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OLNOHO1 30 ALISHSAINN

Presented to

Che Library of the University of Toronto by Bertram ἸΏ. Davis from tbe books of

the late Lionel Davis, h.C.

PREFACH.

_ Tux first idea of this History was conceived many years ago, at a time when ancient Hellas was known to the English public chiefly through the pages of Mitford; and my purpose in writing it was to rectify the erroneous statements as to matter of fact _ which that history contained, as well as to present the general _ phenomena of the Grecian world under what I thought a juster _ and more comprehensive point of view. My leisure however _ was not at that time equal to the execution of any large literary = _ undertaking ; ; nor is it until within the last three or four years _ that I have been able to devote to the work that continuous ἢ ‘and exclusive labour, without which, though much may be _ done to illustrate detached points, no entire or complicated _ subject can ever be set forth in a manner worthy to meet 9 the public eye.

Meanwhile the state of the English literary world, in reference ancient Hellas, has been materially changed in more ways pone. If my early friend Dr. Thirlwall’s History of Greece d appeared a few years sooner, I should probably never have ived the design of the present work at all; I should y not have been prompted to the task by any deficiencies jthose which I felt and regretted in Mitford. The com- of the two authors affords indeed a striking proof of the of sound and enlarged views respecting the ancient

bear testimony to the learning, the sagacity, and the * which pervade his excellent work ; and it is the more

iv PREFACE.

particular points on which I shall have occasion to advert to it will unavoidably be points of dissent oftener than of coincidence.

The liberal spirit of criticism, in which Dr. Thirlwall stands so much distinguished from Mitford, is his own: there are other features of superiority which belong to him conjointly with his age. For during the generation since Mitford’s work, philological studies heve been prosecuted in Germany with remarkable success : the stock of facts and documents, comparatively scanty, handed down from the ancient world, has been combined, and illustrated in a thousand different ways: and if our witnesses cannot be multiplied, we at least have numerous interpreters to catch, repeat, amplify and explain their broken and half-inaudible

‘depositions. Some of the best writers in this department— Boeckh, Niebuhr, O. Miiller—have been translated into our language ; so that the English public has been enabled to form some idea of the new lights thrown upon many subjects of antiquity by the inestimable aid of German erudition. The poets, historians, orators and philosophers of Greece have thus been all rendered both more intelligible and more instructive than they were to a student in the last century ; and the general picture of the Grecian world may now be conceived with a degree of fidelity, which, considering our imperfect materials, it is curious to contemplate.

It is that general picture which an historian of Greece is required first to embody in his own mind, and next to lay out before his readers ;—a picture not merely such as to delight the imagination by brilliancy of colouring and depth of sentiment, but also suggestive and improving to the reason. Not omitting the points of resemblance as well as of contrast with the better- known forms of modern society, he will especially study to exhibit the spontaneous movement of Grecian intellect, sometimes aided but never borrowed from without, and lighting up a small portion of a world otherwise clouded and stationary. He will develop the action of that social system, which, while ensuring to the mass of freemen a degree of protection elsewhere unknown, acted as a stimulus to the creative impulses of genius, and left the superior minds sufficiently unshackled to soar above religious and

PREFACE. v

political routine, to overshoot their own age, and to become the teachers of posterity.

To set forth the history of a people by whom the first spark was set to the dormant intellectual capacities of our nature— Hellenic phenomena as illustrative of the Hellenic mind and character—is the task which I propose to myself in the present work ; not without a painful consciousness how much the deed falls short of the will, and a yet more painful conviction, that full success is rendered impossible by an obstacle which no human ability can now remedy—the insufficiency of original evidence. For in spite of the valuable expositions of so many able commentators, our stock of information respecting the ancient world still remains lamentably inadequate to the demands of an enlightened curiosity. We possess only what has drifted ashore from the wreck of a stranded vessel; and though this. includes some of the most precious articles amongst its once- abundant cargo, yet if any man will cast his eyes over the citations in Diogenes Laertius, Athenzus or Plutarch, or the list of names in Vossius de Historicis Greecis, he will see with grief. and surprise how much larger is the proportion which, through the enslavement of the Greeks themselves, the decline of the Roman Empire, the change of religion, and the irruption of barbarian conquerors, has been irrecoverably submerged. We are thus reduced to judge of the whole Hellenie world, eminently multiform as it was, from a few compositions; excellent indeed in themselves, but bearing too exclusively the stamp of Athens. Of Thucydidés and Aristotle indeed, both as inquirers into matter of fact and as free from narrow local feeling, it is impossible to speak too highly ; but unfortunately that work of the latter which would have given us the most copious information regard- ing Grecian political life—his collection and comparison of 150 distinct town-constitutions—has not been preserved ; while the brevity of Thucydidés often gives us but a single word where a sentence would not have been too much, and sentences which we should be glad to see expanded into paragraphs.

Such insufficiency of original and trustworthy materials, as compared with those resources which are thought hardly sufficient

vi PREFACE,

for the historian of any modern kingdom, is neither to be con- cealed nor extenuated, however much we may lament it. I advert to the point here on more grounds than one. For it not only limits the amount of information which an historian of Greece can give to his readers—compelling him to leave much of his picture an absolute blank,—but it also greatly spoils the execution of the remainder. The question of credibility is perpetually obtruding itself, and requiring a decision, which, whether favourable or unfavourable, always introduces more or less of controversy; and gives to those outlines, which the interest of the picture requires to be straight and vigorous, a faint and faltering character. Expressions of qualified and hesitating affirmation are repeated until the reader is sickened ; while the writer himself, to whom this restraint is more painful still, is frequently tempted to break loose from the unseen spell by which a conscientious criticism binds him down—to screw up the possible and probable into certainty, to suppress counter- balancing considerations, and to substitute a pleasing romance in place of half-known and perplexing realities. Desiring in the present work to set forth all which can be ascertained, together with such conjectures and inferences as can be reasonably deduced from it, but nothing more—I notice at the outset that faulty state of the original evidence which renders discussions of credibility, and hesitation in the language of the judge, unavoidable. Such discussions, though the reader may be assured that they will become less frequent as we advance into times better known, are tiresome enough even with the comparatively late period which I adopt as the historical beginning; much more intolerable would they have proved had I thought it my duty to start from the primitive terminus of Deukalién or Inachus, or from the unburied Pelasgi and Leleges, and to subject the heroic ages toa similar scrutiny. I really know nothing so disheartening or unrequited as the elaborate balancing of what is called evidence— the comparison of infinitesimal probabilities and conjectures all uncertified—in regard to these shadowy times and persons.

The law respecting sufficiency of evidence ought to be the same for ancient times as for modern; and the reader will find in this

PREFACE. vil

history an application to the former, of criteria analogous to those which have been long recognised in the latter, Approaching, though with a certain measure of indulgence, to this standard, I begin the real history of Greece with the first recorded Olympiad, or 776 B.o. To such asare accustomed to the habits once univer- sal, and still not uncommon, in investigating the ancient world, I may appear to be striking off one thousand years from the scroll of history : but to those whose canon of evidence is derived from Mr. Hallam, M. Sismondi, or any other eminent historian of modern events, I am well-assured that I shall appear lax and eredulous rather than exigent or sceptical. For the truth is, that historical records, properly so called, do not begin until long after this date; nor will any man, who candidly considers the extreme paucity of attested facts for two centuries after 776 B.c., be astonished to learn that the state of Greece in 900, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1300, 1400 8.6., &e.—or any earlier century which it may please chronologists to include in their computed genealogies— cannot be described to him upon anything like decent evidence. I shall hope, when I come to the lives of Sokrates and Plato, to illustrate one of the most valuable of their principles—that conscious and confessed ignorance is a better state of mind, than the fancy, without the reality, of knowledge. Meanwhile I begin by making that confession in reference to the real world - of Greece anterior to the Olympiads ; meaning the disclaimer to apply to anything like a general history,—not to exclude rigorously every individual event.

The times which I thus set apart from the region of history are discernible only through a different atmosphere—that of epic poetry and legend. To confound together these disparate matters is, in my judgment, essentially unphilosophical. I describe the earlier times by themselves, as conceived by the faith and feeling of the first Greeks, and known only through their legends— without presuming to measure how much or how little of his- torical matter these legends may contain. If the reader blame me for not assisting him to determine this—if he ask me why I do not undraw the curtain and disclose the picture—I reply in the words of the painter Zeuxis, when the same question was

Vill PREFACE.

addressed to him on exhibiting his master-piece of imitative art —‘“The curtain is the picture”. What we now read as poetry and legend was once accredited history, and the only genuine history which the first Greeks could conceive or relish of their past time: the curtain conceals nothing behind, and cannot by any ingenuity be withdrawn. I undertake only to show it as it stands—not to efface, still less to re-paint it.

Three-fourths of the two volumes now presented to the public are destined to elucidate this age of historical faith, as distin- guished from the later age of historical reason: to exhibit its basis in the human mind—an omnipresent religious and personal interpretation of nature ; to illustrate it by comparison with the like mental habit in early modern Europe; to show its immense abundance and variety of narrative matter, with little care for consistency between one story and another: lastly, to set forth the causes which overgrew and partially supplanted the old epical sentiment, and introduced, in the room of literal faith, a variety of compromises and interpretations.

The legendary age of the Greeks receives its principal charm and dignity from the Homeric poems: to these, therefore, and to the other poems included in the ancient epic, an entire chapter is devoted, the length of which must be justified by the names of the Iliad and Odyssey. I have thought it my duty to take some notice of the Wolfian controversy as it now stands in Germany, and have even hazarded some speculations respecting the structure of the Iliad. The society and manners of the heroic age, con- sidered as known in a general way from Homer’s descriptions and allusions, are also described and criticised.

I next pass to the historical age, beginning at 776 B.0.; pre- fixing some remarks upon the geographical features of Greece. I try to make out, amidst obscure and scanty indications, what the state of Greece was at this period ; and I indulge some cautious conjectures, founded upon the earliest verifiable facts, respecting the steps immediately antecdent by which that condition was brought about. In the present volumes I have only been able to include the history of Sparta and the Peloponnesian Dorians, down to the age of Peisistratus and Creesus, I had hoped to have

PREFACE. ix

comprised in them the entire history of Greece down to this last- mentioned period, but I find the space insufficient.

The history of Greece falls most naturally into six compart- ments, of which the first may be looked at as a period of preparation for the five following, which exhaust the free life of collective Hellas.

I. Period from 776 B.c. to 560 B.c., the accession of Peisistratus at Athens and of Croesus in Lydia.

II. From the accession of Peisistratus and Croesus to the repulse of Xerxes from Greece.

III. From the repulse of Xerxes to the close of the Pelopon- nesian war and overthrow of Athens.

1V. From the close of the Peloponnesian war to the battle of Leuktra.

V. From the battle of Leuktra to that of Cheroneia.

VI. From the battle of Cheeroneia to the end of the generation of Alexander.

The five periods from Peisistratus down to the death of Alexander and of his generation, present the acts of an historical drama capable of being recounted in perspicuous succession, and connected by a sensible thread of unity. I shall interweave in their proper places the important but outlying adventures of the Sicilian and Italian Greeks—introducing such occasional notices of Grecian political constitutions, philosophy, poetry, and oratory, as are requisite to exhibit the many-sided activity of this people during their short but brilliant career.

After the generation of Alexander, the political action of Greece becomes cramped and degraded—no longer interesting to the. reader, or operative on the destinies of the future world. We may indeed name one or two incidents, especially the revolutions of Agis and Kleomenés at Sparta, which are both instructive and affecting ; but as a whole, the period between 300 B.c. and the absorption of Greece by the Romans is of no interest in itself, and is only so far of value as it helps us to understand the preceding centuries. The dignity and value of the Greeks from that time forward belong to them only as individual philosophers, preceptors, astronomers and mathematicians, literary men and

x PREFACE.

critics, medical practitioners, &c. In all these respective capa- cities, especially in the great schools of philosophical speculation, they still constitute the light of the Roman world; though as communities they have lost their own orbit, and have become satellites of more powerful neighbours.

I propose to bring down the history of the Grecian communities to the year 300 B.c., or the close of the generation which takes its name from Alexander the Great, and I hope to accomplish this in eight volumes altogether. For the next two or three volumes I have already large preparations made, and I shall publish my third (perhaps my fourth) in the course of the ensuing winter.

There are great disadvantages in the publication of one portion of a history apart from the remainder; for neither the earlier nor the later phenomena can be fully comprehended without the light which each mutually casts upon the other. But the practice has become habitual, and is indeed more than justified by the well-known inadmissibility of “long hopes” into the short span of human life. Yet I cannot but fear that my first two volumes will suffer in the estimation of many readers by coming out alone —and that men who value the Greeks for their philosophy, their politics, and their oratory, may treat the early legends as not worth attention. And it must be confessed that the sentimental attributes of the Greek mind—its religious and poetical vein— here appear in disproportionate relief, as compared with its more vigorous and masculine capacities—with those powers of acting, organising, judging, and speculating, which will be revealed in the forthcoming volumes. I venture however to forewarn the reader that there will occur numerous circumstances in the after political life of the Greeks which he will not comprehend unless he be initiated into the course of their legendary associations. He will not understand the frantic terror of the Athenian public during the Peloponnesian war, on the occasion of the mutilation of the statues called Hermes, unless he enters into the way in which they connected their stability and security with the domiciliation of the gods in the soil; nor will he adequately appreciate the habit of the Spartan king on military expeditions,—when he

PREFACE. xi

offered his daily public sacrifices on behalf of his army and his country,—“ always to perform this morning service immediately before sunrise, in order that he might be beforehand in obtaining the favour of the gods,”! if he be not familiar with the Homeric conception of Zeus going to rest at night and awaking to rise at: early dawn from the side of the “white-armed Héré”, The occasion will indeed often occur for remarking how these legends illustrate and vivify the political phenomena of the succeeding times, and I have only now to urge the necessity of considering them as the beginning of a series,—not as an entire work.

1 Xenophon, Repub. Lacedwmon., μὲν τούτου τοῦ ἔργου ἔτι κνεφαῖος, προλαμ: cap. xiii. 8, ᾿Αεὶ δὲ, ὅταν θύηται, ἄρχεται βάνειν βουλόμενος τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ εὔνοιαν.

London, March 5, 1846.

ἐν (aerate ae ρα νὲν νὰ i

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION OF VOLUMES 1. AND II.

In preparing a Second Edition of the two First Volumes of my History, I have profited by the remarks and corrections of various critics, contained in Reviews both English and Foreign. I have suppressed, or rectified, some positions which had been pointed out as erroneous, or as advanced upon inadequate evidence. I have strengthened my argument in some cases where it appeared to have been imperfectly understood—adding some new notes, partly for the purpose of enlarged illustration, partly to defend certain opinions which had been called in question. The greater number of these alterations have been made in Chapters XVI. and XXI. of Part I.—and in Chapter VI. of Part 11.

I trust that these three Chapters, more full of speculation, and Ὁ therefore more open to criticism than any of the others, will thus appear in a more complete and satisfactory form. But I must at the same time add that they remain for the most part unchanged in substance, and that I have seen no sufficient reason to modify my main conclusions even respecting the structure of the Iliad, controverted though they have been by some of my most esteemed critics.

In regard to the character and peculiarity of Grecian legend, as broadly distinguished throughout these volumes from Grecian history, I desire to notice two valuable publications with which I have only become acquainted since the date of my first edition. One of these is a short Essay on Primeval History, by John Kenrick, M.A. (London, 1846, published just at the same time as these volumes), which illustrates with much acute reflection the

xiv PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION OF VOLS. I. AND IL.

general features of legend, not only in Greece but throughout the ancient world—see especially pages 65, 84, 92, et seg. The other work is Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, by Colonel Sleeman—first made known to me through an excellent notice of my History in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1846. The description given by Colonel Sleeman, of the state of mind now actually prevalent among the native population of Hindostan, presents a vivid comparison, helping the modern reader to under- stand and appreciate the legendary wra of Greece. I have embodied in the notes of this Second Edition two or three passages from Colonel Sleeman’s instructive work: but the whole of it richly deserves perusal.

Having now finished six volumes of this History, without attaining a lower point than the peace of Nikias in the tenth year of the Peloponnesian war, I find myself compelled to retract the expectation held out in the preface to my First Edition, that the entire work might be completed in eight volumes. Experience proves to me how impossible it is to measure beforehand the space which historical subjects will require. All I can now promise is, that the remainder of the work shall be executed with as much regard to brevity as is consistent with the paramount duty of rendering it fit for public acceptance.

G. 6.

London, April 8, 1849.

NAMES OF GODS, GODDESSES, AND HEROES.

Fottowtne the example of Dr. Thirlwall and other excellent scholars, I call the Greek deities by their real Greek names, and not by the Latin equivalents used among the Romans. For the assistance of those readers to whom the Greek names may be less familiar I here annex a table of the one and the

other, °

Greek. Zeus, Poscid6n, Arés, Dionysus, Hermés, Hélios, Hépheestus, Hadés,

Latin, Jupiter. Neptune, Mars. f Bacchus. Mercury. Sol. Vulcan. Pluto.

Juno. Minerva. Diana. Venus. Aurora. Vesta. Latona. Ceres.

Hercules, Aisculapius.

A few words are here necessary respecting the orthography of Greek names adopted in the above table and generally

a) »

xvi NAMES OF GODS, GODDESSES, AND HEROES.

throughout this history. I have approximated as nearly as I dared to the Greek letters in preference to the Latin; and on this point I venture upon an innovation which I should have little doubt of vindicating before the reason of any candid English student. For the ordinary practice of substituting, in a Greek name, the English C in place of the Greek K is indeed so obviously incorrect, that it admits of no rational justification. Our own K precisely and in every point coincides with the Greek K: we have thus the means of reproducing the Greek name to the eye as well as to the ear, yet we gratuitously take the wrong letter in preference to the right. And the precedent of the Latins is here against us rather than in our favour, for their C really coincided in sound with the Greek K, whereas our C entirely departs from it, and becomes an §, before 6, 4, @, ὦ, and y. Though our C has so far deviated in sound from the Latin C, yet there is some warrant for our continuing to use it in writing Latin names—because we thus reproduce the name to the eye, though not to the ear. But this is not the case when we employ our C to designate the Greek K, for we depart here not less from the visible than from the audible original ; while we mar the unrivalled euphony of the Greek language by that multiplied sibilation which constitutes the least inviting feature in our own. Among German philologists the K is now universally employed in writing Greek names, and I have adopted it pretty largely in this work, making exceptions for such names as the English reader has been so accustomed to hear with the C, that they may be considered as being almost Anglicised. I have farther marked the long ὁ and the long ὁ (η, #) bya circumflex (Héré) when they occur in the last syllable or in the penultimate of a name.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

PART L—LEGENDARY GREECE,

CHAPTER L

LEGENDS RESPECTING THE Gops,

Epening of the mythical world . ow the mythes are to be told . Allegory rarely admissible a ‘cng Po foremost in Grecian concep- The gods—how conceived: human eenlarged .. istory of the gods fitted on og present conceptions... .. Gea and Uranos ᾿ Uranos disabled... Kronos and the Titans Kronos overreached. Birth and safety of Zeus and his Packtons Other deities . Ambitious schemes of Zeus Victory of Zeus and his brethren Typhocus Kronos and the Titans. .

Drak of Zi Ἂς ἐς τ heigl i distribution of the divine

Hesiodic theos ony—its authority Points of difference between

Homer and Hesiod .. ς Homeric Zeus a Amplified Piovgoay of Zeus.

Hesiodic mythes traceable to Kréte and Delphi ae ee

hic theogon: a2 ἧς as Zeus and Pranks fe - Pe

Comparison of Hesiod and Or- Ρ heus oe oe oe oo

AGE 1

Ρ Influence of foreign religions upon

Greece. Especially in regard to the wor- ship of Démétér and Dionysos Purification for homicide un- known to Homer New and peg religious Tites.. Circulated by voluntary teachers and promising special bless-

Epimenidés, Sibylla, Bakis 0. Principal mysteries of Greece .. bay ὁ ri op pie from

700—500 B.

Connected with the worship of

Dionysos . Thracian and Egyptian influence E pe t to nysti legends ncouragement to mystic legends Melampus the earliest name as teacher of the Dionysiac rites Orphic sect, pear ote Diony-

siac mystics Contrast of the mysteries with the Homeric Hymns .. ee

bs nen to Dionysos .. teration of the primitive Gre- cian idea of Dionysos

Asiatic frenzy ted on ithe joviality of ¢ Greene Dio- nysia A

Eleusinian mysteries ὧν

Homeric Hymn to Démét or δῇ

Temple of Eleusis, built by order of Démétér for her residence

me 8

2S ses Ξ Sgr

xvii

HISTORY OF GREECE.

CHAPTER I.—continued.

PAGE

Démétér pense the mystic ritual of Eleusis

Homeric ἐπα τὰ a sacred Eleu- sinian reco:

Explanatory ἣ the details of divine service

Importance of the mysteries to the town of Eleusis .

Strong hold of the legend upon Eleusinian feelings ..

Different legends Zpapeceing Dé- métér elsewhere

Expansion of the legends ..

pe lenic importance of Demeter... mds of Apollo .. ian Apollo

Pethian pollo

Foundation legend of the Del- phian oracle .

ΠΟΥ ee the purpose “of his-

rical explanation .. Sie

Extended worship of Apollo...

Multifarious local = re- specting Apollo. 4

Festivals and gones

State of mind and circumstances

δ Sh δ £SSFees Fb 9 8 8

PAGE

ors ιν which Grecian mythes Discrepancies in the ‘legends little

notice Py Aphrodité .. re ne ἘΣ Athéné.. - ay. ee Pe Artemis Poseid6n Stories of temporary scivitude imposed on gods Héphestos Sle τς ὡ Se Hestia . ἐς wa Ὁ ἐν Ἡρυτηδθ᾽ Hermés inventor of the lyre

Barre between Hermés = Expository value of the Hymn ᾿ς

Mythes arising ‘out of the religious Small il part of of the animal sacri-

Promituons had outwitted Zeus Gods, Heroes, and Men appear together in the mythes Be

CHAPTER II.

LEGENDS RELATING TO HEROES AND MEN.

Races of men as they appear in the oe “Works and

Days” . $i The Golden .. τς Ἂ. as The Silver .. ee as vs The Brazen .. Ἐν EP ᾽ The Heroic A The Iron Different both from the Theogony and from Homer

Explanation of this difference - Ἶ Ethical vein of sentiment ..

ἔθ Sssesea

Intersected by the mythical

The ‘“ Works and Days” earliest didactic poem .. +

First introduction of demons

Changes in the idea of demons .

Baa rege in attacks on the pagan

ait!

Functions of the Hesiodic demons

Personal feeling which pervades the ‘* Works and τεὸν

Probable age of the ‘‘ Works and Days”.

CHAPTER IIL.

LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS.

Iapetidsin Hesiod .. ea Prométheus and Epimétheus 23 op ὀραδαρυαν γ᾽ λέει, ἢ of Sie theus and Zeus . déra ey Pandora in the. Theogony .. ne General feeling of the poet 9

ag Bi but Zeus not fe

Mischiefs arising from women oo

Punishment of métheus

The Prométheus of Aischylus ..

Locality in which Prométheus was confined

SFFgse ΒΘ 5

Φ «- sgs

$3 3

FSEa

CONTENTS OF VOLUME J

CHAPTER IV.

Heroic LEGENDS—GENEALOGY OF ARGOS,

PAGE Structure and purposes of Grecian Legendary abductions of heroties genealogies ἧς 77 adapted to the fee pie- To connect the Grecian com- valent during the Persian war munity with their common Danaos and the Danaides.. god ἐδ, Akrisios and Proetos Lower members of the genealogy The Proetides cured of frenay by historical— higher members Melampus Ξ non-historical 78 Akrisios, Danad, and Zeus" The non-historical portion ‘equally Perseus and the Gorgons .. ieved, and most valued, by Foundation of Mykénze — — com- the Greeks ib. mencement of Perseid dynasty Number of ine or genealogies — Amphitry6n, i ea ca | ea every fraction of Zeus and Alkméné . .. ἐδ. Birth of Herakigs, : Argeian genealogy—Inachus 79 Bonet legend of his birth : its Phoréneus .. ib. Bare value : acta Panoptés 80 The Hérakleids expelled - : Τὸ %. Their recovery of Pelo: mnésus, Remance of Τὸ historicized by and establishment Argos, Persians and Pheenicians .. 81 Sparta, and Messénia, .. os CHAPTER V.

DrvxKaui6n, Hein, anp Sons or HELEN,

Deukalién, son of Prométheus ..

Phthidtis ; his permanent seat .

General deluge. —Salvation of Deukalién and Pyrrha

“geo in this deluge throughout

Greece ἊΣ Hellén and Amphikty: én .. Sons ΝΗ Hellén: Déorus, Xuthus,

92 93

8 8

ἐδ.

Division of a Afolians, Doérians, Iénian:

Large extent of Doris implied in oe ger 2

This form of the "legend har- monizes with the great estab- lishments of the historical Dérians ..

Achzus—purpose which his name

Amphiktyonic "assembly. — Com- serves in the legend .. mon solemnities and games.. ἐδ. Genealogical diversities .. “. CHAPTER VI.

Tue AZo.ips, on Sons AND DaveuTsERs oF OLS.

Legends of Greece, originally iso- lated, afterwards wn into #folus .

His seven sons and five daughters First Holid line—Salmoneus, Tyro Pelias and Néleus .. oe Péré, Bias, and Melampus

Periklymenos ἃς Nestér and his exploits .. Néleids down to Kodrus ., Second Molid line—Krétheus Admétus and Alkéstis Ὗἱ Péleus and the wife of Akastus .. Pelias and Jasén Jasén and Médea

ae

se sese ese ese 8.

fo] -

HISTORY OF GREEOE,

CHAPTER VI.—continued.

Médea at Corinth Third Holid line—Sisyphus cae pues genealogy of

oalemnieous of different legends about Médea and Sisyphus .

Bellerophén ..

Fourlh Fold line—Athamas

Phryxus and Hellé . ἕν ἧς

Ind and Palemén. — Isthmian

Probable inferences as to in

antehisto: Orchomenos .. Its early wealth andindustry . Emissaries of the late Képais Old Amphiktyony at Kalauria « = Orchomenos and arp ΞΕ Alcyoné and og = a Canacé—the

dids Kalyke— Elis ΝΣ Atdlia—Eleian genealogy 4

Ξ -- ἐδ. Augeas.. Local root of the legend of Atha- The Molionid brothers 118 tolian genealogy . ἐς Traces of ancient human sacri- Cneus, Meleager, Tydeus .. 120 d of Meleager in Homer °. Pt οἷ the district near How altered by poets after Homer Orchom ἐδ. Althea and the burning brand . Eteoklés— festival of the Chari- Grand Kalydonian boar-hunt — tésia 121 Atalanta Foundation and greatness of ἜΘΟΣ of the boar long preserved Orchomenos 122 at Tegea . Overthrown by Héraklés and the Atalanta vanquished in the race Thébans ᾿ς ae by stratagem .. ἀξ Trophénius and Agamédés. i. Deianeira . as —— ρα τὰ enos 123 τῶ τὶ of Herakles πὲ = Discrepancies in e Orchomenian eus—Old age o: eus aa genealogy = ἐν ἐδ. Dlocrenaes genealogies .. ee CHAPTER VIL THE PELOPIDS. Misfortunes and celebrity of the Chariot victory of as bis Pelopids .. 142 principality ὃν Pelops—eponym of Peloponnésus ib. Atreus, T yestés, Ομ pus .. Deduction eee cf e renee of Pelops 148 Family horrors among Pelopids.. Kingly attributes of the family .. 144 Agamemnén and Menelaus A Homeric ας ΒΆ é ib. Orestés Ly Pisa, » post-Homeric The goddess Héré and Mykéne .. ities δ 145 Legendary importance of Mykéns Tantalus ib. Its decline coincident with the Niobé . »ᾧ ~ “a 146 rise - — ao and Cnomaus, king Agamemnén an ina, ° a ‘ a. ferred to Sparta ἊΝ CHAPTER VIII.

Lac6nIAN AND MESSENIAN GENEALOGIES.

Lelex — autochthonous in ap cénia Ἢ : — and Léda”

of Léda—1. Kastor, ΤΊ. Klytemnéstra. 2. Pollux, Helen ..

= Legend of the Attic Dekeleia

156 Messénian genealogy Ss

Kastor and Pollux

Idas and Lynkeus Great functions and power ‘of the Dioskuri .

: : : seHeSHES peueue 5

CONTENTS OF VOLUME LL

CHAPTER IX.

AROADIAN GENEALOGY.

PAG

Lyk d nd bie Atty come ας fe ity md 0: m — feroc

punished by the gods .. : Deep religious faith of Pausanias His view of past ~ ees

160 ib,

PAGE

Echemus kills Hyllus — Héra- kleids πα πὰ from ἄρον onnésus . ae Kordnis and Asklé pius τὲ Extended worship ὩΣ Asklépius-. numerous legends

world ib. Machaén and Podaleirius ,. ἐς Kallisté and Arkas .. ze .- 162 Numerous Asklépiads, or descen- Azan, Apheidas, Elatus .. .. 163 dants from Asklépius .. as Aleus, Augé, Télephus.. .. ἴδ. Temples of Asklépius—sick per- Ankeus—Echemus .. a. .. 164 sons healed there ἐπί en CHAPTER i.

#iaxkvs AND HIs DesceNDANTS—iGINA, SALAMIS, AND PHTHIA,

#akus—son of Zeus and Pop ἐπι

Offspring of Hakus—Péleus, Tela- mén, Phékus ..

oe - _ Zakus—procure relief

ΠΣ Salted by Péleus and Tela- Telamén, banished, ; goes to Sala- mis

oe ee ee

170 ib, 1 ἐδ.

pa = goes to Phthia—his mar- e with Thetis ee

Neopto emus .

Ajax—his son Philaus the | epony- mous hero of a déme Attica

ἌΝ ΩΝ banished, settles in Cy-

Diffusion of the Hakid genealogy

CHAPTER Xi.

Arrio LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES,

Erechtheus—autochthonous Attic legends — originally from των αἰ νὴ pea each déme

had its Little le otiod ὦ by the old epic

Rabreve

De λας Pandiin

ag ᾿ληϑδα of Pandién—Prokné, hiloméla. Legend of Téreus

Lon gig of Erechtheus—Pro-

ge .—Oreithyia, ‘the wife of

το 5 of the Athenians to ae nye Sigal gracious help τ

their dange Erechtheus one. Eumolpus| self-sacrifice of

Voluntary self is

197

178

_— daughters of are

KretisaandIén

Sons of Pandién—Zigens, ‘&e.

Théseus

His legendary ‘character refined ..

Plutarch—his way of handling the matter of legend ae

Legend of the Amazons ee

Its antiquity and prevalence.

Glorious eae his the Amazons .

Their ubiquity

Universally received as 8 ‘portion of the Greek past

Amazons produced as ag present by the historians of Alexander. .

Conflict of faith and reason in the historical critics

173 174

176

HISTORY OF GREECE.

CHAPTER XIL

Kratan LeGENDs—Minés anp wis FaMmIry.

PAGE

Minds of Zeus SS SERS mba sons

Burene Pasi Soribe and δ and the Minotaur Daath f 4 andre 5, and. ts) rogeos, an anger of Minés ‘against Athens .. Athenian victims for the Minétaur Self-devotion of Théseus—he kills the Minétaur. Ariadné thenian commemorative cere- monies

Jamily of Mindz |.

Minds and eee rere of the latter to Sicil Minds one to ὦ ΑΡΩ him, but is

Semi Krétan sottlements else- where—connected with this voyage of Minds

Sufferings of the eg after- wai from the wrath is Minds

Portrait of Minés—how varied . Affinity between Kréte and Asia Minor

oe oe .. oe

CHAPTER XIiL

ARGONAUTIO ExPEDITIGs.

Argé in the Od er esiod and Eum Jason and his heroic companions Adventures Ἢ Kyzikus, ‘Bithj ven a in y- a Ned Héraklés and Hylas.

Dangers of f the ΠῚ légades Arrival at the Srmpl Conditions imposed by Mates as

the price of the golden fleece Perfidy of Alétés—flight of the Argonauts and Médea with

the fleece

Pursuit of Aibits—the Argonauts saved by Méd

Return of the de pbula cine

218 tous and perilous ke ἐδ. Numerous and wide-spread monu- τ ments referring to the pomnee

Fabulous legend merges Fabulous νος y — grad ified as real geographi:

ΝΣ increased .

Transposition of epical localities

How and when the Argonautic voy: porate: basta » Kolchis ..

Métés and Circé

Return of the Argonauts — dif ferent versions ..

Continued faith in the voy: fees of truth Rotenine

rabo

by

CHAPTER XIV.

LEGENDS or THEBEs.

Abundant legends of Thébes

Amphién and Zéthus Homeric founders of Thébes. Kadmus ye een both distinct

How thebesw was founded by Kad-

Five primitive families at Thébes called Sparti

The te τῇ apc of Kadmus—

2. Soineld a

oe cad se oe

285 38. Autonoé and her son Aktzeén.. 4. Agavé and her son Pentheus.. He resists the god Dionysus—his miserable end wer Antiopé, Amphién, and Zéthus

Laius—Mdi us—Legendary cele- peed of GEdipus and his! πὸ αὶ

Eteokles and Polynikés Ae Old e Thebes — on ἊΝ ἫΝ of

«“.

td. 237 238

ib. ib.

PAGE

Bs BB ge Ἢ :

s : ᾿

243 244

Εἰ "

CONTENTS OF VOLUME {[.

CHAPTER XIV.—continued.

Sreces or THEBEs.

Curse 1 ase tt Ecce devoted

(dipus

Movellios intr introduaed by Sophoklés

Death of Cdipus — quarrel of Eteoklés and Polynikés for the sceptre 3

Polynikés retires to Argos—aid Lt en to him by Adrastus

Amphiaraiis and Eriphylé

even chiefs of the army a;

Thébes <i Defeat of the Thébans in the field—heroic devotion of Me- neekeus .. = ee Pr le combat of Eteoklés and

cm ᾿ which both

rish Repulse and destruction of the Argeian chiefs —all except

Sin

PAGE 246 247

248

2i1

xxiii

PAGE

Adrastus. Amphiaraiis is swallowed up in the earth .. Kreén, king of Thébes, forbids the burial of Polynikés and the other fallen Argeian chiefs Devotion and death of Antigoné The Athenians interfere to pro- cure the interment of the fallen chiefs Second siege of Thébes by ‘Adras- tus with the Epigoni, or sons Ὁ ΩΣ she ee in the first Ξ ictory 0 e cn ΟΝ ure of Thébes rs Worship of Adrastus at Sikyén— how abrogated by Kleisthenés Alkmezén — his matricide and

punishment .. ys ἧς Fatal necklace οὗ Eriphylé δ.

CHAPTER ΧΥ.

LEGEND oF Troy,

Great extent and variviy of = tale of Troy Se Dardanus, son of Zeus 5 Ilus, founder οὗ Tlium Walls of Tum built. b Poseidén Capture of lium by Héraklés

Priam ἐπα his offspring πεν σὴς απο on the three es of ‘Helen from S as Expedition of the wakes to re- cover her.. Heroes from all of Greece

combined under Agamemnén Achilles and Odysseus... The Grecian host mistakes Teu- thrania for Troy—Telephus .. Detention of the Greeks at Aulis —Agamemnén and Iphigeneia First success of the Greeks on

landing near Troy. Briséis awarded to Achilles .. ys Palamédés—his genius and trea- cherous dea a

Epic chronology—historicized ἫΝ Period of the Homeric Πἰίδά.

Hectér killed by Achilles .. New allies of Troy—Penthesileia Memnén—killed by Achilles .. Death of Achilles

of oe oe

Funeral games celebrated in honour of him— sai about his poor ee pe sseus pre- vails and himself...

Philoktétés an Neo: tolemus ..

Capture of the P: ac τέσσ wooden horse

Destruction of Troy..

Distribution of the captives: among

the victors Helen restor to Menelaus — lives in dignity at Sparta—

— to a happy immorta-

ty Blindness and cure ‘of the oet Stésichorus—alteration of the legend about Helen .. Egyptian tale about Helen—ten- dency to historicize .. Return of the Greeks from

Troy Their Sufferiige — anger “of the

8

Wanderings of the “heroes in all directions

Memorials of them throughout the Grecian world ..

psp ena ied —his final adventures

Atneas and his descendants

oe

251

x

Be BERES 8

xxiv

HISTORY OF GREECE.

CHAPTER XV.—continued

PAGE

Different stories about Aineas— Aineadae at τῷ, ag ea ἐξ Ubi ber ied of Hineas . Ev se

Tale of Troy—its magnitude and discre

pancies Trojan war—essentially legendary —its importance as an item in Grecian loalignal faith ᾿ Basis of history for it—possible, and nothing more ὲ Historicizin, innovations — Dio m Ἂς

Generally received and visited as the town of Priam Respect shown to it Ὁ Alexander Successors of Alexander—founda- tion of Alexan Tréas The marked respec = Llium with oe ftumacy of Ilium — ξεν τ: in question by

acai

ser lng of =

Supposed Old ium, ὦ or real Tro ed from New Ilium Strabo alone ene in Old lium as the real Troy—other au- thors continue in the old faith —the moderns follow Strabo The A, loci faith ἮΝ shaken by

— bilities sg ese and the Teu-

eo Molic Greeks in the Tréad—the whole territory gradually

Zolized Old date and long prevalence of τοῦ Hons ὁ of Apollo Smin-

Asiatic customs and religion— blended enc Hellenic

Sibylline prophecies

Settlements from Milétus, Mity- léné, and Athens ne

CHAPTER XVI.

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

The mythes formed the entire mental stock of the early Greeks .. 34 fs v3

oe of ga out of which they

Tendency to universal personifi-

Ab re ot itive kn vledge— sence 0 posi ve know. supplied ον eee

Multitude and variety of quasi human personages

What we read as poetical “fancies were to the Greeks serious realities. .

The gods and heroes—their chiet agency cast back into πουτῖνς and embodied in the

Marked ona “manifold types of the Homeric

Stimulus which they afforded to the mythopeic faculty

Easy faith in popular and plau- sible stories .

Poets—receive their matter from = divine inspiration of the

use op ss pe ae

ane | of the Be te gE

riginal—al:

Matter of actual history interesting to early Gress. Mythical faith and religious point

of view — paramount in the Homeric age Gradual development of the scien- es i μετ of view—its opposi- ious .. Mythoposie age—anterior to this

dissent παν Ἐπ τ) force of Grecian intel-

Transition towards. ‘positive and oe — fact ὡς ὗ e becomes the o: ο resent time oo ἔς Iambic, el: , and lyri eye oo the cpesiig “ot E Egypt ———— B.C.

Progress — hi -- historical, hi- rest: — ate period

Altered” Standard of jud it, ethical and in’ os

F phe : ge

Σ

CONTENTS OF VOLUME f.

CHAPTER XVI.—continued.

PAGE

Commencement οὗ ysical

science—Thalés, Ronophants, oras

nature conceived ἃ as

How dealt with by oe phi- losophers

Sokratés oe oe ἜΣ ἐς

Hippokratés .. -F A ie

Anaxagoras .. a Soh ss

ag oe with Grecian religious

Treatment of Sokratés by the Athenians ..

Scission between the superior men and the multitude—important in reference to the mythes ..

The mythes accommodated to a τὰν ἊΝ of feeling and judg-

The p wound and logographers Tracie

ipaaie poets τ Sophokiés .. és

Tendencies of Aisch rac in regard to the old legen

He maintains undiminished the grandeur of _ os Ace ws world ..

ee

Euripidés—accused of vulga vulgarizing

e mythical heroes—and o

introducing exaggerated pa thos, refinement, and Waseca

The logographers—Pherekydés,

Hekatzeus—the mythes rationa- ized

I R ed historians—Herodotus δὶ per of χορ ϑηαν ΟΝ ΟΥ̓́ΘΒΘΙΥΘ.. His views of the mythical world.. His deference for Egypt and Egyptian statements . His vrei erg in the mythical eponyms, — ye’ anabined ΟῚ scepti ticism’ as to matters of ars His remarks upon th ὁ miraculous

foundation of the oracle at Dédéna .. His remarks upon Melampus and his prophe oil gabe rf vr legend of Pom nm In C) Thessalian nd 0} é

τα ὁ legend o of Troy . terpretation ‘of the rn es—more and more esteemed and applicd

331 id.

XXV

PAGE

Divine legends allegorized. He- roic greg: historicized .. its to this interpreting pro- cess

Distinction between gods and ee and widened by Empedokl

see if Sone as partially evil beings—effect of suc admission z

Semi-historical interpretation |:

Some positive certificate indis- ee as a constituent of

torical proof—mere popu- lar faith insufficient ..

Mistake of ascribing to an un- recording age the historical sense of modern times

Matter of tradition uncertified from the beginnin ;

Fictitious matter of tradition does not imply fraud or im- posture ..

Plausible fiction often generated and accredited by the mere force of strong and common sentiment, even in times of instruction

Allegorical theory of the ‘myths

—traced by some up to an ae riestly caste

Real im of the mythes “te pose ro be preserved in the religious mysteries ..

Supposed ancient meaning is

reany @ modern na ak tic

Triple “theology of the “pagan

Proatmaens and use οἱ the mythes according to P.

His views as to the 1 necessity and use of fiction . a

He deals with the mythes as expressions of feeling fr imagination sustained by re- ligious faith, and not by -~ positive basis

Grecian antiquity ‘essentially ‘a

religious conception .. lee τι of ca isa cal- lation divests it of this

M ἐδμαμοῖον ealogios all’ of es one ἀρ ind all on a level in respect to evidence .. Grecian and Egyptian genealo, es Value of each purely subjective, in reference to the faith of the people Gods and men undistinguishabie in Grecian antiquity . rs

3 378

xxyi

HISTORY OF GREECE.

CHAPTER XVI.—continued.

PAGE

General recapitulation .. .. General public of Greece—familiar with their local mythes, care- less of recent history .. ἘΞ Religious festivals—their com- memorative influence .. ἐς

401

406

PAGE

wage and universality of mythi-

relics .. ss a ee

The mythes in their bearing on Grecian art

Tendency of works of art to in- tensify the mythical faith ..

CHAPTER XVIL

408 409 ib.

Tue GreocrAN MyTHICAL VEIN COMPARED WITH THAT OF MODERN

Miéo0s—Sage—an universal mani- festation of the human mind Analogy of the Germans and Celts with the Greeks.. Differences between them — Grecian poetry matchless — Grecian progress self-operated German progress brought about by violent influences from without .. ¥e ae $a Operation of the Roman civiliza- tion and of Christianity upon the primitive German mythes Alteration in the mythical genea- logies—Odin and the other gods degradedintomen .. recian ism—what would have been the case if it had been supplanted by Christian- ity in 500 B.c. .. 6 os Saxo Grammaticus and Snorro Sturleson contrasted with Pherekydés and Hellanikus.. Mythopeic tendencies in modern Europe still subsisting, but for into a new channel. 1. Saintly ideal; 2. Chivalrous ideal 40 oe Ἂς ἂν Legends of the Saints... ss Their analogy with the Homeric theology .. aA a Ee Chivalrous ideal—Romances of Charlemagne and Arthur ..

412 418

ἐδ.

414

418

419 420

421 424

EUROPE.

ia og as realities of the fore-

ime ΟΣ ΕΝ $a ἊΣ Teutonic and Scandinavian epic— its analogy with the Grecian Heroic character and self-expand- ing subject common to both.. Points of distinction between the two—epic of the middle ages neither stood so completely alone, nor was so closely interwoven with religion as the Grecian δὰ 7 we History of England—how con- ceived down to the seven- teenth century—began with Brute the Trojan PM os Earnest and tenacious faith mani- fested in the defence of this

early history .. 3 Judgment of Milton ΩΣ ap τ τ τ th erent an naan

rai n ng) --

not raised in rd to Greece Milton’s way of dealing with the

British fabulous history ob-

jectionable +S ΩΣ Two ways open of dealing with

the Grecian mythes: 1. To omit them ; or 2. To recount them as mythes. Reasons for referring the latter .. a Triple partition of past time by Varro oe

“ν ." eo

CHAPTER XVIIL

ib. 429

481

436

CLosinG EvENTs oF LEGENDARY GREECE.—PERIOD OF INTERMEDIATE DARKNESS, BEFORE THE DAWN oF HIsToRIOAL GREECE.

SECTION I.—Return of the Herakleids Their θα ἐλυρανουτσ ὦ τὴς ΟἹ

into Peloponnésus.

Exile and low condition of the Herakleids δὰ

werful force along with the as well as of the three tribes of Dorians ἃς ws

orians 488 Mythical account of this alliance,

τ oe ψπᾶπ-“΄Φσ’᾿

CONTENTS OF VOLUME I.

OHAPTER XVIII.—continued.

PAGE

Témenus, K hontés, and Aris-

Gedeus invade Peloponnésus

across the Gulf of Corinth ..

The MW reg Karnus slain sd Hip ξ

440

pot =f ib. Oxylus chosen as guide =p 441 Division of the lands of Pelopon- nésus among theinvaders .. ἐό. Explanatory v re of these le- endary even 442 Mythical title of “the Dorians to Peloponnésus . 443 Plato makes out a different title paar - me Pa: ‘is ἐδ. er legen respecting e Acheansand Tisamenus .. 444 Occupation of Argos, Mc rakes and Messénia by the Dorians .. 445

Dorians at Corinth—Alétés nb 80 Oxylus and the Aitolians at Elis Rights of the Eleians to superin- tend the Olympic games... id, Family of Témenus and Kres- phontés lowest in the series of Pm igs for the Heroic

Prelence δὲ the historical Spartan xings to Achzan origin Emigrations from Peloponnésus

consequent on the Dorian

Ρ Affinities between Beeotia and essaly . 464 Transition from goythical to his torical Beeotia .. 455

SEcTION III,—Fmigrations from Greece to Asia and the Islands of the ZEgean,

1, Xolic emigration.

Secession of the mythical races

of Greece .. 455

Aolic migration under the Pe- lopids.. ΝΣ .. 456

2. Ionic sedtatdaton.

Ionic emigration—branches off from the legendary Beers δ Athens .. 457

Théseus and Menestheus . 458

Restoration of the sons of Thé- seus to their father’skingdom 469

They are displaced by the Neleids —Melanthus and Kodrus .. ib. Devotion and death of Kodrus— no more kings at Athens Quarrel of the sons of Kodrus, and emigration of Neileus .. ib. Different races nag Ab os ὌΝ

occupation—Epeians,Pylians, emigrants énia 461 Acheeans, Ionians ἰδ.

Ionians in the north of Belopen- 8. Doric emigrations. nésus—not recognized Dorian coloniesin Asia .. on . ee ee ae 449 Théra 462

ed by Thucydidés to ., Legend¢ of the Minyze from Lemnos ib. ey Pose urn of the Herakleids id. Minyz in Triphylia. 463 ees of Dorians to Kréte 464

SECTION Il.—Migration of Thessalians

Story of Andrén ib.

- Althzemenés, founder of Rhodes 466

and Beotians. Kés, Knidus, and Karpathus .. 466 Thessalians move from Thesprétis Intervening blank betwomn legend

into Thessal 451 and history 467 Non-Hellenic ὁ aracter ‘of the Difficulty of _pzPlaining that 4 blank, on the hypothesis of

Boeotians—their migration from continuous tradition ... oe, 0B Thessaly into Beotia .. 452 Such an interval essentially con- Discrepant legends about the nected with the genesis of Beotians.. a ae .. 453 legend .. aa ἊΜ “.

CHAPTER XIX, APPLIOATION OF CHRONOLOGY ΤῸ GRECIAN LEGEND,

Different schemes of chronolo; cl The data, essential to chrono- proposed να the asin logical determination, are

events . es here wanting “6 .. 471

HISTORY OF GREEOE.

CHAPTER XIX.—continued

PAGE

Modern chronologists take up the same problem as ancient, but with a oar canon of

belief Mr. Clinton’s ¢ oe

pinion on the com- the date of the

jan Value of rai ‘clroustogical com- utations depends on the Deisbwocthiness of the genea-

Mr. Clinton's’ vindication of the genealogies—his proofs ἫΝ iL. Inscriptions—none of proved antiquity .. Genealogies—numerous, and of unascertainable date 2. Early poets Mr. Clinton’s separation of the genealogical persons into a Saino: equate on which itis founded .. Remarks on his opinion .. His concessions are partial and inconsistent, yet sufficient to render the genealogies

473

474

481

PAGR

for chrono-

Mr. ‘Clinton’ ’s positions respecting historical evidence ..

To what extent presumption may stand in favour of the sisi

ΟΡ.

poets Plausible fiction satisfies the con- itions laid down by Mr. Clinton—not disti jhable from truth without the aid of Kadut τ Dee Hyllus, &c., all us, a us, cpenyes a falling under Cite 5 definition of fictitious persons What is real in the genealogies cannot be distinguished fro what is fictitious oe At γραῦς time did the poets begin uce continuous genea- “μὰ ag from the mythical to the real world? .. 2 Evidence of mental odie Ri pas, when men methodize even on fictitious principles on

482 484

490

eee

HISTORY OF GREECE.

EA Bd Je LEGENDARY GREECE.

CHAPTER L

LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS.

THE mythical world of the Greeks opens with the gods, anterior as well as superior to man: it gradually descends, first to herocs, and next to the human race. Along with the gods Geletsneet are found various monstrous natures, ultra-human the mythi- and extra-human, who cannot with propriety be more called gods, but who partake with gods and men in the attributes of volition, conscious agency, and susceptibility of pleasure and pain,—such as the Harpies, the Gorgons, the Gra, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, Echidna, Sphinx, Chimera, Chrysadér, Pegasus, the Cyclépes, the Centaurs, &c. The first acts of what may be termed the great mythical cycle describe the proceedings of these gigantic agents—the crash and collision of certain terrific and overboiling forces, which are ultimately reduced to obedi- ence, or chained up, or extinguished, under the more orderly government of Zeus, who supplants his less capable predecessors, and acquires presidence and supremacy over gods and men— subject however to certain social restraints from the chief gods and goddesses around him, as well as to the custom of occa- sionally convoking and consulting the divine agora, 1—1

2 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Parr I.

I recount these events briefly, but literally, treating them Soa ae simply as mythes springing from the same creative mythesare imagination, addressing themselves to analogous tastes to be told. nl feelings, and depending upon the same authority, as the legends of Thebes and Troy. It is the inspired voice of the Muse which reveals and authenticates both, and from which Homer and Hesiod alike derive their knowledge—the one, of the heroic, the other, of the divine, foretime. I maintain, moreover, fully, the character of these great divine agents as Persons, which is the light in which they presented themselves to the Homeric or Hesiodic audience. Uranos, Nyx, Hypnos and Oneiros (Heaven, Night, Sleep and Dream), are Persons, just as much as ee Zeus and Apollo, To resolve them into mere alle- rarelyad- gories is unsafe and unprofitable: we then depart missible. = from the point of view of the original hearers, with- out acquiring any consistent or philosophical point of view of our own. For although some of the attributes and actions ascribed to these persons are often explicable by allegory, the whole series and system of them never are so: the theorist who adopts this course of explanation finds that, after one or two simple and obvious steps, the path is no longer open, and he is forced to clear a way for himself by gratuitous refinements and conjectures. The allegorical persons and attributes are always found mingled with other persons and attributes not allegorical ; but the two classes cannot be severed without breaking up the whole march of the mythical events, nor can any explanation which drives us to such a necessity be considered as admissible. To suppose indeed that these legends could be all traced by means of allegory into a coherent body of physical doctrine, would be inconsistent with all reasonable presumptions respecting the age or society in which they arose. Where the allegorical mark is clearly set upon any particular character, or attribute, or event, to that extent we may recognise it; but we can rarely venture to divine further, still less to alter the legends themselves on the faith of any such surmises. The theogony of the Greeks contains some cosmogonic ideas ; but it cannot be considered as a system

1It is sufficient, here, to state this specting the allegorizing interpretation position briefly: more will be said re- ina future chapter.

Crap. I. THE PREDOMINANCE OF ZEUS. 3

of cosmogony, or translated into a string of elementary, plane- tary, or physical changes.

In the order of legendary chronology, Zeus comes after Kronos and Uranos; but in the order of Grecian conception,

Zeus is the prominent person, and Kronos and 7eus-fore- Uranos are inferior and introductory precursors, set Grecian.

7 conception. up in order to be overthrown and to serve as me- ‘mentos of the prowess of their conqueror. To Homer and Hesiod, as well as to the Greeks universally, Zeus is the great and predominant god, “the father of gods and men,” whose power none of the other gods can hope to resist, or even delibe- rately think of questioning. All the other gods have their specific potency and peculiar sphere of action and duty, with which Zeus does not usually interfere: but it is he who main- tains the lineaments of a providential superintendence, as well over the phenomena of Olympus as over those of earth. Zeus and his brothers, Poseidén and Hadés, have made a division of power : he has reserved the ether and the atmosphere to him- self—Poseidén has obtained the sea—and Hadés the under-world or infernal regions ; while earth, and the events which pass upon earth, are common to all of them, together with free access to Olympus.?

Zeus, then, with his brethren and cciieagues, constitute the present gods, whom Homer and Hesiod recognise as πη odes in full dignity and efficiency. The inmates of this how con-

ee ° ceived : divine world are conceived upon the model, but not human type upon the scale, of the human. They are actuated *™arsed. by the full play and variety of those appetites, sympathies, passions and affections, which divide the soul of man ; invested with a far larger and indeterminate measure of power, and an exemption as well from death as (with some rare exceptions) from suffering and infirmity. The rich and diverse types thus conceived, full of energetic movement and contrast, each in his own province, and soaring confessedly above the limits of ex-

1 See Iliad, viii. 405, 463 ; xv. 20,130, suppressed by the unexpected appari- 185. Hesiod. Theog. 885. tion of Briareus as his ally, is among

This unquestioned τ ἐδ τῶ isthe the exceptions. (Hliad, i. 400.) Zeus general representation of Zeus: at the is at one time vanquished by Titan, sume time the conspiracy of Héré, but rescued by Hermés. (Apollodér. Poseiddn, and Athéné against him, i. 6, 3

4 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part I.

perience, were of all themes the most suitable for adventure and narrative, and operated with irresistible force upon the Grecian fancy. All nature was then conceived as moving and working through a number of personal agents, amongst whom the gods of Olympus were the most conspicuous ; the reverential belief in Zeus and Apollo being only one branch of this omnipresent per- sonifying faith. The attributes of all these agents had a ten- dency to expand themselves into illustrative legends—especially those of the gods, who were constantly invoked in the public wor- ship. Out of the same mental source sprang both the divine and heroic mythes—the former being often the more extravagant and abnormous in their incidents, in proportion as the general type of the gods was more vast and awful than that of the heroes. * As the gods have houses and wives like men, so the present Past history Gynasty of gods must have a past to repose upon;? "ἢ = moos and the curious and imaginative Greek, whenever he present con- does not find a recorded past ready to his hand, is oe uneasy until he has created one. Thus the Hesiodic . weogony explains, with a certain degree of system and coherence, - first the antecedent circumstances under which Zeus acquired the divine empire, next the number of his colleagues and descendants.

First in order of time (we are told by Hesiod) came Chaos ; next Gea, the broad, firm, and flat Earth, with deep and dark Tartarus at her base. Erdés (Love), the subduer of gods as well as men, came immediately afterwards. 3

From Chaos sprung Erebos and Nyx ; from these latter Athér and Hémera. Gea also gave birth to Uranos, equal in breadth to herself, in order to serve both as an overarching vault to her, and as a residence for the immortal gods ; she further produced the mountains, habitations of the divine nymphs, and Pontus, the barren and billowy sea.

Then Gza intermarried with Uranos, and from this union Gea and came a numerous offspring—twelve Titans and Titan- Uranos. —_— ides, three Cyclépes, and three Hekatoncheires or

. 5 Arist. Polit. i. 1. ὥσπερ δὲ καὶ τὰ 2 Hesiod, Theog. 116. Apollodérus

εἴδη ἑαυτοῖς ἀφομοιοῦσιν ἄνθρωποι, οὕτως begins with Uranos and Gwa (i. 1);

καὶ τοὺς βίους, τῶν θεῶν. τὰ ay not recognise Erés, Nyx, or rebos.

Crap. ἴ URANOS AND KRONOS. 5

beings with a hundred hands each. The Titans were Oceanus, Keeos, Krios, Hyperién, Iapetos, and Kronos: the Titanides, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnémosyné, Phcebé, and Téthys. The Cyclépes were Brontés, Steropés, and Argés,—formidable persons, equally distinguished for strength and for manual craft, so that they made the thunder which afterwards formed the irresistible artillery of Zeus.1 The Hekatoncheires were Kottos. Briareus, and Gygés, of prodigious bodily force.

Uranos contemplated this powerful brood with fear and horror ; as fast as any of them were born, he concealed them in cavities of the earth, and would not permit them to come out. Gea could find no room for them, and groaned under the pressure : she pro- duced iron, made a sickle, and implored her sons to avenge both her and themselves against the oppressive treatment of their father. But none of them, except Kronos, had courage to undertake the deed : he, the youngest and the most daring, was armed with the sickle and placed in suitable ambush by the contrivance of Gea. Presently night arrived, and Uranos descended to the embraces of Gea: Kronos then emerged from his concealment, cut off the genitals of his father, and cast the bleeding member behind him far away into the 568.2 Much of the blood was spilt upon the earth, and Gea in consequence gave birth to the irresistible Erinnys, the vast and muscular Gigantes, and the Melian nymphs. Out of the genitals themselves, as bg dis- they swam and foamed upon the sea, emerged the goddess Aphrodité, deriving her name from the foam out of which she had sprung. She first landed at Kythéra, and then went to Cyprus: the island felt her benign influence, and the green herb started up under her soft and delicate tread. Erés immediately joined her, and partook with her the function of suggesting and directing the amorous impulses both of gods and men.®

Uranos being thus dethroned and disabled, Kronos and the

1 Hesiod, Theog. 140, 156. Apollod. surname Urania, ᾿Αφροδίτη Οὐρανία,

ut Pe. - under which she was so very exten-

2 Hesiod, Theog. 160,182. Apollod. sively worshipped, especially both in

i. 1 4. Cyprus and Kythéra, seemingly origi-

Hesiod, Theog. 192. This legend nated in both islands by the Pheni-

ting the birth of Aphroditéseems cians. Herodot. i. 105. Compare the

ave m derived partly from her instructive section in Boeckh’s Metro- name (ἀφρὸς, foam), partly from the logie, c. iv. § 4

6 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Parr 1.

Titans acquired their liberty and became predominant: the Cyclépes and the Hekatoncheires had been cast by Uranos into Tartarus, and were still allowed to remain there.

Each of the Titans had a numerous offspring: Oceanus, especi- Kronos and ally, marrying his sister Téthys, begat three thousand the Titans. daughters, the Oceanic nymphs, and as many sons: the rivers and springs passed for his offspring. Hyperién and his sister Theia had for their children Hélios, Seléné, and Eés; Keeos with Pheebé begat Lété and Asteria: the children of Krios were Astrzeos, Pallas, and Persés,—from Astreos and Eés sprang the winds Zephyrus, Boreas, and Notus. Iapetos marrying the Oceanic nymph Klymené, counted as his progeny the cele- brated Prométheus, Epimétheus, Mencetius, and Atlas. But the offspring of Kronos were the most powerful and transcendent of all. He married his sister Rhea, and had by her three daughters—Hestia, Démétér, and Héré—and three sons, Hadés, Poseidén, and Zeus, the latter at once the youngest and the greatest.

But Kronos foreboded to himself destruction from one of his own children, and accordingly, as soon as any of them were born, he immediately swallowed them and retained them in his own Kronos belly. In this manner had the five first been treated, cA’ and Rhea was on the point of being delivered of Zeus. Birthand Grieved and indignant at the loss of her children, she pain ὃς ΠΡ applied for counsel to her father and mother, Uranos brethren. and Gea, who aided her to conceal the birth of Zeus. They conveyed her by night to Lyktus in Créte, hid the new-born child in a woody cavern on Mount Ida, and gave to Kronos, in place of it, a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he greedily swallowed, believing it to be his child. Thus was the safety of Zeus ensured.! As he grew up his vast powers fully developed themselves: at the suggestion of Geea, he induced Kronos by stra- tagem to vomit up, first the stone which had been given to him,— next the five children whom he had previously devoured. Hestia, Démétér, Héré, Poseidén and Hadés were thus allowed to grow up ilong with Zeus; and the stone to which the latter owed his preservation was placed near the temple of Delphi, where it ever

1 Hesiod, Theog. 452, 487. Apollod. i. 1, 6.

eee EOE =e oe

Crap. 1. THE TITANS. 7

afterwards stood, as a conspicuous and venerable memorial to the religious Greek.}

We have not yet exhausted the catalogue of beings generated during this early period, anterior to the birth of Zeus. other Nyx, alone and without any partner, gave birth to a {eities. numerous progeny : Thanatos, Hypnos and Oneiros ; Mémus and Oizys (Grief); K16th6, Lachesis, and Atropos, the three Fates ; the retributive and equalizing Nemesis ; Apaté and Philotés (Deceit and amorous Propensity), Geras (Old Age) and Eris (Contention). From Eris proceeded an abundant offspring, all mischievous and maleficent: Ponos (Suffering), Léthé, Limos (Famine), Phonos and Maché (Slaughter and Battle), Dysnomia and Até (Lawlessness and reckless Impulse), and Horkos, the ever-watchful sanctioner of oaths, as well as the inexorable punisher of voluntary perjury.?

Gea, too, intermarrying with Pontus, gave birth to Nereus, the just and righteous old man of the sea ; to Thaumas, Phorkys and Kété. From Nereus, and Doris daughter of Oceanus, proceeded the fifty Nereids or Sea-nymphs. Thaumas also married Elektra daughter of Oceanus, and had by her Iris and the two Harpies, Aell6é and Okypeté,—winged and swift as the winds. From Phorkys and Kété sprung the Dragon of the Hesperides, and the monstrous Greee, and Gorgons: the blood of Medusa, one of the Gorgons, when killed by Perseus, produced Chrysaér, and the horse Pegasus ; Chrysaér and Kallirhoé gave birth to Geryén as well as to Echidna,—a creature half-nymph and half-serpent, un- like both to gods and to men. Other monsters arose from the union of Echidna with Typhaén,—Orthros, the two-headed dog of Geryén ; Cerberus, the dog of Hadés with fifty heads, and the Lernean Hydra. From the latter proceeded the Chimera, the Sphinx of Thébes, and the Nemean lion.® ;

A powerful and important progeny, also, was that of Styx, daughter of Oceanus, by Pallas; she had Zélos and Niké (Im- periousness and Victory), and Kratos and Bia (Strength and Force). The hearty and early co-operation of Styx and her four

1 Hesiod, Theog. 498— Σῆμ᾽ ἔμεν ἐξοπίσω, θαῦμα θνητοῖσι Τὸν μὲν Ζεὺς στήριξε κατὰ χθονὸς εὐ- βροτοῖσι. ρυοδείης 2 Hesiod, Theog. 212—232, Iiv90t ἐν nyabén, γνάλοις ὑπὸ ἸΠαρνή- 8 Hesiod, Theog. 940-- 890, Apollo- goto, dér, i, 2, 6, 7,

8 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part 1,

sons with Zeus was one of the main causes which enabled him to achieve his victory over the Titans.

Zeus had grown up not less distinguished for mental capacity Ambitions '2an for bodily force. He and his brothers now deter- schemes of mined to wrest the power from the hands of Kronos

ΤῊ and the Titans, and a long and desperate struggle —

commenced, in which all the gods and all the goddesses took part. Zeus convoked them to Olympus, and promised to all who would aid him against Kronos, that their functions and privileges should remain undisturbed. The first who responded to the call, came with her four sons, and embraced his cause, was Styx. Zeus took them all four as his constant attendants, and conferred upon Styx the majestic distinction of being the Horkos, or oath-sanc- tioner of the Gods,—what Horkos was to men, Styx was to the Gods.?

Still further to strengthen himself, Zeus released the other victory oe Uranids who had been imprisoned in Tartarus by Zeusand _ their father,—the Cyclépes and the Centimanes,—and his brethren prevailed upon them to take part with him against and the the Titans. The former supplied him with thunder

and lightning, and the latter brought into the fight their boundless muscular strength.? Ten full years did the combat continue; Zeus and the Kronids occupying Olympus, and the Titans being established on the more southerly mountain-chain of Othrys. All nature was convulsed, and the distant Oceanus, though he took no part in the struggle, felt the boiling, the noise, and the shock, not less than Gea and Pontus. The thunder of Zeus, combined with the crags and mountains torn up and hurled by the Centimanes, at length prevailed, and the Titans were defeated and thrust down into Tartarus. Iapetos, Kronos, and the remaining Titans (Oceanus excepted) were imprisoned per- petually and irrevocably, in that subterranean dungeon, a wall of brass being built around them by Poseidén, and the three Centimanes being planted as guards.

Of the two sons of Iapetos, Mencetius was made to share this prison, while Atlas was condemned to stand for ever at the

1 Hesiod, Theog. 885. 408, 2 Hesiod, Theog. 140, 624, 657. Apol- er ss κτλ ee

a

Crap. 1... ZEUS—POSEIDON—HADES. § extreme west, and to bear upon his shoulders the solid vault of heaven.1

Thus were the Titans subdued, and the Kronids with Zeus at their head placed in possession of power. They were not, however, yet quite secure ; for Gzea, intermarry- ing with Tartarus, gave birth to a new and still more formidable monster called Typhéeus, of such tremendous properties and promise, that, had he been allowed to grow into full develop- ment, nothing could have prevented him from vanquishing all rivals and becoming supreme. But Zeus foresaw the danger, smote him at once with a thunderbolt from Olympus, and burnt him up: he was cast along with the rest into Tartarus, and no further enemy remained to question the sovereignty of the Kronids.?

With Zeus begins a new dynasty and a different order of beings. Zeus, Poseidén and Hadés agree upon the distribution pynasty of before noticed of functions and localities: Zeus retain- 2¢us- ing the Athér and the atmosphere, together with the general presiding function: Poseidén obtaining the sea, and administering subterranean forces generally : and Hadés ruling the under-world, or region in which the half-animated shadows of departed men reside.

It has been already stated, that in Zeus, his brothers and his sisters, and his and their divine progeny, we find the present Gods ; that is, those, for the most part, whom the Homeric and Hesiodic Greeks recognised and worshipped. The yj, wives of Zeus were numerous as well as his offspring. spring. First he married Métis, the wisest and most sagacious of the goddesses ; but Gzea and Uranos forewarned him that if he per- mitted himself to have children by her, they would be stronger than himself and dethrone him. Accordingly, when Métis was on the point of being delivered of Athéné, he swallowed her up,

Typhdeus.

1 The battle with the Titans, Hesiod, Theog. 627—735. Hesiod mentions nothing about the Gigantes and the Gigantomachia : Apollodérus, ‘on the other hand, gives this latter in some

the legendary poets were often in- clined

2 Hesiod, Theog. 820—869. Apollod. i. 6,3. He makes Typh6n very nearly victorious over Zeus. Typhéeus, ac-

detail, but despatches the Titans ina few words (i. 2, 4;1.6,1). The Gigantes seem to be only a second edition of the Titans,—a sort of duplication to which

cording to Hesiod, is father of the irre- gular, violent, and mischievous winds: Notus, Boreas, Argestés, and Zephyrus are of divine origin (870).

10 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part L

~ and her wisdom and sagacity thus became permanently identified with his own being.! His head was subsequently cut open, in order to make way for the exit and birth of the goddess Athéné.? By Themis, Zeus begat the Hore ; by Eurynomé, the three Cha- rites or Graces: by Mnémosyné, the Muses ; by Lété (Latona), Apollo and Artemis ; and by Démétér, Persephoné. Last of all he took for his wife Héré, who maintained permanently the dig- nity of queen of the Gods; by her he had Hébé, Arés, and Eilei- thyia. Hermés also was born to him by Maia, the daughter of Atlas ; Héphzstos was born to Héré, according to some accounts by Zeus ; according to others, by her own unaided generative force.* _ He was born lame, and Héré was ashamed of him ; she wished to secrete him away, but he made his escape into the sea, and found shelter under the maternal care of the Nereids Thetis and Eurynomé.*

Our enumeration of the divine race, under the presidency of Zeus, will thus give us,°>—

Generaldis- 1. The twelve great gods and goddesses of Olympus, Sapo cet —Zeus, Poseidén, Apollo, Arés, Héphestos, Hermés, race. Héré, Athéné, Artemis, Aphrodité, Hestia, Démétér.

2. An indefinite number of other deities, not included among the Olympic, seemingly because the number twelve was com- plete without them, but some of them not inferior in power and dignity to many of the twelve :—Hadés, Hélios, Hekaté, Diony- sos, Lété, Diéné, Persephoné, Seléné, Themis, Eds, Harmonia, the Charites, the Muses, the Eileithyiz, the Mcere, the Oceanids and the Nereids, Proteus, Eidothea, the Nymphs, Leukothea, Phorkys, ZZolus, Nemesis, &c.

3. Deities who perform special services to the greater gods :— Iris, Hébé, the Hore, &c.

4. Deities whose personality is more faintly and unsteadily conceived :—Até, the Litz, Eris, Thanatos, Hypnos, Kratos, Bia, Ossa, &c.6 The same name is here employed sometimes to de- signate the person, sometimes the attribute or event not personi-

1 Hesiod, Theog. 885—900, , 5See Burckhardt, Homer. und He- 2 Apollod. i. 3, 6. ors Mythologie, sect. 102. (Leipz.

® Hesiod, Theog. 900—944. 6 Atwds—Hunger—is a person, in 4 Iomer, Lliad, xviii. 397 Hesiod, Opp. Di. 299.

Gnap. f. HESIODIC THEOGONY. 11

fied,—an unconscious transition of ideas, which, when consciously performed, is called Allegory.

5. Monsters, offspring of the Gods :—the Harpies, the Gorgons, the Gres, Pegasus, Chrysaér, Echidna, Chimera, the Dragon of the Hesperides, Cerberus, Orthros, Geryén, the Lernzan Hydra, the Nemean lion, Scylla and Charybdis, the Centaurs, the Sphinx, Xanthos and Balios the immortal horses, ὅσο.

From the gods we slide down insensibly, first to heroes, and then to men; but before we proceed to this new mixture, it is necessary to say a few words on the theogony gene- ni rally. I have given it briefly as it stands in the Fenn Hesiodic Theogonia, because that poem—in spite of ager great incoherence and confusion, arising seemingly

‘from diversity of authorship as well as diversity of age—presents an ancient and genuine attempt to cast the divine foretime into a systematic sequence. Homer and Hesiod were the grand authorities in the pagan world respecting theogony. But in the Tliad and Odyssey nothing is found except passing allusions and implications ; and even in the Hymns (which were commonly believed in antiquity to be the productions of the same author as the Iliad and the Odyssey) there are only isolated, unconnected narratives. Accordingly men habitually took their information respecting their theogonic antiquities from the Hesiodic poem, where it was ready laid out before them ; and the legends con- secrated in that work acquired both an extent of circulation and a firm hold on the national faith, such as independent legends could seldom or never rival. Moreover the scrupulous and sceptical pagans, as well as the open assailants of paganism in later times, derived their subjects of attack from the same source; so that it has been absolutely necessary to recount in their naked simplicity the Hesiodic stories, in order to know what it was that Plato deprecated and Xenophanés denounced, The strange proceedings ascribed to Uranos, Kronos, and Zeus have been more frequently alluded to in the way of ridicule or condemna- tion than any other portion of the mythical world.

But though the Hesiodic theogony passed as orthodox among the later pagans,! because 10 stood before them as the only

1See Gottling, Preefat. ad Hesiod. p. 23.

19 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part I.

system anciently set forth and easily accessible, it was evidently Pointsof ποῦ the only system received at the date of the poem greek! itself. Homer knows nothing of Uranos, in the sense Homerand οὗ an arch-God anterior to Kronos. Uranos and Gea, Hesiod. like Oceanus, Téthys and Nyx, are with him great and venerable Gods, but neither the one nor the other present the character of predecessors of Kronos and Zeus.! The Cycldpes, whom Hesiod ranks as sons of Uranos and fabricators of thunder, are in Homer neither one nor the other: they are not noticed in the Tliad at all, and in the Odyssey they are gross gigantic shepherds and cannibals, having nothing in common with the Hesiodic Cyclépes except the one round central eye.? Of the three Cen- timanes enumerated by Hesiod, Briareus only is mentioned in Homer, and, to all appearance, not as the son of Uranos, but as the son of Poseidén; not as aiding Zeus in his combat against the Titans, but as rescuing him at a critical moment from a con- spiracy formed against him by Héré, Poseidén, and Athéné.3 Not only is the Hesiodic Uranos (with the Uranids) omitted in Homer, but the relations between Zeus and Kronos are also presented in a very different light. No mention is made of Kronos swallowing his young children: on the contrary, Zeus is the eldest of the three brothers, instead of the youngest, and the “hildren of Kronos live with him and Rhea: there the stolen intercourse between Zeus and Héré first takes place without the knowledge of their parents When Zeus puts Kronos down into Tartarus, Rhea consigns her daughter Héré to the care of Oceanus: no notice do we find of any terrific battle with the Titans as accompanying that event. Kronos, Iapetos, and the remaining Titans are down in Tartarus, in the lowest depths under the earth, far removed from the genial rays of Hélios; but they are still powerful and venerable, and Hypnos makes Héré swear an oath in their name, as ap most inviolable that he can think οἱ, ἢ

Sy μα, xiv. pied | = τος ea Ζ 3 Tliad, i, 401. ceanus and Téthys seem Θ 4 presented in the Iliad as the θεν δ ΩΣ Ἐπ rea! aa ie Ce In

Father and Mother of the Go the Ηθαΐσαϊο Opp. et Di., Kronos is ᾽Ωκεανόν τε θεῶν γένεσιν, καὶ gt es represented. as suting} in the Islands of θύν. (xiv. 201.) the Blest in the neighbourhood of

2 Odyss. ix. 87, eoanus (Υ, 168).

»

Cuap. 1. HOMERIC THEOGONY. 13

In Homer, then, we find nothing beyond the simple fact that Zeus thrust his father Kronos, together with the re- : maining Titans, into Tartarus ; an event to which he Homeric affords us a tolerable parallel in certain occurrences even under the presidency of Zeus himself. For the other gods make more than one rebellious attempt against Zeus, and are only put down, partly by his unparalleled strength, partly by the presence of his ally the Centimane Briareus. Kronos, like Laértes or Péleus, has become old, and has been supplanted by a force vastly superior to his own. The Homeric epic treats Zeus as present, and like all the interesting heroic characters, a father must be assigned to him: that father has once been the chief of the Titans, but has been superseded and put down into Tartarus along with the latter, so soon as Zeus and the superior breed of the Olympic gods acquired their full development.

That antithesis between Zeus and Kronos—between the Olympic gods and the Titans—which Homer has thus briefly brought to view, Hesiod has amplified into a theogony, with many things new and some things contradictory to his predecessor; while Eumélus or Ark- tinus in the poem called Titanomachia (now lost) also adopted it as their special subject. As Stasinus, Arktinus, Leschés and others enlarged the Legend of Troy by composing poems relating to a supposed time anterior to the commencement, or subsequent to the termination of the Iliad,—as other poets re- counted adventures of Odysseus subsequent to his landing in Ithaka,—so Hesiod enlarged and systematised, at the same time that he corrupted, the skeleton theogony which we find briefly indicated in Homer. There is violence and rudeness in the. Homeric gods, but the great genius of Grecian Epic is ne way accountable for the stories of Uranos and Kronos,—the standing reproach against pagan legendary narrative.

Amplified theogony of Zeus,

1 See the few fragments of the Tita- nomachia, in Diintzer, Epic. Grec. .p.2; and Heyne, ad cay Smt i. 2. Perhaps there was more than one erg on the subject, though it seems + Athenzeus had only read one (viii.

p. 277). In the Titanomachia, the genera- tions anterior to Zeus were still further

Aithér (Fr. 4 Diintzer). Aigeon was also represented as son of Pontos and Geea, and as having foughtin the ranks of the Titans: in the Iliad he (the same who is called Briareus) is the fast ally of Zeus.

A Titanographia was ascribed to Museus (Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iii. 1178 ; compare Lactant. de Fals. Rel. i.

1).

lengthened by making Uranos son of 21)

14 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS.

Part I.

How far these stories are the invention of Hesiod himself is impossible to determine.' They bring us down to a cast of fancy more coarse and indelicate than the Homeric, and more nearly resembling some of the Holy Chapters (ἱεροὶ λόγοι) of the more recent mysteries, such (for example) as the tale of Dionysos

1 That the Hesiodic Theogony is re- ferable to an age considerably later than the Homerie poems, appears now to be the generally admitted opinion ; and the reasons for believing so are, in my RS emo satisfactory. Whether the Theogony is com by the same author as the Works and Days is a disputed point. The Beotian literati in the days of Pausanias decidedly denied the identity, and ascribed to their Hesiod only the Works and Days: Pausanias himself concurs with them (ix. 31, 4; ix. 35. 1), and Volcker (My- thologie des Japetisch. Geschiechts, Ἂς 14) maintains the same opinion, as w as Gottling (Pref. ad Hesiod. xxi.): K. O. Miiller (History of Grecian Litera-

ture, ch. 8. § 4) thi that there is not sufficient evidence to form a decisive opinion.

Under the name of Hesiod (in that vague language which is usual in anti- quity respecting authorship, but which modern critics have not much mended by speaking of the Hesiodic school, sect, or family) passed many different nos. belonging to three classes quite

istinct from each other, but all dis- parate from the Homeric epic :—1. The poems of legend cast into historical and genealogical series, such as the Eoiai, the Catalogue of Women, &c. 2. The poems of a didactic or ethical tendency, such as the Worksand Days, the Precepts of Cheirén, the Art of Au Prophecy, &c. 3. Separate and short mythical compositions, such as the Shield of Héraklés, the marriage of Keyx (which, however, was of dis- puted authenticity, Athenz. ii. p. 49), the Epithalamium of Péleus and Thetis ἄς. (See Marktscheffel, Prefat. ad Fragment. Hesiod. p. 89.)

The Theogony belongs chiefiy to the first of these classes, but it has also a dash of the second in the legend of Prométheus, &c. ; moreover in the por- tion which respects Hekaté, it has both a mystic character and a distinct bear- ing upon present life and customs, which we may also trace in the allu- sions to Kréte and Delphi. There seems reason to place it in the same age with the Works and Days, perhaps in the

half century preceding 700 B.c., and little, if at all, anterior to Archilochus. The poem is evidently conceived upon one scheme, yet the parts are so orderly and incoherent, that it is diffi- cult to say how much is in’ lation. Hermann has well dissected the exor- dium: see the preface to Gaisford’s Hesiod (Poetz Minor. p. 63).

K. O. Miiller tells us (ut sup. p. 90): “The Titans, according to the notions of Hesiod, represent a system of things in which elementary beings, natural

wers, and notions of order and -

ity are united to forma whole. The Cyclopes denote the transient disturb- ances of this order of nature by storms, and the Hekatoncheires, or hundred- handed Giants, signify the fearful power of the greater revolutions of nature.” The affords little pre- sumption that any such ideas were resent to the mind of its author, as, J hink, will he seen if we read 140—155, 630—745.

The Titans, the Cyclépes, and the Hekatoncheires, can no more be con- strued into physical a than Chrysaér, Pegasus, Echidna, the Gree, or the Gorgons. Zeus, like Héraklés, or Jas6n, or Perseus, if his adventures are to be described, must have enemies, worthy of himself and his vast type, and whom it is some credit for him to overthrow. Those who contend with him or assist him must be conceived on a scale fit to be drawn on the same imposing canvas: the dwartfish pro- portions of man will not satisfy the sentiment of the poet or his audience respecting the ndeur and glory of the gods. To obtain creations of ade- quate sublimity for such an object, the poet may occasionally borrow analogies from the striking accidents of physical nature, and when such an allusion manifests itself clearly, the critic does well to point it out. But it seems to me a mistake to treat these approxi- mations to physical phanomena as forming the main scheme of the poet,— to look for them everywhere, and to presume them where there is little or no indication,

Cuap. 1. HOMER AND HESIOD. 15

Zagreus. ‘There is evidence in the Theogony itself that the author was acquainted with local legends current both at Kréte and at Delphi; for he mentions both the mountain-cave in Kréte wherein the new-born Zeus was hidden, and the stone near the Delphian temple—the identical stone which Kronos had swal- lowed—* placed by Zeus himself as a sign and wonder to mortal men”. Both these two monuments, which the poet ex- egiodic pressly refers to, and had probably seen, imply a whole ae raceable to train of accessory and explanatory local legends—cur- Kréte and rent probably among the priests of Kréte and Delphi, Dae between which places, in ancient times, there was an intimate religious connexion. And we may trace further in the poem— that which would be the natural feeling of Krétan worshippers of Zeus—an effort to make out that Zeus was justified in his aggression on Kronos, by the conduct of Kronos himself both towards his father and towards his children: the treatment of Kronos by Zeus appears in Hesiod as the retribution foretold and threatened by the mutilated Uranos against the son who had outraged him. In fact, the relations of Uranos and Geea are in almost all their particulars a mere copy and duplication of those between Kronos and Rhea, differing only in the mode whereby the final catastrophe is brought about. Now castration was a practice thoroughly abhorrent both to the feelings and to the customs of Greece ;1 but it was seen with melancholy frequency in the domestic life as well as in the religious worship of Phrygia and other parts of Asia ; and it even became the special qualifica- tion of a priest of the Great Mother Cybelé,? as well as of the Ephesian Artemis. The employment of the sickle ascribed to Kronos seems to be the product of an imagination familiar with the Asiatic worship and legends, which were connected with and

1 The strongest evidences of thisfeel- in his lost play Troilus (ap. Jul. Poll. ing are exhibited in Herodotus, iii. 48; x. 165), introduced one of the characters vill. 105. See an example of this muti- of his drama as having been castrated lation inflicted upon a youth named by order of Hecuba, ξκαλμῇ yap ὄρχεις Adamas by the Thracian king Kotys, βασιλὶς ἐκτέμνουσ᾽ éuovs,—probably the in Aristot. Polit. v. 8, 12, and the tale Παιδαγωγός or guardian and companion 944 the Corinthian Periander, Herod. of the youthful Troilus. See Welcker, iii. 48.

ie Aa + abs Baikal Griechisch. Trag6d. vol. i. p. 125.

an instance of the habit, 80 5 Herodot, vii. 105, εὐνοῦ τ frequent among the Attic tragedians, .. . 5, EUVOVXOCs ἀχι- De asoribing Asiatic or Phrygian man- ora fs te Syria, ο. 60. Strabo, xiv, ners to the Trajans, when Sophocles ΡΡ' 640—G#1.

16 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS.

partially resembled the Krétan.' And this deduction becomes the more probable when we connect it with the first genesis of iron, which Hesiod mentions to have been produced for the express purpose of fabricating the fatal sickle; for metallurgy finds a place in the early legends both of the Trojan and of the Krétan Ida, and the three Idean Dactyls, the legendary inventors of it, are assigned sometimes to one and sometimes to the other?

As Hesiod had extended the Homeric series of gods by pre- fixing the dynasty of Uranos to that of Kronos, so the Orphic theogony lengthened it still further.* First came Chronos, or Orphic Time, as a person, after him Athér and Chaos, out of theogony. whom Chronos produced the vast mundane egg.

, pee

Hence emerged in process of time the first-born god Phanés, 0. ~

Métis, or Hérikapzos, a person of double sex, who first generated the Kosmos, or mundane system, and who carried within him the

seed of the gods. He gave birth to Nyx, by whom he begat~

Uranos and Gea; as well as to Hélios and Seléné.*

From Uranos and Gea sprang the three Mcere, or Fates, the three Centimanes, and the three Cyclopes: these latter were cast by Uranos into Tartarus, under the foreboding that they would rob him of his dominion. In revenge for this maltreatment of her sons, Gea produced of herself the fourteen Titans, seven male and seven female: the former were Keos, Krios, Phorkys,

1 Diodér. v. 64. Strabo, x. p. 469. Hoeck, in his learned work Kréta (vol. i. books 1 and 2), has collected all the information attainable sian tra | the early influences of Phrygia an Asia Minor upon Kréte : nothing seems ascertainable except the general fact ; all the particular evidences are lament- ably vague.

e worship of the Diktzan Zeus seems to have originally belonged to

Orphic Theogony in Hermann’s edition of the Orphica, pp. 448, 504, which it is difficult to understand and piece to- gether, even with the aid of Lobeck’s elaborate examination (Aglaophamus, p. 470, &c.). The passages are chiefly aes by Proclus and the later

latonists, who seem to entangle them almost inextricably with their own philosophical ideas.

The first few lines of the Orphic Argonautica contain a brief summary

the Eteokrétes, who were not Hellens, and were more in to the Asiatic

pulation than to the Hellenic. Bt rabo, x. p. 478. Hoeck, Kréta, vol. i, p. 139.

2 Hesiod, Theogon. 161—

Alwa δὲ ποιήσασα γένος πολιοῦ ἀδά-

μαντος,

Τεῦξε μέγα δρέπανον, &.

See the extract from the old poem Phoréniz ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. 1129 ; and Strabo, x. p. 472.

3See the scanty fragments of the

of the chief points of the Theogony. 4See Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 472—476, 490—500, Μῆτιν σπέρμα φέροντα θεῶν κλυτὸν Ἢρικεπαῖον ; again, Θῆλυς καὶ γενέτωρ κρατερὸς θεὸς ᾿Ηρικέπαιος. Com- pare Lactant. iv. 8,4; Suidas, v. Φάνης : Athenagoras, xx. 296; Dioddér. i. 27. This egg figures, as might be ex- ted, in the cosmogony set forth by he Birds, Aristophan. Av. 695. Nyx gives birth to an egg, out of which steps the golden Erés ; from Erés and Chaos spring the race of birds.

tre lt

Parti.

cur. ἴ. ORPHIC THEOGONY, 7 Kronos, Oceanus, Hyperién, and Iapetos ; the latter were Themis, Téthys, Mnémosyné, Theia, Didné, Phoebé, and Rhea! They received the name of Titans because they avenged upon Uranos the expulsion of their elder brothers. Six of the Titans, headed by Kronos, the most powerful of them all, conspiring against Uranos, castrated and dethroned him: Oceanus alone stood aloof and took no part in the aggression. Kronos assumed the govern- ment, and fixed his seat on Olympus; while Oceanus remained apart, master of his own divine stream.? The reign of Kronos was a period of tranquillity and happiness, as well as of extra- ordinary longevity and vigour.

Kronos and Rhea gave birth to Zeus and his brothers and sisters. The concealment and escape of the infant Zeus, and the swallowing of the stone by Kronos, are given in the Orphic Theogony substantially in the same manner as by Hesiod, only in a style less simple and more mysticised. Zeus is Zeus and concealed in the cave of Nyx, the seat of Phanés Phanés. himself, along with Eid@ and Adrasteia, who nurse and preserve him, while the armed dance and sonorous instruments of the Kurétés prevent his infant cries from reaching the ears of Kronos, When grown up, he lays a snare for his father, intoxicates him with honey, and, having surprised him in the depth of sleep, enchains and castrates him.’ Thus exalted to the supreme mastery, he swallowed and absorbed into himself Métis, or Phanés, with all the pre-existing elements of things, and then generated all things anew out of his own being and comformably to his own divine ideas. So scanty are the remains of this system,

Ἔργοισιν μεθύοντα μελισσάων ἐρι- ;

1Lobeck, Ag. p. 504. Athenagor. θά

γ. p. 64. 2 Lobeck, Ag. p. 507. Plato, Timzeus, . 41, In the Διονύσου τρόφοι of Alschy- us, the old attendants of the god Dionysos were said to have been cut up and boiled in a caldron, and rendered again young, by Medeia. Pherecydés and Simonidés said that Jasén himself had been so dealt with. Schol. Aris- toph. Equit. 1321. 3Lobeck, p. 514. Porphyry, de Antro Nym harum, c. 16, φησὶ yap παρ᾽ Ὀρφεῖ ἡ Noe, τῷ Act ὑποτιθεμένη τὸν διὰ τοῦ μέλιτος δόλον, Εὖτ' ἂν δή μιν ἴδηαι ὑπὸ δρυσὶν ὑψικό- μοισι

x

όμβων,

Αὔτικά μιν δῆσον.

Ὃ καὶ πάσχει ὃ Kpdvos καὶ δεθεὶς ἐκτέμ» νεται, ὡς Οὐρανός.

Compare T'imzus ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 983.

4The Cataposis of Phanés by Zeus is one of the most memorable points of the Orphic Theogony. Lobeck, p. 519; also Fragm. vi. p. 456 of Hermann’s Orphica.

From this absorption and subsequent reproduction of all things by Zeus, flowed the magnificent string of Orphic predicates about him,—

1—2

18 Part t.

that we find it difficult to trace individually the gods and god- desses sprung from Zeus beyond Apollo, Dionysos, and Persephoné —the latter being confounded with Artemis and Hekaté. But there is one new personage begotten by Zeus, who stands pre-eminently marked in the Orphic Theogony, and whose adventures constitute one of its peculiar features. Zagreus. —-Zagreus, “the horned child,” is the son of Zeus by his own daughter Persephoné: he is the favourite of his father, a child of magnificent promise, and predestined, if he grow up, to succeed to supreme dominion, as well as to the handling of the thunderbolt. He is seated, whilst an infant, on the throne beside Zeus, guarded by Apollo and the Kurétés. But the jealous Héré intercepts his career, and incites the Titans against him, who, having first smeared their faces with plaster, approach him on the throne, tempt his childish fancy with playthings, and kill him with a sword while he is contemplating his face ina mirror. They then cut up his body and boil it in a caldron, leaving only the heart, which is picked up by Athéné and carried to Zeus, who in his wrath strikes down the Titans with thunder into Tartarus ; whilst Apollo is directed to collect the remains of Zagreus and bury them at the foot of Mount Parnassus. The heart is given to Semelé, and Zagreus is born again from her under the form of Dionysos.

LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS.

ἘΣ & pel, δὴ eriieet ΒΝ . 4, Ῥ. iintzer.

ing the Orphic Theogony generally, Brandis (Handbuch der Geschichte der Griechisch-Rémischen Philosophie, c.

Ζεὺς ἀρχὴ, Ζεὺς μέσσα, Ards δ᾽ ἐκ πάντα τέτυκται, an allusion to which is traceable even in Plato, de Legs. ἢ iv. af ate: 715. Plutarch, de Defectu O p. 379, c. 48.

Diodérus (i. ii) is is he ae ancient writer remaining to us who mentions the name of Phanés, in a line cited as roceeding from Orpheus ; wherein, howseer, Phanés is identified with Se Compare Macrobius, Satur- i 1 About the tale of Zagreus, see Lo- beck, p. 552, seg. Nonnus in his Diony- siaca has given many details about it :-— Faer. onan κέροεν βρέφος, ὅσ. (vi. 264). Clemens Alexandrin. Admonit. ad Gent. se 11, 12, Sylb. The story was treated both by Kallimachus and by Ruphori6n, Etymolog. Magn. v. Z pevs, Schol. get 208. In the old epic poem Alkmeénis or Epigoni,

xvii., xviii.), K. O. — Bsr, Mythol. pp. 379—396), an: b- handlungen, v. pp. » oe) on ΜῈ be pie with much advantage. Bran- dis regards this Theo ogony as consider- ably older than the first Lonic philosophy, which is a higher antiquity than ap- pears probable: some of the ideas which it contains, such, for example, as that of the Orphic egg, roe a departure from the strin urely personal generations which th omer and Hesiod exclusively recount, and a resort to something like physical ana- logies. On the whole, we cannot rea- sonably claim for it more than half a century above the age of Onomakritus. The Theogony of Pherekydés of Syros seems to have borne some analogy to

ZAGREUS.—HESIOD AND ORPHEUS. 19

Crap. Ὁ.

Such is the tissue of violent fancies comprehended under the title of the Orphic Theogony, and read as such, it appears, by Plato, Isokratés, and Aristotle. It will be seen that it is based upon the Hesiodic Theogony, but, according to the general ex- pansive tendency of Grecian legend, much new matter is added : Zeus has in Homer one predecessor, in Hesiod two, and in Orpheus four.

The Hesiodic Theogony, though later in date than the Iliad and Odyssey, was coeval with the earliest period of what may be called Grecian history, and certainly of an age earlier than 700 B.c. It appears to have been widely circulated in | , Greece, and being at once ancient and short, the Comparison general public consulted it as their principal source of as oe information respecting divine antiquity. The Orphic Theogony belongs to a later date, and contains the Hesiodic ideas and persons, enlarged and mystically disguised. Its vein of invention was less popular, adapted more to the contemplation of a sect specially prepared than to the taste of a casual audience. And it appears accordingly to have obtained currency chiefly among purely speculative men.1 Among the majority of these latter, however, it acquired greater veneration, and above all was

the Orphic. See Diogen. Laért. i. 119, Sturz. Fragm. Pherekyd. §5—6, Brandis, Handbuch, ut sup. c. xxii. Pherekydés partially deviated from the mythical track or personal successions set forth by Hesiod. ἐπεὶ οἵ ye μεμιγμένοι αὐτῶν καὶ τῷ μὴ μυθικῶς ἅπαντα λέγειν, οἷον Φερεκύδης καὶ ἕτεροί τινες, &e. ngage Metaphys. N. p. 301, ed. Brandis.) Porphyrius, de Antro Nym- phar. c. 31, καὶ τοῦ Συρίου Pepexvdov μυχοὺς καὶ βόθρους καὶ ἄντρα Kai θύρας καὶ πύλας λέγοντος, καὶ διὰ τούτων αἰνιτ- τομένου τὰς τῶν ψυχῶν γενέσεις καὶ ἀπογενέσεις, ἄο. EKudémus the Peripa- tetic, pupil of Aristotle, had drawn up an account of the Orphic Theogony as well as of the doctrines of Pherekydés, Akusilans, and others, which was still in the hands of the Platonists of the fourth century, though it is now lost. The extracts which we find.seem all to countenance the belief that the Hesiodic Theogony formed the basis upon which they worked. See about Akusilaus, Plato, Sympos. p. 178; Clem. Alex. Strom. p. 629.

1 The Orphic Theogony is never cited

in the ample Scholia on Homer, pes Hesiod is often alluded to. (See Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 540.) Nor can it have been present to the minds of Xenophanés and Herakleitus, as representing any widely diffused Grecian belief: the former, who so severely condemned Homer and Hesiod, would have found Orpheus much more deserving of his censure: and the latter could hardly have omitted Orpheus from his memor-' able denunciation :—IloAvpa@in νόον ob διδάσκει" Ἡσίοδον yap av ἐδίδαξε καὶ Πυθαγόρην, αὗτις δὲ Ξενοφάνεά τε καὶ Ἑκαταῖον. Diog. Laér. ix.1. Isokratés treats Orpheus as the most censurable of ali the poets. See Busiris, p. 229; ii. p. 300, Bekk. The Theogony of Orpheus, as conceived by Apollonius Rhodius (i. 504) in the third century, B.C., and by Nigidius in the first cen- tury, B.c. (Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. iv. 10), seems to have been on a more contracted scale than that which is given in the text. But neither of them notice the tale of Zagreus, which we know to be as old as Onomakritus.

20 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part L

supposed to be of greater antiquity than the Hesiodic. The belief in its superior antiquity (disallowed by Herodotus, and seemingly also by Aristotle),' as well as the respect for its con- tents, increased during the Alexandrine age and through the declining centuries of paganism, reaching its maximum among the New-Platonists of the third and fourth century after Christ. Both the Christian assailants, as well as the defenders of paganism, treated it as the most ancient and venerable summary of the Grecian faith. Orpheus is celebrated by Pindar as the harper and companion of the Argonautic maritime heroes : Orpheus and Muszeus, as well as Pamphos and Olén, the great supposed authors of theogonic, mystical, oracular, and prophetic verses and hymns, were generally considered by literary Greeks as older than either Hesiod or Homer.? And such was also the common opinion ΟἹ modern scholars until a period comparatively recent. But it has now been shown, on sufficient ground, that the compositions which passed under these names emanate for the most part from poets of the Alexandrine age, and subsequent to the Christian era ; and that even the earliest among them, which served as the stock on which the latter additions were engrafted, belong to a period far more recent than Hesiod: probably to the century preceding Onomakritus (B.c. 610-510). It seems, however, cer- tain that both Orpheus and Muszeus were names of established reputation at the time when Onomakritus flourished ; and it is distinctly stated by Pausanias that the latter was himself the author of the most remarkable and characteristic mythe of the

1 This opinion of Herodotus is im- plied in the remarkable passage about Homer and Hesiod, ii. 53, though he never once names Orpheus—only allud- ing once to ‘‘Orphic ceremonies,” ii. 81. He speaks more than once of the prophecies of Muszeus. Aristotle denied the past existence and reality of Or- pheus. See Cicero de Nat. Deor. i. 38

2 Pindar, Pyth. iv. 177. Plato seems to consider Orpheus as more ancient than Homer. Compare ‘Thextét. p. 179 ; Cratylus, p. 402 ; De Republ. ii. p. 364. ‘The order in which Aristophan (and Hippias of Elis, 4 Clem. Alex. Str. vi. p. 624) mentions them indicates the same view, Ranz, 1030. It is un-

necessary to cite the later chronologers, among whom the belief in the antiquity of Orpheus was universal ; he wascom- monly described as son of the Muse Calliopé. Androtién seems to have denied that he was a Thracian, mane ing the Thracians as incurably stupid and illiterate. Androtién, . 36, ed. Didot. Ephorus treated him as ἐπ hn f been a pupil of the Idean Dac- tyls of Phrygia (see Diodér. v. 64), and as having learnt from them his τελετάς and μυστήρια, Which he was the first to introduce into Greece. The earliest mention which we find of Orpheus, is that of the gsi Ibycus “enk ge B.C. 530), ὀνομάκλντον * ἣν. yei Fragm. 9, p. 341, ed. Schneide i J

a

FOREIGN RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES, 21

Cuap. 1.

Orphic Theogony—the discerption of Zagreus by the Titans, and his resurrection as Dionysos.”

The names of Orpheus and Muszeus (as well as that of Pytha- goras,? looking at one side of his character) represent facts of importance in the history of the Grecian mind Pomeinie gt —the gradual influx of Thracian, Phrygian, and Hgionsupon Egyptian religious ceremonies and feelings, and the Ἷ increasing diffusion of special mysteries,’ schemes for religious purification, and orgies (I venture to anglicise the Greek word, which contains in its original meaning no implication of the ideas of excess to which it was afterwards diverted), in honour of some particular god,—distinct both from the public solemnities and from the gentile solemnities of primitive Greece,—celebrated apart from the citizens generally, and approachable only through a certain course of preparation and initiation—sometimes even forbidden to be talked of in the presence of the uninitiated under the severest threats of divine judgment. Occasionally such voluntary combinations assumed the form of permanent brother- hoods, bound together by periodical solemnities as well as by vows of an ascetic character. Thus the Orphic life (as it was called), or regulation of the Orphic brotherhood, among other injunctions, partly arbitrary and partly abstinent, forbade animal food universally, and, on certain occasions, the use of woollen

1 Pausan, viii. 87,3. Τιτᾶνας δὲ πρῶ- τον és ποίησιν ἐσήγαγεν Ὅμηρος. θεοὺς εἶναι σφᾶς ὑπὸ τῷ καλουμένῳ Ταρτάρῳ" καί ἐστιν ἐν Ἡρᾶς ὅρκῳ τὰ ἔπη" παρὰ δὲ ὍὉμήρου ᾿Ονομάκριτος, παραλαβὼν τῶν Τιτάνων τὸ ὄνομα, Διονύσῳ τε συνέθηκεν ὄργια, καὶ εἶναι τοὺς Τιτᾶνας τῷ Διονύσῳ τῶν παθημάτων ἐποίησεν avtoupyovs. Both the date, the character, and the function of Onomakritus are distinctly marked by Herodotus, vii. 6.

2 Herodotus believed in the derivation both of the Orphic and Pythagorean regulations from Egypt—opodoyéovor δὲ ταῦτα τοῖσι ᾿Ορφικοῖσι καλεομένοισι καὶ Βακχικοῖσι, ἐοῦσι δὲ Αἰγυπτίοισι (ii. 81). e knows the names of those Greeks who have borrowed from Egypt the doctrine of the metempsychosis, but he will not mention them (ii, 123): he can hardly allude to any one but the ἜΣ oreans, many of whom he probably knew in Italy. See the curious extract from Xenophanés

the doctrine of Pythagoran, Dingess 986.

Laért. viii. 87: and the quotation from the Silli of Timdn, Πυθαγόραν δὲ γόητος ἀποκλίναντ᾽ ἐπὶ δόξαν, &. Compare Porphyr. in Vit. Pyth. ο. 41.

3 Aristophan. Ran. 1030—

᾿οΟρφεὺς μὲν γὰρ τελετάς θ᾽ ἡμῖν κατέδειξε, όνων T ἀπέχε Ω Μουσαῖός 7’, ἐξακέσεις τε νόσων καὶ χρη-᾿ _ σμούς. Ἡσιοδος δὲ Τῆς ἐργασίας, καρπῶν ὥρας, ἀρότους " ὁ δὲ θεῖος Ὅμηρος ᾿Απὸ τοῦ τίμην καὶ κλέος ἔσχεν, πλὴν τοῦθ᾽, ὅτι χρήστ᾽ ἐδίδασκεν, ᾿Αρετὰς, τάξεις, ὁπλίσεις ἀνδρῶν, ὅσ. The same general contrast is to be found in Plato, Protagoras, p. 316; the opinion of Pausanias, ix. 80, 4. The poems of Muszeus seem to have borne considerable analogy to the Melam- podia ascribed to Hesiod (see Clemen. Alex. Str. vi. p, 628); and healin charms are ascribed to Orpheus as we as to Museus. See Eurip. Alcestis,

22 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS, Part L

clothing. The great religious and political fraternity of the Pythagoreans, which acted so powerfully on the condition of the Italian cities, was one of the many manifestations of this general tendency, which stands in striking contrast with the simple, open-hearted, and demonstrative worship of the Homeric Greeks.

Festivals at seed-time and harvest—at the vintage and at the opening of the new wine—were doubtless coeval with the earliest habits of the Greeks ; the latter being a period of unusual joviality.

: Yet in the Homeric poems, Dionysos and Démétér, pyar the patrons of the vineyard and the cornfield, are the worship seldom mentioned, and decidedly occupy little place

d in the imagination of the poet as compared with the other gods: nor are they of any conspicuous import- ance even in the Hesiodic Theogony. But during the interval between Hesiod and Onomakritus, the revolution in the religious mind of Greece was such as to place both these deities in the front rank. According to the Orphic doctrine, Zagreus, son of Persephoné, is destined to be the successor of Zeus ; and although the violence of the Titans intercepts this lot, yet even when he rises again from his discerption under the name of Dionysos, he is the colleague and co-equal of his divine father.

This remarkable change, occurring as it did during the sixth and a part of the seventh century before the Christian era, may be traced to the influence of communication with Egypt (which only became fully open to the Greeks about 8.0. 660), as well as with Thrace, Phrygia, and Lydia. From hence new religious ideas and feelings were introduced, which chiefly attached themselves to the characters of Dionysos and Démétér. The Greeks iden- tified these two deities with the great Egyptian Osiris and Isis, so that what was borrowed from the Egyptian worship of the two latter naturally fell to their equivalents in the Grecian system.? Moreover the worship of Dionysos (under what name cannot be certainly made out) was indigenous in Thrace,* as that of the

1 Herod. ii. 81; Euripid. Hippol. 957, 470; Schol. ad Aristophan. Aves, 874;

and the curious fragment of the lost Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg. 1069; Har- Κρῆτες of Euripides. ᾿Ορφικοὶ βίοι, krat. v. σΣάβοι ; Photius, Eiot SafSor.

an Dionysos.

Plato, Legg. vii. 782. e “ Lydiaca” of C. Th. Menke (Berlin, 2 Herodot. ii. 42, 59, 144. 1843), traces the early connexion be- 5 Herodot. ii. 42, 59, tween the religion of Dionysos and that

8 Herodot. v. 7, vii. 111; Euripid. of Cybelé, c. 6,7. Hoeck’s Kr@ta (vol. Hecub. 1249, and Rhésus, 969, and the i. p. 128—134) is instructive respec Prologue to the Bacchz ; Strabe, x, p. the Phrygian religion.

Cup, I. POST-HOMERIC CHANGES IN RELIGION. 23

Great Mother was in Phrygia and in Lydia—together with those violent ecstasies and manifestations of temporary frenzy, and that clashing of noisy instruments which we find afterwards cha- racterizing it in Greece. The great masters of the pipe—as well as the dithyramb,! and indeed the whole musical system appro- priated to the worship of Dionysos, which contrasted so pointedly with the quiet solemnity of the Pean addressed to Apollo—were all originally Phrygian.

From all these various countries, novelties, unknown to the Homeric men, found their way into the Grecian worship : and there is one amongst them which deserves to be specially noticed, because it marks the generation of the new class of ideas in their theology. Homer mentions many persons guilty of pri- vate or involuntary homicide, and compelled either to go into exile or to make pecuniary satisfaction ; but he never once de- scribes any of them to have either received or required puri- purification for the crime.? Now in the times sub- {ation for sequent to Homer, purification for homicide comes to unknown be considered as indispensable: the guilty person is re- *° #°™° garded as unfit for the society of man or the worship of the gods until he hasreceived it, and special ceremoniesare prescribed where- by itis to be administered. Heredotus tells us that the ceremony of purification was the same among the Lydians and among the Greeks :* we know that it formed no part of the early religion of

1 Aristotle, Polit. viii. 7, 9. Πᾶσα yap Βάκχεια Kat πᾶσα ἡ τοιαύτη κίνησις ἄλιστα τῶν ὀργάνων ἐστὶν ἐν τοῖς αὐ- λοῖς" τῶν δ᾽ ἁρμονίων ἐν τοῖς Φρυγιστὶ μέλεσι λαμβάνει ταῦτα τὸ πρέπον, οἷον ὃ διθύραμβος δοκεῖ ὁμολογουμένως εἶναι Φρύγιον. Eurip. Bacch. 58.— Αἴρεσθε τἀπιχώρι᾽ ἐν πόλει Φρυγῶν Τύμπανα, Ῥέας τε μητρὸς ἐμά θ᾽ εὑρή- ματα, OC. Plutarch, Ei in Delph. ο. 9; Philochor. Fr. 21, ed. Didot, p. 389. The complete and intimate manner in which Euri- idés identifies the Bacchic rites of ionysos with the Phrygian ceremonies in honour of the Great Mother is very remarkable. The fine description given by Lucretius (ii, 600—640) of the Phry- gian worship is much enfeebled by his unsatisfactory allegorizing. 2Schol. ad Niad, xi. 690—od διὰ τὰ καθάρσια ᾿Ιφίτου πορθεῖτωι ἡ Πύλος, ἐπεί

τοι ᾿Οδυσσεὺς μείζων Νέστορος, καὶ παρ᾽ Ὁμήρῳ οὐκ οἴδαμεν φονέα καθαιρόμενον, ἀλλ᾽ ἀντιτίνοντα ἢ φυγαδευόμενον. The examples are numerous, and are found both in the Diad and the Odyssey. Tliad, ii. 665: (Tlépolemos); xiii. 697 | Medén); xiii. 574 (Epeigeus); xxiii. 99 Patroklos); Odyss. xv. 224 (Theokly- menos); xiv. 380 (an #tolian). Nor does the interesting mythe respecting the functions of Até and the Lite har- monise with the subsequent doctrine . about the necessity of purification. (liad, ix. 498.)

3 Herodot. i. 8ὅ---ἔστι δὲ παραπλησίη ἡ κάθαρσις τοῖσι Λυδοῖσι καὶ τοῖσι "EA- λησι. One remarkable proof, amongst many, of the deep hold which this idea took of the greatest minds in Greece, that serious mischief would fall upon the community if family quarrels or homicide remained without religious expiation, is to be found in the objec-

94 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part I.

the latter, and we may perhaps reasonably suspect that they bor- rowed it from the former. The oldest instance known to us of expiation for homicide was contained in the epic poem of the Milesian Arktinus,’ wherein Achillés is purified by Odysseus for the murder of Thersités: several others occurred in the later or Hesiodic epic—Héraklés, Péleus, Bellerophén, Alkmedén, Am- phiktyén, Peemander, Triopas—from whence they probably passed through the hands of the logographers to Apollodérus, Diodérus, and others. The purification of the murderer was originally operated, not by the hands of any priest or specially sanctified man, but by those of a chief or king, who goes through the ap- propriate ceremonies in the manner recounted by Herodotus in his pathetic narrative respecting Croesus and Adrastus.

The idea of a special taint of crime, and of the necessity as well as the sufficiency of prescribed religious ceremonies as a means of removing it, appears thus to have got footing in Grecian

practice subsequent to the time of Homer. The pe- bal sg culiar rites or orgies, composed or put together by es Onomakritus, Methapus,? and other men of more than

the ordinary piety, were founded upon a similar mode of thinking, and adapted to the same mental exigencies. They were voluntarily religious manifestations, superinduced upon the old public sacrifices of the king or chiefs on behalf of the whole society, and of the father on his own family hearth. They marked out the details of divine service proper to appease or gratify the god to whom they were addressed, and to procure for the believers who went through them his blessings and protection here or hereafter—the exact performance of the divine service in all its specialty was held necessary, and thus the priests or

tions which Aristotle urges against the spear rg Se women Pier ap in the Platonic Republic. could not be known what individuals stood in the relation of father, son, or brother: if. therefore, wrong or murder of kindred should take place, the appropriate reli- gious atonements (ai νομιζόμεναι λύσεις) could not be applied and the crime would go unexpiated. (Aristot. Polit. ii. 1,14. Compare Thucyd i. 125—128.)

1 See the . of the Aithiopis of

in Lobeck’s Aglaophamos. Epimettr. ii. ad Orphica, p. 968.

3 Pausanias (iv. 1, δὴ --μετεκόσμησε yap kai Μέθαπος τῆς τελετῆς (the Eleu- sinian Orgies, carried by Kaukon from Eleusis into Messénia), ἔστιν ἅ, Ὁ δὲ Μέθαπος γένος μὲν ἣν ᾿Αθηναῖος, τελετῆς τε καὶ ὀργίων παντοίων συνθ έ- τῆς. Again, viii. 87, 8, Onomakritus Διονύσῳ συνέθηκεν ὄργια, &e. i is another πρὸς νι ἐπ ἡ τ τὶ the same idea as the Rhésus of Euripidés,

Arktinus, in Diintzer’s Collection, p. 944—

16. 2 The references for this are collected

Μυστηρίων τε τῶν ἀποῤῥήτων φάνας ᾿Εδειξεν ᾿Ορφεύς.

Cuap. 1. TEACHERS OF RELIGIOUS NOVELTIES. 25

Hierophants, who alone were familiar with the ritual, acquired a commanding position.! Generally speaking, these peculiar orgies obtained their admission and their influence at periods of distress, disease, public calamity, and danger, or religious terror and despondency, which appear to have been but too frequent in their occurrence.

The minds of men were prone to the belief that what they were suffering arose from the displeasure of some of circulated the gods, and as they found that the ordinary sacri- ech: fices and worship were insufficient for their protection, ers and so they grasped at new suggestions proposed to them Petia © with the view of regaining the divine favour.? Such _Plessings. suggestions were more usually copied, either in whole or in part, from the religious rites of some foreign locality, or from some other portion of the Hellenic world ; and in this manner many new sects or voluntary religious fraternities, promising to relieve the troubled conscience and to reconcile the sick or suffering with the offended gods, acquired permanent establishment as well as considerable influence. They were generally under the superintendence of hereditary families of priests, who imparted the rites of confirmation and purification to communicants gene- rally; no one who went through the prescribed ceremonies being excluded. In many cases such ceremonies fell into the hands of jugglers, who volunteered their services to wealthy men, and degraded their profession as well by obtrusive venality as by extravagant promises.3 Sometimes the price was lowered to

17Télinés, the ancestor of the Syra- cusan despot Geld, acquired great poli- tical power as possessing τὰ ipa τῶν θονίων θεῶν (Herodot. vii. 153); he and his family became hereditary Hiero- hants of these ceremonies. How élinés acquired the ipd, Herodotus cannot say—odev δὲ αὐτὰ ἔλαβε, ἢ αὐτὸς

comfortable without receiving the Or- phic communion monthly from the Orpheotelestze (Theophr. Char. xvi.). Compare Plutarch, Uept rod μὴ χρᾶν ἔμμετρα, &., c. 25, p. 400. The comic writer Phrynichus indicates the exist- ence of these rites of religious excite- ment, at Athens, during the Pelopon-

ἐκτήσατο, τοῦτο οὐκ ἔχω εἶπαι. Pro- nesian war. See the short f ent of bably there was a traditional legend, his Κρόνος, ap. Schol. Aristoph, Aves, not inferior in sanctity to that of Eleu- 989—

sis, tracing them to the gift of Démétér herself.

2 See Josephus cont. Apién. ii. 6. 35; Hesych. Θεοὶ ξένιοι ; Strabo, x. p. 471; Plutarch, Περὶ Δεισιδαιμον. 6. iii. p. 166 ; c. vii. p. 167.

8 Plato, Republ. ii. p. 864; Demos- then. de Corona, c. 79, p. 313. The δεισιδαίμων of Theophrastus cannot be

egak 4 eer, & a Avnp χορεύει, καὶ Ta TOU θεοῦ κα- λῶς’

Βούλει Διοπείθη μεταδράμω καὶ τύμ- Tava;

Diopeithés was a χρησμολόγος, or col- lector and deliverer of prophecies, which he sung (or rather, perhaps, recited) with solemnity and emphasis,

-

26 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS.

Part L

bring them within reach of the poor and even of slaves, But the wide diffusion and the number of voluntary communicants of these solemnities prove how much they fell in with the feeling of the time, and how much respect they enjoyed—a respect which the more conspicuous establishments, such as

2 Eleusis and Samothrace, maintained for several cen- Epimenidés, ‘tories, And the visit of the Kretan Epimenidés to Bakis. Athens—in the time of Solén, at a season of the most serious disquietude and dread of having offended the gods— illustrates the tranquillizing effect of new orgies! and rites of absolution, when enjoined by a man standing high in the favour of the gods, and reputed to be the son of a nymph. The sup- posed Erythrean Sibyl, and the earliest collection of Sibylline prophecies,? afterwards so much multiplied and interpolated, and referred (according to Grecian custom) to an age even earlier than Homer, appear to belong to a date not long posterior to Epimenidés. Other oracular verses, such as those of Bakis, were treasured up in Athens and other cities: the sixth century before the Christian zra was fertile in these kinds of religious manifestations.

Amongst the special rites and orgies of the character just Principal described, those which enjoyed the greatest Pan- mysteri Hellenic reputation were attached to the Idan of Greeee. Zeus in Kréte, to Démétér at Eleusis, to the Kabeiri in Samothrace, and to Dionysos at Delphi and Thebes. That they were all to a great degree analogous is shown by the way in

in public. ὥστε ποιοῦντες χρησμοὺς

βάντων γένεσις, and his four thousand αὐτοὶ Διδόασ᾽ ἄδειν Διοπείθει τῷ wapa- ing Minés and

verses an

Pp Thucyd. ii. 21.

1 Plutarch, Solén, c. 12; Diogen. Laért. i. 110.

2See Klausen, ‘‘ Aineas und die Penaten”: his chapter on the con- nexion between the Grecian and Roman Sibylline collections is among the most ingenious of his learned book. Book ii. pp. 210—240: see Steph. Byz. vy. Tépyts.

Ὁ the same belong the χρησμοί and καθαρμοί of Abaris and his marvel- lous journey through the air upon an arrow (Herodot. iv. 36).

Epimenidés also composed καθαρμοί in epic verse ; his Κουρήτων and Kopu-

manthys, if they had been preserved, wan let poten | ΝΣ the ideas of a religious mystic o age respecting the amilarton of Greece. (Strabo, x. p. 474; Diogen. Laért. i. 10.) Among the poems ascribed to Hesiod were comprised not only the Melampodi but also ἔπη μαντικά and ἐξηγήσεις ἐπὶ τέρασιν. Pausan. ix. 81, 4.

3 Among other illustrations of this general resemblance, may be counted a= coe of Ἔ i

riestess, who passed pay of Démétér to that of the Kabeiri, then to that of Cybelé, having wou aiiidadhes, piece. Anat women. us, Epigram. 308, ed. Ernest. F

Cuap. I. INFLUENCE OF EXTRA-HELLENIC RELIGION. 27

which they unconsciously run together and become confused in the minds of various authors. The ancient inquirers themselves were unable to distinguish one from the other, and we must be content to submit to the like ignorance. But we see enough to satisfy us of the general fact, that during the century and a half which elapsed between the opening of Egypt to the Greeks and the commencement of their struggle with the Persian kings, the old religion was largely adulterated by importations from Egypt, Asia Minor,! and Thrace. The rites grew to be more furious and ecstatic, exhibiting the utmost excitement, bodily 4 poctatic well as mental: the legends became at once more rites intro- ς : . duced from coarse, more tragical, and less pathetic. The mani- Asia 700- festations of this frenzy were strongest among the 503° women, whose religious susceptibilities were often found ex- tremely unmanageable,? and who had everywhere congregative occasional ceremonies of their own, apart from the men—indeed, in the case of the colonists, especially of the Asiatic colonists, the women had been originally women of the country, and as such retained to a great degree their non-Hellenic manners and

feelings.* The god Dionysos,‘

1 Plutarch (Defect. Oracul. c. 10, p. 415) treats these countries as the ori- inal seat of the worship of Demons fvholl or partially bad, and inter- mediate between gods and men), and their religious ceremonies as of a corre- sponding character: the Greeks were borrowers from them, according to him, both of the doctrine and of the ceremonies.

2 Strabo, vii. p. 297. ἽΛπαντες yap τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας ἀρχηγοὺς οἴονται Tas yu- ναῖκας " αὐταὶ δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας προκα- λοῦνται ἐς τὰς ἐπὶ πλέον θεραπείας τῶν θεῶν, καὶ ἑορτὰς, καὶ ποτνιασμούς. Plato (De Legg. x. pp. 909, 910) takes great pains to restrain this tendency on ie. of sick or suffering persons, especially women, to introduce new sacred rites into his city.

' 3 Herodot. i. 146. The wives of the Tonic original settlers at Miletos were ee women, whose husbands they

ew.

The violences of the Karian worship are attested by what Herodotus says of the Karian residents in Egypt, at the festival of Isis at Busiris. The Egyptians at this festival manifested

their feeling by beating themselves,

whom the legends described as

the Karians by cutting their faces with knives (ii. 61). The Καρικὴ μοῦσα be- came proverbial for funeral wailings (Plato, Legg. vii. p. 800): the unmea- sured effusions and demonstrations of sorrow for the departed, sometimes accompanied with cutting and mutila- tion self-inflicted by the mourner, was a distinguishing feature in Asiatics and Egyptians as compared with Greeks. Plutarch, Consolat. ad Apol- lon. c. 22, p.123. Mournful feeling was, in fact, a sort of desecration of the genuine and primitive Grecian festival, which was a season of cheerful har- mony and social enjoyment, wherein the god was believed to sympathise (εὐφροσύνη). See Xenophanés ap. Aris- tot. Rhetor. ii. 25; eye ee » 1. ed. Schneidewin; Theognis, 776; Plutarch, De Superstit. p. 169. The unfavourable comments of Dionysius of Halikarnassus, in so far as they refer to the festivals of Greece, apply to the foreign corruptions, not to the native character, of Grecian worship. 4 The Lydian Héraklés was conceived and worshipped as a man in female attire: this idea occurs often in the Asiatic religions. Menke, Lydi Cy

28 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part L

clothed in feminine attire, and leading a troop of frenzied Connected Women, inspired a temporary ecstasy.. Those who re-

vee ti of sisted the inspiration, being disposed to disobey his Dionysos. will, were punished either by particular judgments or

by mental terrors; while those who gave full loose to the feeling, in the appropriate season and with the received solemnities, satis- fied his exigencies, and believed themselves to have procured immunity from such disquietudes for the future. Crowds of women, clothed with fawn-skins, and bearing the sanctified thyrsus, flocked to the solitudes of Parnassus, or Kithzrén, or Taygetus, during the consecrated triennial period, passed the night there with torches, and abandoned themselves to demon- strations of frantic excitement, with dancing and clamorous invocation of the god. They were said to tear animals limb from limb, to devour the raw flesh, and to cut themselves without feeling the wound? The men yielded to a similar impulse by noisy revels in the streets, sounding the cymbals and tambourine, and carrying the image of the god in procession. It deserves to be remarked that the Athenian women never prac- tised these periodical mountain excursions, so common among the rest of the Greeks: they had their feminine solemnities of the Thesmophoria,‘ mournful in their character and accompanied

8, p. 22. Διόνυσος ἄῤῥην καὶ θῆλυς. ‘Aristid. Or. iv. 28; “Hischyl. Edoni, ap. Aristoph. Thesmoph. 135. Ποδαπὸς ὁ γύννις; tis πάτρα; τίς ἡ στολή; 1 ee cures the women (whom Dionysos has struck mad for their resistance to his rites), παραλαβὼν τοὺς δυνατωτάτους τῶν veaviwv μετ᾽ ἄλαλαγ- μοῦ Kai τινος ἐνθέου χορείας. Apollodér. li. 2,7. Compare Eurip. Bacch. 861. Plato (Legg. vii. p. 790) gives a simi- lar theory of the healing effect of the Korybantic rites, which cured vague and inexplicable terrors of the mind by means of dancing and music con- joined with religious ceremonies—ai τὰ τῶν Κορυβάντων ἰάματα τελοῦσαι (the practitioners were women), αἱ τῶν ἐκ- φρόνων Βακχείων ἰάσεις--- τῶν ἔξωθεν κρατεῖ κίνησις προσφερομένη τὴν ἐντὸς οβερὰν οὖσαν καὶ μανικὴν κίνησιν--- ὀρχουμένους δὲ καὶ αὐλουμένους μετὰ θεῶν, οἷς ἂν καλλιερήσαντες ἕκαστοι θύωσιν, κατειργάσατο ἀντὶ μανικῶν ἡμῖν διαθέσεων ἕξεις ἔμφρονας ἔχειν,

by the Lysist.

2 Described in the Bacche of Euri- pidés (140, 735, 1135, &c.). Ovid, Trist. ly. i. 41, ‘*Utque suum Bacchis non sentit saucia vulnus, Cum furit Edonis exululata jugis.” In a fragment of the

oet Alkman, a Lydian by birth, the Bace nal nymphs are represented as milking the lioness, and g cheese of the milk, during their mountain excursions and festivals. (Alkman, Fragm. 14, Schn. Compare Aristid. Orat. iv. p. 29.) Clemens Alexand. Admonit. ad Gent. p. 9, Sylb.; Lucian, Dionysos, c. 8, T. iii. p. 77, Hemsterh.

3 See the tale of Skylés in Herod. iv. 79, and Athenzeus, x. p. 445. Hero- dotus mentions that the Scythians ab- horred the Bacchie ceremonies, ac- counting the frenzy which belonged to them to be disgraceful and monstrous.

4 Plutarch, De Isid. et Osir. c. 69, p. 878; Schol. ad Aristoph. Thesmoph. There were, however, Bacchic cere- monies seemed to a certain extent

ae women. (Aristoph.

Guar. L THE WORSHIP OF DIONYSOR. $9

with fasting, and their separate congregations at the temples of Aphrodité, but without any extreme or unseemly demonstra- tions. The state festival of the Dionysia, in the city of Athens, was celebrated with dramatic entertainments, and the once rich harvest of Athenian tragedy and comedy was thrown up under its auspices. The ceremonies of the Kurétes in Kréte, originally armed dances in honour of the Idean Zeus, seem also to have borrowed from Asia so much of fury, of self-infliction, and of mysticism, that they became at last inextricably confounded with the Phrygian Korybantes, or worshippers of the Great Mother; though it appears that Grecian reserve always stopped short of the irreparable self-mutilation of Atys,

The influence of the Thracian religion upon that of the Greeks cannot be traced in detail, but the ceremonies con- : tained in it were of a violent and fierce character, like and Geyp- the Phrygian, and acted upon Hellas in the same fan in- general direction as the latter. And the like may be upon said of the Egyptian religion, which was in this case parce the more operative, inasmuch as all the intellectual Greeks were naturally attracted to go and visit the wonders on the banks of the Nile: the powerful effect produced upon them is attested by many evidences, but especially by the interesting narrative of Herodotus. Now the Egyptian ceremonies were at once more licentious, and more profuse in the outpouring both of joy and sorrow than the Greek; but a still greater difference sprang from the extraordinary power, separate mode of life, minute observances, and elaborate organisation of the priesthood. The ceremonies of Egypt were multitudinous, but the legends con- cerning them were framed by the priest, and, as a general rule, seemingly, known to the priests alone: at least they were not intended to be publicly talked of, even by pious men. They were “holy stories,” which it was sacrilege publicly to mention, and which from this very prohibition only took firmer hold of the minds of the Greek visitors who heard them. And thus the element of secrecy and mystic silence—foreign to Homer, and only faintly glanced at in Hesiod—if it was not originally de-

1 “ AMgyptiaca numina fere plangori- et tympanistarum et choraularum.” bus gaudent, Graeca plerumque choreis, (Apuleius, De Genio Socratis, y. ii. p. barbara autem strepitu cymbalistarum 149, Oudend-)

80 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Parr 1

rived from Egypt, at least received from thence its greatest Encourage- stimulus and diffusion. The character of the legends matic’ themselves was naturally affected by this change legends. from publicity to secrecy: the secrets when revealed would be such as to justify by their own tenor the interdict on public divulgation: instead of being adapted, like the Homeric mythe, to the universal sympathies and hearty interest of a crowd of hearers, they would derive their impressiveness from the tragical, mournful, extravagant, or terror-striking character of the incidents." Such a tendency, which appears explicable and probable even on general grounds, was in this particular case rendered still more certain by the coarse taste of the Egyptian priests. That any recondite doctrine, religious or philosophical, was attached to the mysteries or contained in the holy stories, has never been shown, and is improbable, though the affirmative has been asserted by learned men.

Herodotus seems to have believed that the worship and cere- προς: monies of Dionysos generally were derived by the the earliest Greeks from Egypt, brought over by Kadmus, and hes of taught by him to Melampus. And the latter appears the Diony- in the Hesiodic Catalogue as having cured the daugh- siac rites. ters of Proetus of the mental distemper, with which they had been smitten by Dionysos for rejecting his ritual. He cured them by introducing the Bacchic dance and fanatical excitement: this mythical incident is the most ancient mention of the Dionysiac solemnities presented in the same character as they bear in Euripidés. It is the general tendency of Herodotus to apply the theory of derivation from Egypt far too extensively to Grecian institutions: the orgies of Dionysos were not origin- ally borrowed from thence, though they may have been much modified by connexion with Egypt as well as with Asia. The remarkable mythe composed by Onomakritus respecting the dis- memberment of Zagreus was founded upon an Egyptian tale very similar respecting the body of Osiris, who was supposed to be

1The legend of Dionysos and Pro- Phrygian, Bacchic, and Eleusinian symnos, as it stands in Clemens, could mysteries, that one cannot distinguish never have found place inanepic poem them apart. _ (Admonit. ad Gent. p. 22 SylIb.). Com- The author called Demetrius Phalé- re page 11 of the same work, where, reus says about the legends belongi owever, he so confounds together to these ceremonies—Avd καὶ τὰ μυστή-

Cuar. ἴ. HE DIONYSIAC RITES, $1

identical with Dionysos Nor was it unsuitable to the reckless fury of the Bacchanals during their state of temporary excite- ment, which found a still more awful expression in the mythe of Pentheus,—torn in pieces by his own mother Agavé at the head of her companions in the ceremony, as an intruder upon the feminine rites, as well as a scoffer at the God.? A passage in the Iliad (the authenticity of which has been contested, but even as an interpolation it must be old)* also recounts how Lykurgus was struck blind by Zeus, for having chased away with a whip “the nurses of the mad Dionysos,” and for having frightened the god himself into the sea to take refuge in the arms of Thetis: while the fact that Dionysos is so frequently represented in his mythes as encountering opposition and punishing the refractory, seems to indicate that his worship under its ecstatic form was a late phenomenon, and introduced not without difficulty. The my- thical Thracian Orpheus was attached as Eponymos gy, pnic sect, to a new sect, who seem to have celebrated the a variety of : : : : : the Dio- ceremonies of Dionysos with peculiar care, minute- nysiac ness, and fervour, besides observing various rules ™¥stics. in respect to food and clothing. It was the opinion of Herodotus that these rules, as well as the Pythagorean, were borrowed from Egypt. But whether this be the fact or not, the Orphic brother- hood is itself both an evidence, and a cause, of the increased importance of the worship of Dionysos, which indeed is attested by the great dramatic poets of Athens.

The Homeric Hymns present to us, however, the religious ideas and legends of the Greeks at an earlier period, when Pa tots the enthusiastic and mystic tendencies had not yet the mys- acquired their full development. Though not referable ‘ries, to the same age or to the same author as either the Homeric Tliad or the Odyssey, they do to a certain extent con- sa,

pia λέγεται ἐν ἀλληγορίαις πρὸς Ex- from one of his lost works, tom. y. p. πληξιν καὶ ὥ

σκότῳ καὶ νυκτί. (De Interpretatione, 6. 101.

1See the curious treatise of Plu- tarch, De Isid. et Osirid. c. 11—14, p.

855, and his elaborate attempt to alle-

gorise the legend. He seems to have conceived that the Thracian Orpheus had first introduced into Greece the mysteries both of Démétér and Diony- sos, copying them from those of Isis and Osiris in Egypt. See Fragm. 84,

φρίκην, ὥσπερ ἐν 891, ed. Wyttenb.

2 Aischylus had dramatised the story of Pentheus as well as that of Lykurgus: one of his tetralogies was the Lykurgeia (Dindorf, Aisch. Fragm. 116). A short allusion to the story of Pentheus appears in Eumenid. 25. Compare Sophokl. Antigon. 985, and the Scholia.

3 Tliad, vi. 130. See the remarks of Mr. Payne Knight ad loc.

32 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS.

Part ft.

tinue the same stream of feeling, and the same mythical tone and colouring, as these poems—manifesting but little evidence of Egyptian, Asiatic, or Thracian adulterations. The difference is striking between the god Dionysos as he appears in the Homeric hymn and in the Bacche of Euripidés. The hymnographer describes him as standing on the sea-shore, in the guise of a beauti- ful and richly-clothed youth, when Tyrrhenian pirates suddenly approach; they seize and bind him and drag him on board their vessel, But the bonds which they employ burst spontaneously, and leave the god free. The steersman, perceiving this with Hymnto affright, points out to his companions that they have Dionysos. unwittingly laid hands on a god,—perhaps Zeus himself, or Apollo, or Poseidén. He conjures them to desist, and to replace Dionysos respectfully on the shore, lest in his wrath he should visit the ship with wind and hurricane: but the crew deride his scruples, and Dionysos is carried prisoner out to sea with the ship under full sail. Miraculous circumstances soon attest both his presence and his power. Sweet-scented wine is seen to flow spontaneously about the ship, the sail and mast appear adorned with vine and ivy-leaves, and the oar-pegs with garlands, The terrified crew now too late entreat the helmsman to steer his course for the shore, and crowd round him for protection on the poop. But their destruction is at hand: Dionysos assumes the form of a lion—a bear is seen standing near him—this bear rushes with a loud roar upon the captain, while the crew leap overboard in their agony of fright, and are changed into dolphins, There remains none but the discreet and pious steersman, to whom Dionysos addresses words of affectionate encouragement, revealing his name, parentage, and dignity.!

1See Homer, Hymn 5, Διόνυσος ἢ

length he came to Cybela in Phrygia, Ajjora.—The satirical drama of Euri-

was purified (καθαρθείς) by Rhea, and

pidés, the Cyclops, extends and alters this old legend. Dionysos is carried away by the Tyrrhenian pirates, and Silénus at the head of the Bacchanals

‘oes everywhere in search of him (Eur. ie 112). The pirates are instigated = him by the hatred of Héré, which appears frequently as a cause of mischief to Dionysos (Bacche, 286). Héré in her anger had driven him mad when a child, and he had wandered in this state over Egypt and Syria; at

received from her female attire (Apol- lodér. iii. 5, 1, with Heyne’s note). This seems to have been the legend adopted to explain the old verse of the Tliad, as well as the maddening attri- butes of the god generally.

There was a standing antipathy be- tween the priestesses and the religious establishments of Héré and Dionysos (Plutarch, Περὶ τῶν ἐν Taaraias Δαιδάλων, 6. 2, tom. v. p. 755, ed. Wytt. Plutarch ridicules the legen-

Cuar. I. pIFFERENCES IN THE WORSHIP OF DIONYSOS. 33

This hymn, perhaps produced at the Naxian festival of Dionysos, and earlier than the time when the dithyrambic chorus became the established mode of singing the praise and glory of that god, is conceived in a spirit totally dif- ferent from that of the Bacchic Telete, or special rites which the Bacche of Euripidés so abundantly extol— rites introduced from Asia by Dionysos himself at the head of a thiasus or troop of enthusiastic women—inflaming with temporary frenzy the minds of the women of Thebes—not communicable except to those who approach as pious worshippers—and followed by the most tragical results to all those who fight against the god. The Bacchic Teletz, and the Bacchic feminine frenzy, were im- portations from abroad, as Euripidés represents them, engrafted upon the joviality of the primitive Greek Dionysia; they were borrowed, in all probability, from more than one source, and introduced through more than one channel, the Orphic life or brotherhood being one of the varieties. Strabo ascribes to this latter a Thracian original, considering Orpheus, Muszeus, and Eumolpus as having been all Thracians.? It is curious to observe how, in the Bacchz of Euripidés, the two distinct and even con- flicting ideas of Dionysos come alternately forward ; sometimes the old Grecian idea of the jolly and exhilarating god of wine— but more frequently the recent and important idea of the terrific and irresistible god who unseats the reason, and whose estrus can only be appeased by a willing though temporary Asiatic obedience. In the fanatical impulse which inspired cm ol un the votaries of the Asiatic Rhea or Cybelé, or of the the he joviality Thracian Kotys, there was nothing of spontaneous joy ; it was a sacred madness, during which the soul appeared to be surrendered to a stimulus from without, and accompanied by preternatural strength and temporary sense of power%—altogether distinct from the unrestrained hilarity of the

Alteration of the primitive Grecian idea of Dionysos.

"τῶν i Dionysia.

dary reason commonly assigned for the tale of Pentheus, the goddess

Ajooa was introduced, stimula the

this, and provides a s bolical expla- nation which he thinks very satis-

1 Earip. Bacch. 825, 464, &.

2 Strabo, x. Ὃς 471. Compare Aris- tid. Or. iv. p

3 In the Sox "Xantrie of Aischylus, in which seems to have been included

Bacche, and creating in them spas- modic egg το from head to foot: ἐκ ποδῶν ὃ ἄνω Ὑπέρχεται omapa: μὸς εἰς ἄκρον κάρα, ὅσ. ragm. 155, Din- dorf.) His tragedy called Fdoni also ve a terrific representation of the acchanals and their fury, exaggerated

34 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part L

_ driginal Dionysia, as we see them in the rural demes of Attica, or in the gay city of Tarentum. There was indeed a side on which the two bore some analogy, inasmuch as, according to the religious point of view of the Greeks, even the spontaneous joy of the vintage-feast was conferred by the favour and enlivened by the companionship of Dionysos. It was upon this analogy that the framers of the Bacchic orgies proceeded ; but they did not the less disfigure the genuine character of the old Grecian Dionysia.

Dionysos is in the conception of Pindar the Paredros or com- ion in worship of Démétér.1 The worship and religious sstimate of the latter has by that time undergone as great a change as that of the former, if we take our comparison with the brief description of Homer and Hesiod: she has acquired? much of the awful and soul-disturbing attributes of the Phrygian Cybelé. In Homer, Démétér is the goddess of the corn-field, who becomes attached to the mortal man Jasién ; an unhappy passion, since Zeus, jealous of the connexion between goddesses and men, puts him to death. In the Hesiodic Theogony, Démétér is the mother of Persephoné by Zeus, who permits Hadés to carry off the latter

by the maddening music: Πίέμπλησι μέλος, Μανίας ἐπαγωγὸν ὁμοκλάν (Fr. 654).

Such also is the reigning sentiment throughout the greater of the Bacche of Euripidés: it is brought out still more impressively in the mournful Atys of us :—

“Dea ρ΄ ταν Dea Cybele, Dindymi Ὁ

Procul a mea tuus sit furor omnis, hera, domo:

Alios age incitatos : alios age rabi- dos }"

We have only to compare this fear- ful influence with the description of Dikzopolis and his exuberant joviality in the festival of the rural Dionysia (Aristoph. Acharn. 1051 seg. ; see also

Plato, . 1. Ὁ. 637), to see how com- pletely ὁ e foreign innovations re- coloured the old Grecian Dionysos—

Διόνυσος πολυγηθής, Who appears also in the scene of Dionysos and Ariadné in the Symposion of <a c. 9. The simp: icity of the ancient Dionysiac De Gupidir is dwelt upon by Plutarch, e Cupidine De iaeree ΕΣ ond the original dithyram Archilochus to Whagadd is an qn ctuiion

of drunken hilarity (Archiloch. Frag 60, Schneid.).

1 Pindar, Isthm. vi. 8. χαλκοκρό- Tov πάρεδρον Δημήτερος,--ἰῃθ epithet marks the ee Teal of Démétér to the Mother of the Gods. ἡ κροτάλων τυπάνων τ᾽ ἰαχὴ, σύν τε βρόμος ac Εὔαδεν (Homer. Hymn. xiii.) ;—th Mother of the Gods was worshi ped by Pindar along with she had in-his time her — aan ceremonies at Thébes (Pyth. iii. 78; Fragm. Dithyr. 5, and the Scholia ad 1.) as well as, probably, at Athens (Pausan. i. 3, 3).

Dionysos and Démétér are also brought together in the chorus of ~ Sophoklés, Antigoné, 1072, μέδεις δὲ παγκοίνοις λέν A Δηοῦς ἐν κόλ- ποις; and K hus, Hymn. Cerer. 70. Bactinan or Dionysos are in the Attic i constantly. con- fom with the Démétrian Iacchos,

ginal so different,—a personifica- tion of the mystic word shouted by the Eleusinian communicants. See Strabo,

x.

Pear idés in his Chorus in the Helena (1320 seq.) assi to Demeter all the attributes of Rhea, and blends the two completely into one,

Crap. I. HOMERIC HYMN TO DiMETER. 85

as his wife; moreover Démétér has, besides, by Jasién, a son called Plutos, born in Kréte. Even from Homer to Hesiod, the legend of Démétér has been expanded and her dignity exalted ;

- according to the usual tendency of Greek legend, the expansion

goes on stillfurther. Through Jasién, Démétér becomes connected with the mysteries of Samothrace, through Persephoné, with those of Eleusis. The former connexion it is difficult to follow

out in detail, but the latter is explained and traced to its origin in the Homeric Hymn to Démétér.

Though we find different statements respecting the date as well as the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries, yet the mieusinian popular belief of the Athenians, and the story which Mysteries. found favour at Eleusis, ascribed them to the presence and dicta- tion of the goddess Démétér herself ; just as the Bacchic rites are, according to the Bacche of Euripidés, first communicated and enforced on the Greeks by the personal visit of Dionysos to Thébes, the metropolis of the Bacchic ceremonies. In the Eleusinian legend, preserved by the author of the . 4. Homeric Hymn, she comes voluntarily and identifies Hymn to herself with Eleusis ; her past abode in Kréte being Pem*tr briefly indicated.2 Her visit to Eleusis is connected with the deep sorrow caused by the loss of her daughter Persephoné, wha had been seized by Hadés, while gathering flowers in a meadow along with the Oceanic Nymphs, and carried off to become his wife in the under-world. In vain did the reluctant Persephoné shriek and invoke the aid of her father Zeus: he had consented to give her to Hadés, and her cries were heard only by Hekaté and Hélios. Démétér was inconsolable at the disappearance of her daughter, but knew not where to look for her: she wandered for nine days and nights with torches in search of the lost maiden without success. At length Hélios, the “spy of gods and men,” revealed to her, in reply to her urgent prayer, the rape of Perse- phoné, and the permission given to Hadés by Zeus. Démétér was smitten with anger and despair: she renounced Zeus and the society of Olympus, abstained from nectar and ambrosia, and wandered on earth in grief and fasting until her form could no

1Sophokl. Antigon. Βακχᾶν μητρό- Hymn to Démétér has been translated, πολιν Θήβαν. accompanied with valuable illustrative Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 128. The notes, by J. H. Voss (Heidelb. 1826).

36 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part I.

longer be known. In this condition she came to Eleusis, then governed by the prince Keleos, Sitting down by a well at the wayside in the guise of an old woman, she was found by the daughters of Keleos, who came thither with their pails of brass for water. In reply to their questions, she told them that she had been brought by pirates from Kréte to Thorikos, and had made her escape; she then solicited from them succour and employment as a servant or asanurse. The damsels prevailed upon their mother Metaneira to receive her, and to entrust her with the nursing of the young Démophodn, their late-born brother, the only son of Keleos. Démétér was received into the house of Metaneira, her dignified form still borne down by grief: she sat long silent, and could not be induced either to smile or to taste food, until the maid-servant Iambé, by jests and playful- ness, succeeded in amusing and rendering her cheerful. She would not taste wine, but requested a peculiar mixture of barley- meal with water and the herb mint.1

The child Démophoén, nursed by Démétér, throve and grew up like a god, to the delight and astonishment of his parents : she gave him no food, but anointed him daily with ambrosia, and plunged him at night in the fire like a torch, where he remained unburnt. She would have rendered him immortal had she not been prevented by the indiscreet curiosity and alarm of Metaneira, who secretly looked in at night, and shrieked with horror at the sight of her child in the fire? The indignant goddess, setting the infant on the ground, now revealed her true character to Metaneira: her wan and aged look disappeared, and she stood confest in the genuine majesty of her divine shape, diffusing a dazzling brightness, which illuminated the whole house. “Foolish mother,” she said, “thy want of faith has robbed thy son of im- mortal life. Iam the exalted Démétér, the charm and comfort both of gods and men: I was preparing for thy son exemption from death and old age ; now it cannot be but he must taste οὗ. both. Yet shall he be ever honoured, since he has sat upon my knee, and slept in my arms. Let the people of Eleusis erect for me a temple and altar on yonder hill above the fountain: I will

1 Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 202—210. her wanderings. See Plutarch, De 5 This story was also told with refe- 1514, et Osirid. c. 16, p. 357. rence to the Egyptian goddess Isis in

ey ee

ae a hl

val ers

Cur. 1. pimairirn at ELEUSIs. 37

myself prescribe to them the orgies which they must religiously perform in order to propitiate my favour.”?

The terrified Metaneira was incapable even of lifting up her child from the ground: her daughters entered at her cries, and began to embrace and tend their infant brother, but he sorrowed and could not be pacified for the loss of his divine nurse. All night they strove to appease the goddess.?

Strictly executing the injunctions of Démétér, Keleos convoked the people of Eleusis, and erected the temple on the ee spot which she had pointed out. It was speedily ‘aes, completed, and Démétér took up her abode in it, apart built by from the remaining gods, still pining with grief for Démétér for the loss of her daughter, and withholding her bene- pillage: ficent aid from mortals. And thus she remained a whole year—a desperate and terrible year:* in vain did the oxen draw the plough, and in vain was the barley-seed cast into the furrow—Démétér suffered it not to emerge from the earth The human race would have been starved, and the gods would have been deprived of their honours and sacrifice, had not Zeus found means to conciliate her. But this was a hard task ; for Démétér resisted the entreaties of Iris and of all the other god- desses and gods whom Zeus successively sent to her. She would be satisfied with nothing less than the recovery of her daughter. At length Zeus sent Hermés to Hadés, to bring Persephoné away : Persephoné joyfully obeyed, but Hadés prevailed upon her before she departed to swallow a grain of pomegranate, which rendered it impossible for her to remain the whole year away from him.*

With transport did Démétér receive back her lost daughter, and the faithful Hekaté sympathised in the delight felt by both at the reunion.® It was now an easier undertaking to reconcile

1 Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 274— in great wrath. (Apollon. Rhod. iv. 866. Ὄργια δ᾽ αὐτὴ ἐγὼν ὑποθήσομαι, ὡς ἂν 2 Homer, Hymn. 290— ἔπειτα * ᾿ 4 ἘΦ τοῦ δ᾽ οὐ μειλίσσετο θυμὸς, Evayéws ἕρδοντες ἐμὸν νόον ἱλάσ- Χειρότεραι γὰρ δή μιν ἔχον τρόφοι ἠδὲ κησθε. τιθῆναι.

8

The same story is told in regard to Homer. H. Cer. 305. the infant Achilles. Hismother Thetis Atvérarov δ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν ἐπὶ χθόνα πον was taking similar measures to render λυβότειραν ἬΕΙ him immortal, when his father Peleus Ποίησ᾽ ἀνθρώποις, ἰδὲ κύντατον. interfered and prevented the consum- 4 Hymn, v. 375. mation. Thetis immediately left him 5 Hymn, v. 443,

88 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Parr I.

her with the gods. Her mother Rhea, sent down expressly by Zeus, descended from Olympus on the fertile Rharian plain, then smitten with barrenness like the rest of the earth : she succeeded in appeasing the indignation of Démétér, who consented again to put forth her relieving hand. The buried seed came up in abundance, and the earth was covered with fruit and flowers. She would have wished to retain Persephoné constantly with her ; but this was impossible, and she was obliged to consent that her daughter should go down for one-third of each year to the house of Hadés, departing from her every spring at the time when the seed issown. She then revisited Olympus, again to dwell with the gods; but before her departure she communicated to the daughters of Keleos, and to Keleos himself, together with Trip- tolemus, Dioklés, and Eumolpus, the divine service and the solemnities which she required to be observed in her Démét¢r —_honour.t And thus began the venerable mysteries of prescribes : the mystic Eleusis, at her special command : the lesser mysteries, > pacha celebrated in February, in honour of Persephoné ; the greater, in August, to the honour of Démétér her- self. Both are jointly patronesses of the holy city and temple. Such is a brief sketch of the temple legend of Eleusis, set forth at length in the Homeric Hymn to Démétér. It is interesting not less as a picture of the Mater Dolorosa (in the mouth of an Athenian, Démétér and Persephoné were always The Mother and Daughter, by excellence), first an agonised sufferer, and then finally glorified—the weal and woe of man being dependent upon her kindly feeling,—than as an illustration of the nature and growth of Grecian legend generally. Though we now read this Hymn as pleasing poetry, to the Eleusinians, for whom it was composed, it was genuine and sacred history. They nome believed in the visit of Démétér to Eleusis, and in the

sacred ‘ Mysteries as a revelation from her, as implicitly as record, .__ they believed in her existence and power as a goddess.

The Eleusinian psalmist shares this belief in common with his countrymen, and embodies it in a continuous narrative,

1 Hymn, v. 475— Εὐμόλπου te βίῃ, Κελέῳ θ᾽ ἡγήτορι alr ͵ 5 λαῶ

ἯἩ δὲ κίουσα θεμιστοπόλοις βασιλεῦσι πον

Δεῖξεν, Τριπτολέμῳ τε, Διοκλέϊζ τε

ὄ παισὶν πληξίππῳ, χε chit

Πρεσβυτέρῃς Κελέοιο, ἄσ.

Δρησμοσύνην ἱερῶν" καὶ ἐπέφραδεν

Cuap. I: THE ELEUSINIAN RITUAL. 39

in which the great goddesses of the place, as well as the great heroic families, figure in inseparable conjunction. Keleos is the son of the Eponymous hero Eleusis, and his daughters, with the old epic simplicity, carry their basons to the well for water. Eumolpus, Triptolemus, Dioklés, heroic ancestors of the privi- leged families who continued throughout the historical times of Athens to fulfil their special hereditary functions in the Eleu- sinian solemnities, are among the immediate recipients of in- spiration from the goddess : but chiefly does she favour Metaneira and her infant son Démophodn, for the latter of whom her greatest boon is destined, and intercepted only by the weak

faith of the mother. Moreover every incident in the tory of tke Hymn has a local colouring and a special reference, details of The well overshadowed by an olive-tree near which be rie ΤῊΣ Démétér had rested, the stream Kallichoros and the temple-hill, were familiar and interesting places in the eyes ot every Eleusinian ; the peculiar posset prepared from barley-meal with mint was always tasted by the Mysts (or communicants) after a prescribed fast, as an article in the ceremony,—while it was also the custom, at a particular spot in the processional march, to permit the free interchange of personal jokes and taunts upon individuals for the general amusement. And these two customs are connected in the Hymn with the incidents, that Démétér herself had chosen the posset as the first interruption of her long and melancholy fast, and that her sorrowful thoughts had been partially diverted by the coarse playfulness of the ser- vant-maid Iambé. In the enlarged representation of the Eleu- sinian ceremonies, which became established after the incorpora- tion of Eleusis with Athens, the part of Iambé herself was enacted by a woman, or man in woman’s attire, of suitable wit and ima- gination, who was posted on the bridge over the Kephissos, and addressed to the passers-by in the procession,! especially the great men of Athens, saucy jeers probably not less piercing than those of Aristophanés on the stage. The torch-bearing Hekaté received a portion of the worship in the nocturnal ceremonies of the

1 Aristophanés, Vesp. 1363. Hesych. jocularity gees in the rites of Démé- v. Τεφυρίς. Suidas, v. Vepupigwv. Com- tér in Sicily (Diodor. v. 4; see also pare, about the details of the ceremony, Pausan. vii. 27, 4), and in the worship Clemens Alexandr. Admon. ad Gent. of Damia and Auxesia at Agina (Hero- p.13. A similar licence of unrestrained- dot. v. 83),

40 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Parr I.

Eleusinia : this too is traced in the Hymn to her kind and affec- tionate sympathy with the great goddesses, "

Though all these incidents were sincerely believed by the Eleu- sinians as a true history of the past, and as having been the real initiatory cause of their own solemnities, itis not the less certain that they are simply mythes or legends, and not to be treated as history either actual or exaggerated. They do not take their start from realities of the past, but from realities of the present com- bined with retrospective feeling and fancy, which fills up the blank of the aforetime in a manner at once plausible and impres- sive. What proportion of fact there may be in the legend, o1 whether there be any at all, it is impossible to ascertain and use- less to inquire ; for the story did not acquire belief from its ap- proximation to real fact, but from its perfect harmony with Importance leusinian faith and feeling, and from the absence of of the mys- any standard of historical credibility. ‘The little town town of of Eleusis derived all its importance from the solem- Eleusis. = nity of the Démétria, and the Hymn which we have been considering (probably at least as old as 600 B.c.) represents the town as it stood before its absorption into the larger unity of Athens, which seems to have produced an alteration of its legends and an increase of dignity in its great festival. In the faith of an Eleusinian, the religious as well as the patriotic antiquities of his native town were connected with this capital Stronghold solemnity. The divine legend of the sufferings of Démé- ofthele- _ tér and her visit to Eleusis was to him that which the

enth ad heroic legend of Adrastus and the siege of Thebes was feelings. to a Sikyonian, or that of Erechtheus and Athéné to an Athenian—grouping together in the same scene and story the goddess and the heroic fathers of the town. If our information were fuller, we should probably find abundance of other legends - respecting the Démétria: the Gephyrai of Athens, to whom be- Different longed the celebrated Harmodios and Aristogeitén, legendsre- and who possessed special Orgies of Démétér the Sor- Demétér rowful, to which no man foreign to their Gens was elsewhere. ever admitted, would doubtless have told stories not only different but contradictory ; and even in other Eleusinian

1 Herodot. ¥ 41.

Ona. f. CONSECRATION oF ELEUSIS. 41

mythes we discover Eumolpus as king of Eleusis, son of Poseidén, and a Thracian, completely different from the character which he bears in the Hymn before us. Neither discrepancies nor want of evidence, in reference to alleged antiquities, shocked the faith of a non-historical public. What they wanted was a picture of the past, impressive to their feelings and plausible to their imagina- tion: and it is important to the reader to remember, while he reads either the divine legends which we are now illustrating, or the heroic legends to which we shall soon approach, that he is dealing with a past which never was present,—a region essen- tially mythical, neither approachable by the critic nor measurable by the chronologer.

The tale respecting the visit of Démétér, which was told by the ancient Gens, called the Phytalids,? in reference to another temple of Démétér between Athens and Eleusis, and also by the Megarians in reference to a Démétrion near their city, acquired under the auspices of Athens still further extension. py pansion The goddess was reported to have first communicated to of the le- Triptolemus at Eleusis the art of sowing corn, which — by his intervention was disseminated all over the earth. And thus the Athenians took credit to themselves for having been the medium of communication from the gods to man of all the ines- timable blessings of agriculture which they affirmed to have been first exhibited on the fertile Rharian plain near Eleusis. Such pretensions are not to be found in the old Homeric hymn. The festival of the Thesmophoria, celebrated in honour of Démétér Thesmophoros at Athens, was altogether different from the Eleu- sinia, in this material respect, as well as others, that all males were excluded and women only were allowed to partake in it: the surname Thesmophoros gave occasion to new legends in which the goddess was glorified as the first authoress of laws and legal sanctions to mankind.* This festival for women apart and alone

1 Pausan. i. 38, 3; τ ages iii, 2 Phytalus, the Eponym or god- 15, 4. Heyne in his Note admits father of this gens, had _ received several persons named Eumolpus. Démétér as a guest in his house Compare Isokratés, Panegyr. p. 55. when she first presented mankind Philochorus the Attic antiquary could with the fruit of the fig-tree. (Pausan. not have received the legend of the i. 37, 2.)

Eleusinian Hymn, from the different 3 Kallimach. Hymn. Cerer. 19. So-

account which he OP respecting the hoklés, Triptolemos, Fragm. 1. Cicero

on, Dib, wis aio, respecting egg. ii, 14, and the note of Servius ad

Keleos (Fr. 28, ibid.). Virgil. Ain, iv. 58.

43 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part L

was also celebrated at Thebes, at Paros, at Ephesus, and in many other parts of Greece.*

Altogether, Démétér and Dionysos, as the Grecian counter- parts of the Eygptian Isis and Osiris, seem to have been the great recipients of the new sacred rites borrowed from Eygpt, before the worship of Isisin her own name was introduced into Greece : their solemnities became more frequently recluse and Hellenic mysterious than those of the other deities. The im-

eames ce portance of Démétér to the collective nationality of

er. Greece may be gathered from the fact that her tem- ple was erected at Thermopyle, the spot where the Amphiktyonic assemblies were held, close to the temple of the Eponymous hero Amphiktyén himself, and under the surname of the Amphik- tyonic Démétér.?

We now pass to another and not less important celestial per- sonage—A pollo.

The legends of Délos and Delphi, embodied in the Homeric Legendsof Hymn to Apollo, indicate, if not a greater dignity, Apollo. at least a more widely diffused worship of that god than even of Démétér. The Hymn is, in point of fact, an aggregate of two separate compositions, one emanating from an Ionic bard at Délos, the other from Delphi. The first details the birth, the second the mature divine efficiency, of Apollo; but both alike present the unaffected charm as well as the characteristic peculiarities of Grecian mythical narrative. The hymnographer sings, and his hearers accept in perfect good faith, a history of the past; but it is a past, imagined partly as an introductory explanation to the present, partly as the means of glorifying the god. The island of Délos was the accredited birthplace of Apollo, and is also the place in which he chiefly delights, where the great and _brilliant- Tonic festival is periodically convened in his honour, Yet it is a rock narrow, barren, and uninviting: how came so glorious a privilege to be awarded to it? This the poet takes upon Delian himself to explain. Lété, pregnant with Apollo Apollo. and persecuted by the jealous Héré, could find no spot wherein to give birth to her offspring. In vain did she

1 Xen. Hell. v. 2, 29. Herodot. vii --τὰ és ἔρσενα γόνον ἄῤῥητα ἱερά, 16, 134. ἕρκος Θεσμοφόρου Δήμητρος 2 Herodot. vii. 200.

