Hecate

Summary

Hecate is a goddess of Greek myth who holds a share in every realm: in earth, sea and sky, at the crossroads, and on the road between the living and the dead. Her Greek name is Ἑκάτη, Hekatē. Hesiod makes her the daughter of the Titans Perses and Asteria, Asteria being the sister of Leto, mother of Apollo, and gives her a long hymn in the Theogony. He says that Zeus honoured her above all, gave her a "portion" of the earth and of the unharvested sea, and that she has honour in starry heaven, so that whoever offers sacrifice and prays calls upon Hecate. She had her portion in the time of the Titans, and when Zeus came to rule he did her no wrong and took nothing from her portion: she holds, as the division was at the first from the beginning, privilege in earth, in heaven and in sea. Whom she will she aids: she sits by worshipful kings in judgment, makes whom she will distinguished in the assembly, gives victory in war and glory in the games, stands by horsemen; fishermen pray to Hecate and Poseidon and she gives them a great catch or takes it away if she will; with Hermes she increases the herds or makes them fewer. And Zeus made her the nurse of the young who after that day saw the light of dawn.

In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter she has a part in the story of the abduction. When Hades seized Persephone, the girl cried out to her father, and no one among gods or men heard her except Hecate, "tender-hearted, bright-coiffed", from her cave, and Helios. Demeter wandered nine days with torches in her hands and no one told her the truth; when the tenth dawn came, Hecate met her with a torch in her hands and said: who has carried off Persephone? I heard her voice, but did not see with my eyes who it was. Demeter sped off with her, torches in hand, until they stood before Helios's horses, and he told her. At the end of the hymn, when Persephone has come back to her mother, Hecate comes and embraces Demeter's daughter again and again, and from that time she is "minister and companion to Persephone".

After Hesiod and the hymn, Hecate became the goddess of the crossroads, the torch and magic. LSJ says "Hecate's dinner" was a meal that rich people set out at the foot of her statue at the meeting of three roads at the end of each month, and that it became a dole for the poor, and it lists among her titles "light-bearer". Pausanias says the people of Aegina worship Hecate most of all the gods and hold mystic rites for her every year which they say Orpheus founded among them, that her image there has one face and one body, and that the first to make three figures of her joined together was the sculptor Alcamenes at Athens, a figure the Athenians call "On the Tower", standing beside the temple of the Wingless Victory. And Janus says in Ovid: you see Hecate's faces turned three ways, to guard the crossroads where the road splits into three.

The best known of her servants is Medea, daughter of the king of Colchis. Apollonius of Rhodes says she was Hecate's priestess and spent all day in her temple, and that Hecate had taught her the herbs that quench fire and stop rivers. When Jason came for the Golden Fleece, Medea gave him the charm and told him to sacrifice to Hecate by night; he went to a place far from men, bathed in the river, dug a pit, cut the throat of a ewe over it, kindled the logs, poured mingled libations, called on Hecate Brimo to aid him, and went back without turning round. The goddess heard him from the uttermost depths and came to his sacrifice; horrible serpents twined round her among the oak boughs, there was a gleam of countless torches, the hounds of the underworld howled around her, and the meadows trembled at her step. In Euripides Medea swears "by the goddess I worship most of all, my chosen helper Hecate, who dwells in the inner chamber of my house".

The idea Hecate's stories turn on is that she owns a share of every realm and stands where one passes from one realm to another. In Hesiod her share in earth, sea and sky is old, older than Zeus's reign, and he did not take it from her. In the hymn she hears from her cave what happened in the dark, carries the torch, and becomes the companion of Persephone, who goes down every year to the house of Hades and comes up again. In cult she stands at the crossroads, where three roads meet, with three faces. She is the guardian of the places where a person passes from one thing to the next: road to road, life to death, child to grown man.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the project's essays do not read it. Ἑκάτη begins with the breathing h, then k, then t, then the -ē that marks a feminine noun in Greek. We read it as Arabic al-ḥaqqa. In Lane ḥaqq is what is owed to someone and binding, and "a share, or portion, that is appointed, or assigned, to him", as in the saying "give to everyone who has a share his share"; and ḥaqqa or ḥiqqa is the more particular term: "this is my ḥiqqa", my due. Ḥ becomes the Greek breathing h, q becomes k because Greek has no q, the doubled q comes out single, and the Arabic feminine t is the Greek t. That is the subject of Hesiod's whole hymn: a goddess whose portion is her due, fixed since the first division, which the new king did not take from her, and from which she gives to whom she will.

Linguistic Root

LSJ derives Ἑκάτη from Ἕκατος, an epithet of Apollo, and glosses her name "she who works her will". That is close to what Hesiod repeats throughout his hymn: she aids "whom she will", gives the catch and takes it away "if she will", increases the herds or lessens them "if she will". The Greek sense and the Arabic reading meet in a woman who has a share and disposes of it as she pleases.

