The gods of old and the story that they tell

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THE GODS OF OLD;

_ AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL.

THE GODS OF OLD:

AND THE

STORY THAT THEY TELL.

BY

REV. JAMES A. FITZ SIMON,
AND

VINCENT A. FITZ SIMON, M.D.

‘In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas
Corpora.” Ovin, Met. I. 1.

LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 1899

BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS
LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.

[-4ll Rights reserved. ]
rede

1666428

INTRODUCTION.

ne

Ir would be difficult to find a single branch of knowledge
in which we are not more or less indebted to the writers of
pre-christian times. They excelled us in some things, such as
poetry, painting, sculpture, oratory, and logic ; in others they
were our equals ; and in others still they pointed out the way.

What strikes us particularly, however, is their system, or
rather systems, of Philosophy, in which they follow matter
and force and mind to their ultimate grounds in the
endeavour to satisfy those two innate feelings, “to know,”
and “ to worship,” implanted in the breast of man. For a
period extending over 800 years we have an uninterrupted
succession of schools and systems, founded by such men as
Zeno the Stoic, who flourished 260 z.c., Epicurus, Aristotle,
Plato, Socrates, Protagoras, Empedocles, Democritus,
Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Pythagoras, Anaxi-
menes, Anaximander, and Thales who is supposed to have
been born 636 B.c.

Of all these the Ionic school, founded by Thales, was the
oldest, and its followers referred the origin and constitution
of the universe as a whole to a single primordial principle
which Thales called water, Anaximenes air, Heraclitus Jire,
or a clear light fluid “self-kindled and self-extinguished,”’
-and Anaximander called apx7, ‘‘ the unlimited, eternal, and
unconditioned” material which embraced all things, from
which the cold, warm, dry, and moist of all things were
secreted, and into which all things were resolved on their
dissolution. —

However differently all these may sound, they refer to
one sensuous principle, namely, that simplest form of

- visible matter as seen in the heavens and called nebulous,

vi INTRODUCTION.

which we ourselves, like Thales, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus,
describe indifferently as misty, or gaseous, or ‘‘ a fire-mist,”
or, like Anaximander, as the condition of our universe in
the beginning, when it was one universal whole, an in-
definitely extended mass, exempt from addition or annihila-
tion, and homogeneous,—a whole from which all things
were evolved, and to which all things will finally return
when suns grow cold and stellar bodies lose their way. In
brief language, the Ionian philosophy of some twenty-five
centuries or so ago, disguise it as we may, was nothing
more nor less than the famous ‘‘ Nebular Hypothesis ” of

our own day.

In addition to this physical knowledge, Thales is also
credited with having maintained the unity of the world, the
immortality of the soul, and the personality of God. Ii is
on record that he calculated an eclipse of the sun, turned
the course of the river Halys, excelled in mathematics, and
signalised himself so much by his prudence, learning, and
knowledge as to be numbered among the Seven Sages.
From whom did he get this knowledge? As the founder
of the Ionic school he stands at the head of Philosophy,
and there is no mention of an immediate predecessor from
whom he could derive instruction. Aristotle, however,
when writing of Thales, suggests that his primordial
principle, “‘ water,’’ was derived from the teachings of “‘ the
old theologians,” and by these he is supposed to allude to
Homer and Hesiod. If so, it points to a Dark Age in
Grecian literature extending from the time of Thales to
that of the above-named poets, an interval of at least 800
years, and consequently. pushes knowledge back to about
1000 3.c.

And, again, from whom did Hesiod and Homer derive
their knowledge? No one art or science, poetry least of
all, can flourish extensively at the expense of others, and
judging by the Theogony, Iliad, and Odyssey, we must
suppose the age their writers lived in to be characterised by
profound thought and advanced knowledge. But those
works are closed books; they make no mention of other
writers nor of schools of learning; and those works are the
soleremnants that we have of their own and of preceding ages.

INTRODUCTION. vil

Now, the one only inheritance which we find those two
poets receiving from the wise who lived before them, and
which they in turn handed down to Thales and his
successors, is a bare list of words or names of divinities
around which is woven all the Theogony, the greater part
of the Iliad and Odyssey, and much of the poetry from the
days of Grecian Thales to those of the Roman Cesgars, the
whole constituting what is commonly called Mythology.

The question for consideration is, ‘‘ What do these names
stand for ?”’ -

All that we know of them may be stated thus :—

1. They are of unknown antiquity, the all that has been
saved from the wreck of ages. If the survival of the fittest
holds good for literature as it does for species, then must
these names stand for what was best in knowledge.

2. Many of them, such as Gea, Uranus, Auther, Kronos,
Helios, Selene, &c., are, even at first sight, strikingly
suggestive of the heavens and the earth; many more,
considered derivationally, point quickly to the same con-
clusion. The inference is, consequently, that all the names
are connected more or less intimately with the matter and
force of our universe in the whole and in the part.

3. They are not a loose assemblage of disconnected
words. Hach one is dependent for its being on another,
that on another, and so on, till by a chain of cause and
effect we finally arrive at Chaos. This Chaos heads the
list ; from it flow all the others, and to it can all the others
be traced. It is thus to the names what the primordial
principle is to Philosophy, the beginning and the end of all.

4. In this Chaos, as Hesiod tells us, were Gea and Eros.

Now supposing, as will be rendered plainer later on, that
these words stand for matter and force, then a Chaos, or
first principle, that contained matter and force is an
additional proof that the mythological names are closely
connected with the construction of the universe and of
earth.

5. The names, in connection no doubt with what they
meant, commended themselves for preservation, amplifica-
tion, and detailed description to Hesiod and Homer, and
through them to the founders and disciples of every

viii INTRODUCTION.

school of ancient philosophy, to poets and statesmen,
artists and mathematicians, in short to the cultured of
every clime where Greece and Rome held sway. The
number of names, too, was being continually added to,
each writer coining as it were a divinity of his own.
This widespread sanction, adoption, and multiplication
can only be accounted for in one of three ways, namely,
that the words symbolised religious knowledge, scientific
knowledge, or the two combined. So far as multiplication
alone is considered, it is a very strong proof that the names
related to scientific knowledge, since the nomenclature of
each and every branch of science must necessarily increase
with time and progress. .

6. There is no doubt whatsoever that to the masses at
large the words represented so many potential deities to ~
be adored and worshipped, and thus constituted a Pagan
system of religion.

7. But with the educated it was different. A belief in
One Supreme Being seems never to have been lost sight of
in ancient Greece and Rome, and judging from their own
writings Monotheism, not Paganism, must be considered as
the religion of the cultured. The following are instances
of how undisguised and pervading this belief in One God
was :— a .

, Eis dor abroyevns, évbs exyova mdvra réruxrat.—Orpheus.
One is the self-begotten, and all things
Derived from this same One created were

"Eye eipe wav 71d yeyovds xat dy, kai éodpevor.
“T am all that was, and is, and will be,”—

an inscription placed publicly on a temple at Sais. These
two voice the religious feeling of early times; this, trans-
lated from Seneca (Nat. Quest. II. 45), i is a fair exponent of
his own and preceding days :—

‘* The wisest among men understand him whom we call Jove to be
the guardian and ruler, soul and spirit, of the universe, the lord and
maker of this mundane sphere, and one to whom every name is
applicable. Dost wish to call him Fate? Thou wilt not err. He it
is on whom all things are dependent, from whom are all the causes of
causes. Dost wish to call him Providence? Rightly wilt thou do so;
for by his counsel it is that provision is made for this world, so that it
may proceed in orderly fashion and unfold his deeds to view. Dost

INTRODUCTION. ix

wish to call him Nature ! ? Thou wilt commit no sin; for he it is from
whom all things are sprung, and by whose spirit we breathe life.

Dost wish to call him the World? Thou wilt not be mistaken ; for he,
the all that thou dost behold, is all infused in its parts, and self-—
existing by power his own.”

8. Since the mythological names, then, did not appeal
directly to a One Supreme Being in the minds of the
educated, there is nothing else left for them to appeal to
except Philosophy ; and this same Philosophy, then as now,
may have constituted the entire religion of the atheistically
inclined, or been cultivated as a means of understanding
the Creator better through His works among those who
believed in and worshipped a One True God. Their God
and their gods were very different, and their worship of the
latter must be taken in a very restricted sense. As being
the works of God, they felt themselves quite free to respect
and speak well of such, and so to avoid the wrath of rulers
and the mob. To raise an altar to Bacchus or a temple to
Mars had probably no more significance in their eyes than
it has in ours to erect a university or build an arsenal.

The conclusions deducible from all these points may be
thus summed up. The mythological names are but word-
pictures of a condensed knowledge that has immediate
reference to the construction of the universe, of earth, and
to the things of earth. Much of this knowledge is very old ;
in its written form it was as old as Hesiod and Homer ; its
traditional form, while ending, it may be, with the days in
which these poets lived, goes back, for aught we know to
the contrary, to Noah—to Adam even—certainly to the first
man or men who deemed it wise and profitable to know and
study the works of God, and to tell his or their children by
word of mouth the ends for which the world and mankind
were made.

On this presumption, that the names of the divinities are
really but the nomenclature of science, we can readily
understand the fascination which they held for the cultured
of every age and country. On and around these kernels of
knowledge they could safely weave story after story, which
would either describe or amplify existing scientific truths
or add to the general store such information as time,

x INTRODUCTION

progress, and research would necessarily bring to being.
It was a glorious field for philosophical tillage, and each
writer readily availed himself of the means provided so as
to exhibit his own knowledge of the past and present, and
pit his skill with others in the art of myth-making. No
mean art was this either, since a myth, to prove successful
and acceptable, should be perfectly true to science, and still
capable of being read by the vulgar throng according to its
light. And if it was a fascinating pursuit for pure science
to thus mystify the ignorant pagan, we may fancy how
much more fascinating it would be for religious enthusiasm
to mystify the atheistical scientist !

With the remark that such a feat was actually accom-
plished, let us pass to the word Mythology itself, which
means “‘the story of the pv@os.”

What is this ni0os? Lexically defined it is ‘‘a legend,”
‘words or speech,’’ and especially words or speech handed
down by word of mouth, that is “ tradition.”’ Derivationally
considered it would imply (uv@ or pvéw Oefos) ‘ the murmur-
ing, pondering over, or initiation into things divine,” and
hence true; or w8d0s may be but a transposed form of érvpos,
‘true, real,” and as in our own term “etymology,” would
have reference to radical truths condensed as far as possible
into short speech, individual words, or word-pictures.

Mythology would thus mean ‘the story of the legends ”’
for the uneducated, and ‘‘the story of the traditional
words”’ for the educated. The mere scientist would confine
the meaning of “‘traditional words” to knowledge; the
religious scientist, while accepting this meaning would
extend it to divine truth, to the One God who is ‘‘ the way,
and the truth, and the life.” Where the former saw but
“‘the word,” the latter would see ‘‘the Word’’; so that
while both travelled on the self-same highway, the religious
wayfarer chose to go further than his helpmate on the road.

The main point to be dwelt upon, however, is that, as
the philosopher and the poet accepted the traditional names
for what they were, the terminology of science, we must
naturally regard all that they wrote in prose or verse with
respect to these names as genuine science, not as fable.

INTRODUCTION. xi

The first, for all we know to the contrary, to write upon
them was Hesiod, and his Theogoriy may well be considered
as the Genesis of Mythology. He begins with Chaos, ‘‘ the
first of all,” and ends virtually with Zeus; or in other
words, he begins with the primordial principle of Philosophy
and ends with life and the struggles of life. This is
evidently the story, or rather stories of our earth, for earth
has many stories, all of them interesting in their own way,
and all of them requisite for the full understanding and
proper elaboration of the plan for which it was constructed.
Geology begins, or rather ends, the series. It classifies
the rocky strata of our globe, describes their materials and
mode of arrangement, and tells the causes that have led to
and produced such arrangement. It strips the earth for
our benefit of its temporal raiment ; it removes one by one
the Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene rocks, the Cretaceous,
Jurassic, and Triassic, the Carboniferous, Devonian, and
Silurian ; and while dwelling for a space upon each system
and each group, it tells the story of its past, the life forms
that graced it, the most remarkable features of the surface,
and the great physical events which occurred while it
constituted the theatre of life. And so it proceeds till it
finally reaches the Archean granite, and can go no further.

Then does Astronomy take up the story, telling how,
previous to the granite, Karth was probably like what Venus
is at present; how before that it was like Jupiter or Saturn,
half planet half star; and how earlier still it was even a
sun, as bright and hot as that which beams on us to-day.

Then comes Philosophy with its portion of the tale,
reasoning out how Harth, the planets, and their Sun were
all one nebula at first; how this nebula was previously
part and parcel of another, the Milky Way; this of another;
and so on till we go back to the beginning of all when
Earth and planets, Sun, stars, and nebule were all one, one
simple and homogeneous nebulous mass.

A story like unto this triple one is that which Mythology
has to tell. The building of our earth from the beginning
of created matter is its theme; the Divine Author of that
matter is once for all stated distinctly in the title, for while

xii INTRODUCTION.

Genesis means simply “ the generations,” Theogony means
“‘the generations of God’’; matter, force, life, and mind,
with all their respective forms, are the gods of old; and the
story is told by those other gods of old, Hesiod, Homer,
Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and many others who have deservedly
won immortality by the telling of the story. How well
they tell it is for the reader to judge; but it looks as if
there was an immense debt between them and us. — -

Their noble theme has been ignobled, and their science
called idolatry ; their personages are vivid word-pictures, as
clear and intelligible as the Christian, Great-heart, Giant
Despair, and Doubting Castle of Bunyan, but we have
closed our eyes and ears to the ideas involved therein ;
they have furthermore facilitated the explication of those
personages by giving their genealogy and progeny, or
cause and effect, but this family tree so carefully constructed
has little or no meaning in our estimation ; they ask for no
licence save the poet’s own and the sparing adaptation of
Greek words to the Latin tongue, as mentioned in the Ars
Poetica of Horace, but we, often as not, give this licence
when not required and refuse it when required; finally,
they write the story clearly, and thoroughly in consonance
with their theme, but we, having given them a fictitious
theme, construe their words to suit our own ideas of this
theme,—with the melancholy consequence occasionally that
when our ideas grow too prurient, we expurgate the poets’
lines! Every Greek and Latin extract in this volume,
when translated as they are at present in our schools,
painfully accentuates the truth of what we say. Let us
hope that the rendering which we offer may appease the.
shades of those Immortals, and serve as a moiety towards
payment of the debt we owe them. Prosit!

CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.

Uninterrupted succession of philosophical schools from 636 B.C. to 260 B.C.
Tonic, the first—From whom did Thales, its founder, derive his know-
ledge 7“ The old theologians "The only relics of pre-Hesiodic learn-
ing are personified terms, around which the Theogony, liad, and
Odyssey are woven—Significance of these terms, first, to the uneducated ;
second, to the educated—-Myth, and Mythology ; tradition, and the story
of tradition — Earth’s story, threefold : philosophical, " astronomical,
geological—Mythology is the telling of this story—Have we grasped
the idea and meaning of the classic poets? . . . v—xii

BOOK FIRST.

THE GENESIS OF BEING.

CHAPTER I.
Theogony ; Chaosto Hemera—Myths . . . . . + «12

CHAPTER IL-—THe “Unus Vuntus” or NATURE.

Nebulous matter, the simplest visible—The Nebular Hypothesis, pushed to
its ultimate, goes back to one most simple mode of Being in which were
all of matter and of force ; Mythology goes back to a Chaos in which
were Gea and Eros—Hesiod’s invocation to the Muses (Theog. 104-116)
embodies a personal protest against the charge of Paganism—Collision
of stellar bodies and intense heat are preludes to the universal sim-
plicity of: Being ; the same are alluded to as preludes of a Chaos, by
Hesiod (Theog. 695-705), by Ovid (Met. II. 298, 299}—-Further identifi-
cation of.pure Being with .Chaos, through derivation, through Hesiod
(Theog. 116-122), through Ovid (Met. I. 5-20)—The mythological Geea,
a gradually diminishing quantity—-Harmony between Scriptural,
mythological, and scientific accounts of primal Being—Matter not
identical with force . . . . . . . 2—12

CHAPTER IIIl.— QUISQUIS FUIT ILLE DEORUM.”

Change from simplicity and rest to complexity and motion—Constructive
Evolution necessarily involves Dissolution—What these two are to
simple Being and to each othér, Erebus and Nox are to Chaos and to
each other—lIdentity further established by derivation, by the “ melior
natura” of Ovid, and by the “ Erebus” of Hades—Relation of Erebus
to the Genesiac “ morning and evening” . . . . 13—16

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IV.—‘* Ler THERE BE LIGHT.”

Light and its theories—Youman on light and ether—Derivative relation

of the mythological Aither to light, heat, and motion—Passages from
Virgil and Ovid, some favouring the undulatory, others the corpuscular
theory—Identity, through comparison, between the scientific ether and
the mythological Ather—Motion, the first result of change, would be
productive not only of light but of division: our universe, a type of this
division, personified by Hemera—Idea of “division ” transferred from
quantity to time—Genesis (i. 2) supplies the link missing in the mytho-
logical and scientific stories—Harmony between the three—The jyedpa
pia of Genesis in its relation to quantity and time—Hesiod’s First
Day (Theog. 123-125); Ovid’s (Met. I, 21-31)—tUriel’s address to
Satan. . . . . . . . . . . 17—26

BOOK SECOND.

THE ONENESS OF OUR UNIVERSE.

CHAPTER I.

Theogony ; Gea, Uranus, their offspring—Myths . . . 27-—28

CHAPTER II.—' Wirnovut FoRM, AND VOID.”

The collective universe; the ‘yata weAdpy—Astronomy connects entire

sidereal system with the Galaxy or Milky Way; same theory enter-
tained by ancient philosophers and poets; Ovid (Met. I. 168~176)—
Hesiod’s narrative (Theog. 126-130); it tells how form and porosity
were first produced—Matter, form, and substance—Primal condition of
matter, indeterminate ; Evolution would bring determinateness, viz.,
orbicularity as to form, and atoms with porosity asto matter 29—34

CHAPTER Ili.—In Format CHAINS.

Results of further evolution—Helmholtz on dower of matter and force

received by the nebulous offshoot of a greater nebula—Birth of
molecular matter, chemical force, and great physical forces: the
Titans, Cyclopes, and Hecatoncheires— Order of succession ; did force
impress itself on matter, or matter on force?—Inferences from Hesiod
and Apollodorus . . . . . . . . 85—36

CHAPTER IV.—MoLecuLaR MATTER,

Birth of the Titans (Theog. 132-138)—The Atomic Theory—Change of

matter from atomic to molecular; results—The Titans identified with
molecular matter, by (1) genealogy, order of coming, need of being,
and kindred; (2) by Hesiod’s description (Theog. 207-210); (3) by
derivation and mythical details ; (4) by the Titanic force which science
claims as residing in molecules . . se . - 87—39

CONTENTS. XV

CHAPTER V.—CHEMICAL FORCE.

Elements, molecules, atoms—Atoms and molecules compared—Chemical
force the only means of combining atoms into molecules, or of
separating molecules into atoms—For this to operate there must be
bodies of a different nature—The Cyclopes personify Chemical Force ;
proofs, by repeated comparison, derivation, kindred, and connection
with Lestirygones—-Same idea involved in “‘Cyclopes” and “ Chemistry”
—Chemical force and volcanic energy—Three distinct stages in chemical
action, namely, attractive strength, decomposition, and composition :
identified, through derivation, with Brontes, Steropes, and Arges
“—Hesiod’s description (Theog. 189-146)—The Cyclopes in relation to
volcanoes and volcanic action—Homer’s “Land of the Cyclopes”
(Odyss. TX. 106~115)—Ovid's “ Polyphemus and Galatea” (Met. XTIT.
750-897) . . . : . . . . . . - 40—64

CHAPTER VI.—GREAT PHYSICAL FORCES.

The Hecatoncheires—Universal properties of matter reducible to three—
The forces ruling these are Figure, Divisibility, and Gravitation or
Gravity : in Mythology they are Gyes, Cottus, and Briareus or Aigeon
—‘ Hecatoncheires”’ and “universal”—Priority of the three forces—
Briareus ; influence of gravitation on the tides (Theog. 817-819) ; on
Nature in general (Iliad I. 396-406)—Gyes ; Horace (Car. IT. 17-22)
—Cottus — Significative epithets applied to each force — Hesiod’s
Hecatoncheires (Theog. 147-153)—-Passages from Hesiod, Homer, and
Virgil suggest a knowledge of the great law of gravitation . 65—74

CHAPTER VII.—Tue Fixed Cur-orF.

Magnitude of our universe; its form and boundary—The ‘ limitary
boundary ” of science, “ Uranus” of mythology, and “ firmament” of
Genesis, expressive of same thing—-When formed ?—Iis nature and
constituents ?—-How produced ?—The Genesiac narrative (i. 6-8), and
“derivative creation”—The Nebular Hypothesis—The mythological
story compared with the scientific—Hesiod’s version (Theog. 154-181)
—Creation’s Plan . . . . . . . . - T5—82

CHAPTER: VIII.—* Concorpra Munpt.”

Gradual arrangement of the parts—Ether as a connecting medium—
Harmony of our Universe—Hesiod (Theog. 188-206) . - 83—86

BOOK THIRD.

TOILERS OF THE NIGHT.

CHAPTER I.

Theogony—Nox and her offspring; identical with shapes which Virgil
stations at entrance to Hades (Ain. VI. 273-284)—Hesiod’s description
(Theog. 211-232) of Destiny, Responsibility, Death, Sleep, Dreams,
Doubt, Woe, the Obscure, the Fates, Cares, Apprehension, Deceit, —
Affinity, Old Age, Strife, and the offspring of Strife . . 87—92

xvi CONTENTS.

BOOK FOURTH.

WORLD - BUILDING,

CHAPTER I.
Theogony ; ; Pontus, Gea, their offspring—Myths . . - 93—97

CHA APTER II.—THE Lusmvous Past,

Introductory remarks—- Comparison of incidents in this book with work of
the Third Genesiac Day—Our orb as it was once, an immense mass of
luminous vapour: symbolised by Gaza and Pontus ; proofs, from com-
parison, derivation, and extracts from Hesiod and Virgil—How Pontus,
as a term, came to be applied to the ocean—Sketch of our orb and its
aspects during incandescent and igneous stages Piguier’s description
—Conditions prevalent towards the close. . - 98—107

CHAPTER Ii. —THE BIRTH-PLACE, BIRTH, AND Coming OF THE SEA.

The story; told by Gunning and ‘by Figuier of the primal rain; by
Mythology of Nerens—Distinction between Neptune, Pontus, and
Nereus—Nereus identified with the sea, through comparison, derivation,
and extracts—Virgil (Ecl. VI. )—Hesiod (Theog. 235-236)—The sea as
a metamorphist ; as an oracle . . . . - 108—112

CHAPTER IV.—THE RIVERS OF THE SEA,

Hesiod’s version (Theog. 240-242 and seg.)—Circulation of oceanic waters:
—Immense currents traverse the sea in all directions and at all depths
—Their effect on temperature, commerce and navigation, coasts and
cliffs, and on terrigenous deposits in the bed of ocean-——-Comparison
through these effects, through number and names, identify them with
the Nereides—Probabilities . . . . . . +» 113—115

CHAPTER V.—THAUMATURGY,

Electricity ; known only through manifestations and effects ; its sources—
‘All these sources were present when the primal rain came down—
Winchell paints the scene— Thaumas” and “ wondrous manifestations”
—* Electra” and “electricity” — . - . . : - 116—118

CHAPTER Vi.— ‘IRI, DECUS CELI.”

Tris and the rainbow—Hesiod suggests an electrified condition of the
atmosphere as a chief requisite for. its appearance—Quotations from
Virgil and Ovid—Messenger and message ; the dualistic idea in “ Iris ”
—The rainbow’s message,—in our day,—in days of old—Why Iris,
rather than Proserpine, was selected to cut the thread of Dido's
life . . . . . . . » 119—121

CHAPTER VII.—THE PIRATES OF THE AIR.

The Harpies (Theog. 265-269)—Changes in aerial envelope occasioned : by
the primal rain—A “thermal sea” below, a “storm sea” above—The
Harpies identified with cyclones and other revolving tempestuous
winds; proofs, from derivation, individual names, pedigree, and
mythical details—The blind Phineus and the Strop hades—A revolving
storm, as described by Rechis ; by Virgil (Ain. III. 7192-219) 122—127

CONTENTS. xvii

CHAPTER VIII.—TuHet KEEPER AND THE KEEP.

Phoreys and Ceto (Theog. 237-239) ; symbolical of exterior and interior of
our globe; proofs, from implication, genealogy, relationship, and
significance of names and epithets—How Phorcys came to be recognised
asa marine deity . . . . . . . » - 128—129

CHAPTER IX.—THE GRAY FROM BIETH.

Clouds; when first produced and how—Three principal kinds, Cumulus,
Stratus, Cirrhus—Comparison between the clouds and the Graie, drawn
from parentage, position, number, collective and individual names, and
from the epithet “gray from birth”—Hesiod’s description (Theog.
270-273) — The one eye and one tooth of the clonds, and how they
borrow them from one another . . . - 130—134

CHAPTER X.—THE LIGHT THAT FAILED.
Sect. 1—The Golden Age.

Earth as an incandescent orb ; time measurement—-Bonney’s description of
our planet as a sun, and of the three forces operating thereon—These
personified in mythology ; collectively, as the Gorgons ; respectively, as
Stheno, Euryale, Medusa ; proofs, from genealogy, kindred, elimination,
derivation, and mythical details—How science vouches for the immor-
tality of two, and the mortality of one—Self-luminous earth considered
in its three stages: (1) Incandescence; (2) Sub-incandescence; (3)
Non-incandescence—Medusa, the Gorgon, considered under her three
aspects ; (1) Beautiful, with golden locks ; (2) Convulsed, with snaky
tresses ; (3) Decapitated—Incandescence compared with Medusa of the
golden locks—Ovid's testimony (Met. 1V. 794-797) ; Virgil's (Georg. I.
125)—Ovid's “Golden Age” (Met. I. 89-112) . . 1385—142

Sect. 2.—4 Dying-out Sun.

Sub-incandescence compared with Medusa of the snaky tresses—What water
did to incandescent earth ; what Neptune did to golden-haired Medusa
—Ovid-epitomises the acme and wane of incandescent days (Met. IV.
790-801) . . . . . . . . . . 142—146

Sect. 3.—The “ Closing ” Scene.

The story ; as related by Winchell, Bonney, Figuier ; and by Mythology—
Hesiod’s description (Shield 207-215)—Memorable dwellers of this
period : Ixion, Lapithze and Centaurs, Acrisius, Perseus—Decapitation
of Medusa ; the mythical equivalent of non-incandescence, or incrusta-
tion of the fiery surface—The active agent employed in congealing the
liquid exterior, as told by Winchell, Fignier, Bonney; as told by
Mythology—Perseus synonymous with “cold and pressure”; proofs,
from derivation, epithets, and classical description—Horace (Sat. I. 7) ;
Ovid (Met. IV. 769-789) ; Hesiod (Shield 216-229); Apollodorus
(2.4.2.3-2.4.2. 9) Where science has placed the Gorgon’ s head; and
where her trunk. . . 146—164

CHAPTER XI.—THE MISSING GARMENT.

The primal crust of our globe ; no visible relics of it—Probable nature of its
material ?—-Was solidification gradual?—What regions were first in-
crusted ?—Mode and time of formation?—-How long the process ?—
Opinions of modern writers ; of Ovid and Hesiud—Chrysaor identified
with this missing crust, through genealogy, through name—Was life
existent at this period WW hat mythology says thereon ; what science
says—A few flash lights on contemporary events—Callirrhoé and the
waters that rested on the primal covering . . - 165—170

G.O. b

XVili CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XII.—THE WINGED STEED.

Pegasus and evaporation ; each coeval with original incrustation of the
globe—Interstitial water present in all rocks and minerals—Vapour
springs from the earth, but never returns as vapour; identity with
Pegasus, as shown by derivation and details—Vaporisation and evapora-
tion—The flight of vapour, and of Pegasus—Helicon and Hippocrene—
Connection of evaporation with Aurora, Zeus, and the Muses—Hesiod's
description of the Gorgons, of Chrysaor, and of Pegasus (Theog.
274-288) eer . 171—175

CHAPTER X1II.—How THE MouNTAINS WERE “ LIFTED.”

Our continental areas—Their germinal outlines were mountain chains, and
existed from Archean time—Originally produced by wrinkling of the
primal crust—Geryon emblematic of this wrinkling force of earth ; his
cattle are the terrestrial ridges ; proofs, furnished by genealogy, name,
epithets, mythical details, and classical allusions—Virgil (in. vi.
286-289) ; Horace (Car. IT. 14)—“ Boés,” “ boves,” and “mountains”
The giant and his cattle; pre-tertiary time and its ridges—Modern
testimony as to distribution of land and water during Cretaceous and
early Tertiary Days ; testimony of Apollodorus (2.5. 10-2.5.10. 4)—Dana
describes the work performed during Tertiary period; the Tenth
Labour of Hercules tells the same story—Hesiod’s Geryon (Theog.
287-294)—“ Hercules ” and “great earth movements ”"—The “ Twelve
Labours” and “Great geological periods ” of our earth—Tenth Labour
synchronous with our Tertiary Age—Was America known to the
ancients ? . . . . . > . . . - 176—185

CHAPTER XIV.—THE Rock oF AGES.

The closing leaf in the world’s volume—Granite—lIts relation to the missing
erust— Different opinions of modern writers as to its source ; different
opinions as to genealogy of Echidna — Hesiod, a ‘“ Neptunist”;
Apoliodorus, a “ Plutonist ”— Sinuous,” the most striking character-
istic of granite, is embalmed in the “Echidna” of mythology—
Minute description by Hesiod (Theog. 295-306) — Offspring of the
granite . : . - 186—190

CHAPTER XV.—THE HEAT AND DARKNESS OF OTHER Days.

Abnormal heat of the newly-incrusted globe ; Bonney’s description—Steam,
formed by rain rejected from the glowing surface, caused intense
darkness ; Winchell pictures the Cimmerian gloom—Those character-
istics continued in a varying degree up to beginning of Tertiary time—
Figuier, on climatic conditions of the successive geolcgical periods ;
Hugh Miller, on those of Archean days—This combination of “ heat and
darkness” symbolised by the Chimera; proofs, from genealogy,
epithets and phrases, derivation, description—Linguistic relics of the
monster—Apollodorus on the darkness (2.3.1.8)—Three fiery heads and
three different aspects of the heat—“‘ The true Chimera” (Lucretius,
¥. 903)—Abnormal heat finally overcome; by radiation. in the
language of science,—bvy Bellerophon, in the Janguage of Mythology—
Hesiod’s version (Theos. 319-325) ; Homer's Chimera (Il. VI. 152-183)
—Date of Chimera’s death—Final effort of "Bellerophon ; last ride of
terrestial radiation . : : . -- . 191—201

CHAPTER XVI.—‘ HYDRA SEVIOR INTUS HABET SEDEM,”

Ophis, the remaining descendant of Phorcys and Ceto; the centre of our
elobe— Hesiod (Theos. 333-336)—A._ brief review— Is not Theogony
Cosmogony ?”—Ovid’s outline of events in this Book (Met. I. 32-71)
—The condensed scriptural account (Gen. i. 9, 10) . . 202—206

CONTENTS. xix

BOOK FIFTH.

TITANIC 'TTES.

CHAPTER I.
Theogony ; Titans and their offspring—Myths . . . . 207-210

CHAPTER II.—OcEANvs, THE TIE OF WATERS.

Whence come our seas, springs, rivers ?—Volatilising process carried on
during incandescence would be succeeded by oxidation; remarks of
Gunning—Atoms of oxygen and hydrogen would unite and form the
first molecular tie, that of Aqueous Vapour ; this, as comparison shows,
is identical with Oceanus—Genesis (ii. 5, 6)—Characteristics of
aqueous vapour; an Oceanid for each characteris:ic—Hesiod (Theog.
346-370)—Scientific significance of the “ perfect river,” “the backward
flowing,” and other epithets applied to Oceanus—-No fixed limits in
space assigned to diffusion of aqueous vapour ; consequences thereof 3

211—21

CHAPTER JIIl.—HyYperion, THE TIE OF WORLDS.

A contracting nebula entailed a differential space arvuund and beyond—
Hither rushed all cosmic matter given off by radiation and disruption
—The Nebular Hypothesis—This rush of cosmic matter to outer space
symbolised by Hyperion and Thea—Hesiod (Theog. 371-374)—Our
sun—True system of astronomy taught by Pythagvras—Colloquial and
figurative language regarding sun’s course employed by modern as well

as by ancient writers — “Sun-rise,” “sun-high,” and “ sun-set
describe but half his course—‘ The golden buat’”—Some modern
similes . . . . . . . . . . . 219—222

CHAPTER IV.
Sect. 1.—Crius, the Tie of Order.

“ Order,” “course,” and the “ Crius” of mythology ; idea of “separation ”
involved in all; separation leads to order—Ovid (Met. I. 22, 23, 33)—
Changes in matter necessitate a new arrangement or order among the
atoms of molecules—Alexander Pope on the Course of Being—Order
divisible into (1) Constant and Uniform ; (2) Changeable and Multi-
form ; and (3) either Constant and Multiform, or Changeable and
Uniform—These three personified by the offspring of Crius, viz.:
Astreus, Pallas, and Perses—Only in the stars is coustant and uniform
order observable. . . . . : . . . 223—225

Sect. 2—The Constant and the Dawn.

Looking backward; from earth to sun—to stars—to star clusters—to
nebule—Chain of evidence proves that luminous nebulous matter is
the Dawn of alli—the harbinger of light, the begetter of stars, and (as
ascending heat) the begetter of constant winds—This subtle cosmic
matter identified with Eos or Aurora; her partner, Astreus, with the
constant and uniform type of order—Progressive cooling and shrinking
of our globe, the basis of myth regarding Aurora and Tithonus—
Hesiod’s version (Theog. 378-382) . . . . . 225—230

XX CONTENTS.

Sect. 3.—The Changeable and the Gloum.

Offspring of Crius and Eurybia ; Hesiod (Theog. 375-377)—Mutations of
and on the earth—Type of order observable in these is changeable and
multiform ; identified with Pallas; proofs, from parentage, kindred,
and derivation—Potent effects cf change on things of earth, air, and
water—Hesiod’s appellation, “ihe god of gods”—Pallas wedded to
Styx—Evolution carried on at expense of force and motion—
Integration wedded therefore to Disintegration—Equipoise of the two—
The matter is constant; integration and disintegration are functions of
each other; the changeable and multiform order ever goes on, now
above ground, now below — Pupe, Shakespeare, Young, on “the
lurking principle” of disintegration—This dread principle, threatening
death above and corruption below, personified as Styx—Guardian of
the Stygian torrent (Ovid, Met. III. 291)—The whither of matter
after death—One phase of Metempsychosis (Ovid, Met. XV. 88-90,
165-168)—A “via declivis” for all dead matter ; limited downward
ovly by the descent of water—Underground water, its permeation,
circulation, operations witbin the crust, measure of descent—A review
and comparison with Styx—The “via declivis” of Ovid (Met. IV.
432-446)—The Styx of Hesiod (Theog. 383-403, 775-807) . 230—246

CHAPTER V.

Sect. 1—Caus, the Tie of Union,

Union, essential for a stable globe—Cohesion ; its varying strength in
solids, liquids, gases—The radical idea involved in union of all kinds is
“ eommonness ;”’ this commonness symbolised as Ceus—During incan-
descence all kinds of matter capable of being vaporised were held in a
condition of gaseous commonness high above the globe—Virgil
(Eel. VI. 31)—First step towards progress would be purification of the
promiscuous mass ; this purifying process identified with Phoebe, the
consort of Cszeus—Horace (Car. Sac. 1)—The primal rain would not
only establish an ocean on the crust, but would also affect the atmos-
phere and its gasecus mineral contents—The former wouid be rendered
clearer ; the latter would be precipitated into the sea below—This last
result compared with myth of Asterie—Hesiod on Czus and his off-
spring (Theog. 404-410) ; Apollodorus (1.4.1-1.4.3) . - 247—251

Sect 2.—Our Atmosphere.

Latona ; identified by comparison of attributes with the atmosphere—
Extent of atmospheric air, its components, and mode of union—How it
came to settle round our globe—Modern conjecture points to caverns
cf earth as the place where it originated—Reasoning on this presump-
tion is but going over incidents connected with the wanderings of
Latona—Atmosphere of early times very unlike what we have to-day ;
Hugh Miller on that of the Archzean age; Winchell on that of the Car-
boniferous period—Not till close of the Coal Age was there an atmos-
phere suitable for air-breathing animals—Ovid’s fable of Latona and
the frogs (Met. VI. 313-381) ; itis a story of Carboniferous time, and
agrees essentially with our own theories of the probable conditions
then existing—Latona ; Diana ; Apollo—Comparison with our atmos-
phere, and the direct and indirect transmission of light, heat, and
sound—aA bit of condensed science from Apollodgorus . 251—264

CONTENTS. XXi

Sect. 3.—The Metamorphie Rocks,

Different theories as to the origin of Metamorphic rocks ; prevalent opinion
favours the aqueous source; their crystalline texture explained in two
ways—Presence of sediment in primal ocean conceded in both cases—
‘Whence derived ?—The gaseous envelope of incandescent days ; its vast
extent, and immense amount of mineral matter therein, as described by
Figuier—The Asterie of mythology compared with the source, matter,
and translation of the Metamorphic rocks; Perses, her partner, identi-
fied with the crysiallising agency that affected these rocks—Conclusions
based on a study of the myth—Horace’s “ Ad Asterien” (Car. ITI. 7) ;
it is descriptive of the Metamorphic and Devonian rocks, and agrees
with our own conceptions of each formation . . - 264—272

Sect. 4.—Mysterious Ups and Downs.

From the establishment of the Metamorphic rocks sprang a mighty and
mysterious process; from Asterie and Perses sprang the mighty and
mysterious Hecate—Each formation derived from ruins of the preceding
—The story of one; it is that of all—Important rédle played by slow
Elevation and Depression ; (1) below the ocean ; (2) above the ocean ;
(8) higher up, as in hills and mountains—These movements are one in
essence, mysterious, powerful, and still continue—Identified with
Hecate, as shown by derivation, parentage, and in a special manner by
Hesiod’s description (Theog. 411-453)—Elevation, considered under
three heads,—geologica],. astronomical, and mental,—will explain all
the epithets and attributes of Hecate . . ~ .w 2738—284

BOOK SIXTH.
TITANIC TIES (continued).

CHAPTER I.
Theogony ; Kronos, and his offspring—Myths . . . . 285—290

CHAPTER IL—KRonos, THE TIE OF TIES.

Time—Its connection, from mythological standpoint, with the First Day of
Genesis; with the Second, Third, and Fourth Days—Helmbholtz,
Flammarion, and Faraday on unremitting and resistless Time—The
period of incandescence ; changes accomplished in it by time—Bonney
describes how Kronos swallowed his children—Hesiod’s narrative
(Theog. 453-467)—A pollodorus relates the story (1.5.1)—Spectroscopic
analysis—Astronomy teils how Kronos was compellei to vomit up his
offspring—Genesis and mythology furnish clues for approximating the
date—-Conclusions based on collating the two accounts . 291—301

' CHAPTER JII.—Tug CuRDLED SPUME OF AGES.

Hestia (Vesta), and the foundations of our globe—Demeter (Ceres), and
mother earth—-Hera (Juno), and the dry land—Hades (Pluto), and the
underground world—Poseidon (Neptune), and water . - 302—308

xxii CONTENTS.

CHAPTER IV.—LiIFs.

Zeus ; identity with Life; proofs, from order of. being, attributes, power,
derivation, epithets, union with Juno, offspring, and all classical
allusions—First indisputable evidences of life are found in Cambrian
rocks—The Archzan series (gneiss, schists, &c.), below these are desti-
tute of visible fossil remains, with one supposed exception ; but that
life did exist among them is generally favoured by geologists—Lyell
and Winchell on the subject—Reasons for entertaining this belief—The
mythological narrative corroborates the idea—It goes even further
back, and begins life with the wane of the incandescent period—Virgil
(Georg. I. 125-132)—As we associate life with the graphite, the
ancients may have associated it with the diamond—-The chemistry of
life : represented by the Dactyli, Cabiri, and Telchines—Dactyli ; they
personify “the ternary group,”—carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen—Ovid
identifies one of the Dactyli with a member of the group (Met. IV.
281-282) ; further identification from derivation, number, and mythical
details—Cabiri ; comparison with “the nitrogenous group,”— carbon,
oxygen, hydrogen, aud nitrogen ; prvofs, from relationship, number,
powers for good and ill, connections, description, derivation individual
and collective, and association with Hecate—Herodotus on the Cabiri—
Telchines ; they are to the Dactyli and Cabiri what inorganic chemistry
is to organic—Their names ; significative of chief characteristic proper-
ties of the metals and metalloids; further proofs of identity found in
their origin, derivation, description, and mythical details ~ The
physiology of life: represented by Amalthea, the Nymphs Adrastea
and Ida, and the Curetes—The cave of Dicte, and the cellular theory—
Amalthea, and germination—Adrasiea, and absorption ; Ida, and
secretion—The Curetes, and growth—The Zeus of Hesiod (Theog.
468-506)—-Life conditions of Archean time—-Youman on Life—Possi-
bility of life on the planets ; on the sun—Fungous nature of primal
vegetation—Lindley on fungous growth—No fixed limits to its endur-
ance and capabilities . . . . . . . - 809—338

BOOK SEVENTH.

TITANIC TIES (continued).

CHAPTER I.
Theogony ; Iapetus and his offspring—Myths . . . . 339—340

CHAPTER Il.— lapretus, THE TIE OF APTITUDE,

Design and change in all things—The great Plan of Creation—As the
receptacle of the Plan, matter may be supposed as having an aptitude
for receiving and exhibiting it; this aptitude or eternal fitness of
things towards an end is personified as Iapetus—Plan, aptitude, and the
“anima mundi” (Virgil, Ain, VI. 724~732)—Earth’s aptitude for
incandeseence was banished from the exterior and confined within the
centre of our globe, when it became a planet ; the myth that plunges
an lapetus into Tartarus is expressive of the same idea—Homer
(iL. VIII. 477-481). : . . . ’ . . » 341—343

CONTENTS. xxiii

CHAPTER III.—“ Too HIGH BoRN TO BE PROPERTY’D.”

As a sun our earth was spherical; as a planet it is an oblate spheroid—In
adapting itself to the change, remnants of the sphere were sacrificed by
shrinking; these remnants are the Menoetius of mythology—Hesiod’s
version of fapetus and his offspring (Theog. 507-516) . « 3t4—346

CHAPTER IV.—THE WoRLD’s WHEEL.

The equatorial plane and Atlas—The scientific aspects ; the mythological—
Hesiod (Theog. 517-520)—Further proofs from derivation, epithets,
and phrases—Viewed in various ways by the poets; by. Homer in
connection with the depths (Odyss. I. 52, 53); by Ovid, with the
rational horizon (Met. XV. 147-149); by Virgil, for its services to
astronomical research (Ain. I. 744-750)—Mach hemisphere, resting on
the equatorial plane, is a vast mountain, and has been transformed ;
Ovid tells the story (Met. IV. 614-662) . . . . . 347—35+

CHAPTER V.—THE METAPHYSICS OF MYTHOLOGY.

Inner significance of the symbols from Chans to Hemera—Ancient philo-
sophy; Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander, Pythagoras, Xenophanes,
Parmenides, Zeno, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Democritus, Anaxagoras—
The Greek schools only unraveled a pre-Hesiodic philosophy that had
been crystallised into word pictures—Theogony—Chaos to Hemera ;
Genesis i, 1-5—What was the religious belief of the ancient philo-
sophers and poets ?—Some curious cryptographic possibilities that point
to a knowledge of the Christ to come . . . . . 355—376

CHAPTER VI.—-Minp.

Close association in the philosophies between Eros, Light or Alther, and
Mind—Influence of light; on the universe, as law; on molecular
matter, as aptitude—This aptitude exhibited as a rotating spheroid for
our globe; as mind, in varying nature and degree, for the three
kingdoms of nature—Mental aptitude as displayed in minerals; in
vegetables ; in animals ; in man—Senusation, emotion, and volition of
plants—Darwin’s comparison—Cuvier on the “anima mundi ”—Cell
development embodied in the conjunction of Prometheus, Zeus, and
Minerva—Minerva, and organic structure—The theft of mind, the
narthex, and other particulars—The myth of Prometheus studied in
connection with the long procession of life forms upon our globe, and
with the gradual development of mind and structure—Man appears ;
reason is set free— Eleventh Labour” of Hercules synchronous with
the coming of man — Hesiod’s version (Theog. 521-534) — The
incident at Mekone compared with the Fall in Eden; Hesiod
(Theog. 535-564). : . . . . . . - 377—395

CHAPTER VII—THE MEASURE AND THE FOIL oF MIND.

Life and sex—Priority of ihe male kin1—Distinction of sex in vegetable
and animal kingdoms—The generative organ in plants; its parts ;
process of gencration—Sexual structure and function of plant life is
the basis of the myth which introduces a Pandora for an Epimethens—
First partnership between Life and Minit—It necessarily embraced a
third member—The Protophyte, and his Pandora—Hesiod (Theog.
565-589)—-How the firm of Life, Mind, and Co. operated through the
ages—-Post-tertiary time ; man becomes the third member; “I am the
firm !”——His Pandora appears—Hesiod tells the story (Works and
Days, 47-89) . . . . . * . eo - 396—4038

XXiV¥ CONTENTS.

BOOK EIGHTH.

WRESTLING WITH THEIR FATE.

CHAPTER I.
Myths ; the War of the Titans; the Battle of the Giants; the Struggle of
Typhceus : . : . - 409—410

CHAPTER JI.—HEAT vERsus LIFE.

Forces on each side ; duration of the contest ; Hesiod (Theog. 617-638)—
The Council of war; Life appeals to his auxiliary forces; Theog.
(639-666)—Preparing for the final struggle; the chronological date as
recorded in rock-bound pages; Theog. (666-678)—A mémorable field
of battle ; ominous signs; ‘the shock—the shout—the groan of war ;”
victory | vee victis !|—Theog. (678-720) . . . . . 411—426

CHAPTER III.—THE Trap Rocks VERSUS LIFE.

How Life shared the spoils, and became ruler; Hesiod (Theog. 881-885)—
The harness wrings into the raw ; insurrection of the Traps—Their
origin, names and numbers, intrusive manners, savage nature, ambitious
desires, size and strength ; how they warred against life, and how they
were finally laid low—The story as told by science; as told by
Mythology (Apollodorus, 1.6-1.6.2.5) . . . . . 427—438

CHAPTER IV.—THE VOLCANO VERSUS LIFE.

Past and present activity of the voleano—More widely distributed in the
past — “Typhaon,” and “ Voleano” — Apollodorus (1.6.3-1.6.3.12)
describes the origin, construction, geographical distribution, &c., of the
volcano ; how it battled against life for supremacy ; and how and when
it was overcome—Distinction between the giant Traps and the
Typhcean voicano well marked in classic poetry ; Horace (Car, IIT.
4-7; Car. JI. 12-15); Virgil (Georg. I. 278-283); Ovid (Met. I.
151-162 ; Met. V. 346-358)—Hesiod’s references to the Trap rocks
(Theog. 182-186) ; he favours their association with volcanic ones.
The poet pictures the struggle between volcanic and life energies
(Theog. 820-868) . . , . . . . . . 439—456

THE GODS OF OLD:

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL.

BOOK FIRST.
THE GENESIS OF BEING.

—_—_>.——.

CHAPTER I.

THEOGONY.
CHAOS
Exusus N ox
AGTHER HEMERA

MYTHS.

Chaos—a rude and shapeless mass that pre-existed the formation of

the world, and out of which the gods, men, and all things
- arose.

Evrebus—son of Chaos, and wedded to his sister Nox.

Nox—daughter of Chaos, and wife of Erebus. The Egyptians
esteemed her as the most ancient of the gods. Homer calls
her the subduer of gods and men, and a deity of whom
Jupiter himself stands in awe.

As the personification of Night, she is represented as
venerable and majestic in appearance, crowned with poppies
or with stars, equipped with large dark wings and a long
robe, and riding in a chariot drawn by two black horses.

Aither—the son of Erebus and Nox, regarded by the poets as the pure
upper air and the residence of the gods.

Hemera—daughter of Erebus and Nox, and wedded to Atther, her
brother.

G.O. 3B

2 . THE GODS OF OLD;

CHAPTER II.

THE “UNUS VULTUS” OF NATURE.

Chaos.—-Our earth represents one extreme of matter and
force. For the other, or what is conjectured to be the
other, we must go beyond our solar and stellar systems,
beyond even the furthest resolvable of the stars, and gaze
upon other systems to which the general name of Nebule
has been given from their cloud-like appearance. Some
few of these are visible to the naked eye on a clear night,
and look like faint patches of cloud or specks of fog.
Many of them are resolvable under telescopic power into
individual stars, but others have been evoked from the
depths of space that appear as faint and misty to the
mightiest of our telescopes as those which it resolves
appear to the unaided eye.

Science assures us that our solid Earth of to-day, its less
solid sister planets and its central sun, were all originally
in a uebulous condition. It concludes the same of the
fixed stars and of every heavenly body that is visible to the
_ naked eye or the most powerful telescope. It furthermore
implies that the nebule embracing our solar system, each
stellar system, and each nebular system, may originally
have been one; or in other words that the cluster of worlds
which we call the Universe may have been primarily one
immense aggregated nebulous mass in which resided all
the knowable as well as the unknowable forms of matter
and force in their simplest condition.

The composition of those most distant nebule is, so far,
somewhat of a puzzle. The combined efforts of telescope
and spectroscope have tracked the regular sequence of Harth
from planet, planet from star, and star from “ star-dust.”
But beyond this star-dust, or the diffused gaseous material

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 3

of which the nebule are made up, their efforts have been
powerless. “Probably gaseous” and ‘“ probably not
gaseous”’ are the more or less Pythian responses of even
that most powerful of scientific implements, the spectro-
scope, when confronted by some, and those not even the
most distant, of thenebule. . . . And yet thesenebule
must be as old as Harth itself, must have undergone change
after change during the countless million years that geology
assigns to our own orb, and they visibly evince those
changes in ths multiplicity of forms, circular, elliptical,
spiral, and otherwise, which they present for view to-day.
Now, if their change of form be, as it is asserted to be, in
the line of evolution, then there must have also been a
corresponding change from the matter and force originally
resident in them. §o that, however simple the matter of
those nebule be even now,—so much so as to defy the
prism and the lens,—there must have been a time past
when if was simpler still, and an archaic day when the
nebulous mass that embraced our universe, and (it may be)
external universes, contained matter and force in their
simplest forms. What the nature of such force could be is
one of the vexed questions of to-day. It could not have
been any of our known forces; not even gravitation, for in
space filled with nebulous matter, the plenum et inani of
Hpicurus, there was nothing to gravitate to or to be gravi-
tated by. Space and matter were one. What the nature
of the matter was is equally incomprehensible, since it is
almost as difficult to believe it gaseous as it is to believe it
fluid or solid; and we know of matter under no other than
these three forms. Be this as it may, a universal nebulous
mass, characterised by the extreme of simplicity as to form,
maticr, and force, is the ‘‘fons et origo” of approved
modern science when tracing back our universe to its cog-
nisable beginning.

If we now turn to Mythology we find Chaos heading the
list of all existences, the “first of all,” the embracing all,
and than which there was none older. This must conse-
quently be the mythic synonym of our scientific fons et

B 2

4. THE GODS OF OLD;

origo, and if so, must be found to agree with a universal
nebula having the extreme of simplicity as to matter, force,
and form. So far as priority is concerned the proof is
evident enough. Hesiod, invoking the Muses, writes as
follows and effectually disposes, it will be observed, not only
of the priority of Chaos, but also of the false notions con-.
cerning the religious views attached to the so-called Pagan
deities.
Xaipere, réxva Ads, Sore & ipepdeooar dordyy.
KAetere & ddavatev icpév yévos aidv édvrav,
ot yijs eEeyévovro Kal olpavot darepdertos,
vuxtoés Te dvodepis, ovs @ ddpupos erpede movros.
eixare ©, ds taxpara Geol kal yaia yevovro,
kal qrorajol Kal movros azretptros, ciduart Ovay,
aotpa te Aaparerdwvra Kal odpavds ebpts Umrepber,
ol 7 ék ray éyévovto Ocoi, Swipes edav,
st abevov Sdocarro Kal as Tyas S1€AovTO,
70€ kal @s Tamp&ra wodUMTuyoy Eoxov” OhupTov.
TaUTE prot oere Movoa: Oddpmia dopar ~xovcat
é& dpyis, xal eima®? 6 te mp&rov yever’ abrav-
"Hrow pév mpariora Xdos yéver’.
Theog. 104—116.
Jove’s children, hail, and grant the pleasing song.
Of gods immortal voice the blessed race
Who claimed descent from earth and starry heaven,
From gloomy night, and whom the salt sea nursed.
Tell how the elements were gods and earth,
Rivers, and boundless billow-beaten sea,
The shining stars and the wide heaven above ;
And who of gods, the givers of all good,
Were from them sprung; and how they shared the spoil,
And how the honours meted ; also how
Those elements Olympus wreathy held.
O Muses, ye that have Olympian domes,
Those things relate to me from day of eld,
And whichso of them was the first declare.
Truly, indeed, was Chaos first of all.

The possibility of producing such a nebula as has been
described has occupied the attention of Science.

Helmholtz says: ‘If our earth were by a sudden shock
brought to rest on her orbit, a quantity of heat would be
generated sufficient to fuse its mass and reduce it for the
most part to vapour. If, in addition, the earth having

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 5

been thus brought to rest should fall into the sun (which of
course would be the case); the quantity of heat developed
by the shock would be 400 times greater.”’

That is to say, the condition of nebulous matter would
be attenuated or simplified to a degree beyond ordinary
comprehension. Other writers have carried the same
agent, heat, and the same modus operandi to systems
beyond our solar one, and shown that progressive concen-
tration or clustering of stellar bodies would of necessity
lead to collisions: those collisions would generate heat so
much the more intense than that produced by the earth
falling into the sun, as the distance and magnitude of the
colliding stellar bodies are greater than those of earth and
sun: the diffused matter produced therefrom would form a
resisting medium tending to diminish the velocities of
other stellar bodies, and to increase the possibility of more
frequent collisions with the same result: and so on, thus
entailing eventually complete dissipation of matter and
force and a universal nebulous condition. From all this we
can infer that heat, intense heat, would be a prime factor
in the causation of a more or less simple universal nebula.

Now, the same intense heat is mentioned by Hesiod as
the one agent capable of producing a condition of things
approximating the most nearly to Chaos. When describing
the battle of Jupiter against the Titans, the poet pictures
Zeus as collecting all his strength and hurling thick and
fast both bolt and lightning on his foes till at last earth
itself and all upon it shared in the conflagration. He then
continues thus :—

lee 52 xdav waa kai Oxeavoio pécOpa,

movtos + dtpiyeros* tous & tipdere Geppds ditpy
Terjvas yOovious, PrAOE & Hépa Siav ixavev
doretos, doce 8 duepde xai ipbipev rep édvTav
avy? pappaipovea Kepauvod te otEpomis Te.
kadpa b€ Ocoméctov Kateyev Xdos: eicaro 8 tyra
épbarpoiow Deiv 7S otacw drcav dxotoa
atras, as dre Taia cat Otpavds edpds vrepbev
wihvaw@ . ° oios yap Ke péytatos Botmos épepot
Tis pev éperopéevys, Too 8 inpdbev eLepindrros,
téga0s Sodmros eyevro Gedy Epids Evvidvrav.

Theog. 695—705,

6 THE GODS OF OLD;

Then steamed the all of earth, the ocean’s springs,
The boiling sea. Then circling round and round
Those earthy Titans coursed the fiery surge ;

And flame untold to air celestial came ;

And mighty though they were, the dazzling glare
Of bolt and lighting ’reft them of their sight.
Then. awful Chaos checked the heat intense,

And seemed as face to face with eyes to see,

‘With ears to hear a boding sound,—the same

As when wide heaven above and earth drew nigh.
For such a crash tremendous as arose

From him compressing and: from her compressed,
Some such the crash was of conflicting gods.

Ovid, too, bears similar testimony. Writing of the
hardihood of Phethon in guiding the chargers of the sun,
he pictures the conflagration that ensued therefrom as
come to earth, destroying city and plain, mountain, river,
and the depths of land and sea, till finally earth herself,
compelled by dire necessity, implores relief and mercy from
the intense heat, and thus winds up her prayer :—

“Si freta, si terre periunt, si regia cooli ;
In Chaos antiquum confundimur.”
Met. TI. 298—299.

If perish water, land, and sky’s domain,
To oldest Chaos are we blent again.

When we turn to the derivation of the word Chaos we find
additional points of resemblance between the scientific and
mythological starting pomts. The primal nebula was such,
we are told, as would be the last recipient of matter and
force if dissipated by long-continued collisions of stellar
bodies in space: it was also the general receptacle from
which matter and force would be evoluted in the order of
time. It was thus the refuge and the source, the coffin
and the cradle, the goal and starting point of created being.

Now, if it be possible for a single word to picture this
dual idea, then Chaos is that word. It—xdos—comes from
an old root xa that has a twofold meaning, namely, holding,
and releasing. The former is well seen in xavidve, “to
hold, comprise, contain”; the latter, in xaddo, “to let

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 7

loose, to release.” Other characteristically nebulous ideas
are instanced in yatveo and ydoxw, “to gape, open, separate”;
in xdMs, “ pure or unmixed wine,” that is, in its simplest
form ; in yavvdw, “‘ to make light, to weaken both the force
and the weight’; in xatos, ‘‘original’’; and in yaipo, the
imperative form of which, xaipe, is used to signify both
“welcome ”’ and ‘‘farewell.”” So that Chaos would literally
mean the Holder and Releaser, the Welcome and Farewell
of all things, and would thus be the exact personification of
the idea embodied in the greater nebular hypothesis of
science.

For further particulars we quote Hesiod :—

1 "Hrot pév mpotiora Xdos yéver’, aitap érerra
mt 2 cA 4 cd 3 s vA
Tat’ eipvorepvas, wdvray os aodakés aie
24, , aw s z ’ ,
abavaray, ot €xovet Kdpy vipsevros ’OAuprav,
Taptapa 7 hepdevra puye xOovds edpvodeins,
5 78 "Epos, ds xddhioros év dOavarowce Geoict,
Avoipedys, wavrov re Gedy mavtev 7 avoparav
, M 3. LA ‘4 A 3 e La
Sdpvarat év otnbeoce voor kat éxighpova BovAnv.

Theog. 116—122.

Truly, indeed, was Chaos first of all;

But consequent therefrom, the wide-stretched Gé,
The e’er persistent bed of all the gods

Who of Olympus snowy hold the peaks,

And nebulous depths in wide-grooved earth’s recess ;
And Eros too, amongst immortal gods,

Most subtile and resolving, who rules o’er

The duteous wish and feeling in the breasts

Of all, of all, both gods and men alike.

NOTES.

1 éreira—This word in Greek expresses the immediate sequence from
what goes before, and shows that both Tata and “Epos, Matter
and Force, were inevitably blended in the chaos.

2 Yai—The matter of our universe, evidently disseminated
(eipiorepvos) through the nebulous mass. It seems connected
with, if not derived from, ydo, an obsolete root denoting ‘‘ to be
derived from, to be born,” as also, ‘‘to be proud of, to exult.”
If we regard the y as but an aspirate form—the digamma—
we can trace the word through its other form, aia, to dw, ‘to
sleep; to satiate; to breathe,” all three meanings indicative
of the rest and oneness that prevailed in the chaos when ‘the
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

8 . THE GODS OF OLD;

“By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all
the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” Psalm xxxiii. 6.

édos—-Matter is persistent (dogadés aici), the great foundation or bed
of all created things, whether in air above or in the very
nucleus (uvx@) of our globe.

5 “Epos—Force. The word is derived immediately from ¢épa, as
our “force” is from qopd, the Latin impetus: hence gopd
mpaypareyv, ‘‘the force of circumstances,” and gépe yap, or
@épe alone when introductory, answering to our “for” or
“perforce.” In many other words, too, of similar meaning,
the @ is omitted; as in dypi, nui; podrkds, éAKds; Pépeoros,
&picros, &e.

Force produces either motion or rest, motion being a change
of place, and rest being the opposite of motion. As the mini-
mum of force is accompanied inseparably by the minimum of
motion, the simplest form of force and motion may be said to
reside in change, a passing from one state to another, an altera-
tion immeasurably great or infinitely small, as the case may be.
Change implies both force and motion; its absence implies rest.
Now, épos curiously enough becomes by metathesis péos, ‘‘ flux
or change,” and the term of pedvres has been given to such
philosophers as Heraclitus and his followers, who held the
theory that “all things are in a constant state of flux”—a
theory equivalent to our own idea that “‘ change is persistent.”

The Chaos would thus mean simplicity or Absolute Rest, in
which were the substance of matter (Ge), and rudimentary force
and motion, or change (eros).

6 AvompeAjs—From Advois péAw, ‘presiding over resolution,” as seen
in the law styled ‘‘the resolution of force.” -

Ovid, too, adds his contribution—no mean one either, for
every line is brimful of information as regards the proper
understanding of the Chaos:

1, Ante mare et terras, et, quod tegit omnia, coelum,
Unus erat toto Naturz vultus in orbe, .
Quem dixere Chaos; rudis indigestaque moles;
Nec quicquam nisi pondus iners, congestaque eodem
Non bene jJunctarum discordia semina rerum.
Nullus adhuc mundo preebebat lumina Titan ;
Nec nova crescendo reparabat cornua Phoebe ;
Nec circumfuso pendebat in aére tellus,
Ponderibus librata suis; nec brachia longo
10. Margine terrarum porrexerat Amphitrite.

Quaque fuit tellus, illic et pontus, et aér:

Sic erat instabilis tellus, innabilis unda,

Tucis egens aér; nulli sua forma manebat,

or

or

ll

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 9

Obstabatque aliis aliud: quia corpore In uno
15. Frigida pugnabant calidis, humentia siccis,
Mollia cum duris, sine pondere habentia pondus.
Met. I. 5—20.

*Fore sea and lands, and sky that covers all,

In the whole round was Nature’s aspect one ;
*Twas Chaos called; a mass unformed and crude;
Nought save a passive bulk, and packed in same
TIncongruous seeds of things but badly joined.

As yet no Titan gave the world its rays ;

No Phoebe by increase new horns refilled ;

Nor hung the earth self-balanced in the air
Poured all around; nor o’er the margin long

Of lands had Amphitzite stretched her arms.
And where was dust, there moisture was and air:
Thus wanting in stability was earth,

In yielding way the wave, in light the air:

Its own peculiar form for none remained. —

iach hindered each: for in the substance one
Did cold oppose the hot, did moist the dry,

Did soft the hard, and weight those wanting weight.

NOTES.

unus vultus—-Oneness, uniformity. or complete simplicity, was the
characteristic of all creation’s round (in toto orbe) in the
beginning.

rudis—The nebulous mass was /resh (rudis) from the Creator’s
hand, and as yet destitute of form and order (indigesta).

iners—It was powerless for effect, and replete (congesta) with
embryonic matter and force (semina rerum) thoroughly diffused
(non bene junctarum).

rerum—‘‘res” hasa wide meaning in Latin, seeing that it signifies
‘“‘thing ; whatever one can think of, corporeal and incorporeal ;
matter; force; the world; the universe.” Ovid must have
been of the opinion that the matter and force in the Chaos were
not such as we know them to-day, for he uses the words
** seming rerum,”

- nullus Titan—There was as yet no nearest sun, no distant star:

all was darkness.
‘* And darkness was upon the face of the deep.”—Gen. i. 2,
hibrata—Any body that is poised evenly by its own weigh tis “ self-
balanced.”
Quaque fuit tellus—Nebulous matter is scientifically described as
‘fa cloud of intensely-heated gas, a fire-mist; or a cloud of
intensely-heated dust, finely divided particles of solid or liquid

10 THE GODS OF OLD;

matter, each particle enveloped as if were with a layer of
permanent gas.”

13 sua. forma—Again does the poet suggest the unknowable form of
matter in the Chaos.

14 obstabat—They nullified one another, and thus kept up the
Absolute Rest.

Let us say here that the Gé of Mythology and of Hesiod
must be considered in the light of a diminishing quantity.
In the Chaos it stands for Matter as opposed to Force, each
unknowable as to nature. Afterwards, when separated
from the Chaos, it stands for the circle of the universe as
opposed to the circumferential Uranus or firmament; later
on, for the nebulous mass from which our Solar System was
evolved; later still, for the residual nebula from which
earth and its atmosphere were derived ; still later, for the
globe as opposed to the gaseous envelope surrounding it ;
and finally, for the dry land in contradistinction to the sea.
This is in consonance too with the scientific hypothesis
that each successive mass, when disrupted from the parent -
nebula, would represent the density of that nebula and
would consist of progressively heavier matter. The same
interpretation of Gé is observable in Genesis, chap. i.

‘In the beginning God made rév odpavdy and ri yiv.”
Now the writer defines rév otpardy in the 8th verse, where he
says “ And God called the firmament Oipavév,”’ so that we are
naturally led to infer that tiv yjv included all creation, the
firmament excepted. Again it is unreasonable to suppose
that the yi ddéparos kai dxaracxevactos of verse 2, invested
as it is with the unlimited characteristics of the “‘abyss”’
or “ deep,” is identical in size, form, or nature with the
limited yj surrounded afterwards by a firmament and
alluded to in verse 7, ‘‘ the waters which were under the
firmament,” as opposed to “‘ the waters which were above
the firmament’’; and in no way can we confound this last
yi or the preceding ones with that mentioned in verse 10,
*‘ And God ealled the dry land yjv; and the gathering
together of the waters called he seas,” where the distinction
is obvious,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 11

Turning now to that verse of Genesis which concerns most
immediately the very beginning of created things, we find
a condition, similar to the Chaos of the myths and to the
universal nebula of science, described, emphatically and
clearly enough too, taking into account the highly condensed
nature of the sacred narrative :

‘ de a> ae a 3 a, . ‘ 4 > 4 n 2 fa
H Se yi fv aéparos, cat dxararkevactos’ Kal oxéros érdva Tis aBiooov'
-~ - na @ :
kal mvetpa Qcot emedépero éemdvw tov vdaros.—Gen. i, 2.

This aSdocos, ‘‘abyss,” or “deep,” as it is generally
rendered, is universally accepted as the Chaos or primal
aspect of Nature. Its derivation, “‘the unfathomable”
(a Bvacos), points to the unlimited extent of the nebulous
mass, and the nebulous or misty characteristic of the
whole is shown by the epithet rod tédaros assigned it at the
conclusion of the verse. The same rod tdaros occurs in
verses 6 and 7, when the division is made by the firmament,
and when we must suppose the universe as still in a
nebulous condition. Not till the 9th and 10th verses, when
dry land as opposed to water comes into being, do we
find a change to tdep and tddrwv. The distinction is well
marked in verse 6, where instead of the ray tddrav that we
would naturally enough accept, the writer makes use of the
singular form, even at the expense of reiteration. The
verse runs thus :—

4 — 2 \ ¢ x 3 ? a 7 arg
Kai eiev 6 cds, Tevnbjrw orepeopa év péaw tov Vdaros: Kal gota

dtayopifoy dvi pécov Datos xai tdaros’ Kat éyéveta Gutas.

In this mass, unfathomable, dark, and nebulous, was the
4 yn of the Genesiac narrative, fresh (rudis, as Ovid calls
it) from the creative act alluded to in the opening verse.
If, as is certain from verses 6 and 7, it was nebulous matter
after the firmament, what must or can we suppose it as
being at a time so much anterior to this event as is
measured by two of the Genesiac Days? Whether know-
able or not, it was at least nebulous matter, and charac-
terised as ddparos kat dxatacxedactos. The former of those
epithets, déparos, has been rendered as “ void,” an inter-

12 THE GODS OF OLD ;

pretation that, however agreeable it may be with the
Vulgate, is lacking in the preciseness of the Greek. It
literally means “‘ incapable of being seen’ (a dpaw), and if
we admit the close relation between épao, cidw, and ofda, it
would also imply ‘‘ incapable of being known.”

The second epithet, 4 xaracxevacros, means “‘ shapeless,”
or “ unformed,” and hence “‘ that which is characterised by
simplicity.”

Applying these meanings then to the 2nd verse, it would
read thus :—

‘*And matter was incapable of being perceived and simple; and
darkness was upon the face of the abyss.”

Enough has been written, we submit, to bring conviction
to the mind that the story as told by Genesis, Science, and
Mythology, is identical and harmonious so far as Chaos,
and what Chaos stands for, is concerned. It only remains
to point out how curiously close in touch are Genesis and
Mythology, as instanced by finding the mythic characters
in the 2nd verse of the scriptural record, thus, xdos,
aBvoocos; Tata, yj; and even Epos can be detected in the
éreépero attributed to the avedua Geos, thus alike fastening
the derivation, and tending to show that motion in some
phase was the primal force in the opinion of the framers of
Mythology. There is no other feasible conclusion left that
we can see: Genesis sustains it, and Science has nothing
else to offer than “‘ change,” which is but the minimum of
foree and motion. One other conclusion can be derived
from Mythology. We look in vain to this source for the
idea advanced by some scientists of our day that matter
and force are identical, are but forms of one another. On
the contrary, it seems positive from the distinct mention
- of a yaia and an épos in the Chaos that ancient lore
considered the two as entities distinct and separate.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 13

CHAPTER IIL.

“QUISQUIS FUIT ILLE DEORUM.”

Erebus and Nox.—The condition of uniformity and
simplicity was not lasting. Science, as already mentioned,
has pointed out a possible means whereby such a condition
might be brought about. It states in general language
that change is continuous and universal, and that the
processes of integration and disintegration, or evolution
and dissolution, apply equally to our earth, our system,
and our universe as they do to organised beings on our
globe.

Evolution is a change from the simple or general to the
complex or special, and is constructive in its nature.
Dissolution is the reverse of this. .

The constructive change in the arrangement of parts,
which constitutes evolution, must necessarily involve not
alone the matter that makes up the parts thus re-arranged,
but also the motion exhibited during the re-arrangement
and the force that produces this motion. But since
motion is ever carried on at the expense of deduction, and
force at the expense of dissipation, evolution. cannot cease,
owing to the persistency of force, till a point or stage is
arrived at when the forces which favour evolution are
counterbalanced by the forces which oppose it. When
this point, the equilibrium mobile, as it is called, is
reached, change still goes on, but a reverse one, owing
to the disintegrating forces being now in the ascendant.
The change is now from the complex to the simple, from
the special to the general, from the many to the one: it
is destructive, and does not cease till a point or stage is
reached when complete equilibrium, absolute rest, or the

14 THE GODS OF OLD;

uniform simplicity of a nebulous mass occurs. This
reversed change is called Disintegration or Dissolution.

Such is the destiny that the philosophy of to-day,
reasoning from the more or less probable data of collision,
gradual cooling, tidal and ethereal friction, shrinkage, &c.
predicts for organised existence in general and, inevitably
though slowly, for the universe as a whole. It is a
gloomy one enough, and must be borne in mind by those
who condemn the ancients for entertaining the melancholy
and grim ideas they did with regard to Mera and the
Mere, their personifications of Destiny and the Fates.

Turning from the what-may-be to the what-was, we find
as the starting point of existence a vast mass made up
of diffused matter and force reduced to the extreme of
simplicity. Now, change, to occur, could only transpire
by altering this simplicity, by summoning from the
uniform the two principles of Evolution and Dissolution,
twin congeners, inseparably united, and the last—if older
creations there had been—+to lay down their arms—Dissolu-
tion the last of all.

This is the evolutionary theory, and ‘‘ mutatis nominibus,”’
it is the mythological theory also, since from the nebulous
mass or Chaos were born Nox and EHrebus,—Nox or
Dissolution, the most ancient of the deities, the subduer
of gods and men; the one of whom Zeus (Life) himself
stands in awe, as well he may; Nox or Dissolution, sister
and mate to, and sprung from the same source as Evolution
or Erebus, from whom came Aither and Hemera, the
archetypes of all that followed.

Nv& may be derived from wi or viv, a particle that has
reference to time past, present, or to come, and thus
pointing out Dissolution as the beginning, middle, and end
of all things; or from vicca, ‘the starting point, and the
turning point” in the course of creation; or simply and
perferably from Avo, “fo dissolve, to break up,” v and A
being interchangeable in Greek.

As with Nox, so too have we a choice of words regarding
the derivation of Erebus ("EpeSos): they may differ more

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 15

or less, but they all point to the idea contained in
Evolution. Thus épos Baww ‘the march of force”; pépo
Bia or pépw Bios, ‘ force-bearing,”’ or ‘‘ bearing the way of
life’; pez, ‘‘ to be ever shifting, to change.”

There is another derivation suggested by Ovid in the
line:

Hane Deus et melior litem Natura diremit.
Met. I. 21,

The word ‘‘ Nature’? has been defined in eight or nine
different ways, but they can all be covered by the one,
namely, ‘‘the course of being”: this too agrees closest
with the probable derivation, naturus, the future participle
of nascor. But since the course of being tends to either
motion or rest, Ovid says in substance ‘‘this chaos, or
Absolute Rest, was put an end to by some deity, even a
better course of being.” He thus refers to that phase of
Nature which is called by Aristotle active as opposed to
passive,—that is, motion as opposed to rest, or Evolution
as opposed to Dissolution. The melior natura of the poet
would thus be the equivalent of the Greek dpetwy Bios, or
"EpeBos, ‘a, better course of Being,” or Evolution. We have
further confirmation in the fact that Ovid, having described
the general outline of the accomplished work in two lines,
summarises the whole in one expressive word :

Nam coelo terras, et terris abscidit undas;
Et liquidum spisso secrevit ab aére ccelum.
Que postquam evolvit. Met. I. 22.

It may be objected that the same term Erebus was given
to a portion of the Greek Hades. But in this we but see
confirmatory evidence of the ‘ evolution ’’ interpretation.
Beyond Erebus was Tartarus, the domain of fire and flame
and igneous vapour, believed by the ancients to consist of
molten matter, an idea entertained by most modern writers
when treating of the probable nature of the interior of our
globe. Exterior to this Tartarus and beyond the Styx was
Erebus. If, as is generally supposed, our earth is growing
cooler and more solid towards the centre, it would be

16 THE GODS OF OLD;

in this midway region or Erebus, that is neither solid crust
nor molten interior, that evolution of matter would be going
on, if at all.

It would seem at first sight as if there were no exact
equivalents in the Genesiac narrative for Erebus. But
there is really much suggestive of it. The work of each
Day concludes with the phrase “kai éyévero évaépa, Kat
éyévero mpwt,” ‘And there was evening and there was
morning.” If each Day was made up of an evening and a
morning, and represents, as it is generally supposed to do,
a long continued period of time, then “‘ the evening and
morning” would stand for successive centuries during
which the forces of disintegration and of integration would
preponderate in turn. In other words, each Day would
consist of an evening that witnessed the decline of force
and its disintegrating consequences, and of a morning that
beamed on the progress of force. And when we study the
words, we find that. éowépa can signify “the consequences
of force” (ér7opat pos), and spwt “the march of force, or
progress’ (mpotjus). They both constitute “‘the Day” or
qpepa, and Hemera in mythology is the child of Krebus
and Nox.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL 17

CHAPTER IV.
“LET THERE BE LIGHT.”

Atther and Hemera.—With respect to the nature of light
there are two theories, the Corpuscular or Emissive, and
the Undulatory or Wave. The former teaches that light
consists of very minute material particles or corpuscles
thrown off with immense velocities and in all directions
from luminous sources. The latter considers light as the
effect of an undulation or vibration produced by luminous
bodies in an exceedingly rare, elastic, and imponderable
medium called Ether, that is diffused through space.
While each of these theories has its advocates, and while
each admits of no actual demonstration or proof, the
Undulatory is found more consistent with the phenomena
produced and is the one generally adopted to-day. Neither
theory supposes the’ existence of a vacuum, since the
Hmissive fills space with the matter itself of light, and the
Undulatory with the all penetrating Ether. Youman puts
the matter thus: ‘“‘Now the radiant forces are believed to
be all propagated by undulatory motions; but motions in
what? Sound has its medium—the air; and the sound
rays cannot cross a vacuum, as there is nothing to convey
them. But heat, light, and the chemical force dart
through the most perfect vacuum we can produce, and
traverse in all directions the interstellar spaces. There
must be something throughout these spaces to transmit the
motion. The Wave theory of light assumes the existence
of a universal Ether—an infinitely rare and elastic medium
which is diffused through Nature, pervading even the most
solid bodies. It connects atom with atom and star with
star. Through this universal medium—the dynamie bond
of nature—waves are sent with a velocity far exceeding

G.0, C

18 THE GODS OF OLD;

those of sound. It is objected to this idea of Ether that it
is a pure creation of fancy, like caloric and phlogiston. It
is urged that as we know the forces only as manifested in
matter, and as a perfect vacuum has never been produced,
it is better to assume that some form of actual matter is
universal, and that the wave motions take place in that.
But it is after all very much a question of terms. Both
views assume a, universal medium capable of transmitting un-
dulatory motions ; one calls it material, and the other ethereal.
Ether is not held to be force, but only the medium for
representing those motions by which force is transmitted.
One Ether suffices for all the forces, and thus by introducing
the idea of wnity in their modes of action we are prepared
to comprehend their mutual relations.”

There can be no hesitation in taking the Aither of
mythology for the ether of our own day. Science has
accepted the very name, one of the few not destined to die
throughout the ages. The word aiéjp shows by its deriva-
tion—aléw “to light up, to keep burning”’—the intimate
relation between light and heat, and aiétoow, ‘to put in
rapid motion,” is significative of the connection between
both and motion.

Everywhere throughout the classics do we note the same
uncertainty we have ourselves regarding the absolute proof
of Aither as a material and as an ethereal medium. We
give some examples :

Largior hic campos sether et lumine vestit

Purpureo: solemque suum, sua sidera nérunt.
Ain, VI. 640.

Purior ather
Fulsit, et a toto pectore cessit onus.
Ars Amor, TIT, 58.
Ovid, when describing Phethon as starting on his
journey to the sun, makes use of a phrase that brings
vividly to the mind the objection, ‘ a pure. reation of fancy,”
cited by Youman :—

Emicat extemplo letus post talia matris
Dicita suze Pheethon, et concipit cethera mente.

Met. I. 776.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 19

Here is a passage that can be translated in conformity
with the Undulatory theory by rendering “ aque tremulum”
as “undulating ” :—

Sicut aquee tremulum labris ubi lumen aénis,

Sole repercussum, aut radiantis imagine Lune,
Omnia pervolitat late loca. Ain, VII, 22.

Here is another from Ovid strongly poimting to the
Corpuscular :—

Sed timuit, ne forte sacer tot ab ignibus ether
Conciperet flammas. Met. 254.

But feared lest hap the ether pure derived
From many igneous fonts should take the flames.

But that Atther stands, mediately or immediately, for
light is everywhere clear. As the nature of a word is best
recognised by the phrases and epithets used in connection
with it, we give an itemised résumé of the scientific Ether,
annexing after each characteristic the corresponding phrase
or epithet as found applied to Aither in the classics.

It is an exceedingly rare and imponderable medium :

Ffcec super imposuit liquidum et gravitate carentem
AGthera, nec quicquam terrenze frecis habentem.

Mei. 67.
It is elastic (revolubilis), the source of light (lucidus,
candens), and acts with incredible velocity (rapidus); it is
universal as to space (vastus, arduus, altus), binds star to
star (signifer), is the ‘dynamic bond of nature’ (sacer,
omnipotens), and produces a variety of effects, light, heat,
colour, &c. (pictus, igneus, cceruleus, purpureus, &¢.).
Whether light be the material offshoots of, or the medium
thrown into vibration by some luminous body or bodies,
the question arises as to the origin and location of the
source or sources. The only scientific datum properly
granted is a Universal Nebula, the embodiment of that
complete equilibrium or Absolute Rest which philosophy
points to as the goal and start. To effect anything this
state of rest must be disturbed.
c 2

20 THE GODS OF OLD;

If we can only cause change or active effect of any kind
in the mass, all else is comparatively easy; for force
accompanies and is the result of change. Science has
searched for this primal cause: it is still searching. Until
it has solved the problem it is compelled, even though
conflicting with the strict idea of Absolute Rest, to grant a
state of incessant movement to ulfimate atoms. With this
added condition the problem becomes solvable, and is in
reality that which Plato proposed, namely, ‘‘a rude indi-
gested mass of matter animated by an irregular principle of
motion.”

If Absolute Rest be the end of all things, then motion
for the mass must naturally be conceived as the last weapon
employed by Force ere Force itself sank to Resi: if
Absolute Rest be the beginning of all things, then this last
of weapons dropped would be the jirst to be taken up and
employed. If the end of the predominantly destructive
be the beginning of the predominantly constructive, then
motion would be given to the mass, and according to the
correlation of forces motion can be converted into light,
heat, magnetism, electricity, and chemical affinity—if,
indeed, we do not go further and agree with Grove in
thinking all these but modes of motion.

Would this force of motion accomplish any other result
besides the generation of light, heat, &c.? Our universe,
vast as itis, must be conceived as having been but a portion,
a small portion, of the chaotic nebula; and though all that
the most powerlul telescope observes as yet is claimed by
astronomical science for our universe’s domain, the same
science argues for and admits the existence of what it calls
‘¢ external universes.” In conformity with the doctrine of
Evolution, all these must have been one originally: in
conformity with the same Evolution they must have been
separated some time. Our universe is a visible proof that
they were.

The Chaotic Nebula may, on an infinitely vaster scale, be
likened to our Solar System when it too was a homogeneous
mass, and the same Nebular Hypothesis may be applied to

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 21

one as to the other. It would thus be presented as a
luminous mass in which condensation as to substance,
differentiation as to space, and a rotatory motion of the
whole would occur, with the final result of division into
Universes, and the establishment of material sources of
light or of an ethereal medium for transmitting light.

Conjectural as all this must necessarily be on the part of
modern science, it receives confirmation from Mythology.
‘“‘Granted,’’ says one, “‘a universal homogeneous nebula
and rudimentary motion; then light and division into
universes will follow.” ‘‘ Granted,” says Mythology, “a
Chaos and an Erebus; then Aither and Hemera will
follow.” The data in each case are the same: light and
Atther have been shown to be synonymous. What does
Hemera then represent? It, juépa, is derivable from
Meipouat, ‘to receive one’s due, to obtain by lot, to be
divided from ;”’ so that it is very probably but 7 peépa, “the
division,” the first of all divisions, the division par
excellence; that is, the division into universes,—thus
bearing testimony to the truth of modern philosophical
conjecture.

From being a division of the unknowable in space,
matter, and quantity, it was transferred to our universe,
our System, and our Karth, and made to denote a division
of time, or a ‘‘ day,” the length of which would mark the
return of certain phenomena in the same order, and bring
back, as 1t were, the end to the beginning. It would thus
signify an ordinary day of 24 hours, marked by the regular
succession of day and night; or a Lunar Cycle of 19 years,
after the lapse of which. the phases of the moon would
occur on the same day of the year; or a Solar Cycle of
28 years, after the termination of which the days of the
month return to the same days of the week; or the
Platonic year, our own Precession of the Equinoxes, a
period of about 25,868 years, at the end of which the stars
and constellations return to their former places in respect
to the Equinoxes.

The Romans, who kept such names as Chaos, Erebus,

22 THE GODS OF OLD; -

Nox, and Aither, substituted Dies for the Greek jyépa. If
we derive it from dia, “passing right through and going out
of” as to space, and ‘‘ throughout, or during,” that is,
extension as to time, we can see in dies, as in jpépa, the
same division as to universes, and the same measurement
as to that duration of which each heavenly body, our
universe and external ones are, after all, but the great
timekeepers. ,

Nor is the idea of ‘‘ heavens of heavens,’”’ or external
universes confined to the very ancient or very modern
times. Everywhere through medieval literature do we find
allusion made to them, to a heaven for our system, a
colum stellatum for our universe, to a crystalline heaven,
a primum mobile, and above all those mobile heavens to a
supremum ccelum immobile or Empyrean.

Turning now to Genesis, we find the self-same story
told, and some of the missing links supplied :—
2 ‘H 8€ yi jy adparos, kal dxaragkevaotos' Kal oKéros émdve Tis éBicoov"

kal mvedpa Ocod éemehéra émdve Tod veares.

The writer, it is seen, presents but one condition, the
ideal one of science, Absolute Rest, or ‘‘ matter incapable
of being perceived, and simple.” He solves the problem of
creation by alluding to motton as the force brought first
into action, and “ the Spirit of God” as the First Cause in
changing the passivity to activity.

The results that followed are in harmony with the.
deductions of Science and Mythology :—

3 Kat eiev 6 Ocds, Ternnrw Gas’ kal éyévero pas.

4 Kal cider 6 Geds 7d as, drt kadév' kal Stexdpicev 6 Ceds dva pécov
Tod Paros, Kal dvd pecoy Tov oKdTous.

5 Kat éxddecev 6 Geds 76 Hds, “Hyépay, xat To oxoros exadeoe, NUxra’ Kat
éyévero Eamrépa, Kat eyévero mpol, nuépa pia.

Here we find és and “Hypa as the representatives of
Aither and Hemera, of light and division of the chaotic
nebula. That the Genesiac Hemera of the First Day has
reference to external universes may be understood by
reasoning in the same manner as before. It is rationally

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 23

absurd to suppose it as a day measured by the revolution of
& universe, much less of an earth, that was still in the
bosom of the abyss. There was (and still is) a Seventh
Day peculiarly for our earth, and a Sixth, a Fifth, and a
Fourth (tacitly implied), and a Third when the fiat for its
separate existence went forth thus: ‘‘ Let the waters under
the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the
dry land appear.” There was a Second Day when God
said, ‘‘ Let there be a firmament in the midst of the
waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And
God made the firmament and divided the waters which were
under the firmament from the waters which were above the
firmament.”

Was this Second Day for Harth? or for the Sun, Moon,

and Stars? ‘They were not in existence, save in as much
as they formed one mass, “‘ the waters which were under the
firmament.” This Second Day was consequently for our
universe as an independent whole.
_ But there was a Day preceding all these, when the waters
above and the waters under were one, when our universe
was but part of that vast world of waters upon the face of
which moved the Spirit of God, and with regard to which
God said, ‘ Let there be hight.” What then of those waters
that were above, when the division by a firmament was
accomplished? They too were as material, however un-
Inowably so, as the waters under the firmament ; they,
too, enjoyed the light that was made. They, too, must have
shared in the benevolence of creation and of evolution, and
we see no other way that they could do so unless as an
external universe or as universes. Neither do we see any
other Genesiac Day during which the division was likely to
be accomplished, if not that which the writer of Genesis
has distinctly and notably avoided calling “‘ first.” We see
every reason, then, for taking the concluding words of verse
5 literally,—7pépa pia, “one day,” the one day of all others
that witnessed the Oneness of Being, that witnessed the
Darkness o’er one and all, the Light which still lasteth for
one and all, and the division of the Oneness.

24 THE GODS OF OLD;

If there be a day measured by hours for Earth, by years
for our System, by hundreds of centuries for our Universe,
what is the measure of the Day for the most external of
external universes? And if day and night be fateful
phenomena for Earth, menstrual and hebdomadal days for
our System, and the stars and constellations for our
Universe, what must be the phenomena for the most
external of universes, the orderly return of which will bring
back the end to the beginning ?

There is no answer, not even from the higher mathe-
matics, to the first question ; but the reply to the second
is forced, absolutely forced upon us by the same ratio-
cination that has told what the beginning of all things
was,—Absolute Rest. And if so, this fpépa pia is the one
day to come, foretold alike by Genesis, Mythology, and
Science, when the axles of our Harth, our System, our
own and other universes will grow tired and worn out;
when the worlds will rush from their allotted spheres
and be dissipated by collision into a condition similar in
all respects to the “‘ matter incapable of being perceived,
and simple’ of Genesis, to the Chaos of Mythology, to
the Absolute Rest of Science. Then will the long, long
round of this ‘One Day” be circled; then will the end
be brought back to the beginning; then will matter and
force be one and simple, meet for the God, One and
Simple, who created it so; then surely, unless Science,
Writ and Myth be all three false, will the words from
the Sermon on the Mount be verified to completion,
“Thy Kingdom come!”

Hesiod disposes of the general separation in a few lines:

éx Xdeos & "EpeBés te pédawd te NUE éyévovro*

Nuxrés § atr Aiénp, te xai “Hpépy e€eyévorto,
a ca 4 ? ? Lf hod

ots Téxe kucapéevy, “EpéBet pidrdryte peyeioa.

Theog. 123—5.

From Chaos came dark Nox and Erebus;

From Nox was Atther sprung and Hemera,

Whom she that big with them had grown brought forth,
Mixed in affinity with Erebus.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 25

He reserves details of the general for the particular
separation of our own firmament, showing that the same
cause or causes operated in one as in the other.

Ovid, on the contrary, writes at large of the general
separation, and lets the reader understand that from one
event he may learn whatever other followed with regard to
our universe, and later on to our System and our Earth:

1 anc Deus et melior litem Nutura diremit :
Nam ceelo terras, et terris abscidit undas ;

Et liquidum spisso secrevit ab aére ccelum.
Quee postquam evolyit, ceecoque exemit acervo,
Dissociata locis concordi pace ligavit.

Ignea convexi vis et sine pondere coeli
Emicuit, summéque locum sibi legit in arce.
Proximus est aér illi levitate, locoque :

Densior his tellus, elementaque grandia traxit,
10 Et pressa est gravitate sui. Circumfluus humor
Ultima possedit, solidumque coércuit orbem.

Met. 21—31.

This liss some god, a botter Nature, broke:

For by a firmament the worlds, and by

Those worlds the waters separated he ;

And from the darkness rent the liquid vault.
Which once evolved and freed from the Unseen,
Apart in place he bound in concord’s peace.

The fiery and imponderable strength

Of heaven’s convexity flashed forth and chose
Tts own location in the furthest court.

In place and lightness next to it is air:

To those the denser earth, and did attract

The glorious elements and down was pressed
By weight its own. The vapour wide-diffused
Grasped the extremes and bound the concrete orb.

NOTES.

1 Deus.—'* Some god,” for in line 32, Ovid says “ quisquis fuit ile
Deorum.” The eé is definitive, and shows that the god was “‘a
better course of being,” that is Erebus or Evolution.

litem.—Et nova fictaque nuper habebunt verba fidem, si
Greeco fonte cadent, parce detorta.

ar

Hor. Ars Poet.

Ovid makes use of a Greek word durés “‘ simple,” slightly twisted
into a Latin form in order to describe the absolute rest or sim-
plicity of the Chaos. This signification pervades the Latin
litera, our own /etier, the first or simplest element of written

26 THE GODS OF OLD.

language. We find it also in Litany, the simplest form of sup-
plication to God; and in the word we have used, liss, which,
though now obsolete, is used by Chaucer to imply ‘a freedom
from care, grief, pain, strife, &c.”

2 Nam coelo.—This line and the next describe briefly and tersely the
work of the First Genesiac Day. He tells how the division was
made (1) into worlds or universes separated as one mass from the
Chaos and illumined by light. ‘And God divided the light
from the darkness.”

(2) Those worlds would then, as a distinct mass, be a separa~
tion. between the nebulous matter or waters of which they them-
selyes were composed, and the nebulous matter or waters that
lay beyond the light.

4 evolvit.—A significative word as applied to Erebus or Evolution.

cxeco acervo.—The chaos, the 7#.-yi déparos of Genesis, the unknow-

able and unseen matter of creation.

The matter illumined by the light had evoluted and assumed
some visible form that distinguished it from the invisible matter
of the Chaos.

dissociata.—The worlds or universes, while separate from each

other, were united by accordance. Concord precedes harmony,

6 ignea vis.—Light and heat accompanied the division, and pro-
ceeded from the furthest ends of the division, from the highest
heaven.

9 his tellus.—Neat to the light and air; proximus is understood
from the preceding line. The gradual settling and arrange-
ment of the mass is now described, of matter into its three
forms, solid, liquid, and gaseous.

10 humor.—The watery or aqueous vapour was mingled and diffused

more or less with the solids and gases from surface to centre
(ultima). Every form of matter contains water.

1

We conclude with the following lines from Milton’s
Paradise Lost. Uriel speaks thus to Satan :

“€ T saw when at His word the formless mass,
This world’s material mould, came to a heap:
Confusion heard His voice and wild uproar
Stood ruled, stood vast infinitude confined ;
Till at His second bidding darkness fled,

Light shone, and order from disorder sprung.
Swift to their several quarters hasted then

The cumbrous elements, earth, flood, air, fire;
And this ethereal quintessence of heaven

Flew upward, spirited with various forms,
That rolled orbicular, and turned to stars
Numberless, as thou seest, and how they move;
Each had his place appointed, each his course;
The rest in circuit walls this universe.”

BOOK SECOND.
THE ONENESS OF OUR UNIVERSE.

_——_—-

CHAPTER I.

THEOGONY.
Gea
OO rrr,
GBA URANUS, OUREA, Pontus
—_—_ Toh
TITANS, CYCLOPES, FECATONCHEIRES
viz. viz. viz.
Oceanus Brontes Cottus
Ceous Steropes Briareus
Crius Arges Gyes
Hyperion
Tapetus
Thea
Rhea
Themis
Mnemosyne
Phoebe
Tethys
Kronos
MYTHS.

Gaea—or Ge, the Latin Tellus, is described as resident in the Chaos,

and as having produced Uranus first, and then the Ourea and
Pontus. By Uranus she begot the Titans, Cyclopes, and
Hecatoncheires, the last of which were called Centimani by
the Romans. As the personification of Earth, Ge was
regarded as one of the deities of the nether world, to whom
cows and black sheep were sacrificed, and who was evoked
by persons taking oaths. Her worship was universal, and
her temples and altars numerous.

Titans—twelve children begotten by Uranus and Ge, six sons and six

28

THE GODS OF OLD;

daughters, namely, Oceanus, Caus, Crius, Hyperion,
Iapetus, and Kronos; Thea, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne,
Phoobe, and Tethys.

Apollodorus adds an additional daughter, Dione. Of those
Titans, Oceanus was esteemed the eldest, and Kronos the
youngest.

Cyclopes—children of Uranus and Ge, three in number, namely,

Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, each of whom had but one eye
in the middle of his forehead. They were imprisoned by
Uranus and delivered by Kronos who again thrust them
into Tartarus, from which they were finally released by
Zeus in his war against the Titans. They it was who
fashioned the thunder, the bolt, and the lightning for Zeus,
the helmet for Pluto, and the trident for Neptune. Later
myths make them assistants of Vulcan, many in number,
and volcanoes the workshops where they forged metal
armour and ornaments for the gods. The strongest and
most impregnable natural fortresses are said to be their
works. Homer and other poets, Greek and Latin, speak of
the Cyclopes as a gigantic and lawless race dwelling in
Sicily, and having but one eye in their forehead, as caring
naught for Zeus, and as devourers of human flesh.

Hecatoncheires—‘ the hundred-handed,” were three other children of

Uranus and Ge, namely, Cottus, Briareus, and Gyes. They
are described as beings of extraordinary size and strength, .
with fifty heads and a hundred hands. They underwent the
same fortunes at the hands of Uranus and Kronos as did the’
Cyclopes, but were finally released by Zeus when he freed
the Cyclopes, and assisted him in the Titanomachia. Of
these Briareus, so called by the gods, but styled Aigeon by
men, was united to Cymopoleia, the daughter of Neptune.

Cranus—son of Geea and afterwards united to her. Through dislike

of his children, the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, he bound
and thrust them, as soon as each was born, into Tartarus.
Ge, their mother, indignant at such treatment, manufactured
an adamantine sickle, took counsel with her other children,
the Titans, and succeeded in gaining them over to her side.
Placing Kronos, her youngest born and the one who had
first volunteered his services, in ambush, she gave him the
sickle and instructed him how to use it. This he did,
unmanned his father Uranus, and flung the several parts
into the sea. From the drops of blood that fell on Ge, while
this was being done, were afterwards sprung the Erinyes,
the Giants, and the Melian Nymphs; and from the foam
that gathered round the severed parts floating in the sea was
sprung Aphrodite or Venus.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 29

CHAPTER IL

‘WITHOUT FORM AND VOID.”

Gea.—The myth from Chaos to Aither and Hemera is,
as we have seen, descriptive of the theory which the
ancients held regarding the gradual evolution of primordial
matter from a state of Absolute Rest or Total Uniformity
to separate masses, the pre-eminent characteristic of which
was luminosity. What further follows has to deal with
what we call the collective Universe, the Greeks ré wav,
“the all,” and the Latins mundus, “the one course”
(udvos 68ds)—a derivation confirmed by the other meaning,
‘provision of any kind,” assigned to mundus and ddaios
(from 68s).

It commences with a time when our heaven and our
earth were one. In this period Gé is no longer to be
considered as the passive Gé that rested in the Chaos. She
is rather an active agent that begets a Uranus and by him
the Titans, Cyclops, and Hecatoncheires; a mass that
shrinks with pain at the maltreatment of her offspring and
that plans for their deliverance from the depths. No
longer does she bear the distinctive title of Tai’ eiptorepvos
that characterised her in the Chaos: she bears another
title now, and for the first time, that of Tata teAdpy. It
is still nebulous matter that we have to deal with at the
start, matter that is simple, shapeless, and unknowable.
Tt is so far a chip of the old block, but it differs from the
Chaos in being a discrete mass, and endowed with
luminosity and motion of some kind. It is our Universe
as we may imagine it when first separated from the
chaotic mass, when earth and system and every stellar
body in the heaven were all one nebulous whole.

Astronomy tells the story thus.

Our universe is composed of clusters of worlds separated
from each other by vast intervals of space. Each mos

30 THE GODS OF OLD;

fainf and distant of the nebule constitutes a cluster. Our
own system and all the stars observable by naked eye or
most powerful telescope belong to another cluster or nebula
called the Galaxy or Milky Way; and the probable
conjecture is that this same Galaxy originally embraced
not only our cluster but all the others as well. ‘‘ The vast
siderial system,” says Gore, ‘“‘in which our Solar system
is situated includes, in all likelihood, the whole of the
stars and nebule visible in our largest telescopes.” To
the unaided eye the Galaxy looks like a broad whitish
band arching the heavens from horizon to horizon, and
maintaining the same position relatively to the stars.
Under the telescope it is resolvable into millions of stars
and star dust, is lenticular as to form, and bifurcated at
one extremity, our place in the system being supposed
to be close to the point of bifurcation.

That the ancients conceived much the same idea with
regard to the Galaxy as we do ourselves is evidenced by the
name given to it by them. Galaxy denotes “‘ the milky
worth” (ydsa &fia), or that quality which is most charac-
teristic of the thing; and yada with the Greeks, as lac
with the Latins, is often used to denote the elementary
nature or first principles of a thing,—in this case, the
nebulous nature of the mass. It must have been this
erstwhile Gea that Anaximander and Anaxagoras had in
mind when they compared Earth to a cylinder, at one end
of which was situated the known surface of land and
water. Aristotle called it the splendour of innumerable
distant stars. Ovid thus describes its appearance, lustre,
and shape; says that the stars have their orbits in it, and
even points out the very location in it of our solar system:

1 Est via sublimis, coelo manifesta sereno,

Lactea nomen habet; candore notabilis ipso.
Hac iter est Superis ad magni tecta Tonantis,
Regalemque domum. Dextra levique Deorum
Atria nobilium valvis celebrantur apertis.
Plebs habitant diversa locis. A fronte potentes
Coelicolee, clarique sos posuére penates.

Hic locus est, quem, si verbis audacia detur,
Haud timeam magni dixisse Palatia coeli.

or

Met. 168-176,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 31

Aloft there is a Way, in clear sky plain,
Called Milky, famed for lustre of its own.
Here is the path for luminaries bright

Close to great Jove, his belts and royal house.
On right and left the courts of noble gods
With gates thrown ope are far and wide renowned :
The lesser sundry in their places dwell.
Celestials bright and potent have in front
Their own peculiar habitations fixed :

Here is the spot I’d fear not to have called,
Tf license be permitted to my words,

The mighty Empyrean’s masterpiece.

NOTES.

8 Superis.—The planet Jupiter is attended by four satellites, all but
: one exceeding our own Moon in size. They are said to have
been discovered by Galileo. But as both belts (tectu) and
satellites can be seen with telescopes of very moderate power it
is more than likely that they were known to the ancients, and
the line in Ovid is almost positive of the supposition being true.
Magni Tonantis—Jupiter, which we often call ‘“ the giant planet.”

4 regalem domum~—So, in astrological language, we speak of the
“house” of Jupiter, of Mars, &c.

nobilium deorum—So Byron.
«Ye multiplying masses of increased
And still increasing lights! What are ye?
* * * * *
O God! O Gods! or whatsoe’er ye are,
How beautiful ye are!”
5 atria—The constellations, the ‘‘ courts” of heaven.
yalvis apertis—The shape of the Milky Way is roughly thus —<
The poet alludes to the curious valvular openings, and to the
fact that many of the brightest stars (nobilium deorum) have
their location on either side of the bifurcation.

6 plebs—Galacteal photographs tend to show that the small stars of
which the Milky Way is principally composed, are probably
really as well as apparently small.

7 Ccclicole—He now alludes to the particular bodies that compose
our Solar System, bright to the eye and potent on each other
through attraction, and points out the angle, the front (a fronte)
of the bifurcation, where our System is placed in the galaxy.

8 Hic locus—Our own Earth amid the ‘‘ Coelicole,” Earth that is
the ‘‘ masterpiece of creation.”

It is presumably then this Galacteal nebula that, fresh
from the Chaos, presents itself for consideration as the
Universe in its infancy. Let us again reiterate its charac-
teristics in those early days. It was homogeneous,

32

THE GODS OF OLD;

unformed, indefinite as to extent, and possessed of matter
and force that were unknowable: if was richer by the
dowry of luminosity and motion. How would such a mass
behave at the start ?

bo

5

1 Vata 8€ roe rp&rov pev eyetvaro igov éaur7
Otpavdv dorepdevd’, iva juv rept wdvra Kahinrot,
pp’ cin paxapeost Oeois Eos dodadeés aiet*
yetvaro § Otpea paxpd, GeGv yxapievras évadaAous,

5 Nupdéar, at valovow dv otpea Byoojerra.

Theog, 126—~130.
And firstly then did Gé indeed produce
Like to herself the starry Uranus,
To wrap her all around, that she might be
An e’er persistent bed for blessed gods:
And Ouria far-stretching she produced,
The charming halls of deities, the Nymphs
Who occupy those transcendental courts.

NOTES.

isov éau7#—The nebulous Gé produced the firmament (Odpavds)

like to herself. It might be done by a further expansion of its
own matter, caused by the heat involved in the process of
separation from the Chaos. When matter is heated, the
vibration of its particles is augmented; they move more freely,
are urged apart, and thus produce expansion. This expansion
involves form, as seen in the change of solid ice to liquid water,
and of this water to steam. Similar figures (icov) differ in
magnitude, not in composition.

Kadvrroz—to envelop her, to give her form—orbicular form.
Ovpea paxpd—ro odpos or dpos means ‘‘a mountain, a chain of hills,”

literally, ‘(a something rising,” to define and limit. Hence
odpos or épos, ‘a boundary, Limit, space between objects.”
The poet alludes not only to the interstices (larger than the
atoms themselves, 7.e., paxpd), between the ultimate atoms, but
to the universal porosity of matter. Curious instances of such
have been observed in the openings known as the ‘fish mouth”
in the nebula of Orion, the ‘“‘ key-hole” in Argo, the “ coal
sacks”? of many of the large irregular nebule, and the dark
rifts or tunnels noticed in Andromeda. Gore, speaking of
them, says, ‘‘We must suppose these vacuities to represent
tunnels through a gaseous mass * * * or perforations
* %* %, Tn either case, it is not easy to understand how an
opening through a gaseous mass can be kept open, and
prevented from closing up by fluid pressure.”

évavAovs—an expressive word, “hollows,” applied to the pores of

matter.

dv’ Byoonevra— dvaBaive, ‘‘to exceed, to go beyond.”

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 38

Such is the Hesiodic narrative. Apparently simple as
the lines read, they would seem to be the reiteration of all
that was contended and fought for over and over again in
the old philosophies, —being and not-being, the becoming,
the one going into the many, the love principle of Par-
menides, the strife principle of Heraclitus, the love and
strife combined of Empedocles, the fulness and void, and
so on,—all in the endeavour to account for the passing of
possible being into actual matter. If so, we must under-
stand the production of Uranus and the Ourea as the first
efforts of matter in changing from the unknowable to the
knowable, and may reason briefly thus.

We can change ice to water, and this water to vapour. In
each of the three stages the matter is still present, one and
unalterable— imperishable, as we say. Has the form
perished ? It would seem not, inasmuch as we can bring
it back by changing the vapour to water and this to ice.
But it has certainly changed. And that we cannot in all
cases bring back the form, as in the case of decomposed
organisms, is no valid objection; it is only to confess our
inability to do in some instances what we can do in others.
Form, as we know it, clings to and changes with matter as
we know it, that is, to matter invested with its properties
A writer states the question briefly enough thus :—

‘* Matter, or that which composes all bodies, has certain
properties ; by which is meant that it has the power of
making certain impressions upon our senses, or of exciting
in us sensations. Through these sensations we are said to
have a perception of matter and bodies; but as for what
matter is in itself, beyond its power of affecting our senses,
we know nothing. The something, whatever it is, in which
this power is conceived to reside, is called substance. Some
philosophers deny the existence of anything beyond the pro-
perties ; but though we have no direct evidence of anything
else, it is difficult, if not impossible, to get rid of the notion
that there is a substance in which the properties inhere.”’

Again, as in the ordinary course of nature we must
conceive matter as the basis of form, as a something
knowable, without which knowable form cannot be, so too

G.0. D

34 THE GODS OF OLD;

must we conceive the substance of matter as a something
unknowable, without which unknowable form cannot be,
and therefore as a something precedent to form.

There is much, therefore, pointing to the conclusion that
it is this Substance, or matter without its properties, that
Mythology has personified by the Gea of our universe.
The Gea of the Chaos would be a Gea over which, accord-
ing to Genesis, the oxdéros was; and oxdros, if it be sus-
ceptible of derivation, would be oxida éris, “the shadow of
substance.” The Gea of the Universe would be substance
from which this darkness was removed by the production
of an Atther and a Hemera, of light and translation from
the Chaos. The idea of evolution would thus be rigidly
preserved, though we are scientifically at a loss as to how
it was carried out. The same evolution would continue
only by making this substance assume form ; and this, too,
agrees with the myth when it says that Gea was first,
and that she subsequently begot Uranus, with whom she
was then united, and by whom she afterwards begot the
Titans, Cyclopes, and Hecatoncheires. So that in general
Uranus may be regarded as the junction between the
potentiality and the actuality of matter. Matter would
thus take the first step to pass from the indeterminate
to the determinate—that is, to atomic matter. But atomic
matter implies porosity, since atoms, to be indivisible and
impenetrable, must be limited and separated from each other.
The atoms of matter are never in actual contact, it is said ;
and the intervals between them are thought to be far greater
than their diameters. Sir Isaac Newton believed that if the
earth were compressed so that its particles would be in actual
contact, it would occupy the space of but one cubic inch.

With the first advance from the unknown of matter to
the known, we would have the substance which filled all
space, changing from the mere potential to the atomically
real, and thus entailing also the production of space intervals
between the atoms. This is expressed in the myth by Gea
producing Uranus like to herself, and then the Ourea, those
charming évavAous or space intervals, inhabited by their own
peculiar forces that tend to keep the atoms apart.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 35

CHAPTER III.

IN FORMAL CHAINS.

Fortuer evolution on the part of our universe should
bring a further advance in the nature of those atoms, as
also in that of the force associated with them, for foree and
matter ate inseparable, and we know of one only through
the other. Helmholtz writes thus :—

“When the nebulous chaos first separated itself from
other fixed star masses, it must not only have contained
all kinds of matter which was to constitute the future
planetary system, but also, in accordance with our new law,
the whole store of force which at one time must unfold
therein its wealth of actions. Indeed in this respect an
immense dower was bestowed in the shape of the general
attraction of all the particles for each other. This force,
which on the earth exerts itself as gravity, acts in the
heavenly spaces as gravitation. .... The chemical forces
must have been also present, ready to act; but as those
forces can only come into operation by the most intimate
contact of the different masses, condensation must have
taken place before the play of chemical forces began.”

This would mean the production of atoms endowed with
magnitude, of chemical force, and of physical force; and
this, as will be shown, is what Mythology teaches by
asserting that from Gea and Uranus, or substance with
form, were produced the Titans, the Cyclopes, and the
Hecatoncheires.

Which of these came into being in the order of pre-
cedency, if precedency there was? Did force impress itself
on matter, or matter on force? There are advocates for
each supposition in our philosophies of to-day, and it
would seem as if the same dispute was a matter of opinion

Dz

36 THE GODS OF OLD;

among the ancients, judging from the mere sequence in
which they are mentioned by Hesiod and Apollodorus.
The former, when mentioning the offspring of Uranus and
Gea, does so in the order of Titans, Cyclopes, and Hecaton-
cheires; rather, however, of forced order than of actual
precedency, since Sad and dAdo 8ad could signify “and
moreover’ and ‘‘and others too” respectively. Apollo-
dorus, on the other hand, would appear to be more positive
and precise, seeing that he names them in the order of
Hecatoncheires, Cyclopes, and Titans, and that he also
uses éréxvwoe zpérovs for the Hecatoncheires, pera rovrovs 5%
texvot for the Cyclopes, and—after a notable digression—
rexvot d¢ adéis for the Titans. He would thus lead us to
infer that the Physical forces were first, that the Chemical
forces succeeded the Physical, and that the Titans or
matter may have been among the first or subsequent to the
first, for ad6cs can be considered as indefinite in time and
order.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 37

CHAPTER IV.

MOLECULAR MATTER.

Titans. abtap Grea
Ovparg edynOeioa réx’ ’Qxeaviv Badvdivny,
Koidy re Kpidy 7’, “Yarepiova 7 "lameréy re,
Ociav Te ‘Peiay Te, Odpiy re Mvnpoowrny Te,
DoiByv re ypvcoarépavoy They 7 epareuny.
tovs dé 2€0 daAdraros yévero Kpdvos ayxvAounrns,
dewdratos waidwy' Oadrepdy 8 FxOnpe ToKAa.
Theog. 132—138.

But bedded then with Uranus she bore
Deep-rolling Oceanus, Coeus too,

Crius, Hyperion, and Iapetus,

Thea, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne,

Phoebe with crown of gold, and Tethys loved.
And after these her youngest, mightiest child,
The wily counselling Kronos was produced ;
But he opposed was to his haughty sire.

Tux Atomic Theory supposes atoms as being the smallest
conceivable particles of matter, incapable of division
physically or chemically, inappreciable to the senses and
the microscope, and about whose size, shape, and absolute
weight we have no certain knowledge. They are thus as
purely hypothetical creations with respect to matter as are
points with respect to lines, surfaces, and solids. Hach
has position but no magnitude. The union of any number
of things possessing of themselves no magnitude ought still
to give no magnitude, and yet we postulate points and atoms
as respectively producing limes and molecules, each of
which has magnitude. How the change has been done it
is difficult to understand, but it gave to existing substance
and quality the additional accident of quantity, and thus
transformed the theoretical to the real, the atoms to mole-
cules. A wondrous change, a vast stride in Evolution was

38 THE GODS OF OLD;

this that had been accomplished. The invisible was
changed to the visible, the indivisible to the divisible, and
matter that had previously been but the very fabric of a
dream became invested with shape and size and weight,
with what constitutes the hard and the soft, the dry and
the wet, the hot and the cold, with all that tends to make
earth, water, fire, and air, or in other words, the solid,
fluid, and gaseous constituents that make up the matter of
our universe. The whole aspect of creation was conse-
quently altered, and all because of the assumption of
magnitude ; all because of the atoms stretching themselves
to length, to breadth, and to thickness; all bee cause of the
Titans having been born.

There can be no doubt of the mythical personification of
those Titans. Their genealogy, order of coming, necessity
for existence, and their kindred, all point to the one con-
clusion. Hesiod calls them x@oviovs Tirijvas, “ earthy
Titans,” in line 697 of his Theogony. Their own father,
Uranus, gave them the appellation when, on the eve of his
expulsion, he reproached them for an act that earned for
themselves a name and deprived him of further contyrol.
Thus :

1 Tovs dé xarjp Terpvas érixdnow Kadéeoxev
maidas vetxeiay péyas Otpavos ois Téxev airds.
daoke 5é teraivovras dracOahiy péya péEa

4 dpyor, toto 8” gretra tlow perdmirdey Eoeg Oat.