Guar. L HOMERIO HYMN TO APOLLO. © 43

address herself to numerous places in Greece, the Asiatic coast, and the intermediate islands ; all were terrified at the wrath of Héré, and refused to harbour her. As a last resort, she approached the rejected and repulsive island of Délos, and promised that if shelter were granted to her in her forlorn condition, the island should become the chosen resort of Apollo as well as the site of his temple with its rich accompanying solemnities.1 Délos joy- fully consented, but not without many apprehensions that the potent Apollo would despise her unworthiness, and not without exacting a formal oath from Lété,—who was then admitted to the desired protection, and duly accomplished her long and painful labour. Though Didné, Rhea, Themis, and Amphitrité came to soothe and succour her, yet Héré kept away the goddess presiding over childbirth, Eileithyia, and thus cruelly prolonged her pangs. At length Eileithyia came, and Apollo was born. Hardly had Apollo tasted, from the hands of Themis, the immortal food, nectar and ambrosia, when he burst at once his infant bands, and dis- played himself in full divine form and strength, claiming his characteristic attributes of the bow and the harp, and his privileged function of announcing beforehand to mankind the designs of Zeus. The promise made by Létéd to Délos was faithfully per- formed : amidst the numberless other temples and groves which men provided for him, he ever preferred that island as his permanent residence, and there the Ionians with their wives and children, and all their “ bravery,” congregated periodically from their different cities to glorify him. Dance and song and athletic contests adorned the solemnity, while the countless ships, wealth, and grace of the multitudinous Ionians had the air of an assembly of gods. The Delian maidens, servants of Apolo, sang hymns to the glory of the god, as well as of Artemis and Lété, intermingled with adventures of foregone men and women, to the delight of the listening crowd. The blind itinerant bard of Chios (com- poser of the Homeric hymn, and confounded in antiquity with the author of the Iliad), having found honour and accept- ance at this festival, commends himself, in a touching fare-

1 According to another legend, Lét6 connexion with this legend, it was was said to have been conveyed from affirmed that the she-wolves always the Hyperboreans to Délos in twelve brought forth their young only during days, in the form of a she-wolf, to these twelve days in the year (Aristot. escape the jealous eye of Héré. In Hist. Animal. vii. 35).

44 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Pant L

well strain, to the remembrance and sympathy of the Delian maidens.*

But Délos was not an oracular spot: Apollo did not manifest Pythian himself there as revealer of the futurities of Zeus. A Apollo. place must be found where this beneficent function, without which mankind would perish under the innumerable doubts and perplexities of life, may be exercised and rendered available. Apollo himself descends from Olympus to make choice of a suitable site: the hymnographer knows a thousand other adventures of the god which he might sing, but he prefers this memorable incident, the charter and patent of consecration for the Delphian temple. Many different places did Apollo inspect : he surveyed the country of the Magnétes and the Perrhebians, came to Idlkos, and passed over from thence to Eubeea and the plain of Lelanton. But even this fertile spot did not please him : he crossed the Euripus to Beotia, passed by Teuméssus and Mykaléssus, and the then inaccessible and unoccupied forest on which the city of Thebes afterwards stood. He next proceeded to Onchéstos, but the grove of Poseidén was already established there ; next across the Képhissus to Okalea, Haliartus, and the agreeable plain and much-frequented fountain of Delphusa, or Tilphusa. Pleased with the place, Apollo prepared to establish his oracle there, but Tilphusa was proud of the beauty of her own site, and did not choose that her glory should be eclipsed by that of the god.2 She alarmed him with the apprehension that the chariots which contended in her plain, and the horses and mules which watered at her fountain, would disturb the solemnity of his oracle ; and she thus induced him to proceed onward to the southern side of Parnassus, overhanging the harbour of Krissa, Here he established his oracle, in the mountainous site not frequented by chariots and horses, and near to a fountain, which ~ however was guarded by a vast and terrific serpent, once the nurse of the monster Typhaén. This serpent Apollo slew with an arrow, and suffered its body to rot in the sun: hence the name of the place, Pythd,? and the surname of the Pythian Apollo, The plan of his temple being marked out, it was built by Trophénios and Agamédés, aided by a crowd of forward auxiliaries from the

1 Hom. Hymn. Apoll. i. 179. 3Hom. Hymn. 363: πύθϑεσθαι, to 2? Hom. Hymn. Apoll. 262. rot,

CHap, I, FIRST COMMENCEMENT OF DELPHIAN ORACLE. 45

neighbourhood. He now discovered with indignation, however, that Tilphusa had cheated him, and went back with swift step to resent it. “Thou shalt not thus,” he said, “succeed in thy fraud and retain thy beautiful water: the glory of the place shall be mine, and not thine alone.” Thus saying, he tumbled down a crag upon the fountain, and obstructed her limpid current ; establishing an altar for himself in a grove hard by near another spring, where men still worship him as Apollo Tilphusios, because of his severe vengeance upon the once beautiful Tilphusa.? Apollo next stood in need of chosen ministers to take care of his temple and sacrifice, and to pronounce his responses poundation at Pythéd. Descrying a ship, “containing many and ered of good men,” bound on traffic from the Minoian Knossus Delphian in Kréte, to Pylus in Peloponnésus, he resolved to 9.30 19. make use of the ship and her crew for his purpose. Assuming the shape of a vast dolphin, he splashed about and shook the vessel so as to strike the mariners with terror, while he sent a strong wind, which impelled her along the coast of Peloponnésus into the Corinthian Gulf, and finally to the harbour of Krissa, where she ran aground. The affrighted crew did not dare to disembark : but Apollo was seen standing on the shore in the guise of a vigorous youth, and inquired who they were and what was their business. The leader of the Krétans recounted in reply their miraculous and compulsory voyage, when Apollo revealed himself as the author and contriver of it, announcing to them the honourable function and the dignified post to which he destined them.” They followed him by his orders to the Rocky Pythé on Parnassus, singing the solemn Io-Paian such as it is sung in Kréte, while the god himself marched at their head, with his fine * form and lofty step, playing on the harp. He showed them the temple and site of the oracle, and directed them to worship him as Apollo Delphinios, because they had first seen him in the Shape of a dolphin. “ But how,” they inquired, “are we to live in a spot where there is neither corn, nor vine, nor pasturage ?” “Ye silly mortals,” answered the god, “who look only for toil and privation, know that an easier lot is yours. Ye shall live by the cattle which crowds of pious visitors will bring to the temple:

1 Hom. Hymn. Apoll. 381. 3 Hom. Hymn. Apoll, 475, seq,

46 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part I.

ye shall need only the knife to be constantly ready for sacrifice. Your duty will be to guard my temple, and to officiate as ministers at my feasts: but if ye be guilty of wrong or insolence, either by word or deed, ye shall become the slaves of other men, and shall remain so for ever. Take heed of the word and the warning.”

Such are the legends of Délos and Delphi, according to the ch Homeric Hymn to Apollo. The specific functions of

ey served ὃ Fa § the purpose the god, and the chief localities of his worship, to- alot gether with the surnames attached to them, are thus explana- _— historically explained, being connected with his past acts and adventures. Though these are to us only interesting poetry, yet to those who heard them sung they possessed all the requisites of history, and were fully believed as such ; not because they were partially founded in reality, but because they ran in complete harmony with the feelings ; and, so long as that condition was fulfilled, it was not the fashion of the time to canvass truth or falsehood. The narrative is purely personal, without any discernible symbolised doctrine or allegory, to serve as a supposed ulterior purpose: the particular deeds ascribed to Apollo grow out of the general preconceptions as to his attributes, combined with the present realities of his wor- ship. It is neither history nor allegory, but simple mythe or legend.

The worship of Apollo is among the most ancient, capital, Extendea 2nd strongly marked facts of the Grecian world, and jet n of widely diffused over every branch of therace. It is

E56 older than the Iliad or Odyssey, in the latter of which both Pythé and Délos are noted, though Délos is not named in the former. But the ancient Apollo is different in more respects than one from the Apollo of later times. He is in a peculiar manner the god of the Trojans, unfriendly to the Greeks, and . especially to Achilles; he has, moreover, only two primary attributes, his bow and his prophetic powers, without any distinct connexion either with the harp, or with medicine, or with the sun, all which in later times he came to comprehend. He becomes not only, as Apollo Karneius, the chief god of the Doric

1 Homer. Hymn. Apoll. 585— Σφάζειν αἰεὶ μῆλα" τὰ ὃ ἄφθονα πάντα

2 ese <a ᾿ : πάρεσται. ΥΝ Δεξιτέρῃ μάλ᾽ ἕκαστος ἔχων ἐν χερι Ὄσσα ἐμοίγ᾽ ἀγάγωσι περίκλντα φῦλ᾽

΄

Pex per ἀνθρώπων.

Cuap, I. WORSHIP OF APOLLO. 4?

race, but also (under the surname of Patréus) the great protecting divinity of the gentile tie among the Ionians: he is moreover the guide and stimulus to Grecian colonization, scarcely any colony being ever sent out without encouragement and direction from the oracle at Delphi: Apollo Archégetés is one of his great surnames.” His temple lends sanctity to the meetings of the Amphiktyonic assembly, and he is always in filial subordination and harmony with his father Zeus: Delphi and Olympia are never found in conflict. In the Iliad, the warm and earnest patrons of the Greeks are Héré, Athéné, and Poseidén: here too Zeus and Apollo are seen in harmony, for Zeus is decidedly well- inclined to the Trojans, and reluctantly sacrifices them to the importunity of the two great goddesses.3 The worship of the Sminthian Apollo, in various parts of the Troad and the neigh- bouring territory, dates before the earliest periods of Molic colonization: 4 hence the zealous patronage of Troy ascribed to him in the Iliad. Altogether, however, the distribution and partialities of the gods in that poem are different from what they become in later times,—a difference which our means of informa- tion do not enable us satisfactorily to explain. Besides the Delphian temple, Apollo had numerous temples throughout Greece, and oracles at Abe in Phékis, on the Mount Ptdon, and at Tegyra in Beeotia, where he was said to have been born,® at Branchidee near Milétus, at Klarus in Asia Minor, and at Patara in Lykia. He was not the only oracular god: Zeus at Dodona and at Olympia gave responses also: the gods or heroes Tro- phénius, Amphiaraus, Amphilochus, Mopsus, &c., each at his own sanctuary and in his own prescribed manner, rendered the same service.

The two legends of Delphi and Délos, above noticed, form of course ἃ very insignificant fraction of the narratives which

1 Harpokration, v. ᾿Απόλλων πατρῶος “IAvov, Tévedos. See also Klausen,

and ‘Epxeios Ζεύς. Apollo Delphinios Aineas und die Penaten, Ὁ. i. p. 69. also belongs to the Ionic Greeks gene- The worship of Apollo Sminthios and

rally. Strabo, iv. 179. the festival of the Sminthia at Alex- 2Thucydid. vi. 38; Kallimach. andria Troas lasted down to the time Hymn. Apoll. 56— of Menander the rhetor, at the close of

the third century after Christ.

He Plutarch. Dele ee c. 5, p. ? ; 6. 8, p. 414; 8 . Byz. v. Teyvpa. cenit: The Temple of the n Apollo’ had 8 Tliad, iv. 30—46. acquired celebrity before the days of 4Tliad, i. 38, 451; Stephan. Byz. the poet Asius, Pausan, ix. 23, 3.

Φοῖβος yap ἀεὶ πολίεσσι φιληδεῖ Κτιζομέναις, αὐτὸς δὲ θεμείλια Φοῖβος

48 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part I.

once existed respecting the great and venerated Apollo. They Multifa- serve only as specimens, and as very early speci- rious Pe mens,’ to illustrate what these divine mythes were, and specting what was the turn of Grecian faith and imagination.

pollo, The constantly recurring festivals of the gods caused an incessant demand for new mythes respecting them, or at least for varieties and reproductions of the old mythes. Even during the third century of the Christian ra, in the time of the rhétér Menander, when the old forms of paganism were waning and when the stock of mythes in existence was extremely abundant, we see this demand in great force ; but it was incomparably more operative in those earlier times when the creative vein of the Grecian mind yet retained its pristine and unfaded richness. Each god had many different surnames, temples, groves, and solemnities ; with each of which was connected more or less of mythical narrative, originally hatched in the prolific and spon- taneous fancy of a believing neighbourhood, to be afterwards expanded, adorned, and diffused by the song of the poet. The Festivals earliest subject of competition? at the great Pythian and Agones. festival was the singing of a hymn in honour of Apollo: other agones were subsequently added, but the ode or hymn con- stituted the fundamental attribute of the solemnity : the Pythia at Sikyon and elsewhere were probably framed on a similar footing. So too at the ancient and celebrated Charitésia, or festival of the Charites, at Orchomenos, the rivalry of the poets in their various modes of composition both began and continued as the predomi- nant feature : 3 and the inestimable treasures yet remaining to us

1The legend which Euphorus fol- lowed about the establishment of the Delphian temple was something radi- cally different from the Homeric Hymn (Ephori Fragm. 70, ed. Didot); his narrative went far to politicise and rationalise the story. The progeny of Apollo was very numerous, and of the Si Cova ΠΡΟΣ ear of the Ko ere , Fragm. 6, ed. Didot), as well as of Asklépios and Aristeus ree Apollon. Rhod. ii. 500 ; Apollodér. iii. 10, 3).

2 Strabo, ix. p. 421. Menander the Rhetor (ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett. t. ix. p. 136) gives an elaborate classification of hymns to the gods, distinguishing them into nine classes --κλητικοὶ, ἀποπεμπτι-

Kol, φυσικοὶ, μυθικοὶ, γενεαλογικοὶ, πεπ- 4 . . 3 ν , λασμένοι, εὐκτικοὶ, ἀπευκτικοὶ, μικτοί :---

the second class had reference to the

temporary absence or departure of a’

god to some distant place, which were often admitted in the ancient religion. Sappho and Alkman in their {letic hymns invoked the gods from many different places,—rhv μὲν γὰρ Ἄρτεμιν ἐκ μυρίων μὲν ὀρέων, μυρίων δὲ πόλεων, ἔτι δὲ ποτάμων, avaxadec,—also Aphro- dité and Apollo, ἄθ. All these songs were full of adventures and details re-

tter. 3 Pindar, O . xiv.; Boeckh, Staatshaushal εἶς ἊΣ Athener, Ap- pendix, § xx. p. 357.

a

Cuar. I. EARLY GRECIAN RELIGION. 49 of Attic tragedy and comedy, are gleanings from the once nume- rous dramas exhibited at the solemnity of the Dionysia. The Ephesians gave considerable rewards for the best hymns in honour of Artemis, to be sung at her temple.'| And the early lyric poets of Greece, though their works have not descended to us, devoted their genius largely to similar productions, as may be seen by the titles and fragments yet remaining,

Both the Christian and the Mahomedan religions have begun during the historical age, have been propagated from one com- mon centre, and have been erected upon the ruins of a different pre-existing faith. With none of these particulars did Grecian paganism correspond. It took rise in an age of imagi- nation and feeling simply, without the restraints, as well as without the aid, of writing or records, of history or philosophy. It was, as a general rule, the spontaneous product of many separate tribes and locali- ties, imitation and propagation operating as subor- dinate causes ; it was moreover a primordial faith, as far as our means of information enable us to discover.

These considerations explain to us two facts in the history of the early pagan mind. First, the divine mythes, the matter of their religion, constituted also the matter of their earliest history ; next, these mythes harmonised with each other only in their general types, but differed incurably in respect of particular inci- dents. The poet who sang a new adventure of Apollo, the trace of which he might have heard in some remote locality, would take care that it should be agreeable to the general conceptions which his hearers entertained respecting the god. He would not ascribe the cestus or amorous influences to Athéné, nor armed interference and the egis to Aphrodité ; but, provided he main- tained this general keeping, he might indulge his fancy without restraint in the particular events of the story.? The feelings and

State of mind and circum- stances out of which Grecian mythes arose.

1 Alexander Aitolus, apud Macro- bium, Saturn. v. 22. }

2 The birth of Apollo and Artemis from Zeus and Lét6 is among the oldest and most generally admitted facts in the Grecian divine legends. Yet Aischylus did not scruple to de- scribe Artemis publicly as daughter of Démétér (Herodot. ii. 156; Pausan. viii. 37, 3). Herodotus thinks that he

copied this innovation from the Egyptians, who affirmed that Apollo and Artemis were the sons of Dionysos and Isis.

The number and discrepancies of the mythes respecting each god are at- tested by the fruitless attempts of learned Greeks to escape the neces- πὸ of rejecting any of them by mul- tiplying homonymous personages,—

1—4

50 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part L

faith of his hearers went along with him, and there were no critical scruples to hold them back : to scrutinize the alleged proceedings of the gods was repulsive, and to disbelieve them impious. And thus these divine mythes, though they had their root simply in religious feelings, and though they presented great discrepancies of fact, served nevertheless as primitive matter of history to an early Greek : they were the only narratives, at once _ publicly accredited and interesting, which he possessed. To them were aggregated the heroic mythes (to which we shall proceed presently),—indeed the two are inseparably blended, gods, heroes, and men almost always appearing in the same picture,—analogous both in their structure and their genesis, and differing chiefly in the circumstance that they sprang from the type of a hero instead of from that of a god.

We are not to be astonished if we find Aphrodité, in the Discrepan- Iliad, born from Zeus and Dioné, and, in the Theo- εἰν 15 is oe gony of Hesiod, generated from the foam on the sea litle after the mutilation of Uranos; nor if in the Odyssey noticed. she appears as the wife of Héphestos, while in the Theogony the latter is married to Aglaia, and Aphrodité is described as mother of three children by Arés.1 The Homeric hymn to Aphrodité details the legend of Aphrodité and Anchisés, which is presupposed in the Iliad as the parentage of Aineas: but the author of the hymn, probably sung at one of the festivals of. Aphrodité in Cyprus, represents the goddess as ashamed of her passion for a mortal, and as enjoining Anchisés under severe menaces not to reveal who the mother of Aineas was 3 while in the Iliad she has no scruple in publicly owning him, and he passes everywhere as her acknowledged son. Aphrodité is described in the hymn as herself cold and unim- pressible, but ever active and irresistible in inspiring amorous feelings to gods, to men, and to animals. Three goddesses are recorded as memorable exceptions to her universal empire,— Athéné, Artemis, and Hestia or Vesta. Aphrodité was one of the most important of all the goddesses in the mythical world:

Aphrodité.

three persons named Zeus ; five named 1 Hesiod. para 188, 934, 945;

Athéné ; = named Apollo, ἄς. Homer, [liad, v. 371; Odyss. viii. Serene ἃ Natur. Deor. iii. Ls emens Alexand, Admon. ad Gent. 2 Homer, Hymn. Vener. 248, 286°

Homer, Liiad, v. 320, 386,

Cuar, I. APHRODIT#—ATHENA, 51 for the number of interesting, pathetic, and tragical adventures deducible from misplaced or unhappy passion ~as of course very great ; and in most of these cases the intervention of Aphrodité was usually prefixed, with some legend to explain why she manifested herself. Her range of action grows wider in the latter epic and lyric and tragic poets than in Homer.’

Athéné, the man-goddess,? born from the head of Zeus, without a mother and without feminine sympathies, is the antithesis partly of Aphrodité, partly of the effeminate or womanised God Dionysos—the latter is an importation from Asia, but Athéné is a Greek conception—the type of composed, majestic, and unrelenting force. It appears however as if this goddess had been conceived in a different manner in different parts of Greece. For we find ascribed to her, in some of the legends, attributes of industry and home-keeping; she is re- presented as the companion of Héphestos, patronising handicraft, and expert at the loom and the spindle: the Athenian potters worshipped her along with Prométheus. Such traits of character do not square with the formidable wgis and the massive and crushing spear which Homer and most of the mythes assign to her. There probably were at first at least two different types of Athéné, and their coalescence has partially obliterated the less marked of the two. Athéné is the constant and watehful

Athéné.

1A large Ἂν ortion of the Hesiodic epic related he exploits and adven- tures of the heroic women,—the Cata- logue of Women and the Eoiai em-

menta Incerta of Sophoklés (Fr. 63, Brunck) and Euripid. Troad. 946, 995, 1048. Even in the Opp. et Di. of Hesiod, Aphrodité is conceived rather

bodied a string of such narratives. Hesiod and Stesichorus explained the conduct of Helen and Klytzmnestra by the anger of Aphrodité, caused by the neglect of their father Tyndareus to sacrifice to her (Hesiod, Fragm. 59, ed. Diintzer ; Stesichor. Fragm. 9, ed. Schneidewin): the irresistible ascen- dancy of Aphrodité is set forth in the rapes us of EKuripidés not less for- cibly than that of Dionysos in the Bacche. The character of Daphnis the herdsman, well-known from the ing tho destroying foros of Aphrotlts, e destro’ orce of Aphrodi ap to tig ἄκη first introduced into Greek poetry by Stesichorus (see Klausen, Aineas und die Penaten, vol. i, PP. 526—529: compare Welcker, Kleine Schriften, part i. p. 189). Com- pare a striking piece among the Frag-

fe ν See and injurious influence v. 65). Adonis owes his renown to the Alexandrine poets and their contem- ΤΟΙΣ sovereigns (see Bion’s Idyll and he Adoniazuse of Theocritus). The favourites of Aphrodité, even as counted up by the diligence of Cle- mens Alexandrinus, are however very few in number. (Admonitio ad Gent. p. 12, Sylb.) 2°Avipobéa δῶρον ᾿Αθάνᾳ Simmias MRhodius; Πέλεκυς, ap. Hephsestion. c. 9. p. 54, Gaisford. Apollodér. ap. Schol. ad_ Se- phokl. Gidip. Col, 57; Pausan. i. 24, 8; ix. 26, 8: Diodér. v. 78 ; Plato, ἀξ, ἃ ἣν 920. In the Opp. et Di. of Hesiod, the carpenter is the servant of Athéné (429): see also Phereklos the τέκτων in the iad, v. 61: compare viii

52 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS.

PaRT 1

protectress of Héraklés: she is also locally identified with the soil and people of Athens, even in the Iliad: Erechtheus, the Athenian, is born of the earth, but Athéné brings him up, nourishes him, and lodges him in her own temple, where the Athenians annually worship him with sacrifice and solemnities.} It was altogether impossible to make Erechtheus son of Athéné— the type of the goddess forbade it ; but the Athenian mythe- creators, though they found this barrier impassable, strove to approach to it as near as they could, and the description which they give of the birth of Erichthonios, at once un-Homeric and unseemly, presents something like the phantom of maternity.?

The huntress Artemis, in Arcadia and in Greece proper, generally exhibits a well-defined type with which the legends respecting her are tolerably consistent. But the Ephesian as well as the Tauric Artemis partakes more of the Asiatic character, and has borrowed the attributes of the Lydian Great Mother as well as an indigenous Tauric Virgin : 3 this Ephesian Artemis passed to the colonies of Phokea and Milétus.4 The Homeric Artemis shares with her brother Apollo in the dexterous use of the far-striking bow, and sudden death is described by the poet as inflicted by her gentle arrow. Jealousy of the gods at the withholding of honours and sacrifices, or at the presumption of mortals in contending with them,—a point of character so frequently recurring in the types of the Grecian gods,—manifests itself in the legends of Artemis. The memor- able Kalydénian boar is sent by her as a visitation upon Cineus, because he had omitted to sacrifice to her, while he did honour to other gods.5 The Arcadian heroine Atalanta is however a re-

Artemis.

385 ; Odyss. viii. 493 ; and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodité, v.12. The learned article of O. Miiller (in the Encyclo- pedia of Ersch and Gruber, since re- SS among his Kleine Deutsche

hriften, p. 134 seg.), Pallas Athéné, brings together all that can be known about this goddess.

1 Tliad, ii. 546 ; viii. 362.

2 Apollodér. iii. 4, 6. Compare the veers language of Plato, Kritias, c. iv., and Ovid, Metamorph. ii. 757.

3 Herodot. iv. 103; Strabo, xii. p. 534; xiii. p. 650. About the Ephesian Artemis, see Guhl, Ephesiaca rlin, 1843), p. 79, seg.; Aristoph. Nub. 590; Autokratés in Tympanistis apud Ailian.

Hist. Animal. xii. 9; and Spanheim ad Callimach. Hymn. Dian. 86. The dances in honour of Artemis sometimes appear to have approached to the frenzied style of Bacchanal movement. See the words of Timotheus ap. Plutarch. de Audiend. Poet. p. 22, c. 4, and περὶ Δεισιδ. ὁ. ig 170, also Aristoph. Lysist. 1314. ey seem to have been often celebrated in the solitudes of the mountains, which were the favourite resort of Artemis (Kallimach. Hymn. Dian. 19), and these ὀρειβάσιαι were always causes predisposing to fanatical excitement.

4 Strabo, iv. p. 179.

5 Tliad, ix. 529.

Cuap. I. ARTEMIS—POSEIDON. 53

production of Artemis, with little or no difference, and the goddess is sometimes confounded even with her attendant nymphs.

The mighty Poseidén, the earth-shaker and the ruler of the sea, is second only to Zeus in power, but has no share in those imperial and superintending capacities which the Father of Gods and men exhibits. He numbers a numerous heroic progeny, usually men of great corporeal strength, and many of them belonging to the Molic race. The great Neleid family of Pylus trace their origin up to him; and he is also the father of Polyphémus the Cycléps, whose well-earned suffering he cruelly revenges upon Odysseus. His Délos is the island of Kalaureia,! wherein there was held an old local Amphiktyony, for the purpose of rendering to him joint honour and sacrifice. The isthmus of Corinth, Heliké in Achaia, and Onchéstos in Beeotia, are also residences which he much affects, and where he is solemnly worshipped. But the abode which he originally and specially selected for himself was the Acropolis of Athens, where by a blow of his trident he produced a well of water in the rock: Athéné came afterwards and claimed the spot for herself, planting in token of possession the olive-tree which stood in the sacred grove of Pandrosos: and the decision either of the autoch- thonous Cecrops, or of Erechtheus, awarded to her the preference, much to the displeasure of Poseidén. Either on this account, or on account of the death of his son Eumolpus, slain in assisting the Eleusinians against Erechtheus, the Attic mythes ascribed to Poseidon great enmity against the Erechtheid family, which he is asserted to have ultimately overthrown: Theseus, whose glorious reign and deeds succeeded to that family, is said to have been really his son.? In several other places,—in A%gina, Argos and Naxos,—Poseidén had disputed the privileges of patron-god with Zeus, Héré and Dionysos: he was worsted in all, but bore his defeat patiently. Poseidén endured a long slavery, in common with Apollo, gods as they were,* under Laomedén, king of Troy,

Poseidon.

1 Strabo, viii. p. 374. According to compensation for the surrender of Ka- the old poem called Eumolpia, ascribed laureia to him. (Pausan. x. 5, 8.) to Muszeus, the oracle of Delphi origi- 2 rarer iil. 14, 1; iii. 16, 3, 5. nally belonged to Poseidén and Gea, 3 Plutarch, Sympos. viii. 6, p. 741. jointly : from Geea it passed to Themis, 4 Tliad, ii. 716, 766; Euripid. Alkestis, and from her to Apollo, to whom 2. See Panyasis, Fragm. 12, p. 24, ed, Poseidén also made over hisshare asa Diintzer.

54 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part I.

at the command and condemnation of Zeus: the two gods rebuilt the walls of the city, which had been destroyed by Héraklés. When their time was expired, the insolent Laomedén withheld from them the stipulated reward, and even accompanied its refusal with appalling threats; and the subsequent animosity of the god against Troy was greatly determined by the sentiment of this injustice.

Such periods of servitude, inflicted upon individual gods, are among the most remarkable of all the incidents in the divine legends. We find Apollo on another occasion condemned to serve Admétus, king of Phere, as a punishment for having Stories of Killed the Cyclopes, and Héraklés also is sold as a temporary slave to Omphalé. Even the fierce Arés, overpowered imposed on and imprisoned for a long time by the two Aldids,? is 8 ultimately liberated only by extraneous aid. Such narratives attest the discursive range of Grecian fancy in reference to the gods, as well as the perfect commingling of things and persons, divine and human, in their conceptions of the past. The god who serves is for the time degraded: but the supreme god who commands the servitude is in the like proportion exalted, whilst the idea of some sort of order and government among these superhuman beings was never lost sight of. Never- theless the mythes respecting the servitude of the gods became obnoxious afterwards, along with many others, to severe criti- cism on the part of philosophers.

The proud, jealous, and bitter Héré,—the catia: of the once- Hike wealthy Mykéne, the fax et focus of the Trojan war, and the ever-present protectress of Jason in the Argo- nautic expedition,3—occupies an indispensable station in the mythical world. As the daughter of Kronos and wife of Zeus, she fills a throne from whence he cannot dislodge her, and which gives her a right perpetually to grumble and to thwart him.t Her unmeasured jealousy of the female favourites of Zeus, and her antipathy against his sons, especially against Héraklés, has been the suggesting cause of innumerable mythes ; the general type of her character stands here clearly marked, as furnishing both stimulus and guide to the mythopeic fancy, The “Sacred

1 Iliad, vii. 452; xxi. 459. 3 Tliad, iv. 51; Od: xii. 72. 3 Lliad, v. 386. 4 Iliad, i, 544; iv. 20-38; viii. 408,

Cap. 1. HERE—HEPH ESTOS—HERMES. 55

Wedding,” or marriage of Zeus and Héré, was familiar to epitha- lamic poets long before it became a theme for the spiritualizing ingenuity of critics.

Hépheestos is the son of Héré without a father, and stands tk her in the same relation as Athéné to Zeus: her pride and want of sympathy are manifested by her casting him out at once in consequence of his deformity... He is the god of fire—especially of fire in its practical applications to handicraft —and is indispensable as the right-hand and instrument of the gods. His skill and his deformity appear alternately as the source of mythical stories: wherever exquisite and effective fabrication is intended to be designated, Hépheestos is announced as the maker, although in this function the type of his character is reproduced in Deedalos. In the Attic legends he appears inti- mately united both with Prométheus and with Athéné, in conjunction with whom he was worshipped at Kolénus near Athens. Lémnos was the favourite residence of Héphestos ; and if we possessed more knowledge of this island and its town Héphestias, we should doubtless find abundant legends detailing his adventures and interventions.

The chaste, still, and home-keeping Hestia, goddess of the family hearth, is far less fruitful in mythical narratives, Honite. in spite of her very superior dignity, than the knavish, 2 smooth-tongued, keen and acquisitive Hermés. His function of messenger of the gods brings him perpetually on the stage, and affords ample scope for portraying the features of his character. The Homeric hymn to Hermés de- scribes the scene and circumstances of his birth, and the almost instantaneous manifestation, even in infancy, of his peculiar . attributes. It explains the friendly footing on which he stood with Apollo,—the interchange of gifts and functions between them,—and lastly, the inviolate security of all the wealth and offerings in the Delphian temple, exposed as they were to thieves without any visible protection. Such was the innate cleverness and talent of Hermés, that on the day he was born he invented the lyre, stringing the seven chords on the shell of a tortoise 2—

Héphestos.

Hermés.

1 Tliad, xviii. 800. "Holos γεγονὼς, μέσῳ ἥματι ἐγκιθάριζεν, Ἕσπέ 1s Bots KAé é λον ᾿Απόλ' 2 Homer, Hymn. Mercur. 18-- λυυνδὲν ἄς, saat cei

56 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part I.

and also stole the cattle of Apollo in Pieria, dragging them back- wards to his cave in Arcadia, so that their track could not be detected. To the remonstrances of his mother Maia, who points out to him the danger of offending Apollo, Hermés replies, that he aspires to rival the dignity and functions of Apollo among the immortals, and that if his father Zeus refuses to grant them to him, he will employ his powers of thieving in breaking open the sanctuary at Delphi, and in carrying away the gold and the vestments, the precious tripods and vessels.! Presently Apollo Hermésin. scovers the loss of his cattle, and after some trouble ventorof finds his way to the Kyllénian cavern, where he sees see Hermés asleep in his cradle. The child denies the theft with effrontery, and even treats the surmise as a ridiculous impossibility : he persists in such denial even before Zeus, who however detects him at once, and compels him to reveal the place where the cattle are concealed. But the lyre was as yet unknown to Apollo, who has heard nothing except the voice of the Muses and the sound of the pipe. So powerfully is he fascinated by hearing the tones of the lyre from Hermés, and so eager to become possessed of it, that he is willing at once to pardon the past theft, and even to conciliate besides the friendship of Hermés.? Ac- cordingly a bargain is struck between the two gods and sanctioned Bargain by Zeus. Hermés surrenders to Apollo the lyre, petween nq inventing for his own use the syrinx or panspipe, and Apollo. receiving from Apollo in exchange the golden rod of wealth, with empire over flocks and herds as well as over horses and oxen and the wild animals of the woods. He presses to obtain the gift of prophecy, but Apollo is under a special vow not to impart that privilege to any god whatever. He instructs Hermés however how to draw information, to a certain extent, from the Mere or Fates themselves ; and assigns to him, over and above, the function of messenger of the gods to Hadés. Although Apollo has acquired the lyre, the particular object of his wishes, he is still under apprehension that Hermés will steal it away from him again, together with his bow, and he exacts a formal oath by Styx as security. Hermés promises solemnly that 1 Homer, Hymn. Mere. 178— Ἔνθεν ἅλις τρίποδας περικαλλέας ἠδὲ

R 5 2 ε ᾿ λέ Εἶμι γὰρ ἐς Πυθῶνα, μέγαν δόμον ἀντι" 770 ἘΡΈΤΟΕ, ἤρυσόν, ἄς.

τορήσων, Homer, Hymn. Merc. 442—454,

Cwap. I. HOMERIC HYMN TO HERMMS. 57

he will steal none of the acquisitions, nor ever invade the sanctuary of Apollo ; while the latter on his part pledges himself to recognise Hermés as his chosen friend and companion, amongst all the other sons of Zeus, human or divine.

So came to pass, under the sanction of Zeus, the marked favour shown by Apollo to Hermés. But Hermés (concludes the hymnographer, with frankness unusual in speaking of a god) “does very little good: he avails himself of the darkness of night to cheat without measure the tribes of mortal men.” ?

Here the general types of Hermés and Apollo, coupled with the present fact that no thief ever approached the rich and αν ository seemingly accessible treasures of Delphi, engender a value of the string of expository incidents; cast into a quasi- historical form, and detailing how it happened that Hermés had bound himself by especial convention to respect the Delphian temple. The types of Apollo seem to have been different in different times and parts of Greece: in some places he was worshipped as Apollo Nomios,? or the patron of pasture and cattle; and this attribute, which elsewhere passed over to his son Aristeus, is by our hymnographer voluntarily surrendered to Hermés, com- bined with the golden rod of fruitfulness. On the other hand, the lyre did not originally belong to the Far-striking King, nor is he at all an inventor: the hymn explains both its first invention and how it came into his possession. And the value of the incidents is thus partly expository, partly illustrative, as expand- ing in detail the general preconceived character of the Kyllénian god.

To Zeus more amours are ascribed than to any of the other gods,—probably because the Grecian kings and chief- 5 tains were especially anxious to trace their lineage to the highest and most glorious of all,—each of these amours

1 Homer, Hymn. Merc. 507—521— Λητοΐδης κατένευσεν ἐπ᾽ ἀρθμῷ Kat φιλό- Tmt καὶ ὃ μὲν Ἑρμῆ Δητοΐδην ἐφίλησε διαμπερὲς, os ἔτι καὶ ἍΜ fate Ἄλλων ἀκ be criie viv, ἄο. Μήτε θεὸν, μήτ᾽ ἄνδρα, Διὸς γόνον, 8.

* * * * * * *

Kai τότε Μαιάδος vids ὑποσχόμενος κατ- ένευσε Μή λέ ἂν" A - ἥ "νὼ mg ψειν, ὅσ᾽ ΕἙκηβόλος ἐκτεά Νύκτα bv bppratyy φῦλα Oraréy dvOpé- Μηδέ mor oven πυκινῷ δόμῳ" vied Se αὐτὰρ ᾿Απόλλω 8 Kallimach. Hymn. Apoll. 47.

2 Homer, Hymn. Merc. 577—

Παῦρα μὲν οὖν ὀνίνησι, τὸ δ᾽ ἄκριταν ἠπεροπεύει

58 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part L.

having its representative progeny on earth.’ Such subjects were among the most promising and agreeable for the interest of mythical narrative, and Zeus as a lover thus became the father οἱ a great many legends, branching out into innumerable inter- ferences, for which his sons, all of them distinguished individuals, and many of them persecuted by Héré, furnished the occasion. But besides this, the commanding functions of the Supreme God, judicial and administrative, extending both over gods and men, was a potent stimulus to the mythopeic activity. Zeus has to watch over his own dignity,—the first of all considerations with a god: moreover as Horkios, Xenios, Ktésios, Meilichios (a small Proportion of his thousand surnames), he guaranteed oaths and punished perjurers, he enforced the observance of hospitality, he guarded the family hoard and the crop realized for the year, and he granted expiation to the repentant criminal. All these different functions created a demand for mythes, as the means of translating a dim, but serious presentiment into distinct form, woth self-explaining and communicable to others. In enforcing the sanctity of the oath or of the tie of hospitality, the most powerful of all arguments would be a collection of legends respecting the judgments of Zeus, Horkios, or Xenios ; the more impressive and terrific such legends were, the greater would be their interest, and the less would any one dare to disbelieve them. They constituted the natural outpourings of a strong and common sentiment, probably without any deliberate ethical intention: the preconceptions of the divine agency, expanded into legend, form a product analogous to the idea of the divine features and symmetry embodied in the bronze or the marble statue.

But it was not alone the general type and attributes of the gods which contributed to put in action the mythopeic propen-_ sities. The rites and solemnities forming the worship of each Mythes god, as well as the details of his temple and its locality, ἐν ὑπο og out were ἃ fertile source οὗ mythes, respecting his exploits ligious and sufferings, which to the people who heard them ceremonies. served the purpose of past history. The exegetes, or local guide and interpreter, belonging to each temple, preserved and recounted to curious strangers these traditional narratives,

1 Kallimach. Hymn. Jovy. 79. Ἔκ δὲ 2See Herodot. i. 44. Xenoph. Ana- Διὸς βασιλῆες, &e. bas. vii. 8.4. Plutarch, Théseus, c. 12.

Cuap, 1. ZEUS AND HIS ATTRIBUTES. 59

which lent a certain dignity even to the minutie of divine service. Out of a stock of materials thus ample, the poets extracted individual collections, such as the “Causes” (Airta) of Kallimachus, now lost, and such as the Fasti of Ovid are for the Roman religious antiquities.}

It was the practice to offer to the gods in sacrifice the bones of the victim only, enclosed in fat: how did this practice small part arise? The author of the Hesiodic Theogony hasa ofthe, story which explains it: Prométheus tricked Zeus into sacrificed. an imprudent choice, at the period when the gods and mortal men first came to an arrangement about privileges and duties (in Me- kéné). Prométheus, the tutelary representative of man, divided a large steer into two portions: on the one side he placed the flesh and guts, folded up in the omentum and covered over with the skin ; on the other, he put the bones enveloped in fat. He then invited Zeus to determine which of the two portions the gods would prefer to receive from mankind. Zeus “with both hands” decided for and took the white fat, but was highly incensed on finding that he had got nothing at the bottom except Prométheus the bones? Nevertheless the choice of the gods was bad out- now irrevocably made : they were not entitled to any Zeus. portion of the sacrificed animal beyond the bones and the white

fat; and the standing practice

1 Ovid, Fasti, iv. 211, about the fes- tivals of Apollo :— “ Priscique imitamina facti Aira Dee comites raucaque terga movent”,

And Lactantius, v. 19,15. ‘Ipsos ritus ex rebus gestis (deorum) vel ex casibus vel etiam ex mortibus natos:” to the same purpose Augustin. De Civ. D. vii. 18; Diodér. iii. 56. Plutarch’s Queestiones Greece et Romaice are full of similar tales, professing to account for —— customs, many of them re- igious and liturgic. See Lobeck, Or- phica, p. 675. 2 Hesiod, Theog. 550 :—

7 ῥα Πρυλοφρονθοψς Ζεὺς δ᾽ ἄφθιτα μήδεα ε

ώ

Tv ῥ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ἠγνοίησε δόλον" κακὰ δ᾽ ὄσσετο θυμῷ

Θνητοῖς ἀνθρώποισι, τὰ καὶ τελέεσθαι ἔμελλεν.

Χερσὶ δ᾽ by’ ἀμφοτέρῃσιν ἀνείλετο λευκὸν ἄλειφαρ"

is thus plausibly explained? I

Χώσατο δὲ φρένας, ἀμφὶ χόλος δέ μιν ἵκετο θυμὸν, ΡΤ Ὡς ἴδεν ὀστέα λευκὰ βοὸς δολίῃ ἐπὶ τέχνῃ. In the second line of this citation, the — tells us that Zeus saw thro he trick, and was imposed upon by his own consent, foreknowing that after all, the mischievous consequences of the proceeding would be visited on man. ut the last lines, and indeed the whole drift of the legend, imply the contrary of this: Zeus was really taken in, and was in consequence very an, It is curious to observe how the religious feelings of the poet drive him to save in words the prescience of Zeus, though in doing so he contradicts and nullifies the whole point of the story.

3 Hesiod. Theog. 557— Ἔκ τοῦ δ᾽ ἀθανάτοισιν ἐπὶ χθονὶ φῦλ᾽ ἀνθρώπων Kaiovo’ ὀστέα λευκὰ θνηέντων ἐπὶ βωμῶν,

60 LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. Part I.

select this as one amongst a thousand instances to illustrate the genesis of legend out of religious practices. In the belief of the people, the event narrated in the legend was the real producing cause of the practice: but when we come to apply a sound criticism, we are compelled to treat the event as existing only in its narrative legend, and the legend itself as having been in the greater number of cases engendered by the practice,—thus -re- versing the supposed order of production.

In dealing with Grecian mythes generally, it is convenient to Gods, He- ‘distribute them into such as belong to the Gods and ro πο θθα such as belong to the Heroes, according as the one or togetherin the other are the prominent personages. The former the mythes. class manifest, more palpably than the latter, their real origin as growing out of the faith and the feelings, without any necessary basis, either of matter of fact or allegory: moreover, they elucidate more directly the religion of the Greeks, so impor- tant an item in their character as a people. But in point of fact, most of the mythes present to us Gods, Heroes, and Men, in juxtaposition one with the other. And the richness of Grecian mythical literature arises from the infinite diversity of combina- tions thus opened out ; first by the three class-types, God, Hero, and Man ; next by the strict keeping with which each separate class and character is handled. We shall now follow downward the stream of mythical time, which begins with the Gods, to the Heroic legends, or those which principally concern the Heroes and Heroines ; for the latter were to the full as important in legend as the former.

Cuap. 11. LEGENDS RELATING TO HEROES AND MEN, 61

CHAPTER IL LEGENDS RELATING TO HEROES AND ΜΕΝ,

Tue Hesiodic theogony gives no account of anything like a creation of man, nor does it seem that such an idea was much entertained in the legendary vein of Grecian imagination ; which commonly carried back the present men by successive paces of generations to some primitive ancestor, himself sprung ἊΝ = they from the soil, or from aneighbouring river, or mountain, in the |

or from a god, a nymph, ὅθ. But the poet of the Hesicdic Hesiodic “ Works and Days” has given usanarrative Days”. conceived in a very different spirit respecting the origin of the human race, more in harmony with the sober and melancholy ethical tone which reigns through that poem.

First (he tells us) the Olympic gods made the golden race,— good, perfect, and happy men, who lived from the spontaneous abundance of the earth, in ease and tranquillity, like the gods themselves: they suffered neither disease nor old-age, and their death was like a gentle sleep. After death they became, by the award of Zeus, guardian terrestrial daemons, who watch unseen over the proceedings of mankind—with the regal privilege of dispensing to them wealth, and taking account of good and bad deeds,?

The Golden.

1 Hesiod, as cited in the Etymolo- con Magnum (probably the Hesiodic

atalogue of Women, as Marktscheffel considers it, placing it Fr . 183), gives the pereeace of a certain Brotos, who must probably be intended as the first of men: Bpdros, ὡς μὲν Εὐήμερος ὁ Μεσσήνιος, ἀπὸ Βρότου τινὸς αὐτόχθονος "

Αὐτὰρ ἐπειδὴ τοῦτο γένος κατὰ γαῖα κά-

υψε, Τοὶ μὲν δαίμονές εἰσι Διὸς μεγάλου διὰ βουλὰς ᾿Εσθλοὶ, ἐπιχθόνιοι, φύλακες θνητῶν ἀν- θρώπων " Οἵ ῥα φυλάσσουσίν τε δίκας καὶ σχέτλια

ὃ δὲ Ἡσίοδος, ἀπὸ Βρότου τοῦ Αἰθέρος καὶ Ἡμέρας. 2 Opp. Di. 120.--

ΡΥ ΟΡ;

ἐκ, τὶ ἑσσάμενοι, πάντη φοιτῶντες ἐπ᾽ αιαν

Πλουτόδοται " καὶ τοῦτο γέρας βασιλήϊον ἔσχον.

62 LEGENDS RELATING TO HEROES AND MEN.

Next, the gods made the silver race,—unlike and greatly in- ferior, both in mind and body, to the golden. The men of this race were reckless and mischievous towards each other, and disdainful to the immortal gods, to whom they refused to offer either worship or sacrifice. Zeus in his wrath buried them in the earth ; but there they still enjoy a secondary honour, as the Blest of the under-world.

Thirdly, Zeus made the brazen race, quite different from the silver. They were made of hard ash-wood, pugnacious and terrible: they were of immense strength and ada- mantine soul, neither raising nor touching bread. Their arms, their houses, and their implements were all of brass : there was then no iron. This race, eternally fighting, perished by each other’s hands, died out, and descended without name or privilege to Hadés.?

Next, Zeus made a fourth race, far juster and better than the last preceding. These were the Heroes or demigods, who fought at the sieges of Troy and Thébes. But this splendid stock also became extinct: some perished in war, others were removed by Zeus to a happier state in the islands of the Blest. There they dwell in peace and comfort, under the government of Kronos, reaping thrice in the year the sponta- neous produce of the earth.*

The fifth race, which succeeds to the Heroes, is of iron : it is the race to which the poet himself belongs, and bitterly does he regret it. He finds his contemporaries mis- chievous, dishonest, unjust, ungrateful, given to perjury, careless both of the ties of consanguinity and of the behests of the gods: Nemesis and Aidds (Ethical Self-reproach) have left earth and gone back to Olympus. How keenly does he wish that his lot had been cast either earlier or later!* This iron race is doomed

The Silver.

The Brazen.

The Heroic.

The Iron.

Part I.

1 Opp. Di. 140.— Αὐτὰρ, ἐπεὶ καὶ τοῦτο γένος κατὰ γαῖα κάλυψε, Τοὶ μὲν ὑποχθόνιοι μάκαρες θνητοὶ κα- λέονται Δεύτεροι, ἀλλ᾽ ἔμπης τιμὴ καὶ τοῖσιν ὀπηδεῖ, 3 The ash was the wood out of Ὁ spear-handles were made 124): the Νύμφαι Μέλιαι are at τάδος with the G tes and the ecinweyed (Theogon. 187),—“‘ gensque viriim trun-

cis et duro robore eee (Virgil, ineid, vail. 315),—hearts of oak.

3 Opp. Di, 157.— ᾿Ανδρῶν᾽ Ἡρώων θεῖον γένος, οἵ καλέονται Tet προτέρῃ γενέῃ Kar’ ἀπείρονα

ἔπ mes P. Di 173.— Miner ar ὥφειλον ἐγὼ πέμπτοισι

*Avipdow, & ἀλλ᾽ ἣ πρόσθε θανεῖν, ἣ ἔπειτα γενέσθαι.

Νῦν γὰρ δὴ γένος ἐστὶ σιδήρεον. . . «

Cap, 11. SUCCESSION OF EARTHLY RACES. 63

to continual guilt, care, and suffering, with a small infusion of good ; but the time will come when Zeus will put an end to it. The poet does not venture to predict what sort of race will suc- ceed.

Such is the series of distinct races of men, which Hesiod, or the author of the “Works and Days,” enumerates as having existed down to his own time. I give it as it stands, without placing much confidence in the various explanations which critics have offered. It stands out in more than one respect from the general tone and sentiment of Grecian legend: moreover, the sequence of races is neither natural nor homogeneous,—the heroic race not having any metallic denomination, and not occupying any legitimate place in immediate succession to the brazen. Nor is the conception of the demons in harmony either with Homer or with the Hesiodic theogony. In Homer, thereis _.

ἐπι τος τὰς 5 Different scarcely any distinction between gods and demons: both from farther, the gods are stated to go about and visit the paola cities of men in various disguises for the purpose of from * . . . : Homer. inspecting good and evil proceedings! But in the poem now before us, the distinction between gods and demons is generic. The latter are invisible tenants of earth, remnants of the once happy golden race whom the Olympic gods first made: the remnants of the second or silver race are not demons, nor are they tenants of earth, but they still enjoy an honourable posthu- mous existence as the Blest of the under-world. Nevertheless the Hesiodic demons are in no way authors or abettors of evil : on the contrary, they form the unseen police of the gods, for the purpose of repressing wicked behaviour in the world.

We may trace, I think, in this quintuple succession of earthly races, set forth by the author of the “ Works and Days,”

. ἢ ὃ Explana- the confluence of two veins of sentiment, not consistent tion of this one with the other, yet both co-existing in the ‘ference. author’s mind. The drift of his poem is thoroughly didactic and ethical. Though deeply penetrated with the injustice and suffer- ing which darken the face of human life, he nevertheless strives to maintain both in himself and in others, a conviction that on the whole the just and laborious man will come off well,’ and ly

1 Odyss. xvii. 486. appears to believe that, under the 2 There are some lines in which he present wicked and treacherous rulers,

64 LEGENDS RELATING TO HEROES AND MEN. Part ©

enforecs in considerable detail the lessons of practical pru- dence and virtue. This ethical sentiment, which dictates his appreciation of the present, also guides his imagination as to the past. It is pleasing to him to bridge over the chasm between the

gods and degenerate man, by the supposition of pre- ray vious races,—the first altogether pure, the second sentiment. worse than the first, and the third still worse than the second ; and to show further how the first race passed by gentle death-sleep into glorious immortality ; how the second race was sufficiently wicked to drive Zeus to bury them in the under- world, yet still leaving them a certain measure of honour ; while the third was so desperately violent as to perish by its own ani- mosities, without either name or honour of any kind. The con- ception of the golden race passing after death into good guardian demons, which some suppose to have been derived from a com- parison with oriental angels, presents itself to the poet partly as approximating this race to the gods, partly as a means of constituting a triple gradation of post-obituary existence, pro- portioned to the character of each race whilst alive. The denominations of gold and silver, given to the two first races, justify themselves, like those given by Simonidés of Amorgos and by Phokylidés to the different characters of women, derived from the dog, the bee, the mare, the ass, and other animals; and the epithet of brazen is specially explained by reference to the material which the pugnacious third race so plentifully employed for their arms and other implements.

So far we trace intelligibly enough the moralising vein: we Intersectea 4nd the revolutions of the past so arranged as to serve by the partly as an ethical lesson, partly as a suitable preface ΟΝ 35 the present. But fourth in the list comes “the.

it is not the interest of any man to be

just (Opp. Di. 270) :—

Nov δὴ ἐγὼ μήτ᾽ αὐτὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποισι δίκαιος

Εἴην, μήτ᾽ ἐμὸς υἱός" ἐπεὶ κακόν ἐστι δίκαιον

ἔμρε Ὁ εἰ μείζω γε δίκην ἀδικώτερος εξζει"

Plutarch rejects the above four lines, seemingly on no other ground than because he thought them immoral and unworthy of Hesiod (see Proclus ad loc.). But they fall in perfectly with the temper of the poem ; and the rule of Plutarch is inadmissible, in deter- mining the critical question of what is genuine or Pianos

᾿Αλλὰ τόδ᾽. οὕπω ἔολπα τελεῖν Δέα τερ- 1 Aratus (Pheenomen. 107) gives only

πικέραυνον.

On the whole, however, his conviction is to the contrary.

three successive races,—the golden, silver, and brazen: Ovid superadds to these the iron race (Metamorph. i. 89—

Part I, THE DIVINE RACE OF HEROKS. 65

divine race of Heroes” ; and here a new vein of thought is opened by the poet. The symmetry of his ethical past is broken up, in order to make way for these cherished beings of the national faith. For though the author of the “Works and Days” was himself of a didactic cast of thought, like Phokylidés, or Solén, or Theognis, yet he had present to his feelings, in common with his country- men, the picture of Grecian foretime, as it was set forth in the current mythes, and still more in Homer and those other epical productions which were then the only existing literature and his- tory. It was impossible for him to exclude, from his sketch of the past, either the great persons or the glorious exploits which these poems ennobled ; and even if he himself could have con- sented to such an exclusion, the sketch would have become repul- sive to his hearers. But the chiefs who figured before Thébes and Troy could not be well identified either with the golden, the silver, or the brazen race : moreover, it was essential that they should be placed in immediate contiguity with the present race, because their descendants, real or supposed, were the most pro- minent and conspicuous of existing men. Hence the poet is obliged to assign to them the fourth place in the series, and to interrupt the descending ethical movement in order to interpolate them between the brazen and the iron race, with neither of which they present any analogy. The iron race, to which the poet him- self unhappily belongs, is the legitimate successor, not of the heroic, but of the brazen. Instead of the fierce and self-annihi- lating pugnacity which characterises the latter, the iron race manifests an aggregate of smaller and meaner vices and mischiefs, 10 will not perish by suicidal extinction—but it is growing worse and worse, and is gradually losing its vigour, so that Zeus will not vouchsafe to preserve much longer such a race upon the earth.

I conceive that the series of races imagined by the poet of the “Works and Days” is the product of two distinct and incon- 144) ; neither of them notice the heroic Both recognise the disparate character race. of the fourth link in the series, and

The observations both of Buttmann each accounts for it in a different man. ™ hos der altesten Menschengesch- ner. My own view comes r-arer to echter, t. ii. p. 12 of the Mythologus) that of Volcker, with some consider- and of Volcker (Mythologie des Jee. able differences; amongst which one tischen Geschlechts, § 6, pp. 250—279) is, that he rejects the verses respec

on this series of distinct races are ing - the demons, which seem to me capi nious and may be read with profit. parts of the whole scheme.

1—5

66 LEGENDS RELATING TO HEROES AND MEN Part L

grucus veins of imagination,—the didactic or ethical blending TheWorks With the primitive mythical or epical. His poem is sad Deh. remarkable as the most ancient didactic production of didactic the Greeks, and as one of the first symptoms of a new Sata tone of sentiment finding its way into their litera- ture, never afterwards to become extinct, The tendency of the “ Works and Days” is antiheroic : far from seeking to inspire ad- miration for adventurous enterprise, the author inculcates the strictest justice, the most unremitting labour and frugality, and a sober, not to say anxious, estimate of all the minute specialties of the future. Prudence and probity are his means,—practical comfort and happiness his end. But he deeply feels, and keenly exposes, the manifold wickedness and shortcomings of his con- temporaries, in reference to this capital standard. He turns with displeasure from the present men, not because they are too feeble to hurl either the spear of Achilles or some vast boundary-stone, but because they are rapacious, knavish, and unprincipled.

The demons first introduced into the religious atmosphere of Firstintro- he Grecian world by the author of the “Works and duction ¢ of Days”—as generically different from the gods, but

essentially good, and forming the intermediate agents

and police between gods and men,—are deserving of attention. They are the seed of a doctrine which afterwards underwent many changes, and became of great importance, first as one of the constituent elements of pagan faith, then as one of the helps to its subversion. It will be recollected that the buried remnants of the half-wicked silver race, though they are not recognised as deemons, are still considered as having a substantive existence, a ‘name, and dignity, in the under-world. The step was easy, to treat them as demons also, but as demons of a defective and malignant character: this step was made by Empedoclés and Xeno- cratés, and toa certain extent countenanced by Plato. There in came thus to be admitted among the pagan philoso-

pe idea of phers demons both good and bad, in every degree: and these demons were found available as a means of

explaining many phenomena for which it was not convenient to admit the agency of the gods. They served to relieve the gods

1 See this subject further mentioned—injra, chap. xvi.

Cuap. IT. THE HESIODIC DMMONS. 67

from the odium of physical and moral evils, as well as from the necessity of constantly meddling in small affairs. The objection- able ceremonies of the pagan religion were defended upon the ground that in no other way could the exigencies of such malig- nant beings be appeased. The demons were most frequently noticed as causes of evil, and thus the name came insensibly to convey with it a bad sense,—the idea of an evil being as contrasted with the goodness of a god. So it was found by the Christian writers when they commenced their controversy with paganism. One branch of their argument led them to identify the pagan gods with demons in the evil sense, and the insensible change in the received meaning of the word lent them a specious Employed assistance. For they could easily show, that not only 1 attacks in Homer, but in the general language of early pagans, pagan faith all the gods generally were spoken of as demons—and therefore, verbally speaking, Clemens and Tatian seemed to affirm nothing more against Zeus or Apollo than was involved in the language of paganism itself. Yet the audience of Homer or Sophoklés would have strenuously repudiated the proposition, if it had beer put to them in the sense which the word demon bore in the age and among the circle of these Christian writers.

In the imagination of the author of the “ Works and Days,” the demons occupy an important place, and are re- functions garded as being of serious practical efficiency. When of the he is remonstrating with the rulers around him upon demons. their gross injustice and corruption, he reminds them of the vast number of these immortal servants of Zeus who are perpetually on guard amidst mankind, and through whom the visitations of the gods will descend even upon the most potent evil-doers.! His supposition that the demons were not gods, but departed men of the golden race, allowed him to multiply their number inde- finitely, without too much cheapening the divine dignity.

As this poet, enslaved by the current legends, has introduced the heroic race into a series to which they do not legitimately belong—so he has under the same influence inserted in another part of his poem the mythe of Pandéra and Prométheus,? as a means of explaining the primary diffusion, and actual abundance,

1 Opp. Di. 252. Tpis yap μύριοϊ εἰσιν 2 Opp. Di, 50-105, ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ, ΓΗ eee”. 7

68 ᾿ LEGENDS RELATING TO HEROES AND MEN, Part I.

of evil among mankind. Yet this mythe can in no way consist with his quintuple scale of distinct races, and is in fact a totally distinct theory to explain the same problem,—the transition of mankind from a supposed state of antecedent happiness to one of present toil and suffering. Such an inconsistency is not a suffi- cient reason for questioning the genuineness of either passage; for the two stories, though one contradicts the other, both ἘΘΗΤΉΝΥ harmonise with that central purpose which governs feeling the author’s mind,—a querulous and didactic apprecia- which, ;- tion of the present. That such was his purpose ap- ae on, = pears not only from the whole tenor of his poem, but * also from the remarkable fact that his own personality,

his own adventures and kindred, and his own sufferings figure in it conspicuously. And this introduction of self imparts to it a peculiar interest. The father of Hesiod came over from the Holic Kymé, with the view of bettering his condition, and settled at Askra in Beeotia, at the foot of Mount Helicon. After his death his two sons divided the family inheritance: but Hesiod bitterly complains that his brother Persés cheated and went to law with him, and obtained through corrupt judges an unjust decision. He farther reproaches his brother with a preference for the suits and unprofitable bustle of the agora, at a time when he ought to be labouring for his subsistence in the field. Askra indeed was a miserable place, repulsive both in summer and winter. Hesiod had never crossed the sea, except once from Aulis to Eubcea, whither he went to attend the funeral-games of Amphidamas, the chief of Chalkis: he sung a hymn, and gained as prize a tripod, which he consecrated to the muses in Helicon.? These particulars, scanty as they are, possess a peculiar value, as the earliest authentic memorandum respecting the doing or. suffering of any actual Greek person. There is no external testimony at all worthy of trust respecting the age of the “Works and Days”: Herodotus treats Hesiod and Homer as belonging to the same age, four hundred years before his own time; and Probable there are other statements besides, some placing Hesiod ageofthe at an earlier date than Homer, some ata later. Look- ἘΣ ing at the internal evidences, we may observe that the pervading sentiment, tone, and purpose of the poem is widely

1 Opp. Di. 680—650, 27—45.

Cup. tt tHe “ woRKs AND Days”, 69

different from that of the Iliad and Odyssey, and analogous to what we read respecting the compositions of Archilochus and the Amorgian Simonidés. The author of the “Works and Days” is indeed a preacher and not a satirist: but with this distinction, we find in him the same predominance of the present and the positive, the same disposition to turn the muse into an exponent of his own personal wrongs, the same employment of Aisopic fable by way of illustration, and the same unfavourable estimate of the female sex,! all of which may be traced in the two poets above-mentioned, placing both of them in contrast with the Homeric epic. Such an internal analogy, in the absence of good testimony, is the best guide which we can follow in determining the date of the “ Works and Days,” which we should accordingly place shortly after the year 700 B.c. The style of the poem might indeed afford a proof that the ancient and uniform hexameter, though well adapted to continuous legendary narrative or to solemn hymns, was somewhat monotonous when called upon either to serve a polemical purpose or to impress a striking moral lesson. When poets, then the only existing composers, first began to apply their thoughts to the cut and thrust of actual life, aggres- sive or didactic, the verse would be seen to require a new, livelier, and smarter metre; and out of this want grew the elegiac and the iambic verse, both seemingly contemporaneous, and both intended to supplant the primitive hexameter for the short effusions then coming into vogue.

1 Compare the fable (αἶνος) in the ve viii. ed. Welcker, vy. 95—115); also ** Works and Days,” v. 200, with those Phokylidés ap. Stobeum, Fiorileg. in Archilochus, Fr. xxxviii. and xxxix., Ixxi. Gaisford, respecting the fox and the Isokratés assimilates the character ape ; and the legend of Pandéra v.95 of the ‘‘ Works and Days” to that of and y. 705) with the fragment of Simo- Theognis and Phokylides (ad Nicocl, nidés of Amorgos respecting women Or. ii. p. 23).

70 LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS. Part bh

CHAPTER III, LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS,

THE sons of the Titan god Iapetus, as described in the Hesiodic theogony, are Atlas, Menctius, Prométheus, and Epimétheus.? Of these, Atlas alone is mentioned by Homer in the Odyssey, and even he not as the son of Iapetus: the latter himself is named in the Iliad as existing in Tartarus along with Kronos. The Homeric Atlas “knows the depths of the whole sea, and keeps by himself those tall pillars which hold the heaven apart from the earth ”.?

As the Homeric theogony generally appears much expanded in Iapetidsin Hesiod, so also does the family of Iapetus, with their Hesiod. varied adventures. Atlas is here described, not as the keeper of the intermediate pillars between heaven and earth, but as himself condemned by Zeus to support the heaven on his head _. and hands ;* while the fierce Mencetius is pushed down to Erebus as a punishment for his ungovernable insolence. But the re- maining two brothers, Prométheus and Epimétheus, are among the most interesting creations of Grecian legend, and distinguished in more than one respect from all the remainder.

First, the main battle between Zeus and the Titan gods isa Prométheus Contest of force purely and simply—mountains are and Epi: hurled and thunder is launched, and the victory re- métheus. mains to the strongest. But the competition between

1 Hesiod. Theog. 510. 3 Hesiod. Theog. 516—

2 Hom. Odyss, 1. 52.— rs ὁ, Ὧν > = Ἄτλαντος θυγάτηρ ὀλοόφρονος, ὅστε θα- ἀπ νὰ ieee ehply Semper Adoons Ἑστηὼς. ἀκαμά Πάσης βένθεα οἶδεν, ἔχει δέ τε κίονας ἡ rstiiesegs A we όσον

αὐτὸς Maxpas, at γαῖάν τε καὶ οὐρανὸν ἀμφὶς Hesiod stretches far beyond the sim- ἔχουσιν. plicity of the Homeric conception.

Cuap. If ZEUS AND PROMMTHEUS. τ]

Zeus and Prométheus is one of craft and stratagem: the victor) does indeed remain to the former, but the honours of the fight belong to the latter. Secondly, Prométheus and Epimétheus (the fore-thinker and the after-thinker*) are characters stamped at the same mint, and by the same effort, the express contrast and antithesis of each other. Thirdly, mankind are here ex- pressly brought forward, ποὺ indeed as active partners in the struggle, but as the grand and capital subjects interested,—as gainers or sufferers by the result. Prométheus appears in the exalted character of champion of the human race, even against the formidable superiority of Zeus.

In the primitive or Hesiodic legend, Prométheus is not the creator or moulder of man; it is only the later additions which invest him with this character.2 The. race are supposed as existing, and Prométheus, a member of the dispossessed body of Titan gods, comes forward as their representative and defender. The advantageous bargain which he made with Zeus on their behalf, in respect to the partition of the sacrificial animals, has been recounted in a preceding chapter. Zeus felt that he had been outwitted, and was exceeding wroth. In his gounter. displeasure he withheld from mankind the inestim- μεν Soe ig. able comfort of fire, so that the race would have thbaa and perished, had not Prométheus stolen fire, in defiance 2908. of the Supreme Ruler, and brought it to men in the hollow stem of the plant called giant-fennel.?

Zeus was now doubly indignant, and determined to play off a still more ruinous stratagem. Héphestos, by his direction, moulded the form of a beautiful virgin; Athéné dressed her, Aphrodité and the Charites bestowed upon her both ornament and fascination, while Hermés infused into her the mind of a dog, a deceitful spirit, and treacherous words. The messenger

1 Pindar extends the family of Epi- to Pausanias at Panopeus in Phokis métheus and gives him a daughter, (Paus. x. 4, 3). Πρόφασις (Pyth. v. 25), Excuse, the off- — The first Epigram of Erinna(Anthol. spring of After-thought. i. p. 58, ed. Brunck) seems to allude to

2 Apollodér. i. 7,1. Nor is he such Prométheus as moulder of man. The either in Aischylus, or in the Platonic expression of Aristophanés (Aves, 689) fable (Protag. c. 30), though this version --πλάσματα πηλοῦ--- (0685 not necessarily oe renin the ae popular. εν refer to Prométheus.

ened lumps of clay, remnants o : : Ἀ

that which hal boca employed by Pro. * Hesiod. Theog. 566 ; Opp. Di. 62. métheus in moulding man, were shown 4 Theog. 580; Opp. Di. 50—85.

oc

72 LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS. Part ib of the gods conducted this “fascinating mischief” to mankind, at a time when Prométheus was not present. Now Epimétheus had received from his brother peremptory injunctions not to accept from the hands of Zeus any present whatever; but the beauty of Pandéra (so the newly-formed female was called) was not to be resisted. She was received and admitted among men, and from that moment their comfort and tranquillity was exchanged for suffering of every kind. The evils to which mankind are liable had been before enclosed in a cask in their own keeping; Pandora in her malice removed the lid of the cask, and out flew these thousand evils and calamities, to exercise for ever their destroying force. Hope alone remained imprisoned, and therefore without efficacy, as before—the inviolable lid being replaced before she could escape. Before this incident (says the legend) men had lived without disease or suffering; but now both earth and sea are full of mischiefs. Maladies of every description — stalk abroad by day as well as by night,? without any hope for man of relief to come.

The Theogony gives the legend here recounted, with some variations—leaving out the part of Epimétheus alto- gether, as well as the cask of evils, Pandéra is the ruin of man, simply as the mother and representative of the female sex. And the variations are thus useful, as they enable us to distinguish the essential from the accessory circum- stances of the story.

Pandora.

Pandoéra in the Theo- gony.

1 Opp. 4 . 81—90. epened by Pandéra, Consolat. ad Apol- 2 Opp. Di. 93. Pandéra does not lon.c. 7, p.105. The explanation here bring with her the cask, as the common εἰναι of the Hesiodic rela

astm fg of this story would have us sup- pose : the cask exists fast closed in the pos ge δη of Epimétheus, or of man

self, and Pandéra commits the fatal treachery of remo the lid. The case is analogous to that of the closed bag of unfavourable winds which Aiolus gives into the hands of Odysseus, and which the guilty companions of the latter force o Be aes to the entire ruin of

his hopes (Odyss. x. 19—50). The idea of the two casks on the old of Zeus, | ready for tion—one

full of τς Ἃ the other of benefits—is

Homeric (liad, xxiv. 527) :

Δοίοι γάρ τε πίθοι κατακείαται ἐν Διὸς οὔδει,

Plutarch assimilates to this the πίθος

ting to Hope is drawn from an able article in the Wiener Jahrbiicher, vol. 109 ace δ. p. og Ba Bm Ritter; a review of translation οὗ the anetoan of #Eschylus. The diseases and evils are inoperative so long as they remain shut up in the cask; the same mischief-making influence which lets them out to their calamitous ro takes care that Hope shall still co tinue a powerless prisoner in the inside. 8 Theog. 590. "Ex τῆς γὰρ γένος ἐστὶ γυναικῶν θηλυτε- La 4 τῆς ‘yap ὀλώιόν ἐστι γένος" Kai φῦλα γυναικῶν

Πῆμα͵ μέγα θνητοῖσι μετ᾽ ἀνδράσι ναιε- τάουσι, ἄο.

chap. iit. pPIMfrHEts AND PANDORA. 13

“Thus (says the poet, at the conclusion of his narrative) it is not possible to escape from the purposes of Zeus.”! His mythe, connecting the calamitous condition of man with the malevolence of the supreme god, shows, first, by what cause such an unfriendly feeling was raised; next, by what instrumentality its deadly results were brought about. The human race are not indeed the creation, but the protected flock of Prométheus, one of the elder or dispossessed Titan gods. When Zeus acquires supremacy, man- kind along with the rest become subject to him, and are to make the best bargain they can, respecting worship and service to be yielded. By the stratagem of their advocate Prométheus, Zeus is cheated into such a partition of the victims as is eminently unprofitable to him; whereby his wrath is so pro- 4. voked, that he tries to subtract from man the use of feeling of fire. Here, however, his scheme is frustrated by the ‘Poet theft of Prométheus : but his second attempt is more successful, and he in his turn cheats the unthinking Epimétheus into the acceptance of a present (in spite of the peremptory interdict of Prométheus) by which the whole of man’s happiness is wrecked. This legend grows out of two feelings; partly as to the relations of the gods with man, partly as to the relation of the female sex with the male. The present gods are unkind towards man, but the old gods, with whom man’s lot was originally cast, were much kinder—and the ablest among them stands forward as the indefatigable protector of the race. Nevertheless, the mere excess of his craft proves the ultimate ruin of the cause which he espouses. He cheats Zeus out of a fair share of the sacrificial victim, so as both to provoke and justify a retaliation which he cannot be always at hand to ward off; the retaliation is, in his absence, consummated by a snare laid for Epimétheus y,,, and voluntarily accepted. And thus, though Hesiod dab rpc ascribes the calamitous condition of man to the male- not to volence of Zeus, his piety suggests two exculpatory Plame. pleas for the latter; mankind have been the first to defraud Zeus of his legitimate share of the sacrifice—and they have moreover been consenting parties totheir own ruin. Such are the feelings, as to the relation between the gods and man, which have been

1 Opp. Di. 105.—Otrws οὔτι πῆ ἐστὶ Διὸς νόον ἐξαλέασθαι, :

74, LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS.. Parr L.

one of the generating elements of this legend. The other element, Mischiefs 8ἃ conviction of the vast mischief arising to man from arising women, whom yet they cannot dispense with, is fre- women. quently and strongly set forth in several of the Greek poets—by Simonidés of Amorgos and Phokylidés, not less than by Euripidés.

But the miseries arising from woman, however great they might be, did not reach Prométheus himself. For him, the rash champion who had ventured “to compete in sagacity”+ with Zeus, a different punishment was in store. Bound by heavy chains to a pillar, he remained fast imprisoned for several Punish- generations: every day did an eagle prey upon his

asa liver, and every night did the liver grow afresh for the theus. next day’s suffering. At length Zeus, eager to enhance

the glory of his favourite son, Héraklés, permitted the latter to kill the eagle and rescue the captive.?

Such is the Prométhean mythe as it stands in the Hesiodic poems ; its earliest form, as far as we can trace. Upon it was founded the sublime tragedy of Aischylus, “The Enchained Prométheus,” together with at least one more tragedy, now lost, by the same author Aischylus has made several important alterations ; describing the human race, not as having once en- joyed and subsequently lost a state of tranquillity and enjoyment, but as originally feeble and wretched. He suppresses both the first trick played off by Prométheus upon Zeus respecting the partition of the victim—and the final formation and sending of Pandéra—which are the two most marked portions of the Hesi- ri veg. odic story ; while on the other hand he brings out métheus of prominently and enlarges upon the theft of ἔτ," which “schylus. in Hesiod is but slightly touched. If he has thus re- linquished the antique simplicity of the story, he has rendered more than ample compensation by imparting to it a grandeur of idéal, a large reach of thought combined with appeals to our

; 1 Theog. 534. Οὕνεκ᾽ épigero βουλὰς Προμηθεὺς Πύρφορος, and a satyric ὑπερμενέϊ Κρονίωνι. drama, Προμηθεὺς Ππυρκαεύς (Die Grie- Theog. 521—532. chischen "Prag .

3 Of the tragedy called Ἰτρομηθεὺς story of Prométheus had also been Avéuevos some few fragments yet re- handled by ΠΒΈΡΗΝ in one of her lost Main : Προμηθεὺς ἸΤύρφορος was a sa- songs (Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. vi. 42). tyric drama, according to Dindorf: 4 Apollodérus too mentions only the Welcker recognises a third tragedy, theft of fire (i. 7, 1).

Cuap. ΠῚ. THE PROMPTHEUS OF ASCHYLUS. 75

earnest and admiring sympathy, and a pregnancy of suggestion in regard to the relations between the gods and man, which soar far above the Hesiodic level, and which render his tragedy the most impressive, though not the most artistically composed, of all Grecian dramatic productions. Prométheus there appears not only as the heroic champion and sufferer in the cause and for the protection of the human race, but also as the gifted teacher of all the arts, helps, and ornaments of life, amongst which fire is only one :1 all this against the will and in defiance of the purpose of Zeus, who, on acquiring his empire, wished to destroy the human race and to beget some new breed.? Moreover, new relations between Prométheus and Zeus are superadded by Aischylus. At the commencement of the struggle between Zeus and the Titan gods, Prométheus had vainly attempted to prevail upon the latter to conduct it with prudence; but when he found that they obstinately declined all wise counsel, and that their ruin was in- evitable, he abandoned their cause and joined Zeus. To him and to his advice Zeus owed the victory ; yet the monstrous ingrati- tude and tyranny of the latter is now manifested by nailing him to a rock, for no other crime than because he frustrated the pur- pose of extinguishing the human race, and furnished to them the means of living with tolerable comfort. The new ruler Zeus, insolent with his victory over the old gods, tramples down all right, and sets at naught sympathy and obligation, as well towards gods as towards man. Yet the prophetic Prométheus, in the midst of intense suffering, is consoled by the foreknowledge that the time will come when Zeus must again send for him, release him, and invoke his aid, as the sole means of averting from nimself dangers otherwise insurmountable. The security and means of continuance for mankind have now been placed beyond the reach of Zeus—whom Prométheus proudly defies, glorying in his generous and successful championship,‘ despite the terrible price which he is doomed to pay for it.

As the Hischylean Prométheus, though retaining the old linea-

1 Asch. Prom. 442—506.— Οὐκ ἔσχεν οὐδέν᾽, ἀλλ᾽ ἀϊστώσας a s as ref vos eee τέχναι βροτοῖσιν ἐκ Προμὴ- τὸ sy, ἔχρῃζεν ἄλλο φιτῦσαι νέον ws. 3 Asch. Prom. 198—222. 123.— 3 Asch, Prom. 231.— διὰ τὴν λίαν φιλότητα βροτῶν,

Βροτῶν δὲ τῶν ταλαιπώρων λόγυν 4 Zsch. Prom. 169—770.

76 LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS. Part I.

ments, has acquired a new colouring, soul, and character, so he has also become identified with a special locality.

Nivel Pao. In Hesiod there is no indication of the place in which métheus he is imprisoned ; but Aischylus places it in Seythia,!

confined. and the general belief of the Greeks supposed it to be on Mount Caucasus. So long and so firmly did this belief continue, that the Roman general Pompey, when in command of an army in Kolchis, made with his companion, the literary Greek Theophanés, a special march to view the spot in Caucasus where Prométheus had been transfixed?

1Prometh. 2. See also the Frag- that Mount Caucasus is a place diffe- ments of the Prométheus Solutus, 177- rent from that to which the suffering 179, oe ee —— vai teat “ = prisoner is chained. specia named; but v. 719 o Θ Ρ om ΣῈ PromBthens Vinctas sechis ῳ imply * Appian, Bell. Mithridat. ο. 108

Cuap. 17, HEROIO LEGENDS.—GENEALOGY OF ARGOS, 77

CHAPTER IV. HEROIC LEGENDS.—GENEALOGY OF ARGOS.

Havine briefly enumerated the gods of Greece, with their chief attributes as described in legend, we come to those genealogies which connected them with historical men.

* In the retrospective faith of a Greek, the ideas of worship and ancestry coalesced. Every association of men, large gtructure or small, in whom there existed a feeling of present sor Pa union, traced back that union to some common initial Grecian | progenitor ; that progenitor being either the common 8°2e#osies. god whom they worshipped, or some semi-divine person closely allied tohim. What the feelings of the community require is, a continuous pedigree to connect them with this respected source of existence, beyond which they do not think of looking back. A series of names, placed in filiation or fraternity, together with a certain number of family or personal adventures ascribed to some of the individuals among them, constitute the ante-historical past through which the Greek looks back to his gods. The names of this genealogy are, to a great degree, gentile or local names familiar to the people,—rivers, mountains, springs, lakes, vil- lages, demes, &c.,—embodied as persons, and introduced as acting or suffering. They are moreover called kings or chiefs, but the existence of a body of subjects surrounding them is tacitly implied rather than distinctly set forth ; for their own personal exploits or family proceedings constitute for the most part the whole matter of narrative. And thus the genealogy was ΑΜ ον ΣΝ made to satisfy at once the appetite of the Greeks for the Grecian romantic adventure, and their demand for an unbroken community line of filiation between themselves and the gods. common The eponymous personage, from whom the community derive their name, is sometimes the begotten son of the local god,

78 HEROIC LEGENDS.—GENEALOGY OF ARGOS, Part 1.

sometimes an indigenous man sprung from the earth, which is indeed itself divinized.

It will be seen from the mere description of these genealogies that they included elements human and historical, as well as elements divine and extra-historical. And if we could determine the time at which any genealogy was first framed, we should be able to assure ourselves that the men then represented as Lowermem- present, together with their fathers and grandfathers, bers of the were real persons of flesh and blood. But this isa historical — point which can seldom be ascertained ; moreover, high ermem- even if it could be ascertained, we must at once set it historical. —_ aside, if we wish to look at the genealogy in the point of view of the Greeks. For to them, not only all the members were alike real, but the gods and heroes at the commencement were in a Thenon. Certain sense the most real; at least, they were the historical © most esteemed and indispensable of all. The value of se be- the genealogy consisted, not in its length, but in its lieved, ἀπά continuity ; not (according to the feeling of modern west, by aristocracy) in the power of setting out a prolonged

* series of human fathers and grandfathers, but in the sense of ancestral union with the primitive god. And the length of the series is traceable rather to humility, inasmuch as the same person who was gratified with the belief that he was descended from a god in the fifteenth generation, would have accounted it criminal insolence to affirm that a god was his father or grand- father. In presenting to the reader those genealogies which constitute the supposed primitive history of Hellas, I make no pretence to distinguish names real and historical from fictitious creations ; partly because I have no evidence upon which to draw the line, and partly because by attempting it I should altogether depart from the genuine Grecian point of view.

Nor is it possible to do more than exhibit a certain selection of Number of such as were most current and interesting ; ; for the ee gene- total number of them which found place in Grecian pervading faith exceeds computation. Asa general rule, every fraction of deme, every gens, every aggregate of men accustomed Greoks, to combined action, religious or political, had its own. The small and unimportant demes into which Attica was divided had each its ancestral god and heroes, just as much as the great

"»

Cnap. IV. INACHUS—PHORONEUS. | 79

Athens herself. Even among the villages of Phokis, which Pausanias will hardly permit himself to call towns, deductions of legendary antiquity were not wanting. And it is important to bear in mind, when we are reading the legendary genealogies of Argos, or Sparta, or Thébes, that these are merely samples amidst an extensive class, all perfectly analogous, and all exhibiting the religious and patriotic retrospect of some fraction of the Hellenic world. They are no more matter of historical tradition than.any of the thousand other legendary genealogies which men delighted to recall to memory at the periodical festivals of their gens, their deme, or their village.

With these few prefatory remarks, I proceed to notice the most conspicuous of the Grecian heroic pedigrees, and first, that of Argos.

The earliest name in Argeian antiquity is that of Inachus, the son of Oceanus and Téthys, who gave his name to the Ἰνδοὶ, river flowing under the walls of the town. According genealogy tothe chronological computations of those whoregarded ~2¢hus- the mythical genealogies as substantive history, and who allotted a given number of years to each generation, the reign of Inachus was placed 1986 8.0.) or about 1100 years prior to the commence- ment of the recorded Olympiads.

The sons of Inachus were Phoréneus and Agialeus ; both of whom however were sometimes represented as autochthonous or indigenous men, the one in the territory of Argos, the other in that of Sikyén. Mgialeus gave his name to the north-western region of the Peloponnésus, on the southern coast of the Corinthian Gulf? The name of Phoréneus was of great celebrity in the Argeian mythical genealogies, and furnished both the title and the subject of the ancient poem called Phorénis, in which he is styled “the father of mortal men”. He is said to have imparted to mankind, who had before him lived altogether isolated, the first notion and habits of social existence, and even

Phoréneus.

1 Apollodér. 11. 1, Mr. Fynes Clinton 2 Pausan. ii. 5, 4.

does not admit the historical reality of 3 See Diintzer, Fragm. Epic. Gree. Inachus; but he places Phoréneus p. 57. The Argeian author Akusilaus, seventeen generations, or 570 years treated Phoréneus as the first of men, prior to the Trojan war, 978 aon Fragm. 14. Didot. ap. Clem. Alex. earlier than the first recorded Olym- Stromat. i. p. 321. Φορωνῆες, a synonym piad. See Fasti Hellenici, vol. iii. c. i. ue Argeians: Theocrit. Idyt. xxx, p. 19. . .

80 HEROIC LEGENDS.—GENEALOGY OF ARGOS. Part 1.

the first knowledge of fire: his dominion extended over the whole Peloponnésus. His tomb at Argos, and seemingly also the place, called the Phorénic city, in which he formed the first settlement of mankind, were still shown in the days of Pausanias.1 The offspring of Phoréneus, by the nymph Telediké, were Apis and Niobé. Apis, a harsh ruler, was put to death by Thelxién and Telchin, having given to Peloponnésus the name of Apia: he was succeeded by Argos, the son of his sister Niobé by the god Zeus. From this sovereign Peloponnésus was denominated Argos. By his wife Evadné, daughter of Strymén,? he had four sons, Ekbasus, Peiras, Epidaurus, and Kriasus. Ekbasus was succeeded by his Argos son Agéndér, and he again by his son Argos Panoptés, Panoptés. a very powerful prince, who is said to have had eyes distributed over all his body, and to have liberated Peloponnésus from several monsters and wild animals which infested it:* Akusilaus and Aischylus make this Argos an earthborn person, while Pherekydés reports him as son of Arestér. Iasus was the son of Argos Panoptés by Isméné, daughter of Asépus. According to the authors whom Apollodérus and Pausanias prefer, the cele-

brated 16 was his daughter: but the Hesiodic epic (as

well as Akusilaus) represented her as daughter of Peiras, while Aischylus and Kastor the chronologist affirmed the primitive king Inachus to have: been her father. A favourite theme, as well for the ancient genealogical poets as for the Attic tragedians, were the adventures of Τὸ ; of whom, while priestess of Héré, at the ancient and renowned Hérzon between Mykénz and Tiryns, Zeus became amorous. When Héré discovered the intrigue and taxed him with it, he denied the charge, and metamorphosed I6 into a white cow. Héré, requiring that the cow should be surrendered to her, placed her under the keeping of Argos Panoptés ; but this guardian was slain by Hermés, at the command of Zeus ; and Héré then drove the cow [ὃ away

1 Apollodér. ii. 1,1; Pausan. ii. 15, was that Argos was changed into a 5; ἊΝ 5; 20, 8. eacock (Schol. Aristoph, Aves, 103), pollod. 1. c. The mention of Macrobius (ij. 19) considers Strynbe seems connected with an allegorical expression of the ι starry 4éschylus, Suppl. 255. heaven, an idea which Panofka 8 Akusil. . 17, ed. Didot; upholds in one of the recent ΤΙ Zisch. — 568 ; Pherekyd. lungen of the Berlin Academy, 1837, p.

121 seq 2, p. 56, ed. Diintzer: a Apollod. ii. 1, 1; Pausan. ii. 16, 1; among = Pa vatisties of the story, one isch. Prom. Υ͂. . 590—663.

ἘΕῚ -

Cuap. IV. THE ADVENTURES OF 10. 81

from her native land by means of the incessant stinging of ἃ gad- fly, which compelled her to wander without repose or sustenance over an immeasurable extent of foreign regions. The wandering I6 gave her name to the Ionian Gulf, traversed Epirus and ‘Illyria, passed the chain of Mount Hemus and the lofty summits of Caucasus, and swam across the Thracian or Cimmerian Bosporus (which also from her derived its appellation) into Asia. She then went through Scythia, Cimmeria, and many Asiatic regions, until she arrived in Egypt, where Zeus at length bestowed upon her rest, restored her to her original form, and enabled her to give birth to his black son Epaphos.t Such isa general sketch of the adventures which the ancient poets, epic, lyric, and tragic, and the logographers after them, connect with the name of the Argeian I6—one of the numerous tales which the fancy of the Greeks deduced from the amorous dispositions of Zeus and the jealousy of Héré. That the scene should be laid in the Argeian territory appears natural, when we recollect that both Argos and Mykéne were under the special guardianship of Héré, and that the Hérzon near Mykénew was one of the oldest and most celebrated temples in which she was worshipped. It is useful to compare this amusing fiction with the representation reported to us by Herodotus, and derived by him as well from Pheenician as from Persian antiquarians, of the circumstances which occasioned the transit of Τὸ from ἘΣ . mance of Argos to Egypt,—an event recognised by all of them Τὸ histori- as historical matter of fact. According to the Persians, Sed by a Pheenician vessel had arrived at the port near Argos, freighted with goods intended for sale to the inhabi-

and Pheeni- clans. tants of the country. After the vessel had remained a few days,

1 Aischyl. Prom. v. 790—850; Apol- lod. ii. 1, Atschylus in the Supplices gives a different version of the wander- ings of 16 from that which appears in the Prométheus: in the former drama he carries her through Phrygia, Mysia, Lydia, Pamphylia, and Kilikia into

Egypt (Supplic. 544—566): nothing is 8—

there said about Prométheus, or casus, or Scythia, &c.

The track set forth in the Supplices is thus geographically intelligible: that in the Prométheus (though the most noticed of the two) defies all compre- Lension, even as a consistent fiction ;

aul-

nor has the erudition of the commen- tators been successful in clearing it rs See Schiitz, Excurs. iv. ad Prometh. Vinct. pp. 144—149; Welcker, Aischy-

lische Trilogie, pp. 127—146, and espe- cially Vélcker, Mythische Geographie der Griechen und Romer, part i. pp.

13.

The Greek inhabitants at Tarsus in Kilikia traced their origin to Argos: their story was, that Triptolemus had been sent forth from that town in quest of the wandering Τὸ, that he had fol- lowed her to Tyre, and then renounced the search in despair. He and his com-

ro) HEROIC LEGENDS.—GENEALOGY OF ARGOS. Part L

and disposed of most of her cargo, several Argeian women, and among them Ié the king’s daughter, coming on board to purchase, were seized and carried off by the crew, who sold Τὸ in Egypt. The Pheenician antiquarians, however, while they admitted the circumstance that I6 had left her own country in one of their vessels, gave a different colour to the whole by affirming that she emigrated voluntarily, having been engaged in an amour with the captain of the vessel, and fearing that her parents might come to the knowledge of her pregnancy. Both Persians and Pheenicians described the abduction of I6 as the first of a series of similar acts hetween Greeks and Asiatics, committed each in revenge for the preceding. First came the rape of Eurdpé from Pheenicia by Grecian adventurers,—perhaps, as Herodotus supposed, by Krétans: next, the abduction of Médeia from Kolchis by Jasén, which occasioned the retaliatory act of Paris, when he stole away Helena from Menelaos. Up to this point the seizures of women by Greeks from Asiatics, and by Asiatics from Greeks, had been equivalent both in number and in wrong. But the Greeks now thought fit to equip a vast conjoint expedition to recover Helen, in the course of which they took and sacked Troy. The invasions of Greece by Darius and Xerxes were intended, according to the Persian antiquarians, as a long-delayed retribution for the injury inflicted on the Asiatics by Agamemnén and his followers.2

dotus, or that of the old legen

specting the cause which carri To from Argos to Egypt, is the true one: Ephorus (ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii 168) mopere the ‘eden εὐ 1ὸ to

panions then settled soy at Tarsus, partly at Antioch (Strabo, xiv. 673; xv. 750). This is the story of Kadmos and Eurdépé inverted, as happens so often with the Grecian a

Homer calls Hermés * év7ns ; Egypt by the Pheenicians, subjoinin; but this nl ge ot hardly after suffi- a strange account of the pn ogy Οἱ cient that he was uainted the name Bosporus. The remarks of

with ὦ δ mythe οὗ Τὸ, as Vélcker sup- Plutarch on the narrative of —

poses ; it cannot be traced higher than Hesiod. According to some authors, whom Cicero copies, it was on account of the murder of Argos that Hermés was obliged to leave Greece and go into Egypt: then it was that he taught the Egyptians laws and letters Natur. Deor. iii. 22).

1The story in Parthénius (Nar-

rat. 1) is built upon this version of 105 adventures,

2 Herodot. i. 1—6. Pausanias (ii. 15, 1) will not undertake to determine whether the account given by Hero-

are curious: he ere as > oP ie of the κακοήθεια He- piece Dope the peer tee

creditable a narrative S eee ae daughter of Inachus, δα all Geocks believe to have been divinized by foreigners, to have given names to seas and straits, and to be the source of the

iesenee os, ἰὸν Tasus, of the Parse

calls Herodotus φιλοβάρβαρος (Piatarch, De Malign. Mets cx. Gi xiv. pp. 856, 857).

Cuap. IV. DANAOS AND HiS FIFTY DAUGHTERS. 83

The account thus given of the adventures of 16, when con- trasted with the genuine legend, is interesting, as it tends to illustrate the phenomenon which early Grecian history is con- stantly presenting to us,—the way in which the epical furniture of an unknown past is recast and newly coloured so as to meet those changes which take place in the retrospective feelings of the present. The religious and poetical character of the whole legend disappears: nothing remains except the names of persons and places, and the voyage from Argos to Egypt: we have in exchange {)°'DS ian a sober, quasi-historical narrative, the value of which war. consists in its bearing on the grand contemporary conflicts between Persia and Greece, which filled the imagination of Herodotus and his readers,

To proceed with the genealogy of the kings of Argos, Iasus was succeeded by Krotépus, son of his brother Agénor; Krotépus by Sthenelas, and he again by Gelanér.1 In the reign of the latter, Danaos came with his fifty daughters from Egypt to Argos; and here we find another of those romantic adventures which so agreeably decorate the barrenness of the Bein mythical genealogies. Danaos and Aigyptos were two and the brothers descending from Epaphos, son of Id: Aigyptos Panaides. had fifty sons, who were eager to marry the fifty daughters of Danaos, in spite of the strongest repugnance of the latter. To escape such a necessity, Danaos placed his fifty daughters on board of a penteconter (or vessel with fifty oars) and sought refuge at Argos; touching in his voyage at the island of Rhodes, where he erected a statue of Athéné at Lindos, which was long exhibited as a memorial of his passage. Aigyptos and his sons

Legendary abductions of heroines adapted to the feelings orwens

which he has cited :—‘‘ Videant alii,

1 It would be an Le rp fatigue V quomodo genealogias heroicas, et chro-

to enumerate the multiplied and irre-

concileable discrepancies in regard to every step of this old Argeian gene- alogy. Whoever desires to see them brought together may consult Schubart, Questiones in Antiquitatem Heroicam, Marburg, 1832, capp. 1 and 2.

The remarks which Schubart makes

. 85) upon Petit-Radel’s Chronological

bles will be assented to by those who follow the unceasing string of contra- dictions, without any sufficient reason to believe that any one of them, is more worthy of trust than the remainder,

nologie rationes, in concordiam redi- gant. Ipse abstineo, probe persuasus, stemmata vera, historie fide compro- bata, in systema chronologie redigi posse: at ore per secula tradita, a ——- reficta, sepe mutata, prout abula postulare videbatur, ab histori- arum deinde conditoribus restituta, scilicet, brevi, qualia prostant stem- mata —chronologie secundum annos distribute vincula semper recusatura esse.”

84 HEROIC LEGENDS.—GENEALOGY OF ARGOS. Part I,

followed them to Argos, and still pressed their suit, to which Danaos found himself compelled to assent; but on the wedding night he furnished each of his daughters with a dagger, and enjoined them to murder their husbands during the hour of sleep. His orders were obeyed by all, with the single exception of Hypermnéstra, who preserved her husband Lynkeus, incur- ring displeasure and punishment from her father. He afterwards, however, pardoned her; and when, by the voluntary abdication of Gelanér, he became king of Argos, Lynkeus was recognised as his son-in-law, and ultimately succeeded him. The remaining daughters, having been purified by Athéné and Hermés, were given in marriage to the victors in a gymnic contest publicly proclaimed. From Danaos was derived the name of Danai, applied to the inhabitants of the Argeian territory,’ and to the Homeric Greeks generally.

From the legend of the Danaides we pass to two barren names Akrisios of kings, Lynkeus and hisson Abas. The two sons of and Prestos. Abas were Akrisios and Preetos, who, after much dis- sension, divided between them the Argeian territory ; Akrisios ruling at Argos, and Preetos at Tiryns. The families of both formed the theme of romantic stories. To pass over for the pre- sent the legend of Bellerophén, and the unrequited passion which the wife of Proetos conceived for him, we are told that the daughters of Preetos, beautiful, and solicited in marriage by suitors from all Greece, were smitten with leprosy and driven mad, wandering in unseemly guise throughout Peloponnésus. The visitation had overtaken them, according to Hesiod, because they refused to take part in the Bacchic rites ; according to Pherekydés and the Argeian Akusilaus,? because they had treated scornfully the wooden statue and simple equipments of Héré : the religious character of the old legend here displays itself in a remarkable manner. Unable to cure his daughters, Preetos invoked the aid

1 Apollod. 1. The Supplices με ἀν oot βόε θεν Epi Rachaias' is Fes commencing γα eds —. ee a trilogy on this subject of the Dae 2 Apo hereky¢ naides,— IxeriSes, Αἰγύπτιοι, Aavatdes. Hom. en τ "295 : Hesi pakke, Griechisch. Tragédien, vol. Marktsch. Fr. 36, 37, 38. These Frag:

ἣν 48: the two latter are lost. The ments belo: to the Hesiodic Catalogue olde ic poem called Danaisor Danaides, of Women: Apollodérus seems to refer which is mentioned in the Tabula Iliaca ἔθ some other of the numerous Hesiodic as containing 5000 verses, has perished poems. Diodérus (iv. 68) assigns the and is, unfortunately, very little al- anger of Dionysos as the cause,

Crap. IV. THE FRENZY OF THE PRO@TIDES, 85

of the renowned Pylian prophet and leech, Melampus son of Amythaén, who undertook to remove the malady on condition of being rewarded with the third part of the kingdom. Preetos indignantly refused these conditions : but the state of The pre. his daughters becoming aggravated and intolerable, (ipscured he was compelled again to apply to Melampus ; who, Melampus. on the second request, raised his demands still higher, and re- quired another third of the kingdom for his brother Bias. These terms being acceded to, he performed his part of the covenant. He appeased the wrath of Héré by prayer and sacrifice ; or, according to another account, he approached the deranged women at the head of a troop of young men, with shouting and ecstatic dance,—the ceremonies appropriate to the Bacchic worship of Dionysos,—and in this manner effected their cure. Melampus, a name celebrated in many different Grecian mythes, is the legen- dary founder and progenitor of a great and long-continued family of prophets. He and his brother Bias became kings of separate portions of the Argeian territory : he is recognised as ruler there even in the Odyssey, and the prophet Theoklymenos, his grandson, is protected and carried to Ithaka by Telemachus.1 Herodotus also alludes to the cure of the women, and to the double king- dom of Melampus and Bias in the Argeian land : recognising Melampus as the first person who introduced to the knowledge of the Greeks the name and worship of Dionysos, with its appro- priate sacrifices and phallic processions. Here again he histori- cises various features of the old legend in a manner not unworthy of notice.?

But Danaé, the daughter of Akrisios, with her son Perseus, acquired still greater celebrity than her cousins the PADS Preetides. An oracle had apprised Akrisios that his Danaé, and daughter would give birth to a son by whose hand he “"* would himself be slain. To guard against this danger, he impri- soned Danaé in a chamber of brass under ground. But the god Zeus had become amorous of her, and found means to descend

1 Odyss. xv. 240—256. to Pylus to invoke his aid: the heroic 2 Herod. ix. 34; ii. 49: compare wenger sean Pte me pervades the primi- Pausan. ii.18,4. Instead of the Pree- tive story a tides, or daughters of Proetos, it is the Kallimachus notices the Proetid vir- Argeian women generally whom he gins as the parties suffering from mad- represents Melampus as Paving cured, ness, but he treats Artemis as the heal. and the Argeians generally who send ing influence (Hymn. ad Dianam, 235).

86 HEROIC LEGENDS.—GENEALOGY OF ARGOS. Part I.

through the roof in the form of a shower of gold : the consequence of his visits was the birth of Perseus. When Akrisios discovered that his daughter had given existence to a son, he enclosed both the mother and the child in a coffer, which he cast into the sea.! The coffer was carried to the isle of Seriphos, where Diktys, brother of the king Polydektés, fished it up, and rescued both Danaé and Perseus. The exploits of Perseus, when he grew up, against the three Phorkydes or daughters of Phorkys, and the

three Gorgons, are among the most marvellous and imaginative —

in all Grecian legend: they bear a stamp almost Oriental. I shall not here repeat the details of those unparalleled hazards which the special favour of Athéné enabled him to overcome, and which ended in his bringing back from Libya the terrific head of the Gorgon Medusa, endued with the property of and the turning every one who looked upon it into stone. In Gorgons. his return he rescued Andromeda, daughter of Ké- pheus, who had been exposed to be devoured by a sea-monster,

and brought her back as his wife. Akrisios trembled to see him -

after this victorious expedition, and retired into Thessaly to avoid him ; but Perseus followed him thither, and having suc- ceeded in calming his apprehensions, became competitor in a gymnic contest where his grandfather was among the spectators. By an incautious swing of his quoit, he unintentionally struck Akrisios, and caused his death : the predictions of the oracle were thus at last fulfilled. Stung with remorse at the catastrophe, and unwilling to return to Argos, which had been the principality of Akrisios, Perseus made an exchange with Megapenthés, son of Preetos king of Tiryns. Megapenthés became king of Argos, and Perseus of Tiryns : moreover the latter founded, within ten miles of Argos, the far-famed city of Mykénz. The massive walls of this city, like those of Tiryns, of which a large portion yet re- mains, were built for him by the Lykian Cyclépes.?

We here reach the commencement of the Perseid dynasty of Mykénz. It should be noticed, however, that there were among the ancient legends contradictory accounts of the foundation of this city. Both the Odyssey and the great Eoiai enumerated,

1 The beautiful fragment of Simoni- classical reader. dés (Fragm. vii. ed. Gaisford, Poet. 2 Paus. ii, 15, 4 i Hi, 16, 5. Apol-

rd, Min.), describing Danaé and the child lod. ii, 2, Pherekyd. Fragm. 26, thus exposed, is familiar to every Dind. :

(ΠΑΡ. IV. PERSEUS AND THE PERSEIDS. 87

among the heroines, Mykéné, the Eponyma of the city; the former poem classifying her with Tyr6é and Alkméné, the latter describing her as the daughter of Inachus and wife of Arestér. And Akusilaus mentioned an Eponymous Mykéneus, the son of Spartén and grand- son of Phoréneus.*

The prophetic family of Melampus maintained itself in one of the three parts of the divided Argeian kingdom for five genera- tions, down to Amphiaraos and his sons Alkmz6n and Amphi- lochos. The dynasty of his brother Bias, and that of Megapen- thés, son of Preetos, continued each for four generations : a list of barren names fills up the interval.2 The Perseids of Mykénz boasted a descent long and glorious, heroic as well as historical, continuing down to the last kings of Sparta.? The issue of Per- seus was numerous: his son Alkzeos was father of Alkméné ;4 a third, Sthenelos, father of Eurysthenes.

After the death of Perseus, Alkeeos and Amphitryon dwelt at Tiryns. The latter became engaged i in a quarrel with Amphi- Elektryén respecting cattle, and in a fit of passion ἀγὸς, Alk- killed him ;* moreover the piratical Taphians from Sthenelos. the west coast of Akarnania invaded the country, and slew the sons of Alektryén, so that Alkméné alone was left of that family. She was engaged to wed Amphitry6n ; but she bound him by oath not to consummate the marriage until he had avenged upon the Télebox the death of her brothers. Amphitryén, compelled to flee the country as the murderer of his uncle, took refuge in Thébes, whither Alkméné accompanied him: Sthenelos was left

Foundation of Mykénze —commence- ment of Perseid dynasty.

Ss. ii. 120. Hesiod. i ae tee οἷν arktscheff.—Akusil. Fr . 16. Pausan. ii. 16, 4. Hekatzus erived the name of the town from the porns of the sword of Perseus

but he may be πον assigned to an ora between the 30th and 40th Olym-

Asios must have adopted a totally different legend respecting the birth of

Dind.). The Schol. ad . Orest. pg and the circumstances pre- 1247, mentions M κόπους αι τ son of it, among which the deaths of Spartén, but gran Phégeus the her father and brothers are highly in- brother of Phoroneus. fluential, Nor could he have accepted

2 Pausan. ii. 18, 4,

3 Herodot. vi. 53.

4 In the Hesiodic Shield of Héraklés, Alkméné is distinctly mentioned as daughter of Elektryén: the genea- logical poet, Asios, called her the ri of Amphiaraos and Eriphyle

Fragm. 4, ed. Markt. p. 412). The te of Asios cannot be precisely fixed ;

the received chronology of the sieges of Thébes and Troy.

5 So runs the old legend in the Hesi- odic Shield of Héraklés ame 9 Apol- lodérus (or Pherekydés, whom he follows) softens it down, and represents the death of Elektryén | as accidentally

caused by Am vada. Fragm. ἢ ἜΑΣΙ ii, 4,6. Pherekydés, Dind

88 HEROIC LEGENDS.—GENEALOGY OF ARGOS. Part I.

in possession of Tiryns. The Kadmeians of Thébes, together with the Lokrians and Phokians, supplied Amphitry6n with troops, which he conducted against the Téleboz and the Taphians:} yet he could not have subdued them without the aid of Komethd, daughter of the Taphian king Pterelaus, who conceived a passion for him, and cut off from her father’s head the golden lock to which Poseidén had attached the gift of immortality.* Having conquered and expelled his enemies, Amphitryén returned to Thébes, impatient to consummate his marriage: but Zeus on the Zeusand Wedding-night assumed his form and visited Alk- Alkméné. = méné before him: he had determined to produce from her a son superior to all his prior offspring,—“ a specimen of in- vincible force both to gods and men”.’ At the proper time Alk- méné was delivered of twin sons: Héraklés, the offspring of Zeus, —the inferior and unhonoured Iphiklés, offspring of Amphitry6n.*

When Alkméné was on the point of being delivered at Thébes, Birth of Zeus publicly boasted among the assembled gods, at Héraklés. [ἢ instigation of the mischief-making Até, that there was on that day about to be born on earth, from his breed, a son who should rule over all his neighbours. Héré treated this as an empty boast, calling upon him to bind himself by an irremis- sible oath that the prediction should be realized. Zeus incau- tiously pledged his solemn word ; upon which Héré darted swiftly down from Olympus to the Achaic Argos, where the wife of Sthene- los (son of Perseus, and therefore grandson of Zeus) was already seven months gone with child. By the aid of the Eileithyia, the special goddesses of parturition, she caused Eurystheus, the son of Sthenelos, to be born before his time on that very day, while she retarded the delivery of Alkméné. Then returning to Olympus, she announced the fact to Zeus: “The good man Eurystheus, son of the Perseid Sthenelos, is this day born of thy loins : the sceptre of the Argeians worthily belongs tohim”. Zeus was thunder- struck at the consummation which he had improvidently bound himself to accomplish. He seized Até his evil counsellor by the

1 Hesiod. Scut. Herc. 24. Theocrit, fable of Nisus at Megara, infra, chap. Idyll. xxiv. 4. Teleboas, the E xii. nymous of these marauding p 8, 8 Hesiod. Scut. Herc. 29. ὄφρα was son of Poseidén (Anaximander, ap. θεοῖσιν Pee ταὶ τ᾽ ἀλφηστῇσιν ἀρῆς Athen. xi. p. 498). ἀλκτῆρα puted ; 2 Apollod. ii. 4, 7. Compare the ὁ Hesiod. Εἰ Sc. ΕἾ. 50—56.

Cuap. IV. THE BIRTH OF HBRAKLES. 89

hair, and hurled her for ever away from Olympus : but he had no power to avert the ascendency of Eurystheus and the servitude of Héraklés. “Many a pang did he suffer when he saw his favourite son going through his degrading toil in the tasks imposed upon him by Eurystheus.”?

The legend, of unquestionable antiquity, here transcribed from the Iliad, is one of the most pregnant and charac- jyomoric teristic in the Grecian mythology. It explains, ac- He rah cording to the religious ideas familiar to the old epic its exposi- poets, both the distinguishing attributes and the end- ‘*Y value. less toils and endurances of Héraklés,—the most renowned and most ubiquitous of all the semi-divine personages worshipped by the Hellénes,—a being of irresistible force, and especially beloved by Zeus, yet condemned constantly to labour for others and to obey the commands of a worthless and cowardly persecutor. His recompense is reserved to the close of his career, when his afflict- ing trials are brought to a close: he is then admitted to the god- head and receives in marriage Hébé.? The twelve labours, as they are called, too notorious to be here detailed, form a very smal] fraction of the exploits of this mighty being, which filled the Héra. kleian epics of the ancient poets. He is found not only in most parts of Hellas, but throughout all the regions then known to the Greeks, from Gadés to the river Therméd6n in the Euxine and to Scythia, overcoming all difficulties and vanquishing all opponents. Distinguished families are everywhere to be traced who bear his patronymic, and glory in the belief that they are his descendants. Among Achzans, Kadmeians, and Dérians, Héra- klés is venerated: the latter especially treat him as their principal hero,—the Patron Hero-God of the race: the Hérakleids form among all Dérians a privileged gens, in which at Sparta the special lineage of the two kings was included.

His character lends itself to mythes countless in number, as well as disparate in their character. The irresistible force re- mains constant, but it is sometimes applied with reckless violence

αἷς Homer, Iliad. xix. 90-133; also 2 Hesiod, Theogon. 951, τελέσας στο- = San : véevras ἀέθλους. Hom. Odyss. xi. 620; Τὴν αἰεὶ στενάχεσχ᾽, ὅθ᾽ ἑὸν φίλον υἱὸν Hesiod. Eee, Fragm. 24, Diintzer, p. δρῷτο Σ Sta a , "Epyov ἀεικὲς ἔχοντα, ὑπ᾽ Ἐὐρυσθῆος 36, πονηρότατον καὶ ἄριστον. ἀέθλων.

90 HEROIC LEGENDS.—GENEALOGY OF ARGOS. Part I.

against friends as well as enemies, sometimes devoted to the relief of the oppressed. The comic writers often brought him out asa coarse and stupid glutton, while the Keian philosopher Prodikos, without at all distorting the type, extracted from it the simple, impressive, and imperishable apologue still known as the choice of Hercules.

After the death and apotheosis of Héraklés, his son Hyllos and Thattée. v8 other children were expelled and persecuted by Kleidsex- Eurystheus; the fear of whose vengeance deterred

both the Trachinian king Kéyx and the Thebans from harbouring them. The Athenians alone were generous enough to brave the risk of offering them shelter. Eurystheus invaded Attica, but perished in the attempt by the hand of Hyllos, or by that of Iolaos, the old companion and nephew of Héraklés The chivalrous courage which the Athenians had on this occasion displayed on behalf of oppressed innocence was a favourite theme for subsequent eulogy by Attic poets and orators.

All the sons of Eurystheus lost their lives in the battle along with him, so that the Perseid family was now represented only by the Hérakleids, who collected an army and endeavoured to recover the possessions from which they had been expelled. The united forces of I6nians, Achzans, and Arcadians, then inhabit- ing Peloponnésus, met the invaders at the isthmus, when Hyllos, the eldest of the sons of Héraklés, proposed that the contest should be determined by a single combat between himself and any champion of the opposing army. It was agreed that if Hyllos were victorious, the Hérakleids should be restored to their possessions—if he were vanquished, that they should forego all claim for the space of a hundred years, or fifty years, or three generations,—for in the specification of the time accounts differ. Echemos, the hero of Tegea in Arcadia, accepted the challenge, and Hyllos was slain in the encounter; in consequence of which the Hérakleids retired, and resided along with the Dorians under the protection of Agimios, son of Dérus.? As soon as the stipulated period of truce had expired, they renewed their attempt upon Peloponnésus, conjointly with the Dérians, and with complete success: the great Dérian establishments of —

1 Apoll. ii. 8, 1; Hecate. ap. Longin. 2Herodot, ix. 26; Diodér. iy, ¢. 27 ; Diodér. iv. 57. ᾿ 68. Ἢ

Cuap. IV. THE ABRAKLEIDS. 91

Argos, Sparta, and Messénia were the result. The details of this victorious invasion will be hereafter recounted.

Sikyén, Phlios, Epidauros, and Treezen? all boasted of respected eponyms and a genealogy of dignified length, not . exempt from the usual discrepancies—but all just as Let et much entitled to a place on the tablet of history as Feloponné- the more renowned Atolids or Hérakleids. I omit establish. them here because I wish to impress upon the reader’s Argos, mind the salient features and character of the legen- 8 sora gl dary world,—not to load his memory with a full list of legendary names.

1 Pausan. ii. 5,5; 12, 5; 26, 3. His like Argos tended to alter the gene- statements indicate how much the alogies of these inferior towns. predominance of a powerful neighbour

92 DEUKALION, HELLEN, AND SONS OF HELLEN. party

CHAPTER V. DEUKALION, HELLEN, AND SONS OF HELLEN.

In the Hesiodie theogony, as well as in the “ Works and Days,”

the legend of Prométheus and Epimétheus presents an import religious, ethical, and social, and in this sense it is carried

forward by Eschylus; but to neither of the characters is’ any genealogical function assigned. The Hesiodic Catalogue

of Women brought both of them into the stream of Grecian

legendary lineage, representing Deukalién as the son of Pro-

métheus and Pandéra, and seemingly his wife Pyrrha as

daughter of Epimétheus."

Deukalién is important in Grecian mythical narrative under Deukalién, *¥° points of view. First, he is the person specially son of Pro- saved at the time of the general deluge: next, he is métheus. ἢ 6 father of Hellén, the great eponym of the Hellenic race; at least this was the more current story, though there were other statements which made Hellén the son of Zeus. _

The name of Deukalién is originally connected with the Lokrian towns of Kynos and Opus, and with the race of the . Leleges, but he appears finally as settled in Thessaly, and ruling in the portion of that country called Phthidtis.? According to what seems to have been the old legendary account, it is the

1 Schol. ad Apollén. Rhod. iii. 1085. ΔΛεκτοὺς ἐκ γαίης Adas πόρε Δευκα- iad regina of the gene ὑφ λίωνι.

eukalién are given in the Scho ᾿ δ Homer. Odyss. . 2, on the authority The reputed lin of Deukalién

both of Hesiod and Akusilaus. continued in Phthia down to the time 2Hesiodic Catalog. Fragm. xi; of Dikearchus, if we may Judge from Gaisf. lxx. Diintzer— the old Phthiot Pherekratés, whom he troduced in one of his dialogues as a

5 R Pe in’ Ἧτοι yap Aoxpds Λελέγων ἡγήσατο disputant, and whom he expressly λαῶν, anno’ as a descendant of Deuka-

oie ke Ὡς ὃς. ἄ4θ ῃ dant τ ujdea ides, ρονίδης Ζεὺς ἄφθιτα Jian (Cicero, Tuscul. Disp. i. 10).

Cuap. V. GENERAL DELUGE. * 93

deluge which transferred him from the one to the other; but according to another statement, framed in more historicising times, he conducted a body of Kurétes and Leleges into Thessaly, and expelled the prior Pelasgian occupants." The enormous iniquity with which earth was contaminated— as Apollodérus says, by the then existing brazen race, Phthidtis: 15: or as others say, by the fifty monstrous sons of his perma- Lykaén—provoked Zeus to send a general deluge? "°™* seat An unremitting and terrible rain laid the whole of Greece under water, except the highest mountain tops, whereon a few stragglers found refuge. Deukalién was saved in a chest or ark, which he had been forewarned by his father Prométheus to construct. After floating for nine days on the water, he at length landed on the summit of Mount Parnassus. Zeus having sent Hermés to him, promising to grant whatever he asked, he prayed that men and companions might be sent to him in his solitude: accordingly Zeus directed both him and Pyrrha to cast stones over their heads: those cast by Pyrrha became women, those by Deukaliédn men. And thus the “stony race of men” (if we may

be allowed to translate an etymology which the Greek eco language presents exactly, and which has not been Selvation disdained by Hesiod, by Pindar, by Epicharmus, and Pe

by Virgil) came to tenant the soil of Greece. Deuka-

1 The latter account is given by Dionys. Halic. i. 17: the former seems to have been given by Hellanikus, who affirmed that the ark after the deluge stopped upon Mount Othrys, and not upon Mount Parnassus (Schol. Pind. ut sup.), the former being suitable for a settlement in Thessaly.

Pyrrha is the eponymous heroine of Pyrrhea or i op the ancient name of a portion of Thessaly (Rhianus,

. 18, p. 71, ed. Diintzer).

ellanikus had written a work, now lost, entitled Δευκαλιώνεια : all the fragments of it which are cited have reference to places in Thessaly, Lokris, and Phokis. See Preller, ad Hellani- cum, p. 12 (Dérpt. 1840). Probably Hellanikus is the main source of the important position occupied by Deuka- lién in Grecian legend. Thrasybulus and Akestodérus represented Deuka- lién as having founded the oracle of Dédéna, immediately after the deluge (Etym. Mag. v. Δωδωναῖος).

2 Apollodérus connects this deluge with the wickedness of the brazen race in Hesiod, according to the practice, general with the logographers, of string- ing together a sequence out of legends totally unconnected with each other (i. 7, 2).

8 Hesiod, Fragm. 135, ed. Markts. ap. Strabo. vii, p. 332, where the word Aaas, proposed by Heyne as the reading of the unintelligible text, appears to me preferable to Wi of the other sug- waters Pindar, Olymp. ix. 47. "Arep

> Ἑὐνᾶς ὁμόδαμον Κρησάσθαν λίθινον ὄνον" Aaot δ᾽ ὠνόμασθεν. Virgil, eorgic. i. 68. ‘* Unde homines nati, durum genus.” Epicharmus ap. Schol. Pindar. Olymp. ix. 56, Hygin. f. 153. Philochorus retained the etymology: though he gave a totally different fable, nowise connected with Deukalién, to account for it: a curious proof how Pek it was to the fancy of the

reeks (sce Schol. ad Pind. 1. ο, 68).

94 ᾿ς DEUKALION, HELLEN, AND SONS OF HELLEN. parr L

lién on landing from the ark sacrificed a grateful offering to Zeus Phyxios, or the god of escape; he also erected altars in Thessaly to the twelve great gods of Olympus.?

The reality of this deluge was firmly believed throughout the historical ages of Greece ; the chronologers, reckoning up by genealogies, assigned the exact date of it, and placed it at the same time as the conflagration of the world by the rashness of Phaéth6n, during the reign of Krotépos, king of Argos, the seventh from Inachus.2 The meteorological work of Aristotle admits and reasons upon this deluge as an unquestionable fact, though he alters the locality by placing it west of Mount Pindus, near Dédéna and the river Acheléus.3 He at the same time treats it as a physical phenomenon, the result of periodical cycles in the atmosphere,—thus departing from the religious character of the old legend, which described it as a judgment inflicted by Zeus upon a wicked race. Statements founded upon this event were in circulation throughout Greece even to a very late date. ae The Megarians affirmed that Megaros, their hero, son this deluge Of Zeus by a local nymph, had found safety from the throughout waters on the lofty summit of their mountain Geraneia,

which had not been completely submerged. And in the magnificent temple of the Olympian Zeus at Athens a cavity in the earth was shown, through which it was affirmed that the waters of the deluge had retired. Even in the time of Pausanias, the priest poured into this cavity holy offerings of meal and honey.* In this, as in other parts of Greece, the idea of the Deukalionian deluge was blended with the religious impressions of the people, and commemorated by their sacred ceremonies.

1 Apoliod. i. 7,2. Hellanic. Fr. 15, flagration are connected together also Did. Hellanikus affirmed that the ark in Servius ad Vir Bucol. vi. 41: he rested on Mount Othrys, not on Mount refines both of them into a ‘muta-. Parnassus (Fr. 16. Did.) ; Servius (ad tionem temporum”.

Virg. Eclog. vi. 41) placed it on Mount 3 Aristot. Meteorol. i. 14. Justin oe Hyginus (f. 153), on Mount rationalises the fable by telling us that Deukalién was king of Thessaly, who πεν: Tatian adv. Gree, c. 60, adopte > Rigiives shelter and protection to the both by be = ages and ον ἕως δι itives from the deluge (ii. 6, 11). Parian marble placed this deluge in Pausan. i. 18, 7; 40, 1. According the reign of -Kranaos at Athens, 752 to the Parian marble (8. 5), Deukalién years before the first recorded Olym- had come to Athens after the deluge, ory ond 1528 BA before the Chris. and had there himself founded the pres Sie eee 28 hepa ta Zeus. The

Nyctimus in Arcadia (iii. 8,2; 14,5). names of beukalion and Pyrrha, given The deluge and the ekpyrosis or con- by Vilcker in hisingenious Mythologie

Cuap, V HELLEN AND AMPHIKTYON. 95

The offspring of Deukalién and Pyrrha were two sons, Hellén and Amphiktyon, and a daughter, Protogeneia, whose jy Πδη and son by Zeus was Aéthlius: it was however maintained Amphik- by many that “Hellén was the son of Zeus and not of 1: Deukalién. Hellén had by a nymph three sons, Dérus, Xuthus, and Molus. He gave to those who had been before called Greeks?! the name of Hellénes, and partitioned his territory among his three children, olus reigned in Thessaly; Xuthus received Peloponnésus, and had by Kreiisa as his sons Acheus and [6n ; while Dérus occupied the country lying opposite to the Pelopon- nésus, on the northern side of the Corinthian Gulf. These three gave to the inhabitants of their respective countries the names of fHolians, Acheans and Iénians, and Dérians.?

Such is the genealogy as we find it in Apollodérus. In so far as the names and filiation are concerned, many points gong of in it are given differently, or implicitly contradicted, reg by Euripidés and other writers. Though as literal Xnthus, and personal history it deserves no notice, its import is “!s- both intelligible and comprehensive. It expounds and symbolises the first fraternal aggregation of Hellénic men, together with their territorial distribution and the institutions which they collectively venerated.

There were two great holding-points in common for every

‘section of Greeks. One was the Amphiktyonic , |,

: phikty- assembly, which met half-yearly, alternately at onic assem Delphi and at Thermopyle ; originally and chiefly P¥-—Com- for common religious purposes, but indirectly and nities and occasionally embracing political and social objects a along with them. The other was the public festivals or games, of which the Olympic came first in importance ; next the Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian,—institutions which combined religious solemnities with recreative effusion and hearty sympathies, in a manner so imposing and so unparalleled. Amphikty6n represents des Iapetischen Geschlechts (Giessen, Latinus purport to be mentioned, 1824), p. 343, appears to me not at all is Seo Hes convincing. ee Hesiod, Theogon. 1013, and

1Such is the statement of Apol- ve Fragm. xxix. ed. Gottling : lodérus (i. 7, 8); but I cannot with the note of Gottlin also bring myself to believe that the Wachsmuth, Hellen. Alterth. ἢ 1, name (Γραϊκοῦ Greeks is at all old p. 311, eae Griech, Literat.

in the legend, or that the passage vol. i. p. 16 of Hesiod, in which Grecus and 2 Apollod. i. 7, 4.

96 DEUKALION, HELLEN, AND SONS OF HELLEN. Parr.

the first of these institutions, and Aéthlius the second. As the Amphiktyonic assembly was always especially connected with Thermopyle and Thessaly, Amphikty6n is made the son of the Thessalian Deukalién ; but as the Olympic festival was nowise locally connected with Deukalién, Aéthlius is represented as having Zeus for his father, and as touching Deukalién only through the maternal line. It will be seen presently that the only matter predicated respecting Aéthlius is, that he settled in the territory of Elis, and begat Endymién : this brings him into local contact with the Olympic games, and his function is then ended.

Having thus got Hellas as an aggregate with its main Division of cementing forces, we march on to its sub-division Hellas: into parts, through AZolus, Dérus, and Xuthus, the Dorians, three sons of Hellén,! a distribution which is far from cack being exhaustive : nevertheless, the genealogists whom Apollodérus follows recognise no more than three sons.

The genealogy is essentially post-Homeric ; for Homer knows Hellas and the Hellénes only in connexion with a portion of Achaia Phthidtis. But as it is recognised in the Hesiodic Cata- logue*—composed probably within the first century after the commencement of recorded Olympiads, or before 676 B.c.—the peculiarities of it, dating from so early a period, deserve much attention. We may remark, first, that it seems to exhibit to us Dérus and olus as the only pure and genuine offspring of Hellén. For their brother Xuthus is not enrolled as an epony- mus ; he neither founds nor names any people ; it is only his sons Achzus and I6n, after his blood has been mingled with that of the Erechtheid Kreiisa, who become eponyms and founders, each of his own separate people. Next, as to the territorial dis- ao a ibaa ce cE, to, sa

me persons, such 7 greg = Ién,

as the real progenitors o e races ΄ Rak de 2 call ed after him, may be seen by this, ἘΆΝ ἢ sd ἐγένοντο θεμιστόπολοι that Aristotle gives this common de- rae ans + ay ᾿ i acent na thet ΕΞ athe on of yévos (Meta- Δῶρός τε, ξοῦθός τε, kai Αἴολος immo

aa anda χάρμης. : physic. iv. p. 118, Brandis) :— ἐπεὶ Αἰολίδαι δ᾽ ἐγένοντο θεμιστόπολοι eri λέγεται, τὸ μὲν. . . τὸ δὲ, βασιλῆες ἀφ᾽ οὗ ἂν ὦσι πρώτου κινήσαντος εἰς τὸ ὺς ἠδ᾽ "ACK fms re εἶναι. Οὕτω yap λέγονται οἱ μὲν, “EAAn- — ς ἠδ᾽ ᾿Αϑάμας καὶ Σίσυφοῦ ate

Rarer: τῶ ἐφ τοις. pe ves τὸ γένος, οἱ δὲ, Ἴωνες" τῷ, οἱ μὲν αλμωνεύς τ᾽ ἄδικος καὶ ὑπέρθυ ἀπὸ Ἕλληνος, οἱ δὲ ἀπὸ Ἴωνος, εἶναι = eviod. : tad on πρώτου γεννήσαντος.

Crap. V. DORIANS NORTH OF THE CORINTHIAN GULF. 97

tribution, Xuthus receives Peloponnésus from his father, and unites himself with Attica (which the author of this genealogy seems to have conceived as originally unconnected with Hellén) by his marriage with the daughter of the indigenous hero Erech- theus. The issue of this marriage, Achzus and I6n, present to us the population of Peloponnésus and Attica conjointly as re- lated among themselves by the tie of brotherhood, but as one degree more distant both from Dérians and olians, Molus reigns over the regions about Thessaly, and calls the people in those parts Molians ; while Dérus occupies “the country over against Peloponnésus on the opposite side of the Corinthian Gulf,” and calls the inhabitants after himself Dérians.1 It is at once evident that this designation is in no way applicable to the confined district between Parnassus and (ita, which alone is known by the name of Déris, and its inhabitants by that of Dérians, in the historical ages, In the view of the author of this genealogy, the Dérians are the original occupants of Large the large range of territory north of the Corinthian ¢xtent of Gulf, comprising Aitélia, Phékis, and the territory of plied in this the Ozolian Lokrians. And this farther harmonises ®°"°™°8¥ with the other legend noticed by Apollodérus, when he states that Aitélus, son of Endymidén, having been forced to expatriate from Peloponnésus, crossed into the Kurétid territory,” and was there hospitably received by Dérus, Laodokus, and Polypeetes, sons of Apollo and Phthia. He slew his hosts, acquired the territory, and gave toit the name of Aitélia; his son Pleurén married Xanthippé, daughter of Dérus ; while his other son, Kaly- dén, marries Aolia, daughter of Amythaén. Here again we have the name of Dérus, or the Dérians, connected with the tract sub- sequently termed Aitélia. That Dérus should in one place be 1Apoll. i. 7, 8. Ἕλληνος δὲ καὶ Strabo (viii. p. 883) and Conén (Nar, Νύμφης ᾿Ορσήϊδος (2), Δῶρος, Ἐοῦθος, 27), who evidently copy from the same Αἴολος, Αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν ἀφ᾽ αὑτοῦ τοὺς source, ee Dérus as going to

καλουμένους Τραϊκοὺς προσηγόρευσεν settle in the territory properly known Ἕλληνας, τοῖς δὲ παῖσιν ἐμέρισε τὴν as Doris.

χώραν. Καὶ Ξοῦθος μὲν λαβὼν τὴν ΠΙελο- πόννησον, ἐκ Κρεούσης τῆς Ἐρεχθέως ᾿Αχαιὸν ἐγέννησε καὶ Ἴωνα, ἀφ᾽ ὧν ᾿Αχαιοὶ καὶ Ἴωνες καλοῦνται. Δῶρος δὲ, τὴν πέραν χώραν Πελοποννή- σου λαβὼν, τοὺς κατοίκους ad’ ἑαυτοῦ Δωριεῖς ἐκάλεσεν. Αἴολος δὲ, βασιλεύων τῶν περὶ Θετταλίαν τόπων, τοὺς ἐνοικοῦντας Αἰολεῖς προσηγύρευσεν.

2 Apollod. i. 7, 6. Αἰτωλὸς. . φυγὼν eis τὴν Κουρητίδα χώραν, κτείνας τοὺς ὑποδεξαμένους Φθίας καὶ ᾿Απόλλω- νος υἱοὺς, Δῶρον καὶ Λαόδοκον καὶ ἸΤολυ- ποίτην, ἀφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ τὴν χώραν Αἰτωλίαν ἐκάλεσεν. Again,i. 8,1. Πλευρὼν (son of Aitélus) γήμας Ἐανθίππην τὴν Δώρου, παῖδα ἐγέννησεν ᾿Αγήνορα,

38 DEUKALION, HELLEN, AND SONS OF HELLEN. parr

called the son of Apollo and Phthia, and in another place the son of Hellén by a nymph, will surprise no one accustomed to the fluctuating personal nomenclature of these old legends : moreover the name of Phthia is easy to reconcile with that of Hellén, as both are identified with the same portion of Thessaly, even from the days of the Iliad.

This story, that the Dérians were at one time the occupants, or the chief occupants, of the range of territory between the river Achel6us and the northern shore of the Corinthian gulf, is at least more suitable to the facts attested by historical evidence than the legends given in Herodotus, who represents the Dérians as originally in the Phthidtid ; then as passing under Dérus, the son of Hellén, into the Histizétid, under the mountains of Ossa and Olympus ; next, as driven by the Kadmeians into the regions of Pindus; from thence passing into the Dryopid territory, on Mount (Eta; lastly, from thence into Peloponnésus.’ The received story was, that the great Dérian establishments in Peloponnésus were formed by invasion from the north, and that the invaders crossed the gulf from Naupaktus,—a statement which, however disputable with respect to Argos, seems highly probable in regard both to Sparta and Messénia. That the name of Dérians comprehended far more than the inhabitants of the insignificant tetrapolis of Déris Proper must be assumed, if we believe that they conquered Sparta and Messénia: both the magnitude of the conquest itself Thisform and the passage of a large portion of them from Nau- dina paktus, harmonise with the legend as given by Apol- harmonises lodérus, in which the Dérians are represented as the μέκεῖ νυ principal inhabitants of the northern shore of the gulf.

lishments The statements which we find in Herodotus, respect-

of the

historical ing the early migrations of the Dérians, have been _

εὐ; considered as possessing greater historical value than

those of the fabulist Apollodérus. But both are equally matter of legend, while the brief indications of the latter seem to be most in harmony with the facts which we afterwards find attested by history.

It has already been mentioned that the genealogy which makes £olus, Xuthus, and Dérus sons of Hellén, is as old as the Hesiodie Catalogue ; probably also that which makes Hellén son of Deu- — kalién. Aéthlius also is an Hesiodic personage: whether Am-

1 Herod. i. 56,

Cuap. V. - ACHAUS AS AN EPONYM. 99

phiktyén be so or not, we have no proof.! They could not have been introduced into the legendary genealogy until after the Olympic games and the Amphiktyonic council had acquired an established and extensive reverence throughout Greece,

Respecting Dérus the son of Hellén, we find neither legends nor legendary genealogy ; respecting Xuthus, very little beyond the tale of Kreiisa and I6n, which has its place more naturally among the Attic fables. Achzeus, however, who is here represented as the son of Xuthus, appears in other stories with very different parentage and accompaniments. According to the statement which we find in Dionysius of Halikarnassus, Achzus, Phthius, and Pelasgus are sons of Poseidén and Larissa. They migrate from Peloponnésus into Thessaly, and distribute the Thessalian territory between them, giving their names to its principal divi- sions : their descendants in the sixth generation were driven out of that country by the invasion of Deukalién at the head of the Kurétes and the Leleges.2 This was the story of those who wanted to provide an eponymus for the Acheans in the southern districts of Thessaly : Pau- sanias accomplishes the same object by different means, representing Achzus the son of Xuthus as having gone back to Thessaly and occupied the portion of it to which his father was entitled. Then, by way of explaining how it was that there were Achzans at Sparta and at Argos, he tells us that Archander and Architelés the sons of Achzeus, came back from Thessaly to Peloponnésus, and married two daughters of Danaus : they acquired great influence at Argos and Sparta, and gave to the people the name of Achzans after their father Achzus.3

Achzeus— urpose Which his

name

serves in the legend.

1Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iv. 57. Tov δὲ ᾿Ενδυμίωνα Ἡσίοδος μὲν ᾿Αεθλίου τοῦ Διὸς καὶ Καλύκης παῖδα λέγει. ᾿ Καὶ Πείρανδρος δὲ τὰ αὐτά φησι, καὶ ᾿Ακουσίλαος, καὶ Φερεκύδης, καὶ Νίκαν- Spos ἐν δευτέρῳ Αἰτωλικῶν, καὶ Θεόπομ- πος ἐν ᾽᾿Ἐποποιΐαις. ecting the parentage οὗ Hellén, the references to Hesiod are very con- fused. Compare Schol. Homer. Odyss. x. 2,and Schol. Apollon, Rhod. iii. 1086. See also Hellanic. Frag. 10. Didot. Apollodérus and Pherekydés before him (Fragm. 51. Didot), called Proto- neia daughter of Deukalién ; Pindar (Olrm . ix. 64) designated her as ughter of Opus. One of the strata-

gems mentioned by the Scholiast to get rid of this genealogical discrepancy was the supposition that De ién had two names (διώνυμος) ; that he was also named Opus. (Schol. Pind. Olymp.

ix. 85.

That the Deukalide or posterity of Deukalién reigned in Thessaly, was mentioned both by Hesiod and Heka- teus, ap. Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iv. 265.

2 Dionys. H. A. R. i. 17.

3 Pausan. vii. 1, 1—3. Herodotus also mentions (ii. 97) Archander, son of Phthius and grandson of Achzeus, who married the daughter of Danaus. Larcher (Essai sur la Chronologie d’Hé- rodote, ch. x. p. 321) tells us that this

100 DEUKALION, HELLEN, AND SONS OF HELLEN. Part

Euripidés also deviates very materially from the Hesiodic genealogy in respect to the eponymous persons. In the drama called I6n, he describes Ién as son of Kreiisa by Apollo, but adopted by Xuthus : according to him, the real sons of Xuthus and Kreiisa are Dérus and Acheus,!—eponyms of the Déorians and Achzans in the interior of Peloponnésus. And it is a still more capital point of difference that he omits Hellén altogether—making Xuthus an Achzan by race, the son of olus, who is the son of Zeus. This is the more remarkable, as in the fragments of two other dramas of Euripidés, the Melanippé and the olus, we find Hellén men- tioned both as father of AZolus and son of Zeus.? To the general public even of the most instructed city of Greece, fluctuations and discrepancies in these mythical genealogies seem to have been neither surprising nor offensive.

Genealogi- cal ae sities.

cannot be the Danaus who came from Egypt, the father of the fifty daughters, who must have lived two centuries earlier, as may be proved by chrono- logical arguments: this must be another Danaus, according to him. Strabo seems to give a different story respecting the Achzans in Pelopon- nésus:_ he ΒΑΡ —_, they were be ag original population of the peninsula, that they came in from Phthia with Pelops, and inhabited Laconia, which was from them called Argos Achaicum, and that on the conquest of the Dé- rians, they moved into Achaia properly

so called, expelling the Ionians there- from (Strabo, viii. p. 365). This narra- tive is, I presume, borrowed from Ephorus.

1 Eurip. Ion, 1590.

2 Eurip. Ion, 64.

3 See the Fragments of these two ie s in Matthiae’s edition ; compare

elcker, Griechisch. Tragéd. v. il. p. 842. If we may judge from the Frag- ments of the Latin Melanippé of Ennius (see Fragm. 2, ed. Bothe), Hellén was introduced as one of the characters of the piece.

Cap. Vi. THE AOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF HoLUs. 101

CHAPTER VI, THE AOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF HOLUS.

Ir two of the sons of Hellén, Dérus and Xuthus, present to us families comparatively unnoticed in mythical narrative, the third son, Holus, richly makes up for the deficiency. From him we pass to his seven sons and five daughters, amidst a great abun- dance of heroic and poetical incident.

In dealing, however, with these extensive mythical families, it is necessary to observe, that the legendary world of Legends of Greece, in the manner in which it is presented to us, psa appears invested with a degree of symmetry and co- py ont herence which did not originally belong toit. For thee δ τὰ the old ballads and stories which were sung or re- ito series. counted at the multiplied festivals of Greece, each on its own special theme, have been lost: the religious narratives, which the Exégétés of every temple had present to his memory, explanatory of the peculiar religious ceremonies and local customs in his own town or deme, had passed away. All these primitive elements, originally distinct and unconnected, are removed out of our sight, and we possess only an aggregate result, formed by many con- fluent streams of fable, and connected together by the agency of subsequent poets and logographers. Even the earliest agents in this work of connecting and systematising—the Hesiodic poets— have been hardly at all preserved. Our information respecting Grecian mythology is derived chiefly from the prose logographers who followed them, and in whose works, since a continuous narrative was above all things essential to them, the fabulous personages are woven into still more comprehensive pedigrees, and the original isolation of the legends still better disguised. Hekateeus, Pherekydés, Hellanikus, and Akusilaus lived at a

ἰοῦ tHE moxiDs, OR soNS AND DAUGHTERS OF AOLUS. Pant Lh

time when the idea of Hellas as one great whole, composed of fraternal sections, was deeply rooted in the mind of every Greek, and when the hypothesis of a few great families, branching out widely from one common stem was more popular and acceptable than that of a distinct indigenous origin in each of the separate districts. These logographers, indeed, have themselves been lost; but Apollodérus and the various scholiasts, our great immediate sources of information respecting Grecian mythology, chiefly borrowed from them: so that the legendary world of Greece is in fact known to us through them, combined with the dramatic and Alexandrine poets, their Latin imitators, and the still later class of scholiasts—except indeed such occasional glimpses as we obtain from the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the remaining Hesiodic fragments, which exhibit but too frequently a hopeless diversity when confronted with the narratives of the logographers.

Though olus (as has been already stated) is himself called the son of Hellén along with Dérus and Xuthus, yet the legends concerning the olids, far from being dependent upon this genealogy, are not all even coherent with it: moreover the name of Holus in the legend is older than that of Hellén, inasmuch as it occurs both in the Iliad and Odyssey.? Odysseus sees in the under-world the beautiful Tyré, daughter of Salmoneus, and wife of Krétheus, son of olus.

£olus is represented as having reigned in Thessaly: his seven Hisseven sons were Krétheus, Sisyphus, Athamas, Salmdéneus, sonsand =-_‘Deién, Magnés, and Periérés: his five daughters, daughters. Canacé, Alcyoné, Peisidiké, Calycé, and Perimédé. The fables of this race seem to be distinguished by a constant introduction of the god Poseidén, as well as by an unusual prevalence of haughty and presumptuous attributes among the £olid heroes, leading them to affront the gods by pretences of equality, and sometimes even by defiance. The worship of Poseidén must probably have been diffused and pre-eminent among a people with whom those legends originated.

Aolus,

1 Tliad, vi. 154. Σίσυφος Αἰολίδης, &e. Ἢ φάτο Σαλμωνῆος ἀμύμονος ἔκγονος Again, Odyss. xi. 234.— εἶναι,

"Ev@’ ἤτοι πρώτην Τυρὼ ἴδον εὖ πα" νὰ δὲ «Κρηθῆος γυνὴ ἔμμεναι Αἶο-

τέρειαν,

AP VL SALMONEUS—TYRO, 103

Section I.—Sons or Aouvs.

Salméneus is not described in the Odyssey as son of Aolus, but he is so denominated both in the Hesiodic Catalogue and by the subsequent logographers. His daughter Tyré became enamoured of the river Enipeus, the most beautiful 4 prt of all streams that traverse the earth; she frequented Molid the banks assiduously, and there the god Poseidén Salmbnous, found means to indulge his passion for her, assuming TY" the character of the river-god himself. The fruit of this alliance were the twin brothers, Pelias and Néleus: Tyré afterwards was given in marriage to her uncle Krétheus, another son of Aolus, by whom she had Aisén, Pherés, and Amythaén—all names of celebrity in the heroic legends.!| The adventures of Tyré formed the subject of an affecting drama of Sophoklés, now lost. Her father had married a second wife, named Sidéréd, whose cruel counsels induced him to punish and torture his daughter on account of her intercourse with Poseid6n. She was shorn of her magnificent hair, beaten and ill-used in various ways, and con- fined in a loathsome dungeon. Unable to take care of her twa children, she had been compelled to expose them immediately on their birth in a little boat on the river Enipeus; they were preserved by the kindness of a herdsman, and when grown up to manhood, rescued their mother, and revenged her wrongs by putting to death the iron-hearted Sidéré.2 This pathetic tale respecting the long imprisonment of Tyré is substituted by Sophoklés in place of the Homeric legend, which represented her to have become the wife of Krétheus, and mother of a numerous offspring.®

Her father, the unjust Salméneus, exhibited in his conduct the most insolent impiety towards the gods. He assumed the name

1 Homer, Odyss. xi. 234—257; xv. ad Aristoph. Av. 276. See the few 26, fragments of the lost drama in Din-

2Diodérus, iv. 68. Sophoklés, dorf’s Collection, p. 53, The plot was Fragm. 1. Τυρώ. Σαφῶς Σιδηρὼ καὶ in many respects analogous to the φέρουσα τοὔνομα. The genius of So- Antiopé of Euripidés. phoklés is occasionally seduced by this 3 A third story, different both from play upon the etymology of a name, Homer and from Sophoklés, ae, apy even in the most impressive scenes of Tyré, is found in ΣΥΝ ‘ab. Ix.): his tragedies. See Ajax, 425. Com- it is of a tragical cast, and borrowed, pare Hellanik. Fragm. p. 9, ed. Preller. like so many other tales in that col-

ere was a first and second edition of lection, from one of the lost Greek the Tyré—rijs δευτέρας Τυροῦς. Schol. dramas,

104 THE AOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF AOLUS. Parr f.

and title even of Zeus, and caused to be offered to himself the sacrifices destined for that god: he also imitated the thunder and lightning, by driving about with brazen caldrons attached to his chariot, and casting lighted torches towards heaven. Such wickedness finally drew upon him the wrath of Zeus, who smote him with a thunderbolt, and effaced from the earth the city which he had founded, with all its inhabitants.

Pelias and Néleus, “both stout vassals of the great Zeus,” be- Peliasand came engaged in dissension respecting the kingdom of Néleus. Iélkos in Thessaly. Pelias got possession of it, and dwelt there in plenty and prosperity ; but he had offended the goddess Héré by killing Sidéré upon her altar, and the effects of her wrath were manifested in his relations with his nephew Jas6n.?

Néleus quitted Thessaly, went into Peloponnésus, and there founded the kingdom of Pylos. He purchased, by immense mar- riage presents, the privilege of wedding the beautiful Chléris, daughter of Amphién, king of Orchomenos, by whom he had twelve sons and but one daughter’—the fair and captivating Péré, whom suitors from all the neighbourhood courted in marriage. But Néleus, “the haughtiest of living men,”* refused to entertain the pretensions of any of them: he would grant his daughter only to that man who should bring to him the oxen of Iphiklos, from Phylaké in Thessaly. These precious animals were carefully guarded, as well by herdsmen as by a dog whom neither man nor animal could approach. Nevertheless, Bias, the son of Amythaén, nephew of Néleus, being desperately enamoured of Péré, prevailed upon his brother Melampus to undertake for his sake the perilous adventure in spite of the prophetic knowledge

1 Apollod. i. 9, 7. tg ». τ᾽ 586, has retouched it) marks its ancient ἄδικος καὶ ὑπέρθυμος ἹΤεριή, ene date: the final circumstance of that Catal. 8. Mark techer tale was, that the city and its inhabi-

Where the city of Sate bantis was tants were annihilated.

situated, the ancient investigators were not ; whether in the Pisatid, or in Elis, or in ‘Thessaly (see Strabo, viii. . 356). Euripidés in his Zolus placed = on the επί τ the Alpheius urip. Fragm. Atol. 1). A Θ an ἐν ΕΣ in the Pisatid bore tee wane of Salméné; but the mention of the river Enipeus seems to mark Thessaly as the original seat of the legend. But the naiveté of the tale preserved by Apollodérus (Virgil iz the Aneid, vi.

δ Ephorus ρα Salmoneus king of e ns and of the (Fragm. 15, edt Didod.

The lost drama of Sophoklés, ae Σαλμωνεύς, Was a δρᾶμα σατυρικόν. See Dindorf’s Fragm. 483.

2 Hom. Od. xi. 280. Apollod. i. 9, 9. xparépw θεραπόντε Διός, &e.

3 Diodér. iv. 68. 4 Νηλέα τε μεγάθυμον, ἀγανότατον ζωόντων (Hom. ays. xv. "o09)

οσπαν, Vt. NELEUS—MELAMPUS. 105

of the latter, which forewarned him that though he would ulti- mately succeed, the prize must be purchased by severe captivity and suffering. Melampus, in attempting to steal the oxen, was seized and put in prison ; from whence nothing but his prophetic powers rescued him. Being acquainted with the language of worms, he heard these animals communicating to each other, in the roof over his head, that the beams were nearly eaten through and about to fall in. He communicated this intelligence to his guards, and demanded to be conveyed to another place of confine- ment, announcing that the roof would presently fall in and bury them. The prediction was fulfilled, and Phylakos, father of Iphiklos, full of wonder at this specimen of prophetic power, immediately caused him to be released. He further Pérd, Bina consulted him respecting the condition of his son and Melam. Iphiklos, who was childless; and promised him the P™* possession of the oxen on condition of his suggesting the means whereby offspring might be ensured. A vulture having com- municated to Melampus the requisite information, Podarkés, the son of Iphiklos, was born shortly afterwards. In this manner Melampus obtained possession of the oxen, and conveyed them to Pylos, ensuring to his brother Bias the hand of Péré.1 How this great legendary character, by miraculously healing the deranged daughters of Prcetos, procured both for himself and for Bias dominion in Argos, has been recounted in a preceding chapter.

Of the twelve sons of Néleus, one at least, Periklymenos,— besides the ever memorable Nestér,—was distin- periklyme- guished for his exploits as well as for his miraculous Ἐ08. gifts. Poseidén, the divine father of the race, had bestowed upon him the privilege of changing his form at pleasure into that of any bird, beast, reptile, or insect.2, He had occasion for all these resources, and he employed them for a time with success in

1 Hom. Od. xi. 278, xv. 234. Apollod. latter, returning with the oxen from i. 9,12. The basis of this curious ro- Phylaké, revenges himself upon Néleus mance is in the Odyssey, amplified by for the injury. Odyss. xv. 233. subsequent poets. There are points, 2 Hesiod, Catalog. ap. Schol. Apol-

however, in the old Homeric legend : A eer - > J6n. Rhod. i. 156 ; Ovid, Metam. xii. p. as it is briefly sketched in the fifteenth 556; Kustath. ad Odyss. xi. P. ὅδ. us,

book of the Odyssey, which seem to Poseidon carefully protects Ant

284 have been subsequently left out or : 7 sy varied. Néleus iad the property of πο Nestor, in the Iliad, xiii. ὅδ4---

Melampus during his absence: the

106 THE AOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZOLUS. Parr L defending his family against the terrible indignation of Héraklés, who, provoked by the refusal of Néleus to perform for him the ceremony of purification after his murder of Iphitus, attazked the Néleids at Pylos. Periklymenos by his extraordinary powers prolonged the resistance, but the hour of his fate was at length brought upon him by the intervention of Athéné, who pointed him out to Héraklés while he was perched as a bee upon the hero’s chariot. He was killed, and Héraklés became completely victorious, overpowering Poseidén, Héré, Arés, and Hadés, and even wounding the three latter, who assisted in the defence. Eleven of the sons of Néleus perished by his hand, while Nestér, then a youth, was preserved only by his accidental absence at Geréna, away from his father’s residence.?

The proud house of the Néleids was now reduced to Nestér ; Nestérand but Nestér singly sufficed to sustain its eminence. his exploits. He appears not only as the defender and avenger of Pylos against the insolence and rapacity of his Epeian neighbours at Elis, but also as aiding the Lapithz in their terrible combat against the Centaurs, and as companion of Théseus, Peirithéus, and the other great legendary heroes who preceded the Trojan war. In extreme old age his once marvellous power of handling his weapons has indeed passed away, but his activity remains unimpaired, and his sagacity as well as his influence in counsel is greater than ever. He not only assembles the various Grecian chiefs for the armament against Troy, perambulating the districts of Hellas along with Odysseus, but takes a vigorous part in the siege itself, and is of pre-eminent service to Agamemnén. And after the conclusion of the siege, he is one of the few Grecian

1 Hesiod, Catalog. ap. mg Ven. Iliad. ii. 336: and Steph. re: Tepnvia; Homer, Il. v. 392; xi. 693; Apollodér. ii. 7, 8: He Hesiod, Séut. ‘Here. 3 > 1x,

According to the 3 Homeric ene Néleus himself was not killed b raklés: subsequent ts or Png graphers, whom Apollodérus follows, seem to have thought it an injustice, that the offence given by Néleus him- self should have been avenged‘upon his sons and not upon himself ; they there- fore altered the legend upon this point and rejected the passage in the Tliad as spurious (see Schol. Ven. ad Dliad. xi. 682).

The refusal of purification by Néleus to Héraklés is a genuine legendary cause: the commentators, who (Mb disposed to spread a pales of histo froduced

over these tions, another cause,—Néleus, as ἘΣ Σ

Pylos, had aided ΕΣ Pier πος on their war agai Héraklés and ἊΨ Thébans (see Schol. Ven. ad Π|δᾶ. xi.

689).

The neighbourhood of Pylos was distinguished for its ancient worship both of Poseidén and of Hadés: there were abundant local legends respect- γῇ them (see Strabo, xiii. pp. 844,

ὕπαρ, Vi. NESTOR AND THE NA@LEIDS. 107

princes who returns to his original dominions. He is found, in a strenuous and honoured old age, in the midst of his children and subjects,—sitting with the sceptre of authority on the stone bench before his house at Pylos,—offering sacrifice to Poseidén, as his father Néleus had done before him,—and mourning only over the death of his favourite son Antilochus, who had fallen along with so many brave companions in arms in the Trojan war.

After Nestér the line of the Néleids numbers undistinguished names,—Bérus, Penthilus, and Andropompus,—three successive generations down to Melanthus, who on the invasion of Pelopon- nésus by the Herakleids, quitted Pylos and retired to Athens, where he became king, in a manner which I shall hereafter recount. His son Kodrus was the last Athenian king; y4.44, and Néleus, one of the sons of Kodrus, is mentioned down to as the principal conductor of what is called the Ionic *°4™ emigration from Athens to Asia Minor.? It is certain that during the historical age, not merely the princely family of the Kodrids in Milétus, Ephesus, and other Ionic cities, but some of the greatest families even in Athens itself, traced their heroic lineage through the Néleids up to Poseidén ; and the legends respecting Nestér and Periklymenos would find especial favour amidst Greeks with such feelings and belief. The Kodrids at Ephesus, and probably some other Ionic towns, long retained the title and honorary precedence of kings, even after they had lost the sub- stantial power belonging to the office. They stood in the same relation, embodying both religious worship and supposed ancestry, to the Néleids and Poseidén, as the chiefs of the Aolic colonies to Agamemnén and Orestés. The Athenian despot Peisistratus was named after the son of Nestdr in the Odyssey ; and we may safely presume that the heroic worship of the Néleids was as carefully cherished at the Ionic Milétus as at the Italian Meta- pontum.$

Having pursued the line of Salméneus and Néleus to the end

1 About Nestér. Iliad, i. 260—275; Melanthus, traces it through Perikly- ii. 870 ; xi. 670—770; Odyss. iii, 5,110, menos and not through Nestér; the 409. words of Herodotus imply that he must 2 Hellanik. Fragm. 10, ed. Didot; have included Nestér.

Pausan. vii. 2, ὃ; Herodot. v. 65; 4 Herodot. v. 67; Strabo, vi. p. 264;

Strabo, xiv. p. 633. Hellanikus, in ᾿ : giving the genealogy from Néleus to Mimnermus, Fragm. 9, Schneidewin.

-108 THE AOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZOLUS. Parti

of its legendary career, we may now turn back to that of another son of Holus, Krétheus,—a line hardly less celebrated Second 5 : - = Aolidline in respect of the heroic names which it presents. —Krétheus. Alkéstis, the most beautiful of the daughters of Pelias,! was promised by her father in marriage to the man who could bring him a lion and a boar tamed to the yoke and drawing to- gether. Admétus, son of Pherés, the eponymus of Phere in Thessaly, and thus grandson of Krétheus, was enabled by the aid of Apollo to fulfil this condition, and to win her ;? for Apollo happened at that time to be in his service as a slave (condemned to this penalty by Zeus for having put to death the Cyclépes), in which capacity he tended the herds and horses with such suc- cess, as to equip Eumélus (the son of Admétus) to the Trojan war with the finest horses in the Grecian army. Though menial duties were imposed upon him, even to the drudgery of grinding in the mill,® he yet carried away with him a grateful and friendly sentiment towards his mortal master, whom he interfered to rescue from the wrath of the goddess Artemis, when she was

indignant at the omission of her name in his wedding sacrifices. |

ὙΌΣ Admétus was about to perish by a premature death, and when Apollo, by earnest solicitation to the Fates, ob- Alkéstis. tained for him the privilege that his life should be prolonged, if he could find any person to die a voluntary death in his place. His father and his mother both refused to make this sacrifice for him, but the devoted attachment of his wife Alkéstis disposed her to embrace with cheerfulness the condition

1 Tiiad. ii. 715. Avipt παρὰ θνητῷ θητεύσεμεν εἰς .3 Apojlodér. i. 9, 15; Eustath. ad Girne STliad. ii. 711. TA} δὲ καὶ ὀβριμόθυμος "Ἄρης ὑπὸ πατ-

3 Euripid. Alkést. init. Welcker, Griechische Od. (p. 344) on the lost play of Sophoklés called Admétus or Alkéstis ; Hom. Iliad, ii. 766; Hygin. Fab. 50—51 (Sophoklés, Fr. Inc. 730; Dind. ap. Plutarch. Defect. Orac. p. 417). This tale of the temporary servi- tude of particular gods, by order of Zeus as a punishment for misbehaviour, recurs not unfrequently among the incidents of the mythical world. The poet Panyasis (ap. Clem. Alexand. Adm. ad Gent. p. 23)—

TAH μὲν Δημήτηρ, τλῆ δὲ κλυτὸς ᾿Αμφι- , γυής TAH δὲ

΄

ts : Τοσειδάων, τλῆ δ᾽ ἀργυρότοξος Από »

ρὸς ἀνάγκης.

The old legend followed out the~

fundamental idea with remarkable consistency ᾿Ξ τ; το τι as = — po’ master of Poseidén and Apollo, tarestenp to bind them hand poe to sell them in the distant islands, an to cut off the ears of both when they come to ask for their stipulated wages (liad, xxi. 455). It was a new turn given to the story by the Alexandrine poets, when they introduced the motive Paden “rs geen’ a wing (alli

on the rs) pollo i- machus, Hymn. Apoll. 49; Tibullus, Eleg. ii. 3, 11—30).

- ἤν

Crap. Vi. ALKESTIS—PRLEUS, 109

of dying to preserve her husband. She had already perished, when Héraklés, the ancient guest and friend of Admétus, arrived during the first hour of lamentation ; his strength and daring enabled him to rescue the deceased Alkéstis even from the grasp of Thanatos (Death), and to restore her alive to her disconsolate husband."

The son of Pelias, Akastus, had received and sheltered Péleus when obliged to fly his country in consequence of the involun- tary murder of Eurytiédn. Kréthéis, the wife of Aka- ae

; A . eus and stus, becoming enamoured of Péleus, made to him the wife of advances which he repudiated. Exasperated at his “*#stus. refusal, and determined to procure his destruction, she persuaded her husband that Péleus had attempted her chastity : upon which Akastus conducted Péleus out upon a hunting excursion among the woody regions of Mount Pélion, contrived to steal from him the sword fabricated and given by Héphestos, and then left him, alone and unarmed, to perish by the hands of the Centaurs or by the wild beasts. By the friendly aid of the Centaur Cheirén, however, Péleus was preserved, and his sword restored to him : returning to the city, he avenged himself by putting to death both Akastus and his perfidious wife.?

