order of beliefs and worships. They 
 have transferred their allegiance from Olympus to Mount Zion. 
 We have now demonstrated that (i) Protasius and Gervasius 
 were twins, and (ii) that they stand for the Dioscuri. 
 And now let us turn again to the calendar. 
 The Western calendar commemorates Protasius and Ger- 
 vasius on June 19th. The Eastern Church (see the Basilian 
 Menology) transfers the saints, with two other Milanese 
 worthies, to Oct. 14th. But then there is another curious trans- 
 ference in the opposite direction ; for we shall find that the 
 Eastern Church commemorates on June 19th the fame of 
 S. Jude, the Lord's brother, while the Latins have transferred 
 S. Jude to Oct. 28, and have coupled him with S. Simon. 
 
 Now, remembering what we found out with regard to the 
 displacement of the Dioscuri in Edessa, by Judas Thomas, we 
 can hardly fail to be struck by the coincidences which the 
 calendar shows, in making June 19tb a day of the Dioscuri 
 in both the East and West ; and in showing very nearly the 
 same phenomenon occurring in October. This can hardly be 
 accidental, and it may be taken as a striking confirmation of 
 our theory that Protasius and Gervasius stand for the Dioscuri, 
 when we find another well-known displacement of the Dioscuri 
 on the same day in the Greek Church. 
 
 Suppose now we turn to the previous day in the calendar, 
 June 18th. It is the day of celebration of S. Sebastian, of 
 the saints Marcus and Marcellianus, and others. We naturally 
 enquire whether the pair of similar names covers another case 
 of twins, and if so, whether there are any Dioscuric features 
 about them. A reference to the Acta Sanctorum at once settles 
 the first point : 
 
 Clarissimi viri Marcus et M:arcenianiis,,^e5«m fratres, cum servis suis 
 tenti et in vinculis constituti. 
 
48 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 Their father attempts to turn them away from the Christian 
 faith : he cries out, 
 
 filii! baculus senectutis meae et geminum lumen, cur sic mortem 
 diligitis ? 
 
 But the blessed Sebastian protests and encourages the 
 brothers to martyrdom : 
 
 Non separabuntur a vobis, sed vadiini in caelum parare vobis sidereas 
 mansiones. 
 
 After language like this, we can scarcely avoid the con- 
 clusion that there is another Roman festival of the Dioscuri 
 on June 18th. 
 
 We drew attention above to the language of Ambrose in 
 his first sermon on the recovery of the martyrs, when he took 
 for his text the 19th Psalm, and proceeded to explain who 
 were the stars of the heaven that declares the glory of God. 
 It is perhaps conventional to treat the martyrs as constella- 
 tions, and conventional too to preach about them from the 
 Psalm in question. It may, however, be worth while comparing 
 the language and method of S. Ambrose with the language of 
 S. Chrysostom in preaching on S. Thomas and the language 
 of the Greek Menaeum in speaking of S. Jude. 
 
 When Chrysostom made the celebration of S. Thomas' 
 festival the occasion for a discourse against the Arians, he 
 treated his saint in the following manner : 
 
 (Is natrav ttjv yfjV i^rjKBiv 17 Sd^a avTOV, Koi cir Ta Trepara ttjs oiKOVficvr]! 
 Ta TpoTraia avTov. ttws ovv avTOv ovop.do'a; Tp^iov; aX\* virb vvktos ovk 
 eXfyXfTm. aaripa; dXX' rjfiepaTOVTOv oil KpvTTTci. cv iravri Kaipm Karavyd^ci 
 Trjv Kri(Tiv navTa (6(f)ov dneXavva rrjs oiKOVfievr]!. 
 
 The Menaea say much the same of S. Jude: he is the 
 spiritual heaven that discourses the glory of God (6 0e6Tnr]<; 
 (jidiyyerai, ovpav6<; nt ioairep XoyiKoi, tov deoO rrjp ho^av, 
 Birjyovfievo'i tov Bi r)fia^ ev (rapKi ^avevTO<! Oav/xara). 
 
 He becomes a second sun, conformed to the radiance of the 
 first Sun (Aoyov tov aapKiodevTa evpcov hihdaKoXov Kal rat? 
 TOVTov, deoTTTa, fiapfiapv'yai'i irvpovfievo';, eyevov (poix; Bevrepov, 
 rat? TOV irpcoTov \d/u,yfrecn a'Vfifji,op(jiov/jt,evo<;). 
 
PROTASIUS AND GERVASIUS. 49 
 
 And he is said to drive away the darkness from the 
 creation (/eare^tuTicra? evae^aov KupSia';, Ka\ rou eTriKelfievov 
 rfi KTiaei a-Koracrfiov aTreStwfa?). 
 
