Chapter XVI

GRECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT AND INTERPRETED BY THE GREEKS THEMSELVES.

The preceding sections have been intended to exhibit a sketch of that narrative matter, so abundant, so characteristic and so interesting, out of which early Grecian history and chronology have been extracted. Raised originally by hands unseen and from data unassignable, it existed first in the shape of floating talk among the people, from whence a large portion of it passed into the song of the poets, who multiplied, transformed and adorned it in a thousand various ways.

These mythes or current stories, the spontaneous and earliest growth of the Grecian mind, constituted at the same time the entire intellectual stock of the age to which they belonged. They are the common root of all those different ramifications into which the mental activity of the Greeks subsequently diverged; containing, as it were, the preface and germ of the positive history and philosophy, the dogmatic theology and the professed romance, which we shall hereafter trace each in its separate development. They furnished aliment to the curiosity, and solution to the vague doubts and aspirations of the age; they explained the origin of those customs and standing peculiarities with which men were familiar; they impressed moral lessons, awakened patriotic sympathies, and exhibited in detail the shadowy, but anxious presentiments of the vulgar as to the agency of the gods: moreover they satisfied that craving for adventure and appetite for the marvellous, which has in modern times become the province of fiction proper.

It is difficult, we may say impossible, for a man of mature age to carry back his mind to his conceptions such as they stood when he was a child, growing naturally out of his imagination and feelings, working upon a scanty stock of materials, and borrowing from authorities whom he blindly followed but imperfectly apprehended. A similar difficulty occurs when we attempt to place ourselves in the historical and quasi-philosophical point of view which the ancient mythes present to us. We can follow perfectly the imagination and feeling which dictated these tales, and we can admire and sympathize with them as animated, sublime, and affecting poetry; but we are too much accustomed to matter of fact and philosophy of a positive kind, to be able to conceive a time when these beautiful fancies were construed literally and accepted as serious reality.

Nevertheless it is obvious that Grecian mythes cannot be either understood or appreciated except with reference to the system of conceptions and belief of the ages in which they arose. We must suppose a public not reading and writing, but seeing, hearing and telling—destitute of all records, and careless as well as ignorant of positive history with its indispensable tests, yet at the same time curious and full of eagerness for new or impressive incidents—strangers even to the rudiments of positive philosophy and to the idea of invariable sequences of nature either in the physical or moral world, yet requiring some connecting theory to interpret and regularize the phænomena before them. Such a theory was supplied by the spontaneous inspirations of an early fancy, which supposed the habitual agency of beings intelligent and voluntary like themselves, but superior in extent of power, and different in peculiarity of attributes. In the geographical ideas of the Homeric period, the earth was flat and round, with the deep and gentle ocean-stream flowing around and returning into itself: chronology, or means of measuring past time, there existed none; but both unobserved regions might be described, the forgotten past unfolded, and the unknown future predicted—through particular men specially inspired by the gods, or endowed by them with that peculiar vision which detected and interpreted passing signs and omens.

If even the rudiments of scientific geography and physics, now so universally diffused and so invaluable as a security against error and delusion, were wanting in this early stage of society, their place was abundantly supplied by vivacity of imagination and by personifying sympathy. The unbounded tendency of the Homeric Greeks to multiply fictitious persons, and to construe the phænomena which interested them into manifestations of design, is above all things here to be noticed, because the form of personal narrative, universal in their mythes, is one of its many manifestations. Their polytheism (comprising some elements of an original fetichism, in which particular objects had themselves been supposed to be endued with life, volition, and design) recognized agencies of unseen beings identified and confounded with the different localities and departments of the physical world. Of such beings there were numerous varieties, and many gradations both in power and attributes; there were differences of age, sex and local residence, relations both conjugal and filial between them, and tendencies sympathetic as well as repugnant. The gods formed a sort of political community of their own, which had its hierarchy, its distribution of ranks and duties, its contentions for power and occasional revolutions, its public meetings in the agora of Olympus, and its multitudinous banquets or festivals.[834] The great Olympic gods were in fact only the most exalted amongst an aggregate of quasi-human or ultra-human personages,—dæmons, heroes, nymphs, eponymous (or name-giving) genii, identified with each river, mountain,[835] cape, town, village, or known circumscription of territory,—besides horses, bulls, and dogs, of immortal breed and peculiar attributes, and monsters of strange lineaments and combinations, “Gorgons and Harpies and Chimæras dire.” As there were in every gens or family special gentile deities and foregone ancestors who watched over its members, forming in each the characteristic symbol and recognized guarantee of their union, so there seem to have been in each guild or trade peculiar beings whose vocation it was to coöperate or to impede in various stages of the business.[836]

[834] Homer, Iliad, i. 603; xx. 7. Hesiod, Theogon. 802.

[835] We read in the Iliad that Asteropæus was grandson of the beautiful river Axius, and Achilles, after having slain him, admits the dignity of this parentage, but boasts that his own descent from Zeus was much greater, since even the great river Achelôus and Oceanus himself is inferior to Zeus (xxi. 157-191). Skamander fights with Achilles, calling his brother Simoïs to his aid (213-308). Tyrô, the daughter of Salmôneus, falls in love with Enipeus, the most beautiful of rivers (Odyss. xi. 237). Achelôus appears as a suitor of Deianira (Sophokl. Trach. 9).

There cannot be a better illustration of this feeling than what is told of the New Zealanders at the present time. The chief Heu-Heu appeals to his ancestor, the great mountain Tonga Riro: “I am the Heu-Heu, and rule over you all, just as my ancestor Tonga Riro, the mountain of snow, stands above all this land.” (E. J. Wakefield, Adventures in New Zealand, vol. i. ch. 17. p. 465). Heu-Heu refused permission to any one to ascend the mountain, on the ground that it was his tipuna or ancestor: “he constantly identified himself with the mountain and called it his sacred ancestor” (vol. ii. c. 4. p. 113). The mountains in New Zealand are accounted by the natives masculine and feminine: Tonga Riro, and Taranaki, two male mountains, quarrelled about the affections of a small volcanic female mountain in the neighborhood (ibid. ii. c. 4. p. 97).

The religious imagination of the Hindoos also (as described by Colonel Sleeman in his excellent work, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official), affords a remarkable parallel to that of the early Greeks. Colonel Sleeman says,—

“I asked some of the Hindoos about us why they called the river Mother Nerbudda, if she was really never married. Her Majesty (said they with great respect) would really never consent to be married after the indignity she suffered from her affianced bridegroom the Sohun: and we call her mother because she blesses us all, and we are anxious to accost her by the name which we consider to be the most respectful and endearing.

“Any Englishman can easily conceive a poet in his highest calenture of the brain, addressing the Ocean as a steed that knows his rider, and patting the crested billow as his flowing mane. But he must come to India to understand how every individual of a whole community of many millions can address a fine river as a living being—a sovereign princess who hears and understands all they say, and exercises a kind of local superintendence over their affairs, without a single temple in which her image is worshipped, or a single priest to profit by the delusion. As in the case of the Ganges, it is the river itself to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity residing in it, or presiding over it—the stream itself is the deity which fills their imaginations, and receives their homage” (Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, ch. iii. p. 20). Compare also the remarks in the same work on the sanctity of Mother Nerbudda (chapter xxvii. p. 261); also of the holy personality of the earth. “The land is considered as the MOTHER of the prince or chief who holds it, the great parent from whom he derives all that maintains him, his family, and his establishments. If well-treated, she yields this in abundance to her son; but if he presumes to look upon her with the eye of desire, she ceases to be fruitful; or the Deity sends down hail or blight to destroy all that she yields. The measuring the surface of the fields, and the frequently inspecting the crops by the chief himself or his immediate agents, were considered by the people in this light—either it should not be done at all, or the duty should be delegated to inferior agents, whose close inspection of the great parent could not be so displeasing to the Deity” (Ch. xxvii. p. 248).

See also about the gods who are believed to reside in trees—the Peepultree, the cotton-tree, etc. (ch. ix. p. 112), and the description of the annual marriage celebrated between the sacred pebble, or pebble-god, Saligram, and the sacred shrub Toolsea, celebrated at great expense and with a numerous procession (chap. xix. p. 158; xxiii. p. 185).

[836] See the song to the potters, in the Homeric Epigrams (14):—

Εἰ μὲν δώσετε μίσθον, ἀείσω, ὦ κεραμῆες· Δεῦρ᾽ ἄγ᾽ Ἀθηναίη, καὶ ὑπείρεχε χεῖρα καμίνου. Εὖ δὲ μελανθεῖεν κότυλοι, καὶ πάντα κάναστρα Φρυχθῆναί τε καλῶς, καὶ τιμῆς ὦνον ἀρέσθαι. ... Ἦν δ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀναιδείην τρεφθέντες ψευδῆ ἄρῃσθε, Συγκαλέω δὴ ᾽πειτα καμίνῳ δηλητῆρας· Σύντριβ᾽ ὅμως, Σμάραγόν τε, καὶ Ἄσβετον, ἠδὲ Σαβάκτην, Ὠμόδαμόν θ᾽, ὃς τῇδε τέχνῃ κακὰ πολλὰ πορίζει, etc.

A certain kindred between men and serpents (συγγένειάν τινα πρὸς τοὺς ὄφεις) was recognized in the peculiar gens of the ὀφιογενεῖς near Parion, who possessed the gift of healing by their touches the bite of the serpent: the original hero of this gens was said to have been transformed from a serpent into a man (Strabo, xiii. p. 588).

The extensive and multiform personifications, here faintly sketched, pervaded in every direction the mental system of the Greeks, and were identified intimately both with their conception and with their description of phenomena, present as well as past. That which to us is interesting as the mere creation of an exuberant fancy, was to the Greek genuine and venerated reality. Both the earth and the solid heaven (Gæa and Uranos) were both conceived and spoken of by him as endowed with appetite, feeling, sex, and most of the various attributes of humanity. Instead of a sun such as we now see, subject to astronomical laws, and forming the centre of a system the changes of which we can ascertain and foreknow, he saw the great god Hêlios, mounting his chariot in the morning in the east, reaching at mid-day the height of the solid heaven, and arriving in the evening at the western horizon, with horses fatigued and desirous of repose. Hêlios, having favorite spots wherein his beautiful cattle grazed, took pleasure in contemplating them during the course of his journey, and was sorely displeased if any man slew or injured them: he had moreover sons and daughters on earth, and as his all-seeing eye penetrated everywhere, he was sometimes in a situation to reveal secrets even to the gods themselves—while on other occasions he was constrained to turn aside in order to avoid contemplating scenes of abomination.[837] To us these now appear puerile, though pleasing fancies, but to an Homeric Greek they seemed perfectly natural and plausible. In his view, the description of the sun, as given in a modern astronomical treatise, would have appeared not merely absurd, but repulsive and impious. Even in later times, when the positive spirit of inquiry had made considerable progress, Anaxagoras and other astronomers incurred the charge of blasphemy for dispersonifying Hêlios, and trying to assign invariable laws to the solar phænomena.[838] Personifying fiction was in this way blended by the Homeric Greeks with their conception of the physical phænomena before them, not simply in the way of poetical ornament, but as a genuine portion of their every-day belief.

[837] Odyss. ii. 388; viii. 270; xii. 4, 128, 416; xxiii. 362. Iliad, xiv. 344. The Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr expresses it neatly (63)—

Ἡέλιον δ᾽ ἵκοντο, θεῶν σκόπον ἠδὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.

Also the remarkable story of Euênius of Apollônia, his neglect of the sacred cattle of Hêlios, and the awful consequences of it (Herodot. ix. 93: compare Theocr. Idyll, xxv. 130).

I know no passage in which this conception of the heavenly bodies as Persons is more strikingly set forth than in the words of the German chief Boiocalus, pleading the cause of himself and his tribe the Ansibarii before the Roman legate Avitus. This tribe, expelled by other tribes from its native possessions, had sat down upon some of that wide extent of lands on the Lower Rhine which the Roman government reserved for the use of its soldiers, but which remained desert, because the soldiers had neither the means nor the inclination to occupy them. The old chief, pleading his cause before Avitus, who had issued an order to him to evacuate the lands, first dwelt upon his fidelity of fifty years to the Roman cause, and next touched upon the enormity of retaining so large an area in a state of waste (Tacit. Ann. xiii. 55): “Quotam partem campi jacere, in quam pecora et armenta militum aliquando transmitterentur? Servarent sane receptos gregibus, inter hominum famam: modo ne vastitatem et solitudinem mallent, quam amicos populos Chamavorum quondam ea arva, mox Tubantum, et post Usipiorum fuisse. Sicuti cœlum Diis, ita terras generi mortalium datas: quæque vacuæ, eas publicas esse. Solem deinde respiciens, et cœtera sidera vocans, quasi coram interrogabat—vellentne contueri inane solum? potius mare superfunderent adversus terrarum ereptores. Commotus his Avitus,” etc. The legate refused the request, but privately offered to Boiocalus lands for himself apart from the tribe, which that chief indignantly spurned. He tried to maintain himself in the lands, but was expelled by the Roman arms, and forced to seek a home among the other German tribes, all of whom refused it. After much wandering and privation, the whole tribe of the Ansibarii was annihilated: its warriors were all slain, its women and children sold as slaves.

I notice this afflicting sequel, in order to show that the brave old chief was pleading before Avitus a matter of life and death both to himself and his tribe, and that the occasion was one least of all suited for a mere rhetorical prosopopœia. His appeal is one sincere and heartfelt to the personal feelings and sympathies of Hêlios.

Tacitus, in reporting the speech, accompanies it with the gloss “quasi coram,” to mark that the speaker here passes into a different order of ideas from that to which himself or his readers were accustomed. If Boiocalus could have heard, and reported to his tribe, an astronomical lecture, he would have introduced some explanation, in order to facilitate to his tribe the comprehension of Hêlios under a point of view so new to them. While Tacitus finds it necessary to illustrate by a comment the personification of the sun, Boiocalus would have had some trouble to make his tribe comprehend the re-ification of the god Hêlios.

[838] Physical astronomy was both new and accounted impious in the time of the Peloponnesian war: see Plutarch, in his reference to that eclipse which proved so fatal to the Athenian army at Syracuse, in consequence of the religious feelings of Nikias: οὐ γὰρ ἠνείχοντο τοὺς φυσικοὺς καὶ μετεωρολέσχας τότε καλουμένους ὡς, εἰς αἰτίας ἀλόγους καὶ δυνάμεις ἀπρονοήτους καὶ κατηναγκασμένα πάθη διατρίβοντας τὸ θεῖον (Plutarch, Nikias, c. 23, and Periklês, c. 32; Diodôr. xii. 39; Dêmêtr. Phaler. ap. Diogen. Laërt, ix. 9, 1).

“You strange man, Melêtus,” said Socratês, on his trial, to his accuser, “are you seriously affirming that I do not think Hêlios and Selênê to be gods, as the rest of mankind think?” “Certainly not, gentlemen of the Dikastery (this is the reply of Melêtus), Socratês says that the sun is a stone, and the moon earth.” “Why, my dear Melêtus, you think you are preferring an accusation against Anaxagoras! You account these Dikasts so contemptibly ignorant, as not to know that the books of Anaxagoras are full of such doctrines! Is it from me that the youth acquire such teaching, when they may buy the books for a drachma in the theatre, and may thus laugh me to scorn if I pretended to announce such views as my own—not to mention their extreme absurdity?” (ἄλλως τε καὶ οὕτως ἄτοπα ὄντα, Plato, Apolog. Socrat. c. 14. p. 26).

The divinity of Hêlios and Selênê is emphatically set forth by Plato, Legg. x. p. 886-889. He permits physical astronomy only under great restrictions and to a limited extent. Compare Xenoph. Memor. iv. 7, 7; Diogen. Laërt. ii. 8; Plutarch, De Stoicor. Repugnant. c. 40. p. 1053; and Schaubach ad Anaxagoræ Fragmenta, p. 6.

It was in this early state of the Grecian mind, stimulating so forcibly the imagination and the feelings, and acting through them upon the belief, that the great body of the mythes grew up and obtained circulation. They were, from first to last, personal narratives and adventures; and the persons who predominated as subjects of them were the gods, the heroes, the nymphs, etc., whose names were known and reverenced, and in whom every one felt interested. To every god and every hero it was consistent with Grecian ideas to ascribe great diversity of human motive and attribute: each indeed has his own peculiar type of character, more or less strictly defined; but in all there was a wide foundation for animated narrative and for romantic incident. The gods and heroes of the land and the tribe belonged, in the conception of a Greek, alike to the present and to the past: he worshipped in their groves and at their festivals; he invoked their protection, and believed in their superintending guardianship, even in his own day: but their more special, intimate, and sympathizing agency was cast back into the unrecorded past.[839] To give suitable utterance to this general sentiment,—to furnish body and movement and detail to these divine and heroic pre-existences, which were conceived only in shadowy outline,—to lighten up the dreams of what the past must have been,[840] in the minds of those who knew not what it really had been—such was the spontaneous aim and inspiration of productive genius in the community, and such were the purposes which the Grecian mythes preëminently accomplished.

[839] Hesiod, Catalog. Fragm. 76. p. 48, ed. Düntzer:—

Ξυναὶ γὰρ τότε δαῖτες ἔσαν ξυνοί τε θόωκει, Ἀθανάτοις τε θοῖσι καταθνήτοις τ᾽ ἀνθρώποις.

Both the Theogonia and the Works and Days bear testimony to the same general feeling. Even the heroes of Homer suppose a preceding age, the inmates of which were in nearer contact with the gods than they themselves (Odyss. viii. 223; Iliad, v. 304; xii. 382). Compare Catullus, Carm. 64; Epithalam. Peleôs et Thetidos, v. 382-408.

Menander the Rhetor (following generally the steps of Dionys. Hal. Art Rhetor. cap. 1-8) suggests to his fellow-citizens at Alexandria Trôas, proper and complimentary forms to invite a great man to visit their festival of the Sminthia:—ὥσπερ γὰρ Ἀπόλλωνα πολλάκις ἐδέχετο ἡ πόλις τοῖς Σμινθίοις, ~ἥνικα ἐξῆν θεοὺς προφανῶς ἐπιδημεῖν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις~, οὕτω καὶ σὲ ἡ πόλις νῦν προσδέχεται (περὶ Ἐπιδεικτικ. s. iv. c. 14. ap. Walz. Coll. Rhetor, t. ix. p. 304). Menander seems to have been a native of Alexandria Trôas, though Suidas calls him a Laodicean (see Walz. Præf. ad t. ix. p. xv.-xx.; and περὶ Σμινθιακῶν, sect. iv. c. 17). The festival of the Sminthia lasted down to his time, embracing the whole duration of paganism from Homer downwards.

[840] P. A. Müller observes justly, in his Saga-Bibliothek, in reference to the Icelandic mythes, “In dem Mythischen wird das Leben der Vorzeit dargestellt, wie es wirklich dem kindlichen Verstande, der jugendlichen Einbildungskraft, und dem vollen Herzen, erscheint.”

(Lange’s Untersuchungen über die Nordische und Deutsche Heldensage, translated from P. A. Müller, Introd. p. 1.)

The love of antiquities, which Tacitus notices as so prevalent among the Greeks of his day,[841] was one of the earliest, the most durable, and the most widely diffused of the national propensities. But the antiquities of every state were divine and heroic, reproducing the lineaments, but disregarding the measure and limits, of ordinary humanity. The gods formed the starting-point, beyond which no man thought of looking, though some gods were more ancient than others: their progeny, the heroes, many of them sprung from human mothers, constitute an intermediate link between god and man. The ancient epic usually recognizes the presence of a multitude of nameless men, but they are introduced chiefly for the purpose of filling the scene, and of executing the orders, celebrating the valor, and bringing out the personality, of a few divine or heroic characters.[842] It was the glory of bards and storytellers to be able to satisfy those religious and patriotic predispositions of the public, which caused the primary demand for their tales, and which were of a nature eminently inviting and expansive. For Grecian religion was many-sided and many colored; it comprised a great multiplicity of persons, together with much diversity in the types of character; it divinized every vein and attribute of humanity, the lofty as well as the mean—the tender as well as the warlike—the self-devoting and adventurous as well as the laughter-loving and sensual. We shall hereafter reach a time when philosophers protested against such identification of the gods with the more vulgar appetites and enjoyments, believing that nothing except the spiritual attributes of man could properly be transferred to superhuman beings, and drawing their predicates respecting the gods exclusively from what was awful, majestic and terror-striking in human affairs. Such restrictions on the religious fancy were continually on the increase, and the mystic and didactic stamp which marked the last century of paganism in the days of Julian and Libanius, contrasts forcibly with the concrete and vivacious forms, full of vigorous impulse and alive to all the capricious gusts of the human temperament, which people the Homeric Olympus.[843] At present, however, we have only to consider the early, or Homeric and Hesiodic paganism, and its operation in the genesis of the mythical narratives. We cannot doubt that it supplied the most powerful stimulus, and the only one which the times admitted, to the creative faculty of the people; as well from the sociability, the gradations, and the mutual action and reaction of its gods and heroes, as from the amplitude, the variety, and the purely human cast, of its fundamental types.

[841] Titus visited the temple of the Paphian Venus in Cyprus, “spectatâ opulentiâ donisque regum, quæque alia lætum antiquitatibus Græcorum genus incertæ vetustati adfingit, de navigatione primum consuluit” (Tacit. Hist. ii. 4-5).

[842] Aristotel. Problem. xix. 48. Οἱ δὲ ἡγεμόνες τῶν ἀρχαίων μόνοι ἦσαν ἥρωες· οἱ δὲ λαοὶ ἄνθρωποι. Istros followed this opinion also: but the more common view seems to have considered all who combated at Troy as heroes (see Schol. Iliad, ii. 110; xv. 231), and so Hesiod treats them (Opp. Di. 158).

In reference to the Trojan war, Aristotle says—καθάπερ ἐν τοῖς ~Ἡρωϊκοῖς~ περὶ Πριάμου μυθεύεται (Ethic. Nicom. i. 9; compare vii. 1).

[843] Generation by a god is treated in the old poems as an act entirely human and physical (ἐμιγη—παρελέξατο); and this was the common opinion in the days of Plato (Plato, Apolog. Socrat. c. 15. p. 15); the hero Astrabakus is father of the Lacedæmonian king Demaratus (Herod. vi. 66). [Herodotus does not believe the story told him at Babylon respecting Belus (i. 182).] Euripidês sometimes expresses disapprobation of the idea (Ion. 350), but Plato passed among a large portion of his admirers for the actual son of Apollo, and his reputed father Aristo on marrying was admonished in a dream to respect the person of his wife Periktionê, then pregnant by Apollo, until after the birth of the child Plato (Plutarch, Quæst. Sympos. p. 717. viii. 1; Diogen. Laërt. iii. 2; Origen, cont. Cels. i. p. 29). Plutarch (in Life of Numa, c. 4; compare Life of Thêseus, 2) discusses the subject, and is inclined to disallow everything beyond mental sympathy and tenderness in a god: Pausanias deals timidly with it, and is not always consistent with himself; while the later rhetors spiritualize it altogether. Meander, περὶ Ἐπιδεικτικῶν, (towards the end of the third century B. C.) prescribes rules for praising a king: you are to praise him for the gens to which he belongs: perhaps you may be able to make out that he really is the son of some god; for many who seem to be from men, are really sent down by God and are emanations from the Supreme Potency—πολλοὶ τὸ μὲν δοκεῖν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων εἰσὶ, τῇ δ᾽ ἀληθείᾳ παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ καταπέμπονται καὶ εἰσιν ἀπόῤῥοιαι ὄντως τοῦ κρείττονος· καὶ γὰρ Ἡρακλῆς ἐνομίζετο μὲν Ἀμφιτρύωνος, τῇ δὲ ἀληθείᾳ ἦν Διός. Οὕτω καὶ βασιλεὺς ὁ ἡμέτερος το μὲν δοκεῖν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων, τῇ δὲ ἀληθείᾳ τὴν καταβολὴν οὐράνοθεν ἔχει, etc. (Menander ap. Walz. Collect. Rhetor. t. ix. c. i. p. 218). Again—περὶ Σμινθιακῶν—Ζεὺς γένεσιν παιδῶν ~δημιουργεῖν~ ἐνενόησε—Ἀπόλλων τὴν Ἀσκληπιοῦ γένεσιν ~ἐδημιούργησε~, p. 322-327; compare Hermogenês, about the story of Apollo and Daphnê, Progymnasm. c. 4; and Julian. Orat. vii. p. 220.

The contrast of the pagan phraseology of this age (Menander had himself composed a hymn of invocation to Apollo—περὶ Ἐγκωμίων, c. 3. t. ix. p. 136, Walz.) with that of Homer is very worthy of notice. In the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women much was said respecting the marriages and amours of the gods, so as to furnish many suggestions, like the love-songs of Sapphô, to the composers of Epithalamic Odes (Menand. ib. sect. iv. c. 6. p. 268).

Menander gives a specimen of a prose hymn fit to be addressed to the Sminthian Apollo (p. 320); the spiritual character of which hymn forms the most pointed contrast with the Homeric hymn to the same god.

We may remark an analogous case in which the Homeric hymn to Apollo is modified by Plutarch. To provide for the establishment of his temple at Delphi, Apollo was described as having himself, in the shape of a dolphin, swam before a Krêtan vessel and guided it to Krissa, where he directed the terrified crew to open the Delphian temple. But Plutarch says that this old statement was not correct: the god had not himself appeared in the shape of a dolphin—he had sent a dolphin expressly to guide the vessel (Plutarch. de Solertiâ Animal. p. 983). See also a contrast between the Homeric Zeus, and the genuine Zeus, (ἀληθινὸς) brought out in Plutarch, Defect. Oracul. c 30. p. 426.

Illicit amours seem in these later times to be ascribed to the δαίμονες: see the singular controversy started among the fictitious pleadings of the ancient rhetors—Νόμου ὄντος, παρθένους καὶ καθαρὰς εἶναι τὰς ἱερείας, ἱερεία τις εὑρέθη ἀτόκιον φέρουσα, καὶ κρίνεται.... Ἀλλ᾽ ἐρεῖ, φασὶ, διὰ τὰς τῶν δαιμόνων ἐπιφοιτήσεις καὶ ἐπιβουλὰς περιτεθεῖσθαι. Καὶ πῶς οὐκ ἀνόητον κομιδῆ τὸ τοιοῦτον; ἔδει γὰρ πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀφαιρεθῆναι τὴν παρθενίαν φορεῖν τι ἀποτρόπαιον, οὐ μὴν πρὸς τὸ τεκεῖν (Anonymi Scholia ad Hermogen. Στάσεις, ap. Walz. Coll. Rh. t. vii. p. 162).

Apsinês of Gadara, a sophist of the time of Diocletian, pretended to be a son of Pan (see Suidas, v. Ἀψίνης). The anecdote respecting the rivers Skamander and Mæander, in the tenth epistle ascribed to the orator Æschines (p. 737), is curious, but we do not know the date of that epistle.

Though we may thus explain the mythopœic fertility of the Greeks, I am far from pretending that we can render any sufficient account of the supreme beauty of their chief epic and artistical productions. There is something in the first-rate productions of individual genius which lies beyond the compass of philosophical theory: the special breath of the Muse (to speak the language of ancient Greece) must be present in order to give them being. Even among her votaries, many are called, but few are chosen; and the peculiarities of those few remain as yet her own secret.

We shall not however forget that Grecian language was also an indispensable requisite to the growth and beauty of Grecian mythes—its richness, its flexibility and capacity of new combinations, its vocalic abundance and metrical pronunciation: and many even among its proper names, by their analogy to words really significant, gave direct occasion to explanatory or illustrative stories. Etymological mythes are found in sensible proportion among the whole number.

To understand properly then the Grecian mythes, we must try to identify ourselves with the state of mind of the original mythopœic age; a process not very easy, since it requires us to adopt a string of poetical fancies not simply as realities, but as the governing realities of the mental system;[844] yet a process which would only reproduce something analogous to our own childhood. The age was one destitute both of recorded history and of positive science, but full of imagination and sentiment and religious impressibility; from these sources sprung that multitude of supposed persons around whom all combinations of sensible phænomena were grouped, and towards whom curiosity, sympathies, and reverence were earnestly directed. The adventures of such persons were the only aliment suited at once both to the appetites and to the comprehension of an early Greek; and the mythes which detailed them, while powerfully interesting his emotions, furnished to him at the same time a quasi-history and quasi-philosophy: they filled up the vacuum of the unrecorded past, and explained many of the puzzling incognita of the present.[845] Nor need we wonder that the same plausibility which captivated his imagination and his feelings was sufficient to engender spontaneous belief; or rather, that no question as to truth or falsehood of the narrative suggested itself to his mind. His faith is ready, literal and uninquiring, apart from all thought of discriminating fact from fiction, or of detecting hidden and symbolized meaning; it is enough that what he hears be intrinsically plausible and seductive, and that there be no special cause to provoke doubt. And if indeed there were, the poet overrules such doubts by the holy and all-sufficient authority of the Muse, whose omniscience is the warrant for his recital, as her inspiration is the cause of his success.

[844] The mental analogy between the early stages of human civilization and the childhood of the individual is forcibly and frequently set forth in the works of Vico. That eminently original thinker dwells upon the poetical and religious susceptibilities as the first to develop themselves in the human mind, and as furnishing not merely connecting threads for the explanation of sensible phænomena, but also aliment for the hopes and fears, and means of socializing influence to men of genius, at a time when reason was yet asleep. He points out the personifying instinct (“istinto d’ animazione”) as the spontaneous philosophy of man, “to make himself the rule of the universe,” and to suppose everywhere a quasi-human agency as the determining cause. He remarks that in an age of fancy and feeling, the conceptions and language of poetry coincide with those of reality and common life, instead of standing apart as a separate vein. These views are repeated frequently (and with some variations of opinion as he grew older) in his Latin work De Uno Universi Juris Principio, as well as in the two successive rédactions of his great Italian work, Scienza Nuova (it must be added that Vico as an expositor is prolix, and does not do justice to his own powers of original thought): I select the following from the second edition of the latter treatise, published by himself in 1744, Della Metafisica Poetica (see vol. v. p. 189 of Ferrari’s edition of his Works, Milan, 1836): “Adunque la sapienza poetica, che fu la prima sapienza della Gentilità, dovette incominciare da una Metafisica, non ragionata ed astratta, qual è questa or degli addottrinati, ma sentita ed immaginata, quale dovett’ essere di tai primi uomini, siccome quelli ch’ erano di niun raziocinio, e tutti robusti sensi e vigorosissime fantasie, come è stato nelle degnità (the Axioms) stabilito. Questa fu la loro propria poesia, la qual in essi fu una facultà loro connaturale, perchè erano di tali sensi e di si fatte fantasie naturalmente forniti, nata da ignoranza di cagioni—la qual fu loro madre di maraviglia di tutte le cose, che quelli ignoranti di tutte le cose fortemente ammiravano. Tal poesia incominciò in essi divina: perchè nello stesso tempo ch’essi immaginavano le cagioni delle cose, che sentivano ed ammiravano, essere Dei, come ora il confermiamo con gli Americani, i quali tutte le cose che superano la loro picciol capacità, dicono esser Dei ... nello stesso tempo, diciamo, alle cose ammirate davano l’essere di sostanze dalla propria lor idea: ch’è appunto la natura dei fanciulli, che osserviamo prendere tra mani cose inanimate, e transtullarsi e favellarvi, come fussero quelle persone vive. In cotal guisa i primi uomini delle nazioni gentili, come fanciulli del nascente gener umano, dalla lor idea creavan essi le cose ... per la loro robusta ignoranza, il facevano in forza d’una corpolentissima fantasia, e perch’ era corpolentissima, il facevano con una maravigliosa sublimità, tal e tanta, che perturbava all’eccesso essi medesimi, che fingendo le si creavano.... Di questa natura di cose umane restò eterna proprietà spiegata con nobil espressione da Tacito, che vanamente gli uomini spaventati fingunt simul creduntque.”

After describing the condition of rude men, terrified with thunder and other vast atmospheric phænomena, Vico proceeds (ib. p. 172)—“In tal caso la natura della mente umana porta ch’ella attribuisca all’effetto la sua natura: e la natura loro era in tale stato d’uomini tutti robuste forze di corpo, che urlando, brontolando, spiegavano le loro violentissime passioni, si finsero il cielo esser un gran corpo animato, che per tal aspetto chiamavano Giove, che col fischio dei fulmini e col fragore dei tuoni volesse lor dire qualche cosa.... E si fanno di tutta la natura un vasto corpo animato, che senta passioni ed affetti.”

Now the contrast with modern habits of thought:—

“Ma siccome ora per la natura delle nostre umane menti troppo ritirata dai sensi nel medesimo volgo—con le tante astrazioni, di quante sono piene le lingue—con tanti vocaboli astratti—e di troppo assottigliata con l’arti dello scrivere, e quasi spiritualezzata con la practica dei numeri—ci e naturalmente niegato di poter formare la vasta imagine di cotal donna che dicono Natura simpatetica, che mentre con la bocca dicono, non hanno nulla in lor mente, perocchè la lor mente è dentro il falso, che è nulla; nè sono soccorsi dalla fantasia a poterne formare una falsa vastissima imagine. Così ora ci è naturalmente niegato di poter entrare nella vasta immaginativa di quei primi uomini, le menti dei quali di nulla erano assottigliate, di nulla astratte, di nulla spiritualezzate.... Onde dicemmo sopra ch’ora appena intender si può, affatto immaginar non sì può, come pensassero i primi uomini che fondarono la umanità gentilesca.”

In this citation (already almost too long for a note) I have omitted several sentences not essential to the general meaning. It places these early divine fables and theological poets (so Vico calls them) in their true point of view, and assigns to them their proper place in the ascending movement of human society: it refers the mythes to an early religious and poetical age, in which feeling and fancy composed the whole fund of the human mind, over and above the powers of sense: the great mental change which has since taken place has robbed us of the power, not merely of believing them as they were originally believed, but even of conceiving completely that which their first inventors intended to express.

The views here given from this distinguished Italian (the precursor of F. A. Wolf in regard to the Homeric poems, as well as of Niebuhr in regard to the Roman history) appear to me no less correct than profound; and the obvious inference from them is, that attempts to explain (as it is commonly called) the mythes (i. e. to translate them into some physical, moral or historical statements, suitable to our order of thought) are, even as guesses, essentially unpromising. Nevertheless Vico, inconsistently with his own general view, bestows great labor and ingenuity in attempting to discover internal meaning symbolized under many of the mythes; and even lays down the position, “che i primi uomini della Gentilità essendo stati semplicissimi, quanto i fanciulli, i quali per natura son veritieri: le prime favole non poterono finger nulla di falso: per lo che dovettero necessariamente essere vere narrazioni.” (See vol. v. p. 194; compare also p. 99, Axiom xvi.) If this position be meant simply to exclude the idea of designed imposture, it may for the most part be admitted; but Vico evidently intends something more. He thinks that there lies hid under the fables a basis of matter of fact—not literal but symbolized—which he draws out and exhibits under the form of a civil history of the divine and heroic times: a confusion of doctrine the more remarkable, since he distinctly tells us (in perfect conformity with the long passage above transcribed from him) that the special matter of these early mythes is “impossibility accredited as truth,”—“che la di lei propria materia è l’impossibile credibile” (p. 176, and still more fully in the first rédaction of the Scienza Nuova, b. iii. c. 4; vol. iv. p. 187 of his Works).

When we read the Canones Mythologici of Vico (De Constantia Philologiæ, Pars Posterior, c. xxx.; vol. iii. p. 363), and his explanation of the legends of the Olympic gods, Hercules, Thêseus, Kadmus, etc., we see clearly that the meaning which he professes to bring out is one previously put in by himself.

There are some just remarks to the same purpose in Karl Ritter’s Vorhalle Europäischer Volkergeschichten, Abschn. ii. p. 150 seq. (Berlin, 1820). He too points out how much the faith of the old world (der Glaube der Vorwelt) has become foreign to our minds, since the recent advances of “Politik und Kritik,” and how impossible it is for us to elicit history from their conceptions by our analysis, in cases where they have not distinctly laid it out for us. The great length of this note prevents me from citing the passage: and he seems to me also (like Vico) to pursue his own particular investigations in forgetfulness of the principle laid down by himself.

[845] O. Müller, in his Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie (cap. iv. p. 108), has pointed out the mistake of supposing that there existed originally some nucleus of pure reality as the starting-point of the mythes, and that upon this nucleus fiction was superinduced afterwards: he maintains that the real and the ideal were blended together in the primitive conception of the mythes. Respecting the general state of mind out of which the mythes grew, see especially pages 78 and 110 of that work, which is everywhere full of instruction on the subject of the Grecian mythes, and is eminently suggestive, even where the positions of the author are not completely made out.

The short Heldensage der Griechen by Nitzsch (Kiel, 1842, t. v.) contains more of just and original thought on the subject of the Grecian mythes than any work with which I am acquainted. I embrace completely the subjective point of view in which he regards them; and although I have profited much from reading his short tract, I may mention that before I ever saw it, I had enforced the same reasonings on the subject in an article in the Westminster Review, May 1843, on the Heroen-Geschichten of Niebuhr.

Jacob Grimm, in the preface to his Deutsche Mythologie (p. 1, 1st edit. Gött. 1835), pointedly insists on the distinction between “Sage” and history, as well as upon the fact that the former has its chief root in religious belief “Legend and history (he says) are powers each by itself, adjoining indeed on the confines, but having each its own separate and exclusive ground;” also p. xxvii. of the same introduction.