But amongst all the legends with which the name of Pelias is connected, by far the most memorable is that of Jasén and the Argonautic expedition. Jasén was son of Hsén, grandson of Kré- theus, and thus great-grandson of Molus. Pelias, having con- sulted the oracle respecting the security of his dominion at Idlkos, had received in answer a warning to beware of the man who should appear before him with only one sandal. He was celebrating a festival in honour of Poseidén, when it so happened that Jasén appeared before him with one of his feet unsandaled : he had lost one sandal in wading through the swollen current of the river Anauros. Pelias immediately understood that this was the enemy against whom the oracle had forewarned him. Asa

1 Eurip. Alkéstis, Arg. ; Apollod. i. Sra ig Amator. 17, vol. iv. p. 53, 9, 15. To bring this beautiful legend Wytt.).

more into the colour of history, a 2 The legend of Akastus and Péleus new version of it was subsequently was given in great detail in the Cata- framed: Héraklés was eminently logue of Hesiod (Catalog. Fragm. 20— skilled in medicine, and saved the 21. Marktscheff.); Schol. Pindar. life of Alkéstis when she was about Wem. iv. 95; Schol. Apoll. Rhod, i, to perish from a desperate malady 224; Apollod. iii. 13, 2.

110 THE AOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZOLUS. Parr I.

means of averting the danger, he imposed upon Jasén the despe-

Peliasand ate task of bringing back to Iélkos the Golden Fleece, ,

Jason. —the fleece of that ram which had carried Phryxos from Achaia to Kolchis, and which Phryxos had dedicated in the

latter country as an offering to the god Arés. The result of this.

injunction was the memorable expedition—of the ship Argé and her crew called the Argonauts, composed of the bravest and noblest youths of Greece—which cannot be conveniently in- eluded among the legends of the Aolids, and is reserved for a separate chapter.

The voyage of the Argé was long protracted, and Pelias, per- Jasonand suaded that neither the ship nor her crew would ever Médea. return, put to death both the father and mother of Jas6n, together with their infant son. Aisén, the father, being permitted to choose the manner of his own death, drank bull’s blood while performing a sacrifice to the gods. At length, how- ever, Jason did return, bringing with him not only the golden fleece, but also Médea, daughter of Alétés, king of Kolchis, as his

wife,—a woman distinguished for magical skill and cunning, by -

whose assistance alone the Argonauts had succeeded in their pro. ject. Though determined to avenge himself upon Pelias, Jasin knew that he could only succeed by stratagem. He remained with his companions a short distance from Idlkos, while Médea, feigning herself a fugitive from his ill-usage, entered the town alone, and procured access to the daughters of Pelias. By exhi- bitions of her magical powers she soon obtained unqualified ascendancy over their minds. For example, she selected from the flocks of Pelias aram in the extremity of old age, cut him up and boiled him in a caldron with herbs, and brought him out in the shape of a young and vigorous lamb :’ the daughters of Pelias were made to believe that their old father could in like manner be restored to youth. In this persuasion they cut him up with their own hands and cast his limbs into the caldron, trusting that Médea would produce upon him the same magical effect. Médea pretended that an invocation to the moon was a necessary part of

— ΩΣ

Cap. VI. PELIAS—JASON AND MEDEA. 111

the ceremony: she went up to the top of the house as if to pro- nounce it, and there lighting the fire-signal concerted with the Argonauts, Jasén and his companions burst in and possessed themselves of the town. Satisfied with having thus revenged himself, Jasén yielded the principality of Iélkos to Akastus, son of Pelias, and retired with Médea to Corinth. Thus did the god- dess Héré gratify her ancient wrath against Pelias : she had con- stantly watched over Jasén, and had carried the “ all-notorious ” Argé through its innumerable perils, in order that Jasin might bring home Médea to accomplish the ruin of his uncle The misguided daughters of Pelias departed as voluntary exiles to Arcadia; Akastus his son celebrated splendid funeral games in

honour of his deceased father.*

1The kindness of Héré towards Jas6n seems to be older in the legend than her displeasure against Pelias; at least it is specially noticed in the Odyssey, as the great cause of the escape of the ship Argé: ᾿Αλλ᾽ Ἥρη παρέπεμψεν, ἐπεὶ φίλος ἦεν Ἰήσων (τ 70). Inthe Hesiodic Theogony Pelias stands to Jasén in the same relation as Eurystheus to Héraklés,—a severe taskmaster as well as a wicked and insolent man,—dbfprorns Πελίης καὶ ἀτάσθαλος, ὀβριμόεργος (Theog. 995). Og pages Rhodius keeps the wrat of Héré against Pelias in the fore-

ound, i. 14; ii. 1184; iv. 242; see also ygin. f. 13. ere is great diversity in the stories given of the proximate circumstances connected with the death of Pelias: Eurip. Méd. 491; Apollodér. i. 9, 27; Diodor. iv. 50—52; Ovid, Metam. vii. 162, 208, 297, 347; Pausan. viii. 11, 2; Schol. ad Lycoph. 175.

In the legend of Akastus and Péleus, as recounted above, Akastus was made to perish by the hand of Péleus. [do not take upon me to reconcile these contradictions.

Pausanias mentions that he could not find in any of the poets, so far as he had read, the names of the daugh- ters of Péleus, and that the painter Mikén had given to them names (ὀνό- ματα δ᾽ αὐταῖς ποιητὴς μὲν ἔθετο οὐδεὶς, ὅσα γ᾽ ἐπελεξάμεθα ἡμεῖς, &c., Pausan. Viii. h. 1). Yet their names are given in the authors whom Diodérus copied ; and Alkéstis, at any rate, was most memorable. Mikén gave the names Asteropeia and Antinoé, altogether

different from those in Diodérus. Both Diodérus and Hyginus exonerate Al- késtis from all share in the death of her father (Hygin. f. 24).

The old poem called the Νόστοι (see Argum. ad Eurip. Méd., and Schol. Aristophan. Equit. 1321) recounted, that Médea had boiled in a caldron the old Aisén, father of Jasén, with herbs and incantations, and that she had brought him out young and strong. Ovid copies this (Metam. vii. 162903), It is singular that Pherekydés and Simonidés said that she performed this process upon Jasén himself (Schol. Aristoph. J. c.). Diogenes (ap. Stobe. Florileg. t. xxix. 92) rationalises the story, and converts Médea from an enchantress into an improving and re- generating preceptress. The death of 4isén, as described in the text, is

iven from Diodérus and Apollodérus. édea seems to have been worship

as a goddess in other places besides

Corinth (see Athenagor. Legat. pro

Christ. 12; Macrobius, i. 12, p. 247,

Gronov.).

2 These funeral es in honour of Pelias were among the most renowned of the mythical incidents: they were celebrated in a special oe by Stési- chorus, and represented on the chest of Kypselus at “a Kastor, Meleager, Amphiaraos, Jasén, Péleus, Mopsos, &c., contended in them (Pau- san. v. 17, 4; Stesichori Fragm. 1. p. 54, ed. Klewe; Athén. iv. 172). How familiar the details of them were to the mind of a literary Greek is in- directly attested by Plutarch, Sympos. Υ, 2, vol. iii. p. 762, Wytt.

112 THE ZOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZOLUS. Parrt

Jasén and Médea retired from Iélkos to Corinth where they Médeaat resided ten years: their children were—Medeius, Corinth. —_ whom the Centaur Cheirén educated in the regions of Mount Pélion,—and Mermerus and Pherés, born at Corinth. After they had resided there ten years in prosperity, Jasén set his affections on Glauké, daughter of Kreén® king of Corinth ; and as her father was willing to give her to him in marriage, he determined to repudiate Médea, who received orders forthwith to leave Corinth. Stung with this insult and bent upon revenge, Médea prepared a poisoned robe, and sent it as a marriage present to Glauké : it was unthinkingly accepted and put on, and the body of the unfortunate bride was burnt up and consumed. Kreén, her father, who tried to tear from her the burning garment, shared her fate and perished. The exulting Médea escaped by means of a chariot with winged serpents furnished to her by her grand- father Hélios : she placed herself under the protection of Hgeus at Athens, by whom she had a son named Médus. She left her young children in the sacred enclosure of the Akrean Héré, re- lying on the protection of the altar to ensure their safety; but the Corinthians were so exasperated against her for the murder of Kreén and Glauké, that they dragged the children away from the altar and put them to death. The miserable Jasén perished by a fragment of his own ship Argd, which fell upon him while he was asleep under it,* being hauled on shore, according to the habitual practice of the ancients. the children to the Corinthians (Schol.

Eurip. Med. 275, where Didymos gives the story out of the old poem of Kreo- also lian,

1 Hesiod, Theogon. 998. 2 goer: to the Schol. ad Eurip. Méd. 20, Jasén marries the daughter

of Hippotés the son of Kreén, who is V. H. v. 21,

the son of Lykethos. Lykzthos, after the departure of Bellerophén from Corinth, reigned twenty-seven years; then Kreén reigned thirty-five years; then came Hippo

3 Apollodér. i. 9, 27; Diodér. iv. 54. The Médea of Euripidés, which has fortunately been preserved to us, is too well known to need oe reference. He makes Médea the destroyer of her own children, and borrows from this circumstance the most pathetic touches of his exquisite drama. Parmeniskos accused him of having been bribed by the Corinthians to give this turn to the legend; and we may regard the accusa- tion as a proof that the older and more current tale imputed the murder

mene See Th Neth ificant fact in respect e most significan in to the fable is, that the Corinthians celebrated periodically a propitiatory sacrifice to Héré Akrea and to Mer- merus and Phérés, as an atonement for the sin of mph Waves: the sanctuary of the altar. e legend grew out of this religious ceremony, and was so

as to —_ and account for it (see Eurip. Méd. 1376, with the Schol. Diodér. iv. 55).

Mermerus and Phérés were the names given to the children of Médea and Jasén in the old Naupaktian Verses ; in which, however, the legend must have been recounted quite differ-

of ently, since they said that Jasén and

GHap. VL MEDEA AT CORINTH—SISYPHUS. 113

The first establishment at Ephyré, or Corinth, had been founded by Sisyphus, another of the sons of olus, nits brother of Salméneus and Krétheus... The olid Aolid line Sisyphus was distinguished as an unexampled master —Si8yPhus. of cunning and deceit. He blocked up the road along the isthmus, and killed the strangers who came along it by rolling down upon them great stones from the mountains above. He was more than a match even for the arch thief Autolykus, the son of Hermés, who derived from his father the gift of changing the colour and shape of stolen goods, so that they could no longer be recognised: Sisyphus, by marking his sheep under the foot, detected Autolykus when he stole them, and obliged him to restore the plunder. His penetration discovered the amour of Zeus with the nymph Aigina, daughter of the river-god Asdpus. Zeus had carried her off to the island of Ginéné (which sub- sequently bore the name of A‘gina); upon which Asdépus, eager to recover her, inquired of Sisyphus whither she was gone; the latter told him what had happened, on condition that he should provide a spring of water on the summit of the Acro-Corinthus, Zeus, indignant with Sisyphus for this revelation, inflicted upon him in Hadés the punishment of perpetually heaving up a hill a great and heavy stone, which, so soon as it attained the summit, rolled back again, in spite of all his efforts, with irresistible force into the plain.?

Médea had gone from Idélkos, not to she forewarns and preserves Odysseus Corinth, but to Corcyra; and that throughout his dangers, as Médea aids Mermerus had perished in hunting on Jasén: appanage: Po the Hesiodic story the opposite continent of Epirus. Kinz- she has two children by Odysseus, thén again, another ancient genealogi- Agrius and Latinus (Theogon. 1001). cal poet, called the children of Médea Odysseus goes to Ephyré to Llos the and Jason Eriépis and Médos (Pausan. son of Mermerus, to procure poison for ii. 8, 7). Dioddérus gives them different his arrows: Eustathius treats this names (iv. 34). esiod in the Theo- Mermerus as the son of Médea (see gony speaks only of Medeius as the Odyss. i. 270, an. Eust.). As Ephyré is son of Jasén. the legendary name of Corinth, we Médea does not appear either in the may presume this to be a thread of the Tliad or Odyssey: in the former we same mythical tissue. find ny gs daughter of Augeas, 1See Euripid. Mol.—Fragm. 1, “who knows all the poisons (or medi- Dindorf; Dikeearch. Vit. Grec. Ἐ Pe cines) which the earth nourishes” 2 Respecting Sisyphus, see Apollo- ane . xi. 740); in the latter we have dér.i. 9, 3; iii. 12,6. Pausan. ii. 5, 1 ircé, sister of Métés father of Médea, Schol. ad Iliad.i.180. Another legend and living in the HMzan island (Odyss. about the amour of Sisyphus with ὃ x. 70). Circé is daughter of the god is in Hygin. fab. 60, and about the Helios, as Médea is his grand-daughter, manner in which he overreached even —she is herself a goddess. She is in Hadés (Pherekydés ap. Schol. Lliad, many points the parallel of Médea: vi. 153). The stone rolled by Sisyphus

1—8

114 THE AOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF AOLUS. Pant L.

In the application of the Zolid genealogy to Corinth, Sisyphus, the son of AZolus, appears as the first name: but the old Corinthian poet Eumélus either found or framed an heroic genealogy for his native city, independent both of Zolusand Sisyphus. According to this genealogy, Ephyré, daughter of Oceanus and Téthys, was the primitive tenant of the Corinthian territory, Asépus of the Sikyénian: both were assigned to the god Hélios, in adjusting a dispute between him and Poseidén, by Briareus. Hélios divided the territory between his two sons Alétés and Aldeus: to the former he assigned Corinth, to the latter Sikyén. étés, obeying the admonition of an oracle, emigrated to Kolchis, leaving his territory under the rule of Bunos, the son of Hermés, with the stipulation that it should be restored whenever either he or any of his descendants returned. After the death of Bunos, both Corinth and Sikyén were possessed by Epépeus, son of Alédeus, a wicked man. His son Marathén left him in disgust, and retired into Attica, but returned after his death and succeeded to his territory, which he in turn divided between his two sons, Corinthos and Sikyén, from whom the names of the two districts were first derived. Corinthos died without issue, and the Corinthians then invited Médea from Idélkos as the representative of Aétés: she, with her husband Jasén, thus obtained the sovereignty of Gosisiidas Corinth. This legend of Eumélus, one of the earliest genealogy Of the genealogical poets, so different from the story ofEumélus. odopted by Neophron or Euripidés, was followed certainly by Simonidés, and seemingly by Theopompus.? The incidents in it are imagined and arranged with a view to the

in the under-world ἘΣ go in Odyss. Néleus,—the latter had also died at xi. 592. The name of Sisyphus was Corinth,—no one could say where they given during the historical age to men were buried (Pausan. ii. 2, 2).

of craft and stratagem, such as Der- Sisyphus even overreached Perse- kyllidés bre ellenic. iii. 1, 8). phoné, and made his escape from the He passed for the real father of Odys- under-world (Theognis, 702

seus, though Heyne (ad Apollodér. i. 9, 3) treats this as another Sisyphus, whereby he destroys the suitableness of the predicate as regards Odysseus. The duplication and triplication of synonymous personages is an ordinary resource for the purpose of reducing the legends into a seeming chrono- logical sequence.

Even in the days of Eumélus a religious mystery was observed re- specting the tombs of Sisyphus and

1 Pausan. ii. 1,1; 8, 10. Schol. ad Pindar. Ol. xiii. 74, Schol. Lycoph. 174—1024. Schol. Ap. Rh. iv. 1212.

2 Simonid. ap. Schol. ad Eurip. Méd. 10—20: Theopompus, εἰν, να 840, Di- dot; though Welcker r Episch. Cycl. p. 29) thinks this does not belo to the historian Theopompus. Epi- menidés also followed the story of Eumélus in ing Hétés a Corin (Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. iii. 242).

alll

Cuap. Vi. MBDEA AND SISYPHUS. 115

supremacy of Médea; the emigration of Aiétés and the conditions under which he transferred his sceptre, being so laid out as to confer upon Médea an hereditary title to the throne. The Corinthians paid to Médea and to her children solemn worship, either divine, or heroic, in conjunction with Héré Akrea,} and this was sufficient to give to Médea a prominent place in the genealogy composed by a Corinthian poet, accustomed to blend together gods, heroes, and men in the antiquities of his native city. According to the legend of Eumélus, Jasén became (through Médea) king of Corinth; but she concealed the children of their marriage in the temple of Héré, trusting that the goddess would render them immortal. Jasdn, discovering her proceedings, left her, and retired in disgust to Iélkos; Médea also, being dis- appointed in her scheme, quitted the place, leaving the throne in the hands of Sisyphus, to whom, according to the story of Theopompus, she had become attached.? Other legends recounted that Zeus had contracted a passion for Médea, but that she had rejected his suit from fear of the displeasure of Héré; who, as a recompense for such fidelity, rendered her children immortal:3 moreover, Médea had erected, by special command of Héré, the celebrated temple of Aphrodité at Corinth. The tenor of these fables manifests their connexion with the temple of Héré: and we may consider the legend of Médea as having been originally quite in- dependent of that of Sisyphus, but fitted on to it, in seeming chronological sequence, so as to satisfy the feelings of those Eolids of Corinth who passed for his descendants.

Sisyphus had for his sons Glaukos and Ornytién. From Glaukos sprang Bellerophén, whose romantic adventures com- . mence with the Iliad, and are further expanded by subsequent poets: according to some accounts, he was really the son of Poseidén, the prominent deity of the Molid family. The youth

Coales- cence of different legends about Médea and Sisyphus.

1 Περὶ δὲ τῆς εἰς Κόρινθον μετοικήσεως,

Hesiod represented Médea as a goddess Ἵππυς ἐκτίθεται καὶ Ἑλλάνικος " ὅτι δὲ

(Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis,

βεβασίλευκε τῆς Κορίνθου ἡ Μήδεια, Εὔ- μῆλος ἱστορεῖ καὶ Σιμωνίδης " ὅτι δὲ καὶ ἀθάνατος ἦν ἡ Μήδεια, Μουσαῖος ἐν τῷ περὶ ᾿Ισθμίων ἱστορεῖ, ἅμα καὶ περὶ τῶν τῆς ᾿Ακραίας Ἥρας εορτῶν ἐκτιθείς (Schol. Eurip. Méd. 10). Compare also v. 1376, of the play itself, with the Scholia and Pausan. ii. 3, 6. Both Alkman and

p. 54, ed. Oxon.).

2 Pausan. ii. 8, 10; Schol. Pindar. Olymp. xiii. 74.

3 ΚΌΠΟ]. Pindar. Olymp. xiii. 32—74; Plutarch, De Herodot. Malign. p. 871.

4 Pindar, Olymp. xiii. 98, and Schol. ad 1; Schol. ad Mliad. vi. 155; this seems to be the sense of Iliad, vi. 191.

116 THE ZOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF HOLUS. Parr t and beauty of Bellerophén rendered him the object of a strong Hellero- passion on the part of Anteia, wife of Preetos, king of phon. Argos. Finding her advances rejected, she contracted a violent hatred towards him, and endeavoured, by false accusa- tions, to prevail upon her husband to kill him. Preetos refused to commit the deed under his own roof, but despatched him to his son-in-law, the king of Lykia in Asia Minor, putting into his hands a folded tablet fuli of destructive symbols. Conformably to these suggestions, the most perilous undertakings were im- posed upon Bellerophon. He was directed to attack the monster Chimera and to conquer the warlike Solymi as well as the Amazons: as he returned victorious from these enterprises, an ambuscade was laid for him by the bravest Lykian warriors, all of whom he slew, At length the Lykian king recognised him “as the genuine son of a god,” and gave him his daughter in marriage together with half of his kingdom. The grand-children of Bellerophon, Glaukos and Sarpédén,—the latter a son of his daughter Laodameia by Zeus,—combat as allies of Troy against the host of Agamemnon.!

We now pass from Sisyphus and the Corinthian fables to ‘. another son of AZolus, Athamas, whose family history

ourth Holid tine is not less replete with mournful and tragical inci- —Athamas. dents, abundantly diversified by the poets. Athamas, we are told, was king of Orchomenos; his wife Nephelé was a zoddess, and he had “by her two children, Phryxus and Hellé. After a certain time he neglected Nephelé, and took to himself as 3 new wife Ind, the daughter of Kadmus, by whom he had two sons, Learchus and Melikertés. Ind, looking upon Phryxus with the hatred of a stepmother, laid a snare for his life. She per- suaded the women to roast the seed-wheat, which, when sown in this condition, yielded no crop, so that famine overspread the land. Athamas, sending to Delphi to implore counsel and a

The lost drama called Jobatés of all that can be divined respecting the

two plays of Euripidés.

or age and the two by Euripidés ed Sthenebaa and _ Bellerophén, handled the adventures of this hero. See the collection of the few fragments remaining in Dindorf, Fragm. Sophoe. 280; Fragm. Eurip. p. 87—108; and Hygin. fab. 67. Welcker (Griechische Tragéd. ii. p.

777—800) has ingeniously put tometinne

Volcker seeks to make out that Belleroph6n is identical with Poseidén Hippios,—a separate personification of one of the attributes of the god Posei- don. For conjecture he gives —_ a ἘΌΝ te i. ogie

es Japetisch. Geschl

1 liad, vi. 155—210. mee,

Cuar. VI. BELLEROPHON—ATHAMAS. 117

remedy, received for answer, through the machinations of Ind with the oracle, that the barrenness of the fields could not be alleviated except by offering Phryxus as a sacrifice to Zeus. The distress of the people compelled him to execute this injunction, and Phryxus was led as a victim to the altar. But the power of his mother Nephelé snatched him from destruction, and procured for him from Hermés a ram with a fleece of gold, ppryxus upon which he and his sister Hellé mounted and and Hellé. were carried across the sea. The ram took the direction of the Euxine sea and Kolchis: when they were crossing the Hellespont, Hellé fell off into the narrow strait, which took its name from that incident. Upon this, the ram, who was endued with speech, consoled the terrified Phryxus, and ultimately carried him safe to Kolchis: Aiétés, king of Kolchis, son of the god Hélios, and brother of Circé, received Phryxus kindly, and gave him his daughter Chalkiopé in marriage. Phryxus sacrificed the ram to Zeus Phyxios, suspending the golden fleece in the sacred grove of Arés.

Athamas—according to some both Athamas and Iné—were afterwards driven mad by the anger of the goddess Héré; insomuch that the father shot his own son Learchus, and would also have put to death his other son Melikertés, if Inéd 1nd ana had not snatched him away. She fled with the boy Paj#mon.— across the Megarian territory and Mount Geraneia, to games. the rock Moluris, overhanging the Sarénic Gulf: Athamas pursued her, and in order to escape him she leaped into the sea. She became a sea-goddess under the title of Leukothea; while the body of Melikertés was cast ashore on the neighbouring terri- tory of Schcenus, and buried by his uncle Sisyphus, who was directed by the Nereids to pay to him heroic honours under the name of Palemén. The Isthmian games, one of the great periodical festivals of Greece, were celebrated in honour of the god Poseidén, in conjunction with Palemén asa hero. Athamas abandoned his territory, and became the first settler of a neigh- bouring region called from him Athamantia, or the Athamantian plain.}

1 Eurip. Méd. 1250, with the Scholia, Ἵνω μανεῖσαν ἐκ θεῶν, ὅθ᾽ ἡ Διὸς according to which story Iné killed Δάμαρ νιν ἐξέπεμψε δωμάτων ἄλῃ. both her children :— CompareValckenaer, Diatribe inEurip.;

118 THE XOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZOLUS. Parr lI.

The legend of Athamas connects itself with some sanguinary re- Local root _ligious rites and very peculiar family customs, which of the of prevailed at Alos, in Achaia Phthiétis, down to a Atimmas, time? later than the historian Herodotus, and of which some remnant existed at Orchomenos even in the days of Plu- tarch. Athamas was worshipped at Alos as a hero, having both a chapel and a consecrated grove, attached to the temple of Zeus Laphystios. On the family of which he was the heroic progen- itor, a special curse and disability stood affixed. The eldest of the race was forbidden to enter the prytaneion or government- house: if he was found within the doors of the building, the other citizens laid hold of him on his going out, surrounded him with garlands, and led him in solemn procession to be sacrificed as a victim at the altar of Zeus Laphystios. The prohibition carried with it an exclusion from all the public meetings and ceremonies, political as well as religious, and from the sacred fire of the state: many of the individuals marked out had therefore been bold enough to transgress it. Some had been seized on quitting the building and actually sacri-

Apollodér. i. 9, 1—2: Schol. ad Pindar. iii. p. 27). The voyage of Phryxus and Argum. ad Isthm. p. 180. The many Hellé to Kolchis was related in the varieties of the fable of Athamas and Hesiodic Eoiai: we find the names of his family may be seen in Hygin. fab. thechildren of Phryxus by thedaughter 1—5 ; Philostephanus ap. Schol. Iliad. of Alétés quoted from that poem (Schol. idee 86: it was a favouri μοῦνον me ad Apollon. Rhod. ii. 1123): both He- e tragedians, and was han siod and Pherekydés mentioned the σαν, Sophoklés, and Euri arpa — fleece of the ram (Eratosthen. in more than one drama (see Welcker, tasterism. 19; Pherekyd. Fragm. 53, Griechische Tragéd. vol. i. p. 312—332; Didot vol. ii, p. 612). Heyne says that the Hekatzus preserved the romance of proper reading of the name is Phrixus, the ram (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. not Phryxus,—incorrectly, I think: i. 256); bu ee dropped the Φρύξος connects the name both with ΜΟΥ οὗ Hellé having fallen into the thestory of roasting the wheat (¢pvyeur), according to him she died at and also with the country Φρ οἱ Paktyé in the Chersonesus (Schol. which it was pretended that Phryxus Apoll. Rhod, ii, 144). was the a rom or pp Ind, or Leukothea, poet Asius seems to have given was worshipped asa heroine at Megara th Fifa coe of Athamas by Themisté as well as at Corinth (Pausan. i. 42, 5): much in the same manner 5 we find it the celebrity of the Isthmian in Ape Saes gi cag τὸς ix. 23, 3). carried her worship, as well as that of ccording to the ingenious refine- Palemén, throughout most parts οἱ siete of Dionysius and Palephatus Greece (Cicero, De Nat. Deor. iii. 1S. are ὧν Apoll. Rhod. ii. 1144 ; Pale- She is the only personage of this family τω de Incred. c. 81), the ram δαὶ noticed either in the Iliad or phe wll in the latter poem sheis a Sg one who has once been a mortal, daughter in his cacao με δεν κεν τι she =e a from with a ram’s head at the oe mminen rat sea resenting to him her πέδον (Odyss. v. 433; a τος ὦ oe ss ΒΒ see the xefinements of Aristidés, Orat. ol. Apoll. ὕ,

Cap. VI. TRACES OF HUMAN SACRIFICE. 119

ficed ; others had fled the country for a long time to avoid a similar fate.

The guides who conducted Xerxes and his army through southern Thessaly detailed to him this existing practice, coupled with the local legend, that Athamas, together with Ind, had sought to compass the death of Phryxus, who however had escaped to Kolchis ; that the Achzans had been enjoined by an oracle to offer up Athamas himself as an expiatory sacrifice to release the country from the anger of the gods; but that Kytissoros, son of Phryxus, coming back from Kolchis, had intercepted the sacri- fice of Athamas,! whereby the anger of the gods remained still unappeased, and an undying curse rested upon the family.?

That such human sacrifices continued to a greater or less ex- tent, even down to a period later than Herodotus, among the family who worshipped Athamas as their heroic ancestor, appears certain: mention is also made of similar customs in parts of Ar- cadia, and of Thessaly, in honour of Péleus and Cheirén.2 But we may reasonably presume, that in the period of greater hu- manity which Herodotus witnessed, actual sacrifice had become

10f the Athamas of Sophoklés, turning upon this intended but not consummated sacrifice, little is known, except from a passage of Aristophanés and the Scholia upon it (Nubes, 258)— ἐπὶ τί στέφανον ; οἵμοι, Σώκρατες,

ὥσπερ με τὸν ᾿Αθάμανθ᾽ ὅπω; μὴ θύσετε.

Athamas was introduced in this drama with a garland on his head, on the point of being sacrificed as an expiation for the death of his son Phryxus, when Héraklés interposes and rescues him.

2 Herodot. vii. 197. Plato, Minés, p. 315.

3 Plato, Minds, c. 5. Kai ot τοῦ ᾿Αθάμαντος ἔκγονοι, οἵας θυσίας θύουσιν, Ἕλληνες ὄντες. Asa testimony to the fact still existing or believed to exist, this dialogue is quite sufficient, though not the work of Plato.

Μόνιμος δ᾽ ἱστορεῖ, ἐν τῇ τῶν θαυμα- σίων συναγωγῇ ἐν Πέλλῃ τῆς Θετταλίας ᾿Αχαιὸν ἄνθρωπον Πηλεῖ καὶ Χείρωνι καταθύεσθαι. (Clemens Alexand. Ad- mon. ad Gent. p. 27, Sylb.) Respecting the sacrifices at the temple of Zeus Lykeeus in Arcadia, see Plato, Republ. viii. Ὁ. 565. Pausanias (vili. 88, 5) seems to have shrunk, when he was

upon the spot, even from inquirin what they were—a striking proof o the fearful idea which he had conceived ofthem. Plutarch (De Defectu Oracul. c. 14) speaks of τὰς πάλαι ποιουμένας ἀνθρωποθυσίας. The Schol. ad Lycophr. 229, gives a story of children being sacrificed to Melikertés at Tenedos ; and Apollodérus (ad Porphyr. de Ab- stinentid, ii. 55, see Apollod. Fragm. 20, ed. Didot) said that the Lace- dzemonians had sacrificed a man to Arés—xai Λακεδαιμονίους φησὶν 6’ ᾿Απολ- λόδωρος τῷ "Ἄρει θύειν μὰ parked About Salamis in Cyprus, see tantius, De ἡ Falsa Religione, i. c. 21. ‘* Apud Cypri Salaminem, humanam hostiam Jovi Teucrus immolavit, idque sacrificium osteris tradidit: quod est nuper adriano imperante sublatum.” Respecting human sacrifices in his- torical Greece, consult a good section in Κι. F. Hermann’s Gottesdienstliche Alterthiimer der Griechen (sect. 27). Such sacrifices had been a portion of primitive Grecian religion, but had gradually become obsolete everywhere —except in one or two solitary cases, which were spoken of with horror. Even in these cases, too, the reality of the fact, in later times, is not beyond suspicion.

120 ‘THE ZXOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZOLUS. parr I.

very rare. The curse and the legend still remained, but were not called into practical working, except during periods of intense national suffering or apprehension, during which the religious sensibilities were always greatly aggravated. We cannot at all doubt, that during the alarm created by the presence of the Per- sian king with his immense and ill-disciplined host, the minds of the Thessalians must have been keenly alive to all that was ter- rific in their national stories, and all that was expiatory in their religious solemnities. Moreover, the mind of Xerxes himself was Tracesof soawe-struck by the tale, that he reverenced the ancienthu- dwelling-place consecrated to Athamas. The guides fice. who recounted to him the romantic legend gave it as the historical and generating cause of the existing rule and prac- tice: a critical inquirer is forced (as has been remarked before) to reverse the order of precedence, and to treat the practice as having been the suggesting cause of its own explanatory legend..

The family history of Athamas and the worship of Zeus La- phystios are expressly connected by Herodotus with Alos in Achea Phthiétis—one of the towns enumerated in the Iliad as under the command of Achilles. But there was also a mountain called Laphystion, and a temple and worship of Zeus Laphystios between Orchomenos and Koréneia, in the northern portion of the territory known in the historical ages as Beeotia. Here too the family story of Athamas is localised, and Athamas is pre- sented to us as king of the districts of Koréneia, Haliartus and Athamas in Mount Laphystion: he is thus interwoven with the the district Orchomenian genealogy.! Andreus (we are told), son menos. of the river Péneios, was the first person who settled in the region: from him it received the name Andréis. Atha- mas, coming subsequently to Andreus, received from him the territory of Koréneia and Haliartus with Mount Laphystion : he gave in marriage to Andreus Euippé, daughter of his son Leucén, and the issue of this marriage was Eteoklés, said to be the son of the river Képhisos. Korénos and Haliartus, grandsons of the Corin- thian Sisyphus, were adopted by Athamas, as he had lost all his children. But when his grandson Presbén, son of Phryxus, re- turned to him from Kolchis, he divided his territory in such

4 Pausan. ix. 34, 4

} | Cuap, VI. ETEOKLAS—THE CHARITRSIA. 121

manner that Korénos and Haliartus became the founders of the towns which bore theirnames. Almén, the son of Sisyphus, also received from Eteoklés a portion of territory, where he established the village Alménes.?

With Eteoklés began, according to a statement in one of the Hesiodic poems, the worship of the Charites or Graces, so long and so solemnly continued at Orchomenos in the periodical fes- tival of the Charitésia, to which many neighbouring REteoklés— towns and districts seem to have contributed.2 He {festival of also distributed the inhabitants into two tribes—Eteo- tésia. kleia and Képhisias. He died childless, and was succeeded by Almos, who had only two daughters, Chrysé and Chrysogeneia. The son of Chrysé by the god Arés was Phlegyas, the father and founder of the warlixe and predatory Phlegyz, who despoiled every one within their reach, and assaulted not only the pilgrims on their road to Delphi, but even the treasures of the temple itself. The offended god punished them by continued thunder, by earthquakes, and by pestilence, which extinguished all this impious race, except a scanty remnant who fled into Phokis.

Chrysogeneia, the other daughter of Almos, had for issue, by the god Poseidén, Minyas: the son of Minyas was Orchomenos, From these two was derived the name both of Minye for the people, and of Orchomenos for the town.* During the reign of Orchomenos, Hyéttus came to him from Argos, having become an exile in consequence of the death of Molyros: Orchomenos assigned to him a portion of land, where he founded the village called Hyéttus. Orchomenos, having no issue, was succeeded by Klymenos, son of Presbén, of the house of Athamas: Kly- menos was slain by some Thébans during the festival of Poseidén at Onchéstos ; and his eldest son, Erginus, to avenge his death, attacked the Thébans with his utmost force ;—an attack in which he was so successful, that the latter were forced to submit, and to pay him an annual tribute.

1 Pausan. ix, 34, 5. Tanagrean Laps Korinna, the con- 2 Ephorus, Fragm. 68, Marx. berets re (Antonin. Liber- 3 Pausan. ix. 86, 1—3. See also a 4 This exile of Hyéttus was recounted

legend, about the three daughters of in the Eoiai. od. Fragm. 1 Minyas, which was tr by the Markt. -

122 THE XOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZOLUS. PanrrTI.

The Orchomenian power was now at its height: both Minyas ἘΑΧΩΝ and Orchomenos had been princes of surpassing wealth, and great- and the former had built a spacious and durable edi- a fice which he had filled with gold and silver. But the

success of Erginus against Thébes was soon terminated and reversed by the hand of the irresistible Héraklés, who re-

jected with disdain the claim of tribute, and even és ἐπὶ ἐγ mutilated the envoys sent to demand it : he not only and the emancipated Thébes, but broke down and impover-

ished Orchomenos.! Erginus in his old age married a young wife, from which match sprang the illustrious heroes, Trophiatas ΟΣ gods, Trophénius and Agamédés; though many and Aga- (amongst whom is Pausanias himself) believed Tro- médée. phénius to be the son of Apollo? Trophénius, one of the most memorable persons in Grecian mythology, was wor- shipped as a god in various places, but with especial sanctity as Zeus Trophénius at Lebadeia: in his temple at this town, the prophetic manifestations outlasted those of Delphi itself.s Tro, phénius and Agamédés, enjoying matchless renown as architects, built* the temple of Delphi, the thalamus of Amphitryén at Thébes, and also the inaccessible vault of Hyrieus at Hyria, in which they are said to have left one stone removable at pleasure so as to reserve for themselves a secret entrance. They entered so frequently, and stole so much gold and silver, that Hyrieus, astonished at his losses, at length spread a fine net, in which Aga- médés was inextricably caught : Trophénius cut off his brother’s head and carried it away, so that the body, which alone remained, was insufficient to identify the thief. Like Amphiaraos, whom he resembles in more than one respect, Trophénius was swal- lowed up by the earth near Lebadeia.®

1 Pausan. ix. 87, 2. Apollod. ii. 4, Aristophanés (Nub. 508) and Pausanias

11. Diodér. iv. 10, The two latter tell us that Erginus was slain. Klymené is among the wives and daughters of the heroes seen by Odysseus in Hadés ; she is termed by the Schol. daughter of Minyas (Odyss. xi. 325).

2 Pausan. ix. 37, 1-ὃ, Λέγεται δὲ ὁ Τροφώνιος ᾿Απόλλωνος εἶναι, Kat οὐκ *Epyivov* καὶ ἐγώ τε πείθομαι, καὶ ὅστις παρὰ Τροφώνιον ἦλθε δὴ μαντευσόμενος.

8 Plutarch, De Defectu Oracul. c.5, ix

. 411. Strabo, ix. ἢ» 414, The men- Fon of the honeyed cakes, both in

(ix. 39, 5), indicates that the curious preliminary ceremonies, for those who consulted the oracle of Trophénius, remained the same after a lapse of 550 ears. Pausanias consulted it himself. ere had been at one time an oracle of Teiresias at Orchomenos: but it had become silent at am early period (Plutarch, Defect. Oracul. c. 44, p. 484). 4 Homer, Hymn. Apoll. 296. Pausan. ae

x Se ds 5 Pausan. ix. 37,3. A similar story, but far more romantic and amplified,

Cuap. VI. THE ORCHOMENIAN GENEALOGY. 123

From Trophénius and Agamédés the Orchomenian genealogy passes to Askalaphos and Ialmenos, the sons of Arés peat ately _ by Astyoché, who are named in the Catalogue of the and Ialme- Iliad as leaders of the thirty ships from Orchomenos ™* against Troy. Azeus, the grandfather of Astyoché in the Iliad, is introduced as the brother of Erginus? by Pausanias, who does not carry the pedigree lower.

The genealogy here given out of Pausanias is deserving of the more attention, because it seems to have been copied from the special history of Orchomenos by the Corinthian Kallippus, who again borrowed from the native Orchomenian poet, Chersias: the works of the latter had never come into the hands of Pau- sanias. It illustrates forcibly the principle upon which these mythical genealogies were framed, for almost every personage in the series is an Eponymus. Andreus gave his name to the country, Athamas to the Athamantian plain ; Minyas, Orcho- menos, Korénus, Haliartus, Almos, and Hyéttos, are each in like manner connected with some name of people, tribe, town, or village ; while Chrysé and Chrysogeneia have their origin in the reputed ancient wealth of Orchomenos. Abundant piscrepan- discrepancies are found, however, in respect to this old cies in the genealogy, if we look to other accounts. According menian to one statement, Orchomenos was the son of Zeus, by 9°0®#s8y- Isioné, daughter of Danaus ; Minyas was the son of Orchomenos (or rather Poseidén) by Hermippé, daughter of Beedtos ; the sons of Minyas were Presbén, Orchomenos, Athamas, and Diochthéndas.? Others represented Minyas as son of Poseidén by Kallirrhoé, an Oceanic nymph,’ while Dionysius called him son of Arés, and Aristodémus, son of Aleas ; lastly, there were not wanting authors who termed both Minyas and Orchomenos sons of Eteok- lés.* Nor do we find in any one of these genealogies the name of Amphién the son of Iasus, who figures so prominently in the

is told by Herodotus (ii. 121), respect- woven at some point or another of ing the treasury-vault of Rhampsinitus, legendary history, in any country. king of Feypt. Charax (ap. Schol. 1 Pausan. ix. 88, 6; 29, 1. Aristoph. Nub. 508) gives the sametale, 2 geho}, Apollén. Rhod. i. 230. Com- { eed 9 the ie ee beni pare Schol. ad Lycophron. 878. ugeas, ? ᾿

says was built by Trophénius, to whom 39.500]. Pindar, Olymp. xiv. 5. he assigns a totally different genealogy. 4Schol. Pindar. Isthm. i. 79. Other The romantic adventures of the tale discrepancies in Schol. Vett. ad Iliad, rendered it eminently fit to be inter- ii. Catalog. 18. ai

124 THE ZOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZOLUS. part lL

Odyssey as king of Orchomenos, and whose beautiful daughter Chléris is married to Néleus. Pausanias mentions him, but not as king, which is the denomination given to him in Homer.

The discrepancies here cited are hardly necessary in order to prove that these Orchomenian genealogies possess no historical value. Yet some probable inferences appear deducible from the general tenor of the legends, whether the facts and persons of which they are composed be real or fictitious.

Throughout all the historical age, Orchomenos is a member of the Beedtian confederation. But the Beedtians are said to

inferences have been immigrants into the territory which bore ante- their name from Thessaly ; and prior to the time of —e their immigration, Orchomenos and the surrounding menos.

territory appear as possessed by the Minyz, who are recognised in that locality both in the Iliad and in the Odyssey,? and from whom the constantly recurring Eponymus, king Min- yas, is borrowed by the genealogists. Poetical legend connects the Orchomenian Minyz, on the one side, with Pylos and Tri- phylia in Peloponnésus ; on the other side, with Phthiotis and- the town of Iélkos in Thessaly ; also with Corinth,’ through Sisy- phus and his sons. Pherekydés represented Néleus, king of Pylos, as having also been king of Orchomenos.* In the region of Triphylia, near to or coincident with Pylos, a Minyeian river is mentioned by Homer; and we find traces of residents called Minye even in the historical times, though the account given by Herodotus of the way in which they came thither is strange and unsatisfactory.®

Before the great changes which took place in the inhabitants of Greece from the immigration of the Thesprétians into Thessaly,

1 Odyss. xi. 283. Pausan. ix. 36, 3.

2 Tliad, ii. 5, 11. Odyss. xi. Hesiod, Fragm. Eoiai, 27, Diintz. ἽἼξεν δ᾽ Ps caged Μινυήϊον. Pindar, Olymp. Παλαιγόνων Mivvav ἐπίσκοποι.

Herodot. i. 146. Pausanias calls them

th. inye was baie <4 a Ἢ his’ e Θ agains’ opinion.

3 Rehol Apolle Apoll. Bhod. ii. 1136. i. 230. Σκήψιος δὲ Δημήτρος φησι τοὺς περὶ τὴν

Ἰωλκὸν οἰκοῦντας Μινύας καλεῖσθαι; and

283. 1. 763. Τὴν yap ᾿Ιωλκὸν ot Mivvat ῴᾧκουν,

ἄς see Σιμωνίδης ἐν gar see also

ad Iliad. i ii. 512. Steph. Byz. κὰ ie ΤΩΝ and Pylos run together in the mind of the poet of the Odyssey, xi. 458.

4 Pherekyd. Fragm. 56, Didot. We see by the 55th ent of the same eer that he e ded the genea- logy of Phryxos to Phere in Thessaly.

5 Herodot. iv. 145. Strabo, viii. 337 —347. , xi. 721. Pausan. v, 1, 7, ποταμὸν Μινυήζον, near Elis,

Guar. Vi ANTE-HISTORICAL ORCHOMENOS. 125

of the Beedtians into Beedtia, and of the Dérians and AXtélians into Peloponnésus, at a date which we have no means of deter- -mining, the Minyz and tribes fraternally connected with them seem to have occupied a large portion of the surface of Greece, from Idlkos in Thessaly to Pylos in the Peloponnésus. The wealth of Orchomenos is renowned even in the Iliad ;! and when we study its topography in detail, we are furnished with a pro- bable explanation both of its prosperity and its decay. Orcho- menos was situated on the northern bank of the lake

Kopais, which receives not only the river Képhisos SO from the valleys of Phékis, but also other rivers from ‘™4™stry. Parnassus and Helicén. The waters of the lake find more than one subterranean egress—partly through natural rifts and cavities in the limestone mountains, partly through a tunnel pierced arti- ficially more than a mile in length—into the plain on the north- eastern side, from whence they flow into the Eubcean sea near Larymna.? And it appears that, so long as these channels were diligently watched and kept clear, a large portion of the lake was in the condition of alluvial land, pre-eminently rich and fertile. But when the channels came to be either neglected, or designedly choked up by an enemy, the water accumulated to such a degree as to occupy the soil of more than one ancient town, to endanger the position of Képa, and to occasion the change of the site of Or- chomenos itself from the plain to the declivity of Mount Hyphan- teion. An engineer, Kratés, began the clearance of the obstructed water-courses in the reign of Alexander the Great,and |... by his commission—the destroyer of Thébes being ae as anxious to re-establish the extinct prosperity of Orcho- pais. menos. He succeeded so far as partially to drain and diminish the lake, whereby the site of more than one ancient city was ren- dered visible: but the revival of Thébes by Kassandar, after the decease of Alexander, arrested the progress of the undertaking,

1 Tliad, ix. 381.

2 See the description of these chan- nels or Katabothra in Colonel Leake’s Travels in Northern Greece, vol. ii. c. 15, p. 281—293, and still more elabor- ately in Fiedler, Reise durch alle Theile des Kénigreichs Griechenland, Leipzig, 1840. e traced fifteen per- pendicular shafts sunk for the purpose

of admitting air into the tunnel, the first separated from the last by about 5900 feet ; they are now of course over- grown and stopped up (vol. i. p. 115). Forchhammer states the length of this tunnel as considerably greater than what is here mentioned. He also ives a plan of the Lake Képais with he surrounding region.

126 THE AULIDS, Ok SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF AOLUS. Parrl

and the lake soon regained its former dimensions, to contract which no further attempt was made."

According to the Théban legend,” Héraklés, after his defeat of Erginus, had blocked up the exit of the waters, and converted the Orchomenian plain into a lake. The spreading of these waters is thus connected with the humiliation of the Minye; and there can be little hesitation in ascribing to these ancient tenants of Orchomenos, before it became beeotised, the enlarge- ment and preservation of the protective channels. Nor could such an object have been accomplished without combined action and acknowledged ascendency on the part of that city over its neighbours, extending even to the sea at Larymna, where the river Képhisos discharges itself. Of its extended influence, as well as of its maritime activity, we find a remarkable evidence in Ola Am. 88 ancient and venerated Amphiktyony at Kalauria. phiktyony The little island so named, near the harbour of at Kalauria. Tyrezén, in Peloponnésus, was sacred to Poseidén, and an asylum of inviolable sanctity. At the temple of Poseidén, in Kalauria, there had existed, from unknown date, a periodical sacrifice, celebrated by seven cities in common—Hermioné, Epidaurus, Aigina, Athens, Prasiz, Nauplia, and the Minyeian Orchomenos. This ancient religious combination dates from the time when Nauplia was independent of Argos, and Prasie of Sparta: Argos and Sparta, according to the usual practice in Greece, continued to fulfil the obligation each on the part of its respective dependent. Six out of the seven states are ab once sea-towns, and near enough to Kalauria to account for their participation in this Amphiktyony. But the junction of Orcho- menos, from its comparative remoteness, becomes inexplicable, except on the supposition that its territory reached the sea, and that it enjoyed a considerable maritime traffic—a fact which

1 We owe this interesting fact to 2 Diodér. iv. 18. Pausan. ix. 38, rig , ee bot a 5.

and unsatisfactory, viii. p. 406—407. ses - . It was affirmed that there had been ,, °,5t?@bo, viii. p. 374. Ἣν δὲ καὶ two ancient towns, named Eleusis and Athéne, originally founded pr begets ng

*Audixrvovia τις περὶ τὸ ἱερὸν τοῦτο, ἕπτα πόλεων αἱ μετεῖχον τῆς θυσίας" situated on the lake, and thus over- ted = Raeaa ene θεὰ Oe flowed (Steph. Byz. ν. ᾿Αθῆναι. Diogen. δίς Fe ag kg ge Laért. iv. 23. Pausan. ix. 24,2), For panes © ere tank Spe τ ea ὦ δὲ the plain or marsh near Orchomenos, 4% A γῆν TPs Sede as tae

see Plutarch. Sylla, c. 20—22. Λακεδαιμόνιοι, ξυνετέλουν.

Cuap. Vi. ORCHOMENOS. AND THEBES. 127

helps to elucidate both its legendary connexion with Iélkos, and its partnership in what is called the Ionic emigration.?

The great power of Orchomenos was broken down and the city reduced to a secondary and half-dependent position 9. by the Bcedtians of Thébes; at what time and under menos and what circumstances, history has not preserved. The 7B®be. story that the Théban hero, Héraklés, rescued his native city from servitude and tribute to Orchomenos, since it comes from a Kadmeian and not from an Orchomenian legend, and since the details of it were favourite subjects of commemoration in the Théban temples,” affords a presumption that Thébes was really once dependent on Orchomenos. Moreover the savage mutila- tions inflicted by the hero on the tribute-seeking envoys, so faithfully portrayed in his surname Rhinokoloustés, infuse into the mythe a portion of that bitter feeling which so long prevailed between Thébes and Orchomenos, and which led the Thébans, as soon as the battle of Leuktra had placed supremacy in their hands, to destroy and depopulate their rival. The ensuing generation saw the same fate retorted upon Thébes, combined with the restoration of Orchomenos. The legendary grandeur of this city continued, long after it had ceased to be distinguished for wealth and power, imperishably recorded both in the minds of the nobler citizens and in the compositions of the poets: the emphatic language of Pausanias shows how much he found con- cerning it in the old epic.*

Section II.—Daveurers or ALOLUS. -

With several of the daughters of Aolus memorable mythical pedigrees and narratives are connected. Alkyoné ΑἸκνοπὸ married Kéyx, the son of Eésphoros, but both she 4d Kéyx.

1 Pausan. ix. 17,1; 26, 1. 2 Herod. i. 146. Pausan. vii. 2, 2, 3 Theocrit. xvi. 104—

"OM ᾿Ετεόκλειοι θύγατρες θεαὶ, αἱ Μιν- ὕειον ᾽Ορχόμενον φιλέοισαι, ἀπεχθόμενόν ποκα Θήβαις. The Scholiast gives a sense to these words much narrower than they really See Diodor. xv. 79; Pausan. ix. 16. In the oration which Isokratés places in the mouth of a Platzan, complaining of the oppressions of Thé-

bes, the ancient servitude and tribute to Orchomenos are cast in the teeth of the Thébans (Isokrat. Orat. Plataic, vol. iii. p. 82, Auger).

4Pausan. ix. 34, 5. See also the fourteenth Olympic Ode of Pindar, addressed to the Orchomenian Aso- pikus, The learned and instructive work of K. O. Miiller, Orchomenos und die Minyer, embodies everything which can be known respecting this once-memorable city ; indeed the con- tents of the work extend much further than its title promises,

128 TH ZOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF HOLUS. Pant t

and her husband displayed in a high degree the overweening insolence common in the Aiolic race. The wife called her hus- band Zeus, while he addressed her as Héré, for which pre- sumptuous act Zeus punished them by changing both into birds.

Canacé had by the god Poseidén several children, amongst Canace— | Whom were Epdépeus and Aldeus.? Aléeus married the Aldids. JTphimédea, who became enamoured of the god Poseidén, and boasted of her intimacy with him. She had by him two sons, Otos and Ephialtés, the huge and formidable Aloids,—Titanic beings, nine fathoms in height and nine cubits in breadth, even in their boyhood, before they had attained their full strength. These Aldids defied and insulted the gods in Olympus. They paid their court to Héré and Artemis; more- over they even seized and bound Arés, confining him in a brazen chamber for thirteen months. No one knew where he was, and the intolerable chain would have worn him to death, had not Eribeea, the jealous stepmother of the Aldids, revealed the place of his detention to Hermés, who carried him surreptitiously away when at the last extremity. Arés could obtain no atone- ment for such an indignity. Otos and Ephialtés even prepared to assault the gods in heaven, piling up Ossa on Olympus and Pelion on Ossa, in order to reach them. And this they would have accomplished had they been allowed to grow to their full maturity; but the arrows of Apollo put a timely end to their short-lived career.*

1 Apollodér. i. 7,4. Kéyx,—king of Trachin,—the friend of Héraklés and rotector of the Hérakleids to the ex- nt of his power (Hesiod. Scut. Hercul. 355—473; Apollodér. ii. 7,5; Hekate. Fragm. 353, Didot). 2Canacé, daughter of Molus, is a subject of deep tragical interest both in ey “ei and Ovid. The eleventh Heroic Epistle of the latter, founded mainly on the lost tragedy of the former called Molus, purports to be from Canacé to Macareus, and con- tains a pathetic description of the ill-fated passion between a brother and sister: see the Fragments of the Zolus in Dindorf’s collection. In the tale of Kaunos and Byblis, both children of Milétos, the resulta of an incestuous passion are different, but hardly less melancholy (Parthenios, Narr. xi.). Makar, the son of olus, is the

frinitive settler of the island of Lesbos (Hom. Hymn. Apoll. 37): moreover, in the Odyssey, Zolus, son of es Og the dispenser of the winds, six sons and six daughters, and marries the former to the latter (Odyss. x. 7). The two persons called ASolus are brought into connexion ponealogion’y, (see Schol. and Odyss. 1. c., and Dio- dér. iv. 67), but it seems probable that Euripidés was the first to place thename of Macareus and Canacé in that relation which confers upon them their poeti- cal celebrity. Sostratus (ap. Stobeum, t. 614, p. 404) can hardly be considered to have borrowed from any older source than Euripidés, Welcker (Griech, Tra- 6d. vol. li. p. 860) puts together all hat can be known respecting the struc- ture of the lost drama of Euripidés. 3 Tliad, v. 386; Odyss. xi. 306; Apol- lodér i. 7, 4 So Typhoeus in the

ee

Cuap. Vi. THE GIGANTIC ALOIDS—ELEIAN GENEALOGY. 129

The genealogy assigned to Kalyké, another daughter of Molus, conducts us from Thessaly to Elis and Aitélia. She yaya married Aéthlius (the son of Zeus by Prétogeneia, bret nea daughter of Deukalién and sister of Hellén), who Rleian conducted a colony out of Thessaly, and settled in 8nealogy. the territory of Elis. He had for his son Endymidén, respecting whom the Hesiodic Catalogue and the Eoiai related several wonderful things. Zeus granted him the privilege of deter- mining the hour of his own death, and even translated him into heaven, which he forfeited by daring to pay court to Héré: his vision in this criminal attempt was cheated by a cloud, and he was cast out into the underworld. According to other stories, his great beauty caused the goddess Séléné to become enamoured of him, and to visit him by night during his sleep:—the sleep of Endymién became a proverbial expression for enviable, un- disturbed, and deathless repose? Endymién had for issue (Pausanias gives us three different accounts, and Apollodérus a fourth, of the name of his wife), Epeios, Aitélus, Pzedn, and a

Hesiodic Theogony, the last enemy of the gods, is killed before he comes to maturity (Theog. 837). For the different turns given to this ancient Homeric legend, see Heyne, ad Apol- lodér. 1. c., and Hyginus, f. 28. The Aldids were noticed in the Hesiodic

oems (ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 482).

dysseus does not see them in Hadés, as Heyne by mistake says; he sees their mother Iphimédea. Virgil (Ain. vi. 582) assigns to them a place among the sufferers of punishment in Tar-

rus. Eumélus, the Corinthian poet, desig- nated Aléeus as son of the god Hélios and brother of Adétés, the father of Médea (Eumél, Fragm. 2, Markts- cheffel). The scene of their death was subsequently laid in Naxos (Pindar, h. iv. 88): their tombs were seen at Anthéd6n in Beeotia (Pausan. ix. 22, 4). The very curious legend alluded to by Pausanias from Hegisinoos, the author of an Atthis,—to the effect that Otos and Ephialtés were the first to establish the worship of the Muses in Helikén, and that they founded Askra along with G&éklos, the son of Posei- dén,—is one which we have no means of tracing farther (Pausan. ix. 29, 1). _ The story of the Aldids, as Diodérus gives it (v. 51, 52), diverges on almost every point; it is evidently borrowed

from some Naxian archeologist, and the only information which we collect from it is, that Otos and Ephialtés re- ceived heroic honours at Naxos. The views of O. Miller (Orchomenos, p. 387) appear to me unusually vague and fanciful.

Ephialtés takes part in the combat of the giants against the gods (Apollo- dor. i. 6, 2), where Heyne remarks, as in so many other cases, ‘‘ Ephialtes hic non confundendus cum altero Aloei filio”. An observation just indeed, if we are supposed to be dealing with personages and adventures historically real—but altogether misleading in re- gn to these legendary characters.

or here the general conception of Ephialtés and his attributes is in both cases the same; but the particular adventures ascribed to him cannot be =e to consist, as facts, one with the other.

1 Hesiod, Akusilaus, and Pherekydés, ap. Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iy. 57. "Iv ὃ αὐτῷ θανάτου ταμίης. The Scholium is very full of matter, and exhibits many of the diversities in the tale of Endy- miédn: see also Apollodér. i. 7, 5; Pausan. v. 1, 2: Condén, Narr. 14.

2 Theocrit. iii. 49; xx. 85; where, however, Endymién is connected with Latmos in Karia (see Schol. ad loc.).

130 MTHE ZOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZOLUS. Part lI

daughter Eurykydé. He caused his three sons to run a race on the stadium at Olympia, and Epeios, being victorious, was re- warded by becoming his successor in the kingdom: it was after him that the people were denominated Epeians.

Epeios had no male issue, and was succeeded by his nephew Eleios, son of Eurykydé by the god Poseidén: the name of the people was then changed from Epeians to Eleians. &télus, the brother of Epeios, having slain Apis, son of Phoréneus, was compelled to flee from the country: he crossed the Corinthian gulf, and settled in the territory then called Kurétis, but to which he gave the name of AXtélia.?

The son of Eleios,—or, according to other accounts, of the god Hélios, of Poseidén, or of Phorbas,2—is Augeas, whom we find mentioned in the Iliad as king of the Epeians or Eleians. Augeas was rich in all sorts of rural wealth, and possessed herds of cattle so numerous, that the dung of the animals accumulated in the stable or cattle-enclosures beyond all power of endurance. Eurystheus, as an insult to Héraklés, im- posed upon him the obligation of cleansing this stable: the hero, disdaining to carry off the dung upon his shoulders, turned the - course of the river Alpheios through the building, and ‘thus swept the encumbrance away. But Augeas, in spite of so signal a service, refused to Héraklés the promised reward, though his son Phyleus protested against such treachery, and when he found

Augeas.

that this fable indicates a purely pas- toral condition, or at least a mp yen rude state of agriculture; and the way in which Pausanias recounts it goes even beyond the genuine story: ws καὶ τὰ πολλὰ τῆς χώρας αὐτῷ ἤδη διατελεῖν ἀργὰ ὄντα ὑπὸ τῶν βοσκημάτων τῆς κόπρου. The slaves of Odysseus how-

étés, and Médea; not to mention that ΟΣ know what use to make of the the etymology of Augeas connects him before his outer fence

with Hélios, Theokritus (xx. 55) desig- \- nates him as the son of the god Hélios, “i¥orous and pastoral orate (Odyss.

through whose favour his cattle are

᾿ ἐπρανα v. 1. 8-6; Apollodér. i. '

2 Apollodér. ii. 5, 5; Schol. Apol. Rhod. i. 172. In all probability, the old legend made Augeas the son of the god Hélios; Hélios, Augeas, and Agamédé are a triple series parallel to the Corinthian genealogy, Hélios,

pasture,

made to prosper and multiply with such astonishing success (xx. 117).

8 Diodor. iv. 18. Ὕβρεως ἕνεκεν Ev- ρυσθεὺς προσέταξε καθᾶραι." ὃ δὲ “Hpax- λῆς τὸ μὲν τοῖς ὥμοις ἐξενεγκεῖν αὐτὴν ἀπεδοκίμασεν, ἐκκλίνων τὴν ἐκ τῆς ὕβρεως αἰσχύνην, ἄς. (Pausan. y. 1,7; Apollo- dér. ii. 5, 5).

It may not be improper to remark yard

κόπρος In Homer,— Ἐλθούσας ἐς κόπρον, ἐπὴν βοτανῆς κορέσωνται (Odyss. Χ. on: compare Iliad, xviii. δ716.---μυκηθμῷ ἀπὸ κόπρου ἐπεσσεύοντο πέδονδε.

The Augeas of Theocritus has abun- dance of wheat-land and vineyard, as well as cattle: he Pongo his land three or four times, and his vine-

diligently (xx. 20—82).

παρ, VI. AUGEAS—THE MOLIONID BROTHERS. 131

that he could not induce his father to keep faith, retired in sorrow and wrath to the island of Dulichion.1. To avenge the deceit practised upon him, Héraklés invaded Elis; but Augeas had powerful auxiliaries, especially his nephews, the ,, ,

two Molionids (sons of Poseidén by Molioné, the wife Molionid of Aktér), Eurytos, and Kteatos. These two mira- Prothers. culous brothers, of transcendant force, grew together,—having one body, but two heads and four arms.?. Such was their irresis- tible might, that Héraklés was defeated and repelled from Elis: but presently the Eleians sent the two Molionid brothers as Theéri (sacred envoys) to the Isthmian games, and Héraklés, placing himself in ambush at Kleéne, surprised and killed them as they passed through. For this murderous act the Eleians in vain endeavoured to obtain redress both at Corinth and at Argos; which is assigned as the reason for the self-ordained exclusion, prevalent throughout all the historical age, that no Eleian athléte would ever present himself as a competitor at the Isthmian games. The Molionids being thus removed, Héraklés again invaded Elis, and killed Augeas along with his children,— all except Phyleus, whom he brought over from Dulichion, and put in possession of his father’s kingdom. According to the more .. gentle narrative which Pausanias adopts, Augeas was not killed, but pardoned at the request of Phyleus.‘ He was worshipped as a hero® even down to the time of that author.

It was on occasion of this conquest of Elis, according to the old mythe which Pindar has ennobled in a magnificent ode, that Héraklés first consecrated the ground of Olympia and established the Olympic games. Such at least was one of the many fables respecting the origin of that memorable institution.®

1 The wrath and retirement of Phy- leus is mentioned in the Iliad (ii. 633), but not the cause of it.

2 These singular properties were as- cribed to them both in the Hesiodic poems and by Pherekydés (Schol. Ven, ad Il. xi. 715—750, et ad 1]. xxiii. 638), but not in the Iliad. The poet Ibykus (Fragm. 11, Schneid. ap. Athene. ii. 57) calls them ἅλικας ἰσοκεφάλους, ἑνι- γυίους, ᾿Αμφοτέρους γεγαῶτας ἐν ὠέῳ

ἀρ οἷο ea ere were temples and divine honours to Zeus Molién (Lactantius, de Fals& Religione, i. 22).

8 Pausan, Υ. 2, 4. The inscription

cited by Pausanias proves that this was the reason assigned by the Eleian athlétes themselves for the exclusion ; but there were several different stories. 4 Apollodér. ii, 7,2. Diodér. iv. 33. Pausan. v. 2, 2; 3, 2. It seems evi- dent from these accounts that the genuine legend represented Héraklés as having been defeated by the Molio- nids; the unskilful evasions both of Apollodérus and Diodérus betray this. Pindar (Olymp, xi. ee ives the story without any flattery éraklés, 5 Pausan. v. 4, 1. _6The Armenian copy of Eusebius gives a different genealogy respecting

132 THE XOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZOLUS. ParrT.

It has already been mentioned that Aitélus, son of Endymién, Etolian quitted Peloponnésus in consequence of having slain genealogy. Apis.1 The country on the north of the Corinthian gulf, between the rivers Euénus and Acheldéus, received from him the name of Atélia, instead of that of Kurétis: he acquired pos- session of it after having slain Dérus, Laodokus, and Polypcetés, sons of Apollo and Phthia, by whom he had been well received. He had by his wife Pronoé (the daughter of Phorbas) two sons, Pleurén and Kalydén, and from them the two chief towns in /Etélia were named.? Pleuron married Xanthippé, daughter of Dérus, and had for his son Agénor, from whom sprang Portheus, or Porthadn, and Demoniké: Euénos and Thestius were children of the latter by the god Arés.’

Portheus had three sons, Agrius, Melas, and CEneus: among the offspring of Thestius were Althea and Léda,*—names which bring us to a period of interest in the legendary history. Léda marries Tyndareus and becomes mother of Helena and the Dioskuri; Althza marries Cineus, and has, among other children, Meleager and Deianeira; the latter being begotten by the god Dionysus, and the former by Arés.5 Tydeus also is his son, and the father of Diomédés: warlike eminence goes hand in hand with tragic calamity among the members of this memorable family.

sae Meleager Tydeus. :

Elis and Pisa: Aéthlius, Epeius, Endy- mién, Alexinus; next (inomaus and Pelops, then Héraklés. Some counted ten generations, others three, between Héraklés and I hitus, who renewed the discontinued Olympic Armen. Euseb. copy. ὁ. xxxli. p. 140). 1Ephorus said that Altélus had been expelled by Salméneus king of the Epeians and Pisatz (ap. Strab., viii. p. oy. he must have had before him a different story and different genealogy from that which is given in the text.

2 Apollodér. i. 7, 6. Dérus, son of Apollo and Phthia, killed by A‘télus, after having hospitably received him, is here mentioned. Nothing at all is known of this; but the conjunction of names is such as to render it probable that there was some legend connected with them: ssibly given by Apollo to the Kurétes inst the Atolians, and the death of Me- eae, by the hand of Apollo, related both in the Eoiai and the Minyas

e assistance |

(Pausan. x. 31, 2), may have been grounded upon it. The story connects itself with what is stated by Apollo- dérus about Dérus son of Hellén.

3 According to the ancient genea- logical poet Asius, Thestius was son of Agénor the son of Pleurén (Asii Fragm. 6, p. 413 ed. Marktsch.). Compare the genealogy of Aitélia and the general remarks upon it, in Brandstiter, Ges- chichten des ZZtol. Landes, &c., Berlin, 1844, p. 23, seg.

4 Respecting Léda, see the state- ments of Ibykus, Pherekydés, Hellani- kus, &c. (Schol. Apollon. Rhod, i. 146). The reference to the Corinthiaca of Eumélus is curious: it is a specimen of the matters upon which these old genea- logical poems dwelt. Ay!

5 Apollodér. i. 8, 1; Euripidés, Me-

r, . 1. The three sons of Portheus are named in the Lliad (xiv. 116) as living at Pleurén and Kalydén. The name (neus doubtless brings Dionysus into the legend.

ὕπαρ, V1. ALTHMA AND MELEAGER. 133

We are fortunate enough to find the legend of Althea and

Meleager set forth at considerable length in the Iliad, newdien

jin the speech addressed by Phoenix to appease the Meleager

/ wrath of Achilles. CEneus, king of Kalydén, in the i Homer. \ vintage sacrifices which he offered to the gods, omitted to include ‘Artemis: the misguided man either forgot her or cared not for her; and the goddess, provoked by such an insult, sent against the vineyards of Gineus a wild boar of vast size and strength, who tore up the trees by the root, and laid prostrate all their fruit. So terrible was this boar, that nothing less than a numerous body of men could venture to attack him: Meleager, the son of CEneus, however, having got together a considerable number of companions, partly from the Kurétes of Pleurén, at lengthslew him. But the anger of Artemis was not yet appeased. She raised a dispute among the combatants respecting the pos- session of the boar’s head and hide—the trophies of victory. In this dispute Meleager slew the brother of his mother Althea, prince of the Kurétes of Pleurén: these Kurétes attacked the ABtélians of Kalyd6n in order to avenge their chief. So long as Meleager contended in the field the Atolians had the superiority. But he presently refused to come forth, indignant at the curses imprecated upon him by his mother. For Althea, wrung with sorrow for the death of her brother, flung herself upon the ground in tears, beat the earth violently with her hands, and implored Hadés and Persephoné to inflict death upon Meleager,—a prayer which the unrelenting Erinnyes in Erebus heard but too well. So keenly did the hero resent this behaviour of his mother, that he kept aloof from the war. Accordingly, the Kurétes not only drove the Aitolians from the field, but assailed the walls and gates ᾿ of Kalydon, and were on the point of overwhelming its dismayed inhabitants. There was no hope of safety except in the arm of Meleager; but Meleager lay in his chamber by the side of his beautiful wife Kleopatra, the daughter of Idas, and heeded not the necessity. While the shouts of expected victory were heard from the assailants at the gates, the ancient men of Atélia and the priests of the gods earnestly besought Meleager to come 1 Ἢ λάθετ', ἣ οὐκ ἐνόησεν" ἀάσσατο reproduces this ancient circumstance,—

δὲ ei θυμῷ (liad, ix. 538). The de- Oivews δ᾽ ἐν γήρᾳ ἐπιλαθομένον τῆς θεοῦ,

structive influence of Atéis mentioned é&c. (De Venat. 6. 1).

before, vy. 502. The piety of Xenophén

134 THE AOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF HOLUS. Parr I.

forth,’ offering him his choice of the fattest land in the plain of Kalydon. His dearest friends, his father Cineus, his sisters, and even his mother herself, added their supplications—but he remained inflexible. At length the Kurétes penetrated into the town and began to burn it: at this last moment, Kleopatra his wife ad- dressed to him her pathetic appeal to avert from her and from his family the desperate horrors impending over them all. Me- leager could no longer resist : he put on his armour, went forth from his chamber, and repelled the enemy. But when the danger was over, his countrymen withheld from him the splendid pre- sents which they had promised, because he had rejected their prayers, and had come forth only when his own haughty caprice dictated.?

Such is the legend of Meleager in the Iliad: a verse in the second book mentions simply the death of Meleager, without farther details, as a reason why Thoas appeared in command of the Atélians before Troy.*

Later poets both enlarged and altered the fable. The Hesiodic Eoiai, as well as the old poem called the Minyas, represented Meleager as having been slain by Apollo, who aided the Kurétes in the war ; and the incident of the burning brand, though quite How at variance with Homer, is at least as old as the tragic altered by —_ poet Phrynichus, earlier than Eschylus.*. The Mere,

omer. or Fates, presenting themselves to Althza shortly after the birth of Meleager, predicted that the child would die so soon Althea ana 88. the brand then burning on the fire near at hand the burning should be consumed. Althea snatched it from the oem. flames and extinguished it, preserving it with the ut- most care, until she became incensed against Meleager for the death of her brother. She then cast it into the fire, and as soon as it was consumed the life of Meleager was brought to a close,

We know from the censure of Pliny, that Sophoklés heightened the pathos of this subject by his account of the mournful death of Meleager’s sisters, who perished from excess of grief. They were changed into the birds called Meleagrides, and their never-ceasing tears ran together into amber.’ But in the hands of Euripidés—

1 These priests formed the Chorus in 3 Tliad, ii. 642. the Meleager of Sophoklés (Schol. ad 4 Pausan. x. πῇ 2. The Πλευρώνιαι,

Iliad. ix. 575). a lost tragedy of Phrynichus. 2 Tliad, ix. 525—595. 5 Plin. H. N. xxxvii. 2, 11.

MELEAGER—ATALANTA. 135

ΠΑΡ, VI.

whether originally through him or not,! we cannot tell—Atalanta became the prominent figure and motive of the piece, while. the party convened to hunt the Kalydénian boar was made to com- prise all the distinguished heroes from every quarter of Greece. In fact, as Heyne justly remarks, this event is one of the four ag- gregate dramas of Grecian heroic life,? along with the Argonautic expedition, the siege of Thébes, and the Trojan war.

To accomplish the destruction of the terrific animal which Artemis in her wrath had sent forth, Meleager assembled not merely the choice youth among the Kurétes and Aitdélians (as we find in the Iliad), but an illustrious troop, including Granda Kastér and Pollux, Idas and Lynkeus, Péleus and Kalydonian Telamén, Théseus and Peirithous, Ankeeus and Ké- Atalanta. pheus, Jasin, Amphiaraus, Admétus, Eurytién and others. Nes- ἰὸν and Pheenix, who appear as old men before the walls of Troy, exhibited their early prowess as auxiliaries to the suffering Kaly- dénians.? Conspicuous amidst them all stood the virgin Atalanta, daughter of the Arcadian Schceneus ; beautiful and matchless for swiftness of foot, but living in the forest as a huntress and unac- ceptable to Aphrodité.* Several of the heroes were slain by the boar; others escaped, by various stratagems: at length Atalanta first shot him in the back, next Amphiaraus in the eye, and, lastly, Meleager killed him. Enamoured of the beauty of Ata- lanta, Meleager made over to her the chief spoils of the animal, on the plea that she had inflicted the first wound. But his uncles, the brothers of Thestius, took them away from her, asserting their rights as next of kin,® if Meleager declined to keep the prize for

1 There was a tragedy of Zschylus called ᾿Αταλάντη, of which nothing Lage (Bothe, Aschyli Fragm. ix.

8

p. 18). Of the more recent dramatic writers, several selected Atalanta as_ their subject (see Brandstiiter, Geschichten ZAXtoliens, p. 65), 2 There was a poem of Stesichorus, Συόθηραι (Stesichor. Fragm. 15, p. 72). 3 The catalogue of these heroes is in Apollodér. i. 8, 2; Ovid, payee 8 my vili. 300; Hygin. fab. 173. Euripidés, in his play of Meleager, gave an enu- meration and description of the heroes see . 6 of that play, ed. Matth.). estér, in this picture of Ovid, how- ever, does not appear quite so invincible as in his own speeches in the Iliad,

The mythographers thought it neces- Sary to assign a reason why Héraklés was not present at the Kalydénian ad- © venture: he was just at that time in servitude with Omphalé in Lydia χά ape we ii. 6, 8). This seems to have een the idea of Ephorus, and it is much in his style of interpretation (see Eph. Fr. 9, ed. Did.). 4 Eurip. Meleag. Fragm. vi, Matth.— Κύπριδος δὲ μίσημ᾽, ᾿Αρκὰς ᾿Αταλάντη, κυνας Καὶ τόξ᾽ ἔχουσα, &e.

There was a drama ‘ Meleager” both of Sophoklés and Euripidés: of the former hardly an ents re- main,—a few more of the latter,

> Hyginus, fab. 229.

136 ‘THE AOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF MOLUs, Part I,

himself: the latter, exasperated at this behaviour, slew them. Althea, in deep sorrow for her brothers and wrath against her son, is impelled to produce the fatal brand, which she had so long treasured up, and consign it the flames! The tragedy concludes with the voluntary death both of Althea and Kleopatra. Interesting as the Arcadian huntress, Atalanta, is in herself, she is an intrusion, and not a very convenient intrusion, into the Homeric story of the Kalydénian boar-hunt, wherein another female, Kleopatra, already occupied the fore-ground. But the more recent version became accredited throughout Greece, and was sustained by evidence which few persons in those days felt any inclination to controvert. For Atalanta carried away with her the spoils and head of the boar into Arcadia ; and there for successive centuries hung the identical hide and the gigantic tusks, of three feet in length, in the temple of Athéné Alea at Relicsof Legea- Kallimachus mentions them as being there edged preserved, in the third century before the Christian servedat #ra;” but the extraordinary value set upon them is Tepes. best proved by the fact that the emperor Augustus took away the tusks from Tegea, along with the great statue of Athéné Alea, and conveyed them to Rome, to be there preserved among the public curiosities. Even a century and a half afterwards, when Pausanias visited Greece, the skin worn out with age was shown to him, while the robbery of the tusks had not been forgotten. Nor were these relics of the boar the only memento preserved at Tegea of the heroic enterprise. On the pediment of the temple of Athéné Alea, unparalleled in Peloponnésus for beauty and grandeur, the illustrious statuary Skopas had executed one of his most finished reliefs, representing the Kalydénian hunt. Ata- lanta and Meleager were placed in the front rank of the assailants ; while Ankeeus, one of the Tegean heroes, to whom the tusks of the boar had proved fatal,3 was represented as sinking under his

1 Diodér. iv. 34. Apollodérus (i. 8, Οὔ μιν ἐπικλητοὶ Καλυδώνιοι aypev- 2—4) gives first the usual narrative, τῆρες including Atalanta; next, the Homeric Μέμφονται κάπροιο" τὰ γὰρ σημήϊα narrative with some additional circum- νίκης stances, but not including either ᾿Αρκαδίην εἰσῆλθεν, ἔχει δ᾽ ἔτι θηρὸς Atalanta or the fire-brand on which ὀδόντας. Meleager’s life depended.

2 Kallimachus, Hymn. ad Dian. 3See Pherekyd. Fragm. 81, ed. 217.— Didot.

Car. Vi KALYDONIAN BOAR-HUNT—ATALANTA, 137

death-wound into the arms of his brother Epochos. And Pau- sanias observes that the Tegeans, while they had manifested the same honourable forwardness as other Arcadian communities in the conquest of Troy, the repulse of Xerxés, and the battle of Dipza against Sparta—might fairly claim to themselves, through Ankeus and Atalanta, that they alone amongst all Arcadians had partici- pated in the glory of the Kalydénian boar-hunt.! So entire and unsuspecting is the faith both of the Tegeans and of Pausanias in the past historical reality of this romantic adventure, Strabo indeed tries to transform the romance into something which has the outward semblance of history, by remarking that the quarrel respecting the boar’s head and hide cannot have been the real cause of war between the Kurétes and the A‘télians; the true ground of dispute (he contends) was probably the possession of a portion of territory. His remarks on this head are analogous to those of Thucydidés and other critics, when they ascribe the Trojan war, not to the rape of Helen, but to views of conquest or political apprehensions. But he treats the general fact of the battle between the Kurétes and the Aitélians, mentioned in the Tliad, as something unquestionably real and historical—recapi- tulating at the same time a variety of discrepancies on the part of different authors, but not giving any decision of his own respecting their truth or falsehood.

In the same manner as Atalanta was intruded into the Kaly- dénian hunt, so also she seems to have been introduced into the memorable funeral games celebrated after the decease of Pelias at [6lkos, in which she had no place at the time when the works on the chest of Kypselus were executed. But her native and

1 Pausan. viii. 45, 4; 46, 1—3; 47, 2. ,. 111.

3 2Strabo, x. p. 466. πΠολέμον δ᾽ Lucian, adv. Indoctum, c. 14, t

p. 111, Reiz.

The officers placed in charge of the ublic curiosities or wonders at Rome οἱ ἐπὶ τοῖς θαύμασιν) affirmed that one

of the tusks had been accidentally broken in the voyage from Greece: the other was kept in the temple of Bacchus in the Imperial Gardens.

Itis numbered among the memorable exploits of Théseus that hé vanquished and killed a formidable and gigantic sow, in the territory of Krommy6n near Corinth. According to some critics, this Krommyénian sow was the mother of the Kalydénian boar (Strabo, viii. p. 380).

ἐμπεσόντος τοῖς Θεστιάδαις πρὸς Οἰνέα καὶ Μελέαγρον, ὁ μὲν ἸΤοιητὴς, ἀμφὶ συὸς κεφαλῇ καὶ δέρματι, κατὰ τὴν περὶ τοῦ κάπρου μυθολογίαν" ὡς δὲ τὸ εἰκὸς, περὶ μέρους τῆς χώρας, ἄο. This remark is also similar to Mr. Payne Knight’s criticism on the true causes of the Trojan war, which were (he tells us) of 8 Sper character, independent of Helen and her abduction (Prolegom. ad Homer. c, 53).

3 Compare Apollodér. iii. 9, 2, and Pausan. v. 17, 4. She is e to wrestle with Péleus at these funeral games, which seems foreign to her character.

138

THE ZOLIDS, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF ZOLUS. Parti

genuine locality is Arcadia ; where her race-course, near to the town of Methydrion, was shown even in the days of Pausanias.? This race-course had been the scene of destruction for more than

Atalanta vanquished in the race by strata- gem.

one unsuccessful suitor. For Atalanta, averse to mar- riage, had proclaimed that her hand should only be won by the competitor who would surpass her in run- ning: all who tried and failed were condemned to

die, and many were the persons to whom her beauty and swift- ness, alike unparalleled, had proved fatal. At length Meilanién, who had vainly tried to win her affections by assiduous services in her hunting excursions, ventured to enter the perilous lists. Aware that he could not hope to outrun her except by strata- ς gem, he had obtained, by the kindness of Aphrodité, three golden

apples from the garden of the Hesperides, which he successively let fall near to her while engaged in the race. The maiden could not resist the temptation of picking them up, and was thus over- come : she became the wife of Meilanién, and the mother of the Arcadian Parthenopzus, one of the seven chiefs who perished in

the siege of Thébes.?

1 Pausan. viii. 35, 8

2 Re ting the varicties in this interesting story, see Apollod. iii. 9, 2; Hygin. f. 185; Ovid. Metam. x. 560— 700 ; Propert. i. 1, 20; lian V. H. xiii. i. MewAaviwvos σωφρονέστερος. Aris- tophan. Lysistrat. 786 and Schol. In the ancient representation on the chest of Kypselus (Pans Υ͂. 19, 1), Meilanién was exhibited standing near Atalanta, who was holding a fawn: no match or ay mae in running was indicated.

There is great discrepancy in the naming and patronymic description of the parties in the story. Three diffe- rent persons are announced as fathers of Atalanta, Schceneus, Jasus, and Menalos ; the successful lover in Ovid (and seemingly in a also) is called Hippomenés, not Meilanién. In

the Hesiodic poems Atalanta was

vius (ad Virg. Eclog. vi. 61; A®neid, iii. 113) calls Atalanta a native of Skyros.

Both the ancient scholiasts b= 4 Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 769) and the modern commentators, Spanheim and Heyne, seek to escape this difficulty by gg pee eee mee and a Boeétian : assuming the principle of their conjecture to be admissible, they ought to suppose at least three.

rtainly, if personages of the Gre- cian mythes are to be treated as his- torically real, and their adventures as so many exaggerated or miscoloured facts, it will be n to repeat the process of multiplying entities to an infinite extent. And this is one among the many reasons for rejecting the fundamental supposition.

But when Mad cee these - n- es as pure mdary, so an historical basis can neither be affirmed

nor denied ἀχὸ pte 5 them, we escape the necessity of such inconvenient stra- tagems. e test of identity is then to be sought in the attributes, not in the legal description,—in the predi- ae in the subject. Atlanta, whether born of one father or another, whether belonging to one place or another, is beau , cold, repulsive, daring, swift of foot, and skilful with the bow,—these attributes constitute her identity. The Scholiast on Theo-

Crap. VL ATALANTA VANQUISHED—DEIANEIRA. 139

We have yet another female in the family of (Eneus, whose name the legend has immortalised. His daughter Deianeira was sought in marriage by the river Ache- léus, who presented himself in various shapes, first as a serpent and afterwards asa bull. From the importunity of this hateful suitor she was rescued by the arrival of Héraklés, who encountered Acheléus, vanquished him and broke off one of his horns, which Acheléus ransomed by surrendering to him the horn of Amal- theia, endued with the miraculous property of supplying the possessor with abundance of any food and drink which he desired. Héraklés, being rewarded for his prowess by the possession of Deianeira, made over the horn of Amaltheia as his marriage- present to GEneus.' Compelled to leave the residence of Gineus, in consequence of having in a fit of anger struck the youthful attendant Eunomus, and involuntarily killed him,? Héraklés re- tired to Trachin, crossing the river Euénus at the place where the Centaur Nessus was accustomed to carry over passengers for hire. Nessus carried over Deianeira, but when he had arrived on the other side, began to treat her with rudeness, upon which Héra- klés slew him with an arrow tinged by the poison of the Lernezan hydra. The dying Centaur advised Deianeira to preserve the poisoned blood which flowed from his wound, telling her that it would operate as a philtre to regain for her the affections of Héraklés, in case she should ever be threatened by a rival. Some time afterwards the hero saw and loved the beautiful Iolé, daughter of Eurytos, king of CEchalia: he stormed the town, killed

Deianeira.

critus (iii. 40), in vindicating his sup- sition that there were two Atalantas,

Ws a distinction founded upon this very principle: he says that the Bd- tian Atalanta was τοξοτίς, and the Arcadian Atalanta Spoyaia, But this seems an over-refinement ; both the shooting and the running go to consti- tute an accomplished huntress.

In respect Parthenopzeus, called by Euripidés and by so many others the son of Atalanta, it is of some im- portance to add, that Apollodérus, ts on 4 genes ἘΠ author of the Thebaid, assigned to him a pedigree entirely different,—makin him an Argvian, the son of Talaos an Lysimaché, and brother of Adrastus. τ ange i. 9, 13; Aristarch. ap.

chol, Soph, Οὐ, Col. 1320; Anti-

machus ap. Schol. Zschyl. Sept, Theb. 532; and Schol. Supplem. ad Eurip. Pheeniss. t. viii. p. 461, ed. Matth. Apolloddérus is in fact inconsistent with himself in another passage.)

1 Sophokl. Trachin. 7. The horn of Amaltheia was described by Phere- bona (Apollod. ii. 7, 5): see also Strabo, x. p. 458, and Diodér. iy. 36, who cites an interpretation of the fables (οἱ εἰκάζοντες ἐξ αὐτῶν τἀληθές) to the effect that it was symbolical of an embankment of the unruly river by Héraklés, and consequent recovery of very fertile land.

2 Hellanikus (ap. Athen. ix. p. 410) mentioning this incident, in two diffe- rent works, called the attendant by two different names.

140 ‘THE ZOLIDs, OR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF MOLUS. Parr t.

Eurytos, and made Iolé his captive. The misguided Deianeira now had recourse to her supposed philtre : she sent as a present to Héraklés a splendid tunic, imbued secretly with the poisoned Death of blood ofthe Centaur. Héraklés adorned himself with Héraklés. {ἢ tunic on the occasion of offering a solemn sacrifice to Zeus on the promontory of Kénezon in Eubeea: but the fatal garment, when once put on, clung to him indissolubly, burnt his skin and flesh, and occasioned an agony of pain from which he was only relieved by death. Deianeira slew herself in despair at this disastrous catastrophe.?

We have not yet exhausted the eventful career of neus and ee his family—ennobled among the Atélians especially, old age of both by religious worship and by poetical eulogy—and

ee favourite themes not merely in some of the Hesiodic poems, but also in other ancient epic productions, the Alkmzé6nis and the Cyclic Thébais.2 By another marriage, Gineus had for his son Tydeus, whose poetical celebrity is attested by the many different accounts given both of the name and condition of his mother. Tydeus, having slain his cousins, the sons of Melas; who were conspiring against CEneus, was forced to become an exile, and took refuge at Argos with Adrastus, whose daughter Deipylé

1The beautiful drama of the Trachinie has rendered this story familiar: compare Apollod. ii. 7, 7. Hygin. f. 36. Diodér. iv. 36—37.

: e capture of (chalia (Οἰχαλίας ἅλωσις) Was celebrated in a very ancient epic poem by Kreophylos, of the

omeric and not of the Hesiodic character ; it passed with many as the work of Homer himself. (See Diintzer, Fragm. Epic. Grecor. p. 8. Welcker, Der Epische Cyclus, p. 229.) The same subject was also treated in the Hesiodic Catalogue, or in the Eoiai (see Hesiod, =. 129, ed. Marktsch.): the number of the children of Eurytos was there enumerated.

_ This exploit seems constantly men- tioned as the last performed by Héra- klés, and as immediately ing his death or apotheosis on Mount Cita : but whether the legend of Deianeira and the poisoned tunic be very old, we cannot tell.

The tale of the death of Iphitos, son of Eurytos, by Héraklés, is as ancient as the Odyssey (xxi. 19—40): but it is there stated, that Eurytos dying left

his memorable bow to his son Iphitos (the bow is given afterwards by Iphitos to Odysseus, and is the weapon so f:

to the suitors),—a statement not very consistent with the story that Gchalia was taken and Eurytos slain by Héra- klés. It is plain that these were dis- tinct and contradictory legends. Com- pare Soph. Trachin. 260—285 (where Iphitos dies before a not only with the a e just cited from the Odyssey, but with Pherekydés,

. 34, Didot. yginus (f. 33) differs altogether in -

the parentage of Deianeira: he calls her daughter of Dexamenos: his ac- count of her marriage with Héraklés is in every respect at variance with Apol- lodérus. In the latter, Mnésimaché is the —— of Dexamenos ; Héraklés rescues her from the importunities of the Centaur Euryti6n (ii. 5, 5).

2 See the references in Apollod. i. 8, 4—5. Pindar, Isthm. iv. 32. Μελέταν δὲ σοφισταῖς Διὸς ἕκατι ἐς κλίμα εἰ σεβι-

ὄμενοι Ἔν μὲν Αἰτωλῶν θυσίαισι aevvais Οἰνεΐδαι κρατεροί, ἄς,

Cuar. VI. HPRAKLES DEAD—TYDEUS AND DIOMEDEs. 141

he married. The issue of this marriage was Diomédés, whose brilliant exploits in the siege of Troy were not less celebrated than those of his father at the siege of Thébes. After the de- parture of Tydeus, Gineus was deposed by the sons of Agrios. He fell into extreme poverty and wretchedness, from which he was only rescued by his grandson Diomédés, after the conquest of Troy.1 The sufferings of this ancient warrior, and the final restoration and revenge by Diomédés, were the subject of a lost tragedy of Euripidés, which even the ridicule of Aristophanés demonstrates to have been eminently pathetic.2

Though the genealogy just given of Gineus is in part Homeric, and seems to have been followed generally by the Ὦ mythographers, yet we find another totally at variance onc with it in Hekatzeus, which he doubtless borrowed from sies: some of the old poets: the simplicity of the story annexed to it seems to attest its antiquity. Orestheus, son of Deukalién, first passed into Aitélia, and acquired the kingdom: he was father of Phytios, who was father of Gineus. Aitélus was son of Gineus.®

The original migration of Atdélus from Elis to 2télia—and the subsequent establishment in Elis of Oxylus, his descendant in the tenth generation, along with the Dorian invaders of Peloponnésus —were commemorated by two inscriptions, one in the Agora of Elis, the other in that of the Atélian chief town, Thermum, engraved upon the statues of Atélus and Oxylus ὁ respectively.

1 Hekat. Fragm. 341, Didot. In Tepwy τις ἀτυχεῖ; κατέμαθεν τὸν this story Gineus is connected with the Οἰνέα. pest dispovery of the vineand the mak-. Ovid. Heroid. ix. 158.— 196. a et ene a 9. ‘‘Heu! devota domus! Solio sedet _ 28ee Welcker (Griechisch. ‘Drags A ii. p. 583) on the lost tragedy

Cineus. 3 Timoklés, Comic. ap. Athens. vii. 4Ephor. Fragm. 29, Didot, ap. p. 223,— Strab. x.

ed nea desertum nuda senecta mit.”

142 THE PELOPIDS, Part I,

CHAPTER VIL. THE PELOPIDS.

Amone the ancient legendary genealogies there was none which Misfor- figured with greater splendour, or which attracted to tunesand —_ itself a higher degree of poetical interest and pathos, of the than that of the Pelopids—Tantalus, Pelops, Atreus Pelopids. and Thyestés, Agamemnon and Menelaus and Agis- thus, Helen and Klytemnéstra, Orestés and Elektra and Her- mioné. Each of these characters is a star of the first magnitude in the Grecian hemisphere : each name suggests the idea of some interesting romance or some harrowing tragedy : the curse, which taints the family from the beginning, inflicts multiplied wounds at every successive generation. So, at least, the story of the Pelopids presents itself, after it had been successively expanded and decorated by epic, lyric, and tragic poets. It will be suffi- cient to touch briefly upon events with which every reader of Grecian poetry is more or less familiar, and to offer some remarks upon the way in which they were coloured and modified by different Grecian authors. Pelops is the eponym or name-giver of the Peloponnésus : to ν᾿ find an eponym for every conspicuous local name was ‘elops— ‘ ἦ 2 ὃ

eponym of the invariable turn of Grecian retrospective fancy. Felopon- ΤῊ name Peloponnésus is not to be found either in the Iliad or the Odyssey, nor any other denomination

which can be attached distinctly and specially to the entire pen- insula. But we meet with the name in one of the most ancient post-Homeric poems of which any fragments have been preserved —the Cyprian Verses—a poem which many (seemingly most persons) even of the contemporaries of Herodotus ascribed to the

Cuap. VII. THE SCEPTRE OF PELOPS. 148

author of the Iliad, though Herodotus contradicts the opinion.! The attributes by which the Pelopid Agamemnén and his house are marked out and distinguished from the other heroes of the Iliad, are precisely those which Grecian imagination would natu- rally seek in an eponymus—superior wealth, power, splendour, and regality. Not only Agamemnén: himself, but his brother Menelaus, is “ more of a king” even than Nestér or Diomédés. The gods have not given to the king of the “much-golden” Mykéne greater courage, or strength, or ability, than to various other chiefs ; but they have conferred upon him a marked supe- riority in riches, power, and dignity, and have thus singled him out as the appropriate leader of the forces.? He enjoys this pre- eminence as belonging to a privileged family and as inheriting the heaven-descended sceptre of Pelops, the transmission of which is described by Homer in a very remarkable way. The sceptre was made “ by Héphestos, who presented it to Zeus ; Zeus gave it to Hermés, Hermés to the charioteer Pelops ; Pelops 5, 4, ial gave it to Atreus, the ruler of men ; Atreus at his death of the

left it to Thyestés, the rich cattle-owner ; ; Thyestés $& a in his turn left it to his nephew Agamemnén

to carry, that he might hold dominion over many islands and over all Argos”.’

1 Hesiod. ii. 117, Fragment. Epice. σι i. 280) between Agamemndén and Gree. Diintzer, ix. Κύπρια, 8,— . chilles. ΡΥ says to Agamemnén

Ala re Λυγκεὺς ai. ae Tav-yerov προσέβαινε ποσὶν ταχέεσσι ᾿Ατρείδη, σὺ μὲν ἄρχε" σὺ γὰρ πεποιθώς, βασιλεύτατός ἐσσι. ᾿Ακρότατον δ᾽ ἀναβὰς διεδέρκετο νῆσον ἅπασαν And this attribute einen to Mene-

laus as well as to his brother. For when Diomédés is about to choose his companion for the night expedition into the Trojan camp, Agamemnén thus addresses him (x. 235)—

Tov μὲν δὴ ἕταρόν γ᾽ αἱρήσεαι, ὅν κ᾽

ἸΤανταλίδεω ἸΤέλοπος.

Also the Homeric Hymn to ae 419, 430, and Tyrtzus, Fragm. Evvo- pe a).—

Evpetay ἸΤέλοπος νῆσον ἀφικόμεθα.

The Schol. ad Iliad. ix. 246, intimates that the name Πελοπόννησος occurred in one or more of the Hesiodic epics. 2Tliad. ix. 37. Compare ii. 580. Diomédés addresses Agamemndn—

Σοὶ δὲ διάνδιχα δῶκε Κρόνον παῖς ͵ ἀγκυλομήτεω" ἥπτρῳ μέν τοι δῶκε τετιμῆσθαι περὶ πάντων"

᾿Αλκὴν δ᾽ οὔ τοι δῶκεν, ὅ,τε κράτος ἐστὶ μέγιστον.

A similar contrast is drawn by Nestér

ἐθέλησθα

Φαινομένων τὸν ἄριστον, ἐπεὶ μεμάασί ε πολλοί"

Μηδὲ σύ Y) αἰδόμενος σῇσι φρεσί, τὸν

μὲν ἀρείω

Καλλείπειν, σὺ δὲ χείρον᾽ αἰδοῖ εἴκων,

Ἐς ae ὁρόων, εἰ καὶ βασιλεύτερός ἐστιν

Ὡς ἔφατ᾽, ἔδδεισε δὲ περὶ ξανθῷ Meve- Ade.

3 Tliad. ii, 101,

ὀπάσσεαι,

144 THE PELOPIDS. Part I.

We have here the unrivalled wealth and power of the “king of men, Agamemnén,” traced up to his descent from Pelops, and accounted for, in harmony with the recognised epical agencies, by the present of the special sceptre of Zeus through the hands of Hermés ; the latter being the wealth-giving god, whose blessing is most efficacious in furthering the process of acquisition, whether by theft or by accelerated multiplication of flocks and herds.1_ The Kingly at- wealth and princely character of the Atreids were pro- tributes of verbial among the ancient epic poets. Paris not

only carries away Helen, but much property along with her :? the house of Menelaus, when Télemachus visits it in the Odyssey, is so resplendent with gold and silver and rare orna- ment,? as to strike the beholder with astonishment and admira- tion. The attributes assigned to Tantalus, the father of Pelops, are in conformity with the general idea of the family—super- human abundance and enjoyments, and intimate converse with the gods, to such a degree that his head is turned, and he commits inexpiable sin. But though Tantalus himself is mentioned, in one of the most suspicious passages of the Odyssey (as suffering punishment in the under-world), he is not announced, nor is any one else announced, as father of Pelops, unless we are to construe the lines in the Iliad as implying that the latter was son of Hermés. In the conception of the author of the Iliad, the Pelopids are, if not of divine origin, at least a mortal breed specially favoured and ennobled by the gods—beginning with Pelops, and localised at Mykénz. No allusion is made to any connexion of Pelops either with Pisa or with Lydia.

The legend which connected Tantalus and Pelops with Mount Sipylus may probably have grown out of the Holic settlements Homeric at Magnésia and Kymé. Both the Lydian origin and Pelops. the Pisatic sovereignty of Pelops are adapted to times later than the Iliad, when the Olympic games had acquired to themselves the general reverence of Greece, and had come to

1Tliad, xiv. 491. Hesiod, Theog. ᾿Αλκὴν μὲν yap ἔδωκεν Ὀλύμπιος 444, Homer, Hymn. Mercur. 526—568, Αἰακίδῃσιν,

Ὄλβον καὶ πλούτον δώσω περικάλλεα Νοῦν δ᾽ ᾿Αμυθαονίδαις, πλοῦτον δ᾽ ῥάβδον. Compare Eustath. ad Iliad, ἔπορ᾽ ᾿Ατρείδῃσι. xvi. 182. Again, Tyrteus, Fragm. 9, 4.— 2 Tliad, iii. 72; vii. 363. In the He- Οὐδ᾽ εἰ Tavradidew Πέλοπος βασιλεύ- siodic Eoiai was the following couplet τερος εἴη, ἄσ. (Fragm. 55, p. 48, Diintzer) :-- 8 Odyss. iv. 45—71.

_ » ee

Guar. Vit. TANTALUS, 145

serve as the religious and recreative centre of the Peloponnésus— and when the Lydian and Phrygian heroic names, Midas and Gygés, were the types of wealth and luxury, as well as of chariot- driving, in the imagination of a Greek. The inconsiderable villages of the Pisatid derived their whole importance from the vicinity of Olympia: they are not deemed worthy of notice in the Catalogue of Homer. Nor could the genealogy which con- nected the eponym of the entire peninsula with Pisa have obtained currency in Greece unless it had been sustained by pre-established veneration for the locality of Olympia. But ifthe sovereign of the humble Pisa was to be recognised as forerunner of the thrice- wealthy princes of Mykénz, it became necessary to Lydia, Pisa assign some explanatory cause of his riches. Hence be, post- the supposition of his being an immigrant, son of a Homeric wealthy Lydian named Tantalus, who was the offspring

of Zeus and Plouté. Lydian wealth and Lydian chariot-driving rendered Pelops a fit person to occupy his place in the legend, both as ruler of Pisa and progenitor of the Mykénzan Atreids. Even with the admission of these two circumstances there is con- siderable difficulty, for those who wish to read the legends as consecutive history, in making the Pelopids pass smoothly and plausibly from Pisa to Mykéne.

I shall briefly recount the legends of this great heroic family as they came to stand in their full and ultimate growth, after the localisation of Pelops at Pisa had been tavked on as a preface to Homer’s version of the Pelopid genealogy.

Tantalus, residing near Mount Sipylus in Lydia, had two chil. dren, Pelops and Niobé. He was a man of immense possessions and pre-eminent happiness, above the lot of humanity : the gods communicated with him freely, received him at their banquets, and accepted of his hospitality in return. Intoxicated with such prosperity, Tantalus became guilty of gross wickedness. He stole nectar and ambrosia from the table of the gods, and revealed their secrets to mankind : he killed and served up to them at a feast his own son Pelops. The gods were horror- struck when they discovered the meal prepared for them: Zeus restored the mangled youth to life, and as Démétér, then absorbed in grief for the loss of her daughter Persephoné, had eaten a por- tion of the shoulder, he supplied an ivory shoulder in place of

Tantalus.

146 THE PELOPIDs. Part f.

it. Tantalus expiated his guilt by exemplary punishment. He was placed in the under-world, with fruit and water seemingly elose to him, yet eluding his touch as often as he tried to grasp them, and leaving his hunger and thirst incessant and unappeased.* Pindar, in a very remarkable passage, finds this old legend revolt- ing to his feelings: he rejects the tale of the flesh of Pelops having been served up and eaten, as altogether unworthy of the gods.?

Niobé, the daughter of Tantalus, was married to Amphidén, and had a numerous and flourishing offspring of seven sons and seven daughters. Though accepted as the inti- mate friend and companion of Lété, the mother of Apollo and Artemis,’ she was presumptuous enough to triumph over that goddess, and to place herself on a footing of higher dignity, on account of the superior number of her children. Apollo and Artemis avenged this insult by killing all the sons and all the daughters : Niobé, thus left a childless and disconsolate mother, wept herself to death, and was turned into a rock, which the later Greeks continued always to identify on Mount Sipylus.*

Some authors represented Pelops as not being a Lydian, but a king of Paphlagénia ; by others it was said that Tantalus, having become detested from his impieties, had been expelled from Asia by Ilus the king of Troy,—an incident which served the double purpose of explaining the transit of Pelops to Greece, and of im- parting to the siege of Troy by Agamemnén the character of retribution for wrongs done to his ancestor.5 When Pelops came over to Greece, he found CEnomaus, son of the god Arés and Harpinna, in possession of the principality of Pisa, immediately

Niobé,

Pelopsand bordering on the districtof Olympia. Cnomaus, hay- mea ing been apprised by an oracle that death would over-

take him if he permitted his daughter Hippodameia to marry, refused to give her in marriage except to some

1 Diodér. iv. 77. Hom. Odyss. xi. 582. Pindar of the punishment inflicted on Tanta- lus : a vast stone was perpetually im- pending over his head and threatening to fall Ὁ Olymp. i. 56; Isth. io ΒΝ

2 Pindar, Olymp. i, 48. the sentiment of phigensia in in ἜνΗ- pidés, Iph. Taur. 38

3 Sapphé (ragm. 82, Schneidewin), τ-Δατὼ καὶ Lae =52 μάλα μὲν φίλαι ἧσαν

ἑταῖραι. Sapphd assigned to Niobé

gives a different version V. xx.

eighteen children (Aul. Gell. N. A. iv. 7); Hesiod = twenty ; Homer twsire (Apollod. i The Lydian historian Xanthus gave a totally different version both of the mealogy and of the misfortunes of iobé (Parthen. Narr. 33). 4 Ovid, M 2 vi. 164—811. Pausan.

i. Ἧς ἊΣ Viii, 2, 3.

ollén. Rhod. ii. 858, and Schol.; Ise, ent. 59, Dindorf ; Diodér. iv. 74.

CtiaP. VIL. NIOBR—PELOPS AND GNOMAUS. 147

suitor who should beat him in a chariot-race from Olympia to the Isthmus of Corinth!: the ground here selected for the legendary victory of Pelops deserves attention, inasmuch as it is a line drawn from the assumed centre of Peloponnésus to its extremity, and thus comprises the whole territory with which Pelops is connected as eponym. Any suitor overmatched in the race was doomed to forfeit his life ; and the fleetness of the Pisan horses, combined with the skill of the charioteer Myrtilus, had already caused thirteen unsuccessful competitors to perish by the lance of Hnomaus.? Pelops entered the lists as a suitor: his prayers moved the god Poseidén to supply him with a golden chariot and winged horses; or, accord- ing to another story, he captivated the affections of Hippodameia herself, who persuaded the charioteer Myrtilus to loosen the wheels of @nomaus before he started, so that the latter was overturned and perished in the race. Having thus won the hand of Hippodameia, Pelops became prince of Pisa. He put to death the charioteer Myrtilus, either from indignation at his treachery to Ginomaus,‘ or from jealousy on the score of Hippodameia ; but Myrtilus was the son of Hermés, and though Pelops erected a temple in the vain attempt to propitiate that god, he left a curse upon his race which future calamities were destined painfully to work out.° Pelops had a numerous issue by Hippodameia : Pittheus, Troe zen and Epidaurus, the eponyms of the two Argolic gpariot cities so-called, are said to have been among them : Polocs ἧς Atreus and Thyestés were also his sons, and his principality daughter Nikippé married Sthenelus of Mykénz and 4: hee became the mother of Eurystheus.® We hear nothing of the prin- . cipality of Pisa afterwards: the Pisatid villages became absorbed into the larger aggregate of Elis, after a vain struggle to maintain

1 Dioddr. iv. 74.

2 Pausanias (vi. 21, 7) had read their names in the Hesiodie Koiai.

3 Pindar, Olymp. i. 140. The chariot race of Pelops and Ginomaus was re- presented on the chest of Kypselus at Olympia: the horses of the. former were given as having wings (Pausan. v. 17,4). Pherekydés gave the same story (ap. Schol. ad Soph. Elect. 504).

4 Τὸ is noticed by Herodotus and others as a remarkable fact, that no mules were ever bred in the Eleian territory; an Eleian who wished to

breed a mule sent his mare for the time out of the region. The Eleians themselves ascribed this phenomenon toa disability brought on the land by a curse from the lips of Ginomaus (Herod. iy. 30; Plutarch, Quest. Greec. p. 303).

5 Paus. v. 1, 1; Sophok. Elektr. 508 ; Eurip. Orest. 985, with Schol. ; Plato, Kratyl. p. 396.

6 Apollod. ii. 4, 5. Pausan. ii. 30, 8; 26, 3; v. 8, 1. Hesiod. ap. Schol. ad Jliad. xx. 116,

148 THE PELOPIDS. Part T.

their separate right of presidency over the Olympic festival. But the legend ran that Pelops left his name to the whole peninsula : according to Thucydidés, he was enabled to do this because of the great wealth which he had brought with him from Lydia into a poor territory. The historian leaves out all the romantic interest of the genuine legends—preserving only this one circumstance, which, without being better attested than the rest, carries with it, from its common-place and prosaic character, a pretended historical plausibility.

Besides his numerous issue by Hippodameia, Pelops had an Atress, illegitimate son named Chrysippus, of singular grace Thyestés, and beauty, towards whom he displayed so much affec- tion as to excite the jealousy of Hippodameia and her sons. Atreus and Thyestés conspired together to put Chrysip- pus to death, for which they were banished by Pelops and re- tired to Mykénz,?—an event which brings us into the track of the Homeric legend. For Thucydidés, having found in the death of Chrysippus a suitable ground for the secession of Atreus from Pelops, conducts him at once to Mykéne, and shows a train of plausible circumstances to account for his having mounted the throne. Eurystheus, king of Mykéne, was the maternal nephew of Atreus : when he engaged in any foreign expedition, he natu- rally entrusted the regency to his uncle ; the people of Mykénz thus became accustomed to be governed by him, and he on his part made efforts to conciliate them, so that when Eurystheus was defeated and slain in Attica, the Mykénzean people, apprehensive of aninvasion from the Hérakleids, chose Atreus as at once the most powerful and most acceptable person for his successor.* Such was the tale which Thucydidés derived “ from those who had learnt ancient Peloponnésian matters most clearly from their

1 Thucyd. i. δ. —— to — after ao of Pel

2 We find two distinct legends re- W*2 ἃ Sreat army, anc makes. apecting Chrysippus : his abduction by ™ster of his father’s principality (Hel- Laius jes of ébes, on which the Janik. a Schol. oe 106). Hel- lost drama of Kuripidéd ealled Chry- eet on Thucniidée te biter the sippus turned (see Welcker, Griech. So." into contonaid ‘with Haas

ddien, ii. p. 536), and his death by ‘The circumstantial eenealogy given in

the hands of hishalf-brothers. Hyginus ὡς 1,0]. ad Eurip. Orest. 5 βου πόλον (f. 85) blends the two together. and Thyestés reside during their banish-

3 Thucyd. i. 9. λέγουσι δὲ οἱ τὰ Πε- ment at Makestus in Triphylia: it is λοποννησίων σαφέστατα μνήμῃ παρὰ τῶν given without any special authority, πρότερον δεδεγμένο. According to but may perhaps come from Hellani- Hellanikus, Atreus the elder son re- kus,

Cuap. VII. ATREUS AND THYESTSS. 149

forefathers”. The introduction of so much sober and quasi-poli- tical history, unfortunately unauthenticated, contrasts strikingly with the highly poetical legends of Pelops and Atreus, which precede and follow it.

Atreus and Thyestés are known in the Iliad only as successive possessors of the sceptre of Zeus, which Thyestés at Family his death bequeathes to Agamemnén. The family πον ths dissensions among this fated race commence, in the Pelopids. Odyssey, with Agamemnon the son of Atreus, and Aigisthus the son of Thyestés. But subsequent poets dwelt upon an implacable quarrel between the two fathers. The cause of the bitterness was differently represented: some alleged that Thyestés had intrigued with the Krétan Aeropé, the wife of his brother; other nar- ratives mention that Thyestés procured for himself surreptitiously the possession of a lamb with a golden fleece, which had been designedly introduced among the flocks of Atreus by the anger of Hermés, as a cause of enmity and ruin to the whole family.’ Atreus, after a violent burst of indignation, pretended to be reconciled, and invited Thyestés to a banquet, in which he served up to him the limbs of hisown son. The father ignorantly partook of the fatal meal. Even the all-seeing Hélios is said to have turned back his chariot to the east in order that he might escape the shocking spectacle of this Thyestean banquet: yet the tale of Thyestean revenge—the murder of Atreus perpetrated by Agisthus, the incestuous offspring of Thyestés by his daughter Pelopia—is no less replete with horrors.?

Homeric legend is never thus revolting. Agamemnén and Menelaus are known to us chiefly with their Homeric bissuthas attributes, which have not been so darkly overlaid by nén and subsequent poets as those of Atreus and Thyestés, Menelaus. Agamemnén and Menelaus are affectionate brothers ; they marry two sisters, the daughters of Tyndareus, king of Sparta, Klytem- néstra and Helen; for Helen, the real offspring of Zeus, passes as the daughter of Tyndareus.2 The “king of men” reigns at Mykénz; Menelaus succeeds Tyndareus at Sparta. Of the rape of Helen, and the siege of Troy consequent upon it, I shall speak

1 Aischyl. Agamem. 1204, 1253, 1608 ; 3So we must say in conformity to so! 5 86; Attii Fragm. 19. the ideas of antiquity : compare Homer, # Hygin. fab. 87—88. Hiad, xvi. 176 ; and Herodot. vi. 53,

150 THE PELOPIDS. Part I.

elsewhere : I now touch only upon the family legends of the Atreids. Menelaus on his return from Troy with the recovered Helen, is driven by storms far away to the distant regions of Pheenicia and Egypt, and is exposed to a thousand dangers and hardships before he again sets foot in Peloponnésus. But at length he reaches Sparta, resumes his kingdom, and passes the rest of his days in uninterrupted happiness and splendour: being moreover husband of the godlike Helen and son-in-law of Zeus, he iseven spared the pangs of death. When the fulness of his days is past, he is transported to the Elysian fields, there to dwell along with “the golden-haired Rhadamanthus” in a delicious climate and in undisturbed repose.’

Far different is the fate of the king of men, Agamemnén. During his absence, the unwarlike Agisthus, son of Thyestés, had seduced his wife Klyteemnéstra, in spite of the special warning of the gods, who, watchful over this privileged family, had sent their messenger Hermés expressly to deter him from the attempt.2 A venerable bard had been left by Agamemnén ἃ8 the companion and monitor of his wife, and so long as that guardian was at hand, €gisthus pressed his suit in vain. But he got rid of the bard by sending him to perish in a desert island, and then won without difficulty the undefended Klytemnéstra. Ignorant of what had passed, Agamemnén returned from Troy victorious and full of hope to his native country; but he had scarcely landed when AXgisthus invited him to a banquet, and there, with the aid of the treacherous Klytemnéstra, in the very hall of festivity and con- gratulation, slaughtered him and his companions “like oxen tied to the manger”. His concubine Kassandra, the prophetic daughter of Priam, perished along with him by the hand of Klytemnéstra herself. The boy Orestés, the only male offspring of Agamem- ndn, was stolen away by his nurse, and placed in safety at the residence of the Phokian Strophius.

For seven years Agisthus and Klytemnéstra reigned in tran- quillity at Mykénz on the throne of the murdered Agamemnén. But in the eighth year the retribution announced by the gods

1 Hom. Odyss. 280—800 ; iv. 88—560. other historians of that territory, fixed

3 Odyss. 1. 38; iii, 810.---ἀνάλκιδος the precise day of the murder of Aga-

Αἰγίσθοιο. memnén,—the thirteenth of the month

* Odyss. iii, 260—275; iv. 512-537; Gamélidn (Schol. ad Sophocl. Elektr. xi. 403. Deinias, in his Argolica, and 275). :

πα σὰ itz ine

Cuar. VI. | AGAMEMNON AND MENELAUS—ORESTRS. 151

overtook them: Orestés, grown to manhood, returned and avenged his father, by killing Agisthus, according to Homer ; Onsite subsequent poets add, his mother also. He recovered : the kingdom of Mykéne, and succeeded Menelaus in that of Sparta. Hermioné, the only daughter of Menelaus and Helen, was sent into the realm of the Myrmidons in Thessaly, as the bride of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, according to the promise made by her father during the siege of Troy.

Here ends the Homeric legend of the Pelopids, the final act of Orestés being cited as one of unexampled glory.’ Later poets made many additions: they dwelt upon his remorse and hardly- earned pardon for the murder of his mother, and upon his de- voted friendship for Pylades ; they wove many interesting tales, too, respecting his sisters Iphigeneia and Elektra and his cousin Hermioné,—names which have become naturalised in every climate and incorporated with every form of poetry.

These poets did not at all scruple to depart from Homer, and to give other genealogies of their own, with respect to the chief persons of the Pelopid family. In the Iliad and Odyssey, Aga- memnén is son of Atreus.? In Homer he is specially marked as reigning at Mykénz ; but Stesichorus, Simonidés, and Pindar 9 represented him as having both resided and perished at Sparta ot at Amykle. According to the ancient Cyprian Verses, Helen was represented as the daughter of Zeus and Nemesis: in one of the Hesiodic poems she was introduced as an Oceanic nymph, daughter of Oceanusand Téthys.5> The genealogical discrepancies, even as to the persons of the principal heroes and heroines, are far too numerous to be cited, nor is it necessary to advert to them except as they bear upon the unavailing attempt to convert

Welcker in vain endeavours to show

1 Odyss. iii. 306 ; iv. 9, , 2 Odyss. i. 299, ~ Pleisthenés was orgineiy ἐν κα >

ced as the father of 3 Hesiod. Fragm. 60, p. 44, ed. his son (Griech. Tragod. p. 678). Diintzer; Stesichor. F: . 44, Kleine.

ragm 4Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 46. Ὅμηρος The Scholiast ad Soph. Elektr. 539, in ὶ ῦ

reference to another discrepancy be- tween Homer and the Hesiodic poems about the children of Helen, remarks that we ought not to divert our atten- tion from that which is moral and salu- tary to ourselves in the poets (τὰ ἠθικὰ καὶ χρήσιμα ἡμῖν τοῖς ἐντυγχάνουσι), in order to cavil at their ge

sont, 8, :

ἐν Μυκήναις φησὶ τὰ βασιλεῖα τοῦ ᾿Αγα- μέμνονος" Στησίχορος δὲ καὶ Σιμονίδης, ἐν Λακεδαιμονίᾳ. ndar, Pyth. xi. 31; Nem. viii. 21. Stésichorus had com: posed an ’Opéorera, copied in many oints from a still more ancient lyric resteia by Xanthus : compare Athen.

xii. Pe 513, and Allian, V. H. iv. 26. pp esiod. ap. Schol. ad Pindar. Nem.

x.

,

152 THE PELOPIDS. Part L

such legendary parentage into a basis of historical record or chronological calculation.

The Homeric poems probably represent that form of the legend, respecting Agamemnén and Orestés, which was current and popular among the Holiccolonists. Orestés was the great heroic chief of the Holic emigration ; he, or his sons, or his descendants, are supposed to have conducted the Achzeans to seek a new home, when they were no longer able to make head against the invad- ing Dérians: the great families at Tenedos and other Holic cities, even during the historical era, gloried in tracing back their pedi- grees to this illustrious source! The legends connected with the heroic worship of these mythical ancestors form the basis of the character and attributes of Agamemnén and his family, as de- picted in Homer, in which Mykénz appears as the first place in Peloponnésus, and Sparta only as the second: the former the special residence of “the king of men”; the latter that of his younger and inferior brother, yet still the seat of a member of the princely Pelopids, and moreover the birth-place of the divine Helen. Sparta, Argos, and Mykénz are all three designated in the Iliad by the goddess Héré as her favourite cities ; 5 yet the connexion of Mykéne with Argos, though the two towns were only ten miles distant, is far less intimate than the connexion of The goddess Mykéne with Sparta. When we reflect upon the very δῷ peculiar manner in which Homer identifies Héré

with the Grecian host and its leader,—for she watches over the Greeks with the active solicitude of a mother, and her antipathy against the Trojans is implacable to a degree which Zeus cannot comprehend,’—and when we combine this with the ancient and venerated Hérezon, or the temple of Héré, near Mykéne, we may partly explain to ourselves the pre-eminence

1 See the ode of Pindar addressed to Ἰλίον ἐξαλαπάξαι ἐϊκτίμενο; πτολίεθ- Aristagoras of Tenedos (Nem. xi. 35; Vv; 582). There were Pen- Ei δὲ σύ γ᾽, εἰσελθοῦσα πύλας καὶ τείχεα μακρὰ,

8 Iliad, iv. 81. Zeus says to Héré,—

Δαιμονίη, τί νύ ge Πρίαμος Πριάμοιό τε παῖδες

Ἰόσσα κακὰ ῥέζουσιν ὅτ᾽ ἀσπερχὲς μενεαίνεις

᾿Ωμὸν βεβρώθοις. Πρίαμον Πριάμοιό τε Bs

τ' “Ἄλλους τε Ἰρώας, τότε κεν χόλον ἐξακέσαιο.

Again, xviii. 358,—

ἢ ῥά νυ σεῖο

Ἐξ ΝΣ ἐγένοντο καρηκομόωντες

χαιοί,

—— el ΝΣ Εν ἡ α.

Cuap. VIL MYKENZ AND THE HERON, 153

conferred upon Mykéne in the Iliad and Odyssey. The Héreon was situated between Argos and Mykéne; in later times its priestesses were named and its affairs administered by the Argeians: but as it was much nearer to Mykénz than to Argos, we may with probability conclude that it originally belonged to the former, and that the increasing power of the latter enabled them to usurp to themselves a religious privilege which was always an object of envy and contention among the Grecian communities. The Molic colonists doubtless took out with them in their emigra- tion the divine and heroic legends, as well as the worship and ceremonial rites, of the Hérwon; and in those legends the most exalted rank would be assigned to the close-adjoining and administering city.

Mykéne maintained its independence even down to the Persian invasion. Eighty of its heavy-armed citizens, in the ranks of Leonidas at Thermopyle, and a number not [τα σεν ἢ inferior at Plata, upheld the splendid heroic celebrity °! MYken. of their city during a season of peril, when the more powerful Argos disgraced itself by a treacherous neutrality. Very shortly afterwards Mykénz was enslaved and its inhabitants expelled by the Argeians, Though this city so long maintained a separate existence, its importance had latterly sunk to nothing, while that of the Dérian Argos was augmented very much, and that of the Dérian Sparta still more.

The name of Mykéne is imperishably enthroned in the Iliad and Odyssey ; but all the subsequent fluctuations of the legend tend to exalt the glory of other cities at its expense. The recog- nition of the Olympic games as the grand religious festival of Peloponnésus gave vogue to that genealogy which connected Pelops with Pisa or Elis and withdrew him from Mykéne. Moreover, in the poems of the great Athenian tragedians, Mykénz is constantly confounded and treated as one with Argos. If any one of the citizens of the former, expelled at the time of its final subjugation by the Argeians, had witnessed at Athens a drama of Aischylus, Sophoklés, or Euripidés, or the recital of an ode of Pindar, he would have heard with grief and indignation the city of his oppressors made a partner in the heroic glories of his own.’ But the great political ascendency acquired by Sparta con-

1 See the preface of Dissen to the tenth Nem. of Pindgr,

154 THE PELOPIDS. Pant J.

tributed still further to degrade Mykéne, by disposing subsequent Its dectine P0ets to treat the chief of the Grecian armament ecline δ ξ coincident against Troy as having been ἃ Spartan. It has been with the —_ already mentioned that Stésichorus, Simonidés, and grgosand = Pindar adopted this version of the legend. We know that Zeus Agamemnon, as well as the hero Menelaus, was worshipped at the Dorian Sparta; and the feeling of inti- mate identity, as well as of patriotic pride, which had grown up in the minds of the Spartans connected with the name of Aga- memndn, is forcibly evinced by the reply of the Spartan Syagrus to Gelén of Syracuse at the time of the Persian invasion of Greece. Gelén was solicited to lend his aid in the imminent danger of Greece before the battle of Salamis: he offered to furnish an im- mense auxiliary force, on condition that the supreme command should be allotted to him. ‘ Loudly indeed would the Pelopid Agamemnfn cry out (exclaimed Syagrus in rejecting this appli- cation), if he were to learn that the Spartans had been deprived of the headship by Gelén and the Syracusans.”? Nearly a cen- tury before this event, in obedience to the injunctions of the Delphian oracle, the Spartans had brought back from Tegea to Sparta the bones of “the Lacénian Orestés,” as Pindar deno- Agamem. minates him :* the recovery of these bones was an- non and nounced to them as the means of reversing a course of Orestés . ς > > . transferred ill-fortune, and of procuring victory in their war to Sparta. against Tegea.* The value which they set upon this acquisition, and the decisive results ascribed to it, exhibit a pre- cise analogy with the recovery of the bones of Théseus from Skyros by the Athenian Kimén shortly after the Persian in- vasion.5 The remains sought were those of a hero properly belonging to their own soil, but who had died in a foreign land, and of whose protection and assistance they were for that reason deprived. And the superhuman magnitude of the bones, which were contained in a coffin seven cubits long, is well suited to the legendary grandeur of the son of Agamemnén.

1Clemens Alexandr. Admonit. ad compare Homer, Iliad, vii. 125. See Gent. p. 24. ᾿Αγαμέμνονα γοῦν τινα Δία what appears to ‘be an imitation of the ἐν Σπάρτῃ τιμᾶσθαι Στάφυλος ἱστορεῖ. same passage in Josephus, De Bello See also CEnomaus ap. Euseb. Pre- Judaico, iil. 8, 4. ἘΠ Beri ΟΝ ay parat. Evangel. v. 28. στενάξειαν οἱ πάτριοι νόμοι, MC.

3 Herodot. vii. 169. “H κε μέγ᾽ οἰμώ- 3 Pindar, Pyth. xi. 16. ξειεν ὃ Tedonidns ᾿Αγαμέμνων, πυθόμενος 4 Herodot. 1. 68. Σπαρτιήτας ἀπαραιρῆσθαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν 5 Plutarch, Théseus, c. 36, Cimén, poo Τέλωνός τε καὶ τῶν Svpaxovoiwy: δ. 8; Pausan. tii 3, 6.

--

ὕπαρ. VIII. LACONIAN AND MESSfNIAN GENEALOGIES, 155

CHAPTER VIIL LACONIAN AND MESSENIAN GENEALOGIES,

Tux earliest names in Lacénian genealogy are an indigenous Lelex and a Naiad nymph Kleochareia. From this

pair sprung a son Eurétas, and from him a daughter i Sparta, who became the wife of Lacedemén, son of a in Zeus and Taygeté, daughter of Atlas. Amyklas, son

of Lacedemén, had two sons, Kynortas and Hyakinthus—the latter a beautiful youth, the favourite of Apollo, by whose hand he was accidentally killed while playing at quoits: the festival of the Hyakinthia, which the Lacedemédnians generally, and the Amykleans with special solemnity, celebrated throughout the historical ages, was traced back to this legend. Kynortas was succeeded by his son Periérés, who married Gorgophoné, daughter of Perseus, and had a numerous issue—Tyndareus, Ikarius, Aphareus, Leukippus, and Hippokoédn. Some authors gave the genealogy differently, making Periérés, son of Molus, to be the father of Kynortas, and Gibalus son of Kynortas, from whom sprung Tyndareus, Ikarius, and Hippokodén.}

Both Tyndareus and Ikarius, expelled by their brother Hippo- koén, were forced to seek shelter at the residence of tyndareus Thestius, king of Kalydén, whose daughter, Léda, #4 Léda. Tyndareus espoused. It is numbered among the exploits of the omnipresent Héraklés, that he slew Hippokoén and his sons, and restored Tyndareus to his kingdom, thus creating for the subsequent Hérakleidan kings a mythical title to the throne. Tyndareus, as well as his brothers, are persons of interest in legendary narrative : he is the father of Kastér—of Timandra, married to Echemus, the hero of Tegea*—and of Klytemnéstra,

_ 3 Hesiod, ap. Schol. Pindar. Olymp,

1Compare Apollod. iii. 10,4. Pau- san. iii. 1, 4. xi. 79

156 LACONIAN AND MESSENIAN GENEALOGIES. Part L

married to Agamemnén. Pollux and the ever-memorable Helen are the offspring of Léda by Zeus. Ikarius is the father of Pene- lopé, wife of Odysseus: the contrast between her be- haviour and that of Klytemnéstra and Helen became Timandra, the more striking in consequence of their being so Klytem- nearly related. Aphareus is the father of Idas and 2. Pollux, Lynkeus, while Leukippus has for his daughters = Pheebé and Ilaéira. According to one of the Hesiodic poems, Kastér and Pollux were both sons of Zeus by Léda, while Helen was neither daughter of Zeus nor of Tyndareus, but of Oceanus and Téthys.?

The brothers Kastér and (Polydeukés or) Pollux are no less celebrated for their fraternal affection than for their great bodily accomplishments : Kastér, the great charioteer and horse-master ; Pollux, the first of pugilists. They are enrolled both among the hunters of the Kalydénian boar and among the heroes of the Kastér and Argonautic expedition, in which Pollux represses the Pollux. insolence of Amykus, king of the Bebrykes, on the: eoast of Asiatic Thrace :—the latter, a gigantic pugilist, from whom no rival has ever escaped, challenges Pollux, but is vanquished and killed in the fight.

The two brothers also undertook an expedition into Attica for the purpose of recovering their sister Helen, who had been carried off by Théseus in her early youth, and deposited by him at Aphidna, while he accompanied Peirithous to the under-world, © in order to assist his friend in carrying off Persephoné. The force of Kastér and Pollux was irresistible, and when they re-demanded their sister, the people of Attica were anxious to restore her: but no one knew where Théseus had deposited his prize. The invaders, not believing in the sincerity of this denial, proceeded to ravage the country, which would have been utterly ruined, had not Dekelus, the eponymus of Dekeleia, been able to indicate Aphidna as the place of concealment. The indigenous Titakus

Offspring of Léd ἊΨ

1 Hesiod, ap. Genel. Pindar. Nem. x. account of Apa and reap ie | Ἐν . Hesiod. Diintzer, 58, p. Amykus is the contest: in tha‘ Tyn us was worshipped as a of eokritus he is ρος Spee nears “| goa at Lacedemén (Varro ap. Serv. ad forced to give in, with a mise to irgil. Hneid. viii. 275). peace a the future . pia 2 Apollon. Rhod. ii. 1 Apoll, _, Conduct: there were severa erent! 9, 30. Theokrit. xxii 26-433. the aoe See Schol. Apollén. Rhod.

Cap, VIII. KASTOR AND POLLUX. 157

betrayed Aphidna to Kastér and Pollux, and Helen was recovered : the brothers, in evacuating Attica, carried away into τ dot

ae egend o captivity thra, the mother of Théseus. In after- the Attic days, when Kastér and Pollux, under the title of the Perens Dioskuri, had come to be worshipped as powerful gods, and when the Athenians were greatly ashamed of this act of Théseus—the revelation made by Dekelus was considered as entitling him to the lasting gratitude of his country, as well as to the favourable remembrance of the Lacedzeménians, who maintained the Deke- leians in the constant enjoyment of certain honorary privileges at Sparta,! and even spared that déme in all their invasions of Attica. It is not improbable that the existence of this legend had some weight in determining the Lacedzménians to select Dekeleia as the place of their occupation during the Pelopon- nésian war.

The fatal combat between Kastér and Polydeukés on the one side, and Idas and Lynkeus on the other, for the possession of the daughters of Leukippus, was celebrated by more than one ancient poet, and forms the subject of one of the yet remaining Idylls of Theokritus. Leukippus had formally betrothed his daughters to Idas and Lynkeus; but the Tyndarids, becoming qgas ana enamoured of them, outbid their rivals in the value Lynkeus. of the customary nuptial gifts, persuaded the father to violate his promise, and carried of Phcebé and Ilaéira as their brides. Idas and Lynkeus pursued them and remonstrated against the injustice: according to Theokritus, this was the cause of the combat. But there was another tale, which seems the older, and which assigns a different cause to the quarrel. The four had jointly made a predatory incursion into Arcadia, and had driven off some cattle, but did not agree about the partition of the booty—Idas carried off into Messénia a portion of it which the Tyndarids claimed as

1Diodér. iv. 63. Herod. ix. 73. Δεκελέων δὲ τῶν τότε ἐργασαμένων ἔργον χρήσιμον ἐς τὸν πάντα χρόνον, ὡς αὐτοὶ ᾿Αθηναῖοι λέγουσιν. According to other authors, it was Akadémus who made the revelation, and the spot called Akadémia, near Athens, which the Lacedzemdénians spared in considera- tion of this service (Plutarch, Théseus, 31, 32, 33, where he gives several diffe- rent versions of this tale by Attic

writers, framed with the view of exone- rating Théseus). The recovery of Helen and the captivity of Al‘thra were repre- sented on the ancient chest of Kypse- lus, with the following curious inscrip- tion :—

Tuvdapisa Ἑ .λέναν φέρετον, Αἴθραν δ᾽

᾿Αθέναθεν Ἕχλκετον.

“Pausan. v. 19, 1,

158 LACONIAN AND MESSENIAN GENEALOGIES. Part f.

their own. To revenge and reimburse themselves, the Tyndarids invaded Messénia, placing themselves in ambush in the hollow of an ancient oak. But Lynkeus, endued with preternatural powers of vision, mounted to the top of Taygetus, from whence, as he could see over the whole Peloponnésus, he detected them in their chosen place of concealment. Such was the narrative of the ancient Cyprian Verses. Kastér perished by the hand of Idas, Lynkeus by that of Pollux. Idas, seizing a stone pillar from the tomb of his father Aphareus, hurled it at Pollux, knocked him down and stunned him; but Zeus, interposing at the critical moment for the protection of his son, killed Idas with a thunder- bolt. Zeus would have conferred upon Pollux the gift of im- mortality, but the latter could not endure existence without his brother: he entreated permission to share the gift with Kastér, and both were accordingly permitted to live, but only on every other day.?

The Dioskuri, or sons of Zeus,—as the two Spartan heroes, Kastér and Pollux, were denominated,—were recognised in the historical days of Greece as gods, and received divine honours. This is even noticed in a passage of the Odyssey, which is at any Great func. Tate a very old interpolation, as well as in one of the tionsand Homeric hymns. What is yet more remarkable is, Pee Dior that they were invoked during storms at sea, as the karl. special and all-powerful protectors of the endangered mariner, although their attributes and their celebrity seem to be of a character so dissimilar. They were worshipped throughout most parts of Greece, but with pre-eminent sanctity at Sparta.

Kastér and Pollux being removed, the Spartan genealogy passes from Tyndareus to Menelaus, and from him to Orestés.

Originally it appears that Messéné was a name for the western portion of Lacénia, bordering on what is called Pylos: it is so represented in the Odyssey, and Ephorus seems to have included it amongst the possessions of Orestés and his descendants.? Throughout the whole duration of the Messénico-Dérian kingdom,

1 Cypria Carm. Fragm. 8. p. 18, The combat thus ends more favour- Dintzer. Lykophrén, 638—566, with ably to the Tyndarids; but probably Schol. Apollod. iii. U1, 1. Pindar, the account least favourable to them is Nem. x. 55—90. ἑτερήμερον ἀθανασίαν : the oldest, since their dignity went on also Homer, Odyss. xi. 302, with the continually increasing, until at last Commentary of Nitzsch, vol. iii. p. they became great deities.

245. 2 Odyss. xxi. 15. Dioddr. xv. 66.

Crap. VItt. THE DIOSKURI. 169

there never was any town called Messéné; the town was first founded by Epameinéndas, after the battle of Leuctra. The heroic genealogy of Messénia starts from the same mogsénian name as that of Lacénia—from the indigenous Lelex : senealogy. his younger son Polykaén marries Messéné, daughter of the Ar- geian Triopas, and settles in the country. Pausanias tells us that the posterity of this pair occupied the country for five genera- tions ; but he in vain searched the ancient genealogical poems to find the names of their descendants.! To them succeeded Periérés, son of Aolus; and Aphareus and Leukippus, acccording to Pausanias, were sons of Periérés.

Aphareus, after the death of his sons, founded the town of Aréné, and made over most part of his dominions to his kinsman, Néleus, with whom we pass into the Pylian genealogy.

2 Pausan. iy. & 1

160 ARCADIAN GENEALOGY. Part f.

CHAPTER IX. ARCADIAN GENEALOGY,

Tue Arcadian divine or heroic pedigree begins with Pelasgus,

whom both Hesiod and Asius considered as an indige- Folag@s. nous man, though Akusilaus the Argeian represented him as brother of Argos, the son of Zeus by Niobé, daughter of Phoréneus. Akusilaus wished to establish a community of origin between the Argeians and the Arcadians.

Lykaén, son of Pelasgus and king of Arcadia, had, by different ἘΠΕ wives, fifty sons, the most savage, impious, and wicked and his of mankind : Mzenalus was the eldest of them. Zeus, fifty sons. in order that he might himself become a witness of their misdeeds, presented himself to them in disguise. They killed a child and served it up to him for a meal: but the god overturned the table and struck dead with thunder Lykaén and all his fifty sons, with the single exception of Nyktimus, the youngest, whom he spared at the earnest intercession of the goddess Gea (the Earth). The town near which the table was overturned received the name of Trapezus (Tabletown).

This singular legend (framed on the same etymological type

aaa Ἢ that of the ants in Aigina, recounted elsewhere) oe seems ancient, and may probably belong to the Hesio- ferocity , dicCatalogue. But Pausanias tells usastory in many Bagg respects different, which was represented to him in

᾿ Arcadia as the primitive local account, and which be- comes the more interesting, as he tells us that he himself fully believes it. Both tales indeed go to illustrate the same point— the ferocity of Lykaén’s character, as well as the cruel . rites which he practised. Lykaén was the first who established the worship and solemn games of Zeus Lykeus: he offered up a

”

eS. rece

Cuap. IX. LYKAON. 161

child to Zeus, and made Jibations with the blood upon the altar. Immediately after having perpetrated this act, he was changed into a wolf.

“Of the truth of this narrative (observes Pausanias) I feel per- suaded : it has been repeated by the Arcadians from peep reli- old times, and it carries probability along with it, siqis faith For the men of that day, from their justice and piety, nias. were guests and companions at table with the gods, who mani- fested towards them approbation when they were good, and anger if they behaved ill in a palpable manner: indeed at that time

. there were some, who having once been men, became gods, and

who yet retain their privileges as such—Aristeus, the Krétan Britomartis, Héraklés son of Alkména, Amphiaraus the son of Oiklés, and Pollux and Kastér besides. We may therefore believe that Lykaén became a wild beast, and that Niobé, the daughter of Tantalus, becamea stone. But in my time, wickedness having enormously increased, so as to overrun the whole earth and all the cities in it, there are no farther examples of men exalted into gods, except by mere title and from adulation towards the power- ful: moreover the anger of the gods falls tardily upon the wicked, and is reserved for them after their departure from hence.”

Pausanias then proceeds to censure those who, by multiplying false miracles in more recent times, tended to rob the av

: β ..5 ᾽ is view of

old and genuine miracles of their legitimate credit pastand and esteem. The passage illustrates forcibly the views Present which a religious and instructed pagan took of his past

᾿ time—how inseparably he blended together in it gods and men,

1 Apollodér. iii. 8,1. Hygin. fab.176. magnificence in the march through Eratosthen. Catasterism.8. Pausan.viii. Asia Minor (Xen, Anab. i. 2, 10). But 2, 2—3. A different story respecting the the fable of the human sacrifice,

“army of

immolation of the child is in Nikolaus Damask. . p. 41, Orelli. Lykaén is mentioned as the first founder of the temple of Zeus Lykeeus in Schol. Eurip. Orest. 1662; but nothing is there said about the human sacrifice or its consequences. In the historical times, the festival and solemnities of the Lykza do not seem to have been distinguished materially from the other agénes of Greece (Pindar, Olymp. xiii. 104; Nem. x, 46): Xenias the Arcadian, one of the generals in the

Cyrus the younger, cele- brated the solemnity with great

and the subsequent transmutation of the person who had eaten human food © into a wolf, continued to be told in connexion with them (Plato, de Re- aca eet 15, Ρ gi Compare

ny, H. N. viii. 34. 5. passage of Plato seems to afiord indication that the practice of offering human victims at the altar of the Lykean Zeus was neither prevalent nor recent, but at most o tradi- tional and antiquated; and it there- fore limits the sense or invalidates the authority of the Pseudo-Platonic dialogue, Minos, 6. 5

1—ll .

162 ARCADIAN GENEALOGY. Part L

and how little he either recognised or expected to find in it the naked phenomena and historical laws of connexion which be- longed to the world before him. He treats the past as the pro- vince of legend; the present as that of history ; and in doing this he is more sceptical than the persons with whom he conversed, who believed not only in the ancient, but even in the recent, and falsely reported miracles. It is true that Pausanias does not always proceed consistently with this position : he often rationa- lises the stories of the past, as if he expected to find historical threads of connexion ; and sometimes, though more rarely, accepts the miracles of the present. But in the present instance he draws a broad line of distinction between present and past, or rather between what is recent and what is ancient. His criticism is, in the main, analogous to that of Arrian in regard to the Amazons —denying their existence during times of recorded history, but admitting it during the early and unrecorded ages.

In the narrative of Pausanias, the sons of Lykaén, instead of perishing by thunder from Zeus, become the founders of the various towns in Arcadia. And as that region was subdivided into a great number of small and independent townships, each having its own eponym, so the Arcadian heroic genealogy appears broken up and subdivided, Pallas, Orestheus, Phigalus, Trape- zeus, Menalus, Mantineus, and Tegeatés are all numbered among the sons of Lykadén, and are all eponyms of various Arcadian towns.

The legend respecting Kallist6 and Arkas, the eponym of

; Arcadia generally, seems to have been originally quite

τυ το ΑΒ independent of and distinct from that of Lykaén. Eumélus, indeed, and some other poets made Kallisté

daughter of Lykaén : but neither Hesiod nor Asius, nor Phere- kydés, acknowledged any relationship between them. The beautiful Kallisté, companion of Artemis in the chase, had bound herself by a vow of chastity : Zeus, either by persuasion or by force, obtained a violation of the vow, to the grievous displeasure both of Héré and Artemis. The former changed Kallisté into a bear ; the latter, when she was in that shape, killed her with an arrow. Zeus gave to the unfortunate Kallisté a place among the stars, as the constellation of the Bear: he also preserved the child

1 Paus, viii. 3. Hygin. fab. 177. 2 Apollod. iii. 8, 2.

-eulture ; he also taught them to make bread, to spin,

Cuap. IX. KALLISTO AND ARKAS—ALEUS AND AUGA, 163

Arkas, of which she was pregnant by him, and gave it to the Atlantid nymph Maia to bring up.

Arkas, when he became king, obtained from Triptolemus and

communicated to his people the first rudiments of agri- yey

cat

and to weave. He had three sons—Azan, Apheidas, ™*"* and Elatus: the first was the eponym of Azania, the northern region of Arcadia ; the second was one of the heroes of Tegea ; the third was father of Ischys (rival of Apollo for the affections of Korénis), as well as of Aipytus and Kyllén: the name of Aipytus among the heroes of Arcadia is as old as the Catalogue in the Iliad?

Aleus, son of Apheidas and king of Tegea, was the founder of the celebrated temple and worship of Athéné Alea | in that town, Lykurgus and Képheus were his sons, Augé his daughter, who was seduced by Héraklés, and secretly bore to him a child: the father, discovering what had happened, sent Augé to Nauplius to be sold into slavery : Teuthras, king of Mysia in Asia Minor, purchased her and made her his wife: her tomb was shown at Pergamus on the river Kaikus even in the time of Pausanias.®

From Lykurgus,* the son of Aleus and brother of Augé, we pass to his son Ankeeus, numbered among the Argonauts, finally killed in the chase of the Kalydénian boar, and father of Aga- penér, who leads the Arcadian contingent against Troy,—(the adventures of his niece the Tegeatic huntress Atalanta, have

eus, Augé, Télephus.

1 Pausan. viii. 8,2. Apollod. iii. 8, 2. Hesiod. apud Eratosthen. Catasterism. 1. . 182, Marktsch. Hygin. f.177.

2 Homer, Dliad, ii. 604. Pind. Olymp. vi. 44—63.

The tomb of Zpytus, mentioned in the Iliad, was shown to Pausanias between Pheneus and Stymphalus (Pausan. viii. 16, 2). Apytus was a of Hermés (Pausan. viii.

e hero Arkas was worshipped at Mantineia, under the special injunction ως Delphian oracle (Pausan. viii.

, 2). 3 Pausan. viii. 4, 6. Apollod, iii. 9, 1. Diodér. iv. 33. A separate legend respecting Augé and the birth of Télephus was current at Tegea, attached to the temple,

statue, and cognomen of Eileithyia in the Tegeatic agora (Pausan. viii. 48, 5).

Hekateeus seems to have narrated in detail the adventures of Augé (Pausan. viii. 4, 4; 47, 3. Hekate.

ade ome 845, Didot).

uripidés followed a different story about Augé and the birth of Télephus in his lost tragedy called Augé. (See Strabo, xiii. p. 615.) Respecting the Μυσοί of Aischylus, and the two lost dramas, ᾿Αλεαδαί and Μυσοί of Sopho- klés, little can be made out. See Welcker, Griechisch. Tragéd. p. 53, 408—414).

4 There were other local genealogies of Tegea deduced from Lykurgus: Bétachus, eponym of the déme Boéta- chide at that δος was his grandson (Nicolaus ap. Steph. Byz. Υ, Boraxédat),

164 ‘ ARCADIAN GENEALOGY. Part L

already been touched upon),—then to Echemus, son of Aéropus and grandson of the brother of Lykurgus, Képheus. Echemus is Ankeus— the chief heroic ornament of Tegea. When Hyllus, Echemus. the son of Héraklés, conducted the Hérakleids on their first expedition against Peloponnésus, Echemus commanded the Tegean troops who assembled along with the other Pelopon- nésians at the isthmus of Corinth, to repel the invasion: it was agreed that the dispute should be determined by single combat, and Echemus, as the champion of Peloponnésus, encountered and killed Hyllus. Pursuant to the stipulation by which they had bound themselves, the Hérakleids retired, and abstained for three generations from pressing their claim upon Peloponnésus. This valorous exploit of their great martial hero was cited and appealed to by the Tegeates before the battle of Plateea, as the principal evidence of their claim to the second post in the combined army, next in point of honour to that of the Lacedeménians, and superior to that of the Athenians: the latter replied to them by producing as counter-evidence the splendid heroic deeds of

Athens,—the protections of the Hérakleids against ene Eurystheus, the victory over the Kadmeians of Thébes, ee. and the complete defeat of the Amazons in Attica? pelled from Nor can there be any doubt that these legendary πότ). Glories were both recited by the speakers, and heard

by the listeners, with profound and undoubting faith, as well as with heart-stirring admiration.

One other person there is—Ischys, son of Elatus and grandson of Arkas—in the fabulous genealogy of Arcadia whom it would be improper to pass over, inasmuch as his name and adventures are connected with the genesis of the memorable god or hero Kordnis ZEsculapius, or Asklépius. Korénis, daughter of and As- Phlegyas, and resident near the lake Beebéis in are Thessaly, was beloved by Apollo and became preg- nant by him: unfaithful to the god, she listened to the proposi- tions of Ischys, son of Elatus, and consented to wed him: a raven brought to Apollo the fatal news, which so incensed him that he

1 Herodot. ix. 27. Echemus is found a place in the Hesiodic Cata- described by Pindar (Ol. xi. 69) as logue as husband of Timandra, the gaining the prize of wrestling in the sister of Helen and Klytemnéstra abulous Olympic games, on their first (Hesiod, Fragm. 105, p. 318, Markt- establishment by Héraklés, He also scheff.),

+

CHap, IX. ECHEMUS—ASKLEPIUS. 165

changed the colour of the bird from white, as it previously had been, into black.1 Artemis, to avenge the wounded dignity of her brother, put Korénis to death ; but Apollo preserved the male child of which she was about to be delivered, and consigned it to the Centaur Cheirén to be brought up. The child was

- named Asklépius or Ausculapius, and acquired, partly from the

teaching of the beneficent leech Cheirén, partly from inborn and superhuman aptitude, a knowledge of the virtues of herbs and a mastery of medicine and surgery, such as had never before been witnessed. He not only cured the sick, the wounded, and the dying, but even restored the dead to life. Kapaneus, Eriphylé, Hippolytus, Tyndareus, and Glaukus were all affirmed by different poets and logographers to have been endued by him with a new life2 But Zeus now found himself under the necessity of taking precautions lest mankind, thus unexpectedly protected against sickness and death, should no longer stand in need of the im- mortal gods : he smote Asklépius with thunder and killed him. Apollo was so exasperated by this slaughter of his highly-gifted son that he killed the Cyclépes who had fabricated the thunder, and Zeus was about to condemn him to Tartarus for doing so ; but on the intercession of Laténa he relented, and was satisfied with imposing upon him a temporary servitude in the house of Admétus at Phere.

1 Apollodér. iii. 10, 33; Hesiod.

verses, Hippolytus—(compare Servius Fragment. 141—142, Marktscheff. ; i ᾿ τὰ

ad Virgil. Aineid. vii. 761) Panyasis,

Strab. ix. p. 442; Pherekydés, Fr. 8;

Akusilaus, Fragm. 25, Didot.

Τῷ μὲν ἄρ᾽ ἄγγελος ἦλθε κόραξ, ἱερῆς ἀπὸ δαιτὸς

Πυθὼ ἐς ἠγαθέην, καὶ ῥ᾽ ἔφρασεν ἔργ᾽ ἀΐδηλα

Φοίβῳ ἀκερσεκόμῃ, ὅτι ἸἸσχὺς γῆμε Κόρωνιν

Εἰλατίδης, γατρα.

Φλεγύαο διογνήτοιο θύ- (Hesiod, Fr.) The change of the colour of the crow is noticed both in Ovid. Metamorph. ii, 632, in Antonin. Liberal. ο. 20, andin Servius ad Virgil. Aneid. vii. 761, though the name “ Corvo custode ejus” is there printed with a yee letter, asif it were a man named Corvus. 2 Schol. Eurip. Alkést. 1; Diodér. iv. 71; Apollodér. iii. 10, 3; Pindar, . iii. 59; Sextus Empiric. adv. Grammatic. i. 12, p. 271, Stésichorus named Eriphylé—the Naupaktian

Tyndareus ; a proof of the popularity of this tale among the poets. Pindar says that Aisculapius was ‘tempted by gold” to raise a man from the dead, and Plato (Legg. iii. Ys 408) copies him: this seems intended to afford some colour for the subsequent punishment. ‘*Mercede id captum (observes Boeck ad Pindar. 1. c.) Aisculapium fecisse recentior est fictio; Pindari fortasse ipsius, quem tragici secuti sunt: haud

ubie @ medicorum avaris moribus profecta, qui Grecorum medicis nos- trisque communes sunt.” The rapacity of the physicians (granting it to be ever so well-founded, both then and now) appears to me less likely to have operated upon the mind of Pindar, than the disposition to extenuate the cruelty of Zeus, by imputing guilty and sordid views to Asklépius. Com- pare the citation from Dikezarchus, infra, p. 177.

166 ARCADIAN GENEALOGY, Parr £

Asklépius was worshipped with very great solemnity at Trikka,

Extendea + K6s, at Knidus, and in many different parts of ον cg Greece, but especially at Epidaurus, so that more than “numerous one legend had grown up respecting the details of his egends.

birth and adventures: in particular, his mother was by some called Arsinoé. But a formal application had been made on this subject (so the Epidaurians told Pausanias) to the oracle of Delphi, and the god in reply acknowledged that Asklé- pius was his son by Korénis.1 The tale above recounted seems te have been both the oldest and the most current. It is adorned by Pindar in a noble ode, wherein, however, he omits all men- tion of the raven as messenger—not specifying who or what the spy was from whom Apollo learnt the infidelity of Korénis. By many this was considered as an improvement in respect of poetical effect, but it illustrates the mode in which the characteristic details and simplicity of the old fables? came to be exchanged for dignified generalities, adapted to the altered taste of society.

Machaén and Podaleirius, the two sons of Asklépius, command the contingent from Trikka, in the north-west region of Thessaly, at the siege of Troy by Agamemnén.* They are the leeches of the Grecian army, highly prized and consulted by all the wounded chiefs. Their medical renown was further prolonged in the subsequent poem of Ark-— tinus, the Iliu-Persis, wherein the one was represented as un- rivalled in surg:*al operations, the other as sagacious in detecting and appreciating morbid symptoms. It was Podaleirius who first noticed the glaring eyes and disturbed deportment which pre- ceded the suicide of Ajax.*

Machaén and Poda leirius.

1 Pausan. ii. 26, where several dis- tinct stories are mentioned, each spleens up at some one or other of the sanctuaries of the god: quite enough to ewe, Ba idea of three Asculapii (Cicero, N. D. iii. 22).

Homer. Hymn. ad Zsculap. 2. The tale briefly alluded toin the Homeric Hymn. ad Apollin., 209, is evidently different : Ischys is there the companion of Apollo, and Korénis isan Arcadian damsel,

Aristidés, the fervent worshipper of Asklépius, adopted the story of Koré- nis, and composed hymns on the γάμον Kopwvidos καὶ γένεσιν τοῦ θεοῦ (Orat. 23, p. 463, Dind.).

2See Pindar, Pyth. iii. The Scho-

liast put a construction upon Pindar’s words which is at any rate far-fetched, if indeed it be at admissible: he supposes that Apollo knew the fact from his own omniscience, without any informant, and he praises Pindar for having thus transformed the old fable. But the words οὐδ᾽ ἔλαθε σκόπον seem certainly to imply some informant: to suppose that σκόπον means the ᾿5 own mind is a strained interpretation.

3 Iliad, ii. 730. The Messénians laid claim to the sons of Asklépius as their heroes, and tried to justify the pee by a forced construction of

omer (Paus. iii. 4, 2).

4 Arktinus, Epicc. Grec. Fragm. 2. p. 22, Diintzer. The Ilias Minor men-

Guar. 1X. DESCENDANTS OF ASKLEPIUS. 167

Galen appears uncertain whether Asklépius (as well as Dionysus) was originally a god, or whether he was yymerous first aman and then became afterwards a god ;! but rage Fo Apollodérus professed to fix the exact date of his ants from apotheosis.2 Throughout all the historical ages the 4sklé¢pius. descendants of Asklépius were numerous and widely diffused. The many families or gentes called Asklépiads, who devoted | themselves to the study and practice of medicine, and who prin- cipally dwelt near the temples of Asklépius, whither sick and suffering men came to obtain relief—all recognised the god, not merely as the object of their common worship, but also as their actual progenitor. Like Solén, who reckoned Néleus and Posei- dén as his ancestors, or the Milésian Hekatzus, who traced his origin through fifteen successive links to a god—like the privi- leged gens at Pélion in Thessaly,? who considered the wise Centaur Cheirén as their progenitor, and who inherited from him their precious secrets respecting the medicinal herbs of which their neighbourhood was full,—Asklépiads, even of the later times, numbered and specified all the intermediate links which separated them from their primitive divine parent. One of these genealogies has been preserved to us, and we may be sure that there were many such, as the Asklépiads were found in many different places. Among them were enrolled highly instructed

a hate apps nae ngs by ay ta τὸν is ae ne corn urypylus, son ΟἹ ephus (Fragm. 5, whic erhaps a 0 see Di- p. 19, Diinizer). ” ‘kewarch. Ἐς νοὶ ed. Fuhr, p. 408).

δ λαελοκιός γέ τοι καὶ Διόνυσος, εἴτ᾽ ἄνθρωποι πρότερον ἤστην εἴτε καὶ ἀρχῆθεν Bcot (Galen, Protreptic. 9. t. 1. p. 22, cag Pausanias considers him as θεὸς ἐξ ἀρχῆς (ii. 26, 7). In the impor- tant femple at Smyrna he was wor- shipped as Ζεὺς ᾿Ασκληπιός (Aristidés, Or. 6, p. 64; Or. 23, p. 456, Dind.).

2 Apollodér. ap. Clem. Alex. Strom. i. p. 381; see Heyne, Fragment, Apollodér. p. 410. posers By to f ΕΜΑ τ, the apotheosis of Héra- klés and of Aisculapius took place at the same time, thirty-eight years after Héraklés began to reign at Argos.

83 About Hekateeus, Her. ii. 143; about Solén, Diog. L., Vit. Plat., init.

A curious fragment, preserved from the lost works of Diksarchus, tells us of the descendants of the Centaur Cheirén at the town of Pélion, or perhaps at the neighbouring town cf

Ταύτην δὲ τὴν δύναμιν ἕν τῶν πολιτῶν οἶδε γένος, ὁ δὴ ao Xetpwvos ἀπό- γονον εἶναι" παραδίδωσι δὲ καὶ δείκνυσι πατὴρ οἱῷ, καὶ οὕτως ἡ δύναμις φυλάσ- σεται, ὡς οὐδεὶς ἄλλος οἷδε τῶν πολιτῶν" οὐχ ὅσιον δὲ τοὺς ἐπισταμένους τὰ φάρ- μακα μισθοῦ τοῖς καμνοῦσι βοηθεῖν, ἀλλὰ προῖκα.

Plato, de Republ. iii. 4 (p. 391). ᾿Αχιλλεὺς ὑπὸ TH σοφωτάτῳ Xeipwve τεθραμμένος. Ce. Xen. De Ven. 6. 1.

4See the genealogy at length in Le Clerc, Hist. de la Méd. lib. ii. ο. 2. p. 78, also p. 287 ; also Littré, Introd, aux (@uvres Completes has grate t. i. Pp. 84. Hippokratés was the seventeenth

rom Aisculapius.

Theopompus the historian went at considerable length into the pedigree of the Asklépiads of Kés and Knidus, tracing them up to Podaleirius and his first settlement at Syrnus in Karia (see

168 ARCADIAN GENEALOGY. Parr 1.

and accomplished men, such as the great Hippocratés and the historian Ktésias, who prided themselves on the divine origin of themselves and their gens’—so much did the legendary element pervade even the most philosophical and positive minds of his-

torical Greece. Nor can there be any doubt that their ened means of medical observation must have been largely sons healed extended by their vicinity to a temple so much fre- Hero. quented by the sick, who came in confident hopes of divine relief, and who, whilst they offered up sacrifice and prayer ‘to Aisculapius, and slept in his temple in order to be favoured with healing suggestions in their dreams, might, in case the god withheld his supernatural aid, consult his living descendants.? The sick visitors at Kés, or Trikka, or Epidaurus, were numerous and constant, and the tablets usually hung up to record the particulars of their maladies, the remedies resorted to, and the cures operated by the god, formed both an interesting decoration of the sacred

Temples of

ground and an instructive memorial to the Asklépiads.?

Theopomp. Fragm. 111, Didot): Polyan- thus of Kyréné composed a special treatise περὶ τῆς τῶν ᾿Ασκληπιαδῶν γενέσεως (Sextus Empiric. adv. Gram- mat. i. 12, p. 271); see Stephan. Byz. v. Kas, and especially Aristidés, Orat. vii. Asclépiade. The Asklépiads were even reckoned among the Roxayicet of Rhodes, jointly with the Hérakleids (Aristidés, Or. 44, ad Rhod. p. 839, Dind.).