Theog, 207-210.
Reproaching then the children whom he bore,
Their sire, great Uranus, them Titans called.
Declared he too, that stretching as they did
Against his haughtiness, a mighty work
They had accomplished, but of such a kind
As would hereafter be a punishment.

NOTES.

4 riow peromoGev—A prophetic threat, since those molecular
Titans were {fated to lose their own individuality later on,
when their efforts at extension caused molecules to be merged
in molar masses and compounds,

The very name is significative, as we see, of the sense
meant. When we examine the word Tirdv we find it com-

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 39

posed of 7: and rdv; of these rs means “some being, some
creature, some thing, anything conceivable,” and raviw is
‘to stretch, to strain, to extend.” So that Titan is literally
“substance extended,” or ‘substance with magnitude,”
that is, molecular matter. This, by the way, shows that
contrary to what is sometimes asserted, there is nothing
pleonastic in the use of otéey Ti or pjdev Tr, seeing that they
would mean “ not a single thing, not a particle.”

By this real or molecular matter, then, In contradistinc-
tion to the theoretical or atomic, must we understand those
mythical Titans, the far-famed beings who revolted against
the indefinite Uranus and were successful, who warred
against Zeus, more definite than themselves, and were
overthrown—hurled to Tartarus by the Life that conquered
but could not annihilate them; who, during the ten full
cycles that we are told the battle lasted, stretched their —
limbs to space in the accomplishment of what was to be;
who fashioned Sirius, our Sun, and suns like to both; and
who acted as the forbears of the stars above us, the atmo-
sphere around us, the seas that divide us, and of the earth
—the common clay from which plant and animal have the
matter of their being.

It may be, perhaps, that while conviction is established
in the mind as to the identity of Titans and Molecules, a
feeling of disappointment may be left when comparing a
simple molecule of matter with one of those Titanic beings
whom the all-powerful Zeus could not destroy till aided by
the lightning forged for him by the Cyclopes ?

Such a feeling must vanish when we recall what Science
tells with regard to the enormous force that must be
brought to bear in order to overcome molecular union:
“‘The quantity of electricity required to decompose a single
drop of water is estimated to be equal to a powerful flash
of lightning.”

To change a molecule of aqueous vapour to a molecule
of snow demands, says Tyndall, ‘‘an exertion of energy
competent to gather up the shattered blocks of the largest
stone avalanche I have ever seen, and pitch them to twice
the height from which they fell.”

40 THE GODS OF OLD;

CHAPTER V

CHEMICAL FORCE.

Cyclopes.—Matter, as suggested by some writers, may
be only one in its nature, and compound bodies but phases
of that one condition. A similar theory is observable in
the later myths that make “Titan” the oldest of the
Titanic progeny, and the one who gave the empire of the
world to Kronos on condition of his bringing up no male
children.

But so far as is yet discovered there are about seventy
simple substances to which all known bodies can be
reduced ; and these, as being incapable of further separa-
tion, are called Elements. An afom must consequently be
the smallest conceivable part of an element, one which is
indivisible. A molecule consists of two or more atoms,
and is defined as ‘“‘the smallest particle of any kind of
maiter that can subsist alone.” It resembles an atom in
being inappreciable to the senses or microscope, and in
being separated from other molecules by pores. It differs
from an atom in possessing individuality and divisibility.
This divisibility is into atoms, and cannot be accomplished
by mechanical or physical means. Trituration and
solution may weaken the cohesion that binds the atoms,
but there is only one means, Chemical force, that can
separate the atoms from the molecule.

Since atoms are incapable of separate subsistence, it
follows that, when separated from one molecule, they
immediately enter into combination with other atoms to
form another molecule of a different kind of matter, and
this is done by the same chemical force that decomposed
them. A molecule is thus, as it were, what the body is to
the soul, a garment for atoms, one which they wear to-day

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 41

and discard to-morrow for another according as desire or
chemical affinity may prompt. If there were but one kind
of matter there might be desire but no chemical play, for
chemical force can only operate as a rule between bodies of
a different nature. Two or two thousand molecules of
oxygen alone, or of hydrogen alone, would for ever remain
the same; but a mixture of the two in the proportion
of one to two by bulk, or of eight to one by weight, will
produce an entirely new substance, and we find a molecule
of water acting for the time being as a garment of oxygen
and hydrogen, and one which they will retain until such
time as a more enticing fabric, potash for instance, comes
within their means.

It is this chemical force that has been personified as
Cyclopes in mythology. The following comparison will
tend to strengthen the truth of the assertion :

We must presuppose atomic matter to arrive at chemical
force: the Cyclopes were sprung from Uranus and Gea.
Chemical force is closely allied with physical force and
molecular matter: the Cyclopes were kin to the Hecaton-
cheires and Titans. While the atomic matter of our
universe was passing into molecular, chemical and physical
forces would be latent: the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires
were. imprisoned in the womb of Gea. Chemical force
comes into play when powerful changes are in operation :
the Cyclopes were liberated by Kronos to expel Uranus,
and by Zeus to expel Kronos. Chemical force is essentially
directed against molecules: the Cyclopes warred against
the Titans. Thunder and lightning are the grandest
natural exhibitions of chemical force: thunder and
lightning were fabricated by the Cyclopes. Heat is a
prime agent for making chemical force operate: the
Cyclopes were the assistants of Vulcan. Chemical force
is ever active in volcanoes: volcanoes were the workshops
of the Cyclopes.

Let us now pass to the name itself. Considered as a
whole, chemical force cannot be said to create anything
of itself; it but takes matter already formed, an atom
or atoms here, an atom or atoms there, and combines

42 THE GODS OF OLD;

them. Colour, shape, hardness, specific gravity, &e., are
not really its creations: such are latent in the matter
itself or brought about by other forces. It takes 1 lb. of
hydrogen and 8 lbs. of oxygen, and turns them over to 9 lbs.
of water; it takes 105 lbs. of iron and 120 lbs. of sulphur,
and turns them over to 225 lbs. of iron pyrites. It can.
reverse the process and change back the 9 lbs. of water
to its constituents, but we get no more, no less than 8 lbs.
of oxygen and 1 lb. of hydrogen; so, too, with the pyrites.
In each case, the transference is complete, but increase or
diminution there is none. There has been a total change
of properties, it is true,—but it has simply robbed Peter to
pay Paul. And in this sense it is that Mythology has given
the name of Cyclopes to Chemical force.

The derivation, xvxAos & “round eyed,” universally
given it, rests on the following lines of Hesiod:

Kixdomes 8 vow foav éravupor, obver apa obéav
Kukdorepis dpadpos Eers evéxerro peTorr@.
Theog. 144.

But the poet only calls the name an ‘“ auspictous’’ one,
prophetically significant or ominous (émdvupos) of the
volcanoes that were to come afterwards and serve, through
what may be called the one round eye or crater, as mediums
for the exhibition of Chemical force. Hesiod seldom
assigns the derivation of a name to his personages, per-
mitting it rather to be gathered from the nomenclature and
context; but when he does, he uses as a prelude such words
as Kahéecxev, as in the case of the Titans; or KixAjoxover,
as in the case of Aphrodite. We have instances, similar to
the Cyclopes, in the names Chrysaor and Pegasus, of which
he alsosays T@ yey éxdvvpor jv, and yet as we shall see, xpuads
and ayy do not enter directly into the derivations. When
we find then the word éxévupov used, the quick conclusion
is that the true derivation is different from the chance
resemblance, and that Hesiod but commented on the
suitability of the name to phenomena that were to appear
afterwards. . .

However time-honoured, then, be the usual derivation we

AND THE STORY THAT THEY THEIL. 43

are compelled to ignore it and to suggest kos widy, “a
robber of the embryo, a robber of what is already conceived
or made,” as the proper one. This, too, would be in
accordance with our own definition of Chemical force, ‘‘ one
that destroys the properties of the substance engaged and
gives rise to a new kind of matter.”” The whole aim of the
force is to compose, but it cannot possibly do this without
first decomposing or robbing something already in existence.
Decomposition and robbing may sound different, but the
idea involved is identical and is confessedly the essential
characteristic that distinguishes Chemical force from all
others. This same characteristic would bring back the
idea of the force and its mode of action to the nebulous
age where it had a being,—an all-important point to be
taken into consideration. There were no volcanoes in that
age. How then can we associate kikAos Sp as significa-
tive of what was yet to be, with chemical force which
already was? Kvxdos &p would suit only a particular
epoch or epochs of the world: xdvos xAdw will suit all time.
The Lestrygones, too, described as the most ancient
possessors of Sicily and devourers of human flesh, must
evidently be classed among the voleanic agencies, descendants
as it were of the original Cyclopes ; and here the derivation
comes out in the open, namely, Aniorjp yiwoua ‘the
robber born.”

And while on this subject, let us say that it is not at all
certain but that our own word “ chemistry’’ has for its
radical the selfsame idea permeating the Greek ‘‘ Cyclopes.”
The derivations assigned it are by no means satisfactory,
and the word itself has been handed down through medizval
times as a relic of the alchemy that had transmutation for
its fundamental. The Greek word for chemistry, ynyeta,
would seem by a simple transposition to be derived from
phyos, “a contrivance, artificial means,” and we would
thus have both “‘ Mechanics’ and “‘ Chemistry ” descended
from the same root,—very properly, too, when we consider
that chemistry is but Nature’s mechanics. If we derive
this payos from wy éxo (and “ artificial” implies “ that

44, THE GODS OF OLD;

which is really not’), we find the same idea of “ not
having of their own” running through both Cyclopes and
Chemistry. .

Be this as it may, we see that Mythology had a well-
defined idea of chemical force; that it considered it as
dependent upon matter already existing, as stealing from
this matter in order to form new combinations, and as but
repeating the same ‘‘ modus agendi”’ when, after the solid
crust was formed, voleances emitted from their craters
what had been robbed from the igneous interior.

The crater is to the voleano what decomposition is to the .
molecule—a means whereby chemical force can see the
light or, in other words, can use its eye. Volcanic energy
can rend a mountain for its eye to see: chemical force can
decompose a molecule for its eye to see. A molecule is a
volcano in miniature, and the eye is as much resident in
the one as in the other, and composed of matter simpler
than its envelope,——of visible lava, let us say, in one case ;
of invisible atoms certainly, in the case of the molecule,
since there is nothing simpler in it. ‘‘ Chemical force,”
says Attfield, “‘appears to reside in atoms, that is to say,
it is exerted inside a molecule, while all other forces affect
entire molecules.”

Nor does it make any difference whether there be two or
two hundred atoms in a molectle. They may penetrate
one another and be a unit in it for all we know, since
impenetrability applies no more to atomic matter than
does extension or divisibility or any of the other properties
that come into being only with molecular matter. To
Chemical force acting on that molecule all its atoms are
certainly a unit in which the force resides, whether for
attraction, decomposition, or combination, and just as the
centre of gravity is the point d’apput of mechanical force,
so is the atom the point de vise, or eye, of chemical force.

Locked up in the molecule it is dormant until chemical
affinity occurs, and by its agency rends the molecule and
enables the atom to see for a time, infinitesimally brief
though that time be, before it again enters into new

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 45

combinations. And itis only by this robbing agency that
the atom (xéos) or the eye (kvap) can see. As in the case of
the Titans, the Cyclopes earned an appellation from their
action.

Whenever and however Chemical force may act, we
cannot conceive if as instantaneous. There must be a
succession of events associated with its operation. The
mind must call into bemg hydrogen and oxygen separately
before the conception of water is evolved; carbon and
sulphur separately before carbon disulphide is evolved.
“We must regard an atom,” to quote Attfield again, “as
the home of an attractive force of great intensity; but a
free, uncombined atom we cannot conceive as existing for
any appreciable length of time. Freed from one com-
bination it finds itself in proximity to other atoms having
similar desires for union: the result is an impetuous
rushing together and formation of either couples, trios, or
groups, according to the nature of the atoms.”’ We thus
see that there are three distinct stages in chemical action,
namely, Attractive strength; Decomposition; and Com-
position, formation, or molecular union. These same
three agencies «re well depicted in cne of Hesiod’s lines :—

iaxts 7 78¢ Bin al pnxaval joav én’ epyoss.

Theog. 146.

They are also personified in Brontes, Steropes, and Arges,
—Brontes (8pr-évra) *‘ the innate force of matter’”’; Steropes
(orepéw dy) *‘ the robbing of the eye’; Arges (épyov) “ the
formation or work ’’; Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, who
forged for Zeus “‘the thunder and the lightning, and the
blazing bolt”; for Neptune, the famous trident whose three
prongs stand for the solid, fluid, and gaseous conditions of
water; and for Pluto, the crust of earth which chemical
action has joined and solidified, the solid crust that acts as a
helmet to protect and cover from our view the powers
below.

Hesiod thus introduces the Cyclopes :

46 THE GODS UF OLD;

fr ? > , >
1 yetvaro & at KuxAwmas imépBtov rop exovras,
Bpovryy te Srepdany te kal” Apyny dBprdbupoy,
4 N ’ >, Ager z
ot Znvi Boovrny 7 edocay revEdy re xepavvdy.
a 4 ~ >
of & frou Ta pév Gra Geois évadtyxiot Foay,
co > 3 A - 37 LA
5 poivos ) opbadpos péoow evéxeiro perdrg.
> 3 LA c
Kurdones 5 bvop’ joav éravupov, obver’ dpa opéwv
‘
Kuxdorepis ddbbadpos eeus évéxerro perorre"
8 ? iA 3 noe f \ > a9 we
ioxus 7 nde Bin kal pyyaval joav én’ epyots.

Theog. 139—146.

She also bore the Cyclopes that have

A heart unconquered, Brontes, Steropes,

And the strong-minded Arges, all of whom
For Zeus the thunder gave and shaped the boli.
Like to the gods in all respects were they,

Save that there lay in middle of their front

A single eye. And ‘‘Cyclopes”’ was thus

A name auspicious, since one rounded eye
Within their forehead lay. And in their deeds
Were strength and force and structural designs.

NOTES.

1 imépPiov 7rop—The mndestructible atom.

2 68pysdévpov—The intense desire of atoms for combination. Avpollo-
dorus names the Cyclopes in the order of Arges, Steropes and
Brontes, There is really no difference which of the extremes
goes first, provided that Sterope or decomposition be in the
middle.

péco@ petor@—A molecule of matter is generally supposed to be
spherical: if so, the front is any and every portion of the surface,
and the middle of the front must consequently be the centrat
point of the molecule.

Oo

The later myths deal principally with the Cyclopes as
voleanic agencies. Thus the well-known relationship of
volcanoes to land bordering on the sea, or to insular masses,
accounts for the Cyclopes being described as children of
Neptune. ‘“‘ The presence of voleanoes on or close to the
coast,” says Bonney, ‘‘ suggest that their paroxysmal
activity, perhaps their existence, depends on the proximity
of water.”

They are gigantic in size. Two miles is the height of
AXina, and this particular Cyclop is but a baby to some
of his brothers, such as Mauna Loa and Cotopaxi. Their
cannibal propensities have been experienced by many a

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 47

Pompeii and Herculaneum, and by many, too many,
thousands destroyed by the deadly fire damp and choke damp
of our mines. And when we behold such mighty structures
as Aitna, Teneriffe, Loa and Kea in the Sandwich Islands,
and many others,—when we see the immense cones super-
imposed upon the colossal Chimborazo and others of the
Andes,—when, especially, we gaze with wonder on the trap
formations as seen in the Giant’s Causeway and the
Palisades, and are told by geologists that all these are the
~works of volcanic action, we must heartily coincide with
Mythology when it says ‘“‘the most solid walls and im-
pregnable fortresses are said to be the work of the Cyclopes.”
Chemical force was a fruitful theme for the classic poets,
affording as it did a wide field of knowledge, extended
observation, and the use of highly figurative language.
The greater part of the 9th book of the Odyssey is devoted
to the Cyclopes, and all through the close connection
between volcanic agency and chemical force is apparent.
They are thus introduced :

1 Kuxdorev 8 és yaiav trephiddov, dbepicror,
coe a ao ¢ ~ 4 > ,
ixdueb’, ot pa Ocoiot memoOdres abavaro.ow,

2, 7 A ‘ Boy > .
obre tburevovew xepolv puri, ot7’ dpdaow
> A e+ \ > 4 , 7
GAG Tay’ owapra kal dynpota wavra poovrat,
% ‘ , 2N »* o ’

5 supol, cal xpat, 78 Gumedor, aire pépovew
oivoy epiotadunoy, kal ogi Ards OpBpos aéEer.
Totow 8 otr’ dyopal Bovdndspot, otre Oéurares*
GAN oly’ tndey épéwr vaiovar xdpyva,
év aréoot yAadupoict’ Geprorever dé Exaatos

10) waidwr 78 ddoyav’ dvs’ GANA@y dréyovet.

Odyss. 106-115.

Then come we to the land of Cyclopes,

The overflowing, arbitrary, who

Relying merely on the immortal Gods,

Nor plant with hands a crop nor do they till,
But all things grow, indeed, unsown, untilled,
The grain of wheat and barley, vines that bear
Rich grapy juice, and Jove’'s rain fosters such.
For them are neither parliaments nor laws ;
But in the scooped out caves upon the peaks
Of mountains huge they dwell; and each his wives
And children rules; of others reck they not,

48

=T

THE GODS OF OLD;

NOTES.

tmeppidtov. trép didAn—‘‘ Running over the bowl” or crater.
From the peculiarity exhibited by volcanic rocks of resting
upon other rocks as if they had overflowed, they have been
called ‘‘ overlying” by some writers on geology.

dbepioror—a Oéus, ‘not adhering to the law of right,” i.e. robbers.

wemotOéres—Chemical force depends on what is already in
existence. At the same time it is independent of Life and all
other forces, as the Cyclops tells Ulysses.

Od yap Kuxdezes Atds alytdxou ddéyourw,
2 4 - a . 2 \ ‘ ’ 24
dvdé Oey paxdpev' dre} woAd héprepos eipeev.

Odyss. EX. 275—6.

‘* Most of the voleanie rocks produce a fertile soil by their disin-
tegration. It seems that their component ingredients, silica,
alumina, lime, potash, iron, and the rest, are in proportion well
fitted for vegetation.”—Lyell.

It is well to observe, too, that wupol, xp:Oal, and dumedot are but
thinly veiled allusions to the attractive energy (wip), decomposi-
tion (xpive—expiéyv), and combination (dvd medkdw) of chemical
force, ending in the production of lava, or of rock in a molten
state (oivov).

éptordudov.—As if epi-ord{e pudy “in an exceedingly fiuid con~
dition.”

épBpos.—Underground water plays an important part in the
stirring up of volcanic action.

ovr’ dyopat 8.—There is no delay or restraint to chemical force.
When the proper conditions are present it acts without con-
sultation or check. There may also be reference to the gene-
rally isolated position of volcanoes.

Oeytareder Exagtos.—The respective atoms are governed by their
own affinities (waidev 78 dAéxyov) Every chemical reaction is
the best translation of the poet’s concluding lines. Here is an
instance. Heat Sal Ammoniac (H,NCl) with Lime (CaO), and
the reaction will be .

2 (H, N Cl) + Cad

2H,N 48,0 - CaCl,

‘‘ And each his wives
And children rules: of others reck they not.”

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 49

In the 13th Book of his Metamorphoses, Ovid writes at
length of the Cyclop Polyphemus. It affords an excellent
illustration of the assertion that scientific truth is the
theme which runs through a no inconsiderable portion of
classic poeiry. Instead of being a silly and grotesque love
story with a preposterous transformation, it is a vivid
description of a volcanic outburst and its after effects,
written with the master hand of a poet and a scientist.

He takes a newly elevated promontory and calls it Acis ;
the elements of matter that were embraced by this promon-
tory, and calls them Galatea; chemical force, and calls it
Polyphemus ; and a long-dormant volcano which he styles
Aitna. All that occurred is thus retrospectively described
by Galatea :

1 Acis erat Fauno nymphaque Symethide cretus,
Magna quidem patrisque sui matrisque voluptas,
Nostra tamen major. Nam me sibi junxerat uni,
Pulcher: et octonis iterum natalibus actis
Signarat dubia teneras lanugine malas.

Hune ego, me Cyclops nulla cum fine petebat:

Nec, si queesieris, odium Cyclopis, amorne

Acidis in nobis fuerit preesentior, edam :

Par utrumque fuit. Pro quanta potentia regni

10 Est, Venus alma, tui! nempe ille immitis et ipsis
Horrendus sylvis, et visus ab hospite nullo
Impune, et magni cum dis contemptor Olympi,
Quid sit amor, sentit, nostrique cupidins captus
Uritur, oblitus pecorum antrorumque suorum.

15 Jamque tibi forme, jamque est tibi cura placendi:
Jam rigidos pectis rastris, Polypheme, capillos:
Jam. libet hirsutam tibi falce recidere barbam,

Et spectare feros in aqua et componere vultus.
Ceedis amor feritasque sitisque immensa cruoris

20 Cessant, et tutes veniuntque abeuntque caring.

Telemus interea Siculam delatus ad Atinen,

Telemus Hurymides, quem nulla fefellerat ales,

Terribilem Polyphemon adit, ‘‘ Lumen” que, ‘‘ quod unum

Fronte geris media, rapiet tibi” dixit “‘ Ulixes.”

Risit, et ‘‘O vatum stolidissime, falleris” inquit:

‘ Altera jam rapuit.” Sic frustra vera monentem

Spernit, et aut gradiens ingenti litora passu

Degravat, aut fessus sub opaca revertitur antra,

or

wo
or

Prominet in pontum cuneatus acumine longo
30 Collis: utrumque latus circumfluit eequoris unda.
G0. E

40

60

THE GODS OF OLD;

Huc ferus ascendit Cyclops, mediusque resedit.
Lanigerse pecudes, nullo ducente, secuteo.

Cui postquam pinus, baculi quee preebuit usum,
Ante pedes posita est, antennis apta ferendis,
Sumptaque arundinibus compacta est fistula centum,
Senserunt toti pastoria sibila montes,

Senserunt undx. Latitans ego rupe, meiqua
Acidis in gremio residens, procul auribus hausi
Talia dicta meis, auditaque mente notavi:

‘* Candidior folio nivei, Galatea, ligustri,
Floridior pratis, longa procerior alno,
Splendidior vitro, tenero lascivior hedo,

Levior assiduo detritis sequore conchis,

Solibus hibernis, cestiva gratior umbra,
Nobilior forma, platano conspectior alta,
Lucidior glacie, matura dulcior uva,

Mollior et cygni plumis et lacte coacto,

Et, si non fugias, riguo formosior horto.

Ssevior indomitis eadem Galatea juvencis,
Durior annosa quercu, fallacior undis,

Lentior et salicis virgis et vitibus albis,

His immobilior scopulis, violentior amne,
Laudato pavone superbior, acrior igni,
Asperior tribulis, foeta truculentior urea,
Surdior sequoribus, calcato immitior hydro,

Et, quod preecipue vellem tibi demere possem,
Non tantum cervo claris latratibus acto,

Verum etiam ventis volucrique fugacior aura.
At, bene si noris, pigeat fugisse, morasque
Ipsa tuas damnes, et me ratinere labores.

Sunt mihi, pars montis, vivo pendentia saxo —
Antra, quibus nec Sol medio sentifur in estu,
Nec sentitur hiems. Sunt poma gravantia ramos:
Sunt auro similes longis in vitibus uve:

Sunt et purpures: tibi et has servamus, et illas.
Ipsa tuis manibus silvestri nata sub umbra
Mollia fraga leges, ipsa autumnalia corna,
Prunaque, non solum nigro liventia succo,
Verum etiam generosa novasque imitantia ceras.
Nec tibi castaness me conjuge, nec tibi deerunt
Arbutei foetus : omnis tibi serviet arbos.

Hoe pecus omne meum est: multze quoque vallibus errant,

Maultas silva tegit, multe stabulantur in antris.
Nee, si forte roges, possim tibi dicere, quot sint :
Pauperis est numerare pecus. De laudibus harum
Nil mihi credideris: przesens potes ipsa videre,

Ut vix circumeant distentum cruribus uber.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL.

80

90

100

108

110

Sunt, footura minor, tepidis in ovilibus agni :

Sunt quoque, par eetas, aliis in ovilibus hoedi.

Tac mihi semper adest niveum : pars inde bibenda
Servatur : partem liquefacta coagula durant.

Nec tibi delicies faciles, vulgataque tantum

Munera contingent, dame, leporesque, caperque,
Parve columbarum, demptusve cacumine nidus :
Inveni geminos, qui tecum ludere possint,

Inter se similes, vix ut dignoscere possis,

Villosse catulos in summis montibus urse :

Inveni, et dixi, ‘‘ Domine servabimus istos.”

Jam modo cceruleo nitidum. caput exsere ponto,
Jam, Galatea, veni, nec munera despice nostra.
Certe ego me novi, liquideeque in imagine vidi
Nuper aque, placuitque mihi mea forma videnti.
Aspice, sim quantus. Non est hoc corpore major
Jupiter in coelo: nam vos narrare soletis

Nescio quem regnare Jovem. Coma plurima torvos
Prominet in yvultus, humerosque, ut lucus, obumbrat.
Nec mihi quod rigidis horrent densissima setis
Corpora, turpe puta: turpis sine frondibus arbor :
Turpis equus, nisi colla jubse flayentia velent.
Pluma tegit volucres: ovibus sua Jana decori est:
Barba viros hirteeque decent in corpore setze.

Unum est in medio lumen mihi fronte, sed instar
Ingentis clypei. Quid? Non hee omnia magno
Sol videt e coelo? Soli tamen unicus orbis.

Adde, quod in vestro genitor meus eequore regnat:
Hunc tibi do socerum. Tantum miserere, precesque
Supplicis exaudi: tibi enim succumbimus uni:
Quique Jovem et ccelum sperno et penetrabile fulmen,
Nere?, te vereor: tua fulmine seevior ira est.

Atque ego contemptus essem patientior hujus,

Si fugeres omnes. Sed cur Cyclope repulso

Acin amas? preefersque meis amplexibus Acin ?
Tle tamen placeatque sibi, placeatque licebit,

Quod nollem, Galatea, tibi, modo copia detur
Sentiet esse mihi tanto pro corpore vires.

Viscera viva traham, divulsaque membra per agros,
Perque tuas spargam—sic se tibi misceat !—undas,
Uror enim, lesusque exestuat acrius ignis :
Cumque suis videor translatam viribus #itnam
Pectore ferre meo: nec tu, Galatea, moveris.”

Talia nequicquam questus—nam. cuncta videbam—
Surgit, et ut taurus vacca furibundus adempta,
Stare nequit, silyaque et notis saltibus errat.

EB 3:

51

130

140

145

THE GODS OF OLD;

Cum ferus ignaros, nec quicquam tale timentés

Me videt atque Acin, ‘‘ Videoque” exclamat, ‘‘ et ista
Ultima sit, faciam, veneris concordia vestre.”
Tantaque vox, quantam Cyclops iratus habere
Debuit, ila fuit. Clamore perhorruit Aitne.

Ast ego vicino pavefacta sub eequore mergor.

Terga fugee dederat conversa Symeethius heros,

Et “Fer opem, Galatea, precor, mibi; ferte parentes,”
Dixerat ‘et vestris periturum admittite regnis.”
Tnsequitur Cyclops, partemque e monte revulsam
Mittit: et extremus quamvis pervenit ad illum
Angulus is montis, totum tamen obruit Acin.

At nos, quod solum fieri per fata licebat,

Fecimus, ut vires assumeret Acis avitas.

Puniceus de mole cruor manabat, et intra

Temporis exiguum rubor evanescere coepit :

Fitque color primo turbati fluminis imbre,

Purgaturque mora. Tum moles fracta dehiscit,

Vivaque per rimas proceraque surgit arundo :

Osque cavum saxi sonat exsultantibus undis:

Miraque res, subito media tenus exstitit alvo

Incinctus juvenis flexis nova cornua cannis,

Qui, nisi quod major, quod toto ccerulus ore,

Acis erat. Sed sic quoque erat tamen Acis in amnem

Versus. Et antiquum tenuerunt flumina nomen,
Met. XII. 750—897.

From Faunus and the nymph Symethis sprung
Was Acis, aye his parents’ great delight,

Still greater ours. Me to himself as one

He comely joined, and, years twice eight clapsed,
Displayed his tender cheeks with dubious growth.
Him I, the Cyclop me, unceasing craved ;

Nor questioned can I tell if livelier were

Our hate of Cyclop, or of Acis love:

‘Twas even both. How potent is thy sway,

O fervent love! for he most hard of heart,

And source of dread unto the very woods,

And by no entertamer viewed unharmed,

And holding in contempt Olympus vast

With gods thereof, now feels what love can be,
And, all oblivious of his flocks and caves,

Is captive kindled through desire of me.

And now is form, attraction now thy care;
Anon, O Polyphemus, dost thou beat

Thy matted locks with harrows; yet anon

Art keen to cut with blade thy bristling beard,
View thy fierce looks in vapour, and combine.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 58

Dormant the wanton love of slaughter is,
And savagery, and thirst immense for gore;
And vessels safely come and safely go.
Meanwhile, unto Sicilian Adina borne

The rumour far, of wide report begot,

. (Swift rumour that no bird had e’er outdone,)
Approaches Polyphemus grim and spoke :
“Ulysses yet will snatch the single eye
Thou bearest in the middle of thy front!”

He scoffed and said, ‘* Not so, most foolish seer ;
Another’s snatched it now!” Contemns he thus
It telling truth in vain ; and presses down,
Traversing with huge stride, the shores; or tired
Is ’neath his sheltered caves again restored.

Wedged in the promontory long a hill

Hangs o’er the deep; the sea surrounds each side.
Here mounts the Cyclop fierce, and midway stopped.
Without a guide there followed fleecy crowds :
Before his feet was later fixed a pine,

For mainyard fit, that served him for a club;

A pipe with hundred shafts was got and framed ;
The mountains all the growing rumblings felt,
Felt too the waves. Concealed within the rock
And in my Acis’ bosom nestling close,

I drank from far with ears of mine those words
And pondered well in mind o’er what I heard:

‘Oh, Galatea! fairer than the flower

Of privet white, more blooming than the swards,
Stauncher than alder firm, than glass more bright,
More wanton than the kidling, smoother far

Than shells soft polished by the constant sea,
Sweeter than wintry suns, than summer’s shade,
Nobler than form, plainer than platane tree,
Clearer than ice, than ripe grape daintier,

Softer than down of swan, and milk when pressed,
More beauteous than an Eden, did’st but stay.
Ah, Galatea! wilder thou the same ,

Than steers untamed, harder than aged oak,

More fickle than the waves, more easy bent

Than twigs of osier and than whity vines,

More steadfast than those rocks, stronger than flood
Prouder than peacock vain, fiercer than fire,
Rougher than thorns, vengeful more than snake
‘When trodden on, and (what I most would fain

I could deprive thee of), more fleeting than

Not deer alone urged on by bayings loud,

But even than the winds and passing breeze.

THE GODS OF OLD;

Did’st know me well ’twould grieve thee to have fled,
And voluntarily wouldst thou condemn

Thy own delays and strive to hold me back.
Poised in the living rock are antres mine,

Of mount a part, in which midsummer’s sun

Nor winter’s cold is felt : russets there are
Weighing the branches down; in the long boughs
Are golden currants,—there are dark ones too;
And these for thee we save and those as well.
With thy own hands, O child of matter’s shade,
Thow’lt gather soft fragarias, the late

Cornels and prunes that livid with false juice

Not only are, but open-handed too,

And imitating honeycombs in shape.

Nor arbute growths nor chestnuts thee will fail
When yoked to me. Hach shrub will be thy slave.
This stock’s all mine: yet many roam in vales,
The grove clothes more, and more are housed in caves.
Nor could I tell how many, should’st thou ask :
*Tis test of poverty to count one’s stock.

As to their praises trust me nought ; thou canst

In person see how scarce they move around

The udder wide distended ’twixt their thighs,

In their warm folds are lambs, a lesser breed ;

Tn other folds, too, kids, of equal age.

For me the milk is ever white; a part

Is liquid kept, moist clots make hard the rest,
Such cheap delights and gifts too mean, as deer,
And hares, and goat, small share of doves, and nest
That’s robbed from craggy peak, affect thee not:
Twins that can play with thee P’ve found, the cubs
Of polar she-bear in the furthest mounts,

So like that thou couldst scarce tell them apart:

T found and said, ‘ We'll keep them for our queen.’
From depths of blue raise now thy simple head ;
Come, Galatea, now, nor spurn our gifts.

Surely ['ve known and seen myself of late

In liquid water’s shape, and to mine eye

My form was pleasing. See, how great I am.

Not greater than this body is the Jove

In heayen’s expanse,—for ye are wont to tell
That he, the Jove whom I know nought of, rules.
A wealth of hair hangs o’er my features stern

And hides my shoulders like a grove. Nor, since
The firmest bodies with coarse hairs are stiff,
Think base of me: base is the leafless tree,

The steed whose shining neck no mane adorns,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL, 55

Plumage clothes birds; for sheep is wool a grace ;
Rough hairs on body and « beard suit men.

One eye I have in midmost front, but large,
Large as a mighty shield. What then ?

Sees not the sun all things from vasty heaven ?
Yet for this sun is but a single orb.

My founder, mark it well, rules in your sea:
Him as a sire-in-law to thee I give.

Have mercy only, hear a suppliant’s vows,

For we to thee alone succumb; and I

Who Jove and sky and piercing bolt despise

In reverence thee, O Nereus born, hold ;

Far worse is thy displeasure than the bolt.

Of this contempt more patient too I’d be

If thou would’st all avoid. But why dost thou,
Rejecting Cyclop, Acislove? And why
Prefer’st thou Acis to caresses mine ?

Though please he does and may himself, and thee,—
Which latter, Galatea, I like not,—

Let but the chance be given, he will feel

That strength proportioned to my frame is mine.
Vl tear his living vitals out and strew

His mangled limbs o’er plains,—-aye, o’er thy waves ;
So may he mingle his own self with thee!

For I am all of me consumed with heat ;

And surges fiercer still the troublous fire ;

And in this breast of mine I seem to bear
Translated Attna’s self with all its might.

Nor yet art thou, O Galatea, moved!”

In vain complaining thus he rises up,

(For I saw all,) and like a bull that fumes

With rage at cow removed, he cannot rest,

And roams at large in wood and well-known glades.
When fierce he spies us, me and Acis, crude,
And dreading nought like this, he roars aloud,
“‘T see, and I'll combine, and may this be

The final union of your love!” That roar

Was such as furious Cyclop ought to have.

All Aiitna with the loud explosion quaked,

But in the nearing flood aghast I'm merged.
His back to flight the Symeethian hero gave,
And fleeing said, ‘‘ Bring help to me, I pray ;
Your parents, Galatea, bring, and oh !

Admit me perishing to your domains!”

The Cyclop follows in hot haste and hurls

A portion torn from the mount away ;

And though but it, the mountain’s highest peak,
Fell on him, yet it buried Acis all.

56 THE GODS OF OLD;

But all that could be lawful done we did,

That Acis might resume his former strength.

Volatile juice kept flowing from the mass ;

And in short time the redness ’gan to fade ;

And with condensed vapour’s early rain

The hue comes back, and by delay "tis purged.

Then fractured gapes the mass; and live and staunch
A reed springs through the chinks; and hollowed face
Of rock resounds with the impetuous waves.

And wondrous change! from mid-waist up straightway
Stood forth, begirt with waving canes on both

The new-made horns, a youth who Acis was,

But greater and in all his aspect green,

Fen so ’twas Acis pointing seaward still :

And running brooks have kept the ancient name.

NOTES.

1—5 A promontory, favoured by the union of elementary matter and
coyered with a sparse vegetation, is pictured.

1 Acis.—dkis, ‘“‘a point or promontory;” Faunus, davies, “ en-
dowed with sound,” as members of the animal kingdom are.

Symethides, civ aiéw, ‘descended in common from igneous
sources.” §o that Acis would signify a promontory formed
from organic and inorganic materials.

38 me.—That is Galatea (ydAa) ‘“‘elementary matter,” whether of a
solid, fluid, or gaseous nature.

6—14 The elementary conditionis as eagerly desired by chemical force,
as the compound matter of the promontory is by the elements.

11 horrendus sylvis.—Vegetable decay is but a slow form of chemical
action.

12 impune.—No form of matter can entertain chemical force with-
out imperilling its previous existing form.

14 oblitus.—Forgetful of the bodies (pecorum) in which it resides, and
of the pores (antrorum) in these bodies, it longs for elementary
change.

15—18 The first line is descriptive of chemical force as component
and attractive; the next as endeavouring to rend the bonds
that bind it in the compound; the third and fourth as sunder-
ing those bonds, obtaining a short-lived freedom, and again
entering into combination.

16 The rigidos of this line and the hirsutam of the next, mark the
growth of chemical affinity for other compounds.

18 in aqua.—In vapour, the result of harmless explosions, whereby
decomposition is carried out.

19—28 So far chemical force, whether aérial or submarine, was
harmless in effect on the formation of land or on navigation of
the sea, But gradually there arose louder and louder reports
upon the air that prognosticated either the upheaval of some

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 5%

Afiina, or renewed energy on the part of some long dormant
/fitna, and the atmosphere, as a consequence, grew denser at
times.

21 Telemus.—rjjde qui ‘far spoken.” Hurymides, ‘‘ sprung from
Eurymus,” edpts qi ‘‘ wide spoken.”

26 altera.—forma is understood. While the seer was speaking a
chemical change was taking place.

28 degravat.—The results of the nascent volcano made the atmosphere
denser and thus exercised increased pressure on the land;
“‘ingenti passu” denotes the extent of aérial space thus
affected.

There is, according to some authorities, a connection between
atmospheric pressure and volcanic energy. Stromboli is said to
be more active in stormy weather, and Aitna in the winter
months,

aut fessus.—There would be intervals of rest every now and again
from chemical combinations. So, too, are there intervals of
quiescence on the part of active volcanoes.

29—37 An Alitna appears upon the scene, and chemical force pro-
ceeds to make it its peculiarhome. As time rolls on, changes
occur within and without the mountain. Fleecy columns of
smoke issue slowly from its pores and crevices; iis summit is
clothed with brushwood, and its base with heavy forest growth;
a main funnel or pipe is established leading from the summit
to the fires below.

31 ascendit.—The lava rose to a certain point, and there (mediusque
resedit) stopped, rising and falling with a slow rhythmical move-
ment, as has been observed of the lava in Stromboli and other
volcanoes.

32 lanigeres pecudes.—‘‘ Vapour shows itself in the earliest stage of a
volcano’s history. Jéven from yoleanoes which, like the Solfa-
tara, near Naples, have been dormant for many centuries, it
sometimes still rises without intermission and in considerable
volume.”

84 Ante pedes.—The foot or base of the mountain, clothed with forest
trees. Hach tree, in the volcanic outburst, would act as a club
against its fellows.

35 fistula.—-The main pipe leading from the crater down to the
central fire. A huge volcano, such as Ai‘tna, consists of one or
more cones, ‘‘and many lateral fissures or pipes from which
the heated volcanic products are given out.”

38—58 The poet pictures Elementary Matter as listening mutely to
the rumbling notes poured forth from the hundred-passaged
pipe of the volcano, and drawing proper conclusions therefrom

40 Candidior, &c.—Since all compound matter is formed of the
elements, the poet feels himself at liberty to predicate of those
elements any quality pertaining to compound matter, whether

58 THE GODS OF OLD;

whiteness, bloom, staunchness, brightness, &c. The regular
succession of comparatives in or tend to preserve the idea of
“rumbling,” sibila, throughout.

41 longa.—Long, in the sense of ‘‘lasting,” and so applied to the
alder, the wood of which is noted for its firm grain.

48 riguo horto.—‘‘ Than a well watered garden,” or, aS we say, an
Eden. The Greek sapddeoos is the Latin riguus hortus.

59-71 Chemical force continues his roundelay, tells Elementary
Matter that if she would but once embrace him, she would be
eager to detain him, and proceeds to enumerate the treasures
he has in store for her in the mountain, such as volcanic bombs,
lava, tuffs, stones, scories, explosive fissures, vapours and fetid
gases.

62 antra.—The “ pastoria sibila” must be borne in mind, as also the
remark that the sounds came from a distance (procul) and
required much pondering over (mente notavi)—-chemical force
really, as it were, said “nitra,” but the rumbling and rever-
berations made it sound like “antra.” The Latin nitrum and
the Greek virpov is our own Potassa, or Soda, or a mixture of
both, and these enter largely into the composition of rocks in
general, as well as into the various kinds of lavas. Hence the
words employed by Ovid, ‘‘ pars montis, vivo pendentia saxo
antra.”

The English word ‘“ antre” has been used in the translation
from its likeness to natron or anatron; and, in the same way,
an effort has been made to represent the succeeding terms in
phonetic English so as to be in consonance with the Latin.

63 poma.—tThe “rumbling” Bopd ‘an elevation,” volcanic bombs
rounded like an apple or pear-shaped, from a few inches to
several feet im diameter, and sometimes solid, sometimes
vesicular, sometimes hollow in the centre. Some writers are
of opinion that the material of these bombs is in a molten con-
dition like the lava itself, and that when detached and hurled
into the air from the surface of the boiling lava, the initial
rotatory motion and the expansion of the interstitial vapour,
aided by rapid surface cooling, would give them the vary-
ing degrees of roundness as to shape, and their internal
structure.

The likeness between poma and mwépa ‘‘a lid, cover,”
suggests that Ovid held the theory of their being more or less
solidified matter that acted as covers or lids over the molten
lava filling the larger branching passages (ramos)—the term
gravantia supports the idea. It is well to note that when a
voleano is inactive for any length of time, the cavity of the
crater is found to be shut up with a solid crust of lava.

64 uvyee.—The “juicy or grapy” lava. The radical idea of both lava
and wea, as seen in lavo and uveo, is “liquid, or flowing,” and

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 59

the likeness between alluvies, diluvies, and uve, recommended
itself to the poet in his choice of words.

Lavas vary in colour ; the less dense are buff or pale yellow
(auro similes), while the heavier lavas are dark gray or almost
black (purpurece).

vitibus—While keeping up the simile he chooses a word
resembling itibus (itus) ‘‘ passages.” The vitibus refer to the
minor passages, ramos to the main pipes.

The poet is not singular in taking a tree, its branches, and
fruit for a simile. So staid a writer as Lyell has done the
same when comparing the volcanic products with the trap
rocks: ‘‘the external cone with its loose ashes and porous lava
may be likened to the light foliage and branches, and the rocks
concealed far below to the roots.”

66 silvestri nata, &c.—Silvestris and silva are the equivalents of the
Greek iAaios and vay, the latter of which is used in Greek to
denote matter in general. ‘‘ Produced subsequent to matter’s
shade,” says the Cyclop of Galatea—for elementary matter, as
we have seen, was preceded by the Gea over which the
oxéros Was.

67 mollia fraga.—The usual similitude is kept up, raga being fracta,
such soft (mollia) fragmentary materials as dust, ashes, sand,
&c., included under the general names of tuffs. All these are
thrown up in immense quantities and are often turned into
mud by the volume of condensed steam falling upon them in
showers of rain, It was principally by such fragmentary
materials and mud, and not by lava, that Pompeii and
Herculaneum were buried.

Soft mud itself, too, often issues in vast quantities from
volcanic reservoirs, forming what are called mud lavas that are
equal in point of extent and destructiveness to the igneous ones.
In 1698, torrents of mud from Carguara, one of the Andes,
covered an area of four square leagues. A similar outpouring
in Java buried a large extent of territory to a depth of 100 feet.

corna.—Other fragmentary volcanic products, but larger and
ranging from the size of a pea to that of a walnut, are called
lapilli. Still others are tufaceous conglomerate3, or rolled
pebbles cemented together with tuff.

The poet likens both these to cornels, red berries having a
hard kernel in the middle; and as the showers of stones and
cinders continue longer or later than the flow of lava, the word
‘“‘autumnalia,” ‘later in the season, or the fall,” is added to
cornea and pruna.

68 prona.—A thirdclassof fragmentary materials iscomposed of scoria-
ceous matter, such as cinders, slag, pumice, all of which are
more or less porous, or honey-combed. As they are usually of a
reddish-brown, gray, or black hue, they are styled liventia.
Nigro succo, “ false juice,” denotes the dryness of the scoris,

60

70

71

i2-

73

74

ii

THE GODS OF OLD;

niger being used as we use it in such terms as “‘ black galena’
for false galena, ‘‘black-lead” for a mineral containing no
lead, ‘‘ black oak” for barren oak, and so on.

Pruna in Latin signifies also ‘‘a live coal, a hot cinder,” and
hence the selection of the word by Ovid.

‘No part of the operations of a volcano has greater
geological significance than the ejection of such enormous
quantities of fragmentary matter. As every shower of dust
and sand adds to the height of the ground on which it falls,
thick volcanic accumulations may be formed far beyond the
base of the mountain. In these are entangled trees and other
kinds of vegetation, together with the bodies of many animals,
as well as the works of man. Hence new geological formations
arise.” All this is expressed by the poet’s prefacing words,
‘‘ipsa tuis manibus leges.”

castanes.——xdorat, “‘ gapings, clefts, fissures, rents of all kinds,”
caused originally at the focus of action, and thence spreading
and intersecting in all directions. These are always present
(nec deerunt) in greater or less numbers for all active volcanoes.

arbutei.—Another constant and important attendant of volcanoes
are gases and vapours: ‘‘they show themselves in the earliest
stages of a volcano’s history, and continue to appear for
centuries after all other evidences of subterranean action have
ceased.” Mixed with the steam are such acrid gases as
sulphuretted hydrogen, sulphuric, carbonic, and hydrochloric
acids. These are denoted by “arbutei foetus,” ‘ arbutus
growths” ; the arbutus being noted for the acidity of its fruit,
It is well also to note the closeness between foetus and fetidus.

arbos.—é8pés “simple”: ‘‘everything simple will serve thee.”
The pastoria sibila make it sound like arbos, just as “shrub”
sounds like ‘‘ shruff,” metallic dross.

77 The stock enumerated is peculiarly volcanic. But besides

this, chemical changes are constantly taking place in innumer-
able ways amid the carbon compounds of animal and vegetable
life.

in antris.—Not alone the beasts and reptiles and creeping things
that dwell therein, but also such chemical denizens as choke-
damp, fire-damp, &c.

quot sint.—The list of organic compounds is as endless as it is
wonderful.

distentum uber.—iqually remarkable with their multitude is the
number of atoms that organic substances contain. While
inorganic bodies are simple in construction and contain but a
few atoms, the organic are extremely complex, and contain a
large number. Thus, such large-atomed molecules (distentum
uber) as sugar, stearine, and albumen, contain respectively 44,
173, and 222, if not more, atoms.

78-81 Still other treasures has chemical force in the boiling and

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 61

thermal springs, and in the gas, oil, and mineral springs of all
kinds.

tepidis, &c.—The geysers and thermal springers (agni) of the

world: though powerful in their way they are still inferior
(fetura minor) to volcanic energy.

79 heedii—Carbonic acid, carburetted hydrogen, naphtha, petroleum,
chalybeate, sulphur, and other springs: in point of time they
are coeval (par cetas) with the thermal.

80 lac, &c.—The steam, gas, oil, and water, spouting from these
‘‘springers ” are of a white or light straw colour.

pars bibenda,—The Baie of old, and in our own day, certain springs,
such as Vichy and Saratoga, Bath, Kissingen, Wiesbaden, and
numerous others, are resorted to for the purpose of drinking
their medicinal waters.

81 coagula durant.—The hot water of the geysers and thermal springs
is rich in silica, which, on cooling and evaporating, is
hardened and deposited round their basins. One such bed in the
geyser regions of Iceland is about six miles long, one mile wide,
and 100 feet thick. The same process of hardened deposition
goes on round other springs, producing coagulated masses of

’ sulphur, salt, lime, &c.

82-90 As special gifts to Elementary Matter, and ones with which

she can play and sport to her heart’s content, there are promised
- Magnetism and Electricity.

85 geminos.—Magnetism and Electricity, convertible one into the
other, and so like to one another in many well-known respects
that Ovid calls them ‘‘ geminos inter se similes vix ut dignoscere
Ppossis.””

The globe is a vast magnet and the common reservoir of
electricity.

87 villosse ursee.—Magnetism and Electricity are polar forces, and this
is denoted by calling them the ‘‘ cubs of the white, that is, the
polar bear, dwelling on the furthest mounts.”

88 inveni.—Hlectricity and Magnetism are intimately connected with
chemical force, and it is a general law that no chemical action
can occur without producing electrical disturbance of some
kind, even though such disturbance be inappreciable. That
volcanic outbursts are accompanied by electric and magnetic
changes is evidenced by the lightning that frequently accom-
panies the eruptions, and by variations observed in the magnetic
needle.

91-109 Chemical force passes on to a personal description of itself.

92 liquides aque.—Of steam or vapour.

938 Adspice.—‘‘ Behold!” and a mighty volume of steam and smoke
shot heavenwards,—for the denouement was approaching.

hoc corpore.—Life (Jupiter) is organised matter, and organised
matter is but substance (corpus).

=T
io]

62 THE GODS OF OLD;

95 coma.—The tangled brushwood on the mountain’s head or summit,
and the heavier growth of vegetation (lucus) lower down
(humeros), Previous to 79 A.D. the crater of Vesuvius “ was a
wilderness of wild vines and brushwood,” and again during its
quiescence previous to the outburst of 1631, ‘‘ the crater had
once more become choked with copsewood.”

105 genitor.—EHach element has its equivalent number, with which or
a multiple of which it combines with other elements to form
compounds. In the relative scale generally adopted, Hydrogen,
owing to its superior lightness and diffusive power and to its
combining in the smallest proportions of any element, is chosen
for the base or 1. As this Equivalent Notation is all essential
to Chemistry, and as Hydrogen is the foundation on which
Equivalence rests, Ovid describes Chemical force as claiming
Hydrogen for the founder of its race or being, the same
Hydrogen that, as its name denotes, rules in water, H,O.

The line, as bearing on Hygutvalence, is thus as remarkable
in its way as that of Homer’s pointing to chemical reaction.

106 hunc socerum.—Hydrogen, an element itself and the lightest
of all others, is surely the lawful parent, or father-in-law of

’ Elementary Matter. ,

. 109 Nerei.—Nereus literally means ‘‘not changed, unchangeable”
(vn péw). Compound bodies are always undergoing changes; it
is only the elements that are unchangeable or constant—so that
Nereis means ‘‘ born of the unchangeable,” that is, Llementary
matter.

110-120 The rumblings are growing louder, and denser go up the
smoke and steam. Hach succeeding moment is now threatful
of a terrible eruption.

117 Spargam, &c.—lLava streams have protruded into the sea in
many instances. In 1794, one from Vesuvius entered the
Mediterranean to a distance outwards of 360 feet, with a
breadth of 1,100 and a height of 15 feet.

118 uror.—The volcanic crisis is at hand.

119 translatam Atnam.—-Byron has evolved a similar idea :

‘The cold in clime are cold in blood,
Their love can scarce deserve the name ;
But mine was like the lava flood
That boils in Aitna’s breast of flame.”

121-185 The following description of an outburst of Vesuvius will
help to bring before the mind’s eye much of what has preceded
and the pith of what is to come:

‘‘ Frequent indications of an approaching outburst are con-
veyed by sympathetic movements of the ground beneath.
Rumblings and groanings from a subterranean source are
heard; slight tremors succeed, increasing in frequency and

133

134

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 63

violence till they become distinct earthquake shocks. The
vapours from the crater rise more abundantly into the air. All
this time the lava column in the pipe or funnel of the volcano
has been slowly ascending, forced upward and kept in
perpetual agitation by the passage of the elastic vapours through
its mass. Ifa long previous interval of quiescence has elapsed
there may be much solidified lava towards the top of the vent
which will restrain the ascent of the still molten portion under-
neath.

“‘A vast pressure is thus exercised on the sides of the cone.
Should these be too weak to resist, they will open in one or
more rents, and the liquid lava will issue from the outer
slope of the mountain; or the energies of the volcano will be
directed towards clearing the obstruction in the chief throat,
until, with tremendous explosions, and the rise of a vast
cloud of dust and fragments, the bottom and sides of the
crater are finally blown out, and the top of the cone dis-
appears. The lava may now escape from the lowest part of
the lip of the crater, while, at the same time, immense numbers
of red-hot bombs, scorize, and stones are shot up into the air,
most of them falling back into the crater, but many descending
upon the outer slopes of the cone, and some even upon the
country beyond the base of the mountain.

‘<The lava rushes down at first like one or more rivers of
melted iron, but, as it cools, its rate of motion lessens.”

Surgit.—The lava.
cerrat.—From the numerous fissures in the mountain’s side.

Oftener than not, especially in lofty volcanoes, the lava

issues at first from these fissures.
ignaros.—But sparsely clothed with vegetation, immature.

Our use of ‘‘green” in the sense of raw, unripe, crude,

points to 7gnarus as its derivation.

video.—The explosion (exclamat) comes at last: molecular
matter is disrupted by the mighty convulsion, the imprisoned
steam gets free, and Chemical force shouts out ‘* video!”

faciam.—To make is to combine.

ast ego mergor.—The aqueous vapour, with which lava is abun-
dantly charged even when emitted, escapes at once as a dense
white cloud of steam that hangs over and advances in line
with the moving lava torrent.

terga fuges.—The tremors and earthquake shocks would cause
an undulating motion through the surface or back of the
promontory.

insequitur.—_The lava from Mauna Loa in 1852 travelled. 15 miles
in two hours; that from Vesuvius in 1805 went nearly 4 miles
in the first four minutes.

Extremus angulus.—The entire summit, or furthest angle of the

64

THE GODS OF OLD;

mountain, was blown out and scattered in fragments over the
doomed promontory. -

Antuco, in Chili, has hurled stones to a distance of 36 miles,
and Cotopaxi has hurled a 200-ton block nine miles. In 1538
an eruption of Vesuvius formed a hill 440 feet high and a mile
and a~half in circumference, from the stones, scorive, and ashes
ejected.

136—148 The outburst is over. Centuries of quiescence ensue

138

140

148

during which the loving elements of air and water are at work
cooling the lava, changing its hue from glowing red to black,
and causing it to assume a cindery aspect. Rents and fissures
appear over the whole surface; it finally crumbles down to a
soil excellently fitted for a luxuriant vegetation; and once
more a promontory, the same Acis and yet not the same, is
beheld jutting into the sea, encircled with rushes and aquatic
plants, and decked all over with verdant grass and shrubs.

puniceus.—‘ Carthaginian,” that is, not to be depended on,
volatile, puniceus cruor, ‘‘ volatile moisture,” or steam and
imprisoned gases. After the lava has escaped and flowed over,
it continues to exhale steam from every point of its surface.
Here and there, too, fissures, or fumaroles as they are called,
are formed whence issue the more liquid lava underneath,
columns of hissing steam and gaseous vapours of several kinds.

fluminis.—The aqueous vapour ot the atmosphere, the mythological
symbol for which is Oceanus, which has in turn been described
as a river surrounding the entire globe.

purgatur.—The lava bed is rendered porous or cindery.

Os cavum.—A. cove or inlet is formed by the sea in front of the
promontory so as to give it a crescentic or horned appearance,
as mentioned later (nove cornua).

major.—The lava that had projected into the sea helped to make
the new promontory larger than it was before the eruption.

amnem.—The word means not only ‘“‘a river,” but also ‘the
sea, the ocean,” and is so used by Tibullus in the line “ solis
anhelantes abluet amnis equos.”

nomen.—Acis, in some form or other, is a favourite name for
rivers, as directing their course into the sea; thus, Acalandrus,
Acampsis, Aces, Acis, Acesines, Achardeus, Achates,
Achelous, Acheron, &c.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 65

CHAPTER VI.

GREAT PHYSICAL FORCES.

Hecatoncheires.—In scientific language there is a marked
relationship between Matter, Chemical force, and the
Physical forces: in mythological language there is the
same relationship between the Titans, Cyclopes, and
Hecatoncheires. If, then, we accept the identity of the
Titans and Cyclopes with molecular matter and chemical
force, it is only natural to infer that the Physical forces are
symbolised by the Hecatoncheires.

With the coming of molecular matter there would also
come what are called the Universal properties of matter,
and these, though variously subdivided, may be reduced to
three, namely, Extension, Impenetrability, and Attraction.
These are the only observable forces that can be appreciated
when we gaze upon infant matter, or the nebule, through
the most powerful telescope.

We behold them isolated in space, and are conscious of
some mighty force that has been and is at work shaping
and governing their extent from the wholly irregular to
elongated, spiral, annular, circular, elliptical, and other
forms. We call this extension-ruling force Figure.

We look again and see these nebulous masses going
through all degrees of condensation, and are conscious of
another mighty force that has been and is separating the
mass into fissures, nuclei, rings, convolutions, globular
clusters, star balls, and stars. We call this system-making
force Divisibility, one that rules impenetrability with as
iron a rod as Figure rules extension.

Once more we look, and are mentally conscious of a
third force, as mighty as if not mightier than its fellows,

G.0. F

66 THE GODS OF OLD ;

which sways the attraction of atom for atom, molecule for
molecule, and mass for mass. This attraction-ruling force
we call Gravity or Gravitation. ;

And not alone in those most distant nebule are Figure,
Divisibility, and Gravitation present: they are equally
potent in every star, sun, and planet, earth included, that
compose the universe. The particle of aqueous vapour that
is divided from the cloud, shaped into a rain drop, and
attracted to the earth, is as subject to the influences of
those mighty three as is the Earth itself, separate in place,
rounded in form, and bound by attraction to its orbit.
The stars in our visible universe must be calculated by
hundreds of millions as to number, by billions of miles as
to distance, and most of them by multiples of our sun as
to volume. Even so, the hands of Gravitation, of Figure,
and Divisibility are long enough and numerous enough to
grasp them all, to bind them as a whole, to shape their
ends, and measure out the amount of space allotted to
their bulk and to their paths in ether.

Can the mind conceive or desire more mighty forces
than these? We call them Universal or far-reaching:
Mythology has styled them Hecatoncheires or hundred-
handed. The sounds are different, but the idea is identical.

The same doubt existing as to precedency in their order
of being as a whole is noticeable in them individually, for
while Hesiod introduces them as Cottus, Briareus, and
Gyes, Apollodorus mentions them in the order of Briareus,
Gyes, and Cotius. It would seem as if the primordial
agencies in the evolution of a nebulous universe presented
themselves to the mind of the more ancient writer in the
sequence of Differentiation as to space, Traction towards a
common centre, and Shape more or less specified ; while
to Apollodorus the order of evolution would be Traction,
Shape, and finally Division. Those scientists who favour
the throwing off of successive rings from the parent mass
to form our system would appear to have Apollodorus on
their side; while those who, like Faye, argue for the
establishment of our system, not by the formation of rings

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 67

but by local condensations within the nebula, can claim
Hesiod as an authority.

Let us examine those Hecatoncheires separately.

Briareus (Bpidpews), whether derived directly from Bdpos
“weight, gravity,” or from $pi-dpw, “well or mightily
joined,” is evidently that greatest form of attraction called
Gravitation. We see the idea of ‘‘ weight” and “‘gravity”
running too plainly through such cognates as Bapis, Bpidw,
Bpido, and others, to permit of any doubt as to the intent
of the appellation. His other name, Aigeon (Alyaiwy), is
seen by the derivation, aia yaiwv, to signify ‘‘ the exultation
or strong desire of earth,’ and denotes the downward
pressure of a body in its tendency to seek the centre of
the earth. It is thus synonymous with, and indeed the
true derivation of our word “weight.” So that when
Homer says ‘‘ Whom gods Briareus, men Aigeon call,” he
simply distinguishes, as we do ourselves, between the
learned and the common usages of Gravitation and Weight,
and formulated the dictum of modern science, ‘‘ this force
which on the earth exerts itself as gravity acts in the heavenly
spaces as gravitation.” It is probably too, to distinguish
between gravitation as affecting the heavenly bodies, and
mere terrestrial gravity, that the latter (as the more
important for earth), has been written by some writers
‘O Bpidpews, the 6 being emphatic.

The influence that Gravitation exerts on the tides, causing
the waters of our oceans to ebb and flow and preventing
them from falling off the surface of the globe, is not lost
sight of in the myths; for the battle of the Titans being
finished, Hesiod thus concludes :

Bptdpewy ye pev nuv édvTa
yapBpov ev woinae Bapixruros ’Evvociyatos,

dadxe b€ Kupomddetav érview, Ovyarépa iv.

Theog. §17—819.
The loud-resounding one that shakes the earth
Attached in ties of kin Briareus famed,
And gave him Moving Wave, his child, to wed.
Time and again during the many epochs of our earth’s
existence have the convulsive movements of the crust and
F 2

68 THE GODS OF OLD;

overwhelming onsets of the sea shattered and submerged
whole continents and threatened the very existence of life
itself upon our globe. Time and again have the organised
structures themselves preyed upon their fellows, exter-
minated whole colonies, and helped in no little measure
to fetter the life that gave them being. Still, during all,
Gravitation was there with its hundred hands; Gravity
was there with overwhelming might, to keep our orb ever
secure in its daily and yearly round and to check the
rebel passions of the deep; and just as long as it con-
tinues to put forth its powers, so long will Life and the
law that life stands for continue to be triumphant over
the seismic convulsions of the land, the onsets of the sea,
and the destruction of organised beings by natural decay
or an untimely end.

A great truth this, vouched for by time and the teachings
of the rocks; so great and undoubted a truth that we
find it incorporated into the myths and thus immortalised
by Homer.

TloAAdke yap oéo rarpos évi peydpotow dkovea
ebxopévns, br Epynobo xedaivepéi Kpoviovr

din év dOavarovow deixéa Aorydy dpovat,
énmdre py Evvdijoat ‘OAdpercot FOedov GAdot,

5 "Hon 7’, 75é HoreSdwv, xai Waddds *“AOnvy-
*AAAG ov Tov y’ EADotca, Ged, trehicao Seopar,
by’ ‘Exatoyyeipov xahécao’ és paxpdy “Odvpror,
dy Bptdpewy xadcovot Oeoi, dvdpes 5é te wdvres
Alyaiov' 6 yap udre Biy od matpbs dpeivor:

10 és fa wapa Kpoviave xabéfero, ide yalov.

Tov kal breddeucav paxapes Geol, odd 7 Eyoav.

Qiad I. 396—406.

For oft I’ve heard thee in my father’s halls
Relate with pride how you, the only one
Among immortals, showed the cloud-clad son
Of Saturn how to ward untimely wreck
When erst those other gods would fetter him,
Both Juno, Neptune, and Minerva too.

But you arriving loosed the bonds below,
Having, O Goddess, summoned with despatch
To wide Olympus him with hundred hands
Whom gods Briareus, men Aigzeon call,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 69

(For one, inversely in his native strength,

Superior is); who then his station took,

With glory swelling, near to Saturn’s son.

From. him in fear the over-joyous gods

Shrank back, and thought of binding had they not.

NOTES.

"Hon, &c.—Juno is the mythical symbol for the land, Neptune for

the sea, and Minerva for oryanised force.

6 ot... . Gea—Thetis. When land and sea and organised force
break bounds, as they have done in the past, all life and nature
are threatened for a while. But at last there comes the natural
order of things (Thetis—riénu.), that, aided by the mere
presence of gravitation, brings back order from confusion. For
this reason, too, is Thetis said to have ‘‘loosed the bonds below,”
as it is on the surface that peace and order begin.

9 6 yap adre, &c.—The 6 refers evidently to Briareus or Gravitation,
as opposed to Algaon or Gravity. atre means ‘ contrariwise,
conversely, or inversely.” So that the whole line is explanatory
of the great scientific truth with regard to Gravitation and its
law. We shall find additional evidence in the description of the
Hecatoncheires given by Hesiod.

11 dbréS8eerav—The convulsed earth and sea, and organised violence,

shrank back to their original and orderly positions under the

influence of Gravitation and Gravity.

Ou

Gyes (Téns).is certainly related to yviov, “a limb,” that
is, the extremity of anything whereby it is limited or
shaped. The connection is well denoted in a line of
Prior’s :—

‘* Grace shaped her limbs and beauty decked her face.”

We can trace the Greek word in the Latin jiyura, more
plainly in the English “ guise,” and can detect a corre-
sponding relationship between “ limb” and “limn”’ similar
to that between yviov and Tvys. That the real derivation of
the word is yv’a or ydys, ‘ tilled land, the womb,” receives
much confirmation from the use in English of the words
** mould, to fashion, to shape,” and of mould, “the matrix
or womb in which anything is cast and receives its form.”

The word is thus by both derivation and kin synonymous
with Figure or Shape, the force that has given their out-
lines to the continents, oceans, and organisms of Earth, to

70 THE GODS OF OLD;

our own and other systems, to the cosmopolitan comets,
to Sirius and Aldebaran, to the Universe as a whole.
Chemical changes are not under his jurisdiction, for such
belong to his Cyclopean brethren. But all physical changes
acknowledge the sway of Gyes; for while water remains
water, whether as ice, rain, or vapour,—while woody fibre
remains the same, whether in the plant, the tree, or girder,
—while each element retains its individual nature, be it
solid, fluid, or gaseous,—they are all under the power of
Gyes. Let them be transformed as they are again, again,
and again, this master Figure draws circumscribing lines
around them,

‘«There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.”

Horace alludes to Figure in his Odes. Reproaching
Mecenas for his nervous fears, and prophetically declaring
that their destinies for weal or woe are too closely connected
for any separation in this world or the next, he says :—

Tbimus, ibimus,
Utcungue preecedes, supremum
Carpere iter comites parati.
Me nec Chimeere spiritus igneze,
Nec si resurgat centimanus Gyas,

Divellet unquam.
Car. IL. 17.

Prepared to enter on that journey last,

Like comrades marching, marching shall we go;
Thou first may be:

Not me Chimzra’s all-consuming blast,

Not me the resurrected Gyes vast,
Shall bar from thee.

The poet evidently means that no extreme of heat
(chimera), not even boundless space, or the universal and
unshapen mass that existed when Gyes came into being,
could separate the spiritual affinity between his patron and
himself.

Cottus.—If there be, as is generally supposed, but one
force from which all others are evolved, then there must
have been a time when gravitation, figure, and divisibility,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 71

—three distinct forms of force,—did not exist, and when
consequently there was an absence of attraction, extension,
and impenetrability. This state of things can only apply
to the very earliest stage of the nebula, when Gea had not
yet borne molecular children, the Titans, to Uranus; to
that tantalizing era of existence when simple apprehension
is the only refuge for intelligence; when we are forced to
consider the Universe as a point, and matter as composed
of indivisible atoms. Mathematics throws up its hands at
a ‘* point,” chemistry at an ‘‘atom.”

But in whatever way or fashion indivisible matter was
compelled to become divisible, we must take it for granted
that such really did occur, that the theoretical atoms of the
nebulous age were evolved later on into the practical
molecules, that matter capable of being divided or cut
made its appearance, that Divisibility—the mythological
Cottus (Kérros, konto, “to cut, divide’”’) was born.

Not often is he alluded to in the myths; yet there is one
part in the battle of the Titans where he is appropriately
made by Hesiod to speak for himself and brothers in reply
to Jupiter’s appeal for help. But the very name is sugges-
tive and all-sufficient. When we look at the myriads of
stars and reflect that once they were all united in the one
nebulous mass, we are conscious of a Cottus who has used
his falchion wondrous well and wise. When we come to
earth and find that a single grain of copper can by solution
be divided into a hundred million parts, that a drop of
blood contains one hundred and twenty millions of globules,
and that an ounce of gold can be drawn out to 482
thousand million parts, we are struck with the vast power
of this dividing Cottus. Amazement comes to a climax
when we are told that one cubic inch of tripoli consists of
the fossil shells of animalcules each of which is but the 41
thousand millionth of that cubic inch; and yet each of
these was once alive, and presumably in possession of limbs
and internal organs through which nourishment was taken
and fluids circulated !

Distinctive epithets have been assigned by Hesiod to

72 THE GODS OF OLD;

each of the Hecatoncheires, neyddupos, “ the strong-spirited,”’
to the attractive Briareus; datos woAduouo, ‘the insatiable
for strife,” to the ever-changing Gyes ; and dydpey to Cottus.
The derivation of this duvuorv is most probably @ negative
and pve, “to close, to keep close,’—especially as applied
to the lips and eyes. While this does not interfere with the
accepted rendering, “‘ blameless, irreproachable,” in as much
as a person so gifted is ‘‘ one who need not close his lips or
eyes through shame,’ it must be taken literally in the case
of Cottus as “‘ not keeping close,” that is dividing, or the
complex process whereby Evolution is advanced.
Hesiod’s description of the Hecatoncheires runs thus :
1 Gdot & at Tains te cal Otpavod e&eyévovro

Tpeis aides peyddot Te Kal 6Bpiyot, ovk dvopacrai,

Kérros re Botapeas re Tins 0, iwepnpava rékva.

tay éxardy pev xelpes dw Gpav diccorro

or

dmactot, xeedal dé éxdore@ wevTnKorra
€& pov eréduxoy emt ortBapoiot pederow.
ioxts & dadyros kparepy peydde emt cides.

Theog. 147.
From Ge and Uranus were also sprung
Three other sons, children known far and wide,
Both great and strong beyond description’ s bounds,
Cottus and Gyes and Briareus.
*Way from the shoulders hundred hands there flashed
Proportioned not; from fifty shoulders grew,
Anent the well-squared members, heads for each.
And more than great upon a mighty form
Was their exceedingly surpassing force.

NOTES.

3. brepypava—That is ‘‘ universal.”
aAaoTot —a wAactos ‘‘ not shaped, out of proportion.”
6 énépvxov—Literally ‘‘ were made to grow.”
oriBapoict—‘‘ close pressed, compact,” as anything is when square.
Thus ‘‘a gate close shut” is a gate that closes square, and
a “square of soldiery” is a compact body of men.

a

The three lines commencing with “rév éxarov pév xeipes”’
are of astounding importance in as much as they contain
the formula for the great law of Gravitation. The law is,
‘‘ Attraction is inversely as the squares of the distances.”

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 73

Thus, if we represent the respective distances by x and y,
the known attraction of x bya, and that required of y by b;
the proportion will be, not in the direct ratio of x to y, but
inversely as their squares, as follows:

yr: x? ft a:b

To explain this is the poet’s task, and he does it thus:
He regards the ratio sign (:) as ‘‘ shoulders’; the respec-
tive distances (x and y) as “ hands” shooting away from
those shoulders; and the measures of attraction (a and b)
as ‘heads’ lying opposite to the squared members of the
proportion. As those last run in the order of 50?:50?,
49°: 512, 48?:52?, 477: 58%, and so on, in sums always of 100,
till we get to the last combination or 1°: 99°, and as there
are just 50 of those combinations, there would consequently
be 50 ‘‘ heads,” made to grow in a ratio proportional to that
of the inverse squares.
For ingenuity and vividness the lines are probably without
a parallel. Let us take them as they run, and we actually
see the proportion growing under our very eyes, and Gravita-
tion’s law evolving with the growth :
Tov an’ pay . . .
€KaTOV hey xEtpes diooovTo tmaorot

yux
O¢ wevrqxovra €& Gpov . . - y:ix :
&e, &e.
emt otiBapotot pédcoow . vi : x :
Nocos 274 . 2 oe .
kepada éxdote éwépuxoy . : . » y tr aib

It is possible then, however the knowledge was lost up to
the time when Newton re-discovered it, that Gravitation and
the law governing it were well-known to the ancients, as far
back at least as the days of Hesiod. We have already
pointed out a line in the Iliad showing that Homer was also
acquainted with the law, and it may be remarked here that
the words of the succeeding line, “‘ cdei yatwr,” are worthy
of thought and inspection from the strong resemblance
between xddos and xvfos, ‘‘a solid square,” as also between
xvdpos and the Latin quadra. That the knowledge survived
among the well-informed up to the time of the Augustan

74 THE GODS OF OLD;

Era appears more than probable from this passage in the
AAineid :—

Centauri in foribus stabulant, Scylleeque biformes,

Ht centum geminus Briareus.

To translate geminus as “ handed,” with ge as merely
euphonic, has no authority whatsoever and is simply an
ipse dixit of some commentator. If we render centum
geminus literally, it will be ‘‘ hundred double,” that is ‘‘a
hundred squared”’ or “the centuple Briareus,” a meaning
that brings it into consonance with gravitation and its law.

AND THH STORY THAT THEY TELL. 75

CHAPTER VII.

THE FIXED CUT-OFF,

Uranus.—Our earth is, roughly speaking, 8,000 miles in
diameter. As it is somewhat over 2% billions of miles
distant from Neptune, it would take over 300,000 of our
earths to reach the boundary of our system. Again, the
diameter of this solar system is about six billions of miles.
Yet, it would take over four such systems in a straight line
to reach the nearest fixed star, a Centauri; over eight of
them to reach Sirius which is but the fourth nearest to us;
over 38 to arrive at Capella ; 200 to get to Arcturus; and
over 45,000 of our Solar systems to stretch to Algol! Yet,
all these and myriads like them, thousands of others too
far to have their distances computed, and other thousands
too far to be even discerned by telescope yet made, form our
universe and must be supposed as at one far distant time
composing that aggregated mass of which mention has so
frequently been made. And enormous though these figures
be, and however vast the diameter—if we knew it—of our
universe, the mind must still go on and compare it too with
the other universes of infinite space, just as we compared
Earth with its system, and our system with its universe.

What does all this imply? This; that, though
humanly speaking, it, our universe, was the 76 way, it was
nevertheless jinite, and lack of infinity implies the presence
of a boundary, or of that which gives form to the collective uni-
verse. Expand as it would, and contract as it might in order
to gain additional distention, the limit had been assigned
beyond which there was no thoroughfare for the Nebula.

What was this boundary ? When was it formed? What
its nature? How was it produced ?

Answer to these questions must necessarily be vague ;
still, answer there is some.

76 THE GODS OF OLD;

It was the “‘firmament’’ called Uranus or Heaven,
according to Genesis, ‘‘dividing the waters from the
waters:’ it was the “Uranus” cut off by Kronos, as
related in the myths: it was the “ limitary boundary” of
our universe, separating it from external universes, as
expounded by Science.

According to Genesis it was the work of the Second Day.
It was thus subsequent to the time when “the Harth was
without form and void: and darkness upon the face of the
deep,’ and to a Day when God said, ‘‘ let there be light:
and there was light.”” According to Mythology, it was formed
subsequently to Chaos, Erebus, and Nox, to Aither and
Hemera. Science has no date or landmark for the event.

As to the nature of this firmament much has been said,
but only conjecturally. Scripture leads us to infer that it
was such as could divide and keep divided the waters above
it from those under it, for whatever change may have
occurred in time to alter the waters under it, we have for
those above it the words of Psalm exlviii. 4: ‘‘ Praise Him,
ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above
the heavens.’ Most of the epithets applied to it in the
classics are more significative of height, clearness, con-
vexity, splendour, colour, and stelligerence, than they are of
material nature. The Greek poets, Homer frequently,
make use of xdAxeos and oidyjpeos in connection with it,
just as we speak of the ‘‘ brazen vault”? and ‘golden
gates; and in Job xxxvii. 18, we find, “‘ Hast thou with Him
spread out the sky which is strong, and as a molten
looking-glass ?”’

The scholastics, as a rule, were of opinion that it resem-
bled elementary matter in being corporeal, inanimate, and
simple, but maintained that, while the matter of the
elements was corruptible and capable of three forms, solid,
fluid, and gaseous, the matter of the firmament was
incorruptible, and consisted of a fourth form, or one that
was neither solid, fluid, nor gaseous. This, in a sense, is in
accordance with Mythology. Hesiod, as already seen,
says :—

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 77

And firstly then did Gé indeed produce
Like to herself the starry Uranus.

We are thus led to suppose that, whatever was the
nature and whatever were the constituents of the primal
mass when disrupted from the Chaos, the firmament
possessed the same, and that if went in all likelihood
through the same changes in composition that Gea did,
until such time as it was made an independent existence.
It would, as a consequence, range in material nature from the
extreme of pure atomic to that of pure molecular matter,
and as the all-penetrating Kther or light of the Empyrean
had to traverse it, the old epithet of ‘‘ Crystalline Sphere ”’
must be looked on with respect. In view of what we know
to-day regarding the Roentgen or so-called X-rays, the
firmament may be other than Crystalline and still be
capable of transmitting light. Helmholtz adumbrates the
idea of a material firmament when he says, ‘‘ It (solar heat)
has proceeded outwards, and daily proceeds outwards into
infinite space; and we know not whether the medium
which transmits the undulations of light and heat possesses
an end where the rays must return, or whether they
eternally pursue their way through infinitude.” Whatever
it may be, whether material and capable of reflecting force
and the forces evolved from this force, or an unsubstantial
vault, but beyond which no force or material component of
our universe dare swerve by a hair’s breadth, is kept from
human knowledge so far. All we know about it from the
united testimony of Scripture, Science, and Mythology points
conclusively to its existence, favourably to its being of a
material form, but negatively as to the nature of the matter.
As to the manner of its formation, the Genesiac narrative
runs thus :-—
6 Kal eirev 6 Ocds, Tevnbytre otepéwpa év péow rov Uaros* kal got
Siaxwpitoy dva pécov Vdaros kat Vdaros’ kal éyévero otras.

7 Kal évoincey 6 Geds rb otepéopa’ kal dtexdpicrer 6 Oeds ava pécov
tod vdaros, & Hv broKdrw ToD GTEpedparos, Kal ava pégoy rod vdaros,
TOU éwdve TOU OTEpedparos.

8 Kal éxddeoev 6 Geds Th orepéwpa, “Ovpavdy. kali cidev & Oeds, Gre
Kadéy* kal éyévero éorépa, kat éyévero mpot, nuépa Sevrépa.

78 THE GODS OF OLD;

This literally rendered would read :—

6. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the
water: and let there bea division through the midst of water and
of water: and it was so.

7. And God made the firmament: and God made a division through
the midst of the water, the which was under the firmament, and
through the midst of the water, that above the firmament.

8. And God called the firmament Heaven: and God saw that it was
good: and there was evening, and there was morning, the second day.

Those verses are certainly not opposed to the theory of
“Heavens of Heavens’? or external universes; on the
contrary they are rather favourable. Another point in
connection with them must be borne in mind. Many of
the Fathers and Theologians, notably St. Augustine,
distinguish between the opus creationis and the opus
formationis, and consider the evolvement of the physical
universe indirectly, or through the agency of natural
causes,—derivative creation,—as not opposed to the text
of Scripture, and as being more reasonable. In the work
of the Six Days Genesis states the fiat of the Creator and
the accomplishment of the fiat. This, with the regular
order or succession of creative formations, is deemed
sufficient by its author, considering the main point he had
in view,—an Omnipotent and Beneficent Deity. The
subsidiary means and length of time occupied in each
individual formation were but of secondary importance in
his estimation and outside the religious scope of his work.
He was satisfied with enunciating truths: science might or
might not work out the details.

Science has grappled the task, and applying the
ancillaries of the Nebular Hypothesis, Condensation,
Alteration, and Liberation, argues thus: Let condensa-
tion be permitted to occur in the universal nebula, let
alterations take place in the nature of the matter resident
therein, and let there be liberation of the physical and
chemical forces which have sprung up: let all these act
in time, and disruption would occur whereby a firmament,
such as is mentioned, would be formed, acting as a
boundary for that from which it was separated, and within

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 79

which the nebula could undergo further transformations
and disruptions.

Now, whether Science be right or wrong, it would appear
at least to have the sanction of the ages, since we find its
reasoning, mutatis nominibus, to be the Mythologic version
pure and simple. The pains and contractions of Gaa
personified the local condensation ; the Titans represented
the alterations that took place in matter; the Hecaton-
cheires and Cyclopes stood respectively for the physical
and chemical forces: all these acted through Kronos or
time, with the final result of Uranus or the firmament
being separated from participation in the further changes
that were destined for our Universe and Earth.

Could personification be more appropriate, more terse, or
better applied? It is after this fashion that Hesiod
proceeds to describe the results of that eternum vulnus
which has been recorded by Jew, Greek, Roman, Persian,
Goth, and Indian, by the wise indeed of every nation that
has a written language upon record. The narrative is the
first of three remarkable passages in his Theogony where
the poet resorts to dialogue. Having mentioned the
Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires he proceeds thus:

1 daca 8 dp Tains re kal Oipavod éEeyévorro,
dewédrarot raider, eperépm J FyOovro roxyi
é& dpyjs’ kal ray pév bras Tis mpdra yévotro,
wadvtas droKpunTacKe, Kal és chaos otk dvicoe,

5 Tains ev cevOpdnr, card 8 émeréprero épyo
Oipavds. 4 8 évrés orovayitero Taia mekopy
orewonérn Sodinv S€ xaxny éppdocato réxyny.
aia 8é roujoaca yévos modod dddpayros
ted&e péya Spéravoy xal éréppade maot piroow.

10 cine dé Bapaivovca, pidov rerinnémm Rrop*

Tlaides pot cat warpés dragOddov, al « é6édnre
meibecOa, marpés Ke Kaxny Ticaipeba ASBny
tperépov- mpdrepos yap detxéa pnoaro epya.

Qs dare: ods & dpa mavras dev Séos, odd Tis abrdv
15 béyfaro: Oaponoas Sé péyas Kpdvos dyxvdopirys
ay airis pvdorot mpoonvda pyrépa Kedvjv"

Mijrep, €yo kev toird y trooxdpevos redéoarpe
epyor, éret marpés ye Suo@vipou ovk dreyitw
qperépou" mpdrepos ‘yap detkéa pnoaro épya.

20 “Qs hdror ynOnoev bé péya ppeoi Taia reddpy.

in)
Or

THE GODS OF OLD;

eloe 8€ pv xptpaca doy" eveOnxe SE yerpi
Gprnv xapyapdbovra’ Sddov 8 treOHxaro wavra.
WAGE Sé Novxr’ exdyav péyas Odpaves. dudi dé Tain
ineipov pidrdrnros éerécyxero xat p eravvcby
navty’ 68° &x hoxeoto wdis dpéEaro xeipt
oxay, SeEvrepn S€ meAdpiov ~rAaBev Gpmyy,
paxpyy, kapyapddovra, didou & dmb prdea marpos
eooupévas iiunoe, mad & eppipe péper bar
eLorriga. Theog. 154—181.
Of all that sprang from Uranus and Ge,
Most mighty of her children then were these
Who from the first proved hateful to their sire ;
And Uranus, as each was first begot,
Concealed them all within the womb of Ge,
Allowed them not to go towards the light,
And kept rejoicing in his evil work.
But moving Ge, contracted, groaned within
And pondered on the artiul evil work.
Quick, with her offspring dear, she planned and shaped
A mighty semilunar curve, a work
That she had made of crystal hard and clear.
Then cheering spoke, though tortured in her heart:
‘**O sons of an expansive sire, and mine,
If only willing were ye to be moved
We could correct your father’s evil blow;
For he the first has planned incongruous works.”

Thus she ; then tremor seized them all, but yet
No part of them responded. Boldly now,
With crafty speech great Kronos answered back
In words responsive to his parent kind:

“‘ It may be, mother, crouched beneath this work
The deed I'll do, since for this sire of ours,

With name so inauspicious, I care not;
For he the first has planned untimely works.”

Thus he; and moving Ge rejoiced in heart.

Tn wait she secret laid him ; in his hand
A weapon curved, with jagged teeth, she placed ;
And artifice of all kind set below.

Then bringing night came mighty Uranus,
Who yearning fellowship was stretched round Ge,
And strained indeed was she on every side.

But from his ambush stretched himself her son,
Who brandished, now to left, and now to right,
The quivering, far-reaching, jagged blade,
And from his sire cut swift and flung behind
The plans, hereafter to be claimed his own,

4

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 81

NOTES.

2 #xOovro—Chentical force as requiring bodies of different kinds to
act on, arid Attraction, Figure, and Divisibility, as tending to
cohesion, distinctness, and limitation, are antagonistic to the
expansion or diffusion of miatter. In the Hebrew version of
Genesis tlie word used for “‘ firmament” is expansion:

3-5—As matter cooled and assumed form on the surface it would
commence to seek the centre of the niass.

6-7—As Helmholtz says, “ Condensation” (orewopévy) “must have
taken place before the play of chemical forces began,” and the
result would be a shrinkage of the interior (ctovayitero évros);

wéA@pyn—The usual meaning assigned the word is ‘‘monstrots,; pro-
digious, huge, &c.,” with the collateral notion of terrible. The
derivation is ré\ ‘‘ to bé in motion,” and this idea of motiun it
is that as “ writhing, distorted, convulsive, hissing, quivering,
&c.” renders it terrible and monstrous, and equally applicable to
the earth as a moving whole, as to the things of earth, such as the
Cyclops, a goosé, a sword blade, &c. Not the size but the
motion of an object it is that strikes us with awe and terror.

§ odd dddpavros—We do not know what the composition of the
ancient adamant was. The derivation (if a Sduaw) points to
‘* hardness, unalterableness,” and connects it with the matter
of the “crystalline spheres.” Lines 8 and 9 are vividly
descriptive of the Nebular Hypothesis.

11 drac@ddov—Gras Oddd@, “to swell excessively.”

12 weidecéa:—If the molecules would only “be moved to act” intensely
enough, the vibration of their component atoms would’ be such
as to overcome all cohesion, and to bring matter back to
that simple condition—the formless universe—when Uranus
was not.

14 éAev Séos—Her words had at least roused them from inaction, and
some trembling efforts were made on their part towards
assuming dimensions; but their atomic parts responded not
sufficiently,

17 brocxdpevos. tréxo, drecxdunv—Let alterations in matter go on
below, and let time be added; then would disruption follow.

18 dvowvipov—The name, Uranus or “‘ Expansion,” is not pleasing
to insatiate Kronos; neither is that of Uranus or “ the limiting
boundary, or firmament.”

“TI bring the truth to light, detect the ill;
My native greatness scorneth bounded ways.”
Lerd Brooke, on Time.
19 detxéa %pya.—He ends with the same words that Gé did. But,
whereas Gé regarded the works from a mate.ial point of view,
and called them ‘‘incongruous,” Kronos looks on them from
his standpoint and terms them ‘‘ untimely, not suited for time.”
G.O. G

82 | THE GODS OF OLD;

He draws a subtle distinction in the meaning of dexéa; but wé
must remember that he is the péyas dyxvAopyrys.

24 éravicOn.—Owing to the pressure from above, and to the heat
below. ‘*A volume of gas can be compressed with very little
force to half or one-fourth of its bulk, or in short to such an
extent that in many cases the molecules sufficiently approxi-~
mate to form a liquid: further pressure, or pressure under
abnormal conditions, will form it into a solid.”

26 ckath; Seétrep#.—With two mighty sweeps, an upper and an under,
was the firmamerit cut away; and all that reniained embraced
within was henceforth under the sway of Time (dépecdai
éforricw)s

That the Universe has been formed on a great plan or
scheme is universally conceded. The astronomer views
the stars, recognises the existence of laws that govern their
movements, rotation, brightness, eclipse, and relative posi-
tions, and has successfully tracked the gradual building of
an orb from incandescent gas to solid crust, from a nebula
to an earth.

The geologist searches the rocks of our planet and sees
strata after strata from granite to drift, and always in
orderly succession. The paleontologist follows in his
steps and finds a methodical succession of plant and animal
life, from alge to olive, from protozoa to Man.

There is no faltering, no break in the Scheme. It
commences with Being that embraced matter and mind
closely mingled in the vast nebula: it culminates with the
rational and self-conscious individual, Man. Between the
two extremes were many links, thousand ramifications, and
innumerable changes, not only for the orbs of heaven, but
for the mineral, vegetable, and animai individualities of
our globe. But for the firmament there were none that we
know of. When formed it must be supposed-as deprived of
further participation in the changes destined to go on
within its boundary. To put it still plainer, when the
incorruptible or unchangeable firmament was cut away
from the changeable nebula, the plans of this changeable Gea
were cut away from Uranus. This is what the myth means,
and what Hesiod says distinctly when he writes ‘“ and
swiftly cut away from (a0) his dear sire the plans.”

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 83

CHAPTER VIII.
“ GONCORDIA MUNDI.”

Awnp thus was the Firmament spread out “like a curtain,”
and the work of the Second Day completed.

Henceforward we have to regard our nebulous universe
not as a more or less homogeneous whole, but as composed
of three distinct parts,—a Uranus or firmament acting as a
circumferential boundary; a Gea or nebulous mass that
had grown smaller by shrinkage, with a constant tendency
to such contractions within itself as would bring on the
pangs of labour and minimise its bulk by the throwing off
of ring after ring of its own substance ; and an interval of
space between the first and second, in which a succession
of all-important changes was destined to occur.

We cannot conceive this last as a perfect vacuum, since
from the very first flocculi from both firmament and nebula
would probably be found therein, and form by further
expansion an atienvated medium or ether; and as from
time to time there floated away from the mass nebule that
were to form the starry denizens visible to the reason,
telescope, or eye, this medium must have received additions
which rendered it comparatively denser, and thus proved a
factor in limiting the distance to which each successive
misty world advanced.

Té served, too, as a medium for that tie which binds as a
whole the disassociated members of the Cosmos,—that
Harmony of the Universe which has been recognised by
the science and hymned by the poetry of every age. Ovid,
as already pointed out, alludes to it in the line

Dissociata locis concordi pace ligavit.

84 THE GODS OF OLD;

We quote from Lucan, and from what might be its
paraphrase by Tickel,

Nune ades, eterno complectens omnia nexu,
O rerum, mixtique salus Concordia mundi,
Et sacer orbis amor.

«Kind Concord, heavenly born ! whose blissful reign
Holds this vast globe in one surrounding chain.”

Tt is with a description of this Concord, under the
mythical name of Aphrodite, that Hesiod appropriately
concludes the separation of the firmament. Having told in
a few anticipatory lines how our Earth, as a consequence
of the separation, produced in after years the Hrinyes,
Giants and Melian Nymphs, he resumes the thread of his
narrative :—

1 pidea & &s rompGrov dmorpntas dddpavre

KdBBad’ an’ Aeipowo moduKhvaT@ évi wérTe@,

és héper’ ap w&tayos wovAdy xpdvov, dui dé AeuKds

dgpos dx’ a@avdrou xpods Spvura" TG 8 Gx xotpy
eOpépéy. mparov dé KvOnpoise Cabéorow

émhyr’, évbev Exerra wepippurov ixero Kimpov.

ex 8° €Bn aidoin cad} Oeds, ducht b€ méey

wooo tro padivotow aero’ riy & ’Adpodimny,

adpoyevea te Gedy kal éiorépavoy Kubépeav,

10 xtxAnoxovar Oeoi Te Kai avépes, otvex’ év aps
Opépdn’ drap KvOépeav, drt wpooéxupoe Kudjpors*
Kumpoyevéa 8’, Gri yévro wroduxdtore evi Kimpo*
70€ iroppydda, dre pydéwv eLehadyOy,
THO "Epos pdpryce xai “Tepos eowero xadbs

15 -yetvonévg rampOra Oedy 7 és idov iovoy.
Tatra» S e& dpyns tysny eyet We AEAoy ye
potpay ev avOpamrotct kal abavdrowot Geoict,
mapOevious tT ddpous pednpard r éfamdras Te
Tepypw Te yAuKepiy Padryrd te pedtyiny re.

Theog. 188—206.

So too the plans, the very first as ’twere
That he had severed from the adamant
And from the main had flung for basis sure
On the tempested deep, were long time borne
Upon the waters, and a whitish froth
From the immortal surface rose all round.
Therein a maid did thrive ; and she at first
Was to empyreal matter close attached ;
And then to fluid incandescence came.

ar

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 85

And forth a stately beauteous goddess passed,
And ’neath her taper feet the season grew.

Then her, the foam-begotten deity

And the well-circled Cytherea too,

Both gods and mortals Aphrodite call

For reason that in froth she nurtured was;

But Cytherea, since she reached the clear ;
Cyprogenia, too, since got she was

In swelling tide of incandescent heat ;

And Philomede, as from plans she came.

On her when born and come unto the throng

Of gods, the elements, did Eros wait ;
And sweet Desire did follow in her wake,

This honour too ’mongst men and gods renowned
She has from first and gained it as her due,

The warbling converse, smiles, and wiles of maids,
Their joy and honeyed love and blandishment.

NOTES,

1-4 When cut away from the firmament, the plans abided henceforth
with the enclosed nebula. As the ages rolled by this would be
divided and sub-divided to form the various bodies of our
universe, and interstellar space would become filled with a

subtle ether.
rdBBar’ .—‘* Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters,”
—Psalm civ. 3.
2 dx’ jmeipooo—From the original whole that existed before the
separation,

névro.—This and the rédayos of the succeeding line refer to the
nebulous or misty nature of the mass that now lay within the
firmament.

4 ddpis.—The ether, so subtle and impalpable that the poet compares
it to the light, unsubstantial bubbles produced by the fermen-
tation or agitation of a liquid mass.

5-15 In this ether was Concord nursed, and through it as medium
was celestial harmony established, and the spheres bound
together as a whole.

5 Kv@npoot.—As it would be absurd to conceive of localities existing
at an age prior to the formation of a crust upon our globe, it is
evident that the terms Cythera and Cyprus are used only for the
sake of the ideas implied derivationally. Ki@npa (xabaipw, éxdOnpa,
the a being changed into v as in ovpé for cdpé) means “ pure,
the purified, clear,” and Kumpos (kazupés, or xdaaupos, the poetic
form, of xardrvpos) denotes ‘‘ blazing, burning, incandescent.”
Spectral analysis has shown that the simplest stellar bodies
consist mainly of luminous gas or incandescent hydrogen, But

86

THE GODS OF OLD.

that there is a still more simplified form of matter is reasonable
to believe. Itis this most simple condition that Hesiod styles
xvOnpoce Cabégoiswv, while he denotes the swelling incandescence
by wepippurov Kumpov, making it, as seen, subsequent to the
other.

8 *Adpodirny.—By a simple metathesis of the p this becomes padodirny

that is (pdrra dddés) ‘‘ the binder of the orbits.” She would be
so understood by the learned (6coi), while men of inferior
intelligence would recognise her as but ‘‘ the ethereal wayfarer”
(apes ddirns). It would be the same distinction as was made
between Briareus and Aigeeon. The Latin Venus is probably

évoots, ‘* Union.”

13 pedoppndéa.—Cytherean Venus would thus denote “the purest

affection”; Cyprian Venus, ‘‘ ardent or impassioned love”;
Philomede, or Erycinian Venus, “artful love, the love that
laughs at locksmiths.”

14 *Epos.— Change and Desire attended her on earth.

‘Ah me! for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth.”
Shakspeare.

BOOK THIRD.
TOILERS OF THE NIGHT.

CHAPTER I.
THEOGONY.

Moros

Ker

Thanatos

Upnos

Oneiroi

Momus

Oizus

Hesperides
Clotho

Mera | Lachesis
Atropos

Nox

Keres
Nemesis
Apate
Philotes
Geras
Eris

Tur characters in the foregoing table, serving as a sequel
to what preceded and a prelude to what was to come, are
pictured by Hesiod as the offspring of Night without a
consort. In describing the descent of /AAneas into Hades,
Virgil writes thus:

Vestibulum ante ipsum, primisque in faucibus Orci,
Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Cura ;
Pallentesque habitant Morbi, tristisque Senectus,
Et Metus, et malesuada Fames, ac turpis Egestas ;
Terribiles visu forme; Letumque, Labosque ;

Tum consanguineus Leti Sopor; et mala mentis

Gaudia; mortiferumque adverso in limine Bellum,

88

THE GODS OF OLD;

Ferreique Eumenidum thalami, et Discordia demens,
Vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis.

In medio ramos annosaque brachia pandit

Ulmus, opaca, ingens; quam sedem Somnia vulgo
Vana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus herent,

VI. 273—284.

A cursory examination of those lines will tend to show that

the entities mentioned in them, while not arranged in the

same order as those of Hesiod, are similar in number and

characteristics to these of the children of Nox. The

following parallel arrangement may serve to identify them

still further and to throw additional light, one on the other,
otuyepés Mépos . . : . mortiferum Bellum

péedawa Kip. . . . + Labos
@dvaros . . . . Letum

"Yavos . . . . » Sopor

*Oveipae . . . . Somnia vana

Mépos . . : . . turpis Kgestas
ddywéeroa *Oitis . . . Luctus

‘Eomepides . . . mala mentis gaudia

Moipot . . . . ferrei Humenidum thalami
yndeorroivot Kijpes . - + ultrices Curze

Népeois . . . . Metus

"Andt™ . . . . . malesuada Fames

Biddrys . : . . pallentes Morbi
ovAdpevos Typds . . . tristis Senectus
xaprepdOupos”Epis . . Discordia demens

As most of these characters are self-explanatory, we pro-
ceed at once to quote Hesiod’s enumeration and description ;

10

Nv& & érexe orvyepdv te Mépoy kat Kijpa pédaway
kai Odvatoy, téxe & "Yarvov, Erixre S€ Hidov ’Oveipav'
cal EA

odrint KoipnOcioa Gea réxe NDE épeBevyy.
devrepov ad Mapov kai *Oifdy ddywdeccar,
‘Eorepioas @, ais pyda wépyy KAvTOU ’Oxeavoio
xpvoea Kaha pédovar péporra te Sévdpea xaprrdv,
s f 4 ~ J a Ul

kat Moipas xai Knpas éyetvato vyeorowvous,
Krw6d re Adyeoiv te kai Atporoy, aire Bporoiat
yewopévorar Sbotow exew ayabdy Te Kakdy Te,

a - ~ f > id
air’ dyOpav re OcSv te wapatBacias epéeroveat
ovdérare Aryourst eal Sewoio xddoL0,
mpty y arb 76 Swot Kaki bw, doris dpdpry.
tixte 6€ kat Népeow, ajpa Gvytoiot Bporoict,
Nvé chon’ pera tiv 8 "Amdrny réxe kal Piddryra,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 89

15 Tijpds 7° oddduevoy, cat” Epi réxe xaprepdbupov.
Airap "Epis otvyepl téxe ev Tidvoy ddytvdevra
AjOnv re Aipdy re kal” AXyea Saxpudevra,
‘Yopivas re Bdvous Te, Mdxas 7’ ’Avdpoxracias Te,
Neiked re Wevdéas Te Adyous ’Audidoyias Te,
20 Avovopinv” Any re, cvvndeas GAAnAaoL,
“Opkov 6’, ds 8} wretoTov émtxOoviovs dvopwrous
anpaiver, bre xév tis Exdy ériopxov dudoon.— Theog. 211.

But Night, the Night of ages rolling on,

With no one mated, bore dread Destiny

And grim Responsibility ; and Death

And Sleep she bore and multitude of Dreams.
Again begot she Doubt and grievous Woe,
And Processes Occult that care full well,

On this our side of Oceanus famed,

For flocks and beauteous trees that bring forth fruit.
She bore the Fates, to Be, to Do, to Die,

Who good and ill to mortal beings give ;

And the remorseless Cares, all-forceful powers,
Who following up the sins of gods and men
Ne’er cease from anger dire till vengeance dread
Inflict they may upon the one who errs.

And likewise Apprehensive Dread, a bane

To living mortals, bore destroying Night ;
And then Deceit she bore, Affinity,

Carking Old Age, and Strife magnanimous.
But dreaded Strife did grievous Toil beget,
Oblivion, Hunger, tearful-bringing Pains,
Quarrels and Murders, Fights and Homicides,
Contentions, Lying Stories, Equivoques,

And lawless Hate,—compatriots all these ;
Likewise the Solemn Oath that worketh woe
In great degree for dwellers on the earth
When one perchance has knowingly forsworn.

NOTES.

1 Mépov.—The word is derived from peipopa, perf. %popa, “to
receive as one’s portion, to get one’s due.” The Latin equiva-
lent is fatum, ‘‘fate; that order and series of things decreed
from eternity, and from which there is no deviation or escape.’
Dryden pictures it well :

‘Alas, what stay is there in human state,
Or who can shun inevitable fate ?
The doom was written, the decree was past,
Ere the foundations of the world were cast.”

Since destiny comes into operation with life, and since life is

90 THE GODS OF OLD;

but a battle for existence, and a battle that inevitably leads to
death, Virgil has called Moros, ‘‘ mortiferum bellum.”

Krpa—There is but one Ker, as there is but one Moros, in Mythology,
and that Ker (xpn, ‘‘that which must needs be”; ypeos, ‘‘a
business of necessity, a charge, a care’’), is the personification
of ‘‘ Responsible charge” or ‘‘ Cure,” for in the strict sense of
the word, Care is a ‘charge implying responsibility, a trust,
the management of a trust.”

Ker would thus be the equivalent of the ‘“‘ Providence” of
God, of that divine arrangement of all things to one end.
Everything, the universe, earth, man, has been created in
accordance with a plan and towards an end. In its own way,
each created work is indebted for the purchase price of
existence from nihility, and is responsible for the amount to
the last farthing. And the higher in creation’s rank each
being is, and the more endowed with intellectual attributes to
understand the plan and end, the greater must justifiably be
the responsibility attached. As Russo puts it: ‘‘Can we
suppose that when God, by an act of His infinite power, sends
forth rational creatures into space and time, He tells them that
they are not bound to acknowledge the Author of their
existence; that they are dispensed with showing Him senti-
ments of gratitude and love; that, in a word, they are
independent as He himself is independent? Creation with such
a sequel would be an absurdity and the greatest of misfortunes.”

In this general idea of ‘‘ responsible charge” is consequently
involved that of ‘‘conscience” for rational beings, and hence
we can understand the relation of xjp to xp, ‘‘the heart,” as
also of xp7 to ypdw, ‘‘ to deliver an oracle,” for, as Byron says,
‘* Man’s conscience is the oracle of God.” We can in this way,
too, trace the dominant idea in Virgil’s mind when he paralleled
xnp by ‘‘ Labos,” since ‘‘ we must work out our salvation with
fear and trembling,” each for himself.

There are many passages in the Greek classics where the
interpretation of ‘‘ charge, care, conscience, duty,” will render
the meaning more intelligible and vivid. Thus it is that love
of strife, the martial din, and the soldier’s duty ‘‘ with con-
science wide as hell,” are made companions in the battle-field
under the names of Hris, Kudoimos, and Ker. Thus, too, it is
that Achilles scoffingly remarks to Agamemnon, after having
reproached him with never joining in the fray or ambuscade,
‘76 8€é roe Kyp etderat eivas,” Tl. I. 228, ‘* But this to thee our
duty seems to be.”

3 épeBevvy—epeBos evvos, “the evolution of the years.”

4 Mapov—From pi otuas, ‘‘ to suppose, imagine, or believe as not” ;
or py Spipat, ‘not to see, not to know, not to understand”; or
pGpat, ‘to desire eagerly, to inquire, or seek after.” Censure
and ridicule are the peculiar weapons of Doubt, whose mission
it is to thirst and search for truth and facts, and when found,
to see them not, to hear them not, to understand them not.
Hence does Virgil style it ‘‘turpis egestas,” ‘shameless
negation,” shameless want, whether of confidence, truth, know-
ledge, or religion. The censure of the gods by Momus means
that Doubt finds flaws in all things from earth below to stars
on high; even the gait of Venus—the harmony of the universe,
is discordant to his senses, :

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 91

5 ‘Eomepidas—There are ‘‘unexplored remainders” everywhere around

us. We find them in every branch of knowledge—physical,
mental, and intellectual. The divine meets them in the Unity
-and Trinity; the astronomer in the sun-spots and nebulous
rifts; the geologist in the primal crust; the chemist in the
atom; mathematician in the point; geographical explorer in
the North and South Poles; the physicist in the embryo; and
soon, There is ever and always a something that we cannot
grasp, an intangible tangibility, and itis this that Mytholog
personifies in the Hesperides. They are the influences that
preside over the ‘unexplored remainders”; they are, as the
name denotes (€omrépa ei8os), ‘the evening-like, the obscure” ;
or, if we so prefer, they are (omeipde), ‘‘ whatever is wrapped
up or concealed from the view or understanding.” Their
genealogy marks them as being connected with those germinal
processes of which we know so little. Hesiod makes them
children of Nox; other writers describe them as the offspring
of Phoreys and Ceto, of Atlas and Hesperia, of Zeus and
Themis. There is really no difference save as to the beginning,
one writer going back to the universe, and the others to our
system, our earth, or to Life.

We thus see that whatever their ancestry be, they are
invariably connected with what is ‘‘ obscure or unexplored.”
Geographically applied, we find them, as a consequence,
shifted, as knowledge advanced, from the original habitat of
the human race to the countries west of Asia Minor, thence to
the equatorial tracts of Africa, to the extreme west or Western
hemisphere, and finally to the Hyperborean or Polar regions—
the geographical Hesperides of modern times. In the same
manner, do they stand for all those other ‘‘ unexplored
remainders” that elude the view, the knowledge, skill, or
understanding ; and they are confessedly not a few in number.

‘<The mind of man is this world’s true dimension,
And knowledge is the measure of the mind:
And as the mind, in her vast comprehension,
Contains more worlds than all the world can find,
So Knowledge doth itself far more extend
Than all the minds of man can comprehend.”—Brooke.

To explore his world is the mission and the duty of the living
man, nodoubt. Is there a limit to each charge? Time, for
one thing, bounds the former. Does anything bound his duty?
Ifa purely physical act could weaken the understanding, can
a purely mental one antagonise the intellect? Is not obedience
as likely a factor in one case as the other, and does not
obedience imply something forbidden? What is that something
—that dividing line between the sacred and the accursed springs
of knowledge? Even that does the ‘“‘audax gens humana”
want to know.

‘The wish to know—that endless thirst,
Which even by quenching is awaked,
And which becomes or blest or curst,
As is the fount whereat ’tis slaked.””— Moore.

It must have been such a sentiment that made Virgil
parallel the Hesperides by “‘ mala mentis gaudia,”

92 THE GODS OF OLD.

mépny KX. Ox.—Oceanus represents the vast mass of aqueous vapour
surrounding our earth. It has, consequently, two sides, one
spreading into infinite space, the other limited by the surface
of our globe where the Hesperides are stationed.

G6 xpioea Sévd. xaprdv.

“(Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the world and all our woe.”—Milton,

7 Moipas—The Meeree were the agents or distributors of Moros or
Fate, and were accordingly termed Parcee by the Romans, as
being ‘‘the accomplishers or fulfillers” (apdooo) of the eternal
and irrevocable dardv. As the destiny of all things can be
said to consist in being, doing, dying, Mythology enumerates
three Meerse, viz.: Clotho, the fate that spins (xAodw) the
thread of being; Lachesis, she who assorts (Aayydvyw) the
duties to be done; and Atropos, the fate that cannot be avoided
(a tpér@).

“¢ While man is growing, life is in decrease,
Our cradles rock us nearer to the tomb ;
Our birth is nothing but our death begun.”— Young.

If it be true that we are all born with the germs of life, action,
and decay, then each of the three weird sisters is a spimner at
the loom, and the white and black threads of Clotho and of
Atropos are inextricably mingled with the chequered one of
Lachesis. What the prevailing colour of her thread may be
depends entirely on ourselves. ‘‘ Asa man sows, so shall he
reap,” is Scriptural language, of which the homely paraphrase
is, ‘* We must all lie upon the bed which we have made.”
Either text will serve to show why Virgil has paralleled the
Greek Meerse by “ferret Humenidum thalami.”

Kijpas—What the Merz are to Moros, the Keres are to Key, distri-
buting agents of Providence. Providence is two-fold; the
arrangement of all things towards their ends, and the
execution in time of such arrangement through suitable media,
The Keres are emblematic of those media by means of which
the arrangement of Providence is carried to accomplishment,
Each of us, like Achilles, has a choice of Keres or duties,
whether of war or peace, action or indolence, plough or pen;
but whatever we embrace, however high we mount or low we
fall, we are attended by the satellites of grim responsibility.
If we perform our part properly, it is well; if not, then
conscience stings us with its thousand tongues.

‘* The human race are sons of sorrow born,
And each must have his portion.” — Mallett.

14 aAérnra—If matter remained elementary there would be no
decay. Affinity, by causing the elements to unite and become
compounds, brings on disorganisation and disease. Rust is an
example of what Affinity can effectin metals. Hence it is that
Virgil has paralleled Philotes by ‘‘ pallentes morbi,”

BOOK FOURTH.

WORLD-BUILDING.
— ee
CHAPTER I.
THEOGONY.
Pontus GA,

TTT Tn naa,
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oOo. aR oo OO Orn ——~—~

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MYTHS.

Pontus—born of Gea and united to her after her separation from
Uranus. Their offspring were five in number, namely,
Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto, and Eurybia.

94 THE GODS OF OLD;

Nereus—the eldest born of Pontus, and united to Doris, daughter of
Oceanus, by whom he became the father of the Nereides.
His domain is the sea, and the poets have gifted him with
prophecy and the power of assuming different shapes.

Nereides—daughters of Nereus and Doris, and fifty in number. As
being marine nymphs they dwell in their sire’s domains.
They are propitious to sailors, and were worshipped
throughout Greece, particularly in the seaport towns.

Thawmas—another son of Pontus, wedded to the Oceanid Electra,
by whom he begot Iris and the Harpies.

Iris—the messenger of the gods to one another and to men, but later
on the peculiar attendant and messenger of Juno. Some
writers identify her with the rainbow, while others make it
as but the path on which she travels, appearing and vanishing
as required.

One of her peculiar functions is to bear in a golden bowl
the Stygian waters to such divinities as have proved faithless
in the eyes of Zeus. She has wings on her shoulders, a
herald’s staff in her hand, and a tunic or zone of many
colours.

Harpies—described by Hesiod as fair-haired, winged beings, attended
by winds and birds of prey. Homer alludes to them as
storm-winds reputed to carry off whatever or whosoever was
reported as having suddenly disappeared from earth.
4Eschylus represents them as hideous creatures with wings ;
Virgil as part bird, part maid, with long claws and faces pale
with hunger, and as defiling whatever food they left unde-
voured. Hesiod names two, Aéllo and Ocypete; Virgil
mentions another, Celeno; Aéllopos, Nicothoé, Ocythoé,
Ocypode and Acholoé are added by other writers. Their
original abode was Salmydessus in Thrace, where they
tormented the blind Phineus. When expelled from there by
the sons of Boreas they took refuge in the Strophades, and
here it was that Atneas-encountered them previous to his
arrival at Carthage.

Phorcys—son of Pontus and Gea, brother of Ceto, to whom he was
united, and by whom he begot the Graiz, the Gorgons, and _
Ophis.

Ceto—daughter of Pontus and Gea, and joined in wedlock to her
brother, Phorcys.

Graie—children of Phorcys and Ceto, and alluded to by all writers as
being gray from their birth. Hesiod mentions but two,
Pephredo and Enyo. Apollodorus names three, Pephredo,
Enyo, and Deino, and says that they had only one eye and
one tooth in common, which they borrowed from one another
when required.

Gorgons—children of Phorcys and Ceto, who resided on the borders of

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 935

Night beyond Oceanus, where the Hesperides were situated.
Homer mentions but one, Gorgo, dwelling in the depths of
Hades. Hesiod enumerates three, Stheno, Euryale, and
Medusa. The first two were immortal; Medusa alone was
mortal, and the most famed in song and story. Originally
she was a maiden, most beautiful in form, and one of het
chief attractions was her golden hair. Neptune had inter-
course with her, it is said, in the temple of Minerva, in con-
sequence whereof the incensed goddess changed the Gorgoni’s
hidir to writhing snakes, and rendered her head and those of
her sisters so hideous as to turn all who looked tipon them to
stone. Sonie writers say that Medusa was the only one of
the three who had serpents in her hair.

Perseus, son of Zeus and Danae, was commissioned by
Polydectes to cut off Medusa’s head. The details of the
story are thus told by Apollodorus (2. 4. 2. 3) :—

“ Guided by Mercury and Minerva, he (Perseus) comes to
the daughters of Phorcys, namely, nyo, Pephredo, and
Deino. ‘hese were children of Phorcys and Ceto, sisters to
the Gorgons, and gray from birth. The three had but one
eye and one tooth, and these they changed in turn with one
another. Of which having got possession, Perseus said,
when they demanded them back, that he would return them
if they took him down to the path leading to the nymphs.
These nymphs had the winged sandals, the kibisis (which is
said to be a bag), and the helmet.

“The daughters of Phorcys having taken him down, he
gave them back the eye and tooth ; and when he came to the
nymphs and got what he desired, he put the kibisis round him,
fitted the sandala to his ankles, and placed the helmet on his
head: having this last, he was able to sce whomsoever he
wished, and could not be seen by others. Having also got
an adamantine rapier from Mercury, he came to Oceanus
flying and found the Gorgons lulled to sleep. ‘These were by
name, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa. Medusa alone was
imortal; and for this reason had Perseus been sent for her
head. These Gorgons had heads encompassed with the scales
of dragons, had teeth monstrous as those of boars, brazen
hands, golden wings with which they flew, and they made
stones of all that kenned them (rods ¢ iddvras Aidous emolouv).
Standing over them asleep, Minerva directing his hand
aright, Perseus turned one side, and looking into the brazen orb
through which he saw the likeness of the Gorgon, he decapi-
tated her.” Then he put the head into his kibisis, and by
means of the helmet which rendered him invisible he escaped
from the pursuit of the remaining two Gorgons. After
going through many other adventures, Perseus returned the

‘96 THE GODS OF OLD;

sandals, kibisis, and helmet to Mercury, who restored theni
to the nymphs. The Gorgon’s head he gave to Minerva, who
placed it in the middle of her shield or breast-plate.