A view substantially similar is adopted by William Grimm, the other of the two distinguished brothers whose labors have so much elucidated Teutonic philology and antiquities. He examines the extent to which either historical matter of fact or historical names can be traced in the Deutsche Heldensage; and he comes to the conclusion that the former is next to nothing, the latter not considerable. He draws particular attention to the fact, that the audience for whom these poems were intended had not learned to distinguish history from poetry (W. Grimm, Deutsche Heldensage, pp. 8, 337, 342, 345, 399, Gött. 1829).

The state of mind, and the relation of speaker to hearers, thus depicted, stand clearly marked in the terms and tenor of the ancient epic, if we only put a plain meaning upon what we read. The poet—like the prophet, whom he so much resembles—sings under heavenly guidance, inspired by the goddess to whom he has prayed for her assisting impulse: she puts the word into his mouth and the incidents into his mind: he is a privileged man, chosen as her organ and speaking from her revelations.[846] As the Muse grants the gift of song to whom she will, so she sometimes in her anger snatches it away, and the most consummate human genius is then left silent and helpless.[847] It is true that these expressions, of the Muse inspiring and the poet singing a tale of past times, have passed from the ancient epic to compositions produced under very different circumstances, and have now degenerated into unmeaning forms of speech; but they gained currency originally in their genuine and literal acceptation. If poets had from the beginning written or recited, the predicate of singing would never have been ascribed to them; nor would it have ever become customary to employ the name of the Muse as a die to be stamped on licensed fiction, unless the practice had begun when her agency was invoked and hailed in perfect good faith. Belief, the fruit of deliberate inquiry and a rational scrutiny of evidence, is in such an age unknown: the simple faith of the time slides in unconsciously, when the imagination and feeling are exalted; and inspired authority is at once understood, easily admitted, and implicitly confided in.

[846] Hesiod, Theogon. 32.—

... ἐνέπνευσαν δέ (the Muses) μοι αὐδὴν Θείην, ὡς κλείοιμι τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα, πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα, Καί με κέλονθ᾽ ὑμνεῖν μακάρων γένος αἰὲν ἐόντων, etc.

Odyss. xxii. 347; viii. 63, 73, 481, 489. Δημόδοκ᾽ ... ἢ σέ γε Μοῦσ᾽ ἐδίδαξε, Διὸς παῖς, ἢ σέγ᾽ Ἀπόλλων: that is, Demodocus has either been inspired as a poet by the Muse, or as a prophet by Apollo: for the Homeric Apollo is not the god of song. Kalchas the prophet receives his inspiration from Apollo, who confers upon him the same knowledge both of past and future as the Muses give to Hesiod (Iliad, i. 69):—

Κάλχας Θεστορίδης, οἰωνοπόλων ὄχ᾽ ἄριστος Ὃς ᾔδη τά τ᾽ ἐόντα, τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα, πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα Ἣν διὰ μαντοσύνην, τὴν οἱ πόρε Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων.

Also Iliad, ii. 485.

Both the μάντις and the ἀοιδὸς are standing, recognized professions (Odyss. xvii. 383), like the physician and the carpenter, δημιόεργοι.

[847] Iliad, ii. 599.

The word mythe (μῦθος, fabula, story), in its original meaning, signified simply a statement or current narrative, without any connotative implication either of truth or falsehood. Subsequently the meaning of the word (in Latin and English as well as in Greek) changed, and came to carry with it the idea of an old personal narrative, always uncertified, sometimes untrue or avowedly fictitious.[848] And this change was the result of a silent alteration in the mental state of the society,—of a transition on the part of the superior minds (and more or less on the part of all) to a stricter and more elevated canon of credibility, in consequence of familiarity with recorded history, and its essential tests, affirmative as well as negative. Among the original hearers of the mythes, all such tests were unknown; they had not yet learned the lesson of critical disbelief; the mythe passed unquestioned from the mere fact of its currency, and from its harmony with existing sentiments and preconceptions. The very circumstances which contributed to rob it of literal belief in after-time, strengthened its hold upon the mind of the Homeric man. He looked for wonders and unusual combinations in the past; he expected to hear of gods, heroes and men, moving and operating together upon earth; he pictured to himself the fore-time as a theatre in which the gods interfered directly, obviously and frequently, for the protection of their favorites and the punishment of their foes. The rational conception, then only dawning in his mind, of a systematic course of nature was absorbed by this fervent and lively faith. And if he could have been supplied with as perfect and philosophical a history of his own real past time, as we are now enabled to furnish with regard to the last century of England or France, faithfully recording all the successive events, and accounting for them by known positive laws, but introducing no special interventions of Zeus and Apollo—such a history would have appeared to him not merely unholy and unimpressive, but destitute of all plausibility or title to credence. It would have provoked in him the same feeling of incredulous aversion as a description of the sun (to repeat the previous illustration) in a modern book on scientific astronomy.

[848] In this later sense it stands pointedly opposed to ἱστορία, history, which seems originally to have designated matter of fact, present and seen by the describer, or the result of his personal inquiries (see Herodot. i. 1; Verrius Flacc. ap. Aul. Gell. v. 18; Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. iii. 12; and the observations of Dr. Jortin, Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 59).

The original use of the word λόγος was the same as that of μῦθος—a current tale, true or false, as the case might be; and the term designating a person much conversant with the old legends (λόγιος) is derived from it (Herod. i. 1; ii. 3). Hekatæus and Herodotus both use λόγος in this sense. Herodotus calls both Æsop and Hekatæus λογοποιοί (ii. 134-143).

Aristotle (Metaphys. i. p. 8, ed. Brandis) seems to use μῦθος in this sense, where he says—διὸ καὶ φιλόμυθος ὁ φιλόσοφος πώς ἐστιν· ὁ γὰρ μῦθος συγκεῖται ἐκ θαυμασίων, etc. In the same treatise (xi. p. 254), he uses it to signify fabulous amplification and transformation of a doctrine true in the main.

To us these mythes are interesting fictions; to the Homeric and Hesiodic audience they were “rerum divinarum et humanarum scientia,”—an aggregate of religious, physical and historical revelations, rendered more captivating, but not less true and real, by the bright coloring and fantastic shapes in which they were presented. Throughout the whole of “mythe-bearing Hellas”[849] they formed the staple of the uninstructed Greek mind, upon which history and philosophy were by so slow degrees superinduced; and they continued to be the aliment of ordinary thought and conversation, even after history and philosophy had partially supplanted the mythical faith among the leading men, and disturbed it more or less in the ideas of all. The men, the women, and the children of the remote dêmes and villages of Greece, to whom Thucydidês, Hippocratês, Aristotle, or Hipparchus were unknown, still continued to dwell upon the local fables which formed their religious and patriotic antiquity. And Pausanias, even in his time, heard everywhere divine or heroic legends yet alive, precisely of the type of the old epic; he found the conceptions of religious and mythical faith, coëxistent with those of positive science, and contending against them at more or less of odds, according to the temper of the individual. Now it is the remarkable characteristic of the Homeric age, that no such coëxistence or contention had yet begun. The religious and mythical point of view covers, for the most part, all the phænomena of nature; while the conception of invariable sequence exists only in the background, itself personified under the name of the Mœræ, or Fates, and produced generally as an exception to the omnipotence of Zeus for all ordinary purposes. Voluntary agents, visible and invisible, impel and govern everything. Moreover this point of view is universal throughout the community,—adopted with equal fervor, and carried out with equal consistency, by the loftiest minds and by the lowest. The great man of that day is he who, penetrated like others with the general faith, and never once imagining any other system of nature than the agency of these voluntary Beings, can clothe them in suitable circumstances and details, and exhibit in living body and action those types which his hearers dimly prefigure. Such men were the authors of the Iliad and the Odyssey; embodying in themselves the whole measure of intellectual excellence which their age was capable of feeling: to us, the first of poets—but to their own public, religious teachers, historians, and philosophers besides—inasmuch as all that then represented history and philosophy was derived from those epical effusions and from others homogeneous with them. Herodotus recognizes Homer and Hesiod as the main authors of Grecian belief respecting the names and generations, the attributes and agency, the forms and the worship of the gods.[850]

[849] M. Ampère, in his Histoire Littéraire de la France (ch. viii. v. i. p. 310) distinguishes the Saga (which corresponds as nearly as possible with the Greek μῦθος, λόγος, ἐπιχώριος λόγος), as a special product of the intellect, not capable of being correctly designated either as history, or as fiction, or as philosophy:—

“Il est un pays, la Scandinavie, où la tradition racontée s’est développée plus complètement qu’ailleurs, où ses produits ont été plus soigneusement recueillis et mieux conservés: dans ce pays, ils ont reçu un nom particulier, dont l’équivalent exact ne se trouve pas hors des langues Germaniques: c’est le mot Saga, Sage, ce qu’on dit, ce qu’on raconte,—la tradition orale. Si l’on prend ce mot non dans une acception restreinte, mais dans le sens général où le prenait Niebuhr quand il l’appliquoit, par exemple, aux traditions populaires qui ont pu fournir à Tite Live une portion de son histoire, la Saga doit être comptée parmi les produits spontanés de l’imagination humaine. La Saga a son existence propre comme la poësie, comme l’histoire, comme le roman. Elle n’est pas la poësie, parcequ’elle n’est pas chantée, mais parlée; elle n’est pas l’histoire, parcequ’elle est denuée de critique; elle n’est pas le roman, parcequ’elle est sincère, parcequ’elle a foi à ce qu’elle raconte. Elle n’invente pas, mais répète: elle peut se tromper, mais elle ne ment jamais. Ce récit souvent merveilleux, que personne ne fabrique sciemment, et que tout le monde altère et falsifie sans le vouloir, qui se perpétue à la manière des chants primitifs et populaires,—ce récit, quand il se rapporte non à un héros, mais à un saint, s’appelle une légende.”

[850] Herodot. ii. 53.

History, philosophy, etc., properly so called and conforming to our ideas (of which the subsequent Greeks were the first creators), never belonged to more than a comparatively small number of thinking men, though their influence indirectly affected more or less the whole national mind. But when positive science and criticism, and the idea of an invariable sequence of events, came to supplant in the more vigorous intellects the old mythical creed of omnipresent personification, an inevitable scission was produced between the instructed few and the remaining community. The opposition between the scientific and the religious point of view was not slow in manifesting itself: in general language, indeed, both might seem to stand together, but in every particular case the admission of one involved the rejection of the other. According to the theory which then became predominant, the course of nature was held to move invariably on, by powers and attributes of its own, unless the gods chose to interfere and reverse it; but they had the power of interfering as often and to as great an extent as they thought fit. Here the question was at once opened, respecting a great variety of particular phænomena, whether they were to be regarded as natural or miraculous. No constant or discernible test could be suggested to discriminate the two: every man was called upon to settle the doubt for himself, and each settled it according to the extent of his knowledge, the force of his logic, the state of his health, his hopes, his fears, and many other considerations affecting his separate conclusion. In a question thus perpetually arising, and full of practical consequences, instructed minds, like Periklês, Thucydidês, and Euripidês, tended more and more to the scientific point of view,[851] in cases where the general public were constantly gravitating towards the religious.

[851] See Plutarch, Perikl. capp. 5, 32, 38; Cicero, De Republ. i. 15-16, ed. Maii.

The phytologist Theophrastus, in his valuable collection of facts respecting vegetable organization, is often under the necessity of opposing his scientific interpretation of curious incidents in the vegetable world to the religious interpretation of them which he found current. Anomalous phænomena in the growth or decay of trees were construed as signs from the gods, and submitted to a prophet for explanation (see Histor. Plantar. ii. 3, iv. 16; v. 3).

We may remark, however, that the old faith had still a certain hold over his mind. In commenting on the story of the willow-tree at Philippi, and the venerable old plane-tree at Antandros (more than sixty feet high, and requiring four men to grasp it round in the girth), having been blown down by a high wind, and afterwards spontaneously resuming their erect posture, he offers some explanations how such a phænomenon might have happened, but he admits, at the end, that there may be something extra-natural in the case, Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἴσως ἔξω φυσικῆς αἰτίας ἔστιν, etc. (De Caus. Plant. v. 4): see a similar miracle in reference to the cedar-tree of Vespasian (Tacit. Hist. ii. 78).

Euripidês, in his lost tragedy called Μελανίππη Σοφὴ, placed in the month of Melanippê a formal discussion and confutation of the whole doctrine of τέρατα, or supernatural indications (Dionys. Halicar. Ars Rhetoric. p. 300-356, Reisk). Compare the Fables of Phædrus, iii. 3; Plutarch, Sept. Sap. Conviv. ch. 3. p. 149; and the curious philosophical explanation by which the learned men of Alexandria tranquillized the alarms of the vulgar, on occasion of the serpent said to have been seen entwined round the head of the crucified Kleomenês (Plutarch, Kleomen. c. 39).

It is one part of the duty of an able physician, according to the Hippocratic treatise called Prognosticon (c. 1. t. ii. p. 112, ed. Littré), when he visits his patient, to examine whether there is anything divine in the malady, ἅμα δὲ καὶ εἴ τι θεῖον ἔνεστιν ἐν τῇσι νούσοισι: this, however, does not agree with the memorable doctrine laid down in the treatise, De Aëre, Locis et Aquis (c. 22. p. 78, ed. Littré), and cited hereafter, in this chapter. Nor does Galen seem to have regarded it as harmonizing with the general views of Hippocratês. In the excellent Prolegomena of M. Littré to his edition of Hippocratês (t. i. p. 76) will be found an inedited scholium, wherein the opinion of Baccheius and other physicians is given, that the affections of the plague were to be looked upon as divine, inasmuch as the disease came from God; and also the opinion of Xenophôn, the friend of Praxagoras, that the “genus of days of crisis” in fever was divine; “For (said Xenophôn) just as the Dioskuri, being gods, appear to the mariner in the storm and bring him salvation, so also do the days of crisis, when they arrive, in fever.” Galen, in commenting upon this doctrine of Xenophôn, says that the author “has expressed his own individual feeling, but has no way set forth the opinion of Hippocratês:” Ὁ δὲ τῶν κρισίμων γένος ἡμερῶν εἰπὼν εἶναι θεῖον, ἑαυτοῦ τι πάθος ὡμολόγησεν· οὐ μὴν Ἱπποκράτους γε τὴν γνώμην ἔδειξεν (Galen, Opp. t. v. p. 120, ed. Basil).

The comparison of the Dioskuri appealed to by Xenophôn is a precise reproduction of their function as described in the Homeric Hymn (Hymn xxxiii. 10): his personification of the “days of crisis” introduces the old religious agency to fill up a gap in his medical science.

I annex an illustration from the Hindoo vein of thought:—“It is a rule with the Hindoos to bury, and not to burn, the bodies of those who die of the small pox: for (say they) the small pox is not only caused by the goddess Davey, but is, in fact, Davey herself; and to burn the body of a person affected with this disease, is, in reality, neither more nor less than to burn the goddess.” (Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections, etc., vol. i. ch. xxv. p. 221.)

The age immediately prior to this unsettled condition of thought is the really mythopœic age; in which the creative faculties of the society know no other employment, and the mass of the society no other mental demand. The perfect expression of such a period, in its full peculiarity and grandeur, is to be found in the Iliad and Odyssey,—poems of which we cannot determine the exact date, but which seem both to have existed prior to the first Olympiad, 776 B. C., our earliest trustworthy mark of Grecian time. For some time after that event, the mythopœic tendencies continued in vigor (Arktinus, Leschês, Eumêlus, and seemingly most of the Hesiodic poems, fall within or shortly after the first century of recorded Olympiads); but from and after this first century, we may trace the operation of causes which gradually enfeebled and narrowed them, altering the point of view from which the mythes were looked at. What these causes were, it will be necessary briefly to intimate.

The foremost and most general of all is, the expansive force of Grecian intellect itself,—a quality in which this remarkable people stand distinguished from all their neighbors and contemporaries. Most, if not all nations have had mythes, but no nation except the Greeks have imparted to them immortal charm and universal interest; and the same mental capacities, which raised the great men of the poetic age to this exalted level, also pushed forward their successors to outgrow the early faith in which the mythes had been generated and accredited.

One great mark, as well as means, of such intellectual expansion, was the habit of attending to, recording, and combining, positive and present facts, both domestic and foreign. In the genuine Grecian epic, the theme was an unknown and aoristic past; but even as early as the Works and Days of Hesiod, the present begins to figure: the man who tills the earth appears in his own solitary nakedness, apart from gods and heroes—bound indeed by serious obligations to the gods, but contending against many difficulties which are not to be removed by simple reliance on their help. The poet denounces his age in the strongest terms as miserable, degraded and profligate, and looks back with reverential envy to the extinct heroic races who fought at Troy and Thêbes. Yet bad as the present time is, the Muse condescends to look at it along with him, and to prescribe rules for human life—with the assurance that if a man be industrious, frugal, provident, just and friendly in his dealings, the gods will recompense him with affluence and security. Nor does the Muse disdain, while holding out such promise, to cast herself into the most homely details of present existence and to give advice thoroughly practical and calculating. Men whose minds were full of the heroes of Homer, called Hesiod in contempt the poet of the Helots; and the contrast between the two is certainly a remarkable proof of the tendency of Greek poetry towards the present and the positive.

Other manifestations of the same tendency become visible in the age of Archilochus (B. C. 680-660). In an age when metrical composition and the living voice are the only means whereby the productive minds of a community make themselves felt, the invention of a new metre, new forms of song and recitation, or diversified accompaniments, constitute an epoch. The iambic, elegiac, choric, and lyric poetry, from Archilochus downwards, all indicate purposes in the poet, and impressibilities of the hearers, very different from those of the ancient epic. In all of them the personal feeling of the poet and the specialties of present time and place, are brought prominently forward, while in the Homeric hexameter the poet is a mere nameless organ of the historical Muse—the hearers are content to learn, believe, and feel, the incidents of a foregone world, and the tale is hardly less suitable to one time and place than to another. The iambic metre (we are told) was first suggested to Archilochus by the bitterness of his own private antipathies; and the mortal wounds inflicted by his lampoons, upon the individuals against whom they were directed, still remain attested, though the verses themselves have perished. It was the metre (according to the well-known judgment of Aristotle) most nearly approaching to common speech, and well suited both to the coarse vein of sentiment, and to the smart and emphatic diction of its inventor.[852] Simonidês of Amorgus, the younger contemporary of Archilochus, employed the same metre, with less bitterness, but with an anti-heroic tendency not less decided. His remaining fragments present a mixture of teaching and sarcasm, having a distinct bearing upon actual life,[853] and carrying out the spirit which partially appears in the Hesiodic Works and Days. Of Alkæus and Sapphô, though unfortunately we are compelled to speak of them upon hearsay only, we know enough to satisfy us that their own personal sentiments and sufferings, their relations private or public with the contemporary world, constituted the soul of those short effusions which gave them so much celebrity:[854] and in the few remains of the elegiac poets preserved to us—Kallinus, Mimnermus, Tyrtæus—the impulse of some present motive or circumstance is no less conspicuous. The same may also be said of Solôn, Theognis and Phokylidês, who preach, encourage, censure, or complain, but do not recount—and in whom a profound ethical sensibility, unknown to the Homeric poems, manifests itself: the form of poetry (to use the words of Solôn himself) is made the substitute for the public speaking of the agora.[855]

[852] Horat. de Art. Poet. 79:—

“Archilochum proprio rabies armavit Iambo,” etc.

Compare Epist. i. 19, 23, and Epod. vi. 12; Aristot. Rhetor. iii. 8, 7, and Poetic. c. 4—also Synesius de Somniis—ὥσπερ Ἀλκαῖος καὶ Ἀρχίλοχος, οἳ δεδαπανήκασι τὴν εὐστομίαν εἰς τὸν οἰκεῖον βίον ἑκάτερος (Alcæi Fragment. Halle, 1810, p. 205). Quintilian speaks in striking language of the power of expression manifested by Archilochus (x. 1, 60).

[853] Simonidês of Amorgus touches briefly, but in a tone of contempt upon the Trojan war—~γυναικὸς οὕνεκ᾽~ ἀμφιδηριωμένους (Simonid. Fragm. 8. p. 36. v. 118); he seems to think it absurd that so destructive a struggle should have taken place “pro unâ mulierculâ,” to use the phrase of Mr. Payne Knight.

[854] See Quintilian, x. 1, 63. Horat. Od. i. 32; ii. 13. Aristot. Polit. iii. 10, 4. Dionys. Halic. observes (Vett. Scriptt. Censur. v. p. 421) respecting Alkæus—πολλαχοῦ γοῦν τὸ μέτρον εἴ τις περιέλοι, ῥητορικὴν ἂν εὕροι πολιτείαν; and Strabo (xiii. p. 617), τὰ στασιωτικὰ καλούμενα τοῦ Ἀλκαίου ποιήματα.

There was a large dash of sarcasm and homely banter aimed at neighbors and contemporaries in the poetry of Sapphô, apart from her impassioned love-songs—ἄλλως σκώπτει τὸν ἄγροικον νύμφιον καὶ τὸν θυρωρὸν τὸν ἐν τοῖς γάμοις, εὐτελέστατα καὶ ἐν πέζοις ὀνόμασι μᾶλλον ἢ ἐν ποιητικοῖς. Ὥστε αὐτῆς μᾶλλόν ἐστι τὰ ποιήματα ταῦτα διαλέγεσθαι ἢ ἄδειν· οὐδ᾽ ἂν ἅρμοσαι πρὸς τὸν χόρον ἢ πρὸς τὴν λύραν, εἰ μή τις εἴη χόρος διαλεκτικός (Dêmêtr. Phaler, De Interpret. c. 167).

Compare also Herodot. ii. 135, who mentions the satirical talent of Sapphô, employed against her brother for an extravagance about the courtezan Rhodôpis.

[855] Solôn, Fragm. iv. 1, ed. Schneidewin:—

Αὐτὸς κήρυξ ἦλθον ἀφ᾽ ἱμερτῆς Σαλαμῖνος Κόσμον ἐπέων ᾠδὴν ἀντ᾽ ἀγορῆς θέμενος, etc.

See Brandis, Handbuch der Griechischen Philosophie, sect. xxiv.-xxv. Plato states that Solôn, in his old age, engaged in the composition of an epic poem, which he left unfinished, on the subject of the supposed island of Atlantis and Attica (Plato, Timæus, p. 21, and Kritias, p. 113). Plutarch, Solôn, c. 31.

Doubtless all these poets made abundant use of the ancient mythes, but it was by turning them to present account, in the way of illustration, or flattery, or contrast,—a tendency which we may usually detect even in the compositions of Pindar, in spite of the lofty and heroic strain which they breathe throughout. That narrative or legendary poetry still continued to be composed during the seventh and sixth centuries before the Christian æra is not to be questioned; but it exhibited the old epical character without the old epical genius; both the inspiration of the composer and the sympathies of the audience had become more deeply enlisted in the world before them, and disposed to fasten on incidents of their own actual experience. From Solôn and Theognis we pass to the abandonment of all metrical restrictions and to the introduction of prose writing,—a fact, the importance of which it is needless to dwell upon,—marking as well the increased familiarity with written records, as the commencement of a separate branch of literature for the intellect, apart from the imagination and emotions wherein the old legends had their exclusive root.

Egypt was first unreservedly opened to the Greeks during the reign of Psammetichus, about B. C. 660; gradually it became much frequented by them for military or commercial purposes, or for simple curiosity, and enlarged the range of their thoughts and observations, while it also imparted to them that vein of mysticism, which overgrew the primitive simplicity of the Homeric religion, and of which I have spoken in a former chapter. They found in it a long-established civilization, colossal wonders of architecture, and a certain knowledge of astronomy and geometry, elementary indeed, but in advance of their own. Moreover it was a portion of their present world, and it contributed to form in them an interest for noting and describing the actual realities before them. A sensible progress is made in the Greek mind during the two centuries from B. C. 700 to B. C. 500, in the record and arrangement of historical facts: an historical sense arises in the superior intellects, and some idea of evidence as a discriminating test between fact and fiction. And this progressive tendency was further stimulated by increased communication and by more settled and peaceful social relations between the various members of the Hellenic world, to which may be added material improvements, purchased at the expense of a period of turbulence and revolution, in the internal administration of each separate state. The Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian games became frequented by visitors from the most distant parts of Greece: the great periodical festival in the island of Dêlos brought together the citizens of every Ionic community, with their wives and children, and an ample display of wealth and ornaments.[856] Numerous and flourishing colonies were founded in Sicily, the south of Italy, the coasts of Epirus and of the Euxine Sea: the Phokæans explored the whole of the Adriatic, established Massalia, and penetrated even as far as the south of Ibêria, with which they carried on a lucrative commerce.[857] The geographical ideas of the Greeks were thus both expanded and rectified: the first preparation of a map, by Anaximander the disciple of Thalês, is an epoch in the history of science. We may note the ridicule bestowed by Herodotus both upon the supposed people called Hyperboreans and upon the idea of a circumfluous ocean-stream, as demonstrating the progress of the age in this department of inquiry.[858] And even earlier than Herodotus, Xanthus had noticed the occurrence of fossil marine productions in the interior of Asia Minor, which led him to reflections on the changes of the earth’s surface with respect to land and water.[859]

[856] Homer, Hymn. ad Apollin. 155; Thucydid. iii. 104.

[857] Herodot. i. 163.

[858] Herodot. iv. 36. γελῶ δὲ ὁρέων Γῆς περιόδους γράψαντας πολλοὺς ἤδη, καὶ οὐδένα νόον ἔχοντας ἐξηγησάμενον· οἳ Ὠκέανόν τε ῥέοντα γράφουσι πέριξ τὴν γῆν, ἐοῦσαν κυκλοτερέα ὡς ἀπὸ τόρνου, etc., a remark probably directed against Hekatæus.

Respecting the map of Anaximander, Strabo, i. p. 7; Diogen. Laërt. ii. 1; Agathemer ap. Geograph. Minor. i. 1. πρῶτος ἐτόλμησε τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐν πίνακι γράψαι.

Aristagoras of Milêtus, who visited Sparta to solicit aid for the revolted Ionians against Darius, brought with him a brazen tablet or map, by means of which he exhibited the relative position of places in the Persian empire (Herodot. v. 49).

[859] Xanthus ap. Strabo. i. p. 50; xii. p. 579. Compare Creuzer, Fragmenta Xanthi, p. 162.

If then we look down the three centuries and a half which elapsed between the commencement of the Olympic æra and the age of Herodotus and Thucydidês, we shall discern a striking advance in the Greeks,—ethical, social and intellectual. Positive history and chronology has not only been created, but in the case of Thucydidês, the qualities necessary to the historiographer, in their application to recent events, have been developed with a degree of perfection never since surpassed. Men’s minds have assumed a gentler as well as a juster cast; and acts come to be criticized with reference to their bearing on the internal happiness of a well-regulated community, as well as upon the standing harmony of fraternal states. While Thucydidês treats the habitual and licensed piracy, so coolly alluded to in the Homeric poems, as an obsolete enormity, many of the acts described in the old heroic and Theogonic legends were found not less repugnant to this improved tone of feeling. The battles of the gods with the Giants and Titans,—the castration of Uranus by his son Kronus,—the cruelty, deceit and licentiousness, often supposed both in the gods and heroes, provoked strong disapprobation. And the language of the philosopher Xenophanês, who composed both elegiac and iambic poems for the express purpose of denouncing such tales, is as vehement and unsparing as that of the Christian writers, who, eight centuries afterwards, attacked the whole scheme of paganism.[860]

[860] Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathemat. ix. 193. Fragm. 1. Poet. Græc. ed. Schneidewin. Diogen. Laërt. ix. 18.

Nor was it alone as an ethical and social critic that Xenophanês stood distinguished. He was one of a great and eminent triad—Thalês and Pythagoras being the others—who, in the sixth century before the Christian æra, first opened up those veins of speculative philosophy which occupied afterwards so large a portion of Grecian intellectual energy. Of the material differences between the three I do not here speak; I regard them only in reference to the Homeric and Hesiodic philosophy which preceded them, and from which all three deviated by a step, perhaps the most remarkable in all the history of philosophy. In the scheme of ideas common to Homer and to the Hesiodic Theogony (as has been already stated), we find nature distributed into a variety of personal agencies, administered according to the free-will of different Beings more or less analogous to man—each of these Beings having his own character, attributes and powers, his own sources of pain and pleasure, and his own especial sympathies or antipathies with human individuals; each being determined to act or forbear, to grant favor or inflict injury in his own department of phænomena, according as men, or perhaps other Beings analogous to himself, might conciliate or offend him. The Gods, properly so called, (those who bore a proper name and received some public or family worship,) were the most commanding and capital members amidst this vast network of agents visible and invisible, spread over the universe.[861] The whole view of nature was purely religious and subjective, the spontaneous suggestion of the early mind. It proceeded from the instinctive tendencies of the feelings and imagination to transport, to the world without, the familiar type of free-will and conscious personal action: above all, it took deep hold of the emotions, from the widely extended sympathy which it so perpetually called forth between man and nature.[862]

[861] Hesiod, Opp. Di. 122; Homer, Hymn. ad Vener. 260.

[862] A defence of the primitive faith, on this ground, is found in Plutarch, Quæstion. Sympos. vii. 4, 4, p. 703.

The first attempt to disenthral the philosophic intellect from this all-personifying religious faith, and to constitute a method of interpreting nature distinct from the spontaneous inspirations of untaught minds, is to be found in Thalês, Xenophanês and Pythagoras, in the sixth century before the Christian æra. It is in them that we first find the idea of Person tacitly set aside or limited, and an impersonal Nature conceived as the object of study. The divine husband and wife, Oceanus and Têthys, parents of many gods and of the Oceanic nymphs, together with the avenging goddess Styx, are translated into the material substance water, or, as we ought rather to say, the Fluid: and Thalês set himself to prove that water was the primitive element, out of which all the different natural substances had been formed.[863] He, as well as Xenophanês and Pythagoras, started the problem of physical philosophy, with its objective character and invariable laws, to be discoverable by a proper and methodical application of the human intellect. The Greek word Φύσις, denoting nature, and its derivatives physics and physiology, unknown in that large sense to Homer or Hesiod, as well as the word Kosmos, to denote the mundane system, first appears with these philosophers.[864] The elemental analysis of Thalês—the one unchangeable cosmic substance, varying only in appearance, but not in reality, as suggested by Xenophanês,—and the geometrical and arithmetical combinations of Pythagoras,—all these were different ways of approaching the explanation of physical phænomena, and each gave rise to a distinct school or succession of philosophers. But they all agreed in departing from the primitive method, and in recognizing determinate properties, invariable sequences, and objective truth, in nature—either independent of willing or designing agents, or serving to these latter at once as an indispensable subject-matter and as a limiting condition. Xenophanês disclaimed openly all knowledge respecting the gods, and pronounced that no man could have any means of ascertaining when he was right and when he was wrong, in affirmations respecting them:[865] while Pythagoras represents in part the scientific tendencies of his age, in part also the spirit of mysticism and of special fraternities for religious and ascetic observance, which became diffused throughout Greece in the sixth century before the Christian æra. This was another point which placed him in antipathy with the simple, unconscious and demonstrative faith of the old poets, as well as with the current legends.

[863] Aristotel. Metaphys. i. 3.

[864] Plutarch, Placit. Philos. ii. 1; also Stobæus, Eclog. Physic. i. 22, where the difference between the Homeric expressions and those of the subsequent philosophers is seen. Damm, Lexic. Homeric. v. Φύσις; Alexander von Humboldt, Kosmos, p. 76, the note 9 on page 62 of that admirable work.

The title of the treatises of the early philosophers (Melissus, Dêmokritus, Parmenidês, Empedoclês, Alkmæôn, etc.) was frequently Περὶ Φύσεως (Galen. Opp. tom. i. p. 56, ed. Basil).

[865] Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empiric. vii. 50; viii. 326.—

Καὶ τὸ μὲν οὖν σαφὲς οὔτις ἀνὴρ ἴδεν, οὔτε τίς ἐστιν Εἰδὼς ἀμφὶ θεῶν τε καὶ ἅσσα λέγω περὶ πάντων· Εἰ γὰρ καὶ τὰ μάλιστα τύχοι τετελεσμένον εἰπῶν, Αὐτος ὅμως οὐκ οἶδε, δόκος δ᾽ ἐπὶ πᾶσι τέτυκται.

Compare Aristotel. De Xenophane, Zenone, et Georgiâ, capp. 1-2.

If these distinguished men, when they ceased to follow the primitive instinct of tracing the phænomena of nature to personal and designing agents, passed over, not at once to induction and observation, but to a misemployment of abstract words, substituting metaphysical eideôla in the place of polytheism, and to an exaggerated application of certain narrow physical theories—we must remember that nothing else could be expected from the scanty stock of facts then accessible, and that the most profound study of the human mind points out such transition as an inevitable law of intellectual progress.[866] At present, we have to compare them only with that state of the Greek mind[867] which they partially superseded, and with which they were in decided opposition. The rudiments of physical science were conceived and developed among superior men; but the religious feeling of the mass was averse to them; and the aversion, though gradually mitigated, never wholly died away. Some of the philosophers were not backward in charging others with irreligion, while the multitude seems to have felt the same sentiment more or less towards all—or towards that postulate of constant sequences, with determinate conditions of occurrence, which scientific study implies, and which they could not reconcile with their belief in the agency of the gods, to whom they were constantly praying for special succor and blessings.

[866] See the treatise of M. Auguste Comte (Cours de Philosophie Positive), and his doctrine of the three successive stages of the human mind in reference to scientific study—the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive;—a doctrine laid down generally in his first lecture (vol. i. p. 4-12), and largely applied and illustrated throughout his instructive work. It is also re-stated and elucidated by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, vol. ii. p. 610.

[867] “Human wisdom (ἀνθρωπίνη σοφία), as contrasted with the primitive theology (οἱ ἀρχαῖοι καὶ διατρίβοντες περὶ τὰς θεολογίας),” to take the words of Aristotle (Meteorolog. ii. 1. pp. 41-42, ed. Tauchnitz).

The discrepancy between the scientific and the religious point of view was dealt with differently by different philosophers. Thus Socratês openly admitted it, and assigned to each a distinct and independent province. He distributed phænomena into two classes: one, wherein the connection of antecedent and consequent was invariable and ascertainable by human study, and therefore future results accessible to a well-instructed foresight; the other, and those, too, the most comprehensive and important, which the gods had reserved for themselves and their own unconditional agency, wherein there was no invariable or ascertainable sequence, and where the result could only be foreknown by some omen, prophecy, or other special inspired communication from themselves. Each of these classes was essentially distinct, and required to be looked at and dealt with in a manner radically incompatible with the other. Socratês held it wrong to apply the scientific interpretation to the latter, or the theological interpretation to the former. Physics and astronomy, in his opinion, belonged to the divine class of phænomena, in which human research was insane, fruitless, and impious.[868]

[868] Xenoph. Memor. i. 1, 6-9. Τὰ μὲν ἀναγκαῖα (Σωκράτης) συνεβούλευε καὶ πράττειν, ὡς ἐνόμιζεν ἄριστ᾽ ἂν πραχθῆναι· περὶ δὲ τῶν ἀδήλων ὅπως ἀποβήσοιτο, μαντευσομένους ἔπεμπεν, εἰ ποιητέα. Καὶ τοὺς μέλλοντας οἴκους τε καὶ πόλεις καλῶς οἰκήσειν μαντικῆς ἔφη προσδεῖσθαι· τεκτονικὸν μὲν γὰρ ἢ χαλκευτικὸν ἢ γεωργικὸν ἢ ἀνθρώπων ἀρχικὸν, ἢ τῶν τοιούτων ἔργων ἐξεταστικὸν, ἢ λογιστικὸν, ἢ οἰκονομικὸν, ἢ στρατηγικὸν γενέσθαι, πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα, μαθήματα καὶ ἀνθρώπου γνώμῃ αἱρετέα, ἐνόμιζεν εἶναι· τὰ δὲ μέγιστα τῶν ἐν τούτοις ἔφη ~τοὺς θεοὺς ἑαυτοῖς καταλείπεσθαι~, ὧν οὐδὲν δῆλον εἶναι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις.... Τοὺς δὲ μηδὲν τῶν τοιούτων οἰομένους εἶναι δαιμόνιον, ἀλλὰ πάντα τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης γνώμης, δαιμονᾷν ἔφη· δαιμονᾷν δὲ καὶ τοὺς μαντευομένους ἃ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἔδωκαν οἱ θεοὶ μαθοῦσι διακρίνειν.... Ἔφη δὲ δεῖν, ἃ μὲν μαθόντας ποιεῖν ἔδωκαν οἱ θεοὶ, μανθάνειν· ἃ δὲ μὴ δῆλα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἔστι, πειρᾶσθαι διὰ μαντικῆς παρὰ τῶν θεῶν πυνθάνεσθαι· τοὺς θεοὺς γὰρ, οἷς ἂν ὦσιν ἵλεῳ, σημαίνειν. Compare also Memorab. iv. 7. 7; and Cyropæd. i. 6, 3, 23-46.

Physical and astronomical phænomena are classified by Socratês among the divine class, interdicted to human study (Memor. i. 1,13): τὰ θεῖα or δαιμόνια as supposed to τἀνθρώπεια. Plato (Phileb. c. 16; Legg. x. p. 886-889; xii. p. 967) held the sun and stars to be gods, each animated with its special soul: he allowed astronomical investigation to the extent necessary for avoiding blasphemy respecting these beings—μέχρι τοῦ μὴ βλασφημεῖν περὶ αὐτά (vii. 821).