In the extensive sacred enclosure at Epidaurus stood the statues of Asklé- pius and his wife Epioné (Pausan. ii. 29, 1): two daughters are coupled with him by Aristophanés, and he was con- sidered especially εὔπαις (Plutus, 654) ; Jaso, Panakeia and Hygieia are named by Aristidés.

1Plato, Protagér. c. 6. (p. 311). Ἱπποκράτη τὸν Κῶον, τὸν τῶν ᾿Ασκλη- madov; also Phedr. c. 121 (p. 270). About Ktésias, Galen, Opp. t. ν. p. 652, Basil. ; and Bahrt, Fragm. Ktésie, p. 20. Aristotle (see Stahr, Aristotelia, i. p. 32) and gr pose the physician of the emperor Claudius, were both Asklépiads (Tacit. Annal. xii. 61). Plato, de Republ. iii. 405, calls them τοὺς κομψοὺς ᾿Ασκληπιάδας.

ausanias, a distinguished physician at Gela in Sicily, and contemporary of the philosopher Empedoklés, was also an Asklépiad : see the verses of Empe- doklés upon him, Diogen. Laért. viii. 61.

2 Strabo, viii. p. 374; Aristophan. Vesp. 122; Plutus, 635—750; where the visit to the temple of Aisculapius is described in great detail, though with a broad farcical colouring.

During the last illness of Alexander the Great, several of his principal officers slept in the temple of Serapis, in the hope that remedies would be suggested to them in their dreams (Arrian, vii. 26).

Pausanias, in describing the various temples of Asklépius which he saw, announces as a fact quite notorious and well understood, ‘‘ Here cures are wrought by the god” (ii. 36, 1; iii. 26, 7; Vii. 27, 4): see Suidas, v. ’Apiorapxos. The orations of Aristidés, especially the 6th and 7th, Asklépius and the Asklépiade, are the most striking manifestations of faith and thanks- giving towards sculapius, as well as attestations of his extensive working throughout the Grecian world; also Or. 23 and 25, Ἱερῶν Λόγος, 1, 3; and Or. 45 (De Rhet. p. 22, Dind.), ai 7 ἐν ᾿Ασκληπιοῦ τῶν act διατριβόντων ἀγελαὶ, ὅτ.

_ 8 Pausan. ii. 27, 8; 86,1. Ταύταις

ἐγγεγραμμένα ἐστὶ καὶ ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναι- κῶν ὀνόματα ἀκεσθέντων ὑπὸ τοῦ ᾿Ασκλη- πιοῦ, προσέτι δὲ καὶ νόσημα, ὅ,τι ἕκαστος ἐνόσησε, καὶ ὅπως ἰάθη,---[ἰῃ 8. cures are wrought by the god himself.

ἌΝ...

e

Cuap. IX, DESCENDANTS OF ASKLR&PIUS. 169

The genealogical descent of Hippocratés and the other Asklé-

piads from the god Asklépius is not only analogous to that of

Hekatzus and Solén from their respective ancestral gods, but also to that of the Lacedeeménian kings from Héraklés, upon the basis of which the whole supposed chronology of the ante-his- torical times has been built, from Eratosthenés and Apollodérus down to the chronologers of the present century. I shall revert to this hereafter.

1 ** Apollodorus fag Herculis pro cardine chronologiz habuit” (Heyne, ad Apollod. Fr. p. 410),

170 #AKUS AND HIS DESCENDANTS, Parr f.

CHAPTER X,

#IAKUS AND HIS DESCENDANTS—AGINA, SALAMIS, AND PHTHIA.,

THE memorable heroic genealogy of the Aakids establishes a fabulous connexion between A¢gina, Salamis, and Phthia, which we can only recognise as a fact, without being able to trace its origin.

£akus was the son of Zeus, born of Aigina, daughter of Asépus, Fakus— Whom the god had carried off and brought into the son of Zeus island to which he gave her name: she was afterwards and Aigina. married to Aktér, and had by him Mencetius, father of Patroclus. As there were two rivers named Asdpus, one between Phlius and Sikyén, and another between Thébes and Plateea—so the Aiginétan heroic genealogy was connected both with that of Thébes and with that of Phlius ; and this belief led to practical consequences in the minds of those who accepted the legends as genuine history. For when the Thébans, in the 68th Olympiad, were hard-pressed in war by Athens, they were directed by the Delphian oracle to ask assistance of their next of kin. Recollecting that Thébé and Aigina had been sisters, common daughters of Asépus, they were induced to apply to the Aginétans as their next of kin, and the Aginétans gave them aid, first by sending to them their common heroes, the Aakids, next by actual armed force. Pindar dwells emphatically on the heroic brother- hood between Thébes, his native city, and Agina.?

iakus was alone in Aigina: to relieve him from this solitude, Offspring of Zeus changed all the ants in the island into men, and #akus— —_ thus provided him with a numerous population, who, Telamén, from their origin, were called Myrmidons.’ By his

si a wife Endéis, daughter of Cheirén, Alakus had for his

1 Herodot. v. 81. 3 This tale, respecting the transfor- 1Nem. iv. 22. Isth. vii. 16. mation of the ants into men, is as old

171

sons Péleus and Telamén: by the Nereid Psamathé, he had Phékus. A monstrous crime had then recently been committed by Pelops, in killing the Arcadian prince, Stymphalus, under a simulation of friendship and hospitality: for this the gods had smitten all Greece with famine and barrenness. The oracles affirmed that nothing could relieve Greece from this intolerable misery except the prayers of AZakus, the most pious of mankind. Accordingly envoys from all.quarters flocked to Atgina, to pre- vail upon Aakus to put up prayers for them: on his supplica- tions the gods relented, and the suffering immediately ceased. The grateful Greeks established in Agina the temple and worship of Zeus Panhellénius, one of the lasting monuments and institu- tions of the island, on the spot where Auakus had offered up his prayer. The statues of the envoys who had come to solicit him were yet to be seen in the Makeion, or sacred edifice of AXakus, in the time of Pausanias : and the Athenian Isokratés, in his eulogy of Evagoras, the despot of Salamis in Cyprus (who traced his descent through Teukrus to Makus), enlarges upon this signal miracle, recounte+| and believed by other Greeks as well as by the Adginétans, as a proof both of the great qualities and of the divine favour and patronage displayed in the career of the Aiakids.1 Aakus was also employed to aid Poseidén and Apollo in building the walls of Troy.? Péleus and Telamén, the sons of Hakus, contracting a jealousy of their bastard brother, Phékus, in consequence of phokus his eminent skill in gymnastic contests, conspired to Killed by

: . : εἰ ρι El d put him to death. Telamén flung his quoit at him Telamon.

Caap, X. {HE PIOUS AAKUS.

Prayers of Zakus— procure relief for Greece.

as the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. See Diintzer, Fragm. Epicc. 21, p. 34; evidently an etymological tale from the name Myrmidones. usanias throws aside both the etymology and the de- tails of the miracle : he says that Zeus raised men from the earth, at the prayer of Hakus (ii. 29, 2): other authors re- tained the etymology of Myrmidons from μύρμηκες, but gave a different explanation (Kallimachus, Fragm. 114, Dintzer). Μυρμιδόνων ἐσσῆνα (Strabo,

i *Eoony, ὁ οἰκιστής (Hygin.

Viii, p. 375). fab. 52).

According to the Thessalian legend, Myrmidén was the son of Zeus by Eurymedusa, daughter of Kletér; Zeus having assumed the disguise of

an ant (Clemens. Alex. Admon. ad Gent. p. 25, Sylb.).

1 Apollod. 111. 12,6. Isokrat. Evag. Encom. vol. ii. p. 278, Auger. Pausan. i, 44, 18; ii. 29,6. Schol. Aristoph. Equit. 1253. i

So in the 106th Psalm, respecting the Israelites and Phinehas, v. 29, ‘* They provoked the Lord to anger with their inventions, and the plague brake in upon them”; “Then stood up Phinehas and executed By pee and so the plague was stayed” ; ‘‘ And that was counted unto him forrighteousness, unto all generations for evermore”.

2 Pindar, Olymp. viii. 41, with the Scholia. Didymus did not find this story in any other poet older than Pindar.

172 #AKUS AND HIS DESCENDANTS, Parr f.

while they were playing together, and Péleus despatched him by a blow with his hatchet in the back. They then concealed the dead body in a wood, but Afakus, having discovered both the act and the agents, banished the brothers from the island.’ For both of them eminent destinies were in store.

While we notice the indifference to the moral quality of actions implied in the old Hesiodic legend, when it imputes distinctly and nakedly this proceeding to two of the most admired persons of the heroic world—it is not less instructive to witness the change of feeling which had taken place in the age of Pindar. That warm eulogist of the great ΖΑ ΚΙ race hangs down his head with shame, and declines to recount, though he is obliged darkly to glance at, the cause which forced the pious akus to banish his sons from Aigina. It appears that Kallimachus, if we may judge by a short fragment, manifested the same repugnance to mention it.?

Telamén retired to Salamis, then ruled by Kychreus, the son eee of Poseidén and Salamis, who had recently rescued banished, _ the island from the plague ofa terrible serpent. This

oes to animal, expelled from Salamis, retired to Eleusis in Attica, where it was received and harboured by the goddess Démétér in her sacred domicile? Kychreus dying child- less left his dominion to Telamén, who, marrying Peribeea, daughter of Alkathoos, and granddaughter of Pelops, had for his son the celebrated Ajax. Telamén took part both in the chase of the Kalydénian boar and in the Argonautic expedition : he was also the intimate friend and companion of Héraklés, whom he accompanied in his enterprise against the Amazons, and in the attack made with only six ships upon Laomedén, king of Troy.

1 Apollod. iii. 12, 6, who relates the tendency to soften down and moralise tale somewhat differently ; but the old the ancient tales. epic poem Alkmeonis gave the details Pindar, however, seems to forget (ap. Schol. Eurip. Andromach. 685)— this incident when he speaks in other Ἔνθα μὲν ἀντίθεος Τελαμὼν τροχοειδέϊ places of the general character of δίσκῳ na Ῥ : a (Olymp. ii. 75-86. Isthm. vii Πιλῆξε κάρη" Πηλεὺς δὲ θοῶς ἀνὰ χεῖρα "ὁ Anoliod. iii. 12, 7. _Euphoridn, τανυσσας ss 2 . ᾿Αξίνην ἐΐχαλκον ἐπεπλήγει μετὰ νῶτα. Lie cas ae ons Petar 2 Pindar, Nem. v. 15, with Scholia, serpent in the temple at Eleusis, as and Kallimach. Frag. 136. Apollénius there was in that of Athéné Polias at Rhodius represents the fratricide as Athens (Herodot. viii. 41, Photius, v. inadvertent and unintentional (i. 92); Οἰκοῦρον ὄφιν. Arist, Lysistr. 759, with one instance amongst many of the the Schol.).

παρ. X. PRLEUS AND TELAMON—MARRIAGE OF THETIS, 178

This last enterprise having proved completely successful, Tela- mon was rewarded by Héraklés with the possession of the daugh- ter of Laomedén, Hésioné, who bore to him Teukros, the most distinguished archer amidst the host of Agamemnén, and the founder of Salamis in Cyprus.

Péleus went to Phthia, where he married the daughter of Eurytién, son of Aktér, and received from him the paens third part of hisdominions, Taking part in the Kaly- πὰ δὶ dénian boar-hunt, he unintentionally killed his father- uiseings in-law Eurytién, and was obliged to flee to Idlkos, With Thetis. where he received purification from Akastus, son of Pelias: the danger to which he became exposed, by the calumnious accusa- tions of the enamoured wife of Akastus, has already been touched upon in a previous section. Péleus also was among the Argo- nauts ; the most memorable event in his life, however, was his marriage with the sea-goddess Thetis. Zeus and Poseidén had both conceived a violent passion for Thetis. But the former, having been forewarned by Prométheus that Thetis was destined to give birth to a son more powerful than his father, compelled her, much against her own will, to marry Péleus ; who, instructed by the intimations of the wise Cheirdn, was enabled to seize her on the coast called Sépias in the southern region of Thessaly. She changed her form several times, but Péleus held her fast until she resumed her original appearance, and she was then no longer able to resist. All the gods were present, and brought splendid gifts to these memorable nuptials : Apollo sang with his harp, Poseidén gave to Péleus the immortal horses Xanthus and Balius, and Cheirén presented a formidable spear, cut from an ash-tree on Mount Pélion. We shall have reason hereafter to recognise the value of both these gifts in the exploits of Achillés.?

1 Apollod. iii, 12, 7. Hesiod. ap. Strab. ix. p. 393.

The libation and prayer of Héraklés, prior to the birth of Ajax, and his fixing the name of the yet unborn child, from an eagle (aierés) which ap-

ed in response to his words, was Fetailed in the Hesiodic Eoiai, and is celebrated by Pindar (Isthm. v. 30—54). See also the Scholia.

2 Apollodér. iii. 18, 5. Homer, Iliad, XViii. 434; xxiv. 62. Pi , Nem. iv. 50—68; Isthm. vii. 27—50. Herodot.

vii. 192. Catullus, Carm. 64. Epithal. Pel. et Thetidos, with the prefatory remarks of Doering.

The nuptials of Péleus and Thetis were much celebrated in the Hesiodic Catalogue, or prehaps in the Eoiai (Diintzer, Epic. Greece. Frag. 36, p. 39), and Aigimius— see Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. iv. 869—where there is a curious attempt of Staphylus to rationalise the marriage of Péleus and Thetis.

There was a town, seemingly near Pharsalus in Thessaly, called Theti-

174 ZAKUS AND HIS DESCENDANTS, Part f.

The prominent part assigned to Thetis in the Iliad is well known, and the post-Homeric poets of the Legend of Troy intro- duced her as actively concurring first to promote the glory, finally to bewail the death, of her distinguished son. Péleus, having survived both his son Achillés and his grandson Neoptolemus, is ultimately directed to place himself on the very spot where he had originally seized Thetis, and thither the goddess comes her- self to fetch him away, in order that he may exchange the de- sertion and decrepitude of age for a life of immortality along with the Néreids.? The spot was indicated to Xerxés when he marched into Greece by the Iénians who accompanied him, and his magi offered solemn sacrifices to her as well as to the other Néreids as the presiding goddesses and mistresses of the coast.3

Neoptolemus or Pyrrhus, the son of Achillés, too young to en- gage in the commencement of the siege of Troy, comes on the stage after the death of his father as the indis- pensable and prominent agent in the final capture of the city. He returns victor from Troy, not to Phthia, but to Epirus, bring- ing with him the captive Andromaché, widow of Hectér, by whom Molossus is born to him. He himself perishes in the full vigour of life at Delphi by the machinations of Orestés, son of Agamem- nén. But his son Molossus—like Fleance, the son of Banquo, in Macbeth—becomes the father of the powerful race of Molossian kings, who played so conspicuous a part during the declining vigour of the Grecian cities, and to whom the title and parentage of Aakids was a source of peculiar pride, identifying them by com- munity of heroic origin with genuine and undisputed Hellénes,4

The glories of Ajax, the second grandson of A®akus, before Ajax—his Troy, are surpassed only by those of Achillés, He the en perishes by his own hand, the victim of an insup- mous hero portable feeling of humiliation, because a less worthy

a γ δον claimant is allowed to carry off from him the arms of

Neoptole- mus,

deium. Thetis is said to have been carried by Péleus to both these places: probably it grew up round a temple and sanctuary of this goddess (Pherekyd. Frag. 16, Didot; Hellanik. ap. Steph. Byz. Θετίδειον).

1 See the arguments of the lost poems, the Cypria and the Aithiopis, as given by Proclus, in Diintzer, Fragm. Epic. Gr. p. 11—16 ; also Schol.

ad Iliad. xvi. 140 ; and the extract from the lost Ψυχοστασία of Aischylus, ἫΝ Plat. de Republic. ii. ο. 21 (p. 882, St.

2 Eurip. Androm. 1242—1260: Pindar. Olymp. ii. 86.

3 Herodot. vii. 198.

4 Plutarch, Pyrrh. 1; Justin. xi. 3; Eurip. Androm. 1253; Zrrian, Exp. Alexand. i. 11.

«ὦ oe UO eee Ξ

a

Cap. X. NEOPTOLEMUS—AJAX—TEUKRUS, 175

the departed Achillés. His son Phileus receives the. citizen- ship of Athens, and the gens or déme called Philaide traced up to him its name and its origin: moreover the distinguished Athenians, Miltiadés and Thucydidés, were regarded as members of this heroic progeny.

Teukrus escaped from the perils of the siege of Troy as well as from those of the voyage homeward, and reached Sala- Teukrus mis in safety. But his father Telamén, indignant at banished, his having returned without Ajax, refused to receive Cyprus. him, and compelled him to expatriate. He conducted his fol- lowers to Cyprus where he founded the city of Salamis: his descendant Evagoras was recognised asa Teukrid and as an f®@akid even in the time of Isokrates.?

Such was the splendid heroic genealogy of the Aakids,—a family renowned for military excellence. The Aakeion at Aigina, in which prayer and sacrifice were offered to Alakus, remained in undiminished dignity down to the time of Pausa- pjgusion of nias.* This genealogy connects together various emi- the Makid nent gentes Achaia Phthidtis, in Aigina, in Salamis, in — Cyprus, and among the Epirotic Molossians. Whether we are entitled to infer from it that the island of Aigina was originally peopled by Myrmidones from Achaia Phthidtis, as Ὁ, Miiller imagines,* I will not pretend to affirm. These mythical pedigrees seem to unite together special clans or gentes, rather than the

1 Pherekydés and Hellanikus ap. Marcellin. Vit. Thucydid. init. ; Pau- san. ii. 29,4; Plutarch, Solén, 10. <Ac- cording to Apollodérus, however, Pherekydés said that Telamén was only the friend of Péleus, not his brother,—not the son of Makus (iii. 12, 7): this seems an inconsistency. There was, however, a warm dispute between the Athenians and the Me- garians respecting the title to the hero Ajax, who was claimed by both (see Pausan. i, 42, 4; Plutarch, l. c.): the Megarians accused Peisistratus of hav- ing interpolated a line into the Cata- logue in the Iliad (Strabo, ix. p. 394).

2 Herodot. vii. 90; Isokrat. Ene. Evag. ut sup.; Sophokl. Ajax, 984— 895; Vellei. Patercul. i. 1; Aischyl. Pers. 891, and Schol. The return from Troy of Teukrus, his banishment by Telam6n, and his settlement in Cyprus, formed the subject of the Τεῦκρος of Sophoklés, and of a tragedy under a

similar title by Pacuvius (Cicero de

Orat. i. 58 ; ii. 46): Sophokl. Ajax, 892;

Pacuvii Fragm. Teucr. 15.—

“Te repudio, nec recipio, abdico,

Facesse.”

The legend of Teukrus was connected in Attic archeology with the peculiar functions and formalities of the judi- aie Φρεαττοῖ (Pausan. i. 28, 12; ii. 29, 7).

3 Hesiod. Fragm. Diintz. Koiai, 55, p. 43.— ᾿Αλκὴν μὲν γὰρ Αἰακίδαισι, Νοῦν δ᾽ ᾿Αμυθαονίδαις, ἔπορ᾽ ᾿Ατρείδῃσι. Polyb. v. 2.— Αἰακίδας, πολέμῳ δαιτί.

4See his Mginetica, p. 14, his

earliest work. P

natum

ἔδωκεν Ὀλύμπιος

πλοῦτον δ᾽

κεχαρηότας ἦτε

176 ZZAKUS AND HIS DESCENDANTS. Part L

bulk of any community—just as we know that the Athenians generally had no part in the Afakid genealogy, though certain particular Athenian families laid claim to it. The intimate friendship between Achillés and the Opuntian hero Patroklus— and the community of name and frequent conjunction between the Lokrian Ajax, son of Oileus, and Ajax, son of Telamén—con- nect the Zakids with Opus and the Opuntian Lokrians,inamanner which we have no farther means of explaining. Pindar too repre- sents Mencetius, father of Patroklus, as son of Aktér and Aigina, and therefore maternal brother of Afakus.*

1 Pindar. Olymp. ix. 74. The hero shipped at Opus; solemn festivals and Ajax, son of Oileus, was especially wor- games were celebrated in his honour,

Cuap, ΧΙ. ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES. 177

CHAPTER XI. ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES,

THE most ancient name in Attic archeology, as far as cur means of information reach, is that of Erechtheus, who is ὌΜΕ ΚΗ mentioned both in the Catalogue of the Iliad and ina —auto. brief allusion of the Odyssey. Born of the Earth, he ‘hthonous. is brought up by the goddess Athéné, adopted by her as her ward, and installed in her temple at Athens, where the Athenians offer to him annual sacrifices. The Athenians are styled in the Iliad, “the people of Erechtheus”.! This isthe most ancient testimony concerning Erechtheus, exhibiting him as a divine or heroic, certainly a superhuman person, and identifying him with the primitive germination (if I may use a term, the Grecian equivalent of which would have pleased an Athenian ear) of Attic man. And he was recognised in this same character, even at the close of the fourth century before the Christian wera, by the Butade, one of the most ancient and important Gentes at Athens, who boasted of him as their original ancestor: the genealogy of the great Athenian orator Lykurgus, a member of this family, drawn | up by his son Abrén, and painted on a public tablet in the Erechtheion, contained as its first and highest name, Erechtheus, son of Héphestos and the Earth. In the Erechtheion, Erech- theus was worshipped conjointly with Athéné: he was identified with the god Poseidén, and bore the denomination of Poseidén Erechtheus: one of the family of the Butade, chosen among

1 Tliad, ii. 546. Odyss. vii. 81.— snare ᾿ἐν ᾿Αθήνῃσ᾽ εἷσεν ἑῷ ἐνὶ πίονι

Οἱ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ᾿Αθήνας εἶχον. $38

Δῆμον ᾿Ἐριχθῆος μεγαλήτορος, ὅν xox Ἐνθάδε μιν ταύροισι καὶ ἀρνειοῖς

ἱλάονται Κοῦροι ᾿Αθηναίων, περιτελλομένων

Θρέψε,". οἰὸς θυγάτηρ, τέκε δὲ ζείδωρος ἐνιαυτῶν.

1-12

178 ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES. Part I.

themselves by lot, enjoyed the privilege and performed the func- tions of hereditary priest.1 Herodotus also assigns the same earth-born origin to Erechtheus:? but Pindar, the old poem called the Danais, Euripidés, and Apollodérus—all named Erich- thonius, son of Héphestos and the Earth, as the being who was thus adopted and made the temple-companion of Athéné while Apollodérus in another place identifies Erichthonius with Posei- dén.* The Homeric scholiast treated Erechtheus and Erichthonius as the same person under two names:* and since, in regard to such mythical persons, there exists no other test of identity of the subject except perfect similarity of the attributes, this seems the reasonable conclusion.

We may presume, from the testimony of Homer, that the Attic first and oldest conception of Athens and its sacred ginally from acropolis places it under the special protection, and

ifferent Σ represents it as the settlement and favourite abode of Athéné, jointly with Poseidén; the latter being the inferior, though the chosen companion of the former, and therefore exchanging his divine appellation for the cognomen of Erechtheus. But the country called Attica, which during the historical ages, forms one social and political aggregate with Athens, was originally distributed into many independent démes or cantons, and included, besides, various religious clans or here- ditary sects (if the expression may be permitted) ; that is, a multi- tude of persons not necessarily living together in the same locality, but bound together by an hereditary communion of sacred rites, and claiming privileges as well as performing obligations, founded upon the traditional authority of divine persons for whom they

1 See the Life of Lykurgus, in Plu- θεῶν τῶν an’ ᾿Ερεχθέως. tarch’s (I call it by that name, as it is 2 Herodot. viii. 55. always printed with his works) Lives 8 Harpokration, v. Αὐτοχϑθών. Ὁ δὲ of the Ten Orators, tom. iv. p. 382— Πίνδαρος καὶ ὁ τὴν Δαναΐδα πεποιηκώς 384, Wytt. Κατῆγον δὲ τὸ γένος ἀπὸ φασιν, ᾿Εριχθόνιον ἐξ Ἡφαίστου καὶ Ὁ τούτων καὶ ᾿Ερεχθέως τοῦ Τῆς καὶ φανῆναι. Kuripidés, Ion, 21. ΑΡΟΙΟα. Ἡφαίστον . .. καὶ ἐστὶν αὐτὴ ἡ [11.14,6.:1δ,1. Compare Plato, Timzus, past τοῦ γένους τῶν ἱερασαμένων C. 6. ᾿ i τοῦ ἸΤοσειδῶνος, ἄς. “Os τὴν ἱερωσύνην 4Schol. ad 1Π84. ii, 546, where he Ποσειδῶνος ᾿Ερεχθέως εἶχε (pp. 882, 888). cites also Kallimachus for the story of

Erechtheus Πάρεδρος of Athéné—Aris- Erichthonius. Etymologicon Magn. tidés, Panathenaic. p. 184, with the ᾿Ερεχθεύς. Plato Ceritias 6. 4) employs

Scholia of Frommel.

Butés, the eponymus of the Butade, is the first priest of Poseid6én Erich- thonius: Apollod. iii. 15,1. So Kallias (Xenoph. Sympos. viii. 40), ἱερεὺς

vague and general language to descri the agency of Héphestos and Athéné, which the old fable in Apollodérus a 14, 6) details in coarser terms. ee Ovid Metam, ii. 757.

ΝΣ ἐν... α΄

CuaP. XI. LEGENDS OF THE ATTIC DNMES AND GENTES. 179

had a common veneration. Even down to the beginning of the Peloponnésian war, the demots of the various Attic démes, though long since embodied in the larger political union of Attica, and having no wish for separation, still retained the recollection of their original political autonomy. They lived in their own separate localities, resorted habitually to their own temples, and visited Athens only occasionally for private or political business, or for the great public festivals. Each of these aggregates, politi- cal as well as religious, had its own eponymous god or hero, with a genealogy more or less extended, and a train of mythical inci- dents more or less copious, attached to his name, according to the fancy of the local exegetes and poets. The eponymous heroes Marathén, Dekelus, Kolénus, or Phlyus, had each their own title to worship, and their own position as themes of legendary narra- tive, independent of Erechtheus, or Poseidén, or Athéné, the patrons of the acropolis common to all of them.

But neither the archeology of Attica, nor that of its various component fractions, was much dwelt upon by the Little ancient epic poets of Greece. Théseus is noticed both noticed we in the Iliad and Odyssey as having carried off from poets. Kréte Ariadné, the daughter of Minos—thus commencing that connexion between the Krétan and Athenian legends which we afterwards find so largely amplified—and the sons of Théseus take part in the Trojan war. The chief collectors and narrators of the Attic mythes were, the prose logographers, authors of the many compositions called Atthides, or works on Attic archeology. These writers—Hellanikus, the contemporary of Herodotus, is the earliest composer of an Atthis expressly named, though Pherekydés also touched upon the Attic fables—these writers, I say, inter- wove into one chronological series the legends which either greatly occupied their own fancy, or commanded the most general rever- ence among their countrymen. In this way the religious and political legends of Eleusis, a town originally independent of Athens, but incorporated with it before the historical age, were worked into one continuous sequence along with those of the Erechtheids. In this way too, Kekrops, the eponymous hero of the portion of Attica called Kekropia, came to be placed in the

1 Hthra, mother of Théseus, is also mentioned (Homer, Liad, iii. 144).

180 ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES. Part I.

mythical chronology at a higher point even than the primitive god or hero Erechtheus.

Ogygés is said to have reigned in Attica? 1020. years before the first Olympiad, or 1796 years B.c. In his time hap- pened the deluge of Deukalién, which destroyed most of the inhabitants of the country. After a long interval, Ke- krops, an indigenous person, half man and half serpent, is given to us by Apollodérus as the first king of the country; he be- stowed upon the land, which had before been called Akté, the name of Kekropia. In his day there ensued a dispute between Athéné and Poseidén respecting the possession of the acropolis at Athens, which each of them coveted. First, Poseidén struck the rock with his trident, and produced the well of salt water which existed in it, called the Erechthéis: next came Athéné, who planted the sacred olive-tree ever afterwards seen and venerated in the portion of the Erechtheion called the cell of Pandrosus. The twelve gods decided the dispute ; and Kekrops having testi- fied before them that Athéné had rendered this inestimable service, they adjudged the spot to her in preference to Poseidén. Both the ancient olive-tree and the well produced by Poseidén were seen on the acropolis, in the temple consecrated jointly to Athéné and Erechtheus, throughout the historical ages. Poseidén, as a mark of his wrath for the eres given to Athéné, inun- dated the Thriasian plain with water.?

During the reign of Kekrops, Attica was laid waste by Karian pirates on the coast, and by invasions of the Aénian inhabitants from Beedtia. Kekrops distributed the inhabitants of Attica into twelve local sections—Kekropia, Tetrapolis, Epakria, Dekeleia, Eleusis, Aphidna, Thorikus, Braurén, Kythérus, Sphéttus, Ké- phisius, Phalérus. Wishing to ascertain the number of inhabi- — tants, he commanded each man to casta single stone into a general heap: the number of stones was counted, and it was found that there were twenty thousand.*

Kekrops,

1 Hellanikus, Fragm. 62; Philochor. 55; Ovid, Metam. vi. 72. The impres- . 8, ap. Kuseb. Pree vang. x. sion of Poseiddn’s trident is still shown p. 489. Larcher Fleas on the Hang ® oy? of the Erechtheum ΔΗ οί ch. ix. s. 1, eats atAthens. The story current among both the historical διε ΤῈ ἀξίνα, ἊΣ the the presen represented Kekrops as a of Ogygés as perfectly wellauthen- the judge of this controversy (Xenoph. cated. Memor. iii. 5, 10). ΤΑ Apollod. lii, 14, 1; Herodot. viii. 8 Philochor. ap. Strab. ix, p. 397.

Cap. XI. KEKROPS—PROKN& AND PHILOMBLA. 181

Kekrops married the daughter of Aktzeus, who (according to Pausanias’s version) had been king of the country before him, and had called it by the name of Akteea. By her he had three daughters, Aglaurus, Ersé, and Pandrosus, and a son, Erysich- thon.

Erysichthén died without issue, and Kranaus succeeded him,— another indigenous person and another eponymus,—for the name Kranai was an old denomination of the inhabitants of Attica.? Kranaus was dethroned by Amphiktyén, by some gyanans— called an indigenous man ; by others, a son of Deuka- Pandi6n, lién : Amphikty6n in his turn was expelled by Erichthonius, son of Héphestos and the Earth,—the same person apparently as Erechtheus, but inserted by Apollodérus at this point of the series. Erichthonius, the pupil and favoured companion of Athéné, placed in the acropolis the original Palladium or wooden statue of that goddess, said to have dropped from heaven: he was moreover the first to celebrate the festival of the Panathenza. He married the nymph Pasithea, and had for his son and suc- cessor Pandién.* Erichthonius was the first person who tauglit the art of breaking in horses to the yoke, and who drove a chariot and four.‘

In the time of Pandién, who succeeded to Erichthonius, Diony- sus and Démétér both came into Attica; the latter isis was received by Keleos at Eleusis.»5 Pandién married of Pendion the nymph Zeuxippé, and had twin sons, Erechtheus re bear tg and Butés, and two daughters, Prokné and Philoméla. Lael The two latter are the subjects of a memorable and ~~” well-known legend. Pandién having received aid in repelling the Thébans from Téreus, king of Thrace, gave him his daughter — Prokné in marriage, by whom he’had a son, Itys. The beautiful Philoméla, going to visit her sister, inspired the barbarous Thracian with an irresistible passion; he violated her person, confined her in a distant pastoral hut, and pretended that she was dead, cutting out her tongue to prevent her from revealing the

ὰ 1 oe ee Shrenclogiead πολεμῶν 4 Virgil, Georgic. iii. 114.

ΘΡΙΡΉΝΌΘΒ Us as an imdgenous δ The mythe of the visitof Démétér

‘plate ole sof Parium, Epoch. 3. (0 Beth on which occasion she 2 Herod ‘lit, 4. καὶ + AA vouchsafed to teach her holy rites to

Pindan “UD 44, Keavaat ᾿Αθῆναι, the leading Eleusinians, is more fully 8 Apollod. iii. 14, 6. Pa i 6,97 touched upon in my first chapter,

182 ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES. Part I,

truth. After a long interval, Philoméla found means to inform her sister of the cruel deed which had been perpetrated ; she wove into a garment words describing her melancholy condition, and despatched it by a trusty messenger. Prokné, overwhelmed with sorrow and anger, took advantage of the free egress enjoyed by women during the Bacchanalian festival to go and release her sister : the two sisters then revenged themselves upon Téreus by killing the boy Itys, and serving him up for his father to eat; after the meal had been finished, the horrid truth was revealed tohim. Téreus snatched a hatchet to put Prokné to death: she fled, along with Philoméla, and all the three were changed into birds—Prokné became a swallow, Philoméla a nightingale, and Téreus an hoopoe.? This tale, so popular with the poets, and so illustrative of the general character of Grecian legend, is not less remarkable in another point of view—that the great historian Thucydidés seems to allude to it as an historical fact,? not how- ever directly mentioning the final metamorphosis.

After the death of Pandién, Erechtheus succeeded to the king- dom, and his brother, Butés, became priest of Poseidén Erich- thonius ; a function which his descendants ever afterwards exer- cised, the Butade or Eteobutade. Erechtheus seems to appear in three characters in the fabulous history of Athens—as a god, Poseidén Erechtheus ’—as a hero, Erechtheus, son of the Earth— and now, as a king, son of Pandién: so much did the ideas of divine and human rule become confounded and blended together

1 Apollod. iii. 14,8; sch. Supplic. 61; Soph. Elektr. 107; Ovid, Meta- morph. vi. 425—670. Hyginus gives the fable with some additional circum- stances, fab. 45. Antoninus Liberalis (Nar. 11), or Boeus, from whom he

copies, has composed a new narrative by combining together the names of Pan-

Λόγος ᾿Επιτάφιος, ascribed to Demos- thenés, treats it in the same manner, as a fact ennobling the tribe Pandionis, of which Pandién was the eponymus. The same author, in bet pres, Boe Kekrops, the eponymus of the Kekro- pis tribe, cannot believe literally the

story of his b man and half

dareos Aédén, as given in the Odyssey, xix. 523, and the adventures of the old Attic fable. The hoopoe still continued the habit of chasing the nightingale: it was to the Athenians a present fact. See Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 212.

2 Thucyd. ii. 29. He makes express mention of the nightingale in con- nexion with the story, though not of the metamorphosis. See below, chap. xvi. So also does Pausanias mention and reason upon it asa real incident: he founds upon it several moral reflec- tions (i. 5,4; x. 4, 5): the author of the

serpent: he rationalises it, by saying that Kekrops-was so called because in wisdom he was like a man, in strength like a serpent (Demosth. p. 1397, 1398, Reiske). Hesiod glances at the fable (Opp. Di. 566). ὀρθρογόη ἸΤανδιονὶς ὦρτο

ελιδῶν : see also ¥. xii. 20.

he subject was handled by Sophoklés in his lost Téreus.

3 Poseidén is sometimes spoken of under the name of Erechtheus simply (Lycophrén, 158). See Hesychius, v. *EpexOevs.

Crap. XI. HE DAUGHTERS OF ERECHTHEUS. 18%

in the imagination of the Greeks in reviewing their early times.

The daughters of Erechtheus were not Jess celebrated in Athe- nian legend than those of Pandién. Prokris, one of Daughters them, is among the heroines seen by Odysseus in ff Brech- Hadés: she became the wife of Kephalus, son of Prokris. Deionés, and lived in the Attic déme of Thorikus.

Kretisa, another daughter of Erechtheus, seduced by Apollo, pecomes the mother of Ién, whom she exposes im- Kreiisa.— mediately after his birth, in the cave north of the Prelthyia, acropolis, concealing the fact from every one. Apollo Boreas. prevails upon Hermés to convey the new-born child to Delphi, where he is brought up as a servant of the temple, without knowing his parents. Kreiisa marries Xuthus, son of Molus, but continuing childless, she goes with Xuthus to the Delphian oracle to inquire for a remedy. The god presents to them Ién, and desires them to adopt him as their son: their son Acheus is afterwards born to them, and Ién and Achzus become the eponyms of the Idnians and Achzans.*

Oreithyia, the third daughter of Erechtheus, was stolen away by © the god Boreas while amusing herself on the banks of the Ilissus, and carried to his residence in Thrace. The two sons of this marriage, Zétés and Kalais, were born with wings: they took . part in the Argonautic expedition, and engaged in the pursuit of the harpies: they were slain at Ténos by Héraklés. Kleopatra, the daughter of Boreas and Oreithyia, was married to Phineus, and had two sons, Plexippus and Pandién; but Phineus after- wards espoused a second wife, Idea, the daughter of Dardanus, who, detesting the two sons of the former bed, accused them falsely of attempting her chastity, and persuaded Phineus in his wrath to put out the eyes of both. For this cruel proceeding he was punished by the Argonauts in the course of their

voyage.”

1 Upon this story of Ién is founded the tragedy of Euripidés which bears that name. I conceive many of the points of that tragedy to be of the in- vention of Euripidés himself: but represent Ién as son of Apollo, not of Xuthus, seems a figs Attic legend. Respecting this drama, see Ὁ. Miiller, Hist. of Dorians, ii, 2,13—15. I doubt

however the distinction which he draws between the Ionians and the other population of Attica,

2 Apollodér. iii. 15, 2; Plato, Phedr.

to c.3;Sophok. Antig. 984 ; alse thecopious

Scholion on Apollén. Rhod. i. 212.

The tale of Phineus is told very differently in the Argonautic expedi- tion as given by Apollénius Rhodius,

184 ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES. Part I.

On more than one occasion the Athenians derived, or at least Prayers of | believed themselves to have derived, important bene- the Athe- fits from this marriage of Boreas with the daughter Boreas—his of their primeval hero: one inestimable service,

elp ‘ntheir rendered at a juncture highly critical for Grecian in- τ: dependence, deserves to be specified.’ At the time of the invasion of Greece by Xerxés, the Grecian fleet was assembled at Chalkis and Artemision in Eubcea, awaiting the approach of the Persian force, so overwhelming in its numbers as well by sea ason land. The Persian fleet had reached the coast of Magnésia and the south-eastern corner of Thessaly without any material damage, when the Athenians were instructed by an oracle “ to invoke the aid of their son-in-law”. Understanding the advice to point to Boreas, they supplicated his aid and that of Oreithyia most earnestly, as well by prayer as by sacrifice,? and the event corresponded to their wishes. A furious north-easterly wind immediately arose, and continued for three days to afflict the Persian fleet as it lay on an unprotected coast : the number of ships driven ashore, both vessels of war and of provision, was immense, and the injury done to the armament was never thoroughly repaired. Such was the powerful succour which the Athenians derived, at a time of their utmost need, from their son-in-law Boreas ; and their gratitude was shown by consecrat- ing to him a new temple on the banks of the Ilissus.

The three remaining daughters of Erechtheus—he had six in esdanaisiede all *—were in Athenian legend yet more venerated and Eumol- than their sisters, on account of having voluntarily dor devoted themselves to death for the safety of their

ii. 180. From Sophoklés we learn that this was the Attic version.

The two winged sons of Boreas and their chase of ies were noticed in the Hesiodic Catalogue (see Schol. Apoll6én. Rhod. ii. 296). But whether the Attic legend of Oreithyia was re- cognised in the Hesiodic poems seems not certain.

Both Aischylus and Sophoklés com-

posed dramas on the subject of Oreithy a (Longin. de Sublimit. c. rithyia Atheniensis, filia Ter-

ἢ κὰν, et a Borea in Thraciam rapta” pagal ad Virg. Aineid. xii. 83). Ter- ena is the γηγενὴς Ἐρεχθεύς.

Ῥ ilochorus (Fragm. 80) rationalised

the story, and said that it alluded to the effects of a viclent wind.

1 Herodot. vii. 189. Οἱ δὲ ὦ ὧν ᾿Αθην- αἴοί σφι λέγουσι βοηθήσαντα τὸν Βορὴν πρότερον, καὶ τότε ἐκεῖνα κατεργάσασθαι" καὶ ἱρὸν ἀπελθόντες Βορέω ἱδρύσαντο παρα ποταμὸν Ἴλισσον.

Herodot. 1. 6. ᾿Αθηναῖοι τὸν Βορῆν ἐκ ἌΣ ἐπεκαλέσαντο, ἐλθόντος σφι ἄλλον χρηστηρίου, τὸν γαμβρὸν ἐπί- κουρον καλέσασθαι. Βορῆς δὲ κατὰ τὸν Ἑλλήνων λόγον ἔχει γυναῖκα ᾿Αττικὴν, ᾿Ωρειθυίην τὴν Ἔρε θῆος. Κατὰ δὴ τὸ κῆδος τοῦτο, οἱ “A vatot, συμβαλλεό- μενοΐ σφι τὸν Βορῆν γαμβρὸν εἶναι, &e.

ὃ Suidas and de ius, v. Ἰάρθενοι : Protogeneia and Pandéra are given as

ἐν |

Cuap. XI. ERECATHEUS AND EUMOLPUS. 185

country. Eumolpus of Eleusis was the son of Poseidén and the eponymous hero of the sacred gens called the Eumolpids, in whom the principal functions, appertaining to the mysterious rites of Démétér at Eleusis, were vested by hereditary privilege. He made war upon Erechtheus and the Athenians, with the aid of a body of Thracian allies ; indeed it appears that the legends of Athens, originally foreign and unfriendly to those of Eleusis, represented him as having been himself a Thracian born and an immigrant into Attica.1 Respecting Eumolpus, however, and his parentage, the discrepancies much exceed even the measure of license usual in the legendary genealogies, and some critics, both ancient and modern, have sought to reconcile these contradictions, by the usual stratagem of supposing two or three different per- sons of the same name. Even Pausanias, so familiar with this class of unsworn witnesses, complains of the want of native Eleu- sinian genealogists,? and of the extreme license of fiction in which other authors had indulged.

In the Homeric Hymn to Démétér, the most ancient testimony before us,—composed, to all appearance, earlier than the com- plete incorporation of Eleusis with Athens,—Eumolpus appears (to repeat briefly what has been stated ina previous chapter) as one of the native chiefs or princes of Eleusis, along with Tripto-

the names of two of them. The sacri- fice of Panddra, in the Iambi of aK 2

to the sovereign πα of the city. ponax (Hippénact. Fragm. xxi. Welc

Hyginus copies this (fab. 46). 2Pausan. i. 88, 8. ᾿Ελευσίνιοί τε

ap: Athen. ix. p. 870), seems to allude to this daughter of Erechtheus.

1 Apollodér, iii. 15, 3; Thucyd. ii. 15: Isokratés (Panegyr. t. i. p. 206;

Panathenaic. t. ii. p. 560, Auger), Lykurgus, cont. Leocrat. Ee 201, Reiske: Pausan. i. 88, 8: Euripid.

Erecth. Fr, The Schol. ad Soph. (Ed. Col. 1048, gives valuable citations from Ister, Akestodérus and Androtién: we see that the inquirers of antiquity found it difficult to explain how the Eumolpids could have acquired their ascendant privileges in the manage- ment of the Eleusinia, seeing that Eumolpus himself was a foreigner,— Ζητεῖται, τί δήποτε οἱ Εὐμολπίδαι τῶν τελετῶν ἐξάρχουσι, ξένοι ὄντες. Thucy- didés does not call Eumolpus a Thra- cian: Strabo’s language is very large and vague (vii. p. 321): Isokratés says that he assailed Athens in order to vin- dicate the rights of his father Poseidén

ἀρχαῖοι, ἅτε ov προσόντων σφισι γενεα- λόγων, ἄλλα τε πλάσασθαι δεδώκασι καὶ μάλιστα ἐς τὰ γένη τῶν ἡρώων. Heyne ad Apollodér. iii. 15, 4. “Kumolpi nomen modo communi- catum pluribus, modo plurium homi- num res et facta cumulata in unum. Is ad quem Hercules venisse dicitur, serior etate fuit: antiquior est is de quo hoc loco agitur .... anteces- sisse tamen hunc debet alius, qui cum Triptolemo vixit,” &c. See the learned and valuable comments of Lobeck in his Aglaophamus, tom. i. p, 206—2138: in regard to the discrepancies of this narrative he observes, I think, with great justice (p. 211), “‘ quo uno pre μας ex innumerabilibus delecto, arguitur eorum temeritas, qui ex variis discordi- busque poetarum et mythographorum narratiunculis, antique fame formam et quasi lineamenta recognosci posse sperant”,

186 ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES. Part I.

lemus, Dioklés, Polyxeinus, and Dolichus ; Keleos is the king, or principal among these chiefs, the son or lineal descendant of the eponymous Eleusis himself. To these chiefs, and to the three daughters of Keleos, the goddess Démétér comes in her sorrow for the loss of her daughter Persephoné : being hospitably enter- tained by Keleos she reveals her true character, commands that a temple shall be built to her at Eleusis, and prescribes to them the rites according to which they are to worship her.’ Such seems to have been the ancient story of the Eleusinians respect- ing their own religious antiquities: Keleos, with Metaneira his wife, and the other chiefs here mentioned, were worshipped at Eleusis, and from thence transferred to Athens as local gods or heroes? Eleusis became incorporated with Athens, apparently not very long before the time of Solén ; and the Eleusinian wor- ship of Démétér was then received into the great religious solem- nities of the Athenian state, to which it owes its remarkable sub- sequent extension and commanding influence. In the Atticised worship of the Eleusinian Démétér, the Eumolpids and the Kérfkes were the principal hereditary functionaries : Eumolpus, the eponym of this great family, came thus to play the principal part in the Athenian legendary version of the war between Athens and Eleusis. An oracle had pronounced that Athens

Voluntary could only be rescued from his attack by the death reogery a of the three daughters of Erechtheus ; their generous pine patriotism consented to the sacrifice, and their father of Erech- put them todeath. He then went forth confidently theus.

to the battle, totally vanquished the enemy, and killed Eumolpus with his own hand.? Erechtheus was worshipped as

one: Homer, Hymn. ad Cerer. 473— was the son of Ogygés. Compare

Hygin. f. 147. i i Nd δὲ shen ὑδελεστονάλοις Keleos and Metaneira were wor-

βασιλεῦσιν Δεῖξε, Τριπτολέμῳ τε, Διόκλεξ τε πλη- » eee 3.3 ΄ «ε ΄ Εὐμόλπου τε βίῃ, Κελεῷ θ᾽ ἡγήτορι λαῶν, Δρησμοσύνην ἱερῶν. Also vy. 105.— Τὴν δὲ ἴδον θύγατρες. The hero Eleusis is mentioned in

Pausanias, i. 88,7; some said that he was the son of Hermés, others that he

Κελεοῖο ᾿Ελευσινίδαο

shipped by the Athenians with divine honours (Athenagoras, Legat. p. 53, ed. Oxon.): perhaps he confounds divine pose rrr ποτ, ΤῸΝ Pp να controv

i todo. Triptolemus had

were a temple at Eleusis (Paus. i. 38,6). _ 3 Apollodér. iii. 15. 4. Some said that p eens son of Eumolpus, had been killed by Erechtheus (Pan. san. i. 5, 2); others, that both Eumol- us and his son had experienced this ate (Schol. ad ag heeniss. = Rut we learn from Pausanias himself

ATHENS AND ELEUSIS, 187

Cwap. XI.

a god, and his daughters as goddesses, at Athens.1 Their names and their exalted devotion were cited along with those of the warriors of Marathén, in the public assembly of Athens, by orators who sought to arouse the languid patriot, or to denounce the cowardly deserter ; and the people listened both to one and the other with analogous feelings of grateful veneration, as well as with equally unsuspecting faith in the matter of fact.?

Though Erechtheus gained the victory over Eumolpus, yet the story represents Poseidén as having put an end to the life and reign of Erechtheus, who was (it seems) slain in the battle. He was succeeded by his son Kekrops II., and the latter again by his son Pandién II.,3—two names unmarked by any incidents, and which appear to be mere duplication of the former Kekrops and Pandién, placed there by the genealogisers for the purpose of filling up what seemed to them a chronological chasm.

Apollodérus passes at once from Erechtheus to his son Kekrops Il., then to Pandién 17., next to the four sons of the latter, Aiigeus, Pallas, Nisus, and Lykus. But the tragedians here insert

daughters of Kekrops, for infringing the commands of Athéné, had been mentioned. Euripidés modified this in his Erechtheus, for he there intro- duced the mother Praxithea consenting

what the story in the interior of the Erechtheion was,—that Erechtheus killed Eumolpus (i. 27, 8).

1 Cicero, Nat. Deor. iii, 19; Philo-

chor. ap. Schol. Gidip. Col. 100. Three daughters of Erechtheus perished, and three ters were worshipped (Apollodér. iii. 15,4; Hesychius, Zetyos τριπάρθενον, Eurip. Erechtheus, : 3, Dindorf); but both Euripidés and Apollodérus said that Erechtheus was only required to sacrifice, and only did sacrifice, one,—the other two slew themselves voluntarily, from affection for their sister. I cannot but think (in spite of the opinion of Welcker to the contrary, Griechisch. Tragiéd, ii. p. 722) that the genuine legend ere. sented Erechtheus as having sacrificed all three, as appears in the Ién of Euripidés (276):—

IGN. Πατὴρ ᾿Ερεχθεὺς σὰς ἔθυσε συγγόνους ; CREUSA. “Eran πρὸ γαίας σφάγια

παρθένους κτανεῖν. IOn. Σὺ δ᾽ ἐξεσώθης πῶς κασιγνήτων

μόνη; : CREUSA. Βρέφος νέογνον μητρὸς Hv ἐν ἀγκάλαις. Compare with this passage, Demos- then, Λόγος ᾿Επιτάφ. p. 1397 Reiske. Just before, the death of the three

to the immolation of one daughter, for the rescue of the country from a oy γα invader: to propose to a mother the immolation of three daughters at once, would have been too revolting. most instances we find the strongly marked features, the distinct and glaring incidents as well as the dark contrasts, belonging to the Hesiodic or old post-Homeric legend; the changes made afterwards go to soften, dilute, and to complicate, in propor- tion as the feelings of the public be- come milder and more humane; sometimes however the later poets add new horrors.

2 See the striking evidence contained in the oration o races oo against Leocratés (p. 201—204 Reiske ; then, Ady. "Ema. 1.c. ; and Xeno hén. Memor. iii. 5, 9): from the two latter

es we see that the Athenian story represented the invasion under Eumolpus as a combined assault from the western continent.

3 Apollodér. iii. 15, 5; Eurip. Ién, 282 ; Erechth. Fragm. 20, Dindoré.

188 ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES. Part L

the story of Xuthus, Kreiisa, and Idn ; the latter being the son of Kretisa and Kreiisa by Apollo, but given by the god to Xuthus, Ton. and adopted by the latter as his own. Ién becomes the successor of Erechtheus, and his sons (Teleon, Hoplés, Arga- dés, and Aigikorés) become the eponyms of the four ancient tribes of Athens, which subsisted until the revolution of Kleisthenés. Ién himself is the eponym of the Idnic race both in Asia, in Europe, and in the Adgean Islands: Dérus and Acheus are the sons of Kreiisa by Xuthus, so that I6n is distinguished from both of them by being of divine parentage. According to the story given by Philochorus, Ién rendered such essential service in rescuing the Athenians from the attack of the Thracians under Eumolpus, that he was afterwards made king of the country, and distributed all the inhabitants into four tribes or castes, corresponding to different modes of life,—soldiers, husbandmen, goatherds, and artisans? And it seems that the legend explanatory of the origin of the festival Boedromia, originally important enough to furnish a name to one of the Athenian months, was attached to the aid thus rendered by Ién.3

We pass from [ὅπ to persons of far greater mythical dignity and interest,—Mjgeus and his son Théseus.

Pandién had four sons, Adgeus, Nisus, Lykus, and Pallas, be- ele tween whom he divided his dominions. Nisus received Pandién— the territory of Megaris, which had been under the Aigeus, ἄς. sway of Pandién, and there founded the seaport of Nisewa. Lykus was made king of the eastern coast, but a dispute afterwards ensued, and he quitted the country altogether, to establish himself on the southern coast of Asia Minor, among the Termile, to whom he gave the name of Lykians.* Aigeus, as the eldest of the four, became king of Athens ; but Pallas received a portion both of the south-western coast and the interior, and he as well as his children appear as frequent enemies both to Aigeus and to Théseus. Pallas is the eponym of the déme Palléné, and the stories respecting him and his sons seem to be connected

1Eurip. Ién, 1570—1595. The sons of Erechtheus. Kretisa of Sophoklés, a lost tragedy, 2 Philochor. ap, Harpocrat. v. Βοη- seems to have related to the same δρόμια.: Strabo, viii. x 383. subject. — % Philochor. ap. Harpocrat. y. Boy- Pausanias (vii. 1, 2) tell us that δρόμια. Xuthus was chosen to arbitrate be- Sophokl. ap. Strab. ix. p. 392; tween the contending claims of the Herodot, i.173; Strabo, xii. p. 573,

Cuap. XI. “‘PHESEUS AND HIS ADVENTURES. 189

with old and standing feuds among the different démes of Attica, originally independent communities. These feuds penetrated into the legend. They explain the story which we find that Aigeus and Théseus were not genuine Erechtheids, the former being denominated a suppositious child to Pandién."

Afigeus? has little importance in the mythical history except as the father of Théseus: it may even be doubted whether his name is anything more than a mere cognomen of the god Posei- dén, who was (as we are told) the real father of this great Attic Héraklés. As I pretend only to give a very brief outline of the general territory of Grecian legend, I cannot permit myself to recount in detail the chivalrous career of Thé- seus, who is found both in the Kalydénian boar-hunt and in the Argonautic expedition—his personal and victorious encounters with the robbers Sinnis, Prokrustés, Periphétés, Skiron, and others—his valuable service in ridding his country of the Krom- myonian sow and the Marathénian bull—his conquest of the Minotaur in Kréte, and his escape from the dangers of the laby- rinth by the aid of Ariadné, whom he subsequently carries off and abandons—his many amorous adventures, and his expedi- tions both against the Amazons and into the under-world along with Peirithous.®

Thucydidés delineates the character of Théseus as a man who combined sagacity with political power, and who conferred upon

Théseus.

1 Plutarch, Théseus, c, 13, Αἰγεὺς θετὸς γενόμενος Πανδίονι, καὶ pay τοῖς one προσήκων. Apollodér. iii. 15. 6.

2 Hgeus had by Médea (who took refuge at Athens after her flight from Corinth) a son named Médus, who passed into Asia, and was considered as the eponymus and Peogention of the Median people. Datis, the general who commanded the invading Persian army at the battle of Marathén, sent a formal communication to the Athenians announcing himself as the descendant of Médus, and requiring to be admitted as king of Attica: such is the state- ment of Diodérus (Exe. Vatic. vii.-x. 48: see also Schol. Aristophan. Pac.

289), 3 Ovid. Metamorph. vii. 433.—

. . . . *Te,maxime Theseu, Mirata est Marathon Cretei san- guine Tauri:

Quodque Suis securus arat Cromyona

colonus,

Munus opusque tuum est. Tellus Epidauria per te

Clavigeram vidit Vulcani occumbere prolem :

Vidit et immanem Cephisias ora

Procrustem. Cercyonis letum vidit cerealis Eleu-

sin. Occidit ille Sinis,” dc.

Respecting the amours of Théseus Ister especially seems to have entered into great details; but some of them were noticed both in the Hesiodic — and by Kekrops, not to mention

herekydés (Athen. xiii. p. 557). Pei- rithous, the intimate friend and com- — of Théseus, is the eponymous

ero of the Attic déme or gens Peri- thoide (Ephorus ap. Photium v. Περι- Potsar).

190 ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES. Part I.

his country the inestimable benefit of uniting all the separate ,

and self-governing démes of Attica into one common political society... From the well-earned reverence attached to the asser- tion of Thucydidés, it has been customary to reason upon this assertion as historically authentic, and to treat the romantic attri- butes which we find in Plutarch and Diodérus as if they were fiction superinduced upon this basis of fact. Such a view of the case is in my judgment erroneous. The athletic and amorous knight-errant is the old version of the character—the profound and long-sighted politician is a subsequent correction, introduced indeed by men of superior mind, but destitute of historical war- ranty, and arising out of their desire to find reasons of their own His legend- for concurring in the veneration which the general ary charac- public paid more easily and heartily to their national ter refined. the Lapithe against the Centaurs: Théseus, in the Hesiodie poems, is misguided by his passion for the beautiful Adglé, daughter of Panopeus :? and the Théseus described in Plutarch’s biography is in great part a continuation and expansion of these same or similar attributes, mingled with many local legends, ex- plaining, like the Fasti of Ovid, or the lost Aitia of Kallimachus, the original genesis of prevalent religious and social customs.* Plutarch has doubtless greatly softened down and modified the adventures which he found in the Attic logographers, as well as in the poetical epics called Théséis. For in his preface to the life of Théseus, after having emphatically declared that he is about to transcend the boundary both of the known and the knowable, but that the temptation of comparing the founder of Athens with the founder of Rome is irresistible, he concludes with the following remarkable words: “I pray that this fabulous matter may be so far obedient to my endeavours as to receive, when purified by reason, the aspect of history : in those cases where it haughtily scorns plausibility and will admit no alliance with what is probable, I shall beg for indulgent hearers, willing 1 Thucyd. ii. 15. ᾿Επειδὴ δὲ Θησεὺς 2 Tliad, i. 265; Odyss. xi. 321. Ido ἐβασίλευσε, γενόμενος μετὰ τοῦ Evverod not notice the suspected line, Odyss. καὶ δυνατὸς, τά τε ἄλλα διεκόσμησε τὴν Xi. 630. χώραν, καὶ καταλύσας τῶν ἄλλων πόλεων 3 Diodérus also, from his disposition τά τε βουλευτήρια καὶ τὰς ἀρχὰς, és to assimilate Théseus to Héraklés, has

τὴν νῦν πόλιν οὖσαν . » . ξυνῴκισε given us his chivalrous as well as his πάντας. political attributes (iv. 61).

hero. Théseus, in the Iliad and Odyssey, fights with

‘ ae

| |

THASEUS AND HIS ADVENTURES. 191

Cuap. XI.

to receive antique narrative in a mild spirit”. We here see that Plutarch sat down, not to recount the old fables as he ΩΝ found them, but to purify them by reason and to im- his way of part to them the aspect of history. We have to thank a him for having retained, after this purification, so oflegend. much of what is romantic and marvellous ; but we may be sure that the sources from which he borrowed were more romantic and marvellous still. It was the tendency of the enlightened men of Athens, from the days of Solén downwards, to refine and politicise the character of Théseus :* even Peisistratus expunged from one of the Hesiodic poems the line which described the violent passion of the hero for the fair Aigle :* and the tragic poets found it more congenial to the feelings of their audience to exhibit him as a dignified and liberal sovereign, rather than as an adventurous single-handed fighter. But the logographers and the Alexandrine poets remained more faithful to the old fables. The story of Hekalé, the hospitable old woman who received and blessed Théseus when he went against the Marathénian bull, and whom he found dead when he came back to recount the news of his success, was treated by Kallimachus :* and Virgil must have had his mind full of the unrefined legends, when he numbered this Attic Héraklés among the unhappy sufferers condemned to endless penance in the under-world.°

Two, however, among the Théseian fables cannot be dismissed without some special notice,—the war against the Amazons, and the expedition against Kréte. The former strikingly illustrates the facility as well as the tenacity of Grecian legendary faith ; the

᾿Αείδει δ᾽ (Kallimachus) Ἑκάλης re

1 Plutarch, Théseus, i. Ein μὲν οὖν ἡμῖν, ἐκκαθαιρόμενον λόγῳ τὸ μυθῶδες ὑπακοῦσαι καὶ λαβεῖν ἱστορίας ὄψιν" ὕπον δ᾽ ἂν αὐθαδῶς τοῦ πιθανοῦ περι- φρονῇ, καὶ μὴ δέχηται τὴν πρὸς τὸ εἰκὸς μίξιν, εὐγνωμόνων ἀκροατῶν δεησόμεθα, καὶ πρᾷως τὴν ἀρχαιολογίαν προσδεχομένων.

2See Isokratés, Panathenaic. (t. ii. P: 610—512, Auger); Xenoph. Memor. ii. δ, 10. In the Helene Encomium, Isokratés enlarges more upon the per- sonal exploits of Théseus in conjunc- tion with his great political merits (t. ii. p. 842—350, Auger).

8 Plutarch, Théseus, 20,

4 See the epigram of Krinagoras, Antholog. Pal. vol. ii. p. 144; ep. xv. ed. Brunck. and Kallimach. Frag. 40.

φιλοξείνοιο καλιὴν, Καὶ Θησεῖ Μαραθὼν οὗς ἐπέθηκε πό. νους.

Some beautiful lines are preserved by Suidas, v. ᾿Επαύλια, περὶ ‘ExdéAns θανούσης (probably spoken by Théseus himself, see Plutarch, Théseus, c. 14),

Ἴθι, πρηεῖα γυναικῶν, τὴν ὁδὸν, ἣν ἀνίαι θυμαλγέες οὐ περόωσιν" Πολλάκι et’, ὦ μαῖα, φιλοξείνοιο

καλιῆς Μνησόμεθα'" ξυνὸν γὰρ ἐπαύλιον ἔσκεν ἅπασιν. 5 Virgil, Aneid, vi. 617. ‘Sedet eternumque sedebit Infelix Théseus.”

192 ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES. Part I

latter embraces the story of Deedalus and Minos, tio of the most eminent among Grecian ante-historical personages. The Amazons, daughters of Arés and Harmonia} are both early creations, and frequent reproductions, of the theAma- ancient epic—which was indeed, we may generally ἘΞ remark, largely occupied both with the exploits and sufferings of women, or heroines, the wives and daughters of the Grecian heroes—and which recognised in Pallas Athéné the finished type of an irresistible female warrior. A nation of cour- ageous, hardy and indefatigable women, dwelling apart from men, permitting only a short temporary intercourse for the purpose of renovating their numbers, and burning out their right breast with a view of enabling themselves to draw the bow freely,— this was at once a general type stimulating to the fancy of the poets, anda theme eminently popular with his hearers. Nor was it at all repugnant to the faith of the latter, who had no recorded facts to guide them, and no other standard of credibility as to the past except such poetical narratives themselves—to conceive com- munities of Amazons as having actually existed in anterior time. Accordingly, we find these warlike females constantly reappearing in the ancient poems, and universally accepted as past realities. In the Iliad, when Priam wishes to illustrate emphatically the most numerous host in which he ever found himself included, he tells us that it was assembled in Phrygia, on the banks of the Sangarius, for the purpose of resisting the formidable Amazons. When Bellerophén is to be employed on a deadly and perilous undertaking,? by those who indirectly wish to procure his death, he is despatched against the Amazons. In the Athiopis of Arktinus, describing the post-

Its baal uity an prevalence.

Homeric war of Troy, Penthesileia, queen of the Amazons, —

appears as the most effective ally of the besieged city, and as the most formidable enemy of the Greeks, succumbing only to the invincible might of Achilles. The Argonautic heroes find

ox Tees chon Se ee is. See chsen’s

1 Pherekyd. Fragm. 25, Didot. wrefixed to his ition of Quintus, δ

2 Tliad, iii. tie vi. 152.

| 4 i : 3 d ᾿ ' ' ἰ :

ook of Quintus Smyrnzus for some idea of the valour of VPenthe- sileia ; it is supposed to be copied more

ions 5 and 12. Compare Dio Chrysostom, Or. xi.

. 860, Reisk. Philostratus (Heroica, ὁ 19,

Pp. 751 gives a strange transformation of ὁ old epical narrative into a descent of oe upon the island sacred to Achilles

ὕπαρ. Xi. LEGEND OF THE AMAZONS. 198 the Amazons on the river Thermédén, in their expedition along the southern coast of the Euxine. To the same spot Héraklés goes to attack them, in the performance of the ninth labour im- posed upon him by Eurystheus, for the purpose of procuring the girdle of the Amazonian queen Hippolyté ;1 and we are told that they had not yet recovered from the losses sustained in this severe aggression when Théseus also assaulted and defeated them, carrying off their queen Antiopé.? This injury they avenged by invading Attica,—an undertaking (as Plutarch justly observes) “neither trifling nor feminine,” especially if, according to the statement of Hellanikus, they crossed the Cimmerian Bosphorus on the winter ice, begin- ning their march from the Asiatic side of the Palus Meotis.® They overcame all the resistances and difficulties of this prodigious march, and penetrated even into Athens itself; where the final battle, hard-fought and at one time doubtful, by which Théseus crushed them, was fought—in the very heart of the city. Attic antiquaries confidently pointed out the exact position of the two contending armies: the left wing of the Amazons rested upon the spot occupied by the commemorative monument called the Ama- zoneion ; the right wing touched the Pnyx, the place in which the public assemblies of the Athenian democracy were afterwards held.

Glorious achieve- ments of the Ama- zons.

1 Apollén. Rhod. ii. 966, 1004; Apollod, ii. 5—9; Diodér. ii. 46; iv. 16. The Amazons were supposed to speak the Thracian lan e (Schol.

poll. Rhod. ii. 953), though some authors asserted them to be natives of Libya, others of Zthiopia (id. 965).

ellanikus 88, ap. Schol.

conjecture satisfactorily, but the chap- ter is well worth consulting. The epic Théséis seems to have given a version of the Amazonian contest in many re- spects different from that which Plu- tarch has put τ τα out of the logographers (see Plut. Thés, 28): it contained a narrative of many uncon-

agm. vo, ap

Pindar. Nem. ie 65) said that all the Argonauts had assisted Héraklés in this expedition : the fragment of the old epic poem (perhaps the ’Apagovia) there quoted mentions Telamén speci-

ally.

The many diversities in the story respecting Théseus and the Amazon Antiopé are well set forth in Bachet de Meziriac (Commentaires sur Ovide,

t. "Ἐκ 817). elcker (Der Epische Cyclus, p, 818) supposes that the ancient epic em, called by Suidas ᾿Αμαζόνια, re- ated to the invasion of Attica by the Amazons, and that this poem is the same, under another title, as the ᾿Ατθίς of Hegesinous cited by Pausanias: I caynot say that he establishes this

nected exploits belonging to Théseus, and Aristotle censures it on that Pag ay as ill-constructed (Poetic. c. 17).

The ᾿Αμαζονίς οΥ̓᾿Αμαζονικά of Ona- sus can hardly have been (as Heyne supposes, ad Apollod. ii. 5, 9) an epic poem; we may infer from the ration- CI tendency of the citation from it (Schol. ad Theocrit, xiii. 46, and Schol. Apoll6én. Rhod. i, 1207) that it was a work in prose. There was an ᾿Αμαζονίς ro of Magnésia (Athenzeus, vii. Pp. 5

3 Plutarch, Théseus, 27. Pindar (Olymp. xiii. 84) represents the Amazons as having come from the extreme north, when Bellerophén conquers them.

1—13

7.4 ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES. Pant L The details and fluctuations of the combat, as well as the final triumph and consequent truce, were recounted by these authors with as complete faith and as much circumstantiality as those of the battle of Platea by Herodotus. The sepulchral edifice called the Amazoneion, the tomb or pillar of Antiopé near the western gate of the city—the spot called the Horkomosion near the temple of Théseus—even the hill of Areiopagus itself, and the sacrifices which it was customary to offer to the Amazons at the periodical festival of the Théseia—were all so many religious mementos of this victory ;} which was moreover a favourite sub- ject of art both with the sculptor and the painter, at Athens as well as in other parts of Greece.

No portion of the ante-historical epic appears to have been more deeply worked into the national mind of Greece than this invasion and defeat of the Amazons. It was not only a constant theme of the logographers, but was also familiarly appealed to by the popular orators along with Marathén and Salamis, among those antique exploits of which their fellow-citizens might justly be proud. It formed a part of the retrospective faith of Herodotus, Lysias, Plato and Isokratés,? and the exact date of the event was settled by the chronologists.*? Nordid the Athenians stand alone

1 Plutarch, Theséus, 27—28; Pau- san. i. 2, 4; Plato, Axiochus, c. 2; Harpocrati6n, v. ᾿Αμαζονεῖον ; Aristo- phan. Lysistrat. 678, with the Scholia. 4ischyl. (Eumenid. 685) says that the Amazons assaulted the citadel from the Areiopagus :—

Πάγον | δ᾽ “Ἄρειον τόνδ᾽, ᾿Αμαζόνων

ἕδραν Σκηνάς θ᾽, ἦλθον Θησέως κατὰ φθόνον Στρατηλατοῦσαι, καὶ πόλιν νεόπτολιν Τήνδ᾽ ὑψίπυργον ἀντεπύργωσαν πότε.

2 Herodot. ix. 27. Lysias (Epitaph. c. 3) represents the Amazons as ἄρχουσαι πολλῶν ἐθνῶν: the whole race, according to him, was nearly extinguished in their unsuccessful and calamitous invasion of Attica. Isokratés (Panegyric. t. i. p. 206, Auger) says the same: also Pana- thénaic, t. iii. p. 560, Auger ; Demosth. Epitaph. p. 1391, Reis Pausanias quotes Pindar’s notice of the invasion, and with the fullest belief of its his- torical reality (vii. 2, 4). Plato men- tions the invasion of Attica by the Amazons in the Menexenus (c. 9), but

wos oT

the passage in the treatise De Legg. 6. ii. p. 804,—axovwv yap δὴ μύθους παλαιοὺς πέπεισμαι, &e.—is even a stronger evidence of his own belief. And Xenophén, in the Anabasis, when he compares the quiver and the hatchet of his barbarous enemies to ‘“‘ those which the Amazons carry,” —- believed himself to be speaking of persons, though he could have seen only the costumes and armature of those painted by Mikén and others Anabas. iv. 4, 10; mace Zschyl. upplic. 293, and Aristop ἔτ᾽ δα 678; Lucian, Anachars. 6. 34, v. iii. p.

318 How copiously the tale was re a upon by the authors of the Atthides, we Seber oe sarge! hace yp us (ap. yz.” ‘0-

νεῖον ; also Fragm. 350, 351, 352, Didot) and Xanthus (ap. Hesychium, v. Bov- AeWin) both treated of the Amazons: the latter passage ought to be added to the collection of the Fragments of Xanthus by Didot. :

3 Clemens Alexandr. Stromat. i. p. 336 ; Marmor Parium, Epoch. 21,

Cap, ΧΙ. AMAZONS IN ASIA, 195

in such a belief. Throughout many other regions of Greece, both European and Asiatic, traditions and memorials of the Amazons were found. At Megara, at Troezen, in Laconia near Cape Teenarus, at Cheroneia in Beedtia, and in more than one part of Thessaly, sepulchres or monuments of the Amazons were pre- served. The warlike women (it was said), on their way to Attica, had not traversed those countries without leaving some evidences of their passage.?

Amongst the Asiatic Greeks the supposed traces of the Ama- zons were yet more numerous. Their proper territory ‘heir was asserted to be the town and plain of Themiskyra, Ubiauity. near the Grecian colony of Amisus, on the river Thermédén, a region called after their name by Roman historians and geogra- phers.? But they were believed to have conquered and occupied in earlier times a much wider range of territory, extending even to the coast of Idnia and AMolis. Ephesus, Smyrna, Kymé, Myrina, Paphos and Sinépe were affirmed to have been founded and denominated by them.’ Some authors placed them in Libya or Ethiopia ; and when the Pontic Greeks on the north-western shore of the Euxine had become acquainted with the hardy and daring character of the Sarmatian maidens,—who were obliged to have slain each an enemy in battle as the condition of ob. taining a husband, and who artificially prevented the growth of the right breast during childhood,—they could imagine no more satisfactory mode of accounting for such attributes than by de- ducing the Sarmatians from a colony of vagrant Amazons, expelled by the Grecian heroes from their. territory on the Thermédén.‘

1 Plutarch, Thés, 27—28. Steph. Byz.

from an Amazon was given by Heka- v. ᾿Αμαζονεῖον. Pausan. ii. 32, 8; lii.

teus (Fragm. 352). Themiskyra also

, Ἅ.

2Pherekydés ap. Schol. Apollon. Rh. ii. 373—992; Justin, ii. 4; Strabo, xii. p. 547. Θεμίσκυραν, τὸ τῶν ᾿Αμαζόνων οἰκητήριον : Diodér. ii. 45—46 ; Sallust ap. Serv. ad Virgil. Aineid. xi. 659; Pompon. Mela, i. 19; Plin. H. N. vi. 4. The geography of Quintus Curtius (vi. 4) and of Philostratus (Heroic. c. 19) is on this point indefinite, and even inconsistent.

3 Ephor. Fragm. 87, Didot. Strabo, xi. p. 505; xii. p. 573; xiii. p. 622. Pausan. iv. 31, 6; vii. 2, 4. Tacit. Ann. iii, 61, Schol. Apollon. Rhod. ii.

965. The derivation of the name Sinopé

had one of the Amazons for its epony- mus (Appian, Bell. Mithridat. 78). Some of the most venerated religious legends at Sinopé were attached to the expedition of Héraklés against the Amazons: Autolykus, the oracle-giving hero, worshipped with great solemnity even at the time when the town was besieged by Lucullus, was the com- anion of Héraklés (Appian, ib. c. 83). ven a small mountain village in the territory of Ephesus, called Latoreia, derived its name from one of the Amazons (Athenee. i. p, 31). _ 4 Herodot. iv. 108—117, where he ives the long tale imagined by the ontic Greeks, of the origin of the

196 Attic LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIEs. Part tf.

Pindar ascribes the first establishment of the memorable temple of Artemis at Ephesus to the Amazons. And Pausanias explains in part the pre-eminence which this temple enjoyed over every other in Greece by the widely diffused renown of its female founders,! respecting whom he observes (with perfect truth, if we admit the historical character of the old epic), that women possess an unparalleled force of resolution in resisting adverse events, since the Amazons, after having been first roughly handled by Héraklés, and then completely defeated by Théseus, could yet find courage to play so conspicuous a part in the defence of Troy against the Grecian besiegers.? It is thus that in what is called early Grecian history, as the Uni Greeks themselves looked back upon it, the Amazons 1ver- - . sally re- were among the most prominent and undisputed ceived as personages. Nor will the circumstance appear won- he Greek derful if we reflect, that the belief in them was first ane established at a time when the Grecian mind was fed with nothing else but religious legend and epic poetry, and that the incidents of the supposed past, as received from these sources, were addressed to their faith and feelings, without being required to adapt themselves to any canons of credibility drawn from present experience. But the time came when the historians of Alexander the Great audaciously abused this ancient credence. Amongst other tales calculated to exalt the dignity of that mon- arch, they affirmed that after his conquest and subjugation of the Persian empire, he had been visited in Hyrcania by produced § Thalestris, queen of the Amazons, who, admiring his bythe iis. Warlike prowess, was anxious to be enabled to return ree ie into her own country in a condition to produce off- "spring of a breed so invincible.* But the Greeks had ἀραῖος, De Are, Τρεῖς οἱ Aquis, en 1T;migay τὴν ἰσχὸν καὶ τὸ πλῆθος ἀκδιδμες

Ephoris, Fragm. 103; Skymn. Chius, compares a warlike ᾿ ΜΟῚ Plato, Legg. vii. p. 804; Diodér. Sakian woman to the Amazons (Fragm.

. 84. >. The testimony of Hippokratés certi- 1 Pausan. iv. 31, 6; vii. 2, 4. Dionys.

fies the practice of the Sarmatian Periégét. 828. women to check the growth of the 2 Pausan. i. 15, 2. right breast: Τὸν δέξιον δὲ μαζὸν οὐκ 3 Arrian, Exped. Alex. vii. 13 ; com- ἔχουσιν. Παιδίοισι yap ἐοῦσιν ἔτι pare iv. 15; Quint. Curt. vi. 4; Justin, νηπίοισιν αἱ μητέρες χαλκεῖον τετεχνή- Xlii. 4. The note of Freinshemius on μενον ἐπ᾿ αὐτέῳ τούτῳ διάπυρον ποιέου- the above e of Quintus Curtius σαι, πρὸς τὸν μαζὸν τιθέασι τὸν δέξιον: is full of valuable references on the καὶ ἐπικαίεται, ὥστε τὴν αὔξησιν φθεί- subject of the Amazons.

LEGEND OF THE AMAZONS. 197

παρ. XI.

now been accustomed for a century and a half to historical and philosophical criticism—and that uninquiring faith, which was readily accorded to the wonders of the past, could no longer be invoked for them when tendered as present reality. For the fable of the Amazons was here reproduced in its naked simplicity, without being rationalised or painted over with historical colours.

Some literary men indeed, among whom were Démétrius of Skepsis, and the Mitylenzan Theophanés, the companion of Pompey in his expeditions, still continued their belief both in Amazons present and Amazons past; and when it became no- torious that at least there were none such on the banks of the Therméddén, these authors supposed them to have migrated from their original locality, and to have settled in the unvisited regions north of Mount Caucasus. Strabo, on the contrary, feeling that the grounds of disbelief applied with equal force to the ancient stories and to the modern, rejected both the one and the other. But he remarks at the same time, not without some surprise, that it was usual with most persons to adopt a middle course,—to retain the Amazons as historical phenomena of the remote past, but to disallow them as realities of the present, and to maintain

that the breed had died out.2

1Strabo, xi. p. 508—504; Appian, Bell. Mithridat. c. 103; Plutarch, Pom- peius, c. 35; Plin. N..H. vi. 7. Plutarch still retains the old description of Amazons from the mountains near the Thermédén: Appian keeps clear of this geographical error, probably copy- ing more exactly the lan e of Theo- phanés, who must have been well aware that when Lucullus besieged Themiskyra, he did not find it de- fended by the Amazons (see Appian, Bell. Mithridat. c. 78). Ptolemy (v. 9)

laces the Amazons in the imperfectly own regions of Asiatic Sarmati north of the ian and near the river Rha (Volga). ‘‘This fabulous com- munity of women (observes Forbiger, Handbuch der alten Geographie, ii. 17: pe) tae τ πο ye —

Ὁ res or the geographers easily to relinquish.”

2 Strabo. xi. p. 505. "Ἴδιον δέ τι συμ- βέβηκε τῷ λόγῳ περὶ τῶν ᾿Αμαζόνων. Oi μὲν γὰρ ἄλλοι τὸ μυθῶδες καὶ τὸ ἑστο- ρικὸν διωρίσμενον ἔχουσι " τὰ γὰρ παλαιὰ καὶ Ψευδῆ καὶ τερατώδη, μῦθοι καλοῦνται"

[Note. Strabo does not always speak

The accomplished intellect of

of the μῦθοι in this disrespectful tone; he is sometimes much displeased with those who dispute the existence of an historical kernel in the inside, espe- cially with regard to Homer.] ἡ δ᾽ ἱστορία βούλεται τἀληθὲς, ἄντε παλαιὸν, ἄντε νέον" καὶ τὸ τερατῶδες ἢ οὐκ ἔχει, ἢ σπάνιον. Περὶ δὲ τῶν ᾿Αμαζόνων τὰ αὐτὰ λέγεται καὶ νῦν καὶ παλαὶ, τερατώδη τ᾽ ὄντα, καὶ πίστεως πόῤῥω. Tis γὰρ ἂν πιστεύσειεν, ὡς γυναικῶν στράτος, ἢ πόλις, ἣ ἔθνος, συσταίη ἂν πότε χωρὶς ἀνδρῶν ; καὶ οὐ μόνον συσταίη, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐφόδους ποιήσαιτο ἐπὶ τὴν ἀλλοτρίαν, καὶ κρατήσειεν οὐ τῶν ἐγγὺς μόνον, ὥστε καὶ. μέχρι τῆς νῦν Ιωνίας προελθεῖν, ἀλλὰ καὶ διαπόντιον στείλαιτο στρατίαν μέχρι τῆς ᾿Αττικῆς; ᾿Αλλὰ μὴν ταῦτά γε αὑτὰ καὶ νῦν λέγεται περὶ αὐτῶν" ἐπιτείνει δὲ τὴν ἰδιότητα καὶ τὸ πιστεύεσθαι τὰ παλαιὰ μᾶλλον ἣ τὰ νῦν. There are however other passages in which he speaks of the Amazons as ΘΙ

S. Justin (ii. 4) recognises the ower and extensive conquests of th

e mazons in very early times, but says that they gradually dectined down b

at

198 ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES. Part le

Julius Cesar did not scruple to acknowledge them as having once conquered and held in dominion a large portion of Asia? And the compromise between early, traditional, and religious faith on the one hand, and established habits of critical research

Conflict of faithand οῃ the other, adopted by the historian Arrian, deserves the histori: to be transcribed in his own words, as illustrating cal critics.

strikingly the powerful sway of the old legends even over the most positive-minded Greeks :—* Neither Aristobulus nor Ptolemy (he observes), nor any other competent witness, thus recounted this (visit of the Amazons and their queen to Alex- ander): nor does it seem to me that the race of the Amazons was preserved down to that time, nor have they been noticed either by any one before Alexander, or by Xenophén, though he men- tions both the Phasians and the Kolchians, and the other bar- barous nations which the Greeks saw both before and after their arrival at Trapezus, in which marches they must have met with the Amazons, if the latter had been still in existence. Yet it ὦ incredible to me that this race of women, celebrated as they have been by authors so many and so commanding, should never have existed at all. The story tells of Héraklés, that he set out from Greece and brought back with him the girdle of their queen Hippolyté ; also of Théseus and the Athenians, that they were the first who defeated in battle and repelled these women in their invasion of Europe ; and the combat of the Athenians with the Amazons has been painted by Mikén, not less than that between the Athenians and the Persians. Moreover Herodotus has spoken in many places of these women, and those Athenian orators who have pronounced panegyrics on the citizens slain in battle, have dwelt upon the victory over the Amazons as among the most memorable of Athenian exploits. If the satrap of Media sent any equestrian women at all to Alexander, I think that they must have come from some of the neighbouring barbarous tribes, prac-

the reign of Alexander, in whose time

there were just a few remaining; the queen with these few visited Alexander, but shortly afterwards the whole breed became extinct. This hypothesis has the merit of convenience, perhaps of ingenuity.

1 Suetonius, Jul. Cesar. ο. 22. “In

atte quoque Prone Semiramin ulius Cesar said this), magnamque

Asie a Amazonas tenuisse quon-

an the splendid triumph of the emperor Aurelian at Rome after the defeat of Zenob’ aie Gothic women who had been n in arms were ex- hibited — the prisoners; the official placard carried along with them announced them as Amazons ΔΑ ay a in Histor. August,

rip. p. 260, ed. Paris).

Cap. ΧΙ. ARRIAN ON THE AMAZON LEGEND. 199

tised in riding and equipped in the costume generally called Amazonian.” ?

There cannot bea more striking evidence of the indelible force with which these ancient legends were worked into the national faith and feelings of the Greeks, than these remarks of a judicious historian upon the fable of the Amazons. Probably if any plausible mode of rationalising it, and of transforming it into a quasi-political event, had been offered to Arrian, he would have been better pleased to adopt such a middle term, and would have rested comfortably in the supposition that he believed the legend in its true meaning, while his less enquiring countrymen were imposed upon by the exaggerations of poets. But as the story was presented to him plain and unvarnished, either for accep- tance or rejection, his feelings as a patriot and a religious man prevented him from applying to the past such tests of credibility as his untrammeled reason acknowledged to be paramount in regard to the present. When we see moreover how much his belief was strengthened, and all tendency to scepticism shut out, by the familiarity of his eye and memory with sculptured or painted Amazons *—we may calculate the irresistible force of this sensible demonstration on the convictions of the unlettered pub- lic, at once more deeply retentive of passive impressions, and unaccustomed to the countervailing habit of rational investigation into evidence. Had the march of an army of warlike women, from the Thermédén or the Tanais into the heart of Attica, been recounted to Arrian as an incident belonging to the time of Alex- ander the Great, he would have rejected it no less emphatically than Strabo; but cast back as it was into an undefined past, it took rank among the hallowed traditions of divine or heroic anti- quity,—gratifying to extol by rhetoric, but repulsive to scrutinise in argument.®

1 Arrian, Expedit, Alexand. vii. aut vesti nemo quesiverit”. Ad-

mitting the wisdom of this counsel

13,

2 Ktésias described as real animals, existing in wild and distant regions, the heterogeneous and fantastic com- binations which he saw sculptured in the East (see this stated and_illus- trated in Bahr, oo to the Fragm. of Ktésias, pp.

3 Heyne ° sea ὙΠ ii. δ, 9) with rots his to the fable of the Amazons

his historiarum fidem

(and I think it indisputable), why are we required to presume, in the absence of all proof, an istorical basis for each of those other narratives, such as the Kaledénian boar-hunt, the Argonautic

. expedition, or the siege of Troy, which

go to make up, along with the story of the Amazons, the a; Ati matter of Grecian legendary faith? If the tale of the Amazons could gain currency

200

without any such support, why not other portions of the ancient epic?

An author of easy belief, Dr. F. Nagel, vindicates the historical reality of the Amazons (Geschichte der Ama- zonen, Stuttgart, 1808). I subjoin here a different explanation of the Ama- yonian tale, proceeding from another author who rejects the historical basis, and contained in a work of learning and value (Guhl, Ephesiaca, Berlin, 1843, > 132) :—

“Td tantum monendum videtur, Amazonas nequaquam historice acci- piendas esse, sed e contrario totas ad A Aan pertinere. Earum enim fabulas quum ex frequentium hierodu- larum gregibus in cultibus et sacris Asiaticis ortas esse ingeniose osten- derit Tolken, jam inter omnes mythologia peritos constat, Amazonibus nihil fere nisi peregrini cujusdam cultfis notio- nem expressum esse, ejusque cum Gre- corum religione certamen frequentibus istis pugnis designatum esse, quas cum Amazonibus tot Greecorum heroes ha-

ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES.

Parr I.

buisse credebantur, Hercules, Bellero- phon, Theseus, Achilles, et vel ipse, quem Ephesi cultum fuisse supra os- tendimus, Dionysus. Que Amazonum notio primaria, quum paulatim Eue- meristica (ut ita dicam) ratione ita transformaretur, ut Amazones pro vero feminarum populo haberentur, necesse uoque erat, ut omnibus fere locis, ubi ejusmodi religionum ce ocum habuerunt, Amazones habitasse, vel eo usque processisse, crederentur. Quod cum nusquam manifestius fuerit, quam in Asia minore, et potissimum in θὰ parte que Greciam versus vergit, haud mirandum est omnes fere ejus ore urbes ab Amazonibus condi putari.” I do not know the evidence upon which this conjectural interpretation rests, but the statement of it, though it boasts so many supporters among mythological critics, carries no appear- ance of probability to my mind. m fights against the Amazons as well as the Grecian heroes,

Cuap, XIL KRETAN LEGENDS. 201

CHAPTER XII. KRETAN LEGENDS.—MINOS AND HIS FAMILY.

To understand the adventures of Théseus in Kréte, it will be necessary to touch briefly upon Minés’and the Krétan heroic genealogy.

Minés and Rhadamanthus, according to Homer, are sons of Zeus, by Europé,! daughter of the widely-celebrated Minds and Phenix, born in Kréte. Minés is the father of Rhadaman Deukalién, whose son Idomeneus, in conjunction with of Zeus. Mérionés, conducts the Krétan troops to the host of Agamemnén before Troy. Minds is ruler of Knéssus, and familiar companion of the great Zeus. He is spoken of as holding guardianship in Kréte—not necessarily meaning the whole of the island: he is farther decorated with a golden sceptre, and constituted judge over the dead in the under-world to settle their disputes, in which function Odysseus finds him—this however by a passage of comparatively late interpolation into the Odyssey. He also had a daughter named Ariadné, for whom the artist Dedalus fabricated in the town of Knéssus the representation of a compli- cated dance, and who was ultimately carried off by Théseus: she ~ died in the island of Dia, deserted by Théseus and betrayed by Dionysos to the fatal wrath of Artemis. Rhadamanthus seems to approach to Minds both in judicial functions and posthumous dignity. He is conveyed expressly to Eubcea, by the semi-divine sea-carriers the Phzacians, to inspect the gigantic corpse of the earth-born Tityus—the longest voyage they ever undertook. He

1 Europé was worshipped with very was still shown, hard by a fountain at — solemnity in the island of Gortyn in Kréte, in the time of Theo-

te (see Dictys Cretensis, De Bello phrastus: it was said to be the onl Trojano, i. c. 2). plane-tree in the ποὺς ἐττραροῖταοῖνε whic

e venerable plane-tree, under never cast its leaves (Theophrast. Hist. which Zeus and Europé had reposed, Plant. i. : e

202 KRETAN LEGENDS. Part L.

is moreover after death promoted to an abode of undisturbed bliss in the Elysian plain at the extremity of the earth.

According to poets later than Homer, Europé is brought ἜἜΣΟΝ, over by Zeus from Pheenicia to Kréte, where she

; bears to him three sons, Minés, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpédén. The latter leaves Kréte and settles in Lykia, the population of which, as well as that of many other portions of Asia Minor, is connected by various mythical genealogies with Kréte, though the Sarpédén of the Iliad has no connexion with Kréte, and is not the son of Europé. Sarpédén, having become king of Lykia, was favoured by his father, Zeus, with permission to live for three generations? At the same time the youthful Milétus, a favourite of Sarpédén, quitted Kréte, and established the city which bore his name on the coast of Asia Minor. Rha- damanthus became sovereign of and lawgiver among the islands in the AMgean: he subsequently went to Bedtia, where he married the widowed Alkméné, mother of Héraklés.

Europé finds in Kréte a king Astérius, who marries her and adopts her children by Zeus ; this Astérius is the son of Krés, the eponym of the island, or (according to another genealogy by which it was attempted to be made out that Minés was of Dérian race) he was a son of the daughter of Krés by Tektamus, the son of Dérus, who had migrated into the island from Greece.

Minés married Pasiphaé, daughter of the god Hélios and eee Perseis, by whom he had Katreus, Deukalién, Glau- and tne kus, Androgeos,—names marked in the legendary manta narrative,—together with several daughters, among whom were Ariadné and Phedra. He offended Poseidén by

1 Homer, Iliad, xiii. 249, 450; xiv. partially illustrated in Heyne’s Ex- 321. Eg ta 322—568 ; xix. 179; iv. cursus xi. to the sixth book of the

821.

The Homeric Minés in the under- world is not a judge of the previous lives of the d so as to determine whether they deserve reward or punishment for their conduct on earth: such functions are not assigned to him earlier than the time of Plato. He administers justice among the dead, peas conceived as oe τὰν ῥγεὰ sy req! some presidi : θεμισ- τεύοντα nar sonct with ee" to Minds, is said very much like (Odyss. xi. 484) νῦν δ᾽ αὗτε μέγα κρατέεις νεκύεσσι with r to ‘Achill les. See this matter

neid of Virgil.

2 Apollodér. iii, 1, 2. Kat αὐτῷ δίδωσι Ζεὺς ἐπὶ τρεῖς γενεὰς ζῆν. This circumstance is evidently imagined by the logographers to account for the appearance of Sarpédén in the Tro, war, fighting Idomenens, the grandson = - wef ie "ἢ ἘΣ eponymus of Nisa, the of the τρια τὲ Μ : his ieee wae shown at Athens usan. i. 19, 5). Minds is the eponym of the island of Minoa (opposite the port of Niszea), where it was affirmed that the fleet of Minds was stationed (Pausan. i. 44, 5).

παρ. XII. THE MINOTAUR. 203

neglecting to fulfil a solemnly-made vow, and the displeased god afflicted his wife Pasiphaé with a monstrous passion-for a bull. The great artist Daedalus, son of Eupalamus, a fugitive from Athens, became the confidant of this amour, from which sprang the Minétaur, a creature half-man and half-bull.!’ This Miné- taur was imprisoned by Minds in the labyrinth, an inextricable enclosure constructed by Dedalus for that express purpose by order of Minds.

Minés acquired great nautical power, and expelled the Karian inhabitants from many of the islands of the Augean, ΒΚ, and which he placed under the government of his sons on N the footing of tributaries. He undertook several expeditions against various places on the coast—one against Nisus, the son of Pandién, king of Megara, who had amongst the hair of his head one peculiar lock of a purple colour: an oracle had pronounced that his life and reign would never be in danger so long as he preserved this precious lock. The city would have remained inexpugnable, if Skylla, the daughter of Nisus, had not con- ceived a violent passion for Minés. While her father was asleep, she cut off the lock on which his safety hung, so that the Krétan king soon became victorious. Instead of preforming his promise to carry Skylla away with him to Kréte, he cast her from the stern of his vessel into the sea:? both Skylla and Nisus were changed into birds.

Androgeos, son of Minds, having displayed such rare qualities as to vanquish all his competitors at the Panathenaic sats cn festival in Athens, was sent by Aigeus the Athenian Androgeos, king to contend against the bull of Marathén,—an 4nd anger enterprise in which he perished, and Minés made war one upon Athens to avenge his death. He was for a long : time unable to take the city: at length he prayed to his father Zeus to aid him in obtaining redress from the Athenians, and Zeus sent upon them pestilence and famine. In vain did they endeavour to avert these calamities by offering up as propitiatory sacrifices the four daughters of Hyakinthus. Their sufferings

1 Apollodér. iii. 1, 2. oe Eurip. bat gre bp aor thes rts ete aa ft ὉΞ ject of th this fabl ble: also Hyginus, f. 198 ; vill. δ. 100 mr ἐνῶ» οὖν

204 KRETAN LEGENDS. Part L

still continued and the oracle directed them to submit to any terms which Minés might exact. He required that they should send to Kréte a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens, periodically, to be devoured by the Mindtaur,’—offered to him in a labyrinth constructed by Dedalus, including countless different passages, out of which no person could escape.

Every ninth year this offering was to be despatched. The Athenian more common story was, that the youths and maidens tictimsfor thus destined to destruction were selected by lot—but taur. the logographer Hellanikus said that Minés came to Athens and chose them himself.2 The third period for despatching the victims had arrived, and Athens was plunged in the deepest affliction, when Théseus determined to devote himself as one of them, and either to terminate the sanguinary tribute or to perish. He prayed to Poseidén for help, while the Delphian god assured him that Aphrodité would sustain and extricate him. On arriving at Knéssus he was fortunate enough to captivate the affections of Ariadné, the daughter of tion of Minés, who supplied him with a sword and a clue of ieeausne thread. With the former he contrived to kill the Minotaur. Mindtaur, the latter served to guide his footsteps in escaping from the labyrinth. Having accomplished this triumph, he left Kréte with his ship and companions unhurt, carrying off Ariadné, whom however he soon abandoned on the island of Naxos. On his way home to Athens, he stopped at Delos, where he offered a grateful sacrifice to Apollo for his escape, and danced, along with the young men and maidens whom he had rescued from the Minétaur, a dance called the Geranus, imitated from the twists and convolutions of the Krétan labyrinth. It had been concerted with his father geus, that if he succeeded in his enterprise against the Mindtaur, he should on his return hoist white sails in his ship in place of the black canvas which she habitually carried when employed on this mournful embassy. But Théseus forgot to make the change of sails ; so that Aigeus, seeing the ship return with her equipment

1 Apollod6r. iii. 15, 8. tains that the tribute of these human

2 See, on the subject of Théseusand victims paid by Athens to Minds is the Minétaur, Eckermann, Lehrbuch an historical fact. Upon what this der Religions-Geschichte und Mytho- belief is grounded, I confess I do not logie, vo). ii. ch. xiii. p. 133. He maip- see.

Chae, XI. THRSEUS AND THE MINOTAUR. 905

of mourning unaltered, was impressed with the sorrowful con- viction that his son had perished, and cast himself into the sea. The ship which made this voyage was preserved by the Athenians with careful solicitude, being constantly repaired with new timbers, down to the time of the Phalerian Démétrius: every year she was sent from Athens to Delos with a solemn sacrifice and specially-nominated envoys. The priest of Apollo decked her stern with garlands before she quitted the port, Athenian and during the time which elapsed until her return, tive core- the city was understood to abstain from all acts monies. carrying with them public impurity, so that it was unlawful to put to death any person even under formal sentence by the dikastery. This accidental circumstance becomes especially memorable, from its having postponed for thirty days the death of the lamented Sokratés,*

The legend respecting Théseus, and his heroic rescue of the seven noble youths and maidens from the jaws of the Mindtaur, was thus both commemorated and certified to the Athenian public, by the annual holy ceremony and by the unquestioned identity of the vessel employed in it. There were indeed many varieties in the mode of narrating the incident ; and some of the Attic logographers tried to rationalise the fable by transforming the Minétaur into a general or a powerful athlete, named Taurus, whom Théseus vanquished in Kréte.? But this altered version

1 Plato, Phedon, c. 2, 3; Xenoph. offered as food to the Minétaur_ was Memor. iv. 8, 2. Plato especially introduced (Schol. ad Aristoph. Vesp. noticed τοὺς Sis ἕπτα ἐκείνους, the 312). seven youths and seven maidens Ariadn& figures in the Odyssey whom Théseus convoyed to Kréteand along with ‘Th@seus: she is the brought back safely: this number daughter of Minds, carried off by | seems an old and constant feature in Théseus from Kréte, and killed by the legend, maintained py Sapte and Artemis in the way home: there is no

Bacchylidés, as well as uripidés allusion to Mindétaur, or tribute, or (Herc. Fur, 1318). See Servius ad Virg. self-devotion of Théseus (Odyss. xi.

ποία. vi. 21.

2 For the general narrative and its discrepancies, see Plutarch, Thés. c. 15—19 ; Diodér. iv. 60—62; Pausan. i. 17, 3; Ovid, Epist. Ariadn. Thés, 104. In that other portion of the work of Diodérus which relates more especially to Kréte, and is borrowed from Krétan logographers and historians (v. 64—80), he mentions nothing at all respecting the war of Minés with Athens.

In the drama of Euripidés called Théseus, the genuine story of the youths and maidens about to be

824). This is probably the oldest and simplest form of the legend—one of the many amorous (compare Theognis, 1282) adventures of Théseus: the rest is added by post-Homeric poets.

The respect of Aristotle for Minds induces him to adopt the hypothesis that the Athenian youths and maidens were not put to death in Kréte, but

ew old ἴῃ servitude. (Aristot.

ragm. Βοττιαίων Πολιτεία, p. 106, ed. Neumann, of the Fragments of the treatise Περὶ Πολιτειῶν, Plutarch, Quest. Greec. p. 298.)

206 KRETAN LEGENDS. Part t

never overbore the old fanciful character of the tale as maintained by the poets. A great number of other religious ceremonies and customs, as well as several chapels or sacred enclosures in honour of different heroes, were connected with different acts and special ordinances of Théseus. To every Athenian who took part in the festivals of the Oschophoria, the Pyanepsia, or the Kybernesia, the name of this great hero was familiar ; while the motives for offering to him solemn worship at his own special festival of the Théseia, became evident.and impressive.

The same Athenian legends which ennobled and decorated the character of Théseus, painted in repulsive colours the attributes of Minds; and the traits of the old Homeric comrade of Zeus were buried under those of the conqueror and oppressor of Athens. His history, like that of the other legendary personages of Greece, Family of | consists almost entirely of a string of family romances Minte. and tragedies. His son Katreus, father of Aéropé, wife of Atreus, was apprised by an oracle that he would perish by the hand of one of his own children: he accordingly sent them out of the island, and Althemenés, his son, established himself in Rhodes. Katreus, having become old, and fancying that he had outlived the warning of the oracle, went over to Rhodes to see Altheemenés. In an accidental dispute which arose between his attendants and the islanders, Altheemenés inadver- tently took part and slew his father without knowing him. Glaukus, the youngest son of Minés, pursuing a mouse, fell into a reservoir of honey and was drowned. Noone knew what had become of him, and his father was inconsolable ; at length the Argeian Polyeidus, a prophet wonderfully endowed by the gods, both discovered the boy and restored him to life, to the exceeding joy of Minds.?

The latter at last found his death in an eager attempt to over- Minésanad ‘#ke and punish Dedalus. This great artist, the Dedalus— eponymous hero of the Attic gens or déme called the fight of Deedalide, and the descendant of Erechtheus through to Sicily. Métion, had been tried at the tribunal of Arciopagus and banished for killing his nephew Talos, whose rapidly im- proving skill excited his envy.? He took refuge in Kréte, where

1 Apollodér. iii. cap. 2—8. 2 Pherekyd. Fr. 105; Hellanik. Fr. 82 (Didot) ; Pausan. vii. 4, 5.

MIN6S AND DAEDALUS. 207

Cuap. XII.

he acquired the confidence of Minds, and was employed (as bas been already mentioned) in constructing the labyrinth ; subse- quently however he fell under the displeasure of Minés, and was confined asa close prisoner in the inextricable windings of his own edifice. His unrivalled skill and resource however did not forsake him. He manufactured wings both for himself and for his son Ikarus, with which they flew over the sea. The father arrived safely in Sicily at Kamikus, the residence of the Sikanian king Kokalus; but the son, disdaining paternal example and admonition, flew so high that his wings were melted by the sun and he fell into the sea, which from him was called the Ikarian sea.

Dedalus remained for some time in Sicily, leaving in various parts of the island many prodigious evidences of Minds goes mechanical and architectural skill.2 At length Minés, iim bat is bent upon regaining possession of his person, under- killed. took an expedition against Kokalus with a numerous fleet and army. Kokalus, affecting readiness to deliver up the fugitive, and receiving Minés with apparent friendship, ordered a bath to be prepared for him by his three daughters, who, eager to protect Deedalus at any price, drowned the Krétan king in the bath with hot water.* Many of the Krétans who had accompanied him remained in Sicily and founded the town of Minoa, which they denominated after him. But notlongafterwards Zeus ,.5. instigated all the inhabitants of Kréte (except the Krétan towns of Polichna and Presus) to undertake with one ps re accord an expedition against Kamikus for the purpose erent a of avenging the death of Minds. They besieged voyage of Kamikus in vain for five years, until at last famine “™* compelled them to return. On their way along the coast of Italy, in the Gulf of Tarentum, a terrible storm destroyed their fleet and obliged them to settle permanently in the country : they founded

1 Diodér. iv. 79; Ovid, Metamorph. viii. 181. Both Ephorus and Philistus mentioned the coming of Dedalus to Kokalus in Sicily (Ephor. Fr. 99; Philist. Fr. 1, Didot); probably Antiochus noticed it also (Diodér. xii. 71). Kokalus was the point of com- mencement for the Sicilian historians.

2 Diodér. iv..80.

ὃ Pausan. vii. 4, 5; Schol. Pindar.

Nem. iv. 95; Hygin. fab. 44; Conon,

Narr. 25; Ovid, Ibis, 291.—

** Vel tua maturet, sicut Minoia fata,

Per caput infuse fervidus humor aquee.”

This story formed the subject of a lost

drama of Sophoklés Καμίκιοι or Mivws;

it was also told by Kallimachus, ἐν

Αἰτίοις, as well as by Philostepbanus

(Schol. Lliad. ii, 145).

208 KRETAN LEGENDS. Part t

Hyria with other cities, and became Messapian Iapygians. Other settlers, for the most part Greeks, immigrated into Kréte to the spots which this movement had left vacant. In the second generation after Minés, occurred the Trojan war. The departed Minés was exceedingly offended with the Krétans for co-operating in avenging the injury to Menelaus, since the Greeks generally had lent no aid to the Krétans in their expedition against the town of Kamikus. He sent upon Kréte, after the return of Idomeneus from Troy, such terrible visitations of famine and pestilence, that the population again died out or expatriated, and was again renovated by fresh immigrations. The

Sufferings

of the intolerable suffering! thus brought upon the Krétans Krétans ber 5 3 afterwards by the anger of Minds, for having co-operated in the from the general Grecian aid to Menelaus, was urged by them Minés. to the Greeks as the reason why they could take no

part in resisting the invasion of Xerxes ; and it is even pretended that they were advised and encouraged to adopt this ground of excuse by the Delphian oracle.?

Such is the Minds of the poets and logographers, with his poses lar legendary and romantic attributes: the familiar com- Minds— rade of the great Zeus,—the judge among the dead in how varied. }14dés,—the husband of Pasiphaé, daughter of the god Hélios,—the father of the goddess Ariadné, as well as of Andro- geos, who perishes and is worshipped at Athens,’ and of the boy Glaukus, who is miraculously restored to life by a prophet,—the person beloved by Skylla, and the amorous pursuer of the nymph or goddess Britomartis,‘—the proprietor of the labyrinth and of

1 This curious and very characteristic narrative is given by Herodot. vii. 169

2 Herodot. vii. 169. The answer as- cribed to the Delphian oracle, on the question being put by the Krétan envoys whether it would be better for them to aid the Greeks against Xerxés or not, is highly emphatic and poetical: ὯὮ νήπιοι, ἐπιμέμφεσθε ὅσα ὑμῖν ἐκ τῶν Μενελέω τιμωρημάτων Μίνως ἔπεμψε μηνίων δακρύματα, ὅτι οἱ μὲν οὐ ἐνὶ Ae ρήξαντο αὐτῷ τὸν ἐν Καμίκῳ θάνατον γενόμενον, ὑμεῖς δὲ κείνοισι τὴν ἐκ Σπάρ- τῆς ἁρπαχθεῖσαν ὑπ᾽’ ἀνδρὸς βαρβάρου γυναικα.

if such an answer was ever returned at all, I cannot but think that it must

have been from some oracle in Kréte itself, not from Delphi. The Delphian oracle could never have so far forgotten its obligations to the general cause of Greece, at that critical moment, which involved moreover the safety of all its own treasures, as to deter the from giving assistance.

3 Hesiod. Theogon. 949; Pausan. i.

» 4.

4 Kallimach. Hymn. ad Dian. 189.

Strabo (x. p. 476) dwells also upon the strange contradiction of the mds concerning Minds: I agree with Hoeck

(Kreta, ii. p. 93) that δασμόλογος in this Θ Fee to the placa exacted rom Athens for the Minétaur.

- se δα Pe, ee

Cuap. XII. CHARACTER OF MINOS IN LEGEND. 209

the Minétaur, and the exactor of a periodical tribute of youths and maidens from Athens as food for this monster,—lastly, the follower of the fugitive artist Daedalus to Kamikus, and the victim of the three ill-disposed daughters of Kokalus, in a bath. With this strongly-marked portrait, the Minés of Thucydidés and Aristotle has scarcely anything in common except the name. He is the first to acquire Thalassokraty, or command of the Hgean sea: he expels the Karian inhabitants from the Cyclades islands, and sends thither fresh colonists under his own sons; he puts down piracy, in order that he may receive his tribute regularly ; lastly, he attempts to conquer Sicily, but fails in the enterprise and perishes Here we have conjectures, derived from the analogy of the Athenian maritime empire in the historical times, substituted in place of the fabulous incidents, and attached to the name of Minds,

In the fable a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens is paid to him periodically by the Athenians; in the historicised narrative this character of a tribute collector is preserved, but the tribute is money collected from dependent islands :? and Aristotle points out to us how conveniently Kréte is situated to exercise empire over the Agean. The expedition against Kami- kus, instead of being directed to the recovery of the fugitive Dedalus, is an attempt on the part of the great thalassokrat to conquer Sicily. Herodotus gives us generally the same view of the character of Minés as a great maritime king, but his notice of the expedition against Kamikus includes the mention of Dedalus

Ephorus (ap. Skymn. Chi. 542)

1Thucyd. i, 4. Μίνως γὰρ, wadai- τατος ὧν ἀκοῇ ἴσμεν, ναυτικὸν ἐκτήσατο, καὶ τῆς νῦν ᾿Ἑλληνικῆς θαλάσσης ἐπὶ πλεῖστον ἐκράτησε, καὶ τῶν Κυκλάδων νήσων ἣρξέ τε καὶ οἰκιστὴς πρῶτος τῶν πλείστων ἐγένετο, Κᾶρας ἐξελάσας καὶ τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ παῖδας ἡγεμόνας ἐγκαταστή- σας" τό τε λῃστικὸν, ὡς εἰκὸς, καθήρει ἐκ τῆς θαλάσσης, ἐφ᾽ ὅσον ἠδύνατο, τοῦ τὰς προσόδους μᾶλλον ἰέναι αὐτῷ. See also c

. 8.

_Aristot. Polit. ii. 7, 2. Δοκεῖ δ᾽ ἡ νῆσος καὶ πρὸς τὴν ἀρχὴν τὴν Ἑλληνικὴν πεφυκέναι καὶ κεῖσθαικαλῶς . .. διὸ καὶ τὴν τῆς θαλάσσης ἀρχὴν κατέσχεν ὁ Μίνως, καὶ τὰς νήσους τὰς. μὲν ἐχειρώ- σατο, τὰς δὲ ᾧκισε" τέλος δ᾽ ἐπιθέμενος τῇ Σικελίᾳ τὸν βίον ἐτελεύτησεν ἐκεῖ περὶ Κάμικον.

repeated the same statement: he postoned also the indigenous king rés.

2 Τὸ is curious that Herodotus ex- pressly denies this, and in language which shows that he had made special inquiries about it: he says that the Karians or Leleges in the islands (who were, according to Thucydidés, ex- palled by Minés) paid no tribute to

inés, but manned his navy, i.e., they stood to Minds much in the same rela- tion as Chios and Lesbos stood to Athens (Herodot. i. 171). One may trace here the influence of those dis- cussions which must have been pre- valent at that time respecting the maritime empire of Athens,

1—14

210 KRETAN LEGENDS. Part I.

as the intended object of it.1 Ephorus, while he described Minés as a commanding and comprehensive lawgiver imposing his com- mands under the sanction of Zeus, represented him as the imitator of an earlier lawgiver named Rhadamanthus, and also as an immigrant into Kréte from the Molic Mount Ida, along with the priests or sacred companions of Zeus called the Idzi Dactyli. Aristotle too points him out as the author of the Syssitia, or public meals common in Kréte as well as at Sparta,—other divergences in a new direction from the spirit of the old fables.2

The contradictory attributes ascribed to Minds, together with the perplexities experienced by those who wished to introduce a regular chronological arrangement into these legendary events, have led both in ancient and in modern times to the supposition of two kings named Minés, one the grandson of the other,—Minés L, the son of Zeus, lawgiver and judge,—Minés IL., the thalas- sokrat,—a gratuitous conjecture, which, without solving the problem required, only adds one to the numerous artifices em- ployed for imparting the semblance of history to the disparate matter of legend. The Krétans were at all times, from Homer downward, expert and practised seamen. But that they were ever united under one government, or ever exercised maritime dominion in the Agean, is a fact which we are neither able to affirm nor to deny. The Odyssey, in so far as it justifies any inference at all, points against such a supposition, since it recognises a great diversity both of inhabitants and of languages in the island, and designates Minds as king specially of Knéssus: it refutes still more positively the idea that Minds put down piracy, which the Homeric Krétans as well as others continue to practise without scruple.

Herodotus, though he in some places speaks of Minés as a person historically cognisable, yet in one passage severs him pointedly from the generation of man. The Samian despot

1 Herodot. vii. 170. Δέγεται γὰρ Rhadamanthus and born in Kréte. Μίνω κατὰ ζήτησιν Δαιδάλου ἀπικόμενον Strabo, in pointing out the many ἐς Σικανίην, τὴν νῦν Σικελίην καλουμένην, contradictions respecting Minds, re- Kpgree, Gee’ ots inerebvurves, Ace Meaheyeuedeon tie ἘΝ Fee ote alee

2 Aristot. Polit. ἢν 7, 13 vil. 9, 2 τὸν Μίνω λεγόντων, τῶν δὲ ἐπιχώριον. Ephorus, Fragm. 63, 64, 65. He set By the former he doubtless means

63, aside altogether the Homeric genealogy Ephorus, though he has not here of Minés, which makes him brother of specified him (x. p. 477),

————

OO a

ἃς ἐν απ σν.--

——

Cuap. XII. MINGS AND HIS FAMILY. 211

“Polykratés (he tells us) was the first person who aspired to nautical dominion, excepting Minés of Knéssus, and others before him (if any such there ever were) who may have ruled the sea ; but Polykratés is the first of that which is called the generation of man who aspired with much chance of success to govern Iénia and the islands of the Augean”. Here we find it manifestly intimated that Minds did not belong to the generation of man, and the tale given by the historian respecting the tremendous calamities which the wrath of the departed Minds inflicted on Kréte confirms the impression. The king of Knoéssus is a god or a hero, but not a man ; he belongs to legend, not to history. He is the son as well as the familiar companion of Zeus ; he marries the daughter of Hélios, and Ariadné is numbered among his off- spring. To this superhuman person are ascribed the oldest and most revered institutions of the island, religious and political, together with a period of supposed antehistorical dominion. That there is much of Krétan religious ideas and practice embodied in the fables concerning Minds can hardly be doubted ; nor is it improbable that the tale of the youths and maidens sent from Athens may be based on some expiatory offerings rendered to a Krétan divinity. The orgiastic worship of Zeus, solemnized by the armed priests with impassioned motions and violent excite- ment, was of ancient date in that island, as well as the connexion with the worship of Apollo both at Delphi and at Délos. To analyse the fables and to elicit from them any trustworthy particular facts, appears to me a fruitless attempt. The religious recollections, the romantic invention, and the items of matter of fact, if any such there be, must for ever remain indissolubly | amalgamated as the poet originally blended them, for the amuse- ment or edification of his auditors. Hoeck, in his instructive and learned collections of facts respecting ancient Kréte, construes the mythical genealogy of Minds to denote a combination of the orgiastic worship of Zeus, indigenous among the Eteokrétes, with the worship of the moon imported from Pheenicia, and signified ih apives sor juets tine ΠΟ. he expeemion exactly corvouponde θαλασσοκρατέειν ἐπενοήθη, παρὲξ Μίνωός to that of Pausanias, ix. 5, 1, ἐπὶ τῶν

τε τοῦ Κνωσσίου, καὶ εἰ δή τις ἄλλος καλουμένων Ἡρώων, for the age pre- πρότερος τούτου ἦρξε τῆς θαλάττης" τῆς ceding the ἀνθρωπηΐη γενεή ; also viii.

δὲ ἀνθρωπηΐης λεγομένης γενεῆς 2, 1, ἐς τὰ ἀνωτέρω τοῦ ἀνθρώπων Πολυκράτης ἐστὶ πρῶτος ἐλπίδας πολλὰς γένους,

hn

212 KRETAN LEGENDS. Part fT.

by the names Europé, Pasiphaé, and Ariadné.! This is specious as a conjecture, but I do not venture to speak of it in terms of greater confidence.

From the connexion of religious worship and legendary tales Affinity between Kréte and various parts of Asia Minor,— petween | the Troad, the coast of Milétus and Lykia, especially Asia Minor. between Mount Ida in Kréte, and Mount Ida in lois, —it seems reasonable to infer an ethnographical kindred or relationship between the inhabitants anterior to the period of Hellenic occupation. The tales of Krétan settlement at Minoa and Engyédn on the south-western coast of Sicily, and in Iapygia on the Gulf of Tarentum, conduct us to a similar presumption, though the want of evidence forbids our tracing it farther. In the time of Herodotus, the Eteokrétes, or aboriginal inhabitants of the island, were confined to Polichna and Presus; but in earlier times, prior to the encroachments of the Hellénes, they had occupied the larger portion, if not the whole of the island. Minés was originally their hero, subsequently adopted by the immigrant Hellénes,—at least Herodotus considers him as barbarian, not Hellenic.?

1 Hoeck, Kreta, vol. ii. pp. = meas them in a manner totally K. hes Miller ἜΣ \@orier, i 2, κατ erent from Hoeck.

puts a religio nterpretation upon

these Kreto-A lavendia, 8 ge 3 Herodot. i, 173.

Cnar. Xtit. ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION. 913

CHAPTER XIIL ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION.

Tue ship Argé was the theme of many songs during the oldest periods of the Grecian epic, even earlier than the 4; pews Odyssey. The king Aétés, from whom she is depart- in the ing, the hero Jasén, who commands her, and the god- a i dess Héré, who watches over him, enabling the Argé to traverse distances and to escape dangers which no ship had ever before encountered, are all circumstances briefly glanced at by Odysseus in his narrative to Alkinous. Moreover Eunéus, the son of Jasén and Hypsipylé, governs Lémnos during the siege of Troy by Agamemnén, and carries on a friendly traffic with the Grecian camp, purchasing from them their Trojan prisoners.1

The legend of Halus in Achaia Phthidtis, respecting the religious solemnities connected with the family of Athamas and Phryxus (related in a previous chapter) is also interwoven with the voyage of the Argonauts; and both the legend and the solemnities seem evidently of great antiquity. We know further, that the adventures of the Argé were narrated not only 4, posiog by Hesiod and in the Hesiodic poems, but also by and Eumé- Eumélus and the author of the Naupaktian verses— “* by the latter seemingly at considerable length.? But these poems

1 Odyss. xii. 69.— Ἄρα Diintz. ; Fotiai, Fr. 36, p. ye 72, p. 47. Compare Schol. Oin δὴ κείνη ye παρέπλω ποντόπορυς Apolion. "Rhod. i. 45; ii. 178—297, ΩΣ iv. 254—284, Other poetical sources— The old epic poem Agimius, Frag. 5, p. 57, Diintz. Kai νύ xe ΟΝ ἔνθ᾽ ὦκα ΠΝ μεγάλας “" Kinethin in the Herakléia touched ποτὶ πέτρας, K ‘aaX tion παβέπεμψεν, ἐπεὶ φίλος jer yponthe dents of, Elylag mens Klug in ᾿Ἰήσων. The epic 0g Naupaktia, Frag. 1 to See also Iliad, vii. 470 6, Diintz. p. 6 2 See Hesiod, Fragm. Catalog. Fr. 6, Bumélus, toa 2, 3, 5, p. 66, Diintz.

νῆυς, ᾿Αργὼ πασιμέλουσα, παρ᾽ Αἰήταο πλέου-

δὰ ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION. Parti. are unfortunately lost, nor have we any means of determining what the original story was ; for the narrative, as we have it, borrowed from later sources, is enlarged by local tales from the subsequent Greek colonies—Kyzikus, Hérakleia, Sinopé, and others.

Jasén, commanded by Pelias to depart in quest of the golden

Jasonand fleece belonging to the speaking ram which had car- his heroic ried away Phryxus and Hellé, was encouraged by the panions. oracle to invite the noblest youth of Greece to his aid, -

and fifty of the most distinguished amongst them obeyed the call. Héraklés, Théseus, Telamén and Péleus, Kastér and Pollux, Idas and Lynkeus—Zétés and Kalais, the winged sons of Boreas— Meleager, Amphiaraus, Képheus, Laertés, Autolykus, Mencetius, Aktor, Erginus, Euphémus, Ankeus, Pceas, Periklymenus, Augeas, Eurytus, Admétus, Akastus, Keneus, Euryalus, Péne- leés and Léitus, Askalaphus, and Ialmenus, were among them. Argus the son of Phryxus, directed by the promptings of Athéné, built the ship, inserting in the prow a piece of timber, from the celebrated oak of Dodona, which was endued with the faculty of speech :! Tiphys was the steersman, Idmén (the son of Apollo) and Mopsus accompanied them as prophets, while Orpheus came to amuse their weariness, and reconcile their quarrels, with his

harp.”

Epimenidés, the Krétan prophet and

t, composed a poem in 6500 lines, ‘Apyots ναυπηγίαν τε καὶ ᾿Ιάσονος eis ae ἀποπλοῦν (Diogen. Laér. i. 10, 5), which is noticed more than once in the Scholia on Apieaias, on subjects connected with the poem (ii. 1125 ; iii.

42), See Mimnerm. Frag. 10, Schnei- called

μ᾿ ae his ydé ntimachus, in his poem Lydé, touched upon the Argonautic expedi- tion, and has been partially copied by Apollénius Rhod. Scho. Ap. Rh. i. 1290 ; ii. 296 ; iii. 410 ; iv. 1153

The logographers Pherekydés and Hekateus seem to have related the expedition at considerable length.

e Bibliothek der alten Literatur und Kunst (Gottingen, 1786, 2tes Stiick, p. 61) contains an instructive Disserta- tion by Groddeck, Ueber die Argo- nautica, a summary of the various authorities re ting this expedition.

1 Apollén. Rhod. i. 525; iv. 580. Apollodér. i. 9, 16. Valerius Flaccus G. 300) softens down the speech of the ship Argé into a dream of Jasén.

Alexander Polyhistor explained what wood was used (Plin. H. N. xiii. 22).

2 Apollénius Rhodius, Apollodérus, Valerius Flaccus, the Orphic Argo- nautica, and Hyginus, have all given Catalogues of the Argonautic heroes (there was one also in the lost tragedy Λήμνιαι of Sophoklés, see Welcker, Gr. Trag. i. 327): the dis- crepancies among them are numerous and irreconcileable. Beentons the Catalogus Argonautarum, ed to his edition of Valerius ‘slacous, has discussed bogey: sage at I transcribe one or two of the remarks of this conscientious and laborious critic, out of many of a similar tenor, on the impracticability of a fabulous chrono- logy. Immediately before the first article, <Acastus—“ Neque enim in zetatibus Argonautarum ullam ratio- nem temporum constare, neque in stirpe et stemmate deducenda ordinem ipsum nature congruere videbam. Nam et huic wmilitie adscribi videbam Heroas, qui per nature leges et ordi- nem fati eo usque vitam ere non

er

ὕπαρ. XIIt. L&MNOS—HELLESPONT—PROPONTIS. 215

First they touched at the island of Lémnos, in which at that time there were no men; for the women, infuriated by jealousy and ill-treatment, had put to death their fathers, husbands, and brothers. The Argonauts, after some difficulty, were received with friendship, and even admitted into the greatest intimacy. They staid some months, and the subsequent population of the island was the fruit of their visit. Hypsipylé, the queen of the island, bore to Jasén two sons.}

They then proceeded onward along the coast of Thrace, up the Hellespont, to the southern coast of the Propontis, inhabited by the Doliones and their king Kyzikus. Here they were kindly entertained, but after their departure were driven back to the same spot by a storm; and as they landed in the dark, the

Lémnos.

inhabitants did not know them.

in which the chief, Kyzikus, was killed by Jasén ; whereby much grief was occasioned as soon as the real facts became known. After Kyzikus had been interred with every demonstration of mourning and

A battle took place, Adventures at Kyzikus, in Bithynia, ἄς. Héra- klés and Hylas. Phi- neus.

solemnity, the Argonauts proceeded along the coast of Mysia.?

In this part of the voyage they left Héraklés behind.

For

Hylas, his favourite youthful companion, had been stolen away

potuére, ut aliis ab hac expeditione remotis Heroum militiis nomina dedisse narrari deberent a Poetis et Mytho- logis. In idem etiam tempus avos et nepotes conjici, consanguineos state longe inferiores prioribus ut sequales adjungi, concoquere vix posse videtur.” —Art. Anceus: “Scio objici posse, si seriem illam majorem respiciamus, hune Anceum simul cum proayo suo Talao in eandem profectum fuisse expeditionem. Sed similia exempla in aliis occurrent, et in fabulis rationem temporum non semper accuratam licet deducere.”—Art. Jasén: ‘‘ Herculi enim am provectéa etate adhesit Theseus juvenis, et in Amazonia expeditione socius fuit, interfuit huic be yar venatui apri Calydonii, et rapuit Helenam, que circa Trojanum bellum maxime floruit: quae omnia si Theseus tot temporum intervallis distincta egit, secula duo vel tria vixisse debuit. Certe Jason Hypsipylem neptem Ariadnes, nec videre, nec Lemni cog- noscere potuit.”—Art. Meleager ; ‘Unum

est quod alicui longum ordinem majo- rum recensenti scrupulum movere possit : nimis longum intervallum inter Holum et Meleagrum intercedere, ut potuerit interfuisse huic expeditioni : cum nonus fere numeretur ab Holo, et plurimi ut Jason, Argus, et alii tertid tantum ab olo generatione distent. Sed sepe jam notavimus, frustra temporum concordiam in fabulis queeri.”

Read also the articles Castér and Pollux, Nestér, Péleus, Staphylus, ὅτ.

We may stand excused for keeping clear of a chronology which is fertile only in difficulties, and ends in nothing but illusions.

1 Apollodér, i. 9, 17; Apollén. Rhod. i. 609—915; Herodot. iv. 145. Theo- kritus (Idyll. xiii. 29) omits all mention of Lémnos, and represents the Argé as arriving on the third day from Iélkos at the Hellespont. Diodérus (iv. 41) also leaves out Lémnos.

2 Apollén, Rhod, 940—1020; Apol- lodér, i, 9, 18,

216 ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION. Part f.

by the nymphs of a fountain, and Héraklés, wandering about in search of him, neglected to return. At last he _sorrowfully retired, exacting hostages from the inhabitants of

the neighbouring town of Kius that they would persist in the search.!

They next stopped in the country of the Bebrykians, where the boxing contest took place between the king Amykus and the Argonaut Pollux:* they then proceeded onward to Bithynia, the residence of the blind prophet Phineus. His blindness had been inflicted by Poseidén as a punishment for having communicated to Phryxus the way to Kolchis. The choice had been allowed to him between death and blindness, and he had preferred the latter. He was also tormented by the harpies, winged monsters who came down from the clouds whenever his table was set, snatched the food from his lips, and imparted to ita foul and unapproachable odour. In the midst of this misery, he hailed the Argonauts as his deliverers—his prophetic powers having enabled him to foresee their coming. The meal being prepared for him, the harpies approached as usual, but Zétés and Kalias, the winged sons of Boreas, drove them away and pursued them. They put forth all their speed, and prayed to Zeus to be enabled to overtake the monsters ; when Hermés appeared and directed them to desist, the harpies being forbidden further

1 Apollodér. i. 9, 19. This was the religious legend, explanatory of a cere- mony performed for many centuries b the peo μ᾽ οἵ Prusa: they ran roun the 1 Askanius shouting and clethbaring for Hylas—“* ut littus Hyla, Hyla omne sonaret”. (Virgil, Eclog.)

. ‘in cujus memoriam adhuc solemni cursatione lacum populus cir- a et Hylam voce clamat”. Solinus, σ.

There is endless discrepancy

the concern of Héraklés with τ the placed

Argonautic expedition. A story is

alluded to in — (Politic. iii. 9) that the shi herself refused to take him on oa because he was so much superior in stature and power to all the other heroes—oi γὰρ ἐθέλειν αὐτὸν ἄγειν τὴν ᾿Αργὼ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων, ὡς ὑπερβάλλοντα πολὺ τῶν TA ων, This was the gee A of Pherekydés ad 67, Didot) as well as of Antimac

(Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 1290):

it is

Fegend, ἢ a = ancient portion of the egend, inasmuch as it ascribes to the ship sentient powers, in a The tym ace ΤΡ Aphete Posen e etymology o: etz in mnected with he tale Heéraklés having thee peed put on shore from the Argo (HHerodot. vii. 193): Ephorus_ said t he staid awa; + ee eat ithe old ¢ Ome (Frag. 9, Dido e 0 ic Kinethén said that ἐς ad the Kian pace ite at Pachin and that the Kians ever afterwards maintained a respectful correspo

cf

mdence hla bog A meppd sonra Rh. | 1357).

is is the explanatory legend con- nected with some existi custom, which we are unable further to un- ravel.

2 See above, chap. viii.

8 Such was the old τ αν of the Hesiodic Catalogue and Eoiai. See Schol. Apollon. Rhod. ii. 181—296,

Cuap. ΧΠῚ. PHINEUS—THE sYMPL&GADKS—KOLCHis. 217

to molest Phineus,! and retiring again to their native cavern in Kréte.?

Phineus, grateful for the relief afforded to him by the Argo- nauts, forewarned them of the dangers of their voyage and of the precautions necessary for their safety; and through his suggestions they were enabled to pass through the terrific rocks called Sym- plégades. These were two rocks which alternately νὼ opened and shut, with a swift and violent collision, the Sym- so that it was difficult even for a bird to fly through Pléeades. during the short interval When the Argé arrived at the dangerous spot, Euphémus let loose a dove, which flew through and just escaped with the loss of a few feathers of her tail. This was a signal to the Argonauts, according to the prediction of Phineus, that they might attempt the passage with confidence, Accordingly they rowed with all their might, and passed safely through: the closing rocks, held for a moment asunder by the powerful arms of Athéné, just crushed the ornaments at the stern of their vessel. It had been decreed by the gods that so soon as any ship once got through, the passage should for ever after- wards be safe and easy to all. The rocks became fixed in their separate places, and never again closed.

After again halting on the coast of the Mariandynians, where their steersman Tiphys died, as well as inthe country of the Amazons, and after picking up the sons of Phryxus, who had been cast away by Poseidén, in their attempt to return from Kolchis to Greece, they arrived in safety at the river Phasis and the residence of Aétés. In passing by Mount Caucasus, they saw the eagle which gnawed the liver of Prométheus, nailed to . the rock, and heard the groans of the sufferer himself. The sons of Phryxus were cordially welcomed by their mother Arrival at Chalkiopé.* Application was made to Métés that he Kolchis. would grant to the Argonauts, heroes of divine parentage and

1This again was the old Hesiodic The adventure of the Argonauts story (Bohol. Apoll. Bhod. il. 290),— with ἘΡΙΒΟΑῚΝ nek Rar nat Ἕ ὡς Apolloddcar's 9,2), Apeliniaa Gre— μὴ he seems te follow, Dicngets of 800), and Valerius Fiace. (iv. 428—530) wre ἨΔ (ale Saneks 4p ee erruch was the fate of the harpies ,, 2 APollodér. 1.9, 22. Apollon, Thod.

as given in the old Naupaktian Verses. ii. 310--

(See Fragm. Ep. Grec. Diintzer, 4 Apollodér. i. 9,23. Apollén. Rhod. Naupakt. Fr. 2, p. 61.) ii. 850—1257.

$18 ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION. Parr t.

sent forth by the mandate of the gods, possession of the golden fleece: their aid in return was proffered to him against any or all of his enemies. But the king was wroth, and peremptorily refused, except upon conditions which seemed impracticable. Héphestos had given him two ferocious and untamable bulls, with brazen feet, which breathed fire from their nostrils: Jasén was invited, as a proof both of his illustrious descent and of the sanction of the gods to his voyage, to harness these animals to the yoke, so as to plough a large field and sow it with dragon’s teeth.? Perilous as the condition was, each one of the heroes volunteered to make the attempt. Idmén especially encouraged Jasén to undertake Conditions i and the goddesses Héré and Aphrodité made imposed | by straight the way for him. Médea, the daughter of the price of #¢tés and Eidyia, having seen the youthful hero in pera his interview with her father, had conceived towards him a passion which disposed her to employ every

means for his salvation and success. She had received from Hekaté pre-eminent magical powers, and she prepared for Jasén the powerful Prometheian unguent, extracted from a herb which had grown where the blood of Prométheus dropped. The body of Jasén, having been thus pre-medicated, became invulnerable® either by fire or by warlike weapons. He undertook the enterprise, yoked the bulls without suffering injury, and ploughed the field : when he had sown the dragon’s teeth, armed men sprung out of the furrows. But he had been forewarned by Médea to cast a vast rock into the midst of them, upon which they began to fight with each other, so that he was easily enabled to subdue them all.® The task prescribed had thus been triumphantly performed. Perfidy of Yet Alétés not only refused to hand over the golden flight of the fleece, but even took measures for secretly destroying Argonauts the Argonauts and burning their vessel, He designed withthe” to murder them during the night after a festal fleece. banquet ; but Aphrodité, watchful for the safety of

1 Apollén. Rhod. iii. 320— Flace. vi. 440—480, Hygin. fab. 22. 2 Apollén. Rhod. iii. 410. Apollodr. 5 Apollon. Rhod. iii. 835. Pare 9, 23. i. 9, 23. Valer. Flace. vii. 356, Ovid.

8 This was the story of the Naupak- Epist. xii. 15. tian Verses (Schol. Apollén. Rhod. iii. ‘‘ Isset aa non premedicatus 515—525): Apollonius and others altered an it. Idm6n, according to them, died inthe Immemor so: des, oraqueadunca voyage before the arrival at ’Kolchis. boum

4 Apollén, Rhod. iii. 50—200. Valer. § Apollén, Rhod. ἯΙ. 1230—1400.

Guar. Xtit, ὙἘῚ GoLDEN ruexcE—mfpma’s ARTS. 919 Jas6n,! inspired the Kolchian king at the critical moment with an irresistible inclination for his nuptial bed. While he slept, the wise Idmén counselled the Argonauts to make their escape, and Médea agreed to accompany them.? She lulled to sleep by ἃ magic potion the dragon who guarded the golden fleece, placed that much-desired prize on board the vessel, and accompanied Jasén with his companions in their flight, carrying along with her the young Apsyrtus, her brother.’

Métés, profoundly exasperated at the flight of the Argonauts with his daughter, assembled his forces forthwith, and put to sea in pursuit of them. So energetic were his efforts that he shortly overtook the retreating vessel, when the Argonauts again owed their safety to ™ the stratagem of Médea. She killed her brother Apsyrtus, cut his body in pieces, and strewed the limbs round about in the sea. Métés on reaching the spot found these sorrowful traces of his murdered son ; but while he tarried to collect the scattered frag- ments, and bestow upon the body an honourable interment, the Argonauts escaped.* The spot on which the unfortunate Apsyr- tus was cut up received the name of Tomi.5 This fratricide of Médea, however, so deeply provoked the indignation of Zeus, that he condemned the Argé and her crew toa trying voyage,

Pursuit of Aétés—the Argonauts saved by édea.

1 The Naupaktian Verses stated this \see the Fragm. 6, ed. Diintzer, p. 61), ap. Schol. Apollén. Rhod. iv. 59—86.

_ 2Such was the story of the Naupak- tian Verses. (See Fr » OF p. 6L, Diintzer ap. Schol. Apollén. Rhod. iv.

59, 86, 87.) ao i. 9, 23. Apoll6n. Rhod.

Pherekydés said that Jas6n killed the dragon (Fr. 74, Did.). _ 4This is the story of Apollodérus (i, 9, 24), who seems to follow Phere- kydés (Fr. 73, Didot). Apolldnius (iv. 225—480) and Valerius Flaccus (viii. 262 seg.) give totally different circum- stances respecting the death of Apsyrtus : but the narrative of Phere- kydés seems the oldest: so revolting a story as that of the cutting up of the little boy cannot have been imagined in later times,

Sophoklés composed two tragedies on the adventures of Jasén and Médea, both lost—the KoAx Ses, and the Σκύθαι. In the former he represented the murder of the child Apsyrtus as haying

iv.

taken place in the house of Aétés: in the latter he introdnced the mitigating circumstance, that Apsyrtus was the son of Alétés by a different mother from Médea (Schol. Apollén. Rhod. iv.

228). 5 Apollodér. i. 9, 24, τὸν τόπον προση- όρευσε Téduovs. Ovid. Trist. ili. | he story that Apsyrtus was cut in pieces is the etymological legend

explanatory of the name Tomi.

here was however a place called Apsarus, on the southern coast of the Euxine, west of Trapezus, where the tomb of Apsyrtus was shown, and where it was affirmed that he had been put to death. He was the eponymus of the town, which was said to have been once called Apsyrtus, and only corrupted by a barbarian pro- nunciation, (Arrian. Periplus Euxin. B 6; Geogr. Min, v. 1.) Compare

rocop. Bell. Goth. iv. 2,

Strabo connects the death of be bape with the Apsyrtides, islands off the coast of Illyria, in the Adriatic (vii. p. 315), .

ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION, Part i

220

full of hardship and privation, before she was permitted to reach home. The returning heroes traversed an immeasur-

Return of the Argo- able length both of sea and of river: first up the river nauts—cir-

cuitous and Phasis into the ocean which flows round the earth— Perilous. = then following the course of that circumfluous stream until its junction with the Nile,’ they came down the Nile into Egypt, from whence they carried the Argé on their shoulders by a fatiguing land-journey to the lake Triténis in Libya. Here they were rescued from the extremity of want and exhaustion by the kindness of the local god Tritén, who treated them hospitably, and even presented to Euphémus a clod of earth, as a symbolical promise that his descendants should one day found a city on the Libyan shore. The promise was amply redeemed by the flourish- ing and powerful city of Kyréné,? whose princes, the Battiads, boasted themselves as lineal descendants of Euphémus. Refreshed by the hospitality of Tritén, the Argonauts found themselves again on the waters of the Mediterranean on their way homeward. But before they arrived at Idlkos they visited Circé, at the island of Auzea, where Médea was purified for the murder of Apsyrtus: they also stopped at Korkyra, then called Drepané, where Alkinous received and protected them. The cave in that island where the marriage of Médea with Jasén was con- summated, was still shown in the time of the historian Timzus, as well as the altars to Apollo which she had erected, and the rites and sacrifices which she had first instituted. After leaving Korkyra, the Argé was overtaken by a perilous storm near the

1The original narrative was, that the ass returned by navigating the circumfluous ocean. This would be almost certain, even without positive testimony, from the early ideas enter- tained by the Greeks respecting geo- graphy ; but we know further that it was the representation of the Hesiodic poems, as well as of Mimnermus, Heka-

teus and Pindar, and even of Antima- chus. Schol, Parisin, Ap. Rhod. iv. 254. 'Ἑκαταῖος δὲ ὃ Μιλήσιος διὰ τοῦ Φάσιδος ἀνελθεῖν φησὶν αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸν ᾿᾽Ωκεανόν " διὰ δὲ τοῦ ᾿Ωκεανοῦ κατελθεῖν εἰς τὸν Νεῖλον" ἐκ δὲ τοῦ Νείλου εἰς τὴν καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς θάλασσαν. Ἡσίοδος δὲ καὶ Πίν- Sapos ἐν Πυθιονίκαις καὶ ᾿Αντίμαχος ἐν Λυδῇ διὰ τοῦ ᾽Ωκεανοῦ φασὶν ἐλθεῖν αὐ- τοὺς εἰς τὴν Λιβύην : εἶτα βαστάσαντας τὴν ᾿Αργὼ εἰς τὸ ἡμέτερον ἀφικέσθαι πέλαγος.

3 Apollén. Timeus, Fr. 7—8, Didot. Τίμαιος ἐν Κερκύρᾳ λέγων γενέσθαι τοὺς γάμους, καὶ περὶ τῆς θυσίας ἱστορεῖ, ἔτι καὶ νῦν λέγων ἄγεσθαι αὐτὴν κατ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν, Μηδείας πρῶτον θυσάσης ἐν τῷ τοῦ ᾿Απολλῶνος ἱερῷ. Καὶ βωμοὺς δέ φησι μνημεῖα τῶν γάμων ἱδρύσασθαι συνεγγὺς μὲν τῆς θαλάσσης, οὐ μακρὰν δὲ τῆς πόλεως. ᾿Ονομάζουσι δὲ τὸν μὲν, Νυμ- dav: τὸν δὲ, Νηρηΐδων,

Cuap, XIII. RETURN OF THE ARGONAUTS, 291

island of Théra. The heroes were saved from imminent peril by the supernatural aid of Apollo, who, shooting from his golden bow an arrow which pierced the waves like a track of light, caused a new island suddenly to spring up in their track and present to them a portof refuge. The island was called Anaphé; and the grateful Argonauts established upon it an altar and sacrifices in honour of Apollo Aglétés, which were ever after- wards continued, and traced back by the inhabitants to this originating adventure.?

On approaching the coast of Kréte, the Argonauts were pre- vented from landing by Talds, a man of brass, fabricated by Hépheestos, and presented by him to Minds for the protection of theisland.? This vigilant sentinel hurled against the approaching vessel fragments of rock, and menaced the heroes with destruction. But Médea deceived him by a stratagem and killed him ; detect- ing and assailing the one vulnerable point in his body. The Argonauts were thus enabled to land and refresh themselves. They next proceeded onward to Agina, where however they again experienced resistance before they could obtain water— then along the coast of Eubcea and Lokris back to Iélkos in the gulf of Pagasze, the place from whence they had started. The proceedings of Pelias during their absence, and the signal revenge taken upon him by Médea after their return, have already been narrated in a preceding section.? The ship Argé herself, in which the chosen heroes of Greece had performed so long a voyage and ‘braved so many dangers, was consecrated by Jasén to Poseidén at the isthmus of Corinth. According to another account, she was translated to the stars by Athéné, and became a constellation.‘

Traces of the presence of the Argonauts were found not only in the regions which lay between Idlkos and Kolchis, but also in the western portion of the Grecian world—distributed 1. ous more or less over all the spots visited by Grecian and wide- mariners or settled by Grecian colonists, and scarcely SPre4 ἔοο ς less numerous than the wanderings of the dispersed ee corto hs Greeks and Trojans after the capture of Troy. The }

1 Apollodér. i. 9,25. Apollén.Rhod. ὃ Apollodér. 1, 9, 36. Apollon. Rhod. Py aaaess Riakiy co vi. 1638.

emer Caled 280s & TOmMNADS ΟΣ (τς Dioddr. fy, 68. Eratostly Catas- the brazen race of men (Schol. Apoll. ᾿ ATE Σ . Rhod. iy. 1641). po’ terism, ¢, δῦ,

929 ARGONAUTIO EXPEDITION.

Part I.

number of Jasonia, or temples for the heroic worship of Jasén, was very great, from Abdéra in Thrace,’ eastward along the coast * of the Euxine, to Armenia and Media. The Argonauts had left their anchoring-stone on the coast of Bebrykia, near Kyzikus, and there it was preserved during the historical ages in the temple of the Jasonian Athéné.? They had founded the great temple of the Idan mother on the mountain Dindymon, near Kyzikus, and the Hieron of Zeus Urios on the Asiatic point at the mouth of the Euxine, near which was also the harbour of Phryxus.* Idmén, the prophet of the expedition, who was be- lieved to have died of a wound by a wild boar on the Marian- dynian coast, was worshipped by the inhabitants of the Pontic Hérakleia with great solemnity, as their Heros Poliuchus, and that too by the special direction of the Delphian god. Autolykus, another companion of Jasén, was worshipped as Cikist by the inhabitants of Sinopé. Moreover, the historians of Hérakleia pointed out a temple of Hekaté in the neighbouring country of Paphlagonia, first erected by Médea ;* and the important town of Pantikapzon, on the European side of the Cimmerian Bosporus, ascribed its first settlement to a son of Aiétés.5 When the return- ing ten thousand Greeks sailed along the coast, called the Jasonian shore, from Sinopé to Hérakleia, they were told that the grandson of Atétés was reigning king of the territory at the mouth of the Phasis, and the anchoring-places where the Argé had stopped were specially pointed out to them.® In the lofty regions of the Moschi, near Kolchis, stood the temple of Leukothea, founded by Phryxus, which remained both rich and respected down to the

1 Strabo, xi. p. 526—581. ener Apollén. Rhod. i. 955—960, and the

holia

There was in Kyzikus a temple of Apollo under different ἐπικλήσεις ; some called it the temple of the Jasonian Apollo.

Another anchor however was pre- served in the temple of Rhea on the banks of the Phasis, which was ow to be the anchor of the van. A 3

6. Arrian saw it there, but seems have doubted its authenticity ar Pesiolae Euxin. Pont. p. 9. Geogr.

3 Neanthés ap. Strab. p. 45. Apollén. Rhod. i. 1125, ont Schol. Steph. Byz. v. Φρίξος.

Apollénius mentions the fountain called Jasonez, on the hill of Dindymon. Apollén. Rhod. ii. 532, and the citations from Timosthenés and Herodérus in the λοι τῷ ἃ See also Appian, Syriac. c.

A. 4 $e the a, Nee! Hérakleia, ym an mathidas, Fragm. oo oP Hined 100—104, Schol. ad n. Strabo, xii.

Cuar. XIII. MEMORIALS LEFT BY THE ARGONAUTS. 223

times of the kings of Pontus, and where it was an inviolable rule not to offer up a ram. The town of Dioskurias, north of the river Phasis, was believed to have been hallowed by the presence of Kastér and Pollux in the Argé, and to have received from them its appellation. Even the interior of Media and Armenia was full of memorials of Jasin and Médea, and their son Médus, or of Armenus the son of Jasén, from whom the Greeks deduced not only the name and foundation of the Medes and Armenians, but also the great operation of cutting a channel through the moun- tains for the efflux of the river Araxes, which they compared to that of the Peneius in Thessaly. And the Roman general Pompey, after having completed the conquest and expulsion of Mithridatés, made long marches through Kolchis into the regions of Caucasus, for the express purpose of contemplating the spots which had been ennobled by the exploits of the Argonauts, the Dioskuri, and Héraklés.*

In the west, memorials either of the Argonauts or of the pursuing Kolchians were pointed out in Korkyra, in Kréte, in Epirus near the Akrokeraunian mountains, in the islands called Apsyrtides near the Illyrian coast, at the bay of Caieta as well as at Poseidénia on the southern coast of Italy, in the island of A&thalia or Elba, and in Libya.®

1 Strabo, xi. p. 499.

2 Appian, Mithridatic. c. 101.

8 Strabo, xi. Ῥ. 499, 503, 526, 531 ; i. p. 45—48. Justin, xlii. 8, whose state- ments illustrate the way in which men found a present home and application for the old fables,—‘‘ Jason, primus humanorum post Herculem et Liberum, qui reges Orientis fuisse traduntur,

eam agam domuisse dicitur. Cum Albanis foedus percussit, qui Herculem ex Italia ab Albano monte,

cum, Geryone extincto, armenta ejus per Italiam duceret, secuti dicuntur ; quique, memores Italice originis, exercitum Cn. Pompeii bello Mithri- datico fratres consalutavére. Itaque Jasoni totus fere Oriens, ut conditori, divinos honores templaque constituit ; quz Parmenio, dux Alexandri Magni, post multos annos dirui jussit, ne οὐ baaayemc nomen in Oriente venera- bilius quam Alexandri esset.”

The Thessalian companions of Alexander the Great, placed by his victories in possession of rich acquisi- tions in these regions, pleased them-

selves by vivifying and multiplying all

these old fables, proving an ancient

indred between the Medes and

Thessalians. See Strabo, xi. p. 530.

The temples of Jasén were τιμώ-

μενα σφόδρα ὑπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων (ib. 6

p. 526). The able and inquisitive Pag mcd Eratosthenés was among those who fully believed that Jasén had left his ships in the Phasis, and had undertaken a land expedition into the interior country, in which he bad conquered Media and Armenia (Strabo, i. p. 48).

4 Appian, Mithridatic. 103: τοὺς Κόλχους ἐπήει, καθ᾽ ἱστορίαν τῆς *Apyo- ναυτῶν καὶ Διοσκούρων καὶ Ἡρακλέους ἐπιδημίας, καὶ μάλιστα τὸ πάθος ἰδεῖν ἐθέλων, ὃ ἸΙρομηθεῖ φασὶ γενέσθαι περὶ τὸ Καύκασον ὄρος. The lofty of Caucasus called Strobilus, to which Prométheus had been attached, was

ointed out to Arrian himself in τ ΝΣ (p. 12, Geogr. Minor. vol. i.).

5 Strabo, i. pp. 21, 45, 46; v. 224—

252, Pompon. Mel. ii. 8. Dioddr. iv.

924 ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION. Part I.

Such is a brief outline of the Argonautic expedition, one of the Argonautie Most celebrated and widely-diffused among the ancient legend tales of Greece. Since so many able men have treated generally. it as an undisputed reality, and even made it the pivot of systematic chronological calculations, I may here repeat the opinion long ago expressed by Heyne, and even indicated by Burmann, that the process of dissecting the story in search of a basis of fact is one altogether fruitless.1 Not only are we unable to assign the date, or identify the crew, or decipher the log-book, of the Argd, but we have no means of settling even the pre- liminary question, whether the voyage be matter of fact badly reported or legend from the beginning. The widely-distant spots in which the monuments of the voyage were shown, no less than the incidents of the voyage itself, suggest no other parentage than epical fancy. The supernatural and the romantic not only constitute an inseparable portion of the narrative, but even embrace all the prominent and characteristic features ; if they do not comprise the whole, and if there be intermingled along with them any sprinkling of historical or geographical fact,—a question to us indeterminable,—there is at least no solvent by which it can be disengaged, and no test by which it can be recognised. Wherever the Grecian mariner sailed, he carried his religious and patriotic mythes along with him. His fancy and his faith were alike full of the long wanderings of Jasén, Odysseus, Perseus, Héraklés, Dionysus, Triptolemus or 16; it was pleasing to him

Ae eS εσοιν

eee Apollén. Rhod. iv. 656. Lycophron,

Τύρσιν paxedvas ἀμφὶ Κιρκαίου νάπας ᾿Αργοῦς τε κλεινὸν ὅρμον Αἰήτην μέγαν. 1 He Observ. ad Apollodér. i. 9, 16. p. 72. “‘Mirum in modum fallitur, qui in his commentis certum fundum iietorioam vel geographicum aut ex- quirere studet, aut se reperisse, atque historicam vel geographicam aon εὔνοις doctrinam, systema nos Geman, 9 procudi posse, putat,” ἄς. See also the observations inter- spersed in Burmann’s Catalogus onautarum, prefixed to his edition of Valerius Flaccus. The Persian antiquarians whom eo cites at the beginning of ry (i. 2—4—it is much = be aaa? that Herodotus did not inform us who they were, and whether they were the same as those who said

that Perseus was an Assyrian by birth, and had become a Greek, vi. 54), joined together the abductions of Τὸ and of Eurépé, of Médea and of Helen, as pairs of connected proceedings, the second injury being a retaliation for the first,—they drew up a debtor and creditor account of abductions between Asia and Europe. The Kolchian king (they said) had sent a herald to Greece to ask for his satisfaction for the wron done to es by Jas6n and to re-deman

his daughter Médea ; but he was told in reply that the Greeks had received τῇ satisfaction for the previous rape of

There was some ity in thus binding together the old fables, so as to represent the invasions of Greece by Darius and Xerxés as retaliations for the unexpiated destruction wrought by Agamemnon.

< #, Ὶ « 4 4 ἱ μ

Ouar. XIIL FABULOUS LOCALITIES, ὕ 995

in success, and consoling to him in difficulty, to believe that their journeys had brought them over the ground which he was himself traversing. There was no tale amidst the wide range of the Grecian epic more calculated to be popular with the seaman than the history of the primeval ship Argé, and her distinguished crew, comprising heroes from all parts of Greece, and especially the Tyndarids Kastér and Pollux, the heavenly protectors invoked during storm and peril. He localised the legend anew wherever he went, often with some fresh circumstances suggested either by his own adventures or by the scene before him. He took a sort of religious possession of the spot, connecting it by a bond of faith with his native land, and erecting in it a temple or an altar with appropriate commemorative solemnities. The Jasonium thus established, and indeed every visible object called after the name of the hero, not only served to keep alive the legend of the Argé. in the minds of future comers or inhabitants, but was accepted as an obvious and satisfactory proof that this marvellous vessel had actually touched there in her voyage.

The epic poets, building both on the general love of fabulous incident and on the easy faith of the people, dealt poy uous with distant and unknown space in the same manner geography as with past and unrecorded time. They created a ee mythical geography for the former, and a mythical 198] eat history for the latter. But there was this material } owledge difference between the two: that while the unrecorded “78° time was beyond the reach of verification, the unknown space gradually became trodden and examined. In proportion as authentic local knowledge was enlarged, it became necessary to modify the geography, or shift the scene of action, of the old mythes ; and this perplexing problem was undertaken by some of the ablest historians and geographers of antiquity,—for it was painful to them to abandon any portion of the old epic, as if it were destitute of an ascertainable basis of truth.

Many of these fabulous localities are to be found in Homer and Hesiod, and the other Greek poets and logographers,—Erytheia, the garden of the Hesperides, the garden of Pheebus,! to which Boreas transported the Attic maiden Oreithyia, the delicious

1 Sophokl. ap. Strab., vii. p. 295.— Νυκτός τε πηγὰς οὐρανοῦ τ᾽ ἀναπτυχὰς,

Ὑπέρ τε πόντον πάντ᾽ ἐπ᾿ ἔσχατα χθονὸς, Φοίβου τε παλαιὸν κῆπον.

226 ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION, Part I.

country of the Hyperboreans, the Elysian plain,’ the floating island of Holus, Thrinakia, the country of the Athiopians, the Lestrygones, the Kyklépes, the Lotophagi, the Sirens, the Cim- merians and the Gorgons,? ὅθ. These are places which (to use the expression of Pindar respecting the Hyperboreans) you cannot approach either by sea or by land :* the wings of the poet alone can carry you thither. They were not introduced into the Greek mind by incorrect geographical reports, but, on the contrary, had their origin in the legend, and passed from thence into the realities of geography,* which they contributed much to pervert and confuse. For the navigator or emigrant, starting with an unsuspicious faith in their real existence, looked out for them in his distant voyages, and constantly fancied that he had seen or heard of them, so as to be able to identify their exact situation. The most contradictory accounts indeed, as might be expected, were often given respecting the latitude and longitude of such fanciful spots, but this did not put an end to the general belief in their real existence.

In the present advanced state of geographical knowledge, the story of that man who after reading Gulliver’s Travels went to look in his map for Lilliput, appears an absurdity. But those who fixed the exact locality of the floating island of Molus or the rocks of the Sirens did much the same;° and, with their ignorance of geography and imperfect appreciation of historical

1 Odyss. iv. 562, The islands of the blessed, in Hesiod, are near the ocean

fs yer 169). _? Hesiod. Theogon. 275—290. Homer, Tiad, i. 428, Odyss. i. 23 ; ix. 86—206; x. 4—83; xii. 135. Mimnerm. Fragm. 13, Schneidewin.

8 Pindar, Pyth. x. 29.—

Ναυσὶ δ᾽ οὔτε πεζὸς ἰὼν ἂν εὕροις

Ἐς Ὑπερβορέων ἀγῶνα θαυματὰν ὁδόν.

Παρ = ποτε Περσεὺς ἐδαίσατο λαγετάς, C.

Hesiod, and the old epic poem called the Epigoni, both mentioned the Hyperboreans (Herod. iv. 32—34). *This idea is well sta’ and sustained by Vdlecker (Mythische Geographie der Griechen und Rémer, cap. 1. p. 11), and by Nitzsch in his Comments on the Odyssey—Introduct. Remarks to Ὁ. ix. p. xii—xxxiii. The twelfth and thirteenth chapters of the History of Orchomenos, by Ὁ Miiller,

are also full of good remarks on the eography of the Argonautic voyage p. 274—299). ; } The most striking evidence of this disposition of the Greeks is to be found in the legendary discoveries of Alexander and his companions, when they marched over the untrodden regions in the east of the Persian empire (see Arrian, Hist. Al. v. 3: compare Lucian, Dialog. Mortuor. xiv. vol. i. p. 212, Tauch.), because these ideas were first broached at a time when geographical science was suffi- ciently advanced to canvass and criticise them. The early settlers in Italy, Sicily, and the Euxine, indul their fanciful vision without the fear of any such monitor: there was no such thing as a map before the days of Anaximander, the disciple of Thalés. 5 See Mr. Payne Knight, Prolegg. ad Homer. c. 49. Compare Spohn—‘ de extrema Odyssex parte ”—p. 97.

ee ee ΡΥ,

—_—— se

se i oe

a. Ee

Cap, XIII. PERVERSION OF GEOGRAPHY BY LEGEND. 227

evidence, the error was hardly to be avoided. The ancient belief which fixed the Sirens on the islands of Sirenusee off the coast of Naples—the Kyklépes, Erytheia, and the Lestrygones in Sicily— the Lotophagi on the island of Méninx?! near the Lesser Syrtis— the Pheakians at Korkyra—and the goddess Circé at the pro- montory of Circeium—took its rise at a time when these regions were first Hellenised and comparatively little visited. Once embodied in the local legends, and attested by visible monuments and ceremonies, it continued for a long time unassailed ; and Thucydidés seems to adopt it, in reference to Korkyra and Sicily before the Hellenic colonisation, as matter of fact generally unquestionable,? though little avouched as to details. But when geographical knowledge became extended, and the criticism upon the ancient epic was more or less systematised by the literary men of Alexandria and Pergamus, it appeared to many of them impossible that Odysseus could have seen so many wonders or undergone such monstrous dangers, within limits so narrow, and in the familiar track between the Nile and the Tiber.. The scene of his weather-driven course was then shifted farther westward. Many convincing evidences were discovered, especially by Askle- piadés of Myrlea, of his having visited various places in Iberia :3 several critics imagined that he had wandered about in the

1 Strabo, xvii. p. 834. An altar of Odysseus was shown upon this island, as well as some other evidences (σύμβολα) of his visit to the place.