Pegasus.—When the Gorgon’s head was cut off by Perseus, her two
children by Neptune sprang from the wound: these wei'e
Chrysaor and Pegasus. This latter is described as a winged
horse that was born near the springs of Ocean, whence he
ascended to the immortals, and dwells in the halls of Zeus,
to whom he carries the thunder and the lightning. Other
traditions describe him as the horse of Aurora, and place hint
among the stars: All unite in regarding him as connected
with the Muses, and as having produced the fountain of
Hippocrene from Mount Helicon with a blow of his hoof.

Chrysaor—son of Neptune and Medusa, brother of Pegasus, and born
with him after the decapitation of the Gorgon. He was
united to Callirrhod, daughter of Oceanus, and by her he
begot Geryon and Echidna.

Geryon—son of Chrysaor and Callirrhoé, reputed to have had three
heads, or, according to some, three bodies united together.
He dwelt in the island of Erythia, situated in the west near
the ocean, and had magnificent, reddish-colored oxen, that
were tended by the herd Eurytion, and guarded by Orthos,
a two-headed dog born of Echidna and Typhaon. To carry
off those oxen was assigned to Hercules as his Tenth Labour.
‘This he succeeded in doing after killing the dog, the herd,
and Geryon himself.

Echidna—sister of Geryon, and called by Hesiod the daughter of
Chrysaor and Callirrhoé. Other writers call her the offspring
of Tartarus and Geea; still others, of Peiras and Styx. She
is described as a huge, unformed being; a beautiful nymph
in face and body, but snake-like as to her limbs; as im-
mortal, undecaying, and devouring raw flesh in caves beneath
the ground. According to Hesiod, she was drawn down
beneath the Arimi; Apollodorus says that she was reported
to have been destroyed by Argos Panoptes. In quest of his
Ninth Labour, the girdle of Hippolyte, queen of the Amazons,
Hercules is said to have visited the Hyperboreans, and to have
begotten there by Hchidna three children, Agathyrsus,
Gelonus, and Scythes. She is described as wedded to
Typhaon, by whom she begot Orthos—the two-headed dog of |
Geryon, Cerberus—the three-headed dog of Hades, the
Lernean Hydra, the Chimera, the Nemean Lion, and the
Sphinx. According to Hesiod, the last two—the Sphinx
and Nemean Lion—were born of Echidna and of Orthos;
others call them children of Orthos and the Chimera; still
others, of Typhaon and Chimera.

Chimera,—a fire-breathing monster, huge, swift, and strong, having

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 97

G.O

three heads, a lion’s placed in front, a goat’s in the middle,
and a dragon’s head behind. She committed terrible havoc,
but was finally destroyed. The story runs thus: Bellero-
phon, having unwittingly killed his brother (who has been
variously called Bellerus, Deliades, Peiren, and Alcimenes),
came to the court of Praetus in order to be purified. Antza
(called Sthenobzea by some writers), the wife of Pratus, and
daughter of the Lycian king, Iobates, conceived an attach-
ment for Bellerophon, and made overtures to him. When he
fled from her advances she became incensed, and made her
husband believe that Bellerophon had attempted to betray
her. Hither fearing or being unwilling to kill him with his
own hands, Preetus sent his guest to Lycia, and gave him
letters to Iobates, requesting that the bearer should be
destroyed, To make his death assured, as he thought,
Tobates ordered him to wage battle against the dreaded
Chimera. Aided by the gods, the hero caught and mounted
the winged horse Pegasus, rose into the air, and destroyed
the monster with his arrows.

The continuation of Bellerophon’s story is as follows:
After various adventures he married the daughter of
Tobates and was named successor to the throne. But having
attempted to fly to heaven upon Pegasus, the winged steed,
by order of Zeus, flung him blind and maimed to earth.
Homer says that he drew upon himseif the anger of the gods,
and was finally compelled to wander blind, solitary, and far
from the paths of men, in the Aloéan fields,

H

98 THE GODS OF OLD;

CHAPTER II.

THE LUMINOUS PAST.

Tue separation of Uranus from Gea is one of the fore-
most events in Mythology. The next to stand out in
importance is the Battle of the Titans. But whereas the
first has reference to our universe as a whole and ends with
the formation of a firmament, the Titanomachia belongs
peculiarly to our globe and ends with well-established Life. -

Gea, Pontus, and their immediate offspring, are universal
terms, it Is true, since they are applicable not only to our
universe as a whole, apart from the firmament, but also to
each of the stellar systems and to the individual stars of
such systems into which our universe was subsequently
divided. But henceforward our attention is peculiarly
invited to that particular portion of matter which sometime
in the course of ages assumed an existence apart from all
other portions, and which we have called our arth. The
beginning of this independent existence is marked in
Mythology as the union of Gea with Pontus, and the off-
spring begotten of these and the descendants of such
offspring denote the many and varied changes that occurred
and intervened between an incandescent mass and the same
mass with granite for a basis.

Principal among those changes would be the first crust
that solidified upon the molten surface, the waters that
established themselves upon the crust, and the elevation of
dry land above the surrounding waters.

Having described the formation of a firmament, Genesis
thus proceeds :

9. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered
together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY THLL. 99

10. And God called the dry land earth; and the gathering together
of the waters called He seas: and God saw that it was good.

11. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding
seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in
itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

12. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after
his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after
his kind: and God saw that it was good.

13. And the evening and the morning were the third day.

I¢ is with the events of this third day that all the mythical
characters from Pontus to Zeus are connected; and it is
with the events described in verses 9 and 10 that the off-
spring and descendants of Pontus and Gea are specially
concerned. How the dry land appeared, how the seas were
gathered together, and how corresponding changes occurred
in the gaseous envelope around our globe, are the pith and
marrow of all the myths and mythical characters embraced
between Pontus and Hchidna.

Pontus and Gea.—What the condition of its matter was
when our earth, sufficiently cooled to prevent all further
disruption on its part, began a sure and independent
exist-nce in space, is not known. There may be, and
probably is, a still more simple condition than that of
incandescence. Hesiod has suggested it in his ‘‘ Cytherea,”
and certain of the nebule which the most powerful telescope
has failed to resolve into stars are conceived by some
scientists fo be “‘ belated portions, so to speak, of the same
soft and diffused material which, countless ages ago, was
condensed into the defined bodies forming the remainder of
our solar system.” It is worthy of note, too, that the
coronal atmosphere of the sun is said to consist mainly of
sub-incandescent hydrogen ‘‘and another element which
may be new.” Such a condition, if existing, may be con-
sidered as the closing chapter of speculative philosophy
with regard to the matter of our globe. The succeeding
stage and much of what followed belong to speculative
- geology, and in this wise does it proceed to tell the story.
In its early infancy, when earth had dissolved for good and
aye co-partnership with each and every of the celestial

H 2

100 THE GODS OF OLD;

cohort, it was a luminous gaseous mass, surging ever from
internal convulsions or outward disturbances, or from both,
irregular in shape, thousands of times greater in volume
than at present, and equalling, if not surpassing Sirius,
‘*the monarch of the skies,” in heat and brilliancy. It
was, in brief, a sun illumined by its own light, glowing
with its own heat, and composed of matter elementary or
fashioning into elementary, since the same hydrogen line
would be shown by the spectroscope that we now observe in
Sirius and stars like Sirius. As it waxed in years and lost
some of its intensity by radiation of its light and heat into
outer space, its materials became more differentiated into
elements, if shrank in volume, and assumed a structure
like to that of our sun, namely, a solid or liquid incan-
descent nucleus, surrounded with layer after layer of glowing
vapour that evinced the presence of iron, zinc, copper,
sodium, magnesium, calcium, and other elements in addition
to vast quantities of hydrogen. All these would be in a
state of incandescent vapour, and the orb itself would
in all respects resemble our sun in light, heat, and gaseous
layers which would every now and again be thrown into
viclent and surging billows that revealed the dark spots
underneath. And so would it proceed for cycle after cycle,
cooling and contracting, defining into shape and boundary,
changing in colour possibly from white to yellow, from yellow
to orange, and from that to red, till ib became at last a
“dying out sun.” While these changes were occurring,
the atoms that had been there from the first, and that had
been kept disassociated by the intense heat, came closer and
closer together, and the elements appeared, one by one, as
it were, hydrogen first, then the metals, and then the
metalloids, oxygen, nitrogen, silicon, carbon, sulphur, -
chlorine, and others.

During all these gons what was the principal charac-
teristic of our earth? There is but one answer—
Luminosity ; for it was at the expense of luminosity that it
cooled, shrank, and allowed the elements to differentiate.
And this luminosity -was derived from no outward source ;

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 101

it must have been inherent in matter itself from the
beginning, must have grown with its growth, divided with
its division, and attached itself to each member of the
universe ; among others, to earth itself.

Now, this is identical with the myth which makes Pontus
the offspring of Gea without a partner, antecedent in being
even to molecular matter, and subsequently united to his
parent after her divorce from Uranus. The derivation
points to the same conclusion, since Idvros (allowing for
the well-recognised interchanges of z and #, and of o and a,
as instanced in wavds and wdérvn for davds and ddrvyn, otporés
and dvia for orpards and dvia), is equivalent to Pavros, and
thus signifies ‘“‘ giving light, luminous.”

Hesiod, having mentioned how Gea begot Uranus and
the Ourea, says :—

7 8€ kal drpiyerov wédayos Téxev, oiSpare Giov,
Ildvrov, drep ptddérnros éipépov.—Theog. 181.

And Pontus, too, a vaporous expanse
That glowing raged with turbulence, she bore
While still from sweet affinity aloof.

1 drpvyerov.—a tpvye ‘‘ not dry,” that is “‘ moist, vaporous,” just as
we say ‘in a nebulous condition.” We also find arpiyos (a
tpvé) ‘‘clarified, pure, simple.” With the same meaning,
‘*moist” or ‘‘ pure,” does Homer apply it to the ether:

otdnpeos & épupaydds
xadxeov otpavin ike 80 aib€pos drpvyéroio.—IL. XVII. 424.

The usual rendering, “yielding no harvest, unfruitful” (a
tpvydo) has nothing to recommend it, since in their own way
the sea and air are as fruitful as is the land in its way.

méhayos.— The word is used to denote anything vast in volume,
extent, &c. So do we speak of ‘‘a sca of troubles,” “the ocean
of eternity.”
oidpart Giov.—‘‘ raging with swell,” as the gaseous layers of the
incandescent orb would be by commotions within and without
the mass. Hesiod has elsewhere (line 189) used the words
modukdvar@ ev. wévr@ “on the tempested deep,” and again in
line 199, woAukdtor@ evi Kixpo “in the tempested incandescent
mass.” Gv, ‘to slay or burn a victim in sacrifice; to rush
with violence,” has for its radical, according to Passow, the
sense of ‘‘to burn, to fire.”
2 drep iddrytos.—There can be no affinity when thore is only one kind

{02 THE GODS OF OLD;

of matter. At this stage of being matter was but atomic, for
the molecular Titans were not yet born. ‘If the earth con-
sisted of but one kind of matter, mercury, for instance, there
might be gravitation and cchesion, but affinity would be
impossible.” — Youman.

It is consequently but a question of words for Science to
say that our earth was at one time an incandescent mass,
in a vaporous condition, and liable to violent commotions
in its surrounding layers; and for Mythology to say that
Gea was united to Pontus, and that this Pontus was an
arpvyeror méAayos oldpatt Odov.

It must be this early stage of Earth’s existence that
Virgil writes of in his sixth Helogue, and. it must be in this
sense of vaporous incandescence that the “‘ liquidi ignis”
must be understood :—

Namque canebat uti magnum per inane coacta
Semina terrarumque, animeeque, marisque fuissent,
Et liquidi simul ignis: ut his exordia primis
Omnia, et ipse tener mundi concreverit orbis.

For how the elements of continents,

Of vital air, and sea, and liquid fire

Had been collected through the mighty void ;

And how from those same eleinents there grew

Beginnings all, and Eaxth’s own slender round,
All these in pleasing numbers told he of.

From the notions of vastness, oneness, fluidity, and
turbulence, connected with the word in its original sense,
the transition of Ponius to a terrestrial ocean or large sea
was natural and easy of application. It may be, too, that
there is a connection in Latin between pontus and pons,
the idea being that an incandescent globe was a transition
stage or bridge between the totally unknown form of matter
that preceded, and the well-known that was to follow. The
conjecture is strengthened by the Greek yégupa, the
derivation of which (yéa gupdw ‘‘ matter mixed with
moisture”) brings us back to the same idea of vaporous
incandescence that actuated the formation of the Latin
pons ; a8 also by Homer’s using the word ’Eqvpn, Il. VI. 152,
to denote this transition phase of earth. It can only be in

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 103

this sense that pontifex signifies ‘‘ bridge-maker,”—Plutarch
calls the derivation from pons an absurd ‘one. If, however,
we take pontus, the word would signify ‘‘ the light-maker,”
and pontifex maximus would thus be the exact and suitable
equivalent of the Greek Hierophant. Tarth’s reckless
dissipation of heat and light into an outer space that with
chilling impassibility received all and gave back nothing,
could not, did not last’ for ever. Long as it was coming—
more than 50 millions of years, if we place credence on
conjectural calculations—the day of reckoning arrived, as
the geological narrative tells us, when insolvency stared it
in the face, when it could no longer queen it with the
brightest of celestial denizens, and was compelled, possibly
for its own welfare, to take its station in the humbler walks
of beng. Figuratively and literally it woke one morning to
find its property in liquidation, and itself, when all just
debts were settled, in the condition of mostly planet, partly
star; that is to say, in a condition resembling that which
is supposed to prevail at present in our furthest planets,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. It had still an
emblazoned scutcheon, it is true; but the motto was no
longer “‘ Incandescence ;”” it was now “ Igneous fluidity,”
and such it retained for many a long, long day. While
insolvent, it was not bankrupt quite, and Geology has taken
the following inventory of its assets at this period of its
career. It had, first of all, the cherishe:! memory of the
past; it had also, as a modest independence, a volume
sufficiently large, if we include its envelopes, to reach the
moon; 2 well-defined spherical form with an inclination to
assume that of an oblate spheroid; movements of rotation
and translation; heat of its own sufficient to fuse the most
refractory of metals; and a residuum of inherent light,
enough possibly to make it still appear as it were a sun to
the moon, if moon there was, and if there were no dense
canopy of clouds between the two to interfere.

A goodly portion in its way, after all, was this that was
saved from the wreck, and had Earth only hoarded it with
economy the famous Golden Age of traditional history

104 THE GODS OF OLD;

would yet bein existence. But Mother Harth was ever liberal
and generous, and she still continued lavishing both heat
and light upon spendthrift space till such time as she had
spent much of the former and all the latter, and till
herself was left the semblance of what she is to-day. But
this is anticipatory, and so we return to a more minute
description of Earth in its liquid or fluid igneous condition,
or, as it might well be called, the decadence of the incan-
descent stage.

A most curious and interesting condition it was,
however we regard it, since we find the globe proper in a
thoroughly molten condition throughout, a veritable sea of
liquid fire, such as we are inclined to believe the interior
of its mass is to-day. Not a drop of water or of air was
there on or close to the glowing orb; and yet the measures
of all our oceans, seas, and rivers, of all our atmospheres,
were in existence, but thousands, hundreds of thousands
of miles above. And even there they existed but as
elementary gases—oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbonic
acid, mere phantoms of themselves and all aflame, thus
attesting their descent from the paternal Pontus. And
between those far-away regions and Earth’s fiery furnace
below was a mass of incandescent vapour filling the entire
space, growing denser, heavier, darker and more opaque,
as it approached the confines of our globe. And in it were
the measures of all our coal beds, of all the salt in our
mines and oceans, of all our chalk cliffs and common clay,
and the earthy constituents of every plant and animal that
was to occupy our globe; of even the very metals, copper,
iron, silver, gold, and the many others that are now
embowelled in the depths of the earth. These too, like the
water and the air, were but phantoms of what they were to
be, reduced as they were to vapour by the intense fire below
and by their own inherent heat, that was continuously
fanned into fresh energy by friction of the particles and
by the tempestuous surging of the mass.

What then was left for the globe proper? Fire, liquid
fire at a white heat; the same that is now belched from an

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 105

A&tna and a Vesuvius, the same that vomited itself again
and again from below in Archean time to rupture the first
crust that formed on the molten surface, to rear above and
overflow the crust, and subsequently to cool into the primal
granite that lies at the base of the lithological structure.

Was ever anything stranger or more mythical than this?
And yet it is the conclusion, the only rational conclusion
arrived at and acknowledged by the sober, practical science
of to-day. An encyclopedic writer tells us that “the
oxygen which now forms fully half of the outer crust was
originally doubtless part of the atmosphere. So, too, the
vast beds of coal found all over the world in geological
formations of many different ages, represent so much
carbonic acid once present in the air. The chlorides in the
sea likewise were probably carried down out of the
atmosphere in the primitive condensation of the aqueous
vapour.”

In the same strain writes every geologist who touches on
the subject, and especially Figuier, from whose “ World
before the Deluge” we quote at length.

“At this excessive temperature the gaseous mass which we
have described would be borne in space much as the sun may
be supposed to be, and it would shine with the same brilliancy
with which, in our eyes, the fixed stars and planets burn
in the serenity of night. . . . As it got cooler, it gradually
transposed portions of its warmth to the glacial regions of
the interplanetary spaces, in the middle of which it traces
the line of its flaming orbit. Consequent on its continual
cooling, but at the end of a period of time of which it
would be impossible, even approximately, to fix the duration,
the star, at first gaseous, would reach its liquid state... .
If it did not follow, as a consequence of the partial cooling
down of the terrestrial mass, that all the gaseous substances
composing it should pass into a liquid state, some of these
would remain in the state of gas or vapour, and would form
round the terrestrial spheroid an envelope or atmosphere.
We shall not have formed a very inexact idea of the atmo-
sphere which surrounded the globe at this remote period if
we compare it with that which surrounds us now; but the

106 THE GODS OF OLD;

extent of atmosphere which surrounded the primitive
earth must have been immense; it doubtless reached the |
moon. It included, in short, in the state of vapour, the
enormous mass of waters which now, in their condensed
form, constitute the mighty ocean, added to other
substances which preserved their gaseous state at the
temperature then exhibited by the incandescent earth,
and it is certainly no exaggeration to place this at
2,000° Centigrade. ‘The atmosphere would participate
in this temperature and, acted on by this excessive
heat, the pressure that it would exercise on the earth
would be infinitely more considerable than that which it
exercises at the present time. To the gases which form
the component parts of the air—namely, azote, oxygen,
and carbonic acid gas—to the enormous masses of watery
vapour, we should have to add vast quantities of mineral
substances, metallic or earthy, reduced to the gaseous
state, and maintained in that state by the temperature of
this gigantic furnace. The metals, the chlorides—metallic,
alkaline, and earthy, the sulphurets, and even the earthy
bases of silica, of alumina, and of lime; all at this
temperature would exist in a vapoury form in the atmo-
sphere surrounding the primitive globe. It is thought
that, under these circumstances, the different substances
composing the atmosphere would be ranged round the
globe in the order of their density: the first layer—that
nearest to the surface—being formed of the heavier vapours,
as the metals, iron, platinum, copper, mixed doubtless with
clouds of fine metallic grains produced by the partial.
condensation of their vapours. This. first and heaviest
zone, and the thickest also, would be opaque, although the
surface of the earth was still ata red heat. Next in order
would come the more vaporisable substances, such as the
metallic and alkaline chlorides, particularly the chloride of
sodium or marine salt, of sulphur and phosphorus, with
all the volatile combinations of these substances. The
upper zone would contain matter still more easily vaporised,
such as watery vapour or steam, united with bodies naturally
gaseous, as oxygen, azote, and carbonic acid. This order of

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 107

superposition, however, would not maintain itself constantly.
In spite of their unequal density the three atmospheric
beds would often be mixed, producing formidable storms,
violent ebullitions; throwing down, tearing, upheaving,
and confounding these incandescent zones. As to the
globe itself, without being so much agitated as its fiery
and mobile atmosphere, it would be no less the prey of
perpetual storms, occasioned by the thousand chemical
processes which were in action in its molten mass. On
the cther hand the electricity resulting from those powerful
chemical operations, conducted on a scale so unlimited,
would provoke frightful detonations, the echoes of thunder
adding to the horror of this primitive picture.”

Such, then, was the condition of our world under Pontus
and Gea, and it is well to bear in mind that the change
from incandescence to igneous fluidity did not occur all
suddenly, but slowly, almost imperceptibly, and from the
very first; and that only at an advanced stage of incan-
descent decadence would the following summary—and it is
well to note it—be pronouncedly applicable :—

1. An outermost zone where the constituents of water,

oxygen and hydrogen, were most abundant.

2. A more or less dense mass of luminous clastic vapour,
the product of all the other elements, metallic and
non-metallic, reduced to the gaseous state by heat,
reaching from earth to heaven, and frequently dis-
turbed by violent commotions.

3. The earth proper, a globe of liquid fire, and then as
always, even to-day, presenting for reflection an
exterior surface, and an interior beneath the surface.

_ 4. The never-ceasing, inseparable tendency to form and
arrangement in every part of the mass, individually
and collectively.

It is well to note them, we repeat, for each in its own
way was the offspring of incandescent matter; and
Mythology tells us that five children—Nereus, Thaumas,

Phoreys and Ceto, and Hurybia—were born to Pontus and
Gea.

108 THE GODS OF OLD;

CHAPTER JL.

THE BIRTH-PLACE, BIRTH, AND COMING OF THE
SHA.

Nereus.—‘‘ When the world was incandescent,” writes
Gunning in his ‘‘ Life History of our Planet,” ‘the oceans
were not on but abore the earth. No matter has been
added, save in the fall of meteorites, and none has been
taken away. The waters were here from ‘the beginning,’
here in their elemental gases. Ag silica is the oxide of
silicon, and implies a time when its elements were free, so
water is the oxide of hydrogen, and implies a time when its
elements had not combined.”

How those elements of oceans came to be above, Figuier
has already described. Let the same writer tell how the
world of waters was translated from heaven to earth.

* As the globe continued to cool, a time arrived when the
temperature became insufficient to maintain in a state of
vapour the vast masses of water which floated, suspended
and vaporised, in the atmosphere. These vapours would
pass into the liquid state, and now the first rain-drops fell
upon the earth. Let us here remark that these were
veritable rain-drops of. boiling water; for, in consequence
of the very considerable pressure of the atmosphere, water
would be condensed and become liquid at a temperature
very superior to 100° Centigrade. ... , The first water
which fell in the liquid state upon the gradually cooling
surface of the earth would be rapidly reduced to steam by
the elevation of its temperature. Thus rendered much
lighter than the surrounding atmosphere, these vapours
would rise to the utmost limits of the upper atmospheric
zone: thus circumstanced, they would radiate towards the
glacial regions of space, and, again condensing, would thus
again descend to the earth in a liquid state, to reascend as
vapour and fall again in a state of condensation. But these ~

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 109

alternate changes in the physical condition of water could
only be maintained by a very considerable temperature on
the surface of the globe, which these alternations of heat
and cold were very rapidly diminishing: the excess of heat
was being dissipated in the regions of celestial space. This
phenomenon extending itself by degrees to the whole mass
of watery vapour existing in the atmosphere, the waters in
increasing quantities covered the earth; and as the con-
version of all liquids into vapour is provocative of a notable
disengagement of electricity, a vast quantity of electric
fluid necessarily resulted from the conversion of such
masses of water into vapour. Bursts of thunder and bright
gleams of lightning were the necessary accompaniments of
this extraordinary struggle of the elements. How long did
this struggle for supremacy between fire and water, with
the incessant noise of thunder, continue? All that can be
said in reply is, that a day came when water was trium-
phant. After having covered to a vast extent the basins
and hollows of the earth, it finally occupied and covered
the whole surface: for there is good reason to believe
that at a certain epoch, at the commencement, so to speak,
of its evolutions, the earth was covered by the waters in its
whole extent. Ocean was universal.”

When now we turn to the Mythological narrative, it
seems almost superfluous to point out the identity between
our sea, the first product of incandescence, that originally
affected the hollows of our globe, and subsequently covered
the greater part of its expanse,—and between Nereus, the
eldest born of Pontus, who loves peculiarly the hollow depths
of ocean, and who is described by every classic poet as the
Sea. Neptune is the ruler of water in all its three forms,
solid, fluid, and gaseous, and his symbol, the trident, is
indicative of such authority: Pontus is the vast expanse,
the sea as contrasted with the sky, as is well evidenced by
the following quotations :—

Jamque mare et tellus nullum discrimen habebat,
Omnia pontus erant. Deerant quoque littora ponto.
Ov. Met. 291,

110 THE GODS OF OLD;

Postquam altum tenuere rates, nec jam amplius ulli
Apparent terre, coelum undique et undique pontus.
Ain. TIT. 192.

But Nereus is the true, the real sea of earth, the sea as
contrasted with the land. Virgil testifies to his origin and
translation from heaven to earth in the sixth Hclogue.
After writing the lines already quoted in connection with
Pontus, we find—in immediate order of succession, too—
these words :—

Tum durare solum et discludere Nerea Ponto
Coeperit, et rerum paullatim sumere formas.
Then, how the surface essayed to condense,
From Pontus Nereus to separate,
And forms of being slowly to asstme.

The derivation of Nypévs (vy-pém “not changing ’’) is
expressive, for with the first drop of water that formed on
the outer atmospheric zone, and that did not change to
vapour, was Nereus born, however long he may have subse-
quently been before coming to his kingdom upon earth.
And when he did come, he proved himself still further
entitled to the name he bears by (vy few) not flowing off the
surface of our globe,—a wonderful thing in itself, even
when explained by gravity,—and by remaining unchanged
(v7 péw) during all geologic cycles in contradistinction to the —
solid land which, during those cycles, has been repeatedly
moved upwards and downwards. It is probable, too, that
his name has been commemorated in our own language, for
what is “‘rain”’ but Nereus transposed ?—pyvéevs. Hesiod’s
description runs thus :—

Nupéa & aypevdéa kal ddnGéa yeivaro Uévros,
npecBuraroy raiser’ abrap Kaddaver yépovra,
ovvexa pypepths Te Kal imtos, obbe Ocpictéwy
ApOerat, GAG Sixata xat Fata Sqvea oider.—Theog. 233.
Of Pontus born was Nereus, the true,
The real, eldest of his children all;
And him they style ‘‘ the Old,” since ever he,

The same and soft, forgets not nature’s laws ;
But measures all, the strict and fair, he knows.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. ill

NOTES.

1 dyevdéa.— These were veritable rain-drops,” says Figuier.

2 mpeoBirarov.—‘* When the earth and its atmosphere had cooled to
the dew point, condensation occurred. Oxidation, the com-
bination of oxygen and hydrogen, must have occurred before.” —

>

Gunning.
yépovra.— ‘* Look how the gray, old ocean ;
From the depths of his heart rejoices.” —Zowell.
3 vnpepris.—‘* unerring, not deviating, the same.”

‘‘Thou art the same, eternal sea !
The earth hath many shapes and forms,
Of hill and valley, flower and tree.” —Lunt.

rwos.—** Soft,” that is, “‘impressible, yielding.”
‘Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean—roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain.” —Byron.

4 8Shvea otSev.—The sea has witnessed all and every change that has
conyulsed and altered earth and its boundaries from the
beginning.

As to the power assigned Nereus of appearing in different
shapes to mortals, we have only to remember that the sea
has many moods andforms. Itmay be calm or tempestuous,
cerulean, dark, phosphorescent, &c.; it may be transformed
to vapour, or solid as the berg. And as to his prophetic
power there can be no question of doubt. His oracular
responses are still extant and bound, not in cloth or leather
it is true, but bound in rocky covers. Our earth is the
book ; its foliated structure the leaves; and ripple marks,
rain-prints, sun-cracks, raised beaches, terraces, shells,
coal, chalk, lake deposits, diatom mud, calcareous and
siliceous ooze,—all these and others are the prophetic
characters inseribed, indelibly inscribed, upon the leaves
and capable of being deciphered. Ocean has taken the
mollusk for a text and prophesied to the mailed ganoid and
the placoid of the Devonian Age; these in their turn served
him as a homily for the reptile; it for the mammal; all of
them combined for pre-diluvian man :

“Oh! how old
Thou art tome! For countless years thou’st rolled;
Before an ear did hear thee, thou didst mourn,
Prophet of sorrow, o’er a race unborn.” —Dana.

112 THE GODS OF OLD;

The calm of ocean is even more ayvesome than its turbu-
lence. There are times when nought is visible but a, glassy
expanse of waters, and when, perhaps
‘The sky
Spreads like an ocean hung on high,

Bespangled with those isles of light
So wildly, spiritually bright.”

It is at such moments, with infinity all round, that the
soul is most apt to commune with itself, and be startled
by the prophetic warnings of a guilty conscience. It must
have been such a sea and such a night that came for Priam’s
son when sailing o’er the main with Grecian Helen :

Pastor quum traheret per freta navibus
Ideeis Helenen perfidus hospitam,
Ingrato celeres obruit otio
Ventos, ut caneret fera

Nereus fata.
Hor. Od. I. 15.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. ils

CHAPTER IV.

THE RIVERS OF THE SEA.

Nopijos 8 éyévovro peynpara réxva Oeaov

névre ev arpuyér@ Kai Awpidos 7UKdpoL0,

Kotpns '‘Qxeavoio, reAnevros motapoto.—Lheog. 240.
Of Nereus and the fair-haired Doris, child

Of Oceanus, of the perfect stream,

There was begotten in the liquid deep

A passing lovely race of deities.

‘las sea is wedded to this Doris, to the (#0wp) water of
aqueous vapour that remains invisible above till condensa-
tion occurs and sends it down from the gaseous ocean above
to the sea below, whence again it is raised by evaporation
to descend once more. And this process ‘has never ceased
since the first shower of rain fell upon the earth.” Largely
raised as it is from the ocean surface, it falls back directly
upon that surface, and that portion of it which falls on
land finds its way eventually through the brooks and rivers
that it feeds, to the bosom of the sea. ‘‘ All the rivers run
into the sea; yet the sea is not full: into the place from
whence the rivers come, thither they return again.”—
Ecclesiastes.

One of the most interesting circumstances connected with
the ocean is the circulation of its waters. In the first place
we have a general drift, or set of the warmer and lighter
waters flowing on the surface towards the poles, and of the
colder, heavier waters of those arctic regions flowing under-
neath the warmer towards the equator. In addition to
this general drift both ways, there are found to be immense
currents, “the rivers of the sea,” as they have been
aptly called, which traverse the ocean in all directions and
at different depths, and of which the well-known Gulf
Stream isa type. “There is,” says Maury, “a river in

G.O 1

iit THE GODS OF OLD;

the ocean. In the severest droughts it never fails, and in
the mightiest fioeds if never overflows. Its banks and its
bottoms are of cold water, while its current is of warm.
The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is in the
arctic seas. There is in the world no such majestic flow of
waters.” Besides the Gulf Stream, there is a great
Equatorial Current crossing the Atlantic from Africa to
Brazil, where it divides, one part going southwards, the
other northwards to the Gulf of Mexico, then to continue
as or to feed the Gulf Stream. The Indian Qcean has its
ewn currents and its own Gulf Stream, one that runs from
the Straits of Malacca northwards to China and Japan, and
thence across the Pacific towards north-western America.
The Pacific has its own currents ; so, too, probably have the
Polar Seas, and every great inland sea connected with the
ocean.

Those currents play an all-important part in tending to
equalise the temperature of the ocean in all latitudes, and
in modifying to a considerable extent the climates of
different regions. They are furthermore connected closely -
with all that concerns navigation, trade, commerce, and
civilisation in general. In the ocean itself, too, they must
play an important part, seeing that they have much to do
with the fretting and abrasion of the coasts and cliffs, with
the transportation to deeper water of the débris from those
sources, aS also of that carried by every river to the
ocean, and with the friction, comminution, and wide-spread
diffusion over the sea-bottom of all terrigenous deposits.
‘‘ The rock-forming materials,” says a writer, ‘are spread
out far and wide by the numerous ocean currents, some of
which flow for hundreds of miles; and so the bed of ocean
- can be very slowly raised by their accumulations.”

It must have been long since evident that those currents,
in the sea and born of the sea, are the Nereides of
Mythology, born of Nereus, as their name denotes, and of
the aqueous vapour’s water that descended to the sea from
time immemorial. They, like those ocean currents, are
many in number, propitious to sailors, and worshipped in
the seaports of every country. Well do they deserve our

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL, 115

culture and all the altars built to them in the shape of
wharves, docks, and lighthouses. Were it not for those
rivers of the sea, or for such of the Nereides as are
embodied in the Gulf Stream, we are told on good authority
that London would have a mean annual temperature 40°
lower than it has, and that much of Europe would be
placed under glacial conditions.

Their numbers and names are not the same with all
writers. Hesiod mentions 50, Homer 84, and Apollodorus
45. Even in a casual and hasty examination such ex-
pressive names are noticed as Proto, “the surface”; Sao,
“the saver’; Galene, ‘“‘the tranquil”; Pherousa, “ the
transporter’; Enagore, “ the collector ; Tysianassa,
‘‘ the dissolver, or comminutor”; Huarne, “ the strewer ”’;
down to the lowest depths of ocean, to Nemertes, ‘the
unchanging,” 4 sarpcs xe vdov afavdrowo. Hesiod finishes
the enumeration thus:

adrat pév Nypijos duipovos eEeyevovto

kovpus mevTnkorra, apipova épya idviat.
From open sea there sprang those fifty maids,
Witnesses of the works exposed to view.

There arises the not improbable idea that a well-systema-
tised effort was made by Hesiod, if not by the other writers
too, to represent in regular order from surface to bottom
the most striking characteristics of the different marine
strata as to cclour, motion, density, solvency, and depo-
sition. Considering also that there is a general drift of
upper waters towards the poles, and of lower waters towards
_ the equator—that is to say, of a mass of warm water

overlying one of cold—it is suggestive, to say the least,
that if we draw a dividing line between the forty-five
Nereids mentioned by Apollodorus, we will have for the
twenty-third “AAipijdn, “the guardian of the deep”’; and if
we draw a similar line between the fifty of Hesiod, we will
men tha "lr of et

ded , guard of the surface ’’—the
division, as it were, between the warmer upper and the
lower cooler currents.
i2

116 THE GODS OF OLD;

CHAPTER V.

THAUMATURGY.

Thaumas.—The atmosphere is always more or less
charged with electricity, due in part, it is said, to evapora-
tion going on over the oceans, in part to other causes not
well understood yet. Of the precise nature of electricity
itself we know very little. ‘It is neither matter nor
energy,” says Thompson; “yet it apparently can be
associated or combined with matter; and energy can be
spent in moving it.” All that we know with regard to it is
that which is derived from its manifestations, from the
effects which it produces ; and that some of its sources are
friction, percussion, vibration, disruption and cleavage,
evaporation, pressure, heat, chemical action, contact of
dissimilar substances, &c. If all these sources are potent
for electric manifestation to-day, how much more so must
they have been at that stage of our igneous globe when the
rain rushed for the first time upon the earth through the
heated vaporous zone that then served for atmosphere ?
The conditions for electricity were all there, and in an
intensified degree; the heat and pressure were enormous,
the atmosphere was loaded with dissimilar substances,
matter had not advanced beyond the initial stage of mole-
cularity, there was abundance of disruption and chemical
action, and especially was there constant friction from the
uprise of intensely heated steam and the downfall of the
comparatively colder rain, the two forming, as it were, an
endless revolving band of contraries around the blazing orb.

Figuier has already testified to the excessive electrical
disturbances that came into being in those early days of
Barth. Another writer, Winchell, in his “Sketches of
Creation,”’ writes to the same effect: ‘‘ A scene of terrible

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. \W7

sublimity approaches. As yet no water existed upon the
earth. No rain had fallen upon the parched and blackened
crust. All the water which now fills the oceans and the
rivers and the lakes,—all which saturates the atmosphere
and the soil, and the rocks,—rested then upon the earth as
an acrid, elastic, invisible vapour, extending to an unknown
distance into surrounding space. This vapour was not
cloud-like, but intensely hot and transparent. .... The
time had now arrived, however, when the remoter regions to
which this aqueous gas extended began to be so far reduced
in temperature as to cause condensation to begin. ....
Particle drew particle to itself, and rain-drops began to
precipitate themselves through the lower strata of the fervid
atmosphere. In their descent they were scorched to evapo-
ration, as the meteor’s light vanishes in mid-heaven. The
vapours hurrying back to the bosom of the cloud were again
sent forth, again to be consumed. At length they reached
the fervid crust, but only to be exploded into vapour and
driven back to the overburdened cloud which had an ocean
to transfer to earth. The clouds poured the ocean con-
tinually forth, and the seething crust continually rejected
the offering. The field between the cloud and the earth
was one stupendous scene of ebullition. But the descent of
rains and the ascent of vapours disturbed the electricities
of the elements. In the midst of this cosmical contest
between fire and water the voices of heaven’s artillery were
heard. Lightnings darted through the Cimmerian gloom, and
world-convulsing thunders echoed through the universe.”

If we are thus forced to have cognisance of electricity
only through its manifestations or the phenomena produced,
we can understand why Mythology assigned the name of
Thaumas to the same phenomena, inexplicable and wonderful
(Sadua) as they are. It is, indeed, from the kindred OduBos,
“wonder,”’ that we must derive ‘‘amber,” the first sub-
stance, so far as we know, in which electrical properties
were discovered. If, however, we seek a derivation for
Thaumas (and it is only rational to suppose that all
emotions must have had entities to give them their nomen-

118 THE GODS OF OLD;

clature), it may be probably found in a dual sense. The
word is written Gatpa, dona, and Odéipne, and this last, the
Ionic form, is suggestive of O€o dpa (dopa) ‘ swift-falling
rain,” (and it is well to note that 6éw is used to especially
denote circular motion, or that which runs round into itself),
and vw dua, “ burning vapour.” We would thus be brought
back to the original conditions—to the conditions, indeed,
that maintain to-day—for the production of electricity,
namely, the descent of cooled vapour and the ascent of
heated. When we turn to Electricity, or the Electra
of Mythology to whom Thaumas was united, we have, in
the first place, the conviction derived from the similarity of
names. It is also to be noted that she was the daughter of
Oceanus (aqueous vapour), and is thus connected closely with
the same evaporation which we consider so potential in
influencing electricity. That the name Electra is derived
from #Aexzpov, “electron” (either amber or a precious
metal) is improbable ; the reverse is more likely. Lightning,
the most evident manifestation of electricity, would also be
the first to be observed, refiected on, and named. The most
characteristic and striking form of lightning would be
the zigzag, and Elecira (Haéxrpa), allowing for the
metathesis of p, would signify (GA pax7) “the wandering
and the broken ’’—that is, forked lightning.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 119

CHAPTER VI.

“TRI, DECUS CQ¢LI.”

Iris.—The identity of Iris with the rainbow is too well
established to admit of doubt. She is the ‘ Ivi, decus
eceeli”’ of the classic, and the “ Triumphal arch, that fill’st
the sky ’’ of the modern poet.

There appears, however, to be a discrepancy between her
mythical and her modern parentage, for while both Mytho-
logy and Science agree with regard to one side of the
ancestral house, namely, Thaumas, or the rain in transi,
they disagree as to the other. Hesiod assigns Electra, or
electric infinenze ; Science asserts that it is the rays of the
sun. If the former be correct, then we would be led to
infer the presence of an unusual amount of electricity in
the atmosphere previous to the exhibition of rainbows; if
Science be altogether right, the question naturally crops up
why, with the quite common presence of two such factors,
rain and sun, we do not see rainbows oftener than: we do.
Be this as it may, the Latin poets were evidently inclined
to look with suspicion on the female side of the genealogical
tree. Iris is always mentioned by Virgil and Ovid with
the paternal appellative of ‘“‘ Thaumantias”’: Electra is
never alluded to. That their theories in regard to the
formation of rainbows were similar to our own is evident
from the following quotations :

Qualis ab imbre solet percussus solibus arcus
Tnficere ingenti longum curvamine coelum,
Ov. Met. VI. 68.

As when the rainbow, struck by sunny rays,
Spans the wide heaven with its mighty arch.

Cui nubibus arcus
Mille jacit varios adverso sole colores.—Mn. V. 88,
As when the rainbow, opposite the sun,
A thoysand intermingled colours throws,

120 THE GODS OF OLD;

Ergo Tris croceis per coelum roscida pennis,
Mille trahens varios adverso sole colores,
Devolat. fin. IV. 700.

With saffron wings then dewy Iris flies
Through heayen’s expanse, a thousand varied dyes
Extracting from the sun, opposed in place.

Does Iris bear a message? It would be difficult to deny
the fact. To the observant shepherd, the weatherwise
sailor, to the scientific meteorologist, it brings a warning of
what may occur, of storm and rain if seen in the morning,
_ of calm and fair weather if beheld in the evening. To the

human race as a whole it brings a reminder of the last great
cataclysm that convulsed our earth, and an assurance of an
everlasting covenant between Creator and post-diluvian
beings that ‘the waters shall no more become a flood to
destroy all flesh.’ It is thus impossible for the religious or
scientific mind to separate the purely physical emblem from
the event which that emblem indicates; and hence itis that
Iris may be considered as the rainbow, or the rainbow as
but the path on which she travels. In the same way, for
example, may we consider the apices of an indefinite
number of right angles and a semicircle as one and the
same, or the semicircle as but the path described and brought
into being by the motion of a right angle having the
diameter of a circle for hypothenuse.

It is in this dual sense—physical and portentous—that
Tris is introduced in classic poetry, and the distinction, subtle
as it is, is always more or less implied. Hven in the name
is this the case, for “Ipss is derivable from elpw, which has
the dual meanings of ‘‘to join or fasten in rows,” as the
colours in the rambow; ‘“‘ to speak, to announce.”

She is described as the peculiar attendant and messenger
of Juno. (the dry land), because the elevation of the moun-
tains has a very approximate ratio to the altitude’ of the
cloud-bearing and storm-producing strata of the air. But
before she became the special favourite of the land upon our
globe, there were days when she was selected for a more
portentous mission. While the sea has been unchangeable,
not so the land. Often and often in geologic time has if

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL, 121

sions, as Hesiod tells us later on, were not comparatively
often; but when they did occur, when each age had run its
round, evoluted itself probably to the furthest point it could,
and was then found lacking in the essentials of developing
the progress marked out in the grand scheme of creation,
the formations of such age were doomed, the bond was
broken, and they passed away in the convulsions of nature
to give place to others and to better. How were these con-
yulsions produced? Chiefly by volcanic disturbances; and
the rocks bear testimony of the fact in the unconformability
of their structure. There must have been atmospheric
storms too in those days, when continental and insular gods
went down and others took their place; there must have
been signs and tokens of those storms—an Iris that arched
the heavens and foretold to those recreant worlds that their
race was run, an Iris that had been commissioned, by the
Life that never died, to bring the erst cool waters in a golden
bowl, and that did bring them in the steam which bubbled
and rose from the golden crater of volcanoes roused to action,
—steam in whose vapoury spray Iris herself may have
appeared, as in that of a fountain, treading on the rainbow
path.

It has been a matter of debate why Iris was selected by
Virgil to cut the last tie that held the dying Dido to life.
The reason may be twofold. First, to show that Dido by
her own rash act had sundered the covenant between the
Creator and the created. Secondly, to foreshow the
tempest that cast Aineas on the shores of Sicily. The
context shows that Dido perished in the early morning, and
a rainbow in the morning foretells the storm and rain with
which the 5th Book opens. For a similar reason is Iris
introduced in the 2nd Book of the Iliad as a premonition
not only of the stormy battles that were to come, but also
of the covenant between the Greeks and Trojans that was
subsequently broken by the arrow of Pandarus. Ovid,
also, when describing the deluge of Deucalion, introduces
Iris as significative of the disaster that was to come and of
the covenant destroyed by the wickedness of Lycaon,

122 THE GODS OF OLD

CHAPTER VIL

THE PIRATES OF THE AIR.

Harpies. Oaipas § *Qxeavoio Babuppetrao Ouyarpa™
nyayer “HYXéxrpyy? 4) 8 dxciav réxev “Ipwy,
nuxdpous 8 "Aprutas, "Aehdw 7’ “Oxumérny Te,
ai p’ dvépeov mvotjot Kat olwvois dp’ emovrat
axeins nrepuyecot’ petaxpdveat yap tahdov.—Theog. 268.

But Thaumas chose Electra for his spouse,

Of the deep-flowing Oceanus child ;

She bore swift Iris, fair-haired Harpies too,
Aello and Ocypete, that rush

On pinions swift, followed by gales and birds;
For after time of Kronos came they forth.

THERE came a day, we are assured, when the rain from
above established itself as a thermal ocean upon the newly-
formed crust. Thousands of years may have elapsed
before the victory was gained ; but whatever was the length
of time many other changes took place during the interval.
Some of these were immediately connected with the atmo-
spheric envelope. The constant and excessive downpour of
the rain would not only unload the aqueous vapours upon ~
earth, but would also wash down the mineral substances
with which the atmosphere was weighted, and much of the
acid and poisonous gases that permeated it. The air, thus
purged and comparatively purified, and approximating
more closely in character to what it is to-day, would offer
an extended field for those aérial eddies than which there is
nothing more appallingly phenomenal save perhaps the
volcanic outbursts on earth below. The cyclones, hurri-
canes, tornadoes, typhoons, and all other revolving tem-
pests, must have had a beginning, and the early days of the -
solid globe presented all the necessary conditions in an
intensified degree. Modern research has shown that the

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 123

origin and growth of storms are naturally associated with
the expansion of uprising moist air and the formation of
clouds and rain. ‘These associations were pre-eminently
present in Archaic times; the air was still loaded with
clouds and rain, the globe was much hottcr than to-day,
and radiating heat to outer space; there was very little land
to interfere with the action of aérial currents, and from the
vast thermal sea enormous quantities of warm, moist
vapour were incessantly ascending and being met directly
and laterally hy cooler currents descending to supply their
place. All the storm essentials, then, were present, and as
the natural result we would have earth revolving in space
for an indefinite period, girt with a ‘‘ thermal sea’”’ below,
and with a “‘ storm sea’’ above, that helped the ocean to
demolish the blackened isles and crags which raised them-
selves for a brief while above the raging waters.

To those cyclones and other storm winds that suddenly
carry off whatever opposes them, the name of Harpies is
given in Mythology. The word, “Apa: (dpmddw, “to tear,
rend, to carry off”) is expressive of the effects produced.
Their modes of action are visible in the particular names
assigned them ; thus Aello (é ¢iAdw), “the revolving wind,
or cyclone ;” Ocypete (exis wérouat), “ the swift-flying, or
hurricane ;” Acholoé (axAvw), ‘the darkener;’’ and
Celzeno (xeAauds), “the black,” whom Virgil calls “ furiarum
maxima,” to denote that storms are ever presaged and
intensified by blackened skies. Their primal abode,
Salmydessus (Zadpvdnoods), or Halmydessus (GApvdqecds),
evidently refers to the early days of earth, when its atmo-
sphere was (dAs pddos) a sea of damp, moist vapour, wherein
the storm winds had full play, and lashed and tormented
the blinded Phineus below, that is, the (daivw) visible land
of an earth deprived of self-luminosity. As time rolled on,
those revolving storms would no longer have control over
earth’s expanse, but would be confined to certain localities
where the conditions for a whirling motion (orpépw) would
be most favourable—Strophades, from where not even the
sons of Boreas could rout them. Still another, and

124 THE GODS OF OLD;

probably the true reason for the term Strophades is found
in the fact that ‘‘ the revolving tempests of the equatorial
regions occur especially at the time of the reversal (orpépw)
of the regular winds,” and this is denoted by the myth
which mentions how the Harpies were pursued from
Salmydessus by Zetes and Calais, the sons of Boreas, who
did not return from the chase till they had reached the
Strophades. Hesiod calls them children of Thaumas and
Electra, and it is well known that cyclones, hurricanes, and
other revolving storms are charged with electricity and
often accompanied by sheets of driving rain. The following
description of a cyclone by Reclus will best explain this, as
also the general idea of the Harpies being winged beings
who carried away whatever suddenly disappeared from the
earth. ‘‘ Some days before the terrible hurricane is un-
chained, nature, already gloomy and as if veiled, seems to
anticipate a disaster. The little white clouds, which float
in the heights of air with the counter trade-winds, are
hidden under a yellowish or dirty white vapour ; the heavenly
bodies are surrounded by vaguely iridescent halos and
heavy layers of clouds, which in the evening present the
most magnificent shades of purple and gold stretching far
over the horizon, and the air is as stifling as if it came
from the mouth of some great furnace. The cyclone,
which already whirls in the upper regions, gradually
approaches the surface of the ground or water. Torn
fragments of reddish or black clouds are carried furiously
along by the storm, which plunges and hurries through
space: the column of mercury is wildly agitated in the
barometer and sinks rapidly ; the birds assemble as if to
take counsel, then fly swiftly away so as to escape the-
tempest that pursues them. Soon a dark mass shows itself
in the threatening part of the sky; this mass increases and
spreads itself out, gradually covering the azure with a veil
of a terrible darkness or a blood-coloured hue. This is the
cyclone, which falls and takes possession of its empire,
twisting its immense spirals around the horizon. The roaring
of the sea, and skies succeeds to this awful silence,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 125

“The progress of the wind experiences much more
resistance in the interior of continents than on the seas,
but the phenomena which are produced there during the
hurricane are not less terrible. Buildings which oceur in
the path of the storm are razed to their foundations, the
waters of rivers are arrested and flow back towards their
source, isolated trees are torn up and plough the earth with
their roots, the forests bend as if they formed but a single
mass, and give to the tempest their broken branches and
torn leaves. Tiven the grass is uprooted and swept from
the ground. Innumerable fragments fly in the track of the
hurricane, like the waifs carried away by a fluvial or
marine current. Ordinarily, the action of electricity is
added to the violence of the air-in movement, to increase
the ravages of the tempest. Sometimes the flashes of
lightning are so numerous that they fall in sheets like
cascades of fire; the clouds and even the drops of rain emit
light; the electric tension is so strong that sparks have
been seen, says Reed, to dart spontaneously from the body
of a negro.”

The foregoing description of a cyclone’s approach and
onset is almost an amplified paraphrase of what Virgil
writes in his Aineid with regard to the Harpies :—

Postquam altum tenuere rates, nec jam amplius ull
Apparent terre, coelum undique et undique pontus ;
Tum mihi coeruleus supra caput astitit imber,
-Noctem hiememque ferens, et inhorruit unda tenebris.
5 Continuo venti volyunt mare, magnaque surgunt
Aequora: dispersi jactamur gurgite vasto.
Involvere diem nimbi, et nox humida coelum
Abstulit; ingeminant abruptis nubibus ignes.
Excutimur cursu, et caecis erramus in undis.
10 Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere ccelo,
Nec meminisse viee medid Palinurus in undé.
Tres adeo incertos ceec4 caligine soles
Erramus pelago, totidem sine sidere noctes.
Quarto terra die primum se attvllere tandem
15 Visa, aperire procul montes, ac volvere fumum.
Vela cadunt; remus insurgimus; haud mora, naute
Annixi torquent spumas, et coerula verrunt.

126

THE GODS OF OLD;

Setvatum ex undis, Strophadum me litora primum

Accipiunt: Strophades Graio stant nomine dictes

Insulze Tonio in magno, quas dira Celeeno,
Harpyizeque colunt alises, Phineia postquam
Clausa domus, mensasque metu liquere priores.
Tristius hand illis monstrum, nec sevior ulla
Pestis et ira defim Stygiis sese extulit undis.
Virginei volucrum vultus, foodissima ventris
Proluvies, unceeque manus, et pallida semper
Ora fame.

‘When now our crafts possessed the briny deep,
‘When disappears the land, and all around

Ts nought save sky and sea, then o’er my head
Impending stood a purple cloud that bears
Darkness and tempest, and the wave beneath

- Frowned with the horrors of Cimmerian gloom.

The winds incessant move in spiral] curves

The sea’s expanse, and raise stupendous waves.
Tossed by the cyclone vast we're cast adrift.
The lowering clouds involved the light of day,
And reeking darkness blotted out the sky ;

From the rent clouds the lightnings freely flash.

We're driven from our course and roam at large
Upon the giddy waves. Nor night nor day
Can Palinurus’ self discern in heaven,

Nor on the high seas bear in mind the way.
For three such days obscured by blinding mist,
As many starless nights, we roain the deep.
Lazid for the first time on the fourth is seen

To raise itself, disclose the hills far off,

And roll away the haze. The sails grow slack ;
‘To oars we rush; and quick, the sailors braced
Toss the salt spray and sweep the azure depths.
Saved from the waves, the Strophadean shores
Receive me first: in the Ionian main

ITT, 192.

Stand forth those islands dubbed with Grecian name,

Which dread Celzeno and the Harpy crew
Take for a habitation when the house

Of Phineus was closed, and leave they did
Their erstwhile feasting places through alarm.
Than these no dread phenomenon more dire,
No bane more ruthless, and no scourge of gods
Fer raised itself above the Stygian waves.

Of things on wing the primal aspect’s theirs ;
The flux most boist’rous of a central vent ;

Limbs that are curved ; and mouths e’er wan with greed.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 127

NOTES.

5 volvunt mare.—The cyclone above had communicated its eddying
motions to the waters below.

6 gurgite.—The aérial and marine alike.

9 erramus.—A vessel tossed about in the eddies caused by a cyclone
‘has travelled 1,500 miles in 5 days, and yet at the end of that
time was but 410 miles from the point of departure.”

clausa domus.—When earth was covered by a crust of some kind.

23-27.—The poet proceeds to enumerate the principal characteristics

of revolving storms, namely, velocity, a central axis, spiral
currents, and suction.

25 volucrum.—Cyclones move at a rate of from 50 to 100 miles an
hour.

ventris.—‘‘In severe storms there is always present a system
of surface winds revolving about and blowing in towards a
storm centre.”

26 unce manus.—‘‘ At a short distance above the earth’s surface is a
system of outward moving spiral currents immediately above
the lower inward moving winds.”

27 pallida s. o. fame.—There is hardly any limit to their powers of
suction. The waters of the sea have been frequently observed
to be drawn in, in greater or less quantity, by the vacuum
which is formed in the midst of the whirlwind. In Barbadoes
Reed saw showers of salt water fall at a great distance from
the shore, and in such abundance as to destroy all the fish of
the lakes end streams.

128 THE GODS OF OLD;

CHAPTER VIIL

THE KEEPER AND THE KHEP.

Phorcys and Ceto.—Hesiod, it will be remembered, when
enumerating the offspring of Pontus and Gea, began with
Nereus, the eldest; that is, with water or the constituents
of water placed originally, as we have seen, in the furthest
confines of earth’s atmospheric envelope. Continuing his
natrative, the Greek poet says :

adris 8 ad Cabpayra péyay kal dynvopa bopxuy
Tain prrydpevos kal Kyra Kaddurdpnov,
EdpuBinv 7 dddapavros évi hpeci Oupdv Exovoav.—Theog. 237.

Backward and backward still with Gé conjoined,
Great Thaumas bore hé, Phorcys well-defined,
The blushing Ceto, and Hurybia too

With adamantine spirit in her breast,

NOTES.

1 dyjvopa.—aynvap, Dor. dyavap, signifies literally (@yav épde) “ much
seen, very much seen, too much seen,” owing to the varied
constructions of dyav. It is in this way that the term has
been applied in the sense of ‘manifest, conspicuous, very
conspicuous,” to an Achilles; and of “too manifest, too con-
spicuous, barefaced,” to Thersites and the wooers of Penelope.

There is nothing pleonastic or superfluous in the words
‘airs 68’ ad.” They bring the reader from the confines of
the incandescent orb where our oceans were conceived down
to the aérial regions where such phenomena as electricity,
the rainbow, and mighty storm winds hold sway ; and still
jurther down to where those new characters, Phorcys, Ceto,
and Hurybia are situated. If we look back at the tabulated
summary of existing conditions at the conclusion of Pontus
and Gea, we see plainly how Nereus and Thaumas are
respectively applicable to those marked (1) and (2).
Eurybia will be treated of when we come to her consort,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 129

the Titan Crius; but even as it is, the name is sufficiently
suggestive of ‘diffused force” to connect her with that
marked (4). If then the offspring, as a whole, be consonant
with the specified conditions as a whole, it naturally follows
that the mythological remainder must be the equivalent of
the scientific one,—that is to say, Phoreys and Ceto must
represent the conditions marked (3). Everything with
regard to them is confirmative of this conclusion. They end
the “‘ airis 8 ad” of Hesiod’s material beings, just as earth
proper ends the material zones into which the incandescent
globe arranged itself: they are the children of Pontus and
Gea, as the diminished igneous globe is of the larger
incandescent: they are brother and sister and united
in wedlock, as the exterior and interior of our orb are
close kin to one another and inseparably united. Nor
is this all; the very names breathe conviction. Phoreys
(Pépxus) is (paw Epxos) “‘ the visible boundary ’’; while Ceto
(Kye) is but Doric for Kdrw, ‘‘ underneath ”’; so that the
two deities are emblems respectively of the exterior and
the interior of the orb. The epithets dyjvopa and
kaAAindpyov applied to them respectively by Hesiod
accentuate both the derivation and interpretation. Phorcys,
the exterior surface, is ‘‘ well seen, well defined”; Ceto,
that which is beneath the surface, is ‘‘ blushing,” to denote
the glowing heat of our orb in those days—days when
Phorcys was a mighty potentate who held sway over
earth’s expanse. He, like others of the older deities, was
shorn in time of much of his dominion, obliterated as he
was by his Gorgon child, Medusa, as she was by her
offspring Chrysaor, and he by his descendants. But he
still retained a portion,—in the sea whose exterior surface,
unlike that of land, has never changed. There, though
under the control of Neptune, he is the marine Phorcys
who generates the clouds, and controls the surface play of
the waters, beneath which, as in a ring, the ‘“‘ Nereidum,
Phorcique chorus” exercise their functions. As he holds
the surface, so does his partner Ceto hold the depths of
ocean, where the whales and monsters of the sea disport.
G.0. K

130 THE GODS OF OLD;

CHAPTER IX.

THE GRAY FROM BIRTH.

Graie.—How old are the clouds? They precede the
formation of rain in these our days; but in view of their
being but the elastic invisible vapour of water made visible
by condensation and cold, we must suppose this invisible
vapour as antecedent in point of time. Were there no
vapour, there would certainly be no clouds. This is pointed
out in Mythology by saying that Nereus was the eldest
born of Pontus and Gea, and in science by the assertion that
“ oxidation must have preceded condensation.”

Whether the elemental rain was so constituted as to be
capable of falling without any previous condensation into
cloud is even within the range of possibility, taking into
account the abnormal condition of all existing things in
the primal age of earth, and from the fact that rain falls,
though rarely, from a clear and cloudless sky. If con-
densation did occur it might be caused either by cooling
from space without, or by cooling from a diminution of the
heat from the surface of the earth below. The latter is
equally probable with the former, more likely indeed, as
the orb was constantly losing heat; if is more consistent
with our theory of the cloud-making of to-day, and is
certainly the opinion entertained by Mythology, which says
that the Graiz# were children of Phorcys and Ceto, that is, of
the orb below.

True aqueous vapour is invisible and always present in
the atmosphere. Rain is aqueous vapour condensed
sufficiently to make it fall in drops. Cloud is inter-
mediate between these two, since it is visible like rain, _
but suspended in the air like vapour. If close to the

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 131

surface this visible vapour is generally called mist or fog;
if high up, clouds.

Endless though the forms of clouds be, there are three
principal ones, namely, Cirrus, Cumulus, and Stratus. Of
these the Cirrus is curled in appearance and the most
elevated, so much so that its particles are supposed to be
made up of minute crystals of ice or snow. The Cumulus,
‘the cloud of day,” is mountainous-like in appearance,
having above a bossy top that often becomes Cirrus, and below
a horizontal base that stretches sometimes into Stratus.

This last, ‘‘ the cloud of evening,” is lowest in situation,
and comprehends the mists and fogs.

That the Graig are but the Clouds personified admits of
little doubt, even without going further into explanation.
Like the clouds they are emanations from Phorcys and
Ceto, from the upper and under parts of earth, and es-
pecially from the former, as they are always genealogically
alluded to as ‘‘ Phorcydes’”’; like the clouds they are close
akin to our globe, with which the Gorgons will presently be
identified ; like the clouds they are three in number; but
above all, like the clouds are they ‘‘ gray—gray from
birth,” é« yeverfjs woAcds. To what other class of objects
in all creation, except the clouds, can such a phrase be
applicable? For no matter what its situation may be, its
height, colour, form, or extent,—no matter whether it be the
silvery cirrus, a purple mountain, bank of fog, or a nimbus
black as night, the cloud was gray at first, gray from its
birth. The word itself signifies (ypaios) “old, aged, gray,”
and the epithet, é« yeverijs woAtds, but intensifies the idea.
Hesiod writes of them thus:

épxvi & ad Kyte Tpaias réxe xadAurapyous

éx yeverns woAdsds, Tas 6% Tpaias xahéovow

GOdvaroi re Geol yapal épxydpevol 7 &vOpwrot,

Teppynde 7’ ctrerdov Evy re xpoxdmendov.—Lheog. 270.

For Phorcys Ceto retrogressive bore
The fair-cheeked Graiz, hoary from their birth,
Pephredo well tricked out in fair attire,
Enyo too, in saffron mantle clad ;
And these both gods immortal and the men
That come to earth’s domain, the Graiz call.
K 2

132 THE GODS OF OLD;

NOTES.

1 aé.—The description of the terrestrial orb commences with the
clouds lying over the exterior, and proceeds downwards to the
centre of the earth; thus, the Graiz, the Gorgons, Ophis.

kaAAurapyous.—The colouring of the clouds is often exceedingly
beautiful, varying from creamy white to blushing red.

‘Ye clouds that are the ornament of heaven,
Who give to it its gayest shadowings
And its most awful glories ; ye who roll
In the dark tempest, or at dewy evening
Bow low im tenderest beauty :—ye are to us
A volume full of wisdom.”—Percival.

4 Ileppyda.—The word, allowing for the interchange of A and p,
is equivalent to TepAndo, and thus has the very same significa-
tion of (pA:ddo) ‘‘ overflowing, heaping,” that we find in our
own cumulus. The idea is strengthened by the use of erem\ov.

’Evud.—Doric for dkud, and hence (Av) ‘‘ that which looses or
scatters,” like our word stratus. The same word, Ava, signifies
‘*to kill, to slay,” and is hence applied to Enyo, the goddess of
war.

kpoxéverAov-—LThe stratus is ‘‘the cloud of evening,” and an
evening sky of a greenish or yellowish tinge indicates rain.

Hesiod, it is seen, classifies clouds as Cumuli and Strati.
Apollodorus mentions the same two Graiw, and adds a
third whom he calls Dino (Aewvsé), that is, (Gedw) “ the
whirler,”—evidently a personification of our cirrus, or
*eurler.”’

It is further observable that the original myth contains
no mention of the one eye and one tooth possessed in
common by the Graiw, and which they borrowed from one
another when required. Such is either an addition to or
an amplification of - and it is difficult to judge which—the
knowledge extant in Hesiod’s time. Grotesque as it sounds,
it is perfectly in accordance with the truth.

Evaporation is constantly oceurring and from all sur-
faces, even the most parched. The elastic force of the
aqueous vapour thus generated is dependent on the tempera-
ture, and expressed by the number of inches the mercury
will be depressed in the barometric column. The same
figures represent the saturating point of air, or the amount

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 133

of vapour which air is capable of absorbing at a certain
degree of temperature. Thus, at 65°, 70°, and 80° F., the
respective elasticities and saturating points are °617, °727,
and 1°001 inches of barometric pressure. At 70°, for
instance, water could give forth vapour enough to depress
the mercury °727 of an inch. If the barometric pressure
showed but °627, there would consequently be room for
“1 inch more, and the air is said to be dry or thirsty to the
extent of (-1) one-tenth of an inch of the barometer, that
is, to the full elastic force of air at 70°. If the full amount,
“727, be arrived ai, no more vapour can be absorbed at a
heat of 70°, and the air is said to be saturated, or the
elastic force to have arrived at its maximum. Any further
change above or below 70° will cause different results. If
raised, say to 80°, evaporation will resume its action and
can continue till the air has absorbed as much additional
vapour as can counterbalance 1-001 inches of mercury: and
so on, additional vapour being produced and supported by
every additional degree of heat. If, however, the tempera-
ture at 70°, instead of being raised, were lowered, say to
65°, then the excess of vapour represented by the difference
between the respective saturating points, ‘727 and ‘617,
would be thrown out as visible vapour in the form of cloud.

In general, then, it may be said that aqueous vapour up
to the point of saturation remains invisible, and that pro-
gress on its part towards cloud-making entails the action of
Condensation and a lowering of the temperature. The
former reduces the mass to a smaller bulk; the: latter
renders a portion of it visible: the former by itself might
only produce dew; the two combined produce cloud.

Let but a wisp of gray appear ina sky that has previously
been intensely blue, and we know that one of the Graia is
gazing down upon us. What has caused that wisp of
gray? What has given vision to the cloud? ‘What has
given its eye to this one of the Graie? All three questions
are identical, and the answer to each and all is, ‘ A lower-
ing of the temperature,” or, in brief language, Cold. Let
the temperature but rise and that eye of gray will vanish ;

1384 | THE GODS OF OLD;

let it fall, and that eye appears once more. Cold, then, is
the one and only eye belonging to the clouds.

Again, with the appearance of our friend in gray there
was liberated not alone the latent visibility but also that
latent heat which true aqueous vapour always has, and which
it parts with only when changed to the liquid form, or
condensed. Condensation triturates the vapoury mass,
reduces its volume, liberates the heat, and prepares it for
subsequent liquefaction and excretion. It is thus to
aqueous vapour for all intents and purposes what mastica-
tion is to food, and may consequently be well compared to
what the myth has styled it, the one and only tooth belong-
ing to the clouds.

But neither tooth nor eye is a permanent possession, for
we have seen how our cloudlet vanished for a while, What
became of Condensation and Cold in the interval?
** Although evaporation is going on abundantly in the lower
regions, and the temperature such as to sustain it in the
invisible form at the earth’s surface, yet when it rises up-
wards, it will come to some stratum too cold for it, and
where, therefore, a certain portion must be thrown out of
the invisible into the visible state, and cause a cloudy layer
to be formed. Above this the air will perhaps be clear for
a, considerable way, but at a certain additional height the

“game excessive coldness will occur, causing a succession of

cloudy layers.’”” Some other portion of the atmosphere,
then, suitably saturated and affected by its own measure of
cold, seized for its own the condensation and cold that had
vanished from the cloudlet with the accession of heat,—
seized upon them, and looked down on earth from a
different quarter of the sky. The saturated and as yet in-
visible 69° borrowed the tooth and eye from 70°, 68° from
69°, 67° from 68°, and so on interminably; so that, as the
myth telis us, the tooth and eye are ever changing places,
and will continue to do so as long as aqueous vapour and
difference in temperature subsist. .

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 135

CHAPTER X.

THE LIGHT THAT FAILED.

Sect. 1.—THE GoLDEN AGE.

Gorgons.—The Theogony of Pontus and Gea has thus
far brought us retrogressively (adris 8’at) from Nereus to
Thaumas, and from Thaumas to Phorcys and Ceto, that is,
from the confines of our Harth’s gaseous envelope, when
extended furthest and prior to contraction, down to the
exterior and interior of our globe. Of Phorcys and Ceto,
we are told, were sprung in the same retrogressive (8'av)
manner, the Graix, the Gorgons, and Ophis. The Graiz
have been identified as the clouds that surround the sur-
- face from which they had their being. What, then, still
proceeding retrogressively, can be left for the others to
represent? Evidently nothing but the globe proper.

We have seen it as if was under Pontus and Gea, a
homogeneous, all-incandescent, circular mass, loosely
defined and of vast extent. With the first contraction and
differentiation that ensued, there would be a Nereus or
rain-making region left on the outside, a Phorcys and Ceto
or evoluting nucleus inside, and an electric-producing
Thaumas occupying the space between the two. But the
nucleus was ever shrinking in size and ever changing from
the nebulous to the fluid igneous state. In proportion as
it grew smaller and parted with all that was vaporisable on
its surface, so did the differentiating space grow larger and
filled with the elementary matter thus thrown off in a
gaseous condition. Contraction, radiation of heat, and the
throwing off of vaporisable matter would end only when a
crust was established on the glowing surface. How long
the period was between fhe initial and final stages is not

136 THE GODS OF OLD;

known. The time measurements occupied by our earth in
Cainozoic, Mesozoic, Paleozoic,—nay, even in cooling from
.the fused state to incrustation, have been calculated, with
different results it is true, by different writers. Still they
have been attempted. But, says Helmholtz, ‘ with regard
to the time during which the first nebulous mass condensed
into our planetary system, our most daring conjectures
must cease.”

During this interval, however long it may have been,
what forces would be at work within and upon the gradually
shrinking orb? ‘Let us follow rather further,’ says
Bonney, ‘‘ the history of one of these planetary masses
detached from the central sun. It is composed of some-
what similar material, and even at the moment of severance
probably is still in a more or less nebulous condition and at
a very high temperature. As it proceeds on its journey
heat is lost by radiation into space ; the temperature of the
whole mass falls, but the outer layers are especially chilled.
For a considerable while there will be an up and down
movement in the orb, the cooler matter descending from the
exterior, the hotter ascending from the interior: By this
means, in process of time, a kind of stratification will be
produced in the mass, the lighter and more readily
vaporised substances working their way towards the exterior,
the heavier and those which most readily solidify accumu-
lating at the interior. This transference and selective
ordering will continue as long as the materials of the planet
remain in a vaporous or even in a thoroughly liquid condi-
tion. As time goes on, internal movements and relative
displacements will become more difficult. The outer surface
of the globe will begin to crust over, and the condition of
the interior (whether simultaneously or not we cannot say)
will be modified by another cause. Here obviously the
condensation of the mass produces a tremendous pressure.
The high temperature of the interior tends to drive its
molecules apart from one another, but the weight of the
outer layer tends to pack them closer and closer, and thus
to produce a solid nucleus. The two tendencies are anta-

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 187

-gonistic, and our knowledge does not yet enable us to
determine which of the two will prevail.”
A summary statement of the above-mentioned conditions -
would be as follows :
1. Downward movements from the exterior, thus causing
a packing closer and closer of the particles, and hence
contraction of the mass.
2. Upward movements from the interior, with a consequent
spreading and diffused lateral arrangement.
3. The radiation of light and heat from the glowing
nucleus itself, and particularly from the surface.
Those three agencies are respectively called in the mytho-
logical annals, Stheno, Huryale, and Medusa. The deriva-
tions are sufficiently suggestive. evd or Lewd from
oTévw or orelve, “ to contract, to straiten by cramming full” ;
EipudAn, from edpds Gan, “ wide-wandering, diffused ” ;
Meédovca, from peodw pécovrca (6 and o being interchanged, as
in 6.7 for dopa), “‘ shethat occupies the middle, the nucleus.”
The glowing orb, and particularly its surface, was not
only in the middle of its enveloping gaseous layers; it was
also in a middle or transition state of being, and a prize
placed in the midst of two great contestants, fire and water.
All three were collectively called Gorgons, Topydves (yi Epya)
“‘the works or agencies of earth.” Two, Stheno and
Euryale, are immortal according to Mythology. We must
admit it, if we believe with science that earth is growing
colder, denser, and more contracted. We must admit it
even from the evidence of our senses. The up and down
and lateral movements are with us still: every volcanic
outburst shows that the central fires are rising and that
Euryale is still alive; every earthquake suggests that the
subterranean rocks have snapped and fallen in, and that
Stheno is immortal. Not till the lava ceases to flow from
the molten interior, and the crust to vibrate and tremble
from the subterranean wave, not till then will those two
Gorgon sisters die.
But while such inner movements are constant factors in
the world’s being, how would it be with the surface and the

138 THE GODS OF OLD;

incandescent glow extending from it? It would not share
in the immortality of the central forces; it would be
vulnerable to cold and pressure; it, Medusa, would be the
mortal one of the three and doomed to suffer. And yet it
is owing to this mortality that she stands out so pre-
eminently, and the most distinguished character of the age
she lived in. That age, as already pointed out, embraced
much of the vaporous incandescent and all the fluid igneous
_ down to the formation of a crust that barred in the central
heat and ended for ever the self-luminous days of earth.
Its natural sub-divisions, so far as regards the surface, would
consequently be Incandescence, Sub-incandescence, and
Non-incandescence.

In the same way are we invited by the myths to consider
Medusa under three consecutive aspects ; first, as a beautiful
maiden with golden locks; secondly, as one with convulsed
features and snaky tresses; thirdly, as having been de-
capitated. The consecutive aspects of Medusa and the
consecutive stages of the orb’s exterior are but the mytho-
logical and scientific rendering of the same conditions.

If we wish to form a conception of what our earth looked —
like in the first or incandescent stage, we have but to re-
member that it was then self-luminous, and a sun like unto
our own of to-day. It, our sun, consists in brief of a solid
or liquid incandescent nucleus surrounded by an atmosphere
of glowing vapour. This atmosphere embraces several
distinct gaseous layers or envelopes of great depth, all of
which consist of some form or other of elementary matter
in a vaporous condition, and most of which are luminous.
Such, then, was earth and such did it appear in palmy days
long past. While the heat and light continued so abundant
and intense, it would have no need or use of metal, metal-
loid, or compound body; with such a degree of light and
heat no rain would fall, no cloud condense, and life with all
its eares and troubles would not be. And so it would tran-
quilly wend its destined path in space, a glowing nucleus
encircled by ringlet upon ringlet of luminous vapour, most
glorious and conspicuous to be seen.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 189

Is not this Medusa? The beautiful Mééovca or nucleus,
who was famed in song and story for the golden ringlets she
possessed in early youth ?

What does Ovid say ?

Clarissima forma
Multorumque fuit spes invidiosa procorum,
Tila; nec in tota conspectior ulla capillis
Pars fuit. Inveni, qui se vidisse referret.
Met. TV. 794.

Though beautiful us a whole, says the poet, still the
charm that rendered her most conspicuous was the luminous
rays or golden harvest of her head.

Her destroyer, the cold-blooded son of Danaé, never saw
her in this stage. The wondrous curious robe of Nature’s
giving had been transformed sadly when Perseus set out
upon his vengeful mission. Even Zeus himself, the sire of
Perseus, was later born than Medusa, since there was
certainly no life while incandescence was atitsacme. Virgil
alludes to this period and to its prevalent conditions :

Ante Jovem nulli subigebant arva coloni:

Nec signare quidem, aut partiri limite campum

Fas erat; in medium querebant: ipsaque tellus
Omnia liberius, nullo poscente, ferebat.—Georg. I. 125.

Ere dawn of life no hills pressed down the plains:
To even shape or mark its range with bounds
Was granted not: all things the centre sought:
And earth itself, with none to say it nay, :
Continued sending forth too freely all.

NOTES.

coloni.—The Greek xodwves, ‘a hill,” is Latinised by the poet.
3 nec fas.— The incandescent orb was undefined and vast.

in med. querebant.—Gravitation was at work.
4 Omnia liberius.—As light and heat.

ay

We must expect that an age so important and so fascinat-
ing as this would have a distinctive name assigned it in
Mythology. It has. Under the title of ‘‘The Golden
Age’ it has been alluded to by many of the prose writers
and has been written of in some form or other by most
of the classic poets. Here is Ovid’s description :

140 THE GODS OF OLD;

Aurea prima sata est zetas, quae vindice nullo
Sponte sua, sine lege fidem rectumque colebat.
Poena metusque aberant, nec verba minacia fixo
Zire legebantur, nec supplex turba timebat
Judicis ora sui, sed erant sine judice tuti.
Nondum cesa suis, peregrinum ut viseret orbem,
Montibus in liquidas pinus descenderat undas ;
Nullaque mortales preeter sua litora nérant.
Nondum precipites cingebant oppida fosse :

10 Non tuba directi, non seris cornua flexi,

Non gales, non ensis erant. Sine militis usu
Mollia secure peragebant otia gentes.

Ipsa quoque immunis rastroque intacta, nec ullis
Saucia vomeribus per se dabat omnia tellus:

15 Contentique cibis nullo cogente creatis,
Arbuteos fetus montanaque fraga legebant,
Cornaque et in duris hzerentia mora rubetis,

Et que deciderant patula Jovis arbore glandes.
Ver erat sternum, placidique tepentibus auris
20 Mulcebant zephyri natos sine semine flores.
Mox etiam fruges tellus inarata ferebat,
Nec renovatus ager gravidis canebat aristis :
Flumina jam lactis, jam flumina nectaris ibant,
Flavaque de viridi stillabant ilice mella,—Met. I. 89-112.

isi)

All glorious was the first of ages sprung,

That freely, wildly, none to say it nay,

Its trust and course unswerving did pursue.

Far off abided dreadful Doom and Care,

(Nor threat’ning words were read in air on high,
Nor feared its judge’s looks a prostrate world,)

But harmless both were those without the judge.
As yet no clay, from its own mountains lashed,
That it might visit an outlandish sphere,

Had downward sunk into the liquid waves:

And save those banks aught mortal none had known.
As yet no fossils deep the ramparts girt,

No tube of straight, no whorls of twisted mail,

No helms, no swords there were; their seed exempt
From strife and care spent happy days of ease.
Earth’s self too, unconfined, untouched by brake,
Gashed by no ploughs, gave naturally all.

And nought compelling them, the close-packed seeds
In the created fare were gathering

The acrid vapours, alpine tuffs and grits,

The. berries clinging in the swelling red,

And kernels fallen from life’s opening tree.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 141

*Twas constant spring ; and zephyrs softly licked
‘With tepid blasts the seedless floss produced.
Yet in the time to come that virgin earth

Bore fruit of every nature, and the land

That knew no tilth was hoar with teeming corn.
But now the milky, now the nectar floods

Kept rolling on, and from the humid vault

The yellowed honey drops distilled alway.

NOTES.

1 vindice nullo.—So Genesis ii. 5. ‘‘ Andjevery plant of the field
before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it
grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the
earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.” _

3 poena, metus.—The equivalents of Virgil’s ‘‘ mortiferum bellum ”
and ‘‘labos,”’ and both the Latin forms of the Greek pdpos and
rip, the first-born of Nox.

verba minacia.—There were xo clouds, portentous of storms: all
was Incandescent vapor.
‘* Storms when I was young,
Would still pass o’er like nature’s fitful fevers,
And rendered all more wholesome. Now their rage,
Sent thus unseasonably and profitless,
Speaks like the threats of heaven.” —Maturin.

4 turba.—Our ‘‘ world” and the Latin turba have the same meaning,
that which is whirled round.

5 tutii—Supply ‘‘ poena metusque ” from line 3.

7 pinus.—The Greek zivos, ‘‘ dirt, clay.”” There were no mountains,
nothing to suffer denudation. Hence there was no clay to be
carried to the bed. of ocean (peregrinum orbem), and organic
beings have no other habitats except the land and sea (preeter
sua litora).

9 fosse.—There was no life; therefore, no fossils, Ovid mentions
in anticipation some of the fossils of Paleozoic times, such as
the Orthoceratites (cephalopods with straight shells), Lituites
(cephalopods with spiral shells), and the Ganoids or mailed and
sworded fishes.

10 eris.—So Gay:
‘* We strip the lobster of his scarlet mail.”

12 securee—se curse ‘‘ apart from, or exempt from care.”

13 immunis.—It had as yet no walls, no covering or crust; and
there were no denuding (rastris), nor upheaying (vomeribus)
agencies: all was comparatively calm (ver erat zeternum).

14 per se dabat.—Harth was freely parting with its light and heat.

15 Contenti._Supply ‘‘ gentes” from line 12, The seeds of matter,
organic und inorganic, were packed closer together (contenti—
contineor) by the downward movements from the exterior.

142 THE GODS OF OLD;

16 Ovid has already made use of the terms arbuteos fetus, fraga, and
corna in his fable of “ Polyphemus and Galatea,” and in the
sense mentioned here.

17 mora—durus means “ swelling,” just as duritie denotes ‘‘ tumors,
swellings,” and is used in connection with mora ‘‘ mulberries,”
to characterize the berry-like or blistered appearance of lava
when rising or swelling in the crater. ‘‘ At the constantly, but
quietly active volcano of Stromboli, the column of lava in the
pipe may be watched slowly rising and falling with a slow
rythmical movement. At every rise the surface of the lava
swells up into blisters several feet in diameter, which by and
by burst with a sharp explosion that makes the walls of the
crater vibrate.”—Encyc. Brit.

20 sine semine flores.—The efflorescence or vitreous scum that must
have sometime formed on the molten surface.

23 lactis.—Even in the crater of Kilauea the boiling lava is often
observed to be at a white heat, indicating a temperature of
2400° F. :

24 flava mella.—The vapour in the upper regions was getting cooler
and condensing into the first rain drops.

ilice.—Ovid Latinizes the Greek @ué or etkié, “ anything twisted
or spiral; a vault or arch””—and hence applied to the twisted
roots and spreading branches of the ilex or holm tree.

Secr. 2.—A Dyine-our Sun.

We wust suppose thousands upon thousands of years to
have rolled on ere next we gaze upon the Gorgon children
of Phorcys and Ceto. It is now the sub-incandescent
period, and its zons also are drawing toa close. We look
for the two immortals and still behold them occupied,
though not quite so actively as of yore, with their works of
transference and selection. Medusa too appears; but ah!
how changed! Beauty, a troublous beauty is hers still,
symmetry too, and the poetry of motion; but twin snakes
have coiled their folds around her head, and her crowning
charm, those golden tresses that had made her once so
conspicuously enchanting, are now transformed to a writh-
ing, hissing mass of serpents! What has brought about
those horrors? When Ovid wrote the concluding line of
his Golden Age—

Flayaque de viridi stiliabant ilice mella—

he pointed out the source and means.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 143

Let us go back a little as to time.

While our orb was still incandescent and haughtily dis-
missing from its domains one element after another, some
of those that had been first rejected were plotting for a
return to their native shores. Chilled in the distant climes
to which they had been exiled, and ardently longing for
more genial lands, the hydrogen and oxygen united their
forces in the proportion of two to one, and for the first time
in the history of matter was that combination formed which
we call water. With the first drop that distilled above was
the tocsin of rebellion sounded, boding irreparable mischief
to the splendour and tranquillity of golden incandescence.
Science has told us how the primal rain came down. Inch
by inch it fought its way from the glacial regions of space.
Beaten back as steam, it condensed its columns, reformed
its ranks, and hurled itself again with redoubled vigour on
the very layer of fiery vapour that had lately succeeded in
repulsing it: that overcome, it attacked the next, and the
next; and so on, till it forced its way through every
gaseous layer and every atmosphere that surrounded the
nucleus of our globe. Here, too, was no cessation from the
struggle between fire and water. The intruding drops,
whether one by one, or massed in serried lines, were
instantly rejected from the glowing surface and forced,
seething, sputtering, and hissing, to retreat in volumes of
dark vapour. Again did they advance, again retreat, till, in
the words of Winchell, ‘‘ the field between the cloud and
earth was one stupendous scene of ebullition.”

The results must have been terrific. The descending
rain, when beaten back as super-heated steam, would be
in a condition to part readily with its elemental con-
stituents ; and the oxygen and hydrogen uniting with the
carbon, sulphur, phosphorus, nitrogen, sodium, potassium,
and other elements that pervaded the gaseous layers, would
cause a series of chemical combinations with the consequent
explosions and deflagrations, such as it is impossible 1o
picture. In our thunderstorms of to-day the gaseous
nitrogen and oxygen are supposed to be combined by light-

144 THE GODS OF OLD;

ning and to produce the deadly nitric acid. No combina-
tion that we know of would be impossible in those early
days of earth when the descent of rain and ascent of heated
vapour made an endless band with constant friction ; when
such enormous volumes of steam generated electricity, and
produced flash after flash of lightning to decompose, com-
bine, and decompose again; and when every element that
we know of was contained in the atmosphere and thirsting
for affinities. Imagination cannot paint too highly the
horrors of this primeval day, nor the change produced in
the once incandescent region that enveloped earth. The
vast volumes of black, gray, and spotted vapour, that
resulted from steam and chemical reactions, curled,
writhed, and twisted into spiral folds; they blotted out the
heaven and shot forth every now and then tongues of fire
and flame; they dropped a thousand acrid, poisonous gases
from their pores; all these and more, while thunders
pealed, and while ever there was heard the. hissing and the
seething of the rain drops scorched to evaporation by the
dreadful heat.

What better comparison—what other comparison can
there be for this most astounding change in incandescence
than that which is given to us in the Myths ? Can anything
be more brief, more comprehensive, more vividly descrip-
tive of the scene than to say that Medusa’s golden locks
were transformed to a mass of hideous, hissing, and
envenomed snakes? And why? For the reason, the self-
same reason which Science mentions, namely, that Neptune,
the powerful god of water, made advances to Medusa,
incandescent earth, and would not be denied. It may be
said that it was Nereus, the primal rain, who came down.
But it was not water in this form that caused such changes:
it was steam, and Neptune represents water in all its
forms.

Ovid describes the past glories and present horrors of
Medusean incandescence. Requested by one of the chief-
tains at the banquet-board of Cepheus, Perseus has told of
that portion only of the Gorgon’s history in which he

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 145

himself so prominently figured. The poet continues
thus :—
Ante expectatum tacuit tamen. Excipit unus
Ex numero procerum, quzerens, cur sola sororum
Gesserit alternis immixtos crinibus angues.
Hospes ait, ‘‘ Quoniam scitaris digna relatu,
5 Accipe quesiti causam. Clarissima forma
Multorumque fuit spes invidiosa procorum
Illa: Nec in tota conspectior ulla capillis
Pars fuit. Inveni, qui se vidisse referret.
Hane pelagi rector templo vitiasse Minerves
10 Dicitur. Aversa est et castos sgide vultus
Nata Jovis texit : neve hoc impune fuisset,
Gorgoneum crinem turpes mutavit in bydros.”
Met. IV. 790—801.
Yet nought he spoke of what had happed before.
One of the nobles’ train takes up the theme,
Asking why she alone of all the three
Bore snakes commingled with alternate locks.
The guest replies, ‘‘ Since things you wish to know
Well worthy of being told, the reason hear.
Most luminous in aspect once she was,
And tantalizing hope of many flames:
Yet all in all no other part was there
More obvious than her ringlets to the view.
I’ve met with one who said he saw herself,
The ruler of the blue is rumoured wide
To have defiled her for Minerva’s shrine.
Backward she shrunk, and o’er her features chaste
The maid of Jove the mantling swgis drew:
Nor yet was this without its load of care,
To grimy snakes it changed the Gorgon hair.

NOTES.

8 se vidisse.—Commotions in the luminous layers would cause
openings whereby, as in the case of our own sun, those dark
spots would be seen which we suppose to be portions of the
orb’s surface.

9 templo Minervee.—Minerva is the goddess of organised force, or
organic force. Every change that occurred to earth tended
towards fitting it as a habitation for organised beings.

10 aversa est.—Cooled by the onset of the rain, the earth contracted
inits volume. As a general rule, all bodies passing from a
liquid to a solid state are diminished in size; by one-tenth, it is
said, in the case of molten metals.

eegide texit.—The cooling caused by vapour and rain would induce
the elements to combine, to organise ag it were.
G.O. L

146 THE GODS OF OLD;

11 neve impune.—But this same cooling and elementary combina-
tion would cause also such dense fumes as would throw a pall
of darkness around the globe.

12 mutavit—supply hoc from the preceding line. The use of
‘*hydros” is very significant, as it means ‘‘ water-snakes,” that
is, the grimy volumes of steam.

Srect. 3.—Tas “ Crosmve” ScENE.

We come to the last stage of Earth’s eventful incan-
descent history. Neptune had done his work and done it
well. One by one he spoiled the luminous layers that
graced its head; one by one did he convulse every feature
of that head itself. With all his bland and soft and
sinuous ways, he, this water god, was a cruel wooer and
tortured his victim to the very last. And if, perchance, he
did show some pity once in a while, the blue-eyed virago
sprung from the head of Jove, was ever at his side,
whispering the magic word “organisation,” telling him
that the end justified the means, and spurring him with the
hope that in the time to come he would be the sole ruler of
three-fourths of earth’s domain, and a mighty potentate over
what was left. And so he continued harrying and lashing
the still beautiful but. doomed earth below, removing the
whiteness from its brow, the blush from its eheeks, the
carmine from its lips; searing its very eyeballs till at last
the light went out and the enforced darkness was a blessing,
till the tears, ‘‘tears of vengeance, drops. of liquid fire,’’
that gushed apace were changed to viscous rheum which
stained the once fair surface with scum and pus and filmy
scoriaceous matter, the recrements of oxidation on the
molten surface. Alas for incandescence! The end has
come, or nearly come, and ‘‘all the world’s glory is but
dross unclean.”

The description is not a fanciful one, nor overdrawn. It
is the natural prologue to a more stable incrustation, and
the only result that could accrue from cooling and the
downpour of the rain.

The following quotations are interesting as serving to
point out the general idea entertained of Harth’s aspects at

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 147

this stage of its existence. ‘‘In obedience to the law of
thermal equilibrium—a law which undoubtedly rose into
being with the birth of matter—the high temperature of
the earth gradually subsided through radiation into
external space. A crystallisation of the least fusible ele-
ments and simple compounds eventually took place in the
superficial portions of the molten mass. This process
continued till a crystalline crust had been formed, resting
upon the liquid mass which still constituted the chief bulk
of the globe. . . . We may conclude, then, that a solid film
began to form over the surface of the molten sea. But the
earth was even then, as from the beginning, obedient to the
law of axial rotation ; and the sun and moon reached forth
with their attractive influences to solicit the mobile rocks
into tidal elevations. As the wave pursued the moon
around the earth, it daily ruptured the forming film, and
only a wilderness of floating fragments remained, strewn
over the surface of the fiery abyss.” — Winchell.

Bonney, writing on the same topic, says that the Harth
would contract in cooling; that the strain produced by this
change in volume, aided as it would be by the pressure of
imprisoned vapours and by the tidal waves of the molten sea
beneath, would again and again rend and shatter the
primal filmy covering into innumerable fragments; and
that ‘‘as the crust would be heavier than the fluid on which
it had formed, those fragments might be engulfed and
perhaps again melted down; or, as the fluid would be
already in a viscous condition and the difference in specific
gravity would not be great, the fragments would very
probably continue to float.”

Figuier writes in the same strain: ‘‘ Those glacial regions
which would be traversed in its course by the glowing
incandescent globe, would necessarily cool it step by step;
at first, superficially, when it would take a pasty consistency.
Nor must it be forgotten that the earth in its liquid state
would be obedient in all its mass to the action of flux and
reflux which proceeds from the attraction of the sun and
moon, but to which the sea alone is now subject. This

L 2

148 THE GODS OF OLD;

action, to which all liquid and movable molecules are subject,
would singularly accelerate the preludes to solidification in
the terrestrial mass: it would thus gradually assume that
sort of consistence which iron attains when it is first with-
drawn from the furnace for puddling. In its cooling
process beds or strata of a concrete substance would be
produced, which, floating at first in isolated masses on the
surface of the semifluid matter, would float together, con-
solidate, and form continuous banks such as we now see
icebergs form on the shores of the Polar Seas; and finally,
when washed by the agitation of the waves, the masses
would coalesce and form banks more or less movable.”
Now, exactly the same conditions are presented to us in
the myths when we view the Gorgons under their most
dreadful aspects. Floating on and above the nucleus of
the globe there would be a wilderness of fine metallic
particles, some of them washed down from the lower layers
of the atmosphere whither they had been raised ages before
in the gaseous state, more of them driven up from the
elemental crust by the still radiating heat and by the burst-
ing fires below: such would be the scales of dragons that
surrounded the Gorgons’ heads. Again, the eruptive
agencies and corroding gases that unceasingly bit into and
ripped open each newly forming crust with gaping wounds,
huge chasms, and crevasses, are mythologically rendered
as enormous teeth; the fragmenis. of metallic or other
nature into which the crust was shattered and which would
partly float and partly sink in the molten mass, would be
the brazen hands—stretching out, as it were, to grasp their
fellow fragments with a warmth that tended to combine and
cement the bonds of union; and the wild bursts of vivid
flame and fire, that shot up continuously and traversed
earth’s whole surface, were the golden wings with which
the Gorgons flew. As for their petrifying qualities, there
is nothing more absolutely certain. The Gorgons were the
stone-makers of the world; by them the molten surface
was changed to a covering that, however filmy, was still
rock; by them was that film shattered, re-cemented, and

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 149

. strengthened; by them was the process repeated again and
again till finally the entire superficies of earth’s expanse—
all that had been daring enough to Ken or have knowledge
of the Gorgon sisters—was transformed to solid stone, was
petrified.

The elementary and fragmentary nature of the primal
covering is well pointed out by Hesiod in his description of
the Shield of Hercules :

év b¢ Ay edoppos duatpaxérota Gaddoons
KukAorepis éréruxto wavépOou Kagctrépoto,
ca w e a’ s ya ¢ > a

kAuCopéve ikedos* moAXoi ye perv Gp pécov abrod
deddives 77 kal ti eOiveov iyOudovres,

: ” . + a 2 ’
vnxopnevots ikedor’ Soro 8 dvacdvatdarres
apyvpen: Seddives epotray €ddonas ixGis.

n a7 t 2 > eo, 24 299 a
téy 8 tio ydAketot rpéov ixOves* aibrap én’ dxrais
z a4 © ‘ 4 3 AY A
Hote avnp ddteds Sedoxnpéevos: eixe J€ yepov
ixbiow dupiBrnotpoy, amoppiipovre éoxos.—207.

And in it, out of all-fused metal ore,

Was fashioned, rounded as to shape and like
To what’s washed over by the waves, a port,
The refuge safe of the resistless sea.

And in its midst indeed roamed wildly round,
Like gliding fish, a wilderness of white
Metallic fragments; like to swimming ones,
Bobbing in it as m to-day’s, they rushed ;
And both were blowing. Underneath them shook
Fishes of metal red. But on the heights

Sat Man, the fisher, waiting for his time;
And in his hands, as if about to cast,

A net for all the fishes did he grasp.

NOTES.

1 Atuyv.—The bed of ocean.

4 4h xai 77.—In that molten sea of fire the fragmentary materials of
the crust roamed and bobbed up and down, just as dolphins do
when disporting in ¢his of to-day’s.

5 dvadbuotdwvres. —Those fragments spurted forth gases, as our whales
and dolphins spurt water.

6 dpytpeo..—The fragments at a white heat would float on the surface;
those at a red heat (xaAxesor), being cooler and denser, would

- sink more or less below.

7 én dxrais.—Winchell, writing of the Primary Period, makes use
of the same figurative language: “‘The generations of men
yet slumbered in the chambers of futurity. The order of

150 THE GODS OF OLD;

Providence had assigned them their position in the grand pro-
cession of life which was now beginning to move, and the
scouts of which had passed by in the preceding age; but we
must wait for Man till a long line of grotesque and marvellous
forms has marched before our view.”

This entire period of Earth’s existence was an eventful
one and graced by the presence of many an important
personage. In those days flourished Ixion, whose very
name identifies him with the (ids) viscous or pasty
condition of the surface, and whose foolish love for a
phantom crust condemned him to the interior of that
circling orb over whose exterior he once held sway. Now
began the memorable contest between the Centaurs and
the Lapithe that lasted in a general way till the central
forces of our Earth, overcome by the external lapidifying
ones, were forced to leave the plains and take refuge in the
mountain heights. Now lived Acrisius and his daughter
Danae ; now, too, was born Perseus who made history for ©
himself by decapitating Medusa,—by ending thus for ever
the incandescent days of Earth.

Those two expressions are evidently identical, and as
the latter could only be thoroughly accomplished by the
formation of a solid crust all round the globe, the decapita-
tion of the Gorgon must imply the same. Her trunk
pointed down towards the centre; her head was on a level
with the surface: it was that head, that now half-molten
surface, which Perseus was commissioned to cut off. How
the deed was accomplished we proceed to explain as best
we may.

The quotations lately given have left the surface of the
globe in the condition of an archipelago of fragments
floating, at various depths it may be, upon the still molten
mass beneath. ‘In due time,” writes Winchell,—‘ let us
be liberal in our concessions of time—the rocking and
jostling fragments became permanently frozen together,
as the broken ice of Arctic Seas, after being worried
by winds and currents, seizes an interval of calm to
consolidate into a vast and rugged floe. So the rock-floe

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 151

of this fiery ocean formed at length a bridge of rough and
sturdy strength.”

‘*The masses would coalesce,’ says Figuier, ‘and
form banks more or less movable. By extending this
phenomenon to the whole surface of the globe, the total
solidification of its surface would be produced. A solid
but still thin and fragile crust would thus surround the
whole earth, enclosing entirely its liquid interior.”

The inference drawn from these passages is that a
freezing process, or cold, was a prime factor in the total
solidification. Another, atmospheric pressure, is alluded
to by Bonney. Assuming, he argues, that the molten
surface would be at the same temperature, not less than
2,000° F., which lava has when first emitted, it would
then be at a white heat and no water could rest upon it.
“The drops of boiling rain,’ he goes on to say, “ would
be rejected hissing from the uncongenial surface. But
what would this mean? If the present ocean were
converted into vapour, the weight of the atmosphere would
be augmented by that of a shell of water of the area of
the globe and two miles in thickness—or in other words,
the atmospheric pressure would be then about three
hundred and fifty times its present amount. If so, even a
‘lava flow would consolidate under a. pressure equivalent
to that of some 4,000 ft. of average rock; it would be like
an intrusive sill for nearly three-fourths of a mile below
the surface; but the cooling would be slower because the
temperature of the atmosphere would be far higher than
that of the earth is now, and for long has been, at this
depth.”

When now we turn to the mythological account we find
that these two agencies, cold and pressure, are embodied
in the one term, Perseus. The word seems to be connected
with wép0w, ‘to waste, destroy, carry off as plunder,’ and
through it with p76, ‘to blow, to swell,” and xpnorip,
‘‘a violent wind.’ The radical of all these is épw, “ to
bear’’ as a load, and with the collateral notion of motion
*‘to carry off;” also, ‘‘ to rush, to be borne violently along,”’

152 THE GODS OF OLD;

as seen in the cognate gopew. As wand ¢ are interchange-
able, Ileprevs is derivable from this ¢épw, and would thus
be connected with ‘‘ bearing” and ‘“‘motion”’ in any
direction, that is, with “pressure and wind.” A simpler
derivation, epi cedw, “rushing all round,” will give the
same idea of a cold wind or wave. It is certainly under
this aspect of a cold wind or wave that we find Perseus
alluded to by the poets as a rule. The epithets, celer,
ferox, penniger, prepes, alatus, &c. applied to him are
distinctive enough in their way.

airés 8€ ometdorte cat epptyovre datas

Tepoeds Aavaidys éreraivero.—Shield. 228.

Gorgonis anguicome Perseus superator, et alis
4ttherias ausus jactatis ire per auras.—Oy. Met. IV. 699.

The same inference can be drawn from every other
Greek and Latin quotation bearing upon Perseus, and
is strikingly confirmed by what Horace writes in his
Satires, I. 7. A cursory examination of this particular
satire tends to show that all the characters and names of
places mentioned are fictitious, and that there is no proof
whatever of Rex Rupilius, Persius, the Sisenne# and the
Barri having been living personages. If, however, we
consider the names as Greek words “‘slightly twisted’’ so
as to suit the Latin (a privilege the poet is so particular in
claiming in his Ars Poetica), we shall find that the motive,
or one of the motives, of the piece is the formation of a
crust upon our globe.

Proscripti Regis Rupili pus atque venenum
Hybrida quo pacto sit Persius uitus, opinor
Omnibus et lippis notum et tonsoribus esse.
Persius hic permagna negotia dives habebat

5 Clazomenis, etiam lites cum Rege molestas ;
Durus homo atque odio qui posset vincere Regem,
Confidens tumidusque, adeo sermonis amari,
Sisennas, Barros ut equis preecurreret albis.
Ad Regem redeo. Postquam nihil inter utrumque

10 Convenit :—(hoc etenim sunt omnes jure molesti,

Quo fortes, quibus adversum bellum incidit; inter
Hectora Priamiden animosum atque inter Achillem
Tra fuit capitalis, ut ultima divideret mors,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL.

15

20

25

30

Non aliam ob causam, nisi quod virtus in utroque
Summa fuit; duo si discordia vexet inertes,

Aut si disparibus bellum incidat, ut Diomedi
Cum Lycio Glauco, discedat pigrior, ultro
Muneribus missis),—Bruto preetore tenente
Ditem Asiam, Rupili et Perst par pugnat, uti non
Compositum melius cum Bitho Bacchius. In jus
Acres procurrunt, magnum spectaculum uterque.
Persius exponit causam; ridetur ab omni
Conventu; laudat Brutum laudatque cobortem,
Solem Asics Brutum appellat, stellasque salubres
Appellat comites, excepto Rege; canem illum,
Invisum agricolis sidus, venisse. Ruebat,
Flaumen ut hybernum, fertur quo rara securis.
Tum Prenestinus salso multoque fluenti
Expressa arbusto regerit convicia, durus
Vindemiator et invictus, cui seepe viator

Cessisset, magna compellans voce cucullum.

At Greecus, postquam est Italo perfusus aceto,
Persius exclamat, ‘‘ Per magnos, Brute, Deos te
Oro, qui reges consueris tollere, cur non

153

Hune Regem jugulas? Operum hoc, mihi crede, tuorum est.

To trimmers all and blear-eyed, I should say
*Tis known how mongrel Perseus had a rod

In pickle for the pus and virus of

That outlawed regent, ycleped Purblind Fire.
This Perseus, who himself could draw a draft
Ad lib., had much to do with blusterers,

And troublous quarrels with the regent too ;

A hardy fellow who in bitterness

Could beat the regent,—reckless, puffed with airs,
Of breath so cutting that he could outstrip
Loud-rumbling earthquakes on his coursers gray.
Back to the regent go we. After nought
Between them intervenes,—(since brawlers all
Are in this same dilemma as the brave

For whom the tide of battle comes to pass;
Between the boastful Hector, Priam’s son,
And ’tween Achilles was there wrath, so great
That death should end at last, for reason none
Save that in each was bravery supreme ;

But if two laggards discurd vexes, or

If war breaks out between an ill-matched pair,

_ As Diomed with Lycian Glaucus, then

The more faint-hearted of the two must yield,
With bribes thrown im for grace,)—the ample earth
Being governed by brute matter as its lord,

154 THE GODS OF OLD;

The even fight begins of Purblind Fire

And Perseus, so that better matched -was not
Bithus with Bacchius. To viscous paste

The edges run, a wondrous sight the two.
His motive Perseus shows; by all the pack
He flouted is; brute matter it exalts;

The crowd too it exalts; a sun it styles

The earth’s brute matter, calls the adjuncts all,
Outside the regent, healthy ornaments ;
Perseus himself, a hound for having come

A blast distasteful to the toilers all.

Like a cold wave, wherewith a fine-edged axe

Is borne, did he rush. Then headlong stretched,
This bold, undaunted stripper of the vines—

To whom had yielded oft the wayfarer

‘With voice stentorian railing at his cowl,—
Flings right behind him all the filth expressed
From the salt, molten nursery below.

But when well-drenched with verjuice strong he i 1s,
This Perseus volatile cries out aloud,

‘“°O matter brute, whose wont it will have been
To make away with kings, those powerful gods,
Why do you butcher nof this king, I pray ?

This is, believe me, worthy of your pains.

NOTES.

1 Regis.—‘‘Rex” is the Latin form of the Greek Médovca, “a ruler.”

Rupilt.—Rupilius is but the transposed form of mvpi\ios, that is,

(wip iAAds) ‘‘ fire half blinded,” and denotes the half-molten,
half-filmy nature of the earth’s exterior covering.

2 hybrida.—Perseus was the offspring of dissimilars, namely, of Zeus
or life, and of Danae (da vdw) ‘the floating earth,” or the
floating fragmentary surface.

8 lippis—tonsoribus.—He alludes to the scum forming on the surface,
and to the manner in which the exterior was clipped or trimmed
by Perseus.

5 Clazomenis.—xrdlo, “to make a loud noise; to rush” like the
winds, ‘‘ to clash or rattle” like fragments.

6-8.—These three lines are strikingly illustrative of a cold, bitter,
violent, and impetuous wind.

§ Sisennas, Barros.—‘‘Sisennas” is but a transposition of éwosts,
‘shaking, quaking.” ‘‘Sisennas Barros” is really but one
word, and the Latinized form of vogeis Bapeias,—a phrase used
by Hesiod in his Titanomachia, ‘‘ @yvoots 8 tkave Bapeia Tdprapov
nepoevra.” It is worthy of note alse that there is no copulative -
between the two words in the Latin text.

The vibrations of some powerful earthquakes have been

23
24

26

27

28

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 155

known to traverse half a hemisphere. During the famous
Lisbon one in 1755, many of the lakes in central and north-
western Europe were affected to the extent of raising waves 2
or 3 feet above their usual level.

nihil.— When, after having come from the glacial regions of the
Poles, there was no intervening space between the action of the
cold and the debris on the molten surface.

Horace plunges in medias res, and brings Perseus face to face
with the Gorgon.

hoc jure.—It is only when combatants, whether brave or
cowardly, do come face to face, that results follow.

Bruto.—drutus, ‘senseless, brute matter.’ The Greek equivalent
Bpiros, ‘‘fermented liquor,” poits out the active internal
motion of the molten mass that still ruled over the entire globe.

Asiam.—The Greek aia, ‘‘earth”; so too, we find émoGer for
émibev, Ma for Movoa, bppaov for éppacor, &e.

acres.—The sharpened ends; dxpis, ‘‘ the extremity.”

exponit.—If two pieces of ice have their surfaces moist, and if the
temperature be 32° F., they will freeze solidly together, when
their edges are brought in contact. This process is known as
Regelation, and it or some process akin to it, as the welding of
metals, has been assigned by modern science, as well as by
Horace, as efficacious in uniting and consolidating the fragments
of the primal crust.

Jaudat.—The word brings to mind the surging of the fery mass.

Solem Brutum.—tThere was still intense heat, intense enough for
light, in the entire mass, except the surface (excepto Rege) which
the fragmentary scum had reduced to a purblind condition
(Rupilt).

Ruebat.—The preceding word venisse ends the criticism of the
conventus. Perseus now proceeds to complete his work of
consolidation.

flumen ut hibernum.—This idea of ‘‘a cold wave” is in striking
conformity with the modern theory that our earth has under-
gone many lengthened periods of heat and cold during its long
existence, and that the historic Glacial Period was but the last
of many that preceded it. According to Dr. Croll there is a
great climatic change for each hemisphere every 10,000 years
or so. Ifwe divide this length of time into the millions of
years occupied by the earth in its change from incandescence
to non-incandescence, there will be quite a respectable quotient.
So that our orb, while impervious in a degree to the earliest
glacial cycles, owing to its intense heat and light, would feel
perceptibly the latest one when the heat and light were on the
wane.

Preenestinus.—A. composition of rpyvijs reive ‘ stretched out head-
foremost.”

156 THE GODS OF OLD;

29 regerit.—The wind, like a cyclone, carried off all the flame, sparks,

and lighter refuse from the surface over which it rushed.

arbusto.—A common simile with writers is to compare earth at
this time to a ‘‘ furnace”: Horace compares it to a “‘ nursery,”
where seeds are planted for future growth.

30 cui sepe viator &c.—This description of how in after ages the
wayfaring traveller would often have his hat or cowl torn from
his head by the same “‘ stripper” is enough of itself to establish
Perseus as a bitter, violent wind.

32 Greecus.—‘ After the fashion of a Greek, fickle, volatile.” Tence
the use of ‘‘Italo” in opposition to Greecus, to denote “‘ that
which is steadfast, strong.” The corrosive gases and deadly
combinations in the atmosphere are denoted by Italo aceto.

33 per magnos.—One word, permugios.

His identity being thus established, we can have no
hesitation in believing Perseus as the one potential agent
to whom was entrusted the freezing or regelation of the
fragments, edge to edge, and the consolidation of the whole
as a crust for our globe. This, as already noticed, is the
most feasible solution of the problem according to modern
theories, and Horace is close in touch with science when he
says ‘in jus acres procurrunt” ; and then, after a period of
tumultuous rocking, jostling, and surging, “‘ruebat, flumen
ut hibernum, fertur quo rara securis.’’ Other writers,
while not committing themselves so notably as Horace does,
to the precise way in which a crust was formed, are equally
pronounced in pointing to Perseus as a cold wind or wave
that came from the glacial regions after a fashion some-
what similar to that of the great polar current of air towards
the equatorial regions of to-day. Ovid describes the event
in his Metamorphoses. While the wine is going round at
the festive board of Cepheus, Lyncides at the request of
Perseus gives the hero some general information about the
manners and habits of the Aithiopians. Then
Qui simul edocuit ‘‘ Nunc, o fortissime,” dixit
‘‘Fare precor, Perseu, quanta virtute, quibusque
Artibus abstuleris crinita draconibus ora.”

Narrat Agenorides gelido sub Atlante jacentem
Esse locum solide tufum munimine molis,

Cujus in introitu geminas habitasse sorores
Phorcydas, unius partitas luminis usum :

Or

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 157

Td se sollerti furtim, dum traditur, astu
Subposita cepisse manu: perque abdita longe
10 Deviaque et silvis horrentia saxa fragosis
Gorgoneas tetigisse domos: passimque per agros
Perque vias vidisse hominum simulacra ferarumque
In silicem ex ipsis visa conversa Medusa :
Se tamen horrend clipei, quod leva gerebat
15 Aere repercusso formam aspexisse Medusze:
Dumque gravis sommnus colubrasque ipsamque tenebat,
' Eripuisse caput collo: pennisque fugacem
Pegason et fratrem, matris de sanguine natos
Addidit, et longi non falsa pericula cursus:
20 Que freta, quas terras sub se vidisset ab alto,
Kt que jactatis tetigisset sidera pennis.—Met. IV. 769—-789.

When what was asked for had been told, he said,
‘** Now, prithee, Perseus, bravest of the brave,
Come tell us with what force and by what means
Thou did’st remove the dragon-crested face.”

Th’ Agenor-sprung begins, and tells how lies

A place ’neath chilly Atlas, guarded well

By natural bulwark of the mass entire ;

How in the entrance sisters two there dwelt,
From Phorcys sprung, who shared a single eye;
How this, while furtive in the welkin passed,

He took with dex’trous hand placed underneath :
And how he reached the Gorgon dwellings, rocks
Far, far remote, straggling, and quaking all
With jarring fragments; and how everywhere
Through suburbs wide and passage ways he saw
The simulacra of wild beasts and men

Changed, like for like, to quartz by Gorgon ken:
How, still, the orb’s, the rough Medusa’s shape
He gazed on in deflected air, because

She eastward bore; and how while slumber deep
The snakes and her possessed, he sheared her head.
Of the winged Pegasus and Geryon,

Sprung from the mother’s blood, he also told ;
Th’ unvarnished ventures of bis own long flight,
What floods, what fields beneath he saw on high,
And to what heights his outspread wings drew nigh.

NOTES.

4—9,—The wind came from the chilly Arctic regions, says Ovid, and,
as being heavier, slipped under (supposita manu) the Cirri, the
highest (cujus in introitu) and coldest of the clouds; from these,
through compression and superior dryness, it removed the con-
densation and cold whereby they were rendered visible.

158

12

13

14

THE GODS OF OLD;

unius luminis.—The poet does not make mention of the ‘‘ tooth,”
for the reason, it is to be supposed, that cold will also produce
condensation.

astu.—The Greek dorv usually denotes ‘“‘the upper town,” and
Ovid applies it to the upper heavens.

per longe.—One word, perlonge, like the permagnos of Horace.

silvis.—‘‘ Stock, or plenty of matter—matter brought together ”
is one of the recognised meanings of this word. The fragments
were to the molten surface what the trees are to woodland.

simulacra in silicem.—The floating fragments were, according to
Ovid, of a siliceous, quartzose, or flinty nature. Silica is one of
the main constituents of the granite and fundamental rocks,
from the crumbling of which the earthy matter of man and
other organised beings is composed.

ex ipsis.—‘‘ According to themselves, like for like.”

visa.—The Latin video, Greek cido, and English ‘‘ken,” imply
not alone “to see,” but also ‘‘to know, to have knowledge of,
to have close connection with.”

‘‘ And Adam knew Eve his wife.”’-—Gen. iv. 1.

horrenda.—‘*‘ rough” from inequalities on the surface, and rough
from the jarring, jostling, and din of the floating fragments.
clipei.—This and ‘‘ horrendes Meduse”’ are in apposition.