On the other hand, Hippocratês, the contemporary of Socratês, denied the discrepancy, and merged into one those two classes of phænomena,—the divine and the scientifically determinable,—which the latter had put asunder. Hippocratês treated all phænomena as at once both divine and scientifically determinable. In discussing certain peculiar bodily disorders found among the Scythians, he observes, “The Scythians themselves ascribe the cause of this to God, and reverence and bow down to such sufferers, each man fearing that he may suffer the like; and I myself think too that these affections, as well as all others, are divine: no one among them is either more divine or more human than another, but all are on the same footing, and all divine; nevertheless each of them has its own physical conditions, and not one occurs without such physical conditions.”[869]

[869] Hippocratês, De Aëre, Locis et Aquis, c. 22 (p. 78, ed. Littré, sect. 106 ed. Petersen): Ἔτι τε πρὸς τουτέοισι εὐνούχιαι γίγνονται οἱ πλεῖστοι ἐν Σκύθῃσι, καὶ γυναικηΐα ἐργάζονται καὶ ὡς αἱ γυναῖκες διαλέγονταί τε ὁμοίως· καλεῦνταί τε οἱ τοιοῦτοι ἀνανδριεῖς. Οἱ μὲν οὖν ἐπιχώριοι τὴν αἰτίην προστιθέασι θεῷ καὶ σέβονται τουτέους τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ προσκυνέουσι, δεδοικότες περὶ ἑωϋτέων ἕκαστοι. Ἐμοὶ δὲ καὶ αὐτέῳ δοκέει ταῦτα τὰ πάθεα θεῖα εἶναι, καὶ τἄλλα πάντα, καὶ οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἑτέρου θειότερον οὐδὲ ἀνθρωπινώτερον, ἀλλὰ πάντα θεῖα· ἕκαστον δὲ ἔχει φύσιν τῶν τοιουτέων, καὶ οὐδὲν ἄνευ φύσιος γίγνεται. Καὶ τοῦτο τὸ πάθος, ὥς μοι δοκέει γίγνεσθαι, φράσω, etc.

Again, sect. 112. Ἀλλὰ γὰρ, ὥσπερ καὶ πρότερον ἔλεξα, θεῖα μὲν καὶ ταῦτά ἐστι ὁμοίως τοῖσι ἄλλοισι, γίγνεται δὲ κατὰ φύσιν ἕκαστα.

Compare the remarkable treatise of Hippocratês, De Morbo Sacro, capp. 1 and 18, vol. vi. p. 352-394, ed. Littré. See this opinion of Hippocratês illustrated by the doctrines of some physical philosophers stated in Aristotle, Physic. ii. 8. ὥσπερ ὕει ὁ Ζεὺς, οὐχ ὅπως τὸν σῖτον αὐξήσῃ, ἀλλ᾽ ἐξ ἀνάγκης, etc. Some valuable observations on the method of Hippocratês are also found in Plato, Phædr. p. 270.

A third distinguished philosopher of the same day, Anaxagoras, allegorizing Zeus and the other personal gods, proclaimed the doctrine of one common pervading Mind, as having first established order and system in the mundane aggregate, which had once been in a state of chaos—and as still manifesting its uninterrupted agency for wise and good purposes. This general doctrine obtained much admiration from Plato and Aristotle; but they at the same time remarked with surprise, that Anaxagoras never made any use at all of his own general doctrine for the explanation of the phænomena of nature,—that he looked for nothing but physical causes and connecting laws,[870]—so that in fact the spirit of his particular researches was not materially different from those of Demokritus or Leukippus, whatever might be the difference in their general theories. His investigations in meteorology and astronomy, treating the heavenly bodies as subjects for calculation, have been already noticed as offensive, not only to the general public of Greece, but even to Socratês himself among them: he was tried at Athens, and seems to have escaped condemnation only by voluntary exile.[871]

[870] See the graphic picture in Plato, Phædon. p. 97-98 (cap. 46-47): compare Plato, Legg. xii. p. 967; Aristotel. Metaphysic. i. p. 13-14 (ed. Brandis); Plutarch, Defect. Oracul. p. 435.

Simplicius, Commentar. in Aristotel. Physic. p. 38. καὶ ὅπερ δὲ ὁ ἐν Φαίδωνι Σωκράτης ἐγκαλεῖ τῷ Ἀναξαγόρᾳ, τὸ ἐν ταῖς τῶν κατὰ μέρος αἰτιολογίαις μὴ τῷ νῷ κεχρῆσθαι, ἀλλὰ ταῖς ὑλικαῖς ἀποδόσεσιν, οἰκεῖον ἦν τῇ φυσιολογίᾳ. Anaxagoras thought that the superior intelligence of men, as compared with other animals, arose from his possession of hands (Aristot. de Part. Animal. iv. 10. p. 687, ed. Bekk.).

[871] Xenophôn, Memorab. iv. 7. Socratês said, καὶ παραφρονῆσαι τὸν ταῦτα μεριμνῶντα οὐδὲν ἧττον ἢ Ἀναξαγόρας παρεφρόνησεν, ὁ μέγιστον φρονήσας ἐπὶ τῷ τὰς τῶν θεῶν μηχανὰς ἐξηγεῖσθαι, etc. Compare Schaubach, Anaxagoræ Fragment. p. 50-141; Plutarch, Nikias, 23, and Periklês, 6-32; Diogen. Laërt. ii. 10-14.

The Ionic philosophy, from which Anaxagoras receded more in language than in spirit, seems to have been the least popular of all the schools, though some of the commentators treat it as conformable to vulgar opinion, because it confined itself for the most part to phænomenal explanations, and did not recognize the noumena of Plato, or the τὸ ἓν νοητὸν of Parmenidês,—“qualis fuit Ionicorum, quæ tum dominabatur, ratio, vulgari opinione et communi sensu comprobata” (Karsten, Parmenidis Fragment, De Parmenidis Philosophiâ, p. 154). This is a mistake: the Ionic philosophers, who constantly searched for and insisted upon physical laws, came more directly into conflict with the sentiment of the multitude than the Eleatic school.

The larger atmospheric phænomena were connected in the most intimate manner with Grecian religious feeling and uneasiness (see Demokritus ap. Sect. Empiric. ix. sect. 19-24. p. 552-554, Fabric.): the attempts of Anaxagoras and Demokritus to explain them were more displeasing to the public than the Platonic speculations (Demokritus ap. Aristot. Meteorol. ii. 7; Stobæus, Eclog. Physic. p. 594: compare Mullach, Democriti Fragmenta, lib. iv. p. 394).

The three eminent men just named, all essentially different from each other, may be taken as illustrations of the philosophical mind of Greece during the last half of the fifth century B. C. Scientific pursuits had acquired a powerful hold, and adjusted themselves in various ways with the prevalent religious feelings of the age. Both Hippocratês and Anaxagoras modified their ideas of the divine agency so as to suit their thirst for scientific research. According to the former, the gods were the really efficient agents in the production of all phænomena,—the mean and indifferent not less than the terrific or tutelary. Being thus alike connected with all phænomena, they were specially associated with none—and the proper task of the inquirer was, to find out those rules and conditions by which (he assumed) their agency was always determined, and according to which it might be foretold. And this led naturally to the proceeding which Plato and Aristotle remark in Anaxagoras,—that the all-governing and Infinite Mind, having been announced in sublime language at the beginning of his treatise, was afterward left out of sight, and never applied to the explanation of particular phænomena, being as much consistent with one modification of nature as with another. Now such a view of the divine agency could never be reconciled with the religious feelings of the ordinary Grecian believer, even as they stood in the time of Anaxagoras; still less could it have been reconciled with those of the Homeric man, more than three centuries earlier. By him Zeus and Athênê were conceived as definite Persons, objects of special reverence, hopes, and fears, and animated with peculiar feelings, sometimes of favor, sometimes of wrath, towards himself or his family or country. They were propitiated by his prayers, and prevailed upon to lend him succor in danger—but offended and disposed to bring evil upon him if he omitted to render thanks or sacrifice. This sense of individual communion with, and dependence upon them was the essence of his faith; and with that faith, the all-pervading Mind proclaimed by Anaxagoras—which had no more concern with one man or one phænomenon than with another,—could never be brought into harmony. Nor could the believer, while he prayed with sincerity for special blessings or protection from the gods, acquiesce in the doctrine of Hippocratês, that their agency was governed by constant laws and physical conditions.

That radical discord between the mental impulses of science and religion, which manifests itself so decisively during the most cultivated ages of Greece, and which harassed more or less so many of the philosophers, produced its most afflicting result in the condemnation of Socratês by the Athenians. According to the remarkable passage recently cited from Xenophôn, it will appear that Socratês agreed with his countrymen in denouncing physical speculations as impious,—that he recognized the religious process of discovery as a peculiar branch, coördinate with the scientific,—and that he laid down a theory, of which the basis was, the confessed divergence of these two processes from the beginning—thereby seemingly satisfying the exigencies of religious hopes and fears on the one hand, and those of reason, in her ardor for ascertaining the invariable laws of phænomena, on the other. We may remark that the theory of this religious and extra-scientific process of discovery was at that time sufficiently complete; for Socratês could point out, that those anomalous phænomena which the gods had reserved for themselves, and into which science was forbidden to pry, were yet accessible to the seekings of the pious man, through oracles, omens, and other exceptional means of communication which divine benevolence vouchsafed to keep open. Considering thus to how great an extent Socratês was identified in feeling with the religious public of Athens, and considering moreover that his performance of open religious duties was assiduous—we might wonder, as Xenophôn does wonder,[872] how it could have happened that the Athenian dikasts mistook him at the end of his life for an irreligious man. But we see, by the defence which Xenophôn as well as Plato gives for him, that the Athenian public really considered him, in spite of his own disclaimer, as homogeneous with Anaxagoras and the other physical inquirers, because he had applied similar scientific reasonings to moral and social phænomena. They looked upon him with the same displeasure as he himself felt towards the physical philosophers, and we cannot but admit that in this respect they were more unfortunately consistent than he was. It is true that the mode of defence adopted by Socratês contributed much to the verdict found against him, and that he was further weighed down by private offence given to powerful individuals and professions; but all these separate antipathies found their best account in swelling the cry against him as an over-curious sceptic, and an impious innovator.

[872] Xenophôn, Memorab. i. 1.

Now the scission thus produced between the superior minds and the multitude, in consequence of the development of science and the scientific point of view, is a fact of great moment in the history of Greek progress, and forms an important contrast between the age of Homer and Hesiod and that of Thucydidês; though in point of fact even the multitude, during this later age, were partially modified by those very scientific views which they regarded with disfavor. And we must keep in view the primitive religious faith, once universal and unobstructed, but subsequently disturbed by the intrusions of science; we must follow the great change, as well in respect to enlarged intelligence as to refinement of social and ethical feeling, among the Greeks, from the Hesiodic times downward, in order to render some account of the altered manner in which the ancient mythes came to be dealt with. These mythes, the spontaneous growth of a creative and personifying interpretation of nature, had struck root in Grecian associations at a time when the national faith required no support from what we call evidence. They were now submitted, not simply to a feeling, imagining, and believing public, but also to special classes of instructed men,—philosophers, historians, ethical teachers, and critics,—and to a public partially modified by their ideas[873] as well as improved by a wider practical experience. They were not intended for such an audience; they had ceased to be in complete harmony even with the lower strata of intellect and sentiment,—much more so with the higher. But they were the cherished inheritance of a past time; they were interwoven in a thousand ways with the religious faith, the patriotic retrospect, and the national worship, of every Grecian community; the general type of the mythe was the ancient, familiar, and universal form of Grecian thought, which even the most cultivated men had imbibed in their childhood from the poets,[874] and by which they were to a certain degree unconsciously enslaved. Taken as a whole the mythes had acquired prescriptive and ineffaceable possession: to attack, call in question, or repudiate them, was a task painful even to undertake, and far beyond the power of any one to accomplish.

[873] It is curious to see that some of the most recondite doctrines of the Pythagorean philosophy were actually brought before the general Syracusan public in the comedies of Epicharmus: “In comœdiis suis personas sæpe ita colloqui fecit, ut sententias Pythagoricas et in universum sublimia vitæ præcepta immisceret” (Grysar, De Doriensium Comœdiâ, p. 111, Col. 1828). The fragments preserved in Diogen. Laërt. (iii. 9-17) present both criticisms upon the Hesiodic doctrine of a primæval chaos, and an exposition of the archetypal and immutable ideas (as opposed to the fluctuating phænomena of sense) which Plato afterwards adopted and systematized.

Epicharmus seems to have combined with this abstruse philosophy a strong vein of comic shrewdness and some turn to scepticism (Cicero, Epistol. ad Attic. i. 19): “ut crebro mihi vafer ille Siculus Epicharmus insusurret cantilenam suam.” Clemens Alex. Strom. v. p. 258. Νᾶφε καὶ μέμνασ᾽ ἀπιστεῖν· ἄρθρα ταῦτα τῶν φρενῶν. Ζῶμεν ἀριθμῷ καὶ λογισμῷ· ταῦτα γὰρ σώζει βροτοὺς. Also his contemptuous ridicule of the prophetesses of his time who cheated foolish women out of their money, pretending to universal knowledge, καὶ πάντα γιγνώσκοντι τῷ τηνᾶν λόγῳ (ap Polluc. ix. 81). See, about Epicharmus. O. Müller, Dorians, iv. 7, 4.

These dramas seem to have been exhibited at Syracuse between 480-460 B. C., anterior even to Chionidês and Magnês at Athens (Aristot. Poet. c. 3): he says ~πολλῷ~ πρότερος, which can hardly be literally exact. The critics of the Horatian age looked upon Epicharmus as the prototype of Plautus (Hor. Epistol. ii. 1. 58).

[874] The third book of the republic of Plato is particularly striking in reference to the use of the poets in education: see also his treatise De Legg. vii. p. 810-811. Some teachers made their pupils learn whole poets by heart (ὅλους ποιητὰς ἐκμανθάνων), others preferred extracts and selections.

For these reasons the anti-mythic vein of criticism was of no effect as a destroying force, but nevertheless its dissolving decomposing and transforming influence was very considerable. To accommodate the ancient mythes to an improved tone of sentiment and a newly created canon of credibility, was a function which even the wisest Greeks did not disdain, and which occupied no small proportion of the whole intellectual activity of the nation.

The mythes were looked at from a point of view completely foreign to the reverential curiosity and literal imaginative faith of the Homeric man; they were broken up and recast in order to force them into new moulds such as their authors had never conceived. We may distinguish four distinct classes of minds, in the literary age now under examination, as having taken them in hand—the poets, the logographers, the philosophers, and the historians.

With the poets and logographers, the mythical persons are real predecessors, and the mythical world an antecedent fact; but it is divine and heroic reality, not human; the present is only half-brother of the past (to borrow[875] an illustration from Pindar in his allusion to gods and men), remotely and generically, but not closely and specifically, analogous to it. As a general habit, the old feelings and the old unconscious faith, apart from all proof or evidence, still remain in their minds; but recent feelings have grown up which compel them to omit, to alter, sometimes even to reject and condemn, particular narratives.

[875] Pindar, Nem. vi. 1. Compare Simonidês, Fragm. 1 (Gaisford).

Pindar repudiates some stories and transforms others, because they are inconsistent with his conceptions of the gods. Thus he formally protests against the tale that Pelops had been killed and served up at table by his father, for the immortal gods to eat; he shrinks from the idea of imputing to them so horrid an appetite; he pronounces the tale to have been originally fabricated by a slanderous neighbor. Nor can he bring himself to recount the quarrels between different gods.[876] The amours of Zeus and Apollo are no way displeasing to him; but he occasionally suppresses some of the simple details of the old mythe, as deficient in dignity: thus, according to the Hesiodic narrative, Apollo was informed by a raven of the infidelity of the nymph Korônis: but the mention of the raven did not appear to Pindar consistent with the majesty of the god, and he therefore wraps up the mode of detection in vague and mysterious language.[877] He feels considerable repugnance to the character of Odysseus, and intimates more than once that Homer has unduly exalted him, by force of poetical artifice. With the character of the Æakid Ajax, on the other hand, he has the deepest sympathy, as well as with his untimely and inglorious death, occasioned by the undeserved preference of a less worthy rival.[878] He appeals for his authority usually to the Muse, but sometimes to “ancient sayings of men,” accompanied with a general allusion to story-tellers and bards,—admitting, however, that these stories present great discrepancy, and sometimes that they are false.[879] Yet the marvellous and the supernatural afford no ground whatever for rejecting a story: Pindar makes an express declaration to this effect in reference to the romantic adventures of Perseus and the Gorgon’s head.[880] He treats even those mythical characters, which conflict the most palpably with positive experience, as connected by a real genealogical thread with the world before him. Not merely the heroes of Troy and Thêbes, and the demigod seamen of Jasôn and the ship Argô, but also the Centaur Cheirôn, the hundred-headed Typhôs, the giant Alkyoneus, Antæus, Bellerophôn and Pegasus, the Chimæra, the Amazons and the Hyperboreans—all appear painted on the same canvas, and touched with the same colors, as the men of the recent and recorded past, Phalaris and Krœsus; only they are thrown back to a greater distance in the perspective.[881] The heroic ancestors of those great Æginetan, Thessalian, Thêban, Argeian, etc. families, whose present members the poet celebrates for their agonistic victories, sympathize with the exploits and second the efforts of their descendants: the inestimable value of a privileged breed and of the stamp of nature is powerfully contrasted with the impotence of unassisted teaching and practice.[882] The power and skill of the Argeian Theæus and his relatives as wrestlers, are ascribed partly to the fact that their ancestors Pamphaês in aforetime had hospitably entertained the Tyndarids Kastôr and Pollux.[883] Perhaps however the strongest proof of the sincerity of Pindar’s mythical faith is afforded when he notices a guilty incident with shame and repugnance, but with an unwilling confession of its truth, as in the case of the fratricide committed on Phôkus by his brothers Pêleus and Telamôn.[884]

[876] Pindar, Olymp. i. 30-55; ix. 32-45.

[877] Pyth. iii. 25. See the allusions to Semelê, Alkmêna, and Danaê, Pyth. iii. 98; Nem. x. 10. Compare also supra, chap. ix. p. 245.

[878] Pindar, Nem. vii. 20-30; viii. 23-31. Isthm. iii. 50-60.

It seems to be sympathy for Ajax, in odes addressed to noble Æginetan victors, which induces him thus to depreciate Odysseus; for he eulogizes Sisyphus, specially on account of his cunning and resources (Olymp. xiii. 50) in the ode addressed to Xenophôn the Corinthian.

[879] Olymp. i. 28; Nem. viii. 20; Pyth. i. 93; Olymp. vii. 55; Nem. vi. 43. φάντι δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων παλαιαὶ ῥήσιες, etc.

[880] Pyth. x. 49. Compare Pyth. xii. 11-22.

[881] Pyth. i. 17; iii. 4-7; iv. 12; viii. 16. Nem. iv. 27-32; v. 89. Isthm. v. 31; vi. 44-48. Olymp. iii. 17; viii. 63; xiii. 61-87.

[882] Nem. iii. 39; v. 40. συγγενὴς εὐδοξία—πότμος συγγενής; v. 8. Olymp. ix. 103. Pindar seems to introduce φύᾳ in cases where Homer would have mentioned the divine assistance.

[883] Nem. x. 37-51. Compare the family legend of the Athenian Dêmocrates, in Plato, Lysis, p. 295.

[884] Nem. v. 12-16.

Æschylus and Sophoklês exhibit the same spontaneous and uninquiring faith as Pindar in the legendary antiquities of Greece, taken as a whole; but they allow themselves greater license as to the details. It was indispensable to the success of their compositions that they should recast and group anew the legendary events, preserving the names and general understood relation of those characters whom they introduced. The demand for novelty of combination increased with the multiplication of tragic spectacles at Athens: moreover the feelings of the Athenians, ethical as well as political, had become too critical to tolerate the literal reproduction of many among the ancient stories.

Both of them exalted rather than lowered the dignity of the mythical world, as something divine and heroic rather than human. The Promêtheus of Æschylus is a far more exalted conception than his keen-witted namesake in Hesiod, and the more homely details of the ancient Thêbaïs and Œdipodia were in like manner modified by Sophoklês.[885] The religious agencies of the old epic are constantly kept prominent, and the paternal curse,—the wrath of deceased persons against those from whom they have sustained wrong,—the judgments of the Erinnys against guilty or foredoomed persons, sometimes inflicted directly, sometimes brought about through dementation of the sufferer himself (like the Homeric Atê),—are frequent in their tragedies.[886]

[885] See above, chap. xiv. p. 368. on the Legend of the Siege of Thêbes.

[886] The curse of Œdipus is the determining force in the Sept. ad Thêb., Ἀρά τ᾽, Ἐριννὺς πατρὸς ἡ μεγασθενής (v. 70); it reappears several times in the course of the drama, with particular solemnity in the mouth of Eteoklês (695-709, 725, 785, etc.); he yields to it as an irresistible force, as carrying the family to ruin:—

Ἐπεὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα κάρτ᾽ ἐπισπέρχει θεὸς, Ἴτω κατ᾽ οὖρον, κῦμα Κωκυτοῦ λαχὸν, Φοίβῳ στυγηθὲν πᾶν τὸ Λαΐου γένος. · · · · · Φίλου γὰρ ἐχθρά μοι πατρὸς τέλει᾽ ἄρα Ξηροῖς ἀκλαύστοις ὄμμασιν προσιζάνει, etc.

So again at the opening of the Agamemnôn, the μνάμων μῆνις τεκνόποινος (v. 155) and the sacrifice of Iphigeneia are dwelt upon as leaving behind them an avenging doom upon Agamemnôn, though he took precautions for gagging her mouth during the sacrifice and thus preventing her from giving utterance to imprecations—Φθόγγον ἀραῖον οἴκοις, Βίᾳ χαλινῶν τ᾽ ἀναύδῳ μένει (κατασχεῖν), v. 346. The Erinnys awaits Agamemnôn even at the moment of his victorious consummation at Troy (467; compare 762-990, 1336-1433): she is most to be dreaded after great good fortune: she enforces the curse which ancestral crimes have brought upon the house of Atreus—πρώταρχος ἄτη—παλαιαὶ ἁμαρτίαι δόμων (1185-1197, Choëph. 692)—the curse imprecated by the outraged Thyestês (1601). In the Choëphoræ, Apollo menaces Orestês with the wrath of his deceased father, and all the direful visitations of the Erinnyes, unless he undertakes to revenge the murder (271-296). Αἶσα and Ἐριννὺς bring on blood for blood (647). But the moment that Orestês, placed between these conflicting obligations (925), has achieved it, he becomes himself the victim of the Erinnyes, who drive him mad even at the end of the Choëphoræ (ἕως δ᾽ ἔτ᾽ ἔμφρων εἰμὶ, 1026), and who make their appearance bodily, and pursue him throughout the third drama of this fearful trilogy. The Eidôlon of Klytæmnêstra impels them to vengeance (Eumenid. 96) and even spurs them on when they appear to relax. Apollo conveys Orestês to Athens, whither the Erinnyes pursue him, and prosecute him before the judgment-seat of the goddess Athênê, to whom they submit the award; Apollo appearing as his defender. The debate between “the daughters of Night” and the god, accusing and defending, is eminently curious (576-730): the Erinnyes are deeply mortified at the humiliation put upon them when Orestês is acquitted, but Athênê at length reconciles them, and a covenant is made whereby they become protectresses of Attica, accepting of a permanent abode and solemn worship (1006): Orestês returns to Argos, and promises that even in his tomb he will watch that none of his descendants shall ever injure the land of Attica (770). The solemn trial and acquittal of Orestês formed the consecrating legend of the Hill and Judicature of Areiopagus.

This is the only complete trilogy of Æschylus which we possess, and the avenging Erinnyes (416) are the movers throughout the whole—unseen in the first two dramas, visible and appalling in the third. And the appearance of Cassandra under the actual prophetic fever in the first, contributes still farther to impart to it a coloring different from common humanity.

The general view of the movement of the Oresteia given in Welcker (Æschyl. Trilogie, p. 445) appears to me more conformable to Hellenic ideas than that of Klausen (Theologumena Æschyli, pp. 157-169), whose valuable collection and comparison of passages is too much affected, both here and elsewhere, by the desire to bring the agencies of the Greek mythical world into harmony with what a religious mind of the present day would approve. Moreover, he sinks the personality of Athênê too much in the supreme authority of Zeus (p. 158-168).

Æschylus in two of his remaining pieces brings forward the gods as the chief personages, and far from sharing the objection of Pindar to dwell upon dissensions of the gods, he introduces Promêtheus and Zeus in the one, Apollo and the Eumenidês in the other, in marked opposition. The dialogue, first superinduced by him upon the primitive Chorus, gradually became the most important portion of the drama, and is more elaborated in Sophoklês than in Æschylus. Even in Sophoklês, however, it still generally retains its ideal majesty as contrasted with the rhetorical and forensic tone which afterwards crept in; it grows out of the piece, and addresses itself to the emotions more than to the reason of the audience. Nevertheless, the effect of Athenian political discussion and democratical feeling is visible in both these dramatists. The idea of rights and legitimate privileges as opposed to usurping force, is applied by Æschylus even to the society of the gods: the Eumenidês accuse Apollo of having, with the insolence of youthful ambition, “ridden down” their old prerogatives[887]—while the Titan Promêtheus, the champion of suffering humanity against the unfriendly dispositions of Zeus, ventures to depict the latter as a recent usurper reigning only by his superior strength, exalted by one successful revolution, and destined at some future time to be overthrown by another,—a fate which cannot be averted except through warnings communicable only by Promêtheus himself.[888]

[887] Eumenidês, 150.—

Ἰὼ παῖ Διὸς, ἐπίκλοπος πέλει, Νέος δὲ γραίας δαίμονας καθιππάσω, etc.

The same metaphor again, v. 731. Æschylus seems to delight in contrasting the young and the old gods: compare 70-162, 882.

The Erinnyes tell Apollo that he assumes functions which do not belong to him, and will thus desecrate those which do belong to him (715-754):—

Ἀλλ᾽ αἱματηρὰ πράγματ᾽, ~οὐ λαχὼν~, σέβεις, Μαντεῖα δ᾽ οὐκ ἔθ᾽ ἁγνὰ μαντεύσει μένων.

The refusal of the king Pelasgos, in the Supplices, to undertake what he feels to be the sacred duty of protecting the suppliant Danaïdes, without first submitting the matter to his people and obtaining their expressed consent, and the fear which he expresses of their blame (κατ᾽ ἀρχὰς γὰρ φιλαίτιος λέως), are more forcibly set forth than an old epic poet would probably have thought necessary (see Supplices, 369, 397, 485, 519). The solemn wish to exclude both anarchy and despotism from Athens bears still more the mark of political feeling of the time—μήτ᾽ ἄναρχον μήτε δεσποτουμένον (Eumenid. 527-696).

[888] Promêtheus, 35, 151, 170, 309, 524, 910, 940, 956.

It is commonly understood that Æschylus disapproved of the march of democracy at Athens during his later years, and that the Eumenidês is intended as an indirect manifestation in favor of the senate of Areiopagus. Without inquiring at present whether such a special purpose can be distinctly made out, we may plainly see that the poet introduces, into the relations of the gods with each other, a feeling of political justice, arising out of the times in which he lived and the debates of which he was a witness. But though Æschylus incurred reproaches of impiety from Plato, and seemingly also from the Athenian public, for particular speeches and incidents in his tragedies,[889] and though he does not adhere to the received vein of religious tradition with the same strictness as Sophoklês—yet the ascendency and interference of the gods is never out of sight, and the solemnity with which they are represented, set off by a bold, figurative, and elliptical style of expression (often but imperfectly intelligible to modern readers), reaches its maximum in his tragedies. As he throws round the gods a kind of airy grandeur, so neither do his men or heroes appear like tenants of the common earth: the mythical world from which he borrows his characters is peopled only with “the immediate seed of the gods, in close contact with Zeus, in whom the divine blood has not yet had time to degenerate:”[890] his individuals are taken, not from the iron race whom Hesiod acknowledges with shame as his contemporaries, but from the extinct heroic race which had fought at Troy and Thêbes. It is to them that his conceptions aspire, and he is even chargeable with frequent straining, beyond the limits of poetical taste, to realize his picture. If he does not consistently succeed in it, the reason is because consistency in such a matter is unattainable, since, after all, the analogies of common humanity, the only materials which the most creative imagination has to work upon, obtrude themselves involuntarily, and the lineaments of the man are thus seen even under a dress which promises superhuman proportions.

[889] Plato, Republ. ii. 381-383; compare Æschyl. Fragment. 159, ed. Dindorf. He was charged also with having divulged in some of his plays secret matters of the mysteries of Dêmêtêr, but is said to have excused himself by alleging ignorance: he was not aware that what he had said was comprised in the mysteries (Aristot. Ethic. Nicom. iii. 2; Clemens Alex. Strom. ii. p. 387); the story is different again in Ælian, V. H. v. 19.

How little can be made out distinctly respecting this last accusation may be seen in Lobeck, Aglaopham. p. 81.

Cicero (Tusc. Dis. ii. 10) calls Æschylus “almost a Pythagorean:” upon what the epithet is founded we do not know.

There is no evidence to prove to us that the Promêtheus Vinctus was considered as impious by the public before whom it was represented; but its obvious meaning has been so regarded by modern critics, who resort to many different explanations of it, in order to prove that when properly construed it is not impious. But if we wish to ascertain what Æschylus really meant, we ought not to consult the religious ideas of modern times; we have no test except what we know of the poet’s own time and that which had preceded him. The explanations given by the ablest critics seem generally to exhibit a predetermination to bring out Zeus as a just, wise, merciful, and all-powerful Being; and all, in one way or another, distort the figures, alter the perspective, and give far-fetched interpretations of the meaning, of this striking drama, which conveys an impression directly contrary (see Welcker, Trilogie, Æsch. p. 90-117, with the explanation of Dissen there given; Klausen, Theologum. Æsch. p. 140-154; Schömann, in his recent translation of the play, and the criticism on that Translation in the Wiener Jahrbücher, vol. cix. 1845, p. 245, by F. Ritter). On the other hand, Schutz (Excurs. ad Prom. Vinct. p. 149) thinks that Æschylus wished by means of this drama to enforce upon his countrymen the hatred of a despot. Though I do not agree in this interpretation, it appears to me less wide of the truth than the forcible methods employed by others to bring the poet into harmony with their own religious ideas.

Without presuming to determine whether Æschylus proposed to himself any special purpose, if we look at the Æschylean Promêtheus in reference only to ancient ideas, it will be found to borrow both its characters and all its main circumstances from the legend in the Hesiodic Theogony. Zeus acquires his supremacy only by overthrowing Kronos and the Titans; the Titan god Promêtheus is the pronounced champion of helpless man, and negotiates with Zeus on their behalf: Zeus wishes to withhold from them the most essential blessings, which Promêtheus employs deceit and theft to procure for them, and ultimately with success; undergoing, however, severe punishment for so doing from the superior force of Zeus. These are the main features of the Æschylean Promêtheus, and they are all derived from the legend as it stands in the Theogony. As for the human race, they are depicted as abject and helpless in an extreme degree, in Æschylus even more than in Hesiod: they appear as a race of aboriginal savages, having the god Promêtheus for their protector.

Æschylus has worked up the old legend, homely and unimpressive as we read it in Hesiod, into a sublime ideal. We are not to forget that Promêtheus is not a man, but a god,—the equal of Zeus in race, though his inferior in power, and belonging to a family of gods who were once superior to Zeus: he has moreover deserted his own kindred, and lent all his aid and superior sagacity to Zeus, whereby chiefly the latter was able to acquire supremacy (this last circumstance is an addition by Æschylus himself to the Hesiodic legend). In spite of such essential service, Zeus had doomed him to cruel punishment, for no other reason than because he conferred upon helpless man the prime means of continuance and improvement, thus thwarting the intention of Zeus to extinguish the race.

Now Zeus, though superior to all the other gods and exercising general control, was never considered, either in Grecian legend or in Grecian religious belief, to be superior in so immeasurable a degree as to supersede all free action and sentiment on the part of gods less powerful. There were many old legends of dissension among the gods, and several of disobedience against Zeus: when a poet chose to dramatize one of these, he might so turn his composition as to sympathize either with Zeus or with the inferior god, without in either case shocking the general religious feeling of the country. And if there ever was an instance in which preference of the inferior god would be admissible, it is that of Promêtheus, whose proceedings are such as to call forth the maximum of human sympathy,—superior intelligence pitted against superior force, and resolutely encountering foreknown suffering, for the sole purpose of rendering inestimable and gratuitous service to mortals.

Of the Promêtheus Solutus, which formed a sequel to the Promêtheus Vinctus (the entire trilogy is not certainly known), the fragments preserved are very scanty, and the guesses of critics as to its plot have little base to proceed upon. They contend that, in one way or other, the apparent objections which the Promêth. Vinctus presents against the justice of Zeus were in the Promêth. Solutus removed. Hermann, in his Dissertatio de Æschyli Prometheo Soluto (Opuscula, vol. iv. p. 256), calls this position in question: I transcribe from his Dissertation one passage, because it contains an important remark in reference to the manner in which the Greek poets handled their religious legends: “while they recounted and believed many enormities respecting individual gods, they always described the Godhead in the abstract as holy and faultless.” ...

“Immo illud admirari oportet, quod quum de singulis Diis indignissima quæque crederent, tamen ubi sine certo nomine Deum dicebant, immunem ab omni vitio, summâque sanctitate præditum intelligebant. Illam igitur Jovis sævitiam ut excusent defensores Trilogiæ, et jure punitum volunt Prometheum—et in sequente fabulâ reconciliato Jove, restitutam arbitrantur divinam justitiam. Quo invento, vereor ne non optime dignitati consuluerint supremi Deorum, quem decuerat potius non sævire omnino, quam placari eâ lege, ut alius Promethei vice lueret.”

[890] Æschyl. Fragment. 146, Dindorf; ap. Plato. Repub. iii. p. 391; compare Strabo, xii. p. 580.—

... οἱ θεῶν ἀγχίσποροι Οἱ Ζηνὸς ἐγγὺς, οἷς ἐν Ἰδαίῳ πάγῳ Διὸς πατρῴου βωμός ἐστ᾽ ἐν αἰθέρι, Κοὔπω σφιν ἐξίτηλον αἷμα δαιμόνων.

There is one real exception to this statement—the Persæ—which is founded upon an event of recent occurrence; and one apparent exception—the Promêtheus Vinctus. But in that drama no individual mortal is made to appear; we can hardly consider Iô as an ἐφήμερος (253).

Sophoklês, the most illustrious ornament of Grecian tragedy, dwells upon the same heroic characters, and maintains their grandeur, on the whole, with little abatement, combining with it a far better dramatic structure, and a wider appeal to human sympathies. Even in Sophoklês, however, we find indications that an altered ethical feeling and a more predominant sense of artistic perfection are allowed to modify the harsher religious agencies of the old epic; occasional misplaced effusions[891] of rhetoric, as well as of didactic prolixity, may also be detected. It is Æschylus, not Sophoklês, who forms the marked antithesis to Euripidês; it is Æschylus, not Sophoklês, to whom Aristophanês awards the prize of tragedy, as the poet who assigns most perfectly to the heroes of the past those weighty words, imposing equipments, simplicity of great deeds with little talk, and masculine energy superior to the corruptions of Aphroditê, which beseem the comrades of Agamemnôn and Adrastus.[892]

[891] For the characteristics of Æschylus see Aristophan. Ran. 755, ad fin. passim. The competition between Æschylus and Euripidês turns upon γνῶμαι ἀγαθαὶ, 1497; the weight and majesty of the words, 1362; πρῶτος τῶν Ἑλλήνων πυργώσας ῥήματα σεμνά, 1001, 921, 930 (“sublimis et gravis et grandiloquus sæpe usque ad vitium,” Quintil. x. 1); the imposing appearance of his heroes, such as Memnôn and Cycnus, 961; their reserve in speech, 908; his dramas “full of Arês” and his lion-hearted chiefs, inspiring the auditors with fearless spirit in defence of their country,—1014, 1019, 1040; his contempt of feminine tenderness, 1042.—

ÆSCH. Οὐδ᾽ οἶδ᾽ οὐδεὶς ἥντιν᾽ ἐρῶσαν πώποτ᾽ ἐποίησα γυναῖκα. EURIP. Μὰ Δί᾽, οὐδὲ γὰρ ἦν τῆς Ἀφροδίτης οὐδέν σοι. ÆSCH. μηδέ γ᾽ ἐπείη· Ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ σοί τοι καὶ τοῖς σοῖσιν πολλὴ πολλοῦ ᾽πικάθοιτο.

To the same general purpose Nubes (1347-1356), composed so many years earlier. The weight and majesty of the Æschylean heroes (βάρος, τὸ μεγαλοπρεπὲς) is dwelt upon in the life of Æschylus, and Sophoklês is said to have derided it—Ὥσπερ γὰρ ὁ Σοφοκλῆς ἔλεγε, τὸν Αἰσχύλου διαπεπαιχὼς ~ὄγκον~, etc. (Plutarch, De Profect. in Virt. Sent. c. 7), unless we are to understand this as a mistake of Plutarch quoting Sophoklês instead of Euripidês, as he speaks in the Frogs of Aristophanês, which is the opinion both of Lessing in his Life of Sophoklês and of Welcker (Æschyl. Trilogie, p. 525).

[892] See above, Chapters xiv. and xv.