Apollénius Rhodius copies the Odyssey in speaking of the island of Thrinakia and the catile of Helios (iv. 965, with Schol.). He conceives Sicily as Thrinakia, a name afterwards ex- changed for Trinakria. The Scholiast ad Apoll. (1. c.) speaks of Trinax king of Sicily. Compare iv. 291 with the Scholia.

2 Thucyd. i. 25—vi. 2, These local legends appear in the eyes of Strabo convincing evidence (i. p. 23—26),— the tomb of the siren Parthenopé at Naples, the stories at Cume and Dikearchia about the νεκνομαντεῖον of Avernus, and the existence of places named after Baius and Misénus, the egos of Odysseus, &e.

3 Strabo, iii. p. 150—157. Οὐ γὰρ μόνον ot κατὰ τὴν Ἰταλίαν καὶ Σικελίαν τόποι καὶ ἄλλοι τινὲς τῶν τοιούτων σημεῖα ὑπογράφουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἰβηρίᾳ Ὀδύσσεια πόλις δείκνυται, καὶ ᾿Αθηνᾶς

ἱερὸν, καὶ ἄλλα μύρια ἴχνη τῆς ἐκείνου πλάνης, καὶ ἄλλων τῶν ἐκ τοῦ Τρωϊκοῦ πολέμου περιγενομένων ¢ adopt Gross- kurd’s correction of the text from ενομένων tO περιγενομένων, in the note his German translation of Strabo). Asklepiadés (of Myrlea in Bithynia, about 170 B.C.) resided some time in Turditania, the south-western region of Spain along the Guadalquivir, as a teacher of Greek literature (παιδεύσας τὰ γραμματικὰ), and composed a periegesis of the Iberian tribes, which unfortunately has not been preserved. He made various discoveries in archeology, and successfully con- nected his old legends with several pokens of the territory before him. is discoveries were,—1. In the temple of Athéné, at this Iberian town of Odysseia, there were shields and beaks of ships affixed to the walls, monuments of the visit of Odysseus himself. 2. Among the Kalleki, in the northern part of Portugal, several of the companions of Teukros had settled ond left descendants; there

928 ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION, Part L

Atlantic Ocean outside of the Strait of Gibraltar) and they

Transposi- recognised a section of Lotophagi on the coast of Tec Mauritania, over and above those who dwelt on the

island of Méninx.? On the other hand, Eratosthenés and Apollodérus treated the places visited by Odysseus as altogether unreal, for which scepticism they incurred much reproach.®

The fabulous island of Erytheia,—the residence of the three- headed Geryén with his magnificent herd of oxen, under the custody of the two-headed dog Orthrus, described by Hesiod, like the garden of the Hesperides, as extra-terrestrial, on the farther side of the circumfluous ocean,—this island was supposed, by the interpreters of Stesichorus the poet, to be named by him off the south-western region of Spain called Tartéssus, and in the immediate vicinity of Gadés. But the historian Hekateus, in his anxiety to historicise the old fable, took upon himself to remove Erytheia from Spain nearer home to Epirus. He thought

it incredible that Héraklés should have traversed Europe from —

east to west, for the purpose of bringing the cattle of Gery6én to Eurystheus at Mykéne, and he pronounced Geryén to have been a king of Epirus, near the Gulf of Ambrakia. The oxen reared

were in that region two Grecian cities, auditors would be delighted to hear— one called Hellenés, the other called while he was reciting and explaining Amphilochi; for Amphilochus also, to them the animated passage of the the son of Amphiaraus, had died in Dliad, in which Agamemnén_extols Iberia, and many of his soldiers had the inestimable value of the bow of

taken up their permanent residence in the interior. 3. Many new inhabitants had come into Iberia with the expedi- tion of Héraklés; some also after the conquest of Messéné by the Lacedeménians. 4. In Cantabria, on the north coast of Spain, there was a town and region of Lacedemonian colonists. 65. the same portion of the coun there was the town of

Opsikella, founded by Opsikellas, one Lehrs.

of the companions of Anténér in his eS from Troy (Strabo, iii. p. This is a specimen of the manner in which the seeds of Grecian mythus came to be distributed over so la a surface. To an ordinary Gree reader, these legendary discoveries of Asklepiadés would probably be more interesting than the positive facts which he communicated respecting the Iberian tribes; and his Turditanian

Teukros (viii. 281)—that the heroic archer and his companions had actually set foot in the Iberian peninsula.

1 This was the opinion of Kratés of Mallus, one of the most distinguished of the critics on Homer: it was the subject of an animated controversy between him and Aristarchus (Aulus Gellius, N. A. xiv. 6; Strabo, iii. p. 157). See the instructive treatise of , De Aristarchi Studiis, c. v. 8. 4. Δ aancniy the crtlice reapeseeats

among the critics e Ξ und which Menelaus went over in is wanderings (Odyss. iv.). Kratés affirmed that he had circumnavigated the southern extremity of Africa and one to India: the critic Aristoni trabo’s contempo » enumeratec all oe different opinions (Strabo, i. . 38). 5 2 Strabo, iii. p. 157. Ξ 3 Strabo, i. p. 22--44 : vii. p. 299.

Cap, XII. AATLS—cIRCE—AA. 229 in that neighbourhood were proverbially magnificent, and to get them even from thence and bring them to Mykéne (he contended) was no inconsiderable task. Arrian, who cites this passage from Hekateus, concurs in the same view,—an illustration of the licence with which ancient authors fitted on their fabulous geographical names to the real earth, and brought down the ethereal matter of legend to the lower atmosphere of history. Both the track and the terminus of the Argonautic voyage appear in the most ancient epic as little within the conditions of reality, as the speaking timbers or the semi-divine crew of the vessel. In the Odyssey, Alétés and Circé (Hesiod names Médea also) are brother and sister, offspring of Hélios. The Man island, adjoining the circumfluous ocean, “where the house and dancing-ground of Eds are situated, and where Hélios rises,” is both the residence of Circé and of Atétés, inasmuch as

How and Odysseus, in returning from the former, follows the sree same course as the Argo had previously taken in voyage _ returning from the latter. Even in the conception aitached to of Mimnermus, about 600 B.c., Ala still retained its Kolchis.

fabulous attributes in conjunction with the ocean and Hélios, without having been yet identified with any known portion of the solid earth ;3 and it was justly remarked by Démétrius of

1Stesichori Fragm. ed. Kleine; Geryonis Fr. 5. p. 60; ap. Strab., iii.

p. 148; Herodot. iv. 8. It seems very doubtful whether Stesichorus meant

scopulis queerenda, vel pare est ipsa- rum Gadium, neque hodie ejus forme aliqua, uti descripta est, fertur supe- resse”,

to indicate any neighbouring island as Erytheia, if we compare gm. 10. p. 67 of the Geryonis, and the passages

To make the _ disjunctive catalogue complete, he ought to have added, “or it never really existed,”— not the least probable supposition of

of Athenzus and Eustathius there all

cited. He seems to have adhered to the old fable, placing Erytheia on the oppor side of the ocean-stream, for Héraklés crosses the ocean to get to it.

Hekateeus, ap. Arrian. Histor. Alex. ii. 16. Skylax places Erytheia, ‘whither Geryén is said to have come to feed his oxen,” in the Kastid terri- tory near the Greek city of Apollénia on the Ionic Gulf, northward of the Keraunian mountains. There were splendid cattle consecrated to Hélios near Apollonia, watched by the citizens of the place with great care (Herodot. ix. 98; Skylax, c. 26).

About Erytheia, Cellarius observes “st δ Ant. iis 1, 127), “Insula irytheia, quam veteres adjungunt Gadibus, vel demersa est, vel in

2 Hesiod, Theogon. 956—992; Homer, Odyss. xii. 3—69,—

Νῆσον ἐν Αἰαίην, ὅθι τ᾽ Ἤοῦς ἠριγενείης Sate ᾿ OS : Οἴκια καὶ χόροι εἰσὶ, καὶ ἀντολαὶ ἠελίοιο.

3 Mimnerm. Fr. 10—11, Schneidewin; Athene. vii. p. 277.—

Οὐδέ Kor’ Gv μέγα κῶας ἀνήγαγεν αὐτὸς ἸἸήσων Ἐξ Αὔης τελέσας ἀλγινόεσσαν ὁδὸν, Ὑβρίστῃ Πελίῃ τελέων χαλεπῆρες ἄεθλον, Οὐδ᾽ ἂν ἐπ᾽ Ὠκεανοῦ καλὸν ἵκοντο ῥόον. 1 ἀκ νος τὰ ee Αἰήταο πόλιν, τόθι 7 ὠκέος ᾿Ηελίοιο ᾿Ακτῖνες χρυσέῳ κείαται ἐν θαλάμῳ, Ὠκεανοῦ παρὰ χείλεσ᾽, ἵν᾿ ῴχετο θεῖος Ἰήσων.

$30 ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION. Parr tf.

Sképsis in antiquity’ (though Strabo vainly tries to refute him), that neither Homer nor Mimnermus designates Kolchis either as the residence of Alétés, or as the terminus of the Argonautic voyage. Hesiod carried the returning Argonauts through the river Phasis into the ocean. But some of the poems ascribed to Eumélus were the first which mentioned Aétés and Kolchis, and interwove both of them into the Corinthian mythical genealogy.? These poems seem to have been composed subsequent to the foundation of Sinopé, and to the commencement of Grecian settlement on the Borysthenés, between the years 600 and 500 B.c. The Greek mariners who explored and colonised the southern coast of the Euxine, found at the extremity of their voyage the river Phasis and its barbarous inhabitants: it was the easternmost point which Grecian navigation (previous to the time of Alexander the Great) ever attained, and it was within sight of the impassable barrier of Caucasus.2 They believed, not unnaturally, that they had here found “the house of Eés (the morning) and the rising- place of the sun,” and that the river Phasis, if they could follow it to its unknown beginning, would conduct them to the circum- fluous ocean. They gave to the spot the name of Ala, and the fabulous and real title gradually became associated together into one compound appellation,—the Kolchian Ata, or Aa of Kolchis.* While Kolchis was thus entered on the map as a fit representative for the Homeric “ house of the morning,” the narrow strait of the Thracian Bosphorus attracted to itself the poetical fancy of the Symplégades, or colliding rocks, through which the heaven- protected Argé had been the first to pass. The powerful Greek cities of Kyzikus, Hérakleia, and Sinopé, each fertile in local legends, still farther contributed to give this direction to the voyage ; so that in the time of Hekateeus it had become the

1Strabo, i, p. 45—46. Δημήτριος us the municipal rivalry and conten- ὁ Σκήψιος . .. πρὸς Νεάνθη τὸν Κυ- tion between the small town Ské Suxnvov ἰιλοτιμοτέρως ἀντιλέγων, and its powerful neighbour Keniban εἰπόντα, ὅτι οἱ ᾿Αργοναῦται πλέοντες εἰς μας ecting points of comparative

Φᾶσιν τὸν ὑφ᾽ Ὁμήρου καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ono λογούμενον πλοῦν, ἀδρύσαντο τὰ ie ᾿Ιδαίας μητρὸς ἱερὰ ἐπὶ Κύζικον . . ἀρχήν φησι μηδ᾽ εἰδέναι τὴν εἰς Φᾶσιν ἀποδημίαν τοῦ Ἰάσονος Ὅμηρον. Again, p. 46, παραλαβὼν μάρτυρα Μίμνερμον, ὃς ἐν τῷ Ὠκεανῷ ποιήσας οἴκησιν Αἰήτου, &e.

The adverb φιλοτιμοτέρως reveals to

rcheology.

2 Eumélus, Fragm. Evpwria7, Κοριν- θιακά 2—5, pp. 63—68, Diintzer.

8 Arrian, Periplus Pont. Euxin. p. 12; ap. Geogr. Minor. vol. i. He saw the Caucasus from Dioskurias.

4 Herodot. i. 2; vii. see’ Eurip. Med. 5. Valer. Flace. v.

Cua. XII. CIRCHh IN THE WEST. 931

established belief that the Argd had started from Télkos and gone to Kolchis.

ARétés thus received his home from the legendary faith and fancy of the eastern Greek navigators: his sister Circé, apetas and originally his fellow-resident, was localised by the Cireé. western. The Hesiodic and other poems, giving expression to the imaginative impulses of the inhabitants of Cumze and other early Grecian settlers in Italy and Sicily,’ had referred the wanderings of Odysseus to the western or Tyrrhenian sea, and had planted the Kyklépes, the Leestrygones, the floating island of Aolus, the Lotophagi, the Pheakians, &c., about the coast of Sicily, Italy, Libya, and Korkyra. In this way the AZean island—the residence of Circé, and the extreme point of the wanderings of Odysseus, from whence he passes only to the ocean and into Hadés—came to be placed in the far west, while the A®a of Alétés was in the far east—not unlike our East and West Indies. The Homeric brother and sister were separated and sent to opposite extremities of the Grecian terrestrial horizon.”

The track from Idlkis to Kolchis, however, though plausible as far as it went, did not.realize all the conditions of the genuine fabulous voyage : it did not explain the evidences of the visit of these maritime heroes which were to be found in

2 : i ; Ν Return of Libya, in Kréte, in Anaphé, in Korkyra, in the the Argo- Adriatic Gulf, in Italy, and in ASthalia. It became Gifferent

versions.

necessary to devise another route for them in their

1Strabo, i. p. 28. Volcker (Ueber Homerische Geographie, v. 66) is instructive upon this point, as upon the geography of the Greek poets ergy He recognises the purely mythical character of Ala in Homer and Hesiod, but he tries to te eh unsuccessfully in my judgment—that

the other in the exterior ocean oor yeveias Te ἔπλασε τῶν οὕτω διῳκισμένων, καὶ ἐξωκεανισμὸν ἀμφοῖν, i. p. 20); per- . haps also Jasén might have wandered as far as Italy, as evidences (σημεῖά τινα) are shown that he did (#.).

But the idea that Homer conceived A#étés in the extreme east and Circé in

Homer places Métés in the east, while Circé is in the west, and that Homer refers the Argonautic voyage to the Euxine Sea.

2 Strabo (or Polybius, whom he has ust been citing) contends that Homer new the existence of AMétés in Kolchis, and of Cirecé at Circeium, as historical persons, as well as the voyage of Jasén to Ata as an historical fact. Upon this he (Homer) built a superstructure of fiction (προσμύθευμαλ): he invented the brotherhood between them, and he placed both the one and

the extreme west, is not reconcileable with the Odyssey. The pe ip of Strabo is alike violent and unsatis- factory.

Circé was worshipped as a goddess at Circeii (Cicero, Nat. Deor. iii, 19). Hesiod, in the Theogony, represents the two sons of Circé by Odysseus as reigning over all the warlike Tyr- rhenians (Theog. 1012), an undefined western adigig “oKK The great Ma- milian gens at Tusculum traced their descent to Odysseus and Circé (Dionys. Hal. iv. 45).

232 ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION.

Part I. return, and the Hesiodic narrative was (as I have before observed), that they came back by the circumfluous ocean: first going up the river Phasis into the circumfluous ocean: then following that deep and gentle stream until they entered the Nile, and came down its course to the coast of Libya. This seems also to have been the belief of Hekateeus.1 But presently several Greeks (and Herodotus amongst them) began to discard the idea of a circum- fluous ocean-stream, which had pervaded their old geographical and astronomical fables, and which explained the supposed easy communication between one extremity of the earth and another. Another idea was then started for the returning voyage of the Argonauts. It was supposed that the river Ister, or Danube, flowing from the Rhipzan mountains in the north-west of Europe, divided itself into two branches, one of which fell into the Euxine sea, and the other into the Adriatic.

The Argonauts, fleeing from the pursuit of A#étés, had been obliged to abandon their regular course homeward, and had gone from the Euxine sea up the Ister; then passing down the other branch of that river, they had entered into the Adriatic, the Kolchian pursuers following them. Such is the story given by Apollénius Rhodius from Timagétus, and accepted even by so able a geographer as Eratosthenés—who preceded him by one generation, and who, though sceptical in regard to the localities visited by Odysseus, seems to have been a firm believer in the reality of the Argonautic voyage.? Other historians again, among

1 There is an opinion cited from Hekateus in Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 284, contrary to this, which is given by the same scholiast on iv, 259. But, in spite of the remarks of Clausen (ad ent. Hekatei, 187, p. 98), I think that the Schol. ad iv. 284 made a mistake in citing Hekatzus; the more so, as the scholiast, as printed from the Codex Parisinus, cites the same opinion without men-

tioning Hekateus. According to the (ib

old Homeric idea, the ocean-stream flowed all round the earth, and was the source of all the principal rivers which fiowed into the great internal sea, or Mediterranean (see Hekateeus, Fr. 349; Klausen, γἱ τ Arrian. ii. 16, where he speaks of the Mediterranean as the μεγάλη θάλασσα. Re

this old idea of the ocean-stream,

Hekatzeeus would naturally believe that the Phasis joined it: nor can I agree sen pag ne ne Fr. 187) νας this implies a degree of ignorance gross to πάσαν ἐς to him.

2 Apollén. Rhod. iv. 287 ; Schol. ad iv. 284; Pindar, Pyth. iv. 447, with Schol.; Strabo, i. p. 46—57; Aristot. Mirabil. Auscult. c.105. Altars were shown in the Adriatic, which had been erected both by Jasén and by Médea

Aristotle believed in the forked course of the Ister, with one embou- chure in the Euxine and another in the Adriatic : he notices certain fishes called τρίχιαι, who entered the river (like the onauts) from the Euxine went up it as far as the point o bifurcation and descended into the Adriatic (Histor. Animal. viii. 15)

Cap. XIII. ARGONAUTIC LEGEND MODIFIED. 233

whom was Timeeus, though they considered the ocean as an outer sea, and no longer admitted the existence of the old Homeric ocean-stream, yet imagined a story for the return-voyage of the Argonauts somewhat resembling the old tale of Hesiod and Hekateus. They alleged that the Argé, after entering into the Palus Metis, had followed the upward course of the river Tanais ; that she had then been carried overland and launched in a river which had its mouth in the ocean or great outer sea. When in the ocean, she had coasted along the north and west of Europe until she reached Gadés and the strait of Gibraltar, where she entered into the Mediterranean, and there visited the many places specified in the fable. Of this long voyage, in the outer sea to the north and west of Europe, many traces were affirmed to exist along the coast of the ocean.! There was again a third version, according to which the Argonauts came back as they went, through the Thracian Bosporus and the Hellespont. In this way geographical plausibility was indeed maintained, but a large portion of the fabulous matter was thrown overboard.”

Such were the various attempts made to reconcile the Argo- nautic legend with enlarged geographical knowledge and improved historical criticism. The problem remained unsolved, but the faith in the legend did not the less continue. It was a faith originally generated at a time when the unassisted narrative of the inspired poet sufficed for the conviction of his hearers ; it consecrated one among the capital exploits of that heroic and super-human race, whom the Greek was accustomed at once to look back upon as his ancestors and to worship conjointly with his gods: it lay too deep in his mind either to require historical evidence for its support, or to be overthrown by geographical difficulties as they were then appreciated. Supposed traces of the past event, either preserved in the names of places, or embodied

Compare Ukert, Geographie der both of Sophoklés and of Kallimachus Griechen und Rémer, vol. iii. p. 145— (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 284). 147, about the supposed course of the See the Dissertation of Ukert, Ister. Beylage iv. vol. i. part 2, p. 320 of his 1 Diodér, iv. 56; Timsus, Fragm. baby a der Griechen und Romer, 53, Goller. Skymnus the geographer which treats of the ee OTe voyage also adopted this opinion (Schol. Apoll. at some length; also J. H. Voss, Al Rhod. 284—287). The pseudo-Orpheus Weltkunde iiber die Gestalt der Erde, in the poem called Argonautica seems Sarr sa in the second volume of the to give a jumble of all the different Kritische Blatter, pp. 162, 314—326 ; stories. and Forbiger, Handbuch der Alten 2 Diodér. iv. 49. This was the tale Geographie, Kinleitung, p. 8.

934 ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION.

in standing religious customs with their explanatory comments,

Continued served as sufficient authentication in the eyes of the wae curious inquirer. And even men trained in a more hasisof τὺ severe school of criticism contented themselves with mined by eliminating the palpable contradictions and softening

down the supernatural and romantic events, so as to produce an Argonautic expedition of their own invention as the true and accredited history. Strabo, though he can neither overlook nor explain the geographical impossibilities of the narrative, supposes himself to have discovered the basis of actual fact, which the original poets had embellished or exaggerated. The golden fleece was typical of the great wealth of Kolchis, arising from gold-dust washed down by the rivers ; and the voyage of Jasén was in reality an expedition at the head of a considerable army, with which he plundered this wealthy country and made extensive conquests in the interior. Strabo has nowhere laid down what he supposes to have been the exact measure and direction of Jasén’s march, but he must have regarded it as very long, since he classes Jasén with Dionysus and Héraklés, and emphatically characterises all the three as having traversed wider spaces of ground than any moderns could equal.? Such was the compromise which a mind like that of Strabo made with the ancient legends. He shaped or cut them down to the level of his own credence, and in this waste of historical criticism, without any positive evidence, he took to himself the credit of greater penetration than the literal believers, while he escaped the necessity of breaking formally with the bygone heroic world.

Part L.

1 Strabo, i. p. 45. He speaks here of the voyage of Phryxus, as well as that of Jasén, as having beena military undertakin (στρατεία): so again, iii. p. 149, hes of the military expedition of Odysseus—i τοῦ Ὀδυσσέως στρατία, and ἡ Ἡρακλέους στρατία (1Ϊ0.). Again, xi. p. 498. Ot μῦθοι, αἰνιττόμενοι τὴν Ἰάσονος στρατείαν προελθόντος μέχρι καὶ Μηδίας " ἔτι δὲ πρότερον τὴν Φρίξου. Compare also Justin, xlii. 2—3 ; i Annal. vi. 34.

Strabo cannot speak of the old fables with literal fidelity : he unconsciously transforms them into quasi-historical incidents of his own imagination.

Diodérus gives a narrative of the same kind, with decent substitutes for the fabulous elements (iv. 40—47—56). __ Strabo, i. p. 48. The far-extending expeditions undertaken in the eastern regions by Dionysus and Héraklés were constantly present to the mind of Alexander the Great as subjects of comparison with himself: he imposed upon his followers perilous and trying

t. marches, from anxiety to or

686 ; XVii. p. 81.

eae ee ee ΡΨΌΝΝ

Cuap, XIV, LEGENDS OF THABES. 235

CHAPTER XIV, LEGENDS OF THABES.

Tae Beeotians generaily, throughout the historical age, though well endowed with bodily strength and courage,’ are ay naant represented as proverbially deficient in intelligence, le aus of taste, and fancy. But the legendary population of ti Thébes, the Kadmeians, are rich in mythical antiquities, divine as well as heroic. Both Dionysus and Héraklés recognise Thébes as their natal city. Moreover, the two sieges of Thébes by Adrastus, even taken apart from Kadmus, Antiopé, Amphidén, and Zéthus, &c., are the most prominent and most characteristic exploits, next to the siege of Troy, of that pre-existing race of heroes who lived in the imagination of the historical Hellénes.

It is not Kadmus, but the brothers Amphién and Zéthus, who are given to us in the Odyssey as the first founders of Thébes and the first builders of its celebrated walls. They gmphion are the sons of Zeus by Antiopé, daughter of Asdpus. aad The scholiasts, who desire to reconcile this tale with founders of the more current account of the foundation of Thébes El eter by Kadmus, tell us that after the death of Amphién and Zéthus, Eurymachus, the warlike king of the

us and Boedtus Phlegyze, invaded and ruined the newly-settled town,

—both distinct legends.

1The eponym Bedtus is son of Poseidén and Arné (Euphorion ap. Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. 507). It was

The Tanagreean poetess Korinna (the rival of Pindar, whose compositions in the Beedtian dialect are unfortunately

from Arné in Thessaly that. the Beedtians were said to have come when they invaded and occupied Beedtia. Huripidés made him son of Poseidén and Melanippé. Another legend recited Boeédtus and Hellén as sons of Poseidén and Antiopé (Hygin. f, 157—186).

lost) appears to have dwelt upon this native Beeétian genealogy: she derived the Ogygian gates of Thébes from Oayens, son of Boedtus (Schol. Apollén, Rhod. iii. 1178), also the Fr: ents of Korinna in Svhneidewin’s edition, fr. 2, p. 432,

236 LEGENDS OF THEBES. Part L

so that Kadmus on arriving was obliged to re-found it! But Apollodérus, and seemingly the older logographers before him, placed Kadmus at the top, and inserted the two brothers ata lower point in the series. According to them, Bélus and Agénér were the sons of Epaphus (son of the Argeian 16) by Libya. Agénér went to Pheenicia and there became king: he had for his offspring Kadmus, Phenix, Kilix, and a daughter Eurdépa ; though in the Iliad Eurdpa is called daughter of Phenix.” Zeus fell in love with Eurépa, and assuming the shape of a bull, carried her across the sea upon his back from Egypt to Créte, where she bore to him Minés, Rhadamanthus, and Sarpédén. Two out of the three sons sent out by Agénér in search of their lost sister, wearied out by a long-protracted as well as fruitless voyage, abandoned the idea of returning home: Kilix settled in Kilikia, and Kadmus in Thrace? Thasus, the brother or nephew of Kadmus, who had accompanied them in the voyage, settled and gave name to the island of Thasus.

Both Herodotus and Euripidés represent Kadmus as an emigrant from Pheenicia, conducting a body of followers in quest of Eurépa. The account of Apollodérus describes him as having come originally from Libya or Egypt to Pheenicia! we may presume that this was also the statement of the earlier logogra- phers Pherekydés and Hellanikus. Conén, who historicises and politicises the whole legend, seems to have found two different accounts: one connecting Kadmus with Egypt, another bringing him from Phenicia. He tries to melt down the two into one, by representing that the Phcenicians, who sent out Kadmus, had acquired great power in Egypt—that the seat of their kingdom was the Egyptian Thébes—that Kadmus was despatched, under pretence indeed of finding his lost sister, but really on a project

1 Homer, Odyss. xi. 262, and Compare Servius ad Virgil. Aineid. i. Eustath. ad loc. Compare Schol. ad 338. Pherekydés expressly mentioned Tliad. xii. 301. pe Apetoe Ro ee the

- * : ς ὑρώπεια Ο; ichorus (see or. οι Pras Sr pe, a, fy, he Η ᾿ “were seve other ancient poems on Enemien. 55-10%. the adventures of Eurépa: one in

8 Apollodér. ii. 1, 8; iii. 1,8. Inthe particular by Eumélus (Schol. ad Iliad. Hesiodic poems (ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. vi. 138), which, however, can hardly be ii. 178) Phoenix was recognised as son the same as the τὰ ἔπη τὰ εἰς Εὐρώπην of Agénér. Pherekydés also described alluded to by Pausanias (ix. 5,4) See

th Phenix and Kadmus as sons of Wiillnerde Cyclo Epico, p. 57 (Minster, Agénér (Pherekyd. Fragm. 40, Didot). 1825).

CuapP. XIV. KADMUS THE FOUNDER, 2937

of conquest—and that the name Thébes, which he gave to his new establishment in Boeotia, was borrowed from Thébes in Egypt, his ancestorial seat.’

Kadmus went from Phcenicia to Thrace, and from Thrace to Delphi to procure information respecting his sister Eurdépa, but the god directed him to take no further trouble about her ; he was to follow the guidance of a cow, and to found a city on the spot where the animal should liedown. The condition How The- was realised on the site of Thébes. The neighbouring Pes “as be fountain Areia was guarded bya fierce dragon, the Kadmus. offspring of Arés, who destroyed all the persons sent to fetch water. Kadmus killed the dragon, and at the suggestion of Athéné sowed the dragon’s teeth in the earth:? there sprang up at once the armed men called the Sparti, among whom he flung stones, and they immediately began to assault each other until all were slain except five. Arés, indignant at this slaughter, was about to kill Kadmus; but Zeus appeased him, condemning Kadmus to an expiatory servitude of eight years, after which he married Harmonia, the daughter of Arés and Aphrodité— presenting to her the splendid necklace fabricated by the hand of Héphestos, which had been given by Zeus to Eurdpa.? All the gods came to the Kadmeia, the citadel of Thébes, to present con- gratulations and gifts at these nuptials, which seem to have been hardly less celebrated in the mythical world than those of Péleus and Thetis. The issue of the marriage was one son, Polydérus, and four daughters, Autonoé, Ind, Semelé and Agavé.*

1Conén, Narrat. 37. Perhaps the most remarkable thing of all is the tone of unbounded _ self-confidence with which Conén winds up this tissue of uncertified tac Alpe μὲν Κάδμον καὶ Θηβῶν οἰκίσεως οὗτος ὁ ἀληθὴς λόγος" τὸ δὲ ἄλλο μῦθος καὶ γοητεία ἀκοῆς.

2 Stesichor. (F . 16, Kleine) ap. Schol. Eurip. Pheeniss. 680. The place where the heifer had lain down was still shown in the time of Pausanias (ix. 12, 1).

Lysimachus, a lost author who wrote Thebaica, mentioned reps as having come with Kadmus to Thébes, and told the story in many other respects very differently (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iii. 1179).

8 Apollodor. iii, 4,1—3, Pherekydés

gave this account of the necklace, which seems to imply that Kadmus must have found his sister Eurépa. The narrative here given is from Hellanikus ; that of Pherekydés differed from it in some respects ; compare Hellanik. Fragm. 8 and 9, and Pherekyd. Frag. 44. The resem- blance of this story with that of Jasén and Alétés (see above, chap. xiii.) will strike every one. It is curious to observe how the old logographer Pherekydés explained this analogy in his narrative; he said that Athéné given half the dragon’s teeth to Kadmus and half to Alétés (see Schol. Pindar. Isthm. vi. 13).

4 Hesiod aie ἀπ 976. Leukothea, the sea-goddess, ughter of Kadmus, is mentioned in the Odyssey, v. 334; Diodor. iv, 2.

238 LEGENDS OF THRBES. Part L

From the five who alone survived of the warriors sprung from the dragon’s teeth, arose five great families or gentes rimitive in Thébes; the oldest and noblest of its inhabitants, at Thovee, coeval with the foundation of the town. They were

called called Sparti, and their name seems to have given rise, ©

arch not only to the fable of the sowing of the teeth, but also to other etymological narratives.’

All the four daughters of Kadmus are illustrious in fabulous Thefour history. Iné, wife of Athamas, the son of Molus, has noes already been included among the legends of the Hiolids. —1.Ind. Semelé became the mistress of Zeus, and inspired Héré with jealousy. Misguided by the malicious suggestions of that goddess, she solicited Zeus to visit her with all the solemnity and terrors which surrounded him when he approached Héré herself. The god unwillingly consented, and came in his chariot in the midst of thunder and lightning, under which awful accompani- ments the mortal frame of Semelé perished. Zeus, taking from her the child of which she was pregnant, sewed it into his own thigh: after the proper interval the child was brought out and born, and became the great god Dionysus or Bacchus. Hermés took him to Iné and Athamas to receive their protection. Afterwards, however, Zeus having transformed him into a kid to conceal him from the persecution of Héré, the nymphs of the mountain Nysa became his nurses.”

Autonoé, the third daughter of Kadmus, married the pastoral eres hero or god Aristzeus, and was mother of Aktsdén, a and herson devoted hunter and a favourite companion of the god- Aktwon. 655 Artémis. She however became displeased with him—either because he looked into a fountain while she was bathing and saw her naked—or, according to the legend set forth by the poet Stesichorus, because he loved and courted Semelé— or, according te Euripidés, because he presumptuously vaunted himself as her superior in the chase. She transformed him into a stag, so that his own dogs set upon and devoured him. The rock upon which Akteén used to sleep when fatigued with the chase,

2. Semelé.

1 Eurip. Pheeniss. 680, with the Even in the days of Plutarch there Scholia; Pherekydés, Fragm. 44; were persons living who traced their Andrétion, ap. Schol. Pindar. Isthm. descent to the Sparti of Thebés vi. 13. Dionysius (7) called the Sparti (Plutarch, Ser. Num. Vindict. ἦν 563). an ἔθνος Βοιωτίας (Schol. Pheeniss. 1. c.). 2 Apollodor. iii. 4,2—9; Dioddér. iv. 2,

΄

Cua. XIV THE DAUGHTERS OF KADMUS, 239

and the spring whose transparent waters had too clearly revealed the form of the goddess, were shown to Pausanias near Platzea, on the road to Megara.?

Agavé, the remaining daughter of Kadmus, married Echién, one of the Sparti. The issue of these nuptials was ee Pentheus, who, when Kadmus became old, succeeded and her son him asking of Thébes. In his reign Dionysusappeared Pentheus. as a god, the author or discoverer of the vine with all its blessings. He had wandered over Asia, India, and Thrace, at the head of an excited troop of female enthusiasts—communicating and inculeating everywhere the Bacchic ceremonies, and rousing in the minds of women that impassioned religious emotion which led them to ramble in solitary mountains at particular seasons, there to give vent to violent fanatical excitement, apart from the men, clothed in fawnskins and armed with the thyrsus. The obtrusion of a male spectator upon these solemnities was esteemed sacri- legious, Though the rites had been rapidly disseminated and

1 See Apolloddér. iii. 4, 8; Stesichor. Fragm. xvii. Kleine ; Pausan. ix. 2, 3; Eurip. Bacch. 337; Diodér. iv. 81. The old logographer Akusilaus copied Stesichorus.

Upon this well-known story it is unnecessary to multiply references. I shall however briefly notice the remarks made upon it by Diodérus and by Pausanias, as an illustration of the manner in which the literary Greeks of a later day dealt with their old national legends.

Both of them appear pa cereagd to believe the fact that Aktzén was devoured by his own dogs, but they ΕΣ materially in the explanation of it.

Diodérus accepts and vindicates the miraculous interposition of the dis-

wedlock, or whether he presumed to call himself an abler hunter than her with whom the gods themselves will not compete in this department,—ir either case the wrath of the goddess against him was just and legitimate (ὁμολογουμένην καὶ δικαίαν ὀργὴν ἔσχε πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡ θεός). With perfect propriety therefore (Καθόλον δὲ πιθανῶς) was he transformed into an animal such as those he had hunted, and torn to peace by the very oT who had killed them.” (Diod. iv

Pausanias, a man of exemplary piety, and generally less inclined to scepticism than Diodérus, thinks the occasion unsuitable for a miracle or special interference. Having alluded to the two causes assigned for the

pleased goddess to punish Aktze6n, who, according to one story, had boasted of his superiority in the chase to Artemis,—according to another story, had presumed to solicit the goddess in marriage, emboldened by the great numbers of the feet of animals slain in the chase which he had hung up as offerings in her temple. “It is not improbable (observes Diodérus) that the goddess was angry on both these accounts. For whether Aktzeén abused these hunting presents so far as to make them the means of gratifying his own desires towards one unapproachable in

displeasure of Artemis (they are the two first-mentioned in my text, and distinct from the two noticed b

Diodérus), he proceeds to say, “‘ But

believe that the dogs of Aktzén went mad, without the interference of the goddess: in this state of madness they would have torn in pieces without distinction any one whom they met (Paus. ix. 2, 8. ἐγὼ δὲ καὶ ἄνευ θεοῦ πείθομαι νόσον λύσσαν ἐπιβαλεῖν τοῦ ᾿Ακταίωνος τοὺς κύνας). He retains the truth of the final catastrophe, but rationalises it, excluding the special] intervention of Artemis, :

50 LEGENDS OF THEBES. Part LL

fervently welcomed in many parts of Thrace, yet there were some places in which they had been obstinately resisted and their votaries treated with rudeness; especially by Lykurgus, king of the Edonian Thracians, upon whom a sharp and exemplary punishment was inflicted by Dionysus.

Thébes was the first city of Greece to which Dionysus came, at He resists the head of his Asiatic troop of females, to obtain oe god divine honours, and to establish his peculiar rites in hismiser- his native city. The venerable Kadmus, together ableend. = with his daughters and the prophet Teiresias, at once acknowledged the divinity of the new god, and began to offer their worship and praise to him, along with the solemnities which he enjoined. But Pentheus vehemently opposed the new cere- monies, reproving and maltreating the god who introduced them: nor was his unbelief at all softened by the miracles which Dionysus wrought for his own protection and for that of his followers. His mother Agavé, with her sisters and a large body of other women from Thébes, had gone out from Thébes to Mount Kitherén to celebrate their solemnities under the influence of the Bacchic frenzy. Thither Pentheus followed to watch them, and there the punishment due to his impiety overtook him. The avenging touch of the god having robbed him of his senses, he climbed a tall pine for the purpose of overlooking the feminine multitude, who detected him in this position, pulled down the tree, and tore him in pieces. Agavé, mad and bereft of conscious- ness, made herself the foremost in this assault, and carried back in triumph to Thébes the head of her slaughtered son. The aged Kadmus, with his wife Harmonia, retired among the Illyrians, and at the end of their lives were changed into serpents, Zeus permitting them to be transferred to the Elysian fields.

1 Apollod. iii. 5, 3-4; Theocrit. exhibited by his son after his death Idyll. xxvi.; Eurip. Bacch. passim. -(Schol. Aristoph. Ran. 67), contains Such is the tragical plot of this passages strongly inculcating the memorable drama. It is a striking necessity of implicit deference to

roof of the deep-seated reverence of ancestorial authority in matters of he people of Athens for the sanctity religion, and favourably contrasting of the Bacoiiia ceremonies, that they the uninquiring faith of the vulgar could have borne the spectacle of with the dissenting and inquisitive Agavé on the s with her dead tendencies of superior minds: see v. son’s head, and the expressions of 196; compare vv. 389 and 422.— triumphant pathy in her action on

the part of the Chorus (1168), Μάκαιρ᾽ Οὐδὲν σοφιζόμεσθα τοῖσι δαίμοσιν.

e ᾿Αγαύη! This dra: written near the Ilarpiovs παραδοχὰς, ἃς θ᾽ ὁμήλικας close of the life of Euripidés, and χρόνῳ

Cuap. XIV. DIONYSUS AT THEBES—ANTIOPR. 241

Polydérus and Labdakus successively became kings of Thébes : the latter at his death left an infant son, Laius, who Labdakus, was deprived of his throne by Lykus. And here we ΟΣ ΝΗ approach the legend οἵ Antiopé, Zéthus and Amphién, and Zéthus. whom the fabulists insert at this point of the Théban series. Antiopé is here the daughter of Nykteus, the brother of Lykus. She is deflowered by Zeus, and then, while pregnant, flies to Epdpeus, king of Sikyén: Nykteus dying entreats his brother to avenge the injury, and Lykus accordingly invades Sikyén, defeats and kills Epdpeus, and brings back Antiopé prisoner to Thébes. In her way thither, in a cave near Eleutheree, which was shown to Pausanias,! she is delivered of the twin sons of Zeus—Amphién and Zéthus—who, exposed to perish, are taken up and nourished by a shepherd, and pass their youth amidst herdsmen, ignorant of their lofty descent.

Antiopé is conveyed to Thébes, where, after undergoing a long persecution from Lykus and his cruel wife Dirké, she at length escapes, and takes refuge in the pastoral dwelling of her sons, now grown to manhood. Dirké pursues and requires her to be delivered up ; but the sons recognise and protect their mother, taking an ample revenge upon her persecutors. Lykus is slain, and Dirké is dragged to death, tied to the horns of a bull.?

Κεκτήμεθ᾽, οὐδεὶς αὐτὰ καταβαλεῖ λόγος, Οὐδ᾽ ἣν bv ἄκρων τὸ σοφὸν εὕρηται φρένων.

Such reproofs “‘insanientis sapientiz” certainly do not fall in with the plot of the drama itself, in which Pentheus Fs gree as a Conservative, resisting the introduction of the new religious rites. Taken in conjunction with the emphatic and submissive piety which reigns through the drama, they countenance the _ supposition of Tyrwhitt, that Euripidés was anxious to repel the imputations, so often made t him, of commerce with the philosophers, and participation in sundry heretical opinions.

Pacuvius in his Pentheus seems to have closely copied Euripidés; see Servius ad Virg. Aineid. iv. 469.

The old Thespis had composed a tragedy on the subject of Pentheus: Suidas, Θέσπις ; also Zschylus; com- pare his Eumenidés, 25.

According to Apollodérus (iii. δ, 5), Labdakus also perished in a similar

way to Pentheus, and from the like impiety, ἐκείνῳ φρονῶν παραπλήσια. Pausan. i. 38, 9.

2 For the adventures of Antiopé and her sons, see Apollodér. iii. 5; Pausan. il. 6, 2; ix. 6,'2.

The narrative given respecting Epépeus in the ancient Cyprian verses seems to have been very different from this, as far as we can judge from the brief notice in Proclus’s argument,— ὡς ᾿Επωπεὺς φθείρας τὴν Λυκούργου (Av- κου) γυναῖκα ἐξεπορθήθη : it approaches more nearly to the story given in the seventh fable of Hyginus, and followed ps Propertius (iii, 15); the eighth fable of Hyginus contains the tale of Antiopé as given by Euripidés and Ennius. The story of Pausanias differs from

both.

The Scholiast ad Apollén. Rhod. i. 785, says that there were two persons named Antiopé; one, daughter of Asdpus, the other, daughter of Nykteus. Pausanias is content with supposing one only, really the daugbter of Nykteus,

1—16

949 LEGENDS OF THEBES. Part I.

Amphién and Zéthus, having banished Laius, become kings of Thébes. The former, taught by Hermés, and possessing exquisite skill on the lyre, employs it in fortifying the city, the stones of the walls arranging themselves spontaneously in obedience to the rhythm of his song.

Zéthus marries Aédén, who, in the dark and under a fatal mistake, kills her son Itylus: she is transformed into a nightin- gale, while Zéthus dies of grief.2 Amphién becomes the husband of Niobé, daughter of Tantalus, and the father of a numerous offspring, the complete extinction of which by the hands of Apollo and Artemis has already been recounted in these pages.

Here ends the legend of the beautiful Antiopé and her twin sons—the rude .and unpolished, but energetic, Zéthus—and the refined and amiable, but dreamy, Amphién. For so Euripidés, in the drama of Antiopé unfortunately lost, presented the two brothers, in affectionate union as well as in striking contrast.2 It is evident that the whole story stood originally quite apart from the Kadmeian family, and so the rudiments of it yet stand in the Odyssey ; but the logographers, by their ordinary connecting artifices, have opened a vacant place for it in the descending series of Théban mythes. And they have here proceeded in a manner but there was a φήμη that she was that Zéthus died of grief (ix. 5, 5; daughter of Asdpus (11. 6, 2). Asius Pherekydés, Fragm. 102, Did.). made Antiopé daughter of Asdpus, Pausanias, however, as well as and mother (both by Zeus and by Apollodérus, tells us that Zéthus

Epépeus: such a junction of divine married Thébé, from whom the name and human paternity is of common Thébes was given to the city. To

occurrence in the Greek legends) of Zéthus and Amphién (ap. Paus. 1. c.).

The contradictory versions of the story are brought together, though not very perfectly, in Sterk’s Essay, De Labdacidarum Historia, p. 38—48 (Leyden, 1829).

1 This story about the lyre of Amphién is not noticed in Homer, but it was narrated in the ancient ἔπη és Ἑὐρώπην which Pausanias read: the wild beasts as well as the stones were obedient to his strains 2 Pherekydés also recounted it (Pherekyd. Fragm. 102, Didot). The tablet of inscription ( Ἀν γονὴ at Sikyén recognised Amphién as the first composer of

ry and harp-musie (Plutarch, de fusica, c. 8, p. 1132).

2The tale of the wife and son of Zéthus is as old as the Odyssey (xix. 525). Pausanias adds the statemned

reconcile the conflicting pretensions of Zéthus and Amphién with those of Kadmus, as founders of Thébes, Pausanias supposes that the latter was the original settler of the hill of the Kadmeia, while the two former extended the settlement to the lower city (ix. 5, 1—8). Ξ ἀρ SR Cai ge —— μ ἐπ

urip. iq. cap. 7, p. 58; cker, Griechisch. Tivagid. ii. p. 811. There is a striking resemblance between the Antiopé of Euripidés and the Tyré of se és in many points.

lato in his Gorgias has preserved a

few fragments, and a tolerably clear general idea of the characters of

éthus and a (Gorg. 90—92); see also Horat. Epist. i. 18, 42.

Both Livius and Pacuvius had tragedies on the scheme of this of Euripidés, the former seemingly a translation.

Cap. XTYV. AMPHION AND ZETHUS—€DIPUS. 243

not usual with them. For whereas they are generally fond of multiplying entities, and supposing different historical personages of the same name, in order to introduce an apparent smoothness in the chronology—they have here blended into one person Amphién the son of Antiopé and Amphidn the father of Chléris, who seem clearly distinguished from each other in the Odyssey. They have further assigned to the same person all the circum- stances of the legend of Niobé, which seems to have been originally framed quite apart from the sons of Antiopé.

Amphién and Zéthus being removed, Laius became king of Thébes. With him commences the ever-celebrated series of adventures of Gidipus and his family. Laius, fore- faiys— warned by the oracle that any son whom he might beget would kill him, caused CEdipus as soon as he was born to be exposed on Mount Kitherén. Here the herdsmen of Polybus king of Corinth accidentally found him and conveyed him to their master, who brought him up as his own child. In spite of the kindest treatment, however, CEdipus when he grew up found himself exposed to taunts on the score of his unknown parentage, and went to Delphi to inquire of the god the name of his real father. He received for answer an admonition not to go back to his country ; if he did so, it was his destiny to kill his father and become the husband of his mother. Knowing no other country but Corinth, he accordingly determined to keep away from that city, and quitted Delphi by the road towards Beedtia and Phékis. At the exact spot where the roads leading to these two countries forked, he met Laius in a chariot drawn by mules, when the insolence of one of the attendants brought on an angry quarrel, in which Cidipus killed Laius, not knowing him to be his father.*

which ascends from the Krissean plain, rages under Delphi, reaches its highest point at Arakhova, above Delphi, and then descends towards the east. Travellers going eastward from

1 The ἊΝ called σχιστὴ ὁδός (the Divided ay) where this event ea was memorable in the eyes of igs ὁ Greeks, and is specially noticed by the traveller Pausanias,

who still saw there (x. 5, 2) the tombs of Laius and his attendant. It is moreover in itself a very marked place, where the valley which runs north and south, from Daulis to Ambrysus and Antikyra, is met half way from the westward at right angles, but not crossed, by the ravine,

Delphi must always have been stopped at this place by the precipices of Helikon, and must have turned either to the right or to the left. If to the right, they would descend to the Gulf, or they might take their way into Beedtia by the southern passes, as Kleombrotus did before the battle of

944 LEGENDS OF THEBES. Part I.

On the death of Laius, Kreén, the brother of Jokasta, succeeded to the kingdom of Thébes. At this time the country was under the displeasure of the gods, and was vexed by a terrible monster, with the face of a woman, the wings of a bird, and the tail of a lion, called the Sphinx’—sent by the wrath of Héré, and occupying the neighbouring mountain of Phikium. The Sphinx had learned from the Muses a riddle, which she proposed to the Thébans to resolve ; on every occasion of failure she took away one of the citizens and ate him up. Still no person could solve the riddle ; and so great was the suffering occasioned, that Kreén was obliged to offer both the crown and the nuptials of his sister Jokasta to any one who could achieve the salvation of the city. At this juncture Cidipus arrived and solved the riddle: upon which the Sphinx immediately threw herself from the acropolis and disappeared. As a recompense for this service, CEdipus was made king of Thébes, and married Jokasta, not aware that she was his mother.

These main tragical circumstances—that (Edipus had ignorantly killed his father and married his mother—belong to the oldest form of the legend as it stands in the Odyssey. The gods (it is added in that poem) quickly made the facts known to mankind, Epikasta (so Jokasta is here called) in an agony of sorrow hanged herself: Cidipus remained king of the Kadmeians, but under- went many and great miseries, such as the Erinnyes, who avenge an injured mother, inflict.2 A passage in the Iliad implies that he died at Thébes, since it mentions the funeral games which were celebrated there in honour of him. His misfortunes were recounted by Nestér, in the old Cyprian verses, among the stories

The Sphinx.

Leuktra: if to the left, they would Μητέρα 7 Οἰδιπόδαο ἴδον, καλὴν "Em turn the south-east angle of a κάστην, δον ῳ and make their way by Daulis to the “H μέγα ἔργον ἔρεξεν ἀϊδρεΐῃσι νόοιο, valley of Cheroneia and Elateia. Τημαμένη ᾧ υἱεῖ" 6 δ᾽ ὃν πατέρ᾽ ἐξενα- Compare the description in K. Ο. ρίξας ΝΣ. Miiller, Orchomenos, 6. i. p. 87. Τῆμεν" ἄφαρ δ᾽ ἀνάπυστα θεοὶ θέσαν

προ ων γε τὴ iii. 5, 8 An author ἀνθρώποισιν. ΜῊ named Lykus, in his work entitled ᾿Αλλ ὁ μὲν ἐν Θήβῃ πολυηράτῳ ἄλγεα Thébaica, ascribed this visitation to πάσχων, ae : - the anger of Dionysos (Schol. Hesiod, Καδμείων ἤνασσε, θεῶν ὀλοὰς διὰ βουλάς" Theogon. 326). The Sphinx (or Phiz, Ἡ δ᾽ ἔβη εἰς ᾿Αΐδαο πυλάρταο κρατεροῖο from the Beedtian Mount Phikium)is ᾿Αψαμένη βρόχον αἰπὺν ag’ ὑψηλοῖο as old as the Hesiodic Theogony,—®ix’ μελάθρον, ee ᾿ ϑ ὀλοὴν τέκε, Καδμείοισιν ὄλεθρον (Theog. Ὧι ἄχεϊ σχομένη" τῷ δ᾽ ἄλγεα κάλλιπ'

‘ ὀπίσσω

2 Odyss. xi. 210. Odysseus, describing ἸΙολλὰ μάλ᾽, ὅσσα τε μητρὸς Ἐριννύες

what he saw in the under-world,says,— ἐκτελέουσιν.

“δον a ae ot

ΠΑΡ, XIV. THE SPHINX—ETEOKLES AND POLYNIKES. 245 of aforetime.t A fatal curse hung both upon himself and upon his children, Eteoklés, Polynikés, Antigoné and Isméné. Ac- cording to that narrative which the Attic tragedians have rendered universally current, they were his children by Jokasta, the dis- closure of her true relationship to him having been very long deferred. But the ancient epic called Cidipodia, treading more closely in the footsteps of Homer, represented him as having after her death married a second wife, Euryganeia, by whom the four children were born to him: and the painter Onatas adopted this story in preference to that of Sophoklés.?

The disputes of Eteoklés and Polynikés for the throne of their father gave occasion not only to a series of tragical Eteokiés family incidents, but also to one of the great quasi- and _ historical events of legendary Greece—the two sieges Polynikés. of Thébes by Adrastus, king of Argos. The two ancient epic poems called the Thébais and the Epigoni (if indeed both were not parts of one very comprehensive poem) detailed these events at great length, and as it appears, with distinguished poetical merit ; for Pausanias pronounces the Cyclic Thébais (so it was called by the subsequent critics to distinguish it from the more modern Thébais of Antimachus) inferior only to the Iliad and Odyssey ; the ancient elegiac poet Kallinus treated it as an Homeric composition. Of this once-valued poem we unfor-

1 liad, xxiii. 680, with the scholiast who cites Hesiod. Proclus, Argum. ad Cypria, ap. Diintzer. Fragm. Epic. Gree. p. 10. Νέστωρ δὲ ἐν mapexBacer aia «+ + καὶ τὰ περὶ Οἰδίπουν,

ὃ

2Pausan. ix. 5, 5. Compare the narrative from Peisander in Schol. ad Eurip. Pheeniss. 1773; where, however, the blindness of Gidipus seems to be unconsciously interpolated out of the tragedians. In the old narrative of the Cyclic Thébais, Gidipus does not seem to be represented as_ blind (Leutsch, Thebaidis Cyclici Reliquiz, Gotting. 1830, p. 42).

Pherekydés (ap. Schol. Eurip. Pheeniss. 52) tells us that Gidipus had three children by Jokasta, who were all killed by Erginus and the Minyze (this must refer to incidents in the old poems which we cannot now recover); then the four celebrated children by Puryganeia ; lastly, that he married a third wife, Astymedusa. Apollodérus

follows the narrative of the tragedians, but alludes to the different version about Euryganeia—eici δ᾽ οἵ φασιν, &e.

(iii. 5, 8). Hellanikus (ap. Schol. Eurip. Phoeniss. 50) mentioned the self-

inflicted blindness of Gdipus; but it seems doubtful whether this circum- stance was included in the narrative of Pherekydés.

3 Pausan. ix. 9,8. ᾿Εποιήθη δὲ és τὸν πόλεμον τοῦτον καὶ ἔπη, Θηβαΐς" τὰ δὲ ἔπη ταῦτα Καλλῖνος, ἀφικόμενος αὐτῶν ἐς μνήμην, ἔφησεν Ὅμηρον τὸν ποιήσαντα εἶναι. Καλλίνῳ δὲ πολλοί τε καὶ ἄξιοι λόγου κατὰ ταῦτα ἔγνωσαν" ἐγὼ δὲ τὴν ποίησιν ταύτην μετά ye ᾿Ιλιάδα καὶ τὰ ἔπη τὰ ἐς ᾽Οδυσσέα ἐπαινῶ μάλιστα. The name in the text of Pausanias stands Καλαῖνος, an unknown person: most of the critics recognise the Seay gpa of substituting Καλλῖνος, and Leutsch and Welcker have given very sufficient reasons for doing so.

The ᾿Αμφιάρεω ἐξελασία és Θήβας,

246 LEGENDS OF THEBES. Part 1

tunately possess nothing but a few scanty fragments. The leading points ofthe legend are briefly glanced at in the Iliad ; but our knowledge of the details is chiefly derived from the Attic tragedians, who transformed the narratives of their predecessors at pleasure, and whose popularity constantly eclipsed and oblite- rated the ancient version. Antimachus of Kolophdn, contem- porary with Euripidés, in his long epic, probably took no less liberties with the old narrative. His Thébaid never became generally popular, but it exhibited marks of study and elaboration which recommended it to the esteem of the Alexandrine critics, and probably contributed to discredit in their eyes the old cyclic poem.

The logographers, who gave a continuous history of this siege Old epic of Thébes, had at least three pre-existing epic poems— Pesioves the Thébais, the Cidipodia, and the Alkmeénis,— of Thé from which they could borrow. The subject was also handled in some of the Hesiodic poems, but we do not know to what extent.1 The Thébais was composed-more in honour of Argos than of Thébes, as the first line of it, one of the few fragments still preserved, betokens.?

SIEGES OF THEBES.

The legend, about to recount fraternal dissension of the most implacable kind, comprehending in its results not only the immediate relations of the infuriated brothers, but many chosen companions of the heroic race along with them, takes its start from the paternal curse of Gidipus, which overhangs and deter- mines all the gloomy sequel.

CEdipus, though king of Thébes and father of four children by Gaiet pac: Euryganeia (according to the Cidipodia), has become nounced by the devoted victim of the Erinnyes, in consequence of tidings the self-inflicted death of his mother, which he had Spon Ee unconsciously caused, as well as of his unintentional

᾿ parricide, Though he had long forsworn the use of all the ornaments and luxuries which his father had inherited alluded to in the pseudo-Herodotean me so much at variance with the life of Homer, seems to be the incidents stated in other poets as description of a special passage in this Leutsch imagines, Thébais. 2"Apyos ἄειδε, θεὰ, πολυδίψιον, ἔνθεν

διραῖϑ, ὶ ‘. 680, hich’ pangs does meee ΣΑΙ, ἄνακτες (se9 Leutsch, ib. 6. 4. p. 20).

al μπιι ᾿

CHaP. XIV. THE CURSE OF GDIPUS. 247

from his kingly progenitors, yet when through age he had come to be dependent upon his two sons, Polynikés one day broke through this interdict, and set before him the silver table and the splendid wine-cup of Kadmus, which Laius had always been accustomed to employ. The old king had no sooner seen these precious appendages of the regal life of his father, than his mind was overrun by a calamitous phrenzy, and he imprecated terrible curses on his sons, predicting that there would be bitter and endless warfare between them. The goddess Erinnys heard and heeded him ; and he repeated the curse again on another occasion, when his sons, who had always been accustomed to send to him the shoulder of the victims sacrificed on the altar, caused the buttock to be served to him in place of it.1 He resented this as ‘an insult, and prayed the gods that they might perish each by the hand of the other. Throughout the tragedians as well as in the old epic, the paternal curse, springing immediately from the misguided CEdipus himself, but remotely from the parricide and incest with which he has tainted his breed, is seen to domineer over the course of events—the Erinnys who executes that curse being the irresistible, though concealed, agent. schylus not only preserves the fatal efficiency of the paternal curse, but even briefly glances at the causes assigned for it in the Thébais, without superadding any new motives. In the judgment of Sophoklés, — or of his audience, the conception of a father cursing Novelties

his sons upon such apparently trifling grounds was by Sophie odious ; and that great poet introduced many aggra- klés.

vating circumstances, describing the old blind father as having

1 Fragm. of the Thébais, ap. Athenz. Ὡς οὐ οἱ πατρῷα γ᾽ ἐνὶ φιλότητι δάσαιντο, xii. p. 406. ὅτι αὐτῷ παρέθηκαν ἐκπώματα Εἶεν δ᾽ ἀμφοτέροις αἰεὶ πόλεμοί τε μάχαι ἃ ἀπηγορεύκει, λέγων οὕτως " τε.

Αὐτὰρ ὃ δέ ἥρως ξανθὸς ἸΤολυνείκης See Leutsch, Thebaid. Cycl. Reliq. Πρῶτα μὲν Οἰδίποδι καλὴν παρέθηκε τρά-

. 88. πεζαν τ The other fragment from the same ᾿Αργυρέγνν Κάδμοιο θεόφονος" αὐτὰρ Thébais is cited by the Schol. ad Soph. ἔπειτα (dip. Colon. 1378.—

Χρύσεον ἔμπλησεν καλὸν δέπας ἥδεος Ἴσχιον ὡς ἐνόησε, χαμαὶ βάλεν, εἶπέ τε D0

μῦθον. Ὦ μοι ἐγὼ, παῖδές μοι ὀνειδείοντες ἔπεμψαν. Εὖκτο Aut βασιλῆϊ καὶ ἄλλοις ἀθανά- τοισι

οἴνου" Αὐτὰρ dy’ ὡς φράσθη παρακείμενα πατρὸς ες ἑοῖο Τιμήεντα γέρα, μέγα οἱ κακὸν ἔμπεσε ῳ. . δι; ἀρ ar , f oe Ba z mags φοῖσξ pet’, αμφθτέῤοι σιν Χερσὶν ὑπ᾽ ἀλλήλων καταβήμεναι “Aisos

5 Μ᾿ ᾿Αργαλέας ἠρᾶτο" θεὸν δ᾽ οὐ λάνθαν᾽ εἰσω. Ἔριννύν» Τὰ δὲ παραπλήσια τῷ ἐποποιῷ καὶ

248 LEGENDS OF THEBES. Part I.

been barbarously turned out of doors by his sons to wander abroad in exile and poverty. Though by this change he rendered his poem more coherent and self-justifying, yet he departed from the spirit of the old legend, according to which Cidipus has contracted by his unconscious misdeeds an incurable taint destined to pass onward to his progeny. His mind is alienated, and he curses them, not because he has suffered seriously by their guilt, but because he is made the blind instrument of an avenging Erinnys for the ruin of the house of Laius.1 After the death of Cidipus and the celebration of his funeral Death of games, at which, amongst others, Argeia, daughter Gidipus— οὗ Adrastus (afterwards the wife of Polynikés), was teoklés present,” his two sons soon quarrelled respecting the nikésfor Succession. The circumstances are differently related ; the sceptre. byt it appears that, according to the original narrative, the wrong and injustice was on the side of Polynikés; who however, was obliged to leave Thébes and to seek shelter with Adrastus, king of Argos. Here he met Tydeus, a fugitive, at the same time, from A®télia: it was dark when they arrived, and a broil ensued between the two exiles, but Adrastus came out and parted them. He had been enjoined by an oracle to give his two Polynikta daughters in marriage to a lion and a boar, and he retires to thought that this occasion had now arrived, inasmuch ewe as one of the combatants carried on his shield a lion, von: the other a boar. He accordingly gave Deipylé in marriage to Tydeus, and Argeia to Polynikés: more- over he resolved to restore by armed assistance both his sons-im law to their respective countries.*

Αἴσχυλος ἐν τοῖς Ἕπτα ἐπὶ Θήβας. In The Scholiast on Sophoklés = spite of the protest of Schiitz, in his Col. 1878) treats the cause assigned by note, I think that the scholiast has the ancient Thébais for the curse understood the words ἐπίκοτος τροφᾶς vented by CE£dipus as trivial and a gad adv. Theb. 787) in their plainand ludicrous. meaning. The Aigeids at Sparta, who traced 1 The curses of Cidipus are very their descent to Kadmus, suffered from frequently and emphatically dwelt terrible maladies pe ay destroyed the upon both by aachylis and δὶ and Sophoklés lives of their children; an _ oracle (Sept. adv. Theb. 70—586, 655—697, &c.; directed Ὅσα ἐρ epee ‘the —r CEdip. Colon. 1293—1378). the f former of Laius and Cdipus by erecti continues the same point of view as temple, upon which the hes the Thébais, when he mentions— speedily ceased (προ Th iv. ΠΕ +» Tas περιθύμους 2 Hesiod, ap. Schol. Dliad. xxiii. 680. Kardpas βλαψίφρονος Οἰδεπόδα (127); 8 Apollodér. iii. 5,9; Hygin. * 69 ; or, λόγον τ' ἄνοια καὶ φρενῶν Ἔριννύς Aschyl. Sept. adv. Theb. 673. Hyginus (Soph. Antig. 584). says that Polynikés came clothed in

Cuap, XIV, POLYNIKES AND ADRASTUS—AMPHIARAUS. 249

On proposing the expedition to the Argeian chiefs around him, he found most of them willing auxiliaries ; but 4 yi. Amphiaraiis—formerly his bitter opponent, though aratis and now reconciled to him, and husband of his sister si pi Eriphylé—strongly opposed him,! denouncing the enterprise as unjust and contrary to the will of the gods. Again being of a prophetic stock, descended from Melampus, he foretold the certain death both of himself and of the principal leaders, should they involve themselves as accomplices in the mad violence of Tydeus, or the criminal ambition of Polynikés. Amphiaraiis, already distinguished both in the Kalydénian boar- hunt and in the funeral games of Pelias, was in the Théban war the most conspicuous of all the heroes, and absolutely indis- pensable to its success. But his reluctance to engage in it was invincible, nor was it possible to prevail upon him except through the influence of his wife Eriphylé. Polynikés, having brought with him from Thébes, the splendid robe and necklace given by the gods to Harmonia on her marriage with Kadmus, offered it as a bribe to Eriphylé, on condition that she would influence the determination of Amphiaraiis. The sordid wife, seduced by so matchless a present, betrayed the lurking place of her husband, and involved him in the fatal expedition. Amphiaraiis, reluctantly dragged forth, and foreknowing the disastrous issue of the expedition both to himself and to his associates, addressed his last injunctions, at the moment of mounting his chariot, to his sons Alkmezén and Amphilochus, commanding Alkmeedn to avenge his approaching death by killing the venal Eriphylé, and by undertaking a second expedition against Thébes.

The Attic dramatists describe this expedition as having been conducted by seven chiefs, one to each of the seven celebrated

the skin of a lion, and Tydeus in that of a boar; ῬΈΤΘΕΤΕ after Antimachus,

a oracle (ap. Schol. Eurip, Pheeniss. who said that Tydeus had been brought ἔ

up by swineherds (Antimach. Fragm. 27, ed. Diintzer ; ap. Schol. Diad. iv. 400). Very probably, however, the old Thébais compared Tydeus and Polynikés to a lion and a boar, on account of their courage and fierce- ness; a simile quite in the Homeric character. Menaseas gave the words of

1 See Pindar, Nem. ix. 80, with the instructive Scholium.

2 Apollodér. iii. 6, 3, The treachery of ‘the hateful Eriphylé” is noticed in the Odyssey, xi. 827: Odysseus sees her in the under-world along with the a wives and daughters of the

eroes,

250 LEGENDS OF THEBES. Part I,

gates of Thébes. But the Cyclic Thébais gave to it a much more comprehensive character, mentioning auxiliaries from aman Arcadia, Messéné, and various parts of Peloponnésus :! Pegs and the application of Tydeus and Polynikés at against Mykéne in the course of their circuit made to collect Thebes, allies, is mentioned in the [liad. They were well received at Mykéne; but the warning signals given by the gods were so terrible that no Mykénean could venture to accompany them? ‘The seven principal chiefs however were Adrastus, Amphiaraiis, Kapaneus, Hippomedén, Parthenopeus, Tydeus and Polynikés.® The Kadmeians, assisted by their allies the Phékians and the Fhe ok Phlegys, marched out to resist the invaders, and theThébans fought a battle near the Isménian hill, in which aa 568 they were defeated and forced to retire within the npigem sg walls. The prophet Teiresias acquainted them that if " Meneekeus, son of Kredn, would offer himself as a victim to Arés, victory would be assured to Thébes. The generous youth, as soon as he learnt that his life was to be the price of safety to his country, went and slew himself before the gates. The heroes along with Adrastus now commenced a vigorous attack upon the town, each of the seven selecting one of the gates to assault. The contest was long and strenuously maintained ; but the devotion of Mencekeus had procured for the Thébans the protection of the gods. Parthenopzeus was killed with a stone by Periklymenus ; and when the furious Kapaneus, having planted a scaling ladder, had mounted the walls, he was smitten by a thunderbolt from Zeus, and cast down dead upon the earth. This event struck terror into the Argeians, and Adrastus called back his troops from the attack. The Thébans now sallied forth to pursue them, when Eteoklés, arresting the battle, proposed to decide the controversy by single combat with

1 Pausan. ii. 20, 4; ix. 9, 1. His (Sept.adv.Theb.461)leaves out Adrastus testimony to this, as he had read and as one of the seven, and includes admired the Cyclic Thébais, seems Eteoklus instead of him; others left

uite sufficient, in ae ofthe opinionof out Tydeus and Polynikés, and inserted

elcker to the contrary (Zischyleische Eteoklus and Mekisteus (Apollodor. iii, Trilogie, p. 375). 6, 3). Antimachus, in poetical

2 Tliad, iv. 376. Thébais, called Parthenopeus an

3 There are differences in respect to Argeian, not an Arcadian (Schol. ad the names of the seven; A%schylus Aischyl. Sept. adv. Theb. 532).

Cap, XIV. THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES, 251

his brother. The challenge, eagerly accepted by Polynikés, was agreed to by Adrastus: a single combat ensued between the two brothers, in which both were exasperated ¢ to fury, and both ultimately slain by each other’s hand. This equal termination left the result of the καὶ general contest still undetermined, and the bulk of Perish.

the two armies renewed the fight. In the sanguinary struggle which ensued, the sons of Astakus on the Théban side displayed the most conspicuous and successful valour. One of

them,’ Melanippus, mortally wounded Tydeus—while

two others, Leades and Amphidikus, killed Eteoklus Argelan and Hippomedén. Amphiaraiis avenged Tydeus by chiefs—all killing Melanippus ; but unable to arrest the rout of oo“

Repulse and destruction of the

drastus. the army, he fled with the rest, closely pursued by Br ra Periklymenus. The latter was about to pierce him swallowed with his spear, when the beneficence of Zeus rescued UP in the

him from this disgrace—miraculously opening the

earth under him, so that Amphiaraiis with his chariot and horses was received unscathed into her bosom.? The exact spot where this memorable incident happened was indicated by a sepulchral building, and shown by the Thébans down to the days of Pausanias—its sanctity being attested by the fact, that no animal would consent to touch the herbage which grew within the sacred inclosure. Amphiaraiis, rendered immortal by Zeus, was worshipped as a god at Argos, ab Thébes, and at Ordépus—and

1 The story recounted that the head of ees 44 as he was about to e and that he

vi. 11; Mem. ix. 18—27. Pausan. ix. 8, 2; 18, 24.

Euripidés, in the Phenisse (1122 seqq.), escribes the battle enerally : see also Asch. 8. Th. 392.

Vili. p. 601, Walz.).

The lyric ΕΣ Bacchylidés (ap. Schol. ae Aves, 1535) seems to have handled the story even earlier than Sophoklés.

We find the same allegation embodied in charges against real historical men: the invective of

a saree gt morsu Pisonis caput” (Tacit. Hist. ) 2 Apollodér. iii, 6,8. Pindar, Olymp.

t appears by Pausanias that the Thébans had Τοῦ or legends of their own, relative

this war: they dissented in various

ints from the Cyclic Thébais (ix. 18, 4).

e Thébais said that Periklymenus had killed Parthenopzus: the Thébans assigned this exploit to Asphodikus, a warrior not commemorated by any of the poets known to us.

The village of Harma, between Tanagra and Mykaléssus, was affirmed by some to have been the spot where Amphiaraiis closed his life (Strabo, ix. Ρ. oo: oe placed the scene at the phiareium near Orédpus (ap. Strabon. ix. p. 399).

25% LEGENDS OF THEBES. Part L

for many centuries gave answers at his oracle to the questions of the pious applicant.

Adrastus, thus deprived of the prophet and warrior whom he re,arded as “the eye of his army,” and having seen the other chiefs killed in the disastrous fight, was forced to take flight singly, and was preserved by the matchless swiftness of his horse Areién, the offspring of Poseidén. He reached Argos on his return, bringing with him nothing except “his garment of woe and his black-maned steed”.?

Kreén, father of the heroic youth Menckeus, succeeding to the administration of Thébes after the death of the two hostile brothers and the repulse of Adrasias, caused Eteoklés to be buried with distinguished honour, but cast out ignominiously the body of Polynikés asa traitor te his country, forbidding every Kreén, king one on pain of death to consign it to the tomb. He οἱ tebes, likewise refused permission to Adrastus to inter the burialof bodies of his fallen comrades. This proceeding, so and the offensive to Grecian feeling, gave rise to two further Argsian ®" tales; one of them at least of the highest pathos and chiefs. interest. Antigoné, the sister of Polynikés, heard with indignation the revolting edict consigning her brother’s body to the dogs and vultures, and depriving it of those rites

1 Pindar, Olymp. vi. 16. Ἕπτα δ᾽ highly respectful towards Am ἔπειτα mupav véxpwv τελεσθέντων Ta- when he places in the mouth of the Aaiovidas Εἶπεν ἐν Θήβαισι τοιοῦτόν τι Kadmeian king Eteoklés such high ἔπος" Ποθέω στρατιᾶς ὀφθαλμὸν ἐμᾶς encomiums on Amp) jis, and so ᾿Αμφότερον, μάντιν τ᾽ ἀγαθὸν καὶ δουρὶ marked a contrast with the other τς όψοι chiefs from Argos.

he scholiast affirms that these last 2 Pausan. Vill. 25, δ. from the Cyclic expressions are borrowed by Pindar Thébais, Εἵματα λυγρὰ beer! σὺν from the Cyclic Thébais, ᾿Αρείονι Kvavoxairy; also Apo

The temple of Amphiaratis (Pausan. 6, 8.

ii. 23, 2), his oracle, seems to have been The celebrity of the horse Areién eq estimation to every other was extolled in the [liad (xxiii. 346), in except that of Delphi (Herodot. i.52; the Cyclic Thébais, and also in the Pausan. i. 84; Cicero, Divin. i. 40). ‘Thébais of Antimachus (Pausan. 1. c.): Croesus περ a rich present to by the sears of Thelpusia he was

ἀρετὴν καὶ τὴν πάθην (Herod. 1. c.); ἃ Poseidén,—he, and a striking proof how these interes name Pausanias will not communicate,

as genuine historical facts. Other ἀτελέστους λέγειν ov νομίζουσι, 1. c. adver ἮΝ Schol. His

Thronus at Amykle (Pausan. ἕ i. 18, 4). duced him as a wonder to mortal men” schylus (Sept. Theb, 611) seems to (see Antimach. Frag. 16, p. 102: Epic. enter into the Théban view, doubtless Grzc. Frag. ed. Diintzer

Cuap. XIV. ’ (HE DEVOTION OF ANTIGONR. 253

which were considered essential to the repose of the dead. Un- moved by the dissuading counsel of an affectionate but timid sister, and unable to procure assistance, she determined to brave the hazard, and to bury the body with her own hands. p40, She was detected in the act ; and Kredén, though fore- and death of warned by Teiresias of the consequences, gave orders “Antgon® that she should be buried alive, as having deliberately set at naught the solemn edict of the city. His son Hemén, to whom she was engaged to be married, in vain interceded for her life. In an agony of despair he slew himself in the sepulchre to which the living Antigoné had been consigned ; and his mother Eury- diké, the wife of Kreén, inconsolable for his death, perished by her own hand. And thus the new light which seemed to be springing up over the last remaining scion of the devoted family of Gidipus, is extinguished amidst gloom and horrors—which overshadowed also the house and dynasty of Kreén.?

The other tale stands more apart from the original legend, and seems to have had its origin in the patriotic pride of the Athenians. Adrastus, unable to obtain permission from the Thébans to inter the fallen chieftains, presented himself in suppliant guise, accompanied by their disconsolate mothers, to Théseus at Eleusis. He implored the Athenian warrior to extort from the perverse Thébans that last melancholy privi- The lege which no decent or pious Greeks ever thought of Athenians — withholding, and thus to stand forth as the champion procure the of Grecian public morality in one of its most essential jptepmentot points, not less than of the rights of the subterranean chiefs. gods. The Thébans obstinately persisting in their refusal, Théseus undertook an expedition against their city, vanquished them in the field, and compelled them by force of arms to permit the sepulture of their fallen enemies. This chivalrous interposition, celebrated in one of the preserved dramas of Euripidés, formed a subject of glorious recollection to the Athenians throughout the

1Sophokl. Antigon. 581. Νῦν yap pay rudiments from the Cyclic ἐσχάτας ὑπὲρ Ῥίζας ἐτέτατο φάος ἐν Thébais or the ep (Boeckh, Oidirov δόμοις, ἄο. P Dissertation appended to his trans-

The pathetic tale here briefly lation of the Antigoné, ὁ. x. p. 146): recounted forms the subject of this see Apollodér. iii, 7, 1.

beautiful tragedy of Sophoklés, the argument of which is supposed by

Aischylus also touches upon_the heroism of Antigoné (Sept. Theb.

Boeckh to have been borrowed in its 984)

254 LEGENDS OF THEBES, Part I.

historical age. Their orators dwelt upon it in terms of animated panegyric ; and it seems to have been accepted as a real fact of the past time, with not less implicit conviction than the battle of Marathén.1 But the Thébans, though equally persuaded of the truth of the main story, dissented from the Athenian version of it, maintaining that they had given up the bodies for sepulture voluntarily and of their own accord. The tomb of the chieftains was shown near Eleusis even in the days of Pausanias.*

The defeat of the seven chiefs before Thébes was amply avenged by their sons, again under the guidance of Adrastus :—Aigialeus son of Adrastus, Thersander son of Polynikés, Alkmzén and Secondsiege AMmphilochus sons of Amphiaraiis, Diomédés son of i yee ΒᾺ Tydeus, Sthenelus son of Kapaneus, Promachus son with the of Parthenopzus, and Euryalus son of Mekistheus, Epigoni, or joined in this expedition. Though all these youthful ee rng warriors, called the Epigoni, took part in the expedi-

9 tion, the grand and prominent place appears to have been occupied by Alkmzén, son of Amphiaraiis. Assistance was given to them from Corinth and Megara, as well as from Messéné and Arcadia; while Zeus manifested his favourable dispositions by signals not to be mistaken.? At the river Glisas the Epigoni were met by the Thébans in arms, and a battle took place in which the latter were completely defeated. Laodamas, son of Eteoklés, killed Aigialeus, son of Adrastus ; but he and his army were routed and driven within the walls by the valour and energy of Alkmexén. The defeated Kadmeians consulted the prophet Teiresias, who informed them that the gods had declared for their enemies, and that there was no longer any hope of successful resistance. By his advice they sent a herald to the assailants offering to surrender the town, while they themselves conveyed away their wives and children, and fled under the command of Laodamas to the Illyrians,* upon which the Epigoni

1 Apollodér. iii. 7, 1; Eurip. Supp. Ἡμεῖς καὶ Θήβης ἕδος εἵλομεν ἑπταπύλοιο, passim; Herodot. ix. 27; Plato, Παυρότερον λαὸν ἀγαγόνθ᾽ ὑπὸ τεῖχος Menexen. c. 9; Lysias, Epitaph. c. 4; *Apevov,

Isokrat. Orat. Panegyr. p. 196, Auger. Πειθόμενοι τεράεσσι θεῶν καὶ Ζηνὸς

2 Pausan. i. 890, 2. ἀρωγῇ.

3 Homer, _ iv. 406. Sthenelus, Αὐτοὶ δὲ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν the companion of Diomédés and one of ὄλοντο. the Epigoni, says to Agamemnén,— 4 Apollodér. iii. 7, 4. Herodot. v

Ἡμεῖς τοι πατέρων μέγ᾽ ἀμείνονες εὐχό- 57—61. Pausan. ix. 6,7; 9,2 Diodér. ped” εἶναι. iv. 65—66.

Crap. XIV. SECOND EXPEDITION—THE EPIGONI. 255

entered Thébes, and established Thersander, son of Polynikés, on the throne.

Adrastus, who in the former expedition had been the single survivor amongst so many fallen companions, now Victory of found himself the only exception to the general τανε on as triumph and joy of the conquerors: he had lost his of Thébes. son Aigialeus, and the violent sorrow arising from the event prematurely cut short his life. His soft voice and persuasive eloquence were proverbial in the ancient epic.' He was wor- shipped as a hero both at Argos and at Sikyén, but with especial solemnity in the last-mentioned place, where his Herédum stood in the public agora, and where his exploits as well as his suffer- ings were celebrated periodically in lyric tragedies. Melanippus, son of Astakus, the brave defender of Thébes, who had slain both Tydeus and Mekistheus, was worshipped with no less solemnity by the Thébans.? The enmity of these two heroes rendered it impossible for both of them to be worshipped close upon the same spot. Accordingly it came to pass during the historical period, shortly after the time of the Solonian legislation at Athens, that Kleisthenés, despot of Sikyén, wishing to banish the hero Adrastus and abolish the religious solemnities Worship of celebrated in honour of the latter by the Sikyonians, Adrastus at first applied to the Delphian oracle for permission to SXYOr™ carry this banishment into effect directly and forcibly. | gaeset Ἂς Me That permission being refused, he next sent to Thébes ; an intimation that he was anxious to introduce their hero Mela- nippus into Sikyén. The Thébans willingly consented, and he assigned to the new hero a consecrated spot in the strongest and most commanding portion of the Sikyonian prytaneium. He did this (says the historian) “knowing that Adrastus would forthwith go away of his own accord ; since Melanippus was of all persons the most odious to him, as having slain both his son- in-law and his brother”. Kleisthenés moreover diverted the festivals and sacrifices which had been offered to Adrastus, to the newly-established hero Melanippus ; and the lyric tragedies from

Pindar represents Adrastus as rasti pallentis imago” meets the eye of concerned in the second expedition Aineas in the under-world (Ain. vi. 480). against Thébes (Pyth. viii. 40—58). 2 About Melanippus, see Pindar,

Ῥλῶσσαν 7 ᾿Αδρήστον er bis an Nem. x. 36. His sepulchre was shown

ἔχοι (Tyrteus, Eleg. 9,7,Schneidewin); near the Pretid gates of Thébes compare Plato, Phedr. c. 118. ‘‘Ad- (Pausan., ix. 18, 1).

256 LEGENDS OF THEBES. Part I,

the worship of Adrastus to that of Dionysus. But his dynasty did not long continue after his decease, and the Sikyonians then re-established their ancient solemnities.*

Near the Preetid gate of Thébes were seen the tombs of two combatants who had hated each other during life even more than Adrastus and Melanippus—the two brothers Eteoklés and Polynikés. Even as heroes and objects of worship, they still continued to manifest their inextinguishable hostility: those who offered sacrifices to them observed that the flame and the smoke from the two adjoining altars abhorred all communion, and flew off in directions exactly opposite. The Théban exegetes assured Pausanias of this fact. And though he did not himself witness it, yet having seen with his own eyes a miracle not very dissimilar at Pioniz in Mysia, he had no difficulty in crediting their assertion.?

Amphiaraiis, when forced into the first attack of Thébes— against his own foreknowledge and against the warnings of the gods—had enjoined his sons Alkmxén and Amphilochus not only to avenge his death upon the Thébans, but also to punish the treachery of their mother, “Eriphylé, the destroyer of her husband”.’ In obedience to this command, and having obtained

δρώμενα οὐ θεασάμενος πιστὰ ὅμως Compare MHygin.

1 This very curious and illustrative story is contained in Herodot. v. 67.

᾿Επεὶ δὲ ὁ θεὸς τοῦτο οὐ παρεδίδου, ἀπελ- θὼν ὀπίσω (Kleisthenés, returning from Delphi) ἐφρόντιζε μηχανὴν τῇ αὐτὸς ὁ "Ἄδρηστος ἀπαλλάξεται. Ὡς δὲ οἱ ἐξευρῆσθαι ἐδόκεε, πέμψας ἐς Θήβας τὰς Βοιωτίας, ἔφη θέλειν ἐπαγαγέσθαι Μελάνιππον τὸν ᾿Αστακοῦ " οἱ δὲ Θηβαῖοι τῷ or Ἔ άγετο δὲ τὸν Bakdewner ὁ Κλεισθένης, καὶ yap τοῦτο δεῖ ἀπηγή- σασθαι, ἧς ketenes ἔργα ᾿Αδρήστῳ" ὃς τόν τε ἀδέλφεον Μηκιστέα ἀπεκτόνεε, καὶ τὸν wee tere Τυδέα.

e Sikyonians (Herodotus says) τά τε δὴ ἄλλα ἐτίμων τὸν ΓΑδρηστον, καὶ πρὸς τὰ πάθεα αὐτοῦ τραγικοῖσι χόροισι ἐγέραιρον" τὸν μὲν Διόνυσον οὐ τιμέων- τες, τὸν δὲ Γλδρηστον.

Adrastus was worshipped as a hero at Megara as well as at Sikyén: the Megarians affirmed that he had died there on his way back from Thébes ausan. i. 43, 1; Dieuchidas, ap.

hol, ad Pindar. Nem. ix. 31). His house at Argos was still shown when Pausanias visited the town (ii. 23, 2).

2 Pausan. ix. 18, 8, Ta ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῖς

ὑπείληφα εἶναι. f. 68. “Et nova fraterno veniet concordia ‘umo, Quem vetus accensa separat ira ica (Ovid, Ibis, 35.) The tale was comer by Ovid from Kallimachus (Trist. v. 5, 38). δ᾽ Ἀνδροδάμαντ' Ἐριφύλην (Pindar. Nem. ix. 16). A poem Foal peo was included among the mythical composi- tions of Stésichorus: he mentioned in it that Asklépius had restored

eus to life, and that he was for that reason struck dead by thunder

from Zeus (Stésichor . Kleine, 18. p. 74). Two ies Οἱ Ἰκὲ γα φοννε once existed, 1 and Alkmein (Welcker, Griec: Tragod. i. p. 269): a few ts also remain of the Latin i and Alphesibea of Attius: Ennius and Attius both com-

posed or translated from the Greek a Latin <Alkmeén (Poet. Lat. Scenic. ed, Bothe pp. 88, 164, 198).

Cap. XIV. ALKMZON. 257

the sanction of the Delphian oracle, Alkmeén slew his mother ;! but the awful Erinnys, the avenger of matricide, inflicted on him a long and terrible punishment, depriving him of his reason, and chasing him about from place to place without the possibility of repose or peace of mind. He craved protection and cure from the god at Delphi, who required him to dedicate at the temple, as an offering, the precious necklace of Kadmus, that irresistible bribe which had originally corrupted Eriphyié.? He further intimated to the unhappy sufferer, that though the whole earth was tainted with his crime, and had become uninhabitable for him, yet there was a spot of ground which was not under the eye of the sun at the time when the matricide was committed, and where therefore Alkmeén yet might find a tranquil shelter. The promise was realised at the mouth of the river Acheléus, whose turbid stream was perpetually depositing new earth and forming additional islands, Upon one of these, near CEniade, Alkmeén settled, permanently and in peace; he became the primitive hero of Akarnania, to which his son Akarnan gave name.* The neck- lace was found among the treasures of Delphi (together with that which had been given by Aphrodité to Helen), by the Phékian plunderers who stripped the temple in the time of Philip of Macedén. The Phékian women quarrelled about these valuable ornaments. We are told that the necklace of Eriphylé was allotted to a woman of gloomy and malignant disposition, who ended by putting her husband to death; that of Helen to a beautiful but volatile wife, who abandoned her husband from

preference for a young Epirot.* ;

Alkmeén— his matri- cide and punish- ment.

1 Hyginus gives the fable briefly (£. 73; see also Asklepiadés, ap. Schol. Odyss. xi. 826). In like manner, in the case of the matricide of Orestés, Apollo not only sanctions, but. enjoins the deed: but his protection against the avenging Erinnyes is very tardy, not taking effect until after Orestés had

been long persecuted and tormented by acy es Aischyl. Eumen. 76, 197, 462).

In the Alkmeén of the latter tragic writer Theodektés, a distinction was drawn: the gods had decreed that Eriphylé should die, but not that Alkmeén should kill her (Aristot. Rhetoric. ii, 24). Astydamas altered

the story still more in his κέν τας and introduced Alkmezén as his mother ignorantly and without being aware who she was (Aristot. Poetic. c. 27). The murder of Eriphylé by her son was one of the παρειλήμμενοι μῦθοι which could not be departed from; but interpretations and qualifications were resorted to, in order revent it from shocking the softened eelings of the spectators : see the criticism of Aristotle on the Alkmeén of Euripidés (Ethic. Nicom. iii. 1, 8).

2 Ephorus ap. Athenee. vi. p. 232.

3 Thucyd. ii. 68—102.

4Athene. Lec -

258 LEGENDS OF THABES. Parr L

There were several other legends respecting the distracted Alkmeén, either appropriated or invented by the Attic tra- gedians. He went to Phégeus, king of Pséphis in Arcadia, whose daughter Arsinoé he married, giving as a nuptial present the necklace of Eriphylé. Being however unable to remain there, in consequence of the unremitting persecutions of the maternal Erinnys, he sought shelter at the residence of king Acheléus, whose daughter Kallirrhoé he made his wife, and on Fatal neck- Whose soil he obtained repose. But Kallirrhoé would ΡᾺ ul 4, not be satisfied without the possession of the necklace

‘of Eriphylé, and Alkmzén went back to Pséphis to fetch it, where Phégeus and his sons slew him. He had left twin sons, infants, with Kallirrhoé, who prayed fervently to Zeus that they might be preternaturally invested with immediate manhood, in order to revenge the murder of their father. Her prayer was granted, and her sons Amphoterus and Akarnan, having instan- taneously sprung up to manhood, proceeded into Arcadia, slew the murderers of their father, and brought away the necklace of Eriphylé, which they carried to Delphi.?

Euripidés deviated still more widely from the ancient epic, by making Alkmzén the husband of Manté, daughter of Teiresias, and the father of Amphilochus. According to the Cyclic Thébais, Manté was consigned by the victorious Epigoni as a special offering to the Delphian god: and Amphilochus was son of

1 Apollodér. iii. 7, 5—6; Pausan. 24, 4. These two authors have preserved the story of the Akarnanians and the old form of the legend, repre- senting Alkmzén as having found shelter at the abode of the person or king Acheléus, and married his daughter: Thucydides omits the per- sonality of Acheléus, and merely announces the wanderer as ot settled on certain new islands deposite: by the river.

I may remark that this is a singu- larly happy adaptation of a legend to an existing topographical fact. Gene- rally 5 ing, before any such adap- tation can be rendered plausible, the legend is of necessity much transformed; here it is taken exactly as it stands, and still fits on with great precision.

Ephorus recounted the whole sequence of events as so much political history, divesting it altogether of the legendary character. zon and

Diomédés, after having taken Thébes with the other Epigoni, jointly under- took an expedition into Aitélia and Akarnania: they first punished the enemies of the old Gineus, grandfather of Diomédés, and established the latter as king in Kalydén; next they con- quered Akarnania for Alkmzén. Alk- mezon, foe invited by Agamemnén to join in the Trojan war, would not consent to do so (Ephor. ap. Strab. vii. p. 826 ; x. p. 462).

2 Apollodér. iii. 7, 7; Pausan. viii. 24, 3—4. His remarks upon the mis- chievous longing of Kallirrhoé for the necklace are curious: he ushers them in by saying, that ‘“‘many men, and still more women, are given to fall into absurd desires,” &c. He recounts it with all the bonne fot which belongs to the most assured matter of fact.

A short allusion is in Ovid’s Meta- morphoses (ix. 412).

CHap. XIV. ALKMZON. 259

Amphiaraiis, not son of Alkmzén.1 He was the eponymous hero of the town called the Amphilochian Argos, in Akarnania, on the shore of the Gulf of Ambrakia. Thucydidés tells us that he went thither on his return from the Trojan war, being dissatisfied with the state of affairs which he found at the Peloponnésian Argos? The Akarnanians were remarkable for the numerous prophets which they supplied to the rest of Greece: their heroes were naturally drawn from the great prophetic race of the Melampodids.

Thus ends the legend of the two sieges of Thébes; the greatest event, except the siege of Troy, in the ancient epic; the greatest enterprise of war, between Greeks and Greeks, during the time of those who are called the Heroes.

1Thébaid, Cycl. aig 8 Pp. 70, Πουλύποδός μοι, τέκνον, ἔχων νόον, Ap- Leutsch : Schol. Apollén. Rhod. i. 408. φίλοχ᾽ ἥρως, The following lines cited in Athenzeus Τοῖσιν ἐφαρμόζου, τῶν ἂν κατὰ δῆμον (vii. p. 317) are supposed by Boeckh, ἵκηαι. with probable reason, to be taken There were two tragedies composed from the Cyclic Thébais; a portion of py Kuripidés, under the title of the advice of Amphiaratis to his sons ᾿Αλκμαίων, ὁ διὰ Ψωφῖδος, and ᾿Αλκ- at the time of setting out on his last μαίων, ὃ διὰ Κορίνθου (Dindorf. Fragm. expedition,— Eurip. p. ΤΣ

3 Apollodér. iii, 7, 7; Thucyd. ii. 68.

260 LEGEND OF TROY. Pant [.

CHAPTER XY. LEGEND OF TROY.

WE now arrive at the capital and culminating point of the Grecian epic,—the two sieges and captures of Troy, with the destinies of the dispersed heroes, Trojan as well as Grecian, after the second and most celebrated capture and destruction of the city.

It would require a large volume to convey any tolerable idea Greatex- Of the vast extent and expansion of this interésting — πρὸ fable, first handled by so many poets, epic, lyric, and of the tale tragic, with their endless additions, transformations, cals and contradictions,—then purged and recast by his- torical inquirers, who, under colour of setting aside the exaggera- tions of the poets, introduced a new vein of prosaic invention,— lastly, moralised and allegorised by philosophers. In the present brief outline of the general field of Grecian legend, or of that which the Greeks believed to be their antiquities, the Trojan war can be regarded as only one among a large number of incidents upon which Hekatzeus and Herodotus looked back as constituting their fore-time. Taken as a special legendary event, it is indeed of wider and larger interest than any other, but it is a mistake to single it out from the rest as if it rested upon a different and more trustworthy basis. I must therefore confine myself to an abridged narrative of the current and leading facts ; and amidst the numerous contradictory statements which are to be found respecting every one of them, I know no better ground of preference than comparative antiquity, though even the oldest tales which we possess—those contained in the Iliad—evidently presuppose others of prior date,

Cuar. XV. DARDANUS—ILUs—LAOMEDON. 961

The primitive ancestor of the Trojan line of kings is Dardanus, son of Zeus, founder and eponymus of Dardania:! pardanus, in the account of later authors, Dardanus was called 80 of Zeus. the son of Zeus by Elektra, daughter of Atlas, and was further said to have come from Samothrace, or from Arcadia, or from Italy ;? but of this Homer mentions nothing. The first Dardanian town founded by him was in a lofty position on the descent of Mount Ida; for he was not yet strong enough to establish himself on the plain. But his son Erichthonius, by the favour of Zeus, became the wealthiest of mankind. His flocks and herds having multiplied, he had in his pastures three thousand mares, the offspring of some of whom, by Boreas, produced horses of preternatural swiftness. Trés, the son of Erichthonius, and the eponym of the Trojans, had three sons—Ilus, Assaracus, and the beautiful Ganymédés, whom Zeus stole away to become his cup-bearer in Olympus, giving to his father Trds, as the price of the youth, a team of immortal horses.’

From Ilus and Assaracus the Trojan and Dardanian lines diverge ; the former passing from Ilus to Laomedén, yy, Priam and Hectér; the latter from Assaracus to founder of Capys, Anchisés and AEneas. Ilus founded in the plain of Troy the holy city of Ilium; Assaracus and his descendants remained sovereigns of Dardania.*

It was under the proud Laomedon, son of Ilus, that Poseidén and Apollo underwent, by command of Zeus, a Walls of temporary servitude ; the former building the walls wre of the town, the alter tending the flocks “and herds. don. When their task was completed and the penal period had expired, they claimed the stipulated reward; but Laomedén angrily repudiated their demand, and even threatened to cut off their ears, to tie them hand and foot, and to sell them in some distant island as slaves.» He was punished for this treachery by a sea- monster, whom Poseidén sent to ravage his fields and to destroy his subjects. Laomeddén publicly offered the immortal horses

1 Tliad, xx. 215. 2 Hellanik. _ Fragm. 129, Didot ; πίη v. rd: Hellanik. Fr. 146: ae Hal. i. 50—61 ; Apollodor. iii. Apollod. ii. 5, 9 ; Schol. Hind. xviii. 486; Varro, 4 Tliad, xx. 236. ap ᾿Τδρτμ ad Virgil. Atneid, iii. 167 ; 5 lliad, vii. 451; xxi. 456. Hesiod. ephalon. Gergithius ap. Steph. Byz. ap. Schol. Lycophr. 398,

963 LEGEND OF TROY; Part th

given by Zeus to his father Trds, as a reward to any one who would destroy the monster. But an oracle declared that a virgin of noble blood must be surrendered to him, and the lot fell upon Hesioné, daughter of Laomedén himself. Héraklés, arriving at this critical moment, killed the monster by the aid of a fort built for him by Athéné and the Trojans,’ so as to rescue both the exposed maiden and the people ; but Laomedén, by a second act of perfidy, gave him mortal horses in place of the matchless animals which had been promised. Thus defrauded of his due, Héraklés equipped six ships, attacked and captured Troy and killed Laomedén,*? giving Hesioné to his friend and auxiliary Telamén, to whom she bore the celebrated archer Teukros.* <A painful sense of this expedition was preserved among the inhabitants of the historical town of Ilium, who offered no worship to Héraklés.*

Among all the sons of Laomedén, Priam’ was the only one who Priamang ad remonstrated against the refusal of the well- his off- earned guerdon of Héraklés; for which the hero kc recompensed him by placing him on the throne. Many and distinguished were his sons and daughters, as well by his wife Hekabé, daughter of Kisseus, as by other women. Among the sons were Hectér,’ Paris, Déiphobus, Helenus, Trdilus, Polités, Polydérus ; among the daughters Laodiké, Kreiisa, Polyxena, and Kassandra.

Capture of Ilium by Héraklés.

1 Tliad, xx. 145; Dionys. i. 52.

2 Tiiad, v. 640. Meneklés a σῆμ, τα Venet. ad loc.) affirmed that this expedition of Héraklés was a fiction; but Dikezarchus gave, besides, other exploits of the hero in the same

neighbourhood, at Thébé Hypoplakié ad

(Schol. Tliad. vi. 396).

3 Diodér. iv. 32—49. Compare Venet. Schol. ad Hliad. viii. 284.

4 Strabo, xiii. p. 596.

5 As Dardanus, Trés and Ilus are respectively eponyms of Dardania, Eyed and Ilium, so Priam is eponym of the acropolis Pergamum. ἹΤρίαμος is in the ALolic dialect Πέῤῥαμος (Hesy- chius): upon which Ahrens remarks, “Ceterum ex MolicA nominis i ἜΡΟΝ; Priamum non minus arcis Περγάμων eponymum esse, quam Tum urbis, Troem populi; then enim a Περίαμα natum est, « in y mutato”, (Ahrens, De Dialecto

iolica, 8, 7, p. 56; compare ibid. 28, 8, p. 150, πεῤῥ᾽ ἁπάλω.).

6 Tliad, vi. 248; xxiv. 495.

7 Hectér was affirmed, both by Stésichorus and Ibykus, to be the son of Apollo (Stésichorus, ap. Schol. Ven.

iad. xxiv. 259; Ibyci Fragm. xiv. ed. piggy ρον 53 both Euphorién (Fr. 125, Meineke) and Alexander Aitélus follow the same idea. Stési- chorus further stated that after the siege tay had carried Hekalé away into Lykia to rescue her from cap‘ivity (Pausanias, v. 27, 1): according to Euripidés, Apollo had promised t she should die in Troy 427).

By Sapphé, Hectér was given as a surname of Zeus, Ζεὺς Ἕκτωρ (Hesy- chius, v."Exropes); a prince belonging to the regal family of Chios, anterior τ a =, ἐξ να (Pa on πεν

y the Chian poet [én usan, V 8), was so called.

Oar. XV. PRIAM—THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS. 263

The birth of Paris was preceded by formidable presage ; for Hekabé dreamt that she was delivered of a firebrand, Paris—his and Priam, on consulting the soothsayers, was in- Judgment ΠΟ formed that the son about to be born would prove goddesses. fatal to him. Accordingly he directed the child to be exposed on Mount Ida; but the inauspicious kindness of the gods preserved him; and he grew up amidst the flocks and herds, active and beautiful, fair of hair and symmetrical in person, and the special favourite of Aphrodité.!

It was to this youth, in his solitary shepherd’s walk on Mount Ida, that the three goddesses Héré, Athéné and Aphrodité were conducted, in order that he might determine the dispute respect- ing their comparative beauty, which had arisen at the nuptials of Péleus and Thetis,—a dispute brought about in pursuance of the arrangement, and in accomplishment of the deep-laid designs, of Zeus. For Zeus, remarking with pain the immoderate numbers of the then existing heroic race, pitied the earth for the over- whelming burden which she was compelled to bear, and deter- mined to lighten it by exciting a destructive and long-continued war2 Paris awarded the palm of beauty to Aphrodité, who promised him in recompense the possession of Helena, wife of the Spartan Menelaus,—the daughter of Zeus and the fairest of living women. At the instance of Aphrodité, ships were built for him, and he embarked on the enterprise so fraught with eventual disaster to his native city, in spite of the menacing prophecies of his brother Helenus, and the always. neglected warnings of Kassandra.*

1 Miad, iii. 45—55; Schol. Lliad. iii. "Howes κτείνοντο, Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή.

325; Hygin. fab. 91; Apollodér. iii. 12, 5.

2 This was the motive assigned to Zeus by the old epic {ee the Cyprian Verses ae iintz. p. 12; ap. Schol. ad iad. 1. 4):—'H δὲ ἱστορία παρὰ Στασίνῳ τῷ τὰ Κύπρια πεποιηκότι εἰπόντι οὕτως "

"Hy ὅτε μύρια φύλα κατὰ χθόνα πλαζό- MEIGS. aces

+ + © © βαρυστέρνου πλάτος αἴης.

Ζεὺς δὲ ἰδὼν ἐλέησε, καὶ ἐν πυκιναῖς πραπίδεσσι

Σύνθετο κουφίσαι ἀνθρώπων παμβώτορα αἷἴαν,

Ῥιπίσας πολέμου μεγάλην ἔριν Ἰλιακοῖο,

Ὄφρα κενώσειεν θανάτῳ βάρος" οἱ δ᾽ ἐνὶ Τροίῃ

The same motive is touched upon by Eurip. Orest. 1635; Helen. 38; and seriously maintained, as it seems, by Chrysippus, ap. Plutarch. Stoic. Rep. p. 1049: but the poets do not commonly

o back further than the passion of ris for Helen (Theognis, 1232; Simo- nid. Amorg. Fragm. 6, 118).

The judgment of Paris was one of the scenes represented on the ancient chest - Kypselus at Olympia (Pausan. v. 19, 1).

3 Argument of the "Erm Κύπρια (ap. Diintzer, p. 10). These 0! Kassandra form the subject of the obscure and affected poem of Lyco- phron,

964 LEGEND oF TROY. Part ft.

Paris, on arriving at Sparta, was hospitably entertained by Carries off Menelaus as well as by Kastér and Pollux, and was ios from enabled to present the rich gifts which he had

brought to Helen. Menelaus then departed to Kréte, leaving Helen to entertain his Trojan guest—a favourable moment which was employed by Aphrodité to bring about the intrigue and the elopement. Paris carried away with him both Helen and a large sum of money belonging to Menelaus—made a prosperous voyage to Troy—and arrived there safely with his prize on the third day.?

Menelaus, informed by Iris in Kréte of the perfidious return made by Paris for his hospitality, hastened home in grief and indignation to consult with his brother Agamemnon, as well as with the venerable Nestér, on the means of avenging the outrage. They made known the event to the Greek chiefs around them, among whom they found universal sympathy: Nestér, Pala- médés and others went round to solicit aid in a contemplated attack of Troy, under the command of Agamemnén, to whom each chief promised both obedience and unwearied exertion until Helen should be recovered.* Ten years were spent in Expedition equipping the expedition. The goddesses Héré and Qf the to Athéré, incensed at the preference given by Paris to recover hes Aphrodité, and animated by steady attachment to

1 According to the rian Verses, Helena was ἈΝ ΡΣ Zeus by

well as of the abduction of Helen, is several times mentioned in the Lliad

Nemesis, who had in vain tried to evade the connexion (Athenz. viii. 334). Hesiod (Schol. Pindar. Nem. x. 150) represented her as daughter of Oceanus and Téthys, an oceanic nymph: Sappho (Fragm. 17, Schneidewin), i a 33, 2 Apollodérus (iii. 10, 7), and

okra’ com. Helen. v. ii. p. 366, Hg reconcile the pretensions of

and Nemesis to a sort of joint maternity (see Heinrichsen, De Car- minibus Cypriis, p. 45—46).

2 Herodot. ii. 117. He gives distinctly the assertion of the Cyprian Verses which contradicts the argument of the poem as it appears in Proclus 3 1, 1), according to which latter Paris is driven out of his course by a storm and captures the city of Sidén. Homer Ciliad, vi. 293) seems, however, to countenance the statement in the argument.

That Paris was guilty of robbery, as

(iii. 144; vii. 350—363), also in the argument of the Cyprian Vsrses (see ΖΕ ΒΟΌΣ]. Agam. 534).

3 The ancient epic (Schol. ad 1]. ii, 286—339) does not recognise the story of the numerous suitors of Helen, and the oath by which Tyndareus bound them all before he made the selection among them that each should swear not only to aig bg ne a even to aid in maintaining un possession to the husband whom she should choose. This story seems to have been first told by Stésichorus (see Fragm. 20, ed. Kleine; τ cepa iii. 10, .

The exact spotin w Tyn us e this Ἢ from the suitors, ear Sparta, was pointed out even in

n the time of Pausanias (iii. 20, 9).

ὕπαρ, XV. PARIS AND HELEN—THE GRECIAN ARMAMENT. 265 Argos, Sparta, and Mykéne, took an active part in the cause; and the horses of Héré were fatigued with her repeated visits to the different parts of Greece.

By such efforts a force was at length assembled at Aulis? in Beedtia, consisting of 1186 ships and more than 100,000 men,—a force outnumbering by more than ten to one anything that the Trojans themselves could oppose, and superior to the defenders of Troy even with all her allies included. It comprised heroes with their followers from the extreme points of Greece—from the north- western portions of Thessaly under Mount Olympus, as well as the western islands of Dulichium and Ithaca, and the eastern islands of Kréte and Rhodes. Agamemnén himself contributed 100 ships manned with the subjects of his kingdom Mykéne, besides furnishing 60 ships to the Arcadians, who possessed none of their own. Menelaus brought with him 60 ships, Nestér from Pylus 90, Idomeneus from Kréte and Diomédés from Argos, 80 each, Forty ships were manned by the Eleians, under four different chiefs ; the like number under Megés from Dulichium and the ᾿ Echinades, and under Thoas from Kalydén and the other Aitélian towns. Odysseus from Ithaca, and Ajax from Salamis, brought 12 ships each. The Abantes from Eubcea, under Elephénér, filled 40 vessels ; the Bceédtians under Peneleéds and Léitus, 50 ; the inhabitants of Orchomenus and Aspledén, 30; the light- armed Lokrians, under Ajax, son of Oileus,* 40; the Phdékians as many. The Athenians, under Menestheus, a chief distinguished for his skill in marshalling an army, mustered 50 ships; the Myrmidons from Phthia and Hellas, under Achilles, assembled . in 50 ships; Protesilaus from Phylaké and Pyrasus, and

Heroes from all arts of reece combined under Aga- memnon.

1Tliad iv. 27—55; xxiv. 765; Argu- ment. Carm. Cypri. e point is emphatically touched upon by Dio Chrysostom (Orat. xi. Ms 335—336) in his assault upon the old legend. Two years’ preparation—in Dictys Cret. i.16.

2 The Spartan king Agesilaus, when about to start from Greece on his expedition into Asia Minor (396 B.C.), went to Aulis personally, in order that he too might sacrifice on the spot where Agamemnén had sacrificed when he sailed for Troy (Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 4, 4).

Skylax (c. 60) notices the ἱερόν at

Aulis, and nothing else: it seems to have been like the adjoining Delium, a temple with a small village grown up around it.

Aulis is recognised as the port from which the expedition started, in the Hesiodic Works and Days (Υ. 650).

3 Tliad, ii. 128. Uschold (Geschichte des Trojanischen Kriegs, p. 9, Stutt- gart, 1836) makes the total 135,000 men,

4The Hesiodic Catalogue notices es, ς FE cre Mis a - ed etymology of his name (Fragm. 136, ed, Marktscheffel).

266 LEGEND OF TROY. Part L

Eurypylus from Ormenium, each came with 40 ships; Machaén and Podaleirius, from Trikka, with 30; Eumélus, from Phere and the lake Bebéis, with 11; and Philoktétés from Melibeea with 7; the Lapithe, under Polypeetés, son of Peirithous, filled 40 vessels ; the Ainianes and Perrhebians, under Guneus,! 92 ; and the Magnétés, under Prothous, 40; these last two were from the northernmost parts of Thessaly, near the mountains Pélion and Olympus. From Rhodes, under Tlépolemus, son of Héraklés, appeared 9 ships ; from Symé, under the comely but effeminate Nireus, 3; from Kés, Krapathus and the neighbouring islands, 30, under the orders of Pheidippus and Antiphus, sons of Thessalus and grandsons of Héraklés.?

Among this band of heroes were included the distinguished warriors Ajax and Diomédés, and the sagacious an Nestér ; while Agamemnén himself, scarcely inferior Odysseus. to either of them in prowess, brought with him a high reputation for prudence in command. But the most marked and conspicuous of all were Achilles and Odysseus ; the former a beautiful youth born of a divine mother, swift in the race, of fierce temper and irresistible might; the latter not less efficient as an ally, from his eloquence, his untiring endurance, his inexhaustible resource under difficulty, and the mixture of daring courage with deep-laid cunning which never deserted him :* the blood of the arch-deceiver Sisyphus, through an illicit connexion with his mother Antikleia, was said to flow in his veins,* and he was especially patronised and protected by the goddess Athéné. Odysseus, unwilling at first to take part in the expedition, had even simulated insanity ; but Palamédés,

Achilles d

1 Touvevs is the Heros Eponymus of According to Dictys Cretensis, all the town of Gonnus in Thessaly: the the principal heroes engaged in the duplication of the consonant and e ition were kinsmen. Pelopids shortening of the vowel belong to the (i. 14): they take an oath not to la: £olic dialect (Ahrens, De Dialect. down their arms until Helen shail Zolic. 50, 4, p. a have been recove and they receive

2See the Catalogue in the second from Agamemnén a sum of gold. book of the Iliad. There must probably 3 For the character of 1S have been a Catalogue of the Greeks Iliad, iii. 202—220; x. 247. Odyss. xiii.

in the Cyprian Verses; for a 295. i ——_ of the allies of Troy is The Philoktétés of Sophoklés carries specially noticed in the Argument of out very justly the character of the Proclus @. 12, Diintzer). Homeric Odysseus (see v. 1035)—mors

Euripidés (Iphig. Aul. 165—300) exactly than the Ajax of the same poet devotes one of the songs of the Chorus depicts it. to a partial Catalogue of the chief i ea ee Philoktét. 417, and Schol, heroes. —also ol. ad Soph. Ajac. 190,

ACHILLES—ODYSSEUS—-TELEPHUS, 967

Char. XV.

sent to Ithaca to invite him, tested the reality of his madness by placing in the furrow where Odysseus was ploughing his infant son Télemachus. Thus detected, Odysseus could not refuse to join the Achzean host, but the prophet Halithersés predicted to him that twenty years would elapse before he revisited his native land. To Achilles the gods had promised the full effulgence of heroic glory before the walls of Troy ; nor could the place be taken without both his co-operation and that of his son after him. But they had forewarned him that this brillant career would be rapidly brought to a close; and that if he desired a long life, he must remain tranquil and inglorious in his native land. In spite of the reluctance of his mother Thetis, he preferred few years with bright renown, and joined the Achzan host.2, When Nestér and Odysseus came to Phthia to invite him, both he and his intimate friend Patroklus eagerly obeyed the call.®

Agamemnén and his powerful host set sail from Aulis ; but being ignorant of the locality and the direction, they landed by mistake in Teuthrania, a part of Mysia near the river Kaikus, and began to ravage the country under the persuasion that it was the neighbourhood of Troy. Télephus, the king of the country,‘ opposed and repelled them, but was ultimately defeated and severely wounded by Achilles. The Greeks, now wna Gratin discovering their mistake, retired ; but their fleet was host mis- dispersed by a storm and driven back to Greece, ‘kes Teu- Achilles attacked and took Skyrus, and there married secs Deidamia, the daughter of Lycomédés.5 Télephus, arr: suffering from his wounds, was directed by the oracle to come to .

1 Homer, Odyss. xxiv. 115; Alschyl. Agam. 841; Sophokl. Philoktét. 1011, with the Schol. Argument of the Cypria in Heinrichsen, De Carmin. Cypr. p. 23 (the sentence is left out in Diintzer, Pp. 11).

A lost tragedy of Sophoklés, ᾽οδυσ- σεὺς Μαινόμενος, handled this subject.

Other Greek chiefs were not less reluctant than Odysseus to take part in the expedition; see the tale of Pcemandrus, forming a part of the temple legend of the Achilleium at Tanagra in Boeotia (Plutarch. Quest. Gree. p. 299).

2 Iliad, i. 352; ix. 411,

3 Tliad, xi. 782.

4Télephus was the son of Augé daughter of king Aleus of Tegea in Arcadia, by Héraklés: dae aye her romantic adventures, see the previous chapter on Arcadian legends—Strahbo’s faith in the story (xii. p. 572).

The spot called the harbour of the Acheeans, near Gryneium, was stated to be the place where Agamemnon and the chiefs took counsel whether they should attack Télephus or not (Skylax, c. 97; compare Strabo, xiv. p. 622).

5 Tliad, ix. 664; Argum. Cypr. p. 11 Diintzer ; Diktys Cret. ii. 83—4, dag

968 LEGEND oF TROY. Part t.

Greece and present himself to Achilles to be healed, by applying the scrapings of the spear with which the wound had been given : thus restored, he became the guide of the Greeks when they were prepared to renew their expedition.’

The armament was again assembled at Aulis, but the goddess Artemis, displeased with the boastful language of Agamemné6n,

Detention prolonged the duration of adverse winds, and the rine at tending chief was compelled to appease her by the Anlis— well-known sacrifice of his daughter Iphigeneia.? nonand, They then proceeded to Tenedos, from whence Iphigeneia. Odysseus and Menelaus were despatched as envoys to

Troy, to redemand Helen and the stolen property. In spite of the prudent counsels of Anténér, who received the two Grecian chiefs with friendly hospitality, the Trojans rejected the demand, and the attack was resolved upon. It was foredoomed by the gods that the Greek who first landed should perish: Protesilaus was generous enough to put himself upon this forlorn hope, and accordingly fell by the hand of Hectér.

Meanwhile the Trojans had assembled a large body of allies from various parts of Asia Minor and Thrace: Dardanians under Aneas, Lykians under Sarpédén, Mysians, Karians, Meonians, Alizonians,? Phrygians, Thracians, and Ponians.*

1Euripid. Télephus, Fragm. 26, Dindorf ; Hygin. f 101: Diktys, ii. 10. Euripidés had treated the adventure of Télephus in this lost tragedy: he gave the miraculous cure with the dust of the spear, πριστοῖσι λογχῆς θέλγεται

ῥινήμασι. Diktys softens down the em : ** Achilles cum Machaone et irio adhibentes curam eri,”

ἄς. Pliny (xxxiv. 15) gives to the rust of brass or iron a place in the list of genuine remedies.

“Longe omnino a Tiberiad Caicum : quo in loco etiam Agamemnon errasset, nisi ducem Telephum invenisset” (Cicero, Pro L. Flacco, c. 29). The portions of the Trojan legend treated in the lost epics and the tragedians, seem to have been just as familiar to Cicero as those noticed in the Iliad.

Strabo pays comparatively little attention to any portion of the Trojan war except what appears in Homer. He even goes so far as to give a reason why the Amazons did not come to the aid of Priam: they were at

aided dee Pheyeisn ped tego ai e Ty, em

i iii. 188: in Strabo, τοῖς Ἰῶσιν must be a mistake for rots Spvéiv). Strabo can hardly have and never alludes to, Arktinus, in whose poem the brave and beautiful Penthe- sileia, at the head of her Amazons, forms a marked epoch and incident of the war (Strabo, xii. 552).

2 Nothing occurs in Homer respect- ing the sacrifice of Iphigeneia (see Schol. Ven. ad Il. ix. 145).

3No portion of the Homeric Cata- logue gave more trouble to Démétrius of Sképsis and the other expositors

than these Alizonians ξ ἘΠῚ ἤν 549; xiii. p. 603): a fictitious place called Alizonium, in the on of Ida,

was got up to meet the culty (εἶτ᾽ ᾿Αλιζώνιον, τοῦτ᾽ ἤδη πεπλασμένον πρὸς τὴν τῶν ᾿Αλιζώνων ὑπόθεσιν, ἄσ., Strabo, 1. 6.).

4See the Catalogue of the Trojans (Iliad, ii. 815—877).

Crap. XV. FIRST GREEK SUCCESSES—PALAMED&S, 269

But vain was the attempt to oppose the landing of the Greeks: the Trojans were routed, and even the invulnerable

Kyknus,! son of Poseidén, one of the great bulwarks cass of the of the defence, was slain by Achilles. Having driven landing

the Trojans within their walls, Achilles attacked ἜΘΟΣ ΤΟΥ͂. and stormed Lyrnéssus, Pédasus, Lesbos and other ereek to

places in the neighbourhood, twelve towns on the sea- coast, and eleven in the interior ; he drove off the oxen of Aineas and pursued the hero himself, who narrowly escaped with his life: he surprised and killed the youthful Troilus, son of Priam, and captured several of the other sons, whom he sold as prisoners into the islands of the Augean.? He acquired as his captive the fair Briséis, while Chryséis was awarded to Agamemnén : he was moreover eager to see the divine Helen, the prize and stimulus of this memorable struggle ; and Aphrodité and Thetis contrived to bring about an interview between them.®

At this period of the war the Grecian army was deprived ot Palamédés, one of its ablest chiefs. Odysseus had not forgiven the artifice by which Palamédés had detected his simu- pajamaaés lated insanity, nor was he without jealousy of a rival —his genius clever and cunning in a degree equal, if not superior, ae to himself; one who had enriched the Greeks with 4th. the invention of letters, of dice for amusement, of night-watches, as well as with other useful suggestions. According to the old Cyprian epic, Palamédés was drowned while fishing, by the hands

of Odysseus and Diomédés.*

1 Kyknus was said by later writers to be king of Koléne in the Troad Strabo, xiii. p. 589—603; Aristotel.

hetoric. ii. 23). A®schylus introduced upon the Attic rae both Kyknus and

emnon in terrific ee (Aris- tophan. Ran. 957. Οὐδ᾽ ἐξέπληττον αὐτοὺς Κύκνους ἄγων καὶ Μέμνονας κωδω- νοφαλαροπώλους). Compare Welcker, Aischyl. Trilogie, p. 433.

2 Tliad, xxiv. 752; Argument of the Cypria, pp. 11, 12, Diintzer. ‘These desultory exploits of Achilles furnished much interesting romance to the later Greek poets (see Parthénius, Narrat. 21). See the neat summary of the ee events of the war in Quintus

myrn. xiv. 125—140; Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. f; 338—342. Tréilus is only once named in the

Neither in the [liad nor the

Iliad (xxiv. 253); he was mentioned also in the Cypria; but his youth, beauty, and untimely end made him an object of great interest with the ee tat Sophoklés had a tragedy ed Tréilus (Welcker, Griechische Tragéd. i. p. 124); Tov ἀνδρόπαιδα δεσπότην ἀπώλεσα, one of the Fragm. Even earlier than Sopho- klés, his beauty was celebrated by the tragedian Phrynichus (Athene. xiii. p. 564; Virgil, Aineid, i. 474; Lyco- phroén, 307).

3 Argument. Cypr. p. 11, Diintzer. Kai μετὰ ταῦτα ᾿Αχιλλεὺς Ἑλένην ἐπι- θυμεῖ θεάσασθαι, καὶ συνήγαγον αὐτοὺς εἰς τὸ αὐτὸ ᾿Αφροδίτη καὶ Θέτις. A scene which would have been highly interesting in the hands of Homer.

4 Argum. Cypr. 1, 1; Pausan. x. 31,

270 LEGEND OF TROY. Part I. Odyssey does the name of Palamédés occur; the lofty position which Odysseus occupies in both these poems—noticed with some degree of displeasure even by Pindar, who described Pala- ~ médés as the wiser man of the two—is sufficient to explain the omission. But in the more advanced period of the Greek mind, when intellectual superiority came to acquire a higher place in the public esteem as compared with military prowess, the character of Palamédés, combined with his unhappy fate, rendered him one of the most interesting personages in the Trojan legend. ZEschylus, Sophoklés and Euripidés each consecrated to him a special tragedy; but the mode of his death as described in the old epic was not suitable to Athenian ideas, and accordingly he was. represented as having been falsely accused of treason by Odysseus, who caused gold to be buried in his tent, and per- suaded Agamemnén and the Grecian chiefs that Palamédés had received it from the Trojans. He thus forfeited his life, a victim to the calumny of Odysseus and to the delusion of the leading Greeks. The philosopher Sokratés, in the last speech made to his Athenian judges, alludes with solemnity and fellow- feeling to the unjust condemnation of Palamédés, as analogous to that which he himself was about to suffer ; and his companions seem to have dwelt with satisfaction on the comparison. Pala- médés passed for an instance of the slanderous enmity and misfortune which so often wait upon superior genius.®

The concluding portion of the Cypria Welcker (Griechisch. vol. i.

seems to have passed under the title of Sar ai δεία (See . 16 and 18, p. iintzer ; Welcker, Der E isch. Gal 459 ; Eustath. ad Hom. dyss.

The allusion of Quintus Smyrnzus (v. 197) seems rather to point to the story in the Cypria, which Strabo (viii. p. 868) Pindar, not to have read.

st Nem. vii. 21; Aristidés, Onn 46, 39 2See the Fragments of the three tragedians Iadau%5ns—Aristeidés, Or. xlvi. p. 260; Philostrat. Heroic. x. Hygi n. fab. 95—105. Discourses τς against Palamédés, one by ΑἸκί- daieae and one under the name of Gorgias, are printed in Reiske’s Orr. Grec. ὁ. pp. 64, 102; Virgil, neid, ii. 82, with the ample com- mentary of Servius—Polyen. Proe. Ρ. 6

p- 180, vol. ii. p. 500) has pin χυτὴ with ingenuit the ne fragments of wg et ey to Diktys, Od d 600 ys, Odysseus an

Diomédés prevail upon Palamédés to be let down into a deep well, and time cast stones upon him (ii. 15

Xenophon (De Venatione, δ. 1) evidently ΧΘΟΟΘΌΙΘΕΝ the story in the Cypria, that sseus and Diomédés caused the death of Palamédés: but he cannot believe that two such exem- plary men were really ity of so iniquitous an act—xaxoi δὲ ἔπραξαν τὸ ἔ ΟΜ.

The marked eminence i Be πττ as Vg still bears the name of

μεν Pinto, 40, Apahoe. Socr. c. 82; Xenoph,

pol. a Memor. iv. 2, 33; Liban. pro pred P my ed. Morell, : Lucian, Dial. Mort

CuHap. XV. THE EPIC CHRONOLOGY. 271

In these expeditions the Grecian army consumed nine years, during which the subdued Trojans dared not give battle without their walls for fear of Achilles. Ten years was the fixed epical duration of the siege of Troy, just as five years was the duration of the siege of Kamikus by the Krétan armament which came to avenge the death of Minés:! ten years of preparation, ten years of siege, and ten years of wandering for Odysseus, were periods suited to the rough chronological dashes of the ancient epic, and suggesting no doubts nor difficulties with the _.

ag : F Epic Chro- original hearers. But it was otherwise when the same nology his. events came to be contemplated by the historicising *™i#sed. Greeks, who could not be satisfied without either finding or inventing satisfactory bonds of coherence between the separate events. Thucydidés tells us that the Greeks were less numerous than the poets have represented, and that being moreover very poor, they were unable to procure adequate and constant pro- visions ; hence they were compelled to disperse their army, and to employ a part of it in cultivating the Chersonese—a part in marauding expeditions over the neighbourhood. Could the whole army have been employed against Troy at once (he says), the siege would have been much more speedily and easily con. cluded.? If the great historian could permit himself thus to amend the legend in so many points, we might have imagined that a simpler course would have been to include the duration of the siege among the list of poetical exaggerations, and to _affirm that the real siege had lasted only one year instead of ten. But it seems that the ten years’ duration was so capital a feature in the ancient tale, that no critic ventured to meddle with it.

A period of comparative intermission however was now at hand for the Trojans. The gods brought about the memorable fit of anger of Achilles, under the influence of which he refused to put on his armour, and kept his Myrmidons in camp. According to the Cypria, this was the behest of Zeus, who had compassion on the Trojans: according to the Iliad, Apollo was

1 Herodot. vii. 170. Ten years is a years (Hesiod, Theogon. 636). Com- roper mythical period fora great war pare δεκάτῳ ἐνιαυτῴ (Hom. Odyss, to last: the war between the Olympic xvi. 17). gods and the Titan gods lasts ten 2 Thucyd.i.l,

972 LEGEND OF TROY. Part I.

the originating cause,! from anxiety to avenge the injury which Period his priest Chrysés had endured from Agamemnén. of the ., For a considerable time, the combats of the Greeks Dliad. against Troy were conducted without their best war- Hea by rior, and severe indeed was the humiliation which Achilles. they underwent in consequence. How the remaining Grecian chiefs vainly strove to make amends for his absence— how Hectér and the Trojans defeated and drove them to their ships—how the actual blaze of the destroying flame, applied by Hectér to the ship of Protesilaus, roused up the anxious and sympathizing Patroklus, and extorted a reluctant consent from Achilles to allow his friend and his followers to go forth and avert the last extremity of ruin—how Achilles, when Patroklus had been killed by Hector, forgetting his anger in grief for the death of his friend, re-entered the fight, drove the Trojans within their walls with immense slaughter, and satiated his revenge both upon the living and the dead Hectér—all these events have been chronicled, together with those divine dispen- sations on which most of them are made to depend, in the immortal verse of the Iliad.

Homer breaks off with the burial of Hectér, whose body has just been ransomed by the disconsolate Priam; while the lost poem of Arktinus, entitled the Athiopis, so far as we can judge from the argument still remaining of it, handled only the subse- quent events of the siege. The poem of Quintus Smyrnzus, composed about the fourth century of the Christian era, seems in its first books to coincide with the Aithiopis, in the subsequent books partly with the Ilias Minor of Leschés.?

The Trojans, dismayed by the death of Hectér, were again animated with hope by the appearance of the warlike and beautiful queen of the Amazons, Penthesileia, daughter of Arés, hitherto invincible in the field, who came to their assistance from Thrace at the head of a band of her countrywomen. She again led the besieged without the walls to encounter the Greeks in the open field : and under her auspices the latter were at first driven back, until she too was slain by the invincible arm of Achilles.

1 Homer, Iliad, i. 21. Πέρσις was treated both by Arktinus 2 Tychsen, Commentat. de Quinto and by Leschés: with the latter it Smyrnexo, § iii. c, 5-7. The Ἰλίον formed a part of the lias Minor,

THE PROWESS OF ACHILLES. 273

Car. XV.

The victor, on taking off the helmet of his fair enemy xs she lay on the ground, was profoundly affected and captivated New allies by her charms, for which he was scornfully taunted by $f ΤΟΣ τ Thersités : exasperated by this rash insult, he killed sileia. Thersités on the spot with a blow of his fist. A violent dispute among the Grecian chiefs was the result, for Diomédés, the kinsman of Thersités, warmly resented the proceeding; and Achilles was obliged to go to Lesbos, where he was purified from the act of homicide by Odysseus.!

Next arrived Memnon, son of Tithénus and Eés, the most stately of living men, with a powerful band of black yomnon— Ethiopians, to the assistance of Troy. Sallying forth ΚΠΙ͂ΟΟ Ur against the Greeks, he made great havoc among them: the brave and popular Antilochus perished by his hand, a victim to filial devotion in defence of Nestér.? Achilles at length attacked him, and for a long time the combat was doubtful between them: the prowess of Achilles and the supplication of Thetis with Zeus finally prevailed ; whilst Eds obtained for her vanquished son the consoling gift of immortality. His tomb, however,’ was shown near the Propontis, within a few miles of the mouth of the river Adsépus, and was visited annually by the birds called Memnonides, who swept it and bedewed it with water from the stream. So the traveller Pausanias was told, even in the second century after the Christian era, by the Hellespontine Greeks.

1 Argument of the Athiopis, p. 16, Diintzer ; Quint. Smyrn. lib. i.; Diktys Cret. iv. 2—3.

ΝᾺ out the road along which he ad marched. 3Argum. Aith. ut sup.; Quint. .

In the Philoktétés of Sophoklés, Thersités survives Achilles (Soph. Phil. 358—445).

2 Odyss. xi. 522, Κεῖνον δὴ κάλλιστον ἴδον, μετὰ Μέμνονα δῖον : see also Odyss. iv. 187; Pindar, Pyth. vi. 81. Aischylus (ap. Strab. xv. p. 728) con- ceives Memnoén as a Persian starting from Susa.

Ktesias gave in his history full details respecting the expedition of Memnén, sent by the king of Assyria to the relief of his dependent, Priam of Troy; all this was said to be recorded in the royal archives. affirmed that Memnén had come from Egypt (Diodér. ii. 22 ; compare iv. 77): the two stories are blended _ together in Pausanias, x. $1, 2. The Phrygians

The Egyptians p.

Smyrn. ii. 896—550; Pausan. x. 31, 1. Pindar, in praising Achilles, dwells much on his triumphs over Hectér Télephus, Memnén, and Kyknus, but never notices Penthesileia (Olymp. ii. Ἢ Nem. iii. 60; vi. 52, Isthm. v. Aischylus, in the ψΨυχοστασία, introduced Thetis and Eés, each in an attitude of supplication for her son, and Zeus weighing in his golden scales the souls of Achilles and Memnén (Schol. Ven. ad Had. viii. 70; Pollux, iv. 180; Plutarch, De Audiend. Poet. . 17). In the combat between Achilles and Memnén, represented on the chest of Kypselus at Olympia, Thetis and Eés were given each as aiding her son (Pausan. ¥, 19, 1),

274 LEGEND OF TROY. Part I

But the fate of Achilles himself was now at hand. After Deathof routing the Trojans, and chasing them into the town, Achilles. he was slain near the Skean gate by an arrow from the quiver of Paris, directed under the unerring auspices of Apollo.1 The greatest efforts were made by the Trojans to possess themselves of the body, which was however rescued and borne off to the Grecian camp by the valour of Ajax and Odysseus. Bitter was the grief of Thetis for the loss of her son ; she came into the camp with the Muses and the Néreids to mourn over him ; and when a magnificent fureral-pile had been prepared by the Greeks to burn him with every mark of honour, she stole away the body and conveyed it to a renewed and immortal life in the island of Leuké in the Euxine Sea. According to some accounts he was there blest with the nuptials and company of Helen.?

Thetis celebrated splendid funeral games in honour of her son, Fiscal and offered the unrivalled panoply, which Héphestos

cree vagal had forged and wrought for him, as a prize to the honourof most distinguished warrior in the Grecian army. ee Odysseus and Ajax became rivals for the distinction, about his when Athéné, together with some Trojan prisoners, reso who were asked from which of the two their country ee aiex had sustained greatest injury, decided in favour of emt the former. The gallant Ajax lost his senses with

grief and humiliation: in a fit of phrenzy he slew some sheep, mistaking them for the men who had wronged him, and then fell upon his own sword.®

Σκυθικᾶς μέδεις. Eustathius (ad Dionys. Periégét. 307) gives the story of his having followed Iphigeneia

1 Tliad, xxii. 860; Sophokl. Philokt 334; Virgil, Aneid, vi. 56.

2Argum. Aithiop. ut sup.; Quint. Smyrn. 151—583; Homer, Odyss. v.

810; Ovid, Metam. xiii. 284; Eurip. Androm. 1262; Pausan. iii. 19, 13. According to Diktys (iv. 11), Paris and Deiphobus entrap Achilles by the promise of an interview with Polyxena and kill him.

A minute and curious description of the island Leuké, or ᾿Αχιλλέως νῆσος, is given in Arrian (Periplus Pont. Euxin. p. 21; ap. Geogr. Min. t. 1).

The heroic or divine empire of Achilles in Scythia was recognised by Alkeus the poet (Alczi Fragm. Schneidew, Fr. 46), ᾿Αχιλλεῦ, ὃς γᾶς

a compare Antonin. Liberal.

Ibykus represented Achilles as having espoused Médea in the Elysian Field (ibyc. Fragm. 18, Schneidewin). Simonidés followed this story (ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 815).

3 Argument of Athiopis and Ilias Minor, and Fragm, 2 of the latter, pp. 17, 18, Diintz.; Quint. Smyrn. v. 120—482; Hom. Odyss. xi. 550; Pindar, Nem. vii. 26. The Ajax of Sophoklés, aie the ae eches ἰλύν:

ax an ysses in the beginning o the thirteenth book of Ovid's

Cuap, XV. DEATH OF ACHILLES—PHILOKTSTRS. 275

Odysseus now learnt from Helenus son of Priam, whom he had captured in an ambuscade,! that Troy could not be taken unless both Philoktétés, and Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, could be prevailed upon to join the besiegers. The former, having been stung in the foot by a serpent, and becoming insupportable to the Greeks from the stench of his wound, had been left at Lemnus in

‘the commencement of the expedition, and had spent ten years,’

in misery on that desolate island: but he still possessed pyjoxtatas the peerless bow and arrows of Héraklés, which were seh γοώρωρι

said to be essential to the capture of Troy. Diomédés ᾿

fetched Philoktétés from Lemnus to the Grecian camp, where he was healed by the skill of Machadén,? and took an active part against the Trojans—engaging in single combat with Paris, and killing him with one of the Hérakleian arrows. The Trojans were allowed to carry away for burial the body of this prince, the fatal cause of all their sufferings ; but not until it had been mangled by the hand of Menelaus.* Odysseus went to the island

Metamorphoses, are too well known to need special reference.

The suicide of Ajax seems to have been described in detail in the Zthiopis : compare Pindar, Isthm. iii, 51, and the Scholia ad loc., which show the attention paid by Pindar to the minute circumstances of the old epic. See Fragm. 2 of the Ἰλίον Πέρσις of Arktinus, in Diintz. p. 22, which would seem more properly to belong to the 4&thiopis. Diktys relates the suicide of Ajax, as a consequence of his un- successful competition with Odysseus, not about the arms of Achilles, but about the Palladium, after the taking of the city (v. 14).

There were, however, many different accounts of the manner in which Ajax had died, some of which are enumerated in the argument to the drama of Sophoklés. Ajax is never wounded in the Iliad: Aischylus made him invulnerable except under the arm-

- pits (see Schol. ad. Sophoc. Ajac. 833) ;

the Trojans pelted him with mud—et πὼς βαρηθείῃ ὑπὸ τοῦ πήλον, (Schol. Tliad. xiv. 404.)

1 Soph. Philokt. 604.

2 Soph. Philokt. 703. Ὦ μελέα ψυχὰ, "Ὃς μηδ᾽ οἰνοχύτον πόματος Ἥσθη δεκετῆ χρόνον, &e.

In the narrative of Diktys (ii. 47),

of Skyrus to invite Neoptolemus to the army. The untried but

Philoktétés returns from Lemnus to Troy much earlier in the war, before the death of Achilles, and without any assigned cause.

3 According to Sophoklés, Héraklés sends Asklépius to Troy to heal Philoktétés (Soph. Philokt, 1415).

The story of Philoktétés formed the subject of a tragedy by Aischylus and of another by et ag $ (both lost) as well as by Sophoklés.

4 Argument. Iliad. Minor. Diintz. . 6. Καὶ τὸν νεκρὸν ὑπὸ Μενελάου καταικισθέντα ἀνελόμενοι θάπτουσιν οἱ Τρῶες. See Quint. Smyrn. x. 240: he differs here in many respects from the arguments of the old poems as given by Proclus, both as to the incidents and as to their order in time (Diktys, iv. 20). The wounded Paris flees to Gindné, whom he had deserted in order to follow Helen, and entreats her to cure him by her skill in simples: she refuses, and permits him to die; she is afterwards stung with remorse, and hangs herself (Quint. Smyrn. x. 285—331 ; Apollodér. iii. 12, 6; Condn, Narrat. 23; see Bachet de Meziriac, Comment. sur. les Epitres d’Ovide, t. i. 456). The story of Ginéné is as old as Hellanikus and Kephalén of Gergis (see Hellan. Fragm 126, Didot*

276 LEGEND OF TROY Parr IL.

impetuous youth, gladly obeying the call, received from Odysseus his father’s armour ; while on the other hand, Eurypylus, son of Télephus, came from Mysia, as auxiliary to the Trojans, and rendered to them valuable service—turning the tide of fortune for a time against the Greeks, and killing some of their bravest chiefs, amongst whom were numbered Peneleds, and the unrivalled leech Machaén.! The exploits of Neoptolemus were numerous, worthy of the glory of his race and the renown of his father. He encountered and slew Eurypylus, together with numbers of the Mysian warriors: he routed the Trojans and drove them within their walls, from whence they never again emerged to give battle: and he was not less distinguished for good sense and persuasive diction than for forward energy in the field.”

Troy however was still impregnable so long as the Palladium, Capture of 8. Statue given by Zeus himself to Dardanus, remained gen tie in the citadel ; and great care had been taken by the wooden Trojans not only to conceal this valuable present, but —— to construct other statues so like it as to mislead any intruding robber. Nevertheless the enterprising Odysseus, having disguised his person with miserable clothing and self- inflicted injuries, found means to penetrate into the city and to convey the Palladium by stealth away. Helen alone recognised him ; but she was now anxious to return to Greeee, and even assisted Odysseus in concerting means for the capture of the town.3

To accomplish this object, one final stratagem was resorted to. By the hands of Epeius of Panopeus, and at the suggestion of Athéné, a capacious hollow wooden horse was constructed, capable

1To mark the way in which these προσάδουσι δὲ οὐδὲν ἐς τὸν Εὐρύπυλον, legendary events pervaded and became οὐδὲ ἀρχὴν ἐν τῷ ναῷ θέλουσιν ὀνομάζειν embodied in the local worship, I may αὐτὸν, οἷα ἐπιστάμενοι φονέα ὄντα Μα- mention the received practice in the χάονος (Pausan. ili, 26, 2 great temple of Asklépius (father of 23. Argument. Dliad. Minor. p. 18, Machadn) at Pergamus, even in the Diintzer. Homer, Odyss, xi. 510—520. time of Pausanias. Télephus, father Pausan. iii. 26, 7. Quint. Smyrn. vii. ote ylus, bt Paar local hero ΜΝ 553, 3 Vili. can =e Ἢ mythical king of Euthrania, in whic Argument. Iliad. or. p. 18, Pergamus was situated. In_ the Diintz.; Arktinus ap. Dionys. i hymns there sung, the poem and the 69; Homer, pean iv. 246; invocation were addressed to Télephus; Smyrn. x. 354; Virg., Ain., ii. 164, and but nothing was said in them about the 9th Exc. of Heyne on that book. Eurypylus, nor was it permitted even to Compare, with this legend about mention his name in the temple,—“‘they the Palladium, the Roman legend knew him to be slayer of m”; respecting the Ancilia (Ovid, Fasti, ἄρχονται μὲν ἀπὸ Τηλέφον τῶν ὕμνων, iii. 381).

Crap. XV NEOPTOLEMUS—THE WOODEN HORSE. 477

of containing one hundred men. In the inside of this horse, the élite of the Grecian heroes, Neoptolemus, Odysseus, Menelaus and others, concealed themselves while the entire Grecian army sailed away to Tenedos, burning their tents and pretending to have abandoned the siege. The Trojans, overjoyed to find themselves free, issued from the city and contemplated with astonishment the fabric which their enemies had left behind. They long doubted what should be done with it; and the anxious heroes from within heard the surrounding consultations, as well as the voice of Helen when she pronounced their names and counterfeited the accents of their wives! Many of the Trojans were anxious to dedicate it to the gods in the city as a token of gratitude for their deliver- ance ; but the more cautious spirits inculcated distrust of an enemy’s legacy. Laocodn, the priest of Poseidén, manifested his aversion by striking the side of the horse with his spear. The sound revealed that the horse was hollow, but the Trojans heeded not this warning of possible fraud. The unfortunate Laocodén, a victim to his own sagacity and patriotism, miserably perished before the eyes of his countrymen, together with one of his sons : two serpents being sent expressly by the gods out of the sea to destroy him. By this terrific spectacle, together with the per- fidious counsels of Sinon—a traitor whom the Greeks had left behind for the special purpose of giving false information—the ~ Trojans were induced to make a breach in their.own walls, and to drag the fatal fabric with triumph and exultation into their city.?

1 Odyss. iv. 275; Virgil, Mneid, ii, 14; Heyne, Excurs. 8. ad Aineid. ii. Stésichorus, in his Ἰλίον Πέρσις, gave the number of heroes in the wooden horse as one_ hundred (Stesichor. Fragm. 26, ed. Kleine; compare Athene. xiii. p. 610).

2 Odyss. viii. 492; xi. 522. Argument of the ᾿Ιλίονυ Πέρσις of Arktinus, p. 21. Diintz. Hygin.f.108—135. Bacchylidés and a ap. Servium ad Virgil. Aineid. ii. 201.

Both Sinon and Laocoén came originally from the old epic poem of Arktinus, ah τε Virgil may perhaps have immediately borrowed both them, and other matters in his second book, from a poem passing under the name of Pisander. (See Macrob. Satur. v. 2; Heyne, Excurs, 1. ad Ain. ii.; Welcker,

Der Episch. Cyklus, p. 97.) We cannot ge credit either to Arktinus or

isander for the masterly specimen of oratory which is put into the mouth of Sinon in the A/neid.

In Quintus Smyrneus (xii. 366), the Trojans torture and mutilate Sinon to extort from him the truth: his endurance, sustained by the inspiration of Héré, is proof against the extremity of suffering, and he adheres to his false tale. This is probably an incident of the old epic, though the

delicate taste of Virgil, and his sympathy with the a has induced him to omit it. Euphorion

ascribed the proceedings of Sinon to Odysseus: he also gave a different cause for the death of Laocoén (Fr. 85 —86, p. 55, ed. Diintz., in the Fragments

278 LEGEND OF TROY. Part IL

The destruction of Troy, according to the decree of the gods, Destruction WaS now irrevocably sealed. While the Trojans in- of Troy. dulged in a night of riotous festivity, Sinon kindled the fire-signal to the Greeks at Tenedos, loosening the bolts of the wooden horse, from out of which the enclosed heroes descended. The city, assailed both from within and from without, was thoroughly sacked and destroyed ; with the slaughter or captivity of the larger portion of its heroes as well as its people. The venerable Priam perished by the hand of Neoptolemus, having in vain sought shelter at the domestic altar of Zeus Herkeios. But his son Deiphobus, who since the death of Paris had become the husband of Helen, defended his house desperately against Odysseus and Menelaus, and sold his life dearly. After he was slain, his body was fearfully mutilated by the latter.

Thus was Troy utterly destroyed—the city, the altars and temples,? and the population. Aineas and Anténér were per- mitted to escape, with their families, having been always more favourably regarded by the Greeks than the remaining Trojans. According to one version of the story, they had betrayed the city to the Greeks: a panther’s skin had been hung over the door of Anténér’s house as a signal for the victorious besiegers to spare it Distribution i general plunder.’ In the distribution of the prin- ae Uae cipal captives, Astyanax, the infant son of Hectér, was among the cast from the top of the wall and killed, by Odysseus victors. or Neoptolemus: Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, was immolated on the tomb of Achilles, in compliance with a

of Epic Poets after Alexander the the lyric poets Sakadas and Stésichorus Great). Sinon is ἑταῖρος Ὀδυσσέως in probably added many new incidents. Pausan. x. 27, 1. ἜΣΕΙ had Herr a apy oe

1 Odyss. viii. 615; Argument of 0f the various calamitous scenes, drawn Arktings, ut sup.; Euripid. Hecub, 10m the poem of Leschés, on the walls

903; Virg. Ain. vi. 497 ; Quint. Smyrn. xiii. 35—229; Leschés ap. Pausan. x. 27, 2; Diktys, v. 12, Simonidés also represented Deiphobus as the ἀντεράστης Ἑλένης (Schol. Hom. Iliad. xiii. 517).

The night battle in the interior of Troy was described with all its fearful details both by Leschés and Arktinus: the Ἰλίον Πέρσις of the latter seems to have been a separate poem, that of the former constituted a portion of the Ilias Minor (see Welcker, Der Epische Cyklus, p. 215): the Ἰλέου Heépos by

Ibykus and =

of the lesché at Delphi, with the name written over each figure (Pausan. x.

26).

Hellanikus fixed the precise day of

the month on which the capture took

place (Hellan. Fr. 143—144), the twelfth

ΘᾺΣ of Thargelién.

Aischyl. Agamemn. 527.—

Βωμοὶ δ᾽ ἄϊστοι καὶ θεῶν ἱδρύματα,

Καὶ σπέρμα πάσης ἐξαπόλλυται χθονός. 8 ΤῊΪ symbol of treachery also

figured in the picture of Polygndétus.

A different story appears in ScholL.

Hap. XV. CAPTURE OF TROY—HELEN’S AIVTER-LIFE. 279 requisition made by the shade of the deceased hero to his country- men ;' while her sister Kassandra was presented as a prize to Agamemnén. She had sought sanctuary at the altar of Athéné, where Ajax, the son of Oileus, making a guilty attempt to seize her, had drawn both upon himself and upon the army the serious wrath of the goddess, insomuch that the Greeks could hardly be restrained from stoning him to death.? Andromaché and Helenus were both given to Neoptolemus, who, according to the Ilias Minor, carried away also Auneas as his captive.®

Helen gladly resumed her union with Menelaus: she accom- panied him back to Sparta, and lived with him there many years in comfort and dignity,* passing afterwards to a happy immor- tality in the Elysian fields. She was worshipped as Helen a goddess with her brothers the Dioskuri and her Testored to husband, having her temple, statue and altar at livesin Therapnee and elsewhere. Various examples of her ee at miraculous intervention were cited among the Greeks.’ fore ἐδ The lyric poet Stésichorus had ventured to denounce mortality. her, conjointly with her sister Klytezmnéstra, in a tone of rude and plain-spoken severity, resembling that of Euripidés and Lykophrén afterwards, but strikingly opposite to the delicacy

1Kuripid. Hecub. 88—114, and p. 20, Diintz.). Polygnétus, in the ᾿

Troad. 716; Leschés ap. Pausan. x. 25, μ᾽ ὑεῖ, ineid, iii. 322, and Servius 0c.

A romantic tale is found in Diktys zeeporeing the passion of Achilles for Polyxena (iii. 2).

2 Odyss. xi. 422, Arktinus, Argum.

. 21, Diintz, Theognis, 1232. Pausan. .15, 2; x. 26, 3; 31,1. Asan expiation of this sin of their national hero, the Lokrians sent to Ilium periodicall some of their maidens, to do meni service in the temple of Athéné (Plutarch, Ser. Numin. Vindict. p. 557, with the citation from Euphorion or ae Diintzer, Epicc. Vet. p. 1

3 Leschés, Fr. 7, Diintz. ; ap. Schol. Lycophr. 1263. Gompare’ Schol. ad 1232, for the respectful recollection of Andromaché, among the traditions of the Molossian kings, as their heroic mother, and Strabo, xiii. p. 594.

4Such is the story of the old epic (see oa a iv. 260, and the fourth book gene ; Argument of lias Minor,

penne above alluded to, followed he same tale (Pausan. x. 25, 3). |

The anger of the Greeks against Helen, and the statement that Menelaus after the ἢ pegs of Troy approached her wit revengeful purposes, but was so mollified by her surpassing beauty as to cast away his uplifted sword, belongs to the age of the tragedians (Aischyl. Agamem. 685- 1455 ; Eurip. Androm. 600—629 ; Helen. 75—120; Troad. 890—1057; compare also the fine lines in the Mneid, ii. 567—588).

Theodektés ap. Aristot. Pol. i. 2, 19 Θείων ax’ ἀμφοῖν ἔκγονον ῥιξωμάτων,

280

LEGEND OF TROY.

Part I.

and respect with which she is always handled by Homer, who never admits reproaches against her except from her own lips.! He was smitten with blindness, and made sensible of his impiety ; but having repented and composed a special poem formally re- tracting the calumny, was permitted to recover his sight. In his poem of recantation (the famous palinode now unfortunately lost) he pointedly contradicted the Homeric narrative, affirming that Helen had never been at Troy at all, and that the Trojans had carried thither nothing but her image or eidélon.? It is, probably, to the excited religious feelings of Stésichorus that we owe the

1 Euripid. Troad. 982 seg. ; Lyco-

hrén ap. Steph. Byz. v. Αἰγύς; tesichorus ap. Schol. Eurip. Orest. 239; Fragm. 9 and 10 of the Ἰλίου

Πέρσις, Schneid

Οὕνεκα Τυνδάρεως ῥέζων ἅπᾶσι θεοῖς μιᾶς λάθετ᾽ ἠπιοδώρον Κύπριδος κείνα δὲ Τυνδάρεω κούραισι χολωσαμένα Διγάμους τριγάμους τίθησι Καὶ λιπεσάνορας - « «- -

Further eee. Ἑλένη ἑκοῦσ᾽ ἄπηρε, ἄς.

He had probably contrasted her with other females carried away by force. Stésichorus also aficmed that ag ame was the daughter of Helen by Théseus, born at Argos before her marriage with Menelaus and made over to Klytemnéstra ; this tale was perpetuated by the temple of Eileithyia at Argos, which the Argeians affirmed have been erected by Helen (Pausan. ii. 22, 7). The ages ascribed by Hellanikus and other logographers (Hellan. Fr. 74) to Theseus and Helen —he fifty years of age and she a child of seven—when he carried her off to Aphidnz, can never have been the a cheng form of an ᾿ tical ome. ese ages were probably imagined in order to make the mytitical chronolo, run smoothly ; for Théseus belongs the generation before the Trojan war. But we ought always to recollect that Helen never grows old (τὴν yap φάτις ἔμμεν᾽ ayjpw—Quint. Smyr. x. 312), and that her chronology consists only with an immortal being. Servius observes (ad Zneid. ii. 601)—“‘Helenam tmmortalem fuisse indicat tempus. Nam constat fratres ejus cum Argonautis fuisse. me Seg re τς filii cum The- banis (Thebano Eteoclis et Polynicis

ewin :-

bello) dimicaverunt. Item ilorum filii contra Trojam bella gesserunt. Ergo, si immortalis Helena non fuisset, tot sine dubio seculis durare non posset.” So Xenopho after sori all eepiia of Chonte, wepeaiten ages: pu 0! eiron, says the life of Cheirdn suffices for all, he being brother of Zeus (De Venatione, c. 1).

the daughters of Tyndareus are Klytemn Helen, and Ti all open to the charge advanced by Stésichorus: see about Timandra, wife of the T te reve ὅπ ον new fragment of the Hesiodic Catalogue, recently restored by Geel (Gottling, Pref. Hesiod. p. 1xi.).

It is curious to read, in Bayle’s article Héléne, his critical discussion of the adventures ascribed to her—as if they were genuine matter of history, more or less correctly reported.

2 Plato, Republic. ix. p. 587, c. 10. ὥσπερ τὸ τῆς ᾿Ελένης εἴδωλον Στησίχορός

σι περιμάχητον γενέσθαι ἐν Τροίῃ, ἀγνοίᾳ τοῦ ἀληθοῦς.

Isokrat. Encom. Helen. t. ii. p. 370, Auger; Plato, Phedr. c. 44, p. 243 244; Max. Tyr. Diss. xi. p. 320, Davis; Conén, Narr. 18 ; Dio Chrysost. Or. xi.

. 328, Τὸν μὲν Στησίχορον ἐν τῇ ὕστερον ὠδῇ λέγειν, ὡς τὸ παράπαν οὐδὲ πλεύσειεν ἡ Ἑλένη οὐδάμοσε. Horace, Od. i. 17 ; Epod. xvii. 42.—

*‘TInfamis Helens Castor offensus vicem Fraterque magni Castoris, victi Adempta vati reddidere lumina.

Pausan. iii. 19, 5. Virgil, surveying the war from the point of view of the Trojans, had no motive to look upon Helen with particular tenderness: Deiphobus imputes to her the basest treachery (ποῖα, vi. 511, ‘‘scelus exitiale Lacene” ; compare ii. 567).

Cuap. XV. LEGENDS ABOUT HELEN, 281

first idea of this glaring deviation from the old legend, which could never have been recommended by any considerations of poetical interest.

Other versions were afterwards started, forming a sort of com-

promise between Homer and Stésichorus,admittingthat Blindness

Helen had never really been at Troy, withoutaltogether ins poet of

denying her elopement. Such is the story of her κὸν remy

having been detained in Egypt during the whole term of the

of the siege. Paris, on his departure from Sparta, had legend Helen.

been driven thither by storms, and the Egyptian king Proteus, hearing of the grievous wrong which he had committed towards Menelaus, had sent him away from the country with severe menaces, detaining Helen until her lawful husband should come to seek her. When the Greeks reclaimed Helen from Troy, the Trojans assured them solemnly, that she neither was, nor ever had been, in the town; but the Greeks, treating this allegation as fraudulent, prosecuted the siege until their ultimate success confirmed the correctness of the statement. Menelaus did not recover Helen until, on his return from Troy, he visited Egypt. Such was the story told by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, and it appeared satisfactory to his historicising mind. “For if Helen had really been at Troy (he argues) she would certainly have been given up, even had she been mistress of Priam himself instead of Paris: the Trojan king, with all his family and all his subjects, would never knowingly have incurred utter and irre- trievable destruction for the purpose of retaining her : their misfortune was, that while they did not possess, and therefore could not restore her, they yet found it impossible to convince the Greeks that such was the fact.” Assuming the historical character of the war of Troy, the

Egyptian tale about Helen— tendency to historicise,

1 Herodot. ii. 120, οὐ γὰρ δὴ οὕτω γε φρενοβλαβὴς ἦν ὁ Πρίαμος, οὐδ᾽ οἱ ἄλλοι προσήκοντες αὐτῷ, ἄσ. The

assage is too long to cite, but is

ighly curious : not the least remark- able part is the religious colouring which he gives to the new version of the story which he is adopting,—“ the Op egg though they had not got Helen yet could not persuade the Greeks that this was the fact; for it was the divine will that they should be destroyed root.and branch, in order to make it plain to mankind that upon

great crimes the gods inflict great punishments”,

Dio Chrysostom (Or. xi. p. 383) reasons in the same way as Herodotus against the credibility of the received narrative. On the other hand, Isokratés, in extolling Helen, dwells on the calamities of the Trojan war as a test of the peerless value of the prize (Encom. Hel. p. 360, Aug.): in the view of Pindar (Olymp. xiii. 56) as well as in that of Hesiod (Opp. Di. 165), Helen is the one prize contended for.

Euripidés, in his tragedy of Helen,

282 LEGEND OF TROY. Part I.

remark of Herodotus admits of no reply; nor can we greatly wonder that he acquiesced in the tale of Helen’s Egyptian deten- tion, as a substitute for the “incredible insanity” which the genuine legend imputes to Priam and the Trojans. Pausanias, upon the same ground and by the same mode of reasoning, pro- nounced that the Trojan horse must have been in point of fact a battering-engine, because to admit the literal narrative would be to impute utter childishness to the defenders of the city. And Mr. Payne Knight rejects Helen altogether as the real cause of the Trojan war, though she may have been the pretext of it; for he thinks that neither the Greeks nor the Trojans could have been so mad and silly as to endure calamities of such magnitude “for one little woman”. Mr. Knight suggests various political causes as substitutes ; these might deserve consideration, either if any evidence could be produced to countenance them, or if the subject on which they are brought to bear could be shown to belong to the domain of history.

The return of the Grecian chiefs from Troy furnished matter hetata ot to the ancient epic hardly less copious than the siege ἮΝ Σ διὸ itself, and the more susceptible of indefinite diversity,

* inasmuch as those who had before acted in concert were now dispersed and isolated. Moreover the stormy voyages and compulsory wanderings of the heroes exactly fell in with the

common aspirations after an heroic founder, and enabled even

the most remote Hellenic settlers to connect the origin of their town with this prominent event of their ante-historical and semi- divine world. And an absence of ten years afforded room for the supposition of many domestic changes in their native abode, and many family misfortunes and misdeeds during the interval. One of these heroic “ Returns,” that of Odysseus, has been immor- talised by the verse of Homer. The hero, after a series of long- protracted suffering and expatriation, inflicted on him by the anger of Poseidén, at last reaches his native island, but finds his

recognises the detention of Helen in 1 Pausan. i. 23, 8; Payne Knight, Egypt and the presence of her εἴδωλον Prolegg. ad Homer. 6. 53. Euphorion at Troy, but he follows Stésichorus in construed the wooden horse into a denyi ing her elopement altogether,— Grecian ship called Ἵππος, “The Horse " Hermés had carried her to pdlen hit ina ρα, σὰ Fragm. 34, ap. Diintzer, cloud (Helen 35—45, 706): Von gm. ϑρένον —— P. 55).

amy De Mytho nae uripi cap. See Thucyd. i. 12; vi. 2

Leyden, 1843

ee μι, μαννα ον ὭΣ

Crap, XV. RETURN OF THE GRECIAN CHIEFS. 283

wife beset, his youthful son insulted, and his substance plundered, by a troop of insolent suitors; he is forced to appear as a wretched beggar, and to endure in his own person their scornful treatment; but finally, by the interference of Athéné coming in aid of his own courage and stratagem, he is enabled to overwhelm his enemies, to resume his family position, and to recover his property. The return of several other Grecian chiefs was the subject of an epic poem by Hagias, which is now lost, but of which a brief abstract or argument still remains: there were in antiquity various other poems of similar title and analogous matter.