 The language and ideas are strikingly coincident, and very 
 well suited to saints who are displacements of well-known 
 Greek stars. Especially striking is the description of S. Jude 
 as a Sevrepoi; ^\(.o? : we must not, however, build on this. It 
 is probably conventional. Other saints, as S. Euthymius, are 
 addressed in the same way. And the fragments of hymns in 
 the Menaea have a tendency to repetition. 
 
 But the case of Chrysostom is different, and it almost looks 
 as if he had some knowledge of the previous ecclesiastical 
 history of the saint whom he was celebrating. However, as 
 we have said, matters of this kind readily become conventional, 
 and it is quite possible that Chrysostom and Ambrose may 
 have done the regular and expected thing when they quoted 
 the 19th Psalm and used it to illustrate the glory of the saints 
 and martyrs of the Church. 
 
 It may be thought appropriate, at the close of the investi- 
 gation into the meaning of the cult of Protase and Gervase, to 
 remind ourselves again that we have been discussing a historical 
 problem which is closely involved with certain theological 
 problems which are still held to be of supreme importance. 
 
 The story of the finding of the relics of these martyrs and 
 of the miracles which profusely followed the discovery, is con- 
 nected with the ecclesiastical reaction against Arianism which 
 brought the church at Milan, under the leadership of Ambrose, 
 out of the power of the Empress Justina and her followers. We 
 need not therefore be surprised at the attempts which have been 
 made to guarantee these heaven-disclosed relics and the miracles 
 to which they gave occasion. It was natural enough that the 
 late Cardinal Newman should select such an incident as a 
 controversial position of the first importance. And it will be, 
 at least, edifying to read over again, in the light of our observa- 
 tions on the meaning of the festivals and dates of the calendar, 
 the elaborate and ingenious essays in which he protected the 
 reputation of Ambrose, Augustine and Paulinus, and the 
 ecclesiastical miracles for which they stand sponsors. 
 
50 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 Reference should be made to the articles on 'Primitive 
 Christianity' which Newman contributed to the British Maga- 
 zine between the years 1833 and 1836, in which will be found 
 a sketch of the situation at Milan and an intimation of the 
 way in which that situation was changed by Ambrose's dis- 
 covery. 
 
 With this should be compared the famous 'Essays on 
 Ecclesiastical Miracles,' in which a whole section is devoted 
 to the Recovery of the Blind Man by the Relics of S. Gervasius 
 and S. Protasius at Milan. 
 
 To do Newman justice, we transcribe from the essays on 
 ' Primitive Christianity' his summing up of the whole question. 
 
 I want to know what reason there is for stumbling at the above 
 narrative, which will not throw uncertainty upon the very fact that there 
 was such a Bishop as Ambrose, or such an Empress as Justina, or such a 
 heresy as the Arian, or any Church at all in Milan. Let us consider some 
 of the circumstances under which it comes to us. 
 
 1. We have the concordant evidence of three distinct witnesses, of 
 whom at least two were on the spot when the alleged miracles were 
 wrought, one writing at the .time, another some years afterwards in a 
 distant country. And the third [Paulinus], writing after an interval of 
 twenty-six years, agrees minutely with the evidence of the two former, 
 not adding to the miraculous narrative, as is the manner of those who 
 lose their delicate care fur exactness in their admiration of the things and 
 persons of whom they speak. 
 
 2. The miracle is wrought in public, on a person well-known, on one 
 who continued to live in the place where it was professedly wrought, and 
 who, by devoting himself to the service of the martyrs who were the 
 instruments of his cure, was a continual memorial of the mercy which he 
 professed to have received, and' challenged enquiry into it, and refutation 
 if that were possible. 
 
 3. Ambrose, one of our informants, publicly appealed, at the time 
 when the occurrence took place, to the general belief, claimed it for the 
 miracle, and that in a sermon which is still extant. 
 
 4. He made his statement in the presence of most bitter and most 
 powerful enemies, who were much concerned, and very able to expose the 
 fraud, if there was one ; who did, as might be expected, deny the hand of 
 God in the matter ; but who, for all that appears, did nothing but deny 
 what they could not consistently confess, without ceasing to be what they 
 were. 
 
 5. A great and practical impression was made upon the popular 
 mind in consequence of the alleged miracles : or, in the words of a 
 
PROTASIUS AND GERVASIUS. 51 
 
 historian [Gibbon] whose very vocation it is to disbelieve them, 'Their 
 effect on the minds of the people was rapid and irresistible ; and the 
 feeble sovereign of Italy found himself unable to contend with the 
 favourite of heaven.' 
 
 6. And so powerfully did all this press upon the Court, that, as the 
 last words of this extract intimate, the persecution was given up, and the 
 Catholics left in quiet possession of the Churches. 
 
