The gods of Olympos

Preface

I have been asked to write a few words by way of introduction to " The Gods of Olympos," and I do so with the more pleasure as I believe that the book — spite of the many mythological manuals that have appeared — supplies a very definite want.

The " Olympos " of Dr. Petiscus — on which, with large alterations and additions, the present book is based — has gone through twenty editions. This alone proves it to have been pleasantly and readably written, and to have been well adapted to the elementary students for whom it was intended. Even in its twentieth edition, however, the "Olympos " is — I say it advisedly — an old-fashioned book ; and this, at the risk of seeming paradoxical, I assert to be for our particular purpose its peculiar merit, as I will proceed to explain.

The whole method of mythological study is at present in flux. The bright hopes raised in the early part of the present century by what maybe called the "Indo-European " theory have now for the most part faded ; we know now that in the nomen (name) is not to be sought the origin of the numen (god). We know, also, that what may be

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called the cosmical method will not do ; that we cannot reduce a god to the expression of one simple natural phenomenon ; that Hermes is more than the wind, and Athene's continent is beyond the clear blue sky.

A method which had at least simplicity to commend it died hard, but it is dead, and a new theory lives in its place, a new master, with tyrannies of its own — the Folk-lore Method, of which Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. J. G. Frazer are, in England, the best-known exponents. Nowadays we are taught to study the origines of Greek gods, not in the Hymns of the Rig Veda, which is a relief, as so few of us can read them, but by the light of analogy in the Custom and Myth of the contemporary Savage. The shock was severe at first, but we are settling down, and most of us now recognize the substantial soundness of the position. No less do we, and probably its original supporters, see clearly its inadequacy as applied to Greek mythology. It leaves us with the beginning of things, with certain primitive elementary conceptions, and takes no heed of the complex structure reared on the simple basis. The seductive simplicity of the "Corn-mother " and the " Tree-spirit," and, worst of all, the ever-impending " Totem," is almost as perilous as the old Sun and Moon snare.

What really lies before the Greek mythologist of the present and future, is a task so complex, so difficult, that he may well shrink. Gleaning all he can from the Folk-lore Methodist, admitting that the primitive fancy takes at all times analogous forms, acknowledging that the stately ritual

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of the Greek temple was based on the sympathetic magic of the savage, he is yet at the beginning of his task. He has the demons and spirits of primitive man at one pole, and the " gods of Olympos " at the other; while a link in this chain is wanting he knows no rest. It is not enough for him to hint airily that Dionysos may have been a bull or a tree, that Apollo may take his choice between a dog, a wolf, and a mouse — this is as little satisfactory as to offer Hermes the old alternative of resolving himself into the rain or the wind — what he must do, or fail, is to trace each Saga to its local home, to carry out the work that the great H. D. Miiller began before his time, to disentangle the " confederacy of local cults" from which the ultimate Olympian assembly was evolved.

But in the preface to an elementary book on mythology why touch on questions so abstruse ? Simply because they affect the method of elementary teaching, and hence mould my conception of what an elementary handbook should be. To my mind, it should not deal with matter at present controversial.

The necessity of, what I may call for shortness* sake, the " tribal " method is dawning on the writers of handbooks ; hints are scattered here and there through elementary books that the gods as they appeared in Homer are not the primary imaginations of the gifted Greek, have not sprung, like Athene, full armed from the creative brain, but are the late and literary stage of a long evolution. Poseidon, it is whispered, was not originally the god of the sea ;

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Artemis and Apollo had originally nothing to do with each other ; the marriage of Zeus and Hera was a latter-day thing. As in this matter the present writer has been first and worst offender, she may be allowed to record her conviction, based on many years of mythological teaching — that such scattered suggestions are in the elementary handbook premature, and to the student merely confusing. It may be possible ten years hence to write a manual on the historico-tribal method, but the time is not yet. For the present we must, for the student, set forth the " Gods of Olympos " as ultimate facts, with which he is bound to become intimately acquainted before he sets foot in the tempting field of unproved hypothesis. Therefore, to return" to my point, the method of Dr. Petiscus, though old-fashioned, is best ; he is safe ; he knows nothing of the new lights, therefore he cannot prematurely reflect them.

In the English edition his book has been freely dealt with, his occasional lapses into mere hypothesis have been ruthlessly excised, his somewhat lengthy, and often sentimental, excursions condensed, for quotations from German poets, passages from English writers have been here and there substituted as more suggestive to the English student. Additions have been made with a liberal hand. Eight new illustrations have been added, 1 mostly from vase-paintings, a branch of Greek art wholly ignored even in the twentieth

' For permission to reproduce these engravings the thanks of publisher and editor are due to Messrs. Macmillan.

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edition of the German book. The most important addition is, however, that of the abundant references added by the translator. A German popular book has usually no references at all. It bears the superscription, writ large, " Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." In England, for intellectual as for social matters, we draw between the specialist and the public no hard and fast lines of class distinction. It is for the student himself to decide if he will enter, the door is at least wide open.

The manual, then, in its English form is addressed to three possible classes of readers, and should be used as follows : The text of the book should be read right through as it stands, ignoring all references. The student will then have gained such a knowledge of mythology as is necessary for a general education, and for the rough understanding of classical allusions in modern literature; he will, through the illustrations, be acquainted with some of the best-known instances of Greek mythology as expressed in Greek art. Here the student of the first sort will lay the book aside. If, however, he have been attracted by that inherent beauty in Greek imagery which the medium of no manual can wholly obscure, he will go a step further, he will wish to study the actual form, literary and artistic, that these myths took in classical days. He must then take the book in hand a second time, and, looking up all the references to classical poets, read the passages carefully, either in the original or in the best available translations. Side by side with this he must study the statues, vases, etc., of the illustrations, when

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possible, in the originals, where that is impracticable, in photographs or the best reproductions. The illustrations of a handbook are necessarily little more than guide-posts. He now knows the art-form of the Greek myth, and here, if his impulse be merely artistic and contemplative, he may well end his studies. But it may be that his impulse is also or exclusively scientific — that he desires to know the origines of things mythological. To him at this third stage the references to modern scientific writers are addressed. They are not meant to be exhaustive. They include only what is best and most reliable, most in touch with modern method, or again such writings as from the point of view of accumulation of material are indispensable ; occasionally where nothing is first-rate the best available is given.

The book, then, while it is specially intended for the elementary learner, the school-boy and school-girl, offers itself also to the more advanced student of classical art and literature, and humbly as a guide-post to the intending specialist.

Jane E. Harrison.

Contents

PAGE

Introduction

The Character and Meaning of the Gods of Classic Antiquity i