Obscure Gods: Eunostos/Promylius
Eunostos/Promylius:
God/dess of the mills, who watches over the weighing of flour. The name means “Good Yield.”
The Suda tells us that She is also known as Promylaia, and was worshipped in the mills themselves. Yet other sources show a masculine figure for Eunostos. Either way, the icon was set beside the grinding stones.
The name Eunostos is also given to a Hero in Tanagra, whose cultus forbade women. This hero was the grandson of Kephisos. Farnell says he is the son of Elieus of the marsh and Skias of the shade. The surviving story seems to revolve around a false accusation of rape by his cousin Ochna, making him a problematic figure for the world today. His shrine included a grove, and Dillon believes that his origin lay as an agricultural deity. It was said that if a woman were to enter his sanctuary Tanagra would suffer earthquakes, droughts and other signs of the Hero’s displeasure. Diokles tells that Kleidamos had an epiphany of Eunostos being in need of purification by bathing in the sea because a woman had entered the sanctuary.
Scholars have noted the gender confusion between the different accounts of Eunostos and have tried to associate the name with various deities as an epithet as well as speculating that both may have been closely associated early in history.
One of the harbors at Alexandria was called the Eunostos Portus in the Hellenistic Era, and played a major role in the wars between Caesar and Antony. Therein the name translates as “Happy Return.” Bevan posits that the harbor was named after Ptolemy I’s son-in-law, Eunostos the Cypriot Basileus. It was this harbor that took in the larger ships, and as such served prominently in Alexandria’s role as a hub for trade. The grain that fed Greece and Rome (and later Byzantium) often left Egypt through these waters.
As a study, Eunostos shows just how little we know sometimes. Male? Female? Unless we find some source for more information, we may never know. As a hero, I can’t personally approach him both because of his backstory and because of my status as a woman. Additionally, few today grind their own grains, or would know how to begin. If we resurrect the cult of Eunostos the God/dess of the Mill, perhaps it could be as a measurer of the grains when cooking? Do we approach them as an epithet of one of the other agricultural Gods? Or is this one of those deities that we overlook? (and theoi.com proved a difficult and even slightly deceptive source for this one!)
This is another one of those Gods that requires us each to decide individually, I think. For myself, I may whisper a prayer to the God of the Mills when I’m sifting my flour for a cake that the balance of ingredients be true, but the Hero will go un-tended.
Sources:
Theoi.com
Bennett, R. and E. John. History of Corn Milling, vol. 2, Simpkin, Marshall, & co. 1898.
Bevan, Edwyn. A History of Egypt Under the Ptolemaic Dynasty, Routledge, 2014.
Cook, Arthur Bernard. Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion, Biblo and Tannen, 1965.
Dillon, Matthew. Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion, Psych, 2003.
Farnell, Lewis Richard. Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality, Clarendon, 1970.
Fossey, John M. et al. Actes de Troisième congrès international sur la Béotie antique, Gieben, 1985.
Haas, Christopher. Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict, JHU, 2006.
Papantoniou, Giorgos. Religion and Social Transformations in Cyprus: From the Cypriot Basileis to the Hellenistic Strategos, Brill, 2012.
Parker, Robert. On Greek Religion, Cornell, 2011.
Roller, Duane W. Tanagran Studies: The Prosopography of Tanagra in Boiotia, Gieben, 1989.
Schachter, Albert. Cults of Boiotia: Acheloos to Hera, Univ. London, 1981.
Sherwood, Andrew N., et al. Greek and Roman Technology: A Sourcebook, Routledge, 2003.
Snyder, Jane McIntosh. The Woman and the Lyre: Women Writers in Classical Greece and Rome, SIU, 1991.
Images:
Mayo, Nicola George. “Egyptian Felouk at Alexandria – boatman, a man in charge of a small boat.” Photo, 2008. Via wikicommons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Felouka.JPG
Zde, “Millstones,” photo from the Milos Mining Museum. Via wikicommons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Millstones,_Milos_Mining_Museum,_153009.jpg