 On the whole, then, are we not in the following dilemma? If the 
 miracle did not take place, then S. Ambrose and S. Augustine, men of 
 name, said they had ascertained a fact which they did not ascertain, and 
 said it in the face of enemies, with an appeal to a whole city, and that 
 continued during a quarter of a century. What instrument of refutation 
 shall we devise against a case like this, neither so violently d priori as to 
 supersede the testimony of Evangelists, nor so fastidious of evidence as 
 to imperil Tacitus or Caesar ? On the other hand, if the miracle did take 
 place, a certain measure of authority, more or less, must surely attach to 
 S. Ambrose, — to his doctrine and his life, to his ecclesiastical principles, 
 to the Church itself of the fourth century, of which he is one main pillar. 
 The miracle gives a certain sanction to three things at once, to the 
 Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, to the Church's resistance of the civil 
 power and to the Commemoration of Saints and Martyrs. 
 
 Thus far the great Oxford leader. His foundations appear 
 to be hardly commensurate with the superstructure. But it is 
 a good case for a study of the laws of evidence and of the 
 nature of belief: and we have heard it said that "it is not 
 contrary to experience that testimony should be false." 
 
 "Amicus Ambrosius, magis amica Veritas." 
 
 4—2 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SPEUSIPPUS, ELASIPPUS AND MESIPPUS. 
 
 The Greek calendar contains, under the date Jan. 16th, the 
 memorial of three saints and their grandmother. Their names, 
 as given in the printed Menaeum, are 
 
 Peusippus, Elasippus, and Mesippus : 
 
 and their grandmother is called Neonilla. 
 
 So they stand also in the printed Synaxaristes ; but we 
 must evidently correct Peusippus to STreucrtTTTro?, and as this 
 agrees closely with ' E\dcn-n-7ro<; in meaning, we shall probably be 
 correct in treating Mea-nr7ro9 as corrupt, and restoring some 
 related form. But whether this change be required or not, the 
 student of the calendar will be struck by the similarity of the 
 structure of the names. What does it mean ? Are they three 
 converted jockeys, or may we apply the method which we used 
 in the interpretation of Florus and Laurus and say that they 
 are triplets ? At first sight this latter hypothesis seems very 
 improbable. 
 
 The heading of their festival in the Menaeum is as follows : 
 
 Mvrjiirj rav &yia>v fiapTvptov nai avTahi\<f>a>v , YlevfTiTTirov, ''EXatrlmrov KOi 
 Mfcrinnov KOl NfOviWrjs ttjs fidfiiir]! avrav. 
 
 Here it is conceded that the three saints are brothers, and 
 the suspicion arises of a closer relationship ; for it has been 
 already pointed out that avTdBeX<po<! in this branch of literature 
 means often the same thing as StSu/Ao?. 
 
 When we examine more closely into the account given in 
 the Menaeum, we find the following memorial verses : 
 
 Kav wfTiv Inne'ls, KXTjcreuy (njixaa-ia 
 
 Ilc'foi Tpi^ovai TpiSvfioi rpeis irpos (f)\6yn. 
 
SPEUSIPPUS, ELASIPPUS AND MESIPPUS. 53 
 
 Here we expressly have them described as a triplet of 
 brothers who are horsemen. The verses are the echo of the 
 account given in the embedded Synaxarion : 
 
 OvTOL VTTTJp^ov in KaTTTTa^OKLas Tpldvfioi, TTCoXoBafivelv apKTTa fiftiadrjKoTes. 
 Koi Tovs iTTirovs Kara tS)V neSiav kivcIv. 
 
 The Synaxaristes turns the same statement into modern 
 Greek in the following style : 
 
 OvTOi ot ayiot KarrjyovTo €K r^ff KaniradoKias^ y^vv'qdii'Tes Koi ol rpels 
 (Tvyxpovois, CK Trjs avrijs Koikias' ^aav 5e eTTtTrjdetoraToi els to va TjpepovcoaL 
 Koi va liTTrevaai tovs veovs Koi dypiovs LirirovSj Kal va Tpi-)^ui(Ttv en^ avrav els 
 TTjV nebiaba. 
 
 So there can be no doubt that the triplicity of the names 
 implies triplets. But we have also from the names and from 
 the legends the connexion of the triplet with horses. If there 
 had been only two of them, we should have unhesitatingly 
 made the identification with the Dioscuri. But what are we 
 to say, when they appear as three instead of two and when the 
 lady who accompanies them is their grandmother? 
 
