Editing Hecate (section)

===Sacred animals===
Dogs were closely associated with Hecate in the Classical world. They were one of her most important attributes,<ref>Lilja, p. 65.</ref> with a [[literary fragment|fragment]] of [[Euripides]] describing them as her sacred animal.<ref>Bevan, p. 116.</ref> The sacrifice of dogs to her is attested in Thrace, Samothrace, Colophon, and Athens,<ref name="s.v. Hecate"/> and is known to have played a significant role in purification rites to her.<ref>Lilja, p. 80.</ref> A 4th-century&nbsp;BCE marble relief from Crannon in Thessaly was dedicated by a race-horse owner.{{efn|This statue is in the [[British Museum]] as inventory number 816 in ''Catalogue of Greek Sculpture in the British Museum'' by A.H. Smith.}} It shows Hecate, with a hound beside her, placing a wreath on the head of a mare.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1839-0806-3 |title=Marble votive relief of Hecate by Crannon, 400BCE | website=The British Museum }}</ref> It has been claimed that her association with dogs is suggestive of her connection with birth, for the dog was sacred to [[Eileithyia]], Genetyllis, and other birth goddesses. Images of her attended by a dog<ref>{{cite web |title=page&nbsp;21 (image of Hecate attended by a dog) |website=timerift.net |url=http://timerift.net/?p=21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111024203741/http://timerift.net/?p=21 |archive-date=24 October 2011 }}</ref> are also found when she is depicted alongside the god [[Hermes]] and the goddess [[Cybele]] in reliefs.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.eidola.eu/images/907 |title=Images of goddesses |website=Eidola.eu |date=2010-02-28 |access-date=2012-09-24 |archive-date=19 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130619052200/http://www.eidola.eu/images/907 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Although in later times Hecate's dog came to be thought of as a manifestation of restless souls or [[Daimon|daemon]]s who accompanied her, its docile appearance and its accompaniment of a Hecate who looks completely friendly in many pieces of ancient art suggests that its original signification was positive and thus likelier to have arisen from the dog's connection with birth than the dog's underworld associations."<ref>Johnston 1999, pp. 211–212.</ref> The association with dogs, particularly female dogs, could be explained by a metamorphosis myth in [[Lycophron]]: the friendly-looking female dog accompanying Hecate was originally the Trojan Queen [[Hecuba]], who leapt into the sea after the fall of Troy and was transformed by Hecate into her familiar.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.theoi.com/Text/LycophronAlexandra.html |title=Lycophron, Alexandra |website=Theoi |department=Classical texts library }}</ref>

The [[polecat]] is also associated with Hecate. [[Antoninus Liberalis]] used a myth to explain this association:
{{blockquote|At Thebes Proetus had a daughter [[Galanthis|Galinthias]]. This maiden was playmate and companion of [[Alcmene]], daughter of [[Electryon]]. As the birth throes for Herakles were pressing on Alcmene, the [[Moirai]] (fates) and Eileithyia (birth-goddess), as a favour to Hera, kept Alcmene in continuous birth pangs. They remained seated, each keeping their arms crossed. Galinthias, fearing that the pains of her labour would drive Alcmene mad, ran to the Moirai and Eileithyia and announced that by desire of [[Zeus]] a boy had been born to Alcmene and that their prerogatives had been abolished. At all this, consternation of course overcame the Moirai and they immediately let go their arms.<br />
Alcmene’s pangs ceased at once and Herakles was born. The Moirai were aggrieved at this and took away the womanly parts of Galinthias since, being but a mortal, she had deceived the gods. They turned her into a deceitful weasel (or polecat), making her live in crannies and gave her a grotesque way of mating. She is mounted through the ears and gives birth by bringing forth her young through the throat. Hecate felt sorry for this transformation of her appearance and appointed her a sacred servant of herself.<ref>{{cite book |author=[[Antoninus Liberalis]] |title=Metamorphoses |at=29 |translator=Celoria, Francis |publisher=Psychology Press |year=1992}}</ref>}}