As usual with the ancient epic, the multiplied sufferings of this back-voyage are traced to divine wrath, justly provoked by the sins of the Greeks; who, in the fierce exultation of a victory purchased by so many hardships, had neither respected nor even* spared the altars of the gods in Troy. Athéné, who had been their most zealous ally during the siege, was so in- Their. censed by their final recklessness, more especially by Suserines the outrage of Ajax, son of Oileus, that she actively the gods. harassed and embittered their return, in spite of every effort to appease her. The chiefs began to quarrel among themselves: their formal assembly became a scene of drunkenness; even Agamemnén and Menelaus lost their fraternal harmony, and each man acted on his own separate resolution.? Nevertheless, according to the Odyssey, Nestér, Diomédés, Neoptolemus, Idomeneus and Philoktétés, reached home speedily and safely ; Agamemnén also arrived in Peloponnésus, to perish by the hand of a treacherous wife; but Menelaus was condemned to long wanderings and to the severest privations in Egypt, Cyprus and elsewhere, before he could set foot in his native land. The Lokrian Ajax perished on the Gyrean rock.* Though exposed to a terrible storm, he had already reached this place of safety, when he indulged in the rash boast of having escaped in defiance of the gods. No sooner did Poseidén hear this language, than he

1 Suidas, v. Négros. Willner, De 4Odyss. iii, 188-196; iv. 5—87. Cyclo Epico, p. 93. Also ἃ poem The Egyptian city of Kanopus, at the ᾿Ατρειδῶν κάθοδος (Athen. vii. p. 281), mouth of the Nile, was believed to

Upon this the turn of fortune in have taken its name from the pilot of Grecian affairs depends (Aschyl. Menelaus, who had died and was Agamemn. 338; Odyss. iii. 130; buried there (Strabo, xvii. p. 801; Euripid. Troad, 69—95). Tacit. Ann. ii. 60). MeveAdios νόμος,

3Odyss. iii. 130-161; schyl. so called after Menelaus (Dio Chrysost,

bem. 650—662. xi. p. 361).

284 LEGEND OF TROY. Part I,

struck with his trident the rock which Ajax was grasping and precipitated both into the sea.1 Kalchas the soothsayer, together with Leonteus and Polypetés, proceeded by land from Troy to Kolophon.?

In respect however to these and other Grecian heroes, tales Wanderings were told different from those in the Odyssey, assign- oftheherces ing to them a long expatriation and a distant home. directions. Nestor went to Italy, where he founded Metapontum, Pisa and Hérakleia:* Philoktétés* also went to Italy, founded Petilia and Krimisa, and sent settlers to Egesta in Sicily. Neoptolemns, under the advice of Thetis, marched by land across Thrace, met with Odysseus, who had come by sea, at Maroneia, and then pursued his journey to Epirus, where he became king of the Molossians.5 Idomeneus came to Italy, and founded Uria in the Salentine peninsula. Diomédés, after wandering far and wide, went along the Italian coast into the innermost Adriatic gulf, and finally settled in Daunia, founding the cities of Argyrippa, Beneventum, Atria and Diomédeia: by the favour of Athéné he became immortal, and was worshipped as a god in many different places.6 The Lokrian followers of Ajax founded the Epizephyrian Lokri on the southernmost corner of Italy,’ besides another settlement in Libya. I have spoken in another

1 Odyss. iv. 500. The epic Νόστοι of Hagias placed this adventure of Ajax on the rocks of Kaphareus, a southern promontory of Eubcea (Argum, Νόστοι,

. 23, Diintzer). Deceptive lights were

indied on the dangerous rocks by Nauplius, the father of Palamédés, in revenge for the death of his son Bed. gr ren Ναύπλιος Πυρκαεύς, a ost tragedy ; Hygin. f. 116; Senec. Agamemn. 567).

rgument. Νόστοι, ut sup. There were monuments of Kale near Sipontum in Italy also (Strabo, vi. ap 284), as well as at Selgé in Pisidia ae τ p. 570). Ὥς ᾿ 222 ; vi. p. 264. Vellei. Poe i. ervius ad in. x. 179. He had built a temple to Athéné in the island of Keés eds (Strabo, x. p. 487). 4Strabo, vi. pp. 254, 272; Virgil. ZEn. iii. 401, and Servius ad loc. ; Lycophrén, 912.

Both the tomb of Philoktétés and the arrows of Héraklés which he had used against Troy, were for a long time

shown at Thurium (Justin, xx. 1). 5 Argument. Νόστοι, νὴ 28, Pindar, Nem. iv. 51. ‘According to Pindar, however, Neoptolemus comes from Troy by sea, misses the i d of Sa er and sails ound to the Epeirotic

em. vii. 8 ἢ ἜΣΑΝ Nem, x. 7, with the scholia. Strabo, iii. p. 150 ; v. p. 214— 215; Vi. p. 284. Stephan. Byz Apyipurma, Διομηδεία. ΑΣΙΘΕΟΟ eae buried in the Diomed lands it the Adriatic (Anthol. Gr. Brunck. i. p.

178).

The identical tri which had been gained by Diomédés, as victor in the iasiotenee at the funeral games of Patroklus, was shown at Delphi i = the time of ’Phanias, ig sae

ep uk tion, as wellas the ich m worn by — n, aon of

Antenbr ‘Athen. A neid, my xi. 265;

oe Ya ibid. Ajax, the son of Oileus, was worshipped there as a hero (Con6n, Narr, 18).

CHap. XV. MEMORIALS OF THE DISPERSED HEROES. 985

place of the compulsory exile of Teukros, who besides founding the city of Salamis in Cyprus, is said to have established some settlements in the Iberian peninsula.1 Menestheus the Athenian did the like, and also founded both Elza in Mysia and Skylletium in Italy.2, The Arcadian chief Agapénér founded Paphus in Cyprus.’ Epeius, of Panopeus in Phékis, the constructor of the Trojan horse with the aid of the goddess Athéné, settled at Lagaria near Sybaris on the coast of Italy; and the very tools which he had employed in that remarkable fabric were shown down to a late date in the temple of Athéné at Metapontum.* Temples, altars and towns were also pointed out in Asia Minor, in Samos and in Kréte, the foundation of Agamemnén or of his followers.° The inhabitants of the Grecian town of Skioné, in the Thracian peninsula called Palléné or Pelléné, accounted themselves the offspring of the Pellénians from Achea in Pelo- ponnésus, who had served under Agamemnon before Troy, and who on their return from the siege had been driven on the spot by a storm and there settled.6 The Pamphylians, on the southern coast of Asia Minor, deduced their origin from the wanderings of Amphilochus and Kalchus after the siege of Troy: the inhabi- tants of the Amphilochian Argos on the Gulf of Ambrakia revered the same Amphilochus as their founder.? The Orchomenians under Ialmenus, on quitting the conquered city, wandered or were driven to the eastern extremity of the Euxine Sea: and the

1Strabo, iii. p. 157; Isokratés, Byz. v. Adumy. Strabo, xiii. p. 605; Eyagor. Encom. p. 192; Justin. xliv. 8, xiv. p. 639. T a (Fragm., 111, Ajax, the son of Teukros, established Didot) recounted that Agamemnén a —— of Zeus, and an hereditary and his followers had possessed priesthood always held by his themselves of the larger portion of descendants (who mostly bore the Cypr

name of Ajax or Teukros), at Olbé in Kilikia (Strabo, xiy. p. 672). Teukros carried with him his Trojan captives

to Cyprus (Athene. vi, p. 256).

2 Strabo, iii. p. 140—150 ; vi. p. 261; xiii. p. 622. See the epitaphs on Teukros and

τς ome by Aristotle

(Antholog. Gr. Brunck. i. p. 179—

§ Strabo, xiv. p, 683; Pausan. viii. ; 4 Strabo, vi, p. 263; Justin, xx. 2; Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. c. 108. Also the epigram of the Rhodian Simmias called Πελεκύς (Antholog. Gr. ed. Brunck. i.

p. 210). 5 Vellei. Patercul, i. 1, Stephan.

rus. Thucyd. iv. 120. 7 Herodot. vii. 91; Thucyd. ii. 68. According to the old elegiac poet Kallinos, Kalchas himself had died at Klarus near Kolophén, after his march from Troy, but Mopsus, his rival in the —— function, had conducted his ollowers into Pamphilia and Kilikia (Strabo, xii. p. 570; xiv. p. 668). The oracle of Amphilochus at Mallus in Kilikia bore the highest character for exactness and truth-telling in the time of Pausanias, μαντεῖον ἀψευδέστατον τῶν ἐπ᾽ ἐμοῦ (Paus. i. 34. 2). Another story recognised Leontius and Poly- po as the founders of Aspendus in ilikia (Eustath. ad Iliad. ii. 138),

286 LEGEND OF TROY,

Part 1. barbarous Acheans under Mount Caucasus were supposed to have derived their first establishment from this source.1 Merionés with his Krétan followers settled at Engyion in Sicily, along with the preceding Krétans who had remained there after the Memorials invasion of Minds. The Elymians in Sicily also were of them composed of Trojans and Greeks separately driven to throughout . ‘ : ;

the Grecian the spot, who, forgetting their previous differences, ome: united in the joint settlements of Eryx and Egesta? We hear of Podaleirius both in Italy and on the coast of Karia ;% of Akamas, son of Théseus, at Amphipolis in Thrace, at Soli in Cyprus, and at Synnada in Phrygia*; of Guneus, Prothous and Eurypylus, in Kréte as well as in Libya. The obscure poem of Lycophrén enumerates many of these dispersed and expatriated heroes, whose conquest of Troy was indeed a Kadmeian victory (according to the proverbial phrase of the Greeks), wherein the sufferings of the victor were little inferior to those of the van- quished.® It was particularly among the Italian Greeks, where they were worshipped with very special solemnity, that their presence as wanderers from Troy was reported and believed.’

I pass over the numerous other tales which circulated among the ancients, illustrating the ubiquity of the Grecian and Trojan heroes as well as that of the Argonauts,—one of the most striking features in the Hellenic legendary world. Amongst them all, the most interesting, individually, is Odysseus, whose romantic Odysseus— adventures in fabulous places and among fabulous ΠΡΟ ΘΙ persons have been made familiarly known by Homer.

adventures : sass anddeath. The goddesses Kalypsé and Circé; the semi-divine

———— ee a π Σ

1 Strabo, ix. p. 416.

2 Diodér. iv. 79; Thucyd. vi. 2.

3 Stephan. Byz. v. Σύρνα; Lyco- phron, 1047.

4 Aischines, De FalsA Legat. c. 14; Strabo, xiv. p. 683; Stephan. Byz. v. Σύνναδα.

5 Lycophrén, 877—902, with Scholia; Apollodér. Fragm. 386, Heyne. There is also a long enumeration of these returning wanderers and founders of new settlements in Solinus (Polyhist.

c. 2)

6 Strabo, iii. p. 150.

7 Aristot. Mirabil. Auscult. 79, 106, 107, 109, 111.

8 Strabo, i. p. 48. After dwelling emphatically on the long yoyages of

Dionysus, Héraklés, Jasén, Odysse and Menelaus, he says, Αἰνείαν δὲ καὶ ᾿Αντήνορα καὶ Ἑ νετοὺς, καὶ ἁπλῶς τοὺς ἐκ τοῦ Τρωϊκοῦ πολέμου πλανηθέντας εἰς πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην, ἄξιον μὴ τῶν παλαιῶν ἀνθρώπων νομίσαι ; Συνέ γὰρ δὴ τοῖς τότε ΓἙλλησιν, ὁμοίως καὶ τοῖς βαρβάροις, διὰ τὸν τῆς στρατείας χρόνον, ἀποβαλεῖν τά τε ἐν οἴκῳ καὶ τῇ στρατείᾳ πορισθέντα" ὥστε μετὰ τὴν τοῦ ᾿Ιλίον καταστροφὴν τούς τε νικήσαντας ἐπὶ λήστειαν τραπέσθαι διὰ τὰς ἀπορίας, καὶ πολλῷ μᾶλλον τοὺς ἡττηθέντας καὶ περιγενομένους ἐκ τοῦ πολέμον. Καὶ δὴ καὶ πόλεις ὑπὸ τούτων κτισθῆναι λέγονται κατὰ πᾶσαν τὴν ἔξω τῆς Ἑλλάδος παραλίαν, ἔστι δ᾽ ὅπου καὶ τὴν μεσόγαιαν.

ἡ oT ss νυ

βαρ, XV. ADVENTURES OF ODYSSEUS. 287

mariners of Phzacia, whose ships are endowed with consciousness and obey without a steersman; the one-eyed Cyclépes, the gigantic Lestrygones, and the wind-ruler Molos; the Sirens who ensnare by their song, as the Lotophagi fascinate by their food—all these pictures formed integral and interesting portions of the old epic. Homer leaves Odysseus re-established in his house and family. But so marked a personage could never be permitted to remain in the tameness of domestic life: the epic poem called the Telegonia ascribed to him a subsequent series of adventures. Telegonus, his son by Circé, coming to Ithaka in search of his father, ravaged the island and killed Odysseus without knowing who he was. Bitter repentance overtook the sor for his undesigned parricide: at his prayer and by the interven- tion of his mother Circé, both Penelopé and Télemachus were made immortal: Telegonus married Penelopé, and Télemachus married Circé.?

We see by this poem that Odysseus was represented as the mythical ancestor of the Thesprotian kings, just as Neoptolemus was of the Molossian.

It has already been mentioned that Anténér and Aneas stand distinguished from the other Trojans by a dissatisfaction with Priam and a sympathy with the Greeks, which is by Sophoklés and others construed as treacherous collusion,2—a suspicion indirectly glanced at, though emphatically repelled, by the Aineas of Virgil? In the old epic of Arktinus, next in age to the Iliad and Odyssey, Aineas abandons Troy and reas and retires to Mount Ida, in terror at the miraculous his descend- death of Laocoén, before the entry of the Greeks into *” the town and the last night battle: yet Leschés, in another of the ancient epic poems, represented him as having been carried away captive by Neoptolemus.* In a remarkable passage of the Iliad,

Hellanikus seems to have adopted this retirement of neas to the strongest parts of Mount Ida, but to have reconciled it with the stories of the migration of Aineas, by saying

1The Telegonia, composed by Eugammén of Kyréné, is lost, but the Argument of it has been preserved by

‘ lus (p. 25, Diintzer; Diktys, vi. 15

5 Dionys. Hal. i a Sophokl. ap. Strab. xiii. p. 608; Livy, i. 1; Meacahon. Venat. ἵ. 16. ‘ : ee ii. ate t ἕξω rgument οὗ ᾿Ιλίον Πέρσις ; gm. 7, of Leschés, in Diintzer’s Collection, p. 19—21.

that he only remained in Ida a Tittle time, and then quitted the country acer by virtue of a convention concluded with the Greeks (Dionys, Hal. i. 47—48). Among the infinite variety of stories respecting this hero, one was, that after having effected his

288 LEGEND OF TROY.

Poseidén describes the family of Priam as having incurred the hatred of Zeus, and predicts that Aineas and his descendants shall reign over the Trojans: the race of Dardanus, beloved by Zeus more than all his other sons, would thus be preserved, since Eneas belonged to it. Accordingly, when Amneas is in imminent peril from the hands of Achilles, Poseidén specially interferes to rescue him, and even the implacable miso-Trojan goddess Héré assents to the proceeding.t These passages have been construed by various able critics to refer to a family of philo-Hellenic or semi-Hellenic Aineadz, known even in the time of the early singers of the Iliad as masters of some territory in or near the Troad, and professing to be descended from, as well as worshipping, ZEneas. In the town of Sképsis, situated in the mountainous range of Ida, about thirty miles eastward of Ilium, there existed two noble and priestly families who professed to be descended, the one from Hectér, the other from Aineas. The Sképsian critic Démétrius (in whose time both these families were

ore still to be found) informs us that Skamandrius son about of Hectdr, and Ascanius son of Aineas, were the ἐπ πτστε at archegets or heroic founders of his native city, which

had been originally situated on one of the highest ranges of Ida, and was subsequently transferred by them to the less lofty spot on which it stood in his time? In Arisbé and Gentinus there seem to have been families professing the same descent, since the same archegets were acknowledged. In

Pant Lh

settlement in Italy, he had returned to Troy and resumed the sceptre, bequeathing it at_his death to Ascanius Pica Hal. i. 53): this was a comprehensive scheme for BH oe, all the legends.

ἃ, xx. 300 oseidén speaks, respecting 4tneas— ᾿Αλλ᾽ ἄγεθ᾽, ἡ ἡμεῖς πέρ μιν ὑπ᾽ ἐκ θανάτου ἀγάγωμεν, Μήπως καὶ Κρονίδης κεχολώσεται, αἴκεν ᾿Αχιλλεὺς

Τόνδε rac algal μόριμον δέ οἱ Ear’ aré

ὍὌφρα μὴ τονε ιὸν γενεὴ καὶ ἄφαντος ὅληται

Δαρδάνον, ὃν Κρονίδης περὶ πάντων φίλατο παίδων,

Οἵ ἐθεν ἐξεγένοντο, γυναικῶν. τε θνητάων.

Ἤδη γὰρ Πριάμον γενεὴν ἤχθῃρε Κρο- νίων *

Nov δὲ δὴ Αἰνείαο βίη Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξει,

Καὶ παίδων παῖδες, τοί κεν μετόπισθε

γένωνται.

Again, 339, Poseidén tells Aineas that he tas nothing to dread from any other Greek than Achilles.

2 See O, Miiller, on the causes of the ib eh of Aneas, and his σι to Italy, in Classical Journal, vol. xxvi.

. 308; Klausen, ines und die

enaten, vol. i.

Démétrius Sk νέας ap. 607; Nicolaus Pe *Agxavia. Démétrius co: Sképsis had been the seat of 4Eneas: there was a called ineia near to it (Strabo, xiii. p. 603),

3 Steph. Bye vs é Ascanius is kin, of dope of Ἀν reeks (Conén, Narr.

Mela, i. 18). <Ascanius portus ἐν ΚΞ τις Phokea and Kymé.

Crap. XV. WORSHIP OF HECTOR AND ANEAS, 289

Ophrynium, Hectér had his consecrated edifice, while in Ilium both he and Awneas were worshipped as gods:! and it was the remarkable statement of the Lesbian Menekratés, that Aineas, “having been wronged by Paris and stripped of the sacred privileges which belonged to him, avenged himself by betraying the city, and then became one of the Greeks ”.?

One tale thus among many respecting Aineas, and that too the most ancient of all, preserved among natives of the Troad, who worshipped him as their heroic ancestor, was, that after the capture of Troy he continued in the country as king of the remaining Trojans, on friendly terms with the Greeks. But there were other tales respecting him, alike numerous and irreconcileable: the hand of destiny marked him as ppiquity of a wanderer (fato profugus) and his ubiquity is not “4s. exceeded even by that of Odysseus. We hear of him at Alnus in Thrace, in Palléné, at Aineia in the Thermaic Gulf, in Delus, at Orchomenus and Mantineia in Arcadia, in the islands of Kythéra and Zakynthus, in Leukas and Ambrakia, at Buthrotum in Epirus, on the Salentine peninsula and various other places in the southern region of Italy ; at Drepana and Segesta in Sicily, at Carthage, at Cape Palinurus, Cums, Misenum, Caieta, and finally in Latium, where he lays the first humble foundation of the mighty Rome and her empire’ And the reason why his wanderings were not continued still further was, that the oracles and the pronounced will of the gods directed him to settle in Latium. In each of these numerous places his visit was commemorated and certified by local monuments or special

1Strabo, xiii. p. 595; Lycophroén, 1208, and Sch. ; Athenagoras, Legat. 1. Inscription in Clarke’s Travels, vol. ii. Pp. 86, Οἱ Ἰλιεῖς τὸν πάτριον θεὸν Αἰνείαν.

ucian. Deor. Concil. 12. i. 111. p. 534, Hemst.

2 Menekrat. ap. Dionys. Hal. i. 48. ᾿Αχαιοὺς δὲ avin εἶχε (after the burial) καὶ ἐδόκεον τῆς στρατιῆς τὴν κεφαλὴν ἀπηράχθαι. Ὅμως δὲ τάφον αὐτῷ δαί- σαντες, ἐπολέμεον γῇ πάσῃ, ἄχρις Ἴλιος ἑάλω, Αἰνείεω ἐνδόντος. Αἰνείης γὰρ ἄτιτος ἐὼν ὑπὸ ᾿Αλεξάνδρον, καὶ ἀπὸ

ρέων ἱερῶν ἐξειργόμενος, ἀνέτρεψε

ρίαμον, ἐργασάμενος δὲ ταῦτα, εἷς ᾿Αχαιῶν ἐγεγόνει. Dionys. Halic. A. R. i. 48—54; Heyne, Excurs. 1 ad Aineid. iii. : De Ainee Erroribus, and Excurs, 1 ad

ARneid. v.; Conédn, Narr. 46; Livy, xl, 4; Stephan. Byz. Atvea, The inhabitants of Aineia in the Thermaic Gulf worshipped him with great solemnity as their heroic founder (Pausan. iii. 22,4; viii, 12, 4) The tomb of Anchisés was shown on the confines of the Arcadian Orchomenus and Mantineia (compare Stephan. Byz. vy, Κάφυαι), under the mountain called Anchisia, near a temple of Aphrodité : on the discrepancies respecting the death of Anchisés (Heyne, Excurs. 17 ad Ain. iii.) : Segesta in Sicily founded by Mneas (Cicero, Verr. iv. 33).

4 Tod δὲ μηκέτι προσωτέρω τῆς Εὐρώ- ms πλεῦσαι τὸν Τρωϊκὸν στόλον, οἵ τε χρησμοὶ. Sonn αἴτιοι, ὅθ. (Dionys,

al. i.

1—19

290 LEGEND OF TROY.

Part I

legends, particularly by temples and permanent ceremonies in honour of his mother Aphrodité, whose worship accompanied him everywhere: there were also many temples and many different tombs of Aineas himself. The vast ascendency acquired by Rome, the ardour with which all the literary Romans espoused the idea of a Trojan origin, and the fact that the Julian family recognised ineas as their gentile primary ancestor,—all contributed to give to the Roman version of this legend the preponderance over every other. The various other places, in which monuments of Aineas were found, came thus to be represented as places where he had halted for a time on his way from Troy to Latium. But though the legendary pretensions of these places were thus eclipsed in the eyes of those who constituted the literary public, the local belief was not extinguished; they claimed the hero as their permanent property, and his tomb was to them a proof that he had lived and died among them.

Anténér, who shares with AEneas the favourable sympathy of the Greeks, is said by Pindar to have gone from Troy along with Menelaus and Helen into the region of Kyréné in Libya? But according to the more current nar- rative, he placed himself at the head of a body of Eneti or Veneti from Paphlagonia, who had come as allies of Troy, and went by sea into the inner part of the Adriatic Gulf, where he conquered the neighbouring barbarians and founded the town of Patavium (the modern Padua); the Veneti in this region were said to owe their origin to his immigration. We learn further from Strabo, that Opsikellas, one of the companions of Anténér, had continued his wanderings even into Ibéria, and that he had there established a settlement bearing his name.*

Thus endeth the Trojan war, together with its sequel, the dispersion of the heroes, victors as well as vanquished. The account here given of it has been unavoidably brief and imperfect; for in a work intended to follow consecutively the real history of

Anténor.

from the Νόστοι of Lysimachus in the Scholia FB gfe still more fully in the Scholia Lycogte oi es chet & λόφος ᾿Αντηνορίδων a n

3 Lavy, Li Servius ad Aineid. i.

1 agg) ἐ Hal. i. 54. Among other paces, is tomb was shown at recynthia, in Phry (Festus v. Romam, p. 224, ed. Miiller): a curious article, which contains an assemblage

of the most contradictory statements respecting both Aneas and Latinus. Pindar, Pyth. y., and the citation

hay Strabo, i. 48; v. 212. Ovid, Fasti, ἦν. 75. 4 Strabo, iii. p. 157.

Guar. XV. TROJAN WAR ESSENTIALLY LEGENDARY. 291

the Greeks, no greater space can be allotted even to the most splendid gem of their legendary period. Indeed, although it would be easy to fill a large volume with the separate incidents which have been introduced into the ‘Trojan cycle,” the misfor- tune is that they are for the most part so contradictory as to exclude all possibility of weaving them into one connected narrative. We are compelled to select one out of the number, generally without any solid ground of preference, and then to note the variations of the rest. Noone who has not studied maje of the original documents can imagine the extent to Troy—its

. : ᾿ δ tude which this discrepancy proceeds: it covers almost and discre- every portion and fragment of the tale.? re

But though much may have been thus omitted of what the reader might expect to find in an account of the Trojan war, its genuine character has been studiously preserved, without either exaggeration or abatement. The real Trojan war is that which was recounted by Homer and the old epic poets, and continued by all the lyric and tragic composers. For the latter, though they took great liberties with the particular incidents, and introduced to some extent a new moral tone, yet worked more or less faithfully on the Homeric scale ; and even Euripidés, who departed the most widely from the feelings of the old legend, never lowered down his matter to the analogy of contemporary life. They preserved its well defined object, at once righteous and romantic, the recovery of the daughter of Zeus and sister of the Dioskuri—its mixed agencies, divine, heroic and human— the colossal force and deeds of its chief actors—its qyoian war vast magnitude and long duration, as well as the toils a which the conquerors underwent, and the Nemesis legendary— which followed upon their success. And these were is impor.

tance as an

the circumstances which, set forth in the full blaze of a - epic and tragic poetry, bestowed upon the legend its national

powerful and imperishable influence over the Hellenic ‘ith. mind. The enterprise was one comprehending all the members of the Hellenic body, of which each individually might be

1 These diversities are well set forth Achilles especially, some idea may be

in the useful Dissertation of Fuchs, formed from the fourth, fifth and sixth

De Varietate Fabularum Troicarum chapters of Ptolemy Héphestion (apud

(Cologne, 1830). Westermann, Scriptt. Mythograph. p. Of the number of romantic state- 188, &.),

ments put forth respecting Helen and

292 LEGEND OF TROY. Part I.

proud, and in which, nevertheless, those feelings of jealous and narrow patriotism, so lamentably prevalent in many of the towns, were as much as possible excluded. It supplied them with a grand and inexhaustible object of common sympathy, common faith, and common admiration ; and when occasions arose for bringing together a Pan-Hellenic force against the barbarians, the precedent of the Homeric expedition was one upon which the elevated minds of Greece could dwell with the certainty of rousing an unanimous impulse, if not always of counterworking sinister by-motives, among their audience. And the incidents comprised in the Trojan cycle were familiarised, not only to the public mind, but also to the public eye, by innumerable representations both of the sculptor and the painter,—those which were romantic and chivalrous being better adapted for this purpose, and therefore more constantly employed, than any other.

Of such events the genuine Trojan war of the old epic was for the most part composed. Though literally believed, reverentially trai of cherished, and numbered among the gigantic phzno- history for mena of the past, by the Grecian public, it is in the ble ena © eyeS of modern inquiry essentially a legend and nothing nothing more. If we are asked whether it be nota “— legend embodying portions of historical matter, and raised upon a basis of truth,—whether there may not really have occurred at the foot of the hill of Ilium a war purely human and political, without gods, without heroes, without Helen, without Amazons, without Ethiopians under the beautiful son of és, without the wooden horse, without the characteristic and expres- sive features of the old epical war,—like the mutilated trunk of Deiphobus in the under world ; if we are asked whether there was not really some such historical Trojan war as this, our answer must be, that as the possibility of it cannot be denied, so neither can the reality of it be affirmed. We possess nothing but the ancient epic itself without any independent evidence : had it been an age of records indeed, the Homeric epic in its exquisite and unsuspecting simplicity would probably never have come into existence. Whoever therefore ventures to dissect Homer, Arktinus, and Leschés, and to pick out certain portions as matters of fact, while he sets aside the rest as fiction,

Cuap. XV. HISTORICAL ILIUM. 993 must do so in full reliance on his own powers of historical divination, without any means either of proving or verifying his conclusions. Among many attempts, ancient as well as modern, to identify real objects in this historical darkness, that of Dio Chrysostom deserves attention for its extraordinary boldness, In his oration addressed to the inhabitants of [lium, and intended to demonstrate that the Trojans were not only blameless as to the origin of the war, but victorious in its issue—he

Histori- overthrows all the leading points of the Homeric nar- cising inno- Ἢ = ere vations— rative, and re-writes nearly the whole from beginning Dio Chry-

sostom,

to end: Paris is the lawful husband of Helen, Achilles is slain by Hectdér, and the Greeks retire without taking Troy, disgraced as well as baffled. Having shown without difficulty that the Iliad, if it be looked at as a history, is full of gaps, incongruities and absurdities, he proceeds to compose a more plausible narrative of his own, which he tenders as so much authentic matter of fact. The most important point, however, which his Oration brings to view is, the literal and confiding belief with which the Homeric narrative was regarded, as if it were actual history, not only by the inhabitants of [lium, but also by the general Grecian public.

The small town of Ilium, inhabited by Aolic Greeks,? and raised into importance only by the legendary rever- yistorical ence attached to it, stood upon an elevated ridge Hium. forming a spur from Mount Ida, rather more than three miles from the town and promontory of Sigeium, and about twelve stadia, or less than two miles, from the sea at its nearest point. From Sigeium and the neighbouring town of Achilleium (with its monument and temple of Achilles), to the town of Rheteium on a hill higher up the Hellespont (with its monument and chapel of Ajax called the Aianteium),3 was a distance of sixty

1 Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 810—322. _.2 Herodot. v. 122. Pausan. v. 8, 3; Vili. 12, 4. Αἰολεὺς ἐκ πόλεως Τρῴαδος, the title proclaimed at the Olympic es: like Αἰολεὺς ἀπὸ Movpivas, rom Myrina in the more southerly region of olis, as we find in the list of victors at the Charitésia, at Orchomenos in Boedtia (Corp. Inscrip.

Boeckh. No. 1583).

5 390 Pausanias, i. 35, 8, for the

legends current at Ilium respecting the vast size of the bones of Ajax in his tomb. The inhabitants aftirmed that after the shipwreck of Odysseus, the arms of Achilles, which he was carrying away with him, were washed up by the sea against the tomb ot Ajax. Pliny gives the distance at thirty stadia : modern travellers make it something more than Pliny, but considerably less than Strabo.

δὰ “LEGEND OF TROY. Part ft. stadia, or about seven English miles in the straight course by sea: in the intermediate space was a bay and an adjoining plain, comprehending the embouchure of the Skamander, and extending to the base of the ridge on which Ilium stood. This plain was the celebrated plain of Troy, in which the great Homeric battles were believed to have taken place: the portion of the bay near to Sigeium went by the name of the Naustathmon of the Acheeans (i.e. the spot where they dragged their ships ashore), and was accounted to have been the camp of Agamemnén and his vast army.?

Historical Ilium was founded, according to the questionable statement of Strabo, during the last dynasty of the Lydian kings,’ that is, at some period later than 720 B.c. Until after the days of Alexander the Great—indeed until the period of Roman preponderance—it always remained a place of incon- siderable power and importance, as we learn not only from the assertion of the geographer, but also from the fact that Achilleium, Sigeium and Rheeteium were all independent of it.? But inconsiderable as it might be, it was the only place which ever bore the venerable name immortalised by Homer. Like the Homeric Ilium, it had its temple of Athéné,* wherein she was worshipped as the presiding goddess of the town: es pon the inhabitants affirmed that Agamemnén had not asthe town altogether destroyed the town, but that it had been of Priam. re-occupied after his departure, and had never ceased to exist.» Their acropolis was called Pergamum, and in it was

, 1 Strabo, xiii. p. 596—598. Strabo distinguishes the port Ναύσταθμον, which was near to Sigeium, from the ᾿Αχαιῶν λιμήν which was more towards

νίκην, ἀναθήμασι τε κοσμῆσαι τὸ ἱερὸν καὶ προσαγορεῦσαι πόλιν, &C

Again, Καὶ τὸ Ἴλιον, ὃ νῦν ἐστὶ, κωμόπολίς τις ἦν ὅτε πρῶτον Ῥωμαῖοι

“΄

the middle of the bay between Sigeium and Rheeteium ; but we gather from his language that this distinction was not universally recogni Alexander rr at the ᾿Αχαιῶν λιμήν (Arrian, i. 11).

2 Strabo, xiii. p. 593.

3 Herodot. v. 95 (his account of the war between the Athenians and Mitylenzans about Sigeium and Achil- leium) ; Strabo, xiii. p. 593. Τὴν δὲ τῶν ᾿Ιλιέων πόλιν τὴν νῦν τέως μὲν κωμόπολιν εἶναί φασι, τὸ ἱερὸν ἔχουσαν τῆς ᾿Αθηνᾶς μικρὸν καὶ εὐτελές. ᾿Αλέξαν- Spov δὲ ἀναβάντα μετὰ τὴν ἐπὶ Τρανίκῳ

τῆς ᾿Ασίας ἐπέβησαν.

4 Besides Athéné, the Inscriptions authenticate Ζεὺς Πολιεύς at Dium oe Inscrip, Boeckh. No, 3599).

5 Strabo, xiii. p. 600. Λέγουσι δ᾽ οἱ νῦν Ἰλιεῖς καὶ τοῦτο, ὡς οὐδὲ τέλεως συνέβαινεν ἠφανίσθαι τὴν πόλιν κατὰ τὴν ἅλωσιν ὑπὸ τῶν ᾿Αχαιῶν, οὐδ᾽ ἐξηλείφθη οὐδέποτε.

The situation of Ilium (or as it is commonly, but erroneously, ed. New Ilium) appears to be pretty well ong rn a wg λον baa ἊΝ the sea nnell, e To y of Troy, Poe Dr. Clarke's Travels, vol,

il. p. 1 ‘

ὕηλρ. XV. RELICS AND MEMORIALS AT ILIUM. 295

shown the house of Priam and the altar of Zeus Herkeius where that unhappy old man had been slain. Moreover there were exhibited, in the temples, panoplies which had been worn by the Homeric heroes,’ and doubtless many other relics appre- ciated by admirers of the Iliad.

These were testimonies which few persons in those ages were inclined to question, when combined with the identity of name and general locality ; nor does it seem that any one did question them until the time of Démétrius of Sképsis. Hellanikus expressly described this [lium as being the Ilium of Homer, for which assertion Strabo (or probably Démétrius, from whom the narrative seems to be copied) imputes to him very gratuitously an undue partiality towards the inhabitants of the town.? Herodotus relates, that Xerxes in his march into Greece visited the place, went up to the Pergamum of Priam, inquired with much interest into the details of the Homeric siege, made libations to the fallen heroes, and offered to the Athéné of Ilium his magnificent sacrifice of a thousand oxen; he probably represented and believed himself to be attacking Greece as the avenger of the Priamid family. The Lacedemonian admiral Mindarus, while his fleet lay at Abydus, went personally to Ilium to offer sacrifice to Athéné, and saw from that elevated spot the battle fought between the squadron of Dorieus and the Athenians, off the shore near Rheeteium.? During the interval between the Peloponnesian

1 Xerxes passing by Adramyttium, and leaving the range of Mount Ida on his left hand, ἤϊε és τὴν ᾿Ιλιάδα γῆν ᾿Απικομένου δὲ τοῦ στρατοῦ ἐπὶ τὸν Σκάμανδρον Fo or ἃ ἐς τὸ Πριά- μου Πέργαμον ἀνέβη, ἵ, ἵμερον ἔχων θεήσα- σθαι. Θεησάμενος δὲ, καὶ πυθόμενος κείνων ἕκαστα, τῇ ᾿Αθη vat Ἰλιάδι ἔθυσε βοῦς χιλίας" χοὰς Be οἱ μάγοι τοῖσιν ἥρωσιν ἐχέαντο ree “Apo. ἡμέρῃ δὲ ἐπορεύετο, ἐν ἀριστερῇ μὲν ἀπέρ ων Ῥοιτεῖον πόλιν καὶ ὋφΦ υνεῖον καὶ Χάρδανον, ἥπερ δὴ ᾿Αβύδῳ ὅμουρός ἐστιν" ἐν δεξιῇ δὲ, Τέργιθας Tevxpovs (Herod. vii. 48).

Respecting Alexander (Arrian, i. 11), ᾿Ανελθόντα δὲ ἐς Ἴλιον, τῇ ᾿Αθηνᾷ θῦσαι τῇ Ἰλιάδι, καὶ “τὴν πανοπλίαν τὴν αὐτοῦ ἀναθεῖναι. εἰς τὸν ναὸν, καὶ καθελεῖν ἀντὶ ταύτης τῶν ἱερῶν τινα ὅπλων ἔτι ἐκ τοῦ Τρωϊκοῦ ἔργου σωζόμενα " καὶ ταῦτα λέγουσιν ὅτι οἱ ὑπασπισταὶ ἔφερον πρὸ αὐτοῦ ἐς τὰς μάχας. Θῦσαι δὲ αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ βωμοῦ τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Ἑ ρκείον λόγος

κατέχει, μῆνιν Πριάμου παραιτούμενον τῷ Νεοπτολέμου γένει, ὃ δὴ ἐς αὐτὸν

καθῆκ

The inhabitants of Tlium also showed the lyre which had belonged . to Paris (Plut. Alex. c. 15).

Chandler, in his History of Tium, ch, xxii. p. 89, seems to think that the place ca called by, Herodotus the Pergamum of Priam is different from the historical ium. But the mention of the Iliean Athéné identifies them as the same,

2 Strabo, xiii. p. 602. Ἑλλάνικος δὲ χαριζόμενος τοῖς Thao, οἷος ὁ 9 ἐκείνου μῦθος, “συνηγορεῖ τῷ τὴν αὐτὴν εἶναι πόλιν τὴν νῦν τῇ τότε. Hellanikus had written a work called Τρωϊκά.

3 Xenoph. Hellen. i. ΕἸ 10. Skylax places Ilium _ twenty- five stadia, or about three miles, from the sea (c. 94), But I do not understand how he can call Sképsis and Kebrén πόλεις ἐπὶ θαλάσσῃ.

296 LEGEND OF TROY.

Part tf.

war and the Macedonian invasion of Persia, Ilium was always garrisoned as a strong position: but its domain was still narrow, and did not extend even to the sea which was so near to it. Alexander, on crossing the Hellespont, sent his army from Sestus to Abydus, under Parmenio, and sailed personally from Elzeus in the Chersonese, after having solemnly sacrificed at the Eleuntian shrine of Prdétesilaus, to the Harbour of the Achzans between Sigeium and Rheteium. He then ascended to Ilium,

Respect sacrificed to the Iliean Athéné, and consecrated in her tbe” *° temple his own panoply, in exchange for which he Alexander.

ler. took some of the sacred arms there suspended, which were said to have been preserved from the time of the Trojan war. These arms were carried before him when he went to battle by his armour-bearers. It isa fact still more curious, and illustrative of the strong working of the old legend on an impressible and ᾿ eminently religious mind, that he also sacrificed to Priam himself on the very altar of Zeus Herkeius from which the old king was believed to have been torn by Neoptolemus. As that fierce warrior was his heroic ancestor by the maternal side, he desired to avert from himself the anger of Priam against the Achilleid race.?

Alexander made to the inhabitants of Ilium many munificent promises, which he probably would have executed,

of alexan. had he not been prevented by untimely death. One derfoun- of his successors, Antigonus,? founded the city of στὸς Alexandreia in the Tréad, between Sigeium and the

more southerly promontory of Lektum ; compressing

1 See Xenoph. Hellen. iii. i. 16; and the description of the seizure of ium, — with Sképsis and Kebrén, by the chief of mercenaries, Charidémus, in Demosthen. cont. Aristocrat. c. 38, p. 671: compare Aineas Pol. c. 24, and Polyen. iii. 14.

2 Arrian, l.c. Diksearchus eomposed a separate work respecting this sacrifice of Alexander, περὶ τῆς ἐν Ἰλίῳ θυσίας (Ath. xiii. p. 608; Dikearch. Fr. p. 114, ed. Fuhr).

Theophrastus, in noticing old and πο trees, mentions the φηγοΐ (Quercus esculus) on the tomb of Hos at Ilium, without any doubt of the authenticity of the place (De Plant. iv. 14); and his contemporary, the harper Stratonikos, intimates the same feeling, in his jest on the visit of a bad sophist

to Ilium during the festival of the Dlieia (Athene. viii. p. 351). The same may be said respecting the author of the tenth epistle ascribed to the orator Zéschinés φ. 737), in which his visit of curiosity Ilium is described—as well as about Apollénius of or the writer who describes his life and his visit to the Tréad; it is evident that he did not distrust the ἀρχαιολογία of the Ilieans, who affirmed their town to be the real Troy (Philostr. Vit. Apol. Tyan. iv, 11).

The goddess Athéné of Dlium was re- ported to have rendered valuable assist- ance to theinhabitants of crete herd they were besieged by Mithridatés, commemorated by pom tions set up in Lium (Plutarch, . 10).

3 Strabo, xiii. p. 603—607.

Cuap, XV.

RELICS AND MEMORIALS AT ILIUM.

297

into it the inhabitants of many of the neighbouring Holic towns in the region of Ida,—Sképsis, Kebrén, Hamaxitus, Koléne, and Neandria, though the inhabitants of Sképsis were subsequently permitted by Lysimachus to resume their own city and autonomous government. Ilium, however, remained without any special mark of favour until the arrival of the Romans in Asia and their triumph over Antiochus (about 190 B.c.). Though it retained its walls and its defensible position, Démétrius of Sképsis, who visited it shortly before that event, described it as being then in a state of neglect and poverty, many of the houses not even having tiled roofs. In this dilapidated condition, however, it was still

1 Livy xxxv. 43; xxxvii. 9. Polyb. vy. Τ8---Ἴ11 (passages which prove that lium was fortified and defensible about B.C. 218). Strabo, xiii. p. 594. Kat τὸ Ἴλιον δ᾽, viv ἐστι, κωμόπολίς τις ἦν, ὅτε πρῶτον Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς ᾿Ασίας ἐπέβησαν καὶ ἐξέβαλον ᾿Αντίοχον τὸν μέγαν ἐκ τῆς ἐντὸς τοῦ Ταύρον. Φησὶ

οῦὺν Δημήτριος ὃ Σκήψιος, μειράκιον ἐπιδήμησαν εἰς τὴν πόλιν κατ᾽ ἐκείνους τοὺς καιροὺς, οὕτως ὠλιγωρημένην ἰδεῖν τὴν κατοικίαν, ὥστε μηδὲ κεραμωτὰς ἔχειν τὰς στέγας. Ἡγησιάναξ δὲ, τοὺς Γαλάτας περαιωθέντας ἐκ τῆς Εὐρώπης, ἀναβῆναι μὲν εἰς τὴν πόλιν δεομένους ἐρύματος, παραχρῆμα δ᾽ ἐκλιπεῖν διὰ τὸ ἀτείχιστον '" ὕστερον δ᾽ ἐπανόρθωσιν ἔσχε πολλήν. Εἶτ᾽ ἐκάκωσαν αὐτὴν πάλιν οἱ μετὰ Φιμβρίου, &.

Here is a very clear and precise statement, attested by an eye-witness. But it is thoroughly inconsistent with the statement made by Strabo in the previous chapter, a dozen lines before, as the text now stands; for he there informs us that Lysimachus, after the death of Alexander, paid great attention to Ilium, surrounded it with a wall of forty stadia in circumference, erected a temple, and aggregated to Tlium the ancient cities around, which were in a state of decay. We know from Livy that the tion of Gergis and Rheeteium to Ilium was effected, not by Lysimachus, but by the Romans (Livy, xxxviii. 37); so that the jirst statement of Strabo is not only inconsistent with his second, but is contradicted by an independent authority.

Icannot but think that this contradiction arises from a confusion of the text in Strabo’s first passage, and that in that passage Strabo really meant to speak only of the improye-

ments brought about by Lysimachus in Alexandreia Tréas; that he never meant to ascribe to Lysimachus any improvements in Jliwm, but, on the contrary, to assign the remarkable attention paid by Lysimachus to Alexandreia Tréas, as the reason why he had neglected to fulfil the promises held out by Alexander to lium. The series of Strabo’s allegations runs thus :—1. Πίστη is ro hg better than a κώμη at the landing of Alexander ; 2. Alexander promises great additions, but never returns from Persia to accomplish them; 8. Lysimachus is absorbed in Alexandreia Tréas, into which he aggregates several of the adjoining old towns, and which flourishes under his hands; 4. Hence Ilium remained a κώμη when the Romans entered Asia, as it had been when Alexander entered.

This alteration in the text of Strabo might be effected by the simple transposition of the words as they now stand, and by omitting ὅτε καὶ, ἤδη ἐπεμελήθη, Without introducin, a single new or conjectural word, so that the passage would read thus :— Mera δὲ τὴν ἐκείνου (Alexander's) reAev- τὴν Λυσίμαχος μάλιστα τῆς ᾿Αλεξανδρείας ἐπεμελήθη, συνῳκισμένης μὲν ἤδη ὑπ᾽ ᾿Αντιγόνον, καὶ προσηγορευμένης ᾿Αντι- γόνιας, μεταβαλούσης δὲ τοὔνομα " (ἔδοξε

dp εὐσεβὲς εἶναι τοὺς ᾿Αλεξάνδρον δια- ἐοξαιμνοὺς ἐκείνου πρότερον κτίζειν ἐπωνύμους πόλεις, εἶθ᾽ ἑαυτῶν) καὶ νέων κατεσκεύασε καὶ τεῖχος περιεβάλετο ὅσον 40 σταδίων" συνῴκισε δὲ εἰς αὐτὴν τὰς κύκλῳ πόλεις ἀρχαίας, ἤδη κεκακωμένας. Καὶ καὶ συνέμεινε . . . πόλεων. If this reading be adopted, the words beginning that which stands in Tzschucke’s edition ag sect. 27, and which immediately follow the last

298 LEGEND OF TROY. Pane f. mythically recognised both by Antiochus and by the Roman The Ro- consul Livius, who went up thither to sacrifice to the

— treat Jliean Athéné. The Romans, proud of their origin Sate from Troy and A®neas, treated Ilium with signal respect. munificence ; not only granting to it immunity from

tribute, but also adding to its domain the neighbouring territories of Gergis, Rheteium and Sigeitum—and making the Ilieans masters of the whole coast! from the Persea (or continental possessions) of Tenedos (southward of Sigeium) to the boundaries of Dardanus, which had its own title to legendary reverence as the special sovereignty of Aineas. The inhabitants of Sigeium made such resistance to this loss of autonomy, that their city was destroyed by the Ilieans.

The dignity and power of Ilium being thus prodigiously enhanced, we cannot doubt that the inhabitants assumed to themselves exaggerated importance as the recognised parents of ᾿ all-conquering Rome. Partly, we may naturally suppose, from the jealousies thus aroused on the part of their neighbours at Sképsis and Alexandreia Tréas—partly from the pronounced tendency of the age (in which Kratés at Pergamus and Aristarchus at Alexandria divided between them the palm of literary celebrity) towards criticism and illustration of the old poets—a blow was

Mythical now aimed at the mythical legitimacy of Ilium. legitimacy Démétrius of Sképsis, one of the most laborious of the

first en oe Homeric critics, had composed thirty books of comment by Dime upon the Catalogue in the Iliad: Hestieea, an authoress tius of na of Alexandreia Tréas, had written on the same subject : Hestiea. both of them, well acquainted with the locality, remarked that the vast battles described in the Iliad could not be packed into the narrow space between Ilium and the Naustathmon of the Greeks: the more so, as that space, too small even as it then stood, had been considerably enlarged since the date of the Tliad by deposits at the mouth of the Skamander.? They

word πόλεων, will read quite suitably and coherently—Kat τὸ Ἴλιον δ᾽, ὃ viv ἐστι, κωμόπολίς τις ἦν, ὅτε πρῶτον Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς ᾿Ασίας ἐπέβησαν, ἄο.,

whereas with the present reading οὗ ἔστι

the passage they show a contradiction, and the whole passage is entirely confused,

iLivy, xxxviii. 39; Strabo, xiii.

. 600. Κατέσκαπται δὲ καὶ τὸ Σίγειον ὑπὸ τῶν Ἰλιέων διὰ τὴν ἀπείθειαν" ὑπ’ ἐκείνοις γὰρ ἣν ὕστερον ἡ “παραλία πᾶσα ἡ μέχρι Δαρδάνον, καὶ νῦν ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνοις

2 Strabo, xiii. 599. ἸΙαρατίθησι δὲ ὃ Δημήτριος καὶ τὴν ᾿Αλεξανδρίνην Ἕσ- τίαιαν μάρτυρα, τὴν συγγράψασαν περὶ τῆς Ὁμήρον Ἰλιάδος, πυνθανομένην, εἰ

Cuap. XV. HYPOTHESIS OF OLD AND NEW ILIUM. 999

found no difficulty in pointing out topographical incongruities and impossibilities as to the incidents in the Iliad, which they professed to remove by the startling theory that the Homeric Ilium had not occupied the site of the city so called. There was a village, called the village of the Ilieans, situated rather less than four miles from the city in the direction of Mount Ida, and further removed from the sea; here, they affirmed, the “holy Troy” had stood.

No positive proof was produced to sustain the conclusion, for Strabo expressly states that not a vestige of the ancient g Siri city remained at the Village of the Ilieans.! Butthe Old Tium, fundamental supposition was backed by a second accessory supposition, to explain how it happened that all such vestiges had disappeared. Nevertheless Strabo adopts the unsupported hypothesis of Démétrius as if it were an authenticated fact—distinguishing pointedly between Old and New Ilium, and even censuring Hellanikus for having maintained the received local faith. But I cannot find that Démétrius and Hestiza have been followed in this respect by any. other writer of ancient times excepting Strabo. Ilium still continued to be talked of and treated by every one as the genuine Homeric Troy: the eruel jests of the Roman rebel Fimbria, when he sacked the town and massacred the inhabitants—the compensation made by Sylla, and the pronounced favour of Julius Cesar and Augustus,—all prove this continued recognition of identity.? Arrian, though a native of Nicomedia, holding a high appointment in Asia Minor, and remarkable for the exactness of his topographical notices, describes the visit of Alexander to Ilium, without any suspicion

Troy, ἘΠ tinguishe

from New Πίστη.

περὶ τὴν νῦν πόλιν ὃ πόλεμος συνέστη, ἅτε γὰρ ἐκπεπορθημένων τῶν KUKA

καὶ τὸ Τρωϊκὸν : πεδίον ποῦ ἔστιν, ὃ μέταξυ τῆς πόλεως καὶ τῆς θαλάσσης ὁ ποιητὴς

ράξει" τὸ μὲν γὰρ πρὸ τῆς νῦν πόλεως ὁρώμενον, πρόχωμα εἶναι τῶν ποταμῶν, ὕστερον γεγονός.

e words ποῦ ἔστιν are introduced conjecturally by Grosskurd, the excel- lent German translator of Strabo, but they seem to me necessary to make the sense complete.

Hestieea is cited more than once in the Homeric Scholia (Schol. Venet. ad Hliad. iii, 64; Eustath. ad [liad. ii

538). 1 Strabo, xiii. p, 599. Οὐδὲν δ᾽ ἴχνος σώζεται τῆς ἀρχαίας πόλεως---εἰκότως *

πόλεων, οὐ τελέως δὲ κατεσπασμένων, οι λίθοι πάντες εἰς τὴν ἐκείνων ἀνάληψιν μετηνέχθησαν.

2 Appian, Mithridat. c. 53; Strabo, xiii. p. 594; Plutarch, Sertorius, Gy. ἘΣ" Velleius Patere, ii. 23.

The inscriptions attest Panathenaic then celebrated at Πίστη in honour of

théné by the Ilieans conjointly with various other neighbouring cities (see Corp. Inscr. Boeckh. No. 3601—3602, with Boeckh’s observations). The valuable inscription No, 3595 attests the liberality of Antiochus Soter . laa the Athéné as early as 278 B.C.

300

LEGEND OF TROY.

fart ἃ

that the place with all its relics was a mere counterfeit : Aristidés,

Strabo alone believes in Old Tlium as the real Troy— other authors continue in the old faith—the moderns follow Strabo.

1 Arrian, i. 11; Ameen ut sup.; also Aristidés, Or. 48, odiaca, p. 820 (Dindorf, p. 369). The curious Oratio xi. of Dio Chryscstom, in which he writes his new version of the Trojan πα, is addressed to the inhabitants of ium. 2The controversy, now half a century old, ting Troy and the Trojan war—between Bryant and his various opponents, Morritt, Gilbert Wakefield, the British Critic, &c., seems now nearly forgotten, and I rannot think that the pamphlets on either side would be considered as displaying much ability if published at the present day. 6 discussion was raised by the publication of Le Chevalier’s account of the plain of Troy, in which the author profe to have discovered the true site of Old Ilium (the supposed Homeric Troy), about twelve miles from the sea near Bounarbashi. Upon this account Bryant published some animadver- sions followed up by a_ second Treatise, in which he denied the historical reality of the Trojan war, and advanced the hypothesis that the tale was of Egyptian origin (Disserta- tion on the War of y, and the expedition of the Grecians as described by Homer, showing that no such expedition was ever undertaken, and that no such city of Phrygia existed, by Jacob Bryant; seemingly 1797, though there is no date in the title: page: Morritt’s reply was published in 1798). A reply from Mr. Bryant and a rejoinder from Mr. Morritt, as well as a pamphlet from G. Wakefield, ap- eared in 1799 and 1800, besides an xpostulation by the former addressed to the British Critic. Bryant, having dwelt both on the incredibilities and the inconsistencies

Dio Chrysostom, Pausanias, Appian, and Plutarch hold the same language.! But modern writers seem for the most part to have taken up the supposition from Strabo as implicitly as he took it from Démétrius. They call Ilium by the disrespectful appellation of New Tlium— while the traveller in the Tréad looks for Old Tlium as if it were the unquestionable spot where Priam had livedand moved ; the name is even formally enrolled on the best maps recently prepared of the ancient Tréad.*

of the Trojan war, as it is recounted in Grecian legend generally, nevertheless admitted that Homer a ground- work for his story, and maintained that that groundwork was Egyptian. Homer (he thinks) was an Ithacan, descended from a family originally emigrant from Egypt: the war of Tro was originally an Egyptian war, whi explains how Memnoén the Ethiopian history, which tas onigiually ᾿ς... istory, which was originally ian, Homer founded the scheme of fis

(Bryant, pp. 102, 108, 126). The "Hows Αἰγύπτιος, mentioned in the second book of the Odyssey (15), is the Egyptian hero, who affords (in his view) an evidence that the population of that island was in part derived from Egypt. No one since Mr. Bryant, I apprehend, has ever construed the passage in the same sense.

Bryant's Egyptian hypothesis is of no value ; but the negative 5 olgee of his argument, summing up the parti- culars of the Co ua: legend, and contending against its historical credibility, is not so easily put aside. Few persons will share in the zealous conviction by which Morritt tries to make it appear that the 1100 ships, the ten years of war, the large confederacy of princes from all parts of Greece, &c., have nothing but what is consonant with historical probability; difficulties being occasionally eliminated by the plea of our ignorance of the time and of the subject (Morritt, p. 7—21). Gilbert Wakefield, who maintains the historical reality of the siege with the utmost intensity, and even compares Bryant to Tom Payne (W. p. 17), is

301

Crap. XV. MYTHICAL FAITH IN ILIUM.

Strabo has here converted into geographical matter of fact an hypothesis purely gratuitous, with a view of saving the accuracy of the Homeric topography; though in all probability the locality of the pretended Old Ilium would have been found open to difficulties not less serious than those which it was introduced to obviate.’ It may be true that Démétrius and he were justified in their negative argument, so as to show that the battles described in the Iliad could not possibly have taken place if the city of Priam had stood on the hill inhabited by the Ilieans. The mythi-

But the legendary faith subsisted before, and continued

cal faith not shaken Ὁ

without abatement afterwards, notwithstanding such toposraphi-

impos-

topographical impossibilities. Hellanikus, Herodotus, sibilities. Mindarus, the guides of Xerxes, and Alexander, had not been

still more displeased with those who propound doubts, and tells us that ‘grave disputation in the midst of such darkness and uncertainty is a conflict with chimeras” (W. p. 14).

The most plausible line of argument taken by Morritt and Wakefield is, where they enforce the positions taken by Strabo, and so many other authors, ancient as well as modern, that a superstructure of fiction is to be distinguished from a basis of truth and that the latter is to be maintaine while the former is rejected (Morritt, p. 5; Wake. p. 7—8). To this Bryant replies, that ‘‘if we leave out every absurdity, we can make anything plausible: that a fable may be made consistent, and we have many romances that are very regular in the assortment of characters and circumstances : this may be seen in plays, memoirs, and novels. But this regularity and correspondence alone will not ascertain the trnth.” (Expostulation, pp, 8, 12, 13.) “‘That there are a great many other fables besides that of Troy, popula and consistent among them- selves, believed and chronologised by the Greeks, and even looked up to b them in a religious view (p. 13), whic se no one now thinks of admitting as

istory.”

Morritt, having urged the universal belief of antiquity as evidence that the Trojan war was historically real, is met by Bryant, who reminds him that the same — believed in centaurs, satyrs, nymphs, augury, aruspicy ; emer sinitaining that horses could speak, ἄς. To which Morritt replies,

‘* What has religious belief to do with

historical facts? Is not the evidence

on which our faith rests in matters of

religion totally different in all its parts

from that on which we ground our

ages in history?” (Addit. Remarks, 4

The separation between the grounds of religious and historical belief is by no means so complete as Mr. Morritt supposes, even in regard to modern times; and when we apply his position to the ancient Greeks, it will be found completely the reverse of the truth. The contemporaries of Herodotus and Thucydidés conceived their early history in the most intimate conjunc- tion with their religion.

1 ἘῸΣ example, adopting his own line of argument (not to mention those battles in which the pursuit and the flight reaches from the city to the ships and back again), it might have been urged to him, that by supposing the Homeric Troy to be four miles further off from the sea, he aggravated the difficulty of rolling the Trojan horse into the town; it was already sufficiently hard to propel this vast wooden animal full of heroes from the Greek Naustathmon to the town of lium.

The Trojan horse, with its accom- paniments Sinon and Laokodn, is one of the capitai and indispensable events: in the epic: Homer, Arktinus, Leschés Virgil, and Quintus Smyrnzus, all dwell upon it pag ese τὴς as the proximate cause of the capture. ;

The difficulties and inconsistencies of the movements ascribed to Greeks

802 LEGEND OF TROY. Part I,

shocked by them: the case of the latter is the strongest of all, because he had received the best education of his time under Aristotle—he was a passionate admirer and constant reader of the Iliad—he was moreover personally familiar with the move- ments of armies, and lived at a time when maps, which began with Anaximander, the disciple of Thalés, were at least known to all who sought instruction. Now if, notwithstanding such advantages, Alexander fully believed in the identity of Ilium, unconscious of these many and glaring topographical difficulties, much less would Homer himself, or the Homeric auditors, be likely to pay attention to them, at a period, five centuries earlier, of comparative rudeness and ignorance, when prose records as well as geographical maps were totally unknown.! The inspired poet might describe, and his hearers would listen with delight to the tale, how Hectér, pursued by Achilles, ran thrice round the city of Troy, while the trembling Trojans were all huddled into the city, not one daring to come out even at this last extremity of their beloved prince—and while the Grecian army looked on, restraining unwillingly their uplifted spears at the nod of Achilles, in order that Hectér might perish by no other hand than his ; nor were they, while absorbed by this impressive recital, disposed to measure distances or calculate topographical possibilities with

᾿ ᾿ graphy of the Trojan War, Edinburgh, 1822) that these difficulties are nowise obviated by removing [lium a few miles further from ἐμ ae ajor Rennell argues different] from the visit of Alécatalen: eniploying it to confute the hypothesis of Chevalier, who had placed the Homeric Troy at Bounarbashi, the site supposed to have been indicated by Démétrius and Strabo: “ Alexander is said to have been a

“layerpe admirer of the Iliad, and

e had an opportunity of deciding on the spot how far the topography was consistent with the narrative. Ha he been shown the site of Bounarbashi for that of Troy, he would probably have questioned the fidelity either of the historical part of the poem or his guides. It is not within credibility, that a person of so correct a judgment

poem which contained a long history of military details and other transac- tions that could not ἐάσας have had an existence. What pleasure could he receive, in contemplating as subjects of history, events which could not have happened? Yet he did admire the poem, and therefore must have found the topography consistent: that is, Bounarbashi, surely, was not shown to him for τς 8 (Rennell, Obser- vations on the Plain of Troy, p. 128.)

Major Rennell here supposes in Alexander a spirit of topographical criticism quite foreign to his real

character. We have no reason to believe that the site of Bounarbashi was shown Alexander as the Homeric Troy, or that any site was shown to him except Ilium, or what Strabo calls New Dlium. Still less reason have we to believe that any scepticism crossed his mind, or that his deep-seated faith required to be condrined by measurement of dis- nces.

΄

Cuar. XV. HISTORICAL TROAS AND THE TEUKRIANS, 903

reference to the site of the real Ilium.1 The mistake consists in applying to Homer and to the Homeric siege of Troy criticisms which would be perfectly just if brought to bear on the Athenian siege of Syracuse, as described by Thucydidés,? in the Pelopon- nesian war’—but which are not more applicable to the epic narrative than they would be to the exploits of Amadis or Orlando.

There is every reason for presuming that the Ilium visited by Xerxés and Alexander was really the “holy Ilium” present to the mind of Homer; and if so, it must have been inhabited, either by Greeks or by some anterior population, at a period earlier than that which Strabo assigns. History recognises neither Troy the city, nor Trojans, as actually existing ; but the extensive region called Tréas, or the Tréad (more properly Troias), is known both to Herodotus and to Thucydidés: it seems to include the territory westward of an imaginary line drawn from the north-east corner of the Adramyttian gulf to the Propontis at Parium, since both Antandrus, Kolénz, and the district immediately round [lium, are regarded as belonging to the Tréad.* Herodotus further notices the Teukrians of Gergis® (a township conterminous with Ilium, and lying to Historical the eastward of the road from Ilium to Abydus), ftoasand considering them as the remnant of a larger Teukrian krians. population which once resided in the country, and which had in

1 Strabo, xiii. p. 599. Οὐδ᾽ ἡ rod Ἕκτορος δὲ περιδρομὴ ἡ περὶ τὴν πόλιν ἔχει τι εὔλογον " οὐ γάρ ἐστι περίδρομος ἡ νῦν, διὰ τὴν συνεχῆ ῥάχιν " ἡ δὲ παλαιὰ ἔχει περιδρομήν.

2 Mannert (Geographie der Griechen und Rémer, Th. 6, Heft 8, Ὁ. 8, ca) 8) is confused in his account of Old and New Ilium: he represents that Alexander raised up a new spot to the dignity of having been the Homeric Tlium, which is not the fact: Alexander adhered to the received local belief. Indeed, as far as our evidence goes, no one but Démétrius, Hestizea, and Strabo appears ever to have departed from it.

3There can hardly be a more singular example of this same con- fusion, than to find elaborate military criticisms from the Emperor Pe rye upon the description of the taking of Troy in the second book of the Auneid.

Ue shows that gross faults are com-

mitted in it, when looked at from the point of view of a general (see an interesting article by Mr. G. C. Lewis, in the Classical Museum, vol. i. p. 205, ** Napoleon on the Capture of Troy ”). Having cited this criticism from the

. highest authority on the art of war,

we may find a suitable parallel in the works of distinguished publicists. The attack of Odysseus on the Ciconians (described in Homer, Odyss. ix. 39—61) is cited both by Grotius (De Jure Bell. et Pac. iii. 8, 10) and by Vattel (Droit des Gens, iii. 202) as a case in point in international law. Odysseus is con- sidered to have sinned against the rules of international law by geri them as allies of the Trojans, withou

a formal declaration of war.

4 Compare Herodot. 24—122; Thucyd. i.181. The Ἰλιὰς γῆ is a part of the Tréad.

5 Herodot, vii. 43.

heal

304 LEGEND OF TROY. Part ΐ,

very early times undertaken a vast migration from Asia into Europe To that Teukrian population he thinks that the Homeric Trojans belonged : 3 and by later writers, especially by Virgil and the other Romans, the names Teukrians and Trojans are employed as equivalents. As the name Trojans is not mentioned in any contemporary historical monument, so the name Teukrians never once occurs in the old Epic. It appears to have been first_noticed by the elegiac poet Kallinus, about 660 B.c., who connected it with an alleged immigration of Teukrians from Kréte into the region round about Ida. Others again denied this, asserting that the primitive ancestor, Teukrus, had come into the country from Attica, and that he was of indigenous origin, born from Skamander and the nymph Idea—all various manifestations of that eager thirst after an eponymous hero which never deserted the Greeks. Gergithians occur in more than one spot in AZolis, even so far southward as the neighbourhood of Kymé:* the name has no place in Homer, but he mentions Gorgythién and Kebrionés as illegitimate sons of Priam, thus giving a sort of epical recognition both to Gergis and Kebrén. As Herodotus calls the old epical Trojans by the name Teukrians, so the Attic tragedians call them Phrygians ; though the Homeric hymn to Aphrodité represents Phrygians and Trojans as completely distinct, specially noting the diversity of language ;* and in the Iliad the Phrygians are simply numbered among the allies of Troy from the far Ascania, without indication of any more intimate relationship. Nor do the tales which connect Dardanus with Samothrace and Arcadia find countenance in the Homeric poems, wherein Dardanus is the son of Zeus, having no root anywhere except in Dardania.?” The mysterious solemnities of Samothrace, afterwards so highly venerated throughout the Grecian world, date from a period much later than Homer ; and

1 Herodot. v. “rt Pa μὲν Αἰολέας Re δα is called a πάντας, ὅσοι τὴν ᾿Ιλιάδα γῆν νέμονται, & tan han. . V. "Api εἷλε δὲ Τέργιθας, τοὺς ἀπολειφδεν tae τῶν 4 Clearchus ap. ‘ithe Ὁ Ρ. 2566; ἀρχαίων Τεύκρων. 5 Ἃ

χα Τεύ Strabo, xiii. p. 589—616.

or the migration of the Teukrians 5 Homer, δα in Vener, 116.

and Mysians into Europe, see Herodot. 6 Iliad. ii. 863. Asius, the brother vii. 20; the Peonians, on the Strymén, of Hekabé, lives in Phrygia on the called themselves their descendants. banks of the Sangarius (Iliad, xvi. 71

2 Herodot. ii. 118; v. 13. 7 See Hellanik. Fragm. 129, 5

3 Strabo, xiii. p. 604; Apollodér. iii. Didot; and Kephalén Gergithius ap. 12, 4. Steph. Byz. v. ᾿Αρίσβη.

Crap. XV. #OLIC GREEKS IN THE TROAD. 805

the religious affinities of that island as well as of Kréte with the territories of Phrygia and Adolis, were certain, according to the established tendency of the Grecian mind, to beget stories of a common genealogy.

To pass from this legendary world,—an aggregate of streams distinct and heterogeneous, which do not willingly come into confluence, and cannot be forced to intermix,—into the clearer

vision afforded by Herodotus, we learn from him that ποιὸ

in the year 500 8.0. the whole coast-region from Greeksin

Dardanus southward to the promontory of Lektum the whole

(including the town of Ilium), and from Lektum gradually dolised.

eastward to Adramyttium, had been AMolised, or was occupied by Alolic Greeks—likewise the inland towns of Sképsis? and Kebrén. So that if we draw a line northward from Adra- myttium to Kyzikus on the Propontis—throughout the whole territory westward from that line, to the Hellespont and the Aigean Sea, all the considerable towns would be Hellenic. With the exception of Gergis and the Teukrian population around it, all the towns worthy of note were either Ionic or olic. A century earlier, the Teukrian population would have embraced a wider range—perhaps Sképsis and Kebrén, the latter of which places was colonised by Greeks from Kymé :? a century afterwards, during the satrapy of Pharnabazus, it appears that Gergis had become Hellenised as well as the rest. The four towns, Ilium, Gergis, Kebrén and Sképsis, all in lofty and strong positions, were distinguished each by a solemn worship and temple of Athéné, and by the recognition of that goddess as their special patroness.’

The author of the Iliad conceived the whole of this region as

1Sképsis received some colonists from the Ionic Milétus (Anaximenés ee Strabo. xiv. p. 635); but the coins of the place prove that its dialect was A®olic. See Klausen, Aineas und die Penaten, tom. i. note 180.

Arisbé also, near Abydus, seems to have been settled from Mityléné (Eustath. ad Tliad. xii. 97).

The extraordinary fertility and rich black mould of the plain around Ilium is noticed by modern travellers (see Franklin, Remarks and Observations on the Plain of Troy, London, 1800, p. 44); it is also easily worked : “fa couple

of buffaloes or oxen were sufficient to draw the plough, whereas near Con- stantinople it takes twelve or fourteen”.

2 Ephorus ap. Harpocrat. v. KeBpjva. 3 Xenoph. Hellen. i. 1, 10: iii. 1, 10 —15

One of the great motives of Dio in setting aside the Homeric narrative of the Trojan war, is to vindicate Athéné from the charge of ei. unjustly destroyed her own city of lum Wore’. Xi. p. 810: μάλιστα διὰ τὴν ᾿Αθηνᾶν ὅπως μὴ δοκῇ ἀδίκως διαφθεῖραι τὴν ἑαυτῆς πόλιν).

1—20

806 LEGEND OF TROY.

Part 1.

occupied by people not Greek,—Trojans, Dardanians, Lykians, Lelegians, Pelasgians, and Kilikians. He recognises a temple and worship of Athéné in Ilium, though the goddess is bitterly hostile to the Trojans: and Arktinus described the Palladium as the capital protection of the city. But perhaps the most remarkable feature of identity between the Homeric and the

Old date, historical Molis is the solemn and diffused worship ese ΒΕ of the Sminthian Apollo. Chrysé, Killa and Tenedos, of the and more than one place called Sminthium, maintain Xone? of the surname and invoke the protection of that god Sminthius.

during later times, just as they are emphatically described to do by Homer.?

When it is said that the Post-Homeric Greeks gradually Hellenised this entire region, we are not to understand that the whole previous population either retired or was destroyed. The Greeks settled in the leading and considerable towns, which enabled them both to protect one another and to gratify their predominant tastes. Partly by foree—but greatly also by that superior activity, and power of assimilating foreign ways of thought to their own, which distinguished them from the beginning—they invested all the public features and management of the town with an Hellenic air, distributed all about it their gods, their heroes and their legends, and rendered their language the medium of public administration, religious songs and addresses to the gods, and generally for communications wherein any number of persons were concerned. But two remarks are here to be made: first, in doing this they could not avoid taking to themselves more or less of that which belonged to the parties

1Strabo, x. p. 473, xiii. p. 604— the emperor Julian (Ammian. Mar- 605. Polemon. . 81, p. 63, ed. cellin. xxii. 8). Com Menander eller. (the Rhetor) περὶ ᾿Επιδεικτικῶν, iv. 14;

Polemon was a native of Πίστη, and had written a periegesis of the place kia 200 B.c., therefore earlier than

émétrius of Sképsis): he may have witnessed the improvement in its con-

apud Walz. Collect. Rhetor. t. ix. p. 804; also περὶ Σμινθιακῶν, iv. 17. Σμίνθος, both in the Krétan and the f£olic dialect, meant a jield-mouse: the region seems to have been greatly

dition effected by the Romans. He noticed the identical stone upon which Palamédés had taught the Greeks to as αἱ dice.

e Sminthian Apollo appears inscribed on the coins of Alexandreia Tréas ; and the temple of the god was memorable even down to the time of

plagued by these little animals. Polemon could not have acce the theory of Démétrius, td ium

was not the uine y: his Periegesis, d ing the localities and relics of Tlium, implied the

Ρ legitimacy of the place as a matter of course.

Cuap. XV, ASIATIC AND HELLENIC USAGES BLENDED. 307

with whom they fraternised, so that the result was not pure Hellenism; next, that even this was done only in the towns, without being fully extended to the territorial domain around, or to those smaller townships which stood to the town in a dependent relation. The olic and Ionic Greeks borrowed, from the Asiatics whom they had Hellenised, musical instruments and new laws of rhythm and melody, which they knew how to turn to account: they further adopted more or less of those violent and maddening religious rites, manifested occasionally in self-inflicted suffering and mutilation, which were indigenous in Asia Minor in the worship of the Great Mother. The religion of ἼΩΝ

the Greeks in the region of Ida as well as at Kyzikus vee are was more orgiastic than the native worship of Greece Telision— Proper, just as that of Lampsacus, Priapus and Parium was more licentious. From the Teukrian region of Gergis, and from the Gergithes near Kymé, sprang the original Sibylline prophecies, and the legendary Sibyll who plays so important a part in the tale of Aineas. The mythe of the Sibyll, whose prophecies are supposed to be heard in the hollow blast bursting out from obscure caverns and apertures in the rocks, was indigenous among the Gergithian Teukrians, and passed from the Kymeans in Aolis, along with the other circumstances of the tale of Aineas, to their brethren gipynine the inhabitants of Cume in Italy. The date of the Prophecies. Gergithian Sibyll, or rather of the circulation of her supposed prophecies, is placed during the reign of Creesus, a period when Gergis was thoroughly Teukrian. Her prophecies, though embodied in Greek verses, had their root in a Teukrian soil and feelings; and the promises of future empire which they so liberally make to the fugitive hero escaping from the flames of Troy into Italy, become interesting from the remarkable way in which they were realized by Rome.?

with Hellenic.

1 Virgil, Aineid, vi. 42 :-— ic — ao pote ΕΣ ἣ

ὺ ὲ ) e of this Gergithian Sibyll,

apreweesd ae latus ingens rupis ox of. the prophecies passing ander et

- ? 7 τ nhame, is 5 y rakleidés ὁ

ΒΟ Ἀν σοῦθαν aditus centum, ostia Pontus, and there seems no reason for

Ὁ : ing it in question.

ag ene totidem voces, responsa Kleusen (Cineas und die Penaten,

; bosaase book ii. p. 205) has worked out copiously

2 Pausanias, x. 12, 8; Lactantius,i. the circulation and legendary import 6, 12; Steph. Byz. v. Μέρμησσος ; Schol, of the Sibylline prophecies.

-

808 LEGEND OF TROY.

Part 1.

At what time Ilium and Dardanus became AXolised we have no information. We find the Mitylenzans in possession of Sigeium in the time of the poet Alkeeus, about 600 B.c.; and the Athenians, during the reign of Peisistratus, having wrested it from them and Settlements *Tying to maintain their possession, vindicate the ae proceeding by saying that they had as much right to Mityléné it as the Mitylenzans, “for the latter had no more and Athens. claim to it than any of the other Greeks who had aided Menelaus in avenging the abduction of Helen” This isa very remarkable incident, as attesting the celebrity of the legend of Troy, and the value of a mythical title in international disputes—yet seemingly implying that the establishment of the Mitylenzans on that spot must have been sufficiently recent. The country near the junction of the Hellespont and the Propontis is represented as originally held? by Bebrykian Thracians, while Abydus was first occupied by Milesian colonists in the reign and by the permission of the Lydian king Gygés*— to whom the whole Tréad and the neighbouring territory belonged, and upon whom therefore the Teukrians of Ida must have been dependent. This must have been about 700 B.c., a period considerably earlier than the Mitylenian occupation of Sigeium. Lampsacus and Pzsus, on the neighbouring shores of the Propontis, were also Milesian colonies, though we do not know their date: Parium was jointly settled from Milétus, Erythre and Parus.

Ἕνειμαν αὐτόπρεμνον εἰς TO πᾶν ἐμοὶ, ᾿Ἐξαιρετὸν δώρημα Θησέως τόκοις.

In the days of Peisistra it seems, Athens was not bold enough or powerful enough to advance this vast

1 Herodot. v. 94. Σίγειον . . . - τὸ εἷλε Πεισίστρατος αἰχμῇ παρὰ Μιτυ- a) te ἃ ἀποδεικ-

᾿Απὸ Σκαμάνδρου γῆν καταφθατουμένη, Ἣν δή 7’ ᾿Αχαιῶν ἄκτορές τε καὶ πρόμοι Τῶν αἰχμαλώτων χρημάτων λάχος μέγα,

2 Charén of Lampsacus ap. Apollén. Rhod. ii. 2; Be

pretension. Schol. po ad Dionys. Periégét. 805, p. 747.

seems not easy to reconcile with the Peceeting: of the subsequent Lydian ings.

Cuap. XVI, THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. 309

CHAPTER XVI.

GRECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT AND INTER: PRETED 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 The mythes time the entire intellectual stock of the age to which formed the they belonged. They are the common root of all futite men. those different ramifications into which the mental bad serly activity of the Greeks subsequently diverged ; con- taining, 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

310 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part L

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 sympathise 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 State of understood or appreciated except with reference to peng the system of conceptions and belief of the ages in they arose. 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 éither in the physical or moral world, yet requiring some connecting theory to interpret and regularise the phenomena 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 them- Tendency selves but superior in extent of power, and different ee in peculiarity of attributes. In the geographical ideas tion. 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. Nevertheless, 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,

Cap, XVL REMARKS ON MYTHICAL NARRATIVES. 911

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 Apsence of construe interesting or formidable phenomena into positive manifestations of design, is above all things here to be —supplied noticed, because the form of personal narrative, gonifying universal in their mythes, is one of its many conse- faith. quences. 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) recog- nised 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 grada- tions 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 con- tentions for power and occasional revolutions, its public meetings in the agora of Olympus, and its multitudinous banquets or festivals. The great Olympic gods were in fact only the most exalted amongst an aggregate of quasi-human or ultra-human personages,—dzemons, heroes, nymphs, eponymous (or name giving) genii, identified with each river, mountain,? cape, town, village, or known circumscription of territory,—besides horses, 1 Homer, liad, i. 603; xx. 7. Hesiod. Riro: “1 am the Heu-Heu, and rule

Theogon. 802. over you all, just as my ancestor, Ton 2 We read inthe Lliad that Astero- Riro, the mountain of snow, stands

peus was grandson of the beautiful aboveall thisland”. (EK. J. Wakefield,

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 Acheléus and Oceanus himself is inferior to Zeus (xxi. 157—191). Skamander fights with Achilles, calling his brother Simois to hisaid (313-808). _Tyré, the daughter of Salméneus, falls in love with Enipeus, the most beautiful of rivers (Odyss. xi. 237). Acheldus a as a suitor of Deianira (Sophokl. Trach: 9).

There cannot bea 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

Adventures in New Zealand, vol. i. ch. 17, p. 465.) Heu-Heu refused permis- sion to any one to ascend the mountain, on the ground that it was his tipwna, or a or: ‘he eonstantly 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 Tara- naki, two male mountains, quarrelled about the affections of a 5 volcanic female mountain in the neighbourhood (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)

312

THE GREEKS OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES.

Part L.

bulls, and dogs, of immortal breed and peculiar attributes, and

Multitude

and variety “‘Gorgons and Harpies and Chimeras dire ”. there were in every gens or family special gentile deities and foregone ancestors who watched over its

of quasi- human per- sonages.

monsters of strange lineaments and combinations,

As

members, forming in each the characteristic symbol and recog- nised guarantee of their union, so there seem to have been in each guild or trade peculiar beings whose vocation it was to co- operate or to impede in various stages of the business.!

= to that of Sleeman

affords a remarkable the early Greeks. lonel

58. Te asked some of the Hindoos about

us why they called the river Mother the

Nerbudda, if she was really never peep x "Her majesty (said they with great respect) would really never con-

τῶι to be married after the indignity she suffered from her affianced bride- groom 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 ree ie and endearing. Englishman can easily con-

cates a "poet in his highest Sabebats re the al addressing the Ocean as steed that knows rider, and

the crested billow as his

mane. But he must come to understand how every indivi-

patting India

dual of a whole community of many p

millions can address a fine river as a princess who

of. peri

over thetr affairs, without a single temple in which her image is worshipped, or a single riest to poet by the delusion. As in the case of , ἐξ is the river itself to Phony they ress them- selves, and not to any deity residing in it,

presiding over it—the stream itself " ihe deity which fills their ee and receives their ho: ΕἾ (Rambles and Recollections of an ndian Official, ch. iii. p. 20.) Compare also the > remarks in the same work on thn sanctity of. Mother Nerbudda (ch. xxvii.

Pp. 261) ; also of the holy personality of τὴς earth.—* The land is considered as the MOTHER of the ewe 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 abund- ance to her son; but if he presumes to

look upon uy bata the eye of desire, she ceases to b ; or the Deity sends down hail. oF or “Dlink to desir to γῶν τς all that she ΡΘΕ ὅκου λέως the te ef vand th ὃς frequently inspecting the cro Bc e chief himself or his immedja were considered by people in this Ii light ht —either it should not be done at a the duty should be delegated to inferior pda whose close inspection of the parent could mee ΔΕ 80 A δ ἜΤ: Deity ” (ch. xxii.

See also about the nga oe are believed to reside in trees—the Peepul- tree, the cotton-tree, &c. (ch. ix. p. Ἢ) and. the description of the ann

bbl pig e between thesac and pebble, or ne e- the sacred s Pee celebrated at great parse γος with a numerous aeons (chap. xix. p. 158; xxiii.

1 See the song to the potters, in the Homeric Epigrams (14 (14) —

Ei μὲν δώσετε μίσθον, a ἀείσω, ὦ κεραμῆες" Δεῦρ᾽ ἄγ᾽, ᾿Αθηναίη, καὶ ὑπείρεχε χεῖρα καμίνου. Εὖ δὲ πεπανθεῖεν κότυλοι, καὶ πάντα κάναστρα tener τε καλῶς, καὶ τιμῆς ὦνον ἀρέσθαι.

Ἦν δ' ἐπὶ ἀναιδείην τρεφθέντες Wevde’

Suntan 8 8)” πειτα καμίνῳ δηλητῆρας"

᾿ξ “ον ene Σμάραγόν τε, καὶ Ἄσβετον,

Ὠμόβαμόν θ᾽ "ἣν "rie τέχνῃ κακὰ πολλὰ πορίζοι, &e.

A nari rs kindred between men = Serpen ov ἕνειάν int tguers ὄφεις) Was re the peculiar gens of the ἀφιογενεῖς, near Parlon, who possessed the gift of healing by their touches the bite of the serpent*

Cuap, XVL PERSONIFYING IMAGINATION. 313

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 concep- tion 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. The earth and the solid heaven (Gea 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 Hélios, 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. Hélios, having favourite 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.! To us these now appear

the original hero of this gens was said some of that wide extent of lands on to have been transformed from a the Lower Rhine which the Roman

serpent into a man (Strabo, xiii.

p. 588).

1 Odyss. ii. 388 ; viii. 270; xii. 4, 128, 416; xxiii. 362. Dliad, xiv. 344. The Homeric Hymn to Démétér expresses it neatly (63)—

Ἠέλιον δ᾽ ἵκοντο, θεῶν σκόπον ῥδὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.

Also the retharkable story of Euénius

of Apollénia, his neglect of the sacred

cattle of Hélios, and the awful conse-

quences 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

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 eee to the Roman cause, and next

uched 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 transmit- terentur? 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 coelum Diis, ita terras generi mortalium datas: queeque vacue, eas publicas esse. Solem deinde respiciens, et cetera sidera

314

THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES.

Part I.

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

What we read as tical ‘ancies were to the Greeks serious realities.

phznomena.}

vocans, quasi coram interrogabat—vel- lentne contueri inane solum? potius mare superfunderent adversus terrarum erep-

tores. Commotus his Paints “ae.

The legate refused the requ but riva’ acer get to Betorale lands for

from the tribe, which

that cine 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

it Pe ae tribes, of whom

ed it. After much wandering

or oe ce nore cota the whole tribe of the

: its warriors

were all ‘lain: ttn worn women and children sold as slaves.

I notice this afflicting uel, 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 oecasion was ate τῶν of all suited yo a eee rhetorical prosopopeeia. ap is one sincere and heartfelt to the — feelings and EEN of

Tacitus, in reporting accompanies it with the eer: "Faas coram,” to mark that the speaker here into a different order of ideas rom 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 explana- tion, in order to facilitate to his tribe the comprehension of Hélios under a int of view so new to them. While acitus 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 reijication of the god Hélios. 1 Physical astronomy was both new and accounted impious in the time of

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 Hélios, and trying to assign invariable laws to the solar Personifying fiction was in this way blended

the Peloponnesian war: see Plutarch, in his reference to that eclipse which proved so fatal to the Athenian army. at Syracuse, in = uence of the

ious feelings of Nikias: ov γὰρ ἠνείχοντο, τοὺς φυσικοὺς καὶ μετεωρο- λέσχας τότε καλουμένους, ὡς εἰς αἰτίας ἀλόγους καὶ “δυνάμεις ἀπρονοήτους καὶ peta! oe ai πάθη διατρίβοντας τὸ

ward (Plutarch. ikias, c. 23, and Periklés, ο. 32; Diodér. xii. 39; Démétr. Phaler. ap. Diogen. Laérit.

“You strange man, a said | Sokratés, on his to his accuser, “‘are you seriously that I do not think Helios. and Seléné to gods, as the rest of mankind

‘Certainly not, men of the Dikastery : 4 (this is the reply of Melétus), Sokratés says that the sun is a stone, and the moon earth.” “ὝΕΣ, my dear Melétus, you think youare preferring an accusa- tion oras! Youaccount these Dikasts so apres ye! ignorant as not to know that the books of Anaxagoras are full of such doctrines ! ΠΣ ve ed a Ἐ. suc. ching, when refseny =< Θ books for a drachma e th and may thus laugh ὧς Ἦν ‘scorn if pretended to announce such views as clunasiess ao estrovagont?"- Guan

elves so extravagant τ τε καὶ οὕτως a ὄντα, Plato, Apolog. Socrat. c. 14, p. 26).

The divinity of Hélios and Seléné is ee set forth ab — Legg.

p. 886, 889. He ts physical astronomy only under great: rictions and to a limited extent. Con Xenoph. Memor. iv. 7, 7; Dio Laért. ii. 8; Plutarch,

p. 6,

Cuap. XVI. GODS AND HEROES. 315

by the Homeric Greeks with their conception of the physical phenomena before them, not simply in the way of poetical ornament, but as a genuine portion of their everyday belief.

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 guardian- ship, even in his own day: but their more special, intimate, and sympathising agency was cast back into the unrecorded past.’ To give suitable utterance to this general sentiment—to furnish

body and movement and detail to these divine and The gods heroic pre-existences, which were conceived only in 4nd heroes shadowy outline,—to lighten up the dreams of what chief

the past must have been,? in the minds of those who pgck into knew not what it really had been—such was the the pastand

embodied

spontaneous aim and inspiration of productive genius in the

in the community, and such were the purposes which

mythes.

the Grecian mythes pre-eminently accomplished.

The love of antiquities, which Tacitus notices as so prevalent among the Greeks of his day,’ was one of the earliest, the most durable, and the most widely diffused of the national propensities.

1 Hesiod, Catalog. Fragm. 76, p. 48, ed. Diintzer :— τ ee :

Ἐνναὶ yap τότε δαῖτες ἔσαν ξυνοί τε ωκοι, ᾿Αθανάτοις τε θεοῖσι. καταθνήτοις τ᾽ ἀνθρώποις.

Both the Theogonia and the Works and Days bear testimony to the same eneral 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. vili. 223; Iliad, v. 304; xii. 882). Compare Catullus, Carm. 64; Epithalam. Peleos et Thetidos, v. 382—408.

Menander the Rhetor (following generally the steps of Dionys. Hal. Art. Rhetor. cap. 1—8) ΒΕΡΟΝΙΒ to his fellow-citizens at Alexandreia Trdéas, proper and ee ape? forms to invite a great man to visit their festival of the Sminthia :---ὥσπερ γὰρ᾿ Απόλλωνα πολλάκις ἐδέχετο ἡ πόλις τοῖς Surv iors, ἥνικα ἐξῆν θεοὺς προφανῶς ἐπιδημεῖν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις, οὕτω καὶ σὲ ἡ πόλις νῦν προσδέχεται ἐν ὶ ἜἘπιδεικτικ, 5. iv. σ, 14, ap. Walz. oll.

Rhetor. t. ix. p. 804). Menander seems to have been a native of Alexandreia Tréas, though Suidas calls him a Laodicean (see Walz. Pref. ad t. ix. p. XV.—xx.; and περὶ Σμινθιακῶν, sect. iy.c.17). The festival of the Sminthia lasted down to his time, embracing the whole duration of paganism from Homer downwards.

2P. A. Miiller observes justly in his Saga-Bibliothek, in reference to the Icelandic mythes, ‘‘In dem Mythischen wird das Leben der Vorzeit darges- tellt, wie es wirklich dem kindlichen Verstande, der jugendlichen Hinbil- dungskraft, und dem vollen Herzen erscheint”. ‘

Sess aly Untersuchungen iiber die Nordische und Deutsche Heldensage, translated from Ῥ, A. Miiller, Introd. p.1

3 Titus visited the temple of the Paphian Venus in Cyprus, ‘‘spectata opulentia donisque regum, queeque alia letum antiquitatibus Grecorum genus incerte vetustati adjingit, de navigatione ag consuluit”. (Tacit. Hist. ii.

δ.

316 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES, Part I.

But the antiquities of every state were divine and heroic, repro- ducing 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 recognises 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 valour, and bringing out the personality of a few divine or heroic characters.1 It was the glory of bards and story-tellers 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-coloured ; it comprised a great multiplicity Markedana Of persons, together with much diversity in the types ferent the of character ; it divinised every vein and attribute of Homeric humanity, the lofty as well as the mean—the tender om. as well as the warlike—the self-devoting and adven- turous 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.? At 1 Aristotel. Problem. xix. 48. Οἱ δὲ In reference to the Trojan war, ἡγεμόνες τῶν ἀρχαίων μόνοι ἦσαν ἥρωες" Aristotle says—xaldwep ἐν τοῖς οἱ δὲ λαοὶ ἄνθρωποι. Istros followed Ἡρωΐϊκοῖς περὶ Πριάμον μυθεύεται. this opinion also: but the more (athic. Nicom. i. 9; compare vii. 1.) _ common view seems to have con- 2 Generation by a god is treated in sidered all who combated at Troy as the old poemsas an act entirely human heroes (see Schol. Lliad. ii. 110; xv. and physical (ἐμέγη---παρελέξατο) ; and

231), and so Hesiod treats them (Opp. this was the common opinion in the Di. 158). days of Plato (Plato, Apolog. Socrat.

CHAP, XVI. MYTHOPGIC FERTILITY OF THE GREEKS.

317

present, however, we have only to consider the early, or Homeric and Hesiodic paganism, and its operations in the genesis of

the mythical narratives. We cannot doubt that it supplied the most powerful stimulus, and the only

Stimulus which they

one which the times admitted, to the creative faculty forded

to the

of the people ; as well from the sociability, the grada- ne tions, and the mutual action and reaction of its gods 2s and heroes, as from the amplitude, the variety, and the purely liuman cast of its fundamental types.

Though we may thus explain the mythopeic 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 pro-

ductions 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

c. 15, p. 15); the hero Astrabakus is father of the Lacedemonian king Demaratus (Herod. vi. 66). [Herodotus does not believe the story told him at Babylon respecting Belus (i. 182).] Euripidés sometimes expresses dis- Leases of the idea (fon, 350), but Plato passed Longe. be large portion of his irers 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 Periktioné, then pregnant by Apollo, until after the birth of the child Plato (Plutarch, 1; Diogen, Laért. iii, 2; Origen, cont. Cels. i. p. 29). Plutarch (in Life of Numa, c. 4; compare Life of Théseus, 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 spiritualise it altogether. Menander, περὶ ᾿Ἐπιδεικ- τικῶν (towards the end of the third century B.C.), prescribes rules for raising a king: you are to praise him

for the gens to which he belongs:

Foose you may be able to make out hat he really is the son of some god ; for eg 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 καταπέμ- πονται καί εἰσιν ἀπόῤῥοιαι ὄντως τοῦ κρείττονος" καὶ γὰρ Ἡρακλῆς ἐνομίζετο μὲν ᾿Αμφιτρύωνος, τῇ δὲ ἀληθείᾳ ἦν Διός. Οὕτω καὶ βασιλεὺς ὁ ἡμέτερος τὸ μὲν δοκεῖν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων, τῇ δὲ ἀληθείᾳ τὴν καταβολὴν οὐρανόθεν ἔχει, ὅσ. (Menander ap. Walz. Collect. Rhetor. t. ix. 6. i, p. 218). Again—mepi Σμιν- θιακῶν---Ζεὺς γένεσιν παιδῶν δημιοῦνρ- γεῖν ἐνενόησε--᾿Απόλλων τὴν ᾿Ασκλη- mov γένεσιν ἐδημιούργησε, Ὁ. 822--- 827 ; compare Hermogents, about the story of Apollo and Daphné, Progym- nasm. c. 4; and Julian. Orat. vii. p.

220.

The contrast of the pagan phraseo- logy of this age (Menander had himself composed a hymn of invocation to Apollo—repi ᾿Εγκωμίων, c. 8, 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 ee to the composers of Epi- thalamic Odes (Menand. ib. sect. iv. 6.

6, Β 268). enander ἜΤ @ specimen of ἃ mee hymn fit to be addressed to the mintkian Apollo (p, 320); the spiritual character of which hymn forms the most pointed contrast with the Homeric hymn to the same god.

318 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part L

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 combi- — nations, 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 illus- trative 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 mythopeic 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:? yet a process

1The mental analogy between the early stages of human civilisation and the childhood of the individual is forcibly and gy Sores set forth in the works of Vico. That eminently original thinker dwells upon the poetic 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 phenomena, but also aliment for the hopes and fears, and means of socialising influence to men of genius, at a time when reason was yet asleep. He points out the personifying instinct (“‘istinto d’anima- zione”) as the spontaneous philosophy of man, “to make himself the rule of the universe,” and to suppose every- where 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 ἃ separate vein. These views are repea’ 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 suc- cessive 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 him- self in 1744, Dela Metajisica Poetica (see

vol. v. p. 189 of Ferrari's edition of his Works, Milan, 1836): ‘‘ Adunque la sapienza poetica, che fu la prima sapienza deila Gentilita, dovette incominciare de una Metafisica, non ragionata ed astratia, qual ὃ questa or Gegli addottrinati, ma sentita ed immaginata, quale dovett’ essere di tai

rimi uomini, siccome quelli che erano

i niun raziocinio, e tutti robusti sensi e vigorosissime fantasie, come ὃ stato aes Ph. “mq Seo Axioms) lobe ig

uesta fu oro propria Legs a qual in essi fu una faculta& loro connaturale, perché erano di tali sensi e di si fatte fantasie naturalmente forniti, nata da ignoranza di cagioni la qual fu loro madredi maraviglia di tutte le cose, che quelli ignoranti di tutte le cose fortemente ammiravano.

Tal poesia incomincid in essi divina : perché nello stesso tempo ch’ essi i inavano le cagioni delle cose,

che sentivano ed ammiravano, essere Dei, come ora il confermiamo con δὲ panes 4 rat ee eee su 0 oro ty)

disume’ esser Dei . τ ᾿ αν γε aie tempo, diciamo, alle cose ammirate davano I’ essere di sostanze dalla propria lor idea: ch’ ὃ appunto la natura dei fanciulli, che osserviamo prendere tra mani cose imate, e trastullarsi e favellarvi, come fussero quelle persone vive. In cotal guisa i primi uomini delle nazioni gentili, come fanciulli del nascente gener umano, della lor idea creavan essi le

Cuap. XVI. GRECIAN IMAGINATION AND SENTIMENT. 319

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 phenomena were grouped, and towards whom curiosity, sympathies and reverence were earnestly directed. The adven- tures 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.1 Nor need we wonder that Easy faith

the same plausibility which captivated his imagination in popular

and his feelings was sufficient to engender spon- piawaibie

taneous belief; or rather that no question, as to truth

Co oe at per la loro robusta ignoranza, il facevano in forza d’ una corpulentissima fantasia, e perch’ era corpolentissima, il facevano con una maravigliosa sublimita, tal e tanta, che perturbava all’ eccesso_ essi medesimi, che fingendo le si creavano , « « » Di questa natura di cose umane restd eterna ab ele spiegata con nobil espressione Tacito, che vanamente gli uomini spaventati tingunt simul creduntque.”

After describing the condition of rude men, terrified with thunder and other vast atmospheric phznomena, Vico proceeds (ib. Bs 172)—“‘ In tal caso la, natura de mente umana porta ch’ ella attribuisca all’ effetto la sua natura: e la natura loro era in tale stato α᾽ uomini tutti robuste forze di corpo, che urlando, brontolando, spiegavano le loro violentissime passioni, si finsero il cielo esser un

corpo animato, che per tal aspetto chiamavano Giove, che col fischio dei fulmini e col fragore dei tuoni volesse lor dire qualche cosa . . . . Esi fanno di tutta la natura un vasto corpo animato, che senta passioni ed affetti.”

Now the contrast with modern habits of thought :—

“ΜᾺ siccome ora per la natura delle nostre umane menti troppo ritirata dai bensi nel medesimo volgo—con le tante

stories.

astrazioni, di eae sono piene le lingue—con tanti vocaboli astratti—e di troppo assottigliata con I’ arti dello scrivere, e quasi spiritualezzata con la pratica dei numeri—ci ὁ 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, perocché la lor mente ὃ dentro il falso, che ὃ nulla; πὸ sono soccorsi dalla fantasia a poterne formare una falsa vastissima imagine. Cosi ora ct ὃ naturalmente nie gatodi poter entrare nella vasta immaginativa di quet primi uomini, le menti dei quali di nulla erano assottigliate, di nulla astratte, di nulla spiritualezzate ... . Onde dicemmo sopra che ora appena intender si pud, affatto immaginar non si pud, come pensassero i primi uomini che fondarono la umanita gentilesca,.” 10. Miller, in his Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie (cap. iv. p. 108), has pointed out the mistake of supposing that there existed origi- nally some nucleus of pure reality as the starting-point of the mythes, and that upon this nucleus fiction was superinduced afterwards: he main 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

320 {HE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Parr L

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 symbolised 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.

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 _iké the τὲ ἐπεὶ, Ὁ ΠΕΙΣ Ἐξ τὸ muck Gace lees ant under heavenly guidance, inspired by the goddess to whom he has prayed for her assisting impulse. She puts the

Poets—re- ‘ % aus > ᾿

ceive their word into his mouth and the incidents into his mind: cedivins he is a privileged man, chosen as her organ and ary soe speaking from her revelations.1_ As the Muse grants

the gift of song to whom she will, so she sometimes

of that work, which is everywhere full of instruction on the subject of the

adopted by William Grimm, the other Grecian mythes, and is eminently

of the two dis ed brothers whose labours have so much eluci-

dated Teutonic philology and anti-

suggestive, even where the positions of : e 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 song of view in which he regards

hem ; 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 West- minster Review, May, 1843, on the Heroen-Geschichten of Niebuhr.

Jacob Grimm, in the preface to his Deutsche Mythologie (p. 1, ist edit. Gott. 1835), pointedly insists on the distinc- tion between * ” 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

quities. 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 poe - Grimm, Deutsche Heldensage, pp. 8, 337, 342, 345, 399, Gott. 1829). 1 Hesiod, Theogon. 32.—

. + «. ἐνέπνευσαν δέ (the Muses) μοι αὐὴδν Θείην, ὡς κλείοιμι τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα, πρό 7 ἐόντα, Καί με κέλονθ᾽ ὑμνεῖν μακάρων γένος αἰὲν ἐόντων, ὅσο. Odyss. xxii. 847; viii. 63, 73, 481, 489. Δημόδοκ᾽ . . . « HOE ye Moda’ ἐδί- δαξε, Διὸς παῖς, } σέγ᾽ ᾿Απόλλων: thatis, Demodokus has either been inspired as a poet by the Muse, or asa Mt 9 by Apollo: for the Homeric Apollo is not the god of song. Kalchas the prophet

Cnap. XVI. EARLY GREEK POETS. 321

in her anger snatches it away, and the most consummate human genius is then left silent and helpless. It is true that thes expressions, of the Muse inspiring and the poet singing a tale οἹ past times, have passed from the ancient epic to compositions pro- duced under very different circumstances, and have now degene. rated 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 ever have 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, isin 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. The word mythe (μῦθος, fabula, story), in its original meaning, signified simply a statement or current narrative,

3 3 Meaning of without any connotative implication either of truth poe Aa or falsehood. Subsequently the meaning of the word original—

red,

(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.’

receives his inspiration from Apollo,

who confers pen him the same know-

ledge both ὁ t and future as the

Muses give to Hesiod (liad, i. 69) :—

Κάλχας Θεστορίδης, οἰωνοπόλων ὄχ᾽ ἄριστος

Ὃς ἤδη τά τ' ἐόντα, τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα, πρό T €OVTa

"Hy διὰ μαντοσύνην, τήν οἱ πόρε Φοῖβος ᾿Απόλλων.

Also Iliad, ii. 485.

‘Both the μάντις and the ἀοιδός are standing, recognised professions (Odyss. xvii. 883), like the physician and the carpenter, δημιόεργοι.

Tliad, ii. 599. 2In this later sense it stands pointedly opposed to ἱστορία, history, which seems originally to have desig- nated matter of fact, present and seen by the describer, or the result of his

rsonal inquiries (see Herodot. i. 1;

ferrius 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 Adyos was the same as that of pi@os—a current tale true or false, as the case might be ; and the term designating a person much conversant with the old ic (λόγιος) is derived from it (Herod. i. 1; ii. 3). Hekatzus and Herodotus both use Adyos in this sense. Herodotus calls both Alsop and Hekateeus λογοποιοί (ii, 184—143),

Aristotle (Metaphys. i. p. 8, ed. Brandis) seems use μῦθος in this sense, where he says—6.d καὶ φιλόμυθος ὁ φιλόσοφός πώς ἐστιν’ 6 γὰρ μῦθος συγκεῖται ἐκ θαυμασίων, ἄο. In the same treatise (xi. p. 254) he uses it to signify fabulous amplification and transformation of a doctrine true in the main,

1—2]

322 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part L

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 fami- liarity 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 favourites 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

actual introducing no special interventions of Zeus and pert katy Apollo—such a history would have appeared to him ing t = early 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.

To us these mythes are interesting fictions ; to the Homeric and Hesiodic audience they were “rerum divinarum et humana- rum scientia,”—an aggregate of religious, physical, and historical revelations, rendered more captivating, but not less true and real, by the bright colouring and fantastic shapes in which they were presented. Throughout the whole of “mythe-bearing Hellas”?

1M. Ampere, in his Histoire Littéraire tinguishes the Saga (which corresponds de la France (ch. viii. v. i. p. 310), dis- as nearly as Bose with the Greek —

CuaP. XVI. NO OTHER LEARNING EXCEPT THE MYTHES. 323

they formed the staple of the uninstructed Greek mind, upon which history and philosophy were by so slow degrees super- induced ; 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 démes and villages of Greece, to whom Thucydidés, Hippokratés, Aristotle, or Hippar- chus 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 co-existent with those of positive science, and contending agaitist them at more or less of odds, according to the temper of the individual./ Now it is the remarkable characteristic of the Homeric age, yrytnical that no such co-existence or contention had yet begun,) faith and The religious and mythical point of view covers, for αν on: the most part, all the phenomena of nature ; while TO the conception of invariable sequence exists only in in the Ho- the background, itself personified under the name of ™™°*8* the Merz, 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 com-

a

μῦθος, λόγος, μὸν wos λόγος), aS ἃ histoire, la Saga doit étre comptée special product of the intellect, not ar les produits spontanés de capable of being correctly designated Timagination humaine. La Saga a. either as history, or as fiction, or as son existence propre comme la poésie,

philosophy :—

“Tl est un pays, la Scandinavie, ou la tradition racontée s’est développée plus complétement qu ailleurs, ott ses produits ont été plus soigaeusement recueillis et mieux conservés: dans ce pays, ils ont regu un nom particulier, dont I’équivalent exact ne se trouve pas hors des langues Germaniques: cest le mot Saga, Sage, ce qu’on dit, ce qu'on raconte,—la tradition orale. Si Yon prend ce mot non dans une acception restreinte, mais dans le sens gen ral ot le prenait Niebuhr quand

Yappliquoit, par exemple, aux traditions tema qui ont pu fournir 4 Tite Live une portion de son

comme Il’histoire, comme le roman. Elle n’est pas la poésie, parce qu’elle nest pas chantée, mais parlée; elle n’est pas V’histoire, parce qu'elle est dénuée de critique; elle n’est pas le roman, parce qu'elle est sincére, parce qu’elle a foi ἃ ce qu'elle raconte. Elle n’invente pas, mais répéte: elle peut se tromper, mais elle ne ment jamais. Ce récit souvent merveilleux, que personne ne fabrique sciemment, et que tout le monde altére et falsifie sans le youloir, qui se perpétue ἃ la maniére des chants —— et populaires,—ce récit, quand il se rapporte, non ἃ un héros, mais & un saint, s’appelle une légende,”

324 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part I.

munity,—adopted with equal fervour, 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.

History, philosophy, &c., 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 Gradual de. S°dUence of events, came to supplant in the more velopment Vigorous intellects the old mythical creed of omni- ethers present personificationf an inevitable scission was

scientific . point of produced between thé instructed few and the

opprainis remaining community. ) The opposition between the to [86 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

religious.

-often and to as great an extent as they thought fit. Here the

question was at once opened, respecting a great variety of particular phenomena, 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

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 conse- quences, instructed minds, like Periklés, Thucydidés, and Euripidés, tended more and more to the scientific point of

Cuar. XVI.

DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICAL HABIT.

325

view,! in cases where the general public were constantly gravitating towards the religious.

The age immediately prior

to this unsettled condition of

thought is the really mythopceic age; in which the creative

1See Plutarch, Perikl. capp. 5, 82, 88; Cicero, De Republ. i. 15-16 ed. Maii.

The phytologist Theophrastus, in his valuable collection of facts respect- ing vegetable organisation, is often under the necessity of opposing his scientific interpretation of curious incidents in the vegetable world to the ey actin interpretation of them which he found current. Anomalous phzeno- mena in the growth or decay of trees were construed as signs from the gods, and submitted to a prophet for expla- nation (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 haber ig 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 spon- taneously resuming their erect posture, he offers some explanation how such a

jheenomenon might have happened, But he admits, at the end, that there may be something extra-natural in the case, ᾿Αλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν tows ἔξω φυσικῆς αἰτίας ἔστιν, &c. (De Caus. Plant. v. 4): see a similar miracle in reference to the cedar-tree of Vespasian (‘Tacit. Hist. ii. 78).

Euripidés, in his lost tragedy called Μελανίππη ody, placed in the mouth of Melanippé a formal discussion and confutation of the whole doctrine of τέρατα, Of supernatural indications (Dionys. Halicar. Ars Rhetor. p. 300— 856, Reisk.). Compare the Fables of Pheedrus, iii. 83; Plutarch, Sept. Sap. Conviv. ch. 3, p. 149; and the curious

hilosophical explanation by which he learned men of Alexandria tran- quillised the alarms of the vulgar, on occasion of the serpent said to have been entwined round the head of the crucified Kleomenés (Plutarch, Kleo- men. c. 39).

It is one part of the duty of an able physician, according to the Hippokratic treatise called Prognosticon te 1, t. 2, 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 Aére, Locis et Aquis (c. 22, p. 78, ed. Littré), and cited here- after, in this chapter. Nor does Galen seem to have regarded it as harmonising with the general views of Hippocratés. In the excellent Prolegomena of M. Littré to his edition of Hippokratés (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 ne oly were to be looked upon as divine, inasmuch as the disease came from God; and also the opinion of Xenophén, the friend of Praxagoras, that the ‘genus of days of crisis” in fever was divine ; ‘‘ For (said Xenophén) 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 Xenophon, says that the author ‘hag i espa his own individual feeling, but has no way set forth the opinion of Hippokratés” ; 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 Xenophén 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

erson affected with this disease, is, in reality, neither more nor less than to burn the goddess”, (Sleeman, Rambles 9 sere opt a6 &e., vol. i. ch. xxv, p. 221.

336 THE GREEKS’ OWN ViEW OF THE MYTHES. Part t.

faculties of the society know no other employment, and the mass

age— fo this Grandeur, is to be found in the Iliad and Odyssey,— dissent. Bi werinateta nate

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 mythopeic tendencies continued in vigour (Arktinus, Leschés, Eumélus, 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 ἐπε ones ah remarkable people stand distinguished from all their ἐξελατυρῖ neighbours 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 com- bining, 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 οὗ

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. He looks back with reverential envy to the extinct heroic races who fought at Troy and Thébes.{ Yet bad as the present time is, the Muse condescends to look at it along with him, and to prescribe

CaP. XVI. INCREASED ATTENTION TO PRESENT FACTS, 327

rules for human life—with the assurance that if a man be industrous, 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 pyonsition promise, to cast herself into the most homely details towards

of present existence, and to give advice thoroughly ΟΝ καὶ practical and calculating. Men whose minds were [Δ

full of the heroes of Homer called Hesiod in contempt the poet of the Helots. 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 thém the personal feeling of the poet and the special- ‘The poet ties of present time and place, are brought prominently Pecomes

wee 2 " the organ forward ; while in the Homeric hexameter the poet is of present

ἃ mere nameless organ of the historical Muse—the f°, 4 hearers are content to learn, believe, and feel, the of past. 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.t Simonidés of

1 Horat. de Art. Poet. 79 :— = Ee : ore gaint ὮΝ ἰδ and

: . : : oetic. c. 4—also Synesius de Somniis

“ (eves proprio rabies armavit ὁ - p ᾿Αλκαῖος καὶ ᾿Αρχίλοχος, οἱ πόνον Ὁ δεδαπανήκασι Thy εὐστομίαν ἐπ τὸν Compare Epist. i. 19, 23, and Epod, οἰκεῖον βίον ἑκάτερος, (Alcxi Frag-

328 THE GREEKS OWN VIEW Of THE MYTHES, Part 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 116,1 and carrying out the spirit which partially appears in the Hesiodic Works and Days. Of Alkzeus and Sapphé, though unfortunately we are compelled to speak of them upon hearsay only, we know enough to satisfy us that their own personal sentimeyts and sufferings, their relations private or public with the” contemporary world, constituted the soul of those short effusions which gave them so much celebrity.2. Again in the few remains of the elegiac poets preserved to us—Kallinus, : Mimnermus, Tyrtzeus—the impulse of some present Iambic, Ξ ‘ Pum nae — af elegiac, and_ motive or circumstance is no less conspicuous. ‘The lyric poets. “same may also be said of Solén, Theognis and Phokylidés, 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 Solén himself) is made the substitute for the public speaking of the agora.* Doubtless all these poets made abundant use of the ancient mythes, but it ote turning them to present account, in the

ment. Halle, 1810, p. 205). Quintilian speaks in striking language of the power of expression manifested by Archilochus (x. 1. 60).

1Simonidés of Amorgus touches briefly, but in a tone of contempt upon the Trojan ναν-- γυναικὸς οὕνεκ᾽ ἀμφιδηριωμένους (Simonid. . 8, p. 36, v. 118); he seems to think it absurd that so destructive a struggle should have taken place “pro und mulierculd,” to use the phrase of Mr. Payne Knight.

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 Alkzus—rodAaxod γοῦν τὸ μέτρον εἴ τις περιέλοι, ῥητορικὴν ἂν εὕροι πολιτείαν ; and Strabo (xiii. p. 617), τὰ στασιωτικὰ καλούμενα Tov ᾿Αλκαίον ποιήματα.

There was ἃ large dash of sarcasm and homely bante1 aimed at neighbours and contemporaries in the poetry of Sapphd, apart from her impassioned love-songs—aAdws σκώπτει Tov ἄγροικον νύμφιον καὶ τὸν θυρωρὸν τὸν ἐν τοῖς

γάμοις, εὐτελέστατα καὶ ἐν πέζοις ὀνόμασι

μᾶλλον ἢ ἐν ποιητικοῖς. ὯὮστε αὐτῆς

μᾶλλόν ἐστι τὰ ποιήματα ταῦτα διαλέ-

γεσθαι ἢ ἄδειν" οὐδ᾽ ἂν ἁρμόσαι πρὸς τὸν

χόρον ἣ πρὸς τὴν λύραν, εἰ μή τις εἴη

χόρος διαλεκτικός (Démétr. Phaler. De nterpret. ὁ. 167).

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

3 Solon, Fragm., iv. 1, ed. Schneide- win :-— Αὐτὸς κήρυξ ἦλθον ad’ ἱμερτῆς Σαλαμῖνος Κόσμον ἐπέων δὴν ἀντ᾽ ἀγορῆς θέμε- νος, &.

See Brandis, Handbuch der Griechis- chen Philosophie, sect. xxiv.—xxv. Plato states that Solén, in his old age, engaged in the composition of an Ὁ poem, which he left unfinished, on the subject of the supposed island of Atlantis and Attica (Plato, Timzus,

. 21, and Kritias, p. 113). Plutarch,

lén, c. 81.

Car. XVI. FORMATION OF AN HISTORICAL SENSE. 329

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 era, is a fact 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 incidentsof their own actual experience. From Solénand 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. It enlarged the range of their ΠΕΣ ΟΕ thoughts and observations, while it also imparted to the opening them that vein of mysticism, which overgrew the οὗ ἘΕΥΡὺ t

primitive simplicity of the Homeric religion, and of cae 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, pProgress— in the record and arrangement of historical facts ; an Pistoricil, historical sense arises in the superior intellects, and_ ical, social, some idea of evidence as a discriminating test period to between fact and fiction. And this progressive 3-500. 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

330 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Parti material improvements, purchased at the expense of a period of ἊΝ 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 Délos brought together the citizens of every Ionic community, with their wives and children, and an ample display of wealth and ornaments.!_ Numerous and flourishing colonies were founded in Sicily, the south of Italy, the coasts of Epirus, and of the Euxine Sea: the Phokeans explored the whole of the Adriatic, established Massalia, and penetrated even as far as the south of Ibéria, with which they carried on a lucrative commerce.? The geographical ideas of the Greeks were thus both expanded and rectified: the first preparation of a map, by Anaximander the disciple of Thalés, 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. And even earlier than Herodotus— Xanthus and Xenophanés had noticed the occurrence of fossil marine productions in the interior of Asia Minor and elsewhere, which led them to reflections on the changes of the earth’s surface with respect to land and water.*

If then we look down the three centuries and a half which τ ΤΕ elapsed between the commencement of the Olympic standard of gra and the age of Herodotus and Thucydidés, we vinieal and shall discern_a striking advance in the-Greeks,— intellectual. ethical, social, and intellectual. Positive history and chronology has not only been created, but in the case of Thucy- didés, the qualities necessary to the historiographer, in their

ix

1 Homer, oem ad Apollin, 155; Laért. ii. 1; Agathemer. ap. Geograph. Thucyd. iii. 104. Minor. i. . πρῶτος ἐτόλμησε THY οἰκου-

ν ἐν πίνακι γράψαι. 2 Herodot. i. 168, μόν ctagoras ἘΣ Milétus, who visited 8 Herodot. iv. 36. γελῶ δὲ ὁρέων Τῆς δος to coliit aid aid for the revolted

περιόδους γράψαντας πολλοὺς ἤδη, καὶ mians against Darius, brought with

οὐδένα hee yet ἐξηγησάμενον" ot Smeg hee tablet or map, by means

᾿ΩὩκέανόν τε ῥέοντα γράφουσι πέριξ τὴν of which ” exhibited relative ἣν, ἐοῦσαν κυκλοτερέα ws ἀπὸ tépyov, position laces in the Persian ., a remark probably directed against empire Htorodot. vy. 49).

Hekateus. Xanthus ap. Strat i. p. Fearn xii. pln Respecting the map of Anaxi- 579. Compare Creuzer,

mander, Strabo, i p. 7; Diogen. Xanthi, p. 162.

v

ὕπαρ. XVi. DAWN OF ETHIGAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 331

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 criticised 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 Thucydidés 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 Xenophanés, 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.!

It was not merely as an ethical and social critic that Xenophanés stood distinguished. He was one ofagreatandeminent commence- triad—Thalés and Pythagoras being the others—who, ment of : - Bie physical in the sixth century before the Christian era, first science— opened up those veins of speculative philosophy which δὲ τατον τ occupied afterwards so large a portion of Grecian Pythagoras. 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.

They were the first who attempted to disenthral the philosophic intellect from all-personifying religious faith, and to constitute a method of interpreting nature distinct from the spon- ypersonal

“taneous inspirations of untaught minds. It isin them nature “that we first find the idea of Person tacitly set aside or Sa'stject αν limited, and an impersonal Nature conceived as the ° Study.

object of study. The divine husband and wife, Oceanus and Téthys, parents of many gods and of the Oceanic nymphs, together

1 Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empiric. adv. Grec. ed. Schneidewin, Diogen. Laért. . Mathemat. ix. 193, Fragm. 1. Poet. ix. 18, ; '

332 THE GREEKS’ OWN ViEW OF THE MYTHES, Pant L

with the avenging goddess Styx, are translated into the material substance water, or, as we ought rather to say, the Fluid: and Thalés set himself to prove that water was the primitive element, out of which all the different natural substances had been formed.? He, as well as Xenophanés 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? The elemental analysis of Thalés—the one unchangeable cosmic sub- stance, varying only in appearance, but not in reality, as suggested by Xenophanés,—and the geometrical combinations of Pythagoras, —all these were different ways of approaching the explanation of physical phenomena, and each gave: rise to a distinct school or succession of philosophers. But they all agreed in departing from the primitive method, and in recognising determinate properties, a material substratum, 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 fimiting condition. Xenophanés disclaimed openly all know- ledge respecting the gods, and pronounced that no man could have any means of ascertaining when he was right and when he was wrong, in aflirmations respecting them :* 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 era. This was another

1 Aristotel. Metaphys. i. 8.

2 Plutarch, Placit. Philos. ii. 1; also Stobeus, Eclog. Physic. i. 22, where the difference between the Homeric expressions and those of the subse- quent philosophers is seen. τ 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, Démo- kritus, Parmenidés, Empedoklés, Alkmezén, ἄς.) was frequently Περὶ

Φύσεως (Galen, ., tom i p. 56, oa iS Opp.,

3 Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empirie. vii.

50 ; viii. 326.—

Kai τὸ μὲν οὖν σαφὲς οὔτις ἀνὴρ ἴδεν, οὔτε τίς ἐστιν

Εἰδὼς “ἀμφὶ θεῶν τε καὶ ἅσσα λέγω περὶ πάντων"

Ei γὰρ καὶ τὰ μάλιστα τύχοι τετελεσ- μένον εἰπὼν,

Αὐτὸς ὅμως οὐκ οἷδε, δόκος δ᾽ ἐπὶ πᾶσι τέτυκται.

Compare Aristotel. De Xenophane,

Zenone, et Gorgia, capp. 1—2.

Cuap. XVI. STUDY OF IMPERSONAL NATURES. 333 point which placed him in antipathy with the simple, unconscious, and demonstrative faith of the old poets, as well as with the current legend.

If these distinguished men, when they ceased to follow the primitive instinct of tracing the phenomena of nattie to personal and designing agents, passed over, not at once to induction and observation, but to a misemployment of abstract words, substi- tuting metaphysical eidéla 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! At present we have to compare them only with that state of the Greek mind? which they partially superseded, and with which they were in decided opposition. The rudiments of physical science Were op osition conceived and developed among superior men; but between

the religious feeling of the mass was averse to them ; eeethod ‘and and the aversion, though gradually mitigated, never thereligious feeling wholly died away. Some of the philosophers were of the multitude

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 succour and blessings.

The discrepancy between the scientific and the religious point of view was dealt with differently by different philo- sophers. Thus Sokratés openly admitted it, and assigned to each a distinct and independent province. He distributed phenomena into two classes; one

How dealt with by dif. ferent philo- sophers.

1See the treatise of M. Auguste Comte (Cowrs de Philosophie Positive), and his doctrine of the three successive

stages of the human mind in reference 610

to scientific study—the theological, the metaphysical and the positive ;—a doc- trine 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, Ratio- cinative and Inductive, vol. ii. p.

2° Human wisdom (ἀνθρωπίνη σοφία), as contrasted with the primitive theo- logy (ot ἀρχαῖοι καὶ διατρίβοντες περὶ τὰς θεολογίας), to take the words of Aristotle (Meteorolog. ii. 1, pp. 41—42, ed, Tauchnitz).

334 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Parr I.

wherein the connexion of antecedent and consequent was invari- able 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 ascertain- able 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. Sokratés 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 phznomena, in which human research was insane, fruitless, and impious.? On the other hand, Hippokratés, the contemporary of Sokratés, Hippokrates denied the discrepancy, and merged into one those - two classes of phenomena,—the divine and the scien- tifically déterminable,—which the latter had put asunder. Hip- pokratés treated all phenomena 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

Sokratés.

1 Xenoph. Memor. i. 1, 6—9. Ta διακρίνειν . . . . Ἔφη δὲ δεῖν, ἃ μὲν μὲν ἀναγκαῖα (Σωκράτης) συνεβόνλευε μαθόντας ποιεῖν ἔδωκαν οἱ θεοὶ, ά- καὶ πράττειν, ὡς ἐνόμιζεν ἄριστ᾽ ἂν νειν" ἃ δὲ μὴ δῆλα τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἔστι, πραχθῆναι" περὶ δὲ τῶν ἀδήλων ὅπως πειρᾶσθει διὰ μαντικῆς παρὰ τῶν θεῶν ἀποβήσοιτο, μαντευσομένους ἔπεμπεν, εἰ πυνθάνεσθαι τοὺς θεοὺς γὰρ, οἷς ἂν ποιητέα. i τοὺς μέλλοντας οἴκους Te How ἵλεῳ, σημαίνειν. mpare also ~ καὶ πόλεις Καλῶς οἰκήσειν μαντικῆς ἔφη Memorab. iv. 7,7; and Cyroped. i. 6, προσδεῖσθαι" τεκτονικὸν μὲν yap ἣ χαλ- 3 κευτικὸν ἢ γεωργικὸν ἣ ἀνθρώπων ἀρχικὸν,

ἢ τῶν τοιούτων ἔργων ἐξεταστικὸν, ἢ =mena are classified by Sokrates among λογιστικὸν, ἣ οἰκονομικὸν, ἢ στρατηγικὸν the divine class, interdicted to human γενέσθαι, πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα, μαθήματα study (Memor. i. 1, 13): τὰ θεῖα or δαι- καὶ ἀνθρώπον γνώμῃ αἱρετέα, ἐνόμιζεν μόνια as opposed to τἀνθρώπεια. P| εἶναι" τὰ δὲ μέγιστα τῶν ἐν τούτοις Edy (Phileb. c. 16; Legg. x. p. Η τοὺς θεοὺς ἑαυτοῖς καταλεί- xii. p. 967) held the sun and stars to πεσθαι, ὧν οὐδὲν δῆλον εἶναι τοῖς be gods, each animated with its i ἀνθρώποις. . . . Τοὺς δὲ μηδὲν τῶν soul: he allowed astronomical investi- τοιούτων οἰομένους εἶναι δαιμόνιον, ἀλλὰ gation to the extent necessary for πάντα τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης γνώμης, δαιμονᾷν avoiding blasphemy respecting these ἔφη " δαιμονᾷν δὲ καὶ τούς μαντευομένους beings—uéxpt τοῦ μὴ βλασφημεῖν περὶ ἃ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἔδωκαν οἱ θεοὶ μαθοῦσι αὐτά (Vii. 841).

Cuar. XVI. SOKRAT&S—HIPPOKRATAS—ANAXAGORAS. 335

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”.1

A third distinguished philosopher of the same day, Anaxagoras, allegorising Zeus and the other personal gods, pro- claimed the doctrine of one common pervading Mind, as having first originated movement in the primeval Chaos, the heterogeneous constituents of which were so confused together that none of them could manifest themselves, each was neutra- lised by the rest, and all remained in rest and nullity. The movement originated by Mind disengaged them from this imprisonment, so that each kind of particle was enabled to manifest its properties with some degree of distinctness. 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 phenomena of nature,—that he looked for nothing but physical causes and connecting laws,?— 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

Anaxagoras.

1 Hippokratés, De Aére, Locis et Aquis, c. 22 (p. 78, edit. Littré, sect. 106, ed. Petersen): "Hr. τε πρὸς τουτέοισι εὐνούχιαι γίγνονται οἱ πλεῖστοι ἐν Σκύ- θῃσι, καὶ γυναικηΐα ἐργάζονται καὶ ὡς αἱ γυναῖκες διαλέγονταΐ τε ὁμοίως " καλεῦν- Tai τε οἱ τοιοῦτοι ἀνανδριεῖς. Οἱ μὲν οὖν ἐπιχώριοι τὴν αἰτίην προστιθέασι θεῷ καὶ σέβονται τουτέους τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ προσκυνέουσι, δεδοικότες περὶ ἑωύτέων ἕκαστοι. ᾿Ἐμοὶ δὲ καὶ αὐτέῳ δοκέει ταῦτα τὰ πάθεα θεῖα εἶναι, καὶ τἄλλα πάντα, καὶ οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἑτέρου θειότερον οὐδὲ ἀνθρω- πινώτερον, ἀλλὰ πάντα θεῖα" ἕκαστον δὲ ἔχει φύσιν τῶν τοιουτέων, καὶ οὐδὲν ἄνεν φύσιος γίγνεται. Καὶ τοῦτο τὸ πάθος, ὥς μοι δοκέει γίγνεσθαι, φράσω, ἄο.

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

Compare the remarkable treatise of aod La ratés, De Morbo Sacro, capp. 1 and 18, vol. vi. p. 352—3094, ed. Littré,

See this opinion of Hippokratés illus- trated by the doctrines of some phy- sical philosophers stated in Aristotle, Physic. ii. 8. Some ὕει ὁ PY οὐχ ὅπως τὸν σῖτον αὐξήσῃ, ἀλλ᾽ ἐξ ἀνάγκης, &c. Some valuable observations on the method of Hippokratés are also found in Plato, Pheedr. p. 270.

2See the graphic picture in Plato, Pheedon. p. 97—89 (cap. 46—47) : com-

are Plato, Legg. xii. p. 967 ; Aristotel.

etaphysic. i. p. 18—14 (ed. Brandis) ; Plutarch. Defect, Oracul. p. 435.

Simplicius, Commentar. in Aristotel. Physic. p. 88, καὶ ὅπερ δὲ ὁ ἐν Φαίδωνι Σωκράτης ἐγκαλεῖ τῷ ᾿Αναξαγόρᾳ, τὸ ἐν ταῖς τῶν κατὰ μέρος αἰτιολογίαις μὴ τῷ νῷ κεχρῆσθαι, ἀλλὰ ταῖς ὑλικαῖς ἀποδό- σεσιν, οἰκεῖον ἦν τῇ φυσιολογίᾳ. xa- goras thought that the superior intelli- gence of man, compared with other animals, arose from his possession of hands (Aristot. de Part. Animal, iv. 10, p. 687, ed. Bekk.),

338 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part L

bodies as subjects for calculation, have been already noticed as offensive, not only to the general public of Greece, but even to Sokratés himself among them. He was tried at Athens, and seems to have escaped condemnation only by voluntary exile. 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 Hippokratés 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 phenomena,—the mean and indifferent not less than the terrific or tutelary. Being thus alike connected with all phenomena, 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 Contrasted be foretold. Now such a view of the divine agency

with, could never be reconciled with the religious feelings

Grecian ς ° . -

religious of the ordinary Grecian believer, even as they stood in Θ110:

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 Athéné were conceived as definite Persons, objects of special reverence, hopes and fears, and

1 Xenophén, Memorab. iv. 7. So- tés said, καὶ παραφρονῆσαι τὸν ταῦτα μεριμνῶντα οὐδὲν ἧττον ἢ ᾿Αναξαγόρας παρεφρόνησεν, ὃ μέγιστον φρονήσας ἐπὶ

sensu comprobata” eo Parme- nidis Fragment., De armenidis Philo- sophia, p. 154). This is a mistake: the

Ionic p.

τῷ Tas τῶν θεῶν μηχανὰς ἐξηγεῖσθαι, Compare Schau , Anaxagore Frag- ment. p. 50—141; Plutarch, Nikias, 23, and Periklés, 6—32 ; Diogen. Laért. ii. 10—14,

The Ionic philosophy, ago which Anaxagoras more in anguage than in spirit, seems to have been the least popular of all the schools, though some of the commentators treat it as conformable to Mw ed opinion, because it confined itself for the most part to phznomenal explanations, and did not recognise the noumena of Plato, or the τὸ ἕν νοητόν of Parmenidés,—“ quali fuit Ionicorum, que tum dominabatur, ratio, vulgari opinione et commu

&c. searched for and insisted upon p irectly into

osophers, who Reger ict

hysi laws, came more y confli with the sentiment of the multitude than the Eleatic school.

The larger atmospheric phenomena were connected in the most intimate manner with Grecian religious feeling and uneasiness (see Demokritus ap. Sext. Empiric. ix. sect. 19—24, p. 552— 554, Fabric.) ; the attempts of Anaxa- goras and Demokritus ag lain — were more displeasing e public than the Platonic speculations (Demo- kritus ap. Aristot. Meteorol. ii. 7;

Ρ. ualis Stobzeus, Eclog. Physic. p. 594; com- Muliach, ‘Democriti

fib. iv. p. 894). —_

+

Cap. XVL GRECIAN RELIGIOUS BELIEF, 337

animated with peculiar feelings, sometimes of favour, sometimes of wrath, towards himself or his family or country. They were propitiated by his prayers, and prevailed upon to lend him succour 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 them, and dependence upon them, was the essence of his faith. While he prayed with sincerity for special blessings or protection from the gods, he could not acquiesce in the doctrine of Hippokratés, 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 J7ettment. harassed more or less so many of the philosophers, tro τς produced its most afflicting result in the condemnation of Sokratés by the Athenians. According to the remarkable passage recently cited from Xenophén, it will appear that Sokratés agreed with his countrymen in denouncing physical speculations as impious,—that he recognised the religious process of discovery as a peculiar branch, co-ordinate 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 exigences of religious hopes and fears on the one hand, and those of reason, in her ardour for ascertaining the invariable laws of phenomena, 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 Sokratés could point out, that those anomalous phenomena 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.

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 Thucydidés: .

1—22

338 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES.

Part 1.

though in point of fact, even the multitude, during this later age, were partially modified by those very scientific views which they regarded with disfavour. And we must keep in view the primitive religious faith, once universal and unobstructed, but subsequently dis- turbed 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! 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

Scission between the superior men and the multitude— important in reference to the mythes.

1It is curious to see that some of the most recondite doctrines of the Pythagorean philosophy were actually

ille Siculus Epicharmus insusurret cantilenam suam”. Clemens Alex. Strom. v. p. 258. Nade καὶ μέμνασ᾽ απιστειν"

brought before the general Syracusan public in the comedies of Epicharmus : ‘In comeediis suis personas spe ita colloqui fecit, ut sententias tha- goricas et in universum sublimia vite sai pede immisceret”. (Grysar De

oriensium Comedia, p. 111, Col. 1828.) kn

The fragments preserved in Diogen. Laért. ὧν 9—17) present both criticisms upon the Hesiodic doctrine of a prime- val chaos, and an exposition of the archet and immutable ideas (as opposed to the fluctuating phenomena of sense) which Plato afterwards adopted and systematised.

picharmus 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

ἄρθρα ταῦτα τῶν φρενῶν. Ζῶμεν ἀριθμῷ καὶ λογισμῷ" ταῦτα γὰρ σώζει Bporovs. Also his contemptuous ridicule of the prophetesses of his time who cheated foolish women out of their money, pretending to universal owledge, καὶ πάντα γιγνώσκοντι τῷ τηνᾶν λόγῳ (ap. Polluc. ix. 81). | Ni a aa O. Miiller, Dorians, iv.

These dramas seem to have been exhibited at Syracuse between 480— 460 B.c., anterior even to Chionidés and Magnés at Athens (Aristot. Poet, c. 8): he says toAA@ πρότερος, which can har be literally exact. The critics of the Horatian age looked upon Epicharmus as the prototype of Plautus (Hor. Epistol. ii. 1. 58).

παρ, Xvi, ALTERED FEELINGS TOWARDS THE MYTHES. 339

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,! 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. For these reasons, the anti-mythic vein of criticism was of little effect as a destroying force. But nevertheless τς Ξ Ξ Ἔ ν bee e mythes its dissolving, decomposing and transforming influence accommo- was very considerable. To accommodate the ancient ΜΕΝ, mythes to an improved tone of sentiment and ἃ newly feeling and created canon of credibility, was a function which Bias 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 haying 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 της fact. But it is divine and heroic reality, not human; and ee the present is only half-brother of the past (to borrow? eat: an illustration from Pindar in his allusion to gods and men), remotely and generically, but not closely and specifically, ana- logous 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.

1 The third book of the Republic of pupils learn whole poets by heart Bios Plato is particularly striking in refer- ποιητὰς ἐκμανθάνων), others preferred ence to the use of the poets in educa- extracts and selections.

tion : see also his treatise De Legg. vii. 2 Pindar, Nem. 1 taaist 1. Compare p.810—811. Some teachers made their Simonidés,” Fragm. 1 (Gaisford).

340 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTiEs, Part ΐ.

Pindar repudiates some stories and transforms others, because uae 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. Pindar shrinks from the idea of imputing to them so horrid an appetite; he pronounces the tale to have been originally fabricated by a slanderous neighbour. Nor can he bring himself to recount the quarrels between different gods.’ The amours of Zeus and Apollo are noway 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 Korénis: 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.” 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 AZakid 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 rivals 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.* 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.’ He treats even those mythical characters, which conflict the most palpably with positive experience, as connected by a real genealogical thread

1 Pindar, Olymp. i, 30—55; ix. 82— depreciate Odysseus ; for he ΘᾺ] 45. Sisyphus, specially on account of his 2 Pyth. iii. 25. See the allusions to cunning and resources Cie xiii. Semelé, Alkména, and Danaé, Pyth. 50), in the ode addressed enophén iii. ae x. 10. Compare also the Corinthian. supra, chap. ix. * . οι. Εἰπάατ, Nem. vil, 2030; vill. 28 5. 99 OR ane Vit 85; “Nem. Ὑἱ 43 . ΤΩ, . 0—60. . Ζ Jars = ree ‘. 5 _ It seems to be sympathy for Ajax, φάντι δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων παλαιαὶ ῥήσιες, ἄο. in odes addressed to noble Αὐρίπθίαπὀ ὅὄὅγίῃ. x. 49. Compare Pyth. xii. victors, which induces him thus to 11—22

Cuap. XVI. PINDAR~—TRAGIC POETS. 341

with the world before him. Not merely the heroes of Troy and Thébes, and the demigod seamen of Jasén in the ship Argé, but also the Centaur Cheirén, the hundred-headed Typhés, the giant Alkyoneus, Anteus, Bellerophén and Pegasus, the Chimera, the Amazons and the Hyperboreans—all appear painted on the same canvas, and touched with the same colours, as the men of the recent and recorded past, Phalaris and Kroesus: only they are thrown back to a greater distance in the perspec- tive.1 The heroic ancestors of those great Aiginetan, Thessalian, Théban, Argeian, &c., families, whose present members the poet celebrates for their agonistic victories, sympathise 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.? The power and skill of the Argeian Theseus and his relatives as wrestlers, are ascribed partly to the fact that their ancestor Pamphaés in aforetime had hospitably entertained the Tyndarids Kastor and Pollux.? 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 un- willing confession of its truth, as in the case of the fratricide committed on Phokus by his brothers Péleus and Telamén.*

Aschylus and Sophoklés exhibit the same spontaneous and uninquiring faith as Pindar in the legendary anti- Tragic quities of Greece, taken as a whole; but they allow Pot. themselves greater licence 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 intro- duced. 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.

1 Pyth. i. 17; iii. 4—7; iv. 12; viii. introduce φύᾳ in cases where Homer 16. em. iv. 27—32; v. 89. Isthm.v. would have mentioned the divine 81; vi. 44—48. Olymp. iii. 17; viii. 68; assistance. xiii. 61—87. 3Nem. x. 87—51. Compare the

2Nem. iii. 39; v. 40. συγγενὴς family legend of the Athenian Démo- εὐδοξία --- πότμος συγγενής ; Vv. 8. kratés, in Plato, Lysis. p. 205, Olymp. ix. 10% Pindar seems to 4Nem. v.12—16.

342 -

THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES.

Part I.

Both of these poets exalted rather than lowered the dignity of

ischylus eae Sopho- rather than human.

the mythical world, as something divine and heroic

The Prométheus of Aischylus is

a far more exalted conception than his keen-witted namesake in Hesiod, and the more homely details of the ancient Thébais and (idipodia were modified in the like spirit by Sophoklés.! The religious agencies of the old epic are con-

stantly kept prominent by both.

The paternal curse,—the wrath

of deceased persons against those from whom they have sustained wrong,—the judgments of the Erinnys against guilty or fore- doomed persons, sometimes inflicted directly, sometimes brought about through dementation of the sufferer himself (like the Homeric Até),—are frequent in their tragedies.?

1 See above, chap. xiv. on the Legend of the Siege of Thébes.

2 The curse of CEdipus is the deter- mining force in the Sept. ad Theb., "Apa τ΄, ᾿Εριννὺς πατρὸς 7 ασθενής (v. 70); it reap seve imes in the course of the drama, with parti- cular solemnity in the mouth of Eteoklés (695—709, 725, 785, &c.); he yields to it as an irresistible force, as carrying the family to ruin :—

᾿Επεὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα κάρτ᾽ ἐπισπέρχει θεὸς, Ἵτω κατ᾽ ovpov, κῦμα Κωκυτοῦ λαχὸν, Φοίβῳ στυγηθὲν πᾶν τὸ Λαΐου γένος.

ῳ ἀκ te Cao ΚΝ * Φίλου yap ἐχθρά μοι πατρὸς τέλει" apa

Ἐηροῖς ἀκλαύστοις ὄμμασιν προσιζάνει, ἄς.

So again at the opening of the Agamemnon, the μνάμων μῆνις τεκνό- ποινος (Υ. 155) and the sacrifice of Iphigenia are dwelt upon as leaving behind them an avenging doom upon Agamemndén, though he took precau- tions for gagging her mouth during the sacrifice and thus preventing her from giving utterance to imprecations --Φθόγγον ἀραῖον οἴκοις Big χαλινῶν τ᾽ ἀναύδῳ μένει (κατασχεῖν), Υ. 246. The Erinnys awaits Agamemnén even at the moment of his victorious consum- mation 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 rouse of Atreus— πρώταρχος ἄτη---παλαιαὶ ἁμαρτίαι δόμων 1187—1197, Choéph. 692)—the curse

iprecated by the outraged Thyestés

(1601). In the Choéphore, Apollo menaces Orestés with the wrath of his deceased father, and all the direful visitations of the Erinnys, unless he undertakes to revenge the murder (271 Aen B Alcoa and Ἔριννύς bring on blood for blood (647). But the moment

that Orestés, between these conflicting obligations (925), has achieved it, he mes himself the

make their a Brama, of Ὁ of this fearful trilogy. The

eance (Eumenid. 96), and even spurs them on when they appear to relax. Apollo conveys Orestés to Athens, whither the Erinnyes pursue him, and prosecute him before the judgment-seat of the goddess Athéné, τ ἔα they errs oe, ΟΝ

Ο appearing as ender. The debate between ‘‘the daughters of Night” and the god, ing and defending, is eminently curious (576— 730): the —— are deeply morti- fied at the humiliation put upon them when Orestés is acquitted, but Athéné at 1 reconciles them, and a cove- nant is made whereby they become protectresses of Attica, accepting of a permanent abode and solemn worshi (1006): Orestés returns to =o a an 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 acquitta} of Orestés formed the

Cuap. XVI. ASCHYLUS. 343

ZEschylus in two of his remaining pieces brings forward the gods as the chief personages. Far from sharing the objection of Pindar to dwell upon dissensions of the gods, he introduces Prométheus and Zeus in the one, Apollo and the Eumenides in the other, in marked opposition. The dialogue, first super induced by him upon the primitive chorus, gradually became the most important portion of the drama, and is more elaborated in Sophoklés than in Aischylus. Even in Sophoklés, 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 “Eschylus even to. the society of the gods. The Eumenides accuse Apollo of having, with the inso- lence of youthful ambition, “ridden down” their old prerogatives’‘—while the Titan Prométheus, the champion of suffering humanity against the unfriendly disposi- tions 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

Tendencies of A’schy- lus in regard to the old legends.

legend of the Hill and Judicature of Areiopagus. This is the only complete trilo

of #éschylus 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 Kassandra under the actual prophetic fever in the first, contributes still farther to impart to it a colouring different from common humanity.

The general view of the movement of the Oresteia given in Welcker (Aischyl. Trilogie, p. 445) appears to me more conformable to Hellenic ideas than that of Klausen (Theologumena Aischyli, 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 th

rsonality of Athéné too much in he supreme authority of Zeus (p. 158—168).

1 Eumenidés, 150.—

᾿Ιὼ, mat Διὸς, ἐπίκλοπος πέλει, Νέος δὲ γραίας δαίμονας καθιππάσω, &e.

The same metaphor in, v. 731. ZHschylus seems to delight in contrast- ing the young and the old gods: com- pare 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) :-—

"AAN αἱματηρὰ πράγματ᾽, οὐ λαχὼν, σέβεις, ἕ 5. way e , Mavreta 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 protectin; the suppliant Danaides, without firs submitting the matter to his people

the and obtaining their expressed consent,

344

THE GREEKS OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES.

Part I.

by another,—a fate which cannot be averted except through warnings communicable only by Prométheus himself.

Though Aischylus incurred reproaches of impiety from Plato, and seemingly also from the Athenian public, for particular speeches and incidents in his tragedies,” and though he does not

and the fear which = expresses of their blame (κατ᾽ ἀρχὰς γὰρ φιλαίτιος λέως), are more forcib: Ἐ set forth than an old epic poem would probably have thought necessary (see Supplices, 369, 897, 485, 519). The solemn wish to exclude both anarch: τ and despotism from Athens bears sti pore the mark of political feeling of the time—pij7’ ἄναρχον μήτε δεσποτούμενον (Eumenid. 527—696).

1 Prométheus, 85, 151, 170, 309, 524,

910, 940, 956. ὦ Plato ubl. ii. 881—383 ; com- ZEschyl. ent. 159, ed. Din-

plays secret pobre of the mysteries of Démétér, but i said to have excused himself by alleging ignorance: he was not aware that = t tbe had said was comprised in the mysteries (Aristot. Ethic. Nicom. iii. 2; Clemens Alex. Strom. ii. p. 387); the story is different again in Allian, V. H. v. 19.

Ν ἘῸΝ little ἐπα ἴον — out hard inctly respecting accusation my be seen in Lobeck, Aglaopham. p.

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

There is no evidence to prove to us that the Prométheus Vinctus was con- sidered as impious by the public — whom it was represented; but i obvious meaning has been so Sennen 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 Aischylus really meant, we ought not to nab the religious ideas of modern times; we have no test except what we know of the a oe own time and that which had preced

The explanations given by fee ablest critics seem generally to exhibit a predetermination to brin ring out Zeus, as a just, wise, gr ae all-power- ful Being; and one way or another, distort the “igu res, alter the perspective, and give terlethed inter-

pretations of the meaning of this striking drama, which conveys an eon directly contrary (see elcker, Aisch. Trilogie, p. 90—117, with the explanation of Dissen there given; Klausen, Theologum. Aisch. δὰ 40--Ἰδ4 ; Schémann, in his recent slation of the play, and the criti- cism of that translation in the Wiener Jahrbiicher, vol. cix. 1845, p. 245, by F. Ritter). On the other hand, Schutz (Excurs. ad Prom. Vinct. p. 149) thinks that Aischylus 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 pears to me less wide of the truth

rs Sg the forcible methods employed by others to bring the poet into harmony with their own religious

ideas, Of the Prométheus Solutus, which | to the Prométheus

are very scanty, critics as to its plot have little proceed upon. They Λε τοι τῷ that, in ens way or other, the a objec- tions which the Prométh. Vinctus presents against the justice of Zeus were in the Prométh. Solutus removed. Hermann, in his Dissertatio de Hschyli Prometheo Soluto (Opuscula, vol. iv. p 256), calls this position in question : si transcribe from his Dissertation one passage, because it contains an im- portant remark in reference to the manner in which the Greek poets handled. their religious legends: “‘while they recounted and believed many enormities respecting individual fad they always described the God- ead i in the abstract as holy and fault-

oe ‘illud — rtet, quod quum de singulis Ὁ) iis indignissima

quzque crederent, tamen ubi sine certo nomine Deum dicebant, im- munem ab one Ἄς, summaAque

sanctitate ebant. Illam igitur ee sevitiam ut excu- sent defensores ἘΠῚ με jure punitum volunt in

Crap. XVI. SCHYLUS—SOPHOKLAS. 345

adhere to the received vein of religious tradition with the same : strictness as Sophoklés—yet the ascendency and interference of the gods are 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”: his individuals are taken, not from the iron race whom Hesiod acknow- ledges with shame as his contemporaries, but from the extinct heroic race which had fought at Troy and Thébes. It is to them that his conceptions aspire, and he is even chargeable with frequent straining, beyond the limits of poetical taste, to realise 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.

Sophoklés, 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 Sophoklés, however, we find indications that an altered ethical feeling, and a more predominant sense of artistic perfection, are allowed to modify

gran- deur of the mythical world.

Sophoklés,

sequente fabula reconciliato Jove, restitutam arbitrantur divinam justi- tiam. uo invento, vereor ne non optime dignitati consuluerint supremi Deorum, quem decuerat potius non sevire omnino, quam placari ea lege, ut alius Promethet vice lueret.” Cone Fragment. 146, Dindorf ; Plato, Repub. iii. p. 801; compare Strabo, xi xii. p. 580.— oe « e οἱθεῶν ἀγχίσπορο"

to ; ῥοὰς ον ρὲ ae Δωυρονυ ε'

Οἱ Ζηνὸς ἐγγύς, οἷς ἐν ᾿Ιδαίῳ πά Ἢ

Διὸς πατρῴου fees ἐστ᾽ ἐν ai

Κοὔπω σφιν ἐξίτηλον αἷμα Poo) A Gaak

There is one real exception to

this statement—the Persee—which is founded upon an event of recent occur- rence; and one apparent exception— the Prométheus Vinctus. But in that drama no individual mortal is made 6

346 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Parr I.

the harsher religious agencies of the old epic. Occasional misplaced effusions’ of rhetoric, as well as of didactic prolixity, may also be detected. It is Aschylus, not Sophoklés, who forms the marked antithesis to Euripidés ; it is A’schylus, not Sopho- klés, to whom Aristophanés 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 Aphrodité, which beseem the comrades of Agamemnén and Adrastus.?

How deeply this feeling, of the heroic character of the mythical world, possessed the Athenian mind, may be judged

wacmser by the bitter criticiams made on Euripidés, whose a compositions were pervaded, partly by ideas of pythical —_ 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. While Aristophanés assails Euripidés as the repre-

1 For the characteristics of Aischy- Profect. in Virt. Sent. c. 7), unless we lus see Aristophan. Ran. 755, ad jin. are to understand this as a mistake of vassim. The competition between Plutarch quoting Sophoklés instead of Aischylus and Euripidés turns upon Euripidés as he speaks in the Frogs of γνῶμαι ayabai, 1497; the weight and pire: wpe which i majesty of the words, 1362; πρῶτον τῶν both of Lessing in his Life of Sophoklés Ἑλλήνων πυργώσας ῥήματα σεμνά, 1001, and of Welcker (Aschyl. Trilogie, p.

. 595

921, 930 (“‘ sublimis et gravis et di- 5 loquus spe usque ad vitium,” Quintil. See above. Chapters xiv. and xv.

x. 1); the imposing appearance of his heroes, such as Memnén and Kyknus, 961; their reserve in speech, 908 ; his dramas ‘full of Arés,” and his lion- hearted chiefs, inspiring the auditors with fearless spirit in defence of their country,—1014, 1019, 1040; his con- tempt of feminine tenderness, 1042.— ZESCH. Οὐδ᾽ old” οὐδεὶς ἥντιν᾽ ἐρῶσαν πώποτ᾽ ἐποίησα γυναῖκα. EURIP. Ma AC, οὐδὲ γὰρ ἦν τῆς ᾿Αφροδίτης οὐδέν σοι. AESCH. μηδέ y ἐπείη" ᾿Αλλ᾽ ἐπὶ coi τοι καὶ τοῖς σοῖσιν πολλὴ πολλοῦ ᾿πικάθοιτο.

To the same general purpose Nubes (1347—1356), com 80 many years earlier. The weight and majesty of the Aischylean heroes (βάρος, τὸ μεγα- Aomperés) is dwelt upon in the life of #éschylus, and Sophoklés is said to have derided it—‘‘"Qcomep yap ὃ

Σοφοκλῆς ἔλεγε, τὸν Αἰσχύλον διαπε- παιχὼς Syne, &e. (Plutarch, De

ZEschylus seems to have been a ter innovator as to the matter of

he mythes than either Sophoklés or Euripidés (Dionys. Halic. Judic. de Vet. Script. p. 422. Reisk.). Wor the close adherence of Sophoklés to the Homeric epic see Athen. vii. p. 277 ; Diogen. Laért. iv. 20; Suidas, v. Πολέ- μων. ischylus puts into the mouth of the Eumenidés a serious ent derived from the behaviour of Zeus in ining his father Kronos (Eumen.

id. Fragm. capp. 5 and 6. ᾿ fifth lectures the Dramatische oe of aaa] Wilhelm Schlegel d both and eloquently the erence Zschylus, Sophoklés, and ape

on this point of the grad

sinki lossus into an ordi man; about Euripidés especially in lecture δ, vol i. p. 206, ed. Heidelberg, 1809,

Cuap. XVI. ALTERED TONE OF EURIPIDES. 347

sentative 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 savouring of the market place. 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 AKthér 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.? 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 Q!neus, Télephus, Thyestés, Ind, and other heroic characters, were unmercifully

1 Aristot. Poetic. c. 46, Οἷον καὶ

D Kai yap τοῖς ἱματίοις ἡμῶν χρῶντας πολὺ Σοφοκλῆς ἔφη, αὐτὸς μὲν οἵους δεῖ ποιεῖν,

σεμνοτέροισι.

Εὐριπίδης δὲ, οἷοί εἰσι.

The Rane and Acharneis of Aristo- phanés exhibit fully the reproaches —— against Euripidés: the language

ut into the mouth of Euripidés in the

ormer play (vv. 935—977) illustrates specially the point here laid down. Plutarch (De Gloria Atheniens. c. 5) contrasts ἡ Εὐριπίδου σοφία καὶ Sodo- κλεοῦς λογιότης. Sophoklés either ad- hered to the old mythes or introduced alterations into them in a spirit con- formable to their original characte. while Euripidés refined upon them. The comment of Démétrius Phalereus connects τὸ λόγιον expressly with the maintenance of the dignity of the tales. Αρξομαι δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ μεγαλοπρεποῦς, ὅπερ νῦν λόγιον ὀνομάζουσιν (c. 88).

2 ey ροοβ Ran. 770, 887, 1066.

Euripidés says to Alschylus, in re- gard to the language employed by both of them,—

Ἦν οὖν od λέγῃς Δυκαβήττους Καὶ Ἰπαρνάσσων ἡμῖν μεγέθη, τοῦτ᾽ ἐστὶ τὸ χρηστὰ διδάσκειν, Ὃν χρὴ φράζειν ἀνθρωπείως ; Aischylus replies,— ᾿Αλλ᾽, ὦ κακόδαιμον, ἀνάγκη Μεγάλων γνωμῶν καὶ διανοιῶν ἴσα καὶ τὰ ῥήματα τίκτειν. Κἄλλως εἰκὸς τοὺς ἡμιθέους τοῖς μείζοσε χρῆσθαι"

*A "mov χρηστῶς καταδείξαντος διελυμήνω σύ.

EuRIP. Ti δράσας; ARSCH. Πρῶτον μὲν τοὺς βασιλεύοντας

ῥάκι᾽ ἀμπίσχων, ἵν᾽ ἐλεινοὶ

Tois ἀνθρώποις φαίνοιντ᾽ εἶναι.

For the character of the language and measures of Kuripidés, as repre- sented by igen Sor see also v. 1297, and Pac. 527. hilosophical discus- sion was introduced by Euripidés (Dionys. Hal, Ars Rhetor. viii. 10— ix. 11) in the Melanipp8, where the doctrine of prodigies (τέρας) appears to have been argued. Quuintilian (x. 1) remarks that to young beginners in judicial pleading,the study of Euripidés was much more specially profitable than that of Sophoklés: compare Dio Chrysostom, Orat. xviii. vol. i. p. 477, Reiske.

In Euripidés the heroes themselves sometimes delivered moralising dis- courses,—eicdywv τὸν Βελλεροφόντην

νωμολογοῦντα (Welcker, Griechische Tragéd. urip. Stheneb. p. 782). Com- are the Fragments of his Bellerophén 15—25, Matthie), and of his Chrysip- pus (7, ἐδ.). A striking story is found in Seneca, Epistol. 115 ; and Plutarch, de Audiend. Poetis, Ὁ. 4, t. 2, p. 70, Wytt. i

348 THE GREEKS OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part I.

derided, though it seems that their position and circumstances and of had always been painfully melancholy; but the ponpismn | effeminate pathos which Euripidés brought so nakedly

pealion © into the foreground, was accounted unworthy of the onl thee majesty of a legendary hero. And he incurred still

toric. greater obloquy on another point, on which he is allowed even by his enemies to have only reproduced in substance the pre-existing tales,—the illicit and fatal passion

depicted in several of his female characters, such as Phaedra and © Sthenobeea, 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? The marriage of the six daughters to the six sons of Molis is of Homeric origin, and stands now, though briefly, stated, in the Odyssey ; but the incestuous passion of Makareus and Kanaké, embodied by Euripidés* in the lost tragedy called Afolus, 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

1 Aristophan. Ran. 840.— μέτρο ἢ ; Phage Ῥ. Ly ὩΣ suited the ὦ στωμυλιοσυλλεκτάδη pian of the drama 0 US, 23 COM-

Kat πτωχοπὸιὲ καὶ ῥακιοσυῤῥαπτάδη. posed by Euripidés, to place in the Lara of Muakareus a formal recom-

See also Aristophan. Acharn. 385—422. can of incestuous marriages :

For an unfavourable criticism upon probab’ ly this contributed much to

such zeny see Aristot. Poet. 27. Pffend the Athenian public. See

Aristophan. Ran. 1050.— Dionys. Hal. Rhetor. ix. p.

EURIP. Πότερον δ᾽ οὐκ ὄντα λόγον ‘About the liberty of incermnaceidi τοῦτον περὶ τῆς Φαίδρας among relatives apenas in Homer, ξυνέθηκα; parents and children being alone

4ESCH. Ma Δί᾽, ἀλλ᾽ ὄντ᾽ * ἀλλ᾽ ἀπο- excepted, see Eggert Antiquitas κρύπτειν. Χρὴ τὸ πονηρὸν τόν Homerica, cap. xiii. p. 1 .γε ποιητὴ Ovid, whose poetical ἐάν led

Kai μὴ ouipas μηδὲ διδάσκειν. him chiefly to ΟΕ Euripidés, observes

In the Hercules Furens, Euripidés (Trist. ii. puts in relief and even exaggerates the «Omne genus scripti gravitate Tra-

worst elements of the ancient mythes : --. ia vincit, τ a hatred of Héré towards Hec quoque materiam semper - rate eo so far as to de = amoris habet.