 In the first place, observe that the perplexity in which we 
 find ourselves is one in which archeologists were already in- 
 volved. For example at Brasiae in Laconia there were three 
 statues with caps in the manner of the Dioscuri, accompanied 
 by Athena ; Pausanias was unable to decide whether they were 
 meant for the Dioscuri or the Corybantes. And the same 
 thing occurs on certain Etruscan mirrors (Roscher s.v. Dioscuri 
 1177)1 where there are three figures of men with the pilos and 
 one woman. Cicero, too, knew the Dioscuri as a triad' : 
 
 ^l6<T<ovpol etiam apud Graios multis modis nominantur, primi tres qui 
 appellantur Anactes Athenis, exrege love antiquissimo et Proserpina nati, 
 Tritopatreus, Eubuleus, Dionysus; secundi lovi tertio nati et Leda, Castor 
 et Pollux : tertii dicuutur a nonnullis Alco, Melampus et Tmolus, Atrei 
 filii qui Pelope natus fuit. 
 
 Here we have a clear recognition of the fact that the 
 Dioscuri were sometimes regarded as a triad. The same thing 
 is true of the Kabiri with whom they are closely connected. 
 
 1 See also Albert, Castor et Pollux en Italie, p. 135. 
 
 2 D« Nat. Deorum, in. 21, § 53. 
 
54 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 So there is every probability that we have to do with a 
 local variation of the cult, say in Cappadocia. Then we come 
 to the question of the grandmother. On reading the story of 
 the martyrdom more closely, we come to the following additional 
 points. The martyrs had invited their grandmother to a 
 heathen festival of their own country, in honour of Zeus 
 Nemesios. The grandmother was already a Christian and 
 reviled the idols that her family worshipped. Persuaded by 
 her, they likewise became Christians and were promptly com- 
 mitted to the flames by the local rulers. 
 
 The only clue that this furnishes to the unravelling of the 
 legend is the statement as to the displaced cult, and this is 
 commonly a trustworthy piece of information. If, then, the 
 displaced festival was one of Zeus Nemesios, then tlie female 
 figure should be that of Nemesis, who has been locally regarded 
 as the grandmother of the Dioscuri. That Nemesis comes into 
 the cycle of the legends of the Dioscuri we already knew. 
 Pausanias, in his description of the famous statue of Nemesis 
 at Rhamnus, tells us that Nemesis was reckoned to be the 
 mother of Helen, and Leda was only her nurse. On the base 
 of the statue are carved, amongst other figures, the Dioscuri. 
 So there is no real difficulty in the supposition that Nemesis 
 might be regarded locally as the grandmother of the Dioscuri 
 and the mother of Leda. We notice, i'urther, that on the face 
 of the monument where the Dioscuri are described, there is a 
 third figure holding a horse. Pausanias describes the sculptures 
 as follows : ireiro'iTjKe he TvvBdpecov re koI Tov<i TraiSa<; xal 
 dvBpa avv Xirnrw -TrapeaTTjKora, 'l-wirea ovofia. The third figure 
 is, then, named Hippeus, which is quite in the manner of the 
 Cappadocian nomenclature of the three saints. 
 
 Reviewing the argument, we may suggest that, somewhere 
 in Cappadocia, a cult of Nemesis and the Dioscuri was displaced 
 by a Christian ritual. Nemesis was probably regarded locally 
 as the grandmother of the Dioscuri, and the latter were thought 
 of as a triplet and not as a pair. 
 
 If this explanation be correct, we have a fifth case of the 
 survival of the Dioscuri in Christian tradition. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 S. KASTOULOS AND S. POLYEUCTES. 
 
 Suppose now that we follow the clue suggested to us in 
 the foregoing pages, the observed fact, that is, of the occurrence 
 of the Heavenly Twins in the calendar and the detection of 
 their sister in the immediate neighbourhood. We may go on 
 to ask whether there are any cases in which the Twins them- 
 selves have been separated and are yet adjacent to one another 
 in the calendar, or where one exists without the other. 
 
 The Greek calendar, for example, will show us a celebration 
 on Dec. 18th of a certain Kastoulos. Upon examination of his 
 record, we find that, after appropriate tortures, he was thrown 
 into a pit. Remembering that this was also the end of Floras 
 and Laurus, we are suspicious that Kastoulos is a disguise of 
 Kastor. And when we scrutinize the calendar in the neigh- 
 bourhood, we find that on the very next day there is a cele- 
 bration of Polyeuctes, and we naturally conclude that the 
 names are conjugate, and that they stand for Kastor and 
 Polydeuces. And it will be necessary to scan the calendar 
 carefully for all the occurrences of names resembling Kastor 
 and Polydeuces, in order that we may recognize any local cults 
 that are the successors of the ancient worship of the great twin- 
 brethren. Meanwhile, in thus stumbling upon Polyeuctes, we 
 have before us a most interesting problem ; for not only does 
 this name turn up several times in the ecclesiastical year, but 
 there is one famous martyr of the name, over whose legend 
 there has been a long controversy, as to whether it was all 
 legend and no history, or whether there was a historical basis 
 
56 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 underlying the different forms in which the legend has come 
 down to us. 
 
