These goddesses are often nameless and are known as' the Great Goddesses' ; one of them is called 'Despoina the Mistress'. It has already been mentioned that they afford the best example of deities in the form of animals. Animal figures in the clothes of men adorn Despoina's mantle on her statue at Lycosura-they may possibly have reference to an animal masquerade in the cult-and she, like Artemis, has a sacred hind. These deities have sprung J from the same root as Artemis but are more primitive, were originally not so strongly specialized, and in their plurality still preserve something of their original collective nature.
Such goddesses appear in connexion with Poseidon, whose sphere of activity is far wider than the sea to which he is limited by the orthodox mythology, created among the seafaring lonians. He was also ardently worshipped in the interior, in Arcadia, Boeotia, Thessaly. On the Acropolis of Athens he had caused a npring to break out at a blow of his trident, in Thessaly he opened the Vale of Tempe to the river Peneus. In the Peloponnese, where the dvers often follow their course in subterranean channels, he is naturally the one who drives underground'. For ooast-dwellers like the Ionians he is naturally the sea-god. The currents of rivers and the waves of the sea to many people's imagination take the forms of bulls or horses.
A belief in a water-spirit with the form of a horse still persists in Scotland, and we speak metaphorically of ' white horses' and the sea-queen's cows. Poseidon is therefore the god of horses and bulls, he has created the horse and in Arcadia transforms himself into one. The Horse' enters into the names of many wells-Hippe, Hippocrene, Aganippe. Achelos is a river m west Central Greece. Thus, divinity wasthe way to becoming a general nver-god and was worshipped in many places in Greece. He is represented as a bull with a human head. Poseidon is principally the god of the element--few gods are so strictly bound Lo their element as he-and the fertlizing power of water is seldom prominent in his cult. Occasionally he is worshipped as the one who makes the plants germinate and he has a place in the Haloa, the Attic festival of the vegetation.
Elemental Sources of Greek Gods