Æschylus seems to have been a greater innovator as to the matter of the mythes than either Sophoklês or Euripidês (Dionys. Halic. Judic. de Vett. Script. p. 422, Reisk.). For the close adherence of Sophoklês to the Homeric epic, see Athena, vii. p. 277; Diogen. Laërt. iv. 20; Suidas, v. Πολέμων. Æschylus puts into the mouth of the Eumenidês a serious argument derived from the behavior of Zeus in chaining his father Kronos (Eumen. 640).

How deeply this feeling, of the heroic character of the mythical world, possessed the Athenian mind, may be judged by the bitter criticisms made on Euripidês, whose compositions were pervaded, partly by ideas of physical philosophy learnt under Anaxagoras, partly by the altered tone of education and the wide diffusion of practical eloquence, forensic as well as political, at Athens.[893] While Aristophanês assails Euripidês as the representative of this “young Athens,” with the utmost keenness of sarcasm,—other critics also concur in designating him as having vulgarized the mythical heroes, and transformed them into mere characters of common life,—loquacious, subtle, and savoring of the market-place.[894] In some of his plays, sceptical expressions and sentiments were introduced, derived from his philosophical studies, sometimes confounding two or three distinct gods into one, sometimes translating the personal Zeus into a substantial Æthêr with determinate attributes. He put into the mouths of some of his unprincipled dramatic characters, apologetic speeches which were denounced as ostentatious sophistry, and as setting out a triumphant case for the criminal.[895] His thoughts, his words, and the rhythm of his choric songs, were all accused of being deficient in dignity and elevation. The mean attire and miserable attitude in which he exhibited Œneus, Têlephus, Thyestês, Inô, and other heroic characters, were unmercifully derided,[896] though it seems that their position and circumstances had always been painfully melancholy; but the effeminate pathos which Euripidês brought so nakedly into the foreground, was accounted unworthy of the majesty of a legendary hero. And he incurred still greater obloquy on another point, on which he is allowed even by his enemies to have only reproduced in substance the preëxisting tales,—the illicit and fatal passion depicted in several of his female characters, such as Phædra and Sthenobœa. His opponents admitted that these stories were true, but contended that they ought to be kept back and not produced upon the stage,—a proof both of the continued mythical faith and of the more sensitive ethical criticism of his age.[897] The marriage of the six daughters to the six sons of Æolus is of Homeric origin, and stands now, though briefly stated, in the Odyssey: but the incestuous passion of Macareus and Canacê, embodied by Euripidês[898] in the lost tragedy called Æolus, drew upon him severe censure. Moreover, he often disconnected the horrors of the old legends with those religious agencies by which they had been originally forced on, prefacing them by motives of a more refined character, which carried no sense of awful compulsion: thus the considerations by which the Euripidean Alkmæôn was reduced to the necessity of killing his mother appeared to Aristotle ridiculous.[899] After the time of this great poet, his successors seem to have followed him in breathing into their characters the spirit of common life, but the names and plot were still borrowed from the stricken mythical families of Tantalus, Kadmus, etc.: and the heroic exaltation of all the individual personages introduced, as contrasted with the purely human character of the Chorus, is still numbered by Aristotle among the essential points of the theory of tragedy.[900]

[893] See Valckenaer, Diatribe in Euripid. Fragm. capp. 5 and 6.

The fourth and fifth lectures among the Dramatische Vorlesungen of August Wilhelm Schlegel depict both justly and eloquently the difference between Æschylus, Sophoklês and Euripidês, especially on this point of the gradual sinking of the mythical colossus into an ordinary man; about Euripidês especially in lecture 5, vol. i. p. 206, ed. Heidelberg 1809.

[894] Aristot. Poetic. c. 46. Οἷον καὶ Σοφοκλῆς ἔφη, αὐτὸς μὲν οἵους δεῖ ποιεῖν, Εὐριπίδης δὲ, οἷοί εἰσι.

The Ranæ and Acharneis of Aristophanês exhibit fully the reproaches urged against Euripidês: the language put into the mouth of Euripidês in the former play (vv. 935-977) illustrates specially the point here laid down. Plutarch (De Gloriâ Atheniens. c. 5) contrasts ἡ Εὐριπίδου σοφία καὶ ἡ Σοφοκλεοῦς λογιότης. Sophoklês either adhered to the old mythes or introduced alterations into them in a spirit comformable to their original character, while Euripidês refined upon them. The comment of Dêmêtrius Phalereus connects τὸ λόγιον expressly with the maintenance of the dignity of the tales. Ἄρξομαι δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ μεγαλοπρεποῦς, ὅπερ νῦν ~λόγιον~ ὀνομάζουσιν (c. 38).

[895] Aristophan. Ran. 770, 887, 1066.

Euripidês says to Æschylus, in regard to the language employed by both of them,—

Ἦν οὖν σὺ λέγῃς Λυκαβήττους Καὶ Παρνάσσων ἡμῖν μεγέθη, τοῦτ᾽ ἐστὶ τὸ χρηστὰ διδάσκειν, Ὃν χρὴ φράζειν ἀνθρωπείως;

Æschylus replies,—

Ἀλλ᾽, ὦ κακόδαιμον, ἀνάγκη Μεγάλων γνωμῶν καὶ διανοιῶν ἴσα καὶ τὰ ῥήματα τίκτειν. Κἄλλως εἰκὸς τοὺς ~ἡμιθέους~ τοῖς ῥήμασι μείζοσι χρῆσθαι· Καὶ γὰρ τοῖς ἱματίοις ἡμῶν χρῶνται πολὺ σεμνοτέροισι. Ἃ ᾽μοῦ χρηστῶς καταδείξαντος διελυμήνω συ. EURIP. Τί δράσας; ÆSCH. Πρῶτον μὲν τοὺς βασιλεύοντας ῥάκι᾽ ἀμπίσχων, ἵν᾽ ἐλεινοὶ Τοῖς ἀνθρώποις φαίνοιντ᾽ εἶναι.

For the character of the language and measures of Euripidês, as represented by Æschylus, see also v. 1297, and Pac. 527. Philosophical discussion was introduced by Euripidês (Dionys. Hal. Ars Rhetor. viii. 10-ix. 11) about the Melanippê, where the doctrine of prodigies (τέρας) appears to have been argued. Quintilian (x. 1) remarks that to young beginners in judicial pleading, the study of Euripidês was much more specially profitable than that of Sophoklês: compare Dio Chrysostom, Orat. xviii. vol. i. p. 477, Reisk.

In Euripidês the heroes themselves sometimes delivered moralizing discourses:—εἰσάγων τὸν Βελλεροφόντην γνωμολογοῦντα (Welcker, Griechisch. Tragöd. Eurip. Stheneb. p. 782). Compare the fragments of his Bellerophôn (15-25, Matthiæ), and of his Chrysippus (7, ib.). A striking story is found in Seneca, Epistol. 115; and Plutarch, de Audiend. Poetis, c. 4. t. i. p. 70, Wytt.

[896] Aristophan. Ran. 840.—

ὦ στωμυλιοσυλλεκτάδη Καὶ πτωχοποιὲ καὶ ῥακιοσυῤῥαπτάδη·

See also Aristophan. Acharn. 385-422. For an unfavorable criticism upon such proceeding, see Aristot. Poet. 27.

[897] Aristophan. Ran. 1050.—

EURIP. Πότερον δ᾽ ~οὐκ ὄντα λόγον~ τοῦτον περὶ τῆς Φαίδρας ξυνέθηκα;

ÆSCH. Μὰ Δί᾽, ἀλλ᾽ ὄντ᾽· ἀλλ᾽ ἀποκρύπτειν χρὴ τὸ πονηρὸν τόν γε ποιητὴν, Καὶ μὴ παράγειν μηδὲ διδάσκειν.

In the Hercules Furens, Euripidês puts in relief and even exaggerates the worst elements of the ancient mythes: the implacable hatred of Hêrê towards Hêraklês is pushed so far as to deprive him of his reason (by sending down Iris and the unwilling Λύσσα), and thus intentionally to drive him to slay his wife and children with his own hands.

[898] Aristoph. Ran. 849, 1041, 1080; Thesmophor. 547; Nubes, 1354. Grauert, De Mediâ Græcorum Comœdiâ in Rheinisch. Museum, 2nd Jahrs. 1 Heft, p. 51. It suited the plan of the drama of Æolus, as composed by Euripidês, to place in the mouth of Macareus a formal recommendation of incestuous marriages: probably this contributed much to offend the Athenian public. See Dionys. Hal. Rhetor. ix. p. 355.

About the liberty of intermarriage among relatives, indicated in Homer, parents and children being alone excepted, see Terpstra, Antiquitas Homerica, cap. xiii. p. 104.

Ovid, whose poetical tendencies led him chiefly to copy Euripidês, observes (Trist. ii. 1, 380)—

“Omne genus scripti gravitate Tragœdia vincit, Hæc quoque materiam semper amoris habet. Nam quid in Hippolyto nisi cæcæ flamma novercæ? Nobilis est Canace fratris amore sui.”

This is the reverse of the truth in regard to Æschylus and Sophoklês, and only very partially true in respect to Euripidês.

[899] Aristot. Ethic. Nicom. iii. 1, 8. καὶ γὰρ τὸν Εὐριπίδου Ἀλκμαίωνα γελοῖα φαίνεται τὰ ἀναγκάσαντα μητροκτονῆσαι (In the lost tragedy called Ἀλκμαίων ὁ διὰ Ψωφῖδος).

[900] Aristot. Poetic. 26-27. And in his Problemata also, in giving the reason why the Hypo-Dorian and Hypo-Phrygian musical modes were never assigned to the Chorus, he says—

Ταῦτα δὲ ἄμφω χόρῳ μὲν ἀναρμοστὰ, τοῖς δὲ ἀπὸ σκηνῆς οἰκειότερα. Ἐκεῖνοι μὲν γὰρ ἡρώων μίμηται· οἱ δὲ ἡγεμόνες τῶν ἀρχαίων μόνοι ἦσαν ἥρωες, οἱ δὲ λαοὶ ἄνθρωποι, ὧν ἐστὶν ὁ χόρος. Διὸ καὶ ἁρμόζει αὐτῷ τὸ γοερὸν καὶ ἡσύχιον ἦθος καὶ μέλος· ἀνθρωπικὰ γάρ.

The tendency then of Athenian tragedy—powerfully manifested in Æschylus, and never wholly lost—was to uphold an unquestioning faith and a reverential estimate of the general mythical world and its personages, but to treat the particular narratives rather as matter for the emotions than as recitals of actual fact. The logographers worked along with them to the first of these two ends, but not to the second. Their grand object was, to cast the mythes into a continuous readable series, and they were in consequence compelled to make selection between inconsistent or contradictory narratives; to reject some narratives as false, and to receive others as true. But their preference was determined more by their sentiments as to what was appropriate, than by any pretended historical test. Pherekydês, Akusilaus and Hellanikus[901] did not seek to banish miraculous or fantastic incidents from the mythical world; they regarded it as peopled with loftier beings, and expected to find in it phænomena not paralleled in their own degenerate days. They reproduced the fables as they found them in the poets, rejecting little except the discrepancies, and producing ultimately what they believed to be not only a continuous but an exact and trustworthy history of the past—wherein they carry indeed their precision to such a length, that Hellanikus gives the year, and even the day of the capture of Troy.[902]

[901] See Müller, Prolegom. zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie, c. iii. p. 93.

[902] Hellanic. Fragment. 143, ed. Didot.

Hekatæus of Milêtus (500 B. C.), anterior to Pherekydês and Hellanikus, is the earliest writer in whom we can detect any disposition to disallow the prerogative and specialty of the mythes, and to soften down their characteristic prodigies, some of which however still find favor in his eyes, as in the case of the speaking ram who carried Phryxus over the Hellespont. He pronounced the Grecian fables to be “many and ridiculous;” whether from their discrepancies or from their intrinsic improbabilities we do not know: and we owe to him the first attempt to force them within the limits of historical credibility; as where he transforms the three-headed Cerberus, the dog of Hadês, into a serpent inhabiting a cavern on Cape Tænarus—and Geryôn of Erytheia into a king of Epirus rich in herds of oxen.[903] Hekatæus traced the genealogy of himself and the gens to which he belonged through a line of fifteen progenitors up to an initial god,[904]—the clearest proof both of his profound faith in the reality of the mythical world, and of his religious attachment to it as the point of junction between the human and the divine personality.

[903] Hekatæi Fragm. ed. Didot. 332, 346, 349; Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. 1. 256; Athenæ. ii. p. 133; Skylax, c. 26.

Perhaps Hekatæus was induced to look for Erytheia in Epirus by the brick-red color of the earth there in many places, noticed by Pouqueville and other travellers (Voyage dans la Grèce, vol. ii. 248: see Klausen, Æneas und die Penaten, vol. i. p. 222). Ἑκαταῖος ὁ Μιλήσιος—λόγον εὖρεν εἰκότα, Pausan. iii. 25, 4. He seems to have written expressly concerning the fabulous Hyperboreans, and to have upheld the common faith against doubts which had begun to rise in his time: the derisory notice of Hyperboreans in Herodotus is probably directed against Hekatæus, iv. 36; Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 675; Diodôr. ii. 47.

It is maintained by Mr. Clinton (Fast. Hell. ii. p. 480) and others (see not. ad Fragment. Hecatæi, p. 30, ed. Didot), that the work on the Hyperboreans was written by Hekatæus of Abdêra, a literary Greek of the age of Ptolemy Philadelphus—not by Hekatæus of Milêtus. I do not concur in this opinion. I think it much more probable that the earlier Hekatæus was the author spoken of.

The distinguished position held by Hekatæus at Milêtus is marked not only by the notice which Herodotus takes of his opinions on public matters, but also by his negotiation with the Persian satrap Artaphernes on behalf of his countrymen (Diodôr. Excerpt. xlvii. p. 41, ed. Dindorf).

[904] Herodot. ii. 143.

We have next to consider the historians, especially Herodotus and Thucydidês. Like Hekatæus, Thucydidês belonged to a gens which traced its descent from Ajax, and through Ajax to Æakus and Zeus.[905] Herodotus modestly implies that he himself had no such privilege to boast of.[906] Their curiosity respecting the past had no other materials to work upon except the mythes; but these they found already cast by the logographers into a continuous series, and presented as an aggregate of antecedent history, chronologically deduced from the times of the gods. In common with the body of the Greeks, both Herodotus and Thucydidês had imbibed that complete and unsuspecting belief in the general reality of mythical antiquity, which was interwoven with the religion and the patriotism, and all the public demonstrations of the Hellenic world. To acquaint themselves with the genuine details of this foretime, was an inquiry highly interesting to them: but the increased positive tendencies of their age, as well as their own habits of personal investigation, had created in them an historical sense in regard to the past as well as to the present. Having acquired a habit of appreciating the intrinsic tests of historical credibility and probability, they found the particular narratives of the poets and logographers, inadmissible as a whole even in the eyes of Hekatæus, still more at variance with their stricter canons of criticism. And we thus observe in them the constant struggle, as well as the resulting compromise, between these two opposite tendencies; on one hand a firm belief in the reality of the mythical world, on the other hand an inability to accept the details which their only witnesses, the poets and logographers, told them respecting it.

[905] Marcellin. Vit. Thucyd. init.

[906] Herodot. ii. 143.

Each of them however performed the process in his own way. Herodotus is a man of deep and anxious religious feeling; he often recognizes the special judgments of the gods as determining historical events: his piety is also partly tinged with that mystical vein which the last two centuries had gradually infused into the religion of the Greeks—for he is apprehensive of giving offence to the gods by reciting publicly what he has heard respecting them; he frequently stops short in his narrative and intimates that there is a sacred legend, but that he will not tell it: in other cases, where he feels compelled to speak out, he entreats forgiveness for doing so from the gods and heroes. Sometimes he will not even mention the name of a god, though he generally thinks himself authorized to do so, the names being matter of public notoriety.[907] Such pious reserve, which the open-hearted Herodotus avowedly proclaims as chaining up his tongue, affords a striking contrast with the plain-spoken and unsuspecting tone of the ancient epic, as well as of the popular legends, wherein the gods and their proceedings were the familiar and interesting subjects of common talk as well as of common sympathy, without ceasing to inspire both fear and reverence.

[907] Herodot. ii. 3, 51, 61, 65, 170. He alludes briefly (c. 51) to an ἱρὸς λόγος which was communicated in the Samothracian mysteries, but he does not mention what it was: also about the Thesmophoria, or τελετὴ of Dêmêtêr (c. 171).

Καὶ περὶ μὲν τούτων τοσαῦτα ἡμῖν εἰποῦσι, καὶ παρὰ τῶν θεῶν καὶ ἡρώων εὐμένεια εἴη (c. 45).

Compare similar scruples on the part of Pausanias (viii. 25 and 37).

The passage of Herodotus (ii. 3) is equivocal, and has been understood in more ways than one (see Lobeck, Aglaopham. p. 1287).

The aversion of Dionysius of Halikarnassus to reveal the divine secrets is not less powerful (see A. R. i. 67, 68), and Pausanias passim.

Herodotus expressly distinguishes, in the comparison of Polykratês with Minôs, the human race to which the former belonged, from the divine or heroic race which comprised the latter.[908] But he has a firm belief in the authentic personality and parentage of all the names in the mythes, divine, heroic and human, as well as in the trustworthiness of their chronology computed by generations. He counts back 1600 years from his own day to that of Semelê, mother of Dionysus; 900 years to Hêraklês, and 800 years to Penelopê, the Trojan war being a little earlier in date.[909] Indeed even the longest of these periods must have seemed to him comparatively short, seeing that he apparently accepts the prodigious series of years which the Egyptians professed to draw from a recorded chronology—17,000 years from their god Hêraklês, and 15,000 years from their god Osiris or Dionysus, down to their king Amasis[910] (550 B. C.) So much was his imagination familiarized with these long chronological computations barren of events, that he treats Homer and Hesiod as “men of yesterday,” though separated from his own age by an interval which he reckons as four hundred years.[911]

[908] Herod. iii. 122.

[909] Herod. ii. 145.

[910] Herodot. ii. 43-145. Καὶ ταῦτα Αἰγύπτιοι ἀτρεκέως φασὶ ἐπίστασθαι, ἀεί τε λογιζόμενοι καὶ ἀεὶ ἀπογραφόμενοι τὰ ἔτεα.

[911] Herodot, ii. 53. μέχρι οὗ πρωήν τε καὶ χθὲς, ὡς εἰπεῖν λόγῳ. Ἡσίοδον γὰρ καὶ Ὅμηρον ἡλικίην τετρακοσίοισι ἔτεσι δοκέω μευ πρεσβυτέρους γενέσθαι, καὶ οὐ πλέοσι.

Herodotus had been profoundly impressed with what he saw and heard in Egypt. The wonderful monuments, the evident antiquity, and the peculiar civilization of that country, acquired such preponderance in his mind over his own native legends, that he is disposed to trace even the oldest religious names or institutions of Greece to Egyptian or Phœnician original, setting aside in favor of this hypothesis the Grecian legends of Dionysus and Pan.[912] The oldest Grecian mythical genealogies are thus made ultimately to lose themselves in Egyptian or Phœnician antiquity, and in the full extent of these genealogies Herodotus firmly believes. It does not seem that any doubt had ever crossed his mind as to the real personality of those who were named or described in the popular mythes: all of them have once had reality, either as men, as heroes, or as gods. The eponyms of cities, dêmes and tribes, are all comprehended in this affirmative category; the supposition of fictitious personages being apparently never entertained. Deukaliôn, Hellên, Dôrus,[913]—Iôn, with his four sons, the eponyms of the old Athenian tribes,[914]—the autochthonous Titakus and Dekelus,[915]—Danaus, Lynkeus, Perseus, Amphitryôn, Alkmêna, and Hêraklês,[916]—Talthybius, the heroic progenitor of the privileged heraldic gens at Sparta,—the Tyndarids and Helena,[917]—Agamemnôn, Menelaus, and Orestes,[918]—Nestôr and his son Peisistratus,—Asôpus, Thêbê, and Ægina,—Inachus and Iô, Æêtês and Mêdea,[919]—Melanippus, Adrastus, and Amphiaräus, as well as Jasôn and the Argô,[920]—all these are occupants of the real past time, and predecessors of himself and his contemporaries. In the veins of the Lacedæmonian kings flowed the blood both of Kadmus and of Danaus, their splendid pedigree being traceable to both of these great mythical names: Herodotus carries the lineage up through Hêraklês first to Perseus and Danaê, then through Danaê to Akrisios and the Egyptian Danaus; but he drops the paternal lineage when he comes to Perseus (inasmuch as Perseus is the son of Zeus by Danaê, without any reputed human father, such as Amphitryôn was to Hêraklês), and then follow the higher members of the series through Danaê alone.[921] He also pursues the same regal genealogy, through the mother of Eurysthenês and Proclês, up to Polynikês, Œdipus, Laius, Labdakus, Polydôrus and Kadmus; and he assigns various ancient inscriptions which he saw in the temple of the Ismenian Apollo at Thêbes, to the ages of Laius and Œdipus.[922] Moreover, the sieges of Thêbes and Troy,—the Argonautic expedition,—the invasion of Attica by the Amazons,—the protection of the Herakleids, and the defeat and death of Eurystheus, by the Athenians,[923]—the death of Mêkisteus and Tydeus before Thêbes by the hands of Melanippus, and the touching calamities of Adrastus and Amphiaräus connected with the same enterprise,—the sailing of Kastôr and Pollux in the Argô,[924]—the abductions of Iô, Eurôpa, Mêdea and Helena,—the emigration of Kadmus in quest of Eurôpa, and his coming to Bœôtia, as well as the attack of the Greeks upon Troy to recover Helen,[925]—all these events seem to him portions of past history, not less unquestionably certain, though more clouded over by distance and misrepresentation, than the battles of Salamis and Mykalê.

[912] Herodot. ii. 146.

[913] Herod. i. 56.

[914] Herod. v. 66.

[915] Herod. ix. 73.

[916] Herod. ii, 43-44, 91-98, 171-182 (the Egyptians admitted the truth of the Greek legend, that Perseus had come to Libya to fetch the Gorgon’s head).

[917] Herod. ii. 113-120; iv. 145; vii. 134.

[918] Herod. i. 67-68; ii. 113. vii. 159.

[919] Herod. i. 1, 2, 4; v. 81, 65.

[920] Herod. i. 52; iv. 145; v. 67; vii. 193.

[921] Herod. vi. 52-53.

[922] Herod. iv. 147; v. 59-61.

[923] Herod. v. 61; ix. 27-28.

[924] Herod. i. 52; iv. 145; v. 67.

[925] Herod. i. 1-4; ii. 49, 113: iv. 147; v. 94.

But though Herodotus is thus easy of faith in regard both to the persons and to the general facts of Grecian mythes, yet when he comes to discuss particular facts taken separately, we find him applying to them stricter tests of historical credibility, and often disposed to reject as well the miraculous as the extravagant. Thus even with respect to Hêraklês, he censures the levity of the Greeks in ascribing to him absurd and incredible exploits; he tries their assertion by the philosophical standard of nature, or of determinate powers and conditions governing the course of events. “How is it consonant to nature (he asks), that Hêraklês, being, as he was, according to the statement of the Greeks, a man, should kill many thousand persons? I pray that indulgence may be shown to me both by gods and heroes for saying so much as this.” The religious feelings of Herodotus here told him that he was trenching upon the utmost limits of admissible scepticism.[926]

[926] Herod. ii. 45. Λέγουσι δὲ πολλὰ καὶ ἄλλα ἀνεπισκέπτως οἱ Ἕλληνες· εὐήθης δὲ αὐτέων καὶ ὅδε ὁ μῦθός ἐστι, τὸν περὶ τοῦ Ἡρακλέος λέγουσι.... Ἔτι δὲ ἕνα ἐόντα τὸν Ἡρακλέα, καὶ ἔτι ἄνθρωπον ὡς δή φασι, ~κῶς φύσιν ἔχει~ πολλὰς μυριάδας φονεῦσαι; Καὶ περὶ μὲν τούτων τοσαῦτα ἡμῖν εἰποῦσι, καὶ παρὰ τῶν θεῶν καὶ παρὰ τῶν ἡρώων εὐμένεια εἴη.

We may also notice the manner in which the historian criticizes the stratagem whereby Peisistratus established himself as despot at Athens—by dressing up the stately Athenian woman Phyê in the costume of the goddess Athênê, and passing off her injunctions as the commands of the goddess; the Athenians accepted her with unsuspecting faith, and received Peisistratus at her command. Herodotus treats the whole affair as a piece of extravagant silliness, πρᾶγμα εὐηθέστατον μακρῷ (i. 60).

Another striking instance of the disposition of Herodotus to rationalize the miraculous narratives of the current mythes, is to be found in his account of the oracle of Dôdôna and its alleged Egyptian origin. Here, if in any case, a miracle was not only in full keeping, but apparently indispensable to satisfy the exigences of the religious sentiment; anything less than a miracle would have appeared tame and unimpressive to the visitors of so revered a spot, much more to the residents themselves. Accordingly, Herodotus heard, both from the three priestesses and from the Dodonæans generally, that two black doves had started at the same time from Thêbes in Egypt: one of them went to Libya, where it directed the Libyans to establish the oracle of Zeus Ammon; the other came to the grove of Dôdôna, and perched on one of the venerable oaks, proclaiming with a human voice that an oracle of Zeus must be founded on that very spot. The injunction of the speaking dove was respectfully obeyed.[927]

[927] Herod. ii. 55. Δωδωναίων δὲ αἱ ἱρηΐαι ... ἔλεγον ταῦτα, συνωμολόγεον δέ σφι καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι Δωδωναῖοι οἱ περὶ τὸ ἱρόν.

The miracle sometimes takes another form; the oak at Dôdôna was itself once endued with speech (Dionys. Hal. Ars. Rhetoric. i. 6; Strabo).

Such was the tale related and believed at Dôdôna. But Herodotus had also heard, from the priests at Thêbes in Egypt, a different tale, ascribing the origin of all the prophetic establishments, in Greece as well as in Libya, to two sacerdotal women, who had been carried away from Thêbes by some Phœnician merchants and sold, the one in Greece, the other in Libya. The Theban priests boldly assured Herodotus that much pains had been taken to discover what had become of these women so exported, and that the fact of their having been taken to Greece and Libya had been accordingly verified.[928]

[928] Herod. ii. 54.

The historian of Halicarnassus cannot for a moment think of admitting the miracle which harmonized so well with the feelings of the priestesses and the Dodonæans.[929] “How (he asks) could a dove speak with human voice?” But the narrative of the priests at Thêbes, though its prodigious improbability hardly requires to be stated, yet involved no positive departure from the laws of nature and possibility, and therefore Herodotus makes no difficulty in accepting it. The curious circumstance is, that he turns the native Dodonæan legend into a figurative representation, or rather a misrepresentation, of the supposed true story told by the Theban priests. According to his interpretation, the woman who came from Thêbes to Dôdôna was called a dove, and affirmed to utter sounds like a bird, because she was non-Hellenic and spoke a foreign tongue: when she learned to speak the language of the country, it was then said that the dove spoke with a human voice. And the dove was moreover called black, because of the woman’s Egyptian color.

[929] Herod. ii. 57. Ἐπεὶ τέῳ ἂν τρόπῳ πελειάς γε ἀνθρωπηΐῃ φωνῇ φθέγξαιτο;

According to one statement, the word Πελειὰς in the Thessalian dialect meant both a dove and a prophetess (Scriptor. Rer. Mythicarum, ed. Bode, i. 96). Had there been any truth in this, Herodotus could hardly have failed to notice it, inasmuch as it would exactly have helped him out of the difficulty which he felt.

That Herodotus should thus bluntly reject a miracle, recounted to him by the prophetic women themselves as the prime circumstance in the origines of this holy place, is a proof of the hold which habits of dealing with historical evidence had acquired over his mind; and the awkwardness of his explanatory mediation between the dove and the woman, marks not less his anxiety, while discarding the legend, to let it softly down into a story quasi-historical and not intrinsically incredible.

We may observe another example of the unconscious tendency of Herodotus to eliminate from the mythes the idea of special aid from the gods, in his remarks upon Melampus. He designates Melampus “as a clever man, who had acquired for himself the art of prophecy;” and had procured through Kadmus much information about the religious rites and customs of Egypt, many of which he introduced into Greece[930]—especially the name, the sacrifices, and the phallic processions of Dionysus: he adds, “that Melampus himself did not accurately comprehend or bring out the whole doctrine, but wise men who came after him made the necessary additions.”[931] Though the name of Melampus is here maintained, the character described[932] is something in the vein of Pythagoras—totally different from the great seer and leech of the old epic mythes—the founder of the gifted family of the Amythaonids, and the grandfather of Amphiaräus.[933] But that which is most of all at variance with the genuine legendary spirit, is the opinion expressed by Herodotus (and delivered with some emphasis as his own), that Melampus “was a clever man, who had acquired for himself prophetic powers.” Such a supposition would have appeared inadmissible to Homer or Hesiod, or indeed to Solôn, in the preceding century, in whose view even inferior arts come from the gods, while Zeus or Apollo bestows the power of prophesying.[934] The intimation of such an opinion by Herodotus, himself a thoroughly pious man, marks the sensibly diminished omnipresence of the gods, and the increasing tendency to look for the explanation of phenomena among more visible and determinate agencies.

[930] Herod. ii. 49. Ἐγὼ μὲν νύν φημι Μελάμποδα γενόμενον ἄνδρα σοφὸν, μαντικήν τε ἑωυτῷ συστῆσαι, καὶ πυθόμενον ἀπ᾽ Αἰγύπτου, ἄλλα τε πολλὰ ἐσηγήσασθαι Ἕλλησι, καὶ τὰ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον, ὀλίγα αὐτῶν παραλλάξαντα.

[931] Herod. ii. 49. Ἀτρεκέως μὲν οὐ πάντα συλλαβὼν τὸν λόγον ἔφῃνε· (Melampus) ἀλλ᾽ οἱ ἐπιγενόμενοι τούτῳ ~σοφισταὶ~ μεζόνως ἐξέφῃναν.

[932] Compare Herod. iv. 95; ii. 81. Ἑλλήνων οὐ τῷ ἀσθενεστάτῳ ~σοφιστῇ~ Πυθαγόρᾳ.

[933] Homer, Odyss. xi. 290; xv. 225. Apollodôr. i. 9, 11-12. Hesiod, Eoiai, Fragm. 55, ed. Düntzer (p. 43)—

Ἀλκὴν μὲν γὰρ ἔδωκεν Ὀλύμπιος Αἰακίδησι, ~Νοῦν δ᾽ Ἀμυθαονίδαις~, πλοῦτον δ᾽ ἔπορ᾽ Ἀτρείδησι.

also Frag. 34 (p. 38), and Frag. 65 (p. 45); Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 118.

Herodotus notices the celebrated mythical narrative of Melampus healing the deranged Argive women (ix. 34); according to the original legend, the daughters of Prœtus. In the Hesiodic Eoiai (Fr. 16, Düntz.; Apollod. ii. 2) the distemper of the Prœtid females was ascribed to their having repudiated the rites and worship of Dionysus (Akusilaus, indeed, assigned a different cause), which shows that the old fable recognized a connection between Melampus and these rites.

[934] Homer, Iliad, i. 72-87; xv. 412. Odyss. xv. 245-252; iv. 233. Some times the gods inspired prophecy for the special occasion, without conferring upon the party the permanent gift and status of a prophet (compare Odyss. i. 202; xvii. 383). Solôn, Fragm. xi. 48-53, Schneidewin:—

Ἄλλον μάντιν ἔθηκεν ἄναξ ἑκάεργος Ἀπολλὼν, Ἔγνω δ᾽ ἀνδρὶ κακὸν τηλόθεν ἐρχόμενον, Ὧι συνομαρτήσωσι θεοὶ....

Herodotus himself reproduces the old belief in the special gift of prophetic power by Zeus and Apollo, in the story of Euenius of Apollônia (ix. 94).

See the fine ode of Pindar, describing the birth and inspiration of Jamus, eponymous father of the great prophetic family in Elis called the Jamids (Herodot. ix. 33), Pindar, Olymp. vi. 40-75. About Teiresias, Sophoc. Œd. Tyr. 283-410. Neither Nestôr nor Odysseus possesses the gift of prophecy.

We may make a similar remark on the dictum of the historian respecting the narrow defile of Tempê, forming the embouchure of the Pêneus and the efflux of all the waters from the Thessalian basin. The Thessalians alleged that this whole basin of Thessaly had once been a lake, but that Poseidôn had split the chain of mountains and opened the efflux;[935] upon which primitive belief, thoroughly conformable to the genius of Homer and Hesiod, Herodotus comments as follows: “The Thessalian statement is reasonable. For whoever thinks that Poseidôn shakes the earth, and that the rifts of an earthquake are the work of that god, will, on seeing the defile in question, say that Poseidôn has caused it. For the rift of the mountains is, as appeared to me (when I saw it), the work of an earthquake.” Herodotus admits the reference to Poseidôn, when pointed out to him, but it stands only in the background: what is present to his mind is the phænomenon of the earthquake, not as a special act, but as part of a system of habitual operations.[936]

[935] More than one tale is found elsewhere, similar to this, about the defile of Tempê:—

“A tradition exists that this part of the country was once a lake, and that Solomon commanded two deeves, or genii, named Ard and Beel, to turn off the water into the Caspian, which they effected by cutting a passage through the mountains; and a city, erected in the newly-formed plain, was named after them Ard-u-beel.” (Sketches on the Shores of the Caspian, by W. R. Holmes.)

Also about the plain of Santa Fe di Bogota, in South America, that it was once under water, until Bochica cleft the mountains and opened a channel of egress (Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, p. 87-88); and about the plateau of Kashmir (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. i. p. 102), drained in a like miraculous manner by the saint Kâsyapa. The manner in which conjectures, derived from local configuration or peculiarities, are often made to assume the form of traditions, is well remarked by the same illustrious traveller: “Ce qui se présente comme une tradition, n’est souvent que le reflet de l’impression que laisse l’aspect des lieux. Des bancs de coquilles à demi-fossiles, répandues dans les isthmes ou sur des plateaux, font naître même chez les hommes les moins avancés dans la culture intellectuelle, l’idée de grandes inondations, d’anciennes communications entre des bassins limitrophes. Des opinions, que l’on pourroit appeler systématiques, se trouvent dans les forêts de l’Orénoque comme dans les îles de la Mer du Sud. Dans l’une et dans l’autre de ces contrées, elles ont pris la forme des traditions.” (A. von Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. ii. p. 147.) Compare a similar remark in the same work and volume, p. 286-294.

[936] Herodot. vii. 129. (Poseidôn was worshipped as Πετραῖος in Thessaly, in commemoration of this geological interference: Schol. Pindar. Pyth. iv. 245.) Τὸ δὲ παλαιὸν λέγεται, οὐκ ἐόντος κω τοῦ αὐλῶνος καὶ διεκρόου τούτου, τοὺς ποτάμους τούτους ... ῥέοντας ποιεῖν τὴν Θεσσαλίην πᾶσαν πέλαγος. Αὐτοὶ μέν νυν Θέσσαλοι λέγουσι Ποσειδέωνα ποιῆσαι τὸν αὐλῶνα, δι᾽ οὗ ῥέει ὁ Πηνειὸς, οἰκότα λέγοντες. Ὅστις γὰρ νομίζει Ποσειδέωνα τὴν γῆν σείειν, καὶ τὰ διεστεῶτα ὑπὸ σεισμοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ τούτου ἔργα εἶναι, καὶ ἂν ἐκεῖνο ἰδὼν φαίη Ποσειδέωνα ποιῆσαι. Ἐστὶ γὰρ σεισμοῦ ἔργον, ὡς ἐμοὶ ἐφαίνετο εἶναι, ἡ διάστασις τῶν οὐρέων. In another case (viii. 129), Herodotus believes that Poseidôn produced a preternaturally high tide, in order to punish the Persians, who had insulted his temple near Potidæa: here was a special motive for the god to exert his power.

This remark of Herodotus illustrates the hostile ridicule cast by Aristophanês (in the Nubes) upon Socratês, on the score of alleged impiety, because he belonged to a school of philosophers (though in point of fact he discountenanced that line of study) who introduced physical laws and forces in place of the personal agency of the gods. The old man Strepsiades inquires from Socratês, Who rains? Who thunders? To which Socratês replies, “Not Zeus, but the Nephelæ, i. e. the clouds: you never saw rain without clouds.” Strepsiades then proceeds to inquire—“But who is it that compels the clouds to move onward? is it not Zeus?” Socratês—“Not at all; it is æthereal rotation.” Strepsiades—“Rotation? that had escaped me: Zeus then no longer exists, and Rotation reigns in his place.”

STREPS. Ὁ δ᾽ ἀναγκάζων ἐστὶ τίς αὐτὰς (Νεφέλας), οὐχ ὁ Ζεὺς, ὥστε φέρεσθαι; SOCRAT. Ἥκιστ᾽, ἀλλ᾽ αἰθέριος δῖνος. STREPS. Δῖνος; τουτί μ᾽ ἐλελήθει— Ὁ Ζεὺς οὐκ ὢν, ἀλλ᾽ ἀντ᾽ αὐτοῦ Δῖνος νυνὶ βασιλεύων.

To the same effect v. 1454, Δῖνος βασιλεύει τὸν Δί᾽ ἐξεληλακώς—“Rotation has driven out Zeus, and reigns in his place.”