 We start upon the enquiry with a very strong bias against 
 the belief in any historical foundation at all. The disguise of 
 the adjacent names is so thin, that all the conditions of the 
 question are satisfied by saying that Dec. 18th is one of the 
 days on which, in some locality or localities not yet identified, 
 there was especial devotion to the twin-brethren. The locality 
 may, indeed, be hard to fix; for Kastoulos (whom the Synaxar- 
 istes naively calls Kastor in one place) is thrown into the 
 entourage of S. Sebastian, and Polyeuctes is said to belong to 
 Caesarea in Oappadocia. Probably the best way to determine 
 whether Polyeuctes (either in Cappadocia or elsewhere) is a 
 real person will be by examining the greatest of the saints 
 who bear the name, and testing his legend in the light of the 
 suspicion which we have expressed above. 
 
 Polyeuctes the Great, if we may define him so, is the patron 
 saint of Melitene in Armenia (the modern Malatia). His cult 
 must be very early, for we find a section devoted to him in 
 Gregory of Tours, who also tells us of the prominence of the 
 saint in the Church of Constantinople, as well as of the 
 diffusion of the cult in the churches in France. Let us see 
 what Gregory says on the point. He begins by telling us 
 why Polyeuctes was honoured in Constantinople : it was as the 
 avenger of perjury. 
 
 Apud Oonstantinopolin vero magno cultu Polioctas martyr colitur, pro 
 eo praecipue quod cum magnis virtutibus poUeat, in periwris tamen praesens 
 uUor existit. (Z>e glor. Mart. 103.) 
 
 And the same information is given for the French churches 
 when describing an agreement made between certain French 
 princes : 
 
 Eoce pactiones quae inter nos faotae sunt, ut quisquis sine fratris 
 voluntate Parisios ^ urbem ingrederetur, amitteret partem suam, essetque 
 
 1 In 1711, in excavating in the choir of Notre Dame, an altar was discovered, 
 on two faces of which were representations of Castor and Pollux. Here we have 
 the areheological proof of their cult in Paris, along with two other Celtic (?) 
 deities. (See Albert, I.e. p. 52.) 
 
S. KASTOULOS AND S. POLYEUCTES. 57 
 
 Polioctus martyr, cum Hilario atque Martino confessoribus, iudex ac 
 retributor eius. ^jjut. Franc, vli. 6.) 
 
 Now how could a martyr of Melitene become in such a 
 short space of time the avenger of perjury in both East and 
 West?^ It could only be possible if he had displaced an avenger 
 of perjury already existing both in East and West ; and the 
 avenger of perjury is naturally the person by whom one swears. 
 ' So help me God ' means ' as God shall save me,' and implies 
 that God deals out damnation when deserved. "When, there- 
 fore, we find that an appeal lies to Polyeuctes, we at once say, 
 in view of the suspicion with which we started, 
 
 Edepol and Mecastor. 
 
 And a little reflection will show that the natural way to 
 stop the popular swearing by Castor and Pollux was to transfer 
 the oaths to saints who should sound the same. Viewed in 
 this light the statements of S. Gregory of Tours are perfectly 
 intelligible, and we are confirmed in our belief that Polyeuctes 
 is Polydeuces^ 
 
 But this does not absolutely exclude the belief that there 
 may be a person behind the legend, for Polyeuctes is a possible 
 name, apart from substitution and invention. 
 
 ^ Adjuration to the Twins in Greek was commonly under the form vri tw Bew. 
 Thus in Xenophon, Hellenica iv. 4. 10, Pasimachus the Spartan swears in 
 Doric, NaJ rii <n.ib, 'kpyeloi. And in Anab. vi. 6. 34, Cleandros the Spartan 
 swears in the same form. Here the two gods are Castor and Polydeuces. 
 
 But in Aristophanes, Acliarnians 905, the Boeotian uses the form vd ™ acd, 
 where the gods are Amphion and Zethus. 
 
 That the Celts used also to observe the cult of the twin-brethren (which is 
 suggested by the invocation of Polioctus at Paris) appears from Diodorus Siculus 
 (iv. 56) SeiKvdvTes rods irapa, rhv ^UK^avhv KaroLKoOvra^ ffe^ofxivovs fMoKtara rojv dewtf 
 
 Tois AlO(TK6poVS. 
 
 In Eome swearing by Castor was originally a woman's oath, but the oath by 
 the Twins gradually became taken up by men, at first in the form of Aedepol 
 (see Aulus Gellius, xi. 6: "Paulatim tamen, insoitia antiquitatis, viros dioere 
 aedepol coepisse"). 
 
