Demeter’s quest for her daughter exhibits Eleusinian influence, but it has no
impact on the remainder of the narrative. This is centered rather on the union of
Demeter-as-mare with Poseidon, on the anger of the goddess that offers explanation
of her two epithets, and on the fruit of the union of the two deities: a daughter and
the horse Arion.
The birth of the horse Arion shows that the transformation into horses is not there
just to make a good story. It conveys the profound affinity between the world of the
gods and that of the animals. It is to Poseidon that the horse is linked and not
Demeter, even if, in Arcadia, the goddess took the initiative in changing herself into a
mare. In theThebaid (Pausanias 8.25.8) Arion’s mane bears the same epithet,
kuanochaite ̄s(‘‘blue-black’’), that was often used to characterize Poseidon. Poseidon
is repeatedly portrayed as the father of a horse in Greek myth. One thinks of Pegasus,
born in Corinth from the god’s union with Medusa, or of Skyphios, the Thessalian
horse born of the earth. Poseidon is the constant factor in these various cases. It is to
him, not to his partner, that the horse is linked, and in fact we find the name of
Poseidon’s partners varying between mythographers in the case of the same child
(Jost 1985:307 and n.). Thus Arion is sometimes given Erinys as his mother,
sometimes Gaia, sometimes a Harpy, or even the Gorgon Medusa. Other partners
of Poseidon took on the form of mares in order to give themselves to him. Medusa is
sometimes represented with a horse’s tail. Euripides put Melanippe, with the evoca-
tive name of ‘‘black horse’’ on stage in one of his lost tragedies: from her union with
Poseidon were born Boiotos and Aiolos (Bregli-Pulci Doria 1986:112). It was
inevitably therefore to Poseidon that Demeter had to bear the horse Arion. Poseidon
was, besides, worshiped with the epithet Hippios in no less than five regions
of Arcadia: Mantinea (Pausanias 8.10.5), Pheneos (8.14.2), Thelpusa (8.25.7),
Methydrion (8.36.2), and Lykosoura (8.37.10). It should be recalled that it was in
worship of Poseidon that the Arcadians threw horses into the spring of Dine
(Pausanias 8.7.2). But the Thelpusan episode – perhaps initially associated with the
old goddess Erinys – was a surprisingly unconventional one for Demeter, a goddess so
widely regarded as the mother of a daughter. Hence the legend of Demeter’s
transformation into a horse and her theriomorphic union with Poseidon. For
Demeter, the equine form is only temporary and is found nowhere else.
At Phigalia, the story of the union of Poseidon and Demeter was the same as at
Thelpusa: ‘‘However, the being borne by Demeter, according to the Phigalians, was
not a horse, but the deity the Arcadians call Despoina’’ (Pausanias 8.42.1). The
transformation of Poseidon and Demeter does not find expression here in the birth
of a horse, but it is echoed in the semi-theriomorphic wooden statue of the goddess
that was described to Pausanias (8.42.4): it was a woman sitting on a rock, who had
‘‘the head and mane of a horse, and images of snakes and other wild animals
were attached to her head.’’ Poseidon had no cult, and it was upon Demeter that
the theriomorphism was concentrated. But the origin of this theriomorphism was,
nonetheless, still to be found in her union with Poseidon, transformed into a horse.
Some have wished to find the memory of a horse-god in Poseidon’s transformation
into a horse. Farnell (1896–1909:4.15) speaks of a ‘‘horse-god’’ and, according to
F. Schachermeyr (1950), the Greeks had originally worshiped a horse-god (Hippos)
before reassigning his cult to Poseidon Hippios. He had originally been conceived of,
between 1900 and 1600 BC, from a ‘‘peasant’’ perspective, as a fertility and water
276 Madeleine Jost