If Aristophanês had had as strong a wish to turn the public antipathies against Herodotus as against Socratês and Euripidês, the explanation here given would have afforded him a plausible show of truth for doing so; and it is highly probable that the Thessalians would have been sufficiently displeased with the view of Herodotus to sympathize in the poet’s attack upon him. The point would have been made (waiving metrical considerations)—

~Σεισμὸς~ βασιλεύει, τὸν ~Ποσειδῶν᾽~ ἐξεληλακώς.

The comment of Herodotus upon the Thessalian view seems almost as if it were intended to guard against this very inference.

Other accounts ascribed the cutting of the defile of Tempê to Hêraklês (Diodôr. iv. 18).

Respecting the ancient Grecian faith, which recognized the displeasure of Poseidôn as the cause of earthquakes, see Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 3, 2; Thucydid. i. 127; Strabo, xii. p. 579; Diodôr. xv. 48-49. It ceased to give universal satisfaction even so early as the time of Thalês and Anaximenês (see Aristot. Meteorolog. ii. 7-8; Plutarch, Placit. Philos. iii. 15; Seneca, Natural. Quæst. vi. 6-23); and that philosopher, as well as Anaxagoras, Democritus and others, suggested different physical explanations of the fact. Notwithstanding a dissentient minority, however, the old doctrine still continued to be generally received: and Diodôrus, in describing the terrible earthquake in 373 B. C., by which Helikê and Bura were destroyed, while he notices those philosophers (probably Kallisthenês, Senec. Nat. Quæst. vi. 23) who substituted physical causes and laws in place of the divine agency, rejects their views, and ranks himself with the religious public, who traced this formidable phænomenon to the wrath of Poseidôn (xv. 48-49).

The Romans recognized many different gods as producers of earthquakes; an unfortunate creed, since it exposed them to the danger of addressing their prayers to the wrong god: “Unde in ritualibus et pontificiis observatur, obtemperantibus sacerdotiis caute, ne alio Deo pro alio nominato, cum quis eorum terram concutiat, piacula committantur.” (Ammian. Marcell. xvii. 7.)

Herodotus adopts the Egyptian version of the legend of Troy, founded on that capital variation which seems to have originated with Stesichorus, and according to which Helen never left Sparta at all—her eidôlon had been taken to Troy in her place. Upon this basis a new story had been framed, midway between Homer and Stesichorus, representing Paris to have really carried off Helen from Sparta, but to have been driven by storms to Egypt, where she remained during the whole siege of Troy, having been detained by Prôteus, the king of the country, until Menelaus came to reclaim her after his triumph. The Egyptian priests, with their usual boldness of assertion, professed to have heard the whole story from Menelaus himself—the Greeks had beseiged Troy, in the full persuasion that Helen and the stolen treasures were within the walls, nor would they ever believe the repeated denials of the Trojans as to the fact of her presence. In intimating his preference for the Egyptian narrative, Herodotus betrays at once his perfect and unsuspecting confidence that he is dealing with genuine matter of history, and his entire distrust of the epic poets, even including Homer, upon whose authority that supposed history rested. His reason for rejecting the Homeric version is that it teems with historical improbabilities. If Helen had been really in Troy (he says), Priam and the Trojans would never have been so insane as to retain her to their own utter ruin: but it was the divine judgment which drove them into the miserable alternative of neither being able to surrender Helen, nor to satisfy the Greeks of the real fact that they had never had possession of her—in order that mankind might plainly read, in the utter destruction of Troy, the great punishments with which the gods visit great misdeeds. Homer (Herodotus thinks) had heard this story, but designedly departed from it, because it was not so suitable a subject for epic poetry.[937]

[937] Herod. ii. 116. δοκέει δέ μοι καὶ Ὅμηρος τὸν λόγον τοῦτον πυθέσθαι· ἀλλ᾽ οὐ γὰρ ὁμοίως εὐπρεπὴς ἐς τὴν ἐποποιΐην ἦν τῷ ἑτέρῳ τῷ περ ἐχρήσατο· ἑς ὃ μετῆκε αὐτὸν, δηλώσας ὡς καὶ τοῦτον ἐπισταῖτο τὸν λόγον.

Herodotus then produces a passage from the Iliad, with a view to prove that Homer knew of the voyage of Paris and Helen to Egypt; but the passage proves nothing at all to the point.

Again (c. 120), his slender confidence in the epic poets breaks out—εἰ χρή τι τοῖσι ἐποποιοῖσι χρεώμενον λέγειν.

It is remarkable that Herodotus is disposed to identify Helen with the ξείνη Ἀφροδίτη whose temple he saw at Memphis (c. 112).

Enough has been said to show how wide is the difference between Herodotus and the logographers with their literal transcript of the ancient legends. Though he agrees with them in admitting the full series of persons and generations, he tries the circumstances narrated by a new standard. Scruples have arisen in his mind respecting violations of the laws of nature: the poets are unworthy of trust, and their narratives must be brought into conformity with historical and ethical conditions, before they can be admitted as truth. To accomplish this conformity, Herodotus is willing to mutilate the old legend in one of its most vital points: he sacrifices the personal presence of Helena in Troy, which ran through every one of the ancient epic poems belonging to the Trojan cycle, and is indeed, under the gods, the great and present moving force throughout.

Thucydidês places himself generally in the same point of view as Herodotus with regard to mythical antiquity, yet with some considerable differences. Though manifesting no belief in present miracles or prodigies,[938] he seems to accept without reserve the preexistent reality of all the persons mentioned in the mythes, and of the long series of generations extending back through so many supposed centuries: in this category, too, are included the eponymous personages, Hellen, Kekrops, Eumolpus, Pandiôn, Amphilochus the son of Amphiaräus, and Akarnan. But on the other hand, we find no trace of that distinction between a human and an heroic ante-human race, which Herodotus still admitted,—nor any respect for Egyptian legends. Thucydidês, regarding the personages of the mythes as men of the same breed and stature with his own contemporaries, not only tests the acts imputed to them by the same limits of credibility, but presumes in them the same political views and feelings as he was accustomed to trace in the proceedings of Peisistratus or Periklês. He treats the Trojan war as a great political enterprise, undertaken by all Greece; brought into combination through the imposing power of Agamemnôn, not (according to the legendary narrative) through the influence of the oath exacted by Tyndareus. Then he explains how the predecessors of Agamemnôn arrived at so vast a dominion—beginning with Pelops, who came over (as he says) from Asia with great wealth among the poor Peloponnêsians, and by means of this wealth so aggrandized himself, though a foreigner, as to become the eponym of the peninsula. Next followed his son Atreus, who acquired after the death of Eurystheus the dominion of Mykênæ, which had before been possessed by the descendants of Perseus: here the old legendary tale, which described Atreus as having been banished by his father Pelops in consequence of the murder of his elder brother Chrysippus, is invested with a political bearing, as explaining the reason why Atreus retired to Mykênæ. Another legendary tale—the defeat and death of Eurystheus by the fugitive Herakleids in Attica, so celebrated in Attic tragedy as having given occasion to the generous protecting intervention of Athens—is also introduced as furnishing the cause why Atreus succeeded to the deceased Eurystheus: “for Atreus, the maternal uncle of Eurystheus, had been entrusted by the latter with his government during the expedition into Attica, and had effectually courted the people, who were moreover in great fear of being attacked by the Herakleids.” Thus the Pelopids acquired the supremacy in Peloponnêsus, and Agamemnôn was enabled to get together his 1200 ships and 100,000 men for the expedition against Troy. Considering that contingents were furnished from every portion of Greece, Thucydidês regards this as a small number, treating the Homeric catalogue as an authentic muster-roll, perhaps rather exaggerated than otherwise. He then proceeds to tell us why the armament was not larger: many more men could have been furnished, but there was not sufficient money to purchase provisions for their subsistence; hence they were compelled, after landing and gaining a victory, to fortify their camp, to divide their army, and to send away one portion for the purpose of cultivating the Chersonese, and another portion to sack the adjacent towns. This was the grand reason why the siege lasted so long as ten years. For if it had been possible to keep the whole army together, and to act with an undivided force, Troy would have been taken both earlier and at smaller cost.[939]

[938] “Ut conquirere fabulosa (says Tacitus, Hist. ii. 50, a worthy parallel of Thucydidês) et fictis oblectare legentium animos, procul gravitate cœpti operis crediderim, ita vulgatis traditisque demere fidem non ausim. Die, quo Bebriaci certabatur, avem inusitatâ specie, apud Regium Lepidum celebri vico consedisse, incolæ memorant; nec deinde cœtu hominum aut circumvolitantium alitum, territam pulsamque, donec Otho se ipse interficeret: tum ablatam ex oculis: et tempora reputantibus, initium finemque miraculi cum Othonis exitu competisse.” Suetonius (Vesp. 5) recounts a different miracle, in which three eagles appear.

This passage of Tacitus occurs immediately after his magnificent description of the suicide of the emperor Otho, a deed which he contemplates with the most fervent admiration. His feelings were evidently so wrought up that he was content to relax the canons of historical credibility.

[939] Thucyd. i. 9-12.

Such is the general sketch of the war of Troy, as given by Thucydidês. So different is it from the genuine epical narrative, that we seem hardly to be reading a description of the same event; still less should we imagine that the event was known, to him as well as to us, only through the epic poets themselves. The men, the numbers, and the duration of the siege, do indeed remain the same; but the cast and juncture of events, the determining forces, and the characteristic features, are altogether heterogeneous. But, like Herodotus, and still more than Herodotus, Thucydidês was under the pressure of two conflicting impulses—he shared the general faith in the mythical antiquity, but at the same time he could not believe in any facts which contradicted the laws of historical credibility or probability. He was thus under the necessity of torturing the matter of the old mythes into conformity with the subjective exigencies of his own mind: he left out, altered, recombined, and supplied new connecting principles and supposed purposes, until the story became such as no one could have any positive reason for calling in question: though it lost the impressive mixture of religion, romance, and individual adventure, which constituted its original charm, it acquired a smoothness and plausibility, and a poetical ensemble, which the critics were satisfied to accept as historical truth. And historical truth it would doubtless have been, if any independent evidence could have been found to sustain it. Had Thucydidês been able to produce such new testimony, we should have been pleased to satisfy ourselves that the war of Troy, as he recounted it, was the real event; of which the war of Troy, as sung by the epic poets, was a misreported, exaggerated, and ornamented recital. But in this case the poets are the only real witnesses, and the narrative of Thucydidês is a mere extract and distillation from their incredibilities.

A few other instances may be mentioned to illustrate the views of Thucydidês respecting various mythical incidents. 1. He treats the residence of the Homeric Phæakians at Corkyra as an undisputed fact, and employs it partly to explain the efficiency of the Korkyrean navy in times preceding the Peloponnesian war.[940] 2. He notices, with equal confidence, the story of Têreus and Proknê, daughter of Pandiôn, and the murder of the child Itys by Proknê his mother, and Philomêla; and he produces this ancient mythe with especial reference to the alliance between the Athenians and Têrês, king of the Odrysian Thracians, during the time of the Peloponnesian war, intimating that the Odrysian Têrês was neither of the same family nor of the same country as Têreus the husband of Proknê.[941] The conduct of Pandiôn, in giving his daughter Proknê in marriage to Têreus, is in his view dictated by political motives and interests. 3. He mentions the Strait of Messina as the place through which Odysseus is said to have sailed.[942] 4. The Cyclôpes and the Læstrygones (he says) were the most ancient reported inhabitants of Sicily; but he cannot tell to what race they belonged, nor whence they came.[943] 5. Italy derived its name from Italus, king of the Sikels. 6. Eryx and Egesto in Sicily were founded by fugitive Trojans after the capture of Troy; also Skionê, in the Thracian peninsula of Pallênê, by Greeks from the Achæan town of Pellênê, stopping thither in their return from the siege of Troy: the Amphilochian Argos in the Gulf of Ambrakia was in like manner founded by Amphilochus son of Amphiaräus, in his return from the same enterprise. The remorse and mental derangement of the matricidal Alkmæôn, son of Amphiaräus, is also mentioned by Thucydidês,[944] as well as the settlement of his son Akarnan in the country called after him Akarnania.[945]

[940] Thucyd. i. 25.

[941] Thucyd. ii. 29. Καὶ τὸ ἔργον τὸ περὶ τὸν Ἴτυν αἱ γυναῖκες ἐν τῇ γῇ ταύτῃ ἔπραξαν· πολλοῖς δὲ καὶ τῶν ποιητῶν ἐν ἀηδόνος μνήμῃ Δαυλιὰς ἡ ὄρνις ἐπωνόμασται. Εἰκὸς τε καὶ τὸ κῆδος Πανδίονα ξυνάψασθαι τῆς θυγατρὸς διὰ τοσούτου, ἐπ᾽ ὠφελείᾳ τῇ πρὸς ἀλλήλους, μᾶλλον ἢ διὰ πολλῶν ἡμερῶν ἐς Ὀδρύσας ὁδοῦ. The first of these sentences would lead us to infer, if it came from any other pen than that of Thucydidês, that the writer believed the metamorphosis of Philomêla into a nightingale: see above, ch. xi. p. 270.

The observation respecting the convenience of neighborhood for the marriage is remarkable, and shows how completely Thucydidês regarded the event as historical. What would he have said respecting the marriage of Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, with Boreas, and the prodigious distance which she is reported to have been carried by her husband? Ὑπέρ τε πόντον πάντ᾽, ἐπ᾽ ἔσχατα χθονὸς, etc. (Sophoklês ap. Strabo. vii. p. 295.)

From the way in which Thucydidês introduces the mention of this event, we see that he intended to correct the misapprehension of his countrymen, who having just made an alliance with the Odrysian Têrês, were led by that circumstance to think of the old mythical Têreus, and to regard him as the ancestor of Têrês.

[942] Thucyd. iv. 24.

[943] Thucyd. vi. 2.

[944] Thucyd. ii. 68-102; iv. 120; vi. 2. Antiochus of Syracuse, the contemporary of Thucydidês, also mentioned Italus as the eponymous king of Italy: he farther named Sikelus, who came to Morgos, son of Italus, after having been banished from Rome. He talks about Italus, just as Thucydidês talks about Thêseus, as a wise and powerful king, who first acquired a great dominion (Dionys. H. A. R. i. 12, 35, 73). Aristotle also mentioned Italus in the same general terms (Polit. vii. 9, 2).

[945] We may here notice some particulars respecting Isokratês. He manifests entire confidence in the authenticity of the mythical genealogies and chronology; but while he treats the mythical personages as historically real, he regards them at the same time not as human, but as half-gods, superior to humanity. About Helena, Thêseus, Sarpêdôn, Cycnus, Memnôn, Achilles, etc., see Encom. Helen. Or. x. pp. 282, 292, 295. Bek. Helena was worshipped in his time as a goddess at Therapnæ (ib. p. 295). He recites the settlements of Danaus, Kadmus, and Pelops in Greece, as undoubted historical facts (p. 297). In his discourse called Busiris, he accuses Polykratês, the sophist, of a gross anachronism, in having placed Busiris subsequent in point of date to Orpheus and Æolus (Or. xi. p. 301, Bek.), and he adds that the tale of Busiris having been slain by Hêraklês was chronologically impossible (p. 309). Of the long Athenian genealogy from Kekrops to Thêseus, he speaks with perfect historical confidence (Panathenaic. p. 349, Bek.); not less so of the adventures of Hêraklês and his mythical contemporaries, which he places in the mouth of Archidamus as a justification of the Spartan title to Messenia (Or. vi. Archidamus, p. 156, Bek.; compare Or. v. Philippus, pp. 114, 138), φάσιν, οἷς περὶ τῶν παλαιῶν πιστεύομεν, etc. He condemns the poets in strong language for the wicked and dissolute tales which they circulated respecting the gods: many of them (he says) had been punished for such blasphemies by blindness, poverty, exile, and other misfortunes (Or. xi. p. 309, Bek.).

In general, it may be said that Isokratês applies no principles of historical criticism to the mythes; he rejects such as appear to him discreditable or unworthy, and believes the rest.

Such are the special allusions made by this illustrious author in the course of his history to mythical events. From the tenor of his language we may see that he accounted all that could be known about them to be uncertain and unsatisfactory; but he has it much at heart to show, that even the greatest were inferior in magnitude and importance to the Peloponnesian war.[946] In this respect his opinion seems to have been at variance with that which was popular among his contemporaries.

[946] Thucyd. i. 21-22.

The first two volumes of this history have been noticed in an able article of the Quarterly Review, for October, 1846; as well as in the Heidelberger Jahrbücher der Literatur (1846. No. 41. pp. 641-655), by Professor Kortüm.

While expressing, on several points, approbation of my work, by which I feel much flattered—both my English and my German critic take partial objection to the views respecting Grecian legend. While the Quarterly Reviewer contends that the mythopœic faculty of the human mind, though essentially loose and untrustworthy, is never creative, but requires some basis of fact to work upon—Kortüm thinks that I have not done justice to Thucydidês, as regards his way of dealing with legend; that I do not allow sufficient weight to the authority of an historian so circumspect and so cold-blooded (den kalt-blüthigsten und besonnensten Historiker des Alterthums, p. 653) as a satisfactory voucher for the early facts of Grecian history in his preface (Herr G. fehlt also, wenn er das anerkannt kritische Proœmium als Gewährsmann verschmäht, p. 654).

No man feels more powerfully than I do the merits of Thucydidês as an historian, or the value of the example which he set in multiplying critical inquiries respecting matters recent and verifiable. But the ablest judge or advocate, in investigating specific facts, can proceed no further than he finds witnesses having the means of knowledge, and willing more or less to tell truth. In reference to facts prior to 776 B. C., Thucydidês had nothing before him except the legendary poets, whose credibility is not at all enhanced by the circumstance that he accepted them as witnesses, applying himself only to cut down and modify their allegations. His credibility in regard to the specific facts of these early times depends altogether upon theirs. Now we in our day are in a better position for appreciating their credibility than he was in his, since the foundations of historical evidence are so much more fully understood, and good or bad materials for history are open to comparison in such large extent and variety. Instead of wondering that he shared the general faith in such delusive guides—we ought rather to give him credit for the reserve with which he qualified that faith, and for the sound idea of historical possibility to which he held fast as the limit of his confidence. But it is impossible to consider Thucydidês as a satisfactory guarantee (Gewährsmann) for matters of fact which he derives only from such sources.

Professor Kortüm considers that I am inconsistent with myself in refusing to discriminate particular matters of historical fact among the legends—and yet in accepting these legends (in my chap. xx.) as giving a faithful mirror of the general state of early Grecian society (p. 653). It appears to me that this is no inconsistency, but a real and important distinction. Whether Hêraklês, Agamemnôn, Odysseus, etc. were real persons, and performed all, or a part, of the possible actions ascribed to them—I profess myself unable to determine. But even assuming both the persons and their exploits to be fictions, these very fictions will have been conceived and put together in conformity to the general social phænomena among which the describer and his hearers lived—and will thus serve as illustrations of the manners then prevalent. In fact, the real value of the Preface of Thucydidês, upon which Professor Kortüm bestows such just praise, consists, not in the particular facts which he brings out by altering the legends, but in the rational general views which he sets forth respecting early Grecian society, and respecting the steps as well as the causes whereby it attained its actual position as he saw it.

Professor Kortüm also affirms that the mythes contain “real matter of fact along with mere conceptions:” which affirmation is the same as that of the Quarterly Reviewer, when he says that the mythopœic faculty is not creative. Taking the mythes in the mass, I doubt not that this is true, nor have I anywhere denied it. Taking them one by one, I neither affirm nor deny it. My position is, that, whether there be matter of fact or not, we have no test whereby it can be singled out, identified, and severed from the accompanying fiction. And it lies upon those, who proclaim the practicability of such severance, to exhibit some means of verification better than any which has been yet pointed out. If Thucydidês has failed in doing this, it is certain that none of the many authors who have made the same attempt after him have been more successful.

It cannot surely be denied that the mythopœic faculty is creative, when we have before us so many divine legends, not merely in Greece, but in other countries also. To suppose that these religious legends are mere exaggerations, etc. of some basis of actual fact—that the gods of polytheism were merely divinized men, with qualities distorted or feigned—would be to embrace in substance the theory of Euêmerus.

To touch a little upon the later historians by whom these mythes were handled, we find that Anaximenês of Lampsacus composed a consecutive history of events, beginning from the Theogony down to the battle of Mantineia.[947] But Ephorus professed to omit all the mythical narratives which are referred to times anterior to the return of the Herakleids, (such restriction would of course have banished the siege of Troy,) and even reproved those who introduced mythes into historical writing; adding, that everywhere truth was the object to be aimed at.[948] Yet in practice he seems often to have departed from his own rule.[949] Theopompus, on the other hand, openly proclaimed that he could narrate fables in his history better than Herodotus, or Ktesias, or Hellanikus.[950] The fragments which remain to us, exhibit some proof that this promise was performed as to quantity;[951] though as to his style of narration, the judgment of Dionysius is unfavorable. Xenophôn ennobled his favorite amusement of the chase by numerous examples chosen from the heroic world, tracing their portraits with all the simplicity of an undiminished faith. Kallisthenês, like Ephorus, professed to omit all mythes which referred to a time anterior to the return of the Herakleids; yet we know that he devoted a separate book or portion of his history to the Trojan war.[952] Philistus introduced some mythes in the earlier portions of his Sicilian history; but Timæus was distinguished above all others for the copious and indiscriminate way in which he collected and repeated such legends.[953] Some of these writers employed their ingenuity in transforming the mythical circumstances into plausible matter of history: Ephorus, in particular, converted the serpent Pythô, slain by Apollo, into a tyrannical king.[954]

[947] Diodôr. xv. 89. He was a contemporary of Alexander the Great.

[948] Diodôr. iv. 1. Strabo, ix. p. 422, ἐπιτιμήσας τοῖς φιλομυθοῦσιν ἐν τῇ τῆς ἱστωρίας γραφῇ.

[949] Ephorus recounted the principal adventures of Hêraklês (Fragm. 8, 9, ed. Marx.), the tales of Kadmus and Harmonia (Fragm. 12), the banishment of Ætôlus from Elis (Fragm. 15; Strabo, viii. p. 357); he drew inferences from the chronology of the Trojan and Theban wars (Fragm. 28); he related the coming of Dædalus to the Sikan king Kokalus, and the expedition of the Amazons (Fragm. 99-103).

He was particularly copious in his information about κτίσεις, ἀποικίαι and συγγενείαι (Polyb. ix. 1).

[950] Strabo, i. p. 74.

[951] Dionys. Halic. De Vett. Scriptt. Judic. p. 428, Reisk; Ælian, V. H. iii. 18, Θεόπομπος ... δεινὸς μυθόλογος.

Theopompus affirmed, that the bodies of those who went into the forbidden precinct (τὸ ἄβατον) of Zeus, in Arcadia, gave no shadow (Polyb. xvi. 12). He recounted the story of Midas and Silênus (Fragm. 74, 75, 76, ed. Wichers); he said a good deal about the heroes of Troy; and he seems to have assigned the misfortunes of the Νόστοι to an historical cause—the rottenness of the Grecian ships, from the length of the siege, while the genuine epic ascribes it to the anger of Athênê (Fragm. 112, 113, 114; Schol. Homer. Iliad, ii. 135); he narrated an alleged expulsion of Kinyras from Cyprus by Agamemnôn (Fragm. 111); he gave the genealogy of the Macedonian queen Olympias up to Achilles and Æakus (Fragm. 232).

[952] Cicero, Epist. ad Familiar. v. 12; Xenophôn de Venation. c. 1.

[953] Philistus, Fragm. 1 (Göller), Dædalus, and Kokalus; about Liber and Juno (Fragm. 57); about the migration of the Sikels into Sicily, eighty years after the Trojan war (ap. Dionys. Hal. i. 3).

Timæus (Fragm. 50, 51, 52, 53, Göller) related many fables respecting Jasôn, Mêdea, and the Argonauts generally. The miscarriage of the Athenian armament under Nikias, before Syracuse, is imputed to the anger of Hêraklês against the Athenians because they came to assist the Egestans, descendants of Troy (Plutarch, Nikias, 1),—a naked reproduction of genuine epical agencies by an historian; also about Diomêdês and the Daunians; Phaëthôn and the river Eridanus; the combats of the Gigantes in the Phlegræan plains (Fragm. 97, 99, 102).

[954] Strabo, ix. p. 422.

But the author who pushed this transmutation of legend into history to the greatest length, was the Messenian Euêmerus, contemporary of Kassander of Macedôn. He melted down in this way the divine persons and legends, as well as the heroic—representing both gods and heroes as having been mere earth-born men, though superior to the ordinary level in respect of force and capacity, and deified or heroified after death as a recompense for services or striking exploits. In the course of a voyage into the Indian sea, undertaken by command of Kassander, Euêmerus professed to have discovered a fabulous country called Panchaia, in which was a temple of the Triphylian Zeus: he there described a golden column, with an inscription purporting to have been put up by Zeus himself, and detailing his exploits while on earth.[955] Some eminent men, among whom may be numbered Polybius, followed the views of Euêmerus, and the Roman poet Ennius[956] translated his Historia Sacra; but on the whole he never acquired favor, and the unblushing inventions which he put into circulation were of themselves sufficient to disgrace both the author and his opinions. The doctrine that all the gods had once existed as mere men offended the religious pagans, and drew upon Euêmerus the imputation of atheism; but, on the other hand, it came to be warmly espoused by several of the Christian assailants of paganism,—by Minucius Felix, Lactantius, and St. Augustin, who found the ground ready prepared for them in their efforts to strip Zeus and the other pagan gods of the attributes of deity. They believed not only in the main theory, but also in the copious details of Euêmerus; and the same man whom Strabo casts aside as almost a proverb for mendacity, was extolled by them as an excellent specimen of careful historical inquiry.[957]

[955] Compare Diodôr. v. 44-46; and Lactantius, De Falsâ Relig. i. 11.

[956] Cicero, De Naturâ Deor. i. 42; Varro, De Re Rust. i. 48.

[957] Strabo, ii. p. 102. Οὐ πολὺ οὖν λείπεται ταῦτα τῶν Πύθεω καὶ Εὐημέρου καὶ Ἀντιφάνους ψευσμάτων; compare also i. p. 47, and ii. p. 104.

St. Augustin, on the contrary, tells us (Civitat. Dei, vi. 7), “Quid de ipse Jove senserunt, qui nutricem ejus in Capitolio posuerunt? Nonne attestati sunt omnes Euemero, qui non fabulosâ garrulitate, sed historicâ diligentiâ, homines fuisse mortalesque conscripsit?” And Minucius Felix (Octav. 20-21), “Euemerus exequitur Deorum natales: patrias, sepulcra dinumerat, et per provincias monstrat, Dictæi Jovis, et Apollinis Delphici, et Phariæ Isidis, et Cereris Eleusiniæ.” Compare Augustin, Civit. Dei, xviii. 8-14; and Clemens Alexand. Cohort. ad Gent. pp. 15-18, Sylb.

Lactantius (De Falsâ Relig. c. 13, 14, 16) gives copious citations from Ennius’s translation of the Historia Sacra of Euêmerus.

Εὐήμερος, ὁ ἐπικληθεὶς ἄθεος, Sextus Empiricus, adv. Physicos, ix. § 17-51. Compare Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 42; Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, c. 23. tom. ii. p. 475, ed. Wytt.

Nitzsch assumes (Helden Sage der Griechen, sect. 7. p. 84) that the voyage of Euêmerus to Panchaia was intended only as an amusing romance, and that Strabo, Polybius, Eratosthenês and Plutarch were mistaken in construing it as a serious recital. Böttiger, in his Kunst-Mythologie der Griechen (Absch. ii. s. 6. p. 190), takes the same view. But not the least reason is given for adopting this opinion, and it seems to me far-fetched and improbable; Lobeck (Aglaopham. p. 989), though Nitzsch alludes to him as holding it, manifests no such tendency, as far as I can observe.

But though the pagan world repudiated that “lowering tone of explanation,” which effaced the superhuman personality of Zeus and the great gods of Olympus, the mythical persons and narratives generally came to be surveyed more and more from the point of view of history, and subjected to such alterations as might make them look more like plausible matter of fact. Polybius, Strabo, Diodôrus, and Pausanias, cast the mythes into historical statements—with more or less of transformation, as the case may require, assuming always that there is a basis of truth, which may be discovered by removing poetical exaggerations and allowing for mistakes. Strabo, in particular, lays down that principle broadly and unequivocally in his remarks upon Homer. To give pure fiction, without any foundation of fact, was in his judgment utterly unworthy of so great a genius; and he comments with considerable acrimony on the geographer Eratosthenês, who maintains the opposite opinion. Again, Polybius tells us that the Homeric Æolus, the dispenser of the winds by appointment from Zeus, was in reality a man eminently skilled in navigation, and exact in predicting the weather; that the Cyclôpes and Læstrygones were wild and savage real men in Sicily; and that Scylla and Charybdis were a figurative representation of dangers arising from pirates in the Strait of Messina. Strabo speaks of the amazing expeditions of Dionysus and Hêraklês, and of the long wanderings of Jasôn, Menelaus, and Odysseus, in the same category with the extended commercial range of the Phœnician merchant-ships: he explains the report of Thêseus and Peirithöus having descended to Hadês, by their dangerous earthly pilgrimages,—and the invocation of the Dioskuri as the protectors of the imperiled mariner, by the celebrity which they had acquired as real men and navigators.

Diodôrus gave at considerable length versions of the current fables respecting the most illustrious names in the Grecian mythical world, compiled confusedly out of distinct and incongruous authors. Sometimes the mythe is reproduced in its primitive simplicity, but for the most part it is partially, and sometimes wholly, historicized. Amidst this jumble of dissentient authorities we can trace little of a systematic view, except the general conviction that there was at the bottom of the mythes a real chronological sequence of persons, and real matter of fact, historical or ultra-historical. Nevertheless, there are some few occasions on which Diodôrus brings us back a step nearer to the point of view of the old logographers. For, in reference to Hêraklês, he protests against the scheme of cutting down the mythes to the level of present reality, and contends that a special standard of ultra-historical credibility ought to be constituted, so as to include the mythe in its native dimensions, and do fitting honor to the grand, beneficent, and superhuman personality of Hêraklês and other heroes or demi-gods. To apply to such persons the common measure of humanity (he says), and to cavil at the glorious picture which grateful man has drawn of them, is at once ungracious and irrational. All nice criticism into the truth of the legendary narratives is out of place: we show our reverence to the god by acquiescing in the incredibilities of his history, and we must be content with the best guesses which we can make, amidst the inextricable confusion and numberless discrepancies which they present.[958] Yet though Diodôrus here exhibits a preponderance of the religious sentiment over the purely historical point of view, and thus reminds us of a period earlier than Thucydidês—he in another place inserts a series of stories which seem to be derived from Euêmerus, and in which Uranus, Kronus, and Zeus appear reduced to the character of human kings celebrated for their exploits and benefactions.[959] Many of the authors, whom Diodôrus copies, have so entangled together Grecian, Asiatic, Egyptian, and Libyan fables, that it becomes impossible to ascertain how much of this heterogeneous mass can be considered as at all connected with the genuine Hellenic mind.

[958] Diodôr. iv. 1-8. Ἔνιοι γὰρ τῶν ἀναγινωσκόντων, οὐ δικαίᾳ χρώμενοι κρίσει, τἀκριβὲς ἐπιζητοῦσιν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαίαις μυθολογίαις, ἐπίσης τοῖς πραττομένοις ἐν τῷ καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς χρόνῳ, καὶ τὰ δισταζόμενα τῶν ἔργων διὰ τὸ μέγεθος, ἐκ τοῦ καθ᾽ αὑτοὺς βίου τεκμαιρόμενοι, τὴν Ἡρακλέους δύναμιν ἐκ τῆς ἀσθενείας τῶν νῦν ἀνθρώπων θεωροῦσιν, ὥστε διὰ τὴν ὑπερβολὴν τοῦ μεγέθους τῶν ἔργων ἀπιστεῖσθαι τὴν γραφήν. Καθόλου γὰρ ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαίαις μυθολογίαις οὐκ ἐκ παντὸς τρόπου ~πικρῶς τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐξεταστέον~. Καὶ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις ~πεπεισμένοι μήτε Κενταύρους~ διφυεῖς ἐξ ἑτερογενῶν σωμάτων ὑπάρξαι, μήτε Γηρυόνην τρισώματον, ~ὅμως προσδεχόμεθα τὰς τοιαύτας μυθολογίας~, καὶ ~ταῖς ἐπισημασίαις συναύξομεν τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ τιμήν~. Καὶ γὰρ ἄτοπον, Ἡρακλέα μὲν ἔτι κατ᾽ ἀνθρώπους ὄντα τοῖς ἰδίοις πόνοις ἐξημερῶσαι τὴν οἰκουμένην, τοὺς δ᾽ ἀνθρώπους, ἐπιλαθομένους τῆς κοινῆς εὐεργεσίας, ~συκοφαντεῖν~ τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς καλλίστοις ἔργοις ἔπαινον, etc.

This is a remarkable passage: first, inasmuch as it sets forth the total inapplicability of analogies drawn from the historical past as narratives about Hêraklês; next, inasmuch as it suspends the employment of critical and scientific tests, and invokes an acquiescence interwoven and identified with the feelings, as the proper mode of evincing pious reverence for the god Hêraklês. It aims at reproducing exactly that state of mind to which the mythes were addressed, and with which alone they could ever be in thorough harmony.

[959] Diodôr. iii. 45-60; v. 44-46.

Pausanias is far more strictly Hellenic in his view of the Grecian mythes than Diodôrus: his sincere piety makes him inclined to faith generally with regard to the mythical narratives, but subject nevertheless to the frequent necessity of historicizing or allegorizing them. His belief in the general reality of the mythical history and chronology is complete, in spite of the many discrepancies which he finds in it, and which he is unable to reconcile.

Another author who seems to have conceived clearly, and applied consistently, the semi-historical theory of the Grecian mythes, is Palæphatus, of whose work what appears to be a short abstract has been preserved.[960] In the short preface of this treatise “concerning Incredible Tales,” he remarks, that some men, from want of instruction, believe all the current narratives; while others, more searching and cautious, disbelieve them altogether. Each of these extremes he is anxious to avoid. On the one hand, he thinks that no narrative could ever have acquired credence unless it had been founded in truth; on the other, it is impossible for him to accept so much of the existing narratives as conflicts with the analogies of present natural phænomena. If such things ever had been, they would still continue to be—but they never have so occurred; and the extra-analogical features of the stories are to be ascribed to the license of the poets. Palæphatus wishes to adopt a middle course, neither accepting all nor rejecting all: accordingly, he had taken great pains to separate the true from the false in many of the narratives; he had visited the localities wherein they had taken place, and made careful inquiries from old men and others.[961] The results of his researches are presented in a new version of fifty legends, among the most celebrated and the most fabulous, comprising the Centaurs, Pasiphaê, Aktæôn, Kadmus and the Sparti, the Sphinx, Cycnus, Dædalus, the Trojan horse, Æolus, Scylla, Geryôn, Bellerophôn, etc.

[960] The work of Palæphatus, probably this original, is alluded to in the Ciris of Virgil (88):—

“Docta Palæphatiâ testatur voce papyrus.”

The date of Palæphatus is unknown—indeed this passage of the Ciris seems the only ground that there is for inference respecting it. That which we now possess is probably an extract from a larger work—made by another person at some later time: see Vossius de Historicis Græcis, p. 478, ed. Westermann.

[961] Palæphat. init. ap. Script. Mythogr. ed. Westermann, p. 268. Τῶν ἀνθρώπων οἱ μὲν πείθονται πᾶσι τοῖς λεγομένοις, ὡς ἀνομίλητοι σοφίας καὶ ἐπιστήμης—οἱ δὲ πυκνότεροι τὴν φύσιν καὶ πολυπράγμονες ἀπιστοῦσι τὸ παράπαν μηδὲν γενέσθαι τούτων. Ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκεῖ γενέσθαι πάντα τὰ λεγόμενα· ... γενόμενα δέ τινα οἱ ποιηταὶ καὶ λογογράφοι παρέτρεψαν εἰς τὸ ἀπιστότερον καὶ θαυμασιώτερον τοῦ θαυμάζειν ἕνεκα τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. Ἐγὼ δὲ γινώσκω, ὅτι οὐ δύναται τὰ τοιαῦτα εἶναι οἷα καὶ λέγεται· τοῦτο δὲ καὶ διείληφα, ὅτι εἰ μὴ ἐγένετο, οὐκ ἄν ἐλέγετο.

The main assumption of the semi-historical theory is here shortly and clearly stated.

One of the early Christian writers, Minucius Felix, is astonished at the easy belief of his pagan forefathers in miracles. If ever such things had been done in former times (he affirms), they would continue to be done now; as they cannot be done now, we may be sure that they never were really done formerly (Minucius Felix, Octav. c. 20): “Majoribus enim nostris tam facilis in mendaciis fides fuit, ut temerè crediderint etiam alia monstruosa mira miracula, Scyllam multiplicem, Chimæram multiformem, Hydram, et Centauros. Quid illas aniles fabulas—de hominibus aves, et feras homines, et de hominibus arbores atque flores? Quæ, si essent facta, fierent; quia fieri non possunt, ideo nec facta sunt.”