The force and meaning of the lines will be better understood
by remembering how the great polar atmospheric current is said
to behave when arriving at the equatorial regions. Owing to
the earth’s revolution round its axis from west to east in 24
hours, there is for objects on its surface a constantly diminish-
ing velocity from the maximum of about 1,000 miles an hour on
the equator to 860 miles at latitude 30°, 500 at 60°, and so on till
we reach the poles, where the velocity is nothing.

«¢ From this it follows that a wind blowing along the earth’s
surface in the direction of the equator is constantly arriving at
places which have a greater eastward velocity than itself. As
the wind thus lags behind, these places come up, as it were,
against it, the result being an east wind. Since, therefore, the
wind north of the equator is under the influence of two forces—
one, the low pressure near the equator, drawing it southwards,
and the other, the rotation of the earth, deflecting it eastwards
—it will, by the law of the composition of forces, take an inter-
mediate direction, and blow from north-east. For the same
reason, south of the equator, the south is defiected into a south-
east wind.”—Encye. Brit.

It is this “lagging behind” or ‘‘ beaten back” of the wind,
as also its ‘“‘ deflection” from a north or south to a north-east
or south-east wind, that Ovid marks by the term “‘aere
Tepercusso.” , ;

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 159

leeva.—‘' Medusa,” the clypeus or orb of earth, is understood.

Ferrel, and before him Poisson, enunciated the general law
that ‘‘in whatever direction a free-moving body passes along
near the earth’s surface, there is a force arising from the rota-
tion of the earth upon its axis, which deflects it to the right in
the northern hemisphere, to the left in-the southern.”

The use of levus in Latin is ambiguous, astronomically
applied, since it means ‘“ favourable” or ‘‘ unfavourable,” or
right and left, according to the relative positions of augur and
spectator. It is for this ambiguity that Ovid uses the word, so
that it might apply to either hemisphere.

16 gravis somnus.—The wind arrived at an opportune time, when
the surging billows of fire were comparatively at rest.

In his Theogony, Hesiod simply says: ‘‘ Perseus cut off
her head,” xepadt anedeiporéunoey. But in his ‘‘ Shield”
we are presented with the following vivid picture of the

hero, armed cap-a-pie, and flushed with the triumph of his
deed :
ev 3 Av qixdpou Aavans téxos, inmdra Iepoets,
ot7’ Gp’ éenupater odkeos moat ot Exds adrod,
| Gaipa péya ppdcoach émet otdapy éornptxro.
Tas ydp piv maddpats Tedée KruTOs ’Auceyvijeis.
xpracos’ api dé soociv tye wrepdevra wédira.
Gporow O€ pu dpi pedavderav Gop ekecro
xaAkeov €k TehapG@vos' 6 8 Sore vény’ émorato’
wav 8€ perapevov eixye xdpy Setvoio weAdpov,
Topyots' dui dé pw KiBiors Oée, Oatpa idéoOa,
10 dpytipen’ @icavor d€ xatnwpedvro pacwoi,
xpboetoe’ Sect SE wept kpordporow dvaxros
keir’ “Aidos xuvén vuxros Cépo» aivay exouca.
atrés 8¢ omevdovre xai éppiyorre orcas
Tlepreds Aavaidns ériraivero.—216.

ar

And in it too was trim Danae’s son,

The rider Perseus, of a high degree, .

Nor touching with full pressure on the shield

Nor yet far off from it,—a wonder great

To ponder deeply in the mind upon,

Since nowhere fastened had he been; for thus
The fabricator shaped him with his hands.
Winged sandals had he bout his feet; a sword
Keen-tempered, bare, and edged all round with black
His shoulders graced ; and like a thought he flew.
The space entire within his midriff held

The horrible, convulsive Gorgon’s head ;
Encircling him ali round there flashing ran,

160 THE GODS OF OLD;

Or

A wonder to behold, impulsive force,

And surface fringes crowding hung therefrom ;
And round his brows lay Pluto’s helmet dread
That holds the fear-inspiring black of night.
But Perseus’ self, Danae’s son, was stretched
Like to one pressing, quivering with cold.

NOTES.

jixépov.—The word can be derived from jis, and kopde or kopéo,
“ well-plumed, well-equipped; well put in order, well-
adjusted.” Danae, as the elementary covering, would fit the
surface close, and be ready for future order and adjustment.
In English, both ideas are best expressed by “ trim.”

inwéra.—‘ The rider” of the wind. Aeronauts have travelled at
the rate of a mile a minute in the upper regions when a speed
of but a quarter of a mile was noted in the same interval of
time below. What, then, must the astonishing speed be above,
of a storm which travels on the surface at the rate of 100 miles
an hour ?

xptceos.—Used as a simile. Just as we say ‘‘ golden drops” for
rain, ‘‘a golden harvest” for wheat, “golden hair,” in
reference to the utility, worth, and colour of the metal, so does
Hesiod apply the well-known characteristic of heaviness to the
degree of pressure exercised by wind.

woolv.—The word is evidently used after the same fashion as xara
aédas, “ with all the power of one’s feet; with full speed; with
full pressure.”

Gaipa péya.—The ordinary pressure of the atmosphere at the sea
level is 15lbs. on every square inch of surface. On a mass of
ordinary size the pressure is consequently about 30,000 Ibs. : the
weight of the whole atmosphere surrounding our globe has
been computed to be equal to that of a globe of lead 60 miles in
diameter. And yet, Gadpa péya ppdoaccé’, the pressure is not
inconveniently felt by either man or earth!

*Apdryyjets.—Ovid, when describing the winds, writes thus:

‘« His quoque non passim mundi fabricator habendum
Aera permisit.” Met. 57.

nrepdevra 3ébtha.—To denote the velocity, as dop in the following
line denotes the keenness of the wind.

‘‘ The wrathful winter hastening on apace,
With blust’ring blasts had all ybared the treen,
And old Saturnus with his frosty face
With chilling cold had pierced the tender green,”’— Dorset.

dpdi pedav8erov.—All great storm winds are, as a rule, accompanied
by a darkening band of clouds. ‘Ina cyclone the broadest
feature of weather is an area of rain about or rather somewhat

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 161

in front of the centre, surrounded by a ring of cloud, outside
which the sky is clear.”—Encyc. Brit.
- So does Ovid say of Perseus—

**Nune huc, nune illuc, exemplo nubis aquosa
Fertur.” Met. TV. 622.

7 xddxeov.—* Brazen, hard; well or keen tempered.”

8 perdppevov.—The literal meaning of the word is (pera pévos) ‘in
the midst of the midriff.” As an instance of the carrying
power of wind the following is quoted from the Encye. Br. :
“The tornado which passed over Mount Carmel (Lllinois),
June 4, 1877, swept off the spire, vane, and gilded ball of the
Methodist church, and carried them bodily 15 miles to north-
eastward. The velocity of the ascending current which kept
this heavy object suspended in the air for 15 or 20 miles must
have been very great.”

9. Ki®tors.—xiow Bia, ‘* moving force,” or as we say, ‘‘ kinetic energy.”
In all extensive severe storms there is present a storm centre
that has a progressive motion of its own, and a system of
surface winds, some of which blow in towards the storm centre,
while others move in outward spiral currents. The storm
centre is the xiBiots, and we find, in confirmation, the word
written as KiBiots (Kvos or yia Bdive), ‘‘ moving in the centre or
womb.” The surface or visible currents are the “ dvcavos
gactvot” that crowd with pressure (xpiceior) round the centre
of the storm.

Let us now refer to and review briefly the recital of the
exploit as given by Apollodorus :

Guided by fluxion (Mercury) and organised procedure
(Minerva), the wind or cold wave comes from the glacial
regions of arctic space. It is colder, and consequently drier
and heavier, than the surrounding air. Owing to this
heaviness it slips under the banks of clouds and steals from
them through compression, and possibly in virtue of its own
dryness and superior coldness, the condensation and the
cold wherewith they digested their food and saw the light
of heaven. Now since ascending currents of air are known
to become moister with every degree of ascent, and descend-
ing currents drier with every addition of descent, our cold
wind would on going down become drier and colder, and
would meet with ascending currents of different velocities
and temperatures, whereby the processes of cloud-making
would be again renewed, the latent heat would be liberated,

G.0. M

162 THE GODS OF OLD;

and the temperature lowered. Its original characteristic
thus resumed, it would acquire from the innate forces of
the air—for wind and weather have their own nymphal
or innate laws, some of which we are not well cognisant of
—velocity, kinetic energy of a vorticose order, and the pall
of gloom that ever bodes a storm. The last would crown
its head; the second would be its garment—a bag of wind,
as the historian says it is called in common parlance (rijv
KiBiow, qv pacw evar mipav) ; the first would be placed most
effectively on its lower extremities, as in its course from pole
to equator the volocity would be more needed at the latter. .
Equipped with these and with the keen bitter blast

derived from rapid motion, our wind, flying through the
vapoury billows of the atmosphere, comes finally to the
half molten, half scummy surface of our globe, and at an
opportune moment when the raging fire and jostling frag-
ments are in a comparatively tranquil condition. What
followed? Science has told the sequel; Ovid and Horace
have told their tale; it is but right that Apollodorus should
tell his and in his own tongue:

émoras oby abrais 6 Hepoeds xorpapévats, xarevOuvovens

Thy xeipa "AOnvas, drectpappévos xat Bdérav eis dowida

xadkiy, dC fs ti eixéva tis Topydvos €Bderev,

éxapatépnoey avrnv.—2. 4, 2. 8.
It is the self same story and the self same ending. Our
bitter wind swooped over the molten fire and fragments
while at rest, and prepared itself to give the final blow.
Even then it might have failed were it not that the
organised directress of nature, who presides as well over
the composition of forces as she does of bodies, stayed his
impetuous advance and guided his hand aright. The wind
god changed his course from a direct to an indirect one,
turned aside from north and south to north-east and south-
east, and so of necessity viewed the reflection of his prey in
the condensed orb of air (eis donida xadxijv), while he pro-
ceeded with that work of regelation and consolidation which
deprived the Gorgon of her head and robbed our globe for
ever of its light. With the grisly head within its vorticose

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 163

midriff, the cold blast rushed onwards enveloped in dread
darkness, while pursuing it from below there surged and
spouted wave on wave of molten matter that had rent the
tender crust.

.Through many other adventures and hazards did this
Perseus, this “‘ vindemiator,” as Horace calls him, proceed ;
but no further shall we follow him for the present. We
need only remark that he kept the Gorgon’s head for many
a day till consolidation was secured by petrifaction. This
accomplished, he with his spouse, Andromeda, retired to
Tiryns where he still may be, for we have no record of his
death. But previous to his retirement, he gave the sandals,
kibisis, and helmet to Mercury, who, as Apollodorus tells
us, “‘ restored them to the nymphs, as being fore-ordained
for them.”

“Eppis pev ov Ta mpoeipnpeva wadw amédaxe tats vipspats.—2. 4. 3. 7.

The Gorgon’s head he gave to Minerva, who placed it in
her shield. It is there still.

“ Through knowledge we behold the world’s creation,
How in his cradle first he fostered was;
And judge of nature’s cunning operation,
How things she formed of a formless mass.”—Spencer.
Science is the systematic and organised arrangement of

knowledge; and it is in the tomes and books and pamphlets,
which science has arranged for shield, and called the
Circle of the Sciences, that we behold this head, this
light of other days. With this shield and this light bas
Science petrified its foes, and petrifies them still. It is the
ayeheia, the “‘virago,” the driver of men, and has done
yeoman service in the fight for progress. It has its darker
side, however, begotten of the hydra-headed laws and
canons with which the egis is equipped; for Science is
proverbially a cold goddess and an arbitrary, who frowns
upon the ardent advances of a Vulcan, and looks askance at
Eros when he comes too near: and then, as Young says,

“Your learning, like the lunar beam, affords

Light, but not heat; it leaves you undevout,
Frozen at heart, while speculation shines.”
M 2

164 THE GODS OF OLD;

Thus, then, ends this o’er-true narrative of Medusa.

Earth’s incandescence was gone for good and aye, and
our orb became a planet—a Lazarus dependent on the
crumbs that fall from that greater orb for which it is no task
to shine.

The light had fled on high, and all that remained of the
Gorgon was her warm trunk below. There, in foribus, did
Alineas spy it when the Sibyl led the way to Hades. To the
same region, but further in, did Ulysses penetrate, and
thence, after beholding the wives and daughters and the
sons of heroes dead and gone, after gazing. undismayed on
Tityus and Tantalus, Sisyphus, and the simulacrum of
Hercules himself,—thence he turned and fled in terror at
the bare idea of seeing the Gorgon’s head. There, too, does
Science place it when it asserts that there is no fact more
evident or more important than that the temperature
invariably rises as we penetrate towards the centre, and at
the average rate of 1° F. for every 50 ft. or 60 ft. of
descent; and that at the depth, it may be, of 100 miles
_ below the surface, even the least fusible mineral masses
may be in a state of incandescence.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 165

CHAPTER XI.
THE MISSING GARMENT.

Chrysaor. —The first solid crust that covered the molten
matter of our globe is interesting in many particulars. Its
date, the length of time occupied in its formation, its mode
of formation, whether it was formed in globo or in detached
pieces, what portions of the globo were first encrusted, the
nature of its materials, and its possible existence to-day,—
all these have been matter of much debate and curiosity.

Reason convinces us that there must have been a first
crust; but all exploration has hitherto failed to find any
indubitable traces of it. We have never got below the
granite, and yet the strong belief is that this rock is not the
primal crust. ‘‘ Whether any relics,” says Bonney, “‘ of
the Primeval Crust can still be recognised is a matter of
conjecture.” ‘The crust,’ writes Gunning, “‘ which first
hardened over a molten incandescent globe, nowhere
appears: the oldest rocks are everywhere buried under
their own ruins.”

This being so, all remarksas to the nature of its material
must be more or less conjectural,—the strong opinion,
however, being that it must have been crystalline or
erystallized in character. ‘ The original crust may have
been of a glassy character, like some of the vitreous lavas ;
but whatever it was, no trace of it has ever been or is ever
likely to be found.”—Eincyc. Brit. Winchell has already
mentioned the crystalline nature of Earth’s first solid
covering. He says further: ‘‘ It was a mixed conglomerate
of crystalline fragments, such as we now witness in some of
the granites, which are mixtures of quartz, feldspar, and
mica; or the syenites, which are mixtures of quartz, feld-
spar, and hornblende; or the diorites, which are mostly
mixtures of feldspar and hornblende. Or, perchance, the

166 THE GODS OF OLD;

solidification took place under such circumstances that the
crystallisation was more obscure, as in the various dolerites,
which everyone admits to have been born of fire.”

_ The same doubt, of course—greater, if possible—rests
over all the other points connected with it. Bonney says:
‘* There is no evidence when the Earth first solidified that
every part of its vaporous envelope was in a perfectly
uniform condition, or the surface beneath completely
homogeneous in composition and in state. Some parts of
the exterior may have solidified before other parts, and the
crust, when formed, may not have been as thick in some
parts as in others. When the atmosphere had reached its
present condition, if not before, the sun’s heat must have
had more effect in equatorial than in polar regions, so that
the crust would stiffen and thicken rather more rapidly
near the polar than near the equatorial region.”

lis probable mode of formation has been already pointed
out ; its date was evidently subsequent to the termination of
the incandescent period ; and the time taken to establish a
solid crust, that would permanently hold its own over the
molten fire below, is not known.

The classic poets must have indulged in conjectures
similar to our own as regards the first crust. Ovid intro-
duces Perseus as flying over Libya, then he transports him
to the Hesperian or Western hemisphere, and finally to
AAthiopia. Remembering that Perseus came first from
places ‘‘gelido sub Atlante,” Ovid would seem to imply
that the Polar regions were first solidified, then the
Temperate, and lastly the Equatorial. The same poet
gives us also the idea.of a vast length of time being
involved in the solidifying process. Not to mention what
elapsed later on, he speaks thus of Perseus immediately
after his exploit and previous to his experience on the
Hesperian shores :—

Inde per immensum ventis discordibus actus

Nune hue, nunc illuc, exemplo nubis aquose

Fertur, et ex alto seductas zethere longe

Despectat terras, totumque supervolat orbem.

Ter gelidas Arctos, ter Cancri brachia vidit :

Seepe sub occasus, spe est ablatus in ortus.—Met. IV. 621.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 167

We have also seen his use of “in silicem” as pointing
out the quartzose or siliceous nature of the material
constituting the crust. In view of incandescence being cut
off, no better material than silica can in one sense be
imagined for the crust, since, as is well known, quartz
intercepts light but transmits heat. Hesiod in his use of
‘‘mavepOov kago.répoww,” Shield 208, seems to strengthen
Winchell’s theory of a mixed crystalline conglomerate.

Putting by, however, all more or less nebulous conjec-
tures from either source, and coming down to facts, we find
Science on the one hand asserting that there was a primal
crust, that it sprang from incandescence, and that no
vestiges of it have been found; and Mythology, on the
other hand, asserting that there was a Chrysaor, who
sprang from Medusa, and who has not been seen by the eye
of man—for that is what Xpyvodwp means (xpés dopaw) ‘ the
unseen crust’? (v and w being interchangeable, as in
xeAvvn for xeAdvn). There is thus a complete accordance
between the two.

Let us digress a little here and say that, according to the
mythological record, Life had long since come into being ;
and not only life, but an organised life, too, that had
sprung ready armed from the cloven head of Zeus, and that
had assisted Neptune and Perseus in their onslaughts upon
Medusa. We mention this principally for the reason that
early. text-books on geology deny the existence of life in
Archean time, owing to the absence of any fossil remains
in the rocks of this: period. It is well to notice, however,
that a supposed fossil, the Hozoon, has been discovered of
late; and that, even apart from this, the general opinion
of modern geologists trends to the belief that the mere non-
discovery of fossils does not suppose their non-existence ;
that in the primeval days of earth organised beings, suited
to the conditions round them, may have flourished, the
remains of which could be so transformed by heat and
crystallisation as to render them totally unrecognisable.
“As well,” says Agassiz, ‘might we expect to find the
e mains of fish, or shells, or crabs at the bottom of geysers

168 "THE GODS OF OLD;

or of boiling springs, as on those early shores bathed by an
ocean of which the heat must have been so intense.”
Anderson remarks, “A productive flora, then, may have
existed from the earliest period, all traces of which may have
been obliterated.” .

The reign of Chrysaor was a long one, a stormy, and.
undoubtedly a most important one for earth in several
particulars. Many a geological incident and mythological
story—the two are inseparable—are woven round it. Let
us throw a flashlight on a few.

. The newly-formed crust for which Life fought would here
and there be shattered, ripped, and overflowed by the fires
below, the intense heat of which would reduce the com-
ponents of the crust, the water on it, and the air above it
to their original molecules ; again would the crust solidify,
and this time stronger than before; again would it be
reduced to molecularity ; and so on till consolidation was
fully achieved, till the granite and the schists sealed up the
fire, and the molecule-making forces were pent up below:
those were the days when Gods and Titans fought for
supreme sway, and faced one another for the final struggle ;
when Zeus collected all those forces that we read of in
order to put forth all that strength which finally ended in the
defeat of the Titans and their precipitation into Tartarus. ~

Sparse and poor, fungous and unicellular, must have
been the life upon that early and fervid crust; yet, such as
it was, it was Life, the lord of creation, jealous of innova-
tions, and quick to resent whatsoever revolutions threatened
its dynasty, even though revolution meant progress: those
were the days when Prometheus, the crafty son of Iapetus,
stole and concealed within a hollow narthex the far-seeing
light of fire for the benefit of mortals.

The crust, though often shattered, as we have seen, grew
ever stronger and thicker till it finally succeeded in hiding
the fire below, in cooling as to itself, and in growing more
and more dependent on the sun for heat: those were the
days when Zeus withdrew from mortals the fire which
Prometheus had stolen.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 169

That same crust which first enveloped earth and wit-
nessed the dawn of life, is no longer visible; it was bent
and broken, upheaved, ground, denuded, and spread in
finest particles over land and sea, so as to fashion the forma-
tion that succeeded ; that too, after its long span, underwent
the same mutations; and so with the next and the next,
and with each that followed, down to that particular forma-
tion trodden by Adam, who was himself formed of the earth
he trod on ; nothing has been added from above, and con-
sequently the primeval crust of which we speak must, in
whole or in part, have permeated every formation that
followed in its wake; those were the days and this the
Scythian or hidden (xev@w) rock to which, as some writers
affirm, Prometheus was originally chained by Vulcan, and
with which he was hurled to Tartarean depths, because he
had offended Zeus.

All these will be spoken of at more length in their proper
place ; they are introduced here principally for the purpose
of establishing what may be called Mythological Chronology,

. of inducing the belief that we must look to the primal

crust and to the conditions under which it was formed,
when endeavouring to explain some of the earliest and most
interesting of the mythical characters and the historical
garb with which they are invested.

The myth describes Chrysaor as wedded to Callirrhoé
(kaAAt-féw), “the beauteous flowing” daughter of Oceanus.
It is even so, for next to confining the molten sea below, the
most immediate and important function of the crust was to
receive and cherish, for better and worse, the waters coming
to it from the vaporous ocean above. ‘‘ Justas soon,” says
Hooker, ‘as solidification took place on the surface of the
great melted ball which once constituted our earth, a large
part of the steam surrounding it was condensed into water,
which of course fell in rain. At the same time, the form-
ing crust, as is the case with all matter except water, in
passing from the melted to the solid state, contracted, and
this contraction crumpled it into folds, regular and irregular,
and thus made channels and cavities for the water to run

170 THE GODS OF OLD;

and dash in. Water thus began that great work of denuda-
tion which . . . it has been carrying on ever since.
From that denudation in this first age of the world was
supplied material for the strata of the grand Azoiec floor
which covers up the fiery deeps within, and upon and against
which the rocks of after ages were laid.”

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 171

CHAPTER XII.

THE WINGED STEED.

Pegasus.—Chrysaor and Callirrhoé have come, the fiery
furnace is being well-sealed, and an ocean of waters flows
upon our globe. Prometheus, as an offset to the fire with-
drawn, has stolen it from Helios, and the effects of the sun
begin perceptibly to be felt. In what way? In many—
heat, light, vivifying influences,—but first and fore-
most in what we call Evaporation, and Mythology calls
Pegasus. With the first drop of water that rested on our
globe was the process felt as vaporisation; with the first
rocky covering indeed, it may be said, that surrounded
earth was it felt, for no substance that we know of, not ex-
cluding even flint, is free from water. ‘‘ Rocks,” to quote
the Encyclopedia Britannica, “which have undoubtedly
once been in a fluid or at least pasty condition, and which
have been injected as veins and dykes into previously con-
solidated masses, contain water imprisoned within their
component crystals. This is not water which has been
subsequently introduced. It is contained in minute cells,
which it usually does not now completely fill, but which it
no doubt did occupy completely at the time and temperature
at which the rock was consolidated. . . . In the solid
crystals of lava which were erupted only recently, as well
as in those of early geological periods, the presence of water
in minute cavities may be readily detected. It is in the
quartz of such rocks, and still more in that of granite, that
the detection of water-cavities is most easily made. The
quartz of granite is usually full of them.”

Coincident with the crust, then, would vapour spring
heavenward from the surface; and the process that com-
menced when incandescence ended has never ceased.

172 THE GODS OF OLD;

It never returns; it is always the rain, or snow, or hail
that leaves ethereal mansions for our earth; it is the
vapour that always leaves earth for heaven, the vapour that
mounts its winged steed and flies upon the sunbeam to the
heights above. This most prominent characteristic of
vapour it was that gave Pegasus his name, Iljyacos, (87 yijs,
a and 8 being interchangeable) “‘ springing from the earth,”
and the same derivation evidently applies to zyyij, “‘ a well
or spring.”

At a high temperature water will boil and fly off as
steam, or vapour: this is called Vaporisation, and implies
rapid action and more or less artificial agency. At
ordinary temperatures, at all seasons, in all climates, and
from all kinds of matter, there is a slow natural process
going on from the surfaces of bodies whereby vapour is
raised up without ebullition or other disturbance of those
bodies: this is called Evaporation, and everyone is familiar
with the process.

We see the outbursts of an immense volcano and are
struck with the vast volumes of vapour that go curling
upwards: we see the mist rising in the calm of a summer
evening from the juicy flats and meadows, and rolling
upwards, like an inundation, over the visible horizon. But
immense thcugh they be, they are puny in magnitude,
artificial in nature, and mere darkeners of the sky when
compared with the simple, quiet, diaphanous, and enormous
mass of vapour raised daily and hourly by the force. of
Evaporation from land and sea alike. Mountain high and
curling as it goes, a veritable Helicon (Ac), does this mass
rise from off the surface of our globe, gladly responsive to
the creative hymn. Higher and still higher does it go
while the refrain goes on, and while still the heaven’s blue
is clear. Like an intellectual giant that soars to heights
beyond the ken and range of wordy vaporers, so has it left
far below the fog-producing and sulphur-reeking efforts of
Pierian marsh-lands and volcanoes ; it has even dispersed
their darksome fumes, and still goes up, up till the winged
steed has lost some of his elastic vigour, till he grows thirsty

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 173

and drinks his full. Then, satiated with the delight of his
own being, or influenced it may be by the friendly counsels
of the water-god within, he rears with the joy of surfeit,
stamps this Helicon of vapour with his hoof, stamps it to
condensation, and straightway does a Hippocrene appear !
What is vapour, then, but the source, the xpyjvn of every
spring and well and Bandusian fount upon our globe? All
that it requires is the last kick, so to speak, of the elastic
force which rides it, in order to become condensed to clouds
and fall as rain and snow, which in their turn penetrate
the crevices of earth and produce springs. The rivers are
fed by springs, the springs by rain, rain by condensed vapour,
which is thus the source or Hippocrene of all.

There remains little else to be said except that. Hvapora-
tion increases with the break of morn,—hence has Pegasus
been made the horse of Aurora; and that it is generally
believed to be a prime factor in the production of electricity
in the atmosphere, as noticed carefully in the original
myth. His special office as the horse of the Muses is of
course but the intellectual adaptation of the physical
meaning, and is graphically outlined thus by Pope:

‘A little learning is a dangerous thing ;
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxi¢ate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.”

Hesiod’s account of the Gorgon sisters could not be
suitably inserted previous to the present. By giving it
now in conjunction with that of Chrysaor and Pegasus, the
connection between incandescence and incrustation will be
better marked. Having told how the Graiw were sprung
from Phoreys and Ceto, he continues as follows:

Topyots 6, at valovet wépyy KAvrod ’ Oxeavoio,
> = \ i oye , ?
eoyatiy mpos vucrés, W” “Eomepides Aeyupeovoi,
SHewa 7 KipudAy re Médoved re Avypa waboica.
c x ca c € a 14 , 420 7
9 pev env Ovnty, at 8’ aOavarot kal dynpo,

eg ~ Qt a 4 r
ai 800" ry S€ pry wapedeEaro Kuavoxairns
év padaxd etwoue kat GvOeow ciapivoict.
tis 8 dre 8 Uepoeds xehadny dredetporépncer,
C4 , a A LA CZ
éxOope Xpuodwp Te péyas kai Iijyacos immos.

~ a ar U > i a a 3 4
TO péev Grovupoy qv, Gr’ Gp’ *Qxeavod wept mryas

Or

174

THE GODS OF OLD;

16 yév8’, 6 8 dop yptoetov eyev pera yepol pidgort.
x® pév dmontdpevos, mpokirav xOdva pytépa pyrov,
CA 303 3 if 4 2 > i ,
ixer’ és dOavdraus: Znvos & év Sdpace vaiet,

Bpovriy te otepomny te Pepov Ale unridevrt.—Theog. 274.

The Gorgons too she bore, who dwell at large
From sounding ocean to th’ extreme of night
Where the high-toned Hesperides are placed,—
Stheno, Euryale, Medusa too,

The woe-distraught: immortal, undecayed,

The former two; mortal alone was she.

With this one lay the ruler of the blue

In the unwrinkled plain and early bloom.

From her, when Perseus sheared her head, there sprang
Chrysaor prime, and Pegasus the steed.
Auspicious was the name for each, because

One held a golden sword with out-stretched hands,
The other rose from near the ocean’s springs :
Then taking wing and soaring from the earth,

The mother of all fruits, to Gods he came;

And dwells in halls of Zeus, delivering

Thunder and lightning for the Life that plans.

NOTES.

1 vatovor.—The great inner movements, or active agencies of seismic

and volcanic disturbance extend all over our globe, or from the
equatorial regions where ocean prevails to the poles.

2 éoxari.—The Hesperides, as already explained, mark ‘‘ the obscure

or unknown” in all things. Geographically they would mean
any portion of earth’s surface not well known or altogether un-
explored; but the context points to these particular Hesperides
as being the elevated polar regions (Acyidavor ‘“ high-toned,
elevated ”) where the extreme of darkness (écyari mpés vuxrds),
six months of night each year, is experienced.

5 Kvavoxairns.—The usual meaning assigned the word is ‘“ dark~

haired” (xiavos xairn); but Ovid, when describing the same
incident, Met. IV. 798, says:
‘“* Hanc pelagi rector templo vitiasse Minervee
Dicitur.”

So that ‘‘pelagi rector” would seem to be the Latin form for
Kvavoxairns, the derivation of which would be xtvavos éyéo or
xvavos éyw ‘that which sustains, holds, or governs the xvavos.”

What the ‘‘ xiavos” really was is a matter of debate; that it
was of blue colour is generally conceded, and the application of
‘‘ blue” to the sea (pelagi) by Ovid strengthens the opinion.

6 podaxa— soft, smooth, unwrinkled.” The wrinkles or corruga-

tions were to come later on with the new-formed crust.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 175

Ovid expresses the same idea in his Golden Age:
“Tpsa quoque immunis rastroque intacta nec ullis
Saucia vomeribus, per se dabat omnia tellus.”

avOecwy elaptvoio..—Early in the incandescent period when Medusa
had golden hair. Compare Ovid’s lines in his Golden Age:

‘Ver erat eeternum, placidique tepentibus auris
Mulcebant Zephyri natos sine semine flores.”

Hesiod uses the same two words for “a wealth of hair”
(Works and Days, 75).

8 péyas.—‘* Great” in the sense of prime or first. So do we say ‘‘a
prime scholar,” ‘“‘the prime of manhood,” ‘‘ prime numbers.”

9 érévvpov.—The word shows that myyy and xpiceoy dop are not to be
considered as the radicals of Pergasus and Chrysaor; rather as
fortuitous resemblances, as in the case of the Cyclopes.

10 dop xpiaetov.—‘* What,” says Hutchinson, ‘is the source of the
gold and silver and other metals found in mineral veins? This
question cannot as yet be fully answered. Some geologists
look upon the sea as the source, since small quantities of
various metals are found in sea-water. But it is possible that
the source is far down below in the depths of earth, and that
by means of steam and highly-heated water during periods of
volcanic activity, they were erupted and injected into fissures
in the crust.” .

xepoi.—lt has been remarked of metalliferous veins that they
usually strike east and west.

176 THE GODS OF OLD;

CHAPTER XII

HOW THE MOUNTAINS WERE ‘ LIFTED.”

Geryon.—Our continents in their present forms and
dimensions are the finished work of a geologic yesterday.
The Tertiary period looked on while Nature, with a skill
begotten of long experience, was painting and finishing her
work ; Post-tertiary times saw it when undraped and open
for exhibition. It was not the first time that the artist had
tried her hand at continent-making. Again and again in
the ages previous to those mentioned had she put forth her
efforts and placed the same on view: again and again had
she looked upon her work with a critical and disapproving
eye, and washed out the pigments from the canvas. Never
from the first, though, could it be called a perfect tabula
rasa, for some few outlines sketched with unerring hand
always remained as evidence of her maiden trial and of
the grand idea that she had formed in imagination.

The picture sketched in sombre Silurian colours, erased,
and reproduced in brighter Devonian reds, retained the
master-lines of Archaic days; so too did the chiaro-oscuro
of the Carboniferous, the nondescript of the Permian, and
the foamy white of the Cretaceous; so did every other
reproduction of the work, even to this the latest which we
see to-day. Those germinal outlines are the mountain
chains, the backbone around which our continents have
grown bit by bit and shaped themselves to their present
huge proportions. ‘ Continents,” says Winchell, ‘“ have
been developed, like organisms, from their primeval germs.
Geologic force, like vital force, operates always towards the
accomplishment of some definite end. . . . The outline of
the Continent was consequently marked out while yet in
embryo. The foundations of the Alleghanies and Rocky

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 77

mountains were laid ages before the superstructure rose
above the waves.”

‘“‘The inference to be drawn from these facts is that the
present continental regions, through many local oscillations,
have existed as terrestrial ridges from a remote geological
antiquity, and that the ocean basins in like manner have,
on the whole, retained their identity. When the geologist
asks himself how the present distribution of sea and land is
to be accounted for, he finds that the answer to the question
goes back to early Paleozoic times, whence he can in some
cases trace the gradual growth of a continent downward
through the long cycles of geologic time.’’—Encyclopedia
Britannica.

From the very beginning of our crust, therefore, was the
plan of our continents laid down at the bottom of the ocean
which embraced the globe, and this plan exhibited itself at
first and for many a succeeding age in the form of terrestrial
ridges that were occasionally elevated and again submerged
as the years flew by.

How those germs of continents came into existence is
still somewhat of an unsolved problem. The most accepted
opinion is that they originated in the corrugations or
wrinkles into which the early crust was thrown, owing to
unequal contraction on the part of the fluid interior and of
the solid exterior. ‘“‘In the process of refrigeration,”
writes Winchell, ‘‘the stiffening crust would become too
large for the nucleus within. This would necessarily result
from the more rapid contraction of the more highly heated
portions. If the solid and the molten portions suffered
equal losses of heat, the molten, by shrinking the most,
became too small for the enveloping crust. The crust
therefore must wrinkle to fit the shrmking nucleus. Thus
incipient inequalities of the surface began to appear: these
were the germs of mountains and of continents. From a
new-born wrinkle grew the lofty Cordilleras.”

In much the same fashion does writer after writer express
himself, all agreeing on the one fact, however they may differ
in non-essentials, that our continents date their existence

G.0. N

178 THE GODS OF OLD;

from a primal crust surrounded by a world of waters. The
same fact is enunciated in Mythology when it says that
the three-headed Geryon was sprung from Chrysaor and
Callirrhoé. The genealogy is plainly indicative of the date
and origin. If name, epithets, description, and allusions
count for aught, then there is evidence enough, and more
than enough, to prove that Geryon is the personification of
the beginning of our continents. The name alone, I'npyeyv
or T'npvdvns (yq pdw), “the wrinkling or corrugating force of
earth,’ is enough in itself to bring conviction. The three
heads and one body, or three bodies united together, as
pictured by some, evidently refer to our continental areas
according as we view them on the surface, or united
together in the depths of earth. Aineas, when descending
to Hades, saw Geryon in the latter aspect :
Centauri in foribus stabulant, Scylleeque biformes,
Et centumgeminus Briareus, ac bellua Lernze
Horrendum stridens, flammisque armata Chimera;
Gorgones, Harpyizeque, et forma tricorporis umbre.
Ain, vi. 286.
Horace associates him with the depths of earth and ocean :
Non, si trecenis, quotquot eunt dies,
Amice, places illacrimabilem
Plutona tauris, qui ter amplum
Geryonen Tityonque tristi
Compescit unda.—Odes II. 14.

The three heads and his wealth of oxen are the main
characteristics of Geryon, and each will not suffer from a
few words of explanation.

To the Greek poets, and the Latin also, the mountains
were Bdes, boves, “the oxen of the earth.” This will be
plainly evident in classical passages to be quoted as we go
along. From fovvds, “a hill,” a little Bods or mountain as
it were, our own “mountain” and the Latin mons are
derived through the recognised interchange of 8 and yp.
Concerning the derivation of Bots and our own “bull,” it
may be said that the Greek faive and BdAd\o have much in
common as to the character of motion. The former signi-
fies “ to tread, step; go away, depart; to drive up or down,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 179

to lift, to hurl; ”’ the latter means “ to throw, cast, hurl ;
to strike; to let fall, move, to go.”

The Greeks probably derived their Bods from Baiva,
adopting the slow, peaceful idea of motion as suited to the
animal; we, on the other hand, would appear to have
adopted the minatory idea involved in Badd, and applied it
to “bull,” just as we have applied the rapid idea of the
same word to “ball.” Just, then, as we call earth ‘“‘a
mighty ball,” did the Greeks style it a péyas Bois (as
implied by Hesiod when describing the incident at Mekone) ;
and as we call mountains “‘ the bulwarks of our globe,” so
did the ancients call them Bots or boves.

As additional evidence there may be cited odpos, “a
bull; ” the same word also means “‘a boundary, landmark ;
a watcher, bulwark; a fair wind.” We also find oipés,
“the serum or watery part of any substance; a water-
way ;” and finally otpos, ‘‘a mountain, a chain of hills.”
Now, different as their meanings be, there must evidently
be a connection between all those, and it can only be found
by going to the original ovpos, and bearing in mind that
the mountains are the bulls or guardians of our earth, the
watchers on high that protect alike from the encroach-
ments of aérial and subterranean influences; that they are
also the boundaries and landmarks of continents, countries,
and provinces; the breakers of gales and storm-winds, the
condensers of watery vapour into clouds, and the great
waterways or watersheds of continental areas, whence the
rivers take their source and fertilise the plains while gliding
down to ocean.

In the depths of ocean, then, restrained by earth and
sea alike, as Horace tells us and as science teaches, were
those mountain cattle and their three-headed owner.
When he woke and raised his heads each geologic morning,
the cattle left their stalls, one herd ranging westwards and
two eastwards. They sought their feedmg grounds on the
heights above the waves, and there, dotted over the land-
scape, did they browse and chew the cud till evening came
and the tremulous pipe of their master gave warning of the

N 2

“ec

180 THE GODS OF OLD;

night drawing on, and summoned each one back. And so
they hied them home—a few strays now and then excepted
—to their ocean barn, there to wait for the following day in
order to return to the light above.

This is strictly in accordance with the established know-
ledge of to-day. All through Archaic, Paleozoic, and
Mesozoic time, the Eastern Hemisphere had no land area
sufficiently large to be deemed even approximately as a
continent. Hurope, Asia, and Africa were represented by a
number of islands, crags, and ridges, scattered far and
wide in a mighty ocean that made the Atlantic and Pacific
one. Conditions somewhat similar prevailed in the Western
half of our globe. The Archaic peaks and reefs, glutted -
with provender, had their day and sank below the waves,
to rise again next morning branded with Silurian marks.
Those, too, browsed upon the heights and slaked their thirst
at the Silurian beach till evening came and sent them
homewards. Another day dawned, and up came the Devon
cattle to feast and fare in the old pastures and the new.
And so on down through the ages till the close of the
Cretaceous and the dawn of that long day, the Tertiary,
when the herd of oxen left their stalls and forgot from that
day to this to return home.

How this archipelagic condition of our globe prevailed
during the interval between those periods is clearly shown
by what follows, taken from the Encyc. Brit. The Cretaceous
rocks ‘‘ bring before us the records of a time when one
continuous sea stretched over all the centre with most of the
south of Hurope, covered the north of Africa, and swept
eastwards to the far east of Asia. There were doubiless
many islands and ridges in this wide expanse of water,
whereby its areas of deposit and biological provinces must
have been more or less sharply defined. Some of these
barriers can still be traced.’

In North America too, while there was more of a land
area than in the case of Europe, a sea dotted here and
there with islands and reefs still covered the long strip
from New Jersey to the Gulf of Mexico, the entire

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 181

Mississippi valley to beyond the mouth of the Ohio, and
extensive areas over the Rocky Mountain region, California,
and Oregon. Similar conditions existed in the early part
of the Tertiary period or Hocene, when, with the excep-
tion of some land in the northern parts of Russia,
Scandinavia, and Britain, there existed, as Bonney tells
us, “a sea which apparently covered parts of North
Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Northern France, and south-
eastern Hingland. Beyond this, in the same direction lay
land or a closely connected group of islands, and then came
a sea which occupied the whole of South Hurope, the
present Mediterranean, far into Africa on the south, and
eastwards right across Asia to join the Pacific Ocean. Here
and there, however, it was interrupted by islands, now in-
corporated into the Alps, Carpathians, Pyrenees, and
Apennines.”’

Compare this with the mythical description of Geryon,
as told by Apollodorus :

Séxarov dé érerdyn GOdov ras Typvdvou Bois e& “Epufetas xopiterv.
‘Eptéeta S€ fv 'Oxeavod mdyaiov xeypévy vioos, } viv Tddetpa xadetrat.
tauryy xardxet Cnpudvys Xpvadopos kai Kaddippéns tis ‘Qxeavod, tpray
éxov dvdpovy cuphves cdpa, curnypévoy péev els &v Kata THY yaoTépa,
éoxiopévoy dé eis tpeis dard Aaydvwv Te Kai pypdv. ie S€ hourkas Boas,
&v fv Bouxddos "Evputiav, PiAak bé”CpGpos 6 K¥av Sixédados é& “Eyidyns
kal Tupavos yeyerynpévos.—2. 5. 10.

To take up and carry off the oxen of Geryon from Erythia was
assigned as the Tenth Labour. This Erythia, the deposited island of
the ocean near, was that which is now called Gadeira. Here dwelt
Geryon, the son of Chrysaor and of Callirrhod, the daughter of Oceanus,
who had the naturally compact frame of three individuals, contracted
into one at the navel, buf separated into three by both lagoons and
ridges. And he had sandy oxen, of which Eurytion was herd, and
the guardian was the two-headed dog Orthrus, the offspring of
Typhaon and Echidna.

The only difference between the ancient and the modern
account is that we put the summits of our continental
areas in the foreground, and the foundations in the back ;
Apollodorus, in consonance with his topic, makes use of
a reverse procedure. ‘‘ The Creator worked from the
beginning after a plan in developing the continents on

182 THE GODS OF OLD;

the crust of the earth, and if we could go down into the
depths of the ocean, and examine the irregularity of its
floor, we should undoubtedly see the same thing there.” —
Hooker.

Such then was “the grand terraqueous spectacle ”’
at the opening of the Tertiary day,—one-embracing
ocean, islanding a few plateaus and a thousand craggy
peaks of mountains.

What was the spectacle at its close? Let us first view
the character of the work performed during this long
Tertiary day. Dana tells us: ‘‘ There was, 1, the finishing
of the rocky substratum of the continents; 2, the expan-
sion of the continental areas to their full limits and their
permanent recovery from the waters of the ocean; 3, the
elevation of many of the great mountains of the globe,
or considerable portions of them, through a large part of
their height.”

All these were done; the Kocene sea had its bed elevated,
the continental bounds were essentially completed, and the
Rocky Mountains, Alps, Apennines, Pyrenees, Carpathians,
Hindoo Koosh, Himalayas, and others were raised thousands .
of feet above their previous heights. ‘‘ These vast corru-
gations of the earth’s crust were general over the whole
globe about the same period.”

Yes; the Tenth task assigned had been successfully
carried through; the cattle were “‘lifted,” taken up and
carried off for good, and the corrugating or wrinkling force
of earth, Geryon, had received its death-blow, for since
that fateful day there has been no further mountain making,
and those mountains successfully carried off have remained
and still remain above, the back-bones as we dub them,
the thigh-bones (unpév) as Apollodorus styles them, of our
mighty continents.

Hesiod gives the myth in its simplest form :—

Xpuodup 8 Erexe tptxéhador Typvovaa
puxGels Kaddupdn xotpyn KAvrot ’Qxeavoio.

roy pev dp’ éLevaprEe Bin “HpaxAyein

Bovowy én’ eikurddecot mepippire eiv "Epubein,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 183

5 pare r@ re wep Bods fAacev edpuperdrous
Tipuvé’ eds icpnv, SiaBas wépov ’Qxeavoio,
"OpOov re xretvas kai Bovxddov Etputiava
orabud év nepdevre mépyy KAvrou ’Qxeavoio.—Theog. 287.

United with Callirrhoé, the child

Of Oceanus famed, Chrysaor bore

Three-headed Geryon. Herculean strength
Destroyed him for the crumple-footed kine

In sea-girt Erythia, on that day

When having passed through ocean’s path and slain,
In their dark lair afar from ocean loud,

The herd Eurytion and Orthos, he

To sacred Tiryns drove those broad-browed kine.

NOTES.

4 «idurddecot.—eido wots, ‘‘ compressed as to the feet or base.” It

Qu

’Epvbciy.—epvo, ‘‘to draw away, guard, conceal.

is universally conceded, since Sir James Hall’s experiment,
that the flexures in rocky strata were produced by lateral
pressure from below.

” Hach formation
has been elevated, and then submerged or drawn away to the
bottom of the ocean. While submerged it was covered with
the sedimentary deposits of its own denuded matter pre-
cipitated from the ocean above. It is this congeries of de-
posited matter at the bottom of the sea that is called ‘‘ the
sea-gitt Erythia.” Apollodorus makes it still plainer, for,
as already seen, he calls Erythia ‘‘ the deposited island of the
ocean near, that which is now called Gadeira,” or (yj 8épas)
‘the crust of earth.” If an island is that which is surrounded
by water, then in very truth would Erythia be one.

qpart r@.—The Tertiary.
Tipvv6'.—Tipuvs by metathesis and transposition becomes ovvrpt

(ctv tpia) ‘the three together,” that is Europe, Asia, and
Africa. We read of a Tiryns previous to this, but it was only
in posse: not till the three were joined as one above, in the
Tertiary period presumably, would it be called icod Tiryns.

"Opbov kai Eiputiova.—tThe first of these refers to the force which

produces a jointed structure in all our rocks, but especially in
the granite. Those joints run straight up and down (ép6és);
and as they commonly consist of two sets of joints, one running
at right angles or nearly so to the other, and are especially
marked in the granite, we find this Orthos called two-headed,
and the offspring of Echidna.

In the same way does Eurytion mean (eipis puw) ‘* the wide
wrinkles, curvatures, or flexures” into which the rocky strata

184 THE GODS OF OLD;

were origimally thrown. The connection between Orthos and
Hurytion, or Strike and Curvature, is noticed in our works on
Geology. This, by the way, establishes the derivation of
Bouxddos from Bois xdAos, since it was only by shortening the
horizontal extent of the mountains that the flexures could be
produced; and hence the use of the epithet by Hesiod in order
to show the agency that operated.

There is no need of pursuing the myth further. It only
remains to point out that the same agency, “ great earth
movements,’ which geology ascribes as the cause of the
upheaval of mountains and continents, is identical with
‘‘the Herculean strength ”’ mentioned by Hesiod. The
context proves it. The derivation proves it. "Hpa (or Juno),
as will be shown later on, is the personification of ‘‘ dry
land,’’ and ‘HpaxAéns is therefore (ipa xéAns) ‘‘ the move-
ment of the land.”” The famous ‘‘ Twelve Labours ”’ prove
it also, since they will be found to correspond with the
strata comprised in our Geological Periods, that is to say,
they represent the achievements of those “land move-
ments’’ whereby the land was periodically elevated and
submerged, and time divided geologically into the Archean,
Silurian, Devonian, and other eras. The solution of those
Labours, when rightly unravelled, must consequently prove
useful and interesting in the highest degree, as tending to
throw light upon our own theories as regards the lithological
structure of our globe in past ages, its fauna and flora,
its geographical extent, and the coming of man. The Tenth
Labour, this of Geryon, is evidently synchronous with the
Tertiary period, and, when pursued further than we have
gone, affords much food for reflection as to whether the
three heads of Geryon were—not Europe, Asia, and Africa,
but—Europe and Asia, Africa, and America. The know-
ledge of a far distant continent must have permeated
historic times. Not to mention Plato’s Atlantis, and
allusions by some other prose writers, there are many
passages in the poets which lend additional weight to the
opinion that this “ pastor Iberus ” was really and truly the
Iberian shepherd, “‘ the Western ploughman ”’ who wrinkled

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 185

up the Laurentian Hills before an Alpine, Caucasian, or
other ox was turned loose in the Kastern Hemisphere.
For those who may take up the elucidation of the Twelve
Labours, this Tenth one, as being the Tertiary period, would
be a vantage point from which to start in proceeding
regularly backwards and forwards.

186 THE GODS OF OLD;

CHAPTER XIV.

THE ROCK OF AGES.

Echidna.—We open a book of stories from which some of
the leaves have been torn here and there, so as to leave
blanks at the beginning, middle, or end of each or some of
the tales. We read, we note the gaps, can distinguish one
narrative from the other despite those gaps, and endeavour
to supply the omissions from what precedes or follows, as
the case may be. And so we continue till we come to
** finis,” and are satisfied ; even if the last page be torn out

or pasted to the cover, we reason from experience as to how
the story ended.

So is it with the erust of earth. Full of leaves, and with
many breaks, we can trace each and every story pretty
clearly notwithstanding. We can piece the Eocene pages
from the Miocene, the Jurassic from the Cretaceous, and are
never in doubt as to whether we are reading the Cainozoic
or Mesozoic narrative. And so we turn leaf after leaf of
the rocky volume till we come to the granite; and if that
leaf be lost or pasted to the cover, we believe it to have
been there, or to be there if only we could go further. In
either case we close the book. There is no more to be read,
for experience has taught us so far that the granite is ‘‘ the
end,’ and that below this granite we have never got.
Whether it be the offspring of and rest upon the primal
crust all round the globe, or whether it has incorporated its
progenitor into its own being, or whether it be but an
intruder from the fiery depths that has reared its massive
front regularly or irregularly above the primeval crust, or
whether even it be any two or all three of these combined,
we know not, and probably never will know, for the reasons
already mentioned.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 187

Our rocks are igneous or aqueous as to their origin.
Lava and other volcanic products are a type of the first;
ordinary fossiliferous and metamorphic (presumably but an
aliered sedimentary) are types of the second. The granite
remains, and some diversity of opinion exists as to its
source. Some, and by far the greater number of geologists,
call it Plutonic, and claim it as of igneous origin; others
maintain that it is an aqueous or sedimentary rock, the
ingredients of which have but been transformed to a further
extent than the gneiss and other schists.

The reasons adduced in each case it is unnecessary to
mention. It is enough for our purpose to show that the
genealogy of granite has been and is still contested, and that
the same diversity of opinion is entertained with regard to
the mythological Echidna. This is the more remarkable
as she is the first person of the Theogony so far whose
descent has been positively disputed. Hesiod musi have
favoured the aqueous origin of granite, since he makes
Eehidna the daughter of Chrysaor and Callirrhoé.

Apollodorus—usually a conservative writer and one who,
when in doubt himself, quotes Hesiod, Homer, the
tragedians, &c.—ignores all authorities in this instance,
and calls Echidna the daughter of Tartarus and Gea, thus
ranging himself as an advocate for her igneous birth.
Still other writers style her the offspring of Peiras and
Styx, by which is meant the formation of granite in all
ages of the world, the oldest and the latest, for Peiras is
the extreme (zeipas) or centre of the earth in one direction,
and Styx, the invisible but actual boundary line between
life and death, one inch or less below the surface, is the
other extreme.

But, if her ancestry had never been mentioned, if there
had been no marked disagreement on this point, and if
even there was never a word of description regarding her,
the very name, Echidna, would mark her as the granite.
One of the most visible and distinguishing characteristics
of the rock is its intrusive nature, as best exemplified in
the numerous ramifying veins which it sends forth.

188 THE GODS OF OLD;

“No rock,” says one writer, ‘exhibits so admirably as
granite the varieties assumed by veins.’ Lyell too: “‘ As a
general rule, however, granite veins in all quarters of the
globe are more sinuous in their course than those of trap.”
The truth of these remarks is easily evidenced by the plates
and illustrations in every text book on geology. Swelling
out from the parent mass appear branches, varying in
breadth from yards and feet, which pierce and traverse the
adjacent and overlying rocks—even their own granitic pre-
decessors—in every direction, till they become mere filaments
at the end; they cross and twine and curl and writhe—so
much so and so strikingly that no other possible remark
than “‘ snaky-looking ” can fall from the lips of the observer,
whether he views the sketch or the rocks from which the
sketch istaken. Put those expressive words into Greek and
we have “Exidva (@xts eid€var) “ the snaky-looking one.”

Description, however, is not wanting. Here is Hesiod’s,
every line so bristling with characteristics of the granite as
to make the blood run riot in the veins of a geologist :

“HS érex’ Gro wédwpor, dunyavov, ode éoixds
Ouqrois dvOparots ov8’ abavdroice Aeoict,

angi é yAaupa, Oeinv xparepoqppoy’ "Exidvar,
Hou pev vipny Aux@mida, xaddAcrdpyoy,
fpiou © abre wédawpov Suv, Sewwdv te péyay Te,
aiddov @pnatay, Cabeys td Kevbeot yains.

eva S€ of oméos eoti Karo KotAn tmd wérpy

ou

TyHAod am abavdrav Te OeGy Ovnrav 7 avOparar®
2v@’ dpa of Sdowarto Geoi KAuTa Sdpara vaiew.

10 4 8 pur’ civ Apipouow td yOdva Avypy "Exidva,
aGdvaros vipcpn Kal dynpaos ipata wdvra.—Theog. 295,

She bore another in a sculptured cave,
Echidna, of a nature wondrous hard,
Intrusive, shapeless, and adapted not

For gods immortal or for mortal men ;

Half nymph, of oval face and cheeks so fair ;
Half sinuous snake, exceeding strange and strong,
Tis altered food incorporating raw

Under the crannies of majestic earth.

And there, aloof from gods and mortals both,
Her cave's far down beneath the concave rock ;
There, sooth to say, the gods immortal have
Assigned for her as home those famed abodes.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 189

And *mongst the Arimi beneath the earth
Was she, forlorn Echidna, drawn, a nymph
Immortal, never-aging for all time.

NOTES.

1 ‘H &.—Callirrhoé, daughter of Oceanus, and consort of Chrysaor.

wédwpov, &e.—The first two lines contain three important charac-
teristiés of the granite: it is eruptive and intrusive (réAwpoyr) ;
it is shapeless or unstratified (dujyavov); and it is incapable, in
a sense, of supporting organic existence, or non-fossiliferous
(ov8é goixds Ovqrois, &e.).

3 omni yAadvpg.—In the depths of the crust, hollowed out by a
denuding or sculpturing process, was the granite -produced.
‘The granites have been formed at great depths in the earth,
and have cooled and crystallised slowly under enormous pres-
sure where the contained gases could not expand.” —Lyell.

Gcinv xparepoppov’.—Another mark of the granite is its exceeding
hardness and durability. Egyptian obelisks made from it are
still intact after a lapse of 3,000 years. The Pyramids, though
internally constructed of limestone, are coated externally with
granite.

4 qptov vipgyny.—The granite is presented to our view in two forms,
half mountainous, half sinuous. Jn the first case it appears as
large eruptive bosses, of which Lyell remarks, ‘‘ Granite often
preserves a very uniform character throughout a wide range of
territory, forming hills of a peculiar rounded form” (Accaomda).
xaA\urdppov refers to the crystalline texture, and to the white,
grey, or flesh-red colour of the rock.

5 jptov ow.—In the second case, it rises, as already remarked,
from the central mass and penetrates other rocks in highly
tortuous veins and ramifications that present a snaky ap-
pearance.

6 aiddov apnorqy.—tlt scorches, reddens, fuses, transforms, and
alters in every way the rocks which it penetrates; it changes
shale to mica-schist, sandstone to quartz, and limestone to
marble. ‘As Mr. Jukes has shown, the Silurian strata are
underlaid by a vast mass of Cambrian rocks, all of which must
have been invaded Ly the granite before it could have reached
its present horizon. He infers that the granite must have
slowly and irregularly eaten its way upward through the
Silurian rocks, absorbing much of them into its own mass as it
rose.”-—Encyc. Brit.

7 The deep subterranean origin of granite is reiterated by the poet.

9 §8docavro bcoi.—The intellectual gods, the literati, or scientists of
those days. ‘The Latin poets often use “ superi” and ‘ dii” in
a similar sense.

10 ’Apipotow.—aipdua, “lifted, raised up.” The modern theory is

190 THE GODS OF OLD;

11

2

that while volcanic rocks have cooled and consolidated at and
above the surface, the granite has consolidated at great depths
beneath, and always under considerable pressure; and that
such granite as is now visible is owing to denudation of those
original rocks under which it consolidated. To these latter,
then, is the term Arimoi applied, and it may be said in addition
that granite occupies the central parts of many mountain
chains all over the world, ‘“‘forming a kind of core round
which the gneisses, schists, and other crystalline rocks are
arranged.”
dynpaos Fara mdvra.—‘* We must conclude that granite does not
belong exclusively to the earliest nor to any one geological
period, but rather that it has been formed at various epochs,
and may even be forming now.’’—Encye. Brit.
TH dé Tupdovd hace prynpevat ev pedreryre,
dewdv O DBprorny 7 dvepor Eduxadmcde xovpy’
4 8 inoxvoapévn téxeto Kparepdppova réxva.—Theog. 306.
With her, this maiden of the oval face,
Mingled in union was (the story goes),
Typhon, eruptive, overbearing, strange:
And she conceiving bore a stubborn brood.
avepov.—avepnew ‘‘ to vomit up, to belch.”

This brood, as Hesiod tells us, embraced Orthos, Cerberus,

the Lernean Hydra, the Chimera, Sphinx, and the Nemean
Lion. Orthos we have already met in connection with
Geryon ; Cerberus should be studied with the Greek Hades,
as should the Sphinx with Gédipus, and the Hydra and Lion
with the Twelve Labours. The Chimera alone properly
belongs to the scope of our work.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 191

CHAPTER XV.

THE HEAT AND DARKNESS OF OTHER DAYS.

Chimera.—In its very earliest existence our earth, as
already noted, was a self-luminous orb like the sun, possessed
of an immeasurable intensity of light and heat that tended
to make all its particles expand and be driven to the
periphery. Cooled in time by contact with outer space and
thus rendered heavier, those peripheral particles would
gravitate towards the centre, and the orb would contract as
a whole and shrink in volume. And so in varying degree
would it proceed till a crust was established on the molten
surface. But all this while radiation was going on, of both
light and heat while incandescence lasted, of heat alone
after the reckless dissipation of the one had unwittingly
killed the other and blinded Mother Harth for ever.

What the measure of the heat was when our globe was
covered with its primal crust is a matter of conjecture.
‘“‘The temperature,” says Bonney, “at which the crust
would begin to form would probably be something like
2000° F. . . . The crust would probably be formed in
all cases at a temperature above that of ‘ white heat,’ and it
would change slowly down through the various grades of
colour till the natural tint of the constituent rock was
assumed. Yet even then water would not at first be able
to rest upon it, but if by some chance the vapour in the
atmosphere were locally condensed, the drops of boiling
rain would be rejected hissing from the uncongenial
surface.”

As a consequence of this steam atmosphere, another factor,
namely intense darkness, would be added to the heat.
Winchell has already graphically alluded to it, but we quote
again: ‘‘The clouds poured the ocean continually forth,

192 THE GODS OF OLD;

and the seething crust continually rejected the offering.
The field between the cloud and the earth was one stupen-
dous scene of ebullition. But the descent of rains and
the ascent of vapours disturbed the electricities of the
elements. In the midst of this cosmical contest between
fire and water, the voices of heaven’s artillery were heard.
Lightnings darted through the Cimmerian gloom, and world-
convulsing thunders echoed through the universe.”

That this heat and this darkness characterised the climate
of our globe for many a succeeding period is emphasised
by Figuier when describing the climatic conditions of each.
In the Silurian “the atmosphere was still dense, and a
pale sun was seen, struggling to penetrate this atmosphere,
and yielding but a dim and imperfect light.” In the
Devonian was ‘‘a semi-opaque atmosphere, and a light still
pale.” In the Carboniferous, “the attributes of the atmo-
sphere were excessive heat, extreme humidity, and a soft
light from the sun veiled by permanent fogs.” And so on
till we reach the Jurassic period, when “the progressive
cooling of the globe would produce a perceptible diminution
of the heat towards the northern regions, and there would
be a brilliant light from the sun.” If such conditions,
then, prevailed more or less up to the close of Paleozoic
time, how raging must we suppose the heat and how black
the gloom in the early Archean days when the granite and
the granite-born rocks were without a rival? Any descrip-
tion that could be given pales in significance and vividness
when contrasted with this of Hugh Miller: ‘‘ Let us suppose
that during the earlier part of this period of excessive heat
the waters of the ocean had stood at the boiling point even
at the surface, and much higher in the profounder depths;
and farther, that the half-molten crust of the earth, stretched
out over a molten abyss, was so thin that it could not
support, save for a short time, after some convulsion, even
a small island above the sea level. What, in such cireum-
stances, would be the aspect of the scene, optically exhibited
from some point in space elevated a few hundred yards over
the sea? It would be simply a blank, in which the intensest

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 198

glow of fire would fail to be seen at a few yards’ distance.
An inconsiderable escape of steam from the safety-valve of
a railway engine forms so thick a screen that, as it lingers
for a moment, in the passing, opposite the carriage windows,
the passengers fail to discern through it the landscape
beyond. A continuous stratum of steam, then, that attained
to the height of even our preseni atmosphere, would wrap
up the earth in a darkness gross and palpable as that of
Egypt of old—a darkness through which even a single ray
of light would fail to penetrate. And beneath this thick
canopy ihe unseen deep would literally “boil as a pot”
wildly tempested below; while from time to time, more
deeply seated, would upheave suddenly to the surface vast
tracts of semi-molten rock, soon again to disappear, and
from which waves of bulk enormous would roll outward, to
meet in wild conflict with the giant waves of other convul-
sions, or to return to hiss and sputter against the intensely-
heated and fast-foundering mass, whose violent upheaval
had first elevated and sent them abroad.”

Now, it is this excessive heat and gross palpable darkness
which stamped the Archean and many subsequent days,
that Mythology has personified as the Chimera.

In the first place, she was born of Echidna and Typhaon:
her ancestors evidently point to the early days of the newly
formed crust when the scorching blasts of heat intense went
up from the semi-molten granite. In the next place, every
epithet and phrase applied to her breathe of fire, of raging
heat,—ignea, ignifera, rabida, fera, monstrum flammivomum,
Chimera spiritus ignew, flammis armata Chimera; some,
also, of intense gloom,—horrida, horrenda.

But it is when we examine the name itself that the com-
plete significance bursts forth, for Xiuarpa means literally
(xaiw pavpdw) “the heated and darkened;” and our
language retains a relic of the dread monster in the word
** cimmerian,”’ where, while obliterating the idea of heat,
we have intensified that of darkness. ‘‘ Cremation” is
another relic, the ideal process being reversed. The
“ heated’? characteristic is that which is principally alluded

G.0. Oo

194 THE GODS OF OLD;

to by the poets; but the “‘darkened’”’ or blinded is dis-
tinctly mentioned by Apollodorus when writing of the
Chimera :

iv yap od pdvov évi GAa mrodXats otk etadoroy.—2. 3. 1. 3.

‘For she was all but well-blinded («3 dAadw) in one
respect, but in many others not so well;’’ where he evi-
dently means that while earth had lost altogether or nearly
so the light of incandescence, she still had the inferior light
- proceeding from the heated granite and the eruptions of
volcanoes.

With this dual idea of heat and darkness we can under-
stand that comparison of the Chimera given by Hesiod,
and retained by succeeding writers. The heat would have
its lair in the molten mass of our globe, coiled like a dragon,
as it were, in the sinuous billows of the liquid fire below:
the scorching blast, ravenous, as hot air always is, of the
steamy moisture that could not saturate it to repletion,
would rise, like a lion raging for its prey and enveloped
with a mane of darkness, to the heights above: from the
surface of the crust itself that was midway between the
two, the heat which was fed from the furnace underneath
would radiate, would, like a bounding goat, spring forth in
all directions. This radiating surface would be the real,
the true Chimera, and Lucretius expressly says so:

Prima leo, postrema draco, media ipsa Chimera.
De Rer. Nat. v. 903.

Té was necessary for the welfare of our earth, and of those
beings who inhabited and were to inhabit it, that many
processes, such as denudation, deposition, silting, stratifica-
tion, upheaval, and depression should occur as the ages
- winged their flight. But above all others it was absolutely
essential that the conditions alluded to under the Chimera
should be destroyed—that the heat should be reduced and
the darkness be dispelled. This done, all other operations
would be facilitated.

While the external envelope of our orb continued all
gaseous, or all igneous, or even while the ocean was
universal, there could be no proper temperature for earth,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 195

since the heat would radiate equally from, all portions of
the surface. But just as soon as the universality of the
ocean was broken up by an archipelago of craggy isles of
granite, there ensued as a consequence unequal heating of
the surface, and as a further consequence there began that
interchange of atmospheric currents evidenced on a small
scale by our land and sea breezes, and on a larger scale by
the trade winds—an interchange that must have increased
more and more according as the earth cooled towards the
poles, and as the power of the sun began to be felt through
the pall of clouds.

Briefly stated, the law of temperature is based on the
fact that cold air descends, and that hot air ascends and
has a capacity for absorbing moisture. Since both heat
and evaporation are at a maximum in the equatorial
regions, and decrease steadily towards the poles, the first
great effect of unequal heating is to produce over the
equator an ascending current of hot air that, absorbing
aqueous vapour as it rises, flows as an upper-current to the
poles and necessitates an under-current from the poles to
the equator. The colder regions are thus made warmer,
the heated ones cooler, and a suitable temperature is
acquired for our earth as a whole.

Now, this simple theory of modern science is identical
with that brought forward by Mythology, for Bellerophon,
as the name BeAAcpoddyrns denotes, is (BdAAw poddva) “ the
ascending and absorbing one”’ who, with the assistance of
Pegasus or Evaporation, destroyed the Chimera with his
arrows from on high.

Hesiod tells the story in its simplest form :

4 O€ Xipatpay erixte, mvéoveay dpuatudkeroy mp,

Sewnhy re peyddny Te, woOdKEa TE KpaTepHy Te.

tis 8 iv tpeis Kehadai’ pia ev yapomoto Aéovros,

9 O€ xtpaipys, 7 8 Squos, Kparepoio Spdxovros,

mpoabe déwv, dmibev 52 Spdxwv, pécon Sé Xiparpa,

Sewvdy dnonvelovoa mupos pévos alGopévoo.

THY pev Uyyacos cide kal eo Odds BeMAcpobdyrns.—Lheog. 319.
Chimeera too, breathing resistless fire,
The feared and vast, the swift and strong, she bore.

0 2

196 THE GODS OF OLD;

Her heads were three: of ravenous lion one,
Chimera’s own, and snake’s of aspect grim ;
The hon, fore; the dragon, aft; and placed
Betwixt the two, Chimeera, breathing forth
The fearful energy of blazing fire.

But, ne’ertheless, she sank beneath the yoke
Of Pegasus and rare Bellerophon. .

The story has been amplified by other writers, and new
characters introduced. They tell us how in the very earliest
days a transferring process went on whereby the particles
of matter were driven to the surface, and gravitated back
again towards the centre: this process they called Pretus
(mpotnt ‘to drive forward, to abandon”). The clear ex-
ternal space immediately surrounding the surface they
called Lycta (Aevxds), and its ruler they named Jobates
(oioBarys), ‘ the lone dweller.” They tell us also how from
the friendly intimacy between the heated peripheral par-
ticles and the cold external space, the former obtained
for itself a partner, what some would call a contracted
filmy crust, Sthenobeea (crevds Boeia), and what others would
term efflorescence, Anteia (dvOos). They further tell us
how in the course of time the ascending current (Bellero-
phon) that had shattered its own constitution by reckless
dissipation and had unwittingly destroyed the radiant light
and existence of incandescence, its near relative (Bellerus),
sought refuge and pristine vigour in the well-warmed courts
of Proetus; how, while recuperating, fhe too ardent film,
forgetiul of its spouse below, became enamoured of its glow-
ing guest and made, film that she was, markedly semi-
transparent advances to further intimacy on their part.
But in vain, we are informed: the heated current was
possessed of too chaste, too rarefied a nature for such com-
munion, and fled from adulteration, leaving the film it
made light of flushed with passion, quivering with rage,
and framing what would impel its spouse to destroy their
guest. What could this spouse do? Serupulous by
nature, next to nothing in attainments, he was with all his
power but the puppet of the stronger side, a very atomy
of what he should be; and so,—as Horace tells us—urged

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 197

by the misleading charges of the frail spouse that imposed
upon him, he could not withstand the pressure brought to
bear, and gave vent to a wrath which expelled the heat
and proved detrimental to himself.

Ut Proetus mulier perfida credulum
Falsis impulerit criminibus nimis

Casto Bellerophonti

Maturare necem refert.— Odes iii. 7.

The Chimera, without Homer’s narrative, would be im-
perfectly described. We inseré it here, hoping that the
foregoing remarks may prove serviceable in reading between

the poet’s lines.
Glaucus, a white-livered descendant of a gassy stock,
meets Diomed in the field of battle, and tells the tale.

"Eoti wodis "Edupy, pvyd ”Apyeos iiroBdroto,
*EvOade Sioudos toxev, 6 xépdiotos yéver’ avdpav,
Ziouos Aiohidys’ 6 8 dpa TAatvxor réxel vid"
Adbrap Tradkos erixrey dpipova Behepobovrny®

5 Te de Geol eddAos te Kat nvopenv épareuny
"Qracav’ aitdp oi Lpoiros xaxd pyoaro bupé.
"Os p’ €k Sypov ZAaocev, emet mod éprepos jev
*Apyclor’ Zeds ydp of ims oxjatp@ eddpacce.
To de yur} Lpoirou érepzvaro, Sv “Aveta,

10 Kpumradin @adtéryte perynpevas’ ddAG Tov od're
Hei? dyaba dpovéovra Saippova Beddepodésvrny.
*H dé sevoapéry potroy Baotkja mpoonida’
TeOvains, & Upotr’, ) xdxrave BeAAcpopdvrnp,

"Os p’ Cede rrdryre prynpevat ox EOedovern.

15 °Qs ddro* ov S€ dvaxra xédos AdBev, oioy dxovee.
.Kreivat pev p’ Gdéewe, o¢8dooaro yap Taye Gupe,
Tlépare S5€ puv Avxinvde, adpev 8° bye onpara Avypa
Todrpas év rivaxe wruxr@ EvpopOdpa Todad,
Aciéat 8 quaye: @ wevOepa, Sp’ dedotro.

20 Adrap 6 Bij Auxinudc OcGv tm dptpovt wopry.
ANN Gre 59 Avxinv ike, RdvOov re péovra,
Ipoppovéas piv tiev dvaé Avxins edpeins”
*Evyjpap Eeinoce, xat évvéa Bots lepevorer.
"ANN Gre Of Sexdry ébavy pododdxrvdos ’Hos,

25 Kat rére puv epéewe, cal jree ona ibéoOat,
“Orre pd of yauBpoio mapa Upoiroro pépotro.
Abrap ered} ofa xaxév mapedé£aro yapBpov,
Tp&rov pév pa Xivacpay dpatpaxérqy éxédevoe
Hedvépev. 4 8 ap’ env Ociov yévos, ov dvOparer,

198 THE GODS OF OLD;

30 Lpéode \éav, dribev 5€ Spdxor, pécon dé xipaipa,
Actviy dvorvetovaa mupos pévos aidopévoro,
Kal ri pev xarémecpve, Ge@v repdeooe miOjoas.—Illiad, vi. 152.

In some compartment of that massive pile
Which feeds the fiery steeds, there is a state
Called Ephyre, where Sisyphus abode,

Of all most greedy, and Atolian sprung.

He Glaucus bore; Glaucus, Bellerophon,

The open-hearted, unto whom the gods

For gifts gave radiance and a spirit fine.

But badly for himself did Proetus plot,

(When he of agents far more powerful was,

For Zeus had brought all others ‘neath his yoke,)
Who from his broad domain expelled the youth.
The spouse of Proeetus, blest Antea, longed
With him in secret intercourse to join ;

But no—not in the least does she persuade
Him, the high-minded, rare Bellerophon.
Specious she spoke the monarch Preetus then:

‘* Let Proetus die, or slay Bellerophon

Who wished me not for love inclined to join.”
Thus she; and hearing, rage possessed the king.
To slay him, sooth to say, he scrupled much,
For this inspired his inmost thoughts with fear ;
And so to Lycia he despatched him straight,
And many sorry, deadly tokens gave .

That on a folded tablet he had marked,

And bade him show them to his sire-in-law

In order his destruction to insure.

Yet ne’ertheless, to Lycia stretched beneath
The open safeguard of the gods he went.

But when to Lycia and the molten red

He came at length, then spacious Lycia’s king
With outstretched hands did pay him all respect.
Nine days he feasted him, nine oxen killed; -
But when at last the tenth bright morning dawned,
Then questioned he and asked to see what sign
From his near cousin, Proetus, might he bring.
But when his cousin’s baneful sign was shown,
Then first indeed he charged him as a task

To slay Chimera, the resistless one.

And she was of the race of gods, not men:

A lion, fore; a dragon, aft; and placed
Betwixt the two, Chimsra, breathing forth

The fearful energy of blazing fire.

Though such she was, she lost her life to him
Brimmed to the heart with tokens of the gods.

1

li

14

16

18

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 199

NOTES.

govt, &c.—We are transported in thought to a time when the
molten mass began to feel the effects of cooling, to work more
sluggishly as a whole—sufficiently so to make the surface
assume a thickened, pasty (updw) consistency.

Argos, related by derivation to both épyov, ‘‘a work, that
which is wrought or made,” and to dpyds, ‘glistening ;
sluggish,” evidently refers to our globe as a whole in those
days, just as immdPoros does to the eruptive lava, granite, &c.,
nourished within it.

Tf our earth, as claimed, is still molten in the interior, then
there must be an Ephyre still in existence, where the molten
lava is thickened in consistence through contact with the rocks
or vesicular air within : for this reason, possibly, does Homer
commence with ‘ éort.”

The genealogy of Bellerophon is best understood by noting the
steam from the furnace or locomotive. The ascent (Bellerophon)
must have been preceded by the groy colouring (Glaucus), and
that by the steam-process or ebullition (Sisyphus). The same
order of being may be said of Combustion.

dpipova.—a pva, ‘‘ not keeping close, open-hearted.”

Zebs yap ol.—The of refers to Zeus himself. Lite had established
its sway over the surface; but the half-molten particles
beneath the suriace (Proetus) were still independent.

daippova.—Hesiod calls Bellerophon écOAés, and Horace calls him
nimis castus: they are both synonymous with Homer’s phrase
Saippeov (daiw ppv), ‘‘ kindled in spirit, or divided in spirit,”
hence, rare, rarefied.

The specious pleading (evoapévy) comes in with the use of ove,
for the line will have very different meanings according as we
refer ovx to the preceding prynpevat or to the following ée@eAovon.

An attempt has been made to give the same ambiguity in the
English rendering, and the reader may put a comma after me,
or after not, according as he sympathises with Antea.

oeSdcoato.—It proved a sorry day for himself, as the poet has
already remarked, when Proetus expelled the heated air and
drove it to the light of day, since he thus
grew colder in his own nature and fell an
easier prey to Perseus, as Ovid relates.

nivax wruxt@.—Lhe folded tablet is literally
true, and can be readily understood from
the following cut and remarks taken
from Comstock’s Philosophy.

“Suppose ABC to represent a portion
of the earth’s surface, A being towards
the north pole, C towards the south pole,

200 THE GODS OF OLD;

and B the equator. The currents of air are supposed to pass in
the direction of the arrows. The wind, therefore, from A to B,
would blow on the surface of the earth, from north to south,
while from E to A the upper current would pass from south to
north, until it came to A, when it would change its direction
towards the south. The currents in the southern hemisphere,
being governed by the same laws, would assume similar
directions.”

The ascending current at the equator would be thus double-
troughed or folded, and would contain some of the lateral cold
air, enough to make the onyara Avypa, OupopOdpa.

20 The heated current ascends to the exterior surface (Lycia), which
was still but molten fire (ZdvOov péovra), and is eagerly received
by exterior space.

238—24 The connection between the Twelve Labours of Hercules and
our own great geological formations has been already pointed
out, when treating of Geryon. When Homer says, ‘‘ Nine
days he feasted him, nine oxen killed,” he means that for nine
cycles, preceding the tenth, the great ox, Earth, passed through
nine great mutations, each mutation a different ox as it were,
during all of which the conditions embodied in the Chimera
prevailed more or Jess. On the morning of the tenth was
Bellerophon commissioned to slay the Chimera. What was
this tenth day P Evidently, the Tertiary period, that has been
shown to be synchronous with the Tenth Labour. According
to Mythology, then, it was on the morning of the Tertiary
period, in Eocene times, when the temperature of our earth
began to be reduced so as to resemble somewhat that of
to-day.

This is in perfect accordance with the conclusion arrived at
by modern theories based on geological research.

The Cretaceous preceded the Kocene, and Figuier says of it,
“‘The seasons are no longer marked by indications of central
heat, and the influence of the light and heat of the sun began
to be felt more strongly. Zones of latitude show signs of
existence, and biological conditions are such as we can com~-
prehend.” ‘‘It is supposed,” says Hooker, ‘‘that after the
Cretaceous period was completed, in the movement which raised
the mountains there was a general elevation of the land of the
northern regions, and that the severe cold which was thus pro-
duced was at least a prominent agency in the destruction of

’ life at this period.”

82 repdecot mOyoas.—Saturated with evaporation,—mounted on

Pegasus.

The tale has been amplified further in connection with
Pegasus, but in the hope that the personified characters

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL, 201

are already sufficiently identified, there is no necessity for
further elaboration. Let us conclude by saying that the
Chimera was destroyed, and that temperature and an
orderly succession of the seasons were secured for earth ;
that Proetus rued the day when he drove the hot ascend-
ing current from his court, and thus permitted a solid
crust of some fifty miles or more in depth to encroach on
his domain; and that Bellerophon himself, the too rare
Bellerophon of those older days, outlived his usefulness
for good, grew hateful to the gods, and now wanders blind,
solitary, and far from the trodden path of mankind, in
the Aloean fields where our miners start at his shadow
and his breath as they go down, down into the bowels of
the earth. We have still, it is true, an ascending current;
but it is not that which in the days of old proceeded
directly from the glowing orb itself—not the true terrestrial
rider who ambitioned heaven, unconscious that his steed
was recalcitrant, and oblivious of the fact that he still
carried the ojpata Avypd, GvpopOdpa, in the shape of a
sluggish side wind, or ‘‘segni pede,” as Horace puts it,
Ode III. 12:
Eques ipso melior Bellerophonte, neque pugno
Neque segni pede victus.

Our earth has assuredly grown colder and colder, and
is now at best but a storehouse for the sun. Bankruptcy
has dogged her steps ever since she acquired the oxen of
the Iberian ploughman, and to-day she is compelled to
borrow heat from the same source from which she pre-
viously borrowed light.

202 THE GODS OF OLD;

CHAPTER XVI.
“HYDRA SAVIOR INTUS HABET SEDEM.”

Ophis.—Of the children of Phoreys and Ceto, this
character alone remains. All connected with it—genea-
logy, order of being, name, and description point to it as
being the centre of our earth, personified.

Kyra & émddrarov Sdpxu prrdryte puycioa

yeivato Sewdy dpe, bs épepvois xevOeat yains

wetpaotw ev peydAns mayxpioea pha puddocet.

TovTo pév éx Kyntovs cal Bopxuvos yévos éari.—Theog. 333.
In union mixed with Phoreys Ceto bore

A serpent terrible, her youngest child,

That in the closes, in the joyless depths

Of mighty earth, guards the all-golden seeds.

From Ceto and from Phorcys is this breed.

With the arrival of Echidna comes a pause in the
Hesiodic narrative, the poet breaking off, as it were, in
order to return to and dwell further on the Titans and
their offspring. But we have read enough to put the
question in all seriousness, ‘‘ Is not Theogony Cosmogony ?
And is not its author’s theme ‘ the building of our Earth?’”’
Step by step, without break or intermission, has the story
progressed,—from the unknowable of matter and force to
the knowable ; from oneness to division ; from the universe
to earth: that earth is then taken up and traced from
incandescence onwards: we are told how our orb was once
a molten ball of fire; how a crust became established on
it, and an ocean of waters on that crust; how those great
natural phenomena, the rain, the clouds, the storm-winds,
and the rainbow had their being; how the germs of our
mountains and continents came into existence; how the
granite basis of our globe was laid; and how evaporation
and temperature were secured. If this be not world-
building, then nothing is.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 208

Ovid, in his 2nd Fabula, gives a running sketch of all
the principal happenings from Pontus down. In his Ist
Fabula, he brought the story from Chaos down to the
Light and Universes. He then proceeds:

Sic ubi dispositam quisquis fuit ile deorum,
Congeriem secuit, sectamque in membra redegit.
Principio terram, ne non equalis ab omni
Parte foret, magni speciem glomerayit in orbis.
Tum freta diffudit, rapidisque tumescere ventis
Jussit et ambitze circumdare litora terre.
Addidit et fontes et stagna immensa lacusque,
Fluminaque obliquis cinxit declivia ripis,
Ques, diversa locis, partim sorbentur ab ipsa,
10 In mare perveniunt partim, campoque recepta
Liberioris aque pro ripis litora pulsant.
Jussit et extendi campos, eubsidere valles,
Fronde tegi silvas, lapidosos surgere montes.
Utque duce dextra crelum totidemque sinistra
15 Parte secant zone, quinta est ardentior illis:
Sic onus inclusum numero distinxit eodem
Cura dei, totidemque plage tellure premuntur.
Quarum que media est, non est habitabilis estu :
Nix tegit alta duas: totidem inter utramque locavit,
20 Temperiemque dedit mixta cum frigore flamma,
Imminet his aer, qui, quanto est pondere terrze
Pondus aquee levius, tanto est onerosior igni.
Tilic et: nebulas, illic consistere nubes
Jussit, et humanas motura tonitrua mentes,
25 Hit cum fulminibus facientes frigora ventos.
His quoque non passim mundi fabricator habendum
Aera permisit, Vix nunc obsistitur illis,
Cum sua quisque regant diverso flamina tractu,
Quin lanient mundum, tanta est discordia fratrum.
36 Eurus ad Auroram Nabateaque regna recessit
Persidaque et radiis juga subdita matutinis.
Vesper et occiduo que litora sole tepescunt,
Proxima sunt Zephyro: Scythiam septemque trionem
Horrifer invasit Boreas. Contraria tellus
35 Nubibus assiduis pluvioque madescit ab Austro.
Heec super imposuit liquidum et gravitate carentem
Aecthera, nec quicquam terrenze feecis habentem,
Vix ita limitibus disseepserat omnia certis,
Cum que pressa diu massa latuere sub illa,
Sidera coeperunt toto effervescere ccelo.
Met. I. 32—71.

Or

204

THE GODS OF OLD;

The mass when thus disposed some god soe’er

Cut, and when cut reduced it into parts.

And first of all the earth, that it might be

In all directions equal, did he round

After the fashion of a mighty orb.

Then poured he forth the seas, and these he bade
To heave and swell with winds of boist’rous sweep,
And clasp the shores of earth environed round.
Springs, too, he added, vast lagoons, and lakes,
And girt with winding banks the rushing streams
Which, scattered wide, are some by earth absorbed,
Some reach the sea and beat for banks the coasts,
When gathered in the freer tide’s expanse.

Ordered he, too, the plains to be outstretched,

The vales to sink, the woods to be enwrapped
With foliage, the stony hills to rise.

As circles two, on right, on lett, divide

The vault above—hotter than these the fifth—
Fen so the god’s solicitude defined

With number congruous the charge consigned,
And same for clime are stamped upon the earth.
Of these unfit for life through heat is that

Which midmost is ; snow covers deep two more ;
Twixt each of those a like amount he placed

And tempered them, the heat being mixed with cold.
O’er these hangs air, which heavier is than fire

As water’s weight is lighter than the earth’s :

And there he bade abide the fogs, the clouds,

The thunderclaps that awe the minds of men,

And cold-producing winds with lightning’s bolts.
But yet no leave to rule the air at large

To those was granted by the demiurge:

With difficulty now, when each its own

Peculiar blasts in varied clime controls,

Is curb put to them so they may not rend

The world’s domain: so great is strife of kin.

To eastern tracts and Nabatean realms,

Persia, and peaks touched with the morning’s rays,
Did Eurus go: for Zephyrus are next

The west and shores by setting sun made mild:
Rude Boreas seized on Scythia and the north :

By Auster is the opposite extreme

Of earth made moist with constant clouds and rain.
O’er these the ether, liquid, free from weight,

And having nought of earthly dross, he placed.
Scarce had he thus with fixed bounds hedged all,
When stars, that long lay pressed beneath the mass,
Began to shed their light in heayen’s expanse.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 205

NOTES.

1—2 In the preceding fable he described the division into universes,
He now deals with our particular universe (congeries), and in
two brief lines tells how it, too, was disrupted by some force
not well recognised, and reduced to the various heavenly bodies
comprised within it.

3 principio.—He begins with that particular portion (membram) of
the universe, our earth.

17 totidem.—‘‘ As many circles (zone) ”—that is five, the equatorial
circle, the two tropics, and the two polar circles—‘ are stamped
upon our earth to mark its climate.”

18 que media.—The equatorial circle; for places directly on the
equator suffer excessively, as a rule, from the intense heat.

19 duas.—Zonas is understood, the Arctic and Antarctic Circles.

totidem inter, &c.—Between the equator and each polar circle
(inter utramque) was placed the same number (totidem) of
degrees or parallels of latitude, thus constituting the two tem-
perate and the two torrid zones; so that all the earth between
the polar circles is really what is meant by the poet as having
temperature.

It only remains to say a few words with regard to the
Scriptural narrative. Genesis has condensed it to the
extreme of simplicity in I. 9, where all minor additions
and subtractions are ignored, and only the grand total
mentioned :

‘And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be
gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land
appear: and it was so.”

But here and there throughout the Scriptures we come
across allusions and phrases that are startling in their
nature. Most of them, it is true, are interrogational ; but
even so, they tend to prove that the construction of the
heavéns and the building of our earth were topics that
occupied, deeply occupied, the minds of those who penned
the words. ‘‘Dost thou know the balancings of the
clouds?” asks Elihu of Job, and the question remains
question still.

It would be fatuous to deny, after reading portions of
Job, the Proverbs, and the Psalms, that an intelligence
had applied its heart to wisdom, burnt the midnight oil,
and probed knowledge to its depths, only at last to say

206 THE GODS OF OLD.

submissively with Ecclesiastes, ‘“‘Then I beheld all the
work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that
is done under the sun: because though a man labour to
seek it out, yet he shall not find it; yea, further; though
a wise man think to know it, yet shall he not be able to
find it.”

BOOK FIFTH.
TITANIC TIES.

CHAPTER I.

THEOGONY.

Potamoi
Oceanides
| Helios
Selene
{ ios Anemoi
Astreeus Astra

Oceanus, md, Tethys

Hyperion, md. Thia

Zelos
Nike
Cratos
Hecate Bia

Crius, md. Eurybia Pallas, md. Styx.

Persea }
Coeus, md. Phoebe Astorie J
Vesta
. Demeter
Juno
Kronos, md. Rhea Plato
Neptune
Jupiter
Atlas
Mencetius
Prometheus
Epimetheus

* 'Trraws.

Iapefus, md. Clymene

MYTHS.

Oceanus.—Son of Uranus and Ge, and married to his sister Tethys,
by whom he begot all the river gods or Potami, and over
8,000 water nymphs or Oceanides. The Orphic hymns call
him the son of Ccelus and Vesta; Homer styles him the
father of all the gods; and the ancients in general regarded
him as the father not only of the rivers, but of all animals
and of the gods themselves. Apollodorus says that he alone
of all the Titans did not enter into the conspiracy against his

208 THE GODS OF OLD ;

father, Uranus. We is represented as an old man, with long
flowing beard, sitting upon the waves of the sea, and as
honoured with frequent visits from the other deities. The
early Greeks regarded Earth as encompassed by a river
perpetually flowing round it, which they called Oceanus, and
from which was derived the source of all the rivers and other
waters of our globe. Out of and into this river the sun and
stars were supposed to rise and set, and on its banks were
the abodes of the dead. From its thus being the earth’s
outer covering, the name came later on to be used for the
great outer waters of earth, and particularly the Atlantic, as
distinguished from the inner waters, or Mediterranean.

Tethys.—Daughter of Uranus and Gé, wife of Oceanus, and mother
of the Potami and Oceanides.

Potamoi.—Rivers, such as Nile, Alpheus, Eridanus, and others.

Oceanides.—Nymphs, daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, over 3,000 in
number, the most famous of whom were Electra, Doris,
Clymene, Callirrhée, Dione, Metis, Asia, Calypso, and Styx.
They were honoured with libations and sacrifices, and their
favour was invoked by sailors as a protection against storms
and the dangers of the deep.

Hyperion._A_ Titan, married to his sister Thia, and father of Helios,
Selene, and Hos.

Thia.—Daughter of Uranus and Gé, and wife of Hyperion. In the
Homeric hymn she is called Euryphessa.

Helios,—The Latin Sol, our own Sun, described as the god who sees
and hears everything, and who gives light to gods and men.
He rises from Oceanus in the east, traverses heaven in a
chariot drawn by four fiery steeds, and descends in the
evening into the darkness of the west and Oceanus. Later
writers, in describing his return passage from west to east,
picture him when sailing on his nightly voyage either as
slumbering in a golden bed or as carried in a golden boat,
the work of Vulcan.

Selene.—The Luna of the Latins, our own Moon, daughter of Hyperion
and Thia; or, according to later writers, of Zeus and Latona,
or of Pallas. She is pictured with long wings and a golden
diadem or crescent, is clothed in a flowing robe, and traverses
the heavens in a chariot drawn by two milk-white steeds.

Eés.—The Latin Aurora, and goddess of the dawn. Carried in a rose-
coloured chariot by two horses, Lampus and Phaethon, she
opens the gates of the east, announces the coming of the
Sun, pours dew upon the earth, and chases Somnus, Nox,
and the stars from heaven. By Astreeus, the son of Crius
and Eurybia, she begot the Winds and Stars. She loved
Tithonus and obtained immortality for him, but not eternal
youth; as a consequence, he grew old and shrunken, and
was finally changed to a grasshopper.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 209

Crius.—A Titan, married to Eurybia, by whom he begot Astrzus,
Pallas, and Perses.

Eurybia.—Daughter of Pontus and Gé, and wife of Crius.

Astreus.—Married to Kos, by whom he begot the Winds and the Stars.

Pallas and Styx.—Married to Styx, by whom he begot Zelus, Nike,
Cratos, and Bia. Styx, the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys,
was the first of all the older immortals who, with her children,
assisted Zeus against the Titans. In return for such services,
her children were allowed to dwell near Zeus in Olympus,
and Styx herself was made the solemn oath of the gods, a
violation of which entailed a deprival of divinity and of the
use of nectar and ambrosia for the space of 100 years, more
or less, according to different accounts. As a river, Styx is
described as a branch of Oceanus, proceeding from its tenth
source, flowing seven times round the nether world, and
dwelling at the entrance to Hades in a lofty grotto supported
by silver pillars.

Perses.—Brother of Astreeus and Pallas, and married to Asterie, by
whom he begot Hecate.

Ceus.—A Titan, married to his sister Phoebe, and by her the father of
Asteria and Latona.

Phebe.—Sister and wife of Coeus, mother of Leto and Asterie.

Leto.—The Latona of the Latins, daughter of Coeus and Pheebe, and

_sister of Asterie. She was beloved by Zeus, having been
wed to him before Juno according to some accounts, while
others say that she was but one of his favourites. During her
pregnancy she was persecuted by the jealous Juno, and all
the world was consequently afraid to give her refuge. She
wandered about till finally she came to Delos, which was then
a floating island and bore the name of Asterie or Ortygia.
Zeus fastened it with adamantine chains to the bottom of the
sea so as to be a secure resting place for Latona, and here
after nine days’ labour were her children born, first Diana, and
then Apollo.

Asterie.—The sister of Latona. To escape from the advances of Zeus,
she was changed to a quail and threw herself into the sea.
There she was metamorphosed into a rock that lay for a long
time under the surface of the waters, over which it subse-
quently rose and was called Asterie (‘‘the island that had
fallen from heaven like a star”) after her name. It was
subsequently called Delos, and this island it was that received
Latona in her confinement.

Asterie became the wife of Perses, son of Crius and

Eurybia, and by him she begot Hecate.

Hecate.—This Hecate is described as having power in heaven, earth,
and sea. Jupiter not only permitted her to retain all the
honours she possessed under the Titan rule, but even added
to them himself, especially by making her the guardian of

G.O. P

210

THE GODS OF OLD;

the young. She bestows honour and happiness on those she
favours; she helps in council, war, the courts of justice, and
in public games; she aids hunters and sailors, assists in
caring for the flocks, and in nourishing the young. Much
has been added by later writers. She has been made a deity
of the lower world, and a very powerful one; described as
dwelling at places where two roads crossed; in cemeteries,
and near the blood of murdered persons ; as wandering about
with the souls of the dead, teaching sorcery and witchcraft,
and as sending forth at night spectres and phantoms to
frighten mortals. Her approach is announced by the whining
and howling of dogs. She has often been confounded with
other divinities, such as Luna in heaven, Diana on earth,
and Proserpine in the lower world, and has thus been called
Tergemina, Triformis, Triceps. She is variously pictured as
having three bodies or three heads, that of a horse on the
right, a dog on the left, and in the middle that of a lion, a
woman, the moon, or a sow, for authors differ considerably
on the point.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 211

CHAPTER II.

OCEANUS, THE TIE OF WATERS.

Havine in the early part of his Theogony alluded to the
Titans as ‘‘ matter endowed with magnitude,” Hesiod now
takes up each individual Titan and descants upon him and
upon those sprung from him. This he does in regular
order, commencing with Oceanus, but leaving Iapetus to be
described the last.

Oceanus.— Whence came our oceans, seas, rivers, springs,
and every source of water upon our globe? In the
nebulous period all things were as one, whether of matter
or force. As evolution proceeded, the forces grew separate
into physical and chemical, while the nebulous atoms of
matter assumed to themselves dimensions, with the com-
bined result of a firmament being evolved as a boundary
for our Universe. There would thus, as already mentioned,
be eventuated a midway region between this firmament
and a constantly active and contracting mass whose density
must ever increase towards the centre previous to the
throwing off of further portions of its being, and must
probably vary towards the surface from the heat evolved in
its jaculatory efforts. In the midway region alluded to
would be assembled the vapour of every element that is
volatile at a high temperature, and chief among them the
elements of which water is composed. ‘‘ When the earth
was incandescent,” says Gunning, ‘‘ the oceans were above
not on the earth: the waters were here from ‘ the begin-
ning,’ here in their elemental gases. As silica is the oxide
of silicon, water is the oxide of hydrogen: both imply a
time when their elements had not combined, were free.”
‘* When the earth and its atmosphere,” resumes the same
writer, ‘‘had cooled to the dew point, condensation occurred: ©

; P 2

212 THE GODS OF OLD;

oxidation must have oecurred before condensation: the
oceans must have hung as a pavilion of clouds and a thick
veil of mist before they fell in rain upon the earth.”

The nebulous atoms had thus changed in time into
elements, and some of those elements had later on
combined to form what we call Aqueous Vapour: in other
words, the nebulous atoms of Gé had become endowed
with magnitude, and one particular class of those combined
atoms formed what Mythology has called Oceanus.

Let us study in condensed form this aqueous vapour :

1. It, or its elements, are of hoary antiquity, since, as

being the most volatile, it would be among the first to
be evolved from the heated mass. .

2. Being the immediate source of rain, and rain of
springs, and those springs of rivers,—then every
stream and river may well be said to have their origin
in this aqueous vapour.

3. Until it condensed to form the first rain that fell,
there could be no life, vegetable or animal, upon earth.

Now, wherein does this condensed science differ from
Mythology when it tells us that Oceanus was one of the
oldest deities; the father of mighty rivers and gladsome
streams; the father of the Gods themselves? And
wherein does Science or Mythology differ materially from
the following passages in Genesis, Chap. I., 5 and 6.

5. And every plant of the field before it was in the
earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for.
the Lord God had not caused it to rain-upon the
earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

6. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered
the whole face of the ground.

Tydvs 8 ’Qxeave Torapods réxe Snevras.—Theog. 337.
For Oceanus Tethys then begot
The eddying rivers,
both the Nile, and Alpheus, and wide-wandering Eridanus,
and so on for those rivers divyevras, that is, the rivers that
flow in an eddying or circwlar course, from the aqueous

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 213

vapour above to sea beneath, and back again to whence

they came, and so on interminably.

Once more referring to what is stated in our modern
works as regarding the nature of this aqueous vapour, we
find the following among others :

1. It isa bland, impalpable gas, which the atmosphere
in combination with the waters of the sea is constantly
secreting. .

2. By absorbing the radiated heat, it acts as a mantle
to earth in securing it against cold; and it is an
important factor in the meteorological phenomena of
our globe.

3. Beneath its benign shelter live mankind, animals, and
plants. ‘‘ Eliminate the aqueous vapour for the short
interval of a summer night,’ says a writer on geology,
‘‘and the sun would rise next morning on an earth
petrified with frost.”

4, It is ever in motion, forms a connecting link between
heaven and earth, and according to its density or
rarity are hearing, sight, and motion affected. It is
the presence of aqueous vapour that affects the density
of the air, and the denser the air the better is sound
heard, the more resistance is there to motion, and the
more interference with vision, as instanced well on a
foggy day.

5. Being the source of rain and moisture, it is all-
conducive to the fertility of the land, the growth of
vegetation, and the welfare of cattle.

6. Itis always, even on the hottest day, present in the
atmosphere, is potent in the rarefaction or density of
the air, and must consequently by the production of
rain, hail, and snow, be considered as an active agent
in the corrosion and disintegration of the rocks.

The following is Hesiod’s description of the daughters of

Oceanus, the Oceanides. Close examination will show that

it is no mere jumble of names; that, on the contrary, it is

a well digested summary of the attributes which modern

science assigns to aqueous vapour :

214

THE GODS OF OLD;

, 8 a © 4 ca a BS ~
Tikre 5€ Ouyarépwy iepov yévos, at xara ‘yaiay
&dpas xoupifvover ovy ’Ard\Nove dvaxte
kai Horapois, ratrny S€ Avws mdpa potpay exovot,
TetOd 7 ’ASpnrn re “ldvOn + ’HAéxrpn re,

5 Apis re Tpupve re xat Oipavin deoedijs,
“Inma@ te KAupévy re “Pddeud re Kaddtpdn te
ZevEa re KAvrin re “ISvid re WaotOdn re
TWAn§avpy re Yadakavpy 7’ épary re Avdvn
MyAdBoais re Gdn re Kai everdyjs TlodAvdepn,

10 Kepknis te, huiy eparyn, WAoura re Boars,
Tleponis 7’ “Idveipd 7 Andorn re dyn re,
Ilerpain 7 épdeoca MeveoOo 7 Etparn te,
Maris 7 Etpurdun re Teheote re xpoxdsremdos
Xpvonis 7 ‘Ain te xal iuepdeooa Kalua,

15 EvSapy re Tixn re cat Apdiped ’Qxupdn Te,

x a, a La Af 3 A ¢ 4
kat Srv, 7 8n cheov mpodepecrdryn eoriv dracéwv.
atrat & "Qxeavod xat TyObos é£eyévovro

r a, ’ * > Soy
mpecBurarat kotpat’ aoddoi ye pév eioe Kal GAAat.
tpis yap xiAtal eioe ravioopor ’Qxeavivat,

age ca o iy iA e

20 ai pa modvomepécs yaiav kai Bévbca Kipyys

af. £ “~ 3 if , J A ,
mitvrn pes epérovet, Gedev dyad Téxva.

f 7 3m) . x ce
réaca 8 até? erepot rorapol cavaynda péovres,
viées "Oxeavot rovs yelvaro rotma Thus"

~ wy ? 2 id Ba nm > a 3 ~
TOY ovop’ adpyadéov mavrev BpoTs avdpt evaneiv,

25 of 8€ Exacton icaow, Soot mepivaierdovot.—Lheog. 346.

A blessed race of daughters she begot,

Who with the rivers and Apollo king

Mortals caress,—from Jove this lot they have:

The bland and impalpable, warm, electric,

The blessing, and anthem proemial, divine,

The restless, pervading, the flowing, and changing,
Help to life, hearing, vision, to motion diffused,
The moistening, fertile, sweet heavenly treasure,
All-nutrient, cursive, and well-favoured fount,

The beauteous-shaped circlet, the wealthy for oxen,
Dispelling, cloud-melting, condensing, and gilding,
The daintily crumbling, corrosive, and mould’ring,
The subtle in nature, the boundless, mysterious,
The pale-golden, teeming, desire-breeding mantle,
The kind, the auspicious, circumfluous, swift,

And Styx which indeed of them all is the first.

Of Oceanus and of Tethys then

These maids, the oldest of their kind, were sprung;
Yet many others too there are besides.

For thousands three these tiny hammerers are,
These ocean-born, who everywhere alike

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL, 215

Roam scattered o’er the earth and depths of sea,
A glorious race of goddesses divine.

And rivers just as many are there, sons

Of Oceanus, dashing on their course,—

These too the venerable Tethys bore,—

Whose names in full ’twere hard for man to tell,
But known they are to those who near them dwell.

NOTES.

2—3 The aqueous vapour, light and heat, and size of rivers, have

oO

12

14

19

23

much to do with the civilisation of mankind. .
*Adunry, Gyros, “ unconquered, wntouched, impalpable.”
Ipupvd, mpd vyvos ‘‘ the first hymn,” the proem of creation.

‘* Before eternal Love had lit the sun,
Or Time had traced his dial-plate in stars,
The joyful anthem of the ocean flowed.””—Mrs. Hale.

KAupémn—xdteo peévos “force or strength perceived, or viewed in all
its aspects,” hence, ‘‘ renowned, pervading.”

TAntatpy, wAjOos Enpds ‘‘ fillang the dry;” Tadakatpn, ydda Enpds
‘‘making the dry flow with milk ;” A:dvn dios duy ‘Sa heavenly
purchase.”

TloAvdepy, rodds d&pov, or words vdap.

*Tdvetpd, iaive efpos “‘ to melt the fleece ;” ’Acdotn, a yaords “ not
opened”; hence, close, dense; Savdy, EavOos, ‘yellow, red,”
referring to the varying colour of the clouds.

Tlerpain, wérpa paie ‘‘to break the rocks;” MeveoOo, pévos éoblw
“*to eat the strength ;” Etpamy, eipads ‘‘ mould, decay.”

*Agin, dw “ to satiate.”

inepderoa Kalua

“ With the fertile moisture cheered,
The orchards smile, joyous the farmers see
Their thriving plants, and bless the heavenly dew.”—Phillips.

Téxn, rvyxdve “to happen, fall out, come by chance.”

The absence of aqueous vapour makes a Sahara ; its presence,
an oasis. Huxley says, ‘‘ The well-being and even the very
existence of every living thing is absolutely dependent on the
composition of the air.”

taviagopot, Tavta opupa ‘to beat with the hammer.” So too we
say ‘‘the pattering of the rain;” and one writer on elementary
geology makes use of the words ‘‘ those tiny hammerers” for
the raindrops. And if, as is probable, ¢iny be derived from the
Latin tenuis, which certainly comes from reive or ravi, the
word rarvoqopor will literally signify ‘‘ tiny hammerers.”

’Oxeavod.—The usual derivation is dks vdw, ‘rapid flowing,”
or ‘flexibly flowing;” dxits éavov, “the flexible mantle,”
would suit equally well, and be more in accordance with the
characteristics.

216 THE GODS OF OLD;

Apollodorus, while mentioning the number of the
Oceanides as 8,000, enumerates but six, namely Asia,
Styx, Electra, Doris, Hurynome, and Metis. At the same
time he introduces as one of the Oceanides, Amphitrite,
the wife of Neptune, whom Hesiod classifies as a Nereid,
calling her éiopipm “Apdurpirn, ‘the well-hammering
Amphitrite,” as the waters of the seas beat and dash the
rocky coasts of the neighbouring lands. When Apollodorus
says that Oceanus alone of all the Titans did not enter into
the conspiracy against Uranus, he means that this aqueous
vapour is of far-reaching extent, permeating possibly the
ether that unites all the bodies of our Universe; or else,
that disruption of the firmament could not take place were
the elements of this aqueous vapour present to interfere
with the heat evolved in the act of separation. Well,
therefore, have Oe@v yéveots, Somep yéveots TavtTecot TirvKTaL,
Oceanum, patrem rerum, and other like epithets been
applied to Oceanus.

But far more frequently, and with equal significance,
has another class of epithets been assigned him, such as
péyas, axadappelrns, Baddppoos, ayydppoos, "Qxeavds Torapyds,
TeAjets ToTads, and tepds woTayds. Vast as are the oceanic
waters on our globe, and small though be the amount of
aqueous vapour in a given quantity of air—from 4 to 16
grains in 1000—yet when we consider the extent and
circumference of our atmosphere, we must believe that
there is a much larger ocean above than below. This
mighty aqueous vapour ocean has its own eddies, its own
currents, its own storms; and under ordinary circumstances
remains invisible, colourless, and transparent, until the air
containing it is cooled below the point of saturation by the
union of aérial currents of different temperatures, or by the
rise of air into upper and colder regions of the atmosphere.
In the one case saturation augments the aqueous vapour ;
in the other, expansion, radiation, and contact with the
cold peaks of mountain regions, chill it. In both cases
minute particles appear that retain a liquid, or more or less
solid condition, according to the varying degree of temmpera-

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 217

ture, and fill the upper region with masses of clouds,
fantastic in form, and varying in size and altitude. Further
condensation augments the size of those cloud particles,
and finally they fall to earth as dew, rain, snow, hail, or
sleet. In some one or other of those forms does this
aqueous vapour fall on ocean, sea, and lake, on mountain,
valley, marsh, and plain; it sinks even into earth itself,
and permeates through the solid crust to unknown depths,
or circulates through the tunnels and crevices which in
great measure it has fashioned for itself underground. But
this is not the end of the aqueous river from above: by the
sun’s heat this liquid downfall is again more or less
collected from every part of sea and land on which it fell,
and is raised as vapour to the airy regions whence it came,
there again to be condensed to clouds, again to fall on
earth, again to be restored to the realms above; and so on,
without end.

Here is a vast system of circulation ceaselessly going on!
From the first day a drop of water was formed on the
nebulous confines of our globe to the present moment, the
action has been the same; we behold, as Mythology tells
us, a vast, soft-flowing ocean river, moving to depths below
and to heights above, flowing back into itself; a perfect
river, encircling earth as it does; a sacred river surely, as
the gift of God, and as mentioned in sacred history :—

‘But there went up a mist from the earth,

And watered the whole face of the ground.”
Genesis ii. 6.

‘How far does this aqueous vapour stretch? Our atmos-
phere is stated to extend 50 miles or so above earth, and is
conjectured to reach to an inconceivable distance beyond
this in a condition of greater or less tenuity. Wherever
air is found, there certainly is aqueous vapour ; and owing
to the superior lightness of its constituents, it would be
rash to assert that it could not exist in that common
medium, if such there be, which binds all the bodies of our
system, perhaps our universe.

It must be with an added interest and a broader interpre-

218 THE GODS OF OLD;

tation that we read such passages as have Oceanus or
Tethys for their theme :—

. Qua sol utrumque recurrens
Aspicit Oceanum. ABneid vii. 101.

Nos manet Oceanus circumvagus.—Horace Hp. xvi. 41.
Oceani finem juxta solemque cadentem,
Ultimus Asthiopum locus est: ubi maximus Atlas
Axem humero torquet stellis ardentibus aptum.
Aineid iv. 480.

Earth, then, is one of the banks of this endless river, and
on this bank surely are the abodes of the dead: accepting
the widespread diffusion of aqueous vapour, we see the
reason, and must acknowledge the truth, why the sun and
stars—of our system at least—-should be described as
rising and setting therein.

And when life and life’s forces lie parched and breathless
under a torrid sun, when the baked earth and glassy sea
are incapable, as it were, of affording sufficient nutriment
to being, then does a visit to this beneficent Oceanus
invigorate and strengthen the drooping plant, the listless
animal, and exhausted man.

‘<The clouds consign their treasures to the fields,
And softly shaking on the dimpled pool

Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow,
In large effusion, o’er the freshened world.”—-Thomson.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 219

CHAPTER IIL

HYPERION, THE TIE OF WORLDS.

Hyperion.—The nebula at one time filled all space.
When the firmament was separated there must have
eventuated a differential space between the two. It is
evident enough that this space would be constantly aug-
menting at the expense of a constantly contracting and
diminishing nebulous mass, and that thither should rush
all the cosmic matter given off through the sons whether
by radiation or disruption.

Reasoning of the universe somewhat in the same
fashion as we do of our System, we may suppose the
combined forces of attraction and rotation on a constantly
shrinking mass as resulting in a peripheral velocity so
great that gravity would be overcome and the peripheral
portion be detached.

This process, repeated again and again, would eventuate
in the establishment of independent masses, the beginnings
of the sun systems of the universe. We are also at
liberty to imagine that instead of those repeated abstrac-
tions from the original nebula, there might have occurred
but one, whereby far and away the mightiest portion
would be detached as one mass, leaving but a minimum
behind. The former would be evolved into the sidereal
system by further disruptions; the latter, into our solar
system.

However, or how manifold the division, there would be
outer space to fill, and a rush of cosmic matter to fill it,
each mass taking its destined place. This rush of cosmic
matter to outer space would seem to be the Hyperion and
Thea of the myths. The derivation of Hyperion from éaép
iév, “ moving above or beyond,” is not satisfactory to many,

220 THE GODS OF OLD;

owing to the position of the accent. Now we find zapa and
dia written wapai and dat by Homer and others. If we do
the same with this ‘Yzepiwv and derive it from tzepi wy,
then the accent will be satisfied and we get for equivalent
‘being beyond”’ or ‘‘ being above,”’ which agrees with the
idea of outer space. Again as to Oela, we find O€o or deiw
‘signifying ‘“‘to run,” “to rush,” and intimately associated
with Ovo, the original sense of which Passow has suggested
to be “to fire,” “to burn.” So that Thea and Hyperion
would imply much the same notion as “the heavenly
fires” of Milton, or “‘ the incandescent orbs of space,” as
plain prose is sometimes forced to put it. Let us also
remark that there is a suspicious resemblance between
Geta and ‘“‘ heat,” and still more so between it and the
Gothic ‘ heito,” to which our English word is traced.

Cela & "Hédudv re péyav hapmpdy te Sequnv

"HS O, i wdvrecow emtyOoviaror paciver

aOavdrats te Oeoict, rot odpavay ebpiy Exovat,

yeival?’ brrodpnGcio’ “Yiepiovos év pidérytt.—Theog. 371.
But in Hyperion’s fellowship subdued,

Thia begot the mighty Sun, bright Moon,

And Eés too, who shines o’er all terrene

And deathless gods that hold the heaven wide.

In plain prose, the heat of the separated nebulous mass
was at length overcome by the temperature of outer space,
overcome sufficiently to produce a Sun, a Moon, and Hos.

Helios.—The same figurative mode of speaking which
we use as bearing on the rising and setting of the Sun
has been also largely used by the ancients. That the true
system of astronomy was taught by Pythagoras and his
disciples is well substantiated and recognised; and Ovid
thus testifies to the sun’s setting on one-half of the world
only to illumine the other half:

Ipse Dei clypeus, terr& cum tollitur ima,

Mane rubet: terraque rubet cum conditur imé:
Candidus in summo est. Met. xv. 192.

God’s shadow too, when raised o’er earth below,
The morning fires: and fires when hid from earth:
*Tis in the zenith bright,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 221

1 clypeus.—So Byron in his Manfred :—
‘Thou material God !
And representative of the unknown—
‘Who chose thee for His shadow.”
2 terraque rubet—reddens the morning elsewhere,

The ancients described the Sun as traversing the
heavens, in the same colloquial fashion we do ourselves,
and the golden boat or couch in which he made the journey
from west to east is simply figurative, after the same
colloquial fashion, of the under half, so to speak, of our
world being illuminated when the upper half is in darkness
and in slumber.

Awake, we behold the Sun racing in the heavens, and
say so, while recognising the reverse to be true: in dark-
ness and asleep we cannot any longer continue the fiction
of a race that we do not see; but to be consistent, collo-
quially consistent, we must get the Sun back from the
west after the same quasi fashion we spoke of him as
going to the west, and the myth of the golden boat, sailing
along in an ocean of aqueous vapour, was evolved as the
best solution of the problem, how to placate the deception
of the senses. There could scarcely be a better. Cowley
has imitated it, using ‘‘a clear river” for “a swift
vessel ” :—

“Through the soft ways of heaven, and air, and sea,

Which open all their pores to thee,

Like a clear river thou dost glide,

And with thy living stream through the close channel slide.”

Flammarion writes thus :—‘‘ In the centre of this group
shines the sun, a source of light which illuminates it, and
of heat which warms it. Floating in the bosom of the
space which surrounds it on every side, this group is
like a fleet of many boats rocked in the ocean of the
heavens.”

