other: the human
mother is an +aroura+, or ploughed field. This earth-mother is the
characteristic and central feature of the early Aegean religions. The
introduction of agriculture made her a mother of fruits and corn, and it
is in that form that we best know her. But in earlier days she had been
a mother of the spontaneous growth of the soil, of wild beasts and trees
and all the life of the mountain.[29:2] In early Crete she stands with
lions erect on either side of her or with snakes held in her hands and
coiled about her body. And as the earth is mother when the harvest
comes, so in spring she is maiden or Kore, but a maiden fated each year
to be wedded and made fruitful; and earlier still there has been the
terrible time when fields are bare and lifeless. The Kore has been
snatched away underground, among the dead peoples, and men must wait
expectant till the first buds begin to show and they call her to rise
again with the flowers. Meantime earth as she brings forth vegetation in
spring is Kourotrophos, rearer of Kouroi, or the young men of the tribe.
The nymphs and rivers are all Kourotrophoi. The Moon is Kourotrophos.
She quickens the young of the tribe in their mother's womb; at one
terrible hour especially she is 'a lion to women' who have offended
against her holiness. She also marks the seasons of sowing and
ploughing, and the due time for the ripening of crops. When men learn to
calculate in longer units, the Sun appears: they turn to the Sun for
their calendar, and at all times of course the Sun has been a power in
agriculture. He is not called Kourotrophos, but the Young Sun returning
after winter is himself a Kouros,[30:1] and all the Kouroi have some
touch of the Sun in them. The Cretan Spring-song of the Kouretes prays
for +neoi politai+, young citizens, quite simply among the other gifts
of the spring.[30:2]

This is best shown by the rites of tribal initiation, which seem
normally to have formed part of the spring Dromena or sacred
performances. The Kouroi, as we have said, are the initiated young men.
They pass through their initiation; they become no longer +paides+,
boys, but +andres+, men. The actual name Kouros is possibly connected
with +keirein+, to shave,[31:1] and may mean that after this ceremony
they first cut their long hair. Till then the +kouros+ is
+akersekomes+--with hair unshorn. They have now open to them the two
roads that belong to +andres+ alone: they have the work of begetting