It must be confessed that Palæphatus has performed his promise of transforming the “incredibilia” into narratives in themselves plausible and unobjectionable, and that in doing so he always follows some thread of analogy, real or verbal. The Centaurs (he tells us) were a body of young men from the village of Nephelê in Thessaly, who first trained and mounted horses for the purpose of repelling a herd of bulls belonging to Ixiôn king of the Lapithæ, which had run wild and done great damage: they pursued these wild bulls on horseback, and pierced them with their spears, thus acquiring both the name of Prickers (κέντορες) and the imputed attribute of joint body with the horse. Aktæôn was an Arcadian, who neglected the cultivation of his land for the pleasures of hunting, and was thus eaten up by the expense of his hounds. The dragon whom Kadmus killed at Thêbes, was in reality Drako, king of Thêbes; and the dragon’s teeth which he was said to have sown, and from whence sprung a crop of armed men, were in point of fact elephants’ teeth, which Kadmus as a rich Phœnician had brought over with him: the sons of Drako sold these elephants’ teeth and employed the proceeds to levy troops against Kadmus. Dædalus, instead of flying across the sea on wings, had escaped from Krête in a swift sailing-boat under a violent storm: Kottus, Briareus, and Gygês were not persons with one hundred hands, but inhabitants of the village of Hekatoncheiria in Upper Macedonia, who warred with the inhabitants of Mount Olympus against the Titans: Scylla, whom Odysseus so narrowly escaped, was a fastsailing piratical vessel, as was also Pegasus, the alleged winged horse of Bellerophôn.[962]

[962] Palæphat. Narrat. 1, 3, 6, 13, 20, 21, 29. Two short treatises on the same subject as this of Palæphatus, are printed along with it, both in the collection of Gale and of Westermann; the one, Heracliti de Incredibilibus, the other Anonymi de Incredibilibus. They both profess to interpret some of the extraordinary or miraculous mythes, and proceed in a track not unlike that of Palæphatus. Scylla was a beautiful courtezan, surrounded with abominable parasites: she ensnared and ruined the companions of Odysseus, though he himself was prudent enough to escape her (Heraclit. c. 2. p. 313, West.) Atlas was a great astronomer: Pasiphaê fell in love with a youth named Taurus; the monster called the Chimæra was in reality a ferocious queen, who had two brothers called Leo and Drako; the ram which carried Phryxus and Hellê across the Ægean was a boatman named Krias (Heraclit. c. 2, 6, 15, 24).

A great number of similar explanations are scattered throughout the Scholia on Homer and the Commentary of Eustathius, without specification of their authors.

Theôn considers such resolution of fable into plausible history as a proof of surpassing ingenuity (Progymnasmata, cap. 6, ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett. Græc. i. p. 219). Others among the Rhetors, too, exercised their talents sometimes in vindicating, sometimes in controverting, the probability of the ancient mythes. See the Progymnasmata of Nicolaus—Κατασκευὴ ὅτι εἰκότα τὰ κατὰ Νιόβην, Ἀνασκευὴ ὅτι οὐκ εἰκότα τὰ κατὰ Νιόβην (ap. Walz. Coll. Rhetor. i. p. 284-318), where there are many specimens of this fanciful mode of handling.

Plutarch, however, in one of his treatises, accepts Minotaurs, Sphinxes, Centaurs, etc. as realities; he treats them as products of the monstrous, incestuous, and ungovernable lusts of man, which he contrasts with the simple and moderate passions of animals (Plutarch, Gryllus, p. 990).

By such ingenious conjectures, Palæphatus eliminates all the incredible circumstances, and leaves to us a string of tales perfectly credible and commonplace, which we should readily believe, provided a very moderate amount of testimony could be produced in their favor. If his treatment not only disenchants the original mythes, but even effaces their generic and essential character, we ought to remember that this is not more than what is done by Thucydidês in his sketch of the Trojan war. Palæphatus handles the mythes consistently, according to the semi-historical theory, and his results exhibit the maximum which that theory can ever present. By aid of conjecture, we get out of the impossible, and arrive at matters intrinsically plausible, but totally uncertified; beyond this point we cannot penetrate, without the light of extrinsic evidence, since there is no intrinsic mark to distinguish truth from plausible fiction.[963]

[963] The learned Mr. Jacob Bryant regards the explanations of Palæphatus as if they were founded upon real fact. He admits, for example, the city Nephelê alleged by that author in his exposition of the fable of the Centaurs. Moreover, he speaks with much commendation of Palæphatus generally: “He (Palæphatus) wrote early, and seems to have been a serious and sensible person; one who saw the absurdity of the fables upon which the theology of his country was founded.” (Ancient Mythology, vol. i. p. 411-435.)

So also Sir Thomas Brown (Enquiry into Vulgar Errors, Book I. chap. vi. p. 221, ed. 1835) alludes to Palæphatus as having incontestably pointed out the real basis of the fables. “And surely the fabulous inclination of those days was greater than any since; which swarmed so with fables, and from such slender grounds took hints for fictions, poisoning the world ever after: wherein how far they succeeded, may be exemplified from Palæphatus, in his Book of Fabulous Narrations.”

It remains that we should notice the manner in which the ancient mythes were received and dealt with by the philosophers. The earliest expression which we hear, on the part of philosophy, is the severe censure bestowed upon them on ethical grounds by Xenophanês of Kolophôn, and seemingly by some others of his contemporaries.[964] It was apparently in reply to such charges, which did not admit of being directly rebutted, that Theagenês of Rhêgium (about 520 B. C.) first started the idea of a double meaning in the Homeric and Hesiodic narratives,—an interior sense, different from that which the words in their obvious meaning bore, yet to a certain extent analogous, and discoverable by sagacious divination. Upon this principle, he allegorized especially the battle of the gods in the Iliad.[965] In the succeeding century, Anaxagoras and Metrodôrus carried out the allegorical explanation more comprehensively and systematically; the former representing the mythical personages as mere mental conceptions, invested with name and gender, and illustrative of ethical precepts,—the latter connecting them with physical principles and phænomena. Metrodôrus resolved not only the persons of Zeus, Hêrê, and Athênê, but also those of Agamemnôn, Achilles, and Hectôr, into various elemental combinations and physical agencies, and treated the adventures ascribed to them as natural facts concealed under the veil of allegory.[966] Empedoklês, Prodikus, Antisthenês, Parmenidês, Hêrakleidês of Pontus, and in a later age, Chrysippus, and the Stoic philosophers generally,[967] followed more or less the same principle of treating the popular gods as allegorical personages; while the expositors of Homer (such as Stesimbrotus, Glaukôn, and others, even down to the Alexandrine age), though none of them proceeded to the same extreme length as Metrodôrus, employed allegory amongst other media of explanation for the purpose of solving difficulties, or eluding reproaches against the poet.

[964] Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empir. adv. Mathemat. ix. 193. He also disapproved of the rites, accompanied by mourning and wailing, with which the Eleatês worshipped Leukothea: he told them, εἰ μὲν θεὸν ὑπολαμβάνουσι, μὴ θρηνεῖν· εἰ δὲ ἄνθρωπον, μὴ θύειν (Aristotel. Rhet. ii. 23).

Xenophanês pronounced the battles of the Titans, Gigantes, and Centaurs to be “fictions of our predecessors,” πλάσματα τῶν προτέρων (Xenophan. Fragm. 1. p. 42, ed. Schneidewin).

See a curious comparison of the Grecian and Roman theology in Dionys. Halicarn. Ant. Rom. ii. 20.

[965] Schol. Iliad. xx. 67: Tatian. adv. Græc. c. 48. Hêrakleitus indignantly repelled the impudent atheists who found fault with the divine mythes of the Iliad, ignorant of their true allegorical meaning: ἡ τῶν ἐπιφυομένων τῷ Ὁμήρῳ τόλμα τοὺς Ἥρας δεσμοὺς αἰτιᾶται, καὶ νομίζουσιν ὕλην τινα δαψιλῆ τῆς ἀθέου πρὸς Ὅμηρον ἔχειν μανίας ταῦτα—Ἦ οὐ μέμνῃ ὅτι τ᾽ ἐκρέμω ὑψόθεν, etc. λέληθε δ᾽ αὐτοὺς ὅτι τούτοις τοῖς ἔπεσιν ἐκτεθεολόγηται ἡ τοῦ παντὸς γένεσις, καὶ τὰ συνεχῶς ᾀδόμενα τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα τούτων τῶν στίχων ἐστὶ τάξις (Schol. ad Hom. Iliad. xv. 18).

[966] Diogen. Laërt. ii. 11; Tatian. adv. Græc. c. 37; Hesychius, v. Ἀγαμέμνονα. See the ethical turn given to the stories of Circê, the Sirens, and Scylla, in Xenoph. Memorab. i. 3, 7; ii. 6, 11-31. Syncellus, Chronic. p. 149. Ἑρμηνεύουσι δὲ οἱ Ἀναξαγόρειοι τοὺς μυθώδεις θεοὺς, νοῦν μὲν τὸν Δία, τὴν δὲ Ἀθηνᾶν τέχνην, etc.

Uschold and other modern German authors seem to have adopted in its full extent the principle of interpretation proposed by Metrodorus—treating Odysseus and Penelopê as personifications of the Sun and Moon, etc. See Helbig, Die Sittlichen Zustände des Griechischen Helden Alters, Einleitung, p. xxix. (Leipzig, 1839.)

Corrections of the Homeric text were also resorted to, in order to escape the necessity of imputing falsehood to Zeus (Aristotel. De Sophist. Elench. c. 4).

[967] Sextus Empiric. ix. 18; Diogen. viii. 76; Plutarch, De Placit. Philosoph. i. 3-6; De Poesi Homericâ, 92-126; De Stoicor. Repugn. p. 1050, Menander, De Encomiis, c. 5.

Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 14, 15, 16, 41; ii. 24-25. “Physica ratio non inelegans inclusa in impias fabulas.”

In the Bacchæ of Euripidês, Pentheus is made to deride the tale of the motherless infant Dionysus having been sewn into the thigh of Zeus. Teiresias, while reproving him for his impiety, explains the story away in a sort of allegory: the μηρὸς Διὸς (he says) was a mistaken statement in place of the αἰθὴρ χθόνα ἐγκυλούμενος (Bacch. 235-290).

Lucretius (iii. 995-1036) allegorizes the conspicuous sufferers in Hadês,—Tantalus, Sisyphus, Tityus, and the Danaïds, as well as the ministers of penal infliction, Cerberus and the Furies. The first four are emblematic descriptions of various defective or vicious characters in human nature,—the deisidæmonic, the ambitious, the amorous, or the insatiate and querulous man; the last two represent the mental terrors of the wicked.

In the days of Plato and Zenophôn, this allegorizing interpretation was one of the received methods of softening down the obnoxious mythes—though Plato himself treated it as an insufficient defence, seeing that the bulk of youthful hearers could not see through the allegory, but embraced the story literally as it was set forth.[968] Pausanias tells us, that when he first began to write his work, he treated many of the Greek legends as silly and undeserving of serious attention; but as he proceeded, he gradually arrived at the full conviction, that the ancient sages had designedly spoken in enigmatical language, and that there was valuable truth wrapped up in their narratives: it was the duty of a pious man, therefore, to study and interpret, but not to reject, stories current and accredited respecting the gods.[969] And others,—arguing from the analogy of the religious mysteries, which could not be divulged without impiety to any except such as had been specially admitted and initiated,—maintained that it would be a profanation to reveal directly to the vulgar, the genuine scheme of nature and the divine administration: the ancient poets and philosophers had taken the only proper course, of talking to the many in types and parables, and reserving the naked truth for privileged and qualified intelligences.[970] The allegorical mode of explaining the ancient fables[971] became more and more popular in the third and fourth centuries after the Christian æra, especially among the new Platonic philosophers; being both congenial to their orientalized turn of thought, and useful as a shield against the attacks of the Christians.

[968] Οἱ νῦν περὶ Ὅμηρον δεινοί—so Plato calls these interpreters (Kratylus, p. 407); see also Xenoph. Sympos. iii. 6; Plato, Ion. p. 530; Plutarch, De Audiend. Poet. p. 19. ὑπόνοια was the original word, afterwards succeeded by ἀλληγορία.

Ἥρας δὲ δεσμοὺς καὶ Ἡφαίστου ῥίψεις ὑπὸ πατρὸς, μέλλοντος τῇ μητρὶ τυπτομένῃ ἀμυνεῖν, καὶ θεομαχίας ὅσας Ὅμηρος πεποίηκεν, οὐ παραδεκτέον εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ~οὔτ᾽ ἐν ὑπονοίαις πεποιημένας, οὔτ᾽ ἄνευ ὑπονοιῶν~. Ὁ γὰρ νέος οὐχ οἷός τε κρίνειν ὅ,τι τε ὑπόνοια καὶ ὃ μὴ, ἀλλ᾽ ἃ ἂν τηλικοῦτος ὢν λάβῃ ἐν ταῖς δόξαις, δυσέκνιπτά τε καὶ ἀμετάστατα φιλεῖ γίγνεσθαι (Plato, Republ. ii. 17. p. 378).

The idea of an interior sense and concealed purpose in the ancient poets occurs several times in Plato (Theætet. c. 93. p. 180): παρὰ μὲν τῶν ἀρχαίων, μετὰ ποιήσεως ἐπικρυπτομένων τοὺς πολλοὺς, etc.; also Protagor. c. 20. p. 316.

“Modo Stoicum Homerum faciunt,—modo Epicureum,—modo Peripateticum,—modo Academicum. Apparet nihil horum esse in illo, quia omnia sunt.” (Seneca, Ep. 88.) Compare Plutarch, De Defectu Oracul. c. 11-12. t. ii. p. 702, Wytt., and Julian, Orat. vii. p. 216.

[969] Pausan. viii. 8, 2. To the same purpose (Strabo, x. p. 474), allegory is admitted to a certain extent in the fables by Dionys. Halic. Ant. Rom. ii. 20. The fragment of the lost treatise of Plutarch, on the Platæan festival of the Dædala, is very instructive respecting Grecian allegory (Fragm. ix. t. 5. p. 754-763, ed. Wyt.; ap. Euseb. Præpar. Evang. iii. 1).

[970] This doctrine is set forth in Macrobius (i. 2). He distinguishes between fabula and fabulosa narratio: the former is fiction pure, intended either to amuse or to instruct—the latter is founded upon truth, either respecting human or respecting divine agency. The gods did not like to be publicly talked of (according to his view) except under the respectful veil of a fable (the same feeling as that of Herodotus, which led him to refrain from inserting the ἱεροὶ λόγοι in his history). The supreme god, the τἀγαθὸν, the πρῶτον αἴτιον, could not be talked of in fables: but the other gods, the aërial or æthereal powers and the soul, might be, and ought to be, talked of in that manner alone. Only superior intellects ought to be admitted to a knowledge of the secret reality. “De Diis cæteris, et de animâ, non frustra se, nec ut oblectent, ad fabulosa convertunt; sed quia sciunt inimicam esse naturæ apertam nudamque expositionem sui: quæ sicut vulgaribus sensibus hominum intellectum sui, vario rerum tegmine operimentoque, subtraxit; ita à prudentibus arcana sua voluit per fabulosa tractari.... Adeo semper ita se et sciri et coli numina maluerunt, qualiter in vulgus antiquitus fabulata est.... Secundum hæc Pythagoras ipse atque Empedocles, Parmenides quoque et Heraclides, de Diis fabulati sunt: nec secus Timæus.” Compare also Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. x. and xxxii. Arnobius exposes the allegorical interpretation as mere evasion, and holds the Pagans to literal historical fact (Adv. Gentes, v. p. 185, ed. Elm.).

Respecting the allegorical interpretation applied to the Greek fables, Böttiger (Die Kunst—Mythologie der Griechen, Abschn. ii. p. 176); Nitzsch (Heldensage der Griech. sect. 6. p. 78); Lobeck (Aglaopham. p. 133-155).

[971] According to the anonymous writer ap. Westermann (Script. Myth. p. 328), every personal or denominated god may be construed in three different ways: either πραγματικῶς (historically, as having been a king or a man)—or ψυχικῶς, in which theory Hêrê signifies the soul; Athênê, prudence; Aphroditê, desire; Zeus, mind, etc.—or στοιχειακῶς, in which system Apollo signifies the sun; Poseidôn, the sea; Hêrê, the upper stratum of the air, or æther; Athênê, the lower or denser stratum; Zeus, the upper hemisphere; Kronus, the lower, etc. This writer thinks that all the three principles of construction may be resorted to, each on its proper occasion, and that neither of them excludes the others. It will be seen that the first is pure Euêmerism; the two latter are modes of allegory.

The allegorical construction of the gods and of the divine mythes is copiously applied in the treatises, both of Phurnutus and Sallustius, in Gale’s collection of mythological writers. Sallustius treats the mythes as of divine origin, and the chief poets as inspired (θεόληπτοι): the gods were propitious to those who recounted worthy and creditable mythes respecting them, and Sallustius prays that they will accept with favor his own remarks (cap. 3 and 4. pp. 245-251, Gale). He distributes mythes into five classes; theological, physical, spiritual, material, and mixed. He defends the practice of speaking of the gods under the veil of allegory, much in the same way as Macrobius (in the preceding note): he finds, moreover, a good excuse even for those mythes which imputed to the gods theft, adultery, outrages towards a father, and other enormities: such tales (he says) were eminently suitable, since the mind must at once see that the facts as told are not to be taken as being themselves the real truth, but simply as a veil, disguising some interior truth (p. 247).

Besides the Life of Homer ascribed to Plutarch (see Gale, p. 325-332), Hêraclidês (not Hêraclidês of Pontus) carries out the process of allegorizing the Homeric mythes most earnestly and most systematically. The application of the allegorizing theory is, in his view, the only way of rescuing Homer from the charge of scandalous impiety—πάντῃ γὰρ ἠσέβησεν, εἰ μηδὲν ἠλληγόρησεν (Hêrac. in init. p. 407, Gale). He proves at length, that the destructive arrows of Apollo, in the first book of the Iliad, mean nothing at the bottom except a contagious plague, caused by the heat of the summer sun in marshy ground (pp. 416-424). Athênê, who darts down from Olympus at the moment when Achilles is about to draw his sword on Agamemnôn, and seizes him by the hair, is a personification of repentant prudence (p. 435). The conspiracy against Zeus, which Homer (Iliad, i. 400) relates to have been formed by the Olympic gods, and defeated by the timely aid of Thetis and Briareus—the chains and suspension imposed upon Hêrê—the casting of Hêphæstos by Zeus out of Olympus, and his fall in Lêmnus—the destruction of the Grecian wall by Poseidôn, after the departure of the Greeks—the amorous scene between Zeus and Hêrê on Mount Gargarus—the distribution of the universe between Zeus, Poseidôn, and Hadês—all these he resolves into peculiar manifestations and conflicts of the elemental substances in nature. To the much-decried battle of the gods, he gives a turn partly physical, partly ethical (p. 481). In like manner, he transforms and vindicates the adventures of the gods in the Odyssey: the wanderings of Odysseus, together with the Lotophagi, the Cyclôps, Circê, the Sirens, Æolus, Scylla, etc., he resolves into a series of temptations, imposed as a trial upon a man of wisdom and virtue, and emblematic of human life (p. 496). The story of Arês, Aphroditê, and Hêphæstos, in the eighth book of the Odyssey, seems to perplex him more than any other: he offers two explanations, neither of which seems satisfactory even to himself (p. 494).

An anonymous writer in the collection of Westermann (pp. 329-344) has discussed the wanderings of Odysseus upon the same ethical scheme of interpretation as Hêraclidês: he entitles his treatise “A short essay on the Wanderings of Odysseus in Homer, worked out in conjunction with ethical reflections, and rectifying what is rotten in the story, as well as may be, for the benefit of readers.” (τὸ μύθου σαθρὸν θεραπεύουσα.) The author resolves the adventures of Odysseus into narratives emblematic of different situations and trials of human life. Scylla and Charybdis, for example (c. 8. p. 338), represent, the one, the infirmities and temptations arising out of the body, the other, those springing from the mind, between which man is called upon to steer. The adventure of Odysseus with Æolus, shows how little good a virtuous man does himself by seeking, in case of distress, aid from conjurors and evil enchanters; the assistance of such allies, however it may at first promise well, ultimately deceives the person who accepts it, and renders him worse off than he was before (c. 3. p. 332). By such illustrations does the author sustain his general position, that there is a great body of valuable ethical teaching wrapped up in the poetry of Homer.

Proclus is full of similar allegorization, both of Homer and Hesiod: the third Excursus of Heyne ad Iliad. xxiii. (vol. viii. p. 563), De Allegoriâ Homericâ, contains a valuable summary of the general subject.

The treatise De Astrologiâ, printed among the works of Lucian, contains specimens of astrological explanations applied to many of the Grecian μῦθοι, which the author as a pious man cannot accept in their literal meaning. “How does it consist with holiness (he asks) to believe that Æneas was son of Aphroditê, Minôs of Zeus, or Askalaphus of Mars? No; these were men born under the favorable influences of the planets Venus, Jupiter, and Mars.” He considers the principle of astrological explanation peculiarly fit to be applied to the mythes of Homer and Hesiod (Lucian, De Astrologiâ, c. 21-22).

It was from the same strong necessity, of accommodating the old mythes to a new standard both of belief and of appreciation, that both the historical and the allegorical schemes of transforming them arose; the literal narrative being decomposed for the purpose of arriving at a base either of particular matter of fact, or of general physical or moral truth. Instructed men were commonly disposed to historicize only the heroic legends, and to allegorize more or less of the divine legends: the attempt of Euêmerus to historicize the latter was for the most part denounced as irreligious, while that of Metrodôrus to allegorize the former met with no success. In allegorizing, moreover, even the divine legends, it was usual to apply the scheme of allegory only to the inferior gods, though some of the great Stoic philosophers carried it farther, and allegorized all the separate personal gods, leaving only an all-pervading cosmic Mind,[972] essential as a co-efficient along with Matter, yet not separable from Matter. But many pious pagans seem to have perceived that allegory pushed to this extent was fatal to all living religious faith,[973] inasmuch as it divested the gods of their character of Persons, sympathizing with mankind and modifiable in their dispositions according to the conduct and prayers of the believer: and hence they permitted themselves to employ allegorical interpretation only to some of the obnoxious legends connected with the superior gods, leaving the personality of the latter unimpeached.

[972] See Ritter, Geschichte der Philosophie, 2nd edit. part 3. book 11. chap. 4. p. 592; Varro ap. Augustin. Civitat. Dei, vi. 5, ix. 6; Cicero, Nat. Deor. ii. 24-28.

Chrysippus admitted the most important distinction between Zeus and the other gods (Plutarch. de Stoicor. Repugnant. p. 1052.)

[973] Plutarch. de Isid. et Osirid. c. 66. p. 377; c. 70. p. 379. Compare on this subject O. Müller, Prolegom. Mythol. p. 59 seq., and Eckermann, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, vol. i. sect. ii. p. 46.

One novelty, however, introduced seemingly by the philosopher Empedoklês and afterwards expanded by others, deserves notice, inasmuch as it modified considerably the old religious creed by drawing a pointed contrast between gods and dæmons,—a distinction hardly at all manifested in Homer, but recognized in the Works and Days of Hesiod.[974] Empedoklês widened the gap between the two, and founded upon it important consequences. The gods were good, immortal, and powerful agents, having free-will and intelligence, but without appetite, passion, or infirmity: the dæmons were of a mixed nature between gods and men, ministers and interpreters from the former to the latter, but invested also with an agency and dispositions of their own. They were very long-lived, but not immortal, and subject to the passions and propensities of men, so that there were among them beneficent and maleficent dæmons with every shade of intermediate difference.[975] It had been the mistake (according to these philosophers) of the old mythes to ascribe to the gods proceedings really belonging to the dæmons, who were always the immediate communicants with mortal nature, inspiring prophetic power to the priestesses of the oracles, sending dreams and omens, and perpetually interfering either for good or for evil. The wicked and violent dæmons, having committed many enormities, had thus sometimes incurred punishment from the gods: besides which, their bad dispositions had imposed upon men the necessity of appeasing them by religious ceremonies of a kind acceptable to such beings: hence, the human sacrifices, the violent, cruel, and obscene exhibitions, the wailings and fastings, the tearing and eating of raw flesh, which it had become customary to practise on various consecrated occasions, and especially in the Dionysiac solemnities. Moreover, the discreditable actions imputed to the gods,—the terrific combats, the Typhonic and Titanic convulsions, the rapes, abductions, flight, servitude, and concealment,—all these were really the doings and sufferings of bad dæmons, placed far below the sovereign agency—equable, undisturbed, and unpolluted—of the immortal gods. The action of such dæmons upon mankind was fitful and intermittent: they sometimes perished or changed their local abode, so that oracles which had once been inspired became after a time forsaken and disfranchized.[976]

[974] Hesiod, Opp. et Di. 122: to the same effect Pythagoras and Thalês (Diogen. Laër. viii. 32; and Plutarch, Placit. Philos. i. 8).

The Hesiodic dæmons are all good: Athenagoras (Legat. Chr. p. 8) says that Thalês admitted a distinction between good and bad dæmons, which seems very doubtful.

[975] The distinction between Θεοὶ and Δαίμονες is especially set forth in the treatise of Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum, capp. 10, 12, 13, 15, etc. He seems to suppose it traceable to the doctrine of Zoroaster or the Orphic mysteries, and he represents it as relieving the philosopher from great perplexities: for it was difficult to know where to draw the line in admitting or rejecting divine Providence: errors were committed sometimes in affirming God to be the cause of everything, at other times in supposing him to be the cause of nothing. Ἐπεὶ τὸ διορίσαι πῶς χρηστέον καὶ μέχρι τίνων τῇ προνοίᾳ, χαλεπὸν, οἱ μὲν οὐδενὸς ἁπλῶς τὸν θεὸν, οἱ δὲ ὁμοῦ τι πάντων αἴτιον ποιοῦντες, ἀστοχοῦσι τοῦ μετρίου καὶ πρέποντος. Εὖ μὲν οὖν λέγουσιν καὶ οἱ λέγοντες, ὅτι Πλάτων τὸ ταῖς γεννωμέναις ποιότησιν ὑποκείμενον στοιχεῖον ἐξευρὼν, ὃ νῦν ὕλην καὶ φύσιν καλοῦσιν, πολλῶν ἀπήλλαξε καὶ μεγάλων ἀποριῶν τοὺς φιλοσόφους· ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκοῦσι πλείονας λῦσαι καὶ μείζονας ἀπορίας οἱ τὸ τῶν δαιμόνων γένος ἐν μέσῳ θεῶν καὶ ἀνθρώπων, καὶ τρόπον τινὰ τὴν κοινωνίαν ἡμῶν σύναγον εἰς ταὐτὸ καὶ σύναπτον, ἐξευρόντες (c. 10). Ἡ δαιμόνων φύσις ἔχουσα καὶ πάθος θνητοῦ καὶ θεοῦ δύναμιν (c. 13).

Εἰσὶ γὰρ, ὡς ἐν ἀνθρώποις, καὶ δαίμοσιν ἀρετῆς διάφοραὶ, καὶ τοῦ παθητικοῦ καὶ ἀλόγου τοῖς μὲν ἀσθενὲς καὶ ἀμαυρὸν ἔτι λείψανον, ὥσπερ περίττωμα, τοῖς δὲ πολὺ καὶ δυσκατάσβεστον ἔνεστιν, ὧν ἴχνη καὶ σύμβολα πολλαχοῦ θύσιαι καὶ τελεταὶ καὶ μυθολογίαι σώζουσι καὶ διαφυλάττουσιν ἐνδιεσπαρμένα (ib.): compare Plutarch. de Isid. et Osir. 25. p. 360.

Καὶ μὴν ὅσας ~ἔν τε μύθοις καὶ ὕμνοις λέγουσι καὶ ᾅδουσι~, τοῦτο μὲν ἁρπαγὰς, τοῦτο δὲ πλάνας θεῶν, κρύψεις τε καὶ φυγὰς καὶ λατρείας, οὐ θεῶν εἰσίν ἀλλὰ δαιμόνων παθήματα, etc. (c. 15): also c. 23; also De Isid. et Osir. c. 25. p. 366.

Human sacrifices and other objectionable rites are excused, as necessary for the purpose of averting the anger of bad dæmons (c. 14-15).

Empedoklês is represented as the first author of the doctrine which imputed vicious and abominable dispositions to many of the dæmons (c. 15, 16, 17, 20), τοὺς εἰσαγομένους ὑπὸ Ἐμπεδοκλέους δαίμονας; expelled from heaven by the gods, θεήλατοι καὶ οὐρανοπετεὶς (Plutarch, De Vitand. Aër. Alien. p. 830); followed by Plato, Xenokratês, and Chrysippus, c. 17: compare Plato (Apolog. Socrat. p. 27; Politic. p. 271; Symposion, c. 28. p. 203), though he seems to treat the δαίμονες as defective and mutable beings, rather than actively maleficent. Xenokratês represents some of them both as wicked and powerful in a high degree:—Ξενοκράτης καὶ τῶν ἡμερῶν τὰς ἀποφράδας, καὶ τῶν ἑορτῶν ὅσαι πληγάς τινας ἢ κοπετοὺς, ἢ νηστείας, ἢ δυσφημίας, ἢ αἰσχρολογίαν ἔχουσιν, οὔτε θεῶν τιμαῖς οὔτε δαιμόνων οἴεται προσήκειν χρηστῶν, ἀλλ᾽ εἶναι φύσεις ἐν τῷ περιέχοντι μεγάλας μὲν καὶ ἰσχυρὰς, δυστρόπους δὲ καὶ σκυθρωπὰς, αἳ ~χαίρουσι τοῖς τοιούτοις~, καὶ ~τυγχάνουσαι πρὸς οὐθὲν ἄλλο χεῖρον τρέπονται~ (Plutarch, De Isid. ut Osir. c. 26. p. 361; Quæstion. Rom. p. 283): compare Stobæus, Eclog. Phys. i. p. 62.

[976] Plutarch, De Defect. Orac. c. 15. p. 418. Chrysippus admitted, among the various conceivable causes to account for the existence of evil, the supposition of some negligent and reckless dæmons, δαιμόνια φαυλὰ ἐν οἷς τῷ ὄντι γίνονται καὶ ἐγκλητέαι ἀμέλειαι (Plutarch, De Stoicor. Repugnant. p. 1051). A distinction, which I do not fully understand, between θεοὶ and δαίμονες, was also adopted among the Locrians at Opus: δαίμων with them seems to have been equivalent to ἥρως (Plutarch, Quæstion. Græc. c. 6. p. 292): see the note above, pp. 350-351.

This distinction between gods and dæmons appeared to save in a great degree both the truth of the old legends and the dignity of the gods: it obviated the necessity of pronouncing either that the gods were unworthy, or the legends untrue. Yet although devised for the purpose of satisfying a more scrupulous religious sensibility, it was found inconvenient afterwards, when assailants arose against paganism generally. For while it abandoned as indefensible a large portion of what had once been genuine faith, it still retained the same word dæmons with an entirely altered signification. The Christian writers in their controversies found ample warrant among the earlier pagan authors[977] for treating all the gods as dæmons—and not less ample warrant among the later pagans for denouncing the dæmons generally as evil beings.[978]

[977] Tatian. adv. Græcos, c. 20; Clemens Alexandrin. Admonit. ad Gentes, pp. 26-29, Sylb.; Minuc. Felix, Octav. c. 26. “Isti igitur impuri spiritus, ut ostensum a Magis, a philosophis, a Platone, sub statuis et imaginibus consecrati delitescunt, et afflatu suo quasi auctoritatem præsentis numinis consequuntur,” etc. This, like so many other of the aggressive arguments of the Christians against paganism, was taken from the pagan philosophers themselves.

Lactantius, De Verâ Philosophiâ, iv. 28. “Ergo iidem sunt Dæmones, quos fatentur execrandos esse: iidem Dii, quibus supplicant. Si nobis credendum esse non putant, credant Homero; qui summum illum Jovem Dæmonibus aggregavit,” etc.

[978] See above, Chapter II. p. 70, the remarks on the Hesiodic Theogony.

Such were the different modes in which the ancient mythes were treated, during the literary life of Greece, by the four classes above named—poets, logographers, historians, and philosophers.

Literal acceptance, and unconscious, uninquiring faith, such as they had obtained from the original auditors to whom they were addressed, they now found only among the multitude—alike retentive of traditional feeling[979] and fearful of criticizing the proceedings of the gods.[980] But with instructed men they became rather subjects of respectful and curious analysis—all agreeing that the Word as tendered to them was inadmissible, yet all equally convinced that it contained important meaning, though hidden yet not undiscoverable. A very large proportion of the force of Grecian intellect was engaged in searching after this unknown base, by guesses, in which sometimes the principle of semi-historical interpretation was assumed, sometimes that of allegorical, without any collateral evidence in either case, and without possibility of verification. Out of the one assumption grew a string of allegorized phænomenal truths, out of the other a long series of seeming historical events and chronological persons,—both elicited from the transformed mythes and from nothing else.[981]

[979] A destructive inundation took place at Pheneus in Arcadia, seemingly in the time of Plutarch: the subterranean outlet (βάραθρον) of the river had become blocked up, and the inhabitants ascribed the stoppage to the anger of Apollo, who had been provoked by the stealing of the Pythian tripod by Hêraklês: the latter had carried the tripod to Pheneus and deposited it there. Ἆρ᾽ οὖν οὐκ ἀτοπώτερος τούτων ὁ Ἀπόλλων, εἰ Φενεάτας ἀπόλλυσι τοὺς νῦν, ἐμφράξας τὸ βάραθρον, καὶ κατακλύσας τὴν χώραν ἅπασαν αὐτῶν, ὅτι πρὸ χιλίων ἐτῶν, ὥς φασιν, ὁ Ἡρακλῆς ἀνασπάσας τὸν τρίποδα τὸν μαντικὸν εἰς Φενεὸν ἀπήνεγκε; (Plutarch. de Serâ Numin. Vindictâ, p. 577; compare Pausan. viii. 14, 1.) The expression of Plutarch, that the abstraction of the tripod by Hêraklês had taken place 1000 years before, is that of the critic, who thinks it needful to historicize and chronologize the genuine legend; which, to an inhabitant of Pheneus, at the time of the inundation, was doubtless as little questioned as if the theft of Hêraklês had been laid in the preceding generation.

Agathoclês of Syracuse committed depredations on the coasts of Ithaca and Korkyra: the excuse which he offered was, that Odysseus had come to Sicily and blinded Polyphêmus, and that on his return he had been kindly received by the Phæakians (Plutarch, ib.).

This is doubtless a jest, either made by Agathoclês, or more probably invented for him; but it is founded upon a popular belief.

[980] “Sanctiusque et reverentius visum, de actis Deorum credere quam scire.” (Tacit. German. c. 34.)

Aristidês, however, represents the Homeric theology (whether he would have included the Hesiodic we do not know) as believed quite literally among the multitude in his time, the second century after Christianity (Aristid. Orat. iii. p. 25). Ἀπορῶ, ὅπη πότε χρή με διαθέσθαι μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν, πότερα ὡς τοῖς πολλοῖς δοκεῖ καὶ Ὁμήρῳ δὲ συνδοκεῖ, θεῶν παθήματα συμπεισθῆναι καὶ ἡμᾶς, οἷον Ἀρέος δέσμα καὶ Ἀπόλλωνος θητείας καὶ Ἡφαίστου ῥίψεις εἰς θάλασσαν, οὕτω δὲ καὶ Ἰνοῦς ἄχη καὶ φυγάς τινας. Compare Lucian, Ζεὺς Τραγῶδος, c. 20, and De Luctu, c. 2; Dionys. Halicar. A. R. ii. p. 90, Sylb.

Kallimachus (Hymn. ad Jov. 9) distinctly denied the statement of the Kretans that they possessed in Krête the tomb of Zeus, and treated it as an instance of Kretan mendacity; while Celsus did not deny it, but explained it in some figurative manner—αἰνιττόμενος τροπικὰς ὑπονοίας (Origen. cont. Celsum, iii. p. 137).

[981] There is here a change as compared with my first edition; I had inserted here some remarks on the allegorical theory of interpretation, as compared with the semi-historical. An able article on my work (in the Edinburgh Review, October 1846), pointed out that those remarks required modification, and that the idea of allegory in reference to the construction of the mythes was altogether inadmissible.

The utmost which we accomplish by means of the semi-historical theory, even in its most successful applications, is, that after leaving out from the mythical narrative all that is miraculous or high-colored or extravagant, we arrive at a series of credible incidents—incidents which may, perhaps, have really occurred, and against which no intrinsic presumption can be raised. This is exactly the character of a well-written modern novel (as, for example, several among the compositions of Defoe), the whole story of which is such as may well have occurred in real life: it is plausible fiction, and nothing beyond. To raise plausible fiction up to the superior dignity of truth, some positive testimony or positive ground of inference must be shown; even the highest measure of intrinsic probability is not alone sufficient. A man who tells us that, on the day of the battle of Platæa, rain fell on the spot of ground where the city of New York now stands, will neither deserve nor obtain credit, because he can have had no means of positive knowledge; though the statement is not in the slightest degree improbable. On the other hand, statements in themselves very improbable may well deserve belief, provided they be supported by sufficient positive evidence; thus the canal dug by order of Xerxês across the promontory of Mount Athos, and the sailing of the Persian fleet through it, is a fact which I believe, because it is well-attested—notwithstanding its remarkable improbability, which so far misled Juvenal as to induce him to single out the narrative as a glaring example of Grecian mendacity.[982] Again, many critics have observed that the general tale of the Trojan war (apart from the superhuman agencies) is not more improbable than that of the Crusades, which every one admits to be an historical fact. But (even if we grant this position, which is only true to a small extent), it is not sufficient to show an analogy between the two cases in respect to negative presumptions alone; the analogy ought to be shown to hold between them in respect to positive certificate also. The Crusades are a curious phænomenon in history, but we accept them, nevertheless, as an unquestionable fact, because the antecedent improbability is surmounted by adequate contemporary testimony. When the like testimony, both in amount and kind, is produced to establish the historical reality of a Trojan war, we shall not hesitate to deal with the two events on the same footing.