Further description of Helios does not come within
the scope of this book, and though there are multitudinous
myths connected with the Sun God, he does not enter
prominently into the Hesiodic narrative which we are
intending to follow as closely as possible.

222 THE GODS OF OLD;

Sufficient for our purpose is it that Helios is really
our Sun, that there is no concealment about his per-
sonality ; for, as Virgil says,

*¢ Solem quis dicere falsum audeat.”

Selene, too, is not essential to our narrative. So long
as it is clearly recognised that our Moon is meant, we
are satisfied, for the reasons mentioned already, to leave
‘the queen of night,” and proceed to others not so well
understood.

Eos will be treated of best in connection with her con-
sort Astreus. Let us remark, however, that, as the child
of Hyperion and Thea, she too is cosmic matter,—that
most ethereal form of it which composes our starry worlds,
just as the Sun and Moon are less ethereal forms of the
same matter.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 223

CHAPTER IV.

Sror. 1—CRIUS, THE TIE OF ORDER.

Crius.—‘ Order is Heaven’s first law,” sings Pope, and
cavil as we may at the precedency, we must assent to the
efficacy of the mighty power which the poet mentions.
What is Order ? It involves much or all that is implied in
method, arrangement, system, manner, way, rule, design,
plan, scheme, and organisation. There is a distinction
discernible in all these: while design, plan, and scheme
have reference usually to the totality of a thing, the others
refer to the parts as connected with the whole; and while
the dominant idea in ‘‘ rule” is that of sway or precept,
in “method” if is orderly procedure; and so on. But
Order embraces them all, the general principle of arrange-
ment as well as the idea of authority, the universal notions
of some as well as the restricted meanings of others.

And yet this “Order” is too definite in its usually
received application, too well developed to denote the
incipiency of what is implied—too mature, in short, to suit
our purpose. There is another word, broader in meaning,
more generic, and smacking more of the nebulous, which
offers itself for approval; it is the word ‘‘ Course.” It
involves all that Order does, and something more, as evinced
in such phrases, ‘the course of creation,” ‘a course of
studies,” ‘‘ westward the course of empire wends its way,”
‘‘ the course of true love never did run smooth ;”’ itis derived
indirectly from the Greek xeipw; it has the additional
advantage of being the correct English analogue for the
particular Titan that Mythology has termed Kpidés, and of
whom we are now treating.

Whether Kpiés, or as it is sometimes written Kpetos, be
derived from xefpw or from xpivw, we shall not insist on, nor

224 THE GODS OF OLD;

need we, in as much as the radical of each word implies
‘‘ to cut, to separate ;”’ and so long as this idea of separa-
tion is kept in mind, the derivation leads up to the idea of
Order,—that all-essential adjuvant to Evolution, which is
but a change or separation from the simple to the complex.
It is this notion of separation and consequent arrangement
that Ovid has dwelt on when describing the events connected
with the early construction of our universe and earth :
Nam ccelo terras, et terris abscidit undas,
Et liquidum spisso secrevit ab ere coelum. Met. i. 22.
Sic ubi dispositam quisquis fuit ile Deorum,
Congeriem secuit, sectamque in membra redegit.
Met. i. 32.
Matiter is observed only in its compounds. The atoms of
which it is composed are beyond our ken. But from the
day when first those atoms assumed existence there was a
Crius which impelled them to arrange themselves definitely
in molecules and compounds,—an order or course of being
that was irrevocably associated with Hurybia («ipis Bia),
with a far-extended power that reached from heaven above
to earth and the denizens of earth. Alexander Pope has
hymned this Titanic Crius as no other poet has ever done:
‘* Vast chain of Being! which from God began,
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach; from infinite to thee,
From thee to Nothing. On superior pow’rs
Were we to press, inferior might on ours:
Or in the full creation leave a void,
Where, one step broken, the great scale’s destroyed ;
From Nature’s chain whatever link you strike,
Tenth, or ten-thousandth, breaks the chain alike.
And if each system in gradation roll
Alike essential to th’ amazing whole,
The least confusion but in one, not all
That system only, but the whole must fall.
Let Earth unbalanced from her orbit fly,—
Planets and stars run lawless through the sky ;
Let ruling angels from their spheres be hurled,—
Being on Being wrecked, and world on world;

Heaven’s whole foundations to their centre nod,
And Nature trembles to the throne of God.”

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 225

From this nebulous course springs definite order, which
may be subdivided into (1) constant and uniform; (2)
changeable and multiform; and (8) a mixture of the
preceding two, namely, that which is either constant and
multiform, or changeable and uniform. The last two may
be predicated of things terrestrial, and are symbolised
respectively by the Pallas and Perses that are born of
Crius. The first—the constant and uniform—is found
nowhere but in the heavens, and is called Astreus as being
observable only in ‘‘ the movement of the stars”’ (doTpa
pew).

To this Astreus, the remaining son of Crius, was Hés,
the daughter of Hyperion and Thia, mated according to
the myth.

Sect. 2.—THH CONSTANT AND THE DAWN.

Eés.—When treating of Hyperion, it was mentioned how
the parent nebula might be conceived, after the formation
of a firmament, as disrupting into many successive portions,
or into two very unequal masses, one to form our Solar
System, the other to evolve the Sidereal System, and that
as a consequence evolution would go on apace in both.
The larger of these masses would by subsequent disruption
be itself separated into other nebule, and these into others,
and so on, all varied as to size, shape, and distance, but
all possessed of that faint, hazy, ill-defined light charac-
teristic of the nebule of our own day when viewed with
the naked eye or telescope.

Nebulous matter may consequently be considered as the
dawn of our universe, so far as the light from extended
matter be considered. Comparing our Karth with its Sun
the spectroscope shows many of the constituents of the
former as resident in the latter. Thus proceeding from
within outwards, we find in the reversing layer of the Sun
traces of incandescent copper, nickel, cobalt, iron, and
manganese ; the spot zone exhibits titanium and sodium ;
the chromosphere presents the vapours of calcium and

G.0, Q

226 THE GODS OF OLD;

magnesium; and the coronal atmosphere, or outermost
envelope, consists mainly of sub-incandescent hydrogen
and one other not well-recognised element. And further-
more, as Lockyer has pointed out, those elements would
appear to have succeeded each other according to their
densities.

Again, comparing the Sun with the fixed stars, we find
some like Capella, Arcturus, Aldebaran, and others, to
resemble it so closely in the character of the light emitted
as to prove them to contain the same constituents; others,
like Sirius, Vega, and many more, show by the prepon-
derance of the hydrogen line that they are hotter, and
brighter, and consequently less evoluted in the order of
being than our own Sun; still others, and particularly the
majority of the red-coloured stars, show by their banded
spectra that they are more advanced in progress than our
Sun, that they are cooler, “dying out Suns,” as they have
been termed.

Once again comparing those fixed stars with the “ star
clustres,” distinguished for their isolation, variety in form
and size, and for different degrees of condensation, we find
the purely gaseous spectra observed in only the hottest and
whitest of the single stars, as Sirius, common to all the
components of the ‘‘clustres,” showing a less degree of
evolution for them as a whole.

When, finally, we compare those ‘‘clustres’’ with the
nebula, and note, as in certain of the spiral varieties,
the rifts or dark spaces between the central nucleus and
the surrounding rings, the convolutions round a central -
star, and the stars formed and forming in those very
convolutions, with the connecting nebulous matter between
the stars and convolutions, we are forced to believe that
stars are formed, as Roberts puts it, ‘‘ by the condensation
of nebulosity, or by the aggregation of meteoric or other
cosmic matter.”

Reasoning thus from Earth to Sun, and from Sun to
single stars, star clusters, and nebule, we discover a chain
of evidence proving that the stars are formed of nebulous

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 227

matter, and are cooling to the condition of our Sun,—that
all, it matters not how slowly, are approaching the condition
of our Earth; and reversely, that our Earth, cold and
shrunken as it now is, was once like its own Sun, could at
one time compare with Sirius in heat and brilliancy, and
was composed of luminous gas, the first stage we know of
in evolution from purely nebulous matter.

This nebulous matter, then, that broke away from its
smaller partner and, soaring upwards, assumed an upper
place in space, to be subsequently itself subdivided, may
be looked on as the dawn of created matter, begetter of the
stars, and the early precursor of the light which was emitted
by those stars, our Sun included. But this is Eds, or
Aurora, child of Hyperion and Thia, mother of the stars,
and precursor of the morning red. By her alone was the
light of matter visible, faintly and indefinitely like our
dawn, when the sidereal system was yet in its nebulous
incipiency, and when our Sun was in embryo; by her,
assisted by the methodical procedure of her spouse
Astreus, were Sirius, ‘the monarch of the skies,” the
‘demon ”’ Algol and the “‘ variable” V of Cygni, were the
white Vega and yellow Capella, the orange Arcturus,
Aldebaran the red,—were all the hosts of heaven brought
into being and nursed from infancy to age, from
nebulosity to luminosity; by her and by him was
our own System evolved into Sun and planets; and
by her is the light of former days, still resident in the
stars, brought to us each morning when the goddess
driving her steeds, Lampus and Phethon (dos éewv),
ushers in the dawn.

‘‘Of Eos and Astreeus were the winds and stars,” is the
brief description of Apollodorus. The ascent of heated
air, or nebulous matter, is an all-important and well-
understood factor in the causation of winds. Much more
important must it have been in the very early youth of our
globe when heated nebulous matter was more potent and
more extended over its surface, and when there existed no
such obstructions as mountain peaks, or even continents, to

Q 2

228 THE GODS OF OLD;

the production of those northerly, westerly, and southerly
winds which we call constant (as opposed to the periodical and
variable winds), and which under the name of trade winds
are the prevailing type to-day in the equatorial regions.
Bearing in mind that nebulous matter is Hos, and that
Astreus is the symbol of constant or unvarying order, we
can see why the myth has made the Constant Winds
children of Eés and Astreus. The other winds, it will be
remembered, had as progenitors Thaumas and Electra, and
did not come into being till after the time of Kronos, since
Hesiod says, ‘‘ peraxpdviat yap taddov.”’

There was a day, then, when Earth was as bright and
hot as Sirius; when, later, it was as brilliant as our Sun;
when, still later and covered with its primal crust, the sur-
face glowed with heat from pole to pole. But even so,
there was ever an unceasing radiation of its heat to out-
ward space, a radiation that continued through all the ages
from the Archaic to the Cainozoic. Colder and more
shrunken then did Earth get to be from age to age; the
polar regions were the first to suffer, and the heat was
being constantly transferred towards what is now the equa-
torial zone.

It is this theory of Earth’s progressive cooling that has
been incorporated into mythology under the fable of Eds
and Tithonus.

Heat was carried away from Harth as a whole, and
gradually transferred from the poles to the tropics:
Tithonus, te Odwy “heated matter,” was carried off by
Aurora to Aithiopia, alway oy; ‘‘ Tithonusque remotus in
auras,’ a8 Horace says. But our Harth, or the matter of
it, will always possess some heat: Aurora obtained immor-
tality for Tithonus. The consequence of progressive
radiation of heat has been to make Karth colder and more
contracted : so too did Tithonus lose the freshness of youth
and grow shrunken in his old age; ‘‘ Longa Tithonum
minuit senectus,” as Horace says again. Science asserts
that changes of climate have been recurrent on our globe,
that the glaciation of one hemisphere and warmth of the

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 229

other has been the rule, and that such alternate conditions
occur every ten or twelve thousand years.

Though Harth, then, may grow colder and colder, it
retains sufficient heat to nourish the vital spark—Tithonus
cannot die;—and by transferring the snow and ice from
one hemisphere to the other, it continues its existence:
even so some myths relate that Tithonus was changed into a
grasshopper, an insect that according to old belief, moults
when it is old and grows young again.

1 ’Aotpaip 8 "Has duéuous réxe kaprepoOipous,
apyéotny Zéupov, Bopény 7’ aivrnpoxédevOov
kat Norov, ev diAdryre bed Oe@ edimeioa.
tous 6€ per’ dorépa tixrev ‘Ewopédpov “Hpryéveta
dotpa te Napmeréavra, td’ ovpavos eorepdvwrat.—Lheog, 378.

or

Couched with the god in sweet companionship
Did Eos for Astreeus bear the winds,

The constant winds, the placid Zephyrus,

The drying Boreas, and Notus too.

Then after these Erigeneia bore

Phosphor, the star of morning, and the stars
That steady shine, and those that deck the sky.

NOTES.

kaprepoOvpouvs.—Stout-hearted, enduring, constant.

2 dpyéornv.—apyéw ‘‘ to be unemployed, to rest.” So Ovid, “ placidi
Zephyri.”

aiinpoxédevOov.— dei ynpds xédevOov, ‘‘ ever drying the ways.” The
North Wind is dry and cold. In the latter sense Ovid uses
“horrifer Boreas.”

83 «ai Nérov.—The South Wind was born last, as being essentially
the one that brings rain. Ovid too, describing the arrange-
ment of the Winds in his Metamorphoses, lines 61 to 66, puts
Auster, the South Wind, last.

4 robs dé per dotépa.—The words can also be rendered, ‘‘ And these

did Erigeneia beget after the star Phosphorus, &.” But we

prefer the rendering given, since not only does Hesiod commence

with the formation of the winds, but also Apollodorus, who
says ‘Hots dé xai ’Aotpaiov dveuot xal dorpa.” In Genesis, too,
the Sun, Moon, and Stars were the work of the Fourth Day,
which period, as we shall find, was posterior to the ‘‘ Golden

Age” of Mythology. When writing of this Age, Ovid makes

distinct mention of the existence of winds :—

‘¢Ver erat sternum: placidique tepentibus auris
Mulcebant Zephyri natos sine semine flores.”

~

230 THE GODS OF OLD;

And it is not till after the formation and distribution of the
‘Winds that he says :—

‘“‘ Vix ea limitibus dissepserat omnia certis:
Cum, que pressa diu mass& latuere sub illA,
Sidera ceeperunt toto effervescere celo.” Met. 69.

*Horyéverca.—An epithet of Eds, and used frequently as such in the
Iliad and Odyssey. It has been variously taken to mean
“early born,” ‘‘ morn-producing,” ‘‘child of morn,” and
‘‘ mother of morn.” Of all four, the first, ‘‘ early born,” is the
closest to the derivation assigned, fp: yeivopar. It may equally
well be derived from jp or dnp yeivopar, and would thus signify
‘air bearing,” or “air born,” that is, producing the winds,
and sprung from nebulous or airy matter. Erigeneia would
thus be both the child of air and the mother of air.

5 dorpa dapreréovra.—The planets that shine with a steady light:
tdr’ otpavés corepdverat, the fixed stars.

Secr. 3.—THE CHANGEABLE AND THE GLOOM.
Pailas. Kpio & EtpuBin téxev ev Guddryre pryctoa
*Aotpaidy te péyay dAAavrd te Sia bedav
Tdpony &, és xal waot perénperey idpoocivnow.—Theog. 375.
Eurybia, with Crius mingled, bore
Astreus mighty, Pallas god of gods,
And Perses who in skill outvies them all.

It is safe to assert that as the stars shine and move to-
day, so did they shine and move when gazed on by the first
man, probably by the first animal, that ever moved upon
this Earth. An order characterised by constancy of being |
and uniformity of motion has been theirs, and has been
symbolised by Astreus in the myths. But there is another
kind of order begotten of the general course of creation, a
terrestrial order that deals peculiarly with our own globe
and its inhabitants. While the heavenly bodies as a whole
have not changed in their nature, movement, or apparent
position, our Harth as a whole has undergone many changes.
It has from a luminous mass become an opaque one; has
been growing colder and colder; has been accelerated or
retarded in its motion by proximity or distance from the
Sun round which it revolves; has been covered in turn
with incandescent gas, with water, and with a solid crust;

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL, 231

has changed from a uniform season, that probably lasted
for thousands of years, to a regular round of spring,
summer, autumn, and winter. The construction of its
crust too has been marked by variability ; and as it was from
the first so has it continued. The unceasing efforts of
Evolution are changing the simple into the complex, and this
into the more complex: those changes necessitate arrange-
ment after arrangement in the matter, and subdivision
after subdivision in the forces and motions; so that all is
progressive, or retrogressive,—which is but progression
backwards.

The type of order for the heavens is constant and uni-
form, that for earth is changeable and multiform: if
Astreus be the symbol of one, then Pallas, as his brother,
must have some valid claim to be the mythological repre-
sentative of the other.

The derivation of the word is as suggestive as is its
relationship to Astreus or its birth from Crius and Hurybia.
The interchange of z and @ is quite common in the Greek,
as instanced in wavds, marvy, &c., for paves, patvn, &e.; so
that IIdAAas is but a changed form for ®addas, which latter
is derived from dw GAdos, “ appearing different.” Such
cognates as gaAAés, the Bacchic emblem for Nature’s gene-
rating power, and dAdscw, “to change,” ‘‘to alter,” “to
make otherwise,” have reference to and fasten the derivation.

This is the Pallas who, when Crius was hurled to
Tartarus, succeeded his nebulous, insufficient sire, and
commencing where he left off, arranged and rearranged,
and arranged again and again, the simple atoms into
molecules and those into compounds, to form all things,
organic and inorganic alike. ‘‘ The elements,” says Miller,
‘‘have no more likeness to the compounds which they form
than the separate letters of the alphabet have to the words
which may be made from them.” Pallas is the great
lexicographer of nature. He has taken the quartz, feldspar,
and mica, which he fashioned, and from them made the
granite and the gneiss to serve as a rocky basis; and when
these were disrupted and changed—by his agency, too—he

232 THE GODS OF OLD;

once and again arranged their constituents, ever adding,
ever altering, to produce the different strata, which surround
our globe. He works equally powerful in water and in air,
forming the latter out of nitrogen, oxygen, carbonic acid,
and other gases; the former from oxygen and hydrogen:
he adds nitrogen to hydrogen and forms ammonia: from
this he takes a little of the nitrogen and adds some oxygen,
and the deadly nitric acid is the result.

And as it is with earth and water and air, so too is it
with the organisms that have dwelt and dwell in all three
habitats ; for whether oak or algew, shrimp or whale, fly or
eagle, worm or mammoth,—all from the well-nigh structure-
less Amebus to that most complete of beings, Man, have
been moulded and framed, and their parts arranged by
this variable order which has been fitly called by Hesiod,
TldAAavra. dia Oedwv, ‘‘ Pallas, the God of gods.”

And it isto this God of gods that Mythology has assigned
a Styx; an atra, stagnans, tristes, inamabilis Styx, as
partner! Willingly would we deny it, gladly disprove it,
were it not that poet, preacher, and scientist, and grim
experience, best teacher of all, assert the self-same fact
and maintain that this particular myth, like all the others,
is but a plain, unvarnished tale of fact, not fiction.

Styx.—Constructive order involves not only the matter
which makes up the parts arranged, but also the motion
exhibited during the arrangement as well as the force
which produces this motion. Many causes, however, such
as gravity, inertia, friction, &c., tend from the very first to
produce continuous deductions in the motion; and con-
tinual division and subdivision tend to produce continuous
dissipation of the force. It is evident then, that destruction
is present from the very inception of construction, and that
an agency exists which grimly follows on the steps of
progressive order, biding its time, and watching for an
opportune moment to assert its reality and to introduce
another but reversed order of things. There is no un-
certainty or doubt as to the fact. Science asserts in cold

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL, 233

language that for the whole and for the part Evolution or
progressive order advances until a point is reached when
the antagonising forces of integration and disintegration
come to an Equipoise, or Equilibrium Mobile: this point
reached, integrating forces yield to disintegrating ones, and
a new order of arrangement begins. So that this Variable
Order, which appertains to earth, consists ever and always
of two elements. An algebraic formula but explains it.
Representing the variables, Constructiveness and Destruc-
tiveness, by C and D, and the constant by O, then we
have C=(O—D)’, where Constructiveness is a decreasing
function of Destructiveness for all values of D_ less
than that assigned to O, and an increasing function of
_ Destructiveness for all values of D greater than that of O.
C and D are variables never apart; they are wedded to one
another for weal or woe; the Order is constant. So is it
with the constructive Pallas and destructive Styx that
Mythology has wedded fast unto one another.

And what the philosopher has reasoned out, the preacher
has proclaimed, and the poet has sung :—

‘* As man, perhaps the moment of his breath,
Receives the lurking principle of death ;

The young disease that must subdue at length,
Grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength.”

What Pope has applied to the part, Shakespeare has
enunciated of the whole :—
‘‘The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve !
And like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.”

Still, nothing has been lost. It is true that a some-
thing which we call Life has departed; but for Matter
itself, the same forces remain, and the round of Order,
though now retrogressive, still proceeds. What is left,
whether incorporated for a while or not, will sooner or
later moulder and be resolved into the elements from which
they sprung.. In either case subsisting life is benefited,

234 THE GODS OF OLD;

and the sum total of matter remains the same. Young
has expressed the idea aptly in his “‘ Night Thoughts.”
‘* Look nature through: ’tis revolution all;
All change; no death. Day follows Night, and Night
The dying Day; stars rise, and set, and rise;
Earth takes th’ example.
* * * * * *

All to reflourish fades ;
As in a wheel, all sinks to reascend,
Emblems of man, who passes, not expires.”

At what stage the dreaded equilibrium mobile occurs, we
know not. There is undoubtedly a natural limit assigned
to all, to hill and vale, river and forest, and to every being
that moves in water, air, or earth; but with this, and
independent of this, there is the terrible uncertainty
and fear of death or destruction which is ever impending
over all. When Ovid describes Zeus as pledging his word
to Semele, he puts the following into the mouth of the god:

Quoque magis credas; Stygii quoque conscia sunto
Numina torrentis—Timor, et Deus ile Deorum.

Met. ITT. 290.
And that the more reliant thou may’st be;

Let these, the Stygian torrent’s guardians, Fear
And he, the God of gods, bear witness too.

We musé all drink of this torrent on the way, but how
long we know not. The earthquake, landslide, volcano
and glacier, have brought ruin on many a towering peak,
fertile plain, and meandering stream, and have buried
them and all organisms upon them fathoms deep under
rock and clay and ice and lava: the budding plant has
been nipped by frost, the stately oak been levelled by
lightning, the cyclone, or the axe: all these forces, and
with them war, disease, famine, care, and pestilence, have
hurried away by an untimely end millions of men,
and animals inferior to men. Hurried them to where?
Sooner or later beneath the earth. Flesh may be devoured by
flesh, man’s by animals, and animal’s by its own kin or by
men ; but earth eventually swallows destroyer and destroyed.
This is in part one phase—the physical—of the celebrated

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 235

Metempsychosis of Pythagoras; and it is with this idea
that much of what Ovid has written in his 15th Book of
the Metamorphoses must be read.
Heu quantum scelus est, in viscera viscera condi,
Congestoque avidum pinguescere corpore corpus ;

Alteriusque animantem animantis vivere letho !
Met. XV. 88.

To bury flesh in flesh, fat greedy frame
With mass congested, and retain life’s spark
By life’s destruction ;—oh! how loathsome "tis !

Omnia mutantur: nihil interit. Errat, et illinc
Hic venit, hinc illie, et quoslibet occupat artus
Spiritus: éque feris humana in corpora transit,
Inque feras noster : nec tempore deperit ullo.
Met. XV. 165.

Things change; nought perishes. Life’s spirit roams,
And to and fro, repeatedly, it comes,

And occupies whatever frames it may ;

The beast’s to human, ours to beasts, doth go:

And yet at no time passes it away.

There is a downward tendency, a via declivis, for all
existences created. Gravity alone urges us thither, says
philosophy; and geology teaches that our broadest continents
and highest mountains were once and again beneath the
surface,—and may be so again, for all that we are absolutely
assured of. And as regards organic life the same holds
good. Man’s last duty to his departed fellows, the cultiva-
tion of the soil, the downward force of rain and snow and
ice, the floods of overflowing rivers, the tidal waves and
inundations of the sea, the earthquake and voleano, and
that constantly slow but sure subsidence going on in
different regions at a time,—all these and other causes tend
eventually to make organic beings disappear from view
beneath the surface, there to decay, moulder, putrefy, and
be dissolved into their original elements.

How far beneath ? Who can tell. It is safe to say, how-
ever, that the elementary particles can be carried to what-
ever depth the water derived from rain, snow, and melted
ice, can penetrate. Of all this water, some goes off with the
streams and rivers down to the deep sea, but by far the

236 THE GODS OF OLD;

greater part sinks into the ground. Of this latter a portion
reappears upon the surface as springs and wells, and some-
times even as rivers: the remaining portion we never
behold unless some of nature’s convulsions cause it to
appear once more in the steam of volcanic outbursts or in
the sudden mutations arising from earthquakes. We cannot
tell what proportion of the whole is thus detained below
and prevented from rising, but judging from the rainfall
and melting snow and from the fact that the floors of sea
and ocean as well ax the beds of rivers and lakes are all
leaky, it is stated that the amount of underground water
itself must be enormous. Even the rocks and minerals
are not capable of resisting its downward progress. The
fragmental rocks, whether sand or clay, coal or chalk, lime-
stone or other, contain water; so do the metamorphic rocks
beneath them, and even in the granite basis of our globe
has it been discovered. The microscope has found in every
rock and mineral a series of minute interstices between the
particles or crystals of which they are composed, and
through those interstices and through even the particles
themselves has water been proved to be capable of infil-
trating. The smaller and closer the interstices the more
difficult will be the passage, but the fact remains that no
rock or mineral, not even flint, is absolutely impervious to
the permeation of water. And when it does reach in some
places a relatively impervious layer, if proceeds to form
there pools or Jakes, and the surplus water overflowing
percolates through some more porous beds till at length it
finds a devious way beneath the obstruction to its downward
trend. That water not only passes down, but that it also
circulates under ground in channels and tunnels, formed
along the natural joints and crevices of the rocks, and
widened by its own mechanical action, is evidenced from
the occasional rise of leaves, twigs, and even live fish, in
the shafts of artesian wells bored in the sandy deserts of
Algeria and other like regions where there is no surface
water and where rain seldom if ever falls,—thus proving that
the water, which must have come from a distance many

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 237

leagues away, has circulated for miles and miles beneath
the surface.

To whatever depth it goes, there is nota particle of organic
or mineral matter secure from its attacks.

As rain, it always absorbs some of the air through which
it falls, and thus becomes possessed of carbonic acid gas
and organic germs, with minute quantities of other ingre-
dients with which our atmosphere is freighted.

By virtue of its own powers as a solvent, and aided by
these auxiliaries, it proceeds to disintegrate the surface
rocks by hydration, weathering, solution, oxidation, deoxida-
tion, and mechanical action.

Carrying with it the same reagents it sinks into the
earth, there to pursue even more markedly the disintegration
and decomposition it had begun above. It now, foo, gains
fresh forces from the abundant organic matter it meets with
in the soil and from the reservoirs of carbonic acid gas it
finds pent up in the natural cavities below. No substance,
it is said, is capable under certain conditions of resisting
the solvent force of water containing carbonic acid: the
water in its downward course finds those conditions in the
increased heat and pressure and the recruits of decomposi-
tion. Armed thus, it defies the resisting powers of all—
even the siliceous rocks—that bars its progress or its circula-
tion. And as it goes it ever scoops out, first the most
yielding and friable of obstructions, leaving the more
massive and hardier to stand. Chemically and mechanically
working, it trickles along here, in a fuller stream there,
forms a pool or lake or cascade elsewhere, winds round
some hardy, opposing rock to attack its weaker neighbour,
swells out in some cretaceous bed to form caves that throw
our Mammoth into insignificance and that are, if may be, —
supported with pillars of chalcedony and chert and other
lustrous varieties of quartz. But it ever goes down, down.
Not mere imagination this: Hvery spring that comes to the
surface brings the débris of the work going on below, and
the immense deposits of sulphur, lime, magnesia, iron,
soda, salt, silica and mineral oil brought up, must represent

238 THE GODS OF OLD;

a corresponding waste of matter below, and as a conse-
quence the existence of tunnels, caves, lakes, and river beds.
Ramsay has estimated the annual discharge of mineral
matter from the warm springs of Bath to be equal toa
square column 9 feet in diameter and 140 feet in height.
And this is only for a single year and for a minor spring!

To what depth this surface water is capable of descending
is not absolutely known. There is nothing, as we have
shown, to prevent it from sinking to the granitic or other
crust that overlies the interior fires of our globe; it is even
asserted that it may infiltrate this and be a means of so
rousing up the central fire as to produce the voleanic out-
breaks of to-day, just as it may have helped to produce
those of a former age. Daubrée has shown that capillary
water has the capacity of penetrating rocks even against a
high counter pressure of vapour, and that water at extreme
depths may be under such a pressure as to retain its liquid
condition at a red or even at a white heat.

Let us review: .

We have a vast body of underground water,—begotten of
aqueous vapour, circulatirig in the stratified beds,—reaching
to the solid crust, and probably infiltrating into the fiery
depths of the nucleus,—carrying with it from the surface
down the hydrated and sodden remains of all organisms
bereft of life, and, though very slowly, of morganic dust ;
and while carrying them, witnessing and helping in the
resolution of those bodies, of the compound rocks and
vegetable fibre, of animal flesh, of the gray matter of the
brain and of all that is latent in this gray matter.

Let us compare:

We have. Styx,—born of Oceanus,—that river of the
nether world round which it flows nine times,—connected
with the more central rivers of Acheron, Cocytus, and
Pyriphlegethon,—that hateful Styx which we all dread to
embark on; that gloomy Styx which when our bodies have
to cross, the quicker the better, for corruption is more
loathsome by its slowness; that Styx which is open for our
voyage provided a little clay be sprinkled over our

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 239

remains ; Styx from which we are assuredly kept back for
a period by suffering a too slow decay for want of a little
earth denied us by poverty, by shipwreck, or the ferocity of
savage beasts.

There is nothing mythical—to use the word in its baser
sense—in this Styx. It is a reality, as substantial, alas!
as the underground waters themselves ; a real river which,
dreadful though it be in anticipation and the changes that
accompany it, we must all embark on soon or late.

‘* Our life is onward—and our very dust

Is longing for its change, that it may take
New Combinations.”

The explanation given will tend to solve what has been
much of a puzzle to translators of the classics, namely,
why Styx has been sometimes described as a river, at other
times as a lake, and again as a stagnant pool. It would
be an almost endless task to quote the passages where Styx
is mentioned, but we give the following from Ovid:

1 Est via declivis funest& nubila taxo:

Ducit ad infernas, per muta silentia, sedes.

Styx nebulas exhalat iners, umbreeque recentes

Descendunt illic, stmulacraque functa sepulchris.

Pallor, hyemsque tenent late loca senta: novique

Qua sit iter manes, Stygiam quod ducit ad urbem,

Ignorant, ubi sit nigri fera regia Ditis,

Mille capax aditus, et apertas undique portas,

Urbs habet. Utque fretum de toté flumina terr4,

10 Sic omnes animas locus accipit ile: nec ulli
Exiguus populo est, turbamve accedere sentit.
Errant exsangues siné corpore et ossibus umbre:
Parsque forum celebrant, pars imi tecta tyranni;
Pars aliquas artes antiquse imitamina vite

14 Exercent; aliam partem sua pcena coercet.—Met. IV. 432.

Or

Downward’s the path obscured by dismal yew:
Through silence mute to nether climes it leads.
There sluggish Styx exhales its fogs; and shades
Just laid to rest, and such as are but graced
With empty honours of a tomb, descend.

Pallor and cold those sentines widely hold:

And manes new know not what way may be
That to the grewsome stronghold doth conduct
Where stands the cruel court of swarthy Dis.

240 THE GODS OF OLD;

Full many avenues and open gates

On all sides hath this stronghold vast. And as
From every land the sea receives the streams,
So too all beings does this place receive :

Nor cramped it is by race of any kind,

Nor recks it of the crowd that ever comes.
There wander shades sans blood, sans flesh, sans bones:
Part throng the deck, and part the very roof
Of central tyrant force; some devious ways,

A past life’s semblances, are used by more;
Still others their own punishment restrains.

NOTES.

1 funest& taxo.—So Byron:
‘« The very cypress droops to death—
Dark tree, still sad when others’ grief is fled,
The only constant mourner o’er the dead.”

3 iners.—Dissolution is in its beginning just below the surface.

5 loca senta.—Filthy places, sink- holes. ‘‘Sentines,” though
marked in our dictionaries as obsolete, should be restored if
only for propriety’s sake.

‘A stinking sentine of all vices.””—Latimer.
6 Qua sit iter.—There are many and devious paths for the under-
ground water.
urbem.—Literally ‘‘ a walled town,” and thus most applicable to
the rocky crust immediately surrounding the central fire, the
Jera regia,
10 nec ulli exiguus. «Dis here all meet !
The shivering Icelander, and sunburnt Moor;
Men of all climes that never met before;
* * * *
The wrecks of nations, and the spoils of time,
With all the lumber of six thousand years.”’—Blair.
18 Forum—that is, from the surface of the earth all the way down.
jforus, the deck or hatch of a ship, which is above, and leads from
deck to deck down to the hold or cellar.
tecta.—The rocky crust covering the central fire, imi tyranni.
14 artes.—The sinuous or winding passages through the rocks.
imitamina.—‘‘ H’en in our ashes live their wonted fires.”—Gray.

Hesiod gives two descriptions of Styx. The first bears
on the help she afforded Zeus in his battle with the Titans :

1 Srb& & erex’ *Oxeavod Ovyérnp Tid\Aavre peyeioa
ZijAov Kal Nixny xaddioupov ev peydpotoe’
kat Kpdros 78¢ Binv dpiWeixera yelvato réxva,
Tav ovK at’ diraveube Ards Sdpos, ob tis ESpn,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 241

5 o¥8 68ds Saray pi xelvors Oeds Pyepovedy
GAN aiet wap Zyvi Bapuxriwe édprdwvrat.
ds yap €Bovdevce Srv dpOiros ’OQxeavivy
qpart TO Gre wavras "Ohipmeos dotepomyris
aOavarous exddeooe Geobs és paxpov” Odvpstov,
10 eizre 8, Os dy pera clo bev Tirfot pdyotro,
pn tw’ awoppaicew yepawy, Tysny dé Exarrov
é£éuev qv 76 wdpos ye per’ dbavdtoure Geoict.
tov & &hab’, doris dripos tb Kpdvov 78’ dyépactos,
Tyas Kal yepdoy émBnagpev f Oguis éariv.
15 HAbe & dpa mpary Srvé dpOcros OdAvprdvbe
ovv ohoicw raideror hidor dia pndea rarpés.
ray O€ Zedbs tinnoe, wepirad dé S&p’ dmédaxev.
abriy peév yap 2Onxe Gedy péyay Enpevot Spxor,
naidas 8° #para mdvra éov peravatéras eivat.
20 ds & atras rdvreoot Siaprepés, Sovep tweety,
éLeréheoo’* adds O€ péya kparel Oe dvdcoet.—Theog. 383

With Pallas mated Ocean’s daughter, Styx,

Bore Zeal and Victory that’s rounded well
Within the crypts; well-guiding Strength and Might
She also bore, an offspring whose abode

Is not aloof from Jove; nor certain seat

For single one of these, nor way whereby

A god may point the path; but ever near
Loud-sounding Jupiter they take their stand.
For so advised the Oceanian born,

Imperishable Styx, that fateful day,

‘When to Olympus wide all deathless gods

Th’ Olympian light’ner summoned, and declared
No one of gods who'd fight the Titan crew

With him should lose his claims,—that each would have
The self-same honour ’mongst the immortal gods.
This too he said, whoe’er "neath Kronos was
Unhonoured and untitled, he’d attain

To rank and titles such as right ’twould be.

So then by means of her beloved sire

Was Styx imperishable first to come

Towards Olympus, and her sons with her.

Zeus honoured her and gave surpassing gifts.
Herself indeed he made the gods’ great oath ;
Her sons, to be his changelings for all time.

In self-same manner for the others all

Precisely as he pledged himself he did;

And great his strength, and mighty does he rule.

G.C. R

242 THE GODS OF OLD;

NOTES.

2 Zidov. *« Not Kings alone,
Hach villager has his ambition too.”— Young.
Nikyv xaddioghupov.—xahrt-opaipda, “ well-rounded.”
“ Our little life is rounded with a sleep.” —Shakespeare.

“For with thy side shall dwell at last
The victory of endurance born.” —Bryant.

peydpotot.—peydpos signifies ‘‘a large common hall,” ‘a house of
Many rooms,” and so earth, as a vast cemetery. ra péyapa
were ‘‘ the underground caves” sacred to Demeter and Proser-
pine.

3 dpideixera, ‘Tis great to have a giant’s strength,

But tyrannous to use it.”

4 ovx dmdvevfe Avis.—A generation dies; but its passions, all em~
braced by zeal, victory, might, and strength, survive.

5 oddé tis pn, odd 58ds.—There is a different ideal for all, but the
way to it is not always the same; there is no royal road to
success or learning.

“€ Life is before ye !’’—from the fated road
Ye cannot: turn then, take ye up the load.
Not yours to tread or leave the unknown way,
Ye must go o’er it, meet ye what ye what ye may.
‘ Mrs. Butler.
15 #aAée Srié.—Decomposition is a prime factor in fertilising the soil,
and is thus an auxiliary, the first, for Zeus or Life.
“But creeping things shall revel in their spoil,
And fit thy clay to fertilise the soil.”— Byron.

‘* Life mocks the idle hate
Of his arch-enemy, Death ;—yea, seats himself
Upon the tyrant’s throne, the sepulchre,
And of the triumph of his ghastly foe
Makes his own nourishment.” —Bryazt.
“That which thou sowest i is not quickened, except it die.”
1 Corinth. xv. 36.

16 a padea matpds.—By means of aqueous vapour, or of evaporation,
is the soil pulverised, decomposition brought to the surface,
and life thus benefited. _

18 jéyay Spxov.—Dissolution accompanies us from birth, and life’s
tenure is uncertain. What then can be the most binding oath ©
for Life (Zeus), but the fear and reality of Death, that is,
Styx ?

19 peravaéras.—There is no annihilation of matter; death in one
form is but a resurrection in another. .

** There is no rest in all the realms of life;
Man’s an epitome of endless strife.”

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 2438

After Zeus had hurled the Titans into Tartarus, Hesiod
gives a further description of Styx:

1 “Evéa 8¢ vaterdet otuyep?) eds dbavarotot,
Aewh SrvE, Ouydrnp ayvoppdov ‘OQxeavoio
mpeoButdry. voodu dé Gedy kraut Sdpara vaiet
paxpyow wérpyot karnpehée’ api b€ rdvry
5 xloow dpyupéoiot mpos odpavey éornpicrat.
mavpa d€ Gatpavros Ouyarnp wédas dkéa “Ipts
ayycAiny wodetrat en’ ebpéa vara Gaddcons,
énnér Epis kal veixos év dbavaroirw Spytat,
kat p’ dre res evdnrar Oddpria Sdpar’ éydvror,
10 Zeds 8€ re *Ipu emrepyre Gedy péyav Spxov éveixat
Tyddbev ev xpvaén MpoXs@, ToAVaeYYpoY Vdep,
Woypédy, & x’ éx wérpys katadeiBerat 7ALBdroto,
inpdijs’ wodddy Se 6 bird xOovds ebpvodeins
é& icpov morapoto péet Oud voxra pedatvay
15 ?Qxeavoio xépas’ Sexdry & émt poipa dédacra.
évvéa pey wept yay Te Kal edpéa vOra Gaddoons
divns apyupéns cideypévos eis GAa wire,
4 O€ pw? éx wérpns mpopéet péya wha Ccotow.
Os kev THY émiopxoy amodeivas éropdoon
20 dOavdrwy, of gyovor Kdpn vibdevros ’OAdprov,
kelrat vnitpos TereAecpevoy eis évaurdv,
ovdé wor’ duBpocins Kal véxrapos epyerar dooov
Bpaotos, dd bye xetrat avdmvevatos kal dvavdos
orpwrois év dexdegoe, kaxdv O€ E KOpa Kadvnret.
airap émjy vovcoy tehéon péyav eis emavrdr,
a os & €& MAov Séxerat yaderarepos GOdos.
elvderes 6€ Gedy dropeiperat aiev edvrov,
ovbé mor’ és Boudry émtpioyetat odd’ émt datras
evvéa wavra trea’ Sexdt@ 8 emtpioryerar avtis
30 cipéas dOatdrwv, ot ’Ohipata Sdpar’ Exovar.
toiov dp’ épxov eevro Geol Sruyds apOcrov Bap,
ayiyov, T6 & inot karagrupéAou bia xSpou'—Theog. 775.

There, hated by immortals, lies dread Styx,

Of backward flowing Ocean eldest child :

Apart from gods there lie those famed abodes
Roofed o’er with mighty rocks, and all around
With shining pillars heavenwards they’ve been propped,
Once in a while upon her message goes

The child of Thaumas, Iris swift of foot,

O’er the broad surface of the deep when strife
And rivalry are ’mongst immortals roused ;

And surely then, when some of those that had
Olympian domes perverted grew, and Zeus ~
Sent Iris forth to bring from far away

In rich outpouring the great oath of gods,

The well-known water, cold, and trickling from

to
Or

244,

12

THE GODS OF OLD;

The rock that’s seated deep and towers on high.
And far ’neath fissured earth through black of night
This branch of ocean’s sacred river runs;

But tenth has been the measure fixed by fate.
For nine, in silvery spires rolled round the earth
And sea’s broad back, falls one into the deep;
But forward flows this other from the rock,

A grievous scourge to the immortals all.

Of gods that hold Olympian snowy peaks,
Whoe’er for this has left the pledge he took,
Senseless he hes for the predestined time,

Nor e’er of sustenance desirous comes

Near to the nectar and ambrosia, but

Breathless and voiceless lies he there within

The stratified beds, and comatose as ’twere.

But when this suffering for ages long

He has discharged, another task’s received,
Another, and another, more severe.

For periods nine away from livelong gods,

Nor once he’s mixed in council nor in feast

The full nine cycles long; but on the tenth
Once more he’s mingled with the host of gods
Immortal who Olympian domes possess.

Such then the oath the gods have made of Styx,
Of its imperishable water, old ; ,
And such through regions rugged down it goes.

NOTES.

paxpyow wérpnot.—Owing primarily to unequal contraction of the
crust, and subsequently to subterranean agitation and the
chemical action of underground water, the whole thickness of
the earth’s rocky covering is supposed to be extensively ©
fissured and intersected with tunnels and caverns.

Kai pf’ ére.—Occasionally, says the poet, does the rainbow go forth
upon its mission; but surely did it go forth once when the
greater part of mankind and of earth grew corrupt (rs Wevdyrat),
and there ensued a Deluge that brought back the Stygian
waters to aid in the general destruction.

‘*In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second
month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were
all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows
of heaven were opened.”—Genesis vii. 11.

éx wérpns.—Lhe rocky crust of earth, with deep foundations and
lofty mountains, and permeated with water from top to base.

dexdrn.—The ancients believed in a general renovation of the
surface of Jand and water upon our globe af the end of every
ten thousand years or so, this period being half of their magnus

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 245

annus, or Great Platonic Cycle. For nine (évvéa) of those
thousands would the aqueous vapour roll round our planet,
replenishing the rivers, lakes, and springs that finally empty
into the ocean; and during the same nine periods would one
branch of this ocean river, namely the underground water,
trickle from the surface downwards through the rocky envelope
of earth. The tenth (Sexdry) period would be the fateful one,
since the entire configuration of land and water would be
altered by seismic, volcanic, depressing, and elevating influences.
A somewhat analogous theory is held by modern writers to
account for the long periods of cold (similar to the historic Ice
Age), and equally long of heat, which occurred at widely
separated intervals during the history of our Earth. Dr. Croll
ascribes the cause to the combined effect of change of eccentricity
and the precession of the equinoxes,—the magnus annus of the
ancients,—and while arguing that the northern hemisphere was
glaciated while the southern was warm, and vice versa, says,

‘‘owing to the precession of the equinoxes, the condition of
things on the two hemispheres must be reversed every 10,000
years or so.”

16-17, The context, as well as the pev—dé (lme 18) shows that the
overground circulation of aqueous vapour as a whole (iepds
morapds ’Oxeavds) is referred to in these lines, just as line 18 has
reference to the underground water.

18 péya mipa.—lIt is generally conceded that the descent of water
from the surface is an essential exciting cause of volcanic
outbursts, landslips, and possibly of earthquakes. The
scourging effects of volcanoes and earthquakes are well known.
In 1806 a landslip in Switzerland swept across the valley of
Goldau, burying four villages and about 500 people. In 1839
a mass of chalk on the Dorsetshire coast of England slipped
into the sea, bearing with it houses, roads, and fields, and
leaving behind a rent three-quarters of a mile long, 150 feet
deep, and 240 feet wide.

19 ri éiopxov.—The éni follows its case, the reading being ri éxi
OpKOV,

Bvery particle of matter has its own station to guard and its
own function to fulfil. Ifit proves untrue to duty, and leaves
behind the bond of union (épxoy dzroXdeipas) for the sake of
this (r}v éwi) underrunning water, it will assuredly rue the day.
The poet tells us how; and modern science thus confirms his
words:

“The great plains of the earth’s surface are due to the
deposit of gravel, sand, and loam. They are thus monuments
at once of the destructive and reproductive processes which
have been in progress unceasingly since the first land rose
above the sea and the first shower of rain fell. Every pebble

246

THE GODS OF OLD;

and particle of their soil, once part of the distant mountains,
has travelled slowly and fitfully downwards. Again and again
have these materials been shifted, ever moving downward and
sea-ward. For centuries, perhaps, they have taken their share
in the fertility of the plains, and have ministered to the
necessities of ower and tree, of the bird of the air, the beast of
the field, and of man himself. But their destiny is still the
great ocean. In that bourne alone can they find undisturbed
repose, and there slowly accumulating in massive beds, they
will remain until, in the course of ages, renewed upheaval shall
raise them into future land, there once more to pass through
the same cycle of change.” —Encye. Brit.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 247

CHAPTER V.

Sect. 1.-CQHUS, THE TIE OF UNION.

Cous.—There is another characteristic as indelibly
associated with matter as is Order. Mere arrangement of
atomic matter would still leave matter as atomic, and an
Earth composed of individual atoms, however often and
variously permutations might occur among them, would be
but very little more advanced in evolution than purely
nebulous matter itself. To continue moving on the lines
of progress, it was necessary for atomic matter to be
endowed with Union. ‘‘In union there is strength,” and
a stable crust for our globe was all essential to its future
development.

There are many shades of union, from that of mere coa-
lescence or coition to that exhibited in our most stable com-
pounds. And by compound we do not mean here those
substances evolved through chemical agency and in which
a total change of properties takes place, such as have been
mentioned under the Cyclopes. We mean those substances
produced by the natural inclination of particles to cling to
each other, and to thus make molecules from atoms, and
masses from molecules, while each ingredient still retains
its own properties.

This natural inclination or inherent property is called
Cohesion or Adhesion : if is common to all matter, being
strongest in the solids to which it gives their varying
degrees of hardness, tenacity, elasticity, malleability, and
ductility ; in a less degree it is found in liquids ; least of all
in gaseous bodies, in which indeed so weak is it that it is
said to be apparently absent. Now, whether we view this
Cohesion as exhibited in the hardest of our sedimentary
rocks, in the sturdy oak, and healthy animal body,—or in

248 THE GODS OF OLD;

its weaker form, as in water, where the association of parts
but enables the particles to roll over other particles,—or in
its still weaker condition, where, as in air, there is but seen
a mixture or diffusion,—we find one resemblance, namely,
a mingling or mixture of the ingredients, a condition or
state in which different constituents are blended in common.
If we hunt down such evoluted words from union, as co-
hesion, mixture, association, society, and their offshoots, we
shall bring them finally to bay when we arrive at the
notion of ‘‘common”; and communion, community,
commonweal, common woe, common lot, and many other
compounds of ‘ common” bear witness to the assertion.
Radicals are to language what the nebulous period is to
time, the beginning of all, misty and uncertain in their ap-
plication, and a basis for word-spinning. In dealing with the
nebulous past it is to those radicals we must look for light;
and in this particular case, it will be found that the idea of
Common must be taken when considering the Titan Ceus.
The word Koios is but xowJs “common,” the v being
omitted, as we see in pvdos for wuvdds, axos and axvis, ephuos
and épepvds ; and xowdw is used in the New Testament to
signify “‘to defile, or pollute,” from the notion of “ pro-
miscuousness ”’ as associated with things in common. Our
own ‘ cohesion” is a relic of this Coeus. In Chaos, which
was but a state of ‘“‘ oneness,’ we do not expect to find a
Cceus or commonness. But when disruption was accom-
plished, when the oneness was pus an end to, then we would
have a condition favourable to the assemblage of things in
common, and it was, accordingly, at that period of existence
that our Titan came into being. This state of things would
continue and be more intensified when, later on, we come
to a time, already mentioned, that presents to view a
midway region confined by the firmament above and by a
fluid igneous orb below. This region contained the semina
rerum, the seeds of all things that make up water, air, and
earth. All these, however scattered and apart originally,
must have gradually mingled and been drawn closer to-
gether to form a vaporous, heated, acrid, atmosphere of

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 249

their own, must have participated in storms and convul-
sions of their own that confounded and mingled together
the nebulous layers, the heavy and the light, the moist and
the dry. A condition of commonness would thus of necessity
be produced, a commonness that implied but mere coition,
it is true; still, it was the nebulous parent of a more
evoluted cohesion that was to be.

Namque canebat uti magnum per inane coacta

Semina terrarumque, animeeque, marisque fuissent,

Et liquidi simul ignis: ut his exordia primis

Omnia, et ipse tener mundi concreverit orbis. ;

Virg. Ecl. VI. 31.

But though an improvement on pre-existence, this loose
gathering of matter was not sufficient. A crust on earth
and an atmosphere above earth were fore-ordained, and such
could be accomplished only by some agency that would
purify the promiscuous mass in translating the semina
rerum to their proper sphere, the orb below. Mytholog
provides such agency.

SoiBn & ad Koiov rodviparov #AGev és evvnv.—Theog. 404.

This purifying agent or Phoebe, (¢oi8os, bright, pure),
that came to the exalted region where promiscuous matter
awaited her, is more likely to have been the deity, and not
Apollo, whom Horace invokes in the first line of his Carmen
Seculare :

Pheebe silvarumque potius Diana,
Lucidum coeli decus, o colendi
. Semper et culti, date, ques precamur.

Considering the ostensible purpose for which the famous
Ode was written, and the real purpose in the mind of him
who penned it, how better could the poet commence than
by invoking Purity in conjunction with the Chastity of
Secluded Nature ?

How would this promiscuous assemblage of all things
become purified, and what would follow? —

So long as no water fell, so long would the common
condition remain; but with the onset of the rain, a new
period in the evolution of our sphere began, and change

250 THE GODS OF OLD;

after change occurred in the regions below and in those
above :—

1. The falling rain, no matter how long resisted by the
intense heat of the fiery orb beneath, would finally
establish a world of waters or ‘‘ thermal ocean ”’ on the
earth’s surface.

2. The metallic and earthy of the semina rerum, as

_ being more dense, would be the first to fall from above
with the downward rain. Again and again would they
be hurled back with the rain when changed to steam
by the heated surface; yet they constantly, like a
quail in flight, kept getting closer and closer to the
gradually cooling surface, and a time came at last
when the vast pile of loose, unstable matter, purged
from the quasi airy envelope of earth, and flying from
the advances of the rain, would be plunged into the sea.

3. Thence they would fall as precipitates to the bottom,
and in conjunction with the denudations and wear of
the primal crust form the lowest strata of our aqueous
rocks.

If we compare the myth of Asteria with the foregoing,
we find the facts identical. Asteria (a crepeds), the “ not
solidified,” ‘‘ the unstable,” who flying from the advances of
Zeus, the life-giving rain, hovered, as a quail, over the
expanse of sea, and plunged into its protecting depths, there
to remain as ‘‘an island that had fallen from heaven like a
star” (ao77%p),—and so “ well-named,”—till she rose above —
the surface, to be termed indifferently Asterie or Ortygia
(épro yi).

We shall have a good deal more to say regarding this
Asteria ; but we leave her for the present and turn to her
sister Leto, or Latona :—

1 Soin & ad Kotov xoduiparoy ibev és ebyny

xvoapévn 8) exerta Oca Ocod év hiddryte

Ant® xvavéremdov éyeivaro, peidtyov aici,

irvov avOperotct Kai dbavdrotot Geoiat,

5 peidexov €€ dpyijs, dyavaratov évrés *OAvprov.
yeivaro 8 ’Aotepinu eidvupor, qv madre Wépons

Hyayer és péya bapa Pidny xexdAjoOat axourwy.—Theog, 404.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 251

To the high couch of Coeus Phoebe came,

And then m union with the god grown large
The goddess bore Latona, the blue-robed,

The ever balmy one, the ever mild

For men and gods immortal ;—balmy aye,
Least solid structure of th’ Olympian realm.
Asteria too, the well-named, she begot,

Whom Perses once brought to his mansion great
To be acclaimed his dear beloved spouse.

NOTES.

moAviparov—molvs aipw.—The region above the earth, containing
the semina rerum. There is an ‘“‘ airy” sound about the Greek
word that savours of the nebulous.
5 dyavdrarov—iyavos (dyvupz) ‘most liable to break,”’ hence, “least
solid.” évros we take as a substantive.

" Apollodorus is more diffuse in the account:

taéy dé Koiov 6vyarépwy ’Actepia pév dporwbcioa

wt c A >? t wv 7 A 4

dptuyt éaurypy eis Oadagcay Eppupe, hevyovea Thy mpds

Aia anvovoiav: Kal wodus dr’ éxeivns ’Actepia mparov
”~ a x ~ A Qh ~

KAnGetoa, vorepov Sé Anos. Anta 8é cuveOotca

Aut card tiv yay dracay id’ “Hpas HAavvero, péxpis

els Andov eMOotaa yerva mpatay "Aprepev, ip’ is

pawbcioa torepoy ’Amd\Xwva éyévyncer-—l. 4,

Srecr. 2.—OUR ATMOSPHERE.

Latona.—Let us anticipate somewhat by saying that
Leto, the Homan Latona, is the personification of our
Atmosphere.

A curious combination is this atmosphere of ours. It is
material, common to all substances, highly elastic, essential
to life; and, though invisible in small quantities, in large
masses it is blue, and imparts this blueness to objects seen
through it.

This description tallies with that given by Hesiod ;—-
Leto, daughter of Coeus or Commonness, least solid of all
structures, ever mild for men and gods, the blue-robed
one.

It is composed principally of Nitrogen and Oxygen in the
ratio of 4 to 1, and though it surrounds our globe to a

252 THE GODS OF OLD;

distance of 50 miles and further, yet those gases form no
chemical compound in the air: the Nitrogen and Oxygen
remain a mere mechanical mixture, as distinct from one
another as a mixture of sand and sugar in a barrel. Why
this is so we know not: neither do we well understand how
our atmosphere came to settle round the globe, the general
conjecture being that it somehow originated in the caverns
of the earth, whence it eventually found egress. Whether
this supposition be deduced from scientific data, or whether
it be a dim relic of ancient lore, we cannot say, but it
sounds suspiciously like that portion of the Myth which
says, ‘‘ Leto was prosecuted by Juno through the entire
world.” One thing is clear; that our information as to
the genesis of the atmosphere is far from complete, and the
late discovery in it of a new element, Argon, throws doubt
on our exact knowledge even of its constituents. The same
Jack of full information is stated in the classics. Thus
Ovid in VI. 319, of his Metamorphoses says :—
Res obscura quidem est ignobilitate virorum
Mira tamen. .

But whatever uncertainty there may be through our
ignobilitas with regard to the exact formation and appear-
ance of an atmosphere, there appears to be very little doubt
as to the main point at issue, namely, that Leto is its
mythical personification. All things, earthy, fluid, and
gaseous, were bound together loosely in Cceus till Phoebe
came to purify the exalted couch on which he lay. And
when the grosser elements were purged and fled before the
rain to plunge themselves into the sea, what would betide
the more volatile, the Nitrogen and Oxygen that are the
main components of atmospheric air? Some portion would
be washed down by the rain and fall to the depths of ocean,
entangled in the earthy and metallic elements; another
portion might rest over the surface of the deep, and be
prevented by the intense heat from mingling in the requisite
proportion ; still a third may have been left higher up, but
80 vitiated by other gases as to be almost useless for a life-
supporting medium. It would thus, as Mythology says, be

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 253

debarred ag it were from all regions ; be the “‘ exul mundi,”
‘** Karth’s Vagrant,’ as Ovid makes Niobe contemptuously
style Latona.

In the meanwhile precipitation, denudation, and disin-
tegration were going on in and at the bottom of the sea,
and the first stratified rocks would appear in time above
the surface, to take on additional cohesiveness when
raised above the waters. This cohesion would be at the
expense of porosity, and the particles of air and water
elements bubbling from the baked backs of the sand and
mud banks would seem to offer a refuge for our atmo-
sphere. Only a seeming one, however, as the heat would
of itself debar any permanent mixture of the elements,
especially of such a one as Nitrogen, so remarkable for
the instability of its-compounds that it has been likened
to a ‘half reclaimed gypsy from the wilds.’’ The refuge
would be but temporary at best, as these Ortygian islands,
succumbing to the onsets of fire below and water above,
would quickly be swallowed in the ocean depths, and
compel our atmospheric elements to be exiled once and
again. This condition of instability in early land-making
is well recognised in treatises on geology, and subsisted
more or less up to Carboniferous times. Silurian land-
making resembled so much the accumulations of sand
thrown upon our beaches by the sea waves that Agassiz
remarks of it: ‘In the Silurian period, the world, so
far as it was raised above the ocean, was a beach.” Of
the Devonian, Hugh Miller writes thus :—‘‘ Over dark and
shallow seas mud-banks of vast extent occasionally raised
their flat, dingy backs, and remained hardening in the
hot sun until their oozy surfaces had cracked and warped,
and become hard as the sun-baked brick of Eastern
countries; and then, ere the seeds of terrestrial plants,
floated from some distant inland, or wafted in the air,
had found time to strike root into the crevices of the soil, -
some of the frequent earth-tremors of the age shook the
flat expanse under the water out of which it had arisen,
and the waves rippled over it as before.”

254 THE GODS OF OLD;

And so it would go on through the ages till such time
as some land area would emerge, more cohesive in its
structure, and more strengthened in its base by the pro-
tozoans of early life. All elevated land areas before this
would be Asterias or Ortygias, marked by instability
and mere visibility: this would be the Delos, the perma-
nently visible, the certain, anchored in the ocean by the
foraminifers and the corals of Zeus or life: in this stable
location would the Atmosphere find a secure abiding
place wherein to gather its forces and bring forth those
agencies whereby we are afforded the direct and reflected
light and heat of the Sun. This once achieved, vegetable
life that takes in carbonic acid and exhales the oxygen
would accomplish the rest,—as it did in the carboniferous
Fra, would purify the air, give fresh sustenance to the
. atmosphere, and establish a medium suited to the wants
of a life more evoluted than the fish and mollusk of
Devonian and Silurian Days.

The derivation assigned Leto (Aj, to lie hid, to be
unseen), is suitable enough to our atmosphere, considering
our lack of knowledge with regard to it in many points,
its own invisibility, and its being a common medium
wherein lie hid the volatile portions of water, earth, and
organic life, the perfume of the rose as well as the germs
of disease, the effluvia of electricity, the rays of light, and
the flame that goeth upwards.

' When was atmospheric air well established round our
globe? Every treatise on geology states that the atmo-
sphere of the early ages was very different from that of
to-day. Miller says of the Azoic Age, ‘‘A continuous
stratum of steam, then, that attained to the height of
even our present atmosphere, would wrap up the earth
in a darkness gross and palpable as that of Egypt of
old—a darkness through which even a single ray of light
would fail to penetrate.”’

Layers of dank, dense vapour—pierced occasionally, it
may be, by a few straggling wisps of palest sunshine—
characterised the atmosphere of Silurian and Devonian

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 255

times. When we come to the Carboniferous Era, the air
was so loaded, it is supposed, with carbonie acid that,
to use the language of Winchell, ‘‘ No air-breathing animal
could survive, and Nature was called upon to solve the
problem of the elimination of the noxious gas which
unfitted the atmosphere for respiration.”

The problem was solved by the vegetation of immense
size and universal extent which characterised the period,
and which by absorbing the superfluity of carbonic acid
from the air helped to purify it and render respiration
possible.

Not, then, till the end or towards the end of the
Carboniferous Age can it be said that an atmosphere
existed similar in a measure to our own in ingredients,
proportion, and respirable qualities.

This is conjectural science, as we find it in the text-
books : yet, when we turn to the Myths, we find much to
verify such conjectural conclusion.

’» The words of Apollodorus in regard to Asteria and Leto
have some significance: ‘‘ éauriy eis OdAacoay épprpe”” point
to the atmosphere not being matured till after the
‘thermal ocean’’ was formed and more or less perma-
nently solid land had been thrust above the waters.

We gain further information from Ovid who devotes
much space to Latona. Having related how the arrogance
of Niobe towards Latona was punished by Apollo and
Diana af the entreaty of their mother, the poet takes a re-
trospective view and describes the wanderings, sufferings,
and final triumph of the atmosphere personified.

We shall understand the poet better by entering into
his plot. He goes back in thought to the day when the
Glacial period had passed, and when nature donned once
more its garb of green. He introduces a denizen of Post-
tertiary times, possibly the humble fern, as relating to its
fellow companions of the wood the incidents which it,
or its type, had witnessed in the early and closing periods
of the Carboniferous Age, and how the atmosphere was
affected thereby.

256

Qu

10

15

LX)
oO

30

35

45

THE GODS OF OLD;

Tune verd cuncti manifestam Numinis iram
Foemina virque timent : cultuque impensils omnes
Magna gemelliparee venerantur numina Dives.
Utque fit, 4 facto propiore priora renarrant.

E quibus unus ait: Lycie quoque fertilis agris
Haud impuné Deam veteres sprevére coloni.

Res obscura quidem est ignobilitate virorum ;
Mira tamen: vidi preesens stagnumque lacumque
Prodigio notum. Nam me jam grandior xvo,
Impatiensque vie genitor, deducere lectos
Jusserat indé boves; gentisque illius eunti

Ipse ducem dederat: cum quo dum pascua lustro,
Ecce ! Jacis medio, sacrorum nigra favilla,

Ara vetus stabat, tremulis circumdata cannis,

Restitit: et pavido, Faveas mihi, murmure dixit
Dux meus: et simili, Faveas, ego murmure dixi.
Naiadum, Faunine foret tamen ara rogabam,
Indigenzené Dei? Oidm talia reddidit hospes.
Non hac, 6 juvenis, montanum Numen in aré est:
Tila suam vocat hance, cui quondam regia Juno
Orbe interdixit: quam vrx erratica Delos
Orantem accepit, tunc cim levis insula nabat.
Tilic incumbens cim Palladis arbore palmes,
Edidit invité geminos Latona nevercé.

Hine quoque Junonem fugisse puerpera fertur,
Inque suo portésse sinu duo Numina natos.

Jamque Chimeriferze, cim Sol gravis ureret arva,
Finibus in Lycie, longo Dea fessa labore,

Sidereo siccata sitim collegit ab sestu,

Uberaque ebiberant avidi lactantia nati.

Forté lacum melioris aquee prospexit in imis
Vallibus: agrestes illic fruticosa legebant

‘Vimina cum juncis, gratamque paludibus ulvam.
Accessit, positaque genu Titania terram

Pressit, ut hauriret gelidos potura liquores:
Rustica turba vetant. Dea sic affata vetantes,
Quid prohibetis aquis? Usus communis aquarum.
Nec solem proprium Natura, nec aéra fecit,

Nec tenues undas. Ad publica munera veni.

Quee tamen ut detis, supplex peto. Non ego nostros
Abluere hic artus, lassataque membra parabam :
Sed relevare sitim. Caret os humore loquentis ;
Et fauces arent; vixque est via vocis in illis.
Haustus aquee mihi nectar erit; vitamque fatebor
Accepisse simul: vitam dederitis in unda.

Hi quoque vos moveant, qui nostro brachia tendunt
Parva sinu. Et casu tendebant brachia nati.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL, 257

50

55

60

65

Quem non blanda Des potuissent verba movere ?
Hi tamen orantem perstant prohibere, minasque,
Ni procul abscedat, conviciaque insuper addunt.
Nec satis hoc. Ipsos etiam pedibusque manuque
Turbavére lacus: imoque é gurgite mollem

Huc illuc imum saltu movére maligno.

Distulit ira sitim. Neque enim jam filia Cosi
Supplicat indignis; nec dicere sustinet ultra
Verba minora Ded; tollensque ad sidera palmas,
éternum stagno, dixit, vivatis in isto !

Eveniunt optata Dex. Juvat isse sub undas;
Et mods tota cavé submergere membra palude
Nune proferre caput: summo modo gurgite nare:
Seepe super ripam stagni considere: spe
In gelidos resilire lacus. Sed nunc quoque turpes
Litibus exercent linguas: pulsoque pudore,
Quamvis sint sub aqua, sub aqua maledicere tentant.
Vox quoque jam rauca est; inflataque colla tumescunt,
Ipsaque dilatant patulos convicia rictus.
Terga caput tangunt; colla intercepta videntur ;
Spina viret: venter, pars maxima corporis, albet;
Limosoque nove saliunt in gurgite rane. .

Met. VI, 313—381.

Then fear they all, of either sex, the wrath
Made manifest of the divinity ;

And all by garb more zealously respect

The twin-bearing deity’s controlling means.
And as it haps, from later incident

They hearken back to those done long before.

Of whom one thus: ‘ With rue the settlers old
In fertile Lycia’s fields this goddess scorned.
Not clear the subject through man’s ignorance;
Yet wondrous ’tis: a witness I have seen

The marsh and lake for strange event renowned :
For me our sire, now older grown in years

And for the way incapable, ordained

To carry down from there the oxen choice;

And gave me going guide of his own stock:
With whom while I traverse the sedgy plains,
Behold! amid the lake, and black with ash

Of sacred rites, a hoary temple stood

Begirt with rustling canes. Paused then my guide
And said with trembling accent, ‘Favour me!’
And ‘Favour me!’ with accent like I said.
When asked I if, howbeit, this were shrine

Of Naiads, Faun, or country born god,

258

THE GODS OF OLD;

My comrade friend made answer thus: ‘O youth,
No mountain deity is in this shrine:

Her own does this she call whom Juno proud

In time past from this orb debarred: and whom
Imploring, wandering Delos scarce received
When erst it floated, an unstable isle.

Incumbent there on palm with wisdom’s tree
Latona brought forth twins, their stepdame loath.
Here too she’s said, delivered, to have fled

From Juno, and have carried on her breast

The two divinities, her offspring born.

And now in Lycia’s climacteric bounds,

When mighty Sol should search with heat the plains,
The goddess wearied by her longsome toil,
Parched by the iron surge grew thirst, and dry
The milk-paps had her eager children drained.
Amidst the lowest vales she spied by chance

A lake of purer water: there did roam

The country’s dweilers through the shrubby plains,
Osiers with reeds and sedge for marshes suit.
The Titan born approached and pressed the earth
With bended knee, that fain to drink she might
The waters cool: the rustic crowd say nay.
Them saying nay the goddess thus addressed :
‘Why bar me from the waters? Common is
The waters’ use. Nor sun particular,

Nor yet the air, nor yet the waters thin,

Has Nature formed. To public gifts Pve eome.
Which yet that ye may give I humbly pray.

Not here to bathe our limbs and wearied frame
Was I preparing: only thirst to ease.

The mouth of aught conversing moisture lacks,
The throat is parched, it scarce has way for sound.
A draught of water nectar I shall find ;

And own that life has likewise been received,—
The life ye may have given in the wave.

Let these, too, move you, who upon our breast
Their little arms extend.’ And, as by chance,
Her offspring young extending were their arms.
Whom would the deity’s sweet words not move?
Yet those persist the suppliant to bar,

And threats and seurrile croaks moreover add
Should she not far retire. Nor this the end.
Them, feet and hands alike, the lakes engulfed ;
And they, in their convulsive struggling, stirred
The mud on all sides from the depth below.

Such wrath as this the raging drought dispelled.

10

11

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 259

For now no more the child of Coous wooes
Unworthy beings: and no longer brooks
To utter words unmeet for deity.

And lifting to the stars her palms she said,
‘In this stagnation may ye dwell for aye!’

The wishes of the goddess come to pass.

It boots that they have gone beneath the waves ;
And sometimes in a hollowed marsh to sink
Their limbs entire, anon to raise the head ;

To sometime swim on surface of the pool;

To often squat upon the marsh’s bank ;

To oft leap back into the waters cool.

But even now those filthy tongues they use

In times of rest: and void of shame they try
Though neath the wave, beneath the wave to croak.
E’en now their voice is harsh, and puffed up necks
They swell, and croaks dilate their gaping jaws.
Head touches back; the necks are seen between ;
The back-bone greenish is ; th’ abdomen too,

By far their body’s greater part, is white ;

As frogs, they jump anew in slimy pool.”

NOTES.

cultu.—The snow and ice of the glacial age, symbolised by Niobe,
had gone under the influence of the heat and light, the offspring
of the atmosphere. As a consequence, vegetation began once
more to deck itself in green.

numina.—The influences of the atmosphere in reflecting light and
heat.

priora renarrant.—This shows that the scientific fact represented
by Niobe was posterior to the circumstances about to be related.

E quibus unus ait.—The ‘‘fern” loquitur.

Lycise.—revxds, “light, clear,” as the atmosphere began to be in
carboniferous times. The ancient name of Lycis was M:Avds,
where the black (péAas) colour of the coal-fields is pointed out.
The epithet fertilis, added to Lycie, denotes the excessive vege-
tation and growth of the period.

stagnumque lacumque.—The vegetation that formed coal was, for
the most part, a swampy growth.

genitor.—The vegetable race must have had an ancestor, the first
of its kind, who in Carboniferous time would certainly be
“‘erandior sevi, impatieusque vice.”

boves.—It is quite a common simile with the classic poets to com-
pare the lands submerged or emerged in the early ages of the
earth to catile: they pictured them, when above the waters, as

$s 2

260

12

14

15

19

23

24

26

THE GODS OF OLD;

oxen grazing; and when submerged, as oxen brought to their
stalls. Thus Geryon’s oxen were the germs of continental
areas raised up by Herculean force, and the oxen of Juno were
the plateaux and mountains raised above the earth’s surface.

In no other age were alternate subsidence and elevation of
land so marked as in the Carboniferous. When the growth and
decay of luxuriant vegetution had .so accumulated as to form
a bed of varying thickness, subsidence ensued, and under the
water and under the detritus brought on by the water, those
beds were transformed into coal by heat, moisture, and
pressure. Later on, those beds with the débris upon them
were raised to the surface, assumed a swampy nature, and
were again filled with the luxurious vegetation requisite
to form another bed of coal,—to sink again, and have the
same process repeated. Ovid has pictured the whole process
briefly and concisely in ‘‘ deducere lectos boves,” and the use
of lectos, as capable of being applied to ‘‘beds” or ‘ layers,”
is significative.

ducem.—Perhaps one of the alges or fucoids, among the earliest
forms of vegetable life.

pascua.—The fern and its companion appeared above the waters
in the midst of a swamp.

ara vetus.—The solid land, ‘‘ the old sod,” elevated enough to be
distinguished from the swamps and marshes hard by, and black
with the convulsions of past ages, and of coal-making periods.

cannis.—Many of the carboniferous trees, especially the calamites,
resembled our cane trees, having a hollow, joimted stem, and
longitudinal striations : they were from 20 to 40 feet high, and
may well be described as tremutis.

restitit.—Both fern and fucoid had originally appeared in a
swampy tract beyond the confines of the more solid and
elevated island (pascua lustro). They now approached this ara
vetus, as being better suited for their growth and requirements.

Juvenis.—The carboniferous fern was but a youth in the eyes of
the Silurian fucoid.

Vast platforms, swampy for the most part, were the charac-
teristics of Carboniferous time: there were no mountain ranges
(non montanum numen).

Palladis arbore palmw.—The palm and olive, types of the
endogens and exogens that were yet to be, were still germinally
belo» : hence the use of incumbens. Endogens have been found
in Devonian times, and fragments of what Dr. Dawson has
likened to dicotyledinous wood.

invité novercé.—The dry land, Juno, was not yet well prepared for
higher forms of life, and for a light and heat giving atmosphere
that was requisite for such forms.

yortisse sinu.—The atmosphere, though possessed of light and

27

29

31

33
36

42

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 261

heat giving qualities from an early period, was forced to keep
them latent till a more suitable age appeared.

Jamque.—The dua, fucoid, may be considered as closing its
relation of past events with the words ‘‘ numina natos.” The
fern now proceeds to tell what it had witnessed for itself. The
fucoid’s story has reference to all before Carboniferous time ;
the fern’s to Carboniferous time itself, and probably its close.

Chimeeriferze.—Chimera, as already mentioned, means a long
degree of heated temperature.

The belief among the ancients, and among many modern
writers, Dr. Croll for instance, is that our Earth in early ages
went through a succession of hot and cold periods, lasting for
about 10,000 years, the half of the magnus annus, or Platonic
year,—or of the cycle produced by the Precession of the
Eiquinoxes.

The words ‘“‘cum Sol gravis ureret arva” show that the
climatic condition at the period denoted by ‘“‘Jamque” was
tropical throug*out ; as indeed it is asserted to be in Carboni-
ferous time, in our geological treatises.

sidereo.—Ovid Latinises the Greek word oidjpeos, “iron,” just as
Pliny uses siderites for the loadstone, that draws iron. The
long é does not affect the scansion, as eo can be taken as one
syllable.

The coal measures are intercalated everywhere with strata of
shale in which beds of iron are always found associated. The
New Red Sandstone group, overlying the Carboniferous, owes
its colour to the presence of ferruginous matter, oxide of iron.
On the stagnant water of marshes, bogs, pools, &c. we see an
iridescent scum: this has been produced by alternate changes
of peroxide to protoxide and protoxide to peroxide of iron, thus
causing a constant interchange of the life-giving element,
oxygen, and the sidereo westu of the poet.

lacum melioris aquee.—Marine shells found lying on the coal bed
or its attached shales show that a portion of the vegetation which
formed the coal flourished in salt or brackish water. But other
portions flourished in bitter or fresh water. ‘Some of the coal
measures are of fresh water origin, and many have been formed
in lakes: others seem to have been deposited in estuaries, or at
the mouths of rivers, in spaces alternately occupied by fresh
and salt water.” —Lyell.

The whole line describes well the Carboniferous flora.

vetaut.--The denizens of the period, cold-blooded animals, did
not want a better atmosphere

caret os humore loquentis.—The atmosphere is requisite for the
proper production of sound or speech.

Dana, writing of the Carboniferous Age, says, ‘‘ There was
no music in the groves, save, perhaps, that of insect life and
the croaking Batrachian.”

262 THE GODS OF OLD;

44 vitam.—Oxygen is the life-giving principle.

47 Et casu.—A stray gleam or two of pale sunshine may have
occasionally pierced the dense air of those days.

49 Hi.—The agrestes mentioned in line 32.

In the Carboniferous Age purely air-breathing animals could
not exist, owing to the excessive amount of carbonic acid in the
air, and animal life was represented chiefly by fishes and such
cold-blooded animals as do not require much oxygen. But all
through this Coal Age and extending into the Triassic are
found the remains and tracks of a supposed amphibian, called
the Labyrinthodont, or Cheirotherium, from the likeness of its
tracks to those of an open hand. Some class it as a marsupial,
but the general opinion is that it was a batrachian. It
measured from 7 or 8 feet to as many inches long. The larger
specimens are thus described by Hooker: ‘‘ Though having a
head of three or four feet in length, and teeth three inches
long, and being about the size of an ox, with his long hind
legs, he was very much like a frog.”

51 pedibusque manuque.—The peculiar marks of the Labyrintho-
donts or Cheirotheria are noted.

One of nature’s convulsions, so common in Carboniferous
times, occurred, with the usual result of submergence for land
and life.

54 Distulit iva sitim.—Platform after platform went down, freighted
with the carbonic acid which vegetation had taken from the
air. The atmosphere was consequently purified, and we find
such air-breathing animals as reptiles, monstrous birds, and
marsupials appearing in the Mesozoic Age that followed the
Carboniferous.

54 Neque enim jam.—The ‘“‘fern” breaks off his narrative for a
while to laud the greater intelligence of those who were fortu-
nate enough to live with it in Post-tertiary days. It says in .
effect, ‘‘ Look around on the fauna and flora of our days; they
are not unworthy of a beneficial atmosphere. Listen to the
chirpings and the songs of birds, the lordly roaring and
bellowing of the animals, &c.: such sounds, more or less
articulate, are the only ones pleasing to the deity of the
atmosphere.”

55 dicere sustinet.—It is the air that proclaims sounds and speech.
No air, no sound.

56 Tollensque.—The ‘‘fern” resumes the thread of its narrative;
and proceeds to describe the change or evolution of the Carbo-
niferous Cheirotheria into Post-tertiary frogs.

58 Juvat.—Better in evolution is a frog than a Cheirotherium.

63 Litibus.—Frogs are loudest in their croaking on stilly evenings.
This is not the first time Ovid has Latinised the Greek durés,
‘‘plain, simple.” See his description of the Chaos.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 263

While Apollo and Diana are not within the direct scope
of this work, yet a few words may be spared them, and may
not be amiss. As children of Latona, it is evident that their
origin must be traced to what Latona represents, viz.: our
atmosphere. Both are described as deities who punish, and
send plagues, pestilence and death on men and animals ; also
as divinities who help, save, and ward off evils from living
beings.

These seemingly contradictory attributes are reconciled
when we remember that atmospheric agencies are construc-
tive and destructive; that the atmosphere is not only a
source of health and well-being, but also an agent which
rusts and corrodes and introduces blight, plague, and
germinal diseases on all organisms alike, animal and vege-
table. The dyava Bédea of Apollo and Diana would con-
sequently be tantamount to natural deaths from apnaa, as
in pleurisy, phthisis, and such other diseases, as opposed
to death from violence.

As both sound and solar light and heat are dependent on
a medium for the vibrations so all-essential for their produc-
tion, and as this medium is our atmosphere, it is evident
how dependent on this atmospheric agency is life with all
its civilisation ; how dependent on it are the gifts of speech,
song, and music. It is thus that Apollo is said to be the
founder of cities and of civilisation, as also the god of
prophecy, music, and song.

The permanence of the atmosphere it is that produces all
the uniformity of sound. Change its stability, and sound
grows fainter until silence ensues; change its proportions,
and discord takes the place of harmony.

But light, heat, and sound are not only transmitted in
direct lines, but also indirectly, through reflection. Diana
is the deity who presides over such subtle agents; she is
peculiarly the goddess of the chase or hunting ; and reflected
light, reflected heat, and reflected sound are nothing but
light chasing light, heat chasing heat, and sound chasing
sound—the Triformis Diana of the myths. She is never
connected with prophecy, song, or music, like Apollo, since

264 THE GODS OF OLD;

grave speech and musical sounds are produce by dzrect, not
indirect vibrations. She has been often confounded with
Luna, as has Apollo with Helios, owing probably to the
close connection between those light-giving deities and the
light-manifesting ones. But if we bear in mind that Apollo
represents the direct agency of the atmosphere in trans-
mitting light, heat, and sound,—and Diana, the indirect
agency of the atmosphere in reflecting the same, we can
never fall into such confusion.

Apollodorus, describing the accouchement of Latona,
says “‘she begot first Artemis; besought by her, she then
begot Apollo.” It is another bit of condensed science,
implying as it does that we see the reflected or refracted
light of the sun before his direct rays are actually visible.

Sect. 3.—THE METAMORPHIC ROCKS.

Let us now go back to Asteria.

Asteria.—The rocks of our globe have been classified as
Fossiliferous, Metamorphic, Volcanic, and Plutonic. Of
these the latter two are universally conceded to be the pro-
ducts of igneous action, and the first or fossiliferous, of
watery action. But the same unanimity of opinion does not
exist as to the origin of the Metamorphic. They form a
huge mass of not less than 80,000 feet in thickness, at the
least, have the plutonic granite for a basis and the fossili-.
ferous for a canopy, and consist of varying combinations
of quartz, feldspar, mica, hornblende, chlorite, limestone, &c.,
so as to form the Gneiss and other rocks called by the general
name of Schists, from their natural tendency to fissility.
They are all crystalline in structure and devoid of fossils: in
these respects they resemble the granite on which they rest,
and differ from those above them. They are also foliated
or stratified in arrangement: in this they resemble the rocks
above them and differ from the amorphous granite. Hence
the doubt and dispute that have arisen as to their origin.
Are those Metamorphic rocks the result of fire, like the
granite; or of water, like the sedimentary ?

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 265

Many things combine to eliminate the first or igneous
mode of origin: the foliated arrangement cannot well be
accounted for under such a theory, while, on the contrary,
the crystalline structure can result from changes brought to
bear on sedimentary rocks under heat, water, pressure, and
introduced gases; all which conditions were pre-eminently
present at the time when the Schists were formed, and
would not alone give them a crystalline texture but would
also destroy all vestiges of fossil remains, supposing such to
have existed.

The aqueous origin has proved more acceptable to most
writers on geology, and has given rise to two theories.
Some, following the ‘‘Neptunian” theory of Werner,
contend that the ‘thermal ocean’’ of our early globe
was loaded with mineral matter of all kinds, and that the
Schistose rocks are chemically formed sediments or
precipitates from this ocean: that the crystalline texture
was gained in the waters before the particles subsided to
the bottom, and that all subsequent changes were merely
molecular or re-actionary.

Others maintain that the Schists were originally sedi-
mentary, and derived partly from disintegration of the
pre-existing granitic crust below or above the surface of the
ocean, and partly from chemical precipitates; that those
mechanical and chemical accumulations, strewed over the
ocean’s bed in coarse or fine debris, would then be subjected
to the great internal heat of the earth, be more or less
fused and rearranged, and would thus under heat, water,
pressure, and escaping gases, be finally transformed into
what are called altered or Metamorphic rocks.

Whichsoever of those theories be preferred, it is evident
that the precipitation of chemically formed sediment is one
of the important factors to be considered, since both sides
allow its presence, one to a very large extent, the other in
an inferior degree. This importance will be increased by
the proportion of precipitated matter.

Who can tell the comparative proportions of denuded
granite and of chemical sediments that formed those

266 THE GODS OF OLD;

Schists? All the waters of our oceans came confessedly
from above. How much of the solid crust came from the
same source ?

That the extent of the original matter-bearing airy
envelope was immense is granted by such writers as
descant upon the topic. ‘It doubtless reached the moon,”

‘says Figuier in his ‘‘ World before the Deluge.’’ That the

quantity of rocky material held by it in a gaseous form was
also immense can be gathered from the same writer who
says that it held not only the components of all our oceans
and our atmosphere, but also “‘ vast quantities of mineral
substances, metallic and earthy, reduced to the gaseous
state, and maintained in that state by the temperature of
the gigantic furnace. The metals, the chlorides—metallic,
alkaline, and earthy,—the sulphurets, and.even the earthy
bases of silica, aluminum, and of lime,—all at this
temperature would exist in a vapoury form in the atmo-
sphere surrounding the primitive globe.” Granting this,
then, there would surely be enough of matter, when
translated from aérial to watery regions, to form when
precipitated the Schistose rocks, thick though they be.

‘The matter, source, and mutations of those Metamorphic
rocks are embodied in the Asteria of the myths. Let us
compare her story with that of the Schists. She was
begotten in the lofty couch of Cceus, the promiscuous
matter of air above; she was the sediment of this matter -
when purified by Phoebe; wooed by Jupiter Pluvius she
fled from aérial homes above and plunged into the sea;
there changed to a rock she remained long before emerging
to the surface as an Ortygia or Delos.

More than this too. She is the same Asteria

Whom Perses once brought to his mansion great
To be acclaimed his dear beloved spouse.

We have met this Perses before. He is the son of Crius
and Kurybia, and brother to Astreus and Pallas: he must,
consequently, have some connection with the course and
order of things. The name, IJépons, implies all that is
common to xépw, ziuzpnut, 7700, and apiw, all of which

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL, 267

resemble one another quite closely in their radical and the
formation of a future and aorist tense: it therefore
embodies the ideas of ‘‘ destruction,” ‘‘ burning,” “‘ swelling
out,”’ and “ severing.”

Hesiod, as noticed, has characterised the three brothers
expressively: ‘‘ Astreeus, mighty; Pallas, god of gods; and
Perses, ‘‘ és kat mace perénpenev idpocvvyjow.’ What is this
iduoodvn, peculiar to Perses, and in some way associated
with Order or Arrangement? ‘‘ Skill,” or ‘‘ craft,” is the
usually accepted rendering of the word; but the derivation,
pwr ovvinut, implies more—‘‘ the craft or knowledge of
bringing together.” Bringing what? Hesiod says, when
speaking of the offspring of Phebe:

Asteria too, the well-named, she bezot,
‘Whom Perses once brought to his mansion great
To be acclaimed his dear beloved spouse.

It was Asteria, then, that Perses exercised his art on,—
it was the mineral and earthy matter which “had fallen
from heaven like a star,” and had plunged into the sea,
that Perses brought to his mansion great, and there
impressed his subtle work on.

What was the nature of this work? If Asteria represent
the mineral sedimentary of the Metamorphic rocks, what
does Perses represent? The question is best answered by
reflecting on the further change impressed on those rocks
to make them what they are, Crystalline Schists. What
the agency is that produces crystallisation in rock or gem
is mcre or less mysterious. That the atoms of common
carbon and of equally common quartz, alumina, silica, and
lime, have been transformed respectively into the diamond,
amethyst, sapphire, opal, and pearl, we know; but we do
not know the precise manner nor agency whereby the
wonderful transformation has been effected. So, too, we
do not definitely understand the agency that has brought
about the crystalline texture of those Metamorphic rocks.
** The metamorphic theory,” says Lyell, “‘ does not require
us to affirm that some contiguous mass of granite has been
he altering power; but merely that an action, existing in

268 THE GODS OF OLD;

that interior of the earth at an unknown depth, whether
thermal, electrical, or otherwise, analogous to that exerted
near intruding masses of granite, has in the course of vast
and indefinite periods, and when rising perhaps from a
large heated surface, reduced strata thousands of yards
thick to a state of semi-fusion, so that on cooling they
have become crystalline, like gneiss.”

But what we do know regarding the process is found to
agree so closely with nomenclature and mythical narrative
as to make it evident that Perses is the personification of
Crystallisation.

A certain though unexplainable arrangement: of parts,
heat, a tendency to expansion, and cleavage, are the
requisites of crystallisation: these four requisites are
expressed by the origin and brotherhood of Perses, and by
the wimpy, “to burn,” ap7dw, “to swell out,’ and zpio,
‘to sever,” that are discernible in the derivation. Matter
and water are essential to crystallisation, and its most general
mode of formation is by deposit from a solution: §o, too,
is Perses described as bringing an Asteria, who had
plunged into the sea, to his great abode. What was this
great abode? It could not be the sea itself, for the myth
leads us to believe that Perses brought her thence to his
great abode. Whither? The only answer is, to the bed
of ocean, where the sedimentary matter, spread out and
exposed to the iyoovr of its subtle partner, was meta-
morphosed into the Crystalline Schists. It would conse-
quently look as if the framers of mythology agreed with
the ‘‘ Neptunists ” as regards the origin of the Metamorphic
rocks, but with their opponents as regards the changes effected
on them: the one side can claim Asteria ; the other, Perses.

The 7th Ode of his 38rd Book is addressed by Horace
to Asterie. The personages mentioned in it have so failed
to be recognised that all commentators are forced to agree
with the following remark of Orellius, ‘“ Asterie, Gyges,
Chloe, and Einipeus are all imaginations of the poet’s brain.”
Quite true; but the imaginations of the true poet, ancient
or modern, are bred of reality. There must be a theme for

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 269

song, and the theme in this case was one of the geological
mutations through which our earth has gone.

We have already seen how Ovid took advantage of Latona
to describe some of the characteristics of the Carboniferous
age. Inthe same fashion does Horace utilise Asteria to
describe some traits of the Devonian period.

We must enter, of course, into the poet’s conceit. Taking
the well-established Asteria as the Metamorphic rocks from
whose disintegration all our great sedimentary formations
are really sprung, he pictures her as a mother weeping for
the departure of each child according as it leaves her to go
to the surface above. Calling the igneous force of the
central fire, that lay beneath those altered rocks, by the
name of Hnipeus,—and the luxuriant vegetation of the
Carboniferous age, that was yet to be, by the name of
Chloe,—the poet transports himself in thought to the
commencement of the Devonian formation, which he calls
Gyges,—and then proceeds to evolve the phantoms of his
intellectual knowledge.

1 Quid fles, Asterie, quem tibi candidi
Primo restituent vere Favonii

Thyna merce beatum,
Constantis juvenum fide,

5 Gygen? Ile Notis actus ad Oricum

Post insana Caprze sidera frigidas
Noctes non sine multis
Insomnis lacrimis agit.

Atqui sollicites nuntius hospite,
10 Suspirare Chloén et miseram tuis
Dicens ignibus uri,
Tentat mille vafer modis.

Ut Preetum mulier perfida credulum
Falsis impulerit criminibus nimis
15 Casto Bellerophonti
Maturare necem refert.

Narrat poene datum Pelea Tartaro,
Magnessam Hippolyten dum fugit abstinens ;
Et peccare docentes
20 Fallax historias movet.

270

THE GODS OF OLD;

Frustra: nam scopulis surdior Icari
Voces audit adhuc integer. At tibi
Ne vicinus Enipeus
Plus justo placeat, cave ;
25 Quamvis non alius flectere equum seciens
4Hique conspicitur gramine Martio,
Nec quisquam citus eque
Tusco denatat alveo.
Prima nocte domum claude neque in vias
30 Sub cantu querulz despice tibie,
Et te seepe vocanti
Duram difficilis mane.

Why, O Asterie, weepest thou for Gyges

Young with assurance of a long existence,

That zephyrs fair will in the early springtide
Back to thee bring with finny ware rejoicing.
Brought to the opening with his spots peculiar
After the stars of Capra madly raging,

Restless he hies through darkness that is chilling,
Darkness that marked is by excessive moisture.

E’en so, the envoy of an anxious hostess,
(Proving how Chloe eager is desirous,

How she inflamed is wretchedly by thy fires),
Cunning attacks him in a thousand fashions,

Tells he in story how a woman, lost for
Love to all honour, by her faise assertions
Urged a confiding Praetus to prepare death
For an exceeding rare Bellerophontes :

Mentions how Peleus, continently fleeing
From the Magnessian Hippolyt, was given
Almost to Hades: subtly does he alter
Stories instructive, purposely to tempt him.

All unavailing ; deafer than Icarian

Rocks does he listen, still is he uninjured.
But for thyself, beware! ‘Let not Enipeus,
Near as he is, be welcomed more than proper ;

Hen though no other equally as skilled is

Seen in the warring plain to bend the courser;
F’en though no other equally as swift is

Seen to glide onwards in the fashioned channel.

Bar thou thy house with coming of the darkness;
‘When the pipe rumbles gaze not at its sounding
Down on the causeways; and to him that often ©
Hardhearted calls thee, obdurate continue,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 271

NOTES.

1-8 Lament not, O Metamorphic rocks, for the Devonian formation.
When cyclical time will bring round the spring, then will the
prodigal return, freighted with mollusks and crustaceans, with
the ganoids and the placoids. But at present it is flushed with
the confidence of youth, has all the world before it, and is
heedless to appeals.

8 Thyna merce.—thynnus, ‘a tunny fish.” The Greek word is
Gévvos or Gdvos, and the omission of a letter is as free to the
Latin as to the Greek poet.

The fishes form the most remarkable feature of the Devonian
period, so much so that it has been called ‘‘ The age of fishes.”

4 constantis.—Literally, ‘‘a youth with the belief of being con-

stant.” The Devonian rocks had just commenced their ex-
istence, and thought, poetically, that they would last for ever.

5 Gygen.—yiyopa: yi, ‘‘earth-born,” as being derived from the
disintegration of a previous formation.

notis.—Nota, ‘‘a mark, spot.” Hach formation has its own cha-
racteristic marks, in addition to the stratified form which is
common to all. So much has this been the case with the
Devonian that it has been called ‘‘The old red sandstone,”
from the abundance of such rocks in the formation. We our-
selves use the word “sandy”? to denote ‘‘ speckled, or marked
with spots.”

Oricum.—épixds, ‘‘ mature, in one’s prime, the first opening of a
thing.” So we say ‘‘the prime of the moon,” to denote the
new moon, when it first appears or opens after the change.

6 Capre.—According to Horace, the Devonian formation appeared
at the end (post) of a hot or summer cycle, and was notable
while it lasted for cold spells (frigidas), a murky atmosphere
(noctes), abundant moisture (multis lacrimis), and much local
disturbance (insomnts).

frigidas.—It has been remarked of the Devonian rocks, and
noticeably of those in the south of Scotland, that ‘‘ some of the
brecciated conglomerates have much resemblance to glacial
detritus, and it has been suggested that they have been con-
nected with contemporaneous ice-action.”

7 noctes.—‘ A light still pale, and a semi-opaque atmosphere”
characterised the Devonian period, according to Figuier

8 insomnis.—‘‘ restless, disturbed,” owing to volcanic action, erup-
tions of trap, upheavals, &c. Hugh Miller, describing the
scenery of the Devonian age, says, ‘‘ Ere the seeds of terrestrial
plants, floated from some distant island, or wafted in the air,
had found time to strike root into the crevices of the soil, some
of the frequent earth-tremors of the age shook the flat expanse
under the water out of which it had arisen, and the waves
rippled over it as before.”

272 THE GODS OF OLD;

9-22 Even to the advances of - vegetation is it heedless, for anxious
though this Chloe be, the Devonian soil responds not to the
_ ardent entreaties of her messenger, but remains cold,—as cold
to vegetation as Bellerophon was to Antea or Peleus to
Hippolyte.

9 nuntius.—Vegetation in the preceding Silurian age was princi-
pally marine and of a low type, as the alga. But in Devonian
days, some fand plants began to appear, the forerunners or
messengers of the luxuriant carboniferous plants that were to
come. The dominant organisms of each geologic age may be
said, in the same way, to have had their couriers in the preced-
ing age. ,

hospitz.—The poet’s idea seems to be that the germs of rich car~-
boniferous vegetation were in the depths, roused to activity by
their proximity to the heat of fhe metamorphic rocks (éués igni-
bus uri), and anxiously waiting, as a hostess does a guest, for
the Devonian formation to come down s0 that the Carboniferous
might take its place at the head of nature’s table.

10 Chloén.—yAdy “ the first light green shoot of plants” in spring.

12 tentat.—‘‘ tries to explore” the sandy soil, as the advance guard
of terrestrial vegetation would do.

21 Frustra.—The Devonian period, while rich in fishes, was singu-~
larly barren as a whole in the vegetable forms of life. Not till
the latter part of the age did plants obtain any footing, and
even then but a scanty one.

22 integer—The formation showed no symptoms yet of disintegra-
tion.

22-32 Until the Devonian formation does return take heed to thy
own ways, O Metamorphic rocks, and beware of the sinuous
advances and dashing manner of thy neighbour, the central fire.
Guard well thy rocky home when blackened skies and rumbling
noises forebode eruptions from below; look not behind, since
such would show weakness on your part; and above all, remain
hard, hard as the nether millstone, to the fire that surges
against your walls.

23 Enipeus.—eév inmevs ‘the Knight, or Hotspur, within,” that is,
the igneous force of the central fire, contiguous (vicinus) to the
metamorphic rocks. It must have some outlet; but keep it
within proper bounds (ne plus justo).

25 flectere.—-This refers to the ‘“‘ sinuous veins,” just as denutat does
to the ‘‘dikes” and “ volcanic funnels,” through which the
molten lava flows.

28 Tusco alveo.—rivicxopat, ‘ to fashion.”

30 tibia.—The pipe or channel leading to the central fire below, and
through which a rumbling (querule) sound would be the first
indication of an approaching eruption.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 273

Srcr. 4.—MYSTERIOUS UPS AND DOWNS.

Hecate.—With the establishment of the Metamorphic
rocks was initiated a new and rather mysterious order of
the course of things. From their ruins in the depths of
ocean was formed the first of the fossiliferous rocks, the
Cambrian: these in their turn provided material for the
Silurian, the Silurian for the Devonian, and so on through-
out all the ages from Paleozoic to Post-tertiary. The
existence of each formation was twofold: one, above the
surface of the waters ; the other, submerged in the ocean.
When above, it was the receptacle of vegetable and animal
life; when below, it was being prepared for the life to
come.

The story of one is the story of all.

The ruins of its predecessor, spread broadcast over ocean’s
bed, the coarser here, the finer further on, were exposed to
heat and pressure and the action of submarine convulsions,
were intimately moulded and mixed, and mixed over again
and again in well-defined layers, till finally consolidation
was attained and a stratified formation came into being,
essentially differing in characteristics from its progenitor.
Consolidation to the required extent having been obtained,
a mysterious principle came into play whereby this new
formation was raised slowly from the bed of ocean to the
air of heaven. Nor at the level of the waters did it cease.
Aided occasionally by shocks of earthquake, this raising
principle thrust up the lofty mountains in one place, the
curved strata that make the hills in another, terraces
or raised beaches in a third, the lowlands and the shores,
each in their proper place and in their own time. Alone
and almost unassisted did this principle work at first, and
peak and crag and mountain top reared their heads in
honour of it while yet Life was in its infancy. And those
elevating privileges Life itself could not wrest away, were it
so inclined. But it could add to them; and it did.

During the countless years that passed over the newly
elevated formation, whose head was in the clouds of heaven

G.0. T

274 THE GODS OF OLD;

and whose base reposed in the depths of ocean, Life—the
life that had waxed in years—honoured it and with no
niggard hand. The ranges and hills, the valleys and
plains, river, brook, and inland sea, the very ocean itself,
all teemed with myriad hordes of animated forms which, by
their passing and going, swelled the volume of matter and
thus glorified the elevating principle. Diatom mud and
mangrove swamps, peat mosses and coal beds, all testify to
the fact; so do the caleareous and siliceous ooze of ocean,
the marl of lakes, the chalk cliffs, and the nummulitic
limestone.

And during all these years, this elevating divinity looked
on, watchful, working, and observant. Seated on its
throne, the domes of lofty mountains, it viewed the strife
of centuries as they rolled by, and marked the din of battle
when and where it raged. It saw the curved strata riven
by convulsions and denuded by water, wind, and air, by
snow and ice, until all the graceful, undulating outline was
disturbed and the continuity was broken: with joy too did
it mark how some portions, stronger and more erect than’
their fellows, withstood the fury of the destroyers and
nodded smilingly to each other as hills across the ravines,
the gorges, and the valleys that separated them when the
contest ended. It saw the weaker strata go down amid the
turmoil, and stood by to assist those which raised them-
selves on high, crumpled, distorted, vertical, and plicated
from their efforts to ward off attacks upon the flank. It
noted the fissure and the fault, and occasionally helped
with its presence the side that was willing to do homage to
elevation. And witness was it also of the dreaded earth-
quake when every now and then it came by land and
sea, riding swiftly on its billowy steeds, to stagger even
monarch mountains with its shock, to tumble the lesser
princes, to open gaping fissures and yawning chasms, to
spread havoc and ruin far and wide, and to depress in
one place, elevate in another, a vast stretch of country.
Thirty square miles of territory in Java subsided and
disappeared in the year 1772; while in 1822 the coast

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 275

of Chili was raised three feet over an area of 100,000
square miles.

But each formation had its allotted span, and a day
came when the life upon it had run through all the phases
of existence that such a formation could produce and
-evolute to the highest standard, had exhausted the treasures
of the soil, and could consequently proceed no further on
the lines of elevation. Inorganic matter was sated with
organic, and organic with inorganic. Hach had given of
its wealth and highest aspirations till nought that was
valuable remained.

The elevating principle was quick to perceive the fact ;
and gathering all, the spoilers and the spoiled, it reversed
its course, and slowly, silently, majestically conveyed earth
and life to the sheltering bosom of the deep. Not as a
whole, however.. Some parts led the way; others followed
in. their turn; still others, the loftiest of their kind,
remained long enough behind to witness probably the
appearance of new arrivals and to give a welcome, part
cheer, part sob, ere they went with heads bowed down to
rejoin the comrades that awaited them below.

And here, with the hoar of ages on its brow, was com-
parative rest for some portions of our formation; but for
others there went on a further disintegration and that
moulding, mixing, and general transforming process already
mentioned, whereby matter was altered, layer after layer
was piled up, and hardening was advanced. Even then
was the elevating principle present, observant of the work,
superintending the stratification, and fostering with tender
care the nuclei of the mountain, hill, and terrace that were
yet to be. -

Such is the scientific story. Every text book on geology
vouches for the doctrine that, as Lyell puts it, ‘‘ the solid
land has been repeatedly moved upwards or downwards so
as permanently to change its position relatively to the sea.”
With like unanimity do they teach that to these movements
primarily are due the general contour of earth’s surface,
such as mountain, bill, plain, and valley: they ‘“ will

xg 2

276 THE GODS OF OLD;

account,” says Lyell, “equally for the position of those
elevated masses of marine origin in which the stratification
remains horizontal, and for those in which the strata are
disturbed, broken, inclined, and vertical.”

Nor have those movements been confined to any one age,
early or late. They were initiated in the first of the fossili-
ferous rocks, they continued through all ages, they are still
going on. ‘‘ Such changes,” remarks Lyell, ‘‘ have actually
occurred in our own days, and are now in progress, being
accompanied in some cases by violent convulsions, while in
others they proceed insensibly.’””

The usual name given to such movements are Elevation
and Subsidence, or Upheaval and Depression. But though
dual in name it does not necessarily follow that they are so
in essence.

The general who advances far into an enemy’s country
and who then retreats with the spoils of war is still one and
the same personage: the earthquake that elevates at one
time and depresses at another is still an earthquake, and
attributable to some common cause. So with Elevation
and Subsidence. Their effects are manifest and intelligible,
but their cause, while more or less a matter of uncertainty,
is conceded to be one. While no solution of this cause has
hitherto proved generally satisfactory, the general belief is
that it is due to consequences ensuing in some way from
the original internal heat of the earth.

Thus, both the movements and their cause are alike
more or less of a mystery to modern science; very aptly,
then, has Mythology symbolised those movements of
Elevation and Subsidence by Hecate, a goddess whose
attributes and offices are so many and strange that we find
her described in classical dictionaries as ‘‘a mysterious
and powerful being.”

When Lyell postulates the elevated position of strata to
the gradual uprising of land from the bed of ocean, and not
to the going down of the sea, he says, ‘‘ This idea, however
startling it may at first appear, is quite in accordance with
the analogy of changes now going on in certain regions of

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 277

the globe.” We may paraphrase the quotation by remark-
ing that however startling the analogy between Hecate and
the movements of Elevation and Subsidence may appear at
first, it will be found quite in accordance with Hesiod’s
description of the goddess, and with all the various
attributes assigned her.

In the first place, the derivation of ‘Exary is very
suggestive, €xas dry, “ruin or destruction far away,”
pointing as it does to the fact that each formation has been
formed from the ruins or destruction of the preceding, far
down in the bed of ocean.

Her parents, too, Asteria and Perses, are suggestive of
the scientific cause generally assigned for elevation,
inasmuch as the Metamorphic rocks are close to the
central heat, and destruction, scattering, and moulding
have much to do with stratification :—

3 7 ¢ La € La s a ‘7 ,

4 8 émoxvoapeévn “Exdrny téke, tiv wept mavrev

Zeds Kpovidns tiunoe’ adpev O€ of dyad Sépa,

potpay Exew yains te kal drpuyérow Oaddoons.

4 8é Kal dorepdevros dn’ obpavod eppope Tipps,
5 davaros re Gcoice reripévn corti pddcora.

kal yap voy bre rou tis emtyOoviay dvOpareay

” € ‘ A x ¢ ,

épdor iepa xadd xara vépor ihaoxnrat,

Ul c 4 LA , cw A
xuxAnoket “Exatny: moAAn ré of €oero Tippy
to- 47 2 CQ 1 £ >
peta pad’, 6 rpdpparv ye Vea irobdéLerat ebyds

10 Kai ré of BABov drdler, éret Suvapis ye waépetiv.
écoo yep Tains re xal Otpavod é£eyévorro
kal Tiny EAaxov, TovTay Exet aigav dravTor,
ovd€é ri piv Kpowidns éBinoaro, obdé 7 aanipa
bao éhaxev Tithes pera mporépotct Oecioty,

15 GW exe ws Tomp@rov aw’ dpyins émdeTo dacpos.
ovd’, drt wovvoyerys, Hooov ed Eupope Tunis,
kal yépas év yain Te kat olpava n5€ Gaddooy.

~ ul
GAN Ere kal odd pGAdov, ézel Kai Zeds riev adrqv.
a > ’ , ror > +
@ 8 dbder peyddos mapaylyverat 3 dvivgow
- - ef >
20 évr dyoph Aaoiot perampéme: bv K eOéAgow
,
at & émér’ és wodepov POtonvopa Gwpnocerrat
ic
dvépes, évOa bed mapaytyverat, ois x 2beAgot
vixny mpopovéas dmdoat kat Kvdos épééat*
év te Sixy Bacthedot wap’ aidoiowes xadicer’
25 écOd7 & abf, ddr’ dvdpes dyaut debhevaow,
” ‘ . - ny 2 8
&vOa Gek Kai Tots wapayiyverat 78 Gvivgct.
vixnoas S€ Bin Kat Kdptet xadov deOdov

278 THE GODS OF OLD;

peta héper xalpar te, toxetor S¢ xidos dmdfe.
> 4 3 o¢ EA , c 372
éobhi 8 inaneooe wapeotdpey ois x ebédyot,
30 kal rois of yAauxiy Svoméu@edov epyatorrat’
” 3 ¢ : 32 , . ,
edyovrat & “Exdry kat éptxrome Evvooryaig.
Las -
pyiSies 8 adypyy xvbvi} Oeds Grace woAAjy,
peia 8° atbeidero atvopévqy, eb&dovea ye Oupd.
écbAy 8 ev crabpoiot civ “Epya dni’ aé€ew"
35 Bovkodias Tr ayédas Te Kat aimd\a mAaré alyar,
r ? > , ak ~ tone
woimvas 7’ eipoméxav Giov, Gund y' OéAovea,
€& dAtyev Bptdet, cat ek woAAGY petova OnKev.
of a
oUTe@ Tol Kal pouvoyerns ek pnTpos codca
waat per’ aOavdroiost TeTipytas yepdeoct.
40 Oijxe 8é puew Kpovidys xoupotpédoy, of per’ exetvny
SPbarpotow iovro pdos moAvdepkéos ’Hods.
NA
otras €& dpyns xovpatpdédos: aide re ryzai.—Theog. 411.

Then with the pangs of labour smarting sore

She ushered into being Hecate

Whom Zeus Kronides honoured over all.

On her were poured these peerless gifts,—to have
The portioning of land and watery main;
Grouped has she too the starry vault’s display ;
And by immortal gods been most revered.

For even now when haply one of men,

Who walks this earth and works at hallowed rites,
Would lawful please, he calls on Hecate ;

And honour great full quickly him attends
‘Whose fervent vows the goddess gracious hears,
And bliss she adds when genius stands his friend.

For many as were born of heaven and earth
And held as heritance the post of sway,

Of all of these the destiny she holds;

Nor did the Kronos-born coerce her aught,

Nor wrest what rights of heritance she had
*Mongst former Titan gods, but these she holds
As from all time the sharing was at first.

And no mean share, one-kinded though she was,
Of rank the goddess got,—seignioral right

In earth, the sea, and in the starry dome;

But much more still when Zeus revered her too.

And much she helps and aids the one she lists ;
In forum thronged ennobles whom she wills;
When. men their armour don for wasting war,
Then comes the goddess, with advisement keen
To victory insure, and glory great

Mete out for such as haply she elects ;

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 279

She sits in judgment close by rulers grave;

When freemen too would struggle in the lists,
Then does the friendly goddess help and aid,

And he who wins by dint of force and strength
Quickly and blithely takes the precious prize,

And on his parents glory bright reflects.

For whom of knights she lists to have stayed by,
And mariners who plough the stormy blue,

A friend she is; to Hecate they pray

And him who shakes with booming loud the earth.

But spoil immense the kindly goddess caused

To follow free; and, when disposed in mind,

She quick removed all open to the view.

A friend she’s too, with Mercury combined,

To shepherd in its stalls the booty all,

The mountains, hills, raised beaches of the waves,
And lines of surf-lashed cliffs, as she’s inclined.
From few she’s strong, from many has made less.

And so, one-kinded as she was from birth,

She has been marked by all the gods with gifts;

But Zeus installed her as the nurse of youth

That sees through her.the dawn’s far-searching light.
Of tender youth a rearer thus she is

From time of old; and such her honours are.

NOTES.

1 4 8 tmoxveopévy.—‘ We know,” writes Lyell, ‘‘ that there are
operations now in progress, at great depths in the interior of
the earth, by which both large and small tracts of ground
are made to rise above and sink below their former level, some
slowly and insensibly, others suddenly and by starts, a few
feet or yards at a time.”

8-5 It is elevation (physical) that decides the configuration of land
and water (yains-6atdooys); it is elevation (astronomical) or
altitude that enables the configuration or relative aspects of the
heavenly bodies to be marked out (dotepdevros dx’ obpavod); and
it is elevation (mental) that raises men above the common level,
and ranks them as immortal (d@avdro.cr re Geoict).

In this way we see why the myth describes Hecate as having
power in heaven, earth, and sea; and it is owing to these
physical, astronomical, and mental distinctions of elevation that
Hecate has been pictured with three bodies or three heads, and
called Tergemina, &c.

280 THE GODS OF OLD;

5 @eotc..—The immortal poets.
“* Poetry is itself a thing of God ;
He made his prophets poets, and the more
We feel of poesie do we become
Like God in love and power—undermakers.”—Batley.

6-10 Having mentioned how Elevation is specially honoured by the
poets, the writer adds in complacent spirit, ‘‘/for even now when
haply one of men,” thus alluding probably to himself as one
who works at the sacred rites of poetry (¢pdwv fepa cada), and
who invokes Elevation.

‘*The land of song within thee lies,
Watered by living springs ;
The lids of Fancy’s sleepless eyes
Are gates unto that Paradise,
Holy thoughts, like stars, arise,
Its clouds are angels’ wings.
Look, then, into thy heart and write!
‘Yes, into Life’s deep stream !
All forms of sorrow and delight,
All solemn Voices of the Night,
These can soothe thee, or affright,—
Be these henceforth thy theme.” —Long/fellow.

7 xara vopov.—According to the canons of poetry.

10 dvvayis—power, ability, faculty; and hence, genius, as referring
to poetry. So Plato writes, ‘‘ dévapis rijs womoeas.”

11-12 Elevation presides over the destiny of each geological forma-
tion. It raised them from the depths to the surface where they
held the post of sway for ages, and their destiny being accom-
plished, the same elevation, reversed in principle, submerged
them in the ocean.

13 ovd€ ri.—The principle of Elevation is independent of the son of
Kronos, that is, of Zeus or Life, so far at least as mere
matter and force (xporépo:ot Oeoiow) are concerned.

16 povvoyerns.—EHlevation, physically and astronomically considered,
rules over one kind of matter, the inorganic.

Powerful as she was, even when restricted to this one king-
dom, she became still more so when Life (émei cai Zeds) rendered
her a mental force.

20-31 It is the skill, tactics, judgment, dexterity, or other ready
power of performance acquired by elevated or concentrated
thought, that distinguishes the orator in the forum, the warrior
in battle, the ruler in council, the poet in song, the wrestler in the
arena, the charioteer in the race, and the mariner in the storm.

&y 7 ayopi.— “O heavenly eloquence!
That with the strong rein of commanding words
Dost manage, guide, and master th’ eminence
Of men’s affections.” —Daniel.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL, 281

21-23. ‘For by wise counsel thou shalt make thy war; and in
multitude of counsellors there is safety.” —Prov. xxiv. 6.

24 “He, who the sword of heaven will bear,

Should be as holy as severe.” —Shakespeare.

32 dypnv.—Disintegration and denudation are favoured by elevation.
The Appalachian and other ranges are supposed to have lost
from removal as much material as is now contained in them,
or even more; our valleys were once as high as the hills in
which they nestle. "Where has all the original material gone ?
From the higher to the lower grounds, thence to the still lower,
and so on till the ocean receives all the spoil; and eventually
receives the entire formation when its span is run, and a reflex
elevation quietly submerges it in the deep (feta 8 dceirero
hawopzemny), ;

34-36 The preceding lines treat chiefly of Hecate above the Earth,
or Elevation, and serve to show why the goddess has been
described as three-fold in nature, and an auxiliary in debate,
war, courts of justice, public games of all kinds, navigation,
and hunting.

The poet now proceeds to describe her as a goddess of the
lower world.

34 oraOpciot.—To the ocean, as already remarked, comes all the
spoils of air and water upon the surface of the land, and
finally the formation as a whole. Once there, erosion goes
on unceasingly, chemically by means of oxidation and the
formation of carbonates, and mechanically by the action of
waves and currents upon the disintegrated materials, till
finally a new formation is ready to emerge.