Beekes's etymological dictionary of Greek questions that derivation at its root. It calls Hecate a popular goddess who came from Anatolia, more specifically from Caria, and says that her name was an epithet thought to be taken from Apollo's title "far-shooter", but that there is no reason to assume an old w at its head, and that it is more probably Pre-Greek. It reports Wilamowitz's view that Ἕκατος and Ἑκάτη come from an Anatolian language and were shaped by the Greeks after Apollo's epithets, and lists Anatolian personal names built on it, such as Ἑκαταῖος. So the Greek derivation is no longer the only account, and the breathing at the head of the name is not the remnant of another letter, which leaves the ḥ of al-ḥaqqa on its path. What is still needed is a Carian or Anatolian form of the name itself.

Lane gives ḥaqq many senses. The first is being established and binding, not to be set aside: ḥaqqa ʿalayka al-qaḍāʾ, the sentence became binding on you and took effect. Then ḥaqq is what is due: a fee, a price, a duty, and the share appointed to its owner. Ḥāqqahu is to dispute with someone, each claiming the right for himself. The reading takes the sense of the fixed share. As for the letters, ḥ is one of the throat sounds that become the Greek breathing h or drop, q becomes k, and t stays t. The weak point is that Greek has its own analysis of the name, from Apollo's epithet, and that the name is not known from any Semitic inscription.

The project's Roman essay mentions Hecate when it reads the name of Diana as dayyān, the ruler and judge, and says that the Greek Hecate, goddess of boundaries and magic, has a similar role of rule. Hesiod has Hecate sit beside kings when they give judgment, and in Arabic ḥaqq is what the judge awards to the one in the right. So the two readings, dayyān in Diana and al-ḥaqqa in Hecate, meet in judgment.

Shifts used: ḥ > the breathing h; doubled q > single k; the feminine t > t.

Key Mythic Narratives

Brimo, queen among the dead

When Medea prepares the charm that will keep Jason safe from fire and bronze, from a plant that sprang from the blood of Prometheus in the Caucasus, she bathes in seven streams and calls seven times on "Brimo, nurse of youth, night-wandering, of the underworld, queen among the dead", in the gloom of night and in dark garments; and the earth shook and bellowed beneath when the root was cut. Here Hecate carries the title Hesiod gives her, nurse of the young, and with it the title of queen of the dead.

Hecate's dinner

LSJ, drawing on Aristophanes and his commentators, says Hecate's dinner was set out at her statue at the crossroads on the thirtieth day of each month, and if left there it was eaten by the needy; because it consisted of scraps, "eating Hecate's suppers" became in Demosthenes a description of a low fellow. The offering laid for the goddess at the crossroads at the end of the month, when the moon is gone, becomes a share for the poor.

Symbolic Reading

The Greek essay does not read Hecate. The Sumerian essay compares Lamaštu, the demoness who snatches infants and sickens pregnant women, with the Hebrew Lilith, the Greek Hecate and the Egyptian Ammit. Hesiod makes Hecate the opposite, the nurse of the young, so the essay is comparing the dark face Hecate later took on, goddess of night, dogs and magic.

One word in the Hymn to Demeter ties Hecate to the moon. The light she carries in her hand when she meets Demeter the hymn calls σέλας, the word from which the name of Selene, the moon, is formed. Hecate is the light-bearer in the night; she stands at the crossroads at the end of the month when the moon is gone, and after her comes the new moon.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In Egypt two goddesses guard the king and sit on his brow, Wadjet and Nekhbet, the cobra and the vulture. The Pyramid Texts address the Red Crown and the uraeus as "Great One, Great-in-magic", and the king asks them to make the terror of him like the terror of them and his blade firm against his enemies. Hesiod's Hecate sits beside kings when they give judgment and gives victory in war, and Apollonius's Hecate is the goddess of magic who comes by night with serpents coiled round her and the gleam of torches. In both lands the goddess is a power of magic and protection at the king's side, and in both the serpent and fire go with her.

In Mesopotamia the queen of the dead is Ereshkigal, and she has a vizier who carries her word up to heaven and comes back, Namtar. Medea calls Hecate "queen among the dead", and in the Hymn to Demeter she is the companion and minister of the queen of the dead, Persephone, going with her and coming back. Ereshkigal is a queen who does not leave her house and sends her vizier out; Hecate is the one who walks the road between the two worlds.

At Rome Janus in Ovid compares his two faces with Hecate's three at the crossroads, and Catullus calls Diana Trivia, goddess of the three ways, Hecate's own title.

Her passage between the two worlds places her in the story of the descent to the underworld, and her part with Persephone in the agricultural calendar.