Meliae
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| Greek deities series | |
|---|---|
| Primordial deities | |
| Titans and Olympians | |
| Aquatic deities | |
| Chthonic deities | |
| Personified concepts | |
| Other deities | |
| Nymphs | |
In Greek mythology, the Meliae were nymphs of the ash tree, whose name, meliai they shared. They appeared from the drops of blood spilled when Cronus castrated Uranus, according to Hesiod, Theogony 187. The most notable of the Meliae is Melia.
Many species of Fraxinus, the ash trees, exude a sugary substance, which the ancient Greeks called méli, "honey". The species of ash in the mountains of Greece is Fraxinus ornus, Manna-ash. The Meliae were nurses of the infant Zeus in the Cretan cave of Dicte, according to Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus. They fed him honey.
Of "manna", the ash-tree sugar, the standard 19th-century US pharmacopeia,The Dispensatory of the United States of America (14th edition, Philadelphia, 1878) said:
- "It is owing to the presence of true sugar and dextrin that manna is capable of fermenting...Manna, when long kept, acquires a deeper color, softens, and ultimately deliquesces into a liquid which on the addition of yeast, undergoes the vinous fermentation."
Fermented honey preceded wine as an entheogen in the Aegean world.
References
- Ruck, Carl A.P. and Danny Staples, The World of Classical Myth 1994, p. 140.
External link
- Darl J. Dumont, "The Ash Tree In Indo-European Culture" from Mankind Quarterly 32.4 (Summer 1992), pp 323-336.