The ocean is thus, as it has been aptly called, ‘‘the coffin
and the cradle of the earth,” or classically, the oradpoi or
‘“‘ stalls” to which the mountain cattle wend their way each
geologic evening for the necessary rest and recuperation.

“Eppz.—That is, with jluxzion. Erosive action is assisted by the
waves, tides, and currents; and by the same agencies is the
débris scattered broadcast over the ocean floor, the coarser and
larger in one place, the finer and smoother further on, and the
finest, as sand and mud, furthest of all.

It is for this reason that Mercury and Hecate are said to
conduct and wander with the dead. All matter, organic or
inorganic, when brought from the surface to the ocean floor,
may be considered as dead ; it has fulfilled the end for which
it was made, has existed and passed away from the busy scene
of life.

Aid’ déerv—aé£o “‘ to Increase, swell, multiply, foster,” as would
be the case with the detritus when layer would be raised on
layer while the process of stratification was going on below,
and while the sedimentary matter was hardening and assuming

282 THE GODS OF OLD;

that configuration of mountain, hill, coast barrier, and plateau,
which is patent to the view when the formation emerges above
the level of the sea.

35-36 liven in the usual acceptation of the words, the gradation
of oxen, cattle, goats, and sheep, is noticeable as descriptive
of various degrees of elevation, of mountain, hill, terrace, and
incline. As already mentioned, ‘‘ oxen” is the mythical and
poetical symbol for ‘‘ mountains; * and this being so, smaller
and inferior cattle would naturally be used to represent smaller
elevations.

Apart, however, from poetical license, the context as well as
the words derivationally considered, are thoroughly significa-
tive of the physical meaning intended to be conveyed.

BovxoAtas.—Bovs xédos ‘the hornless oxen,” or mountains.

ayéXas—ay7 etdw, ‘‘ the rolling curve,” that is, the curved strata
from which our hills are formed. This dyj may be considered
the root of the Latin agyer, just as etdo, or tro, is of the
English word ‘ hill.”

aind\ta—ainis més “ highland;” and aida rAaré’ ‘the flat
highlands,” that is, the tablelands, terraces, raised beaches, all
of which rank among the most characteristic signs of elevation
that survive to this day, and all of which are connected with
the action of the waves along the coasts.

aiyov—aié, from disco, strictly means ‘‘a springer, a rusher,”
and hence, a goat, a fiery meteor, a billow; and alyes, “high
waves,” is regularly used by Artemidorus.

36 soipvas—a herd, or flock, as applied to cattle; a line, or rank, as
applied to inorganic objects.

éiey—oia or da, “a sheepskin, a hem, edge, or border;” the
borders or cliffs that confine the land and separate it from the
sea.

elpoméxav—eipos 1éx ‘‘ wool-combing,” and hence metaphorically,
‘‘surf-beaten.” Even in our own language ‘ comber” is uséd
to signify a log curling wave breaking on the coast.

37 From a few elementary substances (é£ éA/yev) are our mountains
and hills made solid; and from innumerable particles (é«
wo\Aey) are they condensed into smaller compass. And in a
mental sense, brevity and condensation are notable characteristics
of the elevated or sublime in language.

40 xouporpépov.—liducation is elevation ; and in the word ‘‘educate”
we see ‘“‘ Hecate” peeping forth, as it were, and almost
encouraging the derivation of the Goddess from éfdya, the
equivalent of the Latin educo.

‘* Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,
To teach the young idea how to shoot,
To pour the fresh instruction o’er the mind,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 283

To breathe the enlivening spirit and to fix
The generous purpose in the glowing breast!”
Thomson.

With the idea of “ elevation,’’ much of the apparently
mysterious disappears from the mythological Hecate.
Hesiod’s lines have elucidated many of the attributes
assigned her, such as helping the poet, orator, warrior, and
judge, the athlete, hunter, sailor, and the shepherd; as
being the fostering guardian of the young; and a powerful
influence in the moulding of prospective formations.
Especially has he explained her title to Triformis and
Triceps by showing that elevation is physical, astronomical,
and mental. As for the epithet Tergemina, it really implies
‘thrice doubled, or three pairs,” and means that each form
of the Triformis or three-formed goddess is susceptible of a
double sense. Physically, she would be upheaval and
depression ; astronomically, altitude and declination; and
mentally, sublimity and bathos. In the character of
upheaval, altitude, and sublime, she would be apt to be
confounded with Luna ; in those of depression, declination,
and bathos, with Proserpine; and midway between the high
and low, in a state of tremor, oscillation, or reflection, with
Diana.

The cross-roads, as a pictorial emblem, is suggestive of
high and low; and the same dual idea is evidently con-
nected with cemeteries, and with the blood of the murdered
—which sinks into the ground and cries to heaven above
for vengeance.

‘¢ Other sins only speak, murder shrieks out.
The elements of water moisten the earth,
But blood flies upward and bedews the heavens.”
Webster.

Again, since each formation is the sepulchre of the
preceding one, Earth is a vast cemetery; and since sorcery
is but transformation, what greater sorcerer can there be.
physically, than a Hecatean process which, after submerg-
ing any one formation and wandering with its freight of
organic and inorganic dead for countless thousands of years,
has transformed it, elevated it, and has thus sent forth the

284 THE GODS OF OLD.

spectres and phantoms of the Silurian age to the Devonian,
of this to the Carboniferous, and so on to Post-tertiary
time.
“ And in that rock are shapes of shells, and forms
Of creatures in old worlds, of nameless worms,
Whose generations lived and died ere man,
A worm of other class, to crawl began.” —Crabbe,

And what greater sorcerers, mentally speaking, can there
be than the poet, philosopher, and scientist, who with magic
wands transform the pebbles of thought and of reality to
pearls, and leave such crystallised fossils of the mind in
the written page wherein we walk and commune with the
mighty dead.

“The past but lives in words: a thousand ages
Were blank, if books had not evoked their ghosts,
And kept the pale, unbodied shades to warn us
From fleshless lips.” —Bulwer.

In a physical sense, tremors and other convulsive move-
ments of the earth are announced by the uneasiness of
cattle and by the howling of dogs; ina mental sense, the
cynic and critic are the first to hail with praise or condem-
nation the productions of literary aspirants, and to act as
‘‘ whetstones, which unable of themselves to cut, can still
give a cutting edge to iron.”

As to the pictured representation of the three-headed
goddess, the dog would be emblematic of the subsiding
process, or the long night during which each formation
sank into and was guarded in the depths; the horse, of the
elevating process whereby it rode from the bottom to the
surface of the sea; and as for the middle head, the lion
(Adw, ‘‘ to see’”’) may denote the visibility of earth above the
waters; the moon, the incessant changes going on in it;
the sow, the productive powers of nature ; and the woman,
that our terrestrial globe was destined for the human race.

BOOK SIXTH.
TITANIC TIES—(continued).

—>——

CHAPTER LI.

THEOGONY.

Hestia (Vesta)
| Demeter (Ceres)
Kronos and Ruza i Hera (Juno)
menos ' Hades (Pluto)
| Poseidon (Neptune)
i Zeus (Jupiter)

MYTHS.

Kronos.—-The Saturn of the Latins, son of Uranus and Gé, and
youngest of the Titans. He it was who, at the instigation of
Gé, used the sickle upon his father and expelled him from the
throne. He delivered the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes from
Tartarus, only, however, to thrust them back again when he
had been raised to the kmgdom. He married his sister
Rhea, but as Uranus and Gé had predicted that he would be
dethroned by his own son, he swallowed each of his children
according as they were born. Kronos is generally identified
with ‘‘Time,” and is represented as having wings on his
shoulders, chains on his feet, and a pruning-hook in his
hand.

Rhea.—The Ops of the Latins, sister and wife of Kronos, by whom
she begot Vesta, Ceres, Juno, Pluto, Neptune, and Jupiter.
Kronos having devoured the first five of these, the incensed.
mother sought counsel of her parents, Uranus and Gé, before
the birth of her last child. By their advice she went, when
near her time, to Lyctus in Crete and there begot Jupiter in
a cave of Dicte. In order to deceive Kronos, she dressed a
stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to her husband, who
swallowed it in the belief that it was his child.

236 THE GODS OF OLD;

estia,—The Roman Vesta, the first of the children swallowed by her
father Kronos. When Apollo and Neptune sued for her
hand, she obtained from Jupiter the privilege of remaining
a virgin for ever. Always regarded as the goddess of the
hearth, or of the fire burning on the hearth, she thus
symbolised not only the central hearth of the Universe and
that of Earth, but also the central hearth of cities and towns
and the inner chamber of private homes. But few special
temples were erected to her honour, as each residence and
town had in itself the altar of the goddess, namely, the
hearth, which was at once the centre of domestic and civic
happiness, and a sanctuary for the suppliant when fleeing from
danger. The town-hall, or Prytaneum, was consecrated to
her, whence she is also culled Prytanitis: in it, and in
whatever temple was erected to her, a perpetual fire was
kept burning, some of which was taken by intending
emigrants to kindle on the hearth of their new homes.
When sacrifices were offered, Vesta was the first deity to be
invoked, and to her were the first libations presented.

Demeter.—The Roman Ceres, universally recognised as ‘‘ Mother
Earth,” yq pyrnp, the protectress of agriculture and of all
the products of earth, and consequently the introducer of the
laws and regulations that lead up to civilised life. By
Jupiter she begot Persephone, or Proserpine, who was
afterwards carried off by Pluto with Jupiter’s consent. To
appease Demeter, who shunned Olympus and refused fer-
tility to earth, Proserpine was finally permitted to return
and remain for two-thirds of the year with her mother. It
is stated that Demeter fell in love with Iasion, and in a
thrice ploughed field in Crete, she became by him the mother
of Plutus. The Eleusinian mysteries were instituted in her
honour; and in Rome the property of traitors to the common-
wealth was often made over to her temple. She is pictured
with large breasts, robes falling to her feet, and crowned with
corn or poppies.

Hera.--The Roman Juno, was brought up, according to Homer, by
Oceanus and Tethys, and subsequently became the wife of
Jupiter, by whom she begot Hebe, Mars, and Ilithya.
Hesiod says that she begot Vulcan without assistance, while
other writers affirm that he too was the son of Jupiter and

_Juno. On her marriage with Jupiter, she was honoured
with presents from all the gods, and particularly from Ge,
who presented her with a tree bearing golden apples. These
apples Juno in turn gave to Jupiter, who consigned them to
the care of the Hesperides. This marriage, the ‘Sacred
Marriage” (iepds yapos), as it has been called, made her be
esteemed as the deity presiding over wedlock and the birth

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 287

of children; and almost as many cities contended for the
honour of its celebration as for that of her birth. The other
deities reverence her; Jupiter listens to her counsels, com-
municates his secrets to her, and is often swayed—sometimes
against his will—by her entreaties, her passions, or her
jealous fears. She is ever jealous of any one being preferred
before her, and persecutes alike, whether mortal or immortal,
ali those favoured with the love of Jupiter. She is pictured
as majestic in appearance, of mature age, with forehead
broad, and eyes large and widely opened; a diadem is on
her head, a sceptre in her hand, and a flowing veil hangs
down behind or covers her from head to foot. Peacocks
draw her chariot, and Iris is her peculiar messenger.

Hades.—The Roman Piuto, after the conquest of the Titans, got for
his share the empire of the nether world. He has been
variously called Aides, Plouton, Dis, the infernal Jupiter
(Zeds xarayOdnos), King of the Shades (@va€ évépav) and
various other names. He abducted Persephone, the daughter
of Ceres, and made her his queen. He is described as fierce,
inexorable, and hateful to mortals; as keeping the gates of
the lower world closed to bar egress, and as the possessor
and giver of all the metals contained within the earth. No
temples were raised to his honour. He is generally pictured
as sitting on a throne, holding in his hand a key, and having
the three-headed dog Cerberus lying near.

Poseidin—The Roman Neptune, was allotted the sea for empire when
the Titans were overcome. He is generally regarded as the
god of the fluid element, and has for his queen Amphitrite,
daughter of Nereus according to Hesiod, or of Oceanus -
according to others. He rules the sea, gathers the clouds,
calls forth storms, and has it in his power to shake the very
earth round which his waters roll: hence he is styled
yatnoxos, évociyber, Kuwyrip yys, and other like epithets. He
has also the power of assuaging the angry billows and of
calming the tempests which he or the wind gods may have
raised. He rides over the waves in a chariot drawn by
horses with brazen hoofs and golden manes, and in his hand
he holds a trident, the peculiar emblem of his authority, as
the key is of his brother Hades. The dolphin and horse are
other symbols of his, particularly the latter which he was
said to have created, and the management of which he
taught to mortals: for this reason he has been styled immos
ava, and was considered the patron of horse and chariot
races.

Zeus—The Roman Jupiter, was the youngest child of Kronos and
Rhea. Kronos, as already related, having swallowed all the
preceding children he had by Rhea, the latter was so grieved

288

THE GODS OF OLD;

that, when about to give birth to Zeus, she took counsel of
Uranus and Gé in order to try and save her unborn child.
They, influenced by her entreaties, sent her to Lyctus in
Crete where Zeus was born. Thence he was brought to
Dicte and concealed in a cave of Mt. Aigezeon. Rhea dressed
a stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to Kronos, who
swallowed it in the belief thatit was his son. As the years
rolled by Zeus increased in strength, and Kronos, deceived
by the crafty counsels of Gé, threw up the children whom he
had swallowed, and first of all the stone, which stone was
afterwards fixed by Zeus at Pytho under Parnassus. After
this, one of the first acts done by Zeus was to deliver the
Cyclopes from Tartarus, and they in gratitude gave him the
thunder and lightning with which he rules gods and men.

Such is the Hesiodic account, to which many additions
have been made by later writers. Thus Apollodorus makes
no mention of Rhea taking counsel of her parents nor of her
going to Lyctus: he says that Rhea, when ready to bring
forth Zeus, went to Crete, begot the child in a cave of Dicte,
and gave him in charge of the Curetes and the nymphs,
Adrastia and Ide. These latter were the daughters of
Melisseus, and they brought up Geus with the milk of
Amalthea: the Curetes in the meantime kept guard over the
child, and struck their shields with spears so as fo prevent
Kronos from hearing the infant’s cries. Rhea gave Kronos
a stone to swallow, dressed in the manner already described.
When Zeus grew up, he took Metis, the daughter of Oceanus,
as his ally: she gave Kronos a potion to drink that made
him vomit, first the stone, then the children whom he had
swallowed. Many places, such as Mt. Ithome in Messenia,
Thebes in Boeotia, Mgeon in Achaia, Olenus in Mtolia,
Parrhasius in Arcadia, Dodona in Epirus, and other
localities claimed the honour of being the birthplace of Zeus;
but he is generally believed to have been born in Crete.
While other nurses, such as the Hyades and the Arcadian
nymphs, have been mentioned by writers, still the common
belief held good with regard to the daughters of Melisseus,
and to Amalthea. This last was supposed to be a goat, which
Zeus afterwards placed among the stars; but other accounts
affirm that Amalthea was a nymph, daughter of Oceanus,—
or of Helios, Heemonium, Olenus, or Melisseus, for traditions
vary in this particular too,—who fed Zeus with the milk of a
goat. Amalthea is alluded to by the poets sometimes as
‘* Olenia capella.”

Closely associated with the birth and bringing up of Zeus
we find in addition to the Curetes mentioned by Apollodorus,
other more or less curious divinities, such as the Dactyli,
the Telchines, and the Cabiri.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 289

1 Dactyli (Adkrvdor), mythical beings connected with the worship of
Rhea and Cybele in Crete, and, according to some, in Phrygia
and Samothrace. To them were ascribed the discovery of iron,
and the art of working it by means of fire. They are said to be
the original inhabitants of Mt. Ida in Crete, and are hence
called the Idean Dactyli, AdxrvAo: [8aior, and Cicero calls them
“ Digiti Idei.”” They were originally three in number, accord-
ing to Strabo, viz., KéApis, Aapvapeveds, and "Axyov, but their
number was afterwards increased to five, ten, fifty-two, and one
hundred.

2 The Cabiri (KdBerpor) are described as mystic divinities worshipped
particularly at Samothrace, Lemuos, and Imbros, as also at
Thebes, Anthedon, Pergamus, and various other parts of the
world. According to some accounts they are descended from the
Dactyli, but most of the ancient writers ascribe their parentage
to Vulcan and Cabeira, the daughter of Proteus.

In Egypt their number was said to be eight, but the best
accounts make them three originally, viz., Axieros, Axiokersa,
Axiokersos, and to these was subsequently added a fourth,
Cadmilos or Casmilos.

They are described sometimes as kindly, sometimes as
malevolent beings, who were skilled in metallurgy; and as
dwarfs with protuberant bellies, or with large genitals.
Herodotus says that they were worshipped at Memphis as the
children of Vulcan, and that they resembled the dwarf gods, or
mdraxot, whom the Phoenicians attached to the prows of their
vessels.

Their influence over vintage is suggested by their promising
abundance of Lemnian wine to the Argonauts, and by the vows
which the Pelasgians offered in a time of scarcity to Zeus,
Apollo, and the Cabiri.

Additional accounts relate how lovers swear by them when
pledging their vows, how those who are crossed in love call upon
them for vengeance, and how such as are exposed to loss of life,
especially from the sea, invoke their assistance.

Their rites lasted for nine days; were celebrated with great
secrecy, splendour, and attention to details ; and their mysteries,
according to Attic writers, were particularly calculated to
protect the lives of the initiated.

They have been more or less connected with some one or all
three of the following group of deities, Rhea, Ceres, Proserpine ;
Rhea, Ceres, Venus; Zeus, Minerva, Mercury; Zeus, Juno,
Minerva; and it has been particularly noted that wherever
the worship of the Cabiri prevailed, there, too, did that of
Hecate.

8 The Telchines (TeAxives) are said to be a family or tribe descended
from Thalassa, or from Neptune, and the following names of

G.0. 10s

290

THE GODS OF OLD;

individuals among them have been preserved,—Argyron,
Chrysaon, Chalcon, Hormenets, Mylos, Simon, Lycus, Ataby-
rius, Antseus, Megalesius, and Nikon.

Eustathius describes them as marine beings without feet, and
having fins for hands; and the same writer alludes elsewhere
to them as the dogs of Actzson who were changed into men.
According to some accounts they were the original inhabitants
of Crete, and went from there to Cyprus, and thence to Rhodes,
where, in conjunction with Caphira, daughter of Oceanus, they
brought up Neptune, who had been entrusted to their care by
Rhea; other accounts describe them as proceeding from Rhodes
to Orete, and thence to Bootia. They are variously alluded
to as—

(a) Cultivators of the soil, and ministers of the gods.
(b) Inventors of useful arts and institutions. They worked in brass

and iron, made images of the gods, and fashioned the scythe for
Kronos and the trident for Neptune.

(c) Sorcerers who could assume different forms at pleasure, and were

able to bring on rain, hail, and snow. They mixed Stygian
water with sulphur in order to destroy plants and animals; and
their very eyes and aspect are said to have been destructive.

Strabo says that those Rhodian Telchines who assisted in
bringing up the infant Zeus in Crete were called Curetes; and
it is also stated that Rhea, Zeus, and Apollo were hostile to
them and encompassed their ruin, Apollo in the shape of a wolf,
and Zeus by an inundation.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 291

CHAPTER II.

KRONOS, THE TIE OF TIES.

Kronos.—What is Time? By comparison with Eternity —
we arrive at the notion of a something having a beginning
and an end. When was the beginning? Following
Genesis and Mythology, the only literary sources we have
lett to follow, we find that Kronos, personified Time, was
subsequent to Adther and Hemera, that is, to Light and
external universes ; subsequent too, as being the youngest,
to his brother Titans, that is, to matter endowed with
magnitude; but previous to the cutting away of Uranus,
that is, to the formation of a firmament. This would lead
to the deduction that tame did not enter into the work of
the First Day mentioned in Genesis, and that it is an
unknown quantity for Light and for universes other than
ours; that time had a beginning subsequent, however
short, to actual matter, and came into being somewhere
between the evening and the morning of what constituted
the Second Day in Genesis; and that time consequently ap-
pertains to each and every sun, star, and planet, embraced
within the firmament. In brief words, time is not for
Earth alone: it is for our Universe. This is curiously
interesting, as bearing on that much mooted question,
the Hexameron of Genesis, and pointing to the opinion
entertained regarding the signification of the word ‘‘ day”
by the framers of Mythology.

What the measure could be of time previous to the
formation of a firmament is unintelligible. Container and
contained were one, and standard there was none unless
we except the changes going on in the mass, and denote
those changes simply as events. The same may be said
of many an age succeeding the firmament of the Second

u 2

292 THE GODS OF OLD;

Day, during which we must suppose the parent mass as
disentangling and disrupting and forming itself into
systems, and those systems into suns, and the minor
bodies moving round those suns. The myth that weds a
Kronos to a Rhea is but equivalent in this sense to saying
that ‘time rolled on,” that event succeeded event, and
that while the celestial bodies were being propagated and
were fashioning themselves into shape, Time reigned
supreme. But this would bring us down to that evening
and morning which constitutes the Fourth Genesiac Day,
when ‘“‘God made two great lights; the greater light to
rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: the
stars also.”

There is no multiplication of celestial bodies after this
period, and we now find definite measurers or rulers
appearing on the scene for the first time, to stand ‘for
signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years,” to
disturb the despot sway of Time, and afford an opportunity
for one, if one there were, combining force and matter in a
pre-eminent degree, to oust the potentate from his throne.
And one there was. But to dwell upon this would be to
anticipate the Hesiodic narrative, and so we leave it for
the present.

The derivation of Kronos would at first sight appear to
be kpivw “‘to order,” ‘‘ to arrange,” as time may be con-
sidered ‘‘an order or succession of events;” but it is
more likely to be xopévyupt, ‘ to satiate,” “to glut,” seeing
that the Latin Saturnus has the same idea of satiety (sat)
involved in it.

The ancients had no inordinate idea of the power and
antiquity of Kronos. Modern writers entertain much the
same opinions in regard to him. Thus :—

“We estimate the duration of human history at 6,000
years; but immeasurable as this time may appear to us,
what is it in comparison with the time during which the
earth carried successive series of rank plants and mighty
animals, and no men; during which, in our neighbour-
hood, the amber tree bloomed and dropped its costly gum

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 298

upon the earth and in the sea; when in Siberia, Europe,
and North America groves of tropical palms flourished ;
when gigantic lizards, and after them elephants, whose
mighty remains we still find buried in the earth, found
a home? Different geologists, proceeding from different
premises, have sought to estimate the duration of the
above created period, and vary from a million to nine
millions of years. And the time during which the earth
generated organic beings is again small when we compare
it with the ages during which the world was a ball of
fused rocks.

“For the duration of its cooling from 2,000 deg. to 200
deg. Centigrade, the experiments of Bishop upon basalt
show that above 350 millions of years would be necessary.
And with regard to the time during which the first
nebulous mass condensed into our planetary system, our
most daring conjectures must cease.” —Helmholtz.

“Tn order that cosmical matter or the prodigious
assemblage of so many stars could be distributed according
to the curves revealed by the telescope, and winding round
each other in gigantic spirals under the governing action
of the combined attraction of all parts which compose this
universe, it would require an incalculable series of accumu-
lated years to pass away.’’—Flammarion.

“«Time’ is growing up daily into importance as an
element in the exercise of force. The earth moves in its
orbit in time; the crust of the earth moves in time; light
moves in time; an electric magnet requires time for its
charge by an electric current. In some of the known
cases of action in time, something happens while the
time is passing which did not happen before, and does not
continue after.” —Faraday.

With these tributes to the mighty Kronos, let us go back
to the time when he wrested from his sire the reins of
government. All the characters that have been introduced
and described from that fateful event,—the progeny of
Night, the épeBevvy and éd07; of Pontus who begot Nereus,
Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto, and Eurybia; of their descendants

294 THE GODS OF OLD;

too, as well as of those sprung from Oceanus, Hyperion,
Crius, and Cceus;—all these are but interludes cunningly
and methodically brought in by the master hand of Hesiod
to prepare the mind for Kronos and the children of Kronos.
Intentionally has he wandered in individual detail, and
brought the reader through heaven and earth, through air
and sea, through water and through land, until he has
forced upon even the dimmest intelligence a perception of
the glorious truths he was desirous to impart. The
intelligence thus aroused, he now goes back to the misty
past of his departure, and collecting his forces gives a
condensed but succinct account of how each particular
mass, our earth especially, could evolute from nebulosity
to what we see it in our own planet.

When the bond of union between Uranus and Gé was
dissolved, and when the former had retired, leaving for
sole heritage to his children the obloquy of a name and the
prophetic threat that as they sowed, so should they reap,
Gé retained, as we have seen, the offspring born of the two,
the matter and force of all kinds, knowable and unknow-
able. But immortal mothers no more than mortal ones
seem destined to retain for ever their sons and daughters :
preferences and mutual affinities occur, ties are formed,
offspring born, and the inevitable separation and emigra-
tion from the ‘‘ noverca,”’ are the result. So too with the
parent nebula, the weAdpy and cipiorepvos Ge. Thia and
Hyperion wooed and wed and went to seek their fortunes
in distant countries, carrying with them such a magnificent
dowry—surely they must have been favoured children !—as
enabled them to stud the canopy of heaven with the sun,
the moon, the planets, and the stars. It was but a small
pittance, this earth of ours, that Gé reserved unto herself
in her declining years, for old she had grown. The love
light had departed from her eyes with Uranus, and their
exceeding brilliancy had been dimmed when Hyperion and
Thia had gone with their belongings ; her steps felt heavier,
the warm blood ran more sluggishly in her veins, and day
by day she grew more secretive and retiring within herself.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 295

Anatomical Geology has hunted up the record of those
days and has vouched for the foregoing. It states that loss
of light and heat was constantly going on for the parent
mass and for each successive one; that each nebula left
behind consisted of progressively heavier matter, and that
cooling, condensation, and gravitation towards its nucleus
went hand in hand.

And yet withal she was still a stately dame and never
disinclined to assert herself when her children’s wrongs
roused her into action. Zeus, all powerful Zeus himself,
was witness to her wrath when in after years she spurred
on the Giants to avenge her Titan children, and still later
commissioned Typhceus to take vengeance for the Giants.
Love of offspring was indeed her virtue and her weakness ;
otherwise she might still be queen regnant with Uranus.
And she kept this characteristic to the last. Widowed and
bereft, she grew colder to the outside world, retired more
and more to the privacy of her chamber, and left the
management of affairs to the two who still clung closest to
her, to Kronos surnamed the Wily, and his sister partner,
Rhea. And thus did time roll on “ unsoiled and swift,
and of a silken sound,”’ till. But let the scientific
records of the past relate what followed.

When further disruption as regards our planet ceased, it
probably left earth in a more or less nebulous condition
and equal to the sun in volume, heat, and brilliancy. But
as heat was being constantly lost by radiation into space,
with the necessary consequence of cooling, the result would
be that in time, the duration of which it is impossible to
fix even approximately, our planet, originally gaseous,
would ultimately assume a condition of igneous fusion or
fluidity. Now, between these two extremes changes
occurred, the magnitude and number of which can be only
compared with the length of time in carrying them out;
and these changes will best be understood by repeating in
part the history of an independent nebulous mass, such as
earth was, as told by Bonney: ‘It is composed of some-
what similar material, and even at the moment of severance

296 THE GODS OF OLD;

is probably still in a more or less nebulous condition, and
at avery high temperature. As it proceeds on its journey
heat is lost by radiation into space; the temperature of the
whole mass falls, but the outer layers are especially chilled.
For a considerable while there will be an up and down
movement in the orb, the cooler matter descending from
the exterior, the hotter ascending from the interior. By
this means, in process of time, a kind of stratification will
be produced in the mass, the lighter and more readily
vaporised substances working their way towards the
exterior, the heavier and those which most readily solidify
accumulating at the interior. This transference and
selective ordering will continue so long as the materials of
the planet remain in a vaporous or even in a thoroughly
liquid condition.”

While, then, the nebulous or highly fluid condition
prevailed, it would be only when cooled at the surface that
matter could at first assume any of its specific properties,
to lose them possibly again when it experienced the increased
- heat after sinking by its weight; but as time went on and
as the cooling process extended from the surface downwards,
every particle of matter on or coming to the periphery,
and which did not mount upward owing to its superior
volatilisation, would feel the effects of cooling and gravita-
tion, and begin to move downwards towards the centre, the
heavier first, the less heavy next, and so on according to
their respective densities.

In brief language, according as elementary and compound
matter came into being through time, it was swallowed
down. And this is exactly what Mythology tells us when
it declares that Kronos swallowed his children as soon as
each one was born.

Here is Hesiod’s description of the occurrence :

“Peta & trodunbcioa Kpdv@ réxe paidipa réxva,
‘Ilorin, Anpytpa, Kal “Hpnv ypucorméddiAor,
iPOiydv 7 ’Aibny, ds bd xOort Sdpara vale
yydeés iirop Exav, kal épixrumov "Evvociyaor,

5 Zia re pyridevra, Oe&v marép’ 70 kai avdpar,
Tou Kal tad Bpovris wedepiCerat edpeia XOar.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 297

Kai tovs pev xarémwe Kpdvos péyas, Sorts Exaotos
undvos €& iepis pntpos mpos youval? ikotro,
Ta ppovéar, iva pn tis dyavav Otpanaver

10 Gros év dbavaraow exor Bacrdnida ripjy.
mevbero yap Tains te kat Qupavod dorepderros,
olverd of mémpwto EG bd watdt Sapivat,
kal kparep@ wep édvrt, Atos peydAov did Bovdds*
tobver’ dp’ obk dAaooxorujyy exev, GAG Soxevov

15 qaidas éovs xarémve’ “Péeny 8 exe mévbos ttAaoTov.

Theog. 453.

Subdued by Kronos Rhea children bore
Distinguished,—Hestia, Demeter too,

And Hera who has sandals flecked with gold;
Despotic Hades with a ruthless heart

Who dwells within the mansions underground ;
The one that rocks our globe with rumbling hoarse;
And purposing Zeus, of gods and men the sire,
Whose thunder shakes the broad domain of earth.
All these indeed, as one by one they came
From mother’s hallowed womb unto her knees,
Did the all-powerful Kronos swallow up;
Planning those things betimes that other none
Of all the high and mighty gods would have
Imperial sway among th’ immortal host.

For judge he did from earth and starry sky
How, powerful even though he was, his doom—
To be by his own child subdued,—was fixed
Through the wise counsels of a mighty God.
For reason such no careless watch he kept,

But, biding time, swallowed his children all;
And pain, tormenting pain held Rhea fast.

NOTES.

1 ‘Peia—from féw, “to flow,” and allied to épa, ‘‘ the earth,” denotes
our globe in a state of fluxion, as it was all through the
nebulous and far on into fluid igneous time.

trodunbcica— subdued” in the sense of having been tamed or
quieted. The nebula had lost a great deal of its pristine
brilliancy and heat by radiation into space.

aidiua—pdew ids, ‘specific appearing.” Matter, owing to
‘cooling, began to assume specific or distinctive qualities.
Instead of being mere matter, it assumed the characteristics
of solid, liquid, and eeriform,—to shape itself into the elements,
their oxides, and the compounds of those oxides. ‘It is
possible, of course, that every elemental substance is only a
form or mode of manifestation of some one common matter, so

298 THE GODS OF OLD;

that in the apparent diversity of inorganic nature there may be
a latent unity.” —Bonney.

xpvoorédtAov.—Our precious metals, metals of all kinds indeed,
are seldom in a state of purity, but generally occur as oxides,
carbonates, sulphurets, &c., and are found especially in the
primary and metamorphic rocks, the feet of the geological rocks.

4 wees #rop.—The nucleus of our globe.

8 wbdvos e€ iepjs.—As matter worked from the interior (yyduds) to
the exterior (apis yotvaG’) of the earth (pyrpds), it would
on arriving be cooled, assume specific properties, and thus
becoming denser would again sink or be swallowed down
(xarémwe). ,

9 dyavéy—ayavis or dyaupés, from @yw ato, or adyS atipa, would
literally mean ‘going to the air,” as matter would when
ascending from the interior to the surface. Even the usual
meaning, ‘‘illustrious, proud, stately,” is simply ‘‘ having a
lofty air, having a haughty air,” and refers to the character-
istics one assumes.

11 wetGero.—Experience of the past, of changes caused by cooling
that produced a firmament and a more contracted nebulous
mass, gave promise of what would come.

15 wévOos GAacrov.—The high temperature of the interior would be
constantly antagonistic to the pressure from above of cooling
matter, and for many a long day would our orb be thus racked.
Speaking of the early igneous period, Figuier says, ‘‘As to
the globe itself, without being so much agitated as its fiery
and mobile atmosphere, it too would be no less the prey of
perpetual storms, occasioned by the thousand chemical pro-
cesses which were in action in its molten mass.”

w

Apollodorus, while condensing the above description,
emphasises the order in which the offspring were swallowed.
Having mentioned how Kronos had liberated the Cyclopes
and Hecatoncheires from Tartarus, he goes on thus:

‘°6 8€ rovrous prev dv TH Taprdpp mddw Syoas KabeipEe, ryv Se adedpiy
“Péav yhpas, émecdy TH te kai Otpavds eeamigdovy aire Aéyorres tnd wadds
idiov THY dpxnv aatpebnoec Oa, Karémwe Ta yervdopeva. Kai mparny pev
yevvnbeicav “Eotiav xarémiev, eira Anpytpay kai “Hpav, pel? as TWrovrova
xa Hooedava.”—1. 5, 1.

** But those indeed having again bound he imprisoned in Tartarus,
and having wed his sister Khea, he swallowed all those begotten of
her, since both Gé and Uranus, lying quiescent, foreshadowed to him
that the supreme power would be wrested by his own son. And he
swallowed Vesta, the first indeed that was begotten, then Demeter and
Hera, after these Pluto and Neptune.”

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 299

And thus did Time roll on through the ages, Kronos
“biding his day,” as Hesiod says, and well earning his
name by satiating his maw with the grewsome diet begotten
of himself. On it rolled. The aftermath of the nebulous
period, the sowing of the igneous, crop after crop that but
scarce appeared,—all were gathered with its scythe and
stowed away to appease its cravings and prolong its sway.

If we would form a better conception of those events,
and of what resulted from them, we must turn to the
heavens for information. By means of the spectroscope
the light from self-luminous bodies can be analysed so as to
show what elements are present in their luminous vapour.
Some nubule, either through distance, size, or elementary
nature, defy or leave in doubt even spectroscopic analysis.
But those stellar bodies over which it has control have been
distinguished into four great classes: those which, like
Sirius, show the presence of hydrogen only, or of hydrogen
and a feeble proportion of metallic vapours; those which,
like our sun, give evidence in addition to hydrogen, of the
more stable metals such as sodium, magnesium, iron, &c.,
—hbut of no metalloids or compounds; those which, like
the red stars, indicate the presence of others of the metals
and of metalloids; lastly, those which, like Mars, Venus,
and the Moon, present the evident appearance of compound
bodies similar to our own.

According to Lockyer, nebule and stars of the first type
are the hottest and most brilliant; those of the second are
cooler and their materials more differentiated into elements ;
those of the third and fourth are still cooler, their materials
still more differentiated and marked by the appearance of
metalloids and compounds ; and so on, the loss of hydrogen
accompanying increased evolution, till finally we come to
conditions of temperature and materials such as are repre-
sented by our Earth, when all the free hydrogen will have
disappeared. Commenting upon this a writer says, ‘‘ Ac-
cording to this view the atoms of all the elements existed
originally in the nebula disassociated from each other by
reason of the intense heat. As the nebula gravitated

300 THE GODS OF OLD;

towards its nucleus and cooled, the atoms came together
and the elements appeared in a certain order, beginning
with hydrogen, and passing on through the metals and
metalloids into compounds such as we find upon our globe.”
Reasoning thus, we would have in time a very different
order of things from that which took place earlier, as
expounded by Bonney. The earlier periods of incandescence
and of igneous fluidity swallowed elementary matter as soon
as it wasformed. We now find that a reverse procedure is in
wait for every stellar body; that it has commenced for some,
is more advanced for others, and that it has been most
fully accomplished with regard to one particular nebula
which, after cooling and differentiating into hydrogen and
elements not yet recognised, into calcium and magnesium,
sodium, titanium, iron, manganese, and other metallic
elements, has gone through the further stages of metalloids
and compounds, till at last it has become the Earth we call
our own. The Kronos, that once swallowed those his chil-
dren, has been somehow and sometime forced to disgorge
them, ‘‘ to vomit them up,” as the Myth words it.

Particulars regarding the time when such an event
occurred are interesting. The book of Scienceis mute con-
cerning it: if assigns no period for the change from the
swallowing of elementary and compound matter to the dis-
gorgement and establishment of the same. It simply
asserts that the first process was followed by the second,
without indicating any great event whereby the parting of
the ways may be sharply distinguished. Not so, however,
with Genesis and Mythology. We get a more definite idea
of the event from these two sources, and find one supple-
menting the other.

‘‘ After Zeus was born and had waxed in strength and years, Kronos
‘was compelled to throw up the children he had swallowed: assisted
by those, Zeus, after a protracted struggle, succeeded in conquering
the Titans and banishing Kronos.”

So runs the substance of the Myth.

«And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding
seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in
itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 301

* And the earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed after his
kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his
kind: And God saw that it was good.

‘¢ And the evening and the morning were the third day.”
Gen. i. 11, 12, 13.

In those words of Genesis we find Life introduced for the
first time upon our globe. If, then, we succeed in prov-
ing that the Zeus of Mythology is personified Life, we may
be warranted in arriving at the following more or less
definite and important conclusions, through collating
Genesis and Mythology:

1. That Zeus or Life came into existence during the
interregnum that marked the ingulfing of matter
formed by surface cooling and the permanent appear-
ance of elementary and compound bodies on the sur-
face: that this period, characterised as the Third
Genesiac Day—and presumably, its later portion,—
was also the later part of the “Golden Age” of
Mythology.

2. That Zeus or Life appeared first as vegetable, not
animal matter.

3. That the condition of matter as denoted by Kronos
and Rhea, a struggle on the part of molecular matter,
did not cease for some time after Life or Zeus appeared.

4. That the Titanomachia marked the end of this
struggle.

5. That it is within the bounds of reasoning conjecture
to suppose some form or forms of life as capable of
existing in any stellar body evincing a decided advance
from atomic to molecular and molar matter.

302 THE GODS OF OLD;

CHAPTER III.

THE CURDLED SPUME OF AGES.

THERE are scores of myths connected with the offspring
of Time, each myth embodying a scientific truth ; but they
are so interwoven with other characters that thei explana-
tion would interfere too much with the continuity of the
story. It will be sufficient for our purpose to identify and
establish the physical fact embodied in each divinity.

Hestia, the Latin Vesta, is the physical emblem for the
foundation of our earth. This primal vestment, or first
step towards building on the molten fire, is manifested
clearly by calling her the eldest born of Kronos and Rhea,
by making her the goddess of the hearth and of the fire
burning thereon, by including her in all sacrificial rites,
invoking her first, presenting her with the primal offerings,
and by giving her such epithets as antiqua, primeva, cana,
&e. The derivation, too, tornu, “to stand, check, make
fast,” pomts indubitably to the superstructure which stands
over and checks the central fire, and affords a solid basis or
stability for all that is above. This is well marked by
Ovid :

Stat vi Terra sua, vi stando Vesta vocatur.

The earth is stable through inherent force ;
From this stability is Vesta named.

With this idea of stability, Vesta has by a natural transition
been extended from earth as a whole to its magnified types,
our system, and the universe; and to its miniature types,
countries, cities, towns, and private dwellings. What the
foundation would be to the earth, the hearth-stone would
be to the family,—the first essential to a home, the basis
and prop of the surrounding structure, a foundation where-
by fire could be kindled with safety and kept in check,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 303

a prytaneum (zip raviw, “stretched over the fire”) round
which the members could gather for social converse and the
comforts of civilised life, and at which order, respect for
authority and age, and purity of morals could be inculeated,
and the rites of hospitality afforded. It is as the representa-
tive of stability that Vesta is included among the twelve
Dii Consentes who formed the council of Zeus.

But the primal idea was the physical one, namely, the
foundation of our earth. What this is composed of is as
much a matter of mystery to-day as when Job was asked—

“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?

declare, if thou hast understanding.
Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who
hath stretched the line upon it ?
Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened ? or who laid the
corner-stone thereof?”
The only reasonable conjecture offered by science has been
noticed under Chrysaor; this supposes that it was, or is,
of a crystalline or vitreous character, that is, composed of
the elements themselves in a pure or virgin state,—a sur-
mise to which mythology adds some weight by asserting
that Vesta remained a virgin goddess.

Demeter.—The derivation is suggestive in itself. What
is 8@ pyrnp, ‘mother earth,” but the materials from which
are derived the rocks and clay that make our earth, our
soil? And those are silica, alumina, soda, potassa, lime,
magnesia, iron oxide, and other oxides of the elements, all
well recognised rock-makers. Silica, for instance, is the
base of all the quartzose or arenaceous rocks that comprise
nearly one-half of the earth’s crust; alumina, “the clay |
rock,” as it is otherwise called, is the base of clay, mica,
slate, and feldspar, and next to silica ranks most abun-
dantly in the earth’s crust. Jt is easy to see how those
oxides of the elements personified by Demeter would come to
signify the source of all soil, and hence of fertility and
civilisation, as typified by the Roman Ceres. We never
find rocks composed of the pure elements themselves,—for
which reason mythology has made Vesta a virgin,—but of
their compounds, the oxides: we never find silicon in

304 THE GODS OF OLD;

nature, for instance, but we do find silica, pure as in quartz
rock, or united with other oxides, as in the feldspar and
mica of the granite. So with alumina, soda, and the other
rock-makers of our crust.

Ceres, the Roman equivalent for the Greek Demeter, has
been variously derived from gero, sero, and cresco. This
last, as significative of growth, is the best of the three, and
would admit of Ceres being one of the twelve Dii Con-
sentes, since growth is as essential as stability to the opera-
tions of life. It is more than likely, however, that the
Latins went to Greek fountains for the names of their
deities, at least the most important ones; and if so, Kepdw
has much to recommend itself derivationally. It is another
form of kepdvyype, “to mix, to compound,” and differs
from piyvypys in implying that the mixture or compound is
a chemical one. By such a chemical combination would
the oxides be formed from the basic elements; by combina-
tion would tiie ingredients of the soil be mixed and agri-
culture flourish ; by the same combination or union would
law and civilisation be established ; and finally, it would be
owing to mixture, combination, or union of some kind or
other that growth would come.

Hera.—If Vesta then be a foundation composed of pure
elementary substances, and Ceres be the oxides of those
elements, what is there naturally and logically left for Hera
to personify but the mixture of those oxides with one
another ? Rocks composed of one mineral alone are very
few, since most are constituted by a mixture of different
minerals, and it may be said that the land, as opposed to
water, is a compound. Vesta appropriated the elements ;
Ceres, the oxides of those elements ; Hera or Juno symbo-
lised the compounds of those oxides, the solid land. The
derivation, dpe, ‘‘to join,” points to the same conclusion ;
so do such cognates as épa, ‘‘the earth,” fpda, “the dry
land;” so do the Latin terra and the English earth.
Again, the Latin form, Juno, is from Cevyviw, “to join,”
and Virgil in the Aineid, IV. 59, says plainly :—

« Junoni ante omnes, cui vincla jugalia cure.”

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 305

In virtue of her being so important a personage in
classic literature, let us descant a little further on this
queen of the gods. She has usually been supposed to be the
personification of the denser or lower strata of the atmos-
phere. But her ancestry and kin, her power, her offspring
by Jupiter, and her pictured representations do not warrant
any such conclusion, even if the atmosphere were not
already occupied by a Latona. Neither do many passages
from the poets, unless sometimes after a very forced
manner; while in other passages, such as where Virgil
makes her descend into Hades to summon forth Alecto,
and where Ovid does the same to call forth Tesiphone, it is
impossible to retain ‘‘ air” as the personification intended.
But if we take Juno as ‘‘the land,” we can follow the
mythical track of the goddess from her birth to her union
with Zeus or Life; can see why Youth and War and Birth
(Hebe, Mars, and Ilithya) should spring from such union;
can see why Heat (Vulcan), considered as force expended in
the past by the contraction of earth into itself, may be con-
sidered as the offspring of Juno individually,—or why Heat,
considered as force that has never been separated from some
form of life, should be considered as the joint issue of Juno
and Jupiter. We can, as Land, willingly assent fo her
being ‘‘divum regina, Jovisque et soror et conjux,”
especially when we allow Jupiter to symbolize Life; and,
as Land, we can grant all the epithets applied to her,
whether saeva or sacra, alma or aspera, regia or sceptrigera.
We can readily understand how the land, which in geologic
time has repeatedly sought the depths of ocean bed and
descended by its own weight towards the nucleus of our
globe, could be described thus by Virgil :—

‘Flectere se nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.”—A&. VIT. 312.

We can give Ovid credit for geological lore and not
poetic fiction when, on Juno’s entering Hades, the poet
BAYS :—
“Qué simul intrayit, sacroque 4 corpore pressum
Ingemuit limen.”—Met. TY. 449.

306 THE GODS OF OLD;

We can also understand how the close association of
land, from lowest vale to highest peak, with the surround-
ing atmosphere has led to the confounding of the divinity
with the lower strata of air, and to whatever chance resem-
blance there may be in this erroneous personification. And
as to other particulars, who can better be said to have
fostered and brought up the land than Oceanus and
Tethys, that sea which covered our globe at one time
throughout, the thermal ocean of geology, the bed of which,
peaking up here and there it may be above the waters, was
destined to form the dry land later on? And what union
can be more worthily dignified as the first or sacred
marriage, the iepds yduos of the myth, than the wedding of
Land to Life? What see we more majestic and mature,
with broader front, than this ox-eyed Juno, this Bovvaia,
this Harth of ours, whose hills, ‘‘ broad, round, and green,”’
are described by Bryant as ‘‘ Kindling with the spirit of the
morning,” and whose mountains are pictured by Rogers as
“So ethereal as to belong rather to heaven than earth’ ?
What but land, with its isles, its continents, and its Alps of
every clime, can so influence. meteorological conditions as
to lay special claim in the summoning of an Iris, ‘‘ with a
wing on the earth and a wing on the sea”? And finally,
what more jealous of Life and of the doings of Life should
we or do we find than this same Land, ever the acknow-
ledged partner of his couch and sharer of his secrets, but
never, so long as air and water be, the sole partner of his
affections ?

Hades.—From the very beginning of the evolution of
matter there appears a curious tendency to the formation of
chasms or tunnels in the constituted mass. This has
already been alluded to when mentioning the “ rifts”
observed in the great nebula of Andromeda, the ‘‘fish-
mouth” in that of Orion, the ‘‘ Key-hole ” of Argo, and the
“coal sacks ’’ of other nebule; of all which Gore has said,
“Tt is not easy to understand how an opening through a
gaseous mass can be kept open and prevented from closing
up by finid pressure.” And as to cur earth later on,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 307

secular contraction has ever accompanied cooling, with the
further consequences of intermittent upheaval and sub-
sidence over irregular areas. During these subsidences of
the outer shell on the inner nucleus, vast masses of matter
would, in the effort at adjustment, acquire a greater
vertical depth, would be crumpled, crushed, and abundantly
fractured, would thus generate heat and chemical action
sufficient in some cases to produce reservoirs of fused
matter,—especially when underground water would find
access to the intensely heated materials,—and would make
the crust of our globe “‘a complicated network of fissures.”
This hypogene action that takes place beneath the surface,
due to the original internal heat and that portion of it
which has survived, and those modifications which have
been effected by its means in the internal structure and
composition of the crust as a whole, are personified by
Hades, the potentate of the unseen world,—whence his
name, a eid, “not seen,” according to some authorities.
We may not see those changes all, nor be well cognisant of
them, but what we do recognise adds to the horrors of what
we do not.

His is a vich domain, this Pluto’s,. increased ever from
without, a world interior fed from an outer one, for every
thing, all three of nature’s kingdoms alike, is going down
slowly but surely towards the centre, meeting on its way
Cerberus, ‘‘ fame rabida tria guttura pandens,” one for the
mineral, another for the vegetable, a third for the animal.
All roads lead to Hades, the gates are ever open for
admission and are situate but an inch or less beneath the
surface ; but egress there is none, for Hades may be called
the ‘ binder-fast”’ (det dé).

And from those gates branch off avenues many and
intricate, broad and narrow, intersected with rivers, lakes
and stagnant pools, with springs of water clear and cool as
erystal, with others reeking with the fumes of sulphur and
mephitic gases, and with still others where waters bubble
and boil and hiss with superheated steam. All these are
in our earth, are lorded over by the autocratic Pluto,

x 2

308 THE GODS OF OLD;

the brother of Zeus, the undercrust of Life; and here take
place for flesh and woody fibre those curious and appalling
changes that, when coolly and dispassionately brought
before the mind’s eye by geological prose, make the flesh
ereep and the soul shudder as never could a Virgil ora
Dante. ,

Poseidon, the Latin Neptune, is as well recognised a per-
sonification as his brother, Pluto. Water may differ in
specific gravity, salinity, dissolved minerals and gases, taste,
colour, temperature,—in many other respects, according as
if appears in the broad ocean or the solid berg, as it is found
in gulf or lake, in chalybeate or other spring, in the river
that traverses half a continent or the purling stream that
meanders for a mile or two, in the interstitial water of our
rocks, or in the aqueous vapour that descends from the
clouds, that hangs as steam over a volcano, or that is
erupted from a geyser. All these, whatever minor satraps
may have power over them, acknowledge the sway of this
Poseidon, this universal water that drinks up the lands
(xéors 84) over whichit flows. For our hill tops are battered
and fretted and stripped by the rain, the snow, and ice;
our plains are denuded by the streams and rivers; our
coasts by the waves, and the débris of continents is received
and swallowed by the great salt sea.

The Latin form, Neptune, may perhaps come from
yn-ntbw, ‘that which disgorges not,” but mjrowos, “ un-
punished, free,” is preferable, the r being merely euphonic,
as we find if in mrdéAus and wréAeuos for wéAts and aéAepos.

He is a mighty potentate, this Water, and with his trident,
one tine of which is gaseous, a second liquid, and the third
solid as the ice it stands for, has with impunity clipped and
carved and hewn the surface of our globe, has shaped its
outlines, and furnished the sinews whereby a Vesuvius is
roused and an earthquake propagated.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 309

CHAPTER IV.
LIFE.

Zeus.—Is it likely that the myths which personified
matter and force and every variety of the two, would pass
over Life ?—That water, land, and air, that time, the sun,
the moon, the stars, and all other phenomena connected
with these, would each have its personifying word, and that
Life, the Life for which all these earthy, aqueous, and
celestial beings were formed, would be omitted or forgotten ?
Surely not. Genesis was written in the interests of life;
Science has ever had, and still has, life for its aim in all that
it searches out and evolves. Mythology, which has unfolded
itself so far as a scientific record of creation and created
works, must have a word personifying the idea. Nor is it
difficult or puzzling to determine. The graven characters,
commencing with a Chaos, proceed regularly, and systema-
tically from this, the most simple condition of matter and
force combined, down to that miniature Chaos, the parent
nebula from which our universe was evolved, and further
down to the formation of a firmament. We see in these
the personifications of evolution, dissolution, light, and
division into universes, our own included; of physical and
chemical forces, of matter changed from a nebulous to an
- atomic condition, and of a boundary to our universe. But
we find no life, nor do we expect to find it under such a
constituted mode of being. Beginning with Uranus, the
characters go on in an equally orderly and systematic
fashion, from the formation of a firmament to the evolution
in time of atomic matter into molecular and compound.
Here we see the personifications of the celestial bodies, of
aqueous vapour, a nascent atmosphere, arrangement of
particles, of metallic, metalloid, and of compound bodies.

310 THE GODS OF OLD;

None of these is or could be Life. Still, we may now look
for its appearance. But not as sky, land, water, or air, for
these are already occupied by Uranus, Juno, Neptune, and
Coeus. Life should be born after those, in order to have
a habitat; should be born superior to those ; be destined to
change the old and establish a new order of things upon our
globe, and be capable of reigning over earth and sea and
air alike.

There is one, and only one. mythical divinity who fulfils
the required conditions, namely Zeus, born of Kronos and
the youngest of his children, recognised as leader from the
first, who expelled Kronos and effected change after change
in both force and matter, and who was universally
acknowledged as the most powerful among the immortals.
The creative works trended towards and culminated in
Life and in the highest form of life, man: the mytho-
logical divinities trended towards and culminated in Zeus,
the father of gods and men. What have we greater than
Life? And than Zeus—what greater deity have the myths?
None,—as Ovid makes Sol thus declare to Phaethon :

Vasti quoque rector Olympi,
Qui fera terribili jaculatur fulmina dextra,
Non aget hos currus: et quid Jove majus habemus ?
Met. I. 60.

The very derivation is convincing. We find (aa, “to
live,’ and can trace the curious genitive Znvds to the
infinitive ¢jv of the same verb. The Latin Jupiter is
probably Zevs warjp , ‘father Life,” and its genitive Jovis
but a form of (wés, “living.”

Remembering how intimately associated life is with law
and civilised being, we can understand the appropriateness
of all such epithets as dyopatos, épxeios, Spxios, Eévios, and
many other phrases, as ‘father of men and gods,”
‘‘eounselling Jove,” ‘‘far-seeing Jove,” and the like,
when applied to Zeus, epithets which have little or no
significance when applied to air, fire, the sky, fate, or any
other material or immaterial existence supposed to personify
the divinity.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 3811

And what but Life could be the spouse of Juno, the land,
of compound inorganic matter, and therefore a type of
organisms, all of which are compound in their nature ?
So, too, we can trace this life through the children begotten
of Zeus; through the Hore for instance, that marked the
seasons of life, the spring, summer, and winter of life as well
as of the year; through the Mere, the destinies that shape
life from opening to close; through the Charite or Graces, the
physical, intellectual, and moral beauties that tend to refine
and civilise life ; through Minerva, the organised or guarded
strength derived from life’s experiences and troubles;
through Persephone, the seed wherein latent life resides for
the third of the year m which Hades claims his bride;
through the Nine Muses, that surely can be ascribed to
nought else than life. And so on indefinitely. Whenever
and wherever Zevs or Jupiter is mentioned in the classic
poets, there we must look for Lafe, and there we shall find
it either as manifested in organic being or as affecting
inorganic bodies and the earth as a whole.

In many cases, indeed, the interpretation is absolutely
thrust upon us by the poet. Thus, to take Horace alone,
what else than “‘life’”’ can be rationally deduced from the
following in his Odes : ,

Seu plures hiemes seu tribuit Jupiter ultimam,
Que nunc oppositis debilitat pumicibus mare
Tyrrhenum, sapias, vina liques et spatio brevi
Spem longam reseces.—I. xi. 4.

Pone me pigris ubi nulla campis

Arbor sestiva recreatur aura,

Quod latus mundi nebule malusque
Jupiter urget.—I. xxii. 17.

O decus Phoebi et dapibus supremi
Grata testudo Jovis.—I. xxxii. 13.

Regum timendorum in proprios greges,
Reges in ipsos imperium est Jovis.—IIL. i. 5.
The researches of geology have brought the record of
life in an unbroken line from the mosé recent of the Post-
tertiary rocks down to the Cambrian, the oldest of the
Paleozoic. In these Cambrian rocks, consisting of slates,

312 THE GODS OF OLD;

flags, sandstones, and conglomerates, we find representa-
tives of the vegetable kingdom, ehiefly as fucoids; and in
the animal we find abundant remains of Protozoans,
Radiates, Mollusks, and Articulates. So great a profusion
of life, indeed, is there, that Agassiz says, “It would seem
as if God, in the joy of creation, had compensated Himself
for a less variety of forms in the greater richness of the
early types.’’ Under the Cambrian lies what is called the
Archean series of rocks, consisting of granite, gneiss,
schists, limestones, &c. ‘‘ That they are separated by a
vast interval of time from the rocks which lie upon them is
shown by the strong unconformability with which they are
related to every formation of younger date than themselves.
Everywhere thoroughly crystalline, they are disposed in
rude, crumpled, often vertical beds, out of the ruins of
which the overlying formations have been partly built.”

Their thickness is unknown, though an approximate
estimate of from 20,000 to 30,000 feet has been conjectured
for them ; they are supposed to overlie the molten interior
of our globe; and nowhere, with one supposed exception,
has any vestige of life been found among them. In con-
tinental Europe they crop to the surface in Scotland,
Seandinavia, Finland, Russia, Bohemia and Bavaria, in
the Ural Mountains, the Carpathians, and the Alps. In
North America, where they have been divided into an
upper or Huronian and a lower or Laurentian series, they
range from Nova Scotia westwards to the base of the Rocky
Mountains, and appear along the central parts of the Rocky
and Appalachian ranges. The Laurentian or lower series
consists chiefly of gneiss with bands of quartz rocks,
schists, iron ore, and limestone ; and in the limestone here,
as also in the Archean limestone of Bavaria and Bohemia,
_ has been found what is supposed by many geologists to be
the earliest known fossil, and so far the sole representative
of life in the Archean rocks. It has been called the
Eozoon, and is supposed by Dawson, Carpenter, and others,
to be the remains of a massive foraminifer that grew in
large thick sheets over the sea bottom.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 313

Apart however from this disputed Eozoon, the bulk of
unproved testimony is in favour of believing that life existed,
‘and existed abundantly, in Archean times, nathless the
great heat of land and sea and air alike, and that its visible
absence is due to the intense mechanical and chemical
agencies of that early period having so metamorphosed
the organisms as to defy any methods of proof or any
instrument as yet known to science. Lyell reasons thus:
‘We ought not indeed to marvel at the general absence of
organic remains from the crystalline strata when we bear
in mind how often fossils are obliterated, wholly or in part,
even in tertiary formations—how often vast masses of sand-
stone and shale, of different ages, and thousands of feet
thick, are devoid of fossils—how certain strata may first
have been deprived of a portion of their fossils when they
became semi-crystalline, or assumed the transition state of
Werner—and how the remaining organic remains may
have been effaced when they were rendered metamorphic.
Some rocks of the last mentioned class, moreover, must
have been exposed again and again to renewed plutonic
action.”

Winchell too:—‘‘ These underlying crystalline masses
are not confined to the deep-seated regions of the earth’s
crust. We find them thrusting their heads up through
the ruptured strata which repose upon their flanks: higher
than the highest summits formed by the stratified rocks
do those foundation masses rear their bold giant heads.
Some of those venerable domes may be supposed as
having been reared before a particle of sediment had been
produc:d, or before even the world-embracing sea had
descended from the regions of space around the earth,
and as having watched the procession of all subsequent
events. Others were the level floor of the ocean when
the oldest sediments began to accumulate upon them. In
some subsequent period a mighty force has raised them
with their load of sediment above the level of the sea,—
to be partially stripped of their sedimentary coverings by
tempests, or to break through tension into chasms from

314 THE GODS OF OLD;

exposed top to the molten base below, and permit the
fiery sea rise to the lips of the fissure, or even to overflow
in a consuming and terrific flood of lava. The same
course of events may have occurred beneath the waters
of the sea, with the same results, and an entire oceanic
basin may have been converted into a seething caldron
in which seed-weeds, corals, and all living forms have
been destroyed—cooked as it were.”’

Among some of the many reasons for inducing belief
in the fact of organised vegetable existence during Archean
time, the following may be interesting :

1. Vegetable life can flourish under conditions of abnor-
mal heat and cold. We behold plants making their
habitat in the hot springs of California, the Geysers
of Iceland, and the snows of Greenland. Infusions
of living matter, boiled at a temperature of 212° Fah.
for two hours, and then kept in hermetically sealed glass
vessels, have shown the presence of living infusoria
after a few days,—thus proving the tenacity of life in
the germs.

2. Vegetation can flourish in abnormal situations. The
masses of floating hyacinths that choke the bends of
the St. John’s river in Florida and the Mississippi of
Louisiana furnish an instance of profuse vegetation
not requiring soil. So, too, does the seaweed in that
part of the Atlantic known as the Sea of Sargasso,
which extends from west longitude 45° to 70°.

8. Large quantities of graphite—a mixture of carbon
with a small proportion of iron—have been found in
the Archzan rocks, and this graphite is supposed to
be due to the deoxidation of carbonic acid by the
vegetation that flourished in this age.

4. An equally remarkable characteristic of the Archean
rocks is the prevalence of iron ore. Hematite and
titaniferous iron, magnetic and iron sulphides are
everywhere found in the crystalline schists, some-
times to 200 feei thick. Dr. Sterry Hunt considers
these masses of ore as proving the precipitation of

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 315

iron by decomposing vegetation during Archean
time,—and on a grander scale, he asserts, than at
any subsequent geologic period.

While Paleontological Geology, then, has come to a
halt at the crystalline schists, it is in favour of believing
that some forms of life had existed during the Archean
Age, that the earliest form was probably vegetable, that
abnormal conditions of heat, etc., might be counter-
balanced by abnormal structure, and that the presence of
graphite and iron ore in those early formations strongly
favours such belief.

The Mythology which has personified life by Zeus
would seem to corroborate this opinion. We have
identified Asteria with the Crystalline Schists, and noted
how Zeus, then a lusty wooer, forced her to seek refuge
from his advances in the depths of ocean. Farther, much
farther back than this Asteria may we go and still find
evidence of Zeus or life. Chrysaor, the personification of
the first covering worthy of being dignified as the primeval
crust of earth, was born of Medusa, and she was decapi-
tated by Perseus, who was born of Zeus. This brings us
to the “Golden Age” of mythology, the conditions of
which have already been described, and the duration of
which embraced the vast length of time occupied by our
earth from an incandescent state to one admitting of a
crust upon the molten surface. That the myths have
pushed back Zeus to so early a period is evident enough.
Ovid, when writing of the Golden Age, alludes to life as
just opening, or “ patulous,’’ at some time during this
period :

‘« Et que deciderant patula Jovis arbore glandes.”

Virgil, in the Georgics, alludes to the same age—first,
as it was before life :

1 Ante Jovem nulli subigebant arva coloni:
Nec signare quidem, aut partiri limite campum
Fas erat: In medium querebant: ipsaque tellus
4 Omnia liberius, nullo poscenti, ferebat.—I. 125.

316 THE GODS OF OLD;

And then, after life:

THe malum virus serpentibus addidit atris,
Praedarique lupos jussit, pontumque moveri,
Mellaque decussit foliis, ignemque removit,

8 Et passim rivis currentia vina repressit.—I, 129.

Previous to life no hills pressed down the plains;
Not possible it was to trace or bound

The wide expanse ; all things the centre sought ;
And earth itself, with none to say it nay,

Too lavishly expended all it had.

To the foul dragons life their venom gave,

Made wolves rush forth, and sea translated be,
Shook down the honeyed rain drops on the schists,
Moved back the fire, and checked the lava red
That everywhere in rivers swiftly flowed.

NOTES.

1 coloni.—The Greek xoAwvds, ‘<a hill.”

83 nec fas.—A fused condition of our orb admitted of no bounds or
marks.

in medium.—lIt was the stage when gravitation of matter from
the surface to the centre was most active.

4 nullo poscenti.—There was no life as yet; and radiation of heat
and light went on apace (liberius). ~

5 malum virus.—Life brought the rain, and water at first added but
venom to the flames (serpentibus). Furthermore, it is the
water that actually gives their strength to poisonous sub-
stances: remove their water from nitric and sulphuric acids,
and they become more or less inert.

atris.—The colour had changed from the original ‘ golden” to a
more or less dark hue, owing to the radiation of heat and onset
of the rain. Molten metal or mineral changes with cooling
from a white, through various grades of colour, till the natural
tint is assumed.

6 Iupos.—The eruptions of igneous matter that every now and then
ruptured the crust and played havoc with the still tender
formation.

pontum moveri.— From the regions above to earth below.

7 foliis.—The /oliated or schistose rocks.

ignem.—tThe central fire was more and more encroached on and
confined by the external crust which life assisted so much to
form and to strengthen.

8 vina.—The torrents of liquid lava from volcanic eruptions.

It is impossible to know the precise reasons which induced
the framers of mythology to predicate so early a date for

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 317

life. They may have done so guided by purely theoretical
reasoning, or through information derived from practical
scientific research. We must not hastily judge with regard
to the possibility of this latter supposition. We find them,
enntrary to what has been imagined, well acquainted with
the nebular hypothesis, the doctrine of evolution, the
essential truths of matter and of force, and with many of
the intricate points in the geological formation of our globe.
How much further they went in the field of investigation
cannot be said, but it is well to remember always that they
had the benefit of the ages, and of the learning of some
of the greatest intellects the world has yet seen, and that
the Greek mind was ever acute and persistent in the
acquirement of knowledge. But apart from this, theory
alone may have led them to the same conclusion, and just
as we deduce a possible and probable life in the Metamor-
phic rocks from the presence of graphite and iron ore, so
may they have reasoned out life as capable of existence at a
still earlier date—from the first appearance of the carbon
element itself.
Graphite is carbon, sometimes crystallised, sometimes
compact, and generally found mixed with a varying propor-
tion of iron. The diamond is almost pure carbon, and always
in the crystallised condition: it is often associated with
the quartz that enters so prominently into the composition
of our oldest rocks, the gneiss and granite, and is generally
sought for in the “‘ pans” or “‘pipes” of a circular form
that run down into the inferior strata and are filled with
a peculiar igneous rock called diabase or gabbro. The
strong supposition is consequently that the rocks among
which diamonds are found are not the mother rock in which
they were originally formed, but that through volcanic
agencies they have been brought up from the very bowels
of the crust through those ‘‘ pipes.” Nor is the plant
origin of the diamond an unknown or new theory. Newton
supposed it to be ‘‘an unctuous substance coagulated ” ;
Jameson and Brewster traced it to vegetable sources ;
Lavoisier noticed the black specks in diamonds when burned,

318 THE GODS OF OLD;

and ascribed them to uncrystallised carbon; Petzhold and
Goeppert affirmed the presence of vegetable cells in its ashes ;
and the general opinion to-day is that nothing precludes the
idea of the diamond having originally been some peculiar
vegetable product, subsequently altered and crystallized

Actuated by their knowledge, then, that carbon is the one
essential constituent in organised being, the ancients may
have simply pushed our own theory further, and based the
inception of life not with the later graphite of the Meta-
morphic but with the earlier diamond of the unstratified
rocks.

This is strongly confirmed by that portion of the myth
which introduces the Idwan Dactyli in connection with the
infant Zeus.

Excluding a very small proportion of mineral matter or
ash left after burning, the entire mass of vegetable and
animal forms is made up of only four elements, viz., carbon,
oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen. But, while we find all
four in the most complex and highly organised of vital
products, the albuminous group, we find only three in the
simplest of organic substances, such as starch, sugar, and
woody fibre; and these three are carbon, oxygen, and
hydrogen,— the ternary group, as they are called.

Now, the Dactyli too were originally three in number,
namely, Celmis, Damnameneus, and Acmon; their title,
Idwan Dactyli, is synonymous with our phrase, “the ternary
group,” for idéa means ‘‘a class, a group,” and dd«rvdce
signifies ‘‘ fingers, dactyls, anything consisting of or pro-
ceeding by threes,”——(each finger having three joints),—
and hence ternary; and just as C, O, and H are the
custodians of infant life, so were the Dactyli appointed as
custodians of the infant Zeus. Equally must we affirm
of our ternary group that which mythology affirms of the
Dactyli, namely, the discovery and working of iron. This |
metal is never found pure in nature, but always as ore; so
that, were it not for those discoverers, C, O, and H, we
would have no iron carbonate (Fe COs), nor ferric oxide
(Fe: O,), nor ferric hydrate (F'e,03, 3H,0) ; and were it not

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 319

for the same C, O, and H, it would be impossible to work
and smelt the iron ores in those blast-furnaces of to-day,
which are but miniatures of the great natural furnace in
earth itself. Such marks of similarity are almost con-
clusive in themselves towards establishing the relationship
between the Idean Dactyli and the ternary group of carbon
compounds ; but all remaining doubt must vanish with the
open assertion that one of the mythic group is identical
with one of the scientific, since it is but logical to infer that
‘from one we may recognise all.” Ovid furnishes this
assertion in the following lines, and they have the additional
merit of proving that Zeus is life, and that life’s earliest
form can be traced back to the existence of the diamond:
Te quoque nunc adamas, quondam fidissime parvo,

Celme, Jovi * * * * * *
Preetereo. Met. TV. 281.

Thee too, O Celmis, diamond of to-day,
Most true of yore to infant life, I pass.

If Celmis, then, be the diamond—pure carbon—what
else can his brother Dactyli be except oxygen and hydrogen ?
Each name, too, is pregnant with the chief characteristic of
the element it represents, and breathes a significance that
is notably lacking in the modern term. Thus pure carbon,
as being the hardest of known substances, is styled KéAyis,
‘notable or noble strength” (kaAds is, the » being inserted
for euphony as in dvBpmuos for GBpios) ; oxygen, the most
abundant and dominant of the elements, and one which
combines with every simple body save, perhaps, fluorine, is
called Aapvapeveds, ‘‘ the conqueror, the tamer, the one that
yokes or combines” (Sdurnu.), and Youman voices the
mythical idea when he writes thus of oxygen, “‘ enveloping
our planet in its free condition, it manifests an irresistible
passion to seize upon and possess all things”; and finally
hydrogen, the lightest of all known substances, and hence
the most volatile, has been called “Axuwv, ‘‘ reaching to the
highest point” (axy.} ov).

Increasing the number of Dactyli from three to five,
ten, &c., can be readily accounted for by making use of the

320 THE GODS OF OLD;

original three as a compound radical. Thus starch
(C,H,,0;) becomes grape sugar (C,H,.0,) by the addition
of H,O or two new Dactyli, differing essentially from
the other three inasmuch as it is by their agency that the
change from starchy to saccharose matter has been effected.
If to these five complete or male Dactyli (C,H,,0,) we add
as many more, but incomplete or female (C,H,,0;), we get
ten Dactyli, the representatives of C,.H..0,, or cane sugar ;
and so on indefinitely.

All this impresses the belief that a well-grounded know-
ledge of chemistry, its symbols, notation and laws, existed
among the ancients, and that this knowledge was very old.
What we read concerning the Cabiri but strengthens the
conclusion, since all the details connected with these
mysterious divinities can be explained intelligibly in no other
way save by studying them from an organically chemical
point of view. They are said to have been descended from
the Dactyli according to some accounts, or from Vulcan
according to others; and in either case their chemical origin
is pointed out, emphasised as it is by saying that they were
proficient in the art of metallurgy. Like the Dactyli, they
were originally three (C,H,0,), were afterwards increased
to four (C,H,0,N,), and like the Dactyli, they can evidently
be increased to any number by the system of compound
radicals. They are beneficent or malevolent as the case .
may be, as much so as alcohol (C,H,0) is; or the white of
eggs and its isomeric mate, the venom of rattlesnakes; or
as glycerine and nitro-glycerine, &c. They are closely
connected with Rhea (the operations of early earth),
Demeter (the oxides of the elements), with Zeus, Minerva,
and Venus, (life, organisation, and affinity), and with Hermes,
(the flux, fusion, or solution whereby chemical changes are
facilitated). They are potent over growth, over the vine,
the grape, the saccharine matter of the grape, and
alcoholic fermentation; and hence it is that they pro-
mised wine to the Argonauts, and that im conjunction
with life and genial warmth (Zeus and Apollo) they were
invoked by the Pelasgians in a time of dearth.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 821

Emblematic as they are of strong affinity and the closest
union, they were naturally invoked by lovers and appealed
to for vengeance by the slighted ; being the embodiments of
life, and constituting water (HO) in the proper proportions,
as two of them always do in the ternary group, they were
called upon for help in all perils to that life from the sea
and otherwise; and to describe them as dwarfs with pro--
tuberant stomachs is but a ludicrously correct word-picture
of the symbols as presented by the protuberant combining
volumes when attached to the simple elements, as thus,
C.;Hy»O; (starch), C,,H,.O., (tannic acid), and these must
yield in the way of obesity to albumen, which has been
stated as C,.Hy.O.Nj,, with a trace of sulphur. Their
names too have a chemical flavour. ’A€iepos signifies (af:0s
épos) “noble or notable force,” and, though differently
garbed, is thus the exact synonym of Celmis, or the carbon ;
"Agidxepoa and ’Agidxepoos denote (aétos xepdw) ‘‘ noble or
notable chemical union,” that is, of hydrogen and oxygen in
the proper proportions for forming the water (H,O) which
is so essential to animals, vegetables, and even to minerals,
and on whose various qualities depends the very stability of
nature ; KddpiAos or Kdopidos (from xarapedéw, “to care
not, be indifferent,”’ or Xdoxw pédos, ‘the sluggish mem-
ber”) has peculiar reference to the inert characteristic of
nitrogen ; and finally, all four combined, C, H, O, and N,
would be the KdéBepor, or by metathesis the KdpBeo, that
is, would be ‘the carbon compounds” (xépBwr).

As the knowledge of chemistry involves a high degree of
intelligence and information, and as its votaries have been
proverbially looked upon with suspicion by the uneducated,
it is very significant to read how the cult of the Cabiri was
generally associated with that of Hecate (mental elevation),
how the rites were celebrated for nine days (a ternary
period), at night and with great secrecy, and how it was
openly intimated by some writers that the mysteries of the
Cabiri were particularly, calculated to protect the lives of
the initiated. Still more significant of “ the Black Art”
are these words of Herodotus, who was born 484 B.c.,—

G.0. ¥

322 THE GODS OF OLD;

and if we read “test tubes for solution” in place of
‘phallic Herma,” we will be true to the simile and to the
context: ‘‘ The Athenians received their phallic Herme
from the Pelasgians, and those who are initiated in the
mysteries of the Cabiri will understand what I am saying ;
for the Pelasgians formerly inhabited Samothrace, and it is
from them that the Samothracians received their orgies.
But the Samothracians had a sacred legend about Hermes,
which is explained in their mysteries.”

When we come to those other entities, the Telchines, we
find that chemistry is still the theme, and that the term
embraces in a sense all the elements with their simple
combination into acids and bases. ;

The names would certainly warrant this conclusion.
Argyron, Chrysaon, and Chalecon poimt unmistakably to
silver, gold, and copper; Hormeneus, Mylos, and Simon
are equally manifest as mercury (€pzijs), lead (udAvBos),
and antimony (orivyt); Lycus exhibits the characteristic
luminosity (Aev«és) of phosphorus, and Atabyrius (’ AraBupos)
points to ‘the pest of fire’? (@rm mvpds) or sulphur which
is found native in volcanic regions, and which itself
is probably but (dAods mip) “the plague of fire’; the
peculiar crackling, or “tin cry’’ as it is called, given out
by tin when bent, is as visible in the Greek Anteus
(avradw “to sound back’’) as it is in the Latin stannum
(orévw ‘to cry’); Megalesius is (ueyados Gs) the type of
our halogens or salt-formers, and consequently may stand
for chlorine, or sodium, or for both; and Nikon is left for
iron, the symbol of victory (viky) among the ancients, the
symbol of victory to-day when iron has proved the universal
conqueror,—in war, agriculture, navigation, mining, manu-
factures, trade, travel, and the press.

As to their origin, it must be remembered how, when the
world was icandescent, everything that was volatile was
driven to the outskirts by the intense heat, and how as a
consequence the constituents of air, ocean, and of the crust
itself, were not on but above the earth as a vast nebulous or
misty envelope. In this nebulous ocean were the elements

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 323

evolved, and here did the firsté instances of oxidation occur,
that of oxygen with hydrogen, to form the primal rain, and
of oxygen with carbon, sulphur, phosphorus, &c. to form
phosphoric, sulphuric, carbonic, and other acids. The Tel-
chines may therefore be considered as descended from this
gaseous sea, or from Thalassa. And when the rain did fall,
it “‘ did not fall alone,” to use Gunning’s words; “the primal
atmosphere was loaded with other vapours, with all that was
vaporisable,—and chlorine, sulphur, carbon (as acid gases),
and other volatile vapours, all mixed with aqueous vapour,
filled the original atmosphere. The rain washed down those
vapours and acids, which entered into combination with cer-
tain bases, and loaded the sea as they had loaded the air.”
Hence it can be seen why some writers would describe the
Telchines as sprung from this primal water, or Poseidon.

It is for this reason, probably, that they are called
@cdryives, ‘the sea-born”’ (@dAacca yévos); still, if AAyo
(‘to charm, bewitch, to change” as in sorcery, ‘to
enchain’”’ by imperceptible but overwhelming force) be
older than @eAyiv, it would be an apt derivation for the
chemical transformations personified by the Telchines.
The form TeAxives, if not equivalent to @eAyives, would
signify (rédos éxeiv) “reaching towards the end, putting
the finish to,” since the evolution and oxidation of
elementary matter would be the final stage of the unknow-
able, and the beginning of the knowable,—and the
distinction of incipiency as well as of finality is connected
with the use of réAos in some instances.

Their origin and the naked simplicity of the elements,
as also of the acids and bases as a rule, (S, P, CO,, NO, &e.)
are denoted in the myih by calling them marine beings
without feet, and having fins for hands,—a simile which
points to the small combining volumes, and is evidently
in harmony with that which makes the large-atomed
nitrogenous compounds ‘‘ pot-bellied.”’

The comparison of these oxides to Actzon’s dogs is a
forceful simile, for we all go a hunting in the hey-day of
our youth, one after power, another after love, a third after

x 2

324 THE GODS OF OLD;

riches, a fourth afier knowledge, and still another after
something else; and coursing with us goes this oxygen
which Huxley calls ‘‘the great sweeper’’ of the body, and
which Eustathius has likened to ‘a pack of hounds.”
Fach dog serves us faithfully and well, and answers
responsively to every cry and whispered breathing we may
give. Breaking cover at the bronchi they nose through
every ramification till they scent and lap the dark blood in
the vesicles of lung tissue, and reeking now with arterial
red they hasten in full ery to the heart, thence to the
aorta, and from there to every muscle, bone, and vessel of
the frame, keen meanwhile to search for and snap at all
that is torpid and effete within us. We cheer them on,
the chase grows hot, and at last it may be that we hunt
the quarry to its Jair,—only to find that the glamour of
youth has gone and that we see more clearly the nudity
and nullity of things terrestrial. Age has come during the
chase, and with age reflection, the Diana of the mind.
We would gladly lie down and rest, but the oxygen pack is
as eager as before and cannot be restrained by muzzle or
by leash. We care no longer for the hunt; and so these
dogs, for want of better game, turn savage on their master
and hound him to his death. ‘‘ When,” says Steele,
‘‘ there is plenty of fuel in our human furnaces, the O burns
that; but if there is a deficiency, the destructive O must
still unite with something, and so it combines with the
flesh ;—first the fat, and the man grows poor; then the
muscles, and he grows weak; finally the brain, and he
becomes crazed. He has simply burned up, as a candle
burns out to darkness.”

As the phases of each element are distinction, oxidation,
and further change,—or, as some may prefer, change,
distinction, and increasing density, the Telchines are said
to have gone from Crete (xpirw—xpuréor, “rendered distinct’’)
to Cyprus (xdaaupos, ‘‘ burning,’’ and oxidation is combus-
tion), and thence to Rhodes (Gé@ 68ds, “‘ changing ways”) ;
or from Rhodes to Crete and thence to Beotia, an emblem
for sluggishness or density. But the Rhodes that typified

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL, 325

the endless chemical changes going on in matter owing to
the combining and liberating action of oxygen, was their
favourite abode, and hence we may consider them best
under the aspect of oxides.

As such, and in conjunction with Capheiro, the daughter
of Oceanus, they would help in bringing up Neptune, if we
only suppose this Capheiro, the offspring of aqueous vapour,
to represent hydrogen. Thus, if the Telchines calcium
oxide, carbonic acid, and chlorine be united with hydrogen
so as to form Ca CO, + 2 HCl, we find them so far mindful
of their charge as to bring Neptune (H,O) up in the
reaction which ensues, CO, + CaCl, + H,O.

As such too they admit of ready explanation under each
of their three apparently different aspects :

1. What better cultivators of the soil can there be than
lime (CaO), gypsum (CaO, SO,), carbonic acid (CO,),
potash (K,O), salt (NaCl), magnesia (MgO), &c.?
These simple oxides are Telchines that mix with the
decaying rocks and pass as cultivators into the soil,
whence they are taken up by plants, stored away in
seeds or stalks, and through this vegetable medium
serve aS ministers to the wants of animals and men.

2. Silver nitrate (AgNOQ,) is the basis of photography,
as PbO is of paint, and K,O of soap; were it not
for mercury, the thermometer, barometer, and mirror
would be wanting or imperfect, and gold and silver
would be scarcer for lack of an amalgam; were it not
for other useful and inventive Telchines, glass,
matches, gunpowder, dyeing, printing, and many other
arts and manufactures would not exist. Again, it is
of gold, silver, copper, their alloys, and of marble
(CaCO,) that our statues and costliest monuments are
raised ; it is copper and zine that work in brass, just
as it is iron that produces the wrought variety, the
malleable, and steel. The trident of Neptune is but
water in its three forms, solid, liquid, and gaseous,
and since this water (H,0) is but an oxide of hydrogen,
the Telchines must have fabricated it. Equally is it

82

6

THE GODS OF OLD;

evident that they made the scythe of Kronos, for all
things perish through decay, and decay is but another
name for oxidation.

. As sorcerers they are unrivalled, and compared with

them Merlin was a bungler, the Cappadocian Apollo-
nius a charlatan, and Pharaoh’s wise men but tyros.
Transformation was their pastime. The Telchin
oxygen could assume two shapes, as ozone and ant-
ozone; carbon could change to three, the diamond,
graphite, and charcoal; sulphur figured under four
forms; and so on, for we have a dim idea that they,
one and all, are allotropic. Phosphorus was perhaps
the greatest adept of them all, since by some in-
describable hocus-pocus he could appear under six
different aspects, as viscous, crystallised, transparent,
white, black, and red. What they practised on them-
selves they practised upon others. They changed
H, to H,O, and brought it down as rain, snow, or
hail; they transformed C to CO, and a gas resulted;
this they squeezed and it became a liquid; and this
again they exposed to the air and it was rendered
solid; they threw lime upon it, and marble fit for
building came forth. Gold had bragged, unfortunately
for himself, that he was the king of metals; the
Telchins Cl and O; waved their respective wands over
H and N,, sprinkled some water upon the latter, flung
the product upon the monarch, and, presto! the king
was dead. They joined the solid yellow sulphur to the
equally solid black carbon, and, like magic, the colours
and solidity disappeared and a clear colourless liquid,
carbon disulphide, took their place. Again they took
the sulphur, oxidised it to SO;, added some Stygian
water, and sulphuric acid (H,SO,) appeared, most
powerful of all others, and a mortal foe to the living
tissues of animal and plant. In a peculiar degree were
they possessed of ‘‘the evil eye,’”—a phrase handed
down from remote antiquity, and one that probably
owes its origin to these Telchins of old. Those eyes

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 327

were hydrogen and oxygen, the only two that unite
with other elements to form acids, all of which have
a characteristically sour taste and a more or less
corrosive and deadly action. These qualities they owe
to H and O, for if we remove the eyes from HCl, CO,,
HNO;, H.S0,, P:0;, &c., we have the simple and harm-
less elements remaining.

There is every reason to believe that at an early period
of our globe’s existence, when the elements exulted with the
joy of being and thirsted greedily for combination after
combination, when heat and darkness were at a maximum
and cohesion at a minimum, those Telchin sorcerers used
earth and the envelope of earth as a vast laboratory
wherein to practise their unholy spells and too rapid
transformations. Is it to be wondered at, then, that they
were hateful to the gods who stood for progress and
stability ? It is true that some few Telchins were adjuvants
to the infant Zeus, and had much to do in the bringing up
of rust, blight, smut, mould, mildew, and hundred other
microscopic forms of fungous growth, the creatures of
quick change, and yet the pioneers of life. But as an acid
group they were too corrosive, too changeful, and too
antagonistic to organised existence to suit the designs of a
Rhea yearning for a solid crust, of an Apollo longing for an
atmosphere simpler, purer, and permanent in elementary
proportions, of a Zeus who aimed at being the father of gods
and men; and so, as the myth tells us, cohesion, light, and
life were hostile to these magicians from the first, and the
same hostility subsists to-day. When Zeus, then, took on
a soul superior to the microscopic fungi, and when Apollo
succeeded in transmitting the first wan wisps of light (or
“‘ wolf-light’”’ as the story goes), the night of sorcery was
ended. The sunbeam, itself a powerful wizard but a kindly
one, dispelled the darkness and fostered vegetable life; life
in its turn brought cohesion ; and the rain, attracted by
vegetation, came down in a steady flow to purify the atmos-
phere from its acids, to temper the heat, give stability to all,
and keep chemical transmutations within proper bounds.

328 THE GODS OF OLD;

While the chemistry of life is thus portrayed in the
Dactyli, Cabiri, and Telchines, the purely physiological
aspects of the same life are dwelt upon in other myths, that
for instance which brings in Amalthea, the nymphs, and
the Curetes.

Zeus, we are told, was begotten ‘‘év dvtp@ ris Aixrys.”"
To translate this as ‘‘in the cave of Dicte” is true enough
in a sense, but not very intelligible. If we bear in mind
that Aixrn (evidently but another form of SdxrvAos, both
being derived from defxvyyt) is but the Dactyl or ternary
group, and translate the words as ‘in a cell of carbonaceous
matter,’ the meaning becomes perfectly clear, since our
cellular theory teaches that vegetable life springs from a
cell whose walls are composed of carbon, hydrogen, and
oxygen, and that all living tissues and structures are
built from the metamorphoses and union of cells. This
cellular theory—a very old one, since Hesiod distinctly
alludes to it—is referred to in many ways connected with
the infant Zeus, as we shall see presently.

The three most important functions belonging to early
plant life are germination, absorption, and secretion. While
there is much that is known and capable of explanation
regarding each of these, there is also much that is puzzling
—especially so when we come to their principia.. When
we ask ourselves, ‘‘ How does a dry seed stored away for
years still retain the power of germination? Why does the
root invariably go down, not up? And why does each seed
flourish, blossom, and bear only after its own kind?’’ we
find that we have played the quid nunc, or viv 7 once too
often, and must take for answer, ‘“‘ such is their nature,
their essence,’—the modern adaptation of the mythical
phrase, “they are nymphs.” We can and do theorise of
course, and may assert that germination, taking it as an
instance, is the product chiefly of cell development, or
moisture, or solar heat, or atmospheric influence, or of the
conversion of starch into sugar, and so on. Our theories
are old, as old as the myths themselves which personify this
mysterious germination as the nymph Amalthea (dyadds

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 329

adGéw, “tender or embryonic growth”), and ascribe her
parentage to Olenus (adA7, “the court round which the
house itself is built,’ and hence, a cell), or to Oceanus,
or to Helios, or to Hemonius (anya, “air in motion ’’), or to
Melisseus (uéAwooa, “ honey”). As germination is followed
by shooting—the radicle going down and the stem up,—
and absorption of the sap, so too is Amalthea followed by a
goat (atf&—dioow, “to shoot”), and with its milk or sap is the
necessary nutriment furnished to the infant Zeus. Some
writers, like Apollodorus, ignore the distinction between
germination and shooting, and so make the goat, under the
name of Amalthea, stand directly for germination, and its
milk, as before, for the sap. That germination is intimately
connected with cell-growth is pointed out by the poetical
appellation “ Olenia capella,” “the cellular germinator”’ ;
and the irresistible power of germination is equally marked
by the term “ Adamantea ”—or this last may have reference
to the diamond or pure carbon, as being the first repre-
sentative of inorganic matter in which budding or germina-
tion occurred.

With Amalthea for germination, it naturally follows that
Adrastia and Ida are the respective representatives of
absorption and secretion. Both processes are connected
with germination, are mysterious in their simplest aspects,
spring into active being with the first change of starch into
sugar, and nourish infant life with sap: Adrastia and Ida
are connected with Amalthea, are nymphs, children of
Melisseus, and feed the infant Zeus with the milk of
Amalthea. The absorbing agent we call the radicle, and
the Greeks Adrastia, since it is the paramount portion
which, like a root in language, runs no further (a d8pacKe),
—or that part of the plant which, unlike the stem, does not
run away from earth. ‘The embryo is stamped with a
polarity—a tendency to develop in opposite directions ; one
part is to live in the earth, the other in the air.’? The
secreting agent is that unknown property in woody fibre
whereby the cells can so assimilate the sap as to make each
plant grow, blossom, and bear fruit, after its own kind ; and

330 THE GODS OF OLD;

this secretive individuality is well expressed by Ida (éééa,
“a class, kind, pattern, type of the archetype.”

When we come to the Curetes we reach a somewhat more
developed stage of vegetable existence than that denoted by
Amalthea and the nymphs. The story of infant life reads
after this fashion. very perfect seed consists of a com-
pact mass of starch and gluten, and securely wrapped in
this lies the germ or embryo. Exposed to air, moisture, a
proper temperature, and a suitable habitat, the seed swells,
germination starts into being, and every portion is more or
less simultaneously affected by the impulse. The gluten
becomes diastase and dissolves the starch; the starch be-
comes sugar and is assimilated by the germ; the germ
expands and developes into radicle and stem; the radicle
absorbs crude sap which is quickly improved by mingling
with the organised juices; the stem assimilates and secretes
this sap.

This continues while the starch and gluten last; but
when the store is exhausted, another stage of existence
arrives, and a new train of phenomena appears. The stem
is peeping above the surface, the embryo is now a child
crying lustily for its wants, and a new force or process—not
germination, for that ended with the last morsel of trans-
formed starch—appears in order to satisfy those wants.
This force is growth, the Curetes of mythology; for as
growth is a gradual increase to maturity, or in other words,
a filling process up to the completeness of development, so
are the Kovupijres ‘‘ the satisfiers or fillers of early youth,”
(képos or xodpos, “ fulness, satiety; a youth,”)—and it is not
very difficult to see our own ‘‘ growth” in the slightly
transposed form of the word, xpov7jres. Ovid tells us, what
we all know, that growth is induced by rain, when he says
‘‘Jargoque satos Curetas ab imbri;”’ Strabo mentions how
certain of the Telchines who assisted in the bringing up of
Zeus were called Curetes; and this too we know, for it is
such Telchines as H,O (water), CO, (carbonic acid), H,N
(ammonia), and some other inorganic compounds that the
growing plant takes in from the air and from the soil.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 331

In a certain sense these Curetes are associated from the
very first with life, as suggested in the myth, for the dry
seed contains albumen (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen,
sulphur, and phosphorus, in proportions not well deter-
mined), and the rudiments of the plant are in the embryo
itself, ‘‘in some varieties so complete that the microscope
reveals its structure—root, stem, and leaves,’ waiting for
germination, and germination may be considered as embry-
onic growth. But properly speaking, it is when the stored
matter of the seed is exhausted that true growth comes
into active operation ; it is only when the plant appears
above the surface, armed with stem and leaf, that the Curetes
are évorAot, the stem being their spear, and the leafy cover-
ing their shield. If our simplest forms of vegetation were,
as may be well supposed, the first representatives of life
upon our globe, then some of these thallogens, such as the
mushroom with its stipe aud pileus, must have stood forth
as striking illustrations of those armed Curetes.

The conspicuous office assigned them in the myth is as
true as it is important. One of the chief requisites for
growth is the elaboration of the sap by taking in carbonic acid
from the atmosphere. This is done by means of the leaves,
fronds, or thallous expansion, as the case may be; and as
the amount of gas taken in is always in proportion to the
extent of atmospheric surface in contact with the leafy cover-
ing, it is evident that rustling of the leaves, by increasing
the contact area, augments the amount of nutritive material.
Whenever, accordingly, we see a plant whose swaying stem
is setting its leafy covering in motion, or, to speak mytholo-
cically,when the Curetes strike their shields with their spears,
we may be confident that nutrition and growth are going on
apace, and can readily understand how the same rustling
process which feeds the life within the cell is also satisfying
the cravings of the infant and smothering its ery.

All the foregoing, the Dactyli, Cabiri, &e., are bits of
science elaborated and incorporated with the myths in times
later than those of Hesiod. They are important in many
respects since, while establishing the identity of Zeus with

332 THE GODS OF OLD;

life, and vegetation as the primal form of life, they also
throw the fierce light of truth on the real nature of the
myths, on the purpose for which they were digested, and on
the scientific attainments of those who composed and wrote

them.
* 4) gs .
Hesiod’s own description of Zeus runs thus:
GAN Gre 87) Av’ Euchre Gedy wardp’ 78€ Kai avdpav
tf, ey mw tf LA Sed

ré£eoOa, ror Exetra didovs Aurdveve Toxnas
Tous abris Vaidy re kal Otpavoy dotepderra,
pirw cupdpacoacGat, Srws AeddOorto rexovca

5 maida idov, ticacra § épwis wartpés éoto

, 4 Z ‘ t 2 ,
naidar & obs xarémwe péyas Kpdvos ayxvdopytns.
oi b€ Ovyarpi pipy pada peév Kdvov 78° éribovro,
xai oi mepadérny dcanep wénpawto yevér ba
> 7 i ee ‘ C foe -
appi Kpove Baordai ral viet kaprepobupe.
3 ? ca “a

10 wéupav & és Averov, Kpnrns és riova djyov,
éamdr’ ap’ 6mAdraroy mwaider Fpedre rexéobat,
Ziva péyay' ov pév of éd€€aro Tata rehapy

, 3 > ‘ ia > f ,
Kpnrn év etpety tpapépev ariraddAguevai te.
Oa pu ixro pépovca Gov Sia vixra péhaway

15 mparyy és Aixrgy' xpirpev € E xepoi AaBovaa
EA 3. nr. B td r¢ A tf c 4 he) f
dvrpp ev WiBare, Cabéns bx6 Kevbeor yains,

> ta f
Alyaio év dpel, weruxacpeve, tAqevtt.
led a f ia e 2
T@ 5€ onapyavicaca péyav didov eyyuddeev
> r 43> ~ ia mee
Odpavidy péy dvaxrt, Getv mporép@ BactAri.
€ , -
20 rov 768’ Aay xeipecow Eqv éoxdrbero vndvv,
a sO? 2 ¢ 4 a a <2 f
oxétruos, ov8’ evénre pera hpeciv, ds oi drigce
3 ‘ fe ey er > . 3 4
dvti Xidov ébs vids dvixnros Kat dxndys
Aetrre€’, 6 piv Tax’ Cpedre, Bin xal xepot Sapdooas,
-” > fA c 37> > A 3 La
tins eEeddav, 6 8 év Gbavatoow avd£tetv.

25 Kapradipws 8 dp’ trecra pévos xal haidipa yuia
yv&eto Toto Gvaktos* émimhopevor § émavraey
Tains évvecigas wokuppaddéeoct Sodwbeis
é f a, 27 o ’ 2 cy
by yovoy a dvénxe peyas Kpdvos ayxvAopyrys,

x ca ’ td A cn
vixnOels Téexvnat Bini re matdds Eoio.
30 sparov 8 éEqpeoce Nibov, wipatoyv xatanivev'

. cy a , ‘ 4 2 a
Tov pev Zevs oTnptée kata xOovos eipvodeins
Hot ev iyaben yuddots two Hapyqcoio
one tpuev eLoriocw, Oavpa Gynroict Bporoict.
Avoe S€ marpoxactyyijrous éAoay dé Seopa

s 385 Odpavidas, obs djce marnp deouppooivyow:

6&1 of dmepvncavro xdpw evepyecidar,
ddxav 5é Bpovriy 78 aidaddevra kepavvdy

‘7 fe. 4 s 4 id ~ A .
kal oreporny' 1 mplv O€ meAdpn Talia xexevet
rois micuvos Ovytoict kat aOavdrovow dvdooet.—Theog. 468,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 333

But when upon the point of bearing Zeus,

The sire of gods and men, then did she pray

Her parents dear, both earth and starry sky,

That nought material be devised, whereby

She might unknown bring forth her cherished son,
And satisfy the wrongs done to her sire,

And to those children of her own as well

Whom the great crafty Kronos had devoured.
Their daughter dear, exceeding dear, they heard,
Were influenced, and planned right well for her
Whate’er by fate’s decree was held in store

For royal Kronos and his high-souled son.

So to the light, distinction’s rich domain,

They sent her on the point of bringing forth

Her youngest, greatest child, the mighty Zeus.
Revolving earth first took him to herself

To rear in broad distinction and to nerve;

Whilst bearing him through darkness passing black,
To the first indicant she came, and neath

The nooks of righteous earth hid what she grasped
Inside a sapless cell, within a mass

That woody, compact, and expansive was.

But in the palms of the great high-born king,
The former ruler of the gods, she placed
A mighty stone concealed in swaddling garb:
This grasping then he swallowed in his maw,
The reckless one! nor minded well in thought
How, in the ages yet to come for him,
There would be left, as price of this same stone,
His son unconquered, calm, transcending all
Tn force and skill, whose destiny ’twould be
To quickly chase him from his high estate
And ’mongst immortals reign himself supreme.

Rapid, moreover, waxed this ruler’s strength
And limbs distinct; and as the years rolled by,
Great crafty Kronos spewed his offspring back,
By matter’s fine suggestive ways deceived,
O’ercome by arts and vigour of his son.

The stone, that last he gulped, he first disgorged ;
And that same stone was rendered fast by Zeus
Down in the fissured earth at Pytho fair

Under the hollows of Parnassus mount,

To be a token for all time to come,

A wondrous work to perishable flesh.

From galling ties he also freed his kin,
The high-born whom his sire had fatuous bound ;

3384 THE GODS OF OLD;

Thanks for his benefits they felt, and gave
Thunder and lightning and the flaming bolt ;
(These the revolving earth had previous hid) ;
Trusting to these he rules both gods and men.

NOTES.

4 pirw.—She begged for the existence of that which would be (uj
rw) not matter, that is, life.
“A breath thou art,
Servile to all the skyey influences
That doth this habitation, where thou keep’st,
Hourly afflict.” —-Shakspeare.

5 swarpés éoio.— Were there no life on earth, there would be no soul;
so that through life alone could the separation of heayen from
earth be avenged.

‘« There is, they say, (and I believe there is,)

A spark within us of th’ immortal fire,

That animates and moulds the grosser frame ;

Aad when the body sinks, escapes to heaven,

Its native seat, and mixes with the gods.”—Armstrong.

7 énifovro.—All the bodies in our universe influence and are
influenced by one another through gravitation.

10 Avxrov.—neveds, “light, clear, brilliant.” Life came from on high.

‘¢In him was life; and the life was the light of men.”
John i, 4.
‘“* Between two worlds life hovers like a star,
*Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon’s verge.” —Byron.
Kpnrns.—xpivo, xpiréov, ‘‘to distinguish, separate, test.” The

outer verge of earth would be the “ distinguishing ground” for
all that would be evolved, the criterion as it were of their
characteristics and distinctive marks.

14 vixra péAawav.—As it was “the Golden Age” when earth was
like unto our sun in all respects, this ‘‘darkness passing
black’ has reference to the opaque, relatively cool and com-
pressed mass of vapour lying between the body of the sun and the
outer luminous corona, and to which, as some say, the appear-
ance of the sun spots is attributable. If life received its being
on the verge, it would have to pass through this dark or non-
luminous zone in order to reach earth proper.

15-17 The derivation Seixvups, Secxréos, ‘‘to indicate, point out,”
marks Aixryy as being identical with the AaxrvAo: of later
mythology, that is, with C,O, and H, as already noticed; so
that mpdryy Aixrny is consequently “ the first or most important
dactyl, the pointer, the indicating element,” that is, carbon.

16 7AiBdro.—Ionic form of dAi8dr@, which like dAiBas (from a \Bds)
denotes ‘‘ sapless, lifeless.”

The entire paragraph has reference to cell growth. arth,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 335

says the poet, endowed with the principle of life came to the
characteristic indicator of life, the carbon, and enclosed the
precious gift in a cell (dvrpm) devoid of sap and surrounded by
a mass (ev dpe)—starch and gluten—that was compact in
texture (wenuxacpévm), vegetable in nature (idjevri), and
possessed of expansive or germinating powers (Aiyata, dei yaiw,
“ever exulting, ever springing’’).

‘“‘ Every plant,” writes Youman, “‘springs from a seed, and
every perfect seed contains the rudiment of a new plant, called
the germ or embryo. . . . The minute plant lies imbedded
within the seed, surrounded by a protecting mass, which con-
sists chiefly of starch and gluten. . . . Wrapped in this
envelope, the embryo remains at the disposal of external
agents. In certain conditions it continues at rest and torpid ;
but when these conditions are changed, it suddenly awakens
from its slumber, puts forth a new power and begins to grow;
this is called germination.” .

18-24 Our rocks are formed from the ruins of their predecessors ;
they are new personages, so to speak, dressed up in garments
that have been made over again from the raiment worn by
those who lived immediately before them. These coverings
consist of compound matter which becomes less composite in a
sense according as we go down the scale of geological forma-
tions. The fundamental granite is no exception. Its consti-
tuents are quartz, mica, and feldspar, all three of which are
extremely simple in composition, being either pure silica (Si O,)
as in the case of quartz, or silicates of alumina with a small
proportion of potash, soda, iron, lime, and magnesia, as in the
case of mica and feldspar. These it received, as we must
believe, from the primal crust; and if they be simple in the
granite, how much simpler must they have been in its pre-
‘decessor? Simple enough, certainly, to warrant their being
called ondpyava, ‘‘swaddling clothes; anything reminding us
of our birth, our family, and our childhood.” But though
these swaddling clothes, however altered, have been handed
down by the first crust to the granite, and by it to the fossili-
ferous pile above, the primeval crust itself nowhere appears: it
was swallowed by time in the fiery ocean underneath.

It was this primal crust, then, swathed in elementary
coverings, that Rhea gave to Kronos, and it was this he
swallowed, not knowing, as Hesiod says, that the price of this
mighty stone would be the granite and fossiliferous rocks where
life would flourish and have sway. ,

27 éwecinot.—Matter was busily employed in insinuating one element
into another, so as to form compounds and establish solidity.
Life, too, was increasing in vitality, and multiplying its visible
forms.

80 ampdroy Aigov.—The stone that time had swallowed, it now dis-

336 THE GODS OF OLD;

gorged. It went down as the primeval crust, but it came up
as grunite, which, as mentioned in the text, has a deep-seated
origin im the earth, forms the nucleus, or hollows, of our
mountain chains, has subsisted for all time, and owing to its
hardness and durability contrasts wonderfully with mortal flesh
that perishes all too quickly.

Such is the mythological narrative of the introduction
of life upon our globe. It is wonderful, fascinating, daring
in the extreme. It takes us beyond the metamorphic rocks
where geology stops, beyond the granite to which the same
geology looks conjecturally, beyond even that crust from
which, though unrecognised, our granite is supposed to
have got its own constituents by disintegration. Beyond
all these does it take us, to a period in earth’s history when
our globe was a dying out sun, hot enough to prevent the
elements from permanently combining, hot enough to
permit but a molecular existence. Here and under such
conditions, with no soil wherein to plant its radicle, no rain
from which it could derive sap, no atmosphere proper
whence it could draw carbonic acid, does mythology place
the beginning of Life! Both the time and the conditions
are bewildering.

But life itself is equally bewildering. ‘‘ However viewed,”
writes Youman, ‘‘the transcendent miracle of-nature is LIFE.
Whether considered as supporting the spiritual fabric of
mind above, or as rooted in the inorganic world below, it is
alike wonderful. Springing from ethereal airs and yet
invincible; constantly perishing, and yet abounding in
earth, air, and sea; forever conquered by death, yet ever-
more triumphant—‘ strongest and weakest of the things
God has made,’ if is not surprising that it has been
regarded as unlike all else in nature.”

To deny the capabilities of, this life, no matier what the
conditions may be, would be injudicious; to argue on its
possibility when our earth was half star half planet is
admissible, since the astronomical mind is strongly
impressed with the idea of life in Mars, Venus, and the
other planets, and is not inclined to deny it absolutely
even in the Sun. ‘‘Some hold it not improbable that the

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 337

sun may be inbabited. The caseous stratum, which is the
source of light and heat, appears to be at a great elevation
above the solid nucleus; and the non-luminous stratum or
atmosphere that intervenes may be of a nature to temper
the rays, and render their intensity consistent with organic
life.” What holds good for the sun to-day holds equally
good for earth in its sun days.

Ii may be remarked too that whatever knowledge science
possesses as regards the structure and origin of our
precious stones points to a far distant period beyond the
metamorphic rocks, and admits also the strong probability
of plant life having been a factor in initiating the change
from carbon to diamond.

Much evidently depends on the nature of the first
vegetation ; and with respect to this, mythology and science
alike declare that it consisted of alge and fungi, thallogens
both, and the lowest varieties of plant life with which we
are acquainted. The simpler of the two would seem to be
the fungi which have the mushroom for apex, and thence
go down the scale to the microscopic mould, mildew, smut,
rust, and hundred others which we have no name for, and
know so little of. ‘‘ We are entirely ignorant,” says Lindley,
‘‘of the manner in which the stems of those that are
arborescent are developed, and of the course taken by their
ascending and descending sap—if indeed in them there
really exist currents similar to those of flowering-plants ;
which may be doubted. We know not in what way the
fertilising principle is communicated to the sporules or
reproductive grains; the use of the different kinds of
reproductive matter found in most tribes is entirely con-
cealed from us. It is even suspected that some of the
simplest forms—of alge and fungi, at least—are the
creatures of spontaneous growth: and, in fine, we seem to
have discovered little that is positive about the vital
functions of those plants, except that they are reproduced
by their sporules, which differ from seeds, in germinating
from any part of their surface, instead of from two
invariable points.”

G.0. Zz

338 THE GODS OF OLD.

Could these exist under the conditions which our igneous
globe presented? Nothing forbids the idea. Plant life of
this most simple kind must be next in endurance to the
spores themselves which we must suppose as existing from
created matter and subjected to even still greater heat.
Nor would some favourable circumstances be entirely absent.
The meridian of the “Golden Age” would have passed
and earth have felt the cooling effects of outer space. The
rain, trickling from the summits where it originated, would
constantly and increasingly keep vaporous the steamy
atmosphere which enveloped the nucleus of our globe.
Oxidation, the first step towards crust-making, would
quickly occur for elementary matter, but the same oxida-
tion that brought combination would also bring decay. A
decayed particle or two of inorganic material would be a
fertile kingdom for a microscopic spore; heat and moisture,
when combined, would be its proper sustenance; and, once
developed, it mattered little how long it would survive, for
in its case, decay meant victory and strength, plenitude
and renewal,—all four the children of primeval Styx.

To microscopic alge and fungi that thrive alike in earth,
air, or water, and seem to be independent of soil and light,
of colouring matter and of sex, that can defy an abnormal
degree of heat, if moisture be but present, that can grow,
like our puff-ball, ‘in a single night from a mere point to
the size of a large gourd, forming on an average not fewer
than 20,000 new cells per minute,”—to such simple life-
forms, the bafflers of more complex ones on the batile-
ground of generation, there are evidently no set bounds as
to time, conditions, capability, or endurance.

BOOK SEVENTH.
TITANIC TIES—(continued).

a no

CHAPTER I.

THEOGONY.

Atlas
Mencetius
Prometheus
Epimetheus

IapETus and CLYMENE {
\

MYTHS.

Iapetus.—A_ Titan, married to Clymene, according to Hesiod; to Asia,
according to Apollodorus. He was the father of Atlas,
Mencetius, Prometheus, and Epimetheus; and was looked
on by the Greeks as the ancestor of the human race.

Clymene.—Daughter of Oceanus, and wife of Iapetus.

Atlas.—A son of Iapetus, and condemned by Zeus to bear the heavens
on his head and shoulders. Later traditions assert that he was
metamorphosed into a mountain, on which rested heaven
with all its stars. At first the story of Atlas referred to only
one mountain which was believed to exist on the extreme
boundary of the earth ; but the name was gradually given to
other mountains, so that we are told of a Mauretanian Atlas,
an Italian, Arcadian, Caucasian, &c.

Menetius.—A brother of Atlas. He was killed by Zeus with lightning,
and hurled to Tartarus.

Prometheus.—The most famous of all the children of Iapetus. The
Hesiodic legend, as generally rendered with regard to him,
runs thus: Once, when gods and men were in dispute at
Mekone, Prometheus cut up a mighty ox, and divided it into
parts for the purpose of alluring Zeus. The first heap
contained the flesh, intestines, fat, and skin; the second heap
consisted of bones covered with shining fat. When Zeus
commented on the shares, Prometheus told him that he could

Zz 2,

340

THE GODS OF OLD;

make his choice. Zeus, though cognisant of what he did,
chose the bones covered with fat. The father of the gods
avenged himself by withholding fire from mortals, but
Prometheus stole it in a hollow receptacle or vdp@né. There-
upon Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock where his liver,
consumed by an eagle in the daytime, was again restored
each night. This torture he endured for many centuries.
Finally, however, when MHereules in pursuance of his
Eleventh Labour went in quest of the Golden Apples of the
Hesperides, he killed the eagle and delivered Prometheus,
Zeus not being unwilling.

Various additions have been given to the story by later
writers. We are fold, for instance, that Prometheus helped
Zeus in his war against the Titans; that he it was who split
the head of Zeus and thus enabled the god to give birth to
Minerva; that he entertained an ardent affection for this
goddess, and was assisted by her when he secretly stole fire
from heaven, and gave it, concealed in a vdpOné, to those

-mortals whom he had fashioned from earth and water; and

that for doing so without the cognisance and will of Zeus, he
was chained to a rock, hurled with this rock to Tartarus,
again brought back to the upper world, and fastened to
Mount Caucasus, where his liver was devoured by an eagle,
as already mentioned, until Hercules delivered him.

He is represented as the friend of mankind, and their
teacher in architecture, astronomy, mathematics, and many
other arts and sciences; and it is further stated that when
Zeus proposed. to destroy the whole race of mortals, and to
fill their place with a new race of beings, Prometheus
succeeded in warding off the general destruction.

Epimetheus —When Prometheus committed his famous theft, Zeus

caused Vulcan to fashion from earth and water a female
whose grace and beauty would prove a snare, and bring
misery on the mortal race to whom Prometheus had given
fire. The woman who was thus made, and who was called
Pandora, or “ the all-gifted,”’ because each of the gods had
dowered her with some charm, was brought to Epimetheus,
who made her his wife, and who forgot till too late the
injunction given him by his brother, Prometheus, namely,
never to receive a gift from Olympian Zeus.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 341

CHAPTER IL.
IAPETUS, THE TIE OF APTITUDE.

Iapetus.—Design and change are stamped unmistakably
on the heavens and the earth and the things of earth. The
astronomer bears witness to the fact, and thereby builds a
filmy nebula into a fused ball of fire.

The geologist takes up the cry and constructs this igneous
ball into a well-clad earth; he points to the separate
formations and marks their order in succession and in
time; he directs attention to the fossils in these forma-
tions, and notes the gradual change from alge to olive,
from mollusk to man. The scientist, too, each in his own
way, proclaims that the atmosphere has its laws whereby
light, heat, sound, and meteorological phenomena are
regulated ; that the ocean is disciplined as to tides and
currents ; that earth as a whole is so sirictly governed as
to ever make the day succeed the night, and the seasons to
pursue their unvarying round; and that the things of
earth, rocks with their constituents, crystals with their
angles, plants with their cellular and vascular tissues, and
animals with their complex paris, are all subject to law,
order, and definite arrangement. The universe and its
parts, the mass and the molecule, the inanimate and the
animate have been fashioned after a Plan or Scheme, the
beginning, end, and reason of which we know not, but the
course, order, and law of which we can trace distinctly in
all that we see around us.

The Plan must be either a provisional one, or else there
must be some impulse in matter and force whereby they
adapt themselves to the Plan. As the former hypothesis is
contrary to our notions of an omnipotent and immutable
Deity, we must embrace the latter and suppose that there

342 THE GODS OF OLD;

is an eternal fitness of things, an adaptation of themselves
towards the end for which they were determined. How
far back can we push it? Possibly, to matter itself; but as
we do not recognise matter except through its phenomena,
a safe point to go back to is that where matter, in changing
from the unknown to the known, became visible. This
visibility appeared with the coming into being of molecular
matter, that is, with the Titans, of whom Japetus was one;
and it is this Zapetus (daropat, “to fit,” the « being euphonic
as in lav’w for atw) that personifies the aptitude or fitness of
things towards the destined end.

As this adaptation necessarily implies both mind and
spirit, the former to prompt, the latter to act, then both of
these must have been present in the condition of our globe
when Japetus flourished,—when earth, a sun satisfied for
the time being with its gaseous nature and magnified: to
the utmost by swelling meandescence, had nevertheless a
prompting towards planetary existence and the capability
of adapting itself wholly and partly to this end,—its shape
and surface for the spheroid and the crust which cooling
would bring about, its constituents, (especially its organic
ones as being possessed of greater receptivity or capacity),
for the structures that were to be vitalised.