ἬΝ 0: reason (by sending cece Tris and the un g Avoca and τὰν 1... Be =

thus intentionally to drive him to slay Canace

ΠΝ ΠΡ and children with his own arg “ eee ands 3 Aristoph. Ran. 849, 1041, 1080; This is the reverse of the truth in

Grane, Di Bet} Rubes, 1354. Se ge re or τος δὰγτοὶ and Sophoklés, Tau Θ recorum Co- an very true in respect

media in Rheinisch. Museam, tnd to Euripidés.

Cuar. XVI. PHEREKYD&s—AKUSILAUS—HELLANIKUS, 349 ἃ more refined character, such as carried no sense of awful compulsion. Thus the considerations by which the Euripidean Alkmeén was reduced to the necessity of killing his mother, appeared to Aristotle ridiculous.1 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, &c.: and the heroic exultation 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.?

The tendency then of Athenian tragedy—powerfully mani- fested in Aischylus, and never wholly lost—was to ‘The logo- uphold an unquestioning faith and a reverential por estimate of the general mythical world and its dés, &. 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 pre- tended historical test. Pherekydés, Akusilaus, and Hellanikus? 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 phenomena 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—

1 Aristot. Ethic. Nicom. iii. 1, 8 καὶ yap τὸν Εὐριπίδου ᾿Αλκμαίωνα γελοῖα αίνεται τὰ ἀναγκάσαντα μ' τροκτονῆσαι. n the lost tragedy called ᾿Αλκμαίων ὁ διὰ Ψωφῖδος.)

3 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 μέν ἀναρμοστὰ, τοῖς δὲ ἀπὸ σκηνῆς οἰκειότερα. “Exetvor 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.

3See Miiller, Prolegom. zu einer Menges urs Mythologie, ὁ. iii. Pp.

1HE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHEs. Part i

350

wherein they carry indeed their precision to such a length, that Hellanikus gives the year, and even the day, of the capture of Troy.? —

Hekateus of Milétus (500 B.c.), anterior to Pherekydés and Hekateus Hellanikus, is the earliest writer in whom we can

ost ra. detect any disposition to disallow the prerogative and tionalised. speciality of the mythes, and to soften down their —

characteristic prodigies ; some of which however still find favour 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 Hadés, into a serpent inhabiting a cavern on Cape Tzenarus—and Gerydén of Erytheia into a king of Epirus rich in herds of oxen.? Hekateeus traced the genealogy of himself aud the gens to which he belonged through a line of fifteen progenitors up to an initial god,3—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.

We have next to consider the historians, especially Herodotus The his- and Thucydidés. Like Hekateus, Thucydidés be- torians— ὠ longed to a gens which traced its descent from Ajax, Herodotus. and through Ajax to Aakus and Zeus.‘ Herodotus

1 Hellanic. Fragment. 143, ed. Didot.

2 Hekatei ed. Didot, 332, 346, 349; Schol. Apollén. Rhod. i. 256 ; Athene. ii. p. 133 ; Skylax, c. 26.

Perhaps Hekatzus was induced to look for Erytheia in Epirus by the brick-red colour of the earth there in many places, noticed by Pouqueville and other travellers (Voyage dans la Gréce, vol. ii. 248; see Klausen, Atneas

It is maintained by Mr. Clinton (Fast. Hell. ii. p. 480) and others (see not. ad Fragment. Hecatzi, p. 30, ed Didot), that the work on the Hyper- boreans was written by Hekateus of Abdera, a Lier Greek of the age of Ptolemy Philadelphus—not by Heka- teus of Milétus. I do not concur in this opinion. I think it much more probable that the earlier Hekatus

+ -

Nite ae Ca. τω" .. ee wa νας,

und die Penaten, vol. i, p. 222). ‘Exa- ταῖος ὃ Μιλήσιος---λόγον εὗρεν 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 Hyper- boreans in Herodotus is probably di- rected against Hekatzus, iv. 36; Schol. Apollén. Rhod. ii. 675 ; Dioddr. ii. 47.

was the author spoken of.

The distinguished position held Hekateus at Milétus is marked no only by the notice which Herodotus takes of his —— on public matters, but also by his negotiation with the Persian satrap Artaphernes on behalf of his countrymen (Diodér. Excerpt. xlvii. p. 41, ed. Dindorf).

3 Herodot. ii. 143.

4 Marcellin. Vit. Thucyd. init.

Cuar. XVI. HEKATAUS—HERODOTUS. 351

modestly implies that he himself had no such privilege to boast οὗ The curiosity of these two historians respecting the past had no other materials to work upon except the mythes, which they found already cast by the logographers into a continuous series, and presented as an aggregate of antecedent history, chrono- logically deduced from the times of the gods. In common with the body of the Greeks, both Herodotus and Thucydidés 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 enquiry 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 Hekateus, stiil 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.

Each of them however performed the process in his own way. Herodotus is a man of deep and anxious religious Ἐπ ΩΣ feeling. He often recognises the special judgments piety of of the gods as determining historical events : his piety 'erodotus is also partly tinged with that mystical vein which mystic the last two centuries had gradually infused into the ae ο. 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 8 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

1 Herodot. ii. 143.

352 THE GREEKS OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part I.

thinks himself authorised to do so, the names being matter of public notoriety. 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.

Herodotus expressly distinguishes, in the comparison of Poly- kratés with Minés, the human race to which the former belonged, His views from the divine or heroic race which comprised the Sane latter.2 But he has a firm belief in the authentic world. personality and parentage of all the names in the mythes, divine, heroic and human, as well as in the trustworthi- ness of their chronology computed by generations. He counts back 1600 years from his own day to that of Semelé, mother of Dionysus ; 900 years to Héraklés, and 800 years to Penelopé, the Trojan war being a little earlier in date.* 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 Héraklés, and 15,000 years from their god Osiris or Dionysus, down to their king Amasis‘ (550 B.c.). So much was his imagination familiarised 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.§

1 Herodot. ii, 8, 51, 61, 65,170. He The aversion of Dionysius of Hali- alludes briefly (c. ’51) ‘to an an ἱρὸς sth! Se karnassus te reveal the divine secrets which was communicated is not less powerful (see A. R. i. 67, Samothracian mysteries, but he does 68). not mention what it was: also about 2 Herod. iii. 122. gt epee or τελετή οὗ Démétér 3 Herod. ii. 145 Ὁ, Σ ν᾿

Καὶ περὶ μὲν τούτων τοσαῦτα ἡμῖν 4 Herodot. ii. 48--146. Καὶ ταῦτα εἰποῦσι, καὶ παρὰ τῶν θεῶν καὶ ἧρωων Αἰγύπτιοι ἀτρεκέως φασὶ ἐπίστασθαι, dev εὐμένεια εἴη (ς. 54). _ τε λογιζόμενοι καὶ ἀεὶ ἀπογραφόμενοι τὰ

Compare similar ape onthe part ἔτεα. of Pausanias (viii. 25 an 5 Herodot. ii. 53. μέχρι οὗ πρωήν τε

The passage of Heredotas (1. 8) 15. καὶ ὶ χθὲς, ὦ ὡς εἰπεῖν λόγῳ. Ἡσίοδον γὰρ equivocal, and has been understood καὶ Ὅμηρον ἡλικίην τετρακοσίοισι ἔτεσι in more ways than one (see Lobeck, δοκέω μεν πρεσβυτέρους γενέσθαι, καὶ ov Aglaopham. p. 1287). πλέοσ:.

Cuap. XVI. BELIEF OF HERODOTUS IN MYTHICAL PERSONS. 353

Herodotus had been profoundly impressed with what he saw and heard in Egypt. The wonderful monuments, the τς dofe- evident antiquity, and the peculiar civilization of that rence for

: ᾿ Ἢ ἢ Egypt an country, acquired such preponderance in his mind Egyptian over his own native legends, that he is disposed to St#tements. trace even the oldest religious names or institutions of Greece to Egyptian or Pheenician original, setting aside in favour of this hypothesis the Grecian legends of Dionysus and Pan.1 The oldest Grecian mythical genealogies are thus made ultimately to lose themselves in Egyptian or Pheenician 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, démes and tribes are all comprehended in this affirmative category ; the supposition of fictitious personages being apparently never entertained. Deukalién, Hellén, Dérus,2—I6n, with his four sons, the eponyms of the old Athenian tribes,3—the autochthonous Titakus and » Dekelus,A—Danaus, Lynkeus, Perseus, Amphitryén, Alkména, and Héraklés,5—Talthybius, the heroic progenitor of the privi- leged heraldic gens at Sparta,—the Tyndarids and Helena,‘ —Agamemnén, Menelaus, and Orestés,’7—Nestér and his son Peisistratus,—Asépus, Thébé, and Agina,—Inachus and Τό, Aétés and Médea,’—Melanippus, Adrastus, and Amphiaraiis, as well as Jas6én and the Argé,°—all these are occupants of the real past time, and predecessors of himself and his contemporaries. In the veins of the Lacedemonian 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 Héraklés first to Perseus and yi, general Danaé, then through Danaé to Akrisius and the ΘΟῊΝ Egyptian Danaus; but he drops the paternal lineage heroes and when he comes to Perseus (inasmuch as Perseus is the °P°"9™*

1 Herodot. ii. 146, come to Libya to fetch the Gorgon’s 2 Herod. i. 56. ae ὃ ‘ 3 Herod. v. 66. 6 Herod. ii. 118—120; iv. 145; vii. 4 Herod. ix. 73. 4

184. 5 Herod. ii. 48—44, 91—98, 171—182 7 Herod. i. 67—68 ; ii. 118; vii. 159. (the Egyptians admitted the truth of 8 Herod. i. 1, 2, 43 v. 81, 65. the Greek legend, that Perseus had 9 Herod. i. 52; iv. 145 ; v. 67 ; vii. 193.

354 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW or tHE MYTHES. PART i

son of Zeus by Danaé, without any reputed human father, such as Amphitryén was to Héraklés), and then follow the higher members of the series through Danaé alone.! He also pursues the same regal genealogy, through the mother of Eurysthenés and Proklés, up to Polynikés, CEdipus, Laius, Labdakus, Polydérus and Kadmus: and he assigns various ancient inscriptions which he saw in the temple of the Ismenian Apollo at Thébes, to the ages of Laius and Cidipus2 Moreover the sieges of Thébes 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,*—the death of Mékisteus and Tydeus before Thébes by the hands of Melanippus, and the touching calamities of Adrastus and Amphiaraiis con- nected with the same enterprise,—the sailing of Kastér and ‘Pollux in the Argé,4—the abductions of 16, Eurépa, Médea and Helena,—the emigration of Kadmus in quest of Eurépa, and his coming to Bcedtia, as well as the attack of the Greeks upon Troy to recover Helen,5—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 Mykalé.

But though Herodotus is thus easy of faith in regard both to the persons and to the general facts of Grecian mythes, yet when —yetcom. he comes to discuss particular facts taken separately, bined with we find him applying to them stricter tests of historical Sole make credibility, and often disposed to reject as well the tersof fact. miraculous as the extravagant. Thus even with respect to Héraklés, 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 deter- minate powers and conditions governing the course of events. “How is it consonant to nature (he asks), that Héraklés, being, as he was, according to the statement of the Greeks, still a man (i.e. having not yet been received among the gods), 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

1 Herod. vi. 52—53, 4 Herod. i. 52; iv. 145; v. 67. 2 Herod. iv. 147 ; v. 59—61. 5 Herod. i. 1—4; ii. 49, 113 ; iv. 147; ὃ Herod. v. 61; ix. 27—28. νυ. 94.

a ϑϑν ακόῳ «0 ὦν.γ.....Ὁ

CHap. XVI. HERODOTUS AND THE MIRACLE OF DODONA. 355

religious feelings of Herodotus here told him that he was trenching upon the utmost limits of admissible scepticism.’ Another striking instance of the disposition of Herodotus to

rationalise the miraculous narratives of the current pisremarks mythes, is to be found in his account of the oracle of ΡΟΣ ΕΘ, Dédéna and its alleged Egyptian origin. Here, if in foundation any case, a miracle was not only in full keeping, but κᾶν: at Dédona.

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 Dodonzans generally, that two black doves had started at the same time from Thébes 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 Dédéna, 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.?

Such was the tale related and believed at Dédéna. But Herodotus had also heard, from the priests at Thébes in Egypt, a different tale, ascribing the origin of all the prophetic establish- ments, in Greece as well as in Libya, to two sacerdotal women, who had been carried away from Thébes by some Pheenician merchants and sold, the one in Greece, the other in Libya. The Théban priests boldly assured Herodotus that much pains had been taken to discover what had become of these women so

1 Hezod. ii. 45, Λέγουσι δὲ πολλὰ goddess Athéné, and passing off her

καὶ ἄλλα ἀνεπισκέπτως of 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; Kai 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 criticises the stratagem whereby Peisistratus estab- lished himself as despot at Athens— by dressing up the stately Athenian woman Phyé in the costume of the

injunctions as the commands of the goddess: the Athenians accepted hei with unsuspecting faith, and received Peisistratus at her command. Hero- dotus treats the whole affair as a piece of extravagant silliness, πρᾶγμα εὐηθέσ- τατον μακρῷ (i. 60),

2 Herod. li. 55. Δωδωναίων δὲ αἱ ἱρήϊαι . . . ἔλεγον ταῦτα. συνωμολό- yeov δέ σφι καὶ ot ἄλλοι Δωδωναῖοι οἱ περὶ τὸ ἱρόν.

The miracle sometimes takes another form; the oak at Dédéna was itself once endued with — (ionys. Hal. Ars Rhetoric. 1, 6; Strabo.)

5,

REERS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part I,

exported, and that the fact of their having been taken to Greece and Libya had been accordingly verified."

The historian of Halicarnassus cannot for a moment think of admitting the miracle which harmonised so well with the feelings of the priestesses and the Dodonzans.? “ How (he asks) could a dove speak with human voice?” But the narrative of the priests at Thébes, 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 Dodonean 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 Thébes to Dédéna 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 colour.

That Herodotus should thus bluntly reject a miracle, recounted to him by the prophetic women themselves as the prime circum- stance 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

Hi : marks upon designates Melampus “as a clever man, who had Melampus acquired for himself the art of prophecy”; and had

prophetic procured through Kadmus much information about the

owers. sista : .

. religious rites and customs of Egypt, many of which he 1 Herod. ii. 54, τ tor. Rer. Mythicarum, ed. Bode, 3 Herod. ii. 57. ᾿Επεὶ τέῳ τρόπῳ ἂν i. 96). Had there been any truth in

πελειάς ye ἀνθρωπῃΐῃ φωνῇ φθέγξαιτο; this, Herodotus could hardly have

According to one statement, the failed to notice it, inasmuch as it word Πελειάς in the Thessalian dialect would exactly have helped him out of meant both a dove and a prophetess the difficulty which he felt.

\

CHap, XVI. ELIMINATION OF MYTHICAL NARRATIVE. 357

introduced into Greece1—especially the name, the sacr‘fices, 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”.? Though the name of Melampus is here maintained, the character described’ 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 Amphiaraiis.4 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 Solén in the preceding century, in whose view even inferior arts come from the gods, while Zeus or Apollo bestows the power of pro- phesying.® 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

1 Herod. ii. 49. ᾿Εγὼ μὲν viv φημι Μελάμποδα γενόμενον ἄνδρα σοφὸν, μαν- τικήν τε ἑωντῷ συστῆσαι, καὶ πυθόμενον an’ Αἰγύπτον, ἄλλα τε πολλὰ ἐσηγήσασθαι Ἕλλησι, καὶ τὰ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον, ὀλίγα αὐτῶν παραλλάξαντα.

2 Herod. ii. 49. ᾿Ατρεκέως μὲν οὐ πάντα συλλαβὼν τὸν λόγον ἔφῃνε (Me- lampus)* ἀλλ᾽ οἱ ἐπιγενόμενοι τούτῳ σοφισταὶ page ἐξέφῃναν.

8 Compare Herod. iv. 95; ii. 81. Ἑλλήνων οὐ τῷ ἀσθενεστάτῳ σοφιστῇ Πυθαγόρᾳ.

4Homer, Odyss. xi. 290; xv. 225. Apollodér. i. 9, 11—12. Hesiod, Eoiai, Fragm. 55, ed. Diintzer (p. 43).—

᾿Αλκὴν μὲν yap ἔδωκεν ᾿Ολύμπιος Αἰακί-

noe, Νοῦν δ᾽ ᾿Αμνθαονίδαις, πλοῦτον δ᾽ ἔπορ᾽ ᾿Ατρείδησι. Also Frag. 34 (p. 88), and Frag. 65 (Ὁ. 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 Proetus. In the Hesiodic Eoiai (Fr. 16, Diintz.; Apollod. ii. 2) the distemper of the Proetid 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 recognised a connexion between Melampus and these rites.

5 Homer, Iliad, i. 72—873; xv. 412. Odyss. xv. 245—252; iv. 233. Some- times the gods inspired prophecy for the special occasion, without conferrin, upon the party the permanent gift an status of a prophet (compare Odyss. i. 202; xvii. 383). Solén, Fragm. xi. 48— 58, Schneidewin :— ἴΑλλον μάντιν ἔθηκεν ἄναξ ἑκάεργος

᾿Απολλὼν,

Ἔγνω δ᾽ ἀνδρὶ κακὸν τηλόθεν ἐρχό"

μενον, ὯΩι συνομαρτήσωσι θεοί . . + -

Herodotus himself reproduces the old belief in the special gift of pro- phetic power by Zeus and ee in the story of Euenius of Apollénia (ix.

94).

See the fine ode of Pindar describing the birth and inspiration of Jamus, eponymous father of the pate pro-

etic family in Elis called the Jamids trerodot. ix. 33), Pindar, Olymp. vi. 40—75. About Teiresias, Sophoc. Gd. Tyr. 288—410. Neither Nest6ér nor Odysseus possesses the gift of pro- phecy.

358 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Parr i

the explanation of phenomena among more visible and deter- minate agencies.

We may make a similar remark on the dictum of the historian Hisremarks Tespecting the narrow defile of Tempé, forming the spent embouchure of the Péneus and the efflux of all the legend of | waters from the Thessalian basin. The Thessalians toapt alleged that this whole basin of Thessaly had once been a lake, but that Poseidén had split the chain of mountains and opened the efflux ;1 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 Poseidén 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 Poseidén 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 Poseidén, when pointed out to him, but it stands only in the background : what is present to his mind is, the phenomenon of the earthquake, not as a special act, but as part of a system of habitual operations.”

1 More than one tale is found else- where, similar to this about the defile of Tempé :—

“ A tradition exists that this part of the country was once a lake, and that Salomon 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 aoe aaa thiae ὌΝ NG = eer of egress (Hum , Vues des Cordil- léres, p. 87—88); and about the plateau of Kashmir (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. i. p. 102), drained in a like miracu- lous manner by the saint pa. The manner in which conjectures, derived from local configuration or | eer mig Ie are often e to assume

he form of traditions, is well-remarked by the same illustrious traveller :— “Ὁ 6 qui se présente comme une tradi- tion, n’est souvent que le reflet de Yimpression que laisse Taspect des lieux. Des bancs de coquilles ἃ demi-

fossiles, répandues dans les isthmes ou sur des plateaux, font naitre, méme chez les hommes jes moins avancés dans la culture intellectuelle, l’idée de grandes inondations, d’anciennes communications entre des _ bassins limitrophes. Des opinions, que l’on

urroit appeler repay se

uvent dans les foréts de l’Orénoque comme dans les iles de la Mer du Sud. Dans l'une et dans l’autre de ces con- trées, elles ont pris la forme des traditions.” (A. v. Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. ii. p. 147.) Compare a similar remark in the same work and volume, p. 286—294.

2 Herodot. vii. 129. (Poseidén 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 τούτον, τοὺς ποτάμους τούτους . . .- ῥέοντας ποιεῖν τὴν Θεσσαλίην πᾶσαν πέλαγος. Αὐτοὶ μέν νυν Θέσσαλοι λέγουσι Mocedéwva ποιῆσαι τὸν αὐλῶνα, δι᾽ οὗ ῥέει ὃ Πηνειὸς, οἰκότα λέγοντες. Ὅστις νομίζει Ποσειδέωνα τὴν γῆν σείειν, καὶ τὰ διεσ- τεῶτα ὑπὸ σεισμοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ τούτου ἔργα εἶναι, καὶ ἂν ἐκεῖνο ἰδὼν φαίη ἸΤοσειδέωνα ποιῆσαι. Ἐστὶ γὰρ σεισμοῦ ἔργον, ὡς ἐμοὶ ἐφαίνετο εἶναι, ἡ διάστασις τῶν

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AS νοι σωταρένν

Snap. ΧΥΪ.

HERODOTUS ON THE TROY LEGEND.

359

Herodotus adopts the Egyptian version of the legend of Troy, founded on that capital variation which seems to have ypon the originated with Stesichorus, and according to which legend of

Helen never left Sparta at all—her eidélon had been

‘Oy.

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 Préteus, the king of the country, until Menelaus came to reclaim her after his

ovpéwv. In another case (viii. 129), Herodotus believes that Poseidén gmc nag a preternaturally high tide n order to punish the Persians, who had insulted his temple near Potidza: here was a special motive for the god to exert his power.

This remark of Herodotus illustrates the hostile ridicule cast by Aristo- phanés (in the Nubes) upon Sokratés, on the score of alleged impiety, because he belonged to a school of eave (though in point of fact

e discountenanced that line of study) who introduced Fae pee laws and forces in place of the personal agency of the gods. The old man Strepsiades inquires from Sokratés, Who rains?

Who thunders? To which Sokratés

replies, Not Zeus, but the Nephele, i.e.

the clouds: you never saw rain without

clouds. Strepsiadés then proceeds to inquire—‘‘ But who is it that compels the clouds to move onward? is it not

Zeus?” Sokratés—‘‘ Not at all; it is

ethereal rotation.” Strepsiadés—

“Rotation? that had escaped me:

Zeus then no longer exists, and Rota-

tion reigns in his place.”

STREPS. Ὁ δ᾽ ἀναγκάζων ἐστὶ τίς αὐτὰς (Νεφέλας). οὐχ 6 Ζεὺς, ὥστε φέρεσθαι; τὶ

SOKRAT. Ἥκιστ᾽, ἀλλ᾽ αἰθέριος δῖνος.

STREPS, Δῖνος ; τουτί μ᾽ ἐλελήθει---

Ὁ Ζεὺς οὐκ ὧν, ἀλλ᾽ ἀντ᾽ αὐτοῦ Δῖνος νυνὶ βασιλεύων.

To the same effect ν. 1464, Δῖνος βασι-

λεύει τὸν Δί᾽ ἐξεληλακώς---““ Rotation

has driven out Zeus, and reigns in his place”.

If Aristophanés had had as strong a wish to turn the public antipathies against Herodotus as against Sokrat¢s and Euripidés, 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 suffi- ciently displeased with the view of Herodotus to sympathise in the poet’s attack upon him. ‘The point would have been made (waiving metrical considerations)—

Σεισμὸς βασιλεύει, τὸν Ποσειδῶ ν᾽ ἐξεληλακώς.

The comment of Herodotus upon the Thessalian view seems almost as if it were intended to guard against this very inference. ther accounts ascribed the cutting of the defile of Tempé to Héraklés (iodér. iv. 18). : Respecting the ancient Grecian faith which recognised the displeasure of Poseidén as the cause of earthquakes, see Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 3, 2; Thucydid. i. 127; Strabo, xii. p. 579; Dioddr. xv. 48—49, It ceased to give universal satisfaction even so early as the time of Thalés and Anaximenés (see Aristot. Meteorolog. ii. 7—8; Plutarch, Placit. Philos. iii. 15; Seneca, Natural. Quest. vi. 6—23); and that philosopher, as well as Anaxagoras, Democritus, and others, suggested different a explanations of the fact. otwith- standing a dissentient minority, how- ever, the old doctrine still continued to be generally received : and Diodérus, in describing the terrible earthquake in 878 B.C., by which Heliké and Bura were destroyed, while he notices those hilosophers (probably Kallisthenés, Senec. Nat. Queest. vi. 23) who substi- tuted physical causes and lawsin place of the divine agency, rejects their views and ranks himself with the religious public who traced this formidable heenomenon to the wrath of Poseidén xy. 48—49),

360 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part lhe

triumph. The Egyptian priests, with their usual boldness of assertion, professed to have heard the whole story from Menelaus himself—the Greeks had besieged 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 judg- ment 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 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. 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 con- formity, 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 μεν sor. age a we “rvbéabas ; at αν Scthing an Bh ‘to the pad ἀλλ᾽ οὐ γὰρ ὁμοίως εὐπρεπὴς ἐς τὴν Again (c. 120), his slender confidence ἐποποιΐην ἦν τῷ ἑτέρῳ τῷ περ ἐχρήσατο" in the epic poets breaks bas ταὶ χρή τι ἐς ὃ μετῆκε αὐτὸν, δηλώσας ὡς καὶ τοῦτον sha iver χρεώμε μενον λέγε ἐπισταῖτο τὸν λόγον. is remarkable that Hevodotas is Herodotus then Ppp ve & passage aisposed to identify Helen with the

from the Iliad, with a view to prove ξεί spotty σον berg temple he saw that Homer knew of the voyage of Paris ies ee is (c. 112

ἣν ee κάνω,

CuaP. XVI. {THUCYDIDES ON THE WAR OF TROY. 361

poems belonging to the Trojan cycle, and is indeed, under the gods, the great and present moving force throughout.

Thucydidés 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 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, Hellén, Kekrops, Eumolpus, Pandién, Amphilochus the son of Amphiaraiis, 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. Thucydidés, regarding the personages of the mythes as men of the same breed and stature with his own contemporaries, not only tests the acts imputed te 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 Periklés. He treats the Trojan war as a great political enterprise, undertaken by all Greece; brought into combination through the imposing power of Aga- memnén, not (according to the legendary narrative) through the influence of the oath exacted by Tyndareus. Then he explains how the predecessors of Agamemnén arrived at so vast a dominion —hbeginning with Pelops, who came over (as he says) from Asia with great wealth among the poor Peloponnésians, and by means of this wealth so aggrandised 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 Mykéne, which had before been possessed by the descendants

1“Ut conquirere fabulosa (says Tacitus, Hist. ii, 60, a worthy parallel of Thucydidés) et fictis oblectare legentium animos, procul gravitate ceepti operis crediderim, ita vulgatis traditisque demere fidem non ausim.

temporareputantibus, initium finemque miraculi cum Othonis exitu compe- tisse.” Suetonius (Vesp. 5) recounts a different miracle, in which three eagles appear,

This passage of Tacitus occurs

Die, quo Bebriaci certabatur, avem inusitata specie, apud Regium Lepidum celebri vico consedisse, incole memo- rant; nec deinde coetu hominum aut circumvolitantium alitum, territam δάσο, donec Otho se ipse inter-

ceret;: tum ablatam ex oculis: et

immediately after his magnificent description of the suicide of the emperor Otho, a deed which he con- templates with the most fervent admi- ration. His feelings were evidently so wrought up, that he was content to re- lay the canons of historical credibility.

363 fit® GREEKS OWN ViEW Of THE MyTHES. Pagri.

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 Mykénz. 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 Peloponnésus, and Agamemnén 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, Thucydidés 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.'

Such is the general sketch of the war of Troy, as given by Thucydidés. 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,

1 Thucyd. i 9—12,

ΝΥ ΟΡ ΤῊ ae

Guar. XVi. —- THUCYDIDis ON THE WAR OF TROY. 363

and the characteristic features, are altogether heterogeneous. But, like Herodotus, and still more than Herodotus, Thucydidés was under the pressure of two conflicting impulses. He shared the general faith in the mythical antiquity, yet 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 con- formity with the subjective exigencies of hisown 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 political 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 Thucydidés 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 Thucydidés is a mere extract and distillation from their incredibilities.

A few other instances may be mentioned to illustrate the views of Thucydidés respecting various mythical incidents. 1. He treats the residence of the Homeric Pheakians at Korkyra as an undisputed fact, and employs it partly to explain the efficiency - of the Korkyrean navy in times preceding the Peloponnesian war. 2. He notices with equal confidence the story of Téreus and Prokné, daughter of Pandién, and the murder of the child Itys by Prokné his mother and Philoméla; and he produces this ancient mythe with especial reference to the alliance between the Athenians and Térés, king of the Odrysian Thracians, during the time of the Peloponnesian war, intimating that the Odrysian Térés was neither of the same family nor of the same country as Téreus the husband of Prokné.? The conduct of Pandién, in

1 Thueyd. i. 25. περὶ τὸν Ἴτυν αἱ γυναῖκες ἐν τῇ γῇ ταύτῃ 2Thucyd. ii, 29. Καὶ τὸ ἔργον τὸ ἔπραξαν πολλοῖς δὲ καὶ τῶν ποιητῶν ἐν

364 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part L

giving his daughter Prokné in marriage to Téreus, 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! 4. The Cyclépes and the Lestrygones (he says) were the most ancient reported inhabitants of Sicily ; but he cannot tell to what race they belonged, nor whence they came.? 5. Italy derived its name from Italus king of the Sikels. 6. Eryx and Egesta in Sicily were founded by fugitive Trojans after the capture of Troy; also Skioné, in the Thracian peninsula of Palléné, by Greeks from the Achzan town of Pelléné, 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 Amphiaraiis, in his return from the same enterprise. The remorse and mental derangement of the matri- cidal Alkmzén, son of Amphiaraiis, is also mentioned by Thucy- didés,* as well as the settlement of his son Akarnan in the country called after him Akarnania.*

chus of Syracuse, the contemporary of

ἀηδόνος μνήμῃ Δαυλιὰς ἡ ὄρνις ἐπωνό- ὃ Thucydidés, also mentioned Italus as

μασται. Ecos δὲ καὶ τὸ κῆδος Lavdiova

ξυνάψασθαι τῆς θυγατρὸς διὰ τοσούτου, ἐπ᾿ ὠφελείᾳ τῇ πρὸς ἀλλήλους, μᾶλλον ἢ διὰ πολλῶν ἡμερῶν ἐς ᾿Οδρύσας ὁδοῦ. The first of these sentences would lead us to infer, if it came from any other pen than that of Thucydidés, that the writer believed the metamorphosis of Philoméla into a nightingale: see above, ch. xi.

The observation ting the convenience of neighbourhood for the marriage is remarkable, and shows how completely Thucydidés 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 re have been carried by her husband? Ὑ πέρ τε πόντον πάντ᾽, ἐπ᾿ ἔσχατα χθονός, &c. (Sophoklés ap. Strabo. vii. p. 295

From the way in which Thucydidés 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 Térés, were led by that circumstance to think of the old mythical Téreus, and to regard him as the ancestor of Térés.

1 Thucyd. iv. 24.

2 Thucyd, vi. 2.

8 Thucyd, ii. 68—102; vi 2. Antio-

to historically real, he r

the eponymous king of Italy: he farther named Sikelus, who came to Morges, son of Italus, after having been banished from Rome. He talks about Italus, just as Thucydidés talks about Théseus, as a wise and powerful king, who first acquired a great dominion (Dionys. H. A. R. i. 12, 35, 78). Aristotle also mentioned Italus “ees same general terms (Polit. vii, 9, 2).

4 We may here notice some par- ticulars respecting Isokratés. He manifests entire confidence in the authenticity of the mythical genea- logies — απ» ; but while he trea e m rsonages as ard them at the same time not as human, but as half-gods, superior to humanity. About Helena, Théseus, Sarpédén, Kyknus, Memnén, Achilles, &c., see Encom. Helen. Or. x. pp. 282, 292, 295, Bek. Helena was worshipped in his time as a goddess at Therapne (ib. p. 295). He recites the settlements of Danaus, Kadmus and Pelo) in Greece, as undoubted historical facts (p. 297). In his discourse called Busiris, he accuses Polykratés the sophist of a gross anachronism in having placed Busiris subsequent in point of date to Orpheus and lus (Or. xi. p. 301, Bek.), and he

“—_e- ἾΣ

Cuap. XVI.

MYTHICAL NOTICES IN THUCYDIDES.

365

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.! In

adds that the tale of Busiris having been slain by Héraklés was chrono- logically impossible (p. 309). Of the long Athenian genealogy from Kekrops to Théseus, he speaks with perfect historical confidence (Panathenaic. p. 349, Bek.); not lessso of the adventures of Héraklés and his mythical contem- poraries, which he places in the mouth of Archidamus as a oe of the Spartan title to Messenia (Or. vi. rchidamus, Ὁ. 156, Bek. ; compare Or. y. Philippus, pp. 114, 188), φασιν, οἷς περὶ τῶν παλαιῶν πιστεύομεν, &C. 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 ata it may be said, that Isokratés applies no ragga of historical criticism to the mythes; he rejects such as appear to him dis- creditable or unworthy, and believes the rest.

1 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 Jahrbiicher der Literatur (1846, No. 41, pp. 641—655) by Professor Korttim.

ile 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. The Quarterly Re- viewer contends that the mythopeeic faculty of the human mind, though essentially loose and untrustworthy, is never creative, but requires some basis of fact to work upon. Kortiim thinks that I have not done justice to Thucydidés, 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 kaltbliitigsten und besonnensten Historiker des Alter- thums, 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 Premium als Gewaihrsmann verschmiht, p. 654).

No man feels more powerfully than I do the merits of Thucydidés as an historian, or the value of the example which he set in multiplying critical inquiries rence matters recent and verifiable. ut the ablest judge or advocate, in investigating specific facts, can proceed no further than he finds witnesses having the means of know- ledge and willing more or less to tell truth. In reference to facts prior to 776 B.C., Thucydidés had nothing before him except the nes pees poets. whose credibility is not at all enhance by the circumstance that he accepted them as witnesses, applying ἢ himself only to cut down and modify their ris aye 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

osition for appreciating their credi-

ility 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 Thucydidés as a satisfactory guarantee (Gewahrsmann) for matters of fact which he derives only from such sources,

Professor Kortiim considers that I am inconsistent with myself in refusi to discriminate particular matters o: historical fact among the legends—and yet in accepting these ee (in my —- 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

366

THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES.

Part I.

this respect his opinion seems to have been at variance with that which was popular among his contemporaries.

To touch a little upon the later historians by whom these mythes were handled, we find that Anaximenés of Lampsacus composed a consecutive history of events, beginning from the Theogony down to the battle of Mantineia.1 But Ephorus pro- fessed to omit all the mythical narratives which are referred to times anterior to the return of the Herakleids (such restrictions 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.? Yet in practice he seems often to have departed from his own tule. Theopompus, on the other hand, openly proclaimed that he could narrate fables in his history better than Herodotus, or

Héraklés, Agamemnén, Odysseus, &c., were real persons, and performed all, or a of the possible actions ascri to them—I profess myself un- able to εβηδερα τάς But even assuming both the persons and their exploits to be fictions, these very fictions will have conceived and put together in conformity to the page social phee- nomena 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 rtiim best didés, upon which Professor Kortiim tows such just praise, consists, not in the par- mrad facts which he brings out by ane the legends, but in the rational ome views which he sets forth respecting early Grecian society, and ne Arnage | the steps as well as the causes whereby it attained its actual position as he saw it. Professor Kortiim also affirms that

of such severance, to exhibit some means of verification better than an which has been yet pointed out. Thucydidés 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 mythopeeic 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 —— legends are mere 6 era-

tions, &c., of some basis of actual fact —that the gods of polytheism were merely divinised men with qualities distorted or feigned— would be to embrace in substance the theory of Euémerus.

1 Diodér. xv. 89. He was a con- tem orary of Alexander the Great.

iodér. iv. 1. Strabo, ix. p. 422, βεῖηε κως on φιλομυθοῦσιν ἐν τῇ τῆς

the my — contain ‘‘real matter of ἧστο tas $ yeap

fact with mere conceptions”: ph orus Fecounted the ἐώσης ας mace fg tion is the same as that βάτοι — of Héraklés ἐπὰν ἀκοῦν

of the Quarterly Reviewer, when he ), the tales of us ὅν" says that ye ΤῊ] roy ic aed ἘΞ not ρας amy, 12), the banishment creative. a of Ztélus from Elis (Fragm. 15 ; Strabo, mass, Taoubt not that this is true, nor viii, p. 357); he drew inferences from

have I anywhere denied it, them one 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 accom- panying fiction. And it lies u od

hose, who proclaim the practicability

y one, I neither affirm nor Th

He was pacticalatly 00 copious in his information about xrices. ἀποικίαι and συγγενείαι (Polyb. ἐπ“

CaP. XVI | EPHORUS—THEOPOMPUS—XENOPHON, ETO. 367

Ktesias, or Hellanicus.1 The fragments which remain to us exhibit some proof that this promise was performed as to quantity ;* though as to his style of narration, the judgment of Dionysius is unfavourable. Xenophén ennobled his favourite amusement of the chase by numerous examples chosen from the heroic world, tracing their portraits with all the simplicity of an undiminished faith. Kallisthenés, 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.’ Philistus introduced some mythes in the earlier portions of his Sicilian history ; but Timeus was distinguished above all others by the copious and indiscriminate way in which he collected and repeated such legends.* Some of these writers employed their ingenuity in transforming the mythical circumstances into plausible matter of history: Ephorus in particular converted the serpent Pythé, slain by Apollo, into a tyrannical king.®

But the author who pushed this transmutation of legend int history to the greatest length, was the Messenian Euémerus, contemporary of Kassander of Macedén. 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 earthborn men, though superior to the ordinary level in respect of force and capacity, and deified or heroified after death as a recompense

1 Strabo, i. p. 74.

2 Dionys. Halic. de Vett. Scriptt.

Judic. p. 428, Reisk. ; Alli H. iii,

ian, V. 18, Θεόπομπος. . . δεινὸς μυθολόγος.

Theopompus affirmed, that the

3 Cicero, Epist. ad Familiar. v. 12; Xenophon de Venation. c. 1.

4 Philistus, Fragm. 1 (Géller), Deda- lus and Kokalus ; about Liber and Juno . 57); about the migration of

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 Silénus baa a 74, 75, 76 ed. Wichers) : he said a good deal abou’ 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 Athéné (Fragm. 112, 118, 114; Schol. Homer. Liad. ii. 135); he narrated an alleged expulsion of Kinyras from Cyprus by Agamemnon (Fr. 111); he gave the genealogy of the Macedonian queen Olympias up to Achilles and #akus (Fragm. 232

Fragm. the Sikels into Sicily eighty years after the Trojan war (ap. Dionys. Hal. i. 3). Timeus (Fragm. 50, 51, 52, 53, (1161) related ΤΑ ΕΥ̓ fables respecting Jason, Médea, and the Argonauts generally. The wiscarriage of the Athenian armament under Nikias be- fore Syracuse is imputed to the anger of Héraklés against the Athenians because they came to assist the Eges- tans, descendants of Troy (Plutarch, ikias, 1),—a naked reproduction of genuine epical ae by an historian ; also about Diomédés and the Daunians; Phaéthén and the river Eridanus; the combats of the Gigantes in the Phlegrean plains (Fragm. 97, 99, 102),

5 Strabo, ix, p. 422.

368 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part IL.

for services or striking exploits. In the course of a voyage into the Indian sea, undertaken by command of Kassander, Euémerus 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. Some eminent men, among whom may be numbered Polybius, followed the views of Euémerus, and the Roman poet Ennius? translated his Historia Sacra: but on the whole he never acquired favour, and the unblushing inventions which he put into circula- tion 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 Euémerus 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 Euémerus; 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.*

But though the pagan world repudiated that “lowering tone

1 Compare Diodér. v. 44—46; and Lactantius, De Falsa Relig. i. 11.

2 Cicero, De Natura Deor. i. 42; Varro, De Re Rust. i. 48.

3 Strabo, ii. p. 102. Οὐ πολὺ οὖν λείπεται ταῦτα τῶν Πύθεω καὶ Einuépov καὶ ᾿Αντιφάνους ψευσμάτων ; compare νὼ τ 47, and ii. p. 104.

St. — on the con , tells us (Civi' Dei, vi. 7), ‘Quid de ipso Jove senserunt, qui nutricem ejus in Capitolio posuerunt? Nonne attestati sunt omnes Euemero, qui non fabulos&

itate, sed historicd diligentid, omines fuisse mortalesque conscrip- sit?” And Minucius Felix (Octav. 20-21), ““ Euemerus exsequitur Deorum natales: patrias, sepulcra, dinumerat, et per provin monstrat, Dictzi Jovis, et Apollinis Delphici, et Phariz

Isidis, et Cereris Eleusinie”, Compare (

Augustin, Civit. Dei, xviii. 8—14 ; and Clemens Alexand, Cohort. ad Gent. pp. 15—18, Sylb,

Lactantius (De Fals4 Relig. c. 13, 14, 16) gives copious citations from Ennius’s translation of the Historia Sacra of Euémerus. ixuedydels 48 sat

Evijuepos, ὃ ἐπικληθεὶς ἄθεος, us Empiricus, adv. Physicos, ix. g 17—51. Compare Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 42; Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, c. 23, tom. ii. p. 475, ed. Wytt.

Nitzsch assumes el der Griechen, sect. 7, p. 84) that the voyage of Euémerus to Panchaia was intended only as an amusing romance, and that Strabo, Polybius, Eratosthenés and Plutarch were mi in co 2 it as a serious recital. Bdttiger, in his Kunst-Mythologie der Griechen(Absch. ii. 5. 6, p. 190) takes the same view. But not the least reason is given for adopting this opinion, and it seems to me i τ ῳ ΟΣ ᾿Αρῖδο . 989), thoug! itzsch alludes to pr se holding it, manifests no such tendency, as far as I can observe.

ὅπαρ. XVI. bURMERUS—DIODORUS. 369

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, Diodérus, 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 com- ments with considerable acrimony on the geographer Eratosthenés, who maintains the opposite opinion. Again, Polybius tells us that the Homeric Molus, the dispenser of the winds by appoint- ment from Zeus, was in reality a man eminently skilled in navigation, and exact in predicting the weather; that the Cyclépes and Lestrygones were wild and savage real men in Sicily ; and that Scylla and Charybdis were a figurative repre- sentation of dangers arising from pirates in the Strait of Messina. Strabo speaks of the amazing expeditions of Dionysus and Héraklés, and of the long wanderings of Jasdn, Menelaus, and Odysseus, in the same category with the extended commercial range of the Phcenician merchant ships, He explains the report of Théseus and Peirithous having descended to Hadés, by their dangerous earthly pilgrimages,—and the invocation of the Dioskuri. as the protectors of the imperilled mariner, by the celebrity which they had acquired as real men and navigators.

Diodérus 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 incon- gruous authors. Sometimes the mythe is reproduced in its primitive simplicity, but for the most part it is partially and sometimes wholly, historicised. Amidst this jumble of dis- sentient 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

1—24

yee

370 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part I.

some few occasions on which Diodérus brings us back a step nearer to the point of view of the old logographers. For, in reference to Héraklés, he protests against the scheme of cutting down the mythes to the level of present reality. He 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 honour to the grand, beneficent, and superhuman personality of Héraklés and other heroes or demigods. 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.’ Yet though Diodérus here exhibits a preponderance of the religious senti- ment over the purely historical point of view, and thus reminds us of a period earlier than Thucydidés—he in another place inserts a series of stories which seem to be derived from Euémerus, and in which Uranus, Kronus and Zeus appear reduced to the character of human kings celebrated for their exploits and bene- factions? Many of the authors, whom Diodérus copies, have so entangled together Grecian, Asiatic, Egyptian and Libyan fables, that it becomes impossible to ascertain how much of this hetero-

1 Diodér. ix. 1-8. Ἔνιοι yap τῶν ἔτι κατ᾽ ἀνθρώπους ὄντα τοῖς ἰδίοις πόνοις ἀναγινωσκόντων, οὐ δικαίᾳ χρώμενοι ξξημερῶσαι τὴν οἰκουμένην, | τοὺς ὃ κρίσει, τἀκριβὲς ἐπιζητοῦσιν ἐν ταῖς ἀνθρώπους, ἐπιλαθομένους τῆς κοι ἀρχαίαις ολογίαις, ἐπίσης τοῖς πρατ- εὐεργεσίας, συκοφαντεῖν τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς τομένοις ἐν τῷ καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς χρόνῳ, καὶ τὰ καλλίστοις ἔργοις ἔπαινον, δισταζόμενα τὼν ἔργων διὰ τὸ μέγεθος, ἐκ This is a remarkable ro : first, τοῦ καθ᾿ αὑτοὺς βίον τεκμαιρόμενοι, τὴν inasmuch as it sets forth the total Ἡρακλέους δύναμιν ἐκ τῆς ἀσθενείας τῶν inapplicability of anal νῦν ἀνθρώπων θεωροῦσιν, ὥστε διὰ τὴν from the historical as narratives ὑπερβολὴν τοῦ μεγέθους τῶν ἔργων ἀπισ- about Héraklés ; next, inasmuch as it τεῖσθαι τὴν γραφήν. Καθόλου yap ἐν mds the employment of critical

Ve ee

ταῖς ἀρχαίαις μυθολογίαις οὐκ ἐκ παντὸς τρόπου πικρῶς τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐξε- ταστέον. Καὶ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις πεπεισμένοι μήτε Κενταύρους διφυεῖς ἐξ ἑτερογενῶν σωμάτων ὑπάρξαι, pire Τηρυόνην τρισώματον, ὅμως προσδεχόμεθα τὰς τοιαύτας μυθολογίας, καὶ ταῖς ἐπισημα- σίαις σνναύξομεν τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ τιμήν. Kai γὰρ ἄτοπον, Ἡρακλέα μὲν

and scientific tests, and invokes an uiescence interwoven and identified with the feelings, as the proper mode of evincing pious reverence for the Héraklés. It aims at reprodu exactly that state of mind to the mythes were adi with which alone they could ever be iu thorough harmony. 2 Dioddér. iii. 45—60 ; 44-46

CuaP. XVI. DIODORUS—PAUSANIAS—PALAPHATUS. 371

geneous mass can be considered as at all connected with the genuine Hellenic mind,

Pausanias is far more strictly Hellenic in his view of the Grecian mythes than Diodérus: his sincere piety makes him inclined to faith generally with regard to the mythical narratives, but subject nevertheless to the frequent necessity of historicising or allegorising 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 seem to have conceived clearly, and applied consistently, the semi-historical theory of the Grecian mythes, is ‘Paleephatus, of whose work what appears to be a short abstract has been preserved.! In the short preface of this treatise “ con- cerning 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 phenomena. 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. Palephatus 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 others2 The results of

1 The work of Palephatus, probably see Vossiusy de Historicis Greacis, p.

this original, is alluded to in the Ciris 478, ed. Westermann. of Virgil (88) : 2 Palephat. init. ap. Script. Mythogr. “ Docta Palephatia testatur voce ed, Westermann, p. 268. Tov ἀνθρώπων

ot μὲν πείθονται πᾶσι τοῖς λεγομένοις,

pe. ὡς ἀνομίλητοι σοφίας καὶ ἐπιστήμης---

The date of Palephatus is unknown —indeed this passage of the Ciris seems the only ground that exists for inference respecting it. That which we now ess is preter an extract from a larger work—an extract made by an excerptor at some later time;

οἱ δὲ πυκνότεροι τὴν φύσιν καὶ πολυπράγ- μονες ἀπιστοῦσι τὸ παράπαν μηδὲν γενέσθαι τούτων. Ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκεῖ γενέσθαι πάντα τὰ λεγόμενα" . « - - γενόμενα δέ τινα οἱ ποιηταὶ καὶ λογο- ράφοι παρέτρεψαν εἰς τὸ ἀπιστότερον καὶ Weokatie resi τοῦ θαυμάζειν ἕνεκα τοὺς

372 THE GREEKS OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part I.

his researches are presented in a new version of fifty legends, among the most celebrated and the most fabulous, comprising the Centaurs, Pasiphaé, Aktezin, Kadmus and the Sparti, the Sphinx, Cycnus, Dedalus, the Trojan horse, Holus, Scylla, Geryén, Bellerophén, &c.

It must be confessed that Paleephatus 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 Nephelé in Thessaly, who first trained and mounted horses for the purpose of repelling a herd of bulls belonging to Ixién king of the Lapithe, 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 (xévropes) and the imputed attribute of joint body with the horse. Aktedn 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 Thébes, was in reality Drako king of Thébes ; 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 Pheenician had brought over with him: the sons of Drako sold these elephants’ teeth and employed the proceeds to levy troops against Kadmus. Deedalus, instead of flying across the sea on wings, had escaped from Kréte in a swift sailing-boat under a violent storm: Kottus, Briareus, and Gygés 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,

ἀνθρώπους. ᾿Εγὼ δὲ γινώσκω, ὅτι ov they cannot be done now, we ma: be pitty τὰ Byers εἶναι ola καὶ - : : a ΓΝ τοῦτο δὲ καὶ διεΐληφα, ὅτι εἰ μὴ ἐγένετο, formerly (Minucius Felix, Octav. : Sebi. Ba γον, Piaajonibea, enim motels, tm facts

The main assumption of the semi- in mendaciis fides fuit, ut temerd historical theory is here shortly and crediderint etiam alia monstruosa clearly stated. mira riage Scyllam perce

One of the early Christian writers, Chimeram multiformem, Hydram, Minucius Felix, is astonished at the Centauros. Quid illas aniles fabulas easy belief of n forefathers in —de hominibus aves et feras, immo miracles. If eversuch things hadbeen et de hominibus arbores atque flores? done in former times (he , they Que, si essent facta, sierent ; quia Jeri would continue to be done now; as on possunt ideo nec facta sunt.

CuaP. XVI, PALMPHATUS ELIMINATES THE INCREDIBLE. 373

was a fast-sailing piratical vessel, as was also Pegasus, the alleged winged horse of Bellerophén.?

By such ingenious conjectures, Palephatus 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 favour. 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 Thucydidés in his sketch of the Trojan war. Palephatus 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 ;

1 Palephat. Narrat. 1, 8, 6, 18, 20, 21, 29. Two short treatises on the same subject as this of Palephatus

κατὰ Νιόβην (ap. Walz. Coll. Rhetor. i. p. 284—318), where there are many specimens of this fanciful mode of

are printed along with it both in the handl

collection of Gale and of Westermann ; the one Heracliti de Incredibilibus, the other Anonymi de Incredibilibus. They both profess to interpret some of the ee miraculous mythes, and proceed in a track not unlike that of Palephatus. 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, Ὁ. 818, West.). Atlas was a great astronomer ; Pasiphaé fell in love with a youth named Taurus; the monster called the Chimera was in reality a ferocious queen, who had two brothers called ram which carried Phryxus and Hellé across the pn wasa boatman named Krius (Heraclit. c. 2, 6, 15, 24).

A great number of similar explana- jions are scattered throughout the 3cholia on Homer and the Commentary of Eustathius, without specification of sheir authors.

Theén considers such resolution of table into plausible history as a proof of surpassing ingenuity es nasmata, cap. 6, ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett. Greec. i. p. 219). Others among the Rhetors, too, exercised their talents sometimes in vindicating, sometimes in controvert- ing, the gy ged of the ancient mythes. See the Progymnasmata of Nicolaus—Karacxevi) bre εἰκότα τὰ κατὰ Νιόβην, ᾿Ανασκευὴ ὅτι οὐκ εἰκότα τὰ

Leo and Drako;-the ‘

ing.

Plutarch, however, in one of his treatises, accepts Minotaurs, Sphinxes, Centaurs, &c., 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), "

2The learned Mr. Jacob Bryant regards the explanations of Palephatus as if they were founded upon real fact. He admits, for example, the city Nephelé alleged by that author in his exposition of the fable of the Centaurs. Moreover, he a with much com- mendation of Palephatus generally : ‘He (Palephatus) wrote early, and seems to have been a serious and sensible person; one who saw the absurdity of the fables upon which the theolo; of his country was founded” (Ancient Mythology, vol. i. p. 411. ἐδ A a caked

Ὁ also Sir Thomas Browne (Enquiry into Vulgar Errors, Book I. chap. vi. p. 221, ed. 1835) alludes to Palephatus 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, pomp ta the world ever after: wherein ow far they succeeded, may be ex- emplified from Palephatus, in his Book of Fabulous Narrations.”

374 THE GREEKS OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Parti. |

beyond this point we cannot penetrate, without the light of ;

extrinsic evidence, since there is no intrinsic mark to distinguish truth from plausible fiction.

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 Xenophanés of Kolophén, and seemingly by some others of his contemporaries. It was apparently in reply to such charges, which did not admit of being directly rebutted, that Theagenés of Rhégium (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 allegorised especially the battle of the gods in the Iliad. In the succeeding century, Anaxagoras and Metrodérus 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 prin- ciples and phenomena. Metrodérus resolved not only the persons of Zeus, Héré and Athéné, but also those of Agamemnén, Achilles and Hectér, into various elemental combinations and physical agencies, and treated the adventures ascribed to them as natural facts concealed under the veil of allegory. Empedoklés, Prodikus,

1 eo PE ap. Sext. Empir. adv. found fault with the divine ἐπὶ Sess Mathemat. ix.193. Healsodisapproved of the Iliad, ignorant of their tru of the rites, accompanied by mourning allegorical meaning : an τῶν Pariser ων and wailing, wiht ΜῈ which the Eleates τῷ Ὁμήρῳ τόλμα τοὺς Ἧρας δεσμοὺς worship Leukothea : he told them, αἰτιᾶται, καὶ νομίζουσιν ὕλην τινὰ δαψιλῆ εἰ μὲν θεὸν ὑπολαμβάνουσι, μὴ θρηνεῖν" τῆς ἀθέον πρὸς Opwery ew jas εἰ δὲ ἄνθρωπον, μὴ θύειν (Aristotel. Rhet. ταῦτα-- Ἢ ov μέ μέμνῃ ὅτ τ᾽ ἐκρέμω ii. 28). &e. λέληθε δ᾽ eiveas ὅτι τούτοις ἫΝ Xenophanés pronounced the battles ἔπεσιν ἐκτεθεολόγηται 7 παντὸς of the Titans, tes and Centaurs γένεσις, καὶ τὰ γυνεχῶς ἐδόμενα τέσ- to be “ fictions of our predecessors”. capa στοιχεῖα τούτων τῶν στον ἐστὶ πλάσματα τῶν προτέ; £ Xenophan. τάξις Sou ad Hom. Iliad. xv. 18). Fragm. 1, p. 42, Schnei ewin). 3 Diogen. Laért. ii. 11; Tatian. adv. See a curious comparison of the Grec.-c. 37 37 ; Hesychius, v. “A: μνονα. Grecian and Roman theologyin Dionys. See the ethical tarn given to the stories ee fe ea ey, of Circé, the Syrens and Scylla, in 2 Schol. Dliad. xx. 67 ἪΡ adv. ee h. Memorab. i. 3, 7 ; ii. 6, 11--81. Gree. c. 48. Hérakleitus oe’ 2 cellus, Chronic, p. 149. Ἑρμηνεύουσι repelled the impudent atheists who δὲ yi i Anagepiput τοὺς μυθῥδεις θεοὺς,

γιὰ... Δ ἃ.

Cuap. XVI.

ALLEGORISING TENDENCY,

375

Antisthenés, Parmenides, Hérakleidés of Pontus, and in a later age, Chrysippus and the Stoic philosophers generally,! followed more or less the same principle of treating the popular gods as allegorical personages; while the expositors of Homer (such as Stesimbrotus, Glaukén and others, even down to the Alexandrine age), though none of them proceeded to the same extreme length as Metrodorus, employed allegory amongst other media of expla- nation for the purpose of solving difficulties, or eluding reproaches

against the poet.

In the days of Plato and Xenophdn, this allegorising inter-

pretation was one of the received methods of softening down the obnoxious mythes—though Plato himself i 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 Pausanias tells us, that when he first

set forth.?

tion of the mythes— more and more es- teemed and applied.

began to write his work, he treated many of the Greek legends

νοῦν μὲν τὸν Δία, τὴν δὲ ᾿Αθηνᾶν τέχνην,

6. Uschold and other modern German authors seem to have adopted in its full extent the principle of interpreta- tion proposed by Metrodérus—treating Odysseus and Penelopé as personifica- tions of the Sun and Moon, &c. See Helbig, Die Sittlichen Zustinde des Griechischen Helden-Alters ei- tung, p. xxix. (Leipzig, 1839). rrections of the Homeric text were also resorted to, in order to escape the necessity of ney terry falsehood to Zeus (Aristotel. De Sophist. Elench. c. 4).

1 Sextus Empiric. ix. 18; Diogen. viii. 76 ; Plutarch, De Placit. Philosoph. ἡ, 83—6; De Poesi Homerica, 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 Bacche of Euripidés, Pentheus

is made to deride the tale of the 6

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 Διός (he says) was a mistaken statement in lace of the αἰθὴρ χθόνα ἐγκυκλούμενος Fpacch. 235—290). } Lucretius (iii. 995—1036) allegorises the conspicuous sufferers in Hadés, —

Tantalus, Sisyphus, Tityus, and the Danaids, as well as the ministers of penal infliction, Cerberus and the Furies. The first four are emblematio descriptions of various defective or vicious characters in human nature,— the deisidemonic, the ambitious, the - amorous, or the insatiate and querulous man ; the two last represent the mental terrors of the wicked.

2 Oi νῦν περὶ Ὅμηρον Se.voi—so Plato calls these interpreters (Kratylus, p. 407); see also Xenoph. Sympos. ili. 6; Plato, Ion, p. 530; Plutarch, De Audiend. Poet. p. 19. ὑπόνοια was the original word, afterwards succeeded by ἀλληγορία.

Ἥρας δὲ δεσμοὺς καὶ ‘Hdaiorov ῥίψεις ὑπὸ πατρὸς, μέλλοντος τῇ μητρὶ τυπτο- μένῃ ἀμύνειν, καὶ θεομαχίας ὅσας Ὅμηρος πεποίηκεν, οὐ παραδεκτέον εἰς τὴν πόλιν, οὔτ᾽ ἐν ὑπονοίαις πεποιημένας, οὔτ᾽ ἄνευ ὑπονοιῶν. ὋὉ γὰρ νέος οὐχ οἷός τε κρίνειν, ὅ,τι τε ὑπόνοια καὶ

μὴ, GAN ἃ ἂν τηλικοῦτος ὧν λάβῃ ἐν ταῖς δόξαις, δυσέκνιπτά τε καὶ ἀμετάστατο

φιλεῖ γίγνεσθαι (Plato, Republ. ii. 17, Ῥ. 378).

The idea of an interior sense and concealed purpose in the ancient poets occurs several times in Plato (Thestet. 0. 83, p. 180) : παρὰ μὲν τῶν ἀρχαίων, μετὰ ποιήσεως ἐπικρυπτομένων τοὺς πολλούς, &c. ; also Protagor. c. 20, p. 816.

**Modo Stoicum Homerum faciunt,

376 THE GREEKS OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part I, as silly and undeserving of serious attention; but as he pro- ceeded 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.1 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 admitied 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? The allegorical mode of explaining the ancient fables* became more and more popular in the third and —modo ee Peripateti- of ἊΝ secret reality. ‘‘ De Diis ceteris cum,—m cademicum. Apparet et de anima, non frustra se, nec u

nihil notgon esse in illo, quia omnia oblectent, ad fabulosa convertunt ; sed sunt.” Compare quia sciunt inimicam esse natura apertam

88.) Plutarch De Defecta Oracul. c. 11—12. nuda: sui: que sicut τι γαξ κα veciosecen tome ἀν νυ sui, variorerum toque, subtraxit; ita ἃ dentibus osa tractari és) ἐν ‘Adeo semper ita 86 et sciri S

arcana sua voluit ’ per fab coli numina maluerunt, gualiter in

t. ii. P; B a) Wytt., and Julian, Orat.

vii. iBansan. 7 8, δ om ay purpose x. D. ν Ὁ admitted to a certain extent “gg e hin by Dronys Halic. Ant. Rom. ii. The fragment of the lost treatise a Plutarch, on the Platzan festival of the 2 Dene, is ΕΣ eg mr respecti recian ix. t, ay’ p. 754—763, ed. Wate op ap. Euseb. Pre . Evang. iii. 1).

2 This doctrine | is set "forth in Ma- crobius (i. 2). He es between ‘abula, and fabulosa narratio: the former is fiction pure, intended either to amyse or to instruct—the latter is founded upon truth, either Py ran, human or respecting divine aeons The gods did not like to be talked of (acco to his view) exce Σ under the respec Ἢ veil of a fable (the same feeling as that of Herodotus, which led him to refrain from inserting the ἑεροὶ λόγοι in his history). The supreme G Ὁ the τἀγαθίν, the πρῶτον αἴτιον, could not be talked of in fables ; but the other gods, the aérial or zethereal 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

raeen antiquitasfabulataest . . . . Secundum ras ipse atque Empedocles, gry qu et Heraclides, de Diis fabulati sunt ; nec secus Timzus.” Compare also us

Tyrius, Dissert. x. and xxii. Arnobius

the allegorical interpretation as mere evasion, and holds the Pagans . literal historical fact (Ady. Gentes,

. 185, ed. Elm.).

ting the allegorical interpre- tation applied to the Greek fables, Fre ad Die Kunst-Mythologie os Griechen, Abschn. ii. Grech: sect be Cieldonenea op Gri TO 0 188185

Lobeck (

3 Acco: ἐστον, ahonymous writer, ap. Westermann (Seri Gest ipt. Myth. p. =), every pores or denominated be construed in three differen ways:

either μναῖς ἢ Crintosteetiy - Ἀν

having been a king or ἃ man)—or yo xixes, in which theory Héré signifies he soul ; Athéné, prudence ; Aphrodité,

desire ; Zeus, mind, &¢.—or στοιχειακῶς, in which system " Apollo signities the

ΒΑΡ. XVI.

LATER PLATONIC PHILOSOPHERS.

377

fourth centuries after the Christian era, 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.

It was from the same strong necessity, of accommodating the old

-mythes to a new standard both of belief and of appre-

Divine

ciation, that both the historical and the allegorical legends

schemes of transforming them arose; the literal

ego. Heroic

narrative being decomposed for the purpose of legends

arriving at a base either of particular matter of fact,

toricised.

or of general physical or moral truth. Instructed men were

sun; Poseidén, the sea; Héré, the aes stratum of the air, or ether; Athéné, the lower or denser stratum ; Zeus, the upper hemisphere ; Kronus. the lower, &c. 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 Euemerism ; 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 respect- ing them, and Sallustius prays that they will accept with favour his own remarks (cap. 3 and 4, pp. 245—251, Gale). He distributes mythes into five classes: theological, physical, spiritual, material, and mixed. He

efends 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 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 yee asa ne disguising some interior trut! (p. 247).

Besides the life of Homer ascribed to Plutarch (see Gale, ᾽ς 825—332), Héraclidés (not Héraclidés of Pontus carries out the process of allegorising

the Homeric mythes most earnestly and most systematically. The ap- plication of the allegorising theory is, in his view, the only way of rescuing Homer from the charge of scandalous impiety—ray dp ἠσέβησεν, εἰ μηδὲν ἠλληγόρησεν ‘(Herac. in init. p. 407, ale). 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 ound (pp. 416—424), Athéné, who darts down from Olympus at the moment when Achilles is about to draw his sword on Agamemnén, and seizes him by the hair, is a personification of repentant prudence (p. 435). The conspirac against Zeus, which Homer (Iliad, 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 Héré—the casting of Héphzstos by Zeus out of Olympus, and his fall in. Lémnus—the destruction of the Grecian wall by Poseidén, after the departure of the Greeks—the amorous scene between Zeus and Héré on mount Gargarus—the distribution of the universe between Zeus, Poseidén, and adé 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, party ethical (p. 481). In like manner he transforms and vindicates the ad- ventures of the gods in the Odyssey: the wanderings of Odysseus, together with the Lotophagi, the Cynon, Circé, the Sirens, Aolus, Scylla, &c., he resolves into a series of temptations, imposed as a trial upon a man of

378 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES.

Part I.

commonly disposed to historicise only the heroic legends, and to allegorise more or less of the divine legends: the attempt of Euémerus to historicise the latter was for the most part denounced as irreligious, while that of Metrodérus to allegorise the former met with no success. In allegorising 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 allegorised all the separate personal gods, leaving only an all-pervading cosmic Mind,! 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,? inasmuch as it divested the gods of their character of Persons, sympathising with mankind and modifiable in their

Limitsto dispositions according to the conduct and prayers of παλεραμο the believer: and hence they permitted themselves process, to employ allegorical interpretation only to some of

the obnoxious legends connected with the superior gods, leaving the personality of the latter unimpeached.

One novelty, however, introduced seemingly by the philosopher Empedoklés and afterwards expanded by others, deserves notice, inasmuch as it modified considerably the old religious creed by drawing a pointed contrast between gods and demons,—a distinction hardly at all manifested in Homer, but recognised in the Works and Days of Hesiod. Empedoklés widened the gap between the two, and founded upon it important consequences. The gods were good, immortal and powerful agents, having voli- tion and intelligence, but without appetite, passion or infirmity ;

wisdom and virtue, and emblematic he human life ie 496). The story of Arés, Aphrodité, and Héphestos, in

παρ πὶ p. 1 tarch, de oa. et Osirid. c. 66, p. 877; c. 70, p. 879. Compare on this

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 See Se Hr, Geschichte der Led

ysippus admitted the most im- scence tinction between Zeus and the other gods (Plutarch. de Stoicor.

subject O. Miller, ἐς ΣΎΘΙΘΟΟΝΝ Mythol. 59 seg., and Eckermann, Lehrbuch er r Religionsgeschichte, vol. i. sect. ii.

PS Hesiod. Opp. et Di. 122: to the

same effect Pythagoras and Thalés ogen. Laért. viii. 32; and Plutarch,

lacit. Philos. i. 8).

pt Peres ον duane are ent enagoras 58 ων

fiat Thales admitted @ distinction

between good and bad demons, which

seems very doubtful.

Crap, XVI.

the demons were of a mixed nature between gods ministers and interpreters from the former to the latter, but invested also with an agency and dis- positions of their own. Though not immortal, they were still long-lived, and subject to the passions and propensities of men, so that there were among them beneficent and maleficent demons with every shade of

GODS AND DAZMONS CONTRASTED,

379

and men,

Distinction between ods and. mons— altered and Eespeaont? mpedo- klés.

intermediate difference. It had been the mistake (according to these philosophers) of the old mythes to ascribe to the gods proceedings really belonging to the demons, 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

1 The distinction between coi and Δαίμονες is especially set forth in the treatise of Plutarch, be Defectu Oracu- lorum, capp. 10, 12 13, 15, &c. He seems to gs eee it traceable to the doctrine of Zoroaster or the Orphic

Fern and he represents it as

eving the meagre er be great perplexities; for or it was difficult to

ow where draw the line in admitting or ieee Providence : errors were committed sometimes in affirming God to be the cause of everything, at other times in sup- posing h him to be the cause of nothing. Ἐπεὶ τὸ διορίσαι πῶς χρηστέον καὶ μέχρι. τινων τῇ προνοίᾳ, χαλεπὸν, οἱ μὲν οὐδενὸς ἁπλῶς τὸν θεὸν, οἱ δὲ ὁμοῦ τι πάντων αἴτιον ποιοῦντες, areexenes τοῦ μετρίου καὶ πὶ έποντος. Εὖ μὲν οὖν λέγουσιν 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 ὁ 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). ἫἪ δαιμόνων φύσις ἔχουσα καὶ πάθος θνητοῦ καὶ θεοῦ δύνα- μιν (6. 18).

Εἰσὶ γὰρ, ὡς ev ἀνθρώποις, καὶ δαίμο- σιν ἀρετῆς διαφοραὶ, καὶ τοῦ παθητικοῦ καὶ ἀλόγου τοῖς μὲν ἀσθενὲς καὶ ἀμαυρὸν ἔτι λεί ανον, ὥσπερ περίττω τοῖς δὲ πολὺ καὶ δυσκατάσβεστον ἔνεστιν, ὧν ἴχνη καὶ σύμβολα πολλαχοῦ θύσιαι καὶ τελεταὶ καὶ μυθολογίαι σώζουσι καὶ δια- φυλάττουσιν ἐνδιεσπαρμένα (ib.): com- pare Plutarch. de Isid, et Osir. 26, p. 360.

Kai μὴν ὅσας ἔν τε μύθοις καὺ ὕμνοις λέγουσι καὶ ἄδουσι, τοῦτο μὲν ἁρπαγὰς, τοῦτο δὲ πλάνας θεῶν, κρύψεις Te καὶ φυγὰς καὶ λατρείας, ov θεῶν εἰσὶν ἀλλὰ δαιμόνων παθήματα, &C. (c. 16); also 6. 28 ; also de 1514. et Osir. c. 25, p. 366

Human sacrifices and other objec. tionable rites are excused, as necessary for the purpose of averting the anger of bad demons (c. 14—15).

Empedoklés is represented as _ the first author of the doctrine which imputed vicious and abominable dis- position to many of the demons (ο. 15, 16, 17, 20), τούς εἰσαγομένους ὑπὸ "Hume δοκλέους sng expelled from heaven by the gods, θεήλατοι καὶ lek pti Car De Vitand, Aér. Alien.

followed by Plato, Xenokra 5

Chrysippus, c. 17: compare Plato pets Socrat. p. 27; Politic. p. 721; . Symposion, 6. 28, p. 203), though he seems to treat the δαίμονες as defec- tive and mutable beings, rather than actively maleficent. XKenokratés repre- sents some of them both as wicked and powerful in a high degree :— Ξενοκράτης καὶ τῶν ἡμερῶν τὰς ἀποφρά- δας, καὶ τῶν ἑορτῶν ὅσαι πληγάς τινας 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, p Sa δὲ καὶ σκυθρωπάς, αἱ χαίρουσι τοῖς τοιούτοις, καὶ τυγχάνουσαι πρὸς οὐθὲν ἄλλο iia” τρέπονται (Plutarch, De Isid. et Osir. c, 26, p. 361; Question. Rom. p. 283); compare Stobseus, Eclog. Phys. i. p. 62

380 THE GREEKS OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part I.

evil. The wicked and violent demons, 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 dis- creditable 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 demons, placed far below the sovereign agency—equable, undisturbed and unpolluted—of the immortal gods. The action of such demons 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 disfranchised.!

This distinction between gods and demons appeared to save in Admission ἃ great degree both the truth of the old legends and μιὰ s perially the dignity of the gods: it obviated the necessity of evil beings pronouncing either that the gods were unworthy, or suchad- 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 demons with an entirely altered signification. The Christian writers in their controversies found ample warrant among the earlier pagan authors? for treating all

1 Plutarch, De Defect. Orac. c. 15. (Plutarch, Question. Gree. ¢.6, p. 292): p. 418. Chrysippus admitted, among see the note above, the various conceivable causes to 2 Tatian. adv. Greecos, c. 20; Clemens account for the existence of evil, the Alexandrin. Admonit. ad Gentes, pp. pe. sition of some negligent and 26—29, Syib. ; oe Felix, Octay. c. ess demons, δαιμόνια φαυλὰ ἐν οἷς 26. εἰ Tsti ‘tur impuri ‘spiritus, ut ὄντι ee Kal ἐγκλητέαι or ge a a ἔγνων το 8 3 oer Stoicor. Hepugiant. Ὁ, Platone, sub et See ad A Fr ree reag whic. do A consecrati delitescunt, et suo fully understand, between θεοί and quasi auctoritatem tis numinis δαίμονες, Was also ado’ ted among the consequuntur,” &c. like so man Lokrians at Opus: δαίμων with hem other of the ‘aggressive arguments of seems to have m equivalent to ἥρως the Christians against paganism, was

Cuap. XVI.

THE WICKED DSMONS,

381

the gods as demons—and not less ample warrant among the later pagans for denouncing the demons generally as evil beings.

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? and fearful of criticising the proceedings of the gods. 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.

taken from the pagan philosophers themselves.

Lactantius, De Ver4 Philosophia, iv. 28. ‘Ergo iidem sunt Demones, quos fatentur execrandos esse: iidem Dii, quibus supplicant. Sinobis credendum esse non putant, credant Homero ; qui summum illum Jovem Demonibus aggregavit,” &c.

See above, Chapter II., the remarks on the Hesiodic Theogony.

2 A destructive inundation took place at Pheneus in Arcadia, seemingly in the time of Plutarch : the subterranean outlet come b

anger of Apollo, who had been eager the tripod by Héraklés: the latter had carried the tripod to Pheneus and deposited it there. "Ap’ οὖν οὐκ ἀτοπώτερος τούτων ὃ ᾿Απόλλων, εἰ Φενεάτας ἀπόλλυσι τοὺς νῦν, ἐμφράξας τὸ βάραθρον, καὶ κυτακλύσας τὴν χώραν ἅπασαν αὐτῶν, ὅτι πρὸ χιλίων ἐτῶν, ὥς φασιν, ὁ Ἡρακλῆς ἀνασ- πάσας τὸν τρίποδα τὸν μαντικὸν εἰς Φενεὸν κοτε τοῖς (Plutarch, de Sera Numin, Vindicté, p. 557; compare Pausan. viii. 14, 1). e expression of Plutarch that the abstraction of the tripod by Héraklés had taken place 1000 years before, is that of the critic, who thinks it needful. to historicise and chronologise 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 Héraklés had been laid in the preceding generation.

A very large proportion of the

Agathoclés 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 oh mcr and that on his return he had been kindly gare by the Pheakians (Plutarch,

This is doubtless a jest, either made by Fyre or more probably in- vented for him ; but it is founded upon a popular belief.

8 * Sanctiusque et reverentius visum, de actis Deorum credere quam scire.” (Tacit. German. c. 34.)

Aristidés however represents the Homeric theolo whether he would have included the Hesiodic we do not know) as believed quite literally meng the multitude in his time, the second | century after Christianity (Aristid. Orat. ili. p. 25). ᾿Απορῶ, ὅπη πότε χρή με διαθέσθαι μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν, πότερα ws τοῖς πολλοῖς δοκεῖ καὶ Ὁμήρῳ δὲ συνδοκεῖ, θεῶν παθήματα συμπεισθῆναι καὶ ἡμᾶς, οἷον ᾿Αρέος δέσμα καὶ ᾿Απόλλωνος θητείας καὶ Ἡφαίστου ῥίψεις εἰς θάλασσαν, οὕτω δὲ καὶ ᾿Ινοῦς ἄχη καὶ φυγάς τινας. Com-

are Lucian, Ζεὺς Τραγῳδός, c. 20, and De Luctu, c. 2; Dionys, Halicar. A. R.

ymn. ad Jovy. 9) distinctly denied the statement of the Kretans that they possessed in Kréte 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—aivtr6- μενος τροπικὰς ὑπονοίας (Origen, cont, Celsum, iii. p. 187). ,

382 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Parr I

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 allegorised phenomenal 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.

The utmost which we accomplish by means of the semi- Semi- historical theory even in its most successful applica- πόσο tions, is, that after leaving out from the mythical tation. narrative all that is miraculous or high-coloured or extravagant, we arrive at a series of creditable 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 Platea, 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 Xerxes 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 tc induce him to single out the narrative as a glaring example of Grecian mendacity.1_ Again many critics have observed that the 1 Juvenal, Sat. x. 174 :— * Creditur olim

Velificatus Athos, et i πκανοῦι Grecia mendax Audet in historia,” &c.

CuHap. XVI. THE SEMI-HISTORICAL THEORY, 383

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 phenomenon in history, but we accept them nevertheless as an unquestionable fact, because the ante- cedent improbability is surmounted by adequate contemporary testimony. When the like testimony, both in amount and kind, is produced to establish the historical reality of the Trojan war, we shall not hesitate to deal with the two events on the same footing.

In applying the semi-historical theory to Grecian mythical] narrative, it has been often forgotten that a certain dass pot strength of testimony, or positive ground of belief, tive certifi- must first be tendered, before we can be called upon δὺο indis-

Β pensable as to discuss the antecedent probability or improbability 8 consti-

of the incidents alleged. The belief of the Greeks historical themselves, without the smallest aid of special or seg we contemporary witnesses, has been tacitly assumed as a Le a, 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 psychagogic 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 favour of the entire and literal mythes, which are now universally rejected as incredible.1 We 1 Colonel Sleeman observes respect- an Indian Official, vol. i. ch. fx. p. 70), 7 the Hindoo historical mind— And again, ‘‘ The popular poem of the.

story to this people is all a fairy Ramaen describes the abduction of tale” (ambles and Recollections of the heroine by the monster king of

384

THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES.

Parr ft.

have thus the very minimum of positive proof, ad 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 common-place 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.’

Ceylon, Rawun ; and her recovery by means of the monkey general Hun- nooman. Every word of this poem the peoms assured me was written, if not y the hand of the Deity himself, at feast pt Foes inspiration, which was the same t ine oe 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 Be aes ὌΡΟΟΕΝ any very gious absurdity quo from Gree bocks, he replies, with the greatest naiveté 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 thereasoning tha’

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 ras ada pans > and move — without s ing a momen

to ask whether the ars Sua or true. There is only this difference—that with people of education among us, even in short intervals of illusion or aclivig: Gi Anglins «αν ον ἀν ΒΡ τὰ , or flagran ΤῸ in the fiction, destroys the earta: breaks the

spell by which we have been so 97)

mysteriously bound, and restores us to reason and the realities of ordinary life. With the Hindoos, on the con- trary, the greater the improbability, the more monstrous and ie fre 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 oop 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

nations, without ever questioning the truth of one le incident, or hearin it questioned. ere was a time, an

1 Lord Littelton, in commenting on the tales of the Irish bards, in his History of Henry II., has the following just Spr (book iy. More” p. 13, uarto): ‘One may reasonably suppo that in MSS. written since the Trish received the Roman letters from St. Patrick, some traditional truths re- corded before by the bards in their unwritten poems may have been

Cuap, XVI. THE SEMI-HISTORICAL THEORY. 385

In the semi-historical theory respecting Grecian mythical narrative, the critic unconsciously transports into

; : Mistake of the Homeric age those habits of classification and ascribing to distinction, and that standard of acceptance or rejec- cording age tion, which he finds current in his own. Amongst the histori-

Sas : ° 2 cal sense of us the distinction between historical fact and fiction modern imes.

is highly valued as well as familiarly understood: we have a long history of the past, deduced from a study of contem- porary evidences ; and we have a body of fictitious literature, stamped with its own mark and interesting in its own way. 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 dis- cerned 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 patter of past—the larger portion of it indeed consists of nothing bec at else. But what are these traditions? They are the from the matter of those songs and stories which have acquired >esimnine. hold on the public mind ; they are the creations of the poets and

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

time, or the remembrance of old men with whom he conversed. The most judicious historians pay no regard to the Welch or British traditions delivered by Geoffrey of Monmouth,

authority of suspected traditions, that they can be shown not to be so impro- bable 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 licence) may be received on such matters as come within his own

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: ‘O μῦθος εἶναι βούλεται λόγος ψευδὴς ἐοικὼς ἀληθινῷ (Plutarch, Bellone an pace clariores fuerunt Athenienses, p. 348).

“Der Grund-Trieb des Mythus pa ers justly expresses it) das

edachte in ein Geschehenes umzu- setzen.” (Symbolik der Alten Welt, sect. 43, p. 99.)

1—25

386 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part 1

storytellers themselves, each of whom finds some pre-existing, 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 Leschés, these Homeric creations formed portions of pre-existing 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 hypo- thesis gratuitous at the least, not to say inadmissible. For the farther 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 Rhipzan mountains, would in time reach the delicious country and genial climate of the virtuous Hyperboreans—the votaries ind favourites 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 Fictitious to the genesis of Grecian mythes, arises in part from matter of reluctance in critics to impute to the mythopeeic ages does not extreme credulity or fraud; together with the usual pre- τὶ το λέν sumption, that where much is believed some portion om, 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

ope ame

Pon

al,

Aiden

-

aS es a

Cap. XVI. PLAUSIBLE FICTION HOW GENERATED. 387

is moreover inapplicable,) for if the hearers are disposed to accept what is related to them as a revelation from the Muse, the estrus 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.

It is, besides, a presumption far too largely and indiscriminately | applied, even in our own advanced age, that where much is be- lieved, something must necessarily be true—that accredited fiction is always traceable to some basis of historical truth.? 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

Plausible fiction often generated and accre- dited by the mere force of strong and common sentiment, even in times of instruction.

1In reference to the loose siate- ments 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 Burpase to deceive. They have

uired 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 them- selves ; 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 in- vestigations 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, Ist edit. 1775).

2 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, ἢ

388 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTEES. Part I.

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 can- not be undertaken without incurring obloquy. Of such tendencies in the human mind abundant evidence is furnished by the innume- rable 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 per- vading 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 disce. ible, 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 exem- plifying 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.

The allegorical interpretation of the mythes has been by Allegoricat S@Veral learned investigators, especially by Creuzer, theory of connected with the hypothesis of an ancient and —traced by highly instructed body of priests, having their origin some up to either in Egypt or in the East, and communicating to ey, the rude and barbarous Greeks religious, physical and Υ historical knowledge under the veil of symbols. αὖ 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,

Cuap. XVI. THE ALLEGORICAL THEORY. 389

even if understood at all, would at least have been listened to with indifference, as not corresponding with any mental de- mand. In such allegorising 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 symbolised was no longer thought of, while the symbolising 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, com- posed 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 ) ΓΈΜΕΝ Homer. Persons who had gone through the prelimi- of the nary ceremonies of initiation were permitted atlength ™ythes

: : supposed to hear, though under strict obligation of secrecy, this to be pre-

; a 5 ἃ J servedinthe ancient religious and cosmogonic doctrine, revealing religious the destination of men and the certainty of post- ™YStties. humous 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 depositary channels of that purer theology and physics which had originally been communi- cated, though under the unavoidable inconvenience of a symbolical expression, by an enlightened priesthood coming from abroad to the then rude barbarians of the country.!

1 For this general character of the Divine Legation of Moses, book ii. Grecian mysteries with their concealed sect. 4. treasure of doctrine, see Warburion, Payne Knight, On the Symbolical

390

THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES.

Part i.

But this theory, though advocated by several learned men, has

been shown to be unsupported and erroneous.

Language of ancient Artand Mythology, sect. 6, 10, 11, 40, &c.

Saint Croix, Recherches sur les Mystéres du τς πῆρ sect. 3, Ρ. 103 ; sect. 4, p. 404

Creuzer, Ἔ μὰ στῖτας und Mythologie der Alten Volker, sect. a 8, 23, 39 42, &c. Meiners and Heeren adopt generally the same view, though there are many divergencies 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 sag) tong been mere men. 8 Bee emens Alex. Strom. v. p. 592,

ylb. The view taken by Hermann of the ancient Grecian Mythology is in many points similarto that of Creuzer, though with some considerable difference. He thinks thatitis an aggregate of doctrine —philosophical, theological, physical, and mo —expressed under a — of leg a personifications, each person og a called by a name sig: nificant of the function personifi this doctrine was imported from the East into Greece, where the poets,

retaining or translati the names but forgetti their meaning an connexion, distorted the primitive stories, the sense of which came to be retained only in the ancient mysteries. That true sense, however a analysis ma: eal recovered by a ca of cant names : and his

in the

bine thon th e ion of etymol = dissent from egy into is set forth in their published poe τω pondence, y in his concluding ‘Brief an uzer iiber das Wesen und die Behandlung der Mythologie,” Leipzig, 1819. The following citation from his Latin dissertation sets forth his general doctrine : ermann, De eye Greecorum Antiquissima, p. 4. (Opuscula, vol. ii. Pp. 171) :-—** Vi emus rerum divinarum umanarumque scientiam ex Asia Led oe ag Europam : emus fabulosos poé peregrinam doctrinam, monstruoso tumore orientis sive exutam, sive nondum indutam, quasi de integro Greca specie pro-

It implies a

creantes ; videmus poétas illos, quorum omnium ‘vera oat τος nominibus—ab arte, qué clarebant, bliterata sunt, diu in Thracia herentes, raro- que ‘tandem etiam cum aliis Grecie —— commercio gery qualis mphus, non ipse eniensis, Atheniensibus hymnos Deorum fecit. Videmus denique retrusam paulatim in pple ge secretam illam sapientum Vitiatam religionum - eae corruptam inscitia inter- pretum, obscuratam levitate amceniora sectantium—adeo ut eam ne illi qui- dem intelligerent, qui hereditariam a prioribus poésin colentes, quum ingenii preestantia omnes prestin gnerent, Fath illos oblivione merserunt, ut ipsi sint Pa auctores omnis eruditionis i a thinks, pdf iope ti by — iredge. yee etymology Sing Uke a history comple ge come Θ 8 Ty Co! Grecian belief as it stood d anterior δι Homer and Hesiod :—*‘ hac omni ratione judicio inaxiine opus quia non testibus res agitur, interpretandi solertiam omnia revo- canda sunt” (p. 172). To the same

gre Pp se the French work of Eméric David, Recherches sur le

Dieu Jupiter—reviewed by O. Miiller : — Schriften of the latter,

= = = ryant has also employed a Ἧς ὅτ of learning, and numerous etymological conjectures, to resolve the Greek mythes into mistakes, esckwessgey and mutilations, of ae loits and doctrines of oriental long-lost and by-gone,—Amo- Cu kites, &. “It was thinks represented that the of Thoth, Hermés, Menés, Osiris, Zeuth, Atlas, Phoréneus, Prométhe to which list a farther number great extent might be added: the Νοῦς of Anaxagoras was in reality the Noah” (Ant. Mythol. vol. ii. p. 253, 272). “The Cuthites or Amonians, descendants of Noah, settled in Greece from the east, celebrated for a, ok in

see the

Guar. XVI. fRIPLE THEOLOGY OF. PAGANISM. 891

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.

The doctrine supposed to have been originally symbolised and

subsequently overclouded, in the Greek mythes, was gupposed in reality first intruded into them by the unconscious eating fancies of later interpreters. It was one of the various is really . . a modern roads which instructed men took to escape from the interpreta- AON.

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 triple

and Scevola distributed theology into three distinct hop aed departments,—the mythical or fabulous, the civil, and world

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 or political community as such,—it comprised the regu. lation 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

on terms misinterpreted or abused” pr i. p. 452) “The number of

fferent 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” (id. ii. p. 57). ‘The fables of Promé- theus and Tityus were taken from ancient Amonian temples, from hiero- glyphics misunderstood and badly explained” (i. p. 426): see especially vol. ii. p. 160.

1The 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, p. xiii.-xiv.) has good observations on the vanity of all attempts to allegorise 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 as- tonishing 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 allegorising tendencies of the later Platonists (Uist. Decl. and Fall, vol. iv. p. 71).

392 THE GREEKS’ OWN ViEW OF THE MYTHES. Parti

private discussion in the schools apart from the general public. As a member of the city, the philosopher sympathised 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 over- thrown. 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.

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 unauthorised 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

1 Varro, 7s Augustin. De Civ. Dei, Magn. v. Τελεταί---Χχρύσιππος δε φησι, iv. 27; vi. 5—6. ‘‘Dicis fabulosos τοὺς περὶ τῶν θείων λόγους εἰκ Deos accommodatos esse ad theatrum, καλεῖσθαι τελετὰς, χρῆναι ap τούτους naturales ad mundum, civiles ad τελευταίους καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσι ἰιδάσκεσθαι, urbem.” “Varro, de religionibus τῆς ψυχῆς ἐχούσης ἕρμα καὶ κεκρατημένης, loquens, multa esse vera dixit, que καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἀμ: υς σιωπᾷν δυναμένης" non modo vulgo scire non sit utile, sed μέγα γὰρ εἶναι τὸ ἄθλον ὑ ὑπὲρ θεῶν ἀκοῦσαί etiam tametsi falsa sint, aliter existi- τε ὀρθα, καὶ ἐγκρατεῖς γενέσθαι yh mare populum expediat : etideo Greecos The triple division of Varro is 7 teloten ¢ a mysteria taciturnitate parie- duced in Plutarch, rang yn bh Pp. tibusque clausisse” (ibid. iv. 81). See τὰ μὲν μύθῳ, τὰ δὲ νόμῳ, τὰ δὲ λόγῳ, Villoison, De Triplici Theologia Com- πίστιν ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἔσχηκε Tis, δ᾽ οὖν περὶ mentatio, p. 8; and Lactantius, De θεῶν δόξης καὶ παντάπασιν μόνες καὶ

. Error. 11, 8. The doctrine of the διδάσκαλοι γεγόνασιν ἡμῖν οἵ τε ποιηταὶ, Stoic Chrysippus, ad Etymologicon καὶ οἱ νομοθέται, καὶ τρίτον, οἱ φιλόσοφοι.

Guar, XVI. 393 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 Sokratés being asked whether he believes 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 over-much, and not greatly to be envied, if it be only for this reason, that after having set right one fable, they ere wnder the necessity of applying the same process to a host of others—Hippocentaurs, Chimeras, Gorgons, Pegasus, and numberless other monsters and incredi- bilities. 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.” 1

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

OPINION OF PLATO.

1 Plato, Pheedr. c. 7. P, 229. PHEDRUS. Εἶπέ μοι, ὦ Σώκρατες, σὺ τοῦτο τὸ μυβολόγημα πὶ πείθει ἀληθὲς εἶναι; $

SOKRAT ᾿Αλλ’ εἰ ἀπιστοίην, ὥσπερ οἱ σοφοὶ, οὐκ ἂν ἄτοπος. εἴην, εἶτα σοφι- ζόμενος φαίην αὐτὴν πνεῦμα Βορέου κατὰ τῶν πλησίον metpav σὺν φαρμακείᾳ παίζουσαν ὦσαι, καὶ οὕτω δὴ τελευτή- σασαν λεχθῆναι ὑπὸ τοῦ eae ἀναρ- παστὸν γεγονέναι . . ὼ δὲ, ὦ Φαῖδρε, ἄλλως μὲν τὰ τοιαῦτα αρίεντα ἡ οῦμαι, λίαν δὲ δεινοῦ καὶ ἐπιπ' vou καὶ οὐ πάνυ εὐτυχοῦς ἀνδρὸς, κατ᾽ ἄλλο μὲν

οὐδὲν, ὅ ὅτι δ᾽ αὑτῷ ἀνάγκη “μετὰ τοῦτο τὸ τῶν Ἱπποκενταύρων εἶδος ἐπανορθοῦσθαι, καὶ αὖθις τὸ τῆς Χιμαίρας. Καὶ ἐπιῤῥεὶ δὲ ὄχλος τοιούτων ΤῬοργόνων καὶ Πηγά- σων, καὶ ἄλλων ἀμηχάνων πλήθη τε καὶ ἀτοπίαι τερατολόγων τινῶν φύσεων" αἷς εἴ τις ἀπιστῶν προσβιβᾷ κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἕκαστον, ἅτε ἀγροίκῳ. τινὶ σοφίᾳ χρώμενον, πολλῆς αὐτῷ σχολῆς δεήσει. δὲ πρὸς ταῦτα “οὐδαμῶς ἔστι peo εν, wre

θεν , δὴ χαίρειν ἐάσας ταῦτα, πειθόμενος δὲ τῷ νομιζομένῳ περὶ αὐτῶν, ὃ νῦν δὴ ἔλεγον, σκοπῶ οὐ ταῦτα ἀλλ᾽ ἐμαυτόν, ἄσ.

364 Hf GREEKS’ OWN ViEW OF TH MYTHES. parri

process on the remainder. If the process be trustworthy, it ought to be applied to all: and 6 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 recognising the generic difference between them—we find sub- Treatment ‘Stantially the same view pervading the elaborate and use ει, ΠΡΟ in his treatise on the Republic. He there according regards the mythes, not as embodying either matter to Plato. —_ 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 pre- established 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, aa 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 obliga- tion 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 Théseus son of Poseidén, and Peirithous 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

r=

398

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.” +

Most of the mythes which the youth hear and repeat (according to Plato) are false, but some of them are true: the

ὕπαρ. XVI. OPINION OF PLATO.

His views great and prominent mythes which appear in Homer καὶ to Lr and Hesiod are no less fictions than the rest. But and use of

culon.

fiction constitutes one of the indispensable instruments of mental training as well as truth; only the legislator must take care that the fictions so employed shall be beneficent and not mischievous.? 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 authorised compositions, the adoption of a more correct standard.$

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 con- demnation, which he shared with so many other philosophers,

towards a large portion of the

Aires Repub. Fact 5, p. 391. The perfect ignorance o: men respecting the gods rendered the task of fiction oney (Plato, Kritias, p. 107).

Plato, Repub. ii. 16, p. 877. Λόγων δὲ διττὸν εἶδος, τὸ μὲν ἀληθὲς, ψεῦδος δ᾽ ἕτερον; Ναί. Παιδευτέον δ᾽ ἐν ἀμφο- τέροις, πρότερον δ᾽ ἐν τοῖς ψεύδεσιν " atts μανθάνεις, ὅτι πρῶτον τοῖς παιδίοις μύθους λέγομεν" τοῦτο δέ που ὡς τὸ ὅλον εἰπεῖν Ψεῦδος, Eve δὲ καὶ ἀληθῆ. . . « .- Πρῶτον ἡμῖν ἐπιστα- τητέον τοῖς μυθοποιοῖς, καὶ ὃν μὲν ἂν καλὸν μῦθον ποιήσωσιν, ἐγκριτέον, ὃν δ᾽ & μὴ, ἀποκριτέον. . « . ὧν δὲ νῦν λέγουσι, τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐκβλητέον . . - ods Ἡσίοδος καὶ Ὅμηρος ἡμῖν ἐλεγέτην, καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι ποιηταί, Οὗτοι γάρ που μύθους τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ψευδεῖς συντιθέντες ἔλεγόν τε καὶ λέγουσι. ἸΠοίους δὴ, ἦ δ᾽ ὃς, καὶ τί αὐτῶν μεμφόμενος λέγεις ; Ὅπερ, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγὼ, χρὴ καὶ πρῶτον καὶ μάλιστα μέμφεσθαι, ἄλλως τε καὶ ἐάν τις μὴ γαλῶς ψεύδηται. Τί τοῦτο; Ὅταν τις εἰκάζῃ κακῶς τῷ λόγῳ περὶ θεῶν τε καὶ ἡρώων, οἷοί εἰσιν, ὥσπερ γραφεὺς μηδὲν ἐοικότα γράφων οἷς ἂν ὅμοια βού- ληται γράψαι.

The same train of thought, and the precepts founded upon it, are followed up ng hae ἀφ chap. 17, 18, and 19; com- pare De Legg. xii. p. 941.

Homeric and Hesiodic stories.*

Instead of recognising the popular or dramatic progr τ as cheat ΤΥ ϑρ: dis- tinct from the civil (as Varro did), Plato _ suppresses the former as a separate depaxtqnens and merges it in the latter.

Plato, Repub. ii. c. 21, p. 382 Td ἐν τοῖς λόγοις Ψψεῦδος πότε Kai τί χρήσιμον, ὥστε μὴ ἄξιον εἶναι μίσους ; Ap οὐ πρός τε τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ τῶν καλουμένων φίλων, ὅταν διὰ μανίαν 7 τινα ἄνοιαν κακόν τι ἐπιχειρῶσι πράττειν, τότε ἀποτροπῆς ἕνεκα ὡς φάρμακον χρή- σιμον γίγνεται; Καὶ ἐν αἷς νῦν ἐλέγομεν ταῖς μυθολογίαις, δεὰ τὸ μὴ εἰδέναι ὅπῃ τἀληθὲς ἔχει περὶ τῶν παλαιῶν, ἀφομοιοῦν- τες τῷ ἀληθεῖ τὸ ψεῦδος, ὅτι μάλιστα, οὕτω χρήσιμον ποιοῦμεν ; 4The censure which Xenophanés pronounced upon the Homeric legends has already been noticed: He eitus (Diogen. Laért. ix. 1) and Metrodérus, the companion and follower of Epi- curus, 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 be ashamed to confess their utter ignorance of Homer, to the extent of not eepi: ica 4 Hectér was a Greek or a Trojan (Plut. ib. p. 1094).

396 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part 1.

But the manner in which he has set forth this opinion unfolds Hedeals | to us more clearly the real character of the mythical

with the | narrative. They are creations of the productive minds q

andimagi- butes of the gods and heroes: so Plato views them, nation— δηῃᾷ in such character he proposed 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 Héré, or Théseus and Peirithous, 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.

We may consider then that Plato disapproves of the attempt to identify the old mythes either with exaggerated history or with ‘lisguised philosophy. He shares in the current faith, without any suspicion or criticism, as to Orpheus, Palamédés, Dedalus, Amphién, Théseus, Achilles, Cheirén, and other mythical per- sonages ;? 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 oor essentially and inseparably a portion of Hellenic by religious religious faith. ‘The mythe both presupposes, and aot bay springs out of, a settled basis and a strong expansive poses 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

4 Plato, Republic. iii. 4—5, p. 391; De Legg. iii, 1, p. 677.

«

Cuap. XVI. MYTHICAL GENEALOGIES, 397

is judged and upheld, it is a popularised expression of the divine and heroic faith of the people.

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 recognised 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:! for the length and continuity of the series arise from anxiety on the part of historical men to join themselves by a thread of gin descent with the being whom they worshipped in antiquity their gentile sacrifices. Without the ancestorial god, w religious the whole pedigree would have become not only °n¢¢Ption. acephalous, but worthless and uninteresting. The pride of the Herakleids, Asklepiads, Alakids, Neleids, Dedalids, &c. 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 Hekatzus of Milétus, who ranked himself as the fifteenth descendant of a god, might perhaps have accounted it an overweening impiety in any living man to elaim a god for his immediate father.

The whole chronology of Greece, anterior to 776 B.c., consists of calculations founded upon these mythical genea- Application logies, especially upon that of the Spartan kings and οἱ chronolo- their descent from Héraklés,—thirty years being lation commonly taken as the equivalent of a generation, or pe yea about three generations to a century. This process of character. computation was altogether illusory, as applying historical and chronological conditions to a case on which they had no bearing.

1¥or a description of similar ten- coalescence between the ideas of dencies in the Asiatic religions, see ancestry and worship, — confusion Movers, Die Phonizier, ch. v. p. 153 between gods and men in the past,— (Bonn, 1841): he points out the increasing tendency to Huemerise (p. same phenomena as in the Greek,— 156—167).

398 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part I.

Though the domain of history was seemingly enlarged, the religious element was tacitly set aside: when the heroes and gods were chronologised, they became insensibly approximated to the limits of humanity, and the process indirectly gave encourage- ment to the theory of Euémerus. 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 Euémerus and the subsequent Christian writers, who denied the -original and inherent divinity of the pagan gods, had a great advantage in carrying their chrono- logical 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 Apollodérus and Eratosthenés selected

Mythical : ἐς πε μος ἘΣ g : Ξ

genealogies as the basis of their estimate of time, is nowise superior ace oni in eredibility and trustworthiness to the thousand pe keh other gentile and family pedigrees with which Greece respect t abounded ; it is rather indeed to be numbered among

the most incredible of all, seeing that Héraklés as a progenitor is placed at the head of perhaps more pedigrees than any other Grecian god or hero The descent of the Spartan king Leonidas from Héraklés rests upon no better evidence than that of Aristotle or Hippokratés from Asklépius,? —of Evagoras or Thucydidés from Makus,—of Sokratés from Deedalus,—of the Spartan heraldic family from Talthybius,—of the prophetic Iamid family in Elis from Iamus,—of the root- gatherers in Pélion from Cheirén,—and of Hekatzus and his gens from some god in the sixteenth ascending line of the series.

1 According to that which Aristotle Biographic. viii. 1); about Aristo’

tle, see Diogen. Laért. v. 1. Xenophén,

seems to recognise (Histor. Animal. vii. 6), Héraklés was father of seventy-two sons, but of only one da cor a Face was essentially appevdyovos, illustrati one of the physical iarities noti by Aristotle. Euripidés however men- tions daughters of Héraklés in the plural number (Eurip. Herakleid. 45). 2 ἘΠΡ kratés was twentieth in descent from Héraklés, and nineteenth from Asklépius (Vita Hippocr. by Soranus, ap. Westermann, Scriptor.

the physician of the em ees it. Ann, xii.

In Rhodes, the neighbouring island to Kés, an the po ᾿Αλιάδαι, OF

worshippers of Hélios, τὸ κοινὸν τῶν ᾿Αλιαδῶν καὶ τῶν ᾿Αλιαστῶν (see the

iption in Boeckh’s Collection, No. 2525, with Boeckh’s comment). _

CHap XVI. CONFUSION BETWEEN GODS AND MEN. 809

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 exigencies 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.

When Hekatzus visited Thébes 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 outdone by the priests “who genealogised against him”. 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. *

Both these counter-genealogies are, in respect to trustworthiness and evidence, on the same footing. Each represents id Aen partly the religious faith, partly the retrospective Egyptian imagination of the persons from whom it emanated, &™#losies. In each the lower members of the series (to what an 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

1 Herodot. ii. 144. “Ἑκαταίῳ δὲ yevey- Adynoav δὲ ὧδε, &e.

λογήσαντι ἑωῦτὸον, καὶ ἀναδήσαντι ἐς 2 Herod. ii. 1438--1456, Και ταῦτα ἑκκαιδέκατον θεὸν, ἀντεγενεηλόγησαν ἐπὶ Αἰγύπτιοι ἀτρεκέως φασὶν ἐπίστασθαι,

τῇ ἀριθμήσει, οὐ δεκόμενοι παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ, αἰεί τε λογιζόμενοι καὶ αἰεὶ ἀπογραφά- ἀπὸ θεοῦ γίνεσθαι ἄνθρωπον '" ἀντεγενεη- μενοι τὰ ἔτεα,

400 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. PartL

Egyptian chronologies, and vainly employs his ingenuity in Valueof reconciling them. There is no standard of objective cach Bet evidence by which either the one or the other of in reference them can be tried. Each has its own subjective petra faith value, in conjunction with the faith and feelings of people. Egyptian and Greek, 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 imagi- nation 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 eit, Bas gods, heroes, and men, so confounded together that it men undis. was often impossible to distinguish to which class tinguish- any individual name belonged. In regard to the Grecian Thracian god Zalmoxis, the Hellespontic Greeks eT, interpreted his character and attributes according to the scheme of Euemerism. 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 honours. Herodotus cannot bring himself to believe this story, but he frankly avows his inability to determine whether Zalmoxis was a god or a man, nor can he extricate himself from a similar

1 Herod. iv. 94—96. After having ριος, χαιρέτω. So Plutarch νος c. related the Euemeristic version given | will not undertake to

by the Hellespontic Greeks, he con- w

cludes, with his characteristic frank- εἴτε δαίμων, εἴτε βασιλεὺς μενος, ness and Βἰτηρ! οὶ ν--- Ἐγὼ δὲ, περὶ μὲν Herakleitus th

τούτον καὶ τοῦ Katayaiov οἰκήματος, that men were θεοὶ θνητοί, and the οὔτε ἀπιστέω, οὔτε ὧν πιστεύω τι λίην. gods were ἄνθρωποι ἀθάνατοι Ὁ δοκέω δὲ πολλοῖσι ἔτεσι πρότερον τὸν Vitar. Auctio. c. 18. vol. i. p. 303. Ζάλμοξιν τοῦτον γενέσθαι Πυθαγόρεω. Tauchn.: compare the same author, Hite δὲ ἐγένετό τις Ζάλμοξις ἄνθρωπος, Dialog. Mortuor. iii. vol. i. p. 182, ed. εἴτ᾽ ἐστὶ δαίμων τις Τέτησι οὗτος ἐπιχώ- Tauchn.),

GENERAL RECAPITULATION. 401

Crap. XVI.

embarrassment in respect to Dionysus and Pan. Amidst the confusion of the Homeric fight, the goddess Athéné confers upon Diomédésthe miraculous favour 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. 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.?

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

1. They are a special product of the imagination oe a and feelings, radically distinct both from history and ϊ

1 Πίδα, v. 197 :-

᾿Αχλὺν δ᾽ αὖ τοι ἀπ’ ὀφθαλμῶν ἕλον, ἣ πρὶν ἐπῆεν,

"Odp’ εὖ γιγνώσκῃς ἠμὲν θεὸν. ἠδὲ καὶ ἄνδρα.

Of this undistinguishable confusion between gods and men, striking illus- trations are to be found both in the third book of Cicero de Natur4 Deorum 16—21), and in the long disquisition of trabo (x. pp. 467—474) respecting the Kabeiri, the Korybantes, the Daktyls of Ida; the more so as he cites the statements of Pherekydés, Akusilaus, Démétrius of Sképsis and others. Under the Roman empire the lands in Greece belonging to the immortal gas were exempted from tribute. e Roman tax-collectors refused to recognise 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 Asklé ius : Galen, too, is doubtful about Asklépius

and Dionysus—AckAnmés γέ τοι καὶ Διόνυσος, εἶτ᾽ ἄνθρωποι πρότερον ἤστην, εἴτε καὶ ἀρχῆθεν θεοί (Galen in Protrep- tic. 9. tom. 1. p. 22, θα, Kiihn). Xeno- phén (De Venat. c. i.) considers Cheirén as the brother of Zeus.

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

2 Ovid, Fasti, vi. 7—24 :—

‘Fas mihi precipue vultus vidisse Deorum,

Vel quia sum vates, vel quia sacra canoe: ὦ ὦ s

Ecce Deas vidi . ..

Horrueram, tacitoque animum pallore fatebar :

Cum ἄνθος quos fecit, sustulit ipsa

οὔ

5. Namque ait—O vates, Romani conditor anni Ause per exiguos magna referre modos: Jus tibi fecisti numen cceleste videndi, ee placuit numeris condere festa uis.”

1—26

402 THE GREEKS’ OWN ViEW OF THE MYTHES. parrt.

philosophy: they cannot be broken down and decomposed into the one, nor allegorised into the other. There are indeed some particular and even assignable mythes, which raise intrinsic pre- sumption of an allegorising 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 are we 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,—bub 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 impressi- bility 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.

1The fourth Eclogue of Virgil, | Permixtos heroas,” ὅσ. under the form of a prophecy, gives ‘ Alter erit tum Tiphys et altera que a faithful picture of the heroic and vehat Argo divine past, to which the legends of Delectos heroas: erunt etiam altera Troy and the Argonauts belonged :—

bella, “Tile Defim vi i Divi Atque iterum ad Trojam magnus mit- ΝΣ vitam accipiet, Divisque tetur Achilles.”

ee ΥῈ δι 3.

PoP hee)

Cuap. XVI. GENERAL RECAPITULATION. 408

The adventures of Achilles, Helen, and Diomédés, οὗ Gidipus and Adrastus, of Meleager and Althea, of Jasén and the Argé, were recounted by the same tongues and accepted with the same unsuspecting confidence, as those of Apollo and Artemis, of Arés and Aphrodité, of Poseidén and Héraklés.

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 recognised. Moreover superior men profited more largely by the stimulus, and contracted habits of judging different from the vulgar: the god Elenchus! (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 inheri- tance ; 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. Yet the most superior Greek was still a Greek, cherishing 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 manufac- tured some dogmas of supposed original philosophy, and along » 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.?

1 Lucian, Pseudol.c.4. ἸΤαρακλητέος ἡμῖν τῶν Μενάνδρον προλόγων εἷς, ὁ ἤθλεγχος, φίλος ἀληθείᾳ καὶ παῤῥησίᾳ θεὸς, οὐχ ὁ ἀσημότατος τῶν ἐπὶ τὴν δκήνην ἀναβαινόντων. (See Meineke ad Menandr, p. 284.)

2The following passage from Dr. Ferguson’s Essay on Civil Society

art. ii. sect. i. p, 126) bears well on the subject before us :—

“Tf 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, ‘hey are for

404 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES.

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 allegorised philosophy, and the heroic mythes as exaggerated, adorned, and over-coloured 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 connexion 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 aud 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,! while science and history were confined to

Part £.

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 every generation receive a different form. They are made to bear the

ey bear the character, and though mixed with absurdities, often raise the imagination and move the heart: when made the materials of poe , and adorned by the skill and e eloquence of an ardent and supe- rior mind, they instruct the under- standing as well as engage the passions. It is only in the manage- ment of mere antiquaries, or stript of the ornaments which the laws of history forbid them to wear, that they become unjit even to amuse the fancy or to

serve any purpose whatever. “It were absurd to quote the fable

in ascertain w

of the Tliad or the Odyssey, the legends of Hercules, Theseus, and (idipus, as authorities in matters of fact relating to the history of mankind; but they may, with + justice, be cited to i t were the conceptions and sentiments of the age in which they were com , or to characterise 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 4 M. H. de Mon- merqué, prefixed to the Ro de Berte aux Grans Piés, Paris, 1836), respecting the “romans” of the middle Ages :—“ Pour bien connaitre histoire du moyen Age, non pas celle des mais celle des mceurs qui rendent les faits vraisemblables, faut. l'avoir étudiée dans les romans, et voila pourquoi PHistoire de France n’est pas encore faite”. (P. xxi. -

1A curious evidence of the undi- minished popularity of the Grecian

Cuap. XVI. POPULARITY OF GRECIAN MYTHES. 405

comparatively few. We know from Thucydidés how erroneously and carelessly the Athenian public of his day retained the history of Peisistratus, only one century past ;? but the adventures of the gods and heroes, the numberless explanatory

General legends attached to visible objects and periodical awd: ceremonies, were the theme of general talk, and any familiar

man unacquainted with them would have found him- Whi

self partially excluded from the sympathy of his pbs ene neighbours. The theatrical representation, exhibited recent ry

to the entire city population and listened to with enthusiastic interest, both presupposed and perpetuated acquain- tance with the great lines of heroic fable. Indeed in later times even the pantomimic dancers embraced in their representation 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.?

mythes, to the exclusion even of recent history, is preserved by Vopiscus at the beginning of his Life of Aurelian. The prefect 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 by the splendid temple of the Sun, which Aurelian had consecrated, he asked eee 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. hereat the vener- able prefect was profoundly grieved : *Dolorem gemitis sui vir sanctus per hee verba profudit :—Ergo Thersitem, Sinonem, ceteraque illa prodigia vetus- tatis, et nos bene scimus, et postert fre- quentabunt: divum Aurelianum, claris- simum principem, severissimum Impe- ratorem, nomini orbis est restitutus, posteri nescient? Deus avertat hanc amen- tiam! Et tamen, si bene memini,

er quem totus Romano 223

pei αν eer Cite Nig δωσε Low mus,” &. istorie August. Scriptt. p. 209, ed. Salmas.)

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

1 Thucyd. vi. 56.

2 Pausan. i. 8,8. Λέγεται μὲν δὴ καὶ ἄλλα οὐκ ἀληθῆ παρὰ τοῖς πολλοῖς, οἷα ἱστορίας ἀνηκόοις οὖσι, καὶ ὁπόσα ἤκουον εὐθὺς ἐκ παιδῶν ἔν τε χόροις καὶ τραγῳ- δίαις πιστὰ ἡγουμένοις, ἄο. Θ tise 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 τρθαμονς πῆς ὁ c. 76—79, t. il. p. 808--- 810, Hemst.).

Antiphanés ap. Athene. vi. p. Μακάριόν ἐστιν ἡ τραγῳδία ποίημα κατὰ πάντ᾽, εἴ γε πρῶτον οἱ λόγοι

ὑπὸ τῶν θεατῶν εἰσιν ἐγνωρίσμενοι —

406

THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES.

Part I.

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. Theéric ship from Athens to the sacred island of Délos, kept alive in the minds of Athenians gene-

Religious festivals— their com-

The annual departure of the

memorative Tally, the legend of Théseus and his adventurous

uence.

enterprise in Kréte:* and in like manner most of

the other public rites and ceremonies were of a commemorative character, deduced from some mythical person or incident

πρὶν καί τιν᾽ εἰπεῖν " ὡς ὑπομνῆσαι μόνον δεῖ τὸν ποιητήν. Οἰδίπουν γὰρ ἄν γε φῶ, τὰ δ᾽ ἄλλα πάντ᾽ ἴσασιν" ὃ πατὴρ Adios, μήτηρ ᾿Ιοκάστη, θυγατέρες, παῖδες τίνες " τί πείσεθ᾽ οὗτος, τί πεποίηκεν. “Av πάλιν

εἴπῃ τις ᾿Αλκμαίωνα, καὶ τὰ παιδία πάντ᾽ εὐθὺς εἴρηχ᾽, ὅτι μανεὶς ἀπέκτονε τὴν μήτερ᾽" ἀγανακτῶν δ᾽ Ad ευδεως

ἥξει, πάλιν δ᾽ ἄπεισιν, ἄο.

The first pages of the eleventh Oration of Dio Chrysostom contain some striking a both as to the universal acquaintance with the mythes, and as to their extreme

pularity (Or. xi. p. 8307—312, Reisk.).

ee also the commencement of Hera- klidés, De Allegorid Homericé (ap. Scriptt. Myth. Gale, p. 408), about the familiarity with Homer.

The Lydé of the poet Antimachus has composed for his own consolation under sorrow, by enumerating the ἡρωϊκὰς συμφοράς (Plutarch, Consolat.

A m. ¢ 9, p. 106: compare Zischines cont. Gtesiph. ¢. 48). A sepulchral inscription in Théra, on the untimely death of Admétus, a youth of the heroic gens Aigide, makes a touching allusion to his ancestors ἄρ γε and Pherés (Boeckh, C. I, t. ii. p. 1

A curious passage of Aristotle is

reserved by Démétrius Phalereus

Περὶ Ἑρμηνείας, ὁ. 144),—Oow γὰρ

αὐτίτης καὶ μονώτης εἰμὶ, φιλομυθότερος γέγονε (compare the passage in the

ikomachean 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 Sera and familiar comparison, see

enander, epi ᾿Επιδεικτικ. § iv. capp.

9 and 11, ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett. t. ix. eae as ppd eon degree ἐδὼ which they in Θ or songs Οἱ women is illustrated by a touching epigram contained among the Chian erent ay published in Boeckh’s Collection (No. 2236) :— Burr μὰς Davis, φίλη ἡμέρη (Ὁ αἱ συνέ- οι Αἱ πενιχραὶ, γραῖαι, τῆδ᾽ ἐκλίθημεν μο

Ue ᾿Αμφότεραι Κῷαι, πρῶται γένος---ὦ γλυ- κὺς ὄρθρος, se Pig a ᾧ μύθους ἥδομεν ἡμι- ἔων.

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

In the family of the wealth Athenian Demokratés was a legend, that his primitive ancestor ac Zeus by the daughter of the Archégetés of the déme Aixéneis, to which he be- longed) had received Héraklés at his table: this legend was so rife that the

old women sung it,—amep ai γραῖαι

δουσι (Plato, Lysis. p. 205). Compare Ling a Teed 0 the déme ᾿Αναγυροῦς, mentioned in Suidas ad voc.

Orestes from Pyladés in the Iphigeneia rom e Ip)

in Tauris of Euripidés (662),

his sister Iphigeneia, whom he does not know as priestess of Artemis ina foreign land :—

Tis ἐστιν ἡ νεᾶνις; ὡς Ἑλληνικῶς ᾿Ανήρεθ᾽ ἡμᾶς τούς τ᾽ ἐν Ἰλίῳ πόνους Νόστον τ᾽ Αχαιῶν, τόν 7 ἐν οἰωνοῖς σοφὸν Κάλχαντ᾽, ᾿Αχιλλέως τ᾽ οὔνομ᾽, ἄσο.

. ἐστὶν ἡ ξένη γένος

"ExetOev. ᾿Αργεία τις, &. 1 Plato, Pheedo, ς. 3.

- “oz -» eal

"2

ee ee δ αν ὁ

HSE ON Cry

why? wd

Cuap. XVI. CONNEXION OF MYTHES WITH RELIGION, 407

familiarly known to natives, and forming to strangers a portion of the curiosities, of the place! During the period of Grecian subjection under the Romans, these curiosities, together with their works of arts and their legends, were especially clung to as a set- off against present degradation. The Theban citizen who found himself restrained from the liberty enjoyed by all other Greeks, of consulting Amphiaraiis 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,? and which conducted him back to the originally hostile relations between Amphiaraiis and Thébes. Nor can we suppose among the citizens of Sikyén anything less than a perfect and reverential conception of the legend of Thébes, when we read the account given by Herodotus of the conduct of the despot Kleisthenés in regard to Adrastus and Melanippus.2 The Treezenian youths and maidens,‘ who universally, when on the eve of marriage, consecrated an offering of their hair at the Herdéon of Hippolytus, maintained a lively recollection of the legend of that unhappy recusant whom Aphrodité 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 Agamemnén, still preserved in the days of Pausanias at Cheroneia in Beotia, was the work of the god Héphestos. 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 Agamemnén, to Phékis, and

1 The Philopseudes of Lucian (t. iii. p. 31, Hemst. cap. 2, 3, 4) shows not only the pride which the Sacer public of Athens and Thébes took in their old mythes (Triptolemus, Boreas, and Orei- thyia, the Sparti, &c.), 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 pais truth,

even if they could have got it for nothing (μηδὲ ἀμισθὶ τῶν ξένων τἀληθὲς ἀκούειν ἐθελησάντων).

2 Herodot. viii. 184.

8 Herodot. v. 67.

4 Euripid. Hippolyt. 1424; Pausan. ii. 82,1; Lucian, De Dea Syria, c. 60, vol, iv. p. 287, Tauch.

It is curious to see in the account of Pausanias how all the petty Bicone ties of the objects around became connected with explanatory details growing out of this affecting legend.

ompare Pausan. i. 22, 2.

408 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES. Part I.

received divine honours from the citizens of Cheroneia1 The spears of Mérionés and Odysseus were treasured up universality at Engyium in Sicily, that of Achilles at Phasélis ; of mythical the sword of Memnén adorned the temple of ai Asklépius at Nicomédia; and Pausanias, with unsus- pecting confidence, adduces the two latter as proofs that the arms of the heroes were made of brass.2. The hide of the Kalydonian boar was guarded and shown by the Tegeates as a precious possession ; the shield of Euphorbus was in like manner sus- pended in the temple of Branchide near Milétus, as well as in the temple of Héré in Argos. Visible relics of Epeius and Philoktétés were not wanting ; moreover 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. 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 Héraklés, Jasin, Médea, Alkmzén, Diomédés, Odysseus, Danaus and his daughters, &c. 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.

If we analyse the intellectual acquisitions of a common Grecian townsman, from the rude communities of Arcadia or Phékis even up to the enlightened Athens, we shall find that, over and above the rules of art or capacities requisite for his daily wants, they 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

1 Pausan. ix. 40, 6. Wachsmuth has collected the nume- 2 Plutarch, Marcell. c. 20; Pausan. rous citations out of Pausanias on this iii. 8, 6. 2 subject (Hellenische Alterthi 3 Pausan. viii, 46, 1; a Laér. ii. sect. 115, p. 111). viii. a Strabo, vi. iy on pg ae ii. 182; Plutarch,

Cuap. XVI. MYTHES STIMULANTS TO GRECIAN ART. 409

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, discover- able under them.

We must not omit the incalculable importance of the mythes as stimulants to the imagination of the Grecian artist The mythes in sculpture, in painting, in carving and in archi- herd me, tecture. From the divine and heroic legends and Grecian art. personages were borrowed those paintings, statues, and reliefs, which rendered the temples, porticos, and public buildings, at Athens and elsewhere, objects of surpassing admiration. Such visible reproduction contributed again to fix the types of the gods and heroes familiarly and indelibly on the public mind 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.

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,’ of the exploits performed by Perseus and Bellerophdn, of the incidents composing the Trojan war or the Kalydonian boar-hunt—the process of belief, even in the more fantastic of these conceptions, became easy in proportion as the conception was familiarised. And if any person ΕΗ had been slow to believe in the efficacy of the prayers of works of of Hakus, whereby that devout hero once obtained #3ht9M ς special relief from Zeus, at a moment when Greece mythical was perishing from long-continued sterility — his

1 Ἡμιθέων ἀρεταῖς, the subjects of Amazonomachia are eonstantly asso- the works of Polygnotus at Athens ciated together in the ancient Grecian (Melanthius, ap. Plutarch. Cimén. c, reliefs (see the Expédition Scientifique 4): compare Theocrit. xv. 138. de Morée, t. ii. p. 16, in the explanation

€The Centauromachia and the Ε higel — of Apollo Epikureius at

410 THE GREEKS’ OWN VIEW OF THE MYTHES, Part I

doubts would probably vanish, when, on visiting the Hakeium at Aigina, there were exhibited to him the statues of the very envoys who had come on behalf of the distressed Greeks to solicit that AZakus would pray for them.1 A Grecian temple? 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,*® 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.* Such legends, springing up usually in times of suffering and danger, and finding few men

1 Pausan. ii. 29, 6. ig Mor. Germ. c. edgy cen τον 49. Θ manner in w Θ pre- an τὸν Heflin, 12d, p- serene on, sence of a hero was identified with his ad oe tem; ἢ - ye . ed. dena statue (τὸν δέκαιον δεῖ θεὸν Οἴκοι μένειν πο τς = vi Pp. ὅπ. σώζοντα τοὺς ἱδρυμένους. —Menander, “Hvioxos, p. 71, Meineke), con- 71, Meinek

3See the case of the Aginetans secrated ground, and oracle, no- lending the Hakids for a time to the where more powerfully attested than Thebans (Herodot. v 80), who soon in the Heroica of Philostratus ‘poll p. however returned them: likewise 2—20, p. 674692; also De Vit. Apollén. sending the Makids to the battle of Tyan. iv. 11), Prd’ us at

Salamis (viii. 64—80). The Spartans, us, Aj i when they decreed that only one of Hectér at Dium: Prétesilaus appeared their two should be out on mili- exactly i in the equipment of his statue, tary service, decreed at the same time — ἐπε π wis iehirad Ἐ ξένε, τὸν Θετταλικὸν that only one of the Tyndarids should τρ yeree καὶ τὸ πλεγρις τοῦτο φι

go out with them (vy. oi they once 674). resence and sym nt the darids aids the the Ran ykus is essen’ to "the envoys of Epizephyrian Locri, who satisfaction of the Athenian dikasts

τῆν τα pared for them a Apacer on board (Aristophan. Vesp. 389—820) : heir ship (Diodér. Excerpt. xvi. p. 15. fragment of Lucilius quoted

ΧᾺ The Thebans grant their Lactantius, De Falsé Religione G. a hero Melanippus to Kleisthenés of is curious.—Tois ἥρωσι τοῖς κατὰ τὴν “me én (v. 68). What was sent must πόλιν καὶ τὴν xo ἐδρν ΣΦΙΝ

a f the genuine statue. Plutarch, Timoleon. c. 12; Strabo,

Li cage er solemnities *Flatarey Ρ. 264. "Theophrastus treats the towards the statues, see “toon pe iration as a natural phenomenon Alkibiad. 34; Kallimach, Hymn. ad statues made of cedar-wood

Lavacr. Palladis, init., with the note of (Histor. Plant. y. 10). Plutarch dis- Spanheim ; K. O. Miiller, Archeologie cusses the credibility of this sort of der Kunst, § 69; compare Plutarch, miracles in his Life of Coriolanus, c. Question. Romaic. § 61, p. 279; and 87—38.

CDM στα κὸν EK, Ft es

ee

A EN i ee

᾿

Cuap. XVI. ART INTENSIFIED MYTHICAL FAITH, 411

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 pre-existing mythes connected with his name. When Boreas, during the invasion of Greece by Xerxés and in compliance with the fervent prayer of the Athenians, had sent forth a providential storm to the irreparable damage of the Persian armada,! the sceptical minority (alluded to by Plato) who doubted the mythe of Boreas and Oreithyia, and his close connexion thus acquired with Erechtheus and the Erechtheids generally, must for the time have been reduced to absolute silence.

1 Herodot. vii. 189. Compare the titude of the Megalopolitans to reas for having preserved them from the attack of the dzemonian king is (Pausan. viii. 27, 4—viii. 36, 4). en the Ten Thousand Greeks were on their retreat through the cold

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

mountains of Armenia, Boreas blew in

τοῦ © mvevparos.—Xenoph. Anab. iv.

their faces ‘“‘parching and freezing 5, 3

412 MODERN EUROPEAN MYTHES COMPARED, Part I.

CHAPTER XVIL

THE GRECIAN MYTHICAL VEIN COMPARED WITH THAT OF MODERN EUROPE.

I Ave already remarked that the existence of that popular Μῦθος.-- narrative talk, which the Germans express by the Sage~an, _ significant word Sage or Volks-Sage, in a greater or manifesta- less degree of perfection or development, is a phzno- jion of the ~menon common to almost all stages of society and to mind. almost all quarters of the globe. It is the natural effusion of the unlettered, imaginative and believing man, and its maximum of influence belongs to an early state of the human mind: for the multiplication of recorded facts, the diffusion of positive science, and the formation of a critical standard of belief, tend to discredit its dignity and to repress its easy and abundant flow. It supplies to the poet both materials to recombine and adorn, and a basis as well as a stimulus for further inventions of his own ; and this at a time when the poet is religious teacher, historian, and philosopher, all in one—not, as he becomes at a more advanced period, the mere purveyor of avowed, though interesting, fiction.

Such popular stories, and such historical songs (meaning by historical simply that which is accepted as history) are found in most quarters of the globe, and especially among the Teutonic and Celtic populations of early Europe. The old Gothic songs were cast into a continuous history by the historian Ablavius ;* and the poems of the Germans respecting Tuisto the earth-born god, his son Mannus, and his descendants the eponyms of the various German tribes,? as they are briefly described by Tacitus,

1 Jornandes, De Reb. Geticis, capp. 2 Tacit. Mor. German. δ. 2. ‘‘ Cele- 4-Ὁ, brant carminibus antiquis. σποᾶ unum

t » 4 2 5

ὕπαρ. XVII. ANALOGY OF GERMANS AND CELTS. 413

remind us of Hesiod, or Eumélus, or the Homeric Hymns. Jacob Grimm, in his learned and valuable Deutsche Mythologie, has exhibited copious evidence of the great fundamental , | ack analogy, along with many special differences, between of the

the German, Scandinavian and Grecian mythical Gewmans world ; and the Dissertation of Mr. Price (prefixed to haat ag his edition of Warton’s History of English Poetry) ~~ sustains and illustrates Grimm’s view. The same personifying imagination—the same ever-present conception of the will, sympathies, and antipathies of the gods as the producing causes of phenomena, and as distinguished from a course of nature with its invariable sequence—the same relations between gods, heroes and men, with the like difficulty of discriminating the one from the other in many individual names—a similar wholesale transfer of human attributes to the gods, with the absence of human limits and liabilities—a like belief in Nymphs, Giants, and other beings neither gods nor men—the same coalescence of the religious with the patriotic feeling and faith—these are positive features common to the early Greeks with the early Germans: and the negative conditions of the two are not less analogous—the absence of prose writing, positive records, and scientific culture. The preliminary basis and encouragements for the mythopeic faculty were thus extremely similar.

But though the prolific forces were the same in kind, the results were very different in degree, and the developing circum- stances were more different still.

First, the abundance, the beauty, and the long continuance of early Grecian poetry, in the purely poetical age, is a pigorences phenomenon which has no parallel elsewhere. andnesrg

Secondly, the transition of the Greek mind from Grecian its poetical to its comparatively positive state was Poet self-operated, accomplished by its own inherent and Grecian expansive force—aided indeed, but by no means either seif- impressed or provoked, from without. From the °Pe™ poetry of Homer to the history of Thucydidés and the philosophy

apud eos memorize et annalium genus tatis, plures Deo ortos, pluresque est, Tuistonem Deum terra editum, et gentis appellationes, Marsos, Gam- filium Mannum, originem gentis con- brivios, Suevos, Vandaliosque affir-

ditoresque. Quidam licentid vetus- mant: eaque vera et antiqua nomina.”

414 MODERN EUROPEAN MYTHES COMPARED. Part I.

of Plato and Aristotle, was a prodigious step, but it was the native growth of the Hellenic youth into an Hellenic man; and what is of still greater moment, it was brought about without breaking the thread either of religious or patriotic tradition—without any coercive innovation or violent change in the mental feelings. The legendary world, though the ethical judgments and rational criticisms of superior men had outgrown it, still retained its hold upon their feelings as an object of affectionate and reverential retrospect.

Far different from this was the development of the early Germans. We know little about their early poetry, but we shall run no risk of error in affirming that they had nothing to com- pare with either Iliad or Odyssey. Whether, if left to themselves, they would have possessed sufficient progressive power to make a step similar to that of the Greeks, is a question which we cannot answer. Their condition, mental as well as political, was violently changed by a foreign action from without. The progress influence of the Roman empire introduced artificially about by mong them new institutions, new opinions, habits violent and luxuries, and, above all, a new religion; the from Romanised Germans becoming themselves successively without. [ἢ instruments of this revolution with regard to such of their brethren as still remained heathens. It was a revolution often brought about by penal and coercive means: the old gods Thor and Woden were formally deposed and renounced, their images were crumbled into dust, and the sacred oaks of worship and prophecy hewn down. But even where conversion was the fruit of preaching and persuasion, it did not the less break up all the associations of a German with respect to that mythical world which he called his past, and of which the ancient gods constituted both the charm and the sanctity: he had now only the alternative of treating them either as men or as demons.! That mixed religious and patriotic retrospect, formed by the

1 On the hostile influence exercised of instruction on the same subject: see by the change of ΡΝ on the old also the Einleitung to the book, p. 12, Scandinavian poetry, see an interest- 2nd edition. ing article of Jacob Grimm in the A similar observation has been made 0 ὰν Gelehrte Anzeigen, Feb. with respect to the old mythes of the 1830, τοί @ review of Olaf pagan Russians by Eichho = Léta- Tryge¥s0 The article Helden blissement du Christianisme, ce gage

Deutsche Mythologie is also full du bonheur des nations, fut vivement

Cuap XVII. DEVELOPMENT OF GERMAN MYTHES. 415

coalescence of piety with ancestral feeling, which constituted the appropriate sentiment both of Greeks and of Germans towards their unrecorded antiquity, was among the latter banished by Christianity : and while the root of the old mythes was thus cankered, the commemorative ceremonies and customs with which they were connected, either lost their consecrated character or disappeared altogether. Moreover new influences of great importance were at the same time brought to bear. gportion The Latin language, together with some tinge of of the Latin literature—the habit of writing and of recording civilization present events—the idea of a systematic law and ΟΝ τς anity pacific adjudication of disputes,—all these formed a upon the part of the general working of Roman civilization, ant even after the decline of the Roman empire, upon the Teutonic and Celtic tribes. A class of specially-educated men was formed upon a Latin basis and upon Christian principles, consisting almost entirely of priests, who were opposed, as well by motives of rivalry as by religious feeling, to the ancient bards and storytellers of the community. The “lettered men”! were constituted apart from “the men of story,” and Latin literature contributed along with religion to sink the mythes of untaught heathenism. Charlemagne indeed, at the same time that he employed aggressive and violent proceedings to introduce Christianity among the Saxons, also took special care to commit to writing and preserve the old heathen songs. But there can be little doubt that this step was the suggestion of a large and enlightened understanding peculiar to himself. The disposition general among lettered Christians of that age is more accurately. represented by his son Louis le Débonnaire, who, having learnt

erman mythes.

apprécié par les Russes, qui dans leur juste reconnaissance, le personnifidrent s un héros. Vladimir le Grand, ami des arts, protecteur de la religion qu'il protégea, et dont les fruits firent oublier les fautes, devint l’Arthus et le Charlemagne de la Russie, et ses hauts faits furent un mythe national ui domina tous ceux du paganisme. utour de lui se grouptrent ces guerriers aux formes athlétiques, au coeur généreux, dont la poésie aime ἃ entourer le berceau mystérieux des peuples: et les exploits du vaillant

Dobrinia, de Rogdai, d’Ilia, de Curile, animérent les ballades nationales, et vivent encore dans de naifs récits.” prepa tet Histoire de la e et

ittérature des Slaves, Paris, 1839, part iii. ch. Fite 190.)

1 This inction is curiously brought to view by Saxo Gramma- ticus, where he says of an Englishman named Lucas, t he was ‘“ literis — tenuiter instructus, sed histo-

arum scientid apprime eruditis” (p. 880, apud Dahlmann’s Historische For- schungen, vol. i. p. 176).

416

MODERN EUROPEAN MYTHES COMPARED.

Part I,

these songs as a boy, came to abhor them when he arrived at mature years, and could never be induced either to repeat or

tolerate them.?

According to the old heathen faith, the pedigree of the Saxon, Anglian, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish kings,— probably also those of the German and Scandinavian kings generally,—was traced to Odin, or to some of his immediate companions or heroic sons.?, I have already observed that the value of these genealogies consisted not so much in their length, as in the

Alteration in os mythi genealogies —Odin and the other

reverence attached to the name serving as primitive source. After the worship attached to Odin had been extinguished, the genealogical line was lengthened up to Japhet or Noah—and Odin, no longer accounted worthy to stand at the top, was degraded into one of

degraded the simple human members of it. And we find this alteration of the original mythical genealogies to have taken place even among the Scandinavians, although the intro-

into men.

1 “ Barbara et antiquissima carmina (says seni in fen Life of Charle- magne), quibus veterum regum et bella canebantur, conscripsit.”

Theganus says of Louis le Débon- naire, “‘ Poetica carmina gentilia, que in juventute didicerat, respuit, nec legere, nec audire, nec docere, voluit”. (De Gestis Ludovici Imperatoris ap. Pitheeum, p. 304, c. xix.)

2 See Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie, art. Helden, p. 356, 2nd edit. Hengist and Horsa were fourth in descent from Odin (Venerable Bede, Hist. i. 15). Thiodolff, ae of Harold —_ fager king o orway, traced the

Ὁ of ἮΝ ΝΣ ΝΣ

Υ generations e son of Niord companion of Odin at psal; the ki of Upsal were called Ynglinger, and the son of Thiodolff, Ynglingatal ἢ, Histor. For- schung. i. p. 379). Eyvind, another Scald, a century afterwards, deduced the — of Jarl Hacon from Saming son of Y: i

. 881). Are e, the I dic ἀν Ἔρως carried up his own genealogy through

thirty-six generations to Yngwe; 8 a Torfzeus τυρὸν τε as trustworthy, opposing it to the line of ig given by Saxo Grammaticus (p. fager a descendant from Odin throngh twenty-seven generations; Alfred of

Torfeus makes Harold Haar- 8

England through twenty-three genera- tions; Offa of Mercia through fifteen

actus (p. 362). See also the tion by ge of P. A. Miiller’s Biblio- thek, Introd. p. xxviii. and the genea-

logical tables prefixed to Snorro Stur- leson’s Edda.

Mr. Sharon Turner conceives the human existence of Odin to be dis- tinctly proved, seemingly upon the same evidence as Euémerus believed in the human existence of Zeus a of the Anglo-Saxons, Appendix to b. ch. 8, p. 219, 5th edit.).

3 Dahlmann, Histor. ee t. i. p. 390. There is a valuable article on this oT in the Zeitschrift ftir i issenschaft i i. p. 237—282) by Stuhr, “ Hauptfragen des Nordischen ter- thums,” wherein the writer illustrates both the strong motive and the effec- tive tendency, on the part of the Christian cle who had to deal with these newly-converted Teutonic

to Euemerise the old 8, pe to represent a genealogy, foie they were unable to efface from men’s minds, as if it consisted only of mere

men.

Mr. John Kemble (Ueber die Stammtafel der Westsachsen, ap tuhr. p. 254) remarks, that “‘ nobili- tas” among that people consisted in descent from Odin and the other gods,

a cat a el al ᾧ Aah

ν᾽: ea OS net ΡΝ

EARLY GERMAN GENEALOGIES. 417

CHAP. XVII.

duction of Christianity was in those parts both longer deferred, so as to leave time for a more ample development of the heathen poetical vein—and seems to have created a less decided feeling of antipathy (especially in Iceland) towards the extinct faith. The poems and tales composing the Edda, though first committed to writing after the period of Christianity, do not present the ancient gods in a point of view intentionally odious or degrading.

The transposition above alluded to, of the genealogical root from Odin to Noah, is the more worthy of notice, as it illustrates the genuine character of these genealogies, and shows that they sprung, not from any erroneous historical data, but from the turn of the religious feeling; also that their true value is derived from their being taken entire, as connecting the existing race of men with a divine original. If we could imagine that Grecian paganism had been superseded by Christianity in the year 500 B.c., the great and venerated gentile genealogies of Greece would have under- gone the like modification ; the Herakleids, Pelopids, Makids, Asklepiads, &c., would have been merged in some larger aggregate branching out from the archzology of the Old Testament. The old heroic legends connected with these ancestral names would either have been forgotten, or so transformed as to suit the new vein of thought; for the altered worship, ceremonies, and customs would have been altogether at variance with them, and the mythical feeling would have ceased to dwell upon those to whom prayers were no longer offered. Ifthe oak of Dédéna had been cut down, or the Thedric ship had ceased to be sent from Athens

is now received as revelation from heaven : though nothing can be more monstrous t: the actions ascribed to the best incarnation, Krishna, of the best of the gods, Vishnoo.” (Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, vol. i. ch. viii. p. 61.)

1See P. E. Miiller, Ueber den

Colonel Sleeman also deals in the same manner with the religious legends of the Hindoos—so natural is the pro- ceeding of Euémerus, towards any religion in which a critic does not believe—

‘““They (the Hindoos) of course think that the incarnations of their three great divinities were beings in-

finitely superior to prophets, being in all their attributes and prerogatives equal to the divinities themselves. But we are disposed to think that these incarnations were nothing more than great men whom their flatterers and poets have exalted into gods—this was the way in which men made their gods in ancient Greece and Egypt.—All that the poets have sung of the actions of these men

Ursprung und Verfall der Islindischen Historiographie, p. 63.

In the Leitfaden zur Nordischen Alterthumskunde, pp. 4—5 (Copen- hagen, 1837), is an instructive summary of the different schemes of interpreta- tion δον to the northern mythes : 1, the historical ; 2. the geographical ; 8. the astronomical; 4, the physical ; 5, the allegorical.

1—27

418 MODERN EUROPEAN MYTHES COMPARED, Part t.

to Delés, the mythes of Théseus and of the two black doves would have lost their pertinence, and died away. paganism— As it was, the change from Homer to Thucydidés have been and Aristotle took place internally, gradually, and the case, if imperceptibly. Philosophy and history were super- supplanted induced in the minds of the superior few, but the tianityin feelings of the general public continued unshaken— 500 B.C. the sacred objects remained the same both to the eye and to the heart—and the worship of the ancient gods was even adorned by new architects and sculptors who greatly strengthened its imposing effect.

While then in Greece the mythopeic stream continued in the same course, only with abated current and influence, in modern Europe its ancient bed was blocked up and it was turned into new and divided channels. The old religion,—though as an ascendant faith, unanimously and publicly manifested, it became extinct,—still continued in detached scraps and frag- ments, and under various alterations of name and form. The heathen gods and goddesses, deprived as they were of divinity, did not pass out of the recollection and fears of their former worshippers, but were sometimes represented (on principles like those of Euémerus) as having been eminent and glorious men— sometimes degraded into demons, magicians, elfs, fairies and other supernatural agents, of an inferior grade and generally mischievous cast. Christian writers such as Saxo Grammaticus and Snorro Sturleson committed to writing the ancient oral songs of the Scandinavian Scalds, and digested the events contained in them into continuous narrative—performing in this respect a task similar to that of the Grecian logographers Pherekydés and Hellanikus, in reference to Hesiod and the Saxo Gram- Cyclic poets. But while Pherekydés and Hellanikus aeons and compiled under the influence of feelings substantially Sturleson the same as those of the poets on whom they bestowed contrasted their care, the Christian logographers felt it their itera duty to point out the Odin and Thor of the old Scalds

as eyil demons, or cunning enchanters who had fascinated the minds of men into a false belief in their divinity.

, 2‘*Interea tamen homines Chris- nec aliter fidem_narrationibus hisce tiani in numina non credant ethnica, adstruere vel adhibere debent, quam in

Grecian

CuaP. XVII.

LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS.

419

In some cases the heathen recitals and ideas were modified so as to suit Christian feeling. But when preserved without such a change, they exhibited themselves palpably, and were desig- nated by their compilers, as at variance with the religious belief of the people, and as associated either with imposture or with

evil spirits.

A new vein of sentiment had arisen in Europe, indeed to the old mythes, yet leaving still in force the demand for mythical narrative generally. And this demand was satisfied, speaking generally, by two classes of narratives,—the legends of the Catholic Saints and the Romances of Chivalry, corresponding _ to two types of character, both perfectly accommodated to the feelings of the time,—the saintly ideal and the

chivalrous ideal.

unsuitable

Mythopeeic tendencies in modern Europe still subsisting,

Both these two classes of narrative correspond, in character as well as in general purpose, to the Grecian mythes,—being stories accepted as realities, from their full conformity with the predis-

positions and deep-seated faith

libri hujus proemio monitum est de causis et occasionibus cur et quomodo genus humanuma vera fide aberraverit.” (Extract from the Prose Edda, p. 75, in the Lexicon Mythologicumad calcem Eddz Semund. vol. 111, p. 357, Copen- hag. edit.

A similar warning is to be found in another passage cited by P. E. Miiller, Ueber den Ursprung und Verfall der Islandischen Historiographie, p. 188, Copenhagen, 1813: compare the Pro- logue to the Prose Edda, p. 6, and Mallet, Introduction ἃ l’Histoire de Danemare, ch. vii. p. 411—132.

Saxo Grammaticus represents Odin sometimes as a magician, sometimes as an evil demon, sometimes as a high- priest, or pontiff of heathenism, who imposed so powerfully upon the people around him as to receive divine honours. Thor also is treated as having been an evildzmon. (See Lexicon Mythologic. ut supra, pp. 567, 915.)

Respecting the function of Snorro as logographer, see Prefat. ad Eddam, ut supra, p. xi, He is much more faithful, and less unfriendly to the old eg than the other logographers of the ancient Scandinavian Sagas. (Leitfaden der Nordischen Alterthii-

of an uncritical audience, and

mer, p. 14, by the Antiquarian Society of Copenhagen, 1857.) ;

By a singular transformation, de-

endent upon the same tone of mind,

he authors of the French Chansons de Geste in the twelfth century turned Apollo into an evil demon, patron of the Mussulmans (see the Roman of Garin le Loherain, par M. Paulin Paris, 1833, p. 31) :—“‘ Car mieux vaut Dieux que ne fait Apollis”. M. Paris observes, “ Cet ancien Dieu des beaux arts est l'un des démons le plus sou- vent désignés dans nos poémes, comme patron des Musulmans”.

The D ae Mahomet, too, anathe- matised the old Persian epic anterior to his religion. ‘‘ C’est ἃ occasion de Naser Ibn al-Hareth, qui avait apporté de Perse l’Histoire de Rustem et d’Is- fendiar, et la faisait réciter des chanteuses dans les assemblées des Koreischites, que Mahomet prononga le vers suivant (of the Koran): ya des hommes qui achétent des contes frivoles, pews détourner par-la les hommes de la voie de Dieu, d’une maniére insensée, et pour la livrer ἃ la risée : mais leur punition les couvrira de honte.” (Mohl, Préface aw Livre des Rois de Ferdousi, p, xiii.)

420 MODERN EUROPEAN MYTHES COMPARED. Part iL

prepared beforehand by their authors, not with any reference to the conditions of historical proof, but for the purpose of calling forth sympathy, emotion, or reverence. The type of the saintly character belongs to Christianity, being the history of Jesus Christ as described in the Gospels, and that of the prophets in the Old Testament ; whilst the lives of holy men, who acquired a religious reputation from the fourth to the fourteenth century of the Christian «ra, were invested with attributes, and illus- trated with ample details, tending to assimilate them to this revered model. The numerous miracles, the cure of diseases, the expulsion of demons, the temptations and sufferings, the teaching Legends of and commands, with which the biography of Catholic the saints. ggints abounds, grew chiefly out of this pious feeling, common to the writer and to his readers. Many of the other incidents, recounted in the same performances, take their rise from misinterpreted allegories, from ceremonies and customs of which it was pleasing to find a consecrated origin, or from the disposition to convert the etymology of a name into matter of history: many have also been suggested by local peculiarities, and by the desire of stimulating or justifying the devotional emotions of pilgrims who visited some consecrated chapel or image. The dove was connected, in the faith of the age, with the Holy Ghost, the serpent with Satan; lions, wolves, stags, unicorns, &c., were the subjects of other emblematic associations ; and such modes of belief found expression for themselves in many narratives which brought the saints into conflict or conjoint action with these various animals. Legends of this kind, inde- finitely multiplied and pre-eminently popular and affecting, in the middle ages, are not exaggerations of particular matters of fact, but emanations in detail of some current faith or feeling, which they served to satisfy, and by which they were in turn amply sustained and accredited.?

1 The | rg of the Saints have ei eye du Moyen Age, par L. F. been touc mn by M. Quizot Alfred Maury, Paris, 1843. (Cours ἃ Histoire oderne, legon xvii.) M, Guizot scarcely adverts at all to and by M. Ampére (Histoire Littéraire the more or less of matter of fact con- de la France, t. ii. cap. 14, 15, 16) 5 but tained in these biographies: he regards ἃ far more copious and elaborate ac- them altogether anit — grew out of count of them, coupled with much and answered to predominant just criticism, is to be found in the <n —_ mental exi| ae of the valuable Essai sur les Légendes age: al exigencies de fables

Ouar. XVII. ixciNDS Of THE sAiNts. 491

Readers of Pausanias will recognise the great general analogy between the stories recounted to him at the temples which he visited, and these legends of the middle ages. Though the type of character which the latter illustrate is indeed materially different, yet the source as well as the circulation, the generating as well as the sustaining forces, were in both cases the same. Such legends were the natural growth of a religious faith earnest, unexamining, and interwoven with the feelings at a time when

the reason does not need to be cheated. The lives of the Saints bring us even back to the simple and ever-operative theology of the Homeric age; so constantly is the hand of God exhibited even in the

Their analo with the Homeric theology.

minutest details, for the succour of a favoured individual,—so completely is the scientific point of view, respecting the phzeno-

-mena of nature, absorbed into the religious.

absurdes, la morale éclate avec un — empire” (p. 159, ed. 1829). ‘*Les égendes ont été pour les Chrétiens de ce temps (qu’on me permette cette comparaison purement littéraire) ce que sont pour les Orientaux ces longs récits, ces histoires si brillantes et si variées, dont les Mille et une Nuits nous donnent un échantillon. C’était 1a que Vimagination populaire errait librement dans un monde inconnnu, merveilleux, plein de mouvement et de poésie” (Ὁ. 175, ibid.),

M. Guizot takes his comparison with the tales of the Arabian Nights, as heard by an Oriental with unin- quiring and unsuspicious credence. Viewed with reference to an instructed European, who reads these narratives as pleasing but recognised fiction, the comparison would not be just: for no one in that age dreamt of questioning the truth of the oe All the remarks of M. Guizot assume this implicit faith in them as literal his- tories; perhaps in estimating the feelings to which they owed their extraordinary popularity, he allows too little predominance to the reli-

ious feeling, and too much influence other mental exigencies which then went along with it ; more ey as he remarks in the preceding lecture (p. 116), “1,8 caractére général de ’époque est la concentration du développement intellectuel dans la sphére religieuse”.

How this absorbing religious senti- ment operated in generating and ac-

During the

crediting new matter of narrative, is shown with great fulness of detail in the work of M. Maury :—‘“ Tous les écrits du moyen 4ge nous apportent la freare de cette préoccupation exclusive

es esprits vers Histoire Sainte et les hig ges quiavaient signalél’avénement

u Christianisme. Tous nous montrent la pensée de Dieu et du Ciel, dominant . les moindres ceuvres de cette époque de naive et de crédule simplicité. D’ailleurs, n’était-ce pas le moine, le clerc, qui constituaient alors les seuls écrivains? Qu’y a-t-il d’étonnant que le sujet habituel de leurs méditations, de leurs études, se refiétAt sans cesse dans leurs ouvrages? Partout repa- raissait ἃ Vimagination Jésus et ses Saints: cette image, esprit l’accueil- lait avec soumission et obéissance: il n’osait pas encore envisager ces célestes eyed avec l’ceil de la critique, armé

e défiance et de doute; au contraire, Vintelligence les acceptait toutes indis- tinctement et s’en nourrissait avec avidité. Ainsi s’accréditaient tous les jours de nouvelles fables. Une foi vive veut sans cesse de nouveaux faits qwelle puisse croire, comme la charité veut de nouveaux bienfaits pour s’exercer” (Ὁ. 48). The remarks on the History of St. Christopher, whose personality was allegorised by Luther and Melanch- thon, are curious (p. 57).

1“ Dans les prodiges que l’on ad- mettait avoir di nécessairement s’opérer au tombeau du saint nouvelle- ment canonisé, Vexpression, ‘ Ceci

422

MODERN EUROPEAN MYTHES COMPARED.

Part L

intellectual vigour of Greece and Rome, a sense of the invariable course of nature and of the scientific explanation of phenomena had been created among the superior minds, and through them indirectly among the remaining community ; thus limiting toa certain extent the ground open to be occupied by a religious legend. With the decline of the pagan literature and philosophy, before the sixth century of the Christian era, this scientific conception gradually passed out of sight, and left the mind free to a religious interpretation of nature not less simple and naif than that which had prevailed under the Homeric paganism.!

visum, claudi gressum, muti loquelam, surdi auditum, paralytici debitum membrorum officium, recuperabant,’ était devenue plitot une formule d@usage que la relation littérale du fait.” aury, Essai sur les Légendes Pieuses du Moyen Age, p. 5.)

To the same purpose M. Ampére, ch. 14, p. 361: “ΠΥ a un certain nombre de faits que lagi phie reproduit constamment, quelque soit son héros: ordinairement ce person-

a eu dans sa jeunesse une vision qui 1π a révélé son avenir: ou bien une prophétie lui a annoncé ce qui serait un jour. Plus tard, il opére un certain nombre de miracles, toujours les mémes; il exorcise des possédés, ressuscite des morts, il est averti de sa fin par un songe. Puis sur son tom- beau s’accomplissent d'autres mer- veilles 4-peu-prés semblables.”

1A few words from M. Ampére to illustrate this: “‘C’est donc au sixiéme siecle que la légende se constitue: c’est alors qu’elle | prea complétement le caractére if qui lui appartient: pier est elle-méme, qu’elle se sépare de toute influence étrangére. En méme temps, l’ignorance devient de plus en plus grossiére, et par suite la crédulité s'accroit: les calamités du temps sont = lourdes, et l’on a un plus nd

esoin de reméde et de consolation ς ας ἃ Oe its mi eux se substituent aux argumens de la théo- logie. Les miracles sont devenus la meilleure démonstration du Christian-

ree les esprits grossiers des bar-

faut l’'avouer, elle nea etd parfois un peu ces hommes d’une trempe si forte,

en mettant sur leur compte des anec- dotes dont le caractére n'est pas toujours sérieux; elle en a usé ainsi yew St. Columban, dont nous verrons

ut ἃ l'heure le réle vis-a-vis de Brune- haut et des chefs Mérovingiens. La légende aurait pu se dispenser de nous apprendre, comment un jour, il se fit les gants

rapporter par un corbeau qu'il avait perdus : comment, un autre our, il empécha la biére de couler d’un

mneau percé, et diverses merveilles, certainement indignes de sa mémoi

The miracle by which St. Columban κα ψὲς ως the raven to fetch back his lost gloves is exactly in the character of the Homeric and Hesiodic age: the earnest faith, as well as the reverential sympathy, between the Homeric man and Zeus or Athéné, is indicated by the invocation of their aid for his own sufferings of detail and in his own need and danger. The criticism of M. Ampére, on the other hand, is ana- logous that of the latter pagans, after the conception of a course Οἱ nature had become established in men’s minds, so far as that exceptional interference by the gods was under-

to be, comparatively speaking, rare, and only supposable upon what were called eme cies.

In the old Hesiodic legend (see above, ch. ix.), Poe em is os by a raven of the infidelity of the nymph Korénis to him—To¢ μὲν ἄρ᾽ ἄγγελος ot κόραξ, &. (the raven aj

ify- ing how Apollo got his knowledge of

the ci ce. The Scho

rceumstan il ewe Pindar much for having wagered e p the ry¥—

uerile version of νδαρον ὃ ᾿Αρτέμων ὅτι

ἐπαινεῖ τὸν Πί;

Cra. XVII.

LEGENDS OF THE SAIN‘S.

423

The great religious movement of the Reformation, and the gradual formation of critical and philosophical habits in the modern mind, have caused these legends of the Saints,—once the charm and cherished creed of a numerous public,'—to pass altogether out of credit, without even being regarded, among

παρακρουσάμενος τὴν περὶ τὸν κόρακα

ἱστορίαν, αὐτὸν δι᾽ ἑαυτοῦ ἐγνωκέναι φησὶ Ὁ

τὸν ᾿Απόλλω . . . χαίρειν οὖν ἐάσας τῷ τοιούτῳ μύθῳ τέλεως ὄντι λη- ρώδει, &c.—compare also the crith. cisms of the Schol. ad Soph. (Παρ. Col. 1378, on the old epic Thebais; and the remarks of Arrian (Exp. Al. 111, 4) on the divine interference by which Alexander and his army were enabled to find their way across the sand of the desert to the temple of Ammon.

In the eyes of M. Ampere, the recital of the biographer of Saint Columban appears puerile (οὔπω ἴδον ὧδε θεοὺς avadavda φιλεῦντας, Odyss. iii. 221): in the eyes of that biographer, the criticism of M, Ampére would have appeared impious, en it is once conceded that phenomena are distri- butable under two denominations, the natural and the miraculous, it must be left to the feelings of each individual to determine what is and what is not a suitable occasion of a miracle. Dio-

- dérus and Pausanias differed in opinion (as stated in a previous chapter) about the death of Actzeon by his own hounds —the former maintaining that the case was one fit for the special intervention of the goddess Artemis; the latter that it was not so. The question is one determinable only by the religious feelings and conscience of the two dissentients : no common standard of judgment can be imposed upon them ;

or no reasonings derived from science or philosophy are available, inasmuch as in this case the very | sige in dispute is, whether the scientific point of view be admissible, Those who are disposed to adopt the supernatural belief, will find in every case the language open to them wherewith Dionysius of Halikar- nassus (in recounting a miracle wrought by Vesta in the early times of Roman history for the purpose of rescuing an unjustly accused virgin) reproves the sceptics of his time: “‘ It is well worth while (he observes) to recount the special manifestation ses get ote which the goddess showed to these unjustly accused virgins. For these circumstances, extraordinary as they

are, have been held worthy of belief y the Romans, and historians have talked much about them. Those rsons indeed who adopt the atheis- ical schemes of philosophy (if indeed we must call them philosophy), pullin, in pieces as they do all the speci manifestations (ἁπάσας διασύροντες τὰς ἐπιφανείας τῶν θεῶν) of the gods which have taken place among Greeks or barbarians, will of course turn these stories also into ridicule, ascribing them to the vain talk of men, as if none of the gods cared at all for man- kind. But those who, having pushed their researches farther, believe the gods not to be indifferent to human affairs, but favourable to good men and hostile to bad—will not treat these special manifestations as more incredible than others.” (Dionys. Halic. ii. 68—69.) Plutarch, after noticing the great number οὐ mira- culous statements in circulation, Ce his anxiety to draw a line between the true and the false, but cannot find where: “excess both of credulity and of ee ΡΆ τοι tells us) in such matters is gerous ; caution, and nothing too much, is the best course”. Camillus, c. 6.) Polybius is for granting permission to historians to recount a sufficient number of miracles to keep up a feeling of piety in the multitude, but, not more ; to measure out the proper quantity (he observes) is difficult, but not impossible (δυσπαράγραφός ἐστιν ἣ see την, οὐ μὴν ἀπαράγραφός ye, Xvi.

1 The great Bollandist collection of the Lives of the Saints, intended to comprise the whole year, did not extend beyond the nine months from January to October, which pace τ fifty-three large volumes. The mon of April fills three of those volumes, and exhibits the lives of 1472 saints. Had the collection run over the entire year, the total number of such δίρετα: phies could hardly have been less than 25,000, and might have been even greater (see Guizot, Cours d’Histoire Moderne legon xvii. p.157).