 See Albert's interesting chapter on Castor and Pollux as the gods of com- 
 merce and good faith ; " pouvait-on mieux protester de sa bonne foi qu'en 
 invoquant les dieux qui la personnifaient ou le temple qui semblait en 6tre le 
 sanctuaire favori? " This assumes that Aedepol = per aedem Polluois. 
 
58 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 When we turn to the legend, we find that it is certainly a 
 very beautiful one, and takes high rank in the literature of 
 hagiology, so as to have worthily attracted the dramatic skill 
 of Corneille. 
 
 The story opens with the recitation of the affectionate 
 relations that subsisted between Polyeuctes and his friend 
 Nearchus. The narrator at the very outset apologises for the 
 fact that they are not brothers. He describes them as aSeXcfiol 
 fiev, ov Kara yevo?, aXXa Kara irpoaipeaip. This gratuitous 
 explanation betrays what he is doing: he is working over a 
 story of two brothers whom he has turned into two friends. 
 He explains how dear they were to one another. One was a 
 Christian, Nearchus ; the other, Polyeuctes, nominally a pagan. 
 An imperial edict against the Christians has been published, 
 and Nearchus is broken-hearted, because he has a prospect of 
 martyrdom which his friend cannot share. The dialogue which 
 ensues between the friends is a beautiful one. As the Latin 
 Acts sum the matter up. 
 
 Hoc optat fratri quod sibi quoque, si aliter se res habuisset, optaret. 
 Non vult sohis ire ad gloriam, ne plenitudini beatitudinis suae aliquid 
 derogandum crederet, si hac solus et sine socio frui videretur. 
 
 (Aube, PolyeiMte, p. 106.) 
 
 So one brother would not go to heaven without the other ; 
 but this is what the Greek moralists knew how to dwell upon 
 in the story of Kastor and Polydeuces. It was one of the 
 favourite texts in preaching disinterested love. The appeal 
 of the immortal Twin on behalf of the mortal one has been 
 imitated, and the result is Nearchus' lamentation over 
 Polyeuctes. The best illustration will perhaps be Plutarch, 
 De Fraterno Amove (Moral. 589), 
 
 6 8e UoXuScuKjjs ovSe debs ^^f'Xi/o-e judvor, dWa fMaXXov q/itdeos criiv tm 
 oSeXi^o) yividdai, kclI Trjs BvrjTrjS fifplSos jXfTaa-xflv eVi tm fieraSovvai rrjs 
 ddava(Tias fKclvco. 
 
 When Nearchus has explained the situation to his friend, 
 he is comforted to find that Polyeuctes has already had a 
 vision which has resulted in his conversion. Christ has 
 appeared to him, and finding him (as the Dioscuri naturally 
 
S. KASTOULOS AND S. POLYEUCTES. 59 
 
 would be found) in military dress, has taken from him his 
 torn and worn chlamj^s, and replaced it by a new chlamys of 
 silk with a gold buckle, and has given him a winged horse on 
 which he is to ride to heaven \ 
 
 We see at once the origin of the military dress and the 
 winged horse, which latter quadruped has been a serious 
 difBculty to the transcribers, whose explanations have cj-ept 
 into the text here and there. 
 
 Thus the moment we apply our touchstone to the story, 
 the historical elements fade away into legend. The remaining 
 details concern only the trial, when Polyeuctes has to face the 
 appeals and reproaches of his father-in-law Felix and his wife 
 Paulina; he is, of course, mercilessly tortured and finally 
 decapitated. But there is no need to examine the matter 
 more closely. All the history that there is in the account is 
 limited to the fact that the Dioscuri were worshipped in 
 Melitene, and that their worship was early replaced by a 
 Christian cult. 
 
 Aub^ has made a vigorous attempt to prove that the 
 personages in the legend are real ; he published some unedited 
 forms of the Greek and Latin Martyrdoms of Polyeuctes, with 
 the view of showing that the Acta were in the main trust- 
 worthy. His historical minimum of real persons includes 
 Nearchus, Polyeuctes, Felix and Paulina. Their social position 
 and relationships are also to be depended on. The edict of 
 Valerian against the Christians is historical ; so is the back- 
 wardness of the Christians, and the forwardness of Polyeuctes, 
 who destroys the pagan idols, the efforts of Felix to save his 
 son-in-law, the intervention of Paulina and the decapitation of 
 the saint. 
 
 But we have the matter in a different light now. And 
 there is no reason for yielding to the temptation to believe 
 that a story must be true for which we find some fresh 
 documentary evidence ! 
 
 1 "Sordidam sedem(?) quandam ab eo sustulerat cum ohlamyde militari": 
 and cf. the Greek Acts, as published by Aub^ : 
 
60 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 It only remains to scrutinize the dates which are furnished 
 by the Greek Acts. 
 