It is with this idea of general adaptation that we must
receive the ‘anima mundi” of ancient philosophy: and
with this same idea we should read Virgil’s lines, for that
which applies to our earth as it once was is equally
applicable to every stellar body in the universe :

Principio, coelum, ac terras, camposque liquentes,

Lucentemque globum Lune, Titaniaque astra,

Spiritus intus alit; totamque, infusa per artus,

Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.

Inde hominum pecudumgue genus, viteeque volantum,

Et que marmoreo fert monstra sub sequore pontus.

Igneus est ollis vigor, et ccelestis origo,

Seminibus; quantum non noxia corpora tardant,

Terrenique hebetant artus, moribundaque membra.
Ain. VI. 724.

From time’s first onset, heaven, and earth, and sea,

The moon’s resplendent orb, the gaseous stars,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 343

Are by the spirit in them magnified ;

And, all infused throughout the several parts,
The mind excites the structure as a whole,

And with capacious matter joins it-elf.

Thence comes the race of mankind and of beasts,
Thence too of flying kind the living forms,

And monstrous creatures whom the ocean bears
Beneath its burnished surface. For such germs
There is a fiery strength, a birth divine,

Such that defective bodies do not slow,

And earthy joints and mortal limbs not dull.

That our earth-sun did look forward to the planetary
stage, and did follow out the bent of its impulse, is
evidenced by its solidity of to-day. But it had to sacrifice
something to adapt itself to the changed condition, and as
incandescence was a prime obstacle to solidity, this same
incandescence—the Iapetus for the time being—had to go,
and to go where approved mythology and science have
placed it, in the centre of our globe.

The masterful Life that, with countless million subjects
in the ocean and the air, can disregard, if need be, the
animated forms on dry land, thus sternly addresses the
personification of terra firma:

aébev 8 eye od« ddeyila
xoopevns, ob8 cf xe Ta vetara weipad?” txnas
yains kat advroto, ty “lawerds te Kpdvos te
qpevat, or avyas tmrepiovos "Hedlovo
réprovt’, odt dvéuotot, Babs 8é re Tdptupos dpdpis-

Tiad, VIL. 477.

And as for thee possessed with raging hate,

I heed thee not, not even should’st thou go
To earth’s and ocean’s deepest ends, to where
Tapetus and Kronos all-aflame

Enjoy nor beams of heaven’s sun, nor winds,
And hell’s extent abysmal round them lies.

344 THE GODS OF OLD;

CHAPTER IIT.
“TOO HIGH-BORN TO BE PROPERTY’D.”

Menetius.—Incandescence, though the greatest, was not
the only loss which our globe had to endure in order to fit
itself for enrolment among planets. Shape too had to be
sacrificed.

When, to go back in point of time, Harth had adapted
itself through Japetus to solar conditions, it brought into
being four distinguished entities, namely, rotation,
sphericity, light, and visibility.

This, as explained later on, is the same as saying that
Tapetus begot Atlas, Mencetius, Prometheus, and Epi-
metheus. While such is the order in which they are
mentioned by Hesiod, Apollodorus enumerates them as
rotation, light, visibility, and sphericity, since he names
Mencetius last; and each reader can decide for himself
which of the two mythographers was the more correct.

One of these, sphericity or Mencetius, was doomed to die
an early death in the change from solar to planetary
existence. Why and how are best explained by the cut
where the dotted spherical line repre-
sents earth as a sun, and the inner line
as the planet which it aimed to be.
The sphere is evidently too rounded in
outline, too glorious (ézepxvéavra) as
Hesiod says, for a spheroid; too over-
bearing (d8pioriv) by ab and ed for an
oblate spheroid; too diffusive (arac@adins)
and gaseous or high-spirited (jvopéys
tmepdmAov) in nature for well-defined circumference and in-
crustation. Now, that which gives its sphericity to the
outer figure is evidently the difference between the two

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 345

figures, and it is this difference, the remnant of the sphere,
that is personified by Menetius (ueveréov, “that which
remains, theremnant’’). When earth, accordingly, deemed
it prudent to embrace the planetary state, it did so by
simply sacrificing this remnant. Science expresses this by
saying that asa result of continued cooling and rotation
earth would shrink from the dimensions and shape of a
gaseous sphere to those of an oblate spheroid: mythology
tells the same story in its own language when it says that
Zeus, the life that came with cooling, stamped down
Mencetius into Erebus.
Hesiod tells the story thus:

Kovpyy & "lamerds xaddiobupov *Qxeavivny
2 f 4 uo A La ° id
nydyero KAupévny kal épdv dé€xos eioavéBatvev,
ear ey , a -
7 O€ of "ArAavra kpatepdppova yeivato maida:
tixre 5’ imepxvdavra Mevoiriov 7d€ Lpopydéa
motkidov, aioAduntiy, dpaprivooy 7 "Emipndéa,
4a 4 3 > ~ ca 2 2 La x a“
bs xaxdv €& apyis yéver’ avdpdow dddynotnae
mparos yap pa Ards mAaoriy tmédexto yuvaika

* e ‘ x‘ , > - A
gwapbévov. iBptorny bé Mevoirtoy eipvora Zeds
els "EpeBos xarémepape Bada yrodderre kepauve
10 elvex’ dracOadins Te al vopéns trepdmdov-—Theog. 507.

Or

Clymene, vapour’s child, and rounded well,
Iapetus selected for his spouse,
And led her to the couch he shared himself.

She bore him Atlas, even-tempered youth ;
Mencetius too, o’er glorious in his ways;
Prometheus, changeful, quick-devising soul ;
And erring Eipimetheus, who from yore
An evil proved to pleasure-loving men,

For he it was who first did hearken to

His spouse, the maiden fashioned him by Jove.
But Zeus, the Zeus who searches far and wide,
Inclined in thought to smoky, thund’rous bursts,
Struck down the one that held his head too high,
Mencetius, into lower, troublous depths,

Since too diffuse and spirited he was.

NOTES.

2 KAupémv.—Clymene, as a child of Oceanus, has reference to
aqueous vapour in its characteristic of (kdve pévos) ‘ all-per-
vading force; force heard of,” though not seen. Our globe,
as the adaptive Titan first received it, previous to incandescence,

346 THE GODS OF OLD;

was nebulous or vaporous in consistency, and shaping itself
into a circular form (xadAicgupor).

9 poddevrt xepavv@.—The poet implies that the philosophers of his own
and of preceding times, the etpvora Zeds or life that inquires
into all things, had thrown out the suggestion (Gaday, ‘ to
throw, to ponder”) that flattening at the poles was due to volcanic
action. The same opinion was entertained by Apollodorus,
who flourished 3.c. 140, for he says that Menostius was de~
stroyed in the war of Zeus against the Titans, a period when
volcanic energy was in full play. The modern opinion is that
polar flattening is due to rotation of the earth while it was still
in a soft or plastic state.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 347

CHAPTER IV.

THE WORLD’S WHEEL.

Atlas.—The earth turns on its axis once in twenty-four
hours. As this axis passes through the centre from pole to
pole and is itself immovable, the points of rotation are
evidently in circular planes parallel to the equatorial one
which passes from east to west, through the centre of the
earth.

For earth as a revolving sphere, then, this equatorial
plane is the one great essential, since its revolution
involves that of all the others. It is this plane that is ©
personified by Atlas.

Let us examine it in detail, as in the cut, where the
outer circle represents the concave surface of the heavens,
the inner one our earth, H} Q the plane of the earth’s
equator, and N § the axis.

1. The weight of each hemisphere rests upon it.

2. It runs through the centre of the earth.

8. It faces the north and south poles.

4. It is set upright, or perpendicular to the axis.

5. Its extension in all directions to meet the concave
celestial arch forms what is called the Celestial
Equator (e q), which divides the heavens into the
northern and southern hemispheres.

348 THE GODS OF OLD;

Let us now read Hesiod’s description of Atlas, and we
shall find ourselves going over the same details :
“AtXas 8’ ovpavdy edpoy exer Kpatepys ta’ dvdykns,
welpacty év yains, wpdmap “Eorepidwor Acyuparav,
éornds, near Te Kal dxapdryot xéperor.
taurny yap of poipay éddocaro pyriera Zevs.—Theog. 517.
But under pressure that’s immensely great,
Placed in the very roots of mother earth,
Facing the unexplored and lofty poles,
And upright set, does Atlas with his head
And tireless hands hold up the heavens wide.
For such his lot sagacious Zeus assigned.

NOTES.

1 "ArAas.—From bearing the pressure of each hemisphere does he
derive his name (rAdw, ‘‘ to bear, suffer’’).

2 ‘Eow. Acy.—This phrase has already occurred in connection with the
Gorgons, where it denoted the elevated and unexplored regions
surrounding the poles.

8 dxapdryot.—tThe head is at the poles and immovable; the hands
are the planes of the equator and parallels of latitude, all of
which are ¢ireless in their motion round the axis.

L pariera Zets.—That is, the deliberations of science. The eipiora
Zevs represents philosophical research; the pyriera Zevy stands
for the well-digested knowledge which springs from such
research.

It is thus that the Farnese Atlas is represented, with head
at the pole, shoulders at right angles to the axis, arms
embracing the periphery as if they were meridians, and
hands resting on the equator.

The classical epithets and phrases are numerous and
varied, but always suggestive. Celifer and astrifer have
peculiar reference to the plane; sublimis and pruinosus to
the poles ; arduus and altus to the sloping space between
the two. The purely terrestrial is visible in “caput inter
nubila;’’ the celestial in ‘‘ astrorum pondere pressus; ”
and his functions are marked in “‘humeris celum qui
sustinet,”” “‘qui cceelum vertice fulcit,” ‘et fessos excipit
axes Atlas,” “‘ubi stellifer Atlas axem humero torquet,”
and many others. Hach poet alludes to him after a fashion
of his own, and the following are interesting instances.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 349

Homer recalls how the distribution of land and water
has never been the same during all the great geologic ages
which have elapsed since an ocean laved the globe; how
the forbears of our continents and islands have time and
again been covered by a sea, the depths of which, varying
as they did at different periods, were plumbed by the
shoulders and the hands of this great equatorial plane, and
by it alone :

bea 8” év Ocdpare vatee
“Ardavros Ouydrnp ddodpporos, dare Gaddaons
Hdons Bévbea oidev, exer dé re xinvas abtis
Makpas, at yaiay re kal ovpaviv apis éxovor.——Odyss. I, 52.

Ovid regards Atlas from another point of view, namely,
as the plane of the rational horizon; and as this embraces
all other horizons so far as the fixed stars are concerned,
he calls it at one time the northern horizon (“‘ gelido sub
Atlante ’’), at another time the western (‘‘ Hesperio, regnis
Atlantis, in orbe”’), and still at other times, as here, the

horizon in general :
Juvat ire per alta,
Astra: juvat, terris et inerti sede relictis,
Nube vehi, validique humeris insistere Atlantis.
Met. XV. 147.

Virgil lauds the axis in epitrochio for its services to
astronomy. To what are we indebted for our knowledge of
the moon’s phases, if not to revolution round an axis? To
what is due the vicissitudes of our seasons, those labours of
the sun whereby earth is fitted for men and animals,
whereby the spring-time with its rain, and the summer
with its heat, appear in turn? To whatis the mapping of
the heavens due but to the head of Atlas, that Pole-star
which guides us to the ‘‘ pointers” and “ guardians” of
the twin Dippers; from these to others, to the circumpolar
Arcturus of Bootes, the equinoctial Hyades of Taurus, and
soon? And what again but revolution is it that makes
our winter days so short, and nights so long?

All these were once chanted at the festive board of Dido
by the xpinros “Iwzas, the inquiring seer who gazed upon
the stars and had the world’s wheel and axle for a teacher:

350 THE GODS OF OLD;

Cithara crinitus Iopas
Personat aurata, docuit quee maximus Atlas.
Hic canit errantem Lunam, Solisque labores:
Unde hominum genus, et pecudes; unde imber, ef ignes:
Areturum, pluviasque Hyadas, geminosque Triones:
Quid tantum Oceano properant se tingere soles
Hyberni, vel que tardis mora noctibus obstet.—Ain. I. 740.

Coming now to the later myth concerning Atlas, we have
but to look at the cut in order to see how each hemisphere,
sloping regularly from the equator to the pole, with a base
of 25,000 miles in circumference and an altitude of 4,000
miles, is a vast mountain as to shape; and that this
mountain has been transformed—from the fused ball of
fire which it once was, to the solid mass it is at present.
The change is thus described by Ovid, who was evidently a
believer in the theory that incrustation was a gradual pro-
cess which commenced at the polar regions, and extended
from there to the torrid zone :-—

; Et alter
Viperei referens spolium memorabile monstri
Aera carpebat tenerum stridentibus alis.
Cumque super Libycas victor penderet arenas,
Gorgonei capitis gutte cecidére cruenta,

5 Quas humus exceptas varios animavit in angues:
Undé frequens ila est, infestaque, terra colubris.
Indé per immensum ventis discordibus actus
Nunc hic, nunc illuc, exemplo nubis aquosz
Fertur, et ex alto seductas sethere longe

10 Despectat terras, totumque supervolat orbem.

Ter gelidas Arctos, ter Cancri brachia vidit :
Seepé sub occasus, seepé est ablatus in ortus.
Jamque cadente die veritus se credere nocti,
Constitit Hesperio, regnis Atlantis, in orbe:
15 Exiguamque petit requiem, dim Lucifer ignes
Evocet Aurore, currus Aurora diurnos.
Hic hominum cunctos ingenti corpore przestans
Tapetionides Atlas fuit. Ultima tellus
Rege sub héc, et pontus erat, qui Solis anhelis
20 ZAquora subdit equis et fessos excipit axes.
Mille greges illi totidemque armenta per herbas
Errabant: et bumum vicinia nulla premebant.
Arbores frondes auro radiante nitentes
Ex auro ramos, ex auro poma tegebant.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 351

45

‘ Hospes,’ ait Perseus illi, ‘seu gloria tangit

Te generis magni, generis mihi Jupiter auctor:

Sive es mirator rerum, mirabere nostras.

Hospitium requiemque peto.” Memor ille vetustze
Sortis erat: Themis hanc dederat Parnassia sortem :
‘Tempus, Atla, veniet, tua quo spoliabitur auro
Arbor, et hune preede titulum Jove natus habebit.’
Id metuens solidis pomaria clauserat Atlas

Meenibus et vasto dederat servanda draconi,
Arcebatque suis externos finibus omnes.

Huic quoque, ‘ Vade procul, ne longé gloria rerum
Quam mentiris,’ ait, ‘longé tibi Jupiter absit,’
Vimque minis addit, manibusque expellere tentat
Cunctantem et placidis miscentem fortia dictis.
Viribus inferior (quis enim par esset Atlanti
Viribus?) ‘At quoniam parvi tibi gratia nostra est,
Accipe munus,’ ait; leevaque 4 parte Medusa,

Ipse retré versus squalentia prodidit ora.

Quantus erat, mons factus Atlas: nam barba comzque
In sylvas abeunt, juga sunt humerique manusque :
Quod caput anté fuit, summo est in monte cacumen:
Ossa lapis funt. Tim partes auctus in omnes
Crevit in immensum (sic Di statuistis) et omne

Cum tot sideribus ccelum requievit in illo.—Met. TY. 614.

With strident wings the other cleaved thin air,

The snaky monster’s memorable spoil

Transporting. And when over Afrie’s courts

The victor hung, from Gorgon’s head there fell
Those gory drops that earth, when captured, warmed
For spotted snakes ; for reason which that clime
‘With serpents favoured and infested is.

Thence through wide space, by varying winds impelled,
He’s driven, like a rain cloud, here and there;

And high in air looks down upon the lands
Snatched from the top, and speeds all round the globe.
Thrice the cold poles, thrice Cancer's arms he saw:
Oft to the west, oft to the east was borne.

And now, the day declining, loth to trust

Himself to night, he stayed his course awhile

In realms of Atlas on the western bounds,

And craves short rest: till Lucifer may call
Aurora’s lights—the daily courses, she.

And here, all men forestalling, huge of bulk,

Was Atlas, of Iapetus the son.

Beneath this king was circumpolar land,

Beneath him too was circumpolar sea,—

This king who forges for Sol’s panting steeds

352 THE GODS OF OLD;

Wide realms of space, and the fixed axes holds.

. All at a loss for herbage roamed his herds
And thousand fiocks,—their like ne’er pressed the soul.
The branching fronds, aglow with radiant gold,
The golden arms, golden circles hid.
To him speaks Perseus, ‘‘ Hospitable lord,
If great ancestral glory weigh with thee,
The author of my birth is Jove; or if
Of actions great admirer thou should’st be,
Ours thou’lt admire. Shelter and rest I crave.”
The other bore in mind the olden lot,
(This lot Parnassian Themis had assigned),
‘The time will come, O Atlas, when of gold
Thy tree shall be despoiled, and when Jove’s son
Shall have it as the token of his spoil.”
His orchards Atlas, fearing this, had kept
Aloof from solid walls, and placed as guard
A dragon huge of bulk; and he himself
Repelled all strangers from his confines wide.
And so to him he cried, ‘‘ Away! begone!
Lest Jove, or glorious deeds you brag so of,
Prove but of small advantage unto thee” ;
And force to threats he adds, and with his hands
Endeayours to expel him lingering
And interspersing fierce with soothing speech.
Made answer he, inferior much in strength,
(For who in strength with Atlas could compare ?)
‘* Since then of small account our thanks to thea,
Thy meed receive”; and, backward turned, prolonged
Medusa’s squalid features from the left.
Atlas, though great, a mountain then was made;
For beard and locks now intv woodlands go:
The couples are his shoulders and his hands:
What once was head is now the pole on high ;
His bones to stone are changed: and later on,
Swelled out in all directions he has grown
To boundless space, (so ye, O Gods, ordained,)
And on him laid is heaven with all its stars.

NOTES.

1-6 The poet goes back in thought to the time when our globe was a
fused ball of fire, except at the cireumpolar regions (the
Gorgon’s head), where a crust had been formed by the first cold
wave that notably affected earth.

alter.—This wave, or Perseus, is introduced as carrying, like a
tornado, the flaming and fiery particles which it had licked up
from the hardened polar surfaces.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 353

3 aera.—The atmosphere was but a quasi one, being excessively thin
or attenuated, owing to rarefaction.

4 cecidere.—The greater heat of the Libyan regions rarefied the air
still further, diminished the pressure, and so permitted some of
the fiery débris to fall.

7-14 For century after century (ter-ter) did the cold wave range the
globe in all directions, viewing as it were with satisfaction the
circumpolar parts snatched (ex alto seductas terras) from the
fiery vortex and congealed. It was only at the close of the
long igneous day (cadente die) that the intensely heated
equatorial regions could be successfully attacked.

14 Hesperio in orbe.—Geologically speaking, the western hemisphere
is the first born among continents.

19 Rege sub hoc.—The polar regions (ultima tellus) already crusted
over, and the waters (et pontus) that rested on this crust, were
(and still are) under the equatorial plane. The same plane
extends in imagination (subdit) into realms of space far beyond
our solar system, to the very confines of the universe. :

20 fessos—‘‘ Tired out, not able to move, immovable” —as the axis is.

21 greges—armenta.—The hills and mountains in embryo, cattle
whose like was never seen on earth, and searching vainly for
that which did not exist as yet—the graas.

The per is separated from errabant by tmesis.

23-24 Hach hemisphere, consisting as it does of a succession of
parallel circular planes that narrow in diameter from the
equator to the pole, is likened by the poet to a tree. The fiery
surface arborescence concealed from view the branching radii
(ramos) of these circles, and the planes themselves or circular
fruit (poma) produced by these radii.

30 Thermis.—The law already laid down (reOnye) or established, right,
the Latin fas; Parnassus (Hapvacés or Hapyneds, from mpavis or
mpnyns) signifies ‘‘forward, before.” Parnassian Themis is
consequently ‘‘ the law laid down from the beginning.”

84 arcebat.—The dragon of fire inside guarded the tree and fruit;
Atlas himself, the glowing surface, kept out the rain, vapour,
and such other dangerous strangers.

388 placidis—fortia.— There was a succession of cold spells, some with
stormy winds, others without.

40 par esset viribus.—Rotation increases from north or south towards
the equator. The minimum is at the poles; the maximum is
at the equator where the rate is 1000 miles perhour. The most
violent hurricane that we know of travels but about 100 miles
an hour.

41 leva.-The word, as already noticed in connection with the
Gorgong, is indefinite as to direction.

42 retro versus.—The current changed from a descending to an
ascending, and turned back from the equator, as explained
when treating of Bellerophon.

G.O. AA

354 THE GODS OF OLD;

43 mons factus.—The cold descending current from the poles had
time and again essayed to keep near the surface when
approaching the equator, but was as often beaten back by the
intense heat and forced to abide in the high upper regions
(ethere longe). But now, when the decline of the Igneous
Day afforded more favourable conditions, it renewed the attack,
succeeded in landing on the torrid regions of the Western
Hemisphere, and this time with better results. The crusty
features (Medusz squalentia ora) already established at the.
poles were prolonged (prodidit) to the equator, and an Atlas of
fluid fire was transformed to solid stone.

44 juga.—jugum is ‘‘a yoke, a pair” of anything. Here, of course,
it denotes any pair of quadrants or semi-meridians, that extend
like arms from pole to equator, and bound the hemisphere.

46 Tum auctus.—The equatorial plane, swelled out to meet the
concave surface of the heavens, forms the base of the sidereal
hemisphere: ‘‘such is the teaching of astronomers,” (sic Di
statuistis) says Ovid, concluding after the fashion of Hesiod.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 355

. CHAPTER V.
THE METAPHYSICS OF MYTHOLOGY.

Tat mythology, a description of matter and force, would
be oblivious of Mind, the most exalted of forces, is a
supposition that cannot be reasonably entertained. Ii
must consequently have some word personifying mental
force; and everything, genealogy, derivation, verbal garb,
and classical quotations point to Prometheus as that word.

What is this mind of which we are possessed, and
whence does it come? Is it material, or immaterial, or a
combination? If a combination, how came it to be asso-
ciated with matter? Is it primordial, or evoluted? Is it
confined to the human being, or common to all three of
nature’s kingdoms ?

All these queries are more or less connected with the
genealogy of Prometheus. As philosophy also is concerned
with them, it may be well to outline the doctrines of the
various Greek schools, if for no other reason than to point
out the real aspect of the mythical symbols from Chaos to
Hemera, and the large extent to which metaphysics is
indebted to mythology in solving such fundamental in-
quiries as ‘‘ What original principle lies at the basis of all
matter? What was the primal agent in determining
motion? How did abstract being pass over to the con-
crete? How came mind to be associated with matter ?”

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.

Thales.—Born about 686 s.c. Water is the origin of
all things; ‘‘the principle of all things is water; from
water everything arises, and into water everything re-
turns.” The earth floats upon a sea of this elemental
fluid. All things are full of gods. The soul originates
motion. There is a soul in the magnet.

AA 2

356 THE GODS OF OLD;

Anaximenes.—Flourished about 544 3.c. Air is the
primal principle. At a greater or less degree of density,
everything becomes boundless air. Movement pervades it,
heat expands it, cold contracts it; under these three
moving forces, and with various degrees of condensation,
the earth, sun, and stars were formed.

Anaximander.—Born about 610 B.c. The beginning or
apx7 of all things is that which in itself is undetermined
and simple (@zepov), embracing all, ruling all, the prime
source of all separate existences and individual forms, and
also the final end to which such existences and forms
should return.

The above-named philosophers are the chief represen-
tatives of the Ionic School, and all three are said to have
adopted a sensuous substratum for the origin of matter. But
this is questionable. Thales, with the Theogony for his
guide, might have come to the conclusion that as Oceanus
was the first born of molecular matter, this same Oceanus
or watery vapour must have had a previous existence in
the shape of atomic matter, and would thus through a long
series of abstractions constitute the first or oldest principle
of being. Anaximenes, reasoning after the same fashion,
would be led to the same conclusion as to the primal
base, with this exception that what was watery vapour to
Thales would be the vapour of water to him. So that what
one called water, and the other air, would in reality signify
the self-same thing. In no way does the term “ sensuous ”
apply to Anaximander, whose dpxy# forcibly recalls the
Chaos of mythology, or the simplicity of being, as the
Chaos has been shown to represent. The founders of the
Ionic School may consequently be considered as the
pioneers of abstraction as well as of philosophy; and since
all three were contemporaries, the principle of pure being
may well be dated from the very earliest of the Greek
Schools.

Pythagoras.—Flourished between 540 and 510 z.c.
Scarcely were the founders of the Ionic School gathered to
their forefathers when Pythagoras and Xenophanes ap-

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 357

peared in the philosophical arena. As Pythagoras and
his immediate successors committed none of their doctrines
to writing, it is through such followers as Philolaus,
Eurytas, and Archytas, who flourished a century or so
later, and were contemporaries of Socrates and Plato, that
we get what information there is regarding the tenets of
the school. The general dogma maintained by them,
namely, that ‘‘number is the essence of things, every
thing is number,” has excited much inquiry. Did they
regard number as the principle itself of things, or only as
the archetype? Is everything but a representation of
number, or is number merely a representation of every
thing? While there is much that is vague and mysterious
attached to the history of the founder, his followers, and
the philosophy, three leading points are said to stand
prominently forth, the religious, the philosophical, and the
occult. As pure philosophy would involve no more
personal danger to him than to those who preceded him
or to the Hleatics who flourished in his day, the great
secrecy attached to his teachings, the rigid examination
of would-be-disciples and the probationary periods of such,
the silence to which they were pledged with regard to all
persons outside their own ranks, and the signs and pass-
words by which they recognised each other,—all these
must be ascribed to the religious cult, or to the occult, or
to both.

If, now, we suppose (what is very likely) that in his
travels through Egypt and the Hast Pythagoras had
acquired a knowledge of the One true God, of the Trinity,
and of a Christ to come, we can readily account for the
caution and secrecy which play so prominent a part in the
inculcation of his doctrines. Many circumstances are in
harmony with the supposition. The religious element in
his teachings profoundly impressed the philosophers of his
own and subsequent times; his immediate followers re-
garded him in the light not so much of a philosopher as of
a prophet whose mission if was to reveal divine truths and
to inculcate a mode of life distinguished for abstinence,

354 THE GODS OF OLD;

43 mons factus.—The cold descending current from the poles had
time and again essayed to keep near the surface when
approaching the equator, but was as often beaten back by the
intense heat and forced to abide in the high upper regions
(there longe). But now, when the decline of the Igneous
Day afforded more favourable conditions, it renewed the attack,
succeeded in landing on the torrid regions of the Western
Hemisphere, and this time with better results. The crusty
features (Medusx squalentia ora) already established at the.
poles were prolonged (prodidit) to the equator, and an Atlas of
fluid fire was transformed to solid stone.

44 juga.—jugum is ‘‘a yoke, a pair” of anything. Here, of course,
it denotes any pair of quadrants or semi-meridians, that extend
like arms from pole to equator, and bound the hemisphere.

46 Tuam auctus.—The equatorial plane, swelled out to meet the
concave surface of the-heavens, forms the base of the sidereal
hemisphere: ‘‘such is the teaching of astronomers,” (sic Di
statuistis) says Ovid, concluding after the fashion of Hesiod.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 355

. CHAPTER V.
‘THE METAPHYSIOS OF MYTHOLOGY.

Tuat mythology, a description of matter and force, would
be oblivious of Mind, the most exalted of forces, is a
supposition that cannot be reasonably entertained. It
must consequently have some word personifying mental
force ; and everything, genealogy, derivation, verbal garb,
and classical quotations point to Prometheus as that word.

What is this mind of which we are possessed, and
whence does it come? Is it material, or immaterial, or a
combination? If a combination, how came it to be asso-
ciated with matter ? Is it primordial, or evoluted? Is it
confined to the human being, or common to all three of
nature’s kingdoms ?

All these queries are more or less connected with the
genealogy of Prometheus. As philosophy also is concerned
with them, it may be well to outline the doctrines of the
various Greek schools, if for no other reason than to point
out the real aspect of the mythical symbols from Chaos to
Hemera, and the large extent to which metaphysics is
indebted to mythology in solving such fundamental in-
quiries as ‘“‘ What original principle lies at the basis of all
matter? What was the primal agent in determining
motion? How did abstract being pass over to the con-
crete? How came mind to be associated with matter ?”

ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY.

Thales.—Born about 636 B.c. Water is the origin of
all things; ‘‘the principle of all things is water; from
water everything arises, and into water everything re-
turns.” The earth floats upon a sea of this elemental
fiuid. All things are full of gods. The soul originates
motion. There is a soul in the magnet.

AA 2

356 THE GODS OF OLD;

Anaximenes.—Flourished about 544 3B.c. Air is the
primal principle. At a greater or less degree of density,
everything becomes boundless air. Movement pervades it,
heat expands it, cold contracts it; under these three
moving forces, and with various degrees of condensation,
the earth, sun, and stars were formed.

Anaximander.—Born about 610 p.c. The beginning or
épxy of all things is that which in itself is undetermined
and simple (dmepov), embracing all, ruling all, the prime
source of all separate existences and individual forms, and
also the final end to which such existences and forms
should return.

The above-named philosophers are the chief represen-
tatives of the Ionic School, and all three are said to have
adopted a sensuous substratum for the origin of matter. But
this is questionable. Thales, with the Theogony for his
guide, might have come to the conclusion that as Oceanus
was the first born of molecular matter, this same Oceanus
or watery vapour must have had a previous existence in
the shape of atomic matter, and would thus through a long
series of abstractions constitute the first or oldest principle
of being. Anaximenes, reasoning after the same fashion,
would be led to the same conclusion as to the primal
base, with this exception that what was watery vapour to
Thales would be the rapour of water to him. So that what
one called water, and the other air, would in reality signify
the self-same thing. In no way does the term “ sensuous ”
apply to Anaximander, whose dpx% forcibly recalls the
Chaos of mythology, or the simplicity of being, as the
Chaos has been shown to represent. The founders of the
Ionic School may consequently be considered as the
pioneers of abstraction as well as of philosophy; and since
all three were contemporaries, the principle of pure being
may well be dated from the very earliest of the Greek
Schools. .

Pythagoras. —Flourished between 540 and 510 B.c.
Searcely were the founders of the Ionic School gathered to
their forefathers when Pythagoras and Xenophanes ap-

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 357

peared in the philosophical arena. As Pythagoras and
his immediate successors committed none of their doctrines
to writing, it is through such followers as Philolaus,
Eurytas, and Archytas, who flourished a century or so
later, and were contemporaries of Socrates and Plato, that
we get what information there is regarding the tenets of
the school. The general dogma maintained by them,
namely, that ‘number is the essence of things, every
thing is number,” has excited much inquiry. Did they
regard number as the principle itself of things, or only as
the archetype? Is everything but a representation of
number, or is number merely a representation of every
thing? While there is much that is vague and mysterious
attached to the history of the founder, his followers, and
the philosophy, three leading points are said to stand
prominently forth, the religious, the philosophical, and the
occult. As pure philosophy would involve no more
personal danger to him than to those who preceded him
or to the Eleatics who flourished in his day, the great
secrecy attached to his teachings, the rigid examination
of would-be-disciples and the probationary periods of such,
the silence to which they were pledged with regard to all
persons outside their own ranks, and the signs and pass-
words by which they recognised each other,—all these
must be ascribed to the religious cult, or to the occult, or
to both.

If, now, we suppose (what is very likely) that in his
travels through Egypt and the East Pythagoras had
acquired a knowledge of the One true God, of the Trinity,
and of a Christ to come, we can readily account for the
caution and secrecy which play so prominent a part in the
ineulcation of his doctrines. Many circumstances are in
harmony with the supposition. The religious element in
his teachings profoundly impressed the philosophers of his
own and subsequent times; his immediate followers re-
garded him in the light not so much of a philosopher as of
a prophet whose mission it was to reveal divine truths and
to inculeate a mode of life distinguished for abstinence,

358 THE GODS OF OLD;

temperance, patience, harmony, and such other virtues as
tended to purify and elevate mankind. In proof of this it
has been generally conceded that the followers of his school
were men noted for their self-restraint, upright lives, and
for devoted friendship to each other.

Apart, however, from their religious teachings, they
appear to have practised and inculcated some one branch
of knowledge not generally known, one which created a
kind of brotherhood among the members, necessitated the
greatest skill, caution, and secrecy on their part, and had
some bearing on their teachings as a whole. What this ©
peculiar knowledge was is not openly stated, but the
weight of circumstantial evidence points to chemistry, or
the alchemy of old. It was in Samothrace that the cult
of the Cabiri was especially active, and this cult the
Samothracians had received from the Pelasgians, as
Herodotus tells us.

Would such a thinker and inquirer as Pythagoras was
remain in ignorance of this chemical knowledge, espe-
cially as he was born in Samos, not many leagues from
Samothrace? A science like chemistry, so broad in aim,
so fertile in research and practical in results, so exclusive
to the many and so fascinating to the mind, would in-
stantly draw round its expounder the “‘ Three Hundred”’ of
Crotona, Tarentum, and of other important towns in Italy
where up to this chemistry was unknown. As the chemist
of those days was looked upon as a magician who juggled
with the property and lives of those outside his circle, as a
dealer in the ‘‘ Black Art” to be shunned, suspected, and
forcibly removed, there would be an absolute necessity for
observing the scrutiny, probation, secrecy, and shibboleths
which we read of. ‘‘ Everything is not to be told to every-
body” is a motto originating with them. I¢ is difficult
from a perusal of his life to understand Pythagoras in
the light of a politician, but it is thoroughly consonant
with his characteristics to understand him as devoted to
chemistry. ‘‘Of all men,” said Heraclitus, ‘“‘ Pythagoras,
the son of Mnesarchus, was the most assiduous inquirer.”

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 359

Finally, there is no other branch of knowledge save
chemistry that deals so extensively with number, or that
identifies matter and number so closely together. To the
chemist all things are number; what we call hydrogen,
oxygen, sulphur, iron, gold, are to him 1, 16, 32, 56, 196;
and so on with every other element and with every known
combination of elements, solid, fluid, and gaseous.

Taking, then, their science, philosophy, and religious
cult together, we arrive at a better meaning of what
Aristotle alludes to when he regards the Pythagorean
system as something which in its leading features charac-
terised the school generally. Thus while their primary
unit would represent the One true God in religion, it would
also represent the oneness of abstract being in metaphysics,
and the oneness of elementary being in chemistry. This
is in harmony with what Aristotle says when he refers to
this unity as (1) the principium, (2) the essence, and (8)
the element of all things,—the divine unity being the first
principle and cause; and one, the first of all numbers and
the element of all numbers, being the basis of existence,
and when itself become possessed of extension, the element
of all that possesses extension. Since the nature of the
subject under discussion would decide the character of
the units, no confusion would arise; for while 9 would
represent the digits to an arithmetical conclave, or the
nonagon to a geometrical, it would represent the Muses to
a poetical one, the orders of angels to a theological, or
some element like Glucinum to a chemical. If not, then
we must condemn our own methods, since outside of
Infinity there is nothing which we do not divide, subdivide,
and still further classify into orders expressly, into numbers
tacitly. Animate beings, for instance, may be divided into
(1) men, (2) animals, and (8) plants; men are subdivided
into (1) Caucasian, (2) Asiatic, (8) African, &c.; and
Caucasians are classified as (1) English, (2) French, (8)
Germans, &c. In all these instances (1) will be repre-
sentative respectively of man, Caucasian, or English,
according as we are discussing animate being, race, or

360 THE GODS OF OLD;

nationality ; and not only representative but identical so
to speak, since often as not we allude to them as the first,
the second, the third, &e. Thus what Aristotle said of the
Pythagoreans, “they held things for numbers” is in a
measure applicable to ourselves.

In their philosophy they also appear to have gone back
to the Chaos of Mythology, but instead of regarding this
basal being in the line of simplicity, as Anaximander did,
they, in conformity with their number method, viewed it
as oneness; and instead of using the dzepov as a positive
attribute of “the solitary one,” they used it in the sense
of ‘the indefinitely many” in opposition to ‘‘a definite
plurality.” Anaximander had taught that the primal
principle of matter was that which was characterised by
the extreme of simplicity, and had made use of this term
TO G@metpoy in connection therewith. Some claim that he
applied it directly to his apx7 or principle of being ; if so,
it must have been in the sense of ‘‘ unknowable, undistin-
guishable, inexperienced, simple.” Others assert that it
was substance with determination, having a middle
nature between the “water” and ‘‘air’’ principles of
Thales and Anaximenes. Aristotle and Theophrastus say
that it consisted of a mixture of unchangeable elements ;
and more claim that Anaximander had left the nature of
the azeipov undetermined. However the question may be
decided, it is certain that the Ionic School had laid the
foundation stone of being, and left it so for others to
build upon and evolve the phenomenal from the abstract.
The Pythagoreans took up the task. Change, to occur,
should be a passing over from the abstract to the less
abstract, from the simple to the less simple, from the one
to the more than one. This passing over would embrace
both matter and force, since action would of necessity
include the acted on; and while not the first cause of
change, it was the direct result of the movement of the
first cause.

To this passing over, or becoming, as it is better known,
the Pythagoreans gave the name of zepatvoy; to its opposite,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 361

the not-passing over or not-becoming, they applied the term
aneipov ; and from the combination of these two all things
are produced according to the words of Philolaus, “‘ pvous
dé €vy TO Késum GpydyOy e& ameipwv re Kal TwepavdyvTwy, Kal
Bros Kdepos Kat ta év dvt@ aavta.” ‘‘But from the not-
becoming and the becoming is composed the essence in the
Cosmos, and the entire Cosmos, and all the things therein.”

The sentence is a remarkable one, since it not only
shadows out the next two mythological symbols, the Aither
as gvots and the Hemera as ddos xécpos, but also establishes
the identity of the wepaiwdvra and the dzeipa with Erebus
and Nox,—these latter being the immediate born of Chaos,
and the parents of Aither and Hemera; the zepawdvra
and dzeipa being the immediate born of the oneness, and
(as Philolaus says) the parents of ¢vo.s and the daos xécyos.
This, coupled with the additional fact that the dzefpov is
mentioned by Archytas as partaking of corporeity, removes
this latter equally with the wepaioy from any parity or
opposition with pure being, and leaves them as the becoming
and not-becoming, the antitheses of each other, as much
so as are Erebus and Nox. For what is Erebus or
Evolution but a passing over (wepaivw) from the simple to
the less simple and from that to the complex, the more
complex, and soon? And what other antithesis has this
except Dissolution or Nox? The dark antithesis is older
than the bright one, or, as the myth says, Nox is the eldest
born of Chaos, for if, numerically speaking, the Chaos be
one and Erebus a solid two, then must Nox be }, i, 4, +4,
zz, &c., or the countless parts between the two which,
however far they depart from one number and approach
the other, will still never quite make a whole one; singly
or totally there will be a residuum lacking in order to make
unity; singly or totally they can never coalesce with the
2 so as to make 3. Hence it is that Parmenides calls
Chaos ‘‘ the solitary one,” Nox ‘‘ the indefinitely many,”
and Erebus “ the definite plurality ;” hence too it is that
Heraclitus calls Chaos “‘ the one,” Erebus “the whole, the
coalescing,” and Nox “the not-whole, and not-coalescing.”’

362 THE GODS OF OLD;

As we can conceive evolution not only as a continuous
becoming, but also as non-continuous, or as being evoluted
to a certain point and then stationary, we have not far to
go in order to find what is meant in a physico-metaphysical
sense by the not-becoming. The ground is already broken
for us in Mythology, since we find the dzeipoy taken
altogether is Nox or Dissolution, and that the dweipa are
the offspring derived from her, such filmy fabrics of
corporeity as destiny, responsibility, death, sleep, doubt,
woe, .
‘Or any other of that heavenly host

Set down in cloudy throne to do the world some good.”

As positive and immanent as are the fractional parts
between one and two, they run in goodly measure through
the web of all existence, and yet are of themselves incapable
of constituting actual existence.

Thus, by gradual advance, was the knowledge of pre-
Hesiodie days unravelled, tested, and approved. From
the time that Thales started on the quest and that
Anaximander had identified the simplicity of being with
Chaos, a full century elapsed ere the Pythagoreans
identified becoming and not-becoming with Erebus and
Nox. But in symbolising the Deity as the One, and in-
representing the fundamental principle of matter as one,
there was grave danger that, outside the Pythagorean
circle, God and matter would be confounded with one
another in the minds of men. There was also the appre-
hension lest the aze(pov, instead of being relatively opposed
to the mepatvoy and signifying the not-becoming—as the
Pythagoreans intended—would be construed as an opposi-
tion of being, that is, as not-being or nothing. To combat
such false notions was the endeavour of the next school,
the Hleatic.

Xenophanes.—Flourished about 540 B.c. He maintained
the unity of the Deity, and all his sayings savour as much
of theology as of philosophy. The most important of
these sayings are: ‘‘There is one God, greatest among
gods and men, neither in shape nor in thought like unto

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 363

mortals.” ‘From earth all things are and to earth all
things return.’’ ‘‘From earth and water come all of us.”
“‘ All things are matters of opinion. . . . That which I say
is opinion like unto truth.”

Parmenides.--Born 513 3.c. He is supposed by some
to have been a disciple of Xenophanes, and by others of
Pythagoras; and is spoken of with much respect by the
philosophers of his own and subsequent times, so much
so that a Parmenidean life became synonymous with a
Pythagorean one for uprightness, truth, and virtue. He
wrote a poem—part of which has been lost—which he
divided into three parts, a Proem, Truth, and Opinion.

Let us follow out the poetical conceit.

Perplexed by the varieties and mutabilities of this
fleeting world, and eager for true knowledge, he is con-
ducted by the Heliadic virgins on the road from darkness
to Light, to gates where the paths of Night and Day
separate ;—that is, he comes in thought to Atther where
Nox and Hemera are separated by the barrier between the
two. Diké, the law of being, unbolts the gates of the
vinculum, and an unnamed goddess appears upon the
threshold who tells him that be must study and write of
all things, of the Truth which is certain, and of Opinion
which is uncertain, yet valuable as a searcher after truth.
‘‘Look upward!” and she points towards Chaos. ‘‘ Behold
the truth of Being,—being abstracted from its formal robes.
Write what you see.” And he wrote :—One, simple, and
indivisible is pure being, continuous, unchangeable, and
indestructible; object and subject, it is the solitary one of
matter and thought; generated not,—neither from being,
for being cannot precede itself (save to the re-echoing
hearing, #x"jecoa dxovy); nor from not-being, for such is
inconceivable (save to the mentally blinded eye, doxo7voy
éu41a),—created it must have been.

‘‘Well hast thou written, O philosopher, and well has
the Adyos guided thee to a conclusion. And now look
downwards on this other path, and write as best thou
knowest.”

364 THE GODS OF OLD;

And looking down upon all the generations below
Hemera or Day, he wrote in this wise:—What I have
already seen and written of is the one, the real, the
knowable, and the all-worthy of being known; and in this
canon, 6v éort, wy év ovx éor., lies the Truth, and the sum
total of the Truth. But what I now behold is no longer
the one and simple, but the many and the multiform, the
changeable and illusive, the all-appealing to my senses,
the all-distracting to my reason. So that in what I further
write let no man place implicit credence, since my words
are but opinion, and even golden opinion is but like unto
the truth. .

The poet-philosopher goes on to show that the Aaiper
or first of gods (=8ar7jyer, ‘ knowing,” from daw, “to light
up, to portion out,” and hence the Plan of creation)
devised Eros first, and after him the other gods. So long
as the “solitary one’ (Chaos or the 6v) and the ‘‘in-
definitely many’ (Nox or the azeipov of the Pythagoreans)
are absolutely separated, determinate results cannot appear ;
but when a “definite plurality’ (Erebus or the Pythagorean
mepaivov) is interpolated between the two, coalescence and
consistency arise, and determinateness ensues.

While he thus refers vaguely to the becoming and the
not-becoming, he regards them neither in the light of first
cause nor of principles, but rather as occupying a neutral
state between theabstract and phenomenal. He lays down two
primary forms (uop¢ai) from which the phenomenal world
appears—(1) the ethereal fire of flame (pAdyos aiGéprov zip),
which is gentle, subtle, and homogeneous,—the Aither of
mythology or primal Light; (2) the cold, dense, and heavy
structure (5€uas) of darkness,—the Hemera or Cosmos of
mythology. Different writers refer to the two as heat and
cold, fire and earth, but only by way of example and in
allusion to the nature of light and the material frame of
the universe. Parmenides looked upon the first as active,
real, and animating; and on the second as passive, unreal,
and inert, and as only attaining reality when animated by
the first.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 365

The whole Cosmos is thus filled with light and darkness ;
the opposing principles in the two are harmonised by
Eros; of these two all things consist and by them are
they characterised; degrees of organisation are due to the
different proportions in which they mingle; and what
symmetrical composition does for each of the multifarious
members of the animated kingdom, intelligence does for
man, (@s yap éxdorw éxet Kpaois weA€wy ToAUTAGyToD, TOS Vdos
avipdmoct). While the consciousness and thought of the
phenomenal world are to be deduced from the coalescence
of the two primordial forms, this thought must be separated
in a sense from the thought which is coincident with the ov
or pure being.

Finally, all intermingling of every kind between the two
primary poppa is directed by the Aaiywv, or Plan, which
reigns in the midst of all (év 8& peo Todtwy baipwv 4 TdvTa
xvBepva), and is the origin of fateful growth and combina-
tion (arvyepoto réxov kai pigcos apx%).

Zeno.—Born 488 8.c. The pi 6v, not-being or nothing,
which Parmenides had contemptuously dismissed with the
denial not alone of its parity with the ov, but of affirmation
in general, seemed worthy of more attention to his pupil
Zeno. He established the nullity of the ui év beyond a
doubt, and in no small degree through a series of ingenious
paradoxes, Achilles and the tortoise for instance,—so in-
genious as to make Plato call him the Hleatic Palamedes.
To assume that they were a source of perplexity to the
brain that contrived them is absurd; they were evidently
intended to emphasise his master’s words as regards the
futility of assuming not-being or of putting it on a par
with being, by showing how plausible to ‘‘ the re-echoing
hearing”’ and to “the careless eye” statements can be
made involving the infinitely divisible and the infinitely
great, space and magnitude, the deception of the senses,
motion and rest.

Heraclitus.—F lourished about 513 3.c. Though it would
appear as if the Chaos had been viewed in all its aspects
by the Hleatic and preceding schools, there was still

366 THE GODS OF OLD;

another phase pertaining thereto which suggested itself to
Heraclitus as a basis for his philosophy. If this Chaos, he
reasoned, be what its derivation implies, the xa of all, the
holder and releaser, source and refuge, the “salve” and
“vale” of all things, then must Being be conceived as an end-
less chain, a continuous flux and change from the one to the
many, and from the many to the one. He thus recognises
the Eleatic év, but with him it is an év actuated from the
beginning by a mythological Hros—a very flux (éé0s) in
name—that is (as Hesiod mentions) xaAAucros and Avowedijs,
‘harmonious and relaxing” at the same time, by a condi-
tion or tone possessed of agreement or accord and of
disagreement or discord. ~

Hence it happens that all becoming must be the result
of one in its opposite determinations, or of Eros agreeing
to disagree with itself. ‘‘The one,’”’ says Heraclitus,
“setting itself at variance with itself, harmonises with
itself, like the harmony of the bow and viol.” “Strife is
the father of things,” is another of his sayings; and still
another, showing how all things come from and again
return to Chaos through the medium of evolution (Erebus),
of dissolution (Nox), and of the harmonious-discordant
Eros that pervades all, runs thus: ‘‘ Unite the whole and
the not-whole, the coalescing and the not-coalescing, the
harmonious and the discordant, and thus we have the one
becoming from the all, and the all from the one.”

It is his so-called principle of Fire that distinguishes
the Heraclitic philosophy from preceding schools; and an
attentive perusal of his doctrine leaves little doubt but
that this principle is the mythological Adther or primeval
Light.

In the first place he states that this Fire is the complete
embodiment of the process of becoming; and as the
Pythagorean Philolaus has already said that the product
of the not-becoming and the becoming is the essence
(fvo1s) in the Cosmos and the entire Cosmos, this Fire and
essence must be identical. But the product of the not-
becoming and the becoming, or of Nox and Erebus, is

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 367

AXther and Hemera, and this Aither has been shown to
be symbolical of primeval Light—the one most subtle and
imponderable substance that, as lumen and lux, appeals to
mental and sensible vision, and which Ovid, with the same
feelings as Heraclitus, has described as fire:
‘‘Tgnea convexi vis et sine pondere cosli
Emicuit.”

As the first possible sensuous principle of being, then, the
remark of Aristotle is significant, namely, that Heraclitus
selected fire in the same way that Thales selected water,
and Anaximenes air. Remembering that Light was the
work of the First Day, that the simplest form of stellar
bodies is luminous gas out of which are evolved by conden-
sation the stars, our sun, the planets, and our earth, and
that while this luminous gas is the first manifestation of
phenomenal matter in the heavens it is extinguished when
the elements are fully differentiated and a crust is formed,—
remembering these points we shall have a better conception
of the philosopher’s own words when he describes this
Fire as the principle of existence, out of which all things
grow by way of a quasi-condensation, “‘a clear, light fluid,
self-kindled and self-extinguished.” He marks the nebulous
phase of matter by saying that Fire assumes the shape of
water previous to that of earth; and he distinctly affirms
that the manifold is due to hindrances of this Fire and to
its partial extinction, the extreme product of such being
our earth. This Fire it is that pervades, inheres in, and
constitutes the ground of all phenomena, life included. Ii
manifests itself in different forms, is ever passing into new
forms, and is the essential factor in keeping up a state
of continual flux or change. Still there are periods of
possible repose, for, as the descending lightning meets
the upward heat, and order again succeeds the temporary
resolution of matter into elemental rest, we are told how
harmony occasionally results from the downward motion
of some part of the fire encountering the upward motion
of another part, and how this quasi rest is the result not of
accident but of law and order. Outside this quasi rest the

368 THE GODS OF OLD;

totality of things is in an eternal flow. In the heavens
there is no resi: nebule are breaking up, star dust is
condensing, the so-called fixed stars are all in motion, and
planets whirl round a sun which itself is not at rest. On
earth there is no rest: the waters are ever descending and
ascending in circles of distillation and evaporation; the air
is unceasingly kept in motion by rarefaction and condensa-
tion, by winds and storms, by tides and currents of its
own; the land is ever being swallowed by the sea, and the
sea is in turn robbed of its domain by land. Among
living forms there is no rest: their constituent atoms are
continuously combining, separating, and again combining
into new arrangements during life,—they are, and they are
not; and death affords no end to the cycle of change.
‘The creation of a plant,” says Dana, ‘‘ was the simul-
taneous institution of life and death—the establishment of
an incoming and outgoing stream to be in constant flow
as long as the kingdoms of life should last.” Somewhat
the same thought was uttered ages ago by Heraclitus:
‘‘Into the same stream we descend, and at the same time
we do not descend: we are, and also we are not. Jor into
the same stream we cannot possibly descend twice, since it
is always scattering and collecting itself again, or rather
it at the same time flows to us and from us.”
Empedocles.—Flourished about 444 B.c. But,—said
Empedocles, following out the train of thought suggested
by Heraclitus,—if this Chaos be the holder and releaser of
all things, it must have contained within it from the first,
though undistinguishable and motionless, the independent
and unalterable materials of all matter, the four radical
forms of phenomenal being (récoupa rév ndvrov pildépara),
that is, the solid, fluid, gaseous, and the ethereal or fiery.
Nothing new outside of these four root forms can flow
from or back to the solitary 6v; in their aggregation
and segregation lie the processes of growth, increase, and
decrease; and the organic structure of plants as well as
the flesh, blood, bones and nervous structure of animals
varies with the different proportions in which the four

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 369

combine with one another. Since their nature is thus one,
and all are links of the one chain, plants and animals
are possessed of their own measures of sense and under-
standing. In man alone does the mind culminate, and in
him is its peculiar seat; but even in man the mind, as
dependent on and intermingled. with the body, varies with
its changing conditions. |

The active agencies of Empedocles, though two in
number, are essentially the same as that of Heraclitus,
the only difference being that the accord and discord of
Eros are considered as original entities independent of
each other, and not as manifestations of one and the same
fundamental power. These two are called by different
names, probably to denote the various stages of evolution
when they became prominent. The first, for instance, is
called ®iriy, Pirdrns, ‘Apyovtn, and ropy7, that is, Love
or Agreement, Affinity, Union, and Affection; the second
is styled Netkos, Ajjpis, and Keéros, that is, Disagreement,
Division, and Disaffection.

Originally, runs the Empedoclean narrative, (one in which
are readily traced the workings of such world-making forces
as condensation, contraction, and division), the four roots
of matter and the two potentials co-existed as a mighty
sphere in which all six were absolutely undistinguishable
from each other, and in a state of complete rest. This
condition prevailed while Agreement predominated and
while Disagreement was inactive. But as the latter grew
more influential, it commenced to display increased energy
until, from “‘ guarding the extreme ends of the sphere,” it
gradually pressed from the circumference to the centre and
broke the bonds which had hitherto rendered the four
radicals alike and motionless. These latter, separated by
one potential, were again united by the other; and through
a series of such combinations and divisions arose the
phenomenal world. While strange forms of organic being
appeared at first, they did not continue long, permanence
for any considerable length of time being obtained only by
those structures whose parts were properly adapted to each

G.0. BB

370 THE GODS OF OLD;

other in conformity with the original Plan—for Empedocles.
also alludes to the Aaiuwyv, which passes through all nature,
nowhere finding a home, as also to periodical changes in
the formation of the world.

Democritus.—Born 460 3.c. As Thales and Anaximenes
may have been led to their primordia by supposing that
the first substance evoluted to appearance in our universe
was the base of all, so may Democritus have been guided
to his theory; but, instead of taking an individual Titan
like Oceanus, he took the children of Gea as a whole, and
abstracting magnitude from these molecules he formed the
conception of indivisible atoms as the basis of all being.
His doctrine runs thus:

All that exists, both physical and mental, is derived
from the Fulness (76 wAqO0s), the Void (76 xevcv), and
*Avayxyn. The fulness consists of atoms which are un-
changeable, indivisible, impenetrable, infinite in number,
capable of extension, homogeneous as to quality, diverse as
to form (and to density, according to some writers), and
the ultimate material of all matter and of all mind. The
void is the space intervals between the atoms, which keeps
them separate and impenetrable; and this void must be
considered as possessed of being, equally with the atoms.
*Avdyxyn is the principle, co-eternal with the fulness and
the void, whereby the atoms were originally enabled to
come together and combine in various ways: this motive
principle is called Téxn.

Apparently new though this Atomistic doctrine may
sound, if is but the myth over again, and the myth in
its simplest rendition. The void or 76 xevdy is evidently
the xdos, both terms being equally linked with xaive “ to
gape’’; the fulness or atoms is the abstraction of the
Titans born of Gea; and the dvdyxy is again the Eros,
the former being the aorist form of ¢épw just as Eros is
the present. So that when Hesiod declares that Chaos.
(formless being) was first, and in it were Gea (matter) and
Eros (force), Democritus repeats the self-same assertion by

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 371

saying that the void was first, and in it were the fulness
and dvdyxn.

The vulgar idea of “ chance” is as inapplicable to tix
as is “necessity” to dvdayxn; and Democritus himself
expressly says that the common acceptation of chance is
but an apology for one’s own want of knowledge (pépacw
idins dvotys), and the invention of those who are too
indolent to think. His réxn, related as it is to Tvyxdvea,
‘to happen,” and to its cognate revyw, “to prepare, to
construct,” is more likely to be the uncognisable reason for
all happening, and would thus have reference to the Plan
of Creation in its inscrutable workings. Beyond the idea
involved in this Plan or réxy there is no beginning, say the
Atomists, for a beginning of the Infinite is inconceivable.

The philosophy goes on to state. how the four radical
forms of Eimpedocles are produced by the preponderating
attraction of similar atoms, and how real combinations
arise wherein the atoms still continue to be separated from
one another by the void,—that is, by pores. Sensuous
perception is due to there being given off in all directions
from external objects images (eijwAa) which enter the
organs of sense. The soul, the origin of life, consciousness,
and thought are derived from the finest and most spherical
of the ethereal or fire atoms. All human knowledge is
uncertain ; that from the senses is obscure, and that from
mere reason is darkened owing to the soul’s admixture
with the body. A purer and higher knowledge is the
thought directed not to the phenomenal but to the be-
ginning of things.

Anaxagoras.—Born 500 3.c. His cosmology is as
follows :—

In the beginning was the voids; co-eternal with it were the
seeds of all things that have been and now are, endless in
number, infinitesimal in size, and contained in a Chaotic
mass where the homogeneous and heterogeneous were
‘inextricably mixed and undistinguishable from each other.
The segregation and summation of these constituent parts
(Guoromep7]) into such totals as solid, fluid, gaseous, and

BBQ

372 THE GODS OF OLD;

ethereal, was the work of voids, and was so accomplished
that every object in nature is still more or less of a
mixture, and is what it is only through a preponderance
of certain original homogeneous elements. . This vois,
Anaxagoras tells us, was not the creator of matter.
Co-eternal with the Chaotic seeds, it, the vots, was most
subtle and refined, cognoscent in itself and the principle
of all cognition, and stood apart from all things, pure and
independent, until its first appearance as manifested
rotatory motion in the mass.

Much of this, so similar to the Atomistic doctrine as to
suggest that Democritus borrowed from it in part, has
evident reference to the myth, the Chaotic 6potopepy of the
one writer representing the Chaos and Gea, of the Theogony,
just as did the void and fulness of the other. It was in
regard to the Eros which was also in the Chaos that the
two philosophers differed.

To Democritus it was Force, advayxy, and the derivative
of ¢épw; to Anaxagoras it was Mind, the Reason, vois,
and the derivative of épouat, “to inquire, to seek;”’ to one
it was kdAAuoros and Avowedjs; to the other it was in
addition that which

wavrav te Gedy ravrav T avOpatrav
Sdpvarat év orfbecor vdov Kai émippova Bovdgy.

To Democritus the mind was material, atoms of the
fulness or Gea, and dependent on force in order to
manifest itself as an emanation, in its highest form
(reason) of primeval light, in its lowest (sensation) of
phenomenal objects; to Anaxagoras the mind was imma-
terial, an Eros purely distinct from Gea, which manifested
itself primarily as an Hrebus or passing over of mind to
matter so as to originate motion in the inert mass and
give distinction to the homcomeric wholes,—and subse- —
quently as a subtle agent working with design, ruling over
life in all its forms, and enabling us to see the real truth
and essence of things in opposition to the misleading
conclusions of the senses.

This passing over of Eros to Gea seems to have been

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 373

more or less well recognised by all the schools, even by
those philosophers who, like Empedocles and the Atomisis,
conceived it as but a change of place. Anaxagoras
accepts it in its fulness, and defines Erebus and Nox more
clearly when saying “‘ we should name the becoming more
correctly a combination, and the departing a separation.”

In orderly continuation of the symbols and the myth
he tells how the division into warm Ether and cold mist
(Atther and the nebulous Hemera) first broke the spell;
how the misty nebula, with increasing cold, gave rise to
water, earth, and stones ; how the seeds of life that floated
in the air were washed down by the rain and produced
vegetation; and how animals, man included, sprang from
the warm and moist clay.

The vods was triumphant! Whether exalted to sub-
jectivity by the Sophists, or brought back to the objective
by Socrates and his disciples, or confused with the Divinity
by the Stoics, the Eros of Mythology was henceforth
recognised as the symbol of mental force.

So far asthe poit which we contend for—the close
relation between the metaphysics of historic and pre-
historic times—is concerned, it is needless to follow the
philosophies subsequent to the Anaxagorean. While they
explained and amplified some tenets of their predecessors,
and refuted others, they neither added to nor subtracted
from the sum of the universals. Plato may have given us in
his grand pre-existent Idea a glimpse of a higher universal,
of a verbum mentis or Adyos similar to St. John’s, that
preceded and produced the chaotic Gea and Eros; but to
do so he had to break through the pure metaphysical domain
and eneroach upon the theological. Aristotle made the
‘“‘ becoming” apparently more feasible by such tentacles as
potentiality and actuality ; but even these failed to account
satisfactorily for the increment of motion whereby the
passive became active. The dialectic fray had raged for
close on two centuries, and the battle had repeatedly
shifted to and fro and back again from Being to Light and
trom Light to Being, taking in Force and the Becoming on

370 THE GODS OF OLD;

other in conformity with the original Plan—for Empedocles
also alludes to the Aaiuwv, which passes through all nature,
nowhere finding a home, as also to periodical changes in
the formation of the world.

Democritus.—Born 460 p.c. As Thales and Anaximenes
may have been led to their primordia by supposing that
the first substance evoluted to appearance in our universe
was the base of all, so may Democritus have been guided
to his theory; but, instead of taking an individual Titan
like Oceanus, he took the children of Gea as a whole, and
abstracting magnitude from these molecules he formed the
conception of indivisible atoms as the basis of all being.
His doctrine runs thus:

All that exists, both physical and mental, is derived
from the Fulness (76 wAfjOos), the Void (76 xevcv), and
*Avayxyn. The fulness consists of atoms which are un-
changeable, indivisible, impenetrable, infinite in number,
capable of extension, homogeneous as to quality, diverse as
to form (and to density, according to some writers), and
the ultimate material of all matter and of all mind. The
void is the space intervals between the atoms, which keeps
them separate and impenetrable; and this void must be
considered as possessed of being, equally with the atoms.
*Avdyxn is the principle, co-eternal with the fulness and
the void, whereby the atoms were originally enabled to
come together and combine in various ways: this motive
principle is called Téx7n.

Apparently new though this Atomistic doctrine may
sound, if is but the myth over again, and the myth in
its simplest rendition. The void or 76 xevdv is evidently
the xdos, both terms being equally linked with yaivw “to
gape’’; the fulness or atoms is the abstraction of the
Titans born of Gea; and the dvdyxy is again the Eros,
the former being the aorist form of ¢épe just as Eros is
the present. So that when Hesiod declares that Chaos
(formless being) was first, and in it were Gea (matter) and
Eros (force), Democritus repeats the self-same assertion by

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 371

saying that the void was first, and in it were the fulness
and dvdyxn.

The vulgar idea of “‘ chance” is as inapplicable to rvxy
as is “necessity”? to dvayxn; and Democritus himself
expressly says that the common acceptation of chance is
but an apology for one’s own want of knowledge (apépacw
idins avotms), and the invention of those who are too
indolent to think. His réyn, related as it is to rvyxdve,
“to happen,” and to its cognate revyw, “to prepare, to
construct,” is more likely to be the uncognisable reason for
all happening, and would thus have reference to the Plan
of Creation in its inscrutable workings. Beyond the idea
involved in this Plan or réyy there is no beginning, say the
Atomists, for a beginning of the Infinite is inconceivable.

The philosophy goes on to state how the four radical
forms of Empedocles are produced by the preponderating
attraction of similar atoms, and how real combinations
arise wherein the atoms still continue to be separated from
one another by the void,—that is, by pores. Sensuous
perception is due to there being given off in all directions
from external objects images (eljwAa) which enter the
organs of sense. The soul, the origin of life, consciousness,
and thought are derived from the finest and most spherical
of the ethereal or fire atoms. All human knowledge is
uncertain ; that from the senses is obscure, and that from
mere reason is darkened owing to the soul’s admixture
with the body. A purer and higher knowledge is the
thought directed not to the phenomenal but to the be-
ginning of things.

Anaxagoras.—Born 500 3.c. His cosmology is as
follows :—

In the beginning was the voids ; co-eternal with it were the
seeds of all things that have been and now are, endless in
number, infinitesimal in size, and contained in a Chaotic
mass where the homogeneous and heterogeneous were
‘inextricably mixed and undistinguishable from each other.
The segregation and summation of these constituent parts
(Gpotoxepj) into such totals as solid, fluid, gaseous, and

BB 2

372 THE GODS OF OLD;

ethereal, was the work of vois, and was so accomplished
that every object in nature is still more or less of a
mixture, and is what it is only through a preponderance
of certain original homogeneous elements. . This vois,
Anaxagoras tells us, was not the creator of matter.
Co-eternal with the Chaotic seeds, it, the vods, was most
subtle and refined, cognoscent in itself and the principle
of all cognition, and stood apart from all things, pure and
independent, until its first appearance as manifested
rotatory motion in the mass.

Much of this, so similar to the Atomistic doctrine as to
suggest that Democritus borrowed from it in part, has
evident reference to the myth, the Chaotic duorosep of the
one writer representing the Chaos and Gea of the Theogony,
just as did the void and fulness of the other. It was in
regard to the Eros which was also in the Chaos that the
two philosophers differed.

To Demoeritus it was Force, dvayxy, and the derivative
of ¢épw; to Anaxagoras it was Mind, the Reason, vois,
and the derivative of époua:, ‘to inquire, to seek;’’ to one
it was xdAAtoros and Avowedys; to the other it was in
addition that which

wéavrav re Oey ravrav tT advOparev
Sdpvarat év orfbeoot véov Kat émigdpova BovAny.

To Democritus the mind was material, atoms of the
fulness or Gea, and dependent on force in order to
manifest itself as an emanation, in its highest form
(reason) of primeval light, in its lowest (sensation) of
phenomenal objects; to Anaxagoras the mind was imma-
terial, an Eros purely distinct from Gwa, which manifested
itself primarily as an Erebus or passing over of mind to
matter so as to originate motion in the inert mass and
give distinction to the homcomeric wholes,—and subse-
quently as a subtle agent working with design, ruling over
life in all its forms, and enabling us to see the real truth
and essence of things in opposition to the misleading
conclusions of the senses.

This passing over of Eros to Gea seems to have been

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 373

more or less well recognised by all the schools, even by
those philosophers who, like Empedocles and the Atomisis,
conceived it as but a change of place. Anaxagoras
accepts it in its fulness, and defines Erebus and Nox more
clearly when saying “ we should name the becoming more
correctly a combination, and the departing a separation.”

In orderly continuation of the symbols and the myth
he tells how the division into warm Ether and cold mist
(Aither and the nebulous Hemera) first broke the spell ;
how the misty nebula, with increasing cold, gave rise to
water, earth, and stones ; how the seeds of life that floated
in the air were washed down by the rain and produced
vegetation ; and how animals, man included, sprang from
the warm and moist clay.

The vos was triumphant! Whether exalted to sub-
jectivity by the Sophists, or brought back to the objective
by Socrates and his disciples, or confused with the Divinity
by the Stoics, the Eros of Mythology was henceforth
recognised as the symbol of mental force.

So far asthe point which we contend for—the close
relation between the metaphysics of historic and pre-
historic times—is concerned, it is needless to follow the
philosophies subsequent to the Anaxagorean. While they
explained and amplified some tenets of their predecessors,
and refuted others, they neither added to nor subtracted
from the sum of the universals. Plato may have given us in
his grand pre-existent Idea a glimpse of a higher universal,
of a verbum mentis or Adyos similar to St. John’s, that
preceded and produced the chaotic Gea and Eros; but to
do so he had to break through the pure metaphysical domain
and encroach upon the theological. Aristotle made the
“becoming” apparently more feasible by such tentacles as
potentiality and actuality ; but even these failed to account
satisfactorily for the increment of motion whereby the
passive became active. The dialectic fray had raged for
close on two centuries, and the battle had repeatedly
shifted to and fro and back again from Being to Light and
from Light to Being, taking in Force and the Becoming on

374 THE GODS OF OLD;

its way. But not one step beyond the two metaphysical
goals did it go, and the final result was—what? That the
keenest minds and the most subtle reasoning had found
nothing which had not been thought of before, reasoned
on before; and that the sum and substance of all meta-
physical conclusions had been crystallised by the unnamed
and forgotten dead into this

Gcoyona.

Xdos (Tata, "Epos)
SON,
"EpeBos Nvé
>
Ai6np “Hpépy

Here at the head we find the dpx% and the dv, the oneness,
the deep whence being flows and ebbs, the unrufiled
mooring-ground of nature’s radicals, the void; and in this
Chaos is the formless Gea, that one abiding thing which
lies at the basis of all matter and does not change, whether
it be fluid, gaseous, earthy, ethereal, or a homogeneous
combination of all four, or atomic fulness, or homceomeric
seeds; and in this Chaos is also Eros, whom Heraclitus
pictured as the hypotenuse to the sides, and Empedocles as
the sides to the hypotenuse, whom Democritus called
*Avayxn, and Anaxagoras proclaimed as the independent
VOUS.

Coming to the second link in the chain of being we find
Erebus and Nox as the first result of mind passing over to
matter; this Erebus or continuous evolution that has been
variously called the wepatvov, the definite plurality, the
whole, the coalescing, the becoming, the metastasis of _
being, the combination of things; and this Nox or dissolu-—
tion who, with her fateful brood, oscillates between the
abstract and the concrete, who is absolutely at rest though
relatively in motion, and who in contrast to Erebus has
been styled the dzecpov, the indefinitely many, the not-
whole, the not-coalescing, the departing, the separation,

And, lastly, in bold relief stands out the Aither which
Philolaus calls ‘the essence in the Cosmos,” the ¢vcts

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 375

derived from the dzefpoyv and zepaivoy ; that greater Light
to whose gates Parmenides was transported by the virgins
of the sun, and which he described as “ the ethereal fire of
flame;” that allotropic Fire which Heraclitus expounded
scientifically as incandescent gas, metaphysically as the com-
pletion of the becoming, and religiously as—to use Milton’s
words—‘‘ Holy Light! bright effluence of bright essence
increate.”’

As a précis of metaphysics the symbols are unrivaled ;
as a syllabus, they are without an equal; and taking (as
we may) the title Qeoyoua, ‘‘the works of God,” in con-
nection with these symbols, the whole bears a curious
resemblance to the Genesiac narrative when written thus :

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form and void ;

And the Spirit of God And darkness was

moved upon the upon the face

face of the waters. of the deep:
a<LO
And God said, Let there And God divided the light
be light: and there was from the darkness. And
light, And God saw the God called the light Day,
light, that it was good: and the darkness he called

Night:

and the evening and the morning were the first day.

So striking, indeed, is the likeness as to suggest some
inner connection between the two, and to warrant the
inquiry as to whether the Hesiodic outline was not derived
from the older Scriptural, or the two from a pre-existing
narrative of much greater antiquity. But this would open
up another field of investigation, a large one too and most
important, namely, the true religious belief of the philo-
sophers and classic poets. Pagans they certainly were not,
for they openly taught the existence of one Supreme Being,
and many of them were daring enough to defy fines,
imprisonment, exile, and even death, in endeavouring to
throw a proper light upon the idols of the people. But, it
is often asked, if they had cognisance of and belief in the
Trinity and a Christ to come, why did they not exhibit it

376 THE GODS OF OLD;

in their writings? Perhaps they did; and the same words
and symbols that struck the demotic ear and eye in one
sense may have struck the initiated in another. The
subject is an extensive one and we can only allude to it
here; but a few examples will best illustrate our meaning,
and the possibility to which we refer.
Ovid opens his Metamorphoses with the line
Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia coelum.

This, by transposition of the letters, becomes
Ante Deus coolum et terram atq’omnia ore tegit.
‘In the beginning God clothes heaven and earth and all
things by his word.”
The Theogony begins thus :
"Hrot pev wportata Xdos yéver’
Transposition alters it to
Xptords ya wowsny evr’ A te O Te

‘‘Christ, indeed, the shepherd, is both the Alpha and the

Omega.”
Tn the same fashion does. the celebrated dictum of Par-
menides,
dv eort, py Ov ovx €ore become ré petov Kév7’ "Ingots
‘¢ Jesus is called the Lamb.”

Here is another, strikingly recalling the well-known ixéds
in its relation to the initial letters of "Incots Xpiords, Ocod
vids, catjp. The triple interwoven triangle, or star-shaped
pentagon, with the letters v, y, 4, 6, a, at its prominent

vertices, was used as 4 symbol or sign of

“ recognition by the Pythagoreans, and was

y <f\>5,¢0 generally called Pythagore figura from
Dc having been referred to by Pythagoras
y777"e himself in connection, it is supposed, with

the oath of his sect. The figure, as being
three in one, is very suggestive of the Unity and Trinity ;
and the letters form the initials of "Ijcods, vids Oeod, yévero
Adda, “ Jesus the Son of God, was the Alpha.”

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 377

CHAPTER VI.

MIND.

Prometheus. .... It is observable how closely all the
philosophies have associated the primordial Eros with
Light, and through this Light with human thought.
Judged asa whole, the inert Eros would appear to be the
active Aither which, when commingled with the phenomenal
world, manifests itself agreeably to the conditions requisite
for an allotted end. In the universe it exhibits its prepon-
derating influence in the bringing forth of gravitation,
figure, divisibility, and chemical energy, (Hecatoncheires
and Cyclopes); and as these forces act according to fixed
laws whereby the Cosmos is divided into systems, shaped
as to figure and orbits, and bound together by mutual
attraction, the universe is a rational whole,—or, as
mythology puts it, is possessed of an anima mundi.

Again, in the elementary construction of our globe, the
Light would so impress itself on molecular matter as to
give this latter an aptitude for actualising itself to the
furthest: point consistent with the purposes of earth as a
whole, and with the nature of each individual kingdom in
it. In this way -Gea would bring forth an Iapetus who
would in turn produce an Atlas and a Prometheus; or,
in other words, matter would bring forth a molecular
aptitude whereby theré would arise a rotating and re-
volving oblate spheroid for the mass, and a mens or
mind pervading the entire scene of elemental working,
mineral, vegetable, and animal. In the mineral, the
least. porous of the three and hence the most obdurate
to Light, the mental aptitude would display itself most
prominently as impressibility, magnetism and electricity.
‘The magnet bas a soul,” said Thales of old; and this

378 THE GODS OF OLD;

insouling of inorganic matter by the Lumen de Calo is
being rendered more manifest and more general by the
magnetic and electric discoveries of to-day. In organic
bodies the Light finds a more open and congenial field, and
one in which the chemical process is overcome by the
living one. As a consequence the mental aptitude breaks
forth as growth, propagation, and irritability in vegetables;
advances to sensation, locomotion, and instinct in animals;
and culminates in man as thought or reason. Mineral
being and human being are thus, as it were, the opposite
poles of mind, and the Promethean spark which first lay
stiffened, chained, and crystallised in the rock bursts forth
ultimately and after a long series of gradations as the living,
free, and conscious Ego.

Modern philosophy arranges mind under four principal
divisions, sensation, emotion, volition, and intellect. The
last of these, embracing memory, reason, abstraction,
judgment, imagination, &c., is the highest, the most
evoluted form of mind, and was reserved for man, the
most evoluted of animal beings. The other three he has
in common with the members of the animated kingdom ;
and being the last of created works, he may even be
considered as having appropriated a modicum of fear,
hunger, pleasure, desire, &c., from pre-existing beings.
It was thus that Horace reasoned, when he wrote in
Ode i. 16, 18.

Fertur Prometheus, addere principi
Limo coactus particulam undique
Desectam, et insani leonis

‘Vim stomacho apposuisse nostro.

We have used the words “‘ animated kingdom” instead
of ‘animal kingdom” designedly, for just as we notice
and speculate on the insensible gradation of the vegetable
into the animal kingdom, and are inclined, almost com-
pelled, to grant a certain degree of sensation, emotion, and
volition to such plants as Venus’s Fly-Trap, the Moth-
Catching Plant, and to many others remarkable for their
curious irritability and movements, so too did the later

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL 379

writers add to existing mythology by describing Prometheus
as assisting Zeus, or early vegetable life, in the war against
the Titans, and as having Minerva, or organised being,
for a staunch companion, the one celestial who appreciated
his capabilities and aided him in his efforts to ascend
from earth to heaven, from a lower to a higher sphere of
existence.

If irritability and movement be manifestations of mind,
and it is generally conceded that they are, we cannot brush
aside unceremoniously certain assertions made by philoso-
phers, both ancient and modern.

Darwin, for instance, maintained that plants are but
inferior animals, and that they, or some of them, have a
brain, a stomach, and a low form of sensation residing in
the pith, the analogue of the spinal marrow of animals.
Fanciful though if may sound, this doctrine is difficult
to refute in some respects, and the difficulty is increased
when in addition to irritability and spontaneous move-
ments, we notice other unaccountable phenomena on the
part of plant forms,—how soil can change the colour of their
flowers ; how sea-weeds in the depths of ocean, where light
can have very little if any effect, are found nevertheless
possessed of the most brilliant green and red tints; how
fragrant odours are given off from flowers, leaves, bark,
etc., in a manner not yet explained, unless it be that,
as some botanists profess, fragrance is but the excremen-
titious matter thrown off by the living plant; how they
differ in taste, how they evolve heat, luminosity, electricity ;
and many other equally curious phenomena.

Tf such considerations influenced Darwin to extend the
sphere of mind to vegetable life, we cannot scoff at the
extension of it to the earth itself, which as a whole is
notably possessed of irritability and movement.

If those last-named qualities be a form of mind, no
matter how low, then our Earth, the faia weAepn, by right
of its diurnal and annual movements, of secular subsidence
and upheaval, of earthquake shocks and voleanic outbreaks,
can lay claim to a something higher than mere inertness.

380 THE GODS OF OLD;

There is room for reflection in the following: “‘ Plato, the
Stoies, Kepler and others, have considered the globe itself
as possessed of vital faculties. According to them, a vital
fluid circulates in it; a process of assimilation goes on in
it, as well as in animated bodies; every particle of it is
alive; it possesses instinct and volition, even to the most
elementary molecules, which attract and repel each other
according to sympathies and antipathies. Hach kind of
mineral has the power of converting immense masses into
its own nature, as we convert our food into flesh and blood.
The mountains are the respiratory organs of the globe,
and the schists its organs of secretion; it is by these latter
that if decomposes the waters of the sea, in order to pro-
duce the matter ejected by voleanoes. The veins are
caseous sores, abscesses of the mineral kingdom; and the
metals are products of rottenness and disease.’ —Cuvier.

But leaving these conceptions, partly allegorical and
wholly true in a scientific sense, we find mind restricted,
as a rule, to animated beings, presumed of in the vegetable,
acceded to in the animal, and universally acknowledged
in man.

The association of Zeus, Minerva, and Prometheus is
very close, as noticed in the myths, and requires some
explanation. Life, as we have seen, made its first ap-
pearance in the most primitive of fashions, in the mold
and mildew and thousand other fungous forms that, while
possessed of animation, could lay no valid claim to
organism. But as Life progressed and gained the benefi-
cence of moisture for partner, and when it had absorbed
that paritner—as Zeus swallowed the Oceanid Metis—the
foundation for a better vegetation was laid and the rudi-
ments of organic structure commenced to breed in the
highest existing living type,—in the head of Zeus. Organic
structure is almost as wonderful as life itself. We trace it
back to a single cell, but there are forced to stop. Yet
within this cell we know that development is going on,
that changes of some nature are working which tend to
alter the nature of the cell—that pains are racking the

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 381

head of Zeus. But for a space no results are visible.
Zeus cannot deliver himself, and is forced to send for a
Prometheus to split his head,—the cell would for ever
remain a cell and life be for ever unicellular and thallo-
genous of the lowest type, were it not that some noumenon
comes along to split the cell in two. This division is all
sufficient, for segmentation once begun organism appears.
The reign of the fungous dynasty is ended, and a higher
race of plants endowed with organic structure and with
ehlorophyl to give colour to the parts, springs into life:
Minerva, yAavxGms Athene, springs forth fully armed and
equipped from the head of father Zeus.

Claudian’s remark is suggestive :

Auratos Rhodiis imbres, nascente Minerva,
Induxisse Jovem ferunt. .

Was it in return for those services as accoucher
that organised existence arrayed itself on the side of
Prometheus? And did the irritability and spontaneous
movements of early mind conceive an attachment, as
the myths hint, for the emerald-eyed (chlorophyl forbids
writing ‘‘ blue-eyed’) Minerva? We cannot doubt it.
From the first, organic force has ever been in close
sympathy with the evolutions of the mind, has kept
apace with it from the almost structureless amcebus to
the highly structured man, has evolved organ after organ
to meet the requirements of an increased intelligence, has
been, as it were, a Minerva, or piv vetpa,—the very ties, or
fibres, or nerves, whereby all matter is rendered organised.

One thing is evident, that organic being led the way
when once upon a time,—after the sun became a personage,
says Mythology; on the Fifth Day, says Genesis, and the
coincidence is noteworthy,—Mind girt up its loins and,
lighting its torch frem solar heat, brought intelligence and
animals to earth.

A noble achievement surely, and one that gained a name
and fame for Prometheus. Hitherto he had been styled
Touxthos and .aioAduytis; but when he evolved the faculties
that distinguish the animal from the vegetable, song,

382 THE GODS OF OLD;

grateful song which has ever hymned and lauded the
glorious actions of the great, bestowed upon him the well-
deserved titles of GyxuAopyrns and moxiAdBovros. And he
deserved them. Change its forms and colours and crafty
movements as it may, a plant is still a plant. Be it lowly
moss or giant oak, daisy modest or blooming rose, morning-
glory or night-blooming cereus, there is that visibly lacking
which renders it inferior far to the meanest protozoan in
existence. This something is nerve structure. In the most
conplex and curiously-developed plant we fail to find a
nervous system visible: in all the forms of animal life its
presence is assured, is allowed, even though it be not so
far detected in those animalcules that occupy the border
ground between the two animated kingdoms.

It was Mind, then,—the mind which had possibly so
much to do with the pith of life, and which progressively
accommodates itself to being,—it was this mind that
appropriated or stole for the nervous structure fashioned
by Minerva that measure of intelligence without which
no animal could have its being, no man his existence,
and without which, consequently, artificial fire would be
unknown, whether we regard the same as the product of
quick combustion or as the fire of knowledge.

‘“‘ Having concealed it in a narthex” is the way in which
Mythology describes the fire as brought from heaven. We
have solved one of the two unknown quantities: let us
substitute its value in seeking for the other. ‘‘ Having
concealed the nervous structure in a ?’’ The reader is
almost prepared to give the answer. The nerves of
animals are given off from collections of gray matter called
nervous centres or ganglia, which are distributed in various
parts of the frame, and symmetrically, according to the
type upon which the animal is built. In all cases the
ganglion is but a repository or case of the nervous filaments,
and this is the vap@n€ of the myth, the veipov 64x, or
‘repository of the nerves.’’ It is well to note in confirma-
tion of the derivation that certain Greek physicians called
their treatises on medicine vépOnxes or vapOjxia, that is, ‘on

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL, 383

nervous diseases”’; and that the Greek schoolmaster’s rod
or cane was also styled vap6yé, showing the opinion, it may
be, that the early classical pedagogues entertained about
brain and a birch rod!

‘‘Unknown to Zeus did he take it.” There is a good
deal of suggestiveness in the Ad@pq Atos of the prose writer
and the Aadwv Aia repmixépavvoy of the poet. The theft
which Prometheus committed was of huge dimensions and
brought many new and strange subjects under the control
of Life. Though, to follow Aischylus, the Titans had still
to be subdued on the courts of Thessaly, Zeus was fast
becoming a power in the land, was acknowledged as war-
lord by the Olympians, and ruled with absolute sway over
his vegetable kingdom, such as it was. He must have
consequently regarded with surprise and suspicion the new
accessions to his ranks, headed as they were by one whose
mental capabilities he dreaded and of whose real allegiance
he was very doubtful. Life was ever the cipvota Zes,
and though he may have despised the ragged crowd of
Protozoans that Prometheus brought forward to help him
on to victory, his keen glance must have detected the subtle
difference between them and his own vegetative followers,—
may have even pierced the veil of centuries and observed
that though Infusoria occupied one end of this new chain
of being, the other end was held by Man and Reason. If
so, however, he held his peace till the Titanomachia was
fought and won. ©

And then he acted. ‘‘Why should this new race be
forced upon him? He wanted no imperium in imperio,
and yet he had to accept it. He had never asked for a
new order of being.” The old leaven, inherited from his.
sire and grandsire, was breaking out! ‘He had toiled
and moiled, and he bore many a scar, mementoes of the
well-fought fray: all he desired now was peace and rest.
and the nectar and ambrosia that make life pleasant. Why
could not this upstart son of an expedient father have
remained quiet then, and instead of foraging gray matter
from the sources of Helios, be satisfied with the pith

384 . _ THE GODS OF OLD;

already provided? Pith and gray matter ;—irresponsibility
and responsibility. Responsibility for Zeus! A thing
undreamt of up to this! ’Tis rank rebellion! Let its
author be crucified !”’

And so the fiat was issued. Prometheus was bound and
nailed to a rock, there to suffer for many ages, during all of
which an eagle devoured by day the lobes of his liver that
grew again by night.

“‘ Within the brain’s most secret cells,
A certain lord chief justice dwells,
Of sovereign power, whom one and all,

With common voice we Reason call.”
Churchill,

Zeus must have noted well those ganglia from the first.
It was not the fish or bird or beast that he dreaded,
but what he saw reflected in the depths, the “‘ sovereign
power of reason.” IJt-was Intellect and Will that Life saw
in those ‘‘ most secret cells,” and it was for this intellect
and will that Mind was chained and tortured and bound to
a rock. It was the same intellect and will that helped it
to defy the tyranny of Life and to endure its sufferings.

When Man appeared upon the globe, Intellect was
unloosed. As each geological formation has been formed
from the preceding, that from the one before, and so on, it
follows that the rocky crust which the primitive man trod
upon was part and parcel of the first permanent covering
that ever settled over the central fire of earth. To this
rock, whether Glacial or Recent, that was held in the grasp
of the primeval granite, was Mind attached with indis-
soluble bonds; and no more fitting agent could there be
for forging and fastening its chains than Vulcan, the raging
heat of centre and surface and air above that prevailed in
those days of old,—heat that forbade man’s being, heat
that nothing but the principle of Mind and its most pristine
forms could withstand. _

To this granite was he bound, and thence he watched
and was watched by the march of centuries. The spread
.of Centuries! The flight of Ages! What is this but

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 385

“the Hagle with wide extended wings” of the Myth?
What is aierds but ata éros, ‘‘the times of Earth,” ‘ the
years,” and alerds épenrduevos but “the flying years,” and
aierés tavintepos but ‘‘ the long spread of flying years,”

“ the flight-of Centuries ” ?

The classical metaphor has its modern simile, as seen in

the lines of Bishop King :
‘* Like to the falling of a star ;
Or as the flights of eagles are;
Even such is man, whose borrowed light
Is straight called in and paid to-night.”

From this Rock of Ages did the Mind observe the living
tide roll on. It saw the granite and the gneiss, the red
gneiss and the gray, interstratified with schists and
serpentine and graphitic limestone, forming in rude and
massive beds during the long Archaic Day. And ever
through that Day were the forces of disintegration at work,
gnawing and rending the rocky surface and destroying bit
by bit what had been built up: and ever during the flight
of Archean time was the watching Mind tortured by the
eagle of destruction. It came, “the destruction that
wasteth at noonday,” with wings expanded and talons
sharp, and flecked the rocks with the life juice and remains
of animal existences. Strange and lowly though they
may have been, unkenned by mortal eye, if we exclude the
Eozoon, they represented Mind. Even if we suppose them
as possessed of but the merest rudiments of a nervous
system, still they represented Mind. It may have been
this inferiority, as well as the inferiority of all animals to
man, that made Mythology particularise the liver of
Prometheus as the eagle’s prey. The liver is an organ
supplied in common with the other abdominal viscera by
the solar plexus of the sympathetic, and receives but a
few filaments from the brain and spinal cord: it is con-
sequently endowed with much less movement and sensibility
than if it were supplied from the cerebro-spinal system,
and the consciousness and will have no immediate control
over it.

G.0. co

386 THE GODS OF OLD;

But the Night came, the Night that ended and succeeded
the Archewan Day, the Night of whose workings Geology
knows 50 little save the results that followed and that it
lasted for a vast interval of time. Shall we use Brandon’s
words of it ?

‘“Who can express the horror of that night,
When darkness lent his robes to monster fear P

And heaven’s black mantle banishing the light
Made everything in ugly form appear ?”

Or Bowring’s ?
‘«The night comes calmly forth,
Bringing sweet rest upon the wings of even:
The golden wain rolls round the silent north,
And earth is slumbering ‘neath the smiles of heaven.”

In whatever form it came and however long it lasted,
light broke at last and gave to the cohort of the ages
another Day,—the Silurian Day, that had the Cambrian
for its dawn. And lo! the granite, gneiss, and: schists
that had been destroyed by disintegration, have come forth
from the workings of the Night, fresh and recuperated, as
slates and grits, as sandstone, limestone, shales and
conglomerates. And lo! the fauna that had been de-
voured by the granite-born eagle—for the monstrous bird
was sprung from Echidna, and her we have already
identified with the granite—appear in the more evoluted
shapes of protozoan sponges and graptolites; of radiated
Cystideans, Crinoids, Starfishes, and Corals; of moiluscous
Brachiopods and Lamellibranchs, Pteropods, Gasteropods,
and Cephalopods; and of the articulated Annelides, |Ento-
mostraca, Phyllopods, and Trilobites. The lobes of the
chained one’s liver had grown in very truth, and grown in
all directions, ‘(76 8 dé&ero tcov axavrn ruxtds.’ But with
the Day came disintegration’s agencies again, and once
more the Mind heard the dreadful whirring of Life’s
destroying bird, once more was witness of the carnage
that water, air, and storm, that rain and lightning and
natural decay, that pestilence and brute force and cunning
made among its own creations: once more did the eagle

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 387

devour the lobes and cause the rocks to weep with Prome-
thean gore.
Again—
**In sable pomp, with all her starry train,
The Night resumed her throne.”

It may have brought strength and rest and comfort to
the rock-bound Mind, but its inmost fibres were intelli-
gential and, though knowing well the torments that were
in store, it must have longed for the coming Day and the
offspring it would bring. It came, the glorious Devonian
Day ! with its shales and flags, its mottled limestones and
its red, red sandstones. It came, and though it retained
the feudal lords of the preceding age, the aristocratic
Cephalopod, the Orthoceratous viking, and the wonderful-
eyed Trilobite, it brought that with it which ended for ever
the dynasty of the Mollusk,—it brought a vertebrated being.
Surely Mind must have sent up a pean when it beheld
the Coccosteus and Ptericthys, the Asterolepis and Cepha-
laspis, disporting in the waters and clad with coat of mail
that cunning armourer of to-day could never fashion !
What though they were but fish! They had a jointed
skeleton, a spinal column, and a brain. What mattered
it if tortures hitherto unknown racked the whole Prome-
thean frame when the eagle came, true to its time and
mission, and clawed and pecked the liver rendered now
more sensitive by the pneumogastric and the phrenic?
The Man within the Mind was stirred for the first time
from his long, long lethargy.

And thus the precession of the Ages went marching on.
Through the Carboniferous, Triassic, Jurassic, and Creta-
ceous, through the Eocene, Miocene, and. Pliocene, on it
went, Day following Night and Night the Day; Day
bringing disintegration and dissolution; Night, recon-
struction and evolution. The liver was still the eagle’s
prey by Day, but it ever grew through Night, and ever in
all directions. It evoluted in the Radiates, the Mollusks,
and Articulates ; it evoluted in the Vertebrates, bringing to
life the fish, the reptile, the bird, and, last of all, the

cc

388 THE GODS OF OLD;

Mammal. And now once more within the Mind was Man
stirred up from the deep sleep that had succeeded
lethargy. Henceforward he but slumbered, for the end
was nearing.

The myth tells us how the end occurred: how Hercules,
having killed the eagle, freed Prometheus from his bonds
with the consent.of Zeus who thus permitted Hercules to
obtain greater renown than ever.

There came a Day when the rocky surface. of our globe
was fitted for the highest order of terrestrial being. There
surely came a Day when Man roamed at large upon those
rocks. On that Day was Mind unfolded to its furthest
capabilities; and Prometheus, freed from the chains—
the irritability and movement, sensations and emotions,
instinct and volition, from the all that was common to
animated being—shook off the last shackle that enfettered
' him, and casting it off gave Reason to the world, and with
that reason, Immortality, the gift of Chiron, as the myth
relates.

** And this was done with the consent of Zeus,” od« déxnre
Zyvos, a8 Hesiod tells us. By this time Life had conquered
all his foes, had grown older and more experienced, more
‘cognisant of his own power and less alarmed at the advent
of a new being. He had seen the gradual procession of
plant and animal forms that occupied in turn the sea,
the land, the air, and felt that he had received as much
obeisance from the lepidodendron as from the mushroom,
from the ichthyosaurus as from the sponge. And as in
the past, so was if now. Here were those lately arrived
exogens, the oak, the maple, the elm, and the plane; and
here were the mammoth and the horse, the leviathan and
the seal, the dodo and the singing bird. Did they fail
aught in obedience and respect for Zeus? Nota whit; on
the contrary, the finer they grew in fibre and the more
evoluted in structure, the more did they seem to cling to
life. How, then, would it be with this rational idea of
Prometheus, if set free? Would its corporeal possessor
cling to life, or would the ethereal indweller urge him to

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 389

draw distinctions and incline his aspirations to the older
gods, to Aither and the Eros? Even so, it was only
through and by means of life that the thing of clay could
see the light here or hereafter. LetMancomethen. What
had Zeus to fear? If this vitalised clay clung slavishly to
life, it was nought to Zeus; if this human being worked
loyally for life, it would redound to both; if this Man
aspired to Light and Love, to Aither and Eros, then man
should work during life’s pleasure with fear and trembling.
Let him come, and with no niggard greeting, to the ban-
queting house of Life. The ox, the sheep, and the wild
goat would welcome his presence; roses and lilies would
strew his path; the fig tree would give him shade, and the
vine would glad his. heart. Man could add nought save
reason to the wondrous works of life.

Still another reason for Life’s not being unwilling was
that the marvellous results of earth’s great movements
in the past might be manifested,—or, as the myth says,
that the renown of Hercules might be greater than before:

bp ‘“Hpaxdjjos OnBayevéos Kréos ein
_ wit nr tA Jy id é
mdelov &r 9 romapabev ent yOdva movduBdretpay.

Long since had the Titans been sealed down; later on
the Giants had been buried in the Phlegrean fields; and
Typheus himself could now be heard groaning beneath the
&tnean pile. During all these centuries had earth been
storing its gold and silver and precious stones, its wells of
oil, its salt and gypsum, marble, coal, iron, and metal ore
of all kinds; and as yet there had been no creature worthy
to receive the key or capable of unlocking the treasure
chambers. Now too were the continents developing their
outlines to the full, and the seas and oceans lapping their
proper bounds; now were the rivers racing from mountain
heights to the plains and thence to ocean, and now were
the rocks covered with a most fertile soil, Harth and life
were alike ready for the Man, and prepared to give him of
their best in return for the single jewel which he claimed
as birthright.

390 THE GODS OF OLD;

When was Prometheus delivered? When did Man make
his first appearance on our globe? The answer to one
question will be the answer to the other. The myth is
apparently as indefinite to the precise date as is the science
of our day, but it distinctly points to post-tertiary time.
The Tenth Labour has already been identified with the
Tertiary period, and it was during the latter part of
the Eleventh Labour (fetching the golden apples of the
Hesperides), that Hercules delivered Prometheus.

Such are the main outlines of this most strange and
interesting of the myths, which, owing to its subject-
matter, has been variously treated and added to by poet
and philosopher.

Hesiod’s own account runs thus:

doe & ddvxromédyat Upopnbéa rouxtdsBovdov
Seapois dpyadéace pécor dia xiov’ éhaaeas.

Yo€ 2 yy FA } ? . > XN vos
Kat of én’ aierby Spoe tavimrepov: adrap Gy Frap
4 244 Ls Seed > eu
Foe abdvarov, To 8 aékero ioov dmdvryn

5 vuxtds, door wpémav jap €or tavucimrepos Spus.
Tov pev dp’. "ArAkpayvys kaduoddpor GAxipos vids
“Hpaxhéns exretwve, xaxny 8 did voticov ddadkev
Tameriovidy, kai €\vcato Sua hpoouvday,
ovK aéxnte Znvds *Odupriov tpypebovros,
10 ddp’ ‘Hpaxdjzjos OnBayevéos Khéos ein

-~ woe iA 308 ‘ tf
mdetov er’ % Tomdpoley emi xOéva movduBdretpav.
tovtov ap’ a€épevos tipa apielxerov vidy"
kaimep xwdpevos wavOn xdAou by mpiv Exeoxer,
ouver’ épiceto Bovdds dreppevéei Kpoviovt.—Theog. 521.

Prometheus too, the versatile, he held

In durance vile half driven through the rock
With bonds most irksome; and against him urged
An eagle with a stretch of wing immense,

That on his deathless liver gorged its fill ;

And what the bird the live-long day devoured
As much by night in all directions grew.

Yet even so its end was brought to pass

By the well-curved Alcmene’s forceful son,

By Hercules who saved the Titan- born

From evil plight and freed him from his cares,—
Olympus-ruling Zeus demurring not,

So that still greater might the glorious call

Of Hercules, the vigorous born, be

Than ere before upon prolific earth.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 391

With such regard this son renowned he loves ;
Though still disturbed he lulled the rage first felt,
For that he urged free-will on lordly Zeus.

NOTES.

8 dsvoppocvvdwy— from irrationality,” since dve@pay, like édpav,
signifies ‘‘ without intelligence, without reason.” In the same
way does Apollodorus describe the event, 2.5.11. 10. Kés rv
TpopnGéa duce, Serpov EAdpevos tov tis éAaias, ‘and removing
the shackle of irrationality, he freed Prometheus,”—éAaias
being the Ionic form of dAaias, for dAaids as well as dtc@par are
employed by Aischylus in the same sense as appar.

10 6nBayevéos.— Bn yéva, the 8 merely standing for the spiritus asper,
as in Oazd for dua. Hercules was born of vigour (Alemene,
aA\kn pevos), and wedded after death to Hebe, the goddess of
youth and vigour.

13 xaimep xwdpevos.—Volcanic and seismic disturbances, elevation and
subsidence of the land, and other changes affecting life did not
cease with the coming of man; they are occurring even to-day.
But they are minor in their way, and neither in intensity nor
in range do they approach the vast disturbances of former ages.

14 Bovdds.— Free-will, to be such, implies two wills; this is denoted
in the text by the plural BovAds.

The Bovdaf or Free-will leads up immediately to the
episode at Mekone, thus pointing to the conclusion that
this incident is connected with the Fall in Eden when
man’s wills clashed with each other for the first time. The
poet writes with a license all his own. He goes back to
the dim and musty venue of philosophy when the abstract
was passing over to the phenomenal, and to this transition
stage of being he applies the term Mnxeérn or Not-coming
(uy qxwv), In this Not-coming, where destiny, death,
responsibility, and all the other offspring of the Darkness
play so prominent a part, he depicts the great event that
was to be, and the personages. Life and Mind are passing
from the solitary 6v, are assuming a shadowy existence,
and already there commences the struggle between the
two for the forerunner of the human race,—whom the
poet calls a mighty ox (véyav Body), just as Aischylus uses
Tis Boos toy radpov in reference to Clytemnestra and
Agamemnon. Here, then, in the shadow of being as it

392 THE GODS OF OLD;

were, with all the attributes and surroundings of an after
period, do ‘‘ immortalised things of sense” prognosticate the
future.

Let us try, as best may be, to follow distributively the
poet in his conception.

There is conjured from the deep a time, a scene, and a
garden fair to view, where Mind shapes forth the future.
Here is the glory of his Maker, that peyay Boty in whom
Mind and Life are united to the fullest and the noblest
extent ; here too, Tenderness personified and ‘“‘ fair as the
first that fell of womankind”’ is the pleasing abstract of
this exquisite connexion ; and here in this garden of the
world are fleshes of all kind, of fish, of fowl, of beast,—
are the inwards of our globe, marble, coal, and metal ore,
gold, silver, and precious stones, crusted with the fatty clay,
and some bulging from the surface, others deep in the
bowels of the earth. All these, with dominion, were for
Life and Life’s partner; but for Life’s own self was she
reserved who had been taken from his bones and built by’
hands divine.

Kat yap or’ éxpivovro Oeot Ovnroi tr’ avOpwrot
Myxavy, ir erecra péyav Bot mpdpport Ounp
dacodpevos mpovbnxe, Ards véov eLarapicxoy.
Tots pev yap odpxas Te Kai €yxata sriova dyed
év pwd xareOnxe, kadinpas yaorpi Boein,
to 8 adr’ dotéa Aevxd Bods Borin emt réxvy
evéerioas xaréOnxe, Kadupas dpyért Snu@.—Theog. 535-541.
For once in the Not-becoming, when that gods
And mortal men were being appraised, he shaped
A mighty creature whom with prudent thought
He had disjoined to tempt the mind of Zeus.
For them it was the fleshes he had placed,
For them the inwards juiced with fat he hid
Within the crust, within the depths of earth;
For him to boot the creature’s naked bones
He placed and fitted in a cunning way,
And covered over with all-shining fat.

Life awoke and came unto his own. For all too short
a period did he enjoy the wealth of nature, feeling that
life and mind were one, and that she, the soft, the tender,

and mature, was another self.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 393

But there came a day when all this happy unity was
sundered, when the tender zé7wv stood below the salt and
appealed to Life, an apple in her hand. With inborn
intuition did he know that a crisis had arrived,—that his
choice should be made,—that this heaven on earth was
lost. From one to the other did he look, from the feast of
reason and the flow of soul to her his likeness, help, and
heart’s desire. How glorious one? How vied with it the
other? Which must he choose? Must? Could he not,
then, choose the wzéxwv? The additional pang marked
already the one on whom his thought was centred. Yes;
the Bovdai battling in his breast made him now for the first
time fully conscious of the marvellous gift inherent in him
for good or ill; and so strange are the ways of life that in
all his pain and anguish he smiled wanly at the new-felt
power within his mind for option and defiance.

84 Tore puw mpoméerre raTnp avdp&y re Jeay re°
>. te tA 2 ca 22 c
lamertoidn, mdvrov dpideixer’ dvaxrav,
& wemoy, as érepolnrws d:eddocao poipas.
“Os dro xepropéwy Zeds apbira pydea cides,
A 3 sz 4 . 2 Ed
rov 8’ avre wpooéetme Tpopnbevs dyxvAopyrys,
7x’ entpednoas, Sodins & od AnOeto rexvys*
a - a“
Zed xidiore, peyote Oey aievyeverdav,
tavd’ dev émmorépyy oe evi pect Oupds dvayet.
7 pa Sodopovéwr.—s42- 550.

Soliloquised the sire of gods and men:

‘©O apt-born mind, the honoured of all thrones!
O being soft, so tender and mature !

How vieing each with each hast made the shares!”
In anguished accents thus did Zeus commune,
The Zeus who knew the never-changing plans.
But then spoke him the subtle Mind, and smiled
A little, mindful of the nice deceit :

‘* Most noble Zeus, of gods immortal chief,
Take which of these the spirit prompts in soul.”
So spoke the tempter.

Life could not plead ignorance. Better, far better than
any of his seed did he know the Cosmos and its plans, and
the nature of the things around him. But yesterday had
he given names to living creatures, to the cattle, fowl, and

394 THE GODS OF OLD;

beast,—yea, to that last and tearful zézwv now before him,
—~and that which he called each was its name.

Life could not plead ignorance. The apple offered by
the zézwy recalled the high behest, ‘‘ Thou shall not eat
of it.”

Life could not plead ignorance. In his ears there rang
the words, “In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt
surely die.”

And yet, though reason pointed to wisdom and dominion,
and memory to rectitude and divine love, and imagination
to the loss of these, to countless ills and death for all his
kind, he made his choice and, for better for worse, took
that which was but a fair veneer, an outward show, a
veritable Acvkdy GAeupa,

Zeis & apbrra padea cidas
yr p ob jyvoinge déddov’ Kaka 8 Socero Oupad
Ontos avépa@motct, Ta Kat TeA€eo bar Epedre.

xepot 8 by dudorépnow dveiheto Nevxdv dhevha.—550-558.

But the Zeus who knew
The plans immutable knew too the snare
And ignorance could not plead; in mind he saw
The ills for mankind, that they were to be ;—
And yet he clasped a beauty formed to fade.

Repentance came. The lightning, cold, and driving
rain, the wild beast’s roar, the thorns and thistles of the
earth, the daily toil and sweat for bread, and the sorrowful
pangs of labour were constant reminders how deceitful is
favour, how vain is beauty, and how hard is transgression’s
path. In many ways did bitter grief fasten in the heart of
Life and darkness in his understanding; but most of all
when that for which he erred proved but skin-deep. For
as time rolled on with its routine of work and duty, the
beauty of the wézwv faded; ‘assaulted every hour by
creeping minutes of defacing time,” the suppleness and
symmetry were lost, the skin grew shrivelled, and the bony
framework told a sorrowful story. And gazing on her was
the Life who loved her still and murmured the pet name of
yore,—the Life around whose own head the cloud of age
and death was gathering fast, and who, loyal to the last,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 395

made no reproach save this, ‘‘ How long, O Lord, how long
wilt thou remember our iniquities!”’

xecaro dé hpévas audi, xedos Bé pv ixero Ovpoy,
as idev daréa AevKd Bods Sorin emi Téxvy,
éx tot & dbavaroow én xbort Pdr’ avOpatav
kaiovo’ doréa Aevkd Ounévrwy én Bapar.
tov O€ py’ éxOjcas mpoodepy vepednyepéra Zeus:
"Iareriovidn, wdvrev wépt pndea eidas,
& wérov, ovx dpa ww Sorins émedyOeo téxvqs.
“Qs hdro xadpevos Zeds ApOrra pydea eidds.—554-561.
But gloom his mind and bitterness his heart
Possessed when he the creature’s nice-planned bones
Distinctly saw. Hence is it that the race
Of men on earth consume with fire bare bones
Upon the smoking altars of the gods.
And sore at heart communed cloud-gathering Zeus:
‘©O apt-born mind, that knew the plans of all!
O tender heart! Not ever then may be
Forgetfulness of the deceitful way !”
Thus sad spoke Zeus who knew the changeless plans.

The conclusion is brief, pointed, and only too true; for
that which we have is no longer the aupds pévos axaydroto
‘the not-to-be-worked-for ”’ or immediate intelligence that
Adam had. At best it is but a knowledge of things, gained
only by years of study and experience, and liable, too liable
to err. ,

éx Tourou 51 éerra, SéAov pepynpévos aide,

obk €didov peddotat wupds pévos dxapdroto

Oynrois dvOparots, ot émt xGovt varerdovotv.—562-d64.
And hence, rememb’ring ever his deceit,

He did not give the strength of fire instinct
To ill-starred mortals dwelling on the earth.

396 THE GODS OF OLD;

CHAPTER VII.

THE MEASURE AND THE FOIL OF MIND.

Epimetheus.—The question of sex enters largely into life,
the first and broadest distinction of animated forms being
that of male and female; and as the former preceded the
latter in the case of human beings, it is not irrational to
suppose the same priority for the male in all other life
forms, plants as well as animals.

In the animal kingdom there is, as a rule, an individua-
tion of the sexes, the exception being said to exist in the
ease of such hermaphrodites as the snail, tapeworm, and
some others of a low order. In the vegetable kingdom we
find instances of individuation when the male and female
flowers are on separate plants, as in the screw-pine, willow,
mistletoe, and other Diccia; but in all the Phenogams or
flowering plants outside this class, the male and female
organs are found upon one and the same root. In the
Cryptogams or lowest order of vegetation there are no
flowers, spores take the place of true seeds, and as
we descend the scale to mold, mildew, rust, and other
microscopic fungi, the difficulty in distinguishing sex and
the mode of reproduction correspondingly increases. The
same difficulty, it may be observed, exists in the case of
Infusoria and of Zoophytes in general.

In the Phenogams the flower is the generative apparatus,
since from it come the fruit and seeds. It consists of the
calyx, corolla, stamens, and pistil. The latter two are the
sexual organs of the plant, and round them are the calyx
and corolla which are termed the floral envelopes. The
calyx is the external leafy covering, usually green, and
divided into segments or sepals, like the fingers of a hand.
Grasped in these sepals is the corolla, brilliant with colour
and surrounding all the inner paris like a veil.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 397

Within the beautiful corolla, and extending from base
to apex of if are several slender filaments or stamens,
bearing upon their extremities the male organs or anthers,
which are mitre-shaped and consist of two small mem-
branous sacs that contain the pollen or fertilising dust.
The pistil, or female organ of fructification, is the most
central of all, and is made up of three parts,—(1) the
ovary, which lies at the base and contains the ovules or
rudimentary germs; (2) the style, or filamentous part,
which is not so essential as the others, and is sometimes
wanting, as in the pine; and (3) the stigma, or head of
the pistil, which is cloven, vascular, destitute of epidermis,
and, formed as it is of the everted inner surface of the
pistil itself, is thus the analogue of the vagina in animals.

The process of generation is simple. The anthers, when
mature, open their valves and discharge the pollen upon
the stigma, the papillary or hair-like cells of which are
ready to retain it; the pollen penetrates downward through
the loose tissue of the style, when such exists, and finally
reaches the ovary where, coming in contact with the ovules,
an embryo is produced that ultimately ripens into a perfect
seed, the parent of a new plant similar to the old one.

It is this sexual structure and function of a plant,
simple and well-known as it is, that forms the groundwork
for the myth which introduces Pandora and Epimetheus.
It comes in quick succession to the Mekonian era when
Zeus saw, a8 in a glass darkly, the phantoms rising from
the mists of time, and was so little pleased with what he
saw that he preferred an independent existence, such as he
had, to any combination with Prometheus leading up to
disobedience mad and to woes innumerable for life.

And yet, resumes Hesiod, this same Life was eventually
enticed by the soothing ways of Mind to enter into partner-
ship. When? While later poets bring Helios into the
myth and thus limit the date either to the Fourth Genesiac
Day with a higher order of plant life, or to the Fifth Day
with animal life, Hesiod makes no mention of the sun, and
shows plainly by his narrative that mind and life were

398 THE GODS OF OLD;

first associated with vegetable forms, aud almost from the
beginning—that is, from the Third Scriptural Day when
“The earth brought forth grass and herb yielding seed
after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was
in itself, after his kind.”

What form or mode of existence Life had previous to
his union with Mind is not known,—there must have been
many such between the abstract and the phenomenal,—
but when the compact was entered into, Life, whether
pulsating on the earth or (as the poet suggests) high above
(iyi Bpexernv) as a germinal revolving mass, must have been
doubly vivified, stung to the inmost recesses of his being,
and roused to new activity by the advent of an intelligent
partner.

And when the new firm of Life, Mind, and Co.—this
last being a personage useful only in name, and changed
from time to time as business interests demanded,—came
into being, there must have appeared a Protophyte with as
much right and title to ‘the lord of creation” as his.
antitype Adam had in after ages. Why not? He looked
around this new world of earth, and all that he saw was
nought but water, clay, and air. In him alone were life
and mind. He was Zeus; he was Prometheus; he was
the first of mortals. For him mortality had as yet no
sinister meaning, and his vegetative soul sent up an
appropriate anthem to the Maker. It was a joyful song;
but still there was a minor note of sorrow running through
it, for the solitude was hard to bear. In creation’s span
there was vo helpmate fit for the Protophyte, and he
wished for one. The wish was granted; and then appeared
in the world’s mart the first of female kind, the close
resemblance of the Kronos-born Protophyte in all save sex,
the Pandora of her class, and his own particular Eve, who
shared his life and occupied his thoughts to the exclusion of
other subjects.

The original myth runs thus:

adAa piv éEararncey éts mais lameroio,
KAdyras dxaydrowo mupds tAéorxoror avyny

AND

év kotha vdpOnk’ Sdxev dé E vetdbs Gupdy,
Ziv’ inpBpeperny, exdhace Sé pw Girov Frop,

wO? 3 3
5 ds 18° év dvOparro.ee rrupbs THACoKoTOY avyny.

t ? a
abrixa 8 dyri rupds tedEev xaxdv avOpdroict,
, \ , . 9 ’
yains yap obprdacce mepixdutés ’Apceyyners
wapbéve aidoin ixehov Kpovidew S14 Bovdds.
(doe bé xal xéopnoe Ged yAauxmis AOHun

10 dpyuden eoOirt. xaraxpyev dé xahvmrpyy,

16

Sadardqv, xeiperot xaréoxebe, Oadpa idéobar"

Gud dé of oreddvovs, veoOndéas dvbeor trains,
ineprovs 7’ éméOnxe xapnart WaAdas ’AOqrn"

dul b€ of credvny xpucény xeadidw eOnke,

Thy avtos Toinae mwepixdutés ’Aucryujets,

doxnoas waddpnot, xapiCopevos Ati marpi.

tH 8° evi Saidada modAa TerevxaTo, Oaiiua idéaOa,
Kvadand’, 60° ifretpos ToAAG Tpépet 75e Oddacoa-
Tap Gye WEAN’ éeveOnxe, (ydpis 8 deddpaero TOAAN),

20 Gavpdota, Cdotow éoixdra Povnecow-

Adbrdp éme:dy red&e xadov xaxdv avr dya8oio,
é£dyay évOa mep Gddo Evav Oeot 75° dvOpwrot
La >? ca La > LA
Koo N@ ayadAopérny yAavxomOos OBptpordrpns.

