“I am Terpon, servant of the august goddess Aphrodite; may Cypris reward with her favours those who erected me here.”
What does this mean? How could the stone be Terpon, a servant of the Goddess of Love?
It would seem to have been one of those mysterious sacred stones which received worship from the most remote ages, a form of worship belonging to the earliest people of whom anything is known. This _cult_ of rude unshapen stones, very generally black, prevailed among the Phœnicians; it forced its way into the worship of the Israelites. Such stones were set up even in the temple of Jehovah by some of the kings, who inclined to the superstitions of the Canaanites. The worship had so strong a hold on the Arabs that Mohammed could not extirpate it, and the Black Stone of Mecca still receives the veneration of the faithful. It forced its way into the religion of the ancient Greeks, and though quite incongruous with their mythology, held its own to the last.
Prudentius, the Christian poet (died about 410) shows us how strong was the devotion, even in his day.
“His first food was the sacred meal, his earliest sight the sacred candles, and the family gods growing black with holy oil. He saw his mother pale at her prayers before the holy stone, and he, too, would be lifted by his nurse to kiss it in his turn.” (_Cont. Symmachum._)
It has been so tough that it is not extirpated yet.
In 1877 a correspondent of the Society of Anthropology at Paris wrote about the worship as still prevailing in the valleys of the Pyrenees.
“One comes across these sacred stones most usually near fountains. They are rough blocks of porphyroid, or amphibolite granite, left on the mountain side by glacial action. They are almost invariably shapeless, and rarely present any features that can distinguish them from other great stones strewn about. One might pass them by unnoticed but for the local traditions that attach to them and the veneration with which they are regarded by the natives. In vain do the priests preach against them. They have utterly failed to drive the superstition from the hearts of their people. In vain do they get them smashed up secretly, in hopes of thereby destroying these vestiges of paganism; especially do they use their efforts against such as serve as meeting-places to young men and girls. The natives, when they come on the workmen engaged in the destruction, break out into riot, and stop the work. When they cannot do this, then they collect the fragments, replace them, and continue to surround them with veneration. It is necessary to disperse the _débris_ of the Holy Stone to put an end to the cult; but even then, the place where it stood is regarded as sacred, and sometimes the clergy plant a cross there, as the only means of turning the traditional reverence of the spot into a new direction.”