[982] Juvenal, Sat. x. 174:—

“Creditur olim Velificatus Athos, et quantum Græcia mendax Audet in historiâ,” etc.

In applying the semi-historical theory to Grecian mythical narrative, it has been often forgotten that a certain strength of testimony, or positive ground of belief, must first be tendered, before we can be called upon to discuss the antecedent probability or improbability of the incidents alleged. The belief of the Greeks themselves, without the smallest aid of special or contemporary witnesses, has been tacitly assumed as sufficient to support the case, provided only sufficient deduction be made from the mythical narratives to remove all antecedent improbabilities. It has been taken for granted that the faith of the people must have rested originally upon some particular historical event, involving the identical persons, things, and places which the original mythes exhibit, or at least the most prominent among them. But when we examine the pyschagogic influences predominant in the society among whom this belief originally grew up, we shall see that their belief is of little or no evidentiary value, and that the growth and diffusion of it may be satisfactorily explained without supposing any special basis of matters of fact. The popular faith, so far as it counts for anything, testifies in favor of the entire and literal mythes, which are now universally rejected as incredible.[983] We have thus the very minimum of positive proof, and the maximum of negative presumption: we may diminish the latter by conjectural omissions and interpolations, but we cannot by any artifice increase the former: the narrative ceases to be incredible, but it still remains uncertified,—a mere commonplace possibility. Nor is fiction always, or essentially, extravagant and incredible. It is often not only plausible and coherent, but even more like truth (if a paradoxical phrase may be allowed) than truth itself. Nor can we, in the absence of any extrinsic test, reckon upon any intrinsic mark to discriminate the one from the other.[984]

[983] Colonel Sleeman observes, respecting the Hindoo historical mind—“History to this people is all a fairy tale.” (Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, vol. i. ch. ix. p. 70.) And again, “The popular poem of the Ramaen describes the abduction of the heroine by the monster king of Ceylon, Rawun; and her recovery by means of the monkey general, Hunnooman. Every word of this poem, the people assured me was written, if not by the hand of the Deity himself, at least by his inspiration, which was the same thing—and it must consequently be true. Ninety-nine out of a hundred, among the Hindoos, implicitly believe, not only every word of the poem, but every word of every poem that has ever been written in Sanscrit. If you ask a man whether he really believes any very egregious absurdity quoted from these books, he replies, with the greatest naïveté in the world, Is it not written in the book; and how should it be there written, if not true? The Hindoo religion reposes upon an entire prostration of mind,—that continual and habitual surrender of the reasoning faculties, which we are accustomed to make occasionally, while engaged at the theatre, or in the perusal of works of fiction. We allow the scenes, characters, and incidents, to pass before our mind’s eye, and move our feelings—without stopping a moment to ask whether they are real or true. There is only this difference—that with people of education among us, even in such short intervals of illusion or abandon, any extravagance in the acting, or flagrant improbability in the fiction, destroys the charm, breaks the spell by which we have been so mysteriously bound, and restores us to reason and the realities of ordinary life. With the Hindoos, on the contrary, the greater the improbability, the more monstrous and preposterous the fiction—the greater is the charm it has over their minds; and the greater their learning in the Sanscrit, the more are they under the influence of this charm. Believing all to be written by the Deity, or under his inspirations, and the men and things of former days to have been very different from men and things of the present day, and the heroes of these fables to have been demigods, or people endowed with powers far superior to those of the ordinary men of their own day—the analogies of nature are never for a moment considered; nor do questions of probability, or possibility, according to those analogies, ever obtrude to dispel the charm with which they are so pleasingly bound. They go on through life reading and talking of these monstrous fictions, which shock the taste and understanding of other nations, without ever questioning the truth of one single incident, or hearing it questioned. There was a time, and that not far distant, when it was the same in England, and in every other European nation; and there are, I am afraid, some parts of Europe where it is so still. But the Hindoo faith, so far as religious questions are concerned, is not more capacious or absurd than that of the Greeks or Romans in the days of Socrates or Cicero: the only difference is, that among the Hindoos a greater number of the questions which interest mankind are brought under the head of religion.” (Sleeman, Rambles, etc., vol. i. ch. xxvi. p. 227: compare vol. ii. ch. v. p. 51; viii. p. 97.)

[984] Lord Lyttleton, in commenting on the tales of the Irish bards, in his History of Henry II., has the following just remarks (book iv. vol. iii. p. 13, quarto): “One may reasonably suppose that in MSS. written since the Irish received the Roman letters from St. Patrick, some traditional truths recorded before by the bards in their unwritten poems may have been preserved to our times. Yet these cannot be so separated from many fabulous stories derived from the same sources, as to obtain a firm credit; it not being sufficient to establish the authority of suspected traditions, that they can be shown not to be so improbable or absurd as others with which they are mixed—since there may be specious as well as senseless fictions. Nor can a poet or bard, who lived in the sixth or seventh century after Christ, if his poem is still extant, be any voucher for facts supposed to have happened before the incarnation; though his evidence (allowing for poetical license) may be received on such matters as come within his own time, or the remembrance of old men with whom he conversed. The most judicious historians pay no regard to the Welsh or British traditions delivered by Geoffrey of Monmouth, though it is not impossible but that some of these may be true.”

One definition of a mythe given by Plutarch coincides exactly with a specious fiction: Ὁ μῦθος εἶναι βούλεται λόγος ψευδὴς ἐοικὼς ἀληθινῷ (Plutarch, Bellone an pace clariores fuerunt Athenienses, p. 348).

“Der Grund-Trieb des Mythus (Creuzer justly expresses it) das Gedachte in ein Geschehenes umzusetzen.” (Symbolik der Alten Welt, sect. 43. p. 99.)

In the semi-historical theory respecting Grecian mythical narrative, the critic unconsciously transports into the Homeric age those habits of classification and distinction, and that standard of acceptance or rejection, which he finds current in his own. Amongst us, the distinction between historical fact and fiction is highly valued as well as familiarly understood: we have a long history of the past, deduced from a study of contemporary evidences; and we have a body of fictitious literature, stamped with its own mark and interesting in its own way. Speaking generally, no man could now hope to succeed permanently in transferring any striking incident from the latter category into the former, nor could any man deliberately attempt it without incurring well-merited obloquy. But this historical sense, now so deeply rooted in the modern mind that we find a difficulty in conceiving any people to be without it, is the fruit of records and inquiries, first applied to the present, and then preserved and studied by subsequent generations; while in a society which has not yet formed the habit of recording its present, the real facts of the past can never be known; the difference between attested matter of fact and plausible fiction—between truth and that which is like truth—can neither be discerned nor sought for. Yet it is precisely upon the supposition that this distinction is present to men’s habitual thoughts, that the semi-historical theory of the mythes is grounded.

It is perfectly true, as has often been stated, that the Grecian epic contains what are called traditions respecting the past—the larger portion of it, indeed, consists of nothing else. But what are these traditions? They are the matter of those songs and stories which have acquired hold on the public mind; they are the creations of the poets and storytellers themselves, each of whom finds some preëxisting, and adds others of his own, new and previously untold, under the impulse and authority of the inspiring Muse. Homer doubtless found many songs and stories current with respect to the siege of Troy; he received and transmitted some of these traditions, recast and transformed others, and enlarged the whole mass by new creations of his own. To the subsequent poets, such as Arktinus and Leschês, these Homeric creations formed portions of preëxisting tradition, with which they dealt in the same manner; so that the whole mass of traditions constituting the tale of Troy became larger and larger with each successive contributor. To assume a generic difference between the older and the newer strata of tradition—to treat the former as morsels of history, and the latter as appendages of fiction—is an hypothesis gratuitous at the least, not to say inadmissible. For the further we travel back into the past, the more do we recede from the clear day of positive history, and the deeper do we plunge into the unsteady twilight and gorgeous clouds of fancy and feeling. It was one of the agreeable dreams of the Grecian epic, that the man who travelled far enough northward beyond the Rhipæan mountains, would in time reach the delicious country and genial climate of the virtuous Hyperboreans—the votaries and favorites of Apollo, who dwelt in the extreme north beyond the chilling blasts of Boreas. Now the hope that we may, by carrying our researches up the stream of time, exhaust the limits of fiction, and land ultimately upon some points of solid truth, appears to me no less illusory than this northward journey in quest of the Hyperborean elysium.

The general disposition to adopt the semi-historical theory as to the genesis of Grecian mythes, arises in part from reluctance in critics to impute to the mythopœic ages extreme credulity or fraud; together with the usual presumption, that where much is believed some portion of it must be true. There would be some weight in these grounds of reasoning, if the ages under discussion had been supplied with records and accustomed to critical inquiry. But amongst a people unprovided with the former and strangers to the latter, credulity is naturally at its maximum, as well in the narrator himself as in his hearers: the idea of deliberate fraud is moreover inapplicable,[985] for if the hearers are disposed to accept what is related to them as a revelation from the Muse, the œstrus of composition is quite sufficient to impart a similar persuasion to the poet whose mind is penetrated with it. The belief of that day can hardly be said to stand apart by itself as an act of reason. It becomes confounded with vivacious imagination and earnest emotion; and in every case where these mental excitabilities are powerfully acted upon, faith ensues unconsciously and as a matter of course. How active and prominent such tendencies were among the early Greeks, the extraordinary beauty and originality of their epic poetry may teach us.

[985] In reference to the loose statements of the Highlanders, Dr. Johnson observes, “He that goes into the Highlands with a mind naturally acquiescent, and a credulity eager for wonders, may perhaps come back with an opinion very different from mine; for the inhabitants, knowing the ignorance of all strangers in their language and antiquities, are perhaps not very scrupulous adherents to truth; yet I do not say that they deliberately speak studied falsehood, or have a settled purpose to deceive. They have acquired and considered little, and do not always feel their own ignorance. They are not much accustomed to be interrogated by others, and seem never to have thought of interrogating themselves; so that if they do not know what they tell to be true, they likewise do not distinctly perceive it to be false. Mr. Boswell was very diligent in his inquiries, and the result of his investigations was, that the answer to the second question was commonly such as nullified the answer to the first.” (Journey to the Western Islands, p. 272, 1st edit., 1775).

It is, besides, a presumption far too largely and indiscriminately applied, even in our own advanced age, that where much is believed, something must necessarily be true—that accredited fiction is always traceable to some basis of historical truth.[986] The influence of imagination and feeling is not confined simply to the process of retouching, transforming, or magnifying narratives originally founded on fact; it will often create new narratives of its own, without any such preliminary basis. Where there is any general body of sentiment pervading men living in society, whether it be religious or political—love, admiration, or antipathy—all incidents tending to illustrate that sentiment are eagerly welcomed, rapidly circulated and (as a general rule) easily accredited. If real incidents are not at hand, impressive fictions will be provided to satisfy the demand. The perfect harmony of such fictions with the prevalent feeling stands in the place of certifying testimony, and causes men to hear them not merely with credence, but even with delight: to call them in question and require proof, is a task which cannot be undertaken without incurring obloquy. Of such tendencies in the human mind, abundant evidence is furnished by the innumerable religious legends which have acquired currency in various parts of the world, and of which no country was more fertile than Greece—legends which derived their origin, not from special facts misreported and exaggerated, but from pious feelings pervading the society, and translated into narrative by forward and imaginative minds—legends, in which not merely the incidents, but often even the personages are unreal, yet in which the generating sentiment is conspicuously discernible, providing its own matter as well as its own form. Other sentiments also, as well as the religious, provided they be fervent and widely diffused, will find expression in current narrative, and become portions of the general public belief—every celebrated and notorious character is the source of a thousand fictions exemplifying his peculiarities. And if it be true, as I think present observation may show us, that such creative agencies are even now visible and effective, when the materials of genuine history are copious and critically studied—much more are we warranted in concluding that, in ages destitute of records, strangers to historical testimony, and full of belief in divine inspiration both as to the future and as to the past, narratives purely fictitious will acquire ready and uninquiring credence, provided only they be plausible and in harmony with the preconceptions of the auditors.

[986] I considered this position more at large in an article in the “Westminster Review” for May, 1843, on Niebuhr’s Greek Legends, with which article much in the present chapter will be found to coincide.

The allegorical interpretation of the mythes has been by several learned investigators, especially by Creuzer, connected with the hypothesis of an ancient and highly instructed body of priests, having their origin either in Egypt or in the East, and communicating to the rude and barbarous Greeks religious, physical, and historical knowledge under the veil of symbols. At a time (we are told) when language was yet in its infancy, visible symbols were the most vivid means of acting upon the minds of ignorant hearers: the next step was to pass to symbolical language and expressions—for a plain and literal exposition, even if understood at all, would at least have been listened to with indifference, as not corresponding with any mental demand. In such allegorizing way, then, the early priests set forth their doctrines respecting God, nature, and humanity—a refined monotheism and a theological philosophy—and to this purpose the earliest mythes were turned. But another class of mythes, more popular and more captivating, grew up under the hands of the poets—mythes purely epical, and descriptive of real or supposed past events. The allegorical mythes, being taken up by the poets, insensibly became confounded in the same category with the purely narrative mythes—the matter symbolized was no longer thought of, while the symbolizing words came to be construed in their own literal meaning—and the basis of the early allegory, thus lost among the general public, was only preserved as a secret among various religious fraternities, composed of members allied together by initiation in certain mystical ceremonies, and administered by hereditary families of presiding priests. In the Orphic and Bacchic sects, in the Eleusinian and Samothracian mysteries, was thus treasured up the secret doctrine of the old theological and philosophical mythes, which had once constituted the primitive legendary stock of Greece, in the hands of the original priesthood and in ages anterior to Homer. Persons who had gone through the preliminary ceremonies of initiation, were permitted at length to hear, though under strict obligation of secrecy, this ancient religious and cosmogonic doctrine, revealing the destination of man and the certainty of posthumous rewards and punishments—all disengaged from the corruptions of poets, as well as from the symbols and allegories under which they still remained buried in the eyes of the vulgar. The mysteries of Greece were thus traced up to the earliest ages, and represented as the only faithful depository channels of that purer theology and physics which had originally been communicated, though under the unavoidable inconvenience of a symbolical expression, by an enlightened priesthood coming from abroad to the then rude barbarians of the country.[987]

[987] For this general character of the Grecian mysteries, with their concealed treasure of doctrine, see Warburton, Divine Legation of Moses, book ii. sect. 4.

Payne Knight, On the Symbolical Language of ancient Art and Mythology, sect. 6, 10, 11, 40, etc.

Saint Croix, Recherches sur les Mystères du Paganisme, sect. 3, p. 106; sect. 4, p. 404, etc.

Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der Alten Völker, sect. 2, 3, 23, 39, 42, etc. Meiners and Heeren adopt generally the same view, though there are many divergences of opinion between these different authors, on a subject essentially obscure. Warburton maintained that the interior doctrine communicated in the mysteries was the existence of one Supreme Divinity, combined with the Euemeristic creed, that the pagan gods had been mere men.

See Clemens Alex. Strom. v. p. 582, Sylb.

The view taken by Hermann of the ancient Greek mythology is in many points similar to that of Creuzer, though with some considerable difference. He thinks that it is an aggregate of doctrine—philosophical, theological, physical, and moral—expressed under a scheme of systematic personifications, each person being called by a name significant of the function personified: this doctrine was imported from the East into Greece, where the poets, retaining or translating the names, but forgetting their meaning and connection, distorted the primitive stories, the sense of which came to be retained only in the ancient mysteries. That true sense, however, (he thinks,) may be recovered by a careful analysis of the significant names: and his two dissertations (De Mythologiâ Græcorum Antiquissimâ, in the Opuscula, vol. ii.) exhibit a specimen of this systematic expansion of etymology into narrative. The dissent from Creuzer is set forth in their published correspondence, especially in his concluding “Brief an Creuzer über das Wesen und die Behandlung der Mythologie,” Leipzig, 1819. The following citation from his Latin dissertation sets forth his general doctrine:—

Hermann, De Mythologiâ Græcorum Antiquissimâ, p. 4 (Opuscula, vol. ii. p. 171): “Videmus rerum divinarum humanarumque scientiam ex Asiâ per Lyciam migrantem in Europam: videmus fabulosos poëtas peregrinam doctrinam, monstruoso tumore orientis sive exutam, sive nondum indutam, quasi de integro Græcâ specie procreantes; videmus poëtas, illos, quorum omnium vera nomina nominibus—ab arte, quâ clarebant, petitis—obliterata sunt, diu in Thraciâ hærentes, raroque tandem etiam cum aliis Græciæ partibus commercio junctos: qualis Pamphus, non ipse Atheniensis, Atheniensibus hymnos Deorum fecit. Videmus denique retrusam paulatim in mysteriorum secretam illam sapientum doctrinam, vitiatam religionum perturbatione, corruptam inscitiâ interpretum, obscuratam levitate amœniora sectantium—adeo ut eam ne illi quidem intelligerent, qui hæreditariam a prioribus poësin colentes, quum ingenii præstantiâ omnes præstinguerent, tantâ illos oblivione merserunt, ut ipsi sint primi auctores omnis eruditionis habiti.”

Hermann thinks, however, that by pursuing the suggestions of etymology, vestiges may still be discovered, and something like a history compiled, of Grecian belief as it stood anterior to Homer and Hesiod: “Est autem in hac omni ratione judicio maxime opus, quia non testibus res agitur, sed ad interpretandi solertiam omnia revocanda sunt” (p. 172). To the same general purpose the French work of M. Emérie David, Recherches sur le Dieu Jupiter—reviewed by O. Müller: see the Kleine Schriften of the latter, vol. ii. p. 82.

Mr. Bryant has also employed a profusion of learning, and numerous etymological conjectures, to resolve the Greek mythes into mistakes, perversions, and mutilations, of the exploits and doctrines of oriental tribes long-lost and by-gone,—Amonians, Cuthites, Arkites, etc. “It was Noah (he thinks) who was represented under the different names of Thoth, Hermês, Menês, Osiris, Zeuth, Atlas, Phorôneus, Promêtheus, to which list a farther number of great extent might be added: the Νοῦς of Anaxagoras was in reality the patriarch Noah” (Ant. Mythol. vol. ii. pp. 253, 272). “The Cuthites or Amonians, descendants of Noah, settled in Greece from the east, celebrated for their skill in building and the arts” (ib. i. p. 502; ii. p. 187). “The greatest part of the Grecian theology arose from misconception and blunders, the stories concerning their gods and heroes were founded on terms misinterpreted or abused” (ib. i. p. 452). “The number of different actions ascribed to the various Grecian gods or heroes all relate to one people or family, and are at bottom one and the same history” (ib. ii. p. 57). “The fables of Promêtheus and Tityus were taken from ancient Amonian temples, from hieroglyphics misunderstood and badly explained” (i. p. 426): see especially vol. ii. p. 160.

But this theory, though advocated by several learned men, has been shown to be unsupported and erroneous. It implies a mistaken view both of the antiquity and the purport of the mysteries, which cannot be safely carried up even to the age of Hesiod, and which, though imposing and venerable as religious ceremonies, included no recondite or esoteric teaching.[988]

[988] The Anti-Symbolik of Voss, and still more the Aglaophamus of Lobeck, are full of instruction on the subject of this supposed interior doctrine, and on the ancient mysteries in general: the latter treatise, especially, is not less distinguished for its judicious and circumspect criticism than for its copious learning.

Mr. Halhed (Preface to the Gentoo Code of Laws, pp. xiii.-xiv.) has good observations on the vanity of all attempts to allegorize the Hindu mythology: he observes, with perfect truth, “The vulgar and illiterate have always understood the mythology of their country in its literal sense; and there was a time to every nation, when the highest rank in it was equally vulgar and illiterate with the lowest.... A Hindu esteems the astonishing miracles attributed to a Brima, or a Kishen, as facts of the most indubitable authenticity, and the relation of them as most strictly historical.”

Compare also Gibbon’s remarks on the allegorizing tendencies of the later Platonists (Hist. Decl. and Fall, vol. iv. p. 71).

The doctrine, supposed to have been originally symbolized and subsequently overclouded, in the Greek mythes, was in reality first intruded into them by the unconscious fancies of later interpreters. It was one of the various roads which instructed men took to escape from the literal admission of the ancient mythes, and to arrive at some new form of belief, more consonant with their ideas of what the attributes and character of the gods ought to be. It was one of the ways of constituting, by help of the mysteries, a philosophical religion apart from the general public, and of connecting that distinction with the earliest periods of Grecian society. Such a distinction was both avowed and justified among the superior men of the later pagan world. Varro and Scævola distributed theology into three distinct departments,—the mythical or fabulous, the civil, and the physical. The first had its place in the theatre, and was left without any interference to the poets; the second belonged to the city of political community as such,—it comprised the regulation of all the public worship and religious rites, and was consigned altogether to the direction of the magistrate; the third was the privilege of philosophers, but was reserved altogether for private discussion in the schools, apart from the general public.[989] As a member of the city, the philosopher sympathized with the audience in the theatre, and took a devout share in the established ceremonies, nor was he justified in trying what he heard in the one or saw in the other by his own ethical standard. But in the private assemblies of instructed or inquisitive men, he enjoyed the fullest liberty of canvassing every received tenet, and of broaching his own theories unreservedly, respecting the existence and nature of the gods. By these discussions, the activity of the philosophical mind was maintained and truth elicited; but it was such truth as the body of the people ought not to hear, lest their faith in their own established religious worship should be overthrown. In thus distinguishing the civil theology from the fabulous, Varro was enabled to cast upon the poets all the blame of the objectionable points in the popular theology, and to avoid the necessity of pronouncing censure on the magistrates, who (he contended) had made as good a compromise with the settled prejudices of the public as the case permitted.

[989] Varro, ap. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, iv. 27; vi. 5-6. “Dicis fabulosos Deos accommodatos esse ad theatrum, naturales ad mundum, civiles ad urbem.” “Varro, de religionibus loquens, multa esse vera dixit, quæ non modo vulgo scire non sit utile, sed etiam tametsi falsa sint, aliter existimare populum expediat: et ideo Græcos teletas et mysteria taciturnitate parietibusque clausisse” (ibid. iv. 31). See Villoison, De Triplici Theologiâ Commentatio, p. 8; and Lactantius, De Origin. Error. ii. 3. The doctrine of the Stoic Chrysippus, ap. Etymologicon Magn. v. Τελεταί—Χρύσιππος δέ φησι, τοὺς περὶ τῶν θείων λόγους εἰκότως καλεῖσθαι τελετὰς, χρῆναι γὰρ τούτους τελευταίους καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσι διδάσκεσθαι, τῆς ψυχῆς ἐχούσης ἕρμα καὶ κεκρατημένης, καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἀμυήτους σιωπᾷν δυναμένης· μέγα γὰρ εἶναι τὸ ἆθλον ὑπὲρ θεῶν ἀκοῦσαί τε ὀρθὰ, καὶ ἐγκρατεῖς γενέσθαι αὐτῶν.

The triple division of Varro is reproduced in Plutarch, Amatorius, p. 763. τὰ μὲν μύθῳ, τὰ δὲ νόμῳ, τὰ δὲ λόγῳ, πίστιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἔσχηκε· τῆς δ᾽ οὖν περὶ θεῶν δόξης καὶ παντάπασιν ἡγεμόνες καὶ διδάσκαλοι γεγόνασιν ἡμῖν οἵ τε ποιηταὶ, καὶ οἱ νομοθέται, καὶ τρίτον, οἱ φιλόσοφοι.

The same conflicting sentiments which led the philosophers to decompose the divine mythes into allegory, impelled the historians to melt down the heroic mythes into something like continuous political history, with a long series of chronology calculated upon the heroic pedigrees. The one process as well as the other was interpretative guesswork, proceeding upon unauthorized assumptions, and without any verifying test or evidence: while it frittered away the characteristic beauty of the mythe into something essentially anti-mythical, it sought to arrive both at history and philosophy by impracticable roads. That the superior men of antiquity should have striven hard to save the dignity of legends which constituted the charm of their literature as well as the substance of the popular religion, we cannot be at all surprised; but it is gratifying to find Plato discussing the subject in a more philosophical spirit. The Platonic Socratês, being asked whether he believed the current Attic fable respecting the abduction of Oreithyia (daughter of Erechtheus) by Boreas, replies, in substance,—“It would not be strange if I disbelieved it, as the clever men do; I might then show my cleverness by saying that a gust of Boreas blew her down from the rocks above while she was at play, and that, having been killed in this manner, she was reported to have been carried off by Boreas. Such speculations are amusing enough, but they belong to men ingenious and busy-minded overmuch, and not greatly to be envied, if it be only for this reason, that, after having set right one fable, they are under the necessity of applying the same process to a host of others—Hippocentaurs, Chimæras, Gorgons, Pegasus, and numberless other monsters and incredibilities. A man, who, disbelieving these stories, shall try to find a probable basis for each of them, will display an ill-placed acuteness and take upon himself an endless burden, for which I at least have no leisure: accordingly, I forego such researches, and believe in the current version of the stories.”[990]

[990] Plato, Phædr. c. 7. p. 229:—

PHÆDRUS. Εἶπέ μοι, ὦ Σώκρατες, σὺ τοῦτο τὸ μυθολόγημα πείθει ἀληθὲς εἶναι;

SOCRATES. Ἀλλ᾽ εἰ ἀπιστοίην, ὥσπερ οἱ σοφοὶ, οὐκ ἂν ἄτοπος εἴην, εἶτα σοφιζόμενος φαίην αὐτὴν πνεῦμα Βορέου κατὰ τῶν πλησίον πετρῶν σὺν φαρμακείᾳ παίζουσαν ὦσαι, καὶ οὕτω δὴ τελευτήσασαν λεχθῆναι ὑπὸ τοῦ Βορέου ἀναρπαστὸν γεγονέναι.... Ἐγὼ δὲ, ὦ Φαῖδρε, ἄλλως μὲν τὰ τοιαῦτα χαρίεντα ἡγοῦμαι, λίαν δὲ δεινοῦ καὶ ἐπιπόνου καὶ οὐ πάνυ εὐτυχοῦς ἀνδρὸς, κατ᾽ ἄλλο μὲν οὐδὲν, ὅτι δ᾽ αὐτῷ ἀνάγκη μετὰ τοῦτο τὸ τῶν Ἱπποκενταύρων εἶδος ἐπανορθοῦσθαι, καὶ αὖθις τὸ τῆς Χιμαίρας. Καὶ ἐπιῤῥεῖ δὲ ὄχλος τοιούτων Γοργόνων καὶ Πηγάσων, καὶ ἄλλων ἀμηχάνων πλήθη τε καὶ ἀτοπίαι τερατολόγων τινῶν φύσεων· αἷς εἴ τις ἀπιστῶν προσβιβᾷ κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἕκαστον, ἅτε ἀγροίκῳ τινὶ σοφίᾳ χρώμενος, πολλῆς αὐτῷ σχολῆς δεήσει. Ἐμοὶ δὲ πρὸς ταῦτα οὐδαμῶς ἐστι σχολή.... Ὅθεν δὴ χαίρειν ἐάσας ταῦτα, πειθόμενος δὲ τῷ νομιζομένῳ περὶ αὐτῶν, ὃ νῦν δὴ ἔλεγον, σκοπῶ οὐ ταῦτα ἀλλ᾽ ἐμαυτὸν, etc.

These remarks of Plato are valuable, not simply because they point out the uselessness of digging for a supposed basis of truth in the mythes, but because they at the same time suggest the true reason for mistrusting all such tentatives. The mythes form a class apart, abundant as well as peculiar: to remove any individual mythe from its own class into that of history or philosophy, by simple conjecture, and without any collateral evidence, is of no advantage, unless you can perform a similar process on the remainder. If the process be trustworthy, it ought to be applied to all; and e converso, if it be not applicable to all, it is not trustworthy as applied to any one specially; always assuming no special evidence to be accessible. To detach any individual mythe from the class to which it belongs, is to present it in an erroneous point of view; we have no choice except to admit them as they stand, by putting ourselves approximatively into the frame of mind of those for whom they were destined and to whom they appeared worthy of credit.

If Plato thus discountenances all attempts to transform the mythes by interpretation into history or philosophy, indirectly recognizing the generic difference between them—we find substantially the same view pervading the elaborate precepts in his treatise on the Republic. He there regards the mythes, not as embodying either matter-of-fact or philosophical principle, but as portions of religious and patriotic faith, and instruments of ethical tuition. Instead of allowing the poets to frame them according to the impulses of their own genius, and with a view to immediate popularity, he directs the legislator to provide types of his own for the characters of the gods and heroes, and to suppress all such divine and heroic legends as are not in harmony with these preëstablished canons. In the Platonic system, the mythes are not to be matters of history, nor yet of spontaneous or casual fiction, but of prescribed faith: he supposes that the people will believe, as a thing of course, what the poets circulate, and he therefore directs that the latter shall circulate nothing which does not tend to ennoble and improve the feelings. He conceives the mythes as stories composed to illustrate the general sentiments of the poets and the community, respecting the character and attributes of the gods and heroes, or respecting the social relations, and ethical duties as well as motives of mankind: hence the obligation upon the legislator to prescribe beforehand the types of character which shall be illustrated, and to restrain the poets from following out any opposing fancies. “Let us neither believe ourselves (he exclaims), nor permit any one to circulate, that Thêseus son of Poseidôn and Peirithöus son of Zeus, or any other hero or son of a god, could ever have brought themselves to commit abductions or other enormities such as are now falsely ascribed to them. We must compel the poets to say, either that such persons were not the sons of gods, or that they were not the perpetrators of such misdeeds.”[991]

[991] Plato, Repub. iii. 5. p. 391. The perfect ignorance of all men respecting the gods, rendered the task of fiction easy (Plato, Kritias, p. 107).

Most of the mythes which the youth hear and repeat (according to Plato) are false, but some of them are true: the great and prominent mythes which appear in Homer and Hesiod are no less fictions than the rest. But fiction constitutes one of the indispensable instruments of mental training as well as truth; only the legislator must take care that the fiction so employed shall be beneficent and not mischievous.[992] As the mischievous fictions (he says) take their rise from wrong preconceptions respecting the character of the gods and heroes, so the way to correct them is to enforce, by authorized compositions, the adoption of a more correct standard.[993]

[992] Plato, Repub. ii. 16. p. 377. Λόγων δὲ διττὸν εἶδος, τὸ μὲν ἀληθὲς, ψεῦδος δ᾽ ἕτερον; Ναί. Παιδευτέον δ᾽ ἐν ἀμφοτέροις, πρότερον δ᾽ ἐν τοῖς ψεύδεσιν· ... Οὐ μανθάνεις, ὅτι πρῶτον τοῖς παιδίοις μύθους λέγομεν· τοῦτο δέ που ὡς τὸ ὅλον εἰπεῖν ψεῦδος, ἔνι δὲ καὶ ἀληθῆ.... Πρῶτον ἡμῖν ἐπιστατητέον τοῖς μυθοποιοῖς, καὶ ὃν μὲν ἂν καλὸν μῦθον ποιήσωσιν, ἐγκριτέον, ὃν δ᾽ ἂν μὴ, ἀποκριτέον ... ὧν δὲ νῦν λέγουσι, τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐκβλητέον ... οὓς Ἡσίοδος καὶ Ὅμηρος ἡμῖν ἐλεγέτην, καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι ποιηταί. Οὗτοι γάρ που μύθους τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ψευδεῖς συντιθέντες ἔλεγόν τε καὶ λέγουσι. Ποίους δὴ, ἦ δ᾽ ὅς, καὶ τί αὐτῶν μεμφόμενος λέγεις; Ὅπερ, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγὼ, χρὴ καὶ πρῶτον καὶ μάλιστα μέμφεσθαι, ἄλλως τε καὶ ἐάν τις μὴ καλῶς ψεύδηται. Τί τοῦτο; Ὅταν τις εἰκάζῃ κακῶς τῷ λόγῳ περὶ θεῶν τε καὶ ἡρώων, οἷοί εἰσιν, ὥσπερ γραφεὺς μηδὲν ἐοικότα γράφων οἷς ἂν ὅμοια βουληθῇ γράψαι.

The same train of thought, and the precepts founded upon it, are followed up through chaps. 17, 18, and 19; compare De Legg. xii. p. 941.

Instead of recognizing the popular or dramatic theology as something distinct from the civil (as Varro did), Plato suppresses the former as a separate department and merges it in the latter.

[993] Plato, Repub. ii. c. 21. p. 382. Τὸ ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ψεῦδος πότε καὶ τί χρήσιμον, ὥστε μὴ ἄξιον εἶναι μίσους; Ἆρ᾽ οὐ πρός τε τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ τῶν καλουμένων φίλων, ὅταν διὰ μανίαν ἤ τινα ἄνοιαν κακόν τι ἐπιχειρῶσι πράττειν, τότε ἀποτροπῆς ἕνεκα ὡς φάρμακον χρήσιμον γίγνεται; ~Καὶ ἐν αἷς νῦν δὴ ἐλέγομεν ταῖς μυθολογίαις, διὰ τὸ μὴ εἰδέναι ὅπῃ τἀληθὲς ἔχει περὶ τῶν παλαιῶν, ἀφομοιοῦντες τῷ ἀληθεῖ τὸ ψεῦδος~, ὅτι μάλιστα, οὕτω χρήσιμον ποιοῦμεν;

The comments which Plato has delivered with so much force in his Republic, and the enactments which he deduces from them, are in the main an expansion of that sentiment of condemnation, which he shared with so many other philosophers, towards a large portion of the Homeric and Hesiodic stories.[994] But the manner in which he has set forth this opinion, unfolds to us more clearly the real character of the mythical narratives. They are creations of the productive minds in the community, deduced from the supposed attributes of the gods and heroes: so Plato views them, and in such character he proposes to amend them. The legislator would cause to be prepared a better and truer picture of the foretime, because he would start from truer (that is to say, more creditable) conceptions of the gods and heroes. For Plato rejects the mythes respecting Zeus and Hêrê, or Thêseus and Peirithöus, not from any want of evidence, but because they are unworthy of gods and heroes: he proposes to call forth new mythes, which, though he admits them at the outset to be fiction, he knows will soon be received as true, and supply more valuable lessons of conduct.

[994] The censure which Xenophanês pronounced upon the Homeric legends has already been noticed: Herakleitus (Diogen. Laërt. ix. 1) and Metrodôrus, the companion and follower of Epicurus, were not less profuse in their invectives, ἐν γράμμασι τοσούτοις τῷ ποιητῇ λελοιδόρηται (Plutarch, Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum, p. 1086). He even advised persons not to be ashamed to confess their utter ignorance of Homer, to the extent of not knowing whether Hectôr was a Greek or a Trojan (Plut. ib. p. 1094).

We may consider, then, that Plato disapproves of the attempt to identify the old mythes either with exaggerated history or with disguised philosophy. He shares in the current faith, without any suspicion or criticism, as to Orpheus, Palamêdês, Dædalus, Amphiôn, Thêseus, Achilles, Cheirôn, and other mythical personages;[995] but what chiefly fills his mind is, the inherited sentiment of deep reverence for these superhuman characters and for the age to which they belonged,—a sentiment sufficiently strong to render him not only an unbeliever in such legends as conflict with it, but also a deliberate creator of new legends for the purpose of expanding and gratifying it. The more we examine this sentiment, both in the mind of Plato as well as in that of the Greeks generally, the more shall we be convinced that it formed essentially and inseparably a portion of Hellenic religious faith. The mythe both presupposes, and springs out of, a settled basis, and a strong expansive force of religious, social, and patriotic feeling, operating upon a past which is little better than a blank as to positive knowledge. It resembles history, in so far as its form is narrative; it resembles philosophy, in so far as it is occasionally illustrative; but in its essence and substance, in the mental tendencies by which it is created as well as in those by which it is judged and upheld, it is a popularized expression of the divine and heroic faith of the people.

[995] Plato, Republic iii. 4-5. p. 391; De Legg. iii. 1. p. 677.

Grecian antiquity cannot be at all understood except in connection with Grecian religion. It begins with gods and it ends with historical men, the former being recognized not simply as gods, but as primitive ancestors, and connected with the latter by a long mythical genealogy, partly heroic and partly human. Now the whole value of such genealogies arises from their being taken entire; the god or hero at the top is in point of fact the most important member of the whole;[996] for the length and continuity of the series arises from anxiety on the part of historical men to join themselves by a thread of descent with the being whom they worshipped in their gentile sacrifices. Without the ancestorial god, the whole pedigree would have become not only acephalous, but worthless and uninteresting. The pride of the Herakleids, Asklêpiads, Æakids, Nêleids, Dædalids, etc. was attached to the primitive eponymous hero and to the god from whom they sprung, not to the line of names, generally long and barren, through which the divine or heroic dignity gradually dwindled down into common manhood. Indeed, the length of the genealogy (as I have before remarked) was an evidence of the humility of the historical man, which led him to place himself at a respectful distance from the gods or heroes; for Hekatæus of Milêtus, who ranked himself as the fifteenth descendant of a god, might perhaps have accounted it an overweening impiety in any living man to claim a god for his immediate father.

[996] For a description of similar tendencies in the Asiatic religions, see Mövers, Die Phönizier, ch. v. p. 153 (Bonn, 1841): he points out the same phænomena as in the Greek,—coalescence between the ideas of ancestry and worship,—confusion between gods and men in the past,—increasing tendency to Euêmerize (pp. 156-157).