 The text says that the martyrdom is the 9th of January ; 
 
 iv rifiipa rcrpaSi ivvdrrj tou 'lauovapiov. 
 
 There seems to be something wrong about this, and one would 
 at first suspect that reTpdSi should be corrected to Se/carj;, 
 so as to make the martyrdom Jan. 19th. 
 
 The Greek appendix to the Acts, however, says that they 
 are to be read twice in the year: viz. the iv. Id. Jan. (= Jan. 10), 
 the day of the death ; and viii. Kal. Jan. (= Dec. 25), the day 
 when cloths, soaked in the martyr's blood, were brought to the 
 city of the Gananeotae. This does not help us much, as we do 
 not know what city it is : the former date is nearly the same 
 as in the text. 
 
 The BoUandists give the date as Feb. 13th, for the Western 
 Church. But they also know of a celebration which seems to 
 belong to the same cycle 
 
 on May IDth] ^ „ . „ , . 
 
 1 ,1 o, , r at Gaesarea m Gappadocia 
 and May 21st J ^^ 
 
 and at some unknown places on Jan. 8th and Jan. 11th. 
 
 On the whole we have not yet succeeded in clearing up the 
 meaning of the dates. They are, no doubt, those of certain 
 local Dioscoric festivals. 
 
 From the existence of festivals on Jan. 8 and Jan. 10, the 
 probability is that after all Jan. 9 is the right date for the 
 festival at Melitene. 
 
 But there is also confirmation of the correctness of the date 
 Feb. 13. For on this day in the West they celebrated the 
 memory of a presbyter at Treves whose name was Gastor. So 
 here also the conjugate saint is found in the calendar. 
 
 It will be convenient if we exhibit in a tabular form some 
 of the functions of the principal groups of saints whom we 
 have been discussing, as compared with those of the A9vins and 
 the Dioscuri. 
 
S. KASTOULOS AND S. POLYEUCTES. 
 Functions of Twins. 
 
 61 
 
 B' 
 
 CO 
 
 g 
 
 tsi>S 
 
 s-e: 
 
 tro 
 
 CO t3 
 
 o g^ 
 
 B as 
 
 93 ^ 
 CO 
 
 ii 
 
 CO t3 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 
 
 
 + 
 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 
 
 + 
 
 
 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 
 
 + 
 
 
 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 
 
 + 
 
 
 
 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 
 
 
 
 + 
 
 + 
 
 
 + 
 
 
 
 + 
 
 Darkness- 
 
 dispellers 
 
 Helpers in 
 
 battle 
 
 Healers (blind, 
 lame, &c.) 
 
 Sexual helpers 
 
 Saviours from 
 sea 
 
 Horse-riders, 
 horse-tamers, 
 and ass-tamers 
 
 Makers of 
 ploughs and 
 yokes 
 
 Builders 
 
 Immortal and 
 mortal 
 
 The results arrived at in the previous pages are surprising 
 in the disclosures which they make of the extent and variety of 
 the worship of the twin-brethren. It was popular worship, 
 universal worship. 
 
 As in other and similar cases, the literature of the world is 
 an inadequate guide to the knowledge of its religion. And in 
 the case of the Dioscuri, this seems to have been especially 
 so. The cult retained much of its primitive simplicity: 
 temples appear to have been few, monuments very simple; 
 but, in spite of this simplicity, and perhaps because of it, the 
 popular religion was deeply tinctured with Dioscurism. 
 
62 THE DIOSCURI IN THE CHRISTIAN LEGENDS. 
 
 Dion Chrysostom betrays this fact when he says that in his 
 day everyone still believed the Dioscuri were deities : 
 
 Orat. LXi. U (Chryseis). 
 
 KaoTiap KOI IloXvSiviirjc ol Aior irmBes euofiia-dri(rav Koi deal ^exP' '''''' 
 Tract 8oKov(Ti Sia ttjv Svvafuv fjv Tore i'crxov. 
 
 The language helps us to understand the pressure on 
 primitive Christianity in competing with popular beliefs. 
 
 We expected, when we began our investigation, to find a 
 single festival in the calendar that could be assigned to the 
 Twins, and the festivals have multiplied so rapidly as to - 
 surprise us. 
 
 One reason for this appears to lie in the existence of a 
 monthly cult, going back, perhaps, to the earliest forms of 
 human chronology. 
 
 On looking over those festivals which we have already 
 identified we can hardly fail to be struck with the prominence 
 given to the 18th or 19th days of the month. 
 
 For example, on 
 
 April 19th we have a festival of Dioscoros. 
 
 May 19th is a festival of Polyeiictes. 
 