494 MODERN EUROPEAN MYTHES COMPARED. Part L

Protestants at least, as worthy of a formal scrutiny into the evidence—a proof of the transitory value of public belief, however sincere and fervent, as a certificate of historical truth, if it be blended with religious predispositions.

The same mythopeic vein, and the same susceptibility and facility of belief, which had created both supply and demand for the legends of the Saints, also provided the abundant stock of romantic narrative poetry, in amplification and illustration of the chivalrous ideal. What the legends of Troy, of

hvala Thébes, of the Kalydonian boar, of (idipus, Théseus, Romances &c., were to an early Greek, the tales of Arthur, of

eee es Charlemagne, of the Niebelungen, were to an English-

Ἵ man, or Frenchman, or German, of the twelfth or thirteenth century. They were neither recognised fiction nor authenticated history; they were history, as it is felt and welcomed by minds unaccustomed to investigate evidence and unconscious of the necessity of doing so. That the Chronicle of Turpin, a mere compilation of poetical legends respecting Charlemagne, was accepted as genuine history, and even pro- nounced to be such by papal authority, is well known ; and the authors of the Romances announce themselves, not less than those of the old Grecian epic, as being about to recount real matter of fact.’ It is certain that Charlemagne is a great

1See Warton’s History of English

Poetry, vol. i. dissert. i. p, xvii. Again, in sect. iii. p. 140: ‘“‘ Vincent de Beau- vais, who lived under Louis IX. of

France (about 1260), and who, on account of his extraordinary erudition, was appointed preceptor to that king’s sons, very gravely classes Archbishop Turpin’s Charlemagne among the real histories, and places it on a level with Suetonius and Cesar. He was himself an historian, and has left a large his- tory of the world, fraught with a variety of reading, and of igh repute in the middle s; but edifying and entertaining as this work might have

been to his contemporaries, at present D

it serves only to record their prejudices and to characterise their credulity.” About the fall belief in Arthur and the tales of the Round Table during the fourteenth century, and about the strange historical mistakes of the poet Gower in the fifteenth, see the same

work, sect. 7, vol. ii. p. 33; sect. 19, vol. ii. Pp. 239. ‘Liauteur de la Chronique de ——_ (says M. Sismondi, Littérature du Midi, vol. i. ch. 7, p. 289) n’avait point l’intention de briller aux yeux du ἘΠ par une invention heureuse, ni d’amuser les oisifs par des contes merveilleux qu’ils reconnoitroient pour tels: il présentait aux Francais tous ces faits étranges comme de Vhistoire, et la lecture des légendes fabuleuses avait accoutumé ἃ croire ἃ de plus grandes merveilles encore; a plusieurs de ces fables furent-elles reproduites dans la Chronique de St. enis.”

Again, ib. p. 290: “Souvent les anciens romanciers, lorsqu’ils entre- rennent un récit de cour de harlemagne, prennent un ton plus élevé: ce ne sont point des fables quils vont conter, c'est de Vhistoire nationale,—c’est Ta gloire de leurs

Car. XVIL LEGENDS OF CHIVALRY. 495

historical name, and it is possible, though not certain, that the name of Arthur may be historical also. But the Charlemagne of history, and the Charlemagne of romance, have little except the name in common; nor could we ever determine, except by independent evidence (which in this case we happen to possess), whether Charlemagne was a real or a fictitious person.1 That illustrious name, as well as the more problematical Arthur, is taken up by the romancers, not with a view to celebrate realities previously verified, but for the purpose of setting forth or amplifying an ideal of their own, in such manner as both to rouse the feelings and captivate the faith of their hearers.

To inquire which of the personages of the Carlovingian epie were real and which were fictitious,—to examine whether the expedition ascribed to Charlemagne against Jerusalem had ever taken place or not,—to separate truth from exaggeration in the exploits of the Knights of the Round table,—these were problems which an audience of that day had neither disposition to under- take nor means to resolve. They accepted the narrative as they heard it, without suspicion or reserve: the incidents related, as well as the connecting links between them, were in full harmony with their feelings, and gratifying as well to their sympathies as to their curiosity: nor was anything farther wanting to induce them

ancétres qu’ils veulent célébrer, et ils ont droit alors ἃ demander qu’on les écoute avec respect ”.

The Chronicle of Turpin was in- serted, even so late as the year 1566, in the collection petted by Scardius at Frankfort of early German historians (Ginguené, Histoire Littéraire d’Italie, vol. iv. part ii. ch. 3, p. 157).

To the same int—that these romances were listened to as real stories—see Sir Walter Scott’s Preface to Sir Tristram, p. lxvii. The authors of the Legends of the Saints are not less explicit in their assertions that everything which they recount is true ὋΣ well-attested (Ampére, c. 14, p. ΟΣ δ

The series of articles by M. Fauriel, published in the Revue des deux Mondes, vol. xiii., are full of instruction respecting the origin, tenor, and influence of the Romances of Chivalry. Though the name of Charlemagne appears, the romancers

are really unable to distinguish him 5

from Charles Martel or from Charles the Bald (pp. 537—539). They ascribe to him an expedition to the Holy Land, in which he conquered Jerusalem from the Saracens, obtained possession of the relics of the passion of Christ, the crown of thorns, 4c. These precious relics he carried to Rome, from whence they were taken to Spain by a Saracen emir named Balan at the head of an army. The expedition of Charlemagne against the Saracens in Spain was undertaken for the purpose of recover- ing the relics :—‘‘Ces divers romans peuvent étre regardés comme la suite, comme le développement, de la fiction de la conquéte de Jérusalem par Charlemagne ”.

Respecting the Romance of Rinaldo of Montauban (describing the struggles of a feudal lord against the emperor) M. Fauriel observes, “Tl n’y a, je crois, aucun fondement historique: c'est, selon toute apparence, la Pay expres- men poétique du fait gén¢ral,” &e. (Ὁ.

426

MODERN EUROPEAN MYTHES COMPARED,

Partth

to believe it, though the historical basis might be ever so slight or

even. non-existent.!

The romances of chivalry represented, to those who heard them, real deeds of the foretime—* glories of the foregone men,”

1 Among the “‘ formules consacrées” (observes M. Fauriel) of the romancers of the Carlovingian epic, are assevera- tions of their own veracity, and of the accuracy of what they are about to relate — specification of witnesses whom they have consulted—appeals to pretended chronicles :—‘‘ Que ces citations, ces indications, soient parfois sérieuses et sincéres, cela peut étre; mais c’est une exception et une exception rare. De telles alléga- tions de la part des romanciers, sont en général un pur et simple mensonge, mais non toutefois un mensonge gratuit, C’est un mensonge qui a sa raison et sa convenance: il tient au désir et au besoin de satisfaire une opinion accou- tumée ἃ supposer et ἃ chercher du vrai dans les fictions du genre de celles ou Yon allégue ces prétendues autorités. La maniére dont les auteurs de ces fictions les qualifient souvent eux- mémes, est une conséquence naturelle de leur prétention d’y avoir suivi des documens vénérables. Ils les qualifient de chansons de vieille histoire, de haute histoire, de bonne geste, de grande baronnie: et ce n’est age pour se vanter quils parlent ainsi: la vanité d’auteur h’est rien chez eux, en comparaison du besoin quwils ont d’étre crus, de passer pour de simples traducteurs, de simples répétiteurs de légendes ou d’histoire consacrée. Ces protestations de véra- cité, qui, plus ou moins expresses, sont de rigueur dans les romans Carlovin- giens, y sont aussi fréquemment accompagnées de protestations acces- soires contre les romanciers, qui, ayant déja traité faery donné, sont accusés d’y avoir fa la vérité.” (Fauriel, Orig. de Sag sea Chevaleresque, in the vie des Deux Mondes, vol. xiii. p. 554.

About the Cycle of the Round Table, see the same series of articles (Rev. D. M. t. xiv. p. 170—184). The Chevaliers of the Saint Graal were a sort of idéal of the Knights Templars: “ Une race de princes héroiques, originaires de YAsie, fut sg near par le ciel méme ἃ la garde du Saint Graal. Perille fut le premier de cette race, qui s’étant converti au Christianisme, passa en Europe sous l’Empereur Ves en,” &c.; then follows a string of fabulous

incidents : the epical agency is similar to that of Homer—Atis δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή

assign poems of the Carlovingian epic—very unsuccessfully in my opinion. But his own analysis of the old poem of Garin le Loherain bears out the very opinion which he is confuting : ‘‘ Nous sommes au régne de Charles Martel, et nous reconnaissons sous d’autres noms les détails exacts de la fameuse défaite d’Attila dans leschamps Catalauniques. Saint Loup et Saint Nicaise, glorieux rélats du quatriéme siécle, reviennent gurer autour du pére de Pépin le Bref: enfin pour compléter la confusion, Charles Martel meurt sur le champ de bataille, &la place du roi des Visigoths, Théodoric . . . Toutes les parties de la narration sont vraies: seulement toutes s’y trouvent déplacées. En aga les peuples n’entendent rien ἃ la chro- nologie: les éyénemens restent: les individus, les lieux et les époques, ne laissent aucune trace: c’est, pour ainsi dire, une décoration scénique que l’on applique indifféremment ἃ des récits souvent contraires.” (Preface to the Roman de Garin le Loherain, pp. xvi.-

xx.: Paris, 1833.) Com his Lettre ἃ M. Moniacrwh epee to the Roman de Berthe aux Grans Pié¢s,

Paris, 1836.

To say that all the parts of the narrative are true, is contrary to M. Paris’s own showing: some — may be true, separately taken, but these f ents of truth are melted down with a large mass of fiction, and cannot be discriminated ess we some independent test. The poet who picks out one incident from the fourth century, another from the fifth, and a few more from the eighth, and then blends them all into a continuous tale, along with many additions of his own, shows that he takes the items of fact

παρ. XVI. VOLSUNGA SAGA—#DDA—NIEBELUNGEN LIED. 427

that they Accepted as realities

of the foretime.

to use the Hesiodic expression,! at the same time embodied and filled up the details of an heroic ideal, such as that age could conceive and admire—a fervent piety, combined with strength, bravery, and the love of adventurous aggression directed sometimes against infidels, sometimes against enchanters or monsters, sometimes in defence of the fair sex. Such characteristics were naturally popular, in a century of feudal struggles and universal insecurity, when the grand subjects of common respect and interest were the church and the crusades, and when the latter especially were embraced with an enthusiasm truly astonishing.

The long German poem of the Niebelungen Lied, as well as the Volsunga Saga and a portion of the songs of

Teutonic

the Edda, relate to a common fund of mythical, 8:4 Scan dinavian

superhuman personages, and of fabulous adventure, epic—its identified with the earliest antiquity of the Teutonic “148%,

and Scandinavian race, and representing their primi- recian.

tive sentiment towards ancestors of divine origin. Sigurd, Brynhilde, Gudrun, and Atle, are mythical characters celebrated as well by the Scandinavian Scalds as by the German epic poets, but with many varieties and separate additions to distinguish the one from the other. The German epic, later and more elaborated, includes various persons not known to the songs in the Edda, in particular the prominent name of Dieterich of Bern—presenting moreover the principal characters and circumstances as Christian, while in the Edda there is no trace of anything but heathenism. There is indeed, in this the old and heathen version, a remarkable analogy with many points of Grecian mythical narrative. Asin the case of the short life of Achilles, and of the miserable Labdakids of Thébes—so in the family of the Volsungs, though sprung from and protected by the gods—a curse of destiny hangs upon them and brings on because they suit the purposes of his the remnant of bards existing in his

narrative, not because they happen to time (1589): ‘‘ Blind Harpers, or such be attested by historicalevidence. His like Taverne Minstrels, whose matters

hearers are not critical: they desire to are for the most part stories of old time,

have their imaginations and feelings affected, and they are content to accept without question whatever accom- .plishes this end.

1 Hesiod, seca. 100—xAéa προ- τέρων ἀνθρώπων. Puttenham talks of

as the Tale of Sir Topaze, the Reportes of Bevis of Southampton, Adam Bell, Clymme of the Clough, and such other old Romances or Historical Rhymes”. (Arte of English Poesie, book ii cap. 9.)

428

MODERN EUROPEAN MYTHES COMPARED.

bon ;

their ruin, in spite of pre-eminent personal qualities. The more thoroughly this old Teutonic story has been traced and compared, in its various transformations and accompaniments, the less can any well-established connexion be made out for it with authentic historical names or events. We must acquiesce in its personages as distinct in original conception from common humanity, and as belonging to the subjective mythical world of the race by whom

they were sung.

Such were the compositions which not only interested the emotions, but also satisfied the undistinguishing historical curiosity, of the ordinary public in the middle ages, The exploits of many of these romantic heroes resemble in several points those of the Grecian: the adventures of Perseus, Achilles Odysseus, Atalanta, Bellerophén, Jasén, and the Trojan war or Argonautic expedition generally, would have fitted in perfectly

1 Respecting the Volsunga Saga and the Niebelungen Lied, the work of Lange — Untersuchungen iiber die Geschichte und das Verhiltniss der Nordischen und Deutschen Heldénsage —is a valuable translation from the Danish Saga-Bibliothek of P. E. Miller.

P. E. Miller maintains indeed the historical basis of the tales respecting the Volsungs (see p. 102—107)—upon arguments very unsatisfactory ; γον the genuine Scandinavian origin of the tale is perfectly made out. The chapter added by La himself at the close (see p. 432, Se) contains juster views as to the character of the primitive mythology, though he too advances some positions respecting 8. somethi “rei bolisches” in the background, which I find it difficult to follow (see p. 477, &c.).—There are very ancient epical ballads still sung by the people in the Faro islands, many of them phe go to Sigurd and his adventures

Jacob Grimm, in his Deutsche My- thologie, maintains the purely mythical character, as opposed to the historical, of Siegfried and Dieterich (Art. Helden, pp. 344—346). : : So, too, in the great Persian epic of Ferdousi, the principal characters are religious and mythical. M. Mohl observes,—‘ Les caractéres des = sonnages principaux de l’ancienne his- toire de Perse se retrouvent dans le livre des Rois (de Ferdousi) tels que les indiquent les parties des livres de

Zoroaster que nous possédons encore. Kaioumo: Djemschid, Feridoun, Gushtasp, Isfendiar, &c., jouent dans le poéme épique le méme réle que dans les Livres sacrés: ἃ cela prés, que dans les derniers ils nous apparaissent & travers une atmosphére mythologique qui grandit tous leurs traits: mais cette différence est précisément celle qu’on devait s'attendre & trouver entre la tradition religieuse et la tradition épique.” Mohl, Livre des Rois, par erdousi, Préface, p. 1.

The Persian historians subsequent to Ferdousi have all taken his poem as the basis of their histories, and have even copied him faithfully and literally (Mohl, 3 53). Many of his heroes became the subjects of long epical bio- graphies, written and recited without any art or grace, often by writers whose names are unknown (id. p. 54—70). Mr. - Morier tells us that “the Shah Nameh is still believed by the present Persians to contain their ancient history” (Ad-

ventures of Hajji Baba, o. As the Christian romancers Apollo into the patron of Mussulmans,

so Ferdousi makes Alexander the Great 8 istian: “18, critique hi (observes

istorique M. Mohl) était du temps de Ferdousi chose pene @. p. xlviii.). About the absence not onl of all psy τοσ but also of idea of it or taste for it, among the early Indians, Persians, Arabi a oe learned book of iter Syriens, Pp. (Stuttgart, 1849).

0

cHae. XVII. MIDDLE AGE EPIC AND GRECIAN EPIC, 429

to the Carlovingian or other epics of the period! That of the middle ages, like the Grecian, was eminently expansive in its nature. New stories were successively attached to Heroic

the names and companions of Charlemagne and character Arthur, just as the legend of Troy was enlarged by expanding Arktinus, Leschés, and Stesichorus—that of Thébes Suviect by fresh miseries entailed on the fated head of to both. CEdipus,—and that of the Kalydonian boar by the addition of Atalanta. Altogether, the state of mind of the hearers seems in both cases to have been much the same—eager for emotion and sympathy, and receiving any narrative attuned to their feeling, τ “sed with hearty welcome, but also with unsuspecting elief.

Nevertheless there were distinctions deserving of notice, which render the foregoing proposition more absolutely exact with regard to Greece than with regard to the middle ages. The tales of the epic, and the mythes in their most popular and extended signification, were the only intellectual nourishment with which the Grecian public were supplied, until the sixth century before the Christian cera: there was no prose writing, no history, no philosophy. But such was not exactly the case at the time when the epic of the middle ages appeared. At that time, a portion of society possessed the Latin language, the habit of writing, and some

Points of distinction between the two— epic of the middle age» neither stood so completely alone, nor

recian.

1 Several of the heroes of the ancient world were indeed themselves popular subjects with the romancers of the middle ages, Théseus, Jason, &c. ;

quer these obstacles; she gives him ossession of the prize, leaves her ather’s court, and follows him into his

native country.” (Warton, Observa-

Alexander the Great more so than any of them.

Dr. Warton observes respecting the Argonautic expedition, ‘‘Few stories of antiquity have more the cast of one of the old romances than this of Jasén. An expedition of a new kind is made into a strange and distant country, attended with infinite dangers and difficulties. The king’s daughter of the new country is an enchantress ; she falls in love with the young prince, who is the chief adventurer. The prize which he seeks is guarded by brazen-

' footed bulls, who breathe fire, and by a hideous dragon who never sleeps. The princess lends him the assistance of her charms and incantations to con-

tions on Spenser, vol. i. p. 178.)

To the same Lo Ay M. Ginguené : “Le premier modéle des Fées n’est-il as dans Circé, dans Calypso,

édée? Celui des géans, dans Polyphtme, dans Cacus, et dans les géans, ou les Titans, cette race ennemie de Jupiter? Les serpens et les dragons des romans ne sont-ils des successeurs du dragon des Hes- — et de celui de la Toison d’or?

Les Magiciens! la Thessalie en étoit pleine. Les armes enchantées et im- nétrables! elles sont de la méme rempe, et l’on peut les croire forgées au méme fourneau que celles d’Achille et d’Enée.” (Ginguené, Histoire Litteraire d’Ttalie, vol. iy. part ii. ch, 3, p. 161.)

430 MODERN EUROPEAN MYTHES COMPARED, Part 1.

tinge both of history and philosophy: there were a series of

chronicles, scanty indeed and imperfect, but referring to contem- —

porary events and preventing the real history of the past from passing into oblivion: there were even individual scholars, in the twelfth century, whose acquaintance with Latin literature was sufficiently considerable to enlarge their minds and to improve their judgments. Moreover the epic of the middle ages, though deeply imbued with religious ideas, was not directly amalgamated with the religion of the people, and did not always find favour with the clergy ; while the heroes of the Grecian epic were not only linked in a thousand ways with existing worship, practices, and sacred localities, but Homer and Hesiod pass with Herodotus for

the constructors of Grecian theology. We thus see that the q

ancient epic was both exempt from certain distracting influences by which that of the middle ages was surrounded, and more closely identified with the veins of thought and feeling prevalent in the Grecian public. Yet these counteracting influences did not prevent Pope Calixtus II. from declaring the Chronicle of Turpin to be a genuine history.

If we take the history of our own country as it was conceived and written from the twelfth to the seventeenth century by Hardyng, Fabyan, Grafton, Hollinshed, and others, we shall find that it was supposed to begin with Brute the Trojan, and was carried down from thence, for many ages and through a long succession of kings, to the times of Julius Cesar. A similar History of _ belief of descent from Troy, arising seemingly from a England— reverential imitation of the Romans and of their

mate die Trojan origin, was cherished in the fancy of other

to the nth European nations. With regard to the English, the

century in chief circulator of it was Geoffrey of Monmouth. It Brute the passed with little resistance or dispute into the Trojan. national faith—the kings from Brute downward being enrolled in regular chronological series with their respec- tive dates annexed. In a dispute which took place during the reign of Edward I. (Α.Ὁ. 1301) between England and Scotland, the descent of the kings of England from Brute the Trojan was solemnly embodied in a document put forth to sustain the rights of the crown of England, as an argument bearing on the case

then in discussion: and it passed without attack from the opposing

4

Crap. XVII. EARLY HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 431

party,—an incident which reminds us of the appeal made by Zschinés, in the contention between the Athenians and Philip of Macedén respecting Amphipolis, to the primitive dotal rights of Akamas son of Théseus—and also of the defence urged by the Athenians to sustain their conquest of Sigeium, against the reclamations of the Mityleneans, wherein the former alleged that they had as much right to the place as any of the other Greeks who had formed part of the victorious armament of Agamemnén.*

The tenacity with which this early series of British kings was defended, is no less remarkable than the facility with parnestand which it was admitted. The chroniclers at the be- fenacious ginning of the seventeenth century warmly protested fested in against the intrusive scepticism which would cashier so of this early many venerable sovereigns and efface so many noble bistory. deeds. They appealed to the patriotic feelings of their hearers, represented the enormity of thus setting up a presumptuous criticism against the belief of ages, and insisted on the danger of the precedent as regarded history generally.2 How this con- troversy stood, at the time and in the view of the illustrious author of Paradise Lost, I shall give in his own words as they appear in the second page of his History of England. After having briefly touched upon the stories of Samothes son of Japhet, Albion son of Neptune, &c., he proceeds,—

1 See Warton’s History of English Poetry, sect. iii. Ὁ. 131, note. ‘“‘No man before the sixteenth century pre- sumed to doubt that the Francs de- rived their origin from Francus son of Hector; that the Spaniards were de- scended from Japhet, the Britons from Brutus, and the Scotch from Fergus.” (bid. p. 140.)

According to the Prologue of the prose Edda, Odin was the supreme king of Troy in Asia, “in eA terra quam nos Turciam appellamus. .. . Hinc omnes Borealis plagee magnates vel primores genealogias suas referunt, atque prin- cipes illius urbis inter numina locant: sed in primis ipsum Priamum pro Odeno ponunt,” &c. They also identi- fied Tros with Thor. (See Lexicon My-

thologicum ad calcem Edd Szemund. had

p. 552, vol. iii.)

2 See above, ch. xv.; also Aischinés, De FalsAi Legatione, c. 14; Herodot. v. 94. The Herakleids pretended a right to the territory in Sicily near Mount

Eryx, in consequence of the victory gained by their progenitor Héraklés over Eryx, the eponymous hero of the place (Herodot. v. 43).

3 The remarks in Speed’s Chronicle (book v. c. 3, sect. 11-12), and the pre- face to Howes’s Continuation of Stow’s Chronicle, published in 1631, are curious as illustrating this earnest feeling. The Chancellor Fortescue, in impressing bs his royal pupil, the son of Henry VI., the limited character of English monarchy, deduces it from Brute, the Trojan :—‘‘ Concerning the different powers which kings claim over their subjects, I am of opinion that it arises solely from the different nature of their original in- stitution, So the kingdom of England

its original from Brute and the Trojans, who attended him from ἘᾺΝ and Greece, and became a mixt kind of government, compounded of the regal and the political.” (Hallam, Hist. Mid. Ages, ch. viii. P. 8, page 230.)

432 MODERN EUROPEAN MYTHES COMPARED.

“But now of Brutus and his line, with the whole progeny of Judement kings to the entrance of Julius Caesar, we cannot so of Milton. = easily be discharged : descents of ancestry long con- tinued, law and exploits not plainly seeming to be borrowed or devised, which on the common belief have wrought no small im- pression: defended by many, denied utterly by few. For what though Brutus and the whole Trojan pretence were yielded up, seeing they, who first devised to bring us some noble ancestor, were content at first with Brutus the Consul, till better invention, though not willing to forego the name, taught them to remove it higher into a more fabulous age, and by the same remove lighting on the Trojan tales, in affectation to make the Briton of one original with the Roman, pitched there: Yet those old and inborn kings, never any to have been real persons, or done in their lwes at least some part of what so long hath been remembered, cannot be thought without too strict incredulity. For these, and those causes above-mentioned, that which hath received approbation from so many, I have chosen not to omit. Certain or uncertain, be that upon the credit of those whom I must follow: so far as keeps aloof from impossible or absurd, attested by ancient writers from books more ancient, I refuse not as the due and proper subject of story.”2

Yet in spite of the general belief of so many centuries—in spite of the concurrent persuasion of historians and poets—in spite of the declaration of Milton, extorted from his feelings rather than from his reason, that this long line of quasi-historical kings and exploits could not be αὖ unworthy of belief—in spite of so large 8 body of authority and precedent, the historians of the nineteenth century begin the history of England with Julius Cesar. They do not attempt either to settle the date of king Bladud’s accession, or to determine what may be the basis of truth in the affecting narrative of Lear. The standard of historical

1“ Antiquitas enim recepit fabulas fictas etiam nonnunquam incondite:

heec zetas autem jam exculta, presertim Shak

eludens omne quod fieri non potest respuit,” &c. icero, De Republica, ii, 10, p. 147, ed. Maii.

2 Dr. Zac Grey the following observations in his Notes on Shake- - tee (London, 1754, vol. i. p. 112).

commenting on the passage in King

Lear Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness, he says, ‘‘This is one of espeare’s most remarkable ana- chronisms. King Lear succeeded his father Bladud anno mundi 3105; and Nero, anno mundi 4017, was sixteen years old, when he married Octavia, Cesar’s daughter. See Funccii Chrono-

logia, . 94. = a supposed chronological dis

Cuap. XVII. MILTON ON BRITISH FABULOUS HISTORY. 433 credibility, especially with regard to modern events, has indeed

been greatly and sensibly raised within the last

Standard of hundred years, historical But in regard to ancient Grecian history, the rules ¢vidence— of evidence still continue relaxed. The dictum regard to England—

of Milton, regarding the ante-Cesarian history of England, still represents pretty exactly the feeling now prevalent respecting the mythical history of Greece:—“Yet κοι mised those old and inborn kings (Agamemnén, Achilles, in regard to Odysseus, Jasén, Adrastus, Amphiaratis, Meleager, Ἶ &c.), never any to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least some part of what so long has been remembered, cannot be thought without too strict incredulity”. Amidst much fiction (we are still told), there must be some truth: but how is such truth to be singled out? Milton does not even attempt to make the severance: he contents himself with “ keeping aloof from the impossible and the absurd,” and ends in a narrative which has indeed the merit of being sober-coloured, but which he never for a moment thinks of recommending to his readers as true. So in regard to the legends of Greece,—Troy, Thébes, the Argonauts, the Boar of Kalydén, Héraklés, Théseus, Gidipus,—the convic: tion still holds in men’s minds, that there must be something true at the bottom; and many readers of this work may be displeased, I fear, not to see conjured up before them the Eiddélon of an authentic history, even though the vital spark of evidence be altogether wanting.}

crepancy would hardly be pointed out in any commentary now written,

The introduction prefixed by Mr. Giles to his recent translation of Geof- frey of Monmouth (1842) gives a just view both of the use which our old poets made of his tales, and of the general credence so long and so unsus- pectingly accorded to them. The list of old British kings given by Mr. Giles also deserves attention, as a parallel to the Grecian genealogies anterior to the

Olympiads.

The following passage from the Preface of Mr. Price to Warton’s His- tory of English Poetry is alike just and forcibly characterised ; the whole Pre-

‘face is indeed full of philosophical reflection on popular fables generally. Mr. Price observes (p. 79) :—

“The — evil with which this long- contested question appears to be threatened at the present day, is an extreme equally dangerous with the incredulity of Mr. Ritson,—a disposi- tion to receive as authentic history, under a slightly fabulous colouring, every incident recorded in the Britis

Chronicle. An allegorical interpreta- tion is now inflicted upon all the mar- vellous circumstances; a forced con- - struction imposed upon the less glaring

deviations from probability ; and the usual subterfuge of baffled research,— erroneous readings and etymological sophistry,—is made to reduce every stubborn and intractable text to some- thing like the consistency required. It might have been expected that the notorious failures of Dionysius and

1—28

434

MODERN EUROPEAN MYTHES COMPARED. —

Part L

I presume to think that our great poet has proceeded upon

Milton’s

which he retains.

fabulous history ob- jectionable.

mistaken views with respect to the old British fables, not less in that which he leaves out than in that To omit the miraculous and the fantastic (it is that which he really means by “the impossible and the absurd”), is to suck the life-blood out of these once popular narratives—to divest thens

at once both of their genuine distinguishing mark, and of the charm by which they acted on the feelings of believers. Still less ought we to consent to break up and disenchant in a similar manner the mythes of ancient Greece—partly because they possess the mythical beauties and characteristics in far higher perfection, partly because they sank deeper into the mind of a

Plutarch in Roman history would have prevented the repetition of an error which neither learning nor ingenuity can render palatable; and that the havocand deadly ruin effected by these ancient writers (in other respects so valuable) in one of the most beautiful and interesting monuments of tradi- tional story, would have acted as sufficient corrective on all future aspirants. The favourers of this system might at least have been instructed by the omy aged example of Livy,—if it be lawful to ascribe to philosophy a line of conduct which perhaps was yrompted by a powerful sense 0 tic uty,—that itional record can only gain in the hands of the future historian by one attractive aid,—the grandeur and lofty graces of that in- comparable style in which the first decade is written; and that the best duty towards antiquity, and the most agreeable one towards rity, is to transmit the narrative received as an unsophisticated tradition, in all the pen ream of its marvels and the awful ignity of its supernatural agency. For however largely we may concede that real events have supplied the sub- stance of any traditive story, yet the amount of absolute facts, and the manner of those facts, the period of their occurrence, the names of the agents, and the locality given to the scene, are all combined upon pay πε so wholly beyond our knowledge, that it becomes impossible to fix with cer- tainty upon any single point better authenticated than its fellow. Proba- bility in such decisions will often prove

the most fallacious guide we can follow ; for, independently of the ac- knowledged. historical axiom, that ‘le vrai n’est pas toujours le vraisemblable,’ innumerable instances might be ad- duced, where tradition has had recourse to this very probability to confer a etree sanction upon her most ctitious and romantic incidents. It will be a much more labour, wherever it can be eff to trace the progress of this traditional story in the country where it has become located, by a reference to those natural or artificial monuments which are the unvarying sources of fictitious events ; and, by a strict comparison of its de- tails with the analogous memorials of other nations, to separate those ele- ments which are obviously of a native growth, from the occurrences i the impress of a foreign origin. € shall gain little, perhaps, by such a course jor the history of human events; but it will be an eee accession to our stock of knowledge on the hi: of the human mind, It will infallibly lay, as in the analysis of every similar re- cord, the operations of that refining principle which is ever obliterating the monotonous deeds of violence, that fill the chronicle of a nation’s early career, and exhibit the brightest attribute in the catalogue of man’s intell simatien bestowing spon all aneiaapal: gination— ΠῚ Θ - ses of the mind a splendour and virtuous

however fallacious his- —

dignity, whi

torically considered, are never without

2 powerfully redeeming good, the ethi tendency of all their lessons.”

Cuap. XVII SUBJECTIVE VIEW OF THE MYTHES. 435

Greek, and pervaded both the public and private sentiment of the country to a much greater degree than the British fables in England.

Two courses, and two only, are open; either to pass over the mythes altogether, which is the way in which modern historians treat the old British fables—or open of else to give an account of them as mythes; to recog. “eating. nise and respect their specific nature, and to abstain oe: from confounding them with ordinary and certifiable 1. to omit history. There are good reasons for pursuing this {¢™:.°" second method in reference to the Grecian mythes ; br peed sag and when so considered, they constitute an important Reasons for chapter in the history of the Grecian mind, and Preferting indeed in that of the human race generally. The historical faith of the Greeks, as well as that of other people, in reference to early and unrecorded times, is as much subjective and peculiar to themselves as their religious faith: among the Greeks, especially, the two are confounded with an intimacy which nothing less than great violence can disjoin. Gods, heroes and men—religion and patriotism—matters divine, heroic and human—were all woven together by the Greeks into one indivisible web, in which the threads of truth and reality, whatever they might originally have been, were neither intended to be, nor were actually, distingttishable. Composed of such materials, and animated by the electric spark of genius, the mythical antiquities of Greece formed a whole at once trust- worthy and captivating to the faith and feelings of the people ; but neither trustworthy nor captivating, when we sever it from these subjective conditions, and expose its naked elements to the scrutiny of an objective criticism. Moreover the separate portions of Grecian mythical foretime ought to be considered with reference to that aggregate of which they form a part: to detach the divine from the heroic legends, or some one of the heroic legends from the remainder, as if there were an essential and generic difference between them, is to present the whole under an erroneous point of view. The mythes of Troy and Thébes are no more to be handled objectively, with a view to detect an historical base, than those of Zeus in Kréte, of Apollo and Artemis in Délos, of Hermés, or of Prométheus. To single

436 MODERN EUROPEAN MYTHES COMPARED. Part L

out the siege of Troy from the other mythes, as if it were entitled to pre-eminence as an ascertained historical and chrono- logical event, is a proceeding which destroys the true character and coherence of the mythical world : we only transfer the story (as has been remarked in the preceding chapter) from a class with which it is connected by every tie both of common origin and fraternal affinity, to another with which it has no relation- ship, except such as violent and gratuitous criticism may enforce. By drawing this marked distinction between the mythical and the historical world,—between matter appropriate only for subjective history, and matter in which objective evidence is attainable,—we shall only carry out to its proper length the just and well-known position long ago laid down by Varro. That Triple par- learned man recognised three distinguishable periods tition of | ἴῃ the time preceding his own age: “First, the time y Varro. from the beginning of mankind down to the first deluge ; a time wholly unknown. Secondly, the period from the first deluge down to the first Olympiad, which is called the mythical period, because many fabulous things are recounted in it. Thirdly, the time from the first Olympiad down to ourselves, which is called the historical period, because the things done in it are comprised in true histories.” + Taking the commencement of true or objective history at the point indicated by Varro, I still consider the mythical and historical periods to be separated by a wider gap than he would have admitted. To select any one year as an absolute point of commencement, is of course not to be understood literally : but in point of fact, this is of every little importance in reference to the present question, seeing that the great mythical events—the sieges of Thébes and Troy, the Argonautic expedition, the Kalydonian boar-hunt, the return of the Hérakleids, &c.—are

1 Varro ap. Censorin. de Die Natali; nominatur. Tertium a prima Olym- Varronis Fragm. p. 219, ed. Scaliger, piade ad nos; quod dicitur Historicon, iscrimina tem- quia res in eo geste veris historiis con- rum esse tradit. Primum ab tinentur.” " ominum principio usque ad cata- To the same pu Africanus, ap. clysmum priorem, quod propter Eusebium, Prep. Ev. xx. p. 487: Μέχρι ignorantiam vocatur ἄδηλον. Se- μὲν Ὀλυμπιάδων, οὐδὲν ἀκριβὲς ἱστόρηται cundum, a cataclysmo priore ad τοῖς Ἕλλησι, πάντων συγκεχυμένων, καὶ Olympiadem primam, quod, quia in κατὰ μηδὲν αὐτοῖς τῶν πρὸ τοῦ συμφω- 60 multa fabulosa referuntur, Mythicon νούντων, ὅσο.

Cuap. XVII. PARTITION OF PAST TIME BY VARRO. 437

all placed long anterior to the first Olympiad, by those who have applied chronological boundaries to the mythical narratives. The period immediately preceding the first Olympiad is one exceedingly barren of events ; the received chronology recognises 400 years, and Herodotus admitted 500 years, from that date back to the Trojan wai

438 CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE, Part I

CHAPTER XVIII.

CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE.—PERIOD OF INTERMEDIATE DARKNESS, BEFORE THE DAWN OF HISTORICAL GREECE.

Srction I.—RETURN OF THE HERAKLEIDS INTO PELOPONNESUS.

In one of the preceding chapters, we have traced the descending Exileand series of the two most distinguished mythical families low condi-' in Peloponnésus—the Perseids and the Pelopids. We Herakleids. have followed the former down to Héraklés and his son Hyllus, and the latter down to Orestés son of Agamemnén, who is left in possession of that ascendency in the peninsula which had procured for his father the chief command in the Trojan war. The Herakleids or sons of Héraklés, on the other hand, are expelled fugitives, dependent upon foreign aid or protection: Hyllus had perished in single combat with Echemus of Tegea (connected with the Pelopids by marriage with Timandra sister of Klyteemnéstra’), and a solemn compact had been made, as the preliminary condition of this duel, that no similar attempt at an invasion of the peninsula should be undertaken by his family for the space of 100 years. At the end of the stipulated period the attempt was renewed, and with complete success; but its success was owing not so much to the valour of the invaders as to a powerful body of new allies. The Herakleids reappear thir: ἦ leaders and companions of the Dorians,—a northerly pearance as Section of the Greek name, who now first come into

force along Wnportance,—poor indeed in mythical renown, since ieee they are never noticed in the Iliad, and only once

casually mentioned in the Odyssey, as a fraction among the many-tongued inhabitants of Kréte—but destined to

3 Hesiod, Eoiai, Fragm. 58, p. 43, ed. Diintzer,

Cuap. XVIII RETURN OF THE HERAKLEIDS, 439

form one of the grand and predominant elements throughout all the career of historical Hellas.

The son of Hyllus—Kleodseus—as well as his grandson Aristomachus, were now dead, and the lineage of Héraklés was represented by the three sons of the latter—Témenus, Kresphontés, and Aristodémus. Under their conduct the Dorians penetrated into the peninsula. The mythical account traced back this intimate union between the Herakleids and the Dorians to a prior war, in which Héraklés himself had rendered inestimable aid to the Dorian king AXgimius, when the latter was hard pressed in a contest with the Lapithe. Héraklés defeated the Lapithe, and slew their king Korénus; in return for which AXgimius assigned to his deliverer one-third part of his whole territory, and adopted Hyllus as his son. Héraklés desired that the territory thus made over might be held in reserve until a time should come when his descendants might stand in need of it; and that time did come, after the death of Hyllus (see Chap. V.). Some of the Herakleids then found shelter at Trikorythus in Attica, but the remainder, turning their steps towards Zigimius, solicited from him the allotment of land which had been promised to their valiant progenitor. Mgimius received them according to his engagement and assigned to them the stipulated third portion of his territory.1 From this moment the Herakleids and Dorians became intimately united together into one social com- munion. Pamphylus and Dymas, sons of Mgimius, accompanied Témenus and his two brothers in their invasion of Peloponnésus.

Such is the mythical incident which professes to explain the origin of those three tribes into which all the Dorian communi-

Mythical account

of this alliance, as well as of the three tribes of Dorians.

1 Diodér. iv. 37—60 ; Apollodér. ii. 7, 7; Ephorus ap. Steph. Byz. v. Δυμᾶν, Fragm. 10, ed. Marx.

The Doric institutions are called by ee τεθμοὶ Αἰγιμίον Δωρικοί (Pyth. i, 124).

There existed an ancient epic

m, now lost, but cited on some ew occasions by authors still pre- served, under the title Αἰγίμιος ; the authorship being sometimes ascribed to Hesiod, sometimes to Kerkops (Athene. xi. p. 503). The few frag- ments which remain do not enable us to make out the scheme of it, in-

asmuch as they embrace different mythical incidents lying ve

each other,—I6, the Argonan , Péleus and Thetis, &c. But the name which it bears seems to imply that the war of bi pre against the Lapithz, and the aid given to him by Héraklés, was one of its chief topics. Both Ὁ, Miiller (History of the Dorians, vol. i. bk. 1. c. 8) and Welcker (Der Epische Cyklus, p. 263) appear to me to go beyond the very scanty evidence which we SS in their determination of this lost | Spee ; compare Marktscheffel, Preefat.

esiod. Fragm. cap. 5, p. 159,

wide of -

440 CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. Part L

ties were usually divided—the Hylléis, the Pamphyli, and the Dymanes—the first of the three including certain particular families, such as that of the kings of Sparta, who bore the special name of Herakleids. Hyllus, Pamphylus, and Dymas are the

eponymous heroes of the three Dorian tribes. Témenus and his two brothers resolved to attack Peloponnésus, not by a land-march along the Isthmus, such as that in which Hyllus had been previously slain, but* by sea across

Kcphen. the narrow inlet between the promontories of Rhium tés, and ~—_ and Antirrhium with which the Gulf of Corinth ristodé- : Sr: . mus invade commences, According to one story indeed—which

opon-

nésusacross DOwever does not seem to have been known to Herodotus—they are said to have selected this line of march by the express direction of the Delphian god, who vouchsafed to expound to them an oracle which had been delivered to Hyllus in the ordinary equivocal phraseology. Both the Ozolian Lokrians, and the Miolians, inhabitants of the northern coast of the Gulf of Corinth, were favourable to the enterprise, and the former granted to them a port for building their ships, from which memorable circumstance the port ever afterwards bore the name of Naupaktus. Aristodémus was here struck with lightning and died, leaving twin sons, Eurysthenés and Proklés; but his remaining eines continued to press the expedition with alacrity.

At this juncture, an Akarnanian siipliat named Karnus pre- sented himself in the camp? under the inspiration of Apollo, and uttered various predictions: he was however so much suspected Theprophet of treacherous collusion with the Peloponnesians, that

poring Hippotés, great grandson of Héraklés through Phylas —

slain b Hippotts. and Antiochus, slew him. His death drew upon the

army the wrath of Apollo, who destroyed their vessels and

Arideus), son of Hyllus, and Aristo- machus son of Kleodzus, had made separate and successive attempts beg the head of the Herakleids to trate into Peloponnésus ——— the Isthmus: both had failed and perished having misunderstood the ἐπ ἀπ ΣΙ

a Huscbium, Pre veer to of the Delphian oracle. C£nomaus

could have known nothing of the pl given by Hyllus, as the condition of single combat between bee Be Echemus (according to Herodotus), that the Herakleids should make no

fresh trial for 100 us if it had been ὁ

understood that y had given and then violated such 7 edge, auch viola- tion would Poe thely fail ve been adduced to account for their failure.

=

CHap, XVIII. DORIAN INVASION OF PELOPONNESUS. 441

punished them with famine. Témenus in his distress, again applying to the Delphian god for succour and counsel, was made acquainted with the cause of so much suffering, and was directed to banish Hippotés for ten years, to offer expiatory sacrifice for the death of Karnus, and to seek as the guide of the army a man with three eyes. On coming back to Naupaktus, he met the Aitolian Oxylus son of Andreem6n returning to his country, after a temporary exile in Elis incurred for homicide: Oxylus had lost one eye, but as he was seated on a horse, the man and the horse together made up the three eyes required, and he was adopted as the guide prescribed by the oracle.? Conducted by him, they refitted their ships, landed on the opposite coast of Achaia, and marched to attack Tisamenus son of Orestés, then the oxyius great potentate of the peninsula. A decisive battle chosen as was fought, in which the latter was vanquished and

slain, and in which Pamphylus and Dymas also perished. This battle made the Dorians so completely masters of the Pelopon- nésus, that they proceeded to distribute the territory among themselves. The fertile land of Elis had been by previous stipulation reserved for Oxylus, as a recompense for his services as conductor: and it was agreed that the three Herakleids— Témenus, Kresphontés, and the infant sons of Aristo- πῶ démus—should draw lots for Argos, Sparta, and the lands Messéné, Argos fell to Témenus, Sparta to the sons οἱ Pelopon- of Aristodémus, and Messéne to Kresphontés; the among the latter having secured for himself this prize, the most SET: fertile territory of the three, by the fraud of putting into the . vessel out of which the lots were drawn, a lump of clay instead of a stone, whereby the lots of his brothers were drawn out while his own remained inside. Solemn sacrifices were offered by each upon this partition; but as they proceeded to the ceremony, a miraculous sign was seen upon the altar of each of the brothers— a toad corresponding to Argos, a serpent to Sparta, and a fox to Messéné. The prophets, on being consulted, delivered the import of these mysterious indications: the toad, as an animal slow and stationary, was an evidence that the possessor of Argos would not

1 Apollodér. ii. 8, 8; Pausan. iii. the account of Pausanias, the beast 8, 8. upon which Oxylus rode was 8. mule ’2 Apollodér. ii. 8, 8 According to and had lost one eye (Paus. v. 8, δ).

442 CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. Part L

succeed in enterprises beyond the limits of his own city; the serpent denoted the aggressive and formidable future reserved to Sparta ; the fox prognosticated a career of wile and deceit to the Messenian.

Such is the brief account given by Apollodérus of the Return of the Herakleids, at which point we pass, as if touched

Explana-

μὸν Faded by the wand of a magician, from mythical to historical legendary Greece. The story bears on the face of it the stamp, events.

not of history, but of legend—abridged from one or more of the genealogical poets,! and presenting such an account as they thought satisfactory, of the first formation of the great Dorian establishments in Peloponnésus, as well as of the semi- Etolian Elis. Its incidents are so conceived as to have an explanatory bearing on Dorian institutions—upon the triple division of tribes, characteristic of the Dorians—upon the origin of the great festival of the Karneia at Sparta and other Dorian cities, alleged to be celebrated in expiation of the murder of Karnus—upon the different temper and character of the Dorian states among themselves—upon the early alliance of the Dorians with Elis, which contributed to give ascendency and vogue to the Olympic games—upon the reverential dependence of Dorians towards the Delphian oracle—and lastly upon the etymology of the name Naupaktus. If we possessed the narrative more in detail, we should probably find many more examples of colouring of the legendary past suitable to the circumstances of the historical present.

Above all, this legend makes out in favour of the Dorians and their kings a mythical title to their Peloponnesian establishments; Argos, Sparta, and Messéné are presented as rightfully belonging, and restored by just retribution, to the children of Héraklés. It was to them that Zeus had specially given the territory of Sparta: the Dorians came in as their subjects and auxiliaries.”

1 Herodotus observes, in reference χώρην τὴν viv ἐκτέαται, ἀλλ᾽ ο to the Lacedemonian account of their Ape ae παῖδας (Herodot. w Pid benad Lat in Peloponnésus (Eury-

enés ani

Proklés, δ Be sons of Aristodémus), that the Lacede- monians,gave a story not in fae with any of the »οεῖξ,---Δακεδαιμόνιοι γὰρ, ὁμολογέοντες οὐδενὶ Sear

Aiea yap Rpovlan: καλλιστεφάνον πόσις

Ζεὺς ᾿Ερακλείδαις τήνδε δέδωκε πόλιν" Οἷσιν ἅμα, oe κυ ξνν ντες ᾿Ερίνεον ἦνε-

λέγουσιν αὐτὸν ᾿Αριστόδημον ste βασιλεύοντα ἀγαγεῖν σφέας ἐς ταύτην τὴν

Εὐρεῖαν μτεελρά δε νῆσον ἀφικόμεθα. ies similar mann rig τὸς το υα

Onap. XVIII. STORY AS GIVEN BY PLATO. 443

Plato gives a very different version of the legend, but we find that he too turns the story in such a manner as to yythical embody a claim of right on the part of the conquerors. tarda fe According to him, the Achwans who returned from Peloponné- the capture of Troy, found among their fellow- ** citizens at home—the race which had grown up during their absence—an aversion to re-admit them: after a fruitless endea- vour to make good their rights, they were at last expelled, but not without much contest and bloodshed. A leader named Dorieus collected all these exiles into one body, and from him they received the name of Dorians instead of Achzans; then marching back under the conduct of the Herakleids into Pelo- ponnésus they recovered by force the possessions wai from which they had been shut out, and constituted makes out the three Dorian establishments under the separate ἃ diferent Herakleid brothers, at Argos, Sparta, and Messéné, the same These three fraternal dynasties were founded upon a ae scheme of intimate union and sworn alliance one with the other, for the.purpose of resisting any attack which might be made upon them from Asia,! either by the remaining Trojans or by their allies. Such is the story as Plato believed it; materially different in the incidents related, yet analogous in mythical feeling, and embodying alike the idea of a rightful reconquest. Moreover the two accounts agree in representing both the entire conquest and the triple division of Dorian Peloponnésus as begun and completed in one and the same enterprise,—so as to constitute one single event, which Plato would probably have called the Return of the Achzans, but which was commonly known as the Return of the Herakleids. Though this is both inadmissible and inconsistent with other statements which approach close to the historical times, yet it bears every mark of being the primitive view originally presented by the genealogical poets. The broad way in which the incidents are grouped together, was at once easy for the imagination to follow and impressive to the feelings.

that Apollo had planted the sons line of mythical reasoning. There

of Héraklés, jointly with those of seem to have been also stories, contain-

Aigimius, at Sparta, Argos, and Pylus ing mythical reasons why the Herak-

(Pyth. v. 93). leids did not acquire possession of Isokratés (Or. vi. Archidamus, p.120) Arcadia (Polyen. i. 7).

makes out a good title by a erent 1 Plato, Legg. iii. 6—7, pp. 682—686.

444 CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. Parr I.

The existence of one legendary account must never be under- stood as excluding the probability of other accounts, current at the same time, but inconsistent with it; and many such there were as to the first establishment of the Peloponnesian Dorians. In the narrative which I have given from Apollodérus, conceived apparently under the influence of Dorian feeling, Tisamenus is stated to have been slain in the invasion. But according to

Other another narrative, which seems to have found favour ewer A with the historical Achzans on the north coast of Pelo- the ponnésus, Tisamenus, though expelled by the invaders

Acheans from his kingdom of Sparta or Argos, was not slain ; Tisamenus. he was allowed to retire under agreement, together with a certain portion of his subjects, and he directed his steps towards the coast of Peloponnésus south of the Corinthian Gulf, then occupied by the Ionians. As there were relations, not only of friendship, but of kindred origin, between Ionians and Achzans (the eponymous heroes [ὅπη and Achzeus pass for brothers, both sons of Xuthus), Tisamenus solicited from the Ionians admission for himself and his fellow-fugitives into their territory. The leading Ionians declining this request, under the apprehension that Tisamenus might be chosen as sovereign over the whole, the latter accomplished his object by force. After a vehement struggle, the Ionians were vanquished and put to flight, and Tisamenus thus acquired possession of Heliké, as well as of the northern coast of the peninsula, westward from Sikyén ; which coast continued to be occupied by the Acheans, and received its name from them, throughout all the historical times. The Tonians retired to Attica, many of them taking part in what is called the Ionic emigration to the coast of Asia Minor, which followed shortly after. Pausanias indeed tells us that Tisamenus, having gained a decisive victory over the Ionians, fell in the engagement,’ and did not himself live to occupy the country. of which his troops remained masters. But this story of the death of Tisamenus seems to arise from a desire on the part of Pausanias to blend together into one narrative two discre- pant legends; at least the historical Achzans in later times continued to regard Tisamenus himself as having lived and

1 Pansan. vii. 1—8.

Cuar. XVIII. OTHER LEGENDS. 445

reigned in their territory, and as having left a regal dynasty which lasted down to Ogygés,' after whom it was exchanged for a popular government.”

The conquest of Témenus, the eldest of the three Herakleids, originally comprehended only Argos and its neighbourhood: it was from thence that Troezen, Epidaurus, Aigina, Sikyén, and Phlius were successively occupied by Dorians, the sons and son-in-law of Témenus—Déiphontés, Phalkés, and Keisus—being the leaders under whom this was accomplished.* At Pero Sparta the success of the Dorians was furthered by of ἀτκὸν; the treason of a man named Philonomus, who received Sparta, and as recompense the neighbouring town and territory of by the Amykle.* Messénia is said to have submitted without resistance to the dominion of the Herakleid Kresphontés, who established his residence at Stenyklarus: the Pylian Melanthus, then ruler of the country and representative of the great mythical lineage of Néleus and Nestér, withdrew with his household gods and with a portion of his subjects to Attica.°

The only Dorian establishment in the peninsula not directly connected with the triple partition is Corinth, which is said to have been Doricised somewhat later and under another leader, though still a Herakleid. Hippotés—descendant of Héraklés in the fourth generation, but not through Hyllus—had been guilty (as already mentioned) of the murder of Karnus the prophet at the camp of Naupaktus, for which he had been p00. δὲ banished and remained in exile for ten years; his Corinth— son deriving the name of Alétés from the long μ᾿ wanderings endured by the father. At the head of a body of Dorians, Alétés attacked Corinth: he pitched his camp on the Solygeian eminence near the city, and harassed the inhabitants

1Polyb. ii, 45; iv. 1, Strabo, viii. narrative in considerable detail of

. 888-884, This Tisamenus derives this δὴ event of Grecian legend,— is name from the memorable act of the Return of the Herakleids,—with

revenge ascribed to his father Orestés. which he professed to commence his

So in the legend of the Siege of Thébes, consecutive history: from what sources

Thersander, as one of the Epigoni, he borrowed we do not know.

avenged his father Polynikés; the son 8 gtrabo, viii. p. 389. Pausan. ii. 6

of ee yar a a“ 2; 12,1. ᾿

menus (Herodot. iv. 149). Compare O. ᾿

Maller’ Dostana i. p. 69, note 9, Eng. ἊΝ Οοπόπ, Narr. 86; Strabo, viii. p.

Trans. ; 2Diodér. iv. 1. The historian 5 Strabo, viii. p. 359; Conén, Narr. Ephorus embodied in his work a 89.

446 CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. Part I.

with constant warfare until he compelled them to surrender. Even in the time of the Peloponnesian war, the Corinthians professed to identify the hill on which the camp of these assailants had been placed. The great mythical dynasty of the Sisyphids was expelled, and Alétés became ruler and (kist of the Dorian city ; many of the inhabitants however, Holic or Ionic, departed

The settlement of Oxylus and his Atolians in Elis is said by some to have been accomplished with very little opposition ; the leader professing himself to be descended from Aitolus, who had been in a previous age banished from Elis into A®télia, and the two people, Epeians and Aitolians, acknowledging a kindred

origin one with the other.? At first indeed, according μὲς = to Ephorus, the Epeians appeared in arms, determined tolians to repel the intruders, but at length it was agreed nor, on both sides to abide the issue of a single combat. Degmenus, the champion of the Epeians, confided in the long shot of his bow and arrow ; but the Atolian Pyrechmés came provided with his sling,—a weapon then unknown and recently invented by the Aitolians,—the range of which was yet longer than that of the bow of his enemy: he thus killed Degmenus, and secured the victory to Oxylus and his followers. According to one statement the Epeians were expelled ; according to another they fraternised amicably with the new-comers. Whatever may be the truth as to this matter, it is certain that their name is from this moment lost, and that they never reappear among the historical elements of Greece :* we hear from this time forward only of Eleians, said to be of AXtolian descent.*

One most important privilege was connected with the possession Rightsof of the Eleian territory by Oxylus, coupled with his pega claim on the gratitude of the Dorian kings. The intend the ~FJeians acquired the administration of the temple at games. Olympia, which the Achzeans are said to have possessed

1Thucyd. iv. 49, Schol. Pindar. One of the six towns in Triphylia men- Olymp. xiii. 17; and Nem. vii. 155. tioned by Herodotus is ed Ἔπειον Condn, Narrat. 26. Ephor. ap. Strab. (Herodot. iv. 149).

‘Thueydidés calls the ante-Dorian Hekateus affirmed that the Epeians inhabitants of Corinth Aolians; Con6n were completely alien to the Eleians ; ae nee able χὰ γιατ τ hincelf Wither of the able er 5 Ephorus ap. Strab. x. p. 463. affirmative or negative (Hekateus, Fr 8 Strabo, viii. p. 858; Pausan. vy. 4,1. 848, ed. Didot; bo, Viii. p. 341).

rae ὥσθ

CRE αι ι υ αι ο" υὐνιι ν" τυὰὰπι ι

Cuap. ΧΥ͂ΠΙ. THE ATOLIANS AT ELIS. 447

before them ; and in consideration of this sacred function, which subsequently ripened into the celebration of the great Olympic games, their territory was solemnly pronounced to be inviolable. Such was the statement of Ephorus :? we find, in this case as in so many others, that the return of the Herakleids is made to supply a legendary basis for the historical state of things in Peloponnésus,

It was the practice of the great Attic tragedians, with rare exceptions, to select the subjects of their composition pamity of from the heroic or legendary world. Euripidés had Témenus composed three dramas, now lost, on the adventures of pope Témenus with his daughter Hyrnethd and his lowestin

» Α ὰ the series son-in-law Déiphontés—on the family misfortunes of of subjects

Kresphontés and Meropé—and on the successful valour gos os of Archelaus the son of Témenus in Macedonia, where ‘tama. he was alleged to have first begun the dynasty of the Temenid kings. Of these subjects the first and second were eminently tragical, and the third, relating to Archelaus, appears to have been undertaken by Euripidés in compliment to his contemporary sovereign and patron, Archelaus king of Macedonia: we are even told that those exploits which the usual version of the legend ascribed to Témenus, were reported in the drama of Euripidés to have been performed by Archelaus his son.? Of all the heroes, touched upon by the three Attic tragedians, these Dorian Herakleids stand lowest in the descending genealogical series— one mark amongst others that we are approaching the ground of genuine history. : Though the name Acheans, as denoting a people, is hence- forward confined to the North-Peloponnesian territory specially called Achaia, and to the inhabitants of Achza Phthiétis, north of Mount CEta—and though the great Peloponnesian states always seem to have prided themselves on the title of Dorians—yet we

1 Ephorus ap. Strab. viii. Ρ 868. Compare the Fragments of the The tale of the inhabitants of Pisa, Τημενίδαι, ᾿Αρχέλαος, and Κρεσφό 4 the territory more immediately border- in Dindorf’s edition of Euripidés, with ing ae Olympia, was very different the illustrative remarks of Welcker, from this. Griechische Tragddien, pp. 697, 708, 828. 2 Agatharchides ap. Photium, Sect. The Prologue of e Archelaus 250, p. 1882. Οὐδ᾽ Εὐριπίδον κατηγορῶ, seems to have gone through the whole τῷ ᾿Αρχελάῳ περιτεθεικότος τὰς Τημένον series of the Herakleidan lineage, from πράξεις. Aigyptus and Danaus downwards,

448 CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. Part ἢ

find the kings of Sparta, even in the historical age, taking pains to appropriate to themselves the mythical glories of the Achzans, and to set themselves forth as the representatives of Agamemnén Pretence and Orestés. The Spartan king Kleomenés even went pf the 41 80 far as to disavow formally any Dorian parentage ; Spartan for when the priestess at Athens refused to permit him —_ to sacrifice in the temple of Athéné, on the plea that origin. it was peremptorily closed to all Dorians, he replied— “T am no Dorian, but an Achzan”.1 Not only did the Spartan envoy, before Gelén of Syracuse, connect the indefeasible title of his country to the supreme command of the Grecian military force, with the ancient name and lofty prerogatives of Agamemn6n? —but in farther pursuance of the same feeling, the Spartans are said to have carried to Sparta both the bones of Orestés from Tegea, and those of Tisamenus from Heliké,3 at the injunction of the Delphian oracle. There is also a story that Oxylus in Elis was directed by the same oracle to invite into his country an Achzan, as Cikist, conjointly with himself; and that he called in Agorius, the great-grandson of Orestés, from Heliké, with a small number of Achzans who joined him.* The Dorians them- selves, being singularly poor in native legends, endeavoured, not unnaturally, to decorate themselves with those legendary orna- ments which the Achzans possessed in abundance.

As a consequence of the Dorian establishments in Peloponnésus, Emigra- several migrations of the pre-existing inhabitants are tionsfrom represented as taking place. 1. The Epeians of Elis nésuscon- are either expelled, or merged in the new-comers an the under Oxylus, and lose their separate name. 2. The Dorian Pylians, together with the great heroic family of Néleus —Epeians, and his son Nestér, who preside over them, give place ryians, to the Dorian establishment of Messénia, and retire to Tonians. Athens, where their leader Melanthus becomes king: a large portion of them take part in the subsequent Ionic emigra- tion. 3, A portion of the Acheans, under Penthilus, and other descendants of Orestés, leave Peloponnésus, and form what is called the Holic Emigration, to Lesbos, the Tréad, and the Gulf of Adramyttium: the name élians, unknown to Homer and

᾿ 1 Herodot. v. 72. 8 Herodot. i. 68; Pausan. vii. 1, 3. 2 Herodot. vii. 159, 4 Pausan. vy. 4, 2.

sO τὴν

CHAP. XVIII. EMIGRATIONS—DISCREPANT LEGENDS. 449

seemingly never applied to any separate tribe at all, being introduced to designate a large section of the Hellenic name, partly in Greece Proper and partly in Asia. 4. Another portion of Achzeans expel the Ionians from Achaia properly so called, in the north of Peloponnésus ; the Ionians retiring to Attica.

The Homeric poems describe Acheans, Pylians, and Epeians, in Peloponnésus, but take no notice of Ionians in the Ionians in northern district of Achaia: on the contrary, the ἐπὶ τ τυ ΩΒ Catalogue in the Iliad distinctly included this territory μῆς ctr under the dominions of Agamemnén. Though the by Homer. Catalogue of Homer is not to be regarded as an historical docu- ment, fit to be called as evidence for the actual state of Peloponnésus at any prior time, it certainly seems a better authority than the statements advanced by Herodotus and others respecting the occupation of northern Peloponnésus by the Ionians, and their expulsion from it by Tisamenus. In so far as the Catalogue is to be trusted, it negatives the idea of Ionians at Heliké, and countenances what seems in itself a more natural supposition— that the historical Achzans in the north part of Peloponnésus are a small undisturbed remnant of the powerful Achzan population once distributed throughout the peninsula, until it was broken up and partially expelled by the Dorians.

The Homeric legends, unquestionably the oldest which we possess, are adapted to a population of Achzans, Danaans, and Argeians, seemingly without any special and recognised names, either aggregate or divisional, other than the name of each separate tribe or kingdom. The Post-Homeric legends are . adapted to a population classified quite differently—Hellens, distributed into Dorians, Ionians, and AMolians. If we knew more of the time and circumstances in which these different legends grew up, we should probably be able to explain their discrepancy ; but in our present ignorance we can only note the fact.

Whatever difficulty modern criticism may find in regard to the event called “The Return of the Herakleids,” nodoubt pateas. is expressed about it even by the best historians of They Poe antiquity. Thucydidés accepts it es a single and literal to th event, having its assignable date, and carrying at one return

blow the acquisition of Peloponnésus. The date of it Herakleids. 1--29

450 CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. Part I.

he fixes as eighty years after the capture of Troy. Whether he was the original determiner of this epoch, or copied it from some previous author, we do not know. It must have been fixed according to some computation of generations, for there were no other means accessible—probably by means of the lineage of the Herakleids, which, as belonging to the kings of Sparta, constituted the most public and conspicuous thread of connexion between the Grecian real and mythical world, and measured the interval between the Siege of Troy itself and the first recorded Olympiad. Héraklés himself represents the generation before the siege, and his son Tlépolemus fights in the besieging army. If we suppose the first generation after Héraklés to commence with the begin- ning of the siege, the fourth generation after him will coincide with the ninetieth year after the same epoch ; and therefore, deducting ten years for the duration of the struggle, it will coincide with the eightieth year after the capture of the city ;} thirty years being reckoned for a generation. The date assigned by Thucydidés will thus agree with the distance in which Témenus, Kresphontés, and Aristodémus stand removed from Héraklés, The interval of eighty years, between the capture of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids, appears to have been admitted by Apollodérus and Eratosthenés, and some other professed chrono- logists of antiquity: but there were different reckonings which also found more or less of support.

Srcrion IIl.—Micration oF THESSALIANS AND Baorians.

In the same passage in which Thucydidés speaks of the Return of the Herakleids, he also marks out the date of another event a little antecedent, which is alleged to have powerfully affected the condition of Northern Greece. ‘‘Sixty years after the capture of Troy (he tells us) the Bceotians were driven by the Thessalians from Arné, and migrated into the land then called Kadméis, but now Beeotia, wherein there had previously dwelt a section of their race, who had contributed the contingent to the Trojan war.”

The expulsion here mentioned, of the Beeotians from Arné “by the Thessalians,” has been construed, with probability, to allude

1 The date of Thucydidés is calculated μετὰ Ἰλίον ἅλωσιν (i. 18).

THESSALIANS AND BCOTIANS. 451

CuaP. XVIII.

to the immigration of the Thessalians, properly so called, from the Thesprétid in Epirus into Thessaly. That the possatians Thessalians had migrated into Thessaly from the me ἐτῶν Thesprotid territory, is stated by Herodotus, though into Thes- he says nothing about time or circumstances, ἜἾ' Antiphus and Pheidippus appear in the Homeric Catalogue as commanders of the Grecian contingent from the islands of Kés and Karpathus, on the south-east coast of Asia Minor: they are sons of Thessalus, who is himself the son of Héraklés. A legend ran, that these two chiefs, in the dispersion which ensued after the victory, had been driven by storms into the Ionian Gulf, and cast upon the coast of Epirus, where they landed and settled at Ephyré in the Thesprétid.® It was Thessalus, grandson of Pheidippus, who was reported to have conducted the Thesprotians across the passes of Pindus into Thessaly, to have conquered the fertile central plain of that country, and to have imposed upon it his own name instead of its previous denomination Aolis.’ Whatever we may think of this legend as it stands, the state of Thessaly during the historical ages renders it highly yon-wet. probable that the Thessalians, properly so called, were ene char- a body of immigrant conquerors. They appear always the Th Thes- asa rude, warlike, violent, and uncivilised race, distinct S1@ns- from their neighbours the Achzans, the Magnétes, and the Perrhzbians, and holding all the three in tributary dependence. These three tribes stand to them in a relation analogous to that of the Lacedeemonian Periceki towards Sparta, while the Peneste, who cultivated their lands, are almost an exact parallel of the Helots. Moreover, the low level of taste and intelligence among the Thessalians, as well as certain points of their costume, assimilates them more to Macedonians or Epirots than to Hellens.* Their position in Thessaly is in many respects analogous to that

1 Herod. vii. 176.

3 Herodot. 176; ἜΝ Pater- 2See the epigram ascribed to Aris- phan.

cul. 1, 2—8 ; hates, ap. 5 Byz.

totle (Antholog. Grac. t. i. p. 181, ed. ees Bice mage omc i. 1),

Scholia on pe phrén 912) give astory somewhat different. Ephyré is given as the old legendary name of the city of Krannon in Thessaly (Kineas, ap. Schol. Pindar. Pyth. x. 85), which creates the confusion with the Thes- protian Ephyré,

v. Δώριον ; Polyen. Viil. 4

There were several anal state- ments, however, about the parentage of Thessalus as well as about the name of the country (Strabo, ix. p. 443; Stephan. Byz. v. Aipovia).

4See K. O. Miiller, History of the Dorians, Introduction, sect. 4.

452 CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. Parr I,

of the Spartan Dorians in Peloponnésus, and there seems good reason for concluding that the former, as well as the latter, were originally victorious invaders, though we cannot pretend to determine the time at which the invasion took place. The great family of the Aleuads,! and probably other Thessalian families besides, were descendants of Héraklés, like the kings of Sparta.

There are no similar historical grounds, in the case of the alleged migration of the Beeotians from Thessaly to Beeotia, to justify a belief in the main fact of the legend, nor were the different legendary stories in harmony one with the other. While the Homeric epic recognises the Beeotians in Beotia, but not in Besotians— Thessaly, Thucydidés records a statement which he tion from -had found of their migration from the latter into the jhessaly former. But in order to escape the necessity of flatly Beotia, contradicting Homer, he inserts the parenthesis that there had been previously an outlying fraction of Bceotians in Beeotia at the time of the Trojan war,? from whom the troops who served with Agamemnén were drawn. Nevertheless, the discrepancy with the Iliad, though less strikingly obvious, is not removed, inasmuch as the Catalogue is unusually copious in enumerating the contingents from Thessaly, without once mentioning Beotians. Homer distinguishes Orchomenus from Beeotia, and he does not specially notice Thébes in the Catalogue : in other respects his enumeration of the towns coincides pretty well with the ground historically known afterwards under the name of Beeotia.

Pausanias gives us a short sketch of the events which he supposes to have intervened in this section of Greece between the Siege of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids. Peneledés, the leader of the Beotians at the siege, having been slain by Eurypylus the son of Télephus, Tisamenus, son of Thersander and grandson of Polynikés, acted as their commander both during the remainder of the siege and after their return. Autesién, his son and successor, became subject to the wrath of the avenging Erinnyes of Laius and Cidipus: the oracle directed him to expatriate, and he joined the Dorians. In his place Damasichthén,

_ 1 Pindar, x2 ἀποδασμὸς πρότερον ἐν ταύτῃ ἀφ᾽ 2 Thucyd. berg ἣν δὲ αὐτῶν καὶ ὧν καὶ a tage vat hl Aig ”

CHAP. XVIII. MIGRATION OF B@OTIANS FROM THESSALY. 453

son of Opheltas and grandson of Péneleds, became king of the Beeotians ; he was succeeded by Ptolemzeus, who was himself followed by Xanthus. A war having broken out at that time between the Athenians and Beotians, Xanthus engaged in single combat with Melanthus son of Andropompus, the champion of Attica, and perished by the cunning of his opponent. After the death of Xanthus, the Bceotians passed from kingship to popular government.’ As Melanthus was of the lineage of the Néleids, and had migrated from Pylus to Athens in consequence of the successful establishment of the Dorians in Messénia, the duel with Xanthus must have been of course subsequent to the Return of the Herakleids.

Here then we have a summary of alleged Beotian history between the siege of Troy and the Return of the Discrepant Herakleids, in which no mention is made of the aig δα immigration of the mass of Bceotians from Thessaly, Beeotians. and seemingly no possibility left of fitting in so great and capital an incident. The legends followed by Pausanias are at variance with those adopted by Thucydidés, but they harmonise much better with Homer.

So deservedly high is the authority of Thucydidés, that the migration here distinctly announced by him is commonly set down as an ascertained datum, historically as well as chrono- logically. But on this occasion it can be shown that he only followed one amongst a variety of discrepant legends, none of which there were any means of verifying.

Pausanias recognised a migration of the Beeotians from Thessaly, in early times anterior to the Trojan war ;? and the account of Ephorus, as given by Strabo, professed to record a series of changes in the occupants of the country :—first, the non-Hellenic Aones and Temmikes, Leleges and Hyantes; next, the Kadmeians, who, after the second siege of Thébes by the Epigoni, were expelled by the Thracians and Pelasgians, and retired into Thessaly, where they joined in communion with the inhabitants of Arné,—the whole aggregate being called Beeotians. After the Trojan war, and about the time of the Molic emigration, these Beeotians returned from Thessaly, and reconquered Beotia,

1 Pausan. ix. 5, 8, 2 Pausan. x. 8, 3,

454 CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. Parr i. driving out the Thracians and Pelasgians,—the former retiring to Parnassus, the latter to Attica. It was on this occasion (he says) that the Minyz of Orchomenus were subdued, and forcibly incorporated with the Beeotians. Ephorus seems to have followed in the main the same narrative as Thucydidés, about the move- ment of the Beeotians out of Thessaly ; coupling it however with several details current as explanatory of proverbs and customs.! The only fact which we make out, independent of these legends,

Affinities is, that there existed certain homonymies and certain between a affinities of religious worship, between parts of Beeotia Thessaly, and parts of Thessaly, which appear to indicate a

kindred race. A town name Arné,? similar in name to the Thessalian, was enumerated in the Beeotian Catalogue of Homer, and antiquaries identified it sometimes with the historical town Cheroneia,? sometimes with Akrephium. Moreover there was near the Beotian Koréneia a river named Kuarius or Koralius, and a venerable temple dedicated to the Itonian Athéné, in the sacred ground of which the Pambeotia, or public council of the Beeotian name, was held; there was also a temple and a river of similar denomination in Thessaly, near to a town called Iton or Iténus.* We may from these circumstances presume a certain

1Ephor. Fragm. 30, ed. Marx.; by Strabo, but briefly and with a Strabo, ix. p. 401—402. The story of mutilated text) serves only to identify

the Beotians at Arné in Polyznus (i. 12) probably comes from Ephorus.

iodérus (xix. 53) gives a summary of the legendary history of Thébes from Deukalién downwards: he tells us that the Beeotians were expelled from their country, and _ obli| to retire into Thessaly durin e Trojan war, in co uence of the absence of so many of their brave warriors at Troy; they did not find their way back into Beeotia until the fourth generation.

2 Stephan. Byz. v.”Apyy, makes the Thessalian Arné an ἄποικος of the Beeotian.

3 Homer, Iliad, ii.; Strabo, ix. p. 413; Pausan. ix. 40, 3. Some of the families at Cheroneia, even during the time of the Roman dominion in Greece,

traced their origin to Peripoltas the chil

prophet, who was said to have accom- panied Opheltas in his invading march out of Thessaly (Plutarch, Kimon, c. 1). 4 Strabo, ix. 411—485; Homer, Tliad, ii. 696 ; Hekatzus, Fr. 338, Didot. The Fragment from Alkzus (cited

the river and the town.

Iténus was said to be son of Am- hiktyén, and Boeétus son of Iténus

ausan. ix, 1, 1. 34, 1: com’ h. Byz. v. Βοιωτία) by Melanippé. another legendary genealogy (probably | ae, after the name olic had ob- tained footing as the class name for a large section of Greeks, but as old as the poet Asius, Olympiad 30) the eponymous hero Boedtus was ed on to the great lineage of olus through the paternity of the god Poseidén either with pee νν or with Arné, daughter of Atolus (Asius, Fragm. 8, ed. Diintzer ; Strabo, vi. p. 265; Diodér. v. 67; Hellanikus ap. Schol. Dliad. ii. 494). Two lost plays of Euripidés were founded on the mis- fortunes of Melanippé, and her twin Sas yin ah 18 ee te ae

olus (Hygin. ξ ; see the - ments of <a te του α τ τη νίππη Δεσμῶτις indorf's edition, and the instructive comments of Welcker, Griech. Tragéd. vol. ii. p, 840—860),

Cnap. XVIII. MYTHICAL AND tusTORICAL BdoriA. 455

ancient kindred between the population of these regions, and such a circumstance is sufficient to explain the generation of legends describing migrations backward and forward, whether true or not in point of fact.

What is most important to remark is, that the stories of Thucydidés and Ephorus bring us cut of the mythical pysnsition into the historical Boeotia. Orchomenus is Beeotised, from.

β mythical to and we hear no more of the once-powerful Minyx: historical there are no more Kadmeians at Thébes, nor Beeotians Bots in Thessaly. The Minyz and the Kadmeians disappear in the Ionic emigration, which will be presently adverted to. Historical Beeotia is now constituted, apparently in its federative league under the presidency of Thébes, just as we find it in the time of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.

Section JII.—Emigrations rrom Greece to ASIA AND THE IsLANDS OF THE AUGEAN.

1. Hornic.—2. Ionic.—3. Dortc.

To complete the transition of Greece from its mythical to its historical condition, the secession of the races belonging gecession to the former must follow upon the introduction of of the those belonging to the latter. This is accomplished es by means of the Aolic and Ionic migrations. Groton:

The presiding chiefs of the Molic emigration are the repre- sentatives of the heroic lineage of the Pelopids: those of the Ionic emigration belong to the Néleids; and even in what is called the Doric emigration to Théra, the CEkist Théras is not a Dorian but a Kadmeian, the legitimate descendant of CEdipus and Kadmus.

The olic, Ionic, and Doric colonies were planted along the western coast of Asia Minor, from the coast of the Propontis southward down to Lykia (I shall in a future chapter speak more exactly of their boundaries) ; the Holic occupying the northern portion together with the islands of Lesbos and Tenedos; the Doric occupying the southernmost, together with the neigh- bouring islands of Rhodes and Kés ; and the Ionic being planted between them, comprehending Chios, Samos, and the Cyclades islands,

CLOSING EVENS OF LEGENDARY GREECE, Part L

1. Moric Emicration. The Aolic emigration was conducted by the Pelopids: the

Eolic original story seems to have been that Orestés himself migration —_ was at the head of the first batch of colonists, and this Pelopids. version of the event is still preserved by Pindar and

by Hellanikus.! But the more current narratives represented the descendants of Orestés as chiefs of the expeditions to olis,— his illegitimate son Penthilus, by Erigoné daughter of Agisthus,? together with Echelatus and Gras, the son and grandson of Penthilus—also Kleués and Malaus, descendants of Agamemnén through another lineage. According to the account given by Strabo, Orestés began the emigration, but died on his route in Arcadia; his son Penthilus, taking the guidance of the emigrants, conducted them by the long land-journey through Beotia and Thessaly to Thrace ;* from whence Archelaus, son of Penthilus, led them across the Hellespont, and settled at Daskylium on the Propontis. Gras, son of Archelaus, crossed over to Lesbos and possessed himself of the island. Kleués and Malaus, conducting another body of Achzans, were longer on their journey, and lingered a considerable time near Mount Phrikium in the territory of Lokris; ultimately however they passed over by sea to Asia and took possession of Kymé, south of the Gulf of Adramyttium, the most considerable of all the AZolic cities on the continent.‘ From Lesbos and Kymé, the other less considerable Holic towns, spreading over the region of Ida as well as the Tréad, and comprehending the island of Tenedos, are said to have derived their origin.

Though there are many differences in the details, the accounts

1 Pindar, Nem. xi. 48; Hellanic.

usual and obvious sense Fragm. 114, ed. Didot. Compare ed. mn te

intend

Stephan. Byz. v. Πέρινθος.

2Kinethon ap. Pausan. ii. 18, 5. Penthilids existed in Lesbos during ΝΗ times (Aristot. Polit. v.

8 Τὸ has sometimes been supposed that the country called Thrace here means the residence of the Thracians near Parnassus ; but the length of the journey, and the number of years which it took up, are so specially marked, that I think Thrace in its

nded. 4 Strabo, xiii. p. 582. Hellanikus seems to have treated of this delay near Mount Phrikium (see Steph. B Υ͂, Dpixcov), In another account Gail, . 621), Se copied from the ynzean Ephorus, S' connects the establishments of this colony with the sequel of the Trojan war: the Pelas-

gians, the occupants of the terri’ had bea ens

had sustained, and unable to resist the immigrants,

et i εν

Cuap. XVITL. AOLIC AND tonic EMIGRATIONS. 457

agree in representing these Holic settlements as formed by the Acheans expatriated from Lacénia under the guidance of the dispossessed Pelopids.! We are told that in their journey through Beotia they received considerable reinforcements, and Strabo adds that the emigrants started from Aulis, the port from whence Agamemnén departed in the expedition against Troy.” He also informs us that they missed their course and experienced many losses from nautical ignorance, but we do not know to what particular incidents he alludes.*

2, Tontc EMIGRATION.

The Ionic emigration is described as emanating from and directed by the Athenians, and connects itself with the previous legendary history of Athens, which must therefore be here briefly recapitulated.

The great mythical hero Théseus, of whose military prowess and errant exploits we have spoken in a previous fonic | chapter, was still more memorable in the eyes of the ἐπα eres Athenians as an internal political reformer. He was off from the supposed to have performed for them the inestimable He ioeeetl service of transforming Attica out of many states into Athens. one. Each déme, or. at least a great many out of the whole number had before his time enjoyed political independence under its own magistrates and assemblies, acknowledging only a federal union with the rest under the presidency of Athens. By a mixture of conciliation and force, Théseus succeeded in putting down all these separate governments and bringing them to unite in one political system centralised at Athens. He is said to have established a constitutional government, retaining for himself a defined power as king or president, and distributing the people into three classes; Eupatride, a sort of sacerdotal noblesse ; Geémori and Demiurgi, husbandmen and artisans. Having brought these important changes into efficient working, he com- memorated them for his posterity by introducing solemn and appropriate festivals. In confirmation of the dominion of Athens

1 Velleius Patercul. i. 4; compare 2 Strabo, ix. p. 401. Antikleidés ap. Athene. xi. c. 3; Pau- 3 Strabo, i. p. 10. sanias, ili. 2, 1. 4 Plutarch, Théseus, c. 24, 25, 26.

458 CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. Part L

over the Megarid territory, he is said farther to have erecteda pillar at the extremity of the latter towards the Isthmus, marking the boundary between Peloponnésus and Idnia.

But a revolution so extensive was not consummated without ως creating much discontent. Menestheus, the rival of and Menes- Théseus,—the first specimen, as we are told, of an a, artful demagogue,—took advantage of this feeling to — assail and undermine him. Théseus had quitted Attica to — accompany and assist his friend Peirithoiis in his journey down ~ to the under world, in order to carry off the goddess Persephoné, — —or (as those who were critical in legendary story preferred recounting) in a journey to the residence of Aidéneus, king of the Molossians in Epirus, to carry off his daughter. In this enterprise Peirithoiis perished, while Théseus was cast into prison, from whence he was only liberated by the intercession of Héraklés. It was during his temporary absence that the Tyndarids Castér and Pollux invaded Attica for the purpose of recovering theit sister Helen, whom Théseus had at a former period taken away from Sparta and deposited at Aphidne; and the partisans of Menestheus took advantage both of the absence of Théseus and of the calamity which his licentiousness had brought upon the country, to ruin his popularity with the people. When he returned he found them no longer disposed to endure his dominion, or to continue to him the honours which their previous feelings of gratitude had conferred. Having therefore placed his sons under the protection of Elephénér in Eubeea, he sought an asylum with Lykomédés prince of Scyros, from whom however he received nothing but an insidious welcome and a traitorous death.?

Menestheus, succeeding to the honours of the expatriated hero, — commanded the Athenian troops at the siege of Troy. But though he survived the capture, he never returned to Athens— different stories being related of the place where he and his — companions settled. During this interval the feelings of the Athenians having changed, they restored the sons of Théseus, who had served at Troy under Elephénér and had returned — unhurt, to the station and functions of their father. The

1 Plutarch, Théseus, c. 34—35.

Guar. XVIIt. TtHESHID KINGS IN ATTICA. 459 Theseids Démophodn, Oxyntas, Apheidas, and Thymetés, had successively filled this post for the space of about sixty years,! when the Dorian invaders of Peloponnésus (as has been before related) compelled Melanthus and the Néleid family to abandon their kingdom of Pylus. The refugees found shelter at Athens, where a fortunate adventure soon raised Melanthus to the throne. A war breaking out between the Athenians and Beotians respecting the boundary tract of CEnoé, the Beotian king Xanthus challenged Thymeetés to single combat: the latter declining to accept it, Melanthus not only stood forward in his place, but practised a cunning stratagem with such success as to kill his adversary. He was forthwith chosen king, Thymeetés being constrained to resign.’

Melanthus and his son Kodrus reigned for nearly sixty years,

Restoration of the sons of Théseus to their father’s kingdom.

during which their large body of fugitives, escaping They are from the recent invaders throughout Greece, were fieced harboured by the Athenians: so that Attica became Neleids— populous enough to excite the alarm and jealousy of (q@nt™™s Kodrus.

the Peloponnesian Dorians. A powerful Dorian force, under the command of Alétés from Corinth and Althemenés from Argos, were accordingly despatched to invade the Athenian territory, in which the Delphian oracle promised them success, provided they abstained from injuring the person of Kodrus. Strict orders were given to the Dorian army that Kodrus should be preserved unhurt; but the oracle had become known among the Athenians,? and the generous prince determined to bring death upon himself as a means of salvation to his country. Assuming the disguise of a peasant, he intentionally provoked a quarrel with some of the Dorian troops, who slew him without

1 Eusebius, Chronic. Can. p. 228— 229, ed. Scaliger ; Pausan. ii. 18, 7.

2Ephorus ap. Harpocration. v. ᾿Απατούρια :--[Ἔφορος ἐν δευτέρῳ, ὡς διὰ τὴν ὑπὲρ τῶν ὁρίων ἀπάτην γενομένην, ὅτι πολεμούντων ᾿Αθηναίων πρὸς Βοιω- τοὺς ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν Μελαινῶν χώρας, Μέλανθος ὁ τῶν ᾿Αθηναίων βασιλεὺς Ἐάνθον τὸν Θηβαῖον μονομαχῶν ἀπέκ- τεινεν. Compare Strabo, ix. p. 393,

Ephorus derives the term ’Ararovpia from the words signifying a trick with reference to the boundaries, and as- sumes the name of this great Ionic

festival to have been derived from the stratagem of Melanthus, described in Conén (Narrat. 39) and Polysnus (i. 19). The whole derivation is fanciful and erroneous, and the story is a curious specimen of legend growing out of etymology.

_ 3 The orator Lykurgus, in his eulo- gium on Kodrus, mentions a Delphian eitizen named Kleomantis who secretly communicated the oracle to the Athe- nians, and was rewarded by them for doing so with σίτησις ἐν Πρυτανείῳ (Lyourg. cont. Leocrat. ὁ. 20),

460 CLOSING EVENTS of LEGENDARY GREEO?. Parr L

suspecting his real character. No sooner was this event known, than the Dorian leaders, despairing of success, abandoned their enterprise and evacuated the country. In retiring, however, they retained possession of Megara, where they established permanent settlers, and which became from this moment Dorian, —seemingly at first a dependency of Corinth, though it afterwards acquired its freedom and became an autonomous community. This memorable act of devoted patriotism, analogous to that of the daughters of Erechtheus at Athens, and of Mencekeus at Thébes, entitled Kodrus to be ranked among the most splendid characters in Grecian legend.

Kodrus is numbered as the last king of Athens: his descen- Devotion dants wese styled Archons, but they held that dignity anddeath for life—a practice which prevailed during a long pare course of years afterwards. Medon and Neileus, his eet, . two sons, having quarrelled about the succession, the

Delphian oracle decided in favour of the former; upon which the latter, affronted at the preference, resolved upon seeking a new home.* There were at this moment many dispos-

rrelof Sessed sections of Greeks, and an adventitious popula- : pice δὲ A tion accumulated in Attica, who were anxious for emigration settlements beyond sea. The expeditions which now of Neileus. set forth to cross the igean, chiefly under the conduct of members of the Kodrid family, composed collectively the memorable Ionic emigration, of which the Ionians, recently expelled from Peloponnésus, formed a part, but, as it would seem, only a small part ; for we hear of many quite distinct races, some renowned in legend, who withdraw from Greece amidst

this assemblage of colonists. The Kadmeians, the Minyx of ©

~<a

Orchomenus, the Abantes of Euboa, the Dryopes; the Molossi, the Phokians, the Beeotians, the Arcadian Pelasgians, and even the Dorians of Epidaurus—are represented as furnishing each a

proportion of the crews of these emigrant vessels. Nor were the F

1 Pherekydés, Fragm. 110,ed.Didot; 4 Herodot. i. 146; Pausan. vii. 2, 3,

Vell. Patere. i. 2 ; Condn, Narr. 26; 4. Isokratés extols his Athenian an- ; Polyen. i. 6. 18, cestors for having provided, by — Hellanikus traced the genealogy of means of this emigration, settlements

Kodrus, through —e enerations, up for so large a number of to Deukali ukalién Fragment 10, ed. Ῥίον 2 Strabo, xiv. p. 653, ἐφ πὴ. (Or. xii. Panathenaic. Ρ. 3 Pausan. vii. 2. 1 241).

and poor Greeks, at the expense οὗ

CuaP. XVIII. IONIC AND DORIC EMIGRATIONS. 461

results unworthy of so mighty a confluence of different races. Not only the Cyclades islands in the Augean, but the great nieces islands of Samos and Chios near the Asiatic coast, races who and ten different cities on the coast of Asia Minor, Pikes from Milétus on the south to Phoksa in the north, ae ha were founded, and all adopted the Ionic name. Athens é

was the metropolis or mother city ofall of them: Androklus and Neilens, the Gikists of Ephesus and Milétus, and probably other (Ekists also, started from the Prytaneium at Athens,) with those solemnities, religious and political, which usually marked the departure of a swarm of Grecian colonists.

Other mythical families, besides the heroic lineage of Néleus and Nestér, as represented by the sons of Kodrus, took a leading part in the expedition. Herodotus mentions Lykian chiefs, descendants from Glaukus son of Hippolochus, and Pausanias tells us of Phildtas descendant of Peneleds, who went at the head of a body of Thebans: both Glaukus and Peneleds are commemorated in the Iliad.? And itis a remarkable fact mentioned by Pausanias (though we do not know on what authority), that the inhabitants of Phokeea—which was the northernmost city of Iénia on the borders of Aolis, and one of the last founded—consisting mostly of Phckian colonists under the conduct of the Athenians Philogenés and Demon, were not admitted into the Pan-Ionic Amphiktyony until they consented to choose for themselves chiefs of the Kodrid family. Proklés, the chief who conducted the Ionic emigrants from Epidaurus to Samos, was said to be of the lineage of Idn son of Xuthus.4

Of the twelve Ionic states constituting the Pan-Ionic Amphik- tyony—some of them among the greatest cities in Hellas—I shall say no more at present, as I have to treat of them again when I came upon historical ground.

8. Doric EMIGRATIONS.

The Aolic and Ionic emigrations are thus both presented to us as direct consequences of the event called the ἡ ομίδη Return of the Herakleids: and in like manner the colonies in formation of the Dorian Hexapolis in the south- 2

1 Herodot. i, 146; vii. 95; viii. 46, 2 Herodot. i, 147 ; Fee: 2; 7.

Vellei. Paterc. i, 4. Pherekydés, Frag. ὃ Pausan. vii. 2, 2; 111, ed. Didot, 4 Pausan. vii. 4,3.

462 CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. Parr I.

western corner of Asia Minor: Kés, Knidus, Halicarnassus and Rhodes, with its three separate cities, as well as the Dorian establishments in Kréte, Melos, and Théra, are all traced more or less directly to the same great revolution.

Théra, more especially, has its root in the legendary world. — Its (kist was Théras, a descendant of the heroic lineage of (Edipus and Kadmus, and maternal uncle of the young kings of Sparta, Eurysthenés and Proklés, during whose minority he had exercised the regency. On their coming of age his functions were at an end ; but being unable to endure a private station, he determined to put himself at the head of a body of emigrants. Many came forward to join him, and the expedition was further reinforced by a body of interlopers, belonging to the Minyz, of whom the Lacdemonians were anxious to get rid. These Minyz had arrived in Laconia, not long before, from the island of Lemnos, out of which they had been expelled by the Pelasgian fugitives from Attica. They landed without asking permission, took up their abode and began to “light their fires” on Mount Taygetus. When the Lacede- monians sent to ask who they were and wherefore they had come, the Minyz replied that they were sons of the Argonauts who had landed at Lemnos, and that being expelled from their own homes, they thought themselves entitled to solicit an asylum in the territory of their fathers; they asked, withal, to be admitted to share both the lands and the honours of the state. The Lacede- monians granted the request, chiefly on the ground of a common ancestry—their own great heroes, the Tyndarids, having been enrolled in the crew of the Argé: the Minye were then introduced as citizens into the tribes, received lots of land, and began to — Legendof intermarry with the pre-existing families, It was not the Miny® Jong, however, before they became insolent: they Lemnos. § demanded a share in the kingdom (which was the venerated privilege of the Herakleids), and so grossly miscon- ducted themselves in other ways, that the Lacedemonians resolved to put them to death, and began by casting them into — prison. While the Minyz were thus confined, their wives, Spartans by birth and many of them daughters of the principal men, solicited permission to go in and see them: leave being © granted, they made use of the interview to change clothes with

Théra.

Caap. XVIIL THERA AND THE MINYA. 463

their husbands, who thus escaped and fled again to Mount Tay- getus. The greater number of them quitted Laconia, and marched to Triphylia in the western regions of Peloponnésus, from whence they expelled the Paroreate and the Kaukones, and founded six towns of their own, of which Lepreum was the chief. A certain proportion, however, by permission of the Lacedszemonians, joined Théras and departed with him to the island of Kallisté, then possessed by Pheenician inhabitants who were descended from the kinsmen and companions of Kadmus, and who had been left there by that prince, when he came forth in search of Eurdépa, eight generations preceding. Arriving thus among men of kindred lineage with himself, Théras met with a fraternal recep- tion, and the island derived from him the name, under which it is historically known, of Théra.+

Such is the foundation-legend of Théra, believed both by the Lacedemonians and by the Thereans, and interesting miny» in as it brings before us, characteristically as well as Ttiphylia. vividly, the persons and feelings of the mythical world,—the Argonauts with the Tyndarids as their children. In Lepreum, as in the other towns of Triphylia, the descent from the Minyz of old seems to have been believed in the historical times, and the mention of the river Minyéius in those regions by Homer tended to confirm it.2 But people were not unanimous as to the legend by which that descent should be made out ; while some adopted the story just cited from Herodotus, others imagined that Chléris, who had come from the Minyeian town of Orchomenus as the wife of Néleus to Pylus, had brought with her a body of her countrymen.’

These Minyze from Lemnos and Imbros appear again as portions

1 Herodot. iv. 145—149; Valer. Maxim. iv. ὁ. 6; Polyzn. vii. 49, who however gives the narrative differently

with Strabo for admittin sity of stories (Histoire des Colonies Grecques, t. iii. ch. 7, p. 54)—‘‘ Aprés

this diver-

by mentioning ‘‘ Tyrrhenians from Lem- nos aiding Sparta during the Helotic war”: another narrative in his collec- tion (viii. 71), though imperfectly pre- served, seems to approach more closely to Herudotus.

2 Homer, Iliad, xi. 721.

3Strabo, viii. p. 347. M. Raoul Rochette, who treats the legends for the most part as if they were so much authentic history, is much displeased

des détails si clairs et si positifs, com- ment est-il possible que ce méme Stra- bon, bouleversant toute la chronologie, fasse arriver les Minyens dans la Triphylie sous la conduite de Chloris, mére de Nestor?”

The story which M. Raoul Rochette thus puts aside is _ equal in point of credibility to that which he accepts: in fact no measure of credibility can be applied,

464 CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. Part I.

of another narrative respecting the settlement of the colony of © Mélos. It has already been mentioned, that when the Herakleids and the Dorians invaded Lacénia, Philonomus, an Achean, treacherously betrayed to them the country, for which he received _ as his recompense the territory of Amykle. He is said tohave — peopled this territory by introducing detachments of Minyz from Lemnos and Imbros, who in the third generation after the return of the Herakleids, became so discontented and mutinons, that the — Lacedseemonians resolved to send them out of. the country as” emigrants, under their chiefs Polis and Delphus. Taking the Micrations “irection of Kréte, they stopped in their way tolanda — ΡΟΝ ΟΥΒΟΜΘΘΟ ΟΣ their colonists on the island of Melos, which remained throughout the historical times a faithful and attached colony of Lacedeemén.' On arriving in Kréte, they are said to have settled at the town of Gortyn. We find, moreover, — that other Dorian establishments, either from Lacedemén or — Argos, were formed in Kréte, and Lyktos in particular is noticed, not only as a colony of Sparta, but as distinguished for the — analogy of its laws and customs.? It is even said that Kréte, immediately after the Trojan war, had been visited by the wrath of the gods, and depopulated by famine and pestilence, and that — in the third generation afterwards, so great was the influx of © immigrants, that the entire population of the island was renewed _ with the exception of the Eteokrétes at Polichnz and Presus.® There were Dorians in Kréte in the time of the Odyssey: — Homer mentions different languages and different races of men, Eteokrétes, Kydénes, Dorians, Acheans, and Pelasgians, as all co-existing in the island, which he describes to be populous, and — to contain ninety cities. A legend given by Andrén, based seemingly upon the statement of Herodotus, that Dérus the son Story of οὗ Hellen had settled in Histizétis, ascribed the first ἀπάτη, ~—_ introduction of the three last races to Tektaphus son of Dérus—who had led forth from that country a colony of

1 Conén, Narrat. 36. Compare Plut- xii.). Diodérus(v. 80), as well as Hero- _ arch, Question. Grec. c. 21, where dotus, mentees nae large immi- Tyrrhenians from Lemnos are men- grations into ΓΝ from Lacedemén tioned, asin the passage of Polyenus and Argos; but even the i referred to in a preceding note. research of M. Raoul (His- ω 2 Strabo, x. p. 481; Aristot, Polit. ii. toire oe eae 68, t. iii. c. 9,

60—68) fails in iisti

3 Herodot. vii. 171 (see above, Ch. particulars of them. br *

CHap. XVIII. KRETE AND RHODES. 465

Dorians, Achzeans, and Pelasgians, and had landed in Kréte during the reign of the indigenous king Kres.1_ This story of Andrén so exactly fits on to the Homeric Catalogue of Kretan inhabitants, that we may reasonably presume it to have been designedly arranged with reference to that Catalogue, so as to afford some plausible account, consistently with the received legendary chronology, how there came to be Dorians in Kréte before the Trojan war—the Dorian colonies after the return of the Herakleids being of course long posterior in supposed order of time. To find a leader sufficiently early for his hypothesis, Andrén ascends to the primitive Eponymus Dérus, to whose son Tektaphus he ascribes the introduction of a mixed colony of Dorians, Achzans, and Pelasgians into Kréte. These are the exact three races enumerated in the Odyssey, and the king Krés, whom Andrén affirms to have been then reigning in the island, represents the Eteokrétes and Kydénes in the list of Homer. The story seems to have found favour among native Kretan historians, as it doubtless serves to obviate what would otherwise be a con- tradiction in the legendary chronology.?

Another Dorian emigration from Peloponnésus to Kréte, which extended also to Rhodes and Kés, is farther said to Aitheme- have been conducted by Althemenés, who had been πόδ, foun- one of the chiefs in the expedition against Attica in Rhodes. which Kodrus perished. This prince, a Herakleid and third in descent from Témenus, was induced to expatriate by a family quarrel, and conducted a body of Dorian colonists from Argos first to Kréte, where some of them remained; but the greater

menta Historicorum Grecorum, ed, Didot, p. Ixxxii.; and the Prolusio de Atthidum Scriptoribus, prefixed to

_ iSteph. Byz. v. Δώριον.---Περὶ ὧν ἱστορεῖ "Avdpwv, Κρητὸς ἐν τῇ νήσῳ ασιλεύοντος, Τέκταφον τὸν Δώρου τοῦ

Ἑλληνος, ὁρμήσαντα ἐκ τῆς ἐν Θετταλίᾳ τότε μὲν Δωρίδος, νῦν δὲ Ἱστιαιώτιδος καλουμένης, ἀφικέσθαι εἰς Κρήτην μετὰ Δωριέων τε καὶ ᾿Αχαιῶν καὶ Ἐφ συν, τῶν οὐκ ἀπαράντων εἰς Τυῤῥηνίαν. Com- pare Strabo, x. p. 475—476, from which itis plain that the story was adduced by Andrén with a special explanatory riclasi se to the passage in the Odyssey xv. 175).

The age of Andrén, one of the authors of Atthides, is not precisely ascertain- able, but he can hardly be put earlier than 300 B.C.; see the preliminary Dis- sertation of C, MiWer to the Frag-

Lenz’s edition of the Fragments of Phanodémus and Démén, p. xxviii. Lips, 1812,

2 Sve Diodér. iv. 60; v. 80. From Strabo (i. c¢.), however, we see that others rejected the story of Andrén.

QO. Miilier (History of the Dorians, b. i. c. 1. § 9) accepts the story as sub- stantially true, putting aside the name Dérus, and even regards it as certain that Minos of Knéssus was a Dorian: but the evidence with which he sup- orts this conclusion appears to me oose and fanciful.

1—30

466 CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE. Pant I.

number accompanied him to Rhodes, in which island, after expelling the Karian possessors, he founded the three cities of Lindus, Ialysus, and Kamairus.!

It is proper here to add, that the legend of the Rhodian archeologists respecting their (kist Althemenés, who was worshipped in the island with heroic honours, was something totally different from the preceding. Althemenés was a Krétan, son of the king Katreus, and grandson of Minos. An oracle pre- dicted to him that he would one day kill his father: eager to escape so terrible a destiny, he quitted Kréte, and conducted a colony to Rhodes, where the famous temple of the Atabyrian Zeus, on the lofty summit of Mount Atabyrum, was ascribed to his foundation, built so as to command a view of Kréte. He had been settled on the island for some time, when his father Katreus, anxious again to embrace his only son, followed him from Kréte: he landed in Rhodes during the night without being known, and a casual collision took place between his attendants and the islanders. Althemenés hastened to the shore to assist in repelling the supposed enemies, and in the fray had the misfortune to kill his aged father.?

Either the emigrants who accompanied Althemenés, or some tong hen other Dorian colonists afterwards, are reported to have Karpathus, settled at Kés, Knidus, Karpathus, and Halikarnassus. To the last-mentioned city, however, Anthés of Treezén is assigned as the cekist ; the emigrants who accompanied him were said to have belonged to the Dymanian tribe, one of the three tribes always found in a Doric state: and the city seems to have been characterized as a colony sometimes of Treezén, sometimes

of Argos.*

1 Con6n, Narrat. 47; Ephorus, Frag. Paper gg apud Stephan. Byz. v. 62, ed. Marx. yee pea

2 Diodor. v. 66; Ἀμόθοῦθει fii, 2, Sercdoies | (vii. 99) calls Halikarnas- In the chapter next but one Dro Bed sus a colony of Trezén; Pomponius this, Diod6rus had made express: refer- Mela (i. 16), of ae ΤΣ names ence to native Rhodian mythologists,— both 5 and δ᾿ vaheseling supposes named Zeno (c. oD ἢ the two cekists whom he mentio

et

Ww poses pene. a ee ee eet were not 80 w settlers in non Sore δὲ ae as — inhabitants of themenés ; this ὁ handel eet ποτ νας 4 ng οὐδ ἐξα κα σή if we are to treat the two narratives as (see (ce cpa ἀν ᾿Αθῆναι ; and a historical. curious

ption in Boec! h's Corpus 3 Strabo, xiv. p. 653; Pausan. ii. 39, Inscriptionum, No. 2656).

Cnap. XVII]. LEGENDARY PAST IMAGINED AS DISTANT. 467

We thus have the Molic, the Ionic, and the Doric colonial establishments in Asia, all springing out of the legendary age, and all set forth as consequences, direct or indirect, of what is called the Return of the Herakleids, or the Dorian conquest of Peloponnésus. According to the received chronology, they are succeeded by a period, supposed to comprise nearly three centuries, which is almost an entire blank, before we reach ypteryening authentic chronology and the first recorded Olympiad roves —and they thus form the concluding events of the legend and mythical world, out of which we now pass into Mstory- historical Greece, such as it stands at the last-mentioned epoch. It is by these migrations that the parts of the Hellenic aggregate are distributed into the places which they occupy at the dawn of historical daylight—Dorians, Arcadians, &tolo-Eleians, and Acheeans, sharing Peloponnésus unequally among them—Molians, Tonians, and Dorians, settled both in the islands of the Agean and the coast of Asia-Minor. The Return of the Herakleids, as well as the three emigrations, Holic, Ionic, and Doric, present the legendary explanation, suitable to the feelings and belief of the people, showing how Greece passed from the heroic races who besieged Troy and Thébes, piloted the adventurous Argé, and slew the monstrous boar of Kalydén—to the historical races, differently named and classified, who furnished victors to the Olympic and Pythian games,

A patient and learned French writer, M. Raoul Rochette—who construes all the events of the heroic age, generally Difficult

of explain- speaking, as somuch real history, only makingallowance ing that for the mistakes and exaggerations of poets,—is greatly te ioe perplexed by the blank and interruption which this μευ δ᾽ supposed continuous series of history presents, from tradition. the Return of the Herakleids down to the beginning of the Olympiads. He cannot explain to himself so longa period of absolute quiescence, after the important incidents and striking adventures of the heroic age. If there happened nothing worthy of record during this long period—as he presumes from the fact that nothing has been transmitted—he concludes that this must have arisen from the state of suffering and exhaustion

in which previous wars and revolution had left the Greeks ; a

468 CLOSING EVENTS OF LEGENDARY GREECE.

Part 1.

long interval of complete inaction being required to heal such wounds,! Assuming Μ. Rochette’s view of the heroic ages to be correct,

Such an and reasoning upon the supposition that the adventures interval ascribed to the Grecian heroes are matters of historical connected reality, transmitted by tradition from a period of time — ὃς four centuries before the recorded Olympiads, and legend. only embellished by describing poets—the blank

which he here dwells upon is, to say the least of it, embarrassing and unaccountable. It is strange that the stream of tradition, if it had once begun to flow, should (like several of the rivers in Greece) be submerged for two or three centuries and then re-appear. But when we make what appears to me the proper distinction between legend and history, it will be seen that a period of blank time between the two is perfectly conformable to the conditions under which the former is generated. Itis not the immediate past, but a supposed remote past, which forms the suitable atmosphere of mythical narrative,—a past originally quite undetermined in respect to distance from the present, as we see in the Iliad and Odyssey. And even when we come down to the genealogical poets, who affect to give a certain measure of bygone time, and a succession of persons as well as of events, still the names whom they most delight to honour and upon whose

1 “Ta période qui me semble la plus obscure et la ped babe via de cul- tés, n’est pas que je viens de parcourir : eek on celle ani sépare 1" 6

τ des Héraclides de Helge τὴ ution

ympiades. La des pao ἔν hore et de copompe, est sans doute la cause en grande partie du vide immense que nous offre dans cet inter- valle l’histoire de la Gréce. Mais si Yon en exgepte Pétablissement des colonies oliennes, Doriennes, et Toniennes, de l’Asie Mineure, et quel- ques événemens, trés rapprochés ela premitre de ces époques, l’espace de plus de quatre siécles qui les sépare est couvert d’une obscurité presque impénétrable, et l’on aura toujours lieu de s’étonner que les ouvrages des anciens n’offrent avcun secours pour remplir une lacune aussi considérable. Une pareille absence doit aussi nous faire soupgonner qu'il se passa Grice peu de ces grands événemens qui se gravent fortement dans la mémoire

des hommes : puisque, si les traces ne s’en étaient point conservées dans les écrits des ,contemporains, au moins le» souvenir s’en serait-il perpétué par des monumens: or les monumens νὰ fom toire se taisent Bese ἃ donc croire que la Gréce, agitée_ depuis si long temps per des des révolutions de

toute espéce, ses der- niéres naeee ae se tourna toute entiére vers des occupations paisibles, et ne cherc! mdant ce long a valle, qu’A gu go au sein du ree de l’'abondance qui en est la suite, les plaies profondes que sa vopaialsan avait souffertes.” (Raoul Rochette, Histoire des Colonies Grecques, t. it. c. * . 455.)

ot pee Gillies

of road ch. ft be δ pe eine obscure transactions of οἱ Gi the four follo root ὦ hein

la pond with the = Beene at the Trojan

Pie of the Argonautic expedition,’

Cyap., XVIII. LEGENDARY PAST IMAGINED AS DISTANT. 469

exploits they chiefly expatiate, are those of the ancestral gods and heroes of the tribe and their supposed contemporaries; ancestors separated by a long lineage from the present hearer. The gods and heroes were conceived as removed from him by several generations, and the legendary matter which was grouped around them appeared only the more imposing when exhibited at a respectful distance, beyond the days of father and grandfather and of all known predecessors. The Odes of Pindar strikingly illustrate this tendency. We thus see how it happened that between the times assigned to heroic adventure and those of historical record, there existed an intermediate blank, filled with inglorious names; and how amongst the same society, which cared not to remember proceedings of fathers and grandfathers, there circulated much popular and accredited narrative respecting real or supposed ancestors long past and gone. The obscure and barren centuries which immediately precede the first recorded Olympiad, form the natural separation between the legendary return of the Herakleids and the historical wars of Sparta against Messéné ;—between the province of legend wherein matter of fact (if any there be) is so intimately combined with its accom- paniments of fiction, as to be undistinguishable without the aid of extrinsic evidence—and that of history, where some matters of fact can be ascertained, and where a sagacious criticism may be usefully employed in trying to add to their number

470 CHRONOLOGY OF GRECIAN LEGEND.

Part I.

CHAPTER XIX. APPLICATION OF CHRONOLOGY TO GRECIAN LEGEND.

I NEED not repeat, what has already been sufficiently set forth in the preceding pages, that the mass of Grecian incident anterior to 776 B.c. appears to me not reducible either to history or to chronology, and that any chronological systems which may be applied to it must be essentially uncertified and illusory. It was however chronologised in ancient times, and has continued to be so in modern; and the various schemes employed

Different

snrolietoey for this purpose may be found stated and compared roposed _ in the first volume (the last published) of Mr. Fynes τον ΣΤ] Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici. There were among the events. Greeks, and there still are among modern scholars,

important differences as to the dates of the principal events: Eratosthenés dissented both from Herodotus and from Phanias and Kallimachus, while Larcher and Raoul Rochette (who follow Herodotus) stand opposed to O. Miiller and to Mr. Clinton.?

1 Larcherand Raoul Rochette, adopt- ing the pag map κα των date of Herodotus, fix the taking of Troy at 1270 B.c., and the Return of the Herakleids at 1190 B.C, Acco to the scheme of Eratosthenés, these two events stand

of πῆερηςψτ ay 3 p. xxviii. of the same volume) that the ancient chronologists in their arrangement of the mythical events as antecedent and et were guided by certain numeri

attachments, y by @ reverence

at 1184 and 1104 B.c,

O. Mtiller, in his Chronological Tables (Appendix vi. to History of Dorians, vol. ii. p. 441, Engl. transl.), gives no dates or computation of years anterior to the Capture of Troy and the Return of the Herakleids, which he places with Eratosthenés in 1184 and 1104 B.c,

C. Miiller thinks (in his Annotatio ad Marmor Parium, appended to the Hg ore Historicorum Grecorum, ed. Didot, pp. 556, 568, 572; compare his Prefatory Notice of the Fragments

for the cycle of 63 years, product of the sacred num 7x9=63. I cannot think that he makes out his h esis satisfactorily, as to the partic cycle followed, though it is not improbable that some preconceived numerical theories ape ae these early calcula- tors. He attention to the fact that the Alexandrine computation of dates was only one among a number of others discrepant, and that modern inquirers are too apt to treat it as if it stood alone, or carried some superior authority (pp. 568-572; compar¢

Cuap XIX. APPLICATION OF CHRONOLOGY. 471

That the reader may have a general conception of the order in which these legendary events were disposed, I transcribe from the Fasti Hellenici a double chronological table, contained in p. 139, in which the dates are placed in series, from Phordnen- to the Olympiad of Corcebus in B.c. 776—in the first colum: according to the system of Eratosthenés, in the second according to that of Kallimachus.

“The following table (says Mr. Clinton) offers a summary view of the leading periods from Phoréneus to the Olympiad of Corcebus, and exhibits a double series of dates; the one pro- ceeding from the date of Eratosthenés, the other from a date founded on the reduced calculations of Phanias and Kallimachus, which strike out fifty-six years from the amount of Eratosthenés. Phanias, as we have seen, omitted fifty-five years between the Return and the registered Olympiads; for so we may under- stand the account: Kallimachus, fifty-six years between the Olympiad in which Corcebus won.! The first column of this table exhibits the current years before and after the fall of Troy: in the second column of dates the complete intervals are expressed.”

Wherever chronology is possible, researches such as those of Mr, Clinton, which have conduced so much to the he data, better understanding of the later times of Greece, essential to

‘ chronolo- deserve respectful attention. But the ablest chrono- gical deter- logist can accomplish nothing, unless he is supplied Miration, with a certain basis of matters of fact, pure and wanting.

distinguishable from fiction, and authenticated by witnesses,

both knowing the truth and willing to declare it. Possessing this preliminary stock, he may reason from it to refute distinct falsehoods and to correct partial mistakes: but if all the original statements submitted to him contained truth (at least wherever there is truth), in a sort of chemical combination with fiction, which he has no means of decomposing,—he is in the condition of one who tries to solve a problem without data: he is first

Clemen. Alex. Stromat. i. Ὁ. 145, observation which, to say the least of Sylb.). For example, O. Miller ob- it, ascribes to Eratosthenés a far higher serves (Appendix to Hist. of Dorians, authority than he is entitled to.

p. 442), that “Larcher’s criticism and 1 The date of Kallimachus for Iphitus rejection of the Alexandrine chronolo- is hed athe by Clavier (Prem. Temps ag may perhaps be found as ground- tom, ii. p. 203), who considers 1t as no’ less as they are presumptuous,” an far from the truth,

CHRONOLOGY OF GRECIAN LEGEND. Part I.

472 Sater Years rns before borwesi| lw | Salle e Fall tosth mach of Troy. ἐκ πῷ εν events. (670)! Fecatorge ἄρα ae. ite a 287 (1758) (697) cess) { Pelasgee ¥.,p.18,88 2. ΟΣ lt } 33 | Gass) | Gato) (250) ion, p. 42 ΞΞ ὡς thts δ0 (1433) (1877) 200) {| items pss” tf 8 | sea | sen (150) el Aphis, Fatwa” ee o 20 (1333) 180 | Kadmus,p.85 . Sax as, oe yee 30 1313 1257 (00) ae εἴ ΡΞ se 22 (1283) a) Birth of piece) Ὡς x0 ᾿Ξ 3 ΜΝ Gate) 42 nau wa ee 1 30 net Theban war, p. δ], h. ἢ ἘΞ 4 1213 1157 26 Death of Hercules au 2 1209 1153 24 Death of Furystheus, p. catnser x Ae 4 1207 1151 20 Death of Hylius δ δὼ 2y Sm 1203 1147 18 Accession of Agamemnon aS ve 2 1200 1144 16 Second Theban war, p. 87, 1 es 6 1198 1142 10 Trojan expedition (θυ dy Im) et ἢ ἀμμὲ 9 1192 1186 Years after the Fall of Troy. y taken Η 1188 1127 8 he reigns at A in the sth year τς 52 1176 1120 The Thessali occup: 60 The pe return Baotia in the 20 1124 1068 Z£olic vation ‘under Penthilus |: 80 πὰ; σὸς ne ἈΝ ΎΝΕ ΒΡ 29 1104 1048 109 hile τὰ reigns at Corinth, p. 180, m. 1 1075 1019 110 Migration of Theras . 29 1074 1018 181 lane om 1380 years after the τ ἐς 8 1053 997 139 Death o of Codrus 1 1045 989 140 Ionic 2 ee 60 years after the Return 6} 1044 988 151 Cymé founded 150 years after the 1689 Sm ah 168 afte the τ rie mt years r the era, τι 105, 05, t. oe ce: 181 1015 959 s 108 800 Olympiad of Jphitus .. ve 52 } 884 828 = } Olympiad οὗ Corebus .. .. «ὃ ὦ 776 776

1 These dates, distinguished fromthe conjectures, founded upon the proba’ rest by brackets, are proposed as mere Tength of generations. “tei » ed

Cap, XIX. CLINTON’S CHRONOLOGY. 473

obliged to construct his own data, and from them to extract his conclusions, The statements of the epic poets, our only original witnesses in this case, correspond to the description here given. Whether the proportion of truth contained in them be smaller or greater, it is at all events unassignable,—and the constant and intimate admixture of fiction is both indisputable in itself, and indeed essential to the purpose and profession of those from whom the tales proceed. Of such a character are all the deposing witnesses, even where their tales agree ; and it is out of a heap of such tales, not agreeing, but discrepant in a thousand ways, and without a morsel of pure authenticated truth,—that the critic is called upon to draw out a methodical series of historical events adorned with chronological dates.

If we could imagine a modern critical scholar transported into Greece at the time of the Persian war—endued with his present habits of appreciating historical evidence, without sharing in the religious or patriotic feelings of the country—and invited to prepare, out of the great body of Grecian epic which then existed, a History and Chronology of Greece anterior to 776 B.©., assigning reasons as well for what he admitted as for what he rejected—I feel persuaded that he would have judged the under- taking to be little better than a process of guess-work. But the modern critic finds that not only Pherekydés chronolo- and Hellanikus, but also Herodotus and Thucydidés Sp the same have either attempted the task or sanctioned the belief Πὰν κέν bat that it was practicable,—a matter not at all surprising, witha when we consider both their narrow experience of canon of historical evidence and the powerful ascendency of Pe religion and patriotism in predisposing them to antiquarian belief,—and he therefore accepts the problem as they have bequeathed it, adding his own efforts to bring it to a satisfactory solution, Nevertheless, he not only follows them with some degree of reserve and uneasiness, but even admits important distinctions quite foreign to their habits of thought. Thucydidés talks of the deeds of Hellén and his sons with as much confidence as we now speak of William the Conqueror ; Mr. Clinton recog- nises Hellén with his sons Dérus, Zolus and Xuthus, as fictitious persons. Herodotus recites the great heroic genealogies down from Kadmus and Danaus with a belief not less complete in the

474 CHRONOLOGY OF GRECIAN LEGEND. Part 1.

higher members of the series than in the lower: but Mr. Clinton admits a radical distinction in the evidence of events before and after the first recorded Olympiad, or 776 B.c.—“ the first date in Grecian chronology (he remarks, p. 123) which can be fixed upon authentic evidence” —the highest point to which Grecian chrono- logy, reckoning upward, can be carried. Of this important epoch in Grecian development,—the commencement of authentic chronological life,—Herodotus and Thucydidés had no knowledge or took no account: the later chronologists, from Timzus down- wards, noted it, and made it serve as the basis of their chrono- logical comparisons, so far as it went: but neither Eratosthenés nor Apollodérus seems to have recognised (though Varro and Africanus did recognise) a marked difference in respect of certainty or authenticity between the period before and the period after.

In further illustration of Mr. Clinton’s opinion that the first recorded Olympiad is the earliest date which can be fixed upon Mr. Clin. authentic evidence, we have in Ὁ. 138 the following ton’s opin- just remarks in reference to the dissentient views computa- of Eratosthenés, Phanias and Kallimachus, about the tion of the date of the Trojan war :—“The chronology of Eratos- Trojan war. thenés (he says), founded on a careful comparison οὗ circumstances, and approved by those to whom the same stores of — information were open, is entitled to our respect. But we must — remember that a conjectural date can never rise to the authority of evidence ; that what is accepted as a substitute for testimony, is not an equivalent ; witnesses only can prove a date, and in the want of these, the knowledge of it is plainly beyond our reach. — If, in the absence of a better light, we seek for what is probable, we are not to forget the distinction between conjecture and proof; — between what is probable and what is certain. The computation then of Eratosthenés for the war of Troy is open to inquiry ; and if we find it adverse to the opinions of many preceding writers, — who fixed a lower date, and adverse to the acknowledged length of generation in the most authentic dynasties, we are allowed to follow other guides, who give us a lower epoch.” δ

Here Mr, Clinton again plainly acknowledges the want of 4 evidence and the irremediable uncertainty of Grecian . Ac

a+ ἅπας

CHap. XIX. ERATOSTHENES—THE FIRST OLYMPIAD. 475

argument is, not simply that “the computation of Eratosthenés was open to inquiry” (which few would be found to deny), but that both Eratosthenés and Phanias had delivered positive opinions upon a point on which no sufficient evidence was acces- sible, and therefore that neither the one nor the other was a guide to befollowed.1 Mr. Clinton does indeed speak of authentic dynasties prior to the first recorded Olympiad, but if there be any such, reaching up from that period to a supposed point coeval with or anterior to the war of Troy—TI see no good reason for the marked distinction which he draws between chronology before and chronology after the Olympiad of Korcebus, or for the necessity which he feels of suspending his upward reckoning at the last-mentioned epoch, and beginning a different process, called “ἃ downward reckoning,” from the higher epoch (supposed to be somehow ascertained without any upward reckoning) of the first patriarch from whom such authentic dynasty emanates.’

1 Karl Miiller observes (in the Dis- that event asa fixed point for chrono. sertation above referred to, appended τὴς er determinations generally. But

to the Fragmenta Historicorum Gre- ratosthenés could perform correctly corum, p. 568)—‘‘Quod attinet sram Trojanam, tot obruimur et tam diversis veterum scriptorum computationibus, ut singulas enumerare negotium sit teedii plenum, eas vel probare vel improbare res vana nec vacua ab arro- gantid. Nam nemo hodie nescit Sennen fides his habenda sit omni- us.”

2 The distinction which Mr. Clinton draws between an upward and a down- ward chronology is one to which I cannot assent. His doctrine is, that upward chronology is trustworthy and cen νῷ up to the first recorded

lympiad: downward chronology is trustworthy and _ practicable om Phoroneus down to the Ionic migra- tion: what is uncertain is the length of the intermediate line which joins the Ionic migration to the first recorded Olympiad,—the downward and the upward terminus. (See Fasti Hellenici vol. i, Introduct. p. ix. second edit. an p. 128, ch. vi.)

All ager B must begin by reckoning upw. 3 When by this ΜΝ we have arrived at a certain

etermined sera in earlier time, we may from that date reckon downwards, if we please. We must be able to reckon ea from the present time to the hristian xra, before we can employ

the upward reckoning from his own time to the fall of rey, so he could also perform the upward reckoning up to the nearer point of the Ionic mi tion. Itis true that Eratosthenés gives all his statements of time from an older point to a newer (so far at least as we can judge from Clemens Alex. Strom. 1. p. 826) ; he says, ‘‘ From the capture of Troy to the return of the Herakleids is 80 years; from thence to the Ionic igration, 60 years; then further on, to the dianship of Lykurgus, 159 years ; then to the year of the first Olympiad, 108 years; from _ which Olympiad to the invasion of Xerxés, 297 years ; from whence to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, 48 years, &c. But here is no difference between bs elect reckoning as high as the first Olympiad, and then downward reckon- ing for the intervals of time above it. Eratosthenés first found or made some upward reckoning to the Trojan cap- ture, either from his own time or from some time at a known distance from his own: he then assumes the capture of Troy as an era, and gives statements of intervals going downwards to the Peloponnesian war: amongst other statements, he assi clearly that interval which Mr. Clinton hymna to be undiscoverable, viz, the space of

476 CHRONOLOGY OF GRECIAN LEGEND. Part Ι.

Herodotus and Thucydidés might well, upon this supposition, ask of Mr. Clinton, why he called upon them to alter their method of proceeding at the year 776 B.c., and why they might not be allowed to pursue their “upward chronological reckoning” without interruption from Leonidas up to Danaus, or from Peisistratus up to Hellén and Deukalién, without any alteration in the point of view. Authentic dynasties from the Olympiads, up to an epoch above the Trojan war, would enable us to obtain chronological proof of the latter date, instead of being reduced (as Mr. Clinton affirms that we are) to “conjecture” instead of proof.

The whole question, as to the value of the reckoning from the Olympiads up to Phoréneus, does in truth turn upon this one point :—Are those genealogies which profess to cover the space between the two authentic and trustworthy or not? Mr. Clinton appears to feel that they are not so, when he admits the essential

difference in the character of the evidence, and the

eda necessity of altering the method of computation gicalcom- before and after the first recorded Olympiad : yet in wg serial his Preface he labours to prove that they possess worthiness historical worth and are in the main correctly set pve War Ry forth : moreover, that the fictitious persons, wherever

any such are intermingled, may be detected and eliminated. The evidences upon which he relies, are—1. Inserip- tions ; 2. The early poets.

1. An inscription, being nothing but a piece of writing on marble, carries evidentiary value under the same

doata sie: conditions as a published writing on paper. If the fhegeness inscriber reports ἃ contemporary fact which he had — pe the means of knowing, and if there be no reason to

suspect misrepresentation, we believe this assertion: — if, on the other hand, he records facts belonging to a long © period before his own time, his authority counts for little,

time between the Ionic emigration and the first Olympiad, interposing one epoch between them. I reject the computation of Eratosthenés, or any other computation, to determine the 7y para: te of the Trojan war; but if 1 admitted it, I could have no hesita- tion in admitting also the space which

he defines between the Ionic migration

and the first Olympiad. Eusebius ey τὶ Ey. x. 9, p. 485) reckons upwards m the birth of Christ, making various halts but never breaking off, to the initial phenomena of Grecian antiquity —the deluge of Deukalién and the ~ conflagration of Phaéthén,

CuaP. XIX. CHRONOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF INSCRIPTIONS. 477

except in so far as we can verify and appreciate his means of knowledge.

In estimating therefore the probative force of any inscription, the first and most indispensable point is to assure 1 Insorip- ourselves of its date. Amongst all the public registers tions— and inscriptions alluded to by Mr. Clinton, there is more: not one which can be positively referred to a date @tiauity. anterior to 776 B.o. The quoit of Iphitus—the public registers at Sparta, Corinth, and Elis—the list of the priestesses of Juno at Argos—are all of a date completely uncertified. O. Miiller does indeed agree with Mr. Clinton (though in my opinion without any sufficient proof) in assigning the quoit of Iphitus to the age ascribed to that prince: and if we even grant thus much, we shall have an inscription as old (adopting Mr. Clinton’s deter- mination of the age of Iphitus) as 828 Bc. But when Mr. Clinton quotes O. Miiller as admitting the registers of Sparta, Corinth, and Elis, it is right to add that the latter does not profess to guarantee the authenticity of these documents, or the age αὖ which such registers began’to be kept. It is not to be doubted that there were registers of the kings of Sparta carrying them up to Héraklés, and of the kings of Elis from Oxylus to Iphitus: but the question is, at what time did these lists begin to be kept continuously? This is a point which we have no means of deciding, nor can we accept Mr. Clinton’s unsupported con- jecture, when he tell us— Perhaps these were begun to be written as early as B.c. 1048, the probable time of the Dorian conquest”. Again he tells us—“At Argos a register was pre- served of the priestesses of Juno, which might be more ancient than the catalogues of the kings of Sparta or Corinth. That register, from which Hellanikus composed his work, contained the priestesses from the earliest times down to the age of Hellanikus himself. . . . But this catalogue might have been commenced as early as the Trojan war itself, and even at a still earlier date” (pp. x. xi.). Again, respecting the inscriptions quoted by Herodotus from the temple of the Ismenian Apollo at Thébes, in which Amphitryo and Laodamas are named, Mr. Clinton says—“ They were ancient in the time of Herodotus, which may perhaps carry them back 400 years before his time: and in that case they might approach within 300 years of

478 - CHRONOLOGY OF GRECIAN LEGEND. Pape

Laodamas and within 400 years of the probable time of Kadmus himself.”——“ It is granted (he adds in a note) that these inscrip- — tions were not genuine, that is, not of the date to which they were assigned by Herodotus himself. But that they were ancient cannot be doubted,” &c. The time when Herodotus saw the temple of the Ismenian —

. Apollo at Thébes can hardly have been earlier than 450 B.c.: reckoning upwards from hence to 776 B.c., we have an interval — of 326 years: the inscriptions which Herodotus saw may well therefore have been ancient, without being earlier than the first — recorded Olympiad. Mr. Clinton does indeed tell us that ancient — “may perhaps” be construed as 400 years earlier than Herodotus, — But no careful reader can permit himself to convert such bare — possibility into a ground of inference, and to make it available, in conjunction with other similar possibilities before enumerated, for the purpose of showing that there really existed inscriptions — in Greece of a-date anterior to 776 B.c. Unless Mr. Clinton can make out this, he can derive no benefit from inscriptions, in his attempt to substantiate the reality of the mythical persons or of the mythical events. The truth is that the Herakleid pedigree of the Spartar Genealogies kings (as has been observed in a former chapter) is numerous, only one out of the numerous divine and heroic — and of ____ genealogies with which the Hellenic world abounded, — tainable τῷ class of documents which become historical evi- dence only so high in the descending series as με names composing them are authenticated by contemporary, or

1See the string of fabulous names That the Colnlogne of nen priestesses οἱ, laced at the head ofthe Halicarnassian Héréat Argos went nscription, professing to enumerate ἐπ fabulous ents of Hell may bp dwt the series of priests of Poseidon from ellanikus (Frag. the foundation of the city (Inscript. did the No. 2655, Boeckh), with the commen- Si : τανε professed τ = ᾿

tary of the learned editor: compare Amphion, son of Zeus and Antiopé, as also what he a to =e iv the inventor of harp-music (Plutarch,

inscription of a gen De Muse), ὁ. δι δι τον fabulous at τ δε προ a kite (NG (ww 4 remarked in

Mr. Clinton δ ολνα χόστος οἷ The memorable Parian marble is Miiller asa believer in the chronolo itself an Peep iy Bee — legend δ i eroes, and men— are blended ther in the various successive without any con- sciousness of transition in the mind of

EARLIEST INSCRIPTIONS. 479

Cuap. XIX. nearly contemporary, enrolment. At what period this enrolment began, we have no information. Two remarks however may he made, in reference to any approximate guess as to the time when actual registration commenced :—First, that the number of names in the pedigree, or the length of past time which it professes to embrace, affords no presumption of any superior antiquity in the time of registration :—Secondly, that looking to the acknowledged paucity and rudeness of Grecian writing even down to the 60th Olympiad (540 B.c.), and to the absence of the habit of writing, as well as the low estimate of its value, which such a state of things argues, the presumption is, that written enrolment of family genealogies did not commence until a long time after 776 B.¢., and the obligation of proof falls upon him who maintains that it commenced earlier. And this second remark is farther borne out when we observe, that there is no registered list, except that of the Olympic victors, which goes up even so high as 776 B.c. The next list which O. Miiller and Mr. Clinton produce, is that of the Karneonike or victors at the Karneian festival, which reaches only up to 676 8.6.

of Koreebus had been preserved to the:

time of Kratosthenés and Apollodérus”. But this is a mistake: for Miiller expressly disavows any belief in the authenticity of the lists (Dorians, i. p. 146): he says, “1 do not contend tha: the chronological accounts in the Spartan lists form an authentic docu- ment, more than those in the catalogue of the priestesses of Héré and in the list of Halicarnassian priests. The chronological statements in the Spartan lists may have been formed from im- perfect memorials : but the Alexandrine chronologists must have found such tables in existence,” ἄο.

The discrepancies noticed in Hero- dotus (vi. 52) are alone sufficient to prove that continuous registers of the names of the monian kings did not ye to be kept until very long after the date here assigned by Mr. Clinton. nan ( sans, vill. Ὁ

Xenophén ilaus, vii 668 with pg: Herodotus mentions ina been the native Lacedemonian story— that Aristodémus (and not his sons) was the king who conducted the Dorian invaders to Sparta. What is farther remarkable is that Xenophon calls him --ἸΑριστόδημος 6 Ἡρακλέους. e reasonable inference. here is, that

Xenophon believed Aristodemus to be the son of Héraklés. and that this was one of the various genealogical stories current. But here the critics interpose: “δ᾽ Ἡρακλέους (observes Schneider), non παῖς, sed ἀπόγονος, ut ex Herodoto viii. 181 admonuit Weiske”. Surely if Xenophén had meant this, he would have said 6 ad’ Ἡρακλέους.

Perhaps particular exceptional cases might be quoted, wherein the very common phrase of 6 followed by a [rye Mes means descendant, and not son,

ut if any doubt be allowed upon this oint, chronological computations ounded on genealogies, will be expos toa serious additional suspicion. Why are we to assume that Xenophén must give the same story as Herodotus, or his words naturally tell us so

first arranger and methodiser of these early genealogies (p. 8--37).

480 CHRONOLOGY OF GRECIAN LEGEND. Part ἢ.

If Mr, Clinton then makes little out of inscriptions to sustain 2. Karly his view of Grecian history and chronology anterior poets. to the recorded Olympiads, let us examine the infer- ences which he draws from his other source of evidence—the early poets. And here it will be found, First, that in order to maintain the credibility of these witnesses, he lays down positions respecting historical evidence both indefensible in themselves, and especially inapplicable to the early times of Greece: Secondly, that his reasoning is at the same time inconsistent—inasmuch as it includes admissions, which if properly understood and followed out, exhibit these very witnesses, as habitually, indiscriminately, and unconsciously, mingling truth and fiction, and therefore little fit to be believed upon their solitary and unsupported testimony. “The authority even of the genealogies has been called in question by many able and learned persons, who reject Danaus, Kadmus, Hercules, Théseus, and many others, as fictitious persons. It is evident that any fact would come from the hands of the poets embellished with many fabulous additions: and fictitious genea- logies were undoubtedly composed. Because, however, some genealogies were fictitious, we are not justified in concluding that all were fabulous. . . . In estimating then the historical value

of the genealogies transmitted by the early poets, we may take

a middle course; not rejecting them as wholly false, nor yet implicitly receiving all as true. The genealogies contain many real persons, but these are incorporated with many fictitious names. The fictions however will have a basis of truth : the genealogical expression may be false, but the connexion which it describes is real. Even to those who reject the whole as fabulous, the exhi- bition of the early times which is presented in this volume may still be not unacceptable: because it is necessary to the right understanding of antiquity that the opinions of the Greeks con- cerning their own origin should be set before us, even if these are erroneous opinions, and that their story should be told as they have told it themselves. The names preserved by the ancient genealogies may be considered of three kinds; either they were the name of a race or clan converted into the name of an indi- vidual, or they were altogether fictitious, or lastly, they were real

historical names. An attempt is made in the four genealogical

CHaP. XIX. CONFUSION OF REAL AND FICTITIOUS NAMES. 481

tables inserted below to distinguish these three classes of names.

. . Of those who are left in the third class (ie. the real) all are not entitled to remain there. But I have only placed in the third class those names concerning which there seemed to be little doubt. The rest are left to the judgment of the reader.”

Pursuant to this principle of division, Mr. Clinton furmshes four genealogical tables,! in which the names of persons yy. ctin- representing races are printed in capital letters, and pe yar inka those of purely fictitious persons in italics, And these genealogical tables exhibit a curious sample of the intimate com- Personsinto mixture of fiction with that which he calls truth: real jor arin son and mythical father, real husband and mythical bn which it wife, or vice versd. is founded.

Upon Mr. Clinton’s tables we may remark—

1. The names singled out as fictitious are distinguished by no common character, nor any mark either assignable or Remarks on defensible, from those which are left as real. To take his opinion. an example (p. 40), why is Iténus the Ist pointed out as a fiction, while Iténus the 2nd, together with Physcus, Cynus, Salméneus, Ormenus, &c., in the same page, are preserved as real, all of them being eponyms of towns just as much as Iténus ?

2. If we are to discard Hellén, Dérus, Molus, I6n, &c., as not being real individual persons, but expressions for personified races, why are we to retain Kadmus, Danaus, Hyllus, and several others, who are just as much eponyms of races and tribes as the four above mentioned? Hyllus, Pamphylus and Dymas are the eponyms of the three Dorian tribes,’ just as Hoplés and the other three sons of Ién were of the four Attic tribes: Kadmus and Danaus stand in the same relation to the Kadmeians and Danaans, as Argus and Acheus to the Argeians and Acheans. Besides, there are many other names really eponymous, which we cannot now recognise to be so, in consequence of our imperfect acquaint- ance with the subdivisions of the Hellenic population, each of which, speaking generally, had its god or hero, to whom the original of the name was referred. If, then, eponymous names are to be excluded from the category of reality, we shall find that

1See Mr. Clinton’s work, pp. 32,40, Pamphylus and Dymas), says Mr. 100. Clinton, vol. i. ch. 5, p. 109, ‘f the three 2“From these three” (Hyllus, Dorian tribes derived their names”.

482 CHRONOLOGY OF GRECIAN LEGEND. Part I.

the ranks of the real men will be thinned to a far greater extent than is indicated by Mr. Clinton’s tables.

3. Though Mr. Clinton does not carry out consistently either of his disfranchising qualifications among the names and persons of the old mythes, he nevertheless presses them far enough to strike out a sensible proportion of the whole. By conceding thus much to modern scepticism, he has departed from the point of view of Hellanikus and Herodotus, and the ancient historians generally ; and it is singular that the names, which he has been the most forward to sacrifice, are exactly those to which they were most attached and which it would have been most painful to their faith to part with—I mean the eponymous heroes. Neither Herodotus, nor Hellanikus, nor Eratosthenés, nor any one of the chronological reckoners of antiquity, would have admitted the distinction which Mr. Clinton draws between persons real and persons fictitious in the old mythical world, though they might perhaps occasionally, on special grounds, call in question the existence of some individual characters amongst the mythical ΑΣΑ ancestry of Greece; but they never dreamt of that

ces- A sys sionsare general severance into real and fictitious persons partialand Which forms the principle of Mr. Clinton’s “middle

inconsis- at cl to course ”, Their chronological computations for Grecian renderthe antiquity assumed that the mythical characters in fhapplicable their full and entire sequence were all real persons. reba no- Setting up the entire list as real, they calculated so

i many generations to a century, and thus determined the number of centuries which separated themselves from the gods, the heroes, and the autochthonous men, who formed in their view the historical starting-point. But as soon as it is admitted that the personages in the mythical world are divisible into two classes, partly real and partly fictitious, the integrity of the series is broken up, and it can be no longer employed as a basis for chronological calculation. In the estimate of the ancient chronologers, three succeeding persons of the same lineage-- grandfather, father and son—counted for a century; and this may pass in a rough way, so long as you are thoroughly satisfied that they are all real persons: but if in the succession of persons A, B, C, you strike out B as a fiction, the continuity of data necessary for chronological computation disappears. Now Mr.

Cuap. XIX. ANCIENT AND MODERN CHRONOLOGISTS. 483

Clinton is inconsistent with himself in this—that while he abandons the unsuspecting historical faith of the Grecian chrono- logers, he nevertheless continues his chronological computations upon the data of that ancient faith,—upon the assumed reality of all the persons constituting his ante-historical generations. What becomes, for example, of the Herakleid genealogy of the Spartan kings, when it is admitted that eponymous persons are to be cancelled as fictions; seeing that Hyllus, through whom those kings traced their origin to Héraklés, comes in the most distinct manner under that category, as much so as Hoplés the son of Ién? It will be found that’when we once cease to believe in the mythical world as an uninterrupted and unalloyed succession of real individuals, it becomes unfit to serve as a basis for chrono- logical computations, and that Mr. Clinton, when he mutilated the data of the ancient chronologists, ought at the same time to have abandoned their problems as insoluble. Genealogies of real persons, such as Herodotus and Eratosthenés believed in, afford a tolerable basis for calculations of time, within certain limits of error: “genealogies containing many real persons, but incorpo- rated with many fictitious names” (to use the language just cited from Mr. Clinton), are essentially unavailable for such a purpose.

It is right here to add, that I agree in Mr. Clinton’s view of these eponymous persons: I admit with him that “the genea- logical expression may often be false, when the connexion which it describes is real”. Thus, for example, the adoption of Hyllus by Aigimius, the father of Pamphylus and Dymas, to the privi- leges of a son and to a third fraction of his territories, may reasonably be construed as a mythical expression of the fraternal union of the three Dorian tribes, Hylleis, Pamphyli, and Dymanes: so about the relationship of Ién and Achzus, of Dérus and Holus. But if we put this construction on the name of Hyllus, or I6n, or Achzeus, we cannot at the same time employ either of these persons as units in chronological reckoning ; nor is it consistent to recognise them in the lump as members of a distinct class, and yet to enlist them as real individuals in measuring the duration of past time.

4. Mr. Clinton, while professing a wish to tell the story of the Greeks as they have told it themselves, seems unconscious how capitally his point of view differs from theirs. The distinction

484 CHRONOLOGY OF GRECIAN LEGEND. _ Part lL

which he draws between real and fictitious persons would have appeared unreasonable, not to say offensive, to Herodotus or Eratosthenés. It is undoubtedly right that the early history (if so.it is to be called) of the Greeks should be told as they have told it themselves, and with that view I have endeavoured in the previous narrative, as far as I could, to present the primitive legends in their original colour and character—pointing out at the same time the manner in which they were transformed and distilled into history by passing through the retort of later annalists. It is the legend as thus transformed which Mr. Clinton seems to understand as the story told by the Greeks themselves—which cannot be admitted to be true, unless the meaning of the expression be specially explained. In his general. distinction, however, between the real and fictitious persons of the mythical world, he departs essentially from the point of view even of the later Greeks. And if he had consistently followed out that distinction in his particular criticisms, he would have found the ground slipping under his feet in his upward march even to Troy—not to mention the series of eighteen generations farther up to Phoréneus ; but he does not consistently follow it out, and there- fore in practice he deviates little from the footsteps of the ancients.

Enough has been said to show that the witnesses upon whom Mr, Clin- Mr. Clinton relies blend truth and fiction habitually, position indiscriminately and unconsciously, even upon his respecting own admission. Let us now consider the positions evidence. Which he lays down respecting historical evidence. ‘He says (Introduct. p. vi. vii.):—

“We may acknowledge as real persons all those whom there is no reason for rejecting. The presumption is in favour of the early tradition, if no argument can be brought to overthrow it. The persons may be considered real, when the description of them is consonant with the state of the country at that time: when no national prejudice or vanity could be concerned in inventing them: when the tradition is consistent and general: when rival or hostile tribes concur in the leading facts: when the acts ascribed to the person (divested of their poetical ornament) enter into the political system of the age, or form the basis of other transactions which fall within known historical times. Kadmus and Danaus appear to be real persons; for it is conformable to

Crap. X:X, PRESUMPTIVE VALUE OF LESTIMONY. 485

the state of mankind, and perfectly credible, that Pheenician and Egyptian adventurers, in the ages to which these persons are ascribed, should have found their way to the coasts of Greece : and the Greeks (as already observed) had no motive from any national vanity to feign these settlements. Hercules was a real person. His acts were recorded by those who were not friendly to the Dorians ; by Acheans and AZolians and Ionians, who had no vanity to gratify in celebrating the hero of a hostile and rival people. His descendants in many branches remained in many states down to the historical times. His son Tlepolemus and his grandson and great-grandson Cleodzus and Aristomachus are acknowledged (i.e. by O. Miiller) to be real persons: and there is no reason that can be assigned for receiving these, which will not be equally valid for establishing the reality both of Hercules and Hyllus, Above all, Hercules is authenticated by the testi- monies both of the Iliad and Odyssey.”

These positions appear to me inconsistent with sound views of the conditions of historical testimony. According to what is here laid down, we are bound to accept as real all the persons mentioned by Homer, Arktinus, Leschés, the Hesiodic poets, Eumélus, Asius, &c., unless we can adduce some positive ground in each particular ease to prove the contrary. If this position be a true one, the greater part of the history of England, from Brute the Trojan down to Julius Cesar, ought at once to be admitted as valid and worthy of credence. What Mr. Clinton here calls the early tradition, is in point of fact the narrative of these early poets. The word tradition is an equivocal word, and begs the whole question ; for while in its obvious and literal meaning it implies only some- thing handed down, whether truth or fiction—it is tacitly understood to imply a tale descriptive of some real matter of fact, taking its rise at the time when that fact happened, and originally accurate, but corrupted by subsequent oral transmission. Under- standing therefore by Mr. Clinton’s words early tradition, the tales of the old poets, we shall find his position totally inadmissible —that we are bound to admit the persons or statements of Homer and Hesiod as real, unless where we can produce reasons to the contrary. To allow this, would be to put them upon a par with good contemporary witnesses; for no greater privilege can be claimed in. favour even of Thucydidés, than the title of his

486 CHRONOLOGY OF GRECIAN LEGEND. Part L

testimony to be believed unless where it can be contradicted on special grounds. The presumption in favour of an asserting witness is either strong, or weak, or positively nothing, according to the compound ratio of his means of knowledge, his moral and To what intellectual habits, and his motive to speak the truth. paces παγῷ Thus, for instance, when Hesiod tells us that his may stand father quitted the Holic Kymé and came to Askra in of the early Bcedtia, we may fully believe him; but when he poets. describes to us the battles between the Olympic gods and the Titans, or between Héraklés and Kyknus—or when Homer depicts the efforts of Hectér, aided by Apollo, for the defence of Troy, and the struggles of Achilles and Odysseus, with the assistance of Héré and Poseidén, for the destruction of that city, events professedly long past and gone—we cannot presume either of them to be in any way worthy of belief. It cannot be shown that they possessed any means of knowledge, while it is certain that they could have no motive to consider historical truth: their object was to satisfy an uncritical appetite for narrative, and to interest the emotions of their hearers. Mr. Clinton says, that “the persons may be considered real when the description of them is consistent with the state of the country at that time”. But he has forgotten, first, that we know nothing of the state of the country except what these very poets tell us; next, that fictitious persons may be just as consonant to the state of the country as real persons. While therefore, on the one hand, we have no independent evidence either to affirm or to deny that Achilles or Agamemnén are consistent with the state of Greece or Asia Minor at a certain supposed date 1183 B.c.,—so, on the other hand, even assuming such consistency to be made out, this of itself would not prove them to be real persons.

Mr. Clinton’s reasoning altogether overlooks the existence of Plausible plausible fiction—fictitious stories which harmonise satisfies the perfectly well with the general course of facts, and foniitions which are distinguished from matters of fact not by by Mr. any internal character, but by the circumstance that not distin. matter of fact has some competent and well-informed

ishable witness to authenticate it, either directly or through without the legitimate inference. Fiction may be, and often is, evidence. eXtravagant andincredible; butit may also be plausible

Cuap. XIX. PLAUSIBLE FIOTION. 487

and specious, and in that case there is nothing but the want of an attesting certificate to distinguish it from truth. Now all the tests, which Mr. Clinton proposes as guarantees of the reality of the Homeric persons, will be just as well satisfied by plausible fiction as by actual matter of fact ; the plausibility of the fiction consists in its satisfying those and other similar conditions. In most cases, the tales of the poets did fall in with the existing current of feelings in their audience: “prejudice and vanity” are not the only feelings, but doubtless prejudice and vanity were often appealed to, and it was from such harmony of sentiment that they acquired their hold on men’s belief. Without any doubt the Iliad appealed most powerfully to the reverence for ancestral gods and heroes among the Asiatic colonists who first heard it: the temptation of putting forth an interesting tale is quite a sufficient stimulus to the invention of the poet, and the plausibility of the tale a sufficient passport to the belief of the hearers. Mr. Clinton talks of “ consistent and general tradition”. But that the tale of a poet, when once told with effect and beauty, acquired general belief—is no proof that it was founded on fact: otherwise, what are we to say to the divine legends, and to the large portion of the Homeric narrative which Mr. Clinton himself sets aside as untrue under the designation of “ poetical ornament” ? When a mythical incident is recorded as ‘forming the basis” of some known historical fact or institution—as for instance the successful stratagem by which Melanthus killed Xanthus in the battle on the boundary, as recounted in my last chapter,—we may adopt one of two views: we may either treat the incident as real, and as having actually given occasion to what is described as its effect—or we may treat the incident as a legend imagined in order to assign some plausible origin of the reality, —* Aut ex re nomen, aut ex vocabulo fabula”.! In cases where the legendary incident is referred to a time long anterior to any records—as it commonly is—the second mode of proceeding appears to me far more consonant to reason and probability than the first. It is to be recollected that all the persons and facts, here defended as matter of real history by Mr. Clinton, are referred to an age long preceding the first beginning of records.

1 Pomponius Mela, iii. 7,

488 CHRONOLOGY OF GRECIAN LEGEND. PaRT 1.

I have already remarked that Mr. Clinton shrinks from his Kadmus, Wn rule in treating Kadmus and Danaus as rea! Ny «. Persons, since they are as much eponyms of tribesor alleponyms, races as Dérus and Hellén, And if he can admit and falling ~Héraklés to be a real man, I do not see upon what

inton’s reason he can consistently disallow any one of the

of Getftious mythical personages, for there is not one whose exploits ae are more strikingly at variance with the standard of historical probability. Mr. Clinton reasons upon the supposition that “Hercules was a Dorian hero”: but he was Achzan and Kadmeian as well as Dorian, though the legends respecting him are different in all the three characters. Whether his son Tlepolemus and his grandson Kleodzus belong to the category of historical men, I will not take upon me to say, though O. Miller (in my opinion without any warranty) appears to admit it; but Hyllus certainly is not a real man, if the canon of Mr. Clinton himself respecting the eponyms is to be trusted. “The descendants of Hercules (observes Mr. Clinton) remained in many states down to the historical times.” So did those of Zeus and Apollo, and of that god whom the historian Hekateus recognised as his progenitor in the sixteenth generation : the titular kings of Ephesus, in the historical times, as well as Peisistratus, the despot of Athens, traced their origin up to Zolus and Hellén, yet Mr. Clinton does not hesi- tate to reject AZolus and Hellén as fictitious persons. I dispute the propriety of quoting the Iliad and Odyssey (as Mr. Clinton does) in evidence of the historic personality of Hercules. For even with regard to the ordinary men who figure in those poems, we have no means of discriminating the real from the fictitious ; while the Homeric Héraklés is unquestionably more than an ordinary man, —he is the favourite son of Zeus, from his birth predestined to a life of labour and servitude, as preparation for a glorious immorta- lity. Without doubt the poet himself believed in the reality of Hercules, but it was a reality clothed with superhuman attributes.

Mr. Clinton observes (Introd. p. ii.), that “because some Whatis , genealogies were fictitious, we are not justified in con- genealogies cluding that all were fabulous”. Itis no way necessary ac that we should maintain so extensive a position : it is ere τς sufficient that all are fabulous so far as concerns gods is fictitious. and heroes,—some fabulous throughout,—and none

Cuap. XIX. PLAUSIBLE FICTION. 489

ascertainably true, for the period anterior to the recorded Olympiads. How much, or what particular portions, may be true, no one can pronounce. The gods and heroes are, from our point of view, essentially fictitious ; but from the Grecian point of view they were the most real (if the expression may be per- mitted, i.e. clung to with the strongest faith) of all the members of the series. They not only formed parts of the genealogy as originally conceived, but were in themselves the grand reason why it was conceived,—as a golden chain to connect the living man with a divine ancestor. The genealogy therefore taken as a whole (and its value consists in its being taken as a whole) was from the beginning a fiction ; but the names of the father and grandfather of the living man, in whose day it first came forth, were doubtless those of real men. Wherever therefore we can verify the date of a genealogy, as applied to some living person, we may reasonably presume the two lowest members of it to be also those of real persons: but this has no application to the time anterior to the Olympiads—still less to the pretended times of the Trojan war, the Kalydonian boar-hunt, or the deluge of Deukalién. To reason (as Mr. Clinton does, Introd. p. vi.),— “Because Aristomachus was a real man, therefore his father Cleodzeus, his grandfather Hyllus, and so farther upwards, &c., must have been real men,”—is an inadmissible conclusion. The historian Hekateus was a real man, and doubtless his father Hegesander also—but it would be unsafe to march up his genealogical ladder fifteen steps to the presence of the ancestorial god of whom he boasted: the upper steps of the ladder will be found broken and unreal. Not to mention that the inference, from real son to real father, is inconsistent with the admissions in Mr. Clinton’s own genealogical tables ; for he there inserts the names of several mythical fathers as having begotten real historical sons,

The general authority of Mr. Clinton’s book, and the sincere respect which I entertain for his elucidations of the later chrono- logy, have imposed upon me the duty of assigning those grounds on which I dissent from his eonclusions prior to the first recorded Olympiad. The reader who desires to see the numerous and contradictory guesses (they deserve no better name) of the Greeks themselves in the attempt to emer their mythical narratives,

490 CHRONOLOGY OF GRECIAN LEGEND. Part L

will find them in the copious notes annexed to the first half of his first volume. As I consider all such researches not merely as fruitless in regard to any trustworthy result, but as serving to divert attention from the genuine form and really illustrative character of Grecian legend, I have not thought it right to go over the same ground in the present work. Differing as I do, however, from Mr. Clinton’s views on this subject, I concur with him in deprecating the application of etymology (Introd. p. xi.-xii.) as a general scheme of explanation to the characters and events of Greek legend. Amongst the many causes which operated as suggestives and stimulants to Greek fancy in the creation of these interesting tales, doubtless Etymology has had its share; but it cannot be applied (as Hermann, above all others, has sought to apply it) for the purpose of imparting supposed sense and system to the general body of mythical narrative. I have already remarked on this topic in a former chapter.

It would be curious to ascertain at what time, or by whom, the earliest continuous genealogies, connecting existing persons with Ai was the supposed antecedent age of legend, were formed timedid and preserved. Neither Homer nor Hesiod mentioned tone any verifiable present persons or circumstances : had produce they done so, the age of one or other of them could continuous . Η ᾿ genealogies, have been determined upon good evidence, which we τὰ ἔχω, to may fairly presume to have been impossible, from the th endless controversies upon this topic among ancient writers. In the Hesiodic Works and Days, the heroes of Troy and Thébes are even presented as an extinct race,? radically different from the poet’s own contemporaries, who are a new race, far too depraved to be conceived as sprung from the loins of the heroes; so that we can hardly suppose Hesiod (though his father was a native of the Holic Kymé) to have admitted the pedigree of the folic chiefs, as reputed descendants of Agamemnén. Certain it is that the earliest poets did not attempt to measure or bridge over the supposed interval, between their own age and the war of Troy, by any definite series of fathers and sons: whether Eumélus or Asius made any such attempt, we cannot tell, but the earliest continuous backward

e world?

1 See above, Chap. ii,

Cuap. XIX. EARLIEST CONTINUOUS GENEALOGIES ¢ 491

genealogies which we find mentioned are those of Pherekydés, Hellanikus, and Herodotus. It is well known that Herodotus, in his manner of computing the upward genealogy of the Spartan kings, assigns the date of the Trojan war to a period 800 years earlier than himself, equivalent about to B.c. 1270-1250 ; while the subsequent Alexandrine chronologists, Eratosthenés and Apollodérus, place that event in 1184 and 1183 B.c.; and the Parian marble refers it to an intermediate date, different from either—1209 B.c. Ephorus, Phanias, Timzeus, Kleitarchus, and Duris, had each his own conjectural date ; but the compntation of the Alexandrine chronologists was the most generally followed by those who succeeded them, and seems to have passed to modern times as the received date of this great legendary event—though some distinguished inquirers have adopted the epoch of Herodotus, which Larcher has attempted to vindicate in an elaborate, but feeble, dissertation.! It is unnecessary to state that in my view the inquiry has no other value except to illustrate the ideas which

1 Larcher, Chronologie d’Hérodote, chap. xiv. p. 352—401.

From the a of Troy down to the poumes of Alexander with his invading army into Asia, the latter a known date of 334 B.c., the following different reckonings were made :—

Phanisa...4c.5. <> gave 715 years. Ephorus......... 950) LOD gs Eratosthenés.... 4, 774 ¢ Timeus.......... 820 Kleitarchus...... “9 ba DIRE ees css », 1000

(Clemens. Alexand. Strom. i. p. 387.)

Democritus estimated a space of 730 years between his composition uf the Μικρὸς Διάκοσμος and the capture of Troy (Diogen. Laért. ix. 41). Isokratés believed the Lacedemonians to have been established in Peloponnésus 700 years, and he repeats this in three dif- ferent passages (Archidam. p. 118; Panathen. p. 275; De Pace, p. 178). The dates of these three orations themselves differ by twenty-four years, the Archidamus being older than the Panathenaic by that interval; yet he unegs the same number of years for each in calculating backwards to the Trojan war, (see Clinton, vol. i, Introd. i P- 5). In round numbers, his calcula-

ion coincides pretty nearly with the 800 years given by Herodotus in the preceding century.

The remarks of Boeckh on the Parian marble generally, in his Corpus Inscriptionum Grec. t. ii. ᾿' 822—336, are extremely valuable, but especially his criticism on the epoch of the Trojan war, which stands the twenty-fourth in the Marble. The ancient chronolo-

ists, from Damastés and He ikus

ownwards, professed to fix not only the exact year, but the exact month, day and hour in which this celebrated capture took place. [Mr. Clinton pre- tends to no more than the possibility of determining the event within fifty ears, Introduct. p. vi.]_ Boeckh illus- rates the manner of their argumen- tation.

O. Miiller observes (History of the Dorians, t. ii. p. 442, Eng. Tr.), “Τὴ reckoning from the migration of the Heraklidee downward, we follow the Alexandrine chronology, of which it should be observed, that our materials only enable us to restore it to its original state, not to examine its cor- rectness”.

But I do not see upon what evi- dence even so much as this can be done. Mr. Clinton, admitting that Eratosthenés fixed his date by con- jecture, supposes him to have chosen “a middle point between the longer and shorter computations of his pre- decessors”. Boeckh thinks this explan- ation unsatisfactory (1. ¢. p. 328.).

492 CHRONOLOGY OF GRECIAN LEGEND. Partl

guided the Greek mind, and to exhibit its progress from the Evidence days of Homer to those of Herodotus. For it-argues οὐρα αι 8. considerable mental progress when men begin to when men methodise the past, even though they dosoon fictitious — the past, principles, being as yet unprovided with those records oven 08 which alone could put them on a better course. The principles. Homeric man was satisfied with feeling, imagining, — and believing, particular incidents of a supposed past, without — any attempt to graduate the line of connexion between them and himself: to introduce fictitious hypotheses and media of con- nexion is the business of a succeeding age, when the stimulus of rational curiosity is first felt, without any authentic materials to — supply it. We have then the form of history operating upon — the matter of legend—the transition-state between legend and history ; less interesting indeed than either saree yet necessary as a step between the two. 4

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