The whole chronology of Greece, anterior to 776 B. C., consists of calculations founded upon these mythical genealogies, especially upon that of the Spartan kings and their descent from Hêraklês,—thirty years being commonly taken as the equivalent of a generation, or about three generations to a century. This process of computation was altogether illusory, as applying historical and chronological conditions to a case on which they had no bearing. Though the domain of history was seemingly enlarged, the religious element was tacitly set aside: when the heroes and gods were chronologized, they became insensibly approximated to the limits of humanity, and the process indirectly gave encouragement to the theory of Euêmerus. Personages originally legendary and poetical were erected into definite landmarks for measuring the duration of the foretime, thus gaining in respect to historical distinctness, but not without loss on the score of religious association. Both Euêmerus and the subsequent Christian writers, who denied the original and inherent divinity of the pagan gods, had a great advantage in carrying their chronological researches strictly and consistently upwards—for all chronology fails as soon as we suppose a race superior to common humanity.

Moreover, it is to be remarked that the pedigree of the Spartan kings, which Apollodôrus and Eratosthenês selected as the basis of their estimate of time, is nowise superior in credibility and trustworthiness to the thousand other gentile and family pedigrees with which Greece abounded; it is rather indeed to be numbered among the most incredible of all, seeing that Hêraklês as a progenitor is placed at the head of perhaps more pedigrees than any other Grecian god or hero.[997] The descent of the Spartan king Leonidas from Hêraklês rests upon no better evidence than that of Aristotle or Hippocratês from Asklêpius,[998]—of Evagoras or Thucydidês from Æakus,—of Socratês from Dædalus,—of the Spartan heraldic family from Talthybius,—of the prophetic Iamid family in Elis from Iamus,—of the root-gatherers in Pêlion from Cheirôn,—and of Hekatæus and his gens from some god in the sixteenth ascending line of the series. There is little exaggeration in saying, indeed, that no permanent combination of men in Greece, religious, social, or professional, was without a similar pedigree; all arising out of the same exigences of the feelings and imagination, to personify as well as to sanctify the bond of union among the members. Every one of these gentes began with a religious and ended with an historical person. At some point or other in the upward series, entities of history were exchanged for entities of religion; but where that point is to be found we are unable to say, nor had the wisest of the ancient Greeks any means of determining. Thus much, however, we know, that the series taken as a whole, though dear and precious to the believing Greek, possesses no value as chronological evidence to the historian.

[997] According to that which Aristotle seems to recognize (Histor. Animal. vii. 6), Hêraklês was father of seventy-two sons, but of only one daughter—he was essentially ἀῤῥενόγονος, illustrating one of the physical peculiarities noticed by Aristotle. Euripidês, however, mentions daughters of Hêraklês in the plural number (Euripid. Herakleid. 45).

[998] Hippocratês was twentieth in descent from Hêraklês, and nineteenth from Asklêpius (Vita Hippocr. by Soranus, ap. Westermann, Scriptor. Biographic. viii. 1); about Aristotle, see Diogen. Laërt. v. 1. Xenophôn, the physician of the emperor Claudius, was also an Asklêpiad (Tacit. Ann. xii. 61).

In Rhodes, the neighboring island to Kôs, was the gens Ἁλιάδαι, or sons of Hêlios, specially distinguished from the Ἁλιασταὶ of mere associated worshippers of Hêlios, τὸ κοινὸν τῶν Ἁλιαδῶν καὶ τῶν Ἁλιαστῶν (see the Inscription in Boeckh’s Collection, No. 2525, with Boeckh’s comment).

When Hekatæus visited Thêbes in Egypt, he mentioned to the Egyptian priests, doubtless with a feeling of satisfaction and pride, the imposing pedigree of the gens to which he belonged,—with fifteen ancestors in ascending line, and a god as the initial progenitor. But he found himself immeasurably overdone by the priests “who genealogized against him.”[999] They showed to him three hundred and forty-one wooden colossal statues, representing the succession of chief priests in the temple in uninterrupted series from father to son, through a space of 11,300 years. Prior to the commencement of this long period (they said), the gods dwelling along with men, had exercised sway in Egypt; but they repudiated altogether the idea of men begotten by gods or of heroes.[1000]

[999] Herodot. ii. 144. Ἑκαταίῳ δὲ γενεηλογήσαντι ἑωϋτὸν, καὶ ἀναδήσαντι ἐς ἑκκαιδέκατον θεὸν, ἀντεγενεηλόγησαν ἐπὶ τῇ ἀριθμήσει, οὐ δεκόμενοι παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ, ἀπὸ θεοῦ γένεσθαι ἄνθρωπον· ἀντεγενεηλόγησαν δὲ ὧδε, etc.

[1000] Herod. ii. 143-145. Καὶ ταῦτα Αἰγύπτιοι ἀτρεκέως φασὶν ἐπίστασθαι, αἰεί τε λογιζόμενοι καὶ αἰεὶ ἀπογραφόμενοι τὰ ἔτεα.

But these counter-genealogies, are, in respect to trustworthiness and evidence, on the same footing. Each represents partly the religious faith, partly the retrospective imagination, of the persons from whom it emanated; in each, the lower members of the series (to what extent we cannot tell) are real, the upper members fabulous; but in each also the series derived all its interest and all its imposing effect from being conceived unbroken and entire. Herodotus is much perplexed by the capital discrepancy between the Grecian and Egyptian chronologies, and vainly employs his ingenuity in reconciling them. There is no standard of objective evidence by which either the one or the other of them can be tried: each has its own subjective value, in conjunction with the faith and feelings of Egyptians and Greeks, and each presupposes in the believer certain mental prepossessions which are not to be found beyond its own local limits. Nor is the greater or less extent of duration at all important, when we once pass the limits of evidence and verifiable reality. One century of recorded time, adequately studded with authentic and orderly events, presents a greater mass and a greater difficulty of transition to the imagination than a hundred centuries of barren genealogy. Herodotus, in discussing the age of Homer and Hesiod, treats an anterior point of 400 years as if it were only yesterday; the reign of Henry VI. is separated from us by an equal interval, and the reader will not require to be reminded how long that interval now appears.

The mythical age was peopled with a mingled aggregate of gods, heroes, and men, so confounded together that it was often impossible to distinguish to which class any individual name belonged. In regard to the Thracian god Zalmoxis, the Hellespontic Greeks interpreted his character and attributes according to the scheme of Euêmerism. They affirmed that he had been a man, the slave of the philosopher Pythagoras at Samos, and that he had by abilities and artifice established a religious ascendency over the minds of the Thracians, and obtained from them divine honors. Herodotus cannot bring himself to believe this story, but he frankly avows his inability to determine whether Zalmoxis was a god or a man,[1001] nor can he extricate himself from a similar embarrassment in respect to Dionysus and Pan. Amidst the confusion of the Homeric fight, the goddess Athênê confers upon Diomêdês the miraculous favor of dispelling the mist from his eyes, so as to enable him to discriminate gods from men; and nothing less than a similar miracle could enable a critical reader of the mythical narratives to draw an ascertained boundary-line between the two.[1002] But the original hearers of the mythes felt neither surprise nor displeasure from this confusion of the divine with the human individual. They looked at the past with a film of faith over their eyes—neither knowing the value, nor desiring the attainment, of an unclouded vision. The intimate companionship, and the occasional mistake of identity between gods and men, were in full harmony with their reverential retrospect. And we, accordingly, see the poet Ovid in his Fasti, when he undertakes the task of unfolding the legendary antiquities of early Rome, re-acquiring, by the inspiration of Juno, the power of seeing gods and men in immediate vicinity and conjunct action, such as it existed before the development of the critical and historical sense.[1003]

[1001] Herod. iv. 94-96. After having related the Euemeristic version given by the Hellespontic Greeks, he concludes with his characteristic frankness and simplicity—Ἐγὼ δὲ, περὶ μὲν τούτου καὶ τοῦ καταγαίου οἰκήματος, οὔτε ἀπιστέω, οὔτε ὦν πιστεύω τι λίην, δοκέω δὲ πολλοῖσι ἔτεσι πρότερον τὸν Ζάλμοξιν τοῦτον γενέσθαι Πυθαγόρεω. Εἴτε δὲ ἐγένετό τις Ζάλμοξις ἄνθρωπος, εἴτ᾽ ἐστὶ δαίμων τις Γέτησι οὗτος ἐπιχώριος, χαιρέτω. So Plutarch (Numa c. 19) will not undertake to determine whether Janus was a god or a king εἴτε δαίμων, εἴτε βασιλεὺς γενόμενος, etc.

Herakleitus the philosopher said that men were θεοὶ θνητοὶ, and the gods were ἄνθρωποι ἀθάνατοι (Lucian, Vitar. Auctio. c. 13. vol. i. p. 303, Tauch.: compare the same author, Dialog. Mortuor. iii. vol. i. p. 182, ed. Tauchn).

[1002] Iliad, v. 127:—

Ἀχλὺν δ᾽ αὖ τοι ἀπ᾽ ὀφθαλμῶν ἕλον, ἣ πρὶν ἐπῆεν, Ὄφρ᾽ εὖ γιγνώσκῃς ἠμὲν θεὸν, ἠδὲ καὶ ἄνδρα.

Of this undistinguishable confusion between gods and men, striking illustrations are to be found both in the third book of Cicero de Naturâ Deorum (16-21), and in the long disquisition of Strabo (x. pp. 467-474) respecting the Kabeiri, the Korybantes, the Dactyls of Ida; the more so, as he cites the statements of Pherekydês, Akusilaus, Dêmêtrius of Skêpsis, and others. Under the Roman empire, the lands in Greece belonging to the immortal gods were exempted from tribute. The Roman tax-collectors refused to recognize as immortal gods any persons who had once been men; but this rule could not be clearly applied (Cicero, Nat. Deor. iii. 20). See the remarks of Pausanias (ii. 26, 7) about Asklêpius: Galen, too, is doubtful about Asklêpius and Dionysus—Ἀσκληπιός γέ τοι καὶ Διόνυσος, εἶτ᾽ ἄνθρωποι πρότερον ἤστην, εἴτε καὶ ἀρχῆθεν θεοί (Galen in Protreptic. 9. tom. i. p. 22, ed. Kühn). Xenophôn (De Venat. c. i.) considers Cheirôn as the brother of Zeus.

The ridicule of Lucian (Deorum Concilium, t. iii. p 527-538, Hems.) brings out still more forcibly the confusion here indicated.

[1003] Ovid, Fasti, vi. 6-20:—

“Fas mihi præcipue vultus vidisse Deorum, Vel quia sum vates, vel quia sacra cano ... ... Ecce Deas vidi.... Horrueram, tacitoque animum pallore fatebar: Cum Dea, quos fecit, sustulit ipsa metus. Namque ait—O vates, Romani conditor anni, Ause per exiguos magna referre modos; Jus tibi fecisti numen cœleste videndi, Cum placuit numeris condere festa tuis.”

To resume, in brief, what has been laid down in this and the preceding chapters respecting the Grecian mythes:—

1. They are a special product of the imagination and feelings, radically distinct both from history and philosophy: they cannot be broken down and decomposed into the one, nor allegorized into the other. There are indeed some particular and even assignable mythes, which raise intrinsic presumption of an allegorizing tendency; and there are doubtless some others, though not specially assignable, which contain portions of matter of fact, or names of real persons, embodied in them. But such matter of fact cannot be verified by any intrinsic mark, nor we are entitled to presume its existence in any given case unless some collateral evidence can be produced.

2. We are not warranted in applying to the mythical world the rules either of historical credibility or chronological sequence. Its personages are gods, heroes, and men, in constant juxtaposition and reciprocal sympathy; men, too, of whom we know a large proportion to be fictitious, and of whom we can never ascertain how many may have been real. No series of such personages can serve as materials for chronological calculation.

3. The mythes were originally produced in an age which had no records, no philosophy, no criticism, no canon of belief, and scarcely any tincture either of astronomy or geography—but which, on the other hand, was full of religious faith, distinguished for quick and susceptible imagination, seeing personal agents where we look only for objects and connecting laws;—an age, moreover, eager for new narrative, accepting with the unconscious impressibility of children (the question of truth or falsehood being never formally raised) all which ran in harmony with its pre-existing feelings, and penetrable by inspired prophets and poets in the same proportion that it was indifferent to positive evidence. To such hearers did the primitive poet or story-teller address himself: it was the glory of his productive genius to provide suitable narrative expression for the faith and emotions which he shared in common with them, and the rich stock of Grecian mythes attests how admirably he performed his task. As the gods and the heroes formed the conspicuous object of national reverence, so the mythes were partly divine, partly heroic, partly both in one.[1004] The adventures of Achilles, Helen, and Diomêdês, of Œdipus and Adrastus, of Meleager and Athæa, of Jasôn and the Argô, were recounted by the same tongues, and accepted with the same unsuspecting confidence, as those of Apollo and Artemis, of Arês and Aphroditê, of Poseidôn and Hêraklês.

[1004] The fourth Eclogue of Virgil, under the form of a prophecy, gives a faithful picture of the heroic and divine past, to which the legends of Troy and the Argonauts belonged:—

“Ille Deûm vitam accipiet, Divisque videbit Permixtos heroas,” etc.

“Alter erit tum Tiphys et altera quæ vehat Argo Delectos heroas: erunt etiam altera bella, Atque iterum ad Trojam magnus mittetur Achilles.”

4. The time however came, when this plausibility ceased to be complete. The Grecian mind made an important advance, socially, ethically, and intellectually. Philosophy and history were constituted, prose writing and chronological records became familiar; a canon of belief more or less critical came to be tacitly recognized. Moreover, superior men profited more largely by the stimulus, and contracted habits of judging different from the vulgar: the god Elenchus[1005] (to use a personification of Menander) the giver and prover of truth, descended into their minds. Into the new intellectual medium, thus altered in its elements, and no longer uniform in its quality, the mythes descended by inheritance; but they were found, to a certain extent, out of harmony even with the feelings of the people, and altogether dissonant with those of instructed men. But the most superior Greek was still a Greek, and cherished the common reverential sentiment towards the foretime of his country. Though he could neither believe nor respect the mythes as they stood, he was under an imperious mental necessity to transform them into a state worthy of his belief and respect. Whilst the literal mythe still continued to float among the poets and the people, critical men interpreted, altered, decomposed, and added, until they found something which satisfied their minds as a supposed real basis. They manufactured some dogmas of supposed original philosophy, and a long series of fancied history and chronology, retaining the mythical names and generations even when they were obliged to discard or recast the mythical events. The interpreted mythe was thus promoted into a reality, while the literal mythe was degraded into a fiction.[1006]

[1005] Lucian, Pseudol. c. 4. Παρακλητέος ἡμῖν τῶν Μενάνδρου προλόγων εἷς, ὁ Ἔλεγχος, φίλος ἀληθείᾳ καὶ παῤῥησίᾳ θεὸς, οὐχ ὁ ἀσημότατος τῶν ἐπὶ τὴν σκήνην ἀναβαινόντων. (See Meineke ad Menandr. p. 284.)

[1006] The following passage from Dr. Ferguson’s Essay on Civil Society (part ii. sect. i. p. 126) bears well on the subject before us:—

“If conjectures and opinions formed at a distance have not a sufficient authority in the history of mankind, the domestic antiquities of every nation must for this very reason be received with caution. They are, for the most part, the mere conjectures or the fictions of subsequent ages; and even where at first they contained some resemblance of truth, they still vary with the imagination of those by whom they were transmitted, and in every generation receive a different form. They are made to bear the stamp of the times through which they have passed in the form of tradition, not of the ages to which their pretended descriptions relate.... When traditionary fables are rehearsed by the vulgar, they bear the marks of a national character, and though mixed with absurdities, often raise the imagination and move the heart: when made the materials of poetry, and adorned by the skill and the eloquence of an ardent and superior mind, they instruct the understanding as well as engage the passions. It is only in the management of mere antiquaries, or stript of the ornaments which the laws of history forbid them to wear, that they become unfit even to amuse the fancy or to serve any purpose whatever.

“It were absurd to quote the fable of the Iliad or the Odyssey, the legend of Hercules, Theseus, and Œdipus, as authorities in matters of fact relating to the history of mankind; but they may, with great justice, be cited to ascertain what were the conceptions and sentiments of the age in which they were composed, or to characterize the genius of that people with whose imaginations they were blended, and by whom they were fondly rehearsed and admired. In this manner, fiction may be admitted to vouch for the genius of nations, while history has nothing to offer worthy of credit.”

To the same purpose, M. Paulin Paris (in his Lettre à M. H. de Monmerqué, prefixed to the Roman de Berte aux Grans Piés, Paris, 1836), respecting the “romans” of the Middle Ages: “Pour bien connaître l’histoire du moyen âge, non pas celle des faits, mais celle des mœurs qui rendent les faits vraisemblables, il faut l’avoir étudiée dans les romans, et voilà pourquoi l’Histoire de France n’est pas encore faite.” (p. xxi.)

The habit of distinguishing the interpreted from the literal mythe has passed from the literary men of antiquity to those of the modern world, who have for the most part construed the divine mythes as allegorized philosophy, and the heroic mythes as exaggerated, adorned, and over-colored history. The early ages of Greece have thus been peopled with quasi-historical persons and quasi-historical events, all extracted from the mythes after making certain allowances for poetical ornament. But we must not treat this extracted product as if it were the original substance; we cannot properly understand it except by viewing it in connection with the literal mythes out of which it was obtained, in their primitive age and appropriate medium, before the superior minds had yet outgrown the common faith in an all-personified Nature, and learned to restrict the divine free-agency by the supposition of invariable physical laws. It is in this point of view that the mythes are important for any one who would correctly appreciate the general tone of Grecian thought and feeling; for they were the universal mental stock of the Hellenic world—common to men and women, rich and poor, instructed and ignorant; they were in every one’s memory and in every one’s mouth,[1007] while science and history were confined to comparatively few. We know from Thucydidês how erroneously and carelessly the Athenian public of his day retained the history of Peisistratus, only one century past;[1008] but the adventures of the gods and heroes, the numberless explanatory legends attached to visible objects and periodical ceremonies, were the theme of general talk, and any man unacquainted with them would have found himself partially excluded from the sympathy of his neighbors. The theatrical representations, exhibited to the entire city population, and listened to with enthusiastic interest, both presupposed and perpetuated acquaintance with the great lines of heroic fable: indeed, in later times even the pantomimic dancers embraced in their representations the whole field of mythical incident, and their immense success proves at once how popular and how well known such subjects were. The names and attributes of the heroes were incessantly alluded to in the way of illustration, to point out a consoling, admonitory, or repressive moral: the simple mention of any of them sufficed to call up in every one’s mind the principal events of his life, and the poet or rhapsode could thus calculate on touching chords not less familiar than susceptible.[1009]

[1007] A curious evidence of the undiminished popularity of the Grecian mythes to the exclusion even of recent history, is preserved by Vopiscus at the beginning of his Life of Aurelian.

The præfect of the city of Rome, Junius Tiberianus, took Vopiscus into his carriage on the festival-day of the Hilaria; he was connected by the ties of relationship with Aurelian, who had died about a generation before—and as the carriage passed by the splendid Temple of the Sun, which Aurelian had consecrated, he asked Vopiscus, what author had written the life of that emperor? To which Vopiscus replied, that he had read some Greek works which touched upon Aurelian, but nothing in Latin. Whereat the venerable præfect was profoundly grieved: “Dolorem gemitûs sui vir sanctus per hæc verba profudit: Ergo Thersitem, Sinonem, cæteraque illa prodigia vetustatis, et nos bene scimus, et posteri frequentabunt: divum Aurelianum, clarissimum principem, severissimum Imperatorem, per quem totus Romano nomini orbis est restitutus, posteri nescient? Deus avertat hanc amentiam! Et tamen, si bene memini, ephemeridas illius viri scriptas habemus,” etc. (Historiæ August. Scriptt. p. 209, ed. Salmas.)

This impressive remonstrance produced the Life of Aurelian by Vopiscus. The materials seem to have been ample and authentic; it is to be regretted that they did not fall into the hands of an author qualified to turn them to better account.

[1008] Thucyd. vi. 56.

[1009] Pausan. i. 3, 3. Λέγεται μὲν δὴ καὶ ἄλλα οὐκ ἀληθῆ παρὰ τοῖς πολλοῖς, οἷα ἱστορίας ἀνηκόοις οὖσι, καὶ ὅποσα ἤκουον εὐθὺς ἐκ παιδῶν ἔν τε χόροις καὶ τραγῳδίαις πιστὰ ἡγουμένοις, etc. The treatise of Lucian, De Saltatione, is a curious proof how much these mythes were in every one’s memory, and how large the range of knowledge of them was which a good dancer possessed (see particularly c. 76-79. t. ii. p. 308-310, Hemst).

Antiphanês ap. Athenæ. vi. p. 223:—

Μακάριόν ἐστιν ἡ τραγῳδία ποίημα κατὰ πάντ᾽, εἴ γε πρῶτον οἱ λόγοι ὑπὸ τῶν θεατῶν εἰσιν ἐγνωρίσμενοι πρὶν καί τιν᾽ εἰπεῖν· ὡς ὑπομνῆσαι μόνον δεῖ τὸν ποιητήν. Οἰδίπουν γὰρ ἂν γε φῶ, τὰ δ᾽ ἄλλα πάντ᾽ ἴσασιν· ὁ πατὴρ Λάϊος, μήτηρ Ἰοκάστη, θυγατέρες, παῖδες τίνες· τί πείσεθ᾽ οὗτος, τί πεποίηκεν. Ἂν πάλιν εἴπῃ τις Ἀλκμαίωνα, καὶ τὰ παιδία πάντ᾽ εὐθὺς εἴρηχ᾽, ὅτι μανεὶς ἀπέκτονε τὴν μήτερ᾽· ἀγανακτῶν δ᾽ Ἄδραστος εὐθέως ἥξει, πάλιν δ᾽ ἄπεισιν, etc.

The first pages of the eleventh Oration of Dio Chrysostom contain some striking passages both as to the universal acquaintance with the mythes, and as to their extreme popularity (Or. xi. p. 307-312, Reisk). See also the commencement of Heraklidês, De Allegoriâ Homericâ (ap. Scriptt. Myth. ed. Gale, p. 408), about the familiarity with Homer.

The Lydê of the poet Antimachus was composed for his own consolation under sorrow, by enumerating the ἡρωϊκὰς συμφοράς (Plutarch, Consolat. ad Apollôn. c. 9. p. 106: compare Æschines cont. Ktesiph. c. 48): a sepulchral inscription in Thêra, on the untimely death of Admêtus, a youth of the heroic gens Ægidae, makes a touching allusion to his ancestors Pêleus and Pherês (Boeckh, C. I. t. ii. p. 1087).

A curious passage of Aristotle is preserved by Dêmêtrius Phalereus (Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας, c. 144),—Ὅσῳ γὰρ αὐτίτης καὶ μονώτης εἰμὶ, φιλομυθότερος γέγονα (compare the passage in the Nikomachean Ethics, i. 9, μονώτης καὶ ἄτεκνος). Stahr refers this to a letter of Aristotle written in his old age, the mythes being the consolation of his solitude (Aristotelia, i. p. 201).

For the employment of the mythical names and incidents as topics of pleasing and familiar comparison, see Menander, Περὶ Ἐπιδεικτῖκ. § iv. capp. 9 and 11, ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett. t. ix. pp. 283-294. The degree in which they passed into the ordinary songs of women is illustrated by a touching epigram contained among the Chian Inscriptions published in Boeckh’s Collection (No. 2236):—

Βιττὼ καὶ Φαινὶς, φίλη ἡμέρη (?), αἱ συνέριθοι, Αἱ πενιχραὶ, γραῖαι, τῆδ᾽ ἐκλίθημεν ὁμοῦ. Ἀμφότεραι Κώαι, πρῶται γένος—ὦ γλυκὺς ὄρθρος, Πρὸς λύχνον ᾧ μύθους ᾔδομεν ἡμιθέων.

These two poor women were not afraid to boast of their family descent. They probably belonged to some noble gens which traced its origin to a god or a hero. About the songs of women, see also Agathias, i. 7. p. 29, ed. Bonn.

In the family of the wealthy Athenian Dêmocratês was a legend, that his primitive ancestor (son of Zeus by the daughter of the Archêgetês of the dême Aixôneis, to which he belonged) had received Hêraklês at his table: this legend was so rife that the old women sung it,—ἅπερ αἱ γραῖαι ᾄδουσι (Plato, Lysis, p. 205). Compare also a legend of the dême Ἀναγυροῦς, mentioned in Suidas ad voc.

“Who is this virgin?” asks Orestês from Pyladês in the Iphigeneia in Tauris of Euripidês (662), respecting his sister Iphigeneia, whom he does not know as priestess of Artemis in a foreign land:—

Τίς ἐστιν ἡ νεᾶνις; ὡς ~Ἑλληνικῶς~ Ἀνήρεθ᾽ ἡμᾶς τούς τ᾽ ἐν Ἰλίῳ πόνους Νόστον τ᾽ Ἀχαιῶν τόν τ᾽ ἐν οἰωνοῖς σοφὸν Κάλχαντ᾽, Ἀχιλλέως τ᾽ οὔνομ᾽, etc. ... ἐστὶν ἡ ξένη γένος Ἐκεῖθεν. Ἀργεία τις, etc.

A similar effect was produced by the multiplied religious festivals and processions, as well as by the oracles and prophecies which circulated in every city. The annual departure of the Theôric ship from Athens to the sacred island of Dêlos, kept alive, in the minds of Athenians generally, the legend of Thêseus and his adventurous enterprise in Krete;[1010] and in like manner most of the other public rites and ceremonies were of a commemorative character, deduced from some mythical person or incident familiarly known to natives, and forming to strangers a portion of the curiosities of the place.[1011] During the period of Grecian subjection under the Romans, these curiosities, together with their works of art and their legends, were especially clung to as a set-off against present degradation. The Thêban citizen who found himself restrained from the liberty enjoyed by all other Greeks, of consulting Amphiaräus as a prophet, though the sanctuary and chapel of the hero stood in his own city—could not be satisfied without a knowledge of the story which explained the origin of such prohibition,[1012] and which conducted him back to the originally hostile relations between Amphiaräus and Thêbes. Nor can we suppose among the citizens of Sikyôn anything less than a perfect and reverential conception of the legend of Thêbes, when we read the account given by Herodotus of the conduct of the despot Kleisthenês in regard to Adrastus and Melanippus.[1013] The Trœzenian youths and maidens,[1014] who universally, when on the eve of marriage, consecrated an offering of their hair at the Herôon of Hippolytus, maintained a lively recollection of the legend of that unhappy recusant whom Aphroditê had so cruelly punished. Abundant relics preserved in many Grecian cities and temples, served both as mementos and attestations of other legendary events; and the tombs of the heroes counted among the most powerful stimulants of mythical reminiscence. The sceptre of Pelops and Agamemnôn, still preserved in the days of Pausanias at Chæroneia in Bœôtia, was the work of the god Hêphæstos. While many other alleged productions of the same divine hand were preserved in different cities of Greece, this is the only one which Pausanias himself believed to be genuine: it had been carried by Elektra, daughter of Agamemnôn to Phôkis, and received divine honors from the citizens of Chæroneia.[1015] The spears of Mêrionês and Odysseus were treasured up at Engyium in Sicily, that of Achilles at Phasêlis; the sword of Memnôn adorned the temple of Asklêpius at Nicomêdia; and Pausanias, with unsuspecting confidence, adduces the two latter as proofs that the arms of the heroes were made of brass.[1016] The hide of the Kalydônian boar was guarded and shown by the Tegeates as a precious possession; the shield of Euphorbus was in like manner suspended in the temple of Branchidæ near Milêtus, as well as in the temple of Hêrê in Argos. Visible relics of Epeius and Philoktêtês were not wanting, while Strabo raises his voice with indignation against the numerous Palladia which were shown in different cities, each pretending to be the genuine image from Troy.[1017] It would be impossible to specify the number of chapels, sanctuaries, solemnities, foundations of one sort or another, said to have been first commenced by heroic or mythical personages,—by Hêraklês, Jasôn, Mêdea, Alkmæôn, Diomêdês, Odysseus, Danaus, and his daughters,[1018] etc. Perhaps in some of these cases particular critics might raise objections, but the great bulk of the people entertained a firm and undoubted belief in the current legend.

[1010] Plato, Phædo, c. 2.

[1011] The Philopseudes of Lucian (t. iii. p. 31, Hemst. cap. 2, 3, 4) shows not only the pride which the general public of Athens and Thêbes took in their old mythes (Triptolemus, Boreas, and Oreithyia, the Sparti, etc.), but the way in which they treated every man who called the stories in question as a fool or as an atheist. He remarks, that if the guides who showed the antiquities had been restrained to tell nothing but what was true, they would have died of hunger; for the visiting strangers would not care to hear plain truth, even if they could have got it for nothing (μηδὲ ἀμισθὶ τῶν ξένων ἀληθὲς ἀκούειν ἐθελησάντων).

[1012] Herodot. viii. 134.

[1013] Herodot. v. 67.

[1014] Euripid. Hippolyt. 1424; Pausan. ii. 32, 1; Lucian, De Deâ Syriâ, c. 60. vol. iv. p. 287, Tauch.

It is curious to see in the account of Pausanias how all the petty peculiarities of the objects around became connected with explanatory details growing out of this affecting legend. Compare Pausan. i. 22, 2.

[1015] Pausan. ix. 40, 6.

[1016] Plutarch, Marcell. c. 20; Pausan. iii. 3, 6.

[1017] Pausan. viii. 46, 1; Diogen. Laër. viii. 5; Strabo, vi. p. 263; Appian, Bell. Mithridat. c. 77; Æschyl. Eumen. 380.

Wachsmuth has collected the numerous citations out of Pausanias on this subject (Hellenische Alterthumskunde, part ii. sect. 115. p. 111).

[1018] Herodot. ii. 182; Plutarch, Pyrrh. c. 32; Schol. Apoll. Rhod iv. 1217; Diodôr. iv. 56.

If we analyze the intellectual acquisitions of a common Grecian townsman, from the rude communities of Arcadia or Phôkis even up to the enlightened Athens, we shall find that, over and above the rules of art or capacities requisite for his daily wants, it consisted chiefly of the various mythes connected with his gens, his city, his religious festivals, and the mysteries in which he might have chosen to initiate himself, as well as with the works of art and the more striking natural objects which he might see around him,—the whole set off and decorated by some knowledge of the epic and dramatic poets. Such was the intellectual and imaginative reach of an ordinary Greek, considered apart from the instructed few: it was an aggregate of religion, of social and patriotic retrospect, and of romantic fancy, blended into one indivisible faith. And thus the subjective value of the mythes, looking at them purely as elements of Grecian thought and feeling, will appear indisputably great, however little there may be of objective reality, either historical or philosophical, discoverable under them.

Nor must we omit the incalculable importance of the mythes as stimulants to the imagination of the Grecian artist in sculpture, in painting, in carving, and in architecture. From the divine and heroic legends and personages were borrowed those paintings, statues, and reliefs, which rendered the temples, porticos, and public buildings, at Athens and elsewhere, objects of surpassing admiration; and such visible reproduction contributed again to fix the types of the gods and heroes familiarly and indelibly on the public mind.[1019] The figures delineated on cups and vases, as well as on the walls of private houses, were chiefly drawn from the same source—the mythes being the great storehouse of artistic scenes and composition.

[1019] Ἡμιθέων ἀρεταῖς, the subjects of the works of Polygnotus at Athens (Melanthius ap. Plutarch. Cimôn. c. 4): compare Theocrit. xv. 138.

To enlarge on the characteristic excellence of Grecian art would here be out of place: I regard it only in so far as, having originally drawn its materials from the mythes, it reacted upon the mythical faith and imagination—the reaction imparting strength to the former as well as distinctness to the latter. To one who saw constantly before him representations of the battles of the Centaurs or the Amazons,[1020] of the exploits performed by Perseus and Bellerophôn, of the incidents composing the Trojan war or the Kalydônian boar-hunt—the process of belief, even in the more fantastic of these conceptions, became easy in proportion as the conception was familiarized. And if any person had been slow to believe in the efficacy of the prayers of Æakus, whereby that devout hero once obtained special relief from Zeus, at a moment when Greece was perishing with long-continued sterility, his doubts would probably vanish when, on visiting the Æakeion at Ægina, there were exhibited to him the statues of the very envoys who had come on the behalf of the distressed Greeks to solicit that Æakus would pray for them.[1021] A Grecian temple[1022] was not simply a place of worship, but the actual dwelling-place of a god, who was believed to be introduced by the solemn dedicatory ceremony, and whom the imagination of the people identified in the most intimate manner with his statue. The presence or removal of the statue was conceived as identical with that of the being represented,—and while the statue was solemnly washed, dressed, and tended with all the respectful solicitude which would have been bestowed upon a real person,[1023] miraculous tales were often rife respecting the manifestation of real internal feeling in the wood and the marble. At perilous or critical moments, the statue was affirmed to have sweated, to have wept, to have closed its eyes, or brandished the spear in its hands, in token of sympathy or indignation.[1024] Such legends, springing up usually in times of suffering and danger, and finding few men bold enough openly to contradict them, ran in complete harmony with the general mythical faith, and tended to strengthen it in all its various ramifications. The renewed activity of the god or hero both brought to mind and accredited the preëxisting mythes connected with his name. When Boreas, during the invasion of Greece by Xerxês, and in compliance with the fervent prayers of the Athenians, had sent forth a providential storm, to the irreparable damage of the Persian armada,[1025] the sceptical minority (alluded to by Plato), who doubted the mythe of Boreas and Oreithyia, and his close connection thus acquired with Erechtheus, and the Erechtheids generally, must for the time have been reduced to absolute silence.

[1020] The Centauromachia and the Amazonomachia are constantly associated together in the ancient Grecian reliefs (see the Expedition Scientifique de Morée, t. ii. p. 16, in the explanation of the temple of Apollo Epikureius at Phigaleia).

[1021] Pausan. ii. 29, 6.

[1022] Ernst Curtius, Die Akropolis von Athen, Berlin, 1844, p. 18. Arnobius adv. Gentes, vi. p. 203, ed. Elmenhorst.

[1023] See the case of the Æginêtans lending the Æakids for a time to the Thebans (Herodot. v. 80), who soon, however, returned them: likewise sending the Æakids to the battle of Salamis (viii. 64-80). The Spartans, when they decreed that only one of their two kings should be out on military service, decreed at the same time that only one of the Tyndarids should go out with them (v. 75): they once lent the Tyndarids as aids to the envoys of Epizephyrian Locri, who prepared for them a couch on board their ship (Diodôr. Excerpt. xvi. p. 15, Dindorf). The Thebans grant their hero Melanippus to Kleisthenês of Sikyôn (v. 68). What was sent, must probably have been a consecrated copy of the genuine statue.

Respecting the solemnities practised towards the statues, see Plutarch, Alkibiad. 34; Kallimach. Hymn. ad Lavacr. Palladis, init. with the note of Spanheim; K. O. Müller, Archæologie der Kunst, § 69; compare Plutarch, Quæstion. Romaic. § 61. p. 279; and Tacit. Mor. Germ. c. 40; Diodôr. xvii. 49.

The manner in which the real presence of a hero was identified with his statue (τὸν δίκαιον δεῖ θεὸν οἴκοι μένειν σώζοντα ροὺς ἱδρυμένους.—Menander, Fragm. Ἡνίοχος, p. 71, Meineke), consecrated ground, and oracle, is nowhere more powerfully attested than in the Heroïca of Philostratus (capp. 2-20. pp. 674-692; also De Vit Apollôn. Tyan. iv. 11), respecting Prôtesilaus at Elæus, Ajax at the Aianteium, and Hectôr at Ilium: Prôtesilaus appeared exactly in the equipment of his statue,—χλαμύδα ἐνῆπται, ξένε, τὸν Θετταλικὸν τρόπον, ὥσπερ καὶ τὸ ἄγαλμα τοῦτο (p. 674). The presence and sympathy of the hero Lykus is essential to the satisfaction of the Athenian dikasts (Aristophan. Vesp. 389-820): the fragment of Lucilius, quoted by Lactantius, De Falsâ Religione (i. 22), is curious.—Τοῖς ἥρωσι τοῖς κατὰ τὴν πόλιν καὶ τὴν χώραν ~ἱδρυμένοις~ (Lycurgus cont. Leocrat. c. 1).

[1024] Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 12; Strabo, vi. p. 264. Theophrastus treats the perspiration as a natural phænomenon in the statues made of cedar-wood (Histor. Plant. v. 10). Plutarch discusses the credibility of this sort of miracles in his Life of Coriolanus, c. 37-38.

[1025] Herodot. vii. 189. Compare the gratitude of the Megalopolitans to Boreas for having preserved them from the attack of the Lacedæmonian king Agis (Pausan. viii. 27, 4.—viii. 36, 4). When the Ten Thousand Greeks were on their retreat through the cold mountains of Armenia, Boreas blew in their faces, “parching and freezing intolerably.” One of the prophets recommended that a sacrifice should be offered to him, which was done, “and the painful effect of the wind appeared to every one forthwith to cease in a marked manner;” (καὶ πᾶσι δὴ περιφανῶς ἔδοξε λῆξαι τὸ χαλεπὸν τοῦ πνεύματος.—Xenoph. Anab. iv. 5, 3.)

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XVI

Cite this passage

MLA

APA

Chicago

Chapter XVI