[[Claudius Aelianus|Aelian]] told a different story of a woman transformed into a polecat:
{{blockquote|I have heard that the polecat was once a human being. It has also reached my hearing that [[Gale (mythology)|Gale]] was her name then; that she was a dealer in spells and a sorceress (''pharmakis''); that she was extremely lascivious, and that she was afflicted with abnormal sexual desires. Nor has it escaped my notice that the anger of the goddess Hekate transformed it into this evil creature. May the goddess be gracious to me: Fables and their telling I leave to others.<ref>{{cite book |title=On the Characteristics of Animals by Aelian |author=[[Claudius Aelianus|Aelian]] |translator=Scholfield, Alwyn Faber |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=1958}}</ref>}}

[[Athenaeus of Naucratis]], drawing on the etymological speculation of [[Apollodorus of Athens]], notes that the [[red mullet]] is sacred to Hecate, "on account of the resemblance of their names; for that the goddess is ''trimorphos'', of a triple form". The Greek word for mullet was ''trigle'' and later ''trigla''. He goes on to quote a fragment of verse:
{{poemquote|O mistress Hecate, Trioditis
With three forms and three faces 
Propitiated with mullets.<ref>
{{cite book
 |translator=Yonge, Charles Duke
 |title=The Learned Banqueters
 |author=Bohn, H.G.
 |year=1854
}}
</ref>}}

In relation to Greek concepts of pollution, Parker observes,
{{blockquote|The fish that was most commonly banned was the [[red mullet]] (''trigle''), which fits neatly into the pattern. It 'delighted in polluted things', and 'would eat the corpse of a fish or a man'. Blood-coloured itself, it was sacred to the blood-eating goddess Hecate. It seems a symbolic summation of all the negative characteristics of the creatures of the deep.<ref>{{cite book |first=Robert |last=Parker |title=Miasma: Pollution and purification in early Greek religion |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1990 |pages=362–363}}</ref>}}

[[File:T16.5Hekate.jpg|thumb|right|A goddess, probably Hecate (possibly [[Artemis]]), is depicted with a bow, dog and twin torches.]]
At Athens, it is said there stood a statue of Hecate ''Triglathena'', to whom the red mullet was offered in sacrifice.<ref>{{cite book |first=William Martin |last=Leake |title=The Topography of Athens |place=London, UK |year=1841 |page=492}}</ref> After mentioning that this fish was sacred to Hecate, Alan Davidson writes,
{{blockquote|Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, Martial, Pliny, Seneca, and Suetonius have left abundant and interesting testimony to the red mullet fever which began to affect wealthy Romans during the last years of the Republic and really gripped them in the early Empire. The main symptoms were a preoccupation with size, the consequent rise to absurd heights of the prices of large specimens, a habit of keeping red mullet in captivity, and the enjoyment of the highly specialized aesthetic experience induced by watching the color of the dying fish change.<ref>{{cite book |first=Alan |last=Davidson |title=Mediterranean Seafood |publisher=Ten Speed Press |year=2002 |page=92}}</ref>}}

In her three-headed representations, discussed above, Hecate often has one or more animal heads, including cow, dog, boar, serpent, and horse.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Yves |last1=Bonnefoy |first2=Wendy |last2=Doniger |title=Roman and European Mythologies |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=1992 |page=195}}<br />{{cite encyclopedia |title=Hecate |type=article |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |year=1823}}</ref> [[Lion]]s are associated with Hecate in early artwork from Asia Minor, as well as later coins and literature, including the ''Chaldean Oracles''.<ref name=rotting/> The [[frog]], which was also the symbol of the similarly named Egyptian goddess [[Heqet]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Armour |first=Robert A. |year=2001 |title=Gods and Myths of Ancient Egypt |publisher=American University in Cairo Press |page=116}}</ref> has also become sacred to Hecate in modern pagan literature, possibly due in part to its ability to cross between two elements.<ref>{{cite book |author=Varner, Gary R. |year=2007 |title=Creatures in the Mist: Little people, wild men, and spirit beings around the world: A study in comparative mythology |page=135 |place=New York, NY |publisher=Algora Publishing |isbn=978-0-87586-546-1}}</ref>

Comparative mythologist [[Alexander Haggerty Krappe]] cited that Hecate was also named {{math|ίππεύτρια}} (''hippeutria'' – 'the equestrienne'), since the horse was "the chthonic animal ''par excellence''".<ref>{{cite journal |author=Krappe, Alexander Haggerty |year=1932 |title=La poursuite du Gilla Dacker et les Dioscures celtiques |trans-title=The pursuit of the Gilla Dacker and the Celtic dioscuri |journal=Revue Celtique |volume=49 |page=102 |language=fr}}</ref>