 June 18th is the festival of Marcus and Marcellianus. 
 
 June 19th is the festival of Judas Thomas and of Protase and Gervase. 
 
 Aug. 18th is the festival of Floras and Laurus, and of Helena. 
 
 Sept. 18th is a festival of Kastor. 
 
 Dec. 18th is a festival of Kastoulos. 
 
 Dec. 19th is a festival of Polyeuotes — 
 
 so that for six months in the year there is a suspicion of a 
 festival of the Brethren at the 18th or 19th of the month. 
 
 The impression which this makes upon one is that a number 
 of the festivals belong to a connected monthly system. Thus 
 an explanation is found, in part, of the recurrence of the cult 
 in the calendar. 
 
 We shall probably find, as we continue the investigation on 
 the lines suggested in the foregoing pages, that there are more 
 cases of the displaced Twins in the calendar than those to 
 which we have drawn attention. But life is short, and 
 hagiology is long, and so, for the present, we desist from the 
 enquiry. 
 
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON FLORUS AND LAURUS. 
 
 The evidence for the connexion of Florus and Laurus with 
 horses finds an interesting reinforcement in the following 
 passage from Tylor's Early History of Mankind, to which my 
 attention has heen drawn by the author. It is important, 
 also, as connecting the cult of the Twins with the ' needfire.' 
 
 The Western clergy discountenanced, and, as far as they could, put 
 down the needfire ; but in Russia it was not only allowed, but was (and 
 very likely may be still) practised under ecclesiastical sanction, the priest 
 being the chief actor in the ceremony. This interesting fact seems not to 
 have been known to Grimm and Kvihn, and the following passage, which 
 proves it, is still further remarkable as asserting that the ancient fire- 
 making by friction was still used in Russia for practical as well as 
 ceremonial purposes in the last century. It is contained in an account 
 of the adventiu-es of four Russian sailors who were driven by a storm 
 upon the desert island of East Spitsbergen i. 
 
 " They knew, however, that if one rubs violently together two 
 pieces of dry wood, one hard and the other soft, the latter will catch 
 fire. Besides this being the way in which the Russian peasants obtain 
 fire when they are in the woods, there is also a religious ceremony, 
 performed in every village where there is a church, which could not 
 have been unknown to them. Perhaps it will be not disagi'eeable for 
 me here to give an account of this ceremony, though it does not 
 belong to the story. The 18th of August, old style, is called by the 
 Russians Frol i Lavior, these being the names of two martyrs, called 
 Florus and Laurus in the Roman Kalendar : they fall, according to this 
 latter, on the 29th of the said month, when the festival of the Beheading 
 of John is celebrated. On this day the Russian peasants bring their 
 horses to the village church, at the side of which they have dug the 
 evening before a pit with two outlets. Each horse has his bridle, which 
 is made of lime-tree bark. They let the horses, one after another, go into 
 
 > P. L. le Eoy, Erzdhlvng der Begehenheiten, Eiga, 1760. (An Eng. Tr. iu 
 Pinkerton, Vol. i.) 
 
64 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES. 
 
 this pit, at the opposite outlet of which the priest stands with .an asperging- 
 brush in his hand, with which he sprinkles them with holy water. As 
 soon as the horses are come out, their bridles are taken off, and they are 
 made to go between two fires, which are kindled with what the Russians 
 call Oivoy agon, that is, ' living fire,' of which I will give the explanation, 
 after remarking that the peasants throw the bridles of the horses into one 
 of these fires to burn them up. Here is the manner of kindling this 
 Qivoy Agon or living fire.'' 
 
 (Tyloe, Early History of Mankind, jj. 257.) 
 
 We must examine whether this conjunction of Floras and 
 Laurus with the new fire may not imply a New Year's festival 
 with the sun in the sign Gemini. 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON THE DIOSCURI 
 
 IN EDESSA. 
 
 I HAVE omitted to notice on p. 33, that Julian says that the 
 Sun was honoured in Edessa along with two subordinate deities, 
 named Monimos and Azizos (see Duval, 1. c), and M. Cumont 
 has maintained that the worship is Mithraic, and that Monimos 
 and Azizos are respectively the evening star and the morning 
 star. "Aziz designe le Lucifer des Remains, le Phosphoros des 
 Grecs, le dieu de I'etoile du matin, qui precede le soleil et 
 annonce le retour de la lumiere et de la vie, et qu'on reprd- 
 sentait sous la forme d'un adolescent portant une torche" 
 {Revue Archeologique, 1888, p. 96). Without introducing 
 Mithraism, we have arrived at a similar conclusion as to the 
 worship of Hesper-Phosphor in Edessa. 
 
 CAMBBIDGE : PRINTED BY J. AND u. F. CLAY, AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.