Oatpa 8 &y’ aOavdrous re Geovs Ovnrous 7” avOperovs,

THE STORY THAT THEY TELL.

399

25 as eidov dddov aimiv, dunyavoy avOpdrotow.—Theog. 565-589.

But this, Iapet’s clever son disguised,

Who hid instinctive fire’s far-seeing light
Within a hollow narthex. To the quick

In soul it stung him, high-pulsating Zeus ;
And pain spasmodic racked his inmost core
When fire’s far-seeing light in men he knew.
Then he with expedition swift prepared

An ill for men, a rival of the fire:

For at his wish the far-famed demiurge
Moulded of clay, with maiden grace attached,
A close resemblance of the Kronos-born.
Then did Minerva, bright-eyed goddess, gird
And deck her with a garment finest spun :
Grasped in her hands she held a wondrous veil
Checkered with colours, cireumambient :
Around her too Pallas Minerva placed

Crowns newly budding with the summer’s bloom,
All yearning for her head with sweet desire ;
And round her placed for head a circlet rare
Formed by the far-famed demiurge himself,
And moulded palmate, father Zeus to please.
In her own self had ovules strange been made,
Wondrous to see, innumerable as

The earth’s expanse and ocean wide support.

400 THE GODS OF OLD;

Or

~1 o>

Many of these he also stored away,

Wondrous, befitting life endowed with sound,

And from them grace in goodly measure beamed.
But when this beauteous ill-for-good he framed,

Then to the world where others, gods and men,

Abode, he led this prided in of her,

The bright-eyed daughter of a mighty sire;

And mortals frail, and gods immortal too

Were seized with wonder, gazing on the Jure

Enchanting, irresistible to men.

NOTES.

@dd.—The dAvd shows that something different from what was
said before is now introduced.

puy.—The strength of intelligential fire (arupés pvos dxapdroco),
already alluded to, was so disguised as to be suitable for
nature’s simplest animated kingdom, the vegetable.

év avOpdéwoot.—-That is, when life first felt in its vegetable being
the intelligential fire, (even though disguised or weakened), that
men were to possess in full.

évri “ opposed to, rivaling.”

yains cbpmaoce.—‘* And the earth brought forth grass.”

Gen. i. 12.

"Apoeyunets.—Homer describes Vulcan as lame from birth; other
writers ascribe this lameness to his having been hurled from
heaven by Zeus. Theepithet dugeyujes, (dude yvios), ‘ doubly
lame, or lame in both feet,” applied to him in consequence is
simply indicative of the fact that incandescence for earth was
born with the germs of decay, and that the innate light and
heat of our orb are crippled in comparison with what they once
were.

It is only as an epithet, however, that the term is used for
Vulcan. The true ‘Apdryvjes has a birth anterior to the
crippled son of Zeus, or to Zeus himself, and must be con-
sidered as synonymous with the mythological ASther,—with
that ‘‘Essence in the Cosmos,’ ‘‘ethereal fire of fame,”
“Fire,” or primeval Light, alluded to so often in the Greek
philosophies as that from which all the members of the
phenomenal world are derived. The derivation, duds yiov,
‘‘all-limbed, membered all around,” supports this interpreta-
tion; so also does the Latin equivalent, Mulciher, which
signifies ‘‘the director of matter ;” (vAn xuBepvde, the p» being
euphonic); and so do such phrases as mundi fabricator, and
opifer rerum, used by Ovid in his description of the formation
of the universe, Metamorphoses, lines 57 and 79.

The *Audeyvjers bears to the Creator the same relation that
the opus formationis does to the opus creationis,

10

12

14

17
18

19

23

25

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 401

Kpovidew.—That is, the protophyte ; for he was ‘‘ born in time.”

’Adnvn.—Tbe plant, once moulded by the fabricator, is developed
by Minerva or organic structure, who gives colour (yAavxémts) to
animated nature.

dpyugén (dpyds ipaive), ‘ fine-spun.”

“‘ Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil
not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

Matt. vi. 28, 29.
xataxpjbev.—The most important parts of the plant are now
described, and may be compared with the cut, the portion
to the right repre-
senting the male
and female organs,
that to the left, the
floral envelopes.
Kadvmrpny.— The co-
rolla, grasped in
the hands(xeipeoct)
or sepals of the
calyx.
otehdavous. — The
mitre-shaped an-
thers, swelling with
pollen, and sur-

rounding the head a, a. Stamens, with aan © an tad o. 6 4. ae ine
or stigma (apart) with sepals. f. °0! ary * ,
of the pistil.
orepdvyy.—lhe stigma, which is club-shaped or palmate in
Pee
évi.—In the ovary.

2 ba —The ovules; either from their being ‘‘ motile and
turgid” (xiwéw odadéos); or because they are the “ well-known
evidences ” (yv& dyAdw) of our origin.

In his Deucalion and Pyrrha, Ovid calls these ovules
‘* documenta,” in the concluding line:

‘¢ Et documenta damus, qua simus origine nati.”

trav wOAX évéOnxe.—The ovules of beasts, birds, and fishes, all of
which were to appear in their own time.
dya\opévnv.—The female is the last and proudest effort of organic
structure.
‘© fairest of creation, last and best
Of all God’s works.” —Milton.
Sddov aimov—
‘“‘ For beauty is the bait which, with delight,
Doth man allure, for to enlarge his kind ;

402 THE GODS OF OLD;

Beauty, the burning lamp of heaven’s light,
Darting her beams into each feeble mind,
Against whose power nor god nor man can find

Defence.” —Spenser.

As it was with the Protophyte, so was it with the first
of every new species of plant and animal that appeared
upon the earth. Since each one had a previous existence
as a male being, and an after existence when he wished for
and received the female of his kind, his history consisted in
brief of a prologue and an epilogue, and he necessarily
figured in it as a Prometheus and an Epimetheus. Inthe
human being there was no exception to the great design,
since man was formed first, the greatest Prometheus of
them all; nor to the general result, for then came woman.

It is in his “‘ Works and Days” that2Hesiod?dwells upon
the Epimethean phase of man’s existence, and his‘descrip-
tion of creation’s animated last is as terse and graphic as
that of the first of female sex. He goes back to the point
of leaving off—the first partnership between the two
immortals.

Entangled as he was time and again in the meshes of
Prometheus, Zeus avenged himself to the full. If Mind
introduced him to a third party, Life accepted the new
member and allowed him to participate in the general
business for a time. In this way appeared the Protophyte
and the Mushroom, the Calamite and Lepidodendron, the
gigantic Fern, and many another of pith and moment in
their day; in this way too came the Protozoon and the
Eozoon, the Orthoceras and Trilobite, the mailed Pterich-
thys, the Pterodaciyl, Dinotherium, Mastodon, and count-
less others of high repute in the world’s exchange.

But many-kinded as they were, and numerous as they
were, and whether they ploughed the sea or drummed the
land for a living, a day came for each when Life grew
surfeited with affluence, irritated with the connection, and
disturbed in spirit. As he could not sunder altozether the
compact between himself and Mind, he revenged himself
upon the third party, and retired the obnoxious individuals,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 403

one after another, to the cold oblivion of the ocean’s depths.
With every geological subsidence were the flora and fauna
of centuries destroyed ; with every such cataclysm was the
fire concealed,—not alone the intelligential fire of these
animated beings, but also the central fire of our globe that
was hidden more and more by the crust which the lifeless
bodies of these beings helped in no small degree to
thicken.

There came another day, however, when the heaven was
blue and the sun shone bright and clear,—a Post-tertiary
Day when Prometheus, stealing again the fire, or the last
consignment of the fire, brought Zeus face to face with a
new partner who called himself Man. Did Life expect
him through the fulness of prefiguration? The Greek
poet does not think so, for he says that man’s advent was
hidden from thunder-loving Zeus (Aa@ay Aia reptixépavvor),
that is, from existing plants and animals with whose and
for whose vital workings the rain clouds gather which
bring on the thunder. Was man but an evolution of some
pre-existent mammal? The poet again says ‘“‘No;” for
not from Life in any concrete form did man come, but
from self-counselling, self -communing, or abstract life
(Avés zdpa pnridevros)—and it is well to note that pyrides is
but the adjective form of pjris, and that this is yu rls, ‘ not
something, not concrete, abstract.”’

Man came, and exhibited his independence from the
first. He stared critically at Life from foot to head, and
then, with much complacency, looked up beyond him. He
measured himself with Mind, and found no difference. He
took the well-worn ledger from the shelf and opened a new
account. He cried out, ‘‘I am the measure of life, Iam
the measure of mind, J am the measure of all things. I
am the firm; and being so .’ He left out his part-
ners’ names and wrote down ‘‘ Man.”’

The immortalised ideals must have revolted at the
slight, Zeus pyres particularly so. Ousted as he was,
abstract life may have had influence enough to point the
looks at fowl and beast and to note the two of every kind,—

DD2

404 THE GODS OF OLD;

to institute fine distinctions between solitude and happiness,
between enjoyment and content,—and to instil strange,
elusive yearnings in this new lord and master.

‘‘The world was sad !—the garden was a wild!
And man, the hermit, sighed !—till woman smiled!”

If so, life’s promptings bore their fruit, and woman was
made, the counterpart of Promethean man, the Eve of
Epimethean Adam. Then did the epilogue begin which
ended so fatefully for the human race.

With mind inferior to that of man alone, Eve was his
superior in grace and beauty; so that in comparison with
him she was the Zeus Olympian, the acme of visible life.
She was Pandora, “‘ the all-endowed;’’ she was Pandora,
‘‘ the giver of all; and among some of the things in her
giving was the tempting apple.

Had the Epimethean Adam, says Hesiod in conclusion,
but minded well the warning given to Promethean man,
all would have been well. But he did not. He accepted a
gift from this living acme, Eve; and only when he had
eaten of the fruit and had experienced the miseries atten-
dant on expulsion from the garden,—only then did he
ponder !

AAG Zevs Expuipe yokwodpevos ppeciv jouw,
Orre pu ELardrnoe Wpopnbeds dyxvhopjrns’
totver’ dp’ avOpdroow éunoaro Kydea Auypd.
kpuwpe O€ wip’ 7b pév adris eds mais "lareroio
5 ekdey’ avOpammoior Atés mapa pytidevtos
év xoth@ vapOnxt, A\ab&y Aia reprixépavvey.
rov 5€ yokwrdpevos mpoaépy vepeAnyepéra Zevs-
‘Tarertovion, wavreav wept pydea cides,
xaipets wip Kdepas kal euds dpévas nreporeioas,
10 colt’ aire péya mihpa Kat dvdpdow éocopévoie’
tois & éy@ dvrt wupds ddow Kaxov @ Kev Gmavres
réprovrat katt Gupov éby xakdv adudayaravres.
“Qs &har’* ex 8 éyéhacce rarhp avdpav re Gedy re
"Hoaorov & éxédeuoe wepixduréy orre tdxtoTa
15 yatav vdet Pipe, év 8 dvOpadwov Oéuev abdjv
xat cbévos, Abavdrats Sé Geois eis Sra éickev
mapbevxis Kadov etdos, emnpatoy' adrap "AOHyqy
epya Sidacxijoat, rodvdaidadoy iorév tpaivew*

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 405

kal xdpw dpguxéat xehadj xpuoeny 'Adpodirny,

20 xat wéOov dpyadéov Kai yuroBdpous pereddvas-
év S€ Oépev kivedy re véov kat émixhowov AOos
‘Eppelav iJvarye, Sidxropoy ’Apyerpovrnv.

Qs hab" of 8 éridovro Ati Kpoviom dvaxre

airixa 5 ék yains mAdoce Kdvros ’"Apdeyuners

25 smapOéve aidoiy ixehov Kpovidew da Bovdas*
(ce dé xai kdopyoe 9 yhavedmes ’AOHvy’
appl dé of Xapirés re Ocal cal wérma MerOd
Sppous ypuoeiovs COecav xpar audi be rhrye
*Opat xadXixopot orépov dvbeow ciapwoicr®

30 smdvra dé of xpot kéopov eyppoce TladAds ’AGnrn.
év © pa of ornbecor Stdxropos "Apyeupovrns
yevded 0 aipudtous te Adyous Kal éwikNorov #Oos
redfe Atos BovAgot Bapuxrimou' év 8 dpa havi
Ojjxe Ocev Kipv& dvdpnve be tHvde yuvaixa

35 Tavdapqy, drt raves 'Ohipmia Sdpar’ ¢xovres
Sdpov edapyoav, map avdpdow dApyotjow.

Atrap éret Sédov aimdy dunyavoy é€eréheccer,
els "EmipnOéa népre warnp Kdutov ’Apyeupdyrny
Sapov dyovra, Ge&v Taxty dyyedov* 000’ "Emipnbeds

40 édpdoal’, ds of feure Tlpopnfeds unwore SGpov
dé£acOat wap Zyvis ’OAupmiov, adX’ droméumwery
éLorice, pi mov Tt Kaxéy Ovyroiot yevyrat.
abrap 6 SeEdpevos, dre 7) xaxdv ely’, événoe.

Works and Days, 47-89.
But Zeus, disturbed in spirit, covered o’er
Whate’er Prometheus subtly lured him to;
And thus were dire disasters framed for men.
He hid the fire ; once more from abstract Zeus,
Unknown to thunder-loving Zeus, ’twas filehed
Within a hollow narthex for the race
Of mankind by Iapet’s noble son.
And thus did gloomy Zeus disturbed converse :
*¢O apt-born Mind who knows the plans of all,
Thow’rt pleased in soul at having lured my thoughts,
At having stolen fire, a mighty scourge
For thine own self and men that are to come;
But I shall give them that which rivals fire,
An ill with which, embracing each his own,
All will be gladdened to their heart’s desire.”
Thus he; and laughed the sire of gods and men.
Then did he prompt the fabricator famed ;
‘With water quickly mingle earth, and place
Man’s speech, man’s energy therein, and shape
A maiden’s beauteous and beloved form,
In visage like to the immortal gods; ”

406

THE GODS OF OLD;

Minerva too, ‘‘ Teach her all useful works,
To deftly weave the many-coloured web ;”
The golden Venus, ‘ Pour around her head
Grace in abundance, troubled tenderness,
And household cares relaxing to the limbs ; ”
And Mercury, chief minister that slays
Simplicity, he prompted thus, ‘‘ In her
Infuse a fitful mind and tricksy way.”

Thus he; and they the Kronos-born obeyed.
The far-famed demiurge immediate framed
From earth the likeness of a bashful maid,
Conforming to the Kronos-born’s desires ;
Bright-eyed Minerva robed and decked her out;
The Graces fair and sweet Persuasion placed
A wealth of breastwork on her chest, both sides ;
The well-tressed Seasons circled her all round
With harvest rich and rare; Minerva’s all
Of ornament was moulded to her shape.

But in her breast, for boasting life’s free- will,
The candour-slaying minister prepared

Pretexts, and wheedling words, and tricksy way,
And in her, too, he placed no lack of speech.

This maid—a scourge for pleasure-seeking men,—
The herald of the gods Pandora called,

Because with gifts endowered she had been
By all that revel in Olympian homes.

But when this rare, this matchless piece of art
Was all complete, to Epimetheus then
The Father sent an envoy swift, divine,

Bearing as gift the candour-slayer famed :

Nor kept this Epimetheus well in mind,

As told him by Prometheus, ne’er to take

A present from Olympian Zeus, but back

To thrust it from him, lest perchance some ill
Should happen to the race of mortal men.
But when he took and suffered ill, —he thought!

NOTES.

3 xp8ea dAvypd.—The periodic destruction and subsidence of living

forms throughout the ages was a presage of the Deluge for
mankind, -

20 pereddvas.— ‘* Women act their parts

When they do make their ordered houses know them.”
Knowles,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 407

21 xtvedy.—Dogged, stubborn; and in a better sense, having convio-~
tion without proof, and adhering to it against reason.

‘**T have no other but a woman’s reason ;
I think him so, because J think him so.”—Shekspeare.

‘‘ When a woman wills she will, you may depend on’t ;
And when she won’t she won’t, so there’s an end on’t.”

22 ‘Eppeiayv—(féw) Change, variety, inconstancy.

‘“¢Q woman, in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,

And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made.”—Scott.

"Apyevpovrnv.—A transposed form of dypepdvryy (dypeios hévo),
‘the slayer of what is rural.”
Rural life has ever been considered typical of simplicity and
innocence. Thomson apostrophises it thus :—

‘* Here too dwells simple truth; plain innocence;
Unsullied beauty; sound unbroken youth.”

What alters this happy mode of being? Change (‘Eppeias),
which is at once the herald (8:dxropov) and the slayer of sim-

plicity (dpyecpévrnv).
28 éSppovs.—A haven, place of shelter or refuge; the breasts.

‘©On her bare breast, the heart of all her land.”’—Shakspeare.

29 dvbeow ciapwotct.—
‘A silver line, that from the brow to the crown,
And in the middle, parts the braided hair,
Just serves to show how delicate a soil
The golden harvest grows in.”— Wordsworth.

30 awdvra kéopov.—‘‘ Is it for that such outward ornament
‘Was lavished on their sex ?”’— Milton.

33 dovyv.— A dearth of words a woman need not fear.”—Young.

34 Gcdv kiput.—We have altered the punctuation, and joined @eé»
kiput to dvdunve. Adam is meant, as being the herald of the
gods, the fore-runner of immortal men.

*« And Adam called his wife’s name, Eve, because she was
the mother of all living.”—Genesis iii. 20.

408 THE GODS OF OLD.

35 wdvres ’OAVpmia.— «* Adorned
With what all earth or heaven could bestow
To make her amiable.” —Milton.

38 ’Apyebdvrny.—That is, Eve, by whom primeval innocence was
slain.

‘But once beguiled—and ever more beguiling.” — Byron.

BOOK EIGHTH.

WRESTLING WITH THEIR FATE.

CHAPTER I.

MYTHS.

The Titanomachia.—When Zeus had waxed sufficiently in strength
and years, and had been reinforced by those of his kin
whom the potion, so skilfully prepared by Metis, compelled
Kronos to disgorge, war was declared between him and the
Titans for the sovereignty of the world. The latter were
encamped on Othrys, Zeus and his forces on Olympus; and
the combat lasted for ten years without any marked advan-
tage for either side. At the end of this period Zeus,
assisted materially by the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes
whom, owing to the advice of Gea, he had delivered from
Tartarus, obtained the victory after a most desperate struggle.
Having plunged his enemies into Tartarus and set the
Hecatoncheires over them as guard, he proceeded to reward
his followers and allies with the spoils. Reserving Olympus
for himself, he gave the empire of the sea to Neptune, and
that of the infernal regions to Pluto.

The Gigantomachia.—Inflamed greatly by the punishment meted to
her Titan offspring, Gea next brought forth the Giants,
begotten of the drops of blood that flowed from the wound
inflicted by Kronos upon Uranus. These Giants are de-
scribed as large in stature, irresistible in strength, and
terrible in aspect. Their hair hung loose upon their
shoulders, their beard was permitted to grow untouched,
and their feet resembled those of dragons. They were born,
according to some writers, in the Phlegrwan plains, and
according to others, in Pallene. Headed by Alcyoneus and
Porphyrion, and armed with immense rocks and trunks o
trees, they waged war on the immortals, and endeavoured,
according to some accounts, to scale to heaven by piling

410

THE GODS OF OLD;

mountain upon mountain, Ossa upon Pelion, and Olympus
upon Ossa. As there was a current rumour among the
Gods that the Giants could not be conquered without the
assistance of a mortal, Zeus summoned Hercules to aid him
in the combat. The hero first attacked Alcyoneus, and as
this giant was immortal in his native land, Hercules, aided
by Minerva, dragged him from Pallene and thus made an
end of him. He then turned his attention to Porphyrion
who, while struggling with Juno, was struck with lightning
by Zeus, and then stretched low by the arrows of Hercules.
In like manner did Apollo, Bacchus, Vulcan, Minerva,
Neptune, and the other deities each engage a giant foe and
destroy him with the help of Hercules.

The Typhomachia.—When Geea felt that the Giants were being

worsted by the Gods, she entered into close communion
with Tartarus and begot the youngest and last of her
children, Typhoeus. Hesiod describes him as having im-
mense hands. tireless feet, eyes that blazed forth fire, and a
hundred heads like to those of a dragon, from which there
issued fire and terrible voices of every conceivable descrip-
tion. Apollodorus says that Typhceus was born in Cilicia,
and had the mingled nature of man and beast; that in size
and bulk he overtopped the mountains, his head approached
the stars, and so immense were his hands that one rested on
the east and the other on the west of earth. His body was
winged all over, he had a hundred dragon heads, his lower
parts resembled those of a dragon, and from every head and
every eye there darted fire. With terrible voices issuing
from his heads, with surging waves of fire, and hurling
upwards masses of red-hot rocks, he advanced towards
Olympus and laid claim to absolute dominion. At his
approach the Gods fled, as it is said, to Egypt, and
metamorphosed themselves to animals, with the exception,
as some aver, of Zeus and Minerva. After a most fearful
contest, during which Zeus scourged the terrific being and
blew off one head after another, the monster was finally
overcome and buried under Mount Aina.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 411

CHAPTER II.

HEAT VERSUS LIFE.

The Battle of the Titans.—Assuming the granite to be
the oldest of the rocks, we must then believe it to be the
first compound formed, that is, the first matter rendered
molar by molecular combination or attraction. This
implies a previous time when compound matter was not,
and when molecular matter was all-powerful.

Ii we deny the priority of granite, and believe that a
crust existed previously, no traces of which have as yet
been discovered, we only push back the existence of a
compound body, and intensify the molecular existence of
matter previous to this compound, since the further back
we go the greater will be the heat, and heat is the all-
essential agent in reducing matter to molecularity and
keeping it so.

At whatever point, consequently, we date the inception
of compound matter, there and then must we admit the
potentiality of molecularity, and from that point believe
that the struggle for superiority -commenced between
the two.

That matter is still in a molecular or vaporous condition
in the central parts of our globe is believed by many
geologists; that it was once universal and all-powerful
when that globe was a molten ball of fire, is believed by
all. It was for the covering or crust of our globe that the
fight was waged between molecular and molar matter,
and we are all cognisant of the result. A long one—
millions of years—it was, and the duration of the battle
was only equalled by the fierceness with which it was
fought, by that exhibition of force requisite to combine and
destroy the union of elements. How mighty was the force

412 THE GODS OF OLD;

on either side can be intelligibly grasped only by remem-
bering that the energy displayed by the combination of
hydrogen and oxygen into steam is equal to the impact of
22,320 tons falling from a height of one foot, and that the
respective energies of steam condensing into water, and of
water freezing into ice, are equal to the impact of 2,900
and 433 tons falling from a like distance.

Those are the combining or actual energies: we have
but to reverse the process in order to know the decom-
posing or potential energies. ‘‘ As potential energy dis-
appears, actual energy comes into play; throughout the
universe, the sum of these two energies is constant.”

The combat was certainly an unequal one at the start,
owing to the intense heat which disassociated the com-
bining particles and repelled them from one another. But
still the war went on in one shape or another, and the
molecular Titans, strive as they might, could not altogether
prevent the elements from differentiating one by one, nor
from occasionally banding together on the confines for
some fierce foray that invariably terminated in their quick
dispersion and slaughter. And so it went on for ages,
during all which the potential energy of the Titans ruled
the world, and matter bowed the head to molecular being.

A day came at last when there was born of time that
which was neither molar nor molecular, neither solid,
liquid, nor gaseous, that which was not even an element
and therefore was not matter, and that which, if a force,
differs from all other forces when tested by the principle of
correlation. Life was born, and Zeus threw in his lot
with the weaker side and against the Titan crew. A
formidable foe he proved, and feared from the beginning.
The tradition had been handed down that he would rule
the world ; and Kronos, pledged by the Titans, had agreed
to swallow him when born. A kindly earth and his own
immaterial nature saved him from the maw that had
already swallowed his material brothers and sisters, and
so imperceptible were the beginnings of infant life upon
our globe that it was suckled and guarded, strengthened

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 413

and fortified for many a day before the insolent Titans
were even aware of his existence. When they did become
cognisant of the fact, it was too late.

Life had waxed in years and in strength, had raised his
head and seen that the broad domain of earth was one well
worth contending for to the death; and so he boldly flung
down the gauntlet and defied his foes. The challenge was
accepted, and the Titanomachia began.

The molecular forces fought naturally from the stand-
point of radiant heat, that is, from matter sublimed or
brought to a state of vapour by heat and moving in direct
lines—the iWnrjs “Odpvos (6p0es) of the myth. Without a
well-recognised leader, they trusted to their numbers, their
ardour, to their impetuosity of motion, and direct charges.

The molar forces, on the other hand, contended from
the visible combinations (Olympus, obAos Aduaw) of matter.
While fewer in number, they too were equally resolute with
their foes, were more united as a body, and had Life as
leader, a host in himself, and a wary general that saw
confusion in the numbers of the enemy, rashness in their
ardour, the weakness of expansion in their motion, and who
opened his lmes to the direct charges and harassed his
adversaries from flank and rear. .

A host in himself we have said was Zeus, and the
assertion is in no way hyperbolical. Man is an aggregate
of molecules. Let us compute the population of to-day as
1,500,000,000, and the average weight of each individual as
80 Ibs. Some fifty years ago this billion and a-half of
people may be considered as existing in the germinal form,
as capable consequently of being crowded into a cubic inch
of space, and as weighing less probably than an ounce or
two. Bit by bit, molecule by molecule, did they grow in
size and weight, until now they occupy the land surface of
the globe and have a gross weight of 60 millions of tons.
What has done all this, what has abstracted this enormous
molar mass from molecularity? Life. And yet this is
but a small portion of what Life achieves in its own
' Kingdom. Every beast, fowl, and fish, and every creeping

414. THE GODS OF OLD;

thing, commenced existence as a germ, and to-day they
swarm in the fields, the air, the sea, the nooks and crannies
of our earth, greater, far greater in number than the
human race, and head for head outmeasuring the bulk
and weight of individual man. Nor is this all; there is
still the vegetable kingdom, each member of which also
began its being as a germ or cell, and grew molecule by
molecule; whose numbers are. countless, and whose bulk
in many cases outvies that of the most unwieldy dweller of
the land and sea. To make an estimate of the molar mass
of either animal or plant kingdom would be impossible,
and were it capable of being done, the figures in billions,—
trillions of tons, would but pain the eye and madden the
comprehension. What, again we ask, has achieved all this?
Life. In cell and germ has he planted his standard: they
grow with his growth and strengthen with his strength.
His presence is infused in every bone and muscle, trunk
and bough, in every member, leaf, and rootlet, every nerve
and vessel; his active energy pervades in part and whole,
directing, guiding, and overseeing the humblest and the
greatest of his subjects; through him do they exist and
procreate, and through his counsels do they abstract
molecule after molecule of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and
nitrogen, of iron, lime, potash, phosphorus, of every known
element in short, to combine into their.own mass and prove
to the world at large that the dynasty of the Titans is no
more. What has happened recently and is happening to-
day happened also in the past. The coral islands of the
Pacific, the nummulitic strata of the Tertiary period, the
hippuritic limestone and chalk of the Cretaceous, and
the coal beds of the Carboniferous are evidences not alone
of the profusion of living beings in their respective eras,
but also of the mordinate amount of molecular matter
which they abstracted from sea and air and land in order
to form those rocky layers that are tens of hundreds, some
of them tens of thousands of feet in thickness.

Hooker, citing carbonate of lime in sea-water as an
instance of the processes of life, says, “ Shell-animals

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 415

there gather it to make their shells, or coral animals to
make their skeletons. This is a vital operation, for in the
bodies of these animals, by a vital power, the carbonate of
lime is separated from the water in which it is dissolved,
and is deposited in a solid form. Then by a mechanical
operation, these shells and skeletons become massed into
solid rock.’’ And elsewhere the same writer says, ‘“‘A
large portion of the crust of the earth is, in fact, the result
of the aggregate labour of minute animals and vegetables.”

But to go back to the days of Kronos. While Life was
by no means the universal and potential being that he was
later on and is to-day, he was still a force possessed of great
capabilities, actively energetic, the one and only leader for
the cohorts of combination to rally round, and a foeman
worthy of being dreaded even from the beginning.

Hesiod, when writing of the great primal battle between
the combining and the repelling forces, brings us back to
the time when Life entered on his first campaign and
impressed upon his followers the strong necessity of union
if they hoped to win success. They followed his advice,
even to-the death, for thousands of them went down,—down
towards the centre, as science tells us, after having become
noted for their weight and influence and distinguished
qualities upon the surface,—down towards the centre, as
Hesiod tells us, when he says that Gea ‘did ever deposit
all”? in the hope of sharing eventually in the prize -when
the grand distribution of land and sea and air would be
brought about. And these were succeeded by thousands
more who, after imitating the noble example of their
predecessors while in life, followed them into the fiery
furnace when they could fight no more. Thus it went on,
the surface particles growing heavier in Olympus, and then
sinking towards the centre, while the central particles,
hotter and lighter, mounted from the ancient Othrys to the
regions above. Such determined action on the part of
Life’s followers was productive from the first of notable
consequences, for with this union or combination of matter
there necessarily appeared Weight or Gravity, Shape or

416 THE GODS OF OLD;

diversity of form, and Division or that complex process
which accompanies matter when evoluting from the simple.
Life had, in truth, brought back these Hecatoncheires ;
and Hesiod commences the Titanomachia by appropriately
introducing them upon the scene.

*OBptdpew 8 ds np&ra warnp &Siacare bupo

Kérre vr dé Tin, dgce xparep@ evi Séopne,

Hvopeny irépoTtAov aydpevos dé xai eidos

kal péyeOos' xarévaoce 8 bd xOovds eipuodeins

ev oly dhye’ Exovres bd yOovi varerdovres

elar’ én’ éoxariy, peyddns év weipact yains,

60a pad, adxyvipevot, cpadin peya wévbos exovres.

Ad oeas Kpovidys re kat dbdvarot Geot Got,

ots Téxev HUKopos “Peta Kpovou év diddryti,

Yains ppadpooivycw dviyayov és dos adtis

abr) yap opw Gravra dunveréws xatédeEe,

ov xelvots vikny Te Kat dyhabv edyos dpéa bat.

Snpov yap pdpvavro, wdvov Gupadyé’ exovres,

Tirfves re Geol xai door Kpdvou é£eyévorro,

avriov GdAnhotot Ota Kpatepas bopivas*

of pev ad’ inpndas "Opuds Terqves dyavoi,

ot 8’ dp’ dw’ Otddpzroto Geol, Saripes édwv,

ods Téxev HUKOpOS “Peta Kpdve edvnbcioa’

of pa tér’ adAnAacoe wévor Ouparyé’ Exovres

cuvexéws éudyovro Séxa meious evtavrovs.

ovdé tis Hv épidos yadenns Adats ovde TeAEvTH)

ovderépors, isov dé rédos TéraTo mroAgpovo.— Lheog. 617-638,

When first in spirit wrathful grew their sire

With Gyes, Cottus, and Briareus,

Struck by their overwhelming strength, their shape,
Their size, he held them fast in durance vile

And stamped them down beneath the wide-wayed earth.
There, filled with pain, those subterraneous ones
Lay on the verge in mighty earth’s extremes,

Long, long in anguish, and in heart distressed.

But these did Zeus and other deathless gods

Whom fair-haired Rhea, wife of Kronos, bore,
Bring back to light through artful ways of Gé,
Since she did e’er deposit all for them,

To win with them and glory bright obtain.

For long they fought, with toil and moil beset,

And face to face throughout the conflicts dire,

Those Titan gods and all from Kronos sprung ;

The Titans haught from Othrys the sublime,

And from Olympus all the gods benign

Whom fair-haired Rhea, wed to Kronos, bore.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 417

And so, with toil and moil for both they fought
Unceasing ever for ten periods full;

Nor let nor stay from bitter strife was there
For either, and war’s tide rolled even on.

“For ten periods full,” says the poet, did the fight
between molecular and molar foree continue, and fierce as
it was, unceasing as it was, neither side could claim the
victory at the close. Let us bear well in mind the different
states of matter and the conditions on our globe at the
time. In solids, the particles are so firmly held together
by attraction that the bodies retain their figure and
capability of division: in gases, the repulsive forces so
predominate that the attractive force is overecome—and
with it figure and divisibility,—and the particles are
driven asunder.

Life, all the other Kronos-born, and the Hecatoncheires
fought for the solid; the molecular Titans for the gaseous ;
and so intense was the heat on one side, and the desire for
combination on the other, that neither solid nor gas could
gain a marked advantage for many a long day. ‘Nor let,
nor stay,” to use the poet’s words, there was from the
bitter fight; and the tenth day, as he says, still saw them
encamped against each other as hostile and apparently as -
vigorous as before. Supposing, as there is every reason
for doing so, a period (éxtavrds) to be equal in length of time
to that of each Labour of Hercules, and the Tenth Labour
(the carrying off of Geryon’s oxen) to be synchronous with
the Tertiary Period, then, according to Hesiod, the duration
of the contest between the forces of early heat and of early
life was as long as all the years that elapsed from the end
of that contest up to the close of Tertiary time. This, by
the way, is curiously in unison with Hitchcock’s supposition
that the period occupied by earth in changing from a molten
surface to a solid one was longer than all Paleozoic,
Mesozoic, and Cainozoic time put together.

The poet resumes his narrative by taking advantage of
a poet’s license. On or about the close of the tenth cycle,
Life summons all his followers in high conclave. While

G.0. BE

418 THE GODS OF OLD;

the nectar flows, he reminds the Heeatoncheires how,
through means of his, they had been called back from the
enfeebled state in which they bad been held confined in
gaseous matter, and while bidding them to stretch forth
for a final effort the arms, as itresistible as they are
imperceptible, of attraction, shape, and divisibility, he at
the same time admonishes them to be ever mindful of the
interests of solidity. He is answered, not by Attraction,
not by Figure,—it made but little difference to the latter
and Jess to the former, whether life ruled or not over the
molar masses,—but by Cottus, whose prophetic instinct
warned him of the cold that was to come for earth in ages
yet unborn,—cold, the deadly foe of germination, budding,
procreation, decay, of the myriad complex or dividing pro-
cesses for which Cottus stands. The Hecatoncheir dreaded
“‘the chilly curse,’ and knowing that vital force was the
one and only protection against it, he promises for himself
and brethren to safeguard the domain of life by throwing
it into vast foldings or plications.

GAN’ Gre 87 Keivowrt wapérxyebey Eppara mdvra,

7 + 3 if £ . > Ny
véxrap T auBpocin re, ramep Geol adroit aver,
mavray 7 év oTndecow dé£ero Gupds aynvep,
és véxtap 8 émdcavro cal auSpociny épareiwny,
87) rore Tots peréeure tratip avdpay te Gedy re*

Kexduré pev, Tains re kai Odpavot dyAad réxva,

ta
bpp’ cima td pe Oupds évt ornberce Keevet,
#8n yap pada Snpdy evayrion adANAoLot
vixns Kal Kpdreos wept papydpe? para mavra
Tirfvés, te Geot cat oot Kpovov exyevdpec ba.
tpets 8€ peydAny te Binv Kai xetpas ddarrous
haivere Turnverow evavrior év Sat Avyph,

id 4 FJ 4 a £
punodpevat udrdrntos évnéos, 6ooa waddyres
és ddos ayy adixer Ge, Sucnreyéos did Serpov,
c iq 4 A if A , AJ ’
qyeerépas bid Bovdas bard Cépov nepdevros.

“Os daro’ trav & efatris dpeiBero Kdrros dpipor'
Sarpsn’, ovK adayra mipavKeat’ dA kal airot
iSpev, 6 Tor wept pev mparides, mept 8 éoti vonpa,
ddkrijp § abavdérorw apis yéeveo Kpuepoio.
wpoppov 8 éEadris, dpetdixroy dad Seopar,

a > - eo. £ *
onow exuppoovvyow tad Cédhou jepsevros
nrvGoper, Kpdvou tie dvaf, avdedara rabdrres.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 419

T@ Kal viv drevel re vd@ Kal ewihpovt BovAy
puodpeba xparos bpov év aiva Syiorire,
papvdpevat Tirnow ava xparepds bopivas.

“Qs par’: éemyynoay 5é Oeoi, Sarijpes édav,
pibov dxotcavtes’ modguov 8 éAtdaieto Gupos
padAov é7’ # romdpode.—Theog. 639-666.

When now before them lay refreshments spread,

Ambrosia, nectar, such as gods consume,

When spirit plainly swelled in breasts of all

While nectar and divine ambrosia passed,

Then thus harangued the sire of gods and men :

‘“‘ Give heed, great race of Uranus and Ge,

That I may speak the urgings of my mind.

For long, exceeding long, and front to front,

Have we, the Titan gods and Kronos-born,

Waged war each day for victory and rule.

Your strength and hands impalpable now show

In conflict dread against the Titan host,

Giving due heed to kindly union, and

' How back to light through plans of ours ye came,

Ye that had suffered, suffered much and long

From galling bondage ‘neath the misty gloom.”

Thus he; and complex Cottus answered back :

‘‘ With words of wisdom hast thou spoken, lord ;

But we too know, in sooth, what there’s in store

For vitals and for mind, and that thou’rt born

A warder of the chilly curse from gods.

And we, O king, O thou from Kronos sprung,

We, who have suffered almost hopeless ’neath

The misty darkness, have at thy behests

Come back once more from bondage without stint.

So now with mind intent and duteous wish,

Fighting with Titans through the conflicts dire,

Shall we in war’s dread tug infold thy might.”
He spoke; the gods, the givers of all good,

Hearing his speech applauded to the full ;

And more than ever raged the thirst for war.

The day approached that witnessed the final struggle
between heat and life for absolute dominion.

Whatever obscurity there may be as to the time when
the Titanomachia commenced, there appears to be very
little, if any, as to that of its termination. In the first
place it will be remembered that Hesiod, in his building
of our earth, goes no further than the granite (Echidna)

-EBE2

420 THE GODS OF OLD;

and the schistose rocks (Asteria). All his personages and
incidents lead up to these, and these presumably to the battle
itself. In the next place, there are many words and phrases
(to be noticed further on), in the concluding part of his
description that point indubitably to those same schistose
rocks, and to the notable characteristics of plicution,
schistous division, and inclination impressed upon them.

Again, what are the main characteristics of the con-
test ?

1. A struggle that lasted for unknown ages between the
forces of heat and those of life, without advantage to
either side.

2. A final and tremendous conflict between the two at
the close of the tenth cycle, in which land, sea, and
air were alike involved, and in which fire, scorching
heat, earthquakes, chemical explosions, thunder, light-
ning, and the great physical forces of nature played so
prominent a part. ;

8. The triumph of life or Zeus.

4, The hurling of the Titans into Tartarus.

In the geological record there is no period but one that
will suit these characteristics. The purely sedimentary
rocks are derived from the ruins of the preceding, show an
originally tranquil deposition, are unaltered in texture, bear
no impress of scorching heat ‘or of disturbance outside of
what upheaval, volcanic energy, and localised plutonic
action would cause, and are equally rich in fossils differing
not so much in profusion as they do in evolution.

But underneath the oldest of those sedimentary strata
there lies a mixed mass of granite, and of gneiss and other
schists, computed to be 30,000 feet or more in thickness,
whose base has never been discovered, and all of which
are classed as Archean rocks. There is much that is vague
as to their origin, but their crystalline structure, the
welding of their particles and lamin, their crumpled and
vertical bedding and vast plications denote intense internal
and external disturbance, and stamp them with the marks
of fire and heat. Furthermore, no fossils have been dis-

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 421

covered in them. They may have existed—it is the strong
opinion that they did exist—fewer in number probably,
and simpler in nature it is to be supposed; but if so, al.
vestiges of their remains, the possible Eozoon excluded,
have been destroyed by fire, heat, and other agencies.
Fire and heat are as conspicuous in those hypogene rocks
as life is in those above them. Since the stratified nature
of the gneiss and other metamorphic rocks denotes an
originally quiet and horizontal deposition on their part
equally with the sedimentary pile above them, the altered,
convulsed, and non - fossiliferous appearance of these
Archean rocks leads geologists to conclude—

1. That their crystalline structure was a subsequent
process that went on for an indefinite length of time,
during all of which the heat was so intense that life
must have had a hard struggle for existence.

2. That the close of the Archean age was witness to the
occurrence among the Archean rocks of one of the
most fearful convulsions that ever wrecked our earth
since a crust was established upon it.

3. That the end of the struggle was a complete triumph
for life, since we find the Silurian rocks, that succeed
and rest upon the Archean, graced by the presence
in profusion of Protozoans, Radiates, Mollusks, and
Articulates,—that is, by every division of the animal
kingdom, the Vertebrates alone excepted.

4, That the melting and re-cementing of the schistose
rocks formed a more stable crust for our globe, and
served essentially to confine the fire and heat within
the depths below.

Ii we compare these geological outlines with the mytho-
logical ones, we are struck by the close correspondence
between the two, and may reasonably infer that the
Titanomachia is synchronous with the close of the Archean
age, and that the celebrated battle of the Gods and Titans
is a vivid picture of what may well be supposed to have
occurred at a period when our earth was so mysteriously
and so terribly convulsed—

422 THE GODS OF OLD;

payny 8 dpéyaptoy éyetpav
s , f , + - r
mayres, OnActat Te kal dpoeves, Fart Keive,
Terqvés te Beot kat door Kpdvov é£eyévovro,
os Te Zebs "EpéGeoguy tnd xOords fixe Piwade,
dewot re xparepoi Te, Binv imépordov exorres.
ray éxardv pev xeipes am dpwv diraovro
~ c ~ .% a ¢ 4 tA
waco pas, keadal dé éxdot@ wevTnKovTa
é& Spov emépuxor emi otBapotor pédeoory.
a ’ LA 2 "4 > » a
of rére Tirqveoct xaréotaber év Sat Avyp7,
wérpas nAUBarous oTBaphs ev Xepolv exovtes.
Tirqves 8 €répwbev exaprovarro pddayyas
fa ~~ ae > ” aM
mpoppovews, xerpav Te Bins F dua épyov épatvov
duddrepot. —Theog. 666-678.

Then on that day unenviable strife

Was roused by all, by male and female like,

By Titan gods, by all from Kronos sprung,

And by those likewise, wondrous strange and strong,
With overwhelming force, whom Zeus brought back
From evolution under earth to light :

*Way from whose shoulders hundred hands there flashed
Alike for all ; from fifty shoulders grew

Anent the well-squared members heads for each :

These faced the Titans then in deadly strife,

With well-squared hands that grasped the massy rocks.
The Titans, on their side, with forward soul

Their columns reinforced ; quick showed the two

The work of hands, and that of simple force.

The rocks themselves bear testimony to the fierceness of
the Archzan battle. Whole strata, miles in extent, have
been crumpled and folded as if they were but so many
sheets of paper; they have been raised from the horizontal
position and inclined at every angle, even to the perpen-
dicular; their lamine and smallest particles are shown
microscopically to have been sharers in the fight, for they
too are welded, as if were, into each other and exhibit the
same contortions, crumpling, and intense plication that the
larger masses do. ‘‘ Imagination,’ says M‘Culloch, when
writing of those rocks as observed in Scotland, “can
scarcely conceive an intricacy of flexure of which a,
resemblance could not be found in the gneiss.”

“The nucleus of the whole group,” writes Anderson
of the Grampian Hills, ‘‘is granite, one dense aggregation

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 423

of crystals, now rent and furrowed by a thousand seams,
the heart and penetralia bared and open, a convulsed sea
of molten matter still and motionless as the grave! The
associated rocks, all of the primary class, are gneiss, mica-
slate, quartz-rock, chlorite-slate, and limestone; and these
enclose no relic of a living thing.”

Their very constituents, the quartz, mica, and feldspar
are inextricably laced, and the micaceous folia curl and
twist in a manner scarcely to be distinguished from that of
the fluid structure of obsidian or any other purely igneous
rock.

All this denotes a previous state of great flexibility, if not
of thorough fusion, when the particles and masses were free
to move and enter into new combination; all this denotes
mighty forces and a mighty conflict, such as could change
miles of rock from the horizontal to the perpendicular, and
squeeze them together as we would a newspaper. Land,
sea, and air, fire, heat, steam, pressure, even electricity,
all appear to have participated in the geological struggle.
Water, crystals of common salt, and liquid carbonic acid
have been observed in the minute cavities of the crystalline
particles; and the jomts have been ascribed to electric
influence. So that to the horrors of a land wrecked with
eruptions of molien matter and convulsed with the quakings
of a fragile crust, we must add the additional horrors, as
described by Hugh Miller, of a sea ‘‘ boiling as a pot,” of an
atmosphere intensely hot, reeking with vapour, surcharged
with carbonic acid gas, wrapped ‘‘in a darkness gross and
palpable as that of Egypt of old,”’—a darkness rendered all
the more terrible by the roaring wind, the sheeted rain, the
rending lightning, and the all-shaking thunder.

‘*‘ Who,” says Figuier, ‘“‘ would dare to paint the horrors
of these first and mysterious convulsions of the globe?”
Only one that we know of,—Hesiod ; and if mere words
are capable of bringing the scene before the mind’s eye,
then the poet has done it, and done it well. ven in bald
English the description is imposing and realistic: how
much more so in the original. In a whivl of words vivid

424 THE GODS OF OLD;

with imagery, and teeming with onomatopwia, are we carried.
from the ominous sounds of ocean to the general collapse ;
then, to the warring lightning, universal quaking and
general conflagration, till nought remains of solid matter
but crackling dust wherein the constituents, quartz,
feldspar, mica, &c., still carry on the struggle. One step
further and, as the poet suggests, matter would be reduced
to the simple and unknown that it was originally in Chaos!
Then do the multiple hands of Attraction, Figure, and
Divisibility come into play and act upon the elements: the
first binds them fast into rocky masses, shape gives them
their various outlines interiorly and exteriorly, and the
complex Cottus separates the whole into the gneiss, the
tale, mica, hornblende, chlorite, and other schists. Then
too ensue those various mysterious processes, the vast
swelling or plication (éroBos), the schistous structure (xdpros),
and inclination from the horizontal (é«Atv6y), that mark the
Metamorphic rocks and make them what they are, the
overshadowing prison of central fire and heat, and the
progenitors of the Cambrian and other strata that openly
testify to the sway of Life.

decvov dé wepiaxe mévros deipay,
yj O¢ péy eopapaynoer, éréateve 8 ovpavds edpds
ceidpevos, wedddev & erwaocero paxpds "Odupmos
c a Ff 3 3 i bce 2 ~
ping Un’ a€avdrewv, évoots 3 ikave Bapeia
> a o
Tdprapov nepderta, roday T aimeia iw?
domérov iwypoto Bohdwv Te kparepday’
ds dp’ én’ GAnAas lecav BeXca orovdevra.
sa 2 : qo? > . 3 ’
dav} & dpdorépav ixer’ obpavéy dotepdevra
, . CRS EF f Ey a
KexAopevav" ot be fimoav peyd@ ddadnre.
J c > é na
ovS dip’ er Zeds iryev dv pévos adda vu Todye
eOap pev péveos wAjvro Ppéves, ex b€ re macay
Qaive Bin»? dpvdis 8 dip’ dx’ otpavot 78’ dx’ ’Ohbpaov
dotpantav toTeixe ouvwxaddy’ oi dé xepavvol
ixrap Gua Bpovry te cal dotepomi woréovro
A a bod c A f ? ra
xetpos drro-attBapis, iepyy pAdya cihuddavres,

“a 3 x ‘A cad 7 > é
tappees: api de yaia pepéoBios eopapdytcev
katonévn, Adke 8 Gut wupt peyadN? aozeros vAy.
cd 4 N. ~ a7 ~ er
flee b€ xOav waca kat Qxeavoio péebpa,

ny 23 ’ . Xv med ae Ra \
mévros tT’ atpuyeros’ tovs 5 ducbere Oeppds dirpy
Terqvas xOovious, PAsé 8 Hépa Siav ixavev

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 425

domeros, dace & Gpepde kai ibdiuev wep édvTov
avyh pappaipovea Kepavvod Te oTepomijs Te.
kadpa b€ Geoméorov kdrexev Xdos: eicaro 8 avra
6pOadrpoiow iSeiv 7S otarw docav dxodoa
airs, as bre Tata cal Oipavds edpds trrepbev
wihvaw6’. oivs yap ke péytotos Sovmes dpapot
THS pev Eperrropévys, tou & inpddev e&epurdvtos,
téacos Sotmos éyevro Gedy epids Evidyrov-
_ ow 8 avepoi tr’ évoois re Kovinu éoapdyrtov
Bpovriy te orepomny re Kal aidaddevra Kepavydy,
kijka Atos peyddowo, pépov 8 inyqy r’ evorrqy Te
és pécov dudorépwy, broBos 5° aadnros dpepet
opepdaréns epidos, kapros 8 dvedaiveto epyav,
exAvOy S€ payn’ amply & ddAnhos éw€éxorres
eppevéws eudyorto Sia kparepas bopivas.
ot 8 dp’ evt wparovor paynv Spipeiay eyeipay
Kérros re Batdpews te Tins 1’ dares wohépato, ©
of pa Tpinxocias wérpas ottBapay dad xepay
wéumoy éragautépas, cata 8 éoxiacay Bedéeror
Tirqvas, Kal rods per vd xOovds ebpvodeins
mépray kat Secpoiow év dpyadéoow edna,
" vuxnoavres xepoly brepOupous wep edvTas,
réagoy EvepO bb is, Eoov odpaves eat’ asd ‘yains.
Theog. 678-720.
Then dreadful boomed the boundless sea; the earth
Rumbled throughout ; wide heaven convulsive moaned ;
Olympus broad shook to its very plinth
Under the rushing of immortal gods;
And to dark Hades reached the throes of earth,
The hollow ring of its foundations, and
Of wildering echo of the mighty shocks.
Thus then on each fell fast the scathing blows.
The sound of both, urging their fellows on,
Reached the starred canopy of heaven; and then
With ery terrific they encountering closed.
No longer Zeus restrained his strength, but straight
His vitals now with energy were filled,
And all his force flashed forth : ceaseless he ranged
Lighting Olympus and the heaven alike;
Quick with the thunder and the lightning flew
From massive hands of his the dreaded bolts
That whirled and interlinked the sacred fire ;
The burning, foodful globe on all sides quaked ;
And matter cracked beyond compare with fire.
Then steamed the all of earth, the ocean’s springs,
The boiling sea; then circling round and round
Those earthy Titans coursed the fiery surge;

426

THE GODS OF OLD;

Then flame untold to air celestial came;

And mighty though they were, the dazzling glare
Of bolt and lightning ’reft them of their sight.
Then awful Chaos checked the heat intense,

And seemed as face to face with eyes to see,

With ears to hear a boding sound,—the same

As once when heaven above and earth drew nigh :
For such a crash tremendous as arose

From him compressing and from her compressed,
Some such the crash was of conflicting gods.

Then in the thick of both the blasts and throes
Crackled the dust with loud explosion, yea,

The very weapons of great Zeus himself,

The thunder, lightning, and the blazing bolt

That brings the bitter ery and shrieking wail. -
Immense the swell of dread compression rose ;

The schistous structure of the works appeared ;
And sloping upward grew the field of fight.

But previous, grappling with each other they
Commingled fought throughout the conflicts dire.
Then in the elements was piercing strife

Roused up by Cottus, by Briareus,

By Gyes too, insatiate for war :

For thick and fast from well-squared hands they sent
Rocks full three-hundred; winning by their hands,
They gloomed the Titans, haughty as they were,
With missiles such; bound them in irksome bonds;
And plunged them under widely-fissured earth,—
As far ‘neath earth as earth is from the heaven.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 427

CHAPTER III.

THE TRAP ROCKS VERSUS LIFE.

Lhe Battle of the Giants.—The conquest of those Archean
Titans may well be said to bave established the sway of
Zeus, for from the beginning of Paleozoic time there is no
break in the record of life upon our globe. If deficient or
absent in one locality, it is present and abundant in
another, and, as plant or animal or both, has ruled forma-
tion after formation according as they came into being. As
Hesiod says—

Avrap éwei pa mivoyv paxapes Oeol eLerédXeooay,
Terqverce € Tider kpivarro Pindt,
84 pa tér’ Grpuvov Bacirevépey Nde dvdocey
Lains ppadpootyncw *Ohvpmioy eiptora Ziv
aBavarav' 6 5é roicw év dieddooaro Tysds.— Theog. 881-885.
But when their task the gods had gladly wrought
And bravely stripped the Titans of the bays,
Forthwith, through cunning ways of Ge, they urged
Zeus, the Olympian and far-seeing Zeus,
To wield the sceptre and immortals rule;
And well has he the prizes ’mongst them shared.

To Neptune was the watery domain allotted; and to
Pluto, Hades or the all-unseen of earth; Juno got the
continental and insular areas; Minerva, the organisation
of the living kingdoms; Venus, the affinity that attracts
and binds all things: Apollo and Diana were given the
influences of the atmosphere over light, heat, and sound ;
Mars chose battle for his share, and the Life that was
compelled to mete it out gave it with a frown and a rooted
dislike for the recipient; Bacchus took liberty; Vulcan,
fire; and so on, not one being forgotten or overlooked, not
even those who, like Styx and Hecate, came uver to the
winning side. But Zeus himself, while retaining the clear
Olympus for his peculiar abode, was the lord paramount

428 THE GODS OF OLD;

of all, and manfully has he maintained the title from that
day to this.

Life’s troubles, however, did not end with the overthrow,
cr rather underthrow of the Titans. Scarcely had it re-
covered from the moil and toil of the great Metamorphic
battle, when it had once more to take the field, and this
time against the bold intrusions of what we call igneous
rocks, and the Mythologists called Giants. ‘he difference
is but a seeming one to the eye, for the Latin ignis and gigas
are equally related to yiyvcuat, the initial y in the one, and
the v in the other, being omitted ; and both are confessedly
“ earth-bern.”’

The igneous rocks have been produced, as their name
denotes, from the action of fire or subterranean heat, and
are roughly divided into Plutonic and Volcanic, the broad
distinction between the two being that in the case of the
Volcanic the matter has come to the surface in a molten
condition and there consolidated, while in the Plutonic
the molten matter has never quite reached the surface,
but has consolidated at a greater or less depth beneath it.
Lava is the type of one, granite of the other. Between
these two extremes in type there is a class of roeks called
by the general name of Trap, which embraces porphyry,
serpentine, syenite, greenstone, clinkstone, basalt, trachyte,
and many others. They are all of igneous origin, unstrati-
fied, more or less: crystalline, devoid of fossils, and form a
connecting link between the ancient granite and modern
lava. They are generally believed to have been formed of
matter in a thoroughly molten state which, after being
thrust up through rents and fissures in the crust, cooled
off and solidified without, as a rule, breaking through the
rocks upon the surface. That we see them to-day is due
to the effects of water, air, and other agencies that have
disintegrated and denuded those upper strata and left the
trap exposed to observation. Many writers, Lyell among the
number, associate them very closely with the volcanic rocks,
and suggest that they may be the underground portions of
once active volcanoes, the cones and craters of which have

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 429

been washed away in the course of ages, leaving the dikes
or central vents as mementos of their descent and past
ambition. ‘“‘The abrupt manner,” says Lyell, “in which
dikes of trap usually terminate at the surface, and the
water-worn pebbles of trap in the alluvium which covers
the dike, prove incontestably that whatever was uppermost
in these formations has been swept away. It is easy, there-
fore, to conceive that what is gone in regions of trap may have
corresponded to what is now visible in active volcanos.”

There are many other writers on geology, however, who
are more inclined to give the traps a distinctive place to
themselves, and to divide the unstratified rocks into
Granitic, Trap, and Volcanic; and even Lyell feels com-
pelled to say, ‘‘ Although the principal component minerals
of subaérial lava are the same as those of intrusive trap,
and both the columnar and globular structure are common
to both, there are yet some volcanic rocks which never
occur as lava, such as greenstone, clinkstone, the more
erystalline porphyries, and all those traps in which quartz
and mica frequently appear as constituents. In short, the
intrusive trap rocks, forming the intermediate step between
lava and the Plutonic rocks, depart in their character from
lava in proportion as they approximate to granite.”

As seen to-day those masses of trap occur as—(1) dikes,
or wall-like intrusions of igneous rock filling vertical or
highly-inclined fissures in the crust, that vary from inches
to fathoms in width, and from yards to miles in extent;
(2) veins; (8) necks, or the filled-up pipes of former
voleanic vents; (4) as huge masses, some of which are
shapeless, some terraced, and more columnar and jointed ;
and (5) horizontal sheets, the lava outflow, as it were, of
the dikes below, that have intercalated themselves between
the bedding planes of other strata by thrusting upwards the
overlying mass.

In every geological formation are the trap rocks found.
Dikes and beds of greenstone, porphyry, clinkstone, and
tuff have disturbed and metamorphosed the Cambrian and
Silurian strata to such an extent as to make this system the

430 THE GODS OF OLD ;

most dislocated of all formations; the same traps, with
claystone and amygdaloid, have intruded into the Old Red
Sandstone; some of these, with basalt in addition, have
dislocated and faulted the coal beds of the Carboniferous
era; and so on down to the end of Tertiary time. They
pierce the schists, the sandstones, limestones, even their
own trap brethren, and assert the might and savagery of
their nature by changing chalk and limestone to marble,
sandstone to quartz, coal to coke, and shale to flinty slate
and jasper. Most characteristic of all their forms is that
of terraced hills, or large tabular masses that rise above
-one another like steps or stairs, a configuration which has
given them their name of “Trap” (Swedish trappa, “a
flight of steps”). Buti nowhere are they so conspicuous
and imposing as when they assume that columnar and
jointed aspect of which Fingal’s Cave in Scotland, the
Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, and the Palisades on the
Hudson are examples. It is impossible to gaze upon some
of those massive dikes with solid walls as perpendicular
and parallel, and joints as regular, as the most finished
piece of masonry; or on those ‘“‘furnaced pillars’? with
~well-shaped sides and nicely-fitting joints, that tower 200,
sometimes 1,000 feet above the surface; or on those
terraced heights that step by step scale upwards to the
heaven,—without harbouring the traditional belief that
they were the work, in a sense, of giant hands. The
cultured ‘‘ Ettrick Shepherd” has thus immortalised both
the Traps of Staffa and the tradition :—

“« Awed to deep silence they tread the strand

‘Where furnaced pillars in order stand ;

All framed of the liquid burning levin,

And bent like the bow that spans the heaven;

Or upright ranged in wondrous array

‘With purple of green o’er the darksome gray.

The solemn rows in that ocean den

‘Were dimly seen like the forms of men;

Like giant monks in ages agone,

Whom the god of the ocean had scared to stone ;

And their path was a wondrous pavement old

In blocks all cast in some giant mould.”

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 431

Those Traps, we repeat, are the Giant race of Mythology.
The ‘ancients regarded those rocks as observantly as our-
selves; and, if our present knowledge be a criterion, they
must have studied them well. They called them Giants
(iyavres), to denote their might, their size, their savage
nature, and their connection with the depths of earth, for
yiyas is (ytyvopat atas) “born of the earth.”” They marked
their igneous origin by asserting that they were born in the
Phlegrwan plains (¢A€yw “to burn’’); they looked upon
the overlapping steps, and likened them to mountain piled
on mountain whereby the giants might scale to heaven;
they raised their eyes to the lofty, slender, prismatic
columns, and called them the long spears (‘‘ d0Aty’ éyxea,”
Hesiod, 186) that were brandished by earth’s warrior
children.

They noted also. the changes which were effected in the
adjacent rocks, and concluded, as we do, that such con-
solidation and variety of appearance in the traps, and such
faulting, dislocation, metamorphism, and general disturb-
ance in the surrounding strata could not have occurred

without consequent havoc to existing life,—in other words,

that the Giants made war on Zeus, and that Hereules, or
great earth movements, had been called into play and
actively employed all through the contest.

Those Trap giants naturally commended themselves as
a favourite theme to the earlier and later writers of the
myths, and especially to Apollodorus, a thorough Pluto-
nist, who writes of them in extenso. He adopts the theory
of individuality maintained by many modern geologists, and
disassociates those igneous rocks which are indubitably
voleanic in character, that is, which are scoriaceous or
vesicular and intercalated with bands of tvff, from the traps
which are closer in grain and unaccompanied by tuff: the
former he calls Typhaon, the latter the Giants.

His version runs thus :—

Tq 5é wept Tirdvev ayavaxrotea yerva Tiyavras

3 > ~ i) . ‘ > ,

€& Odpavod, peyéOer pév copdtoy dvurepPAHTOvs,
a -

duvayet 5€ dxarayaviorous, of PoBepot pév tats

432 THE GODS OF OLD;

dWeor katepaivovro, kafetpévor Babeiay kouny éx

5 xeadijs kal -yevelov, efyov b€ ras Bdoets @odidas
dpaxdvrarv. eyévovro 8é, as pev ries Aéyovow, ev
Bréypais, ds dé Dra, év WadrAjun. yxdvrefov é
els ovpavay érpas Kal Spds jupéevas.
duéhepe 5é wdvrwv Mopdupiov re cai "Akvoveds, ds

10 81 Kal dédvaros fv ev yep eyervady yz paxdpevos.
obros Sé xai ras “HAiov Béas €& "EpvOelas Aace. ois
dé Oeois Adytov Ay bd Gedy péev pydéva rSy Trydvrav
drodéobat Sivacbat, cvppaxodvros 8 Oynrod Tivos
tedeuTnoev. alaOopévy dé TH rovro e¢yret @dppaxoy,

15 va pyn® ind Gunrot Suvnbdcw adrorécba, Leds dé
drewmov paivew Hot re kal SeAnuy kal “Hrio rd pev
dppaxoy airds erape hOdoas, ‘Hpakdéa d€ cippayor
80 ’AOnvas érexahécato. xKakeivos mpOrov peév
érdfevoev ’Adxvovéa’ 6 8é ént tijs yijs addov dve-

20 @ddwero' °AOnvas 8é brobepévns Em THs TladdAnyys
eiAkucev abtév. Kakeivos pev ovTas éredeurTa.

Tlopupioy Sé “Hpakdel nara paxny épappnce Kal
"Hog. Zevs bé aird wdov “Hpas evéBadev, 7ris kat
Katappyyvivros abtou rovs mwémhous Kat Prater bar beovros

25 Bonbods éwexadeiro’ Kal Atos xepavya@oavtos a’rov
“Hpakdijs to£edcas dméxrewve. tiv dé hourav ’AmdAdov
pev ’Eqiddrov rév dptorepov erdgevorer 6pOadpdv, “Hpaxdis
de rév Sekidv" Etpurov &6¢ Gupog Atévucos exrerve,

Knuriov Se, pagiv, ‘Exdry, paddov dé "“H@aoros Badov

30 pidpots. ‘AOnva dé "Eyxedddea pevyovtt Stxedlay
exéppue Thy vicov, TddAavros dé tiv Sopa éxrepotoa
TavTy Kara THY paxny Td iStov emécKere GSpa.

TloAvBarys 8¢ 81a ris Oaddoons Stwxdeis vx Tod
Tlovecdévos ixev ets KG" Llooetd&v b€ THs vnrou pépos
35 dmoppygas énéppuper aire, 7d Aeydpevoy Nicupoy-
"Eppijs 52 rv” AiSos xuvénu Exar xara Thy pdyny
“Srmddvurur daréxrewer,”Aprepis b€ Tparteva, poipar dé
"Ayptov kat Odwva yarkéocs porddots paxopevovs. Tous bé
AAous Kepauvois Zeb’s Baddv duehberpe. mdvras dé
40 ‘Hpaxdjs diro\Aupévous érdéevoev.—1. 6.—1., 6. 2. 5.
Gea, being violently disturbed owing to the Titans, brings forth
the Uranus-begotten Giants, who in height of body indeed did not
overshoot the mark, but in force were irresistible. Imposing to the
looks did they appear, wrapped as they were in deep covering on head
and front; they had steps like the scales of dragons, were born in the
Phiegresan territories, as some say, but, according to others, in Pallene;
and they thrust up towards heaven both rocks and rooted trees.
All these were overtopped by Porphyrion and Alcyoneus, the latter
of whom was also everduring in whatsoever region he happened to be
contending, and he it was too that carried off the marine oxen from

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 433

Erythia. But among the immortals the general opinion was that
none of the Giants could be utterly destroyed by the Gods, did not
some mortal-born ally bring the thing to pass.

Now Gea, being swelled out by expansion, sought this as an
outward appliance, so that they might not be utterly destroyed by the
mortal-born one; but Zeus, telling the sun, moon, and dawn to shine
upon it, first cut up this outward appliance himself, then by means
of Minerva summoned Hercules as an ally, and he discharged his
shafts first of all at Aleyoneus. This latter was overmuch heated
again upon the earth; but Minerva having placed herself beneath,
Hercules dragged him out of Pallene, and after such fashion did this
one come to his end.

Porphyrion, in his fight with Hercules, rushed furiously upon Juno
also. Then Zeus infused in him a yearning for Juno, who, as he
commenced to rend her garments and desired to offer violence to her,
called the allied forces to her aid; and when Zeus had struck him
with the thunderbolt, Hercules stretched him low with his shafts.

Of those that remained, Apollo shot the left eye of Ephialtus, and
Hercules the right; Eurytion was stretched out by Bacchus with his
wand; Clytion, by Hecate, as some say, but preferably by Vulcan
who struck him with his fire-stones; Minerva hurled the Sicilian
island upon Enceladus when on the point of shrinking, and having
cut the skin off Pallas, she covered the nucleus of his carcase in it all
through the contest; Polybotes, chased through the sea by Neptune,
came to Cos, and Neptune, having torn away that portion of the
_ island which is called Nisyra, hurled it upon him; Mercury, pos-
sessed of Pluto’s helmet during the battle, stretched out Hippolytus ;
Diana, Gration; the Mare, Agrios and Thoon who fought with
metal clubs. Zeus, striking all that were left with his thunder-
bolts, withered them up; and Hereules cut them all down while
perishing.

NOTES.

1 sept Terdvev dyavaxrodoa.—The expansion of the imprisoned vapour
in the interior urged the earth to further convulsions which
brought on the eruptions of the Trap rocks.

2-8.—The principal characteristics of those Traps are enumerated :
they did not reach the surface (dvvmepBdjrous); they were
strongly eruptive (dxataywvicrous) ; imposing looking (@ofepot) ;
covered with superincumbent strata and vegetation (@afeciay
xéunv); bad the form of steps (@dces) that overlapped each
other like the scales of dragons; and thrust upwards by their
eruptive force all (mérpas kat dpis) that was above them. They
are furthermore igneous in origin (ev @déypais). To say that
they were born in Pallene is but to assert their igneous descent
in other words, that is, that they were impelled upwards (md\\o
or BdAAw) by pressure from below.

G.0. Fr

434 THE GODS OF OLD;

9 8épepe.—“ To carry over, surpass,” that is, ‘‘to overflow.” The
porphyry and serpentine Traps (opdupiey re xa *Adkvoveds)
broke through the surface and overflowed in lava beds. Lyell
points to an instance in the rocks near Christiana where beds
of euritic porphyry alternate with fossiliferous transition
strata.

iov.—Ionic form of ddiov, “belonging to the sea’; so that

yAiov Boas is but a compound word, and refers to the “ marine

oxen,” or germs of mountains produced by corrugations of the
primal crust, as noticed in Geryon. This is further established
by the words ¢£ ’Epuéeias.

12 Geois Aéytov.— That is, the “‘ tterati ” were unanimous in believing
that those molten masses of trap would be impervious to the
attacks of life’s agents,—the air, rain, &c. (fev), were they not
aided by great earth movements (Hercules).

14 aigOopévy—dicbo, ‘to breathe out.” This breathing, or swelling
out on the part of earth, formed cones or dome-like masses of
rock and clay that shielded, as it were, the dikes, sheets, and
other forms of trap from rapid cooling and consequent solidifi-
cation or destruction. In so far, it is confirmative of Lyell’s
theory.

15 Zeds dé.—But Life, the life of the Third Day that had grown and
evoluted still further when the Fourth Day brought the sun,
moon, and stellar bodies into being, was actively employed
upon those outward appliances. In many ways did it cut up
the cones or domes, by its roots which pierced and loosened the
soil and rocks, by the rain that hammered and the running
water that scoured them, by the burrowing of creeping things,
by decay and consequent decomposing gases, by many other
processes, all of which lead to the disintegration and destruction
of rocky strata.

17 ‘Hpaxdéa cippayov.—The demolition begun by life was aided and
completed by those great earth movements (Hercules) that were
called into operation through the organise structure (Minerva)
of its being. ‘In the revolutions to which the crust of the
earth has been subjected, however, the subterranean continua-
tions of volcanic sheets have often been laid bare, and not only
so, but sections have been opened into the very heart of masses
which, though molten and eruptive, seem never to have been
directly connected with actual volcanic outbursts.”—Encyc.
Brit.

19 *AAxvovéa.—That this is identical with serpentine may be deduced
by comparison.

Serpentine, for instance:

(1) is found associated with the gneisses and other schistous
rocks of the oldest mountains, such as the Laurentian
Hills of the Archean age;

11

Sa
>

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 435

(2) is an exceedingly durable rock ;
(3) is believed to be, in part at least, an original deposit of
oceanic waters.
Alcyoneus, on the other hand:
(1) is said to have carried off the marine oxen, that is, the
oldest mountains from the depths of ocean ;
(2) is styled everduring (d@dvaros) ;
(3) is, as the derivation (dAs ctw) denotes, ‘‘ sea-born.”
To say that ‘“‘ Minerva placed herself beneath” is but to say
that serpentine is associated with the organised or stratified
limestone, through which it is drawn out or dragged (ciAcucev)
in bands. ‘ With many Paleozoic limestones, and more par-
ticularly with the crystalline beds which occur among the
schistose rocks, serpentine is frequently associated.”—
Eneyc. Br.

22 Toppupiov.—The name tells its own story. It is the quartz-
porphyry, or felsite porphyry, which occurs not only as veins,
necks, &c., but also as submarine or subaérial flows of lava, or
sheets. It is a distinguishing churacteristic of sheets of trap
that they do not rigidly conform to the bedding, but break into
and involve portions of the overlying strata. Particularly is
this so with the porphyry, as witnessed in the Silurian rocks;
and a remarkable feature of the Permian formation is the out-
pouring of great sheets of quartz-porphyry, granitic-porphyry,
porphyrites, and melaphyre. This yearning for and rending of
the surface overhead is mentioned by Apollodorus (méfov “Hpas
—xatappyyvivros), and the outpouring in sheets is marked by
dméxrewve (dmexreiva).

26 ré&v de AouGv.—He now proceeds to classify the remaining traps
according to the shape of the channel by which the molten rock
escaped.

27 *EdidAtov.—emi HAdopat, ‘ to spring or leap upon; to weigh upon,”
as observable in émtdArns, ‘‘the nightmare, the Latin incubus,”
that weighs upon the sleeper’s chest ; hence anything that weighs
on something else, as a wall” does on the ground. So, too,
giddy (Latin vallus, our English ‘ wall’), ‘‘ sunken work.”

The molten trap came up through fissures in the rocks, and
formed dikes which are now visible as walls (raised dikes), or as
deep trenches (sunk dikes), according as the surrounding rock
in one case or the trap itself in the other has been destroyed.
We ascribe the decay in both cases to atmospheric action; but
Apollodorus suggests that, while this action (Apollo) was
effective in decomposing the surrounding rocks—and the better
of the two (dpiorepov),—it was the great earth movements
(Hercules), which made the fissure originally, that emptied the
receptacle (SeEiov Séyopar) of its contents.

28 Evpvrov.—ed pio, “well wrinkled, sinuous,”—the tortuous veins,

FRPQ

436

THE GODS OF OLD;

or portions of molten trap injected into rents of previously
solidified rocks by some means no better understood to-day
than by what the myth tells us, namely, wherever freedom
(Bacchus or Liber) pointed out the way. The éxrewe (éxreivo
‘*to spin out”) marks the ramifications.

Horace refers to the same giant form in Ode ii. 19, under
the slightly altered name of Rictus, and marks the tortuous
character of the veins by retorsisti, and the entire general
appearance of ramifications from a central mass by the claws
and mandible of a crab (leonis) :-—

Tu, quum parentis regna per arduum
Cohors Gigantum scanderet impia,
Rhostum retorsisti leonis
Unguibus horribilique mala.

When. Giant crew would impious scale

The realms on high of parent thine,

With crabbish claws and Gorgon jaw
Did’st thou twist Rhoetus back.

29 Kruriov.—From «Avfo, and signifying, like xkvornp, “a pipe or

funnel,”—in allusion to the ‘“‘necks,” the filled up pipes, it is
supposed, of past volcanoes, the cones and craters of which
have been removed by extensive denudation, leaving those
orifices bare to view. They are filled up with crystalline ma-
terial, such as quartz-porphyry, felstone, basalt, clinkstone,
&c.; or with fragmental matter that fell back after each erup-
tion into the throat of the volcano, and there solidified; or by
both. It is this fragmental débris (yddpors) that recommends
itself to Apollodorus as having destroyed Clytion, in preference
to subsidence or Hecate. That there is, however, some authority
for ascribing the destruction to Hecate may be gathered from
the following passage in the Encyc. Brit.: ‘‘ Pieces of fine
stratified tuff not infrequently appear in the agglomerates. This
fact, coupled with the not uncommon occurrence of a tumul-
tuous fractured and highly-inclined bedding of the materials in
the necks, appear to show that the pipes were partly filled up
by the subsidence of the fuff consolidated in beds within the
erater and at the upper part of the funnel.”

30 "Eyxeddde---dyxddos eidos, ‘‘ of a curved or rounded form,” that is,

the prismatic, columnar form assumed sometimes by trap, as
exhibited in the Giants’ Causeway, Fingal’s Cave, &c. How
this columnar structure has been produced is a matter of much
discussion, but the most accepted theory, that of Mallet, agrees
with the myth in believing it to be due to slow cooling, or
shrinking (@evyorrt).

21 Tld\Aavros.—As Enceladus represents the columnar form of trap,

so does Pallas represent the globular (dda, ‘‘ a ball or sphere’’).

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 487

** Tn some masses of decomposing greenstone, basalt, and other
trap rocks,” says Lyell, ‘‘the globular structure is so con-
spicuous that the rock has the appearance of a heap of large
cannon-balls.” He instances a pitchstone-porphyry in one of
the Ponza islands, and quotes thus from Serope: ‘‘ When the
balls have been exposed a short time to the weather, they scale
off at a touch into numerous concentric coats, like those of a
bulbous root, inclosing a compact nucleus. ‘The laminz of this
nucleus have not been so much loosened by decomposition ; but
the application of a ruder blow will produce a still further ex-
foliation.” It is evident that the nucleus of the geologist is the
iio» cSpa of the mythologist, and that it is enveloped by its
own skin, that has been flayed as it were. Since this concentric
coating is the nearest approach that a mineral can make to
organised arrangement, Minerva, the organising goddess, has
been assigned as the destroying agent. It may be remarked
here that the iact of our globe as a whole (wdAAa) being a highly
organised structure accounts for the common epithet of ‘ Pallas
Minerva.”

33 LDoAvSerns.—Submarine eruptions are not unknown in our time,
but in the early ages of the world they were far more frequent
and general, thereby causing that humped or irregularly
undulating condition of the ocean’s bed which exists more or
less to-day. This is expressed by saying that Polybotes (srodds
éBéo, “the much humping”) was driven through the sea
where, after forming kéllocks (xéos), he was overwhelmed by
the alluvial deposits (Nisyra, that is, vito cipa, ‘‘ the washings
dragged along”) which the ocean and running water (Neptune)
had broken off from those same hillocks as well as from islands
above the sea-level. ‘‘ Subterranean movements,” says Lyell,
‘have caused almost everywhere in regions of active volcanoes,
great changes in the relative level of land and sea, in times
comparatively modern, so as to expose to view the effects
of volcanic operations at the bottoin of the sea. Thus, for
example, the recent examination of the igneous rocks of Sicily,
especially those of the Val di Noto, has proved that all the
more ordinary varieties of European trap have been there
produced under the waters of the sea, at a modern period; that
is to say, since the Mediterranean has been inhabited by a
great proportion of the existing species of testacea. These
igneous rocks of the Val di Noto, and the more ancient
trappean rocks of Scotland and other countries, differ from
subaérial volcanic formations * * * * in the absence of
regular cones and craters, and in the want of conformity of
the lava to the lowest levels of existing valleys. It is highly
probable, however, that insular cones did exist in some parts
of the Val di Noto; and that they were removed by the waves,

438

37

THE GODS OF OLD;

* * * * A multitude of causes tend, near the land, to
reduce the bottom of the sea to a nearly uniform level,—the
sediment of rivers,—materials transported by the waves and
currents of the sea from wasting cliffs,—showers of sand and
scorizes ejected by volcanoes, and scattered by the wind and
waves. When, therefore, lava is poured out on such a surface,
it will spread far and wide in every direction in a liquid sheet,
which may afterwards, when raised up, form the tabular capping
of the land.”

"InmnéAvtov.— The ‘‘ frmos ” here, as elsewhere, has reference to the

granite charger, and the qualifying ‘“‘ Avros” (Avo ‘‘to weaken,
to relax”) tends to point out Hippolytus as denoting such
rocks as syenite, diorite, dolerite, diabase, and others of the
** greenstone ” group, whose texture is of that crystalline
kind commonly called granitic. They are erupted in irregular
masses and intrusive sheets, and send out highly tortuous veins
which pierce, alter, and cut across the surrounding rocks. All
these, as the myth says, were brought to an end or stretched
out by fluxion (Mercury) operating at a considerable depth
beneath the surface.

Tpariwva.—Another form of intrusive veins, distinctly peculiar,

is that which runs horizontal for a space, then upward, then
horizontal again, and so on in what may be called a much-broken
or zig-zag (‘paxrés) fashion. This, says the writer, was stretched
out by Diana, or refraction.

38 “Ayptov cat Gdwva.—Allusion is now made to the sheets in which

trap rock occur. These are characterised (1) by roughness
(ayptos) of the upper surface, owing to their breaking into and
involving portions of the overlying strata; (2) by rushing
(Gods) across the bedding, and running along on a different
platform.

It may be said, then, that it was these strata or divisional
planes (potpa:) that stretched out the trap in sheets.

The words ‘‘ xaAxéois pomddos”’ have reference to the
metalliferous veins or lodes in connection with the trap
rocks. ‘Granite, syenite, and those porphyries which have
a granitiform structure, in short, all plutonic rocks, are
frequently observed to contain metals at or near their junction
with stratified formations.” —Lyell,

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 439

CHAPTER IV.

THE VOLCANO VERSUS LIFE.

The Battle of Typhocus—However close or remote may
be the relationship between the trap rocks and their igneous
brethren, sufficient evidence, such as masses of tuff hundreds
of feet thick, and either alone or associated with interbedded
lavas, remains to prove that volcanic energy, apart alto-
gether from the intrusive trap, has been rife at every period
of the earth’s existence since Paleozoic time, and that
every great formation from the Silurian onwards has had
its own volcanoes, even though the craters, cones, and all
elevated traces of such have disappeared. In every way, the
prodromes of disturbance, ejection of lava and fragmentary
materials from the depths below, the formation of a cone
built gradually from this erupted matter and intersected
with pipes and fissures, the crater connected with a central
vent,—in all these ways, as well as in lineal arrangement
and intervals of activity and repose, do they appear to have
resembled those of our own day. The only difference is
that, while possibly occurring singly on no more violent a
scale than those of the historic period, they seem to have
acted simultaneously over a wider geographical range; for
those now active have, as a rule, broken out on the sites of
prehistoric ones, and those now extinct, not to mention
such as have lost all visible evidences of cones and craters,
were assuredly once active, and far outnumber the living
ones of to-day.

It is those voleanoes of the past, which, then as now,
waged a destructive war on existing life, that Apollodorus
next describes under the general name of Typhaon. The
word, Tvpdeyv, could hardly be better chosen, since smoke
or vapour (ries) is the inevitable accompaniment of volcanic

440 THE GODS OF OLD;

energy. ‘“‘ Gases and vapours play an important part in
voleanic activity; they show themselves in the earliest
stages of a voleano’s history, and continue to appear for
centuries after all the other evidences of subterranean
action have ceased to be manifested. By much the most
abundant of them all is steam.” —Encyc. Brit. It may be
remarked that the marvellous being has left a memorial of
his name in our literature, since the word “ tuff” is, as
defined by Lyell, ‘‘ a substance produced by the showering
down from the air, or incumbent waters, of sand and
cinders, first shot up from the interior of the earth by
explosions of volcanic gases.”

Apollodorus writes thus :—

as 8¢ éxpdrngay of Geot rév Trydvrov, 17 paddov
- f Z ‘ ~ na >,
xorwbcioa piyvura: Taprdpo, Kat yerva Tupava év
ir a id C4 ac > é 4 4 if
Kauxia, pepcyperny Exovta uaty avdpds Kal Onpiov.
duos kai peyéer kai Suvdpet wdvrov Sinveyxey
a a4 ~ S x. >a ‘ SW, Sl
5 Sous éyévynoe TH, qv S€ atraG ra per dypr pnpav
Fi} 2 > f hd © ca a ,
dmherov péyebos avipspophor, date trepéxew pev wavrov
trav pay, 7 S€ Kear? woAdkis TOv GoTpav Afpave*
xelpas Se ceive ri pev éni Hy éxmépay éxrewopéerny
. ae ee ee ae ? , 265 c ‘
tay dé ert ras dvarodds’ ék rovrap de é&eixoy Exardy

10 xearai Spaxdvrav. ra dé dd pnp&v omeipas eixev
breppeycbes éxiOvev, dv éhxol mpos abriy exretvdpevoe
xopupiy cuptypov modvv éiecav. nav de abrov r6
c&pa xarerrépwro, abypnpat dé éx kebadas kal yeveior
tpixes eEqvepodvro, wip dé ed€pxero tots Bppace.

15 rowdtros dv 6 Tupav kal rpdtKodros jypévas BddAav
mérpas ex adroy Tov odpavoy peta cuptypay Gpod Kal

eee ea . sai 2 - ’ eer 4
Bons epépero” oAdz) dé x rod ordpatos wupds e£€Bpacce
Car re] . be € hy 28 >> > A c pos
n. Oeoi d€ as eidov adrov én’ ovpavoy dppempévoy,
eis Aiyumrov huyddes eépovro, kat Stwxdpevot
ED 4 f > Sol AS ‘ : 3
20 rds iS€as peréBadov cis (Ga. Zeds Se wéppw pev
a” « ’ 1
évra Tu Gva €BadXre Kepavvois, mAnoiov de yevdpevoy
dSapavrivy xaréntn£ev Gpry, kal petyovra axpe tod
, , . = teu ,
Kaciov dpous cuvedioge’ rodro d€ trépxecrat Supias
xeiOe O€ adrov xaraterpwpevoy tav eis xeipas cuve-
- al 4 ”“

25 Bore Tuay dé rais omeipats mepurdexGels xaréoxev
airév, Kal THY Gpmny wepteAopevos Ta TE TAY YEtpav
kal Tov ruddy Siérepe vedpa, apdpevos be ent ray
Spov Stexdpicev adrov dia tis Gaddoons ets Kidtxiav

a X 3 A iA WH. 4
kat rapeNOav els To Kwptxiov avrpov xarébero.

30 dpoiws d€ Kat Ta vedpa Kpipas Gpxrou dopa xeibe

dwéOero, kai katéarnoe Ackiurny Spdxawav' jpiénp

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 441

de qv atry 9 Kopy. “Eppijs O¢ xat Alyimay éxxdépavres
Ta vevpa Hpporay TH Asi Aabdvres. ~Zeds OF Thy
diay dvaxoptadpevos ioydy éLaipyns && obpavod, emt

35 aryvaev éxobpevos trey Eppart, BadAwV Kepavvois
ér’ Gpos édio£e Tupdva 76 Aeydépevoy Nicar, dirou
Poipar abrév Stoxbévra Ararycav’ mevoGels yap dre
pooOnrerat paddov, éyedcaro rev épypépwv Kapmav.
Stdirep émidtaxdpevos adOts Kev eis Opdxny, kal

40 praydspevos mept Tov Aiuov Gia éBaddev dpy. Tovrav dé
éx abtov td Tod Kepavvod mdAw Gboupévear TOAD
él Tod Spous é&ékAucev aipa’ kal daciy éx tovTov
Td Gpos kdnOivat Aipov. ebyetw dé dppnbévros adrod
dud ris BexeAtcys Oaddoons, Leds eméppupev Atryny

45 dpos év Sixedig® rodro dé imeppéeyebés eatw, €& od
péxpt Seipd hac dxd tév BAnOévtay xepavvdy
yiverOat rupbs dvahyonpara. —1. 6. 3.—1. 6. 3. 12.

Now, as the Gods proved superior to the Giants, Geea, more stirred

up than ever, is mingled with Tartarus, and in a cone begets Typhaon
who had his nature mixed up with that of man and beast. In both
size and might indeed he outmeasured all others, many and great as
they were that were born of Gea. From the thighs upwards his
parts formed a huge manly mass, so as to raise him above all the
mountains; many times did his head approximate the stars; hands
too he had, one verging upon the west, and another on the east; and
from these stood forth a hundred dragon heads. But the parts from
the thighs down had serpentine windings to an immense degree,
whose trails, stretching to the very summit, emitted much rumbling;
all his body was furnished with wings; the tangled covering of his
head and jaws was shaken by the wind; and fire darted from his eyes.
A being of such nature was Typhaon produced, and one that, when
old enough, hurled against the very heaven red-hot rocks in the midst
of combined rumblings and explosion; and great was the surge of fire
that was vomited from his mouth.
- Now the Gods, when they saw him advancing upon heaven, were
borne. dispersedly in the superincumbent waters, and such as followed
these archetypes changed to animals. But later on indeed Zeus
struck this being, Typhaon, with his bolts; forced him with adamantine
hook to cringe when near; followed him, retreating, up even to the
chasm of the mountain; now this lies over the central vent, and there,
seeing him sorely scotiched, he took him in hands.

Then Typhaon, having entangled him in his folds, held him fast,
and rooting out the hook all round, cut in pieces the nerves of both
hands and feet; then heaving him high upon his shoulders he carried
him in the cone through the sea; and overflowing on the saffron-like
grot, was there deposited. And there in like fashion too did he cover
and preserve the nerves in the hide of the great bear; and there did
he deposit the dolphin-saurian,—for half a beast was this same

442 THE GODS OF OLD;

creature. But those cunning appropriators, regular progression and
vivifying nature, secretly fitted nerves to Zeus.

Now Zeus, having acquired his proper strength in an unlooked for
degree from on high, and bemg borne on a chariot of winged horses,
pursued Typhaon with his thunderbolts to the turning point, the
pillar so to speak, where the divisional planes circumvented him while
shrinking; for prompted by the feeling that he could rush still
further, he made trial of regularly arranged ball and socket joints.

Persistently pursued then, he came in course of time to Thrace, and
whilst warring around Hemus he threw up whole mountains. These
being thrown back upon him by the thunderbolts, his life juice in
abundance streamed forth upon the range; and hence, they say, was
the range called Hemus. Then, while endeavouring to retreat
through the Sicilian sea, Zeus hurled Mount Aina in Sicily upon him ;
and this is of immense size, from which up to the present date
eruptions of fire burst forth, due, as the rumour goes, to the thunder-
bolts that were hurled.

NOTES.

1 The “ os,” the context, and the myth as a whole, tend to show
that, while the interval between the inception of eruptive trap
and of volcanic action was comparatively short, the latter
however was in point of time subsequent to the former.

3 Kidtxia—xvarixov, ‘a small cup,” (the v being changed into «, as in
girio, PrAddo, for dureio, prvddo). A volcano is defined as a
conical or cup-shaped eminence, formed not by upheaval, as in
the case of mountains, but by material ejected from below and
accumulated at the surface around the vent of eruption. The
tendency in construction is invariably to the form of a cone.

peptyperny puow.—Volcanic action has been at work in every age
from the early Paleozoic with its purely animal forms to the
coming of man, and even to the present date.

4 peyéber cat Suvdpet.—Stromboli, Vesuvius, and Hecla are three well-
known volcanoes, about 3000, 4000, and 5000 feet respectively
in height. Placed one on top of the other they would be but
little more elevated than Aitna which is two miles high and
over; Stromboli put on Adtna would give the height of Mauna
Loa, a volcano in the Sandwich Islands; to this add Hecla,
and we would behold Popocatepetl in Mexico; and let us pile
all three, Stromboli, Vesuvius, and Hecla, on top of Attna
itself, and we would not yet have the height of Sahama, the
Peruvian Typhaon, that rises to an elevation of over four miles.

So much for the peyéfos; and as to the duvdyss, in an eruption
of Aitna in 1693, the city of Catania was destroyed in a few
moments, and 18,000 people perished in the ruins; in 1783
Hecla ejected two streams of lava from 40 to 50 miles long,
7 to 13 feet broad, and 100 to 600 feet deep, whereby 20

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 448

villages and 9000 people were destroyed ; in 1815 the explosions
of Tomboro were heard at a distance of 900 miles, the ashes
darkened the air for 300 miles around, the cinders floating on
the sea to the windward of Sumatra formed a mass two feet
thick and several miles long, and over 11,000 persons were
destroyed.

6 dvdpsuoppov.—There is much to recommend the simile. A volcano
has an upright trunk, ramified channels, through which, like
the blood in arteries, flows the lava, and a central vent; it has
periods of activity and repose, and the history of a volcano,
like that of man, is one, as Hutchison remarks, of youth,
middle age, old age, and decay. Again, we say “a mountain
of a man,” to mark the superiority in some respects of an indi-
vidual above his fellow men ; and the simile may be reversed to
denote the superiority of a volcano above its fellow mountains.

7 dotpev &fave.—That is, by repeated additions (woAAdkis) to the
height of the cone, and consequent elevation of the mountain.
As long as the activity of a voleano exists, so long is the work
of construction going on to some extent.

8 xetpas.—The dominant arrangement of volcanoes is in lines east
and west along the coasts of continental areas. Thus, beginning
with the Andaman isles in the Bay of Bengal, there is a chain
of active or extinct volcanoes running along the entire eastern
coast of Asia and embracing Sumatra, Java, the Moluccas,
Philippines, Japan, Kurile Islands, Kamschatka, and Aleutian
isles. There is a similar volcanic range along the west coast of
North and South America, manifesting itself by eruptions along
the whole line from Alaska through the Rocky Mountains,
Cordilleras, and Andes, down to Terra del Fuego. From these
eastern and western hands stand forth, it is not too much to say,
a hundred volcanic vents or heads out of the 200 or more that
are in activity throughout the earth, not to mention those that
are dormant or extinct.

10 omeipas éydvév.—The sinuous fissures communicating with the
molten interior and reaching to the summit (xopypiv). They
radiate from the focus of action and sometimes ramify and
intersect in all directions. In the eruption of Attna in 1660,
one of many fissures that appeared ran in a winding course for
a distance of 12 miles from the side of the mountain to within
a mile of the top.

13 xarentépwro.—That is, ‘‘ with the means of flight.” So does
Shakespeare say, ‘‘ Let fiery expedition be my wing.” From
the rents and clefts that open at all points on the outside of the
cone, as well as from those on the sides and bottom of the
crater, jets of steam and gaseous vapour rush forth like so many
pinions, and so numerous at times as to conceal the rock from

view.

444, THE GODS OF OLD;

14° rpixes.— Wild vines and brushwood grew luxuriantly in the crater
of Vesuvius previous to the famous eruption of 79 A.D., and
again during the long interval of quiescence between the erup-
tions of 1500 and 1637. The older tuffs of the same volcano
exhibit numerous remains of the trees and shrubs which clothed.
its flanks at successive periods.

15 pévas wérpas.—Mantell, an eye-witness of one of the eruptions
of Mount Attna, writes thus: ‘‘If any person could accurately
fancy the effect of 500,000 sky-rockets darting up at once to a
height of three or four thousand feet, and then falling back in the
shape of red-hot balls, shells, and large rocks of fire, he might
have an idea of a single explosion of this burning mountain ;
but it is doubtful whether any imagination can conceive the
effect of one hundred of such explosions in the space of five
minutes, or of twelve hundred or more in the course of an hour,
as we saw them.”

19 Atyurrov.—The word, like Cilicia, is chosen for the idea intended
to be conveyed, namely, ‘‘on the waters over the submerged
land.” The derivation is yaia tmrios, ‘‘ the land in a contrary
position to its usual one,” and as the ordinary and proper posi-
tion is one of elevation, Aiyumros consequently denotes ‘“ the
land submerged.” Egypt from the earliest historic times has
been noted for the inundations of the Nile, so much so that the
verb aiyunrtdtm has been used to signify ‘‘to be like Egypt,
that is, to be under water.”

guyddes.—The first indubitable traces of vegetable life are found in
the Cambrian rocks, and consist entirely of algee or sea-weeds
that floated (uydbdes épépovro) on the waters.

20 (Ga.—Vegetation, the primal form of organised existence, was
followed by animal life. This establishes the chronology of
this portion of the myth, Biblically with the beginning of the
Fifth Genesiac Day, and geologically with the beginning of
Silurian time, since it is in the Cambrian rocks of that period
that animals make their first appearance, and these are all of
the marine type.

Zebs d€ wéppw.—But later on in Silurian days, when the volcanic
giant had raised his head nearer (zAnaiov) to the domain of vital
operations, Life attacked him with the lightning which it
attracted, with the rootlets or hooks (pry) of alges and other
fucoids, with saxicavous mollusks that bored into the mass,
with air and rain, with everything that tended to weather and
decompose the rock, and so make it cringe or contract
(xarénrnéev) upon itself.

22 ddapavrivy &pwy.—Every crag, and rock, and architectural ruin,
bears witness to the wnconguerable ravages of atmospheric
influences and of vital agencies. As an instance of what
weathering can accomplish, granite has been dug into for a

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL, 445

depth of 30 feet, owing to the decomposition of its felspar into
kaolin.

betyovra dypt.— Life followed up its advantage over the shrinking
and temporarily quiescent giant by establishing a growth of
vegetation not only as far as the crater’s mouth (Kaciov—ydors,
‘fa chasm”), but even over the sides and floor of the
crater itself. From this spot, which was directly over the
central vent (Supias, from ovpifw, and like ciptyé, ‘a pipe or
funnel’), did Life look down with the complacency of triumph
upon its badly mutilated foe.

25 swepurdexGcis.—It was a dangerous position that Life had chosen :
for centuries, it may be, after the copsewood had become fast-
rooted in the flanks and crater (xaréeyev), the volcano, that was
dormant (xararerpwpévov), not extinct, resumed its activity once
more. Lava poured forth from every rent and fissure in the
sides, and in this way, aided by the decomposition and disin-
tegration of the rock through weathering, was the connecting
hook of vegetable growth removed from the slopes; volumes of
vapour and super-heated steam rushed from innumerable clefts
and crannies in the sides and crater, and thus were the nerves
of existing animal life lacerated; finally, with one tremendous
explosion, the entire top of the cone, with crater and life forms,
was blown into fragments that rose thousands of feet above the
mountain’s shoulders (dpduevos, &c.) and were subsequently
scattered over the neighbouring sea (8a r7s Gaddoons).

An explosion similar to this in every way occurred to
Vesuvius in 79 A.D., and in 1822 the top of the same volcano
was blown off to the extent of more than 800 feet.

Krakatoa, in the Straits of Sunda, had at one period a cone
with a base of 25 miles in circumference, and a height of 10,000
feet. An eruption, the date of which is not known, occurred
and blew away the cone, leaving but a height of a few hundred
feet.

29 sapeAGav.—F ollowing the explosion the lava overflowed in torrents
that spread over the bed of ocean and helped to cover up the
tuffs, scorie, dust, &c., and the organic relics, all of which had
resulted from the eruption that demolished the cone and crater.
“(In the earth’s crust,” says Lyell, ‘“‘there are volcanic tuffs
of all ages, containing marine shells, which bear witness to
eruptions at many successive geological periods. These tuffs,
and the associated trappean rocks, must not be compared to
lava and scoriz which had cooled in the open air. Their
counterparts must be sought in the products of modern sub-
marine volcanic eruptions.”

Koptxiov.—The ‘‘ Corycian cave,” alluded to by Pindar, Strabo, and
Aaschylus, as the abode of Typhaon, and famous for its saffron
(kpéxos), whence the name OCorycian. Saffron is used as a

446

THE GODS OF OLD;

simile for tuf’, owing to its being light, porous, fibrous in
texture, and yellowish or reddish brown in colour, as some
tuffs are. It is in these tuffs that the fossil remains of life are
generally found. ‘Small irregular fragments of the scorize
and pumice above mentioned, and the dust of the same, pro-
duced by volcanic explosions, form the tuffs which abound in
all regions of active volcanoes, where showers of these materials,
together with small pieces of other rocks ejected from the
crater, fall down upon the land or into the sea. Here they
often become mingled with shells, and are stratified.” —Lyell.

30 dpolws, dpxrov.—In a similar way did the lava and tufts cover and.

conceal the fossil remains of later ages,—of the mammoth, for
instance, which, clothed as if was in a mixture of hair and
wool, is evidently the dpxros or ‘‘great bear” alluded to by
Apollodorus, just as the “dolphin-dragon” is probably the
ichthyosaur or some other of the strange deinosaurs—half fish,
half beast—that flourished up to the opening of the Tertiary
period.

‘Extinct quadrupeds of that era,”’ says Lyell of the Miocene,
**belonging to the genera Mastodon, Rhinoceros, and others,
were buried in ashes and beds of alluvial sand and gravel,
which owe their preservation to sheets of lava which spread
over them.”

32 ‘Eppijs.—The efforts of the volcanic giant were in vain, however,

for destroy as he might, and cover and conceal as he would,
form after form of the life that was, the regular course of
events (‘Eppijs, péo) and the all-vivifying power of nature
(Aiyirav, disow wav) brought into being others of their type.

33 Zeds 8¢.— We are now led on to the Tertiary period, remarkable—

(1) for the ushering in of life in its highest and most potential
(Stay icxtv) form, namely, the mammal; and (2) for the last
great general exhibition of volcanic energy.

The previous period was distinguished for its reptiles, as the
one before it was for its mollusks; but now in Cainozoic or
Tertiary time, vegetation began to assume the forms of to-day,
and the mammals, though uncouth and strange at first,
gradually verged into species closely like those of the present
age. Thus, among the Pliocene or late Tertiary remains in the
Upper Missouri region there are enumerated species resembling
our camel, rhinoceros, elephant, deer, wolf, fox, tiger, beaver,
porcupine, ‘and four or five species of the horse family, one
of which was closely like the modern horse.” Birds too now
appeared in numbers. So that the writer feels justitied in
describing Life as borne on a chariot ‘‘ of winged horses.”

34 é£ ovpavod —The ‘‘development theory” of Darwin finds no

support from those words. The Greek evidently believed that
a new species, the mammal for instance, meant a new creation.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 447

35 xepavvois.—The general accompaniments of violent volcanic erup-
tions are darkness, thunder and lightning, explosive reports,
and earthquake shocks.

36 Tuddva.—But, if Zeus became thus remarkably endowed at this
period with strength and activity, so too did his Typhcean
foe, for Geology notices the fact of widespread and vigorous
voleanic action with successive outpourings of lava on a
prodigious scale all during the Miocene or Middle Tertiary
time. In France, Spain, Italy, Sicily, and Greece, in the
West Indies, Central America, and the Andes, even in arctic
Greenland there are found evidences plain and plentiful point-
ing to the fierceness of the fight, and to battle grounds gory
with the lava that flowed from the giant’s wounds. Hundreds
of maimed voleanoes in Auvergne, Velais, and Vivarais in
Central France, attest how Zeus blew off the monster’s heads,
and the basaltic plateaux of Antrim in Ireland and of Mull
in Scotland mark some of the spots where, all surrounded by
joints (uoipar—peipopar, ‘‘ to divide’) while cooling (8:@x6érra) or
shrinking, the lava was tempted to make trial of the columnar
structure.

én’ Spos.—Literally, ‘‘ to the serum” (épés) or watery part of blood
and other more or less viscid fluids. Blood before coagulation
consists of (1) Globules, and (2) Plasma, this latter containing
fibrine, albumen, water, and salts; after coagulation, blood is
separated into (1) Clot, which contains the globules and fibrine,
and (2) Serum, which contains the albumen, water, and salts.
Microscopic examination of the lava tends to show that it
consists fundamentally of (1) a glassy base, and (2) of micro-
lites, crystals, and interstitial aqueous vapour, the component
molecules of which are diffused through this base. It is also
shown that as lava advances from a fluid to a solid state,
“clots,” as it were, the amount of aqueous vapour diminishes,
while the microlites and erystals develop and increase.

The idea of the Greek writer then, namely, that the serum is the
‘turning point” in coagulation, whether of blood or of lava,
is perfectly legitimate, has much to recommend it, and has
been developed by Gregory Watt who attributed the columnar
structure of lava to the production of globules or spherical
concretions in the cooling mass.

Nocav—vicoa, ‘‘a turning post or pillar” in a racecourse. Life
with its electricity pursued the lava in its onward course till it
reached the turning point, and began to pass from the fluid to
the solid state. What further ensues is thus described in the
Encyc. Brit.: ‘In passing from a fluid to a solid condition,
and thus contracting, lava acquires different structures. Lines
of divisional planes or joints traverse it, especially perpendi-
cular to the upper and under surfaces of the sheet. These lines

448 THE GODS OF OLD;

at various irregular distances cross each other so as to divide
the rock into rude prisms. * * * ‘Where this arrangement
occurs, as it does so commonly in basalt, the mass is divided
into tolerably regular pentagonal, hexagonal, or irregularly
polygonal prisms ‘or columns, set close together at a right angle
to the main cooling surfaces. These prisms vary from two or
three to eighteen or more inches in diameter, and range up to
100 or even 150 feet in length. * * * In the more perfectly
columnar basalts the columns are sometimes articulated, each
prism being separable into vertebree, with a cup and ball
socket at each articulation.”

38 poobjoerat—poopat, ‘to dart, to rush.”

ednpépov.—epnpepis signifies “a diary, journal, calendar,” and
in general ‘‘a record or tabular statement of daily events.”
Hence the adjective, epijepos, may be used to signify either
of the dominant ideas implied in its substantive, that is,
‘lasting but for a day, ephemeral,” or, as it is used here by
Apollodorus, ‘regularly arranged, tabulated or tabular,” as
the columnar structure of lava is.
xapr&v—xaprés, ‘the wrist joint.” The term is chosen advisedly ;

for the wrist, as described in works on anatomy, presents many
of the characters of an enarthrodial (‘‘ ball and socket’) joint.

39 didrep.—All that follows may be considered as happening in the
historic era, or closely preceding.

‘*One portion of the lavas, tuffs, and trap dikes of Aina,
Vesuvius, and the island of Ischia, has been produced within
the historical era; another and a far more considerable part
has originated at times immediately antecedent, when the
waters of the Mediterranean were already inhabited by the
existing species of testacea.”—Lyell.

Since there is no room for doubt, and much food for
reflection, in the foregoing double narrative of Apollodorus,
it is consequently with an interest and respect begotten of
geologic lore that we must read the numerous allusions to
the Giants and Typhaon, or Typhceus as he is otherwise
called, in the classic poets. They all embody the same
idea, the igneous rocks; but when comparison is made, the
distinction is always well-marked between the purely
intrusive giant traps and the voleano that belches forth
smoke and fire. The latter lusts for supreme sway and
relies upon the extent and might of those mountain arms
wherein nestle a hundred volcanic heads; the former
endeavour to scale to heaven on the step-like terraces of trap,
and fight with thrust-up rocks and massive trunks of trees.

”

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 449

The distinctive comparison is well-marked by Horace:
Magnum illa terrorem intulerat Jovi
Fidens juventus horrida brachiis,
Fratresque tendentes opaco
Pelion imposuisse Olympo.—cC. iii. 4.

Again, the volcanoes, while numerous, are still but one,
Typhaon,—one in construction, one in action, one in mode
of dying; the history of one is the history of all. Not so
with the traps; offspring of the same parents, they are as
like and unlike as brothers: as unlike as spotted serpentine
is to porphyry, syenite to the resonant clinkstone, as all
these to diabase and melaphyre; as like as it is possible
for individuals to be in whose veins runs the same blood,
who are actuated by the same desires, and banded together
for a common purpose. This idea is well expressed by
Virgil in his Georgies, I. 278:

Tum partu Terra nefando
Ceumque, Iapetumque creat, ssevumque Typhea,
Et conjuratos ccelum rescindere fratres,
Ter sunt conati imponere Pelio Ossam
Scilicet, atque Osses frondosum involvere Olympum :
Ter Pater extructos disjecit fulmine montes.

The “igneous”’ theme serves to throw a new light, often
a new reading, on many passages from the poets. Here is
an instance of the latter from Horace :

domitosque Herculea manu
Telluris juvenes, unde periculum

Fulgens contremuit domus
Saturni veteris.—-C. ii. 12.

And warrior sons of earth

By mighty force laid low,

Whence flaming danger shook
Old time abodes.

How pointless after all, in the ordinary sense, is the ter
in the lines just quoted from the “ Bard of Mantua.”
Reiteration is its only redeeming feature. But if we bear
in mind that this ter embraces Palszozoic, Mesozoic, and
Cainozoic time, what a new meaning dawns upon us, one
worthy of the understanding and of the poet, and one that
brings up a host of geological recollections.

Ovid, as we would expect, does not forget in his Meta-

G.0. a«

450 THE GODS OF OLD;

morphoses to make mention of the igneous rocks. He too
separates the trap giants from the voleanic Typhceus, and
when writing of the former deftly weaves in, as will be
observed, the tradition mentioned in Genesis vi. 4 and 11:

4, ** There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after
that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and
they bare [children] to them: the same [became] mighty men, which
[were] of old, men of renown.’

11, ‘‘ The earth also was corrupt before God; and the earth was
filled with violence.”
Neve foret terris securior arduus ether,
Affectasse ferunt regnum celeste gigantas,
Altaque congestos struxisse ad sidera montes.
Tum pater omnipotens misso perfregit Olympum
Fulmine, et excussit subjecto Pelio Ossam.
Obruta mole sua cum corpora dira jacerent,
Perfusam multo natorum sanguine Terram
Immaduisse ferunt calidumque animasse cruorem,
Et, ne nulla sue stirpis monimenta manerent,
In faciem vertisse hominum. Sed et illa propago
Contemptrix superum seveeque avidissima caedis
Ht violenta fuit. Scires e sangvine natos.—Met. i. 151.
Nor more immuned the welkin than the lands ;
For giants, as the common story goes,
Aspired to realms supernal, and in throngs
Thrust mountains upward to the stars on high.
Then through Olympus crashed the sire of gods,
All-powerful with the lightuing’s bolt, and shook
The Ossa from the Pelion underneath.
When their dread trunks by weight their own lay stretched,
Earth, with its offspring’s reddened tide all strewn,
Soaked in, ’tis said, and vivified the gore;
And, that some tokens of the seed might last,
Changed on to shape of men: but that race too
Contemned the gods, showed eagerness intense
For slaughter dire, and violence pursued.
From blood you ought those born of blood to know.

In all this we see but the eruptive efforts: of those
igneous traps, many in number (congestos), and rearing
themselves step by step (Pelio Ossam) on high through
means of the terraced mountains they had thrust up or, built:
up,—whichever way we like to construe “ struxisse,’’—until
the surface action of air, water, and life, aided by the great
oscillatory movements of the land itself, put an end to

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 451

their bold endeavours. But there is no allusion to volcanic
action, or to aught connected with such action.

How different reads the following description of Typhceus
from the same poetic hand. Here is no lack of that
volcanic energy and drapery which we missed in the
Giants ; here we behold the tuggings of the lava-monster
in the depths below, and its occasional efforts at vomiting
fire and clouds of sand and dust, in the vain hope of
building once again the whilom cones (pondera terre) and
craters nestling like towns within their rock-ribbed walls,
and of evoluting from its own substance such huge piles as
AKina, Vesuvius, and the like:

Vasta giganteis ingesta est insula membris
Trinacris, et magnis subjectum molibus urget
ABitherias ausum sperare Typhoéa sedes.

Nititur ille quidem, pugnatque resurgere seepe:
Dextra sed Ausonio manus est subjecta Peloro,
Leva, Pachyne, tibi; Lilybeeo crura premuntur ;
Degravat Aitna caput: sub qua resupinus arenas
Hjectat, fammamque fero vomit ore Typhoéus.
Seepe remoliri luctatur pondera terree

Oppidaque, et magnos evolvere corpore montes.
Inde tremit tellus, et rex pavet ipse silentum,

Ne pateat, latoque solum retegatur hiatu,
Immissusque dies trepidantes terreat umbras.—Met. v. 346.

O’er giant limbs a large and three-caped isle

Was thrown; and now by its enormous mass

It presses hard the prone Typhceus down,

Who dared to hope for mansions in the sky.

Still does he strain, and often strives to rise;

But on his right hand is Pelorus couched,

Pachyne on the left; his thighs are weighed

By Lilybeeum; Altna bows his head ;

*Neath which the resupine Typhoeus spews

Vast clouds of sand, and vomits flakes of fire.

Oft tries he mounds of earth and crater walls

To build again, and mountains huge to frame
From substance all his own: then quakes the earth,
And fears the ruler of the dead and gone

Lest gape it should and hell’s foundation be
Disclosed within the yawning chasm, and lest

Th’ admitted light should fright the trembling shades.

We end, as we began, this ‘‘ Story of the Gods of Old,”

452 THE GODS OF OLD;

with Hesiod. In the early part of his Theogony he tells
how, in the separation of the incorruptible firmament from
the heavens “‘ that will pass away,’’ Kronos

« from his sire cut swift and flung behind
The plans, hereafter to be claimed his own.”
He then proceeds, partly consecutively, partly anticipa-
tively : Ta pev ort éragia Expuye xetpos”
écoa yap pabapeyyes drécovber aipardercat,
naoas dé£aro Taia’ mepusdopévav © evavrdv
yetvat’ “Epwis te xparepas peydAous te Tiyavras,
5 revxeot Aapropévous, Sodix’ eyyea xepoty €xovras,
Nopdas 6’ ds Medias xadéovo’ én’ dzelpova yaiav"
Theog. 182.
Not useless ’scaped the efforts of his hand ;
For many as the blood-red liquid drops
That flowed therefrom, did Gé receive them all;
And in the course of ages speeding by
She brought the mortal passions to-the world ;
And mighty Giants, for their rigging famed,
Grasping their long spears close; and Nymphs she bore,
Called ‘* Essences” on this benighted earth.

NOTES.

4 ’Epwis cparepas.—‘‘ The ruling passion, be it what it will,

The ruling passion conquers reason still.”
Pope.

5 redyeot.—The elevated plateaux or terraces of trap, whereby the

giants hoped to mount to heaven.

tevxea, ‘‘implements of any kind; the rigging of a ship,” or
general mounting apparatus, whereby the sails are hoisted and
sailors climb aloft. The word is so suspiciously like refyeou,
‘walls, or dikes,’ as to suggest a further examination of the
original codices.

6 MeAlas—pedro, “to be an object of care, anxiety, or thought” ;
hence, ‘‘to be essential.” The Nymphs (wpqa:) are the
quiddities, innate nature, or essences of things,—the jinal
answer to repetitions of viv dys; “ what then P” or as the Latin
has it, quid est? quid nunc P

The myth is true. All three, Erinyes, Giants, and Nymphs, are
relics of the primal Uranus: all three, the ruling passions, the
burning lava, and the essences of things, are heirlooms received
from the incorruptible, and the last to perish for man, for the
earth as a whole, and for things material, respectively.

This parenthetic clause, so far as it relates to the Giants,
points clearly enough to the tabular and columnar structure

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL. 458

of the trap rocks. It also apparently encourages the hope
that the further narrative of these Giants would be resumed
elsewhere in the Theogony; but as they are never alluded
to by name again, and as the battle with Typhcus imme-
diately follows the battle of the Titans, it is highly
probable, almost certain indeed, that Hesiod considered
the Giants and Typheus as but different forms of the one
class of rocks, the igneous,—in other words, that he held
the same theory with regard to the trappean and volcanic
rocks which Lyell favours and which M‘Culloch formulates
thus: ‘‘Itis a mere dispute about terms to refuse to the
ancient eruptions of trap the name of submarine volcanoes;
for they are such in every essential point, although they no
longer eject fire and smoke.”

Additional confirmation is furthermore obtained from
the poet’s making use of the terms Tvddwv and Tudweis ;
this latter he reserves for the volcanic outbursts; the
former, Typhaon, ‘‘ eruptive, overbearing, strange,’ he
applies for comparative distinction to the traps, and unites
him appropriately to the granite (Echidna), as noticed in
lines 306-7 of the Theogony. There is consequently no real
discrepancy, chronological or otherwise, between Hesiod’s
account and that of Apollodorus, and the conclusion is that
while the later writer favoured the separation, the earlier one
favoured the conjunction of the igneous rocks as a whole.

The Typhomachia of Hesiod may therefore be considered
as a description of what ensued after the greati Archean
struggle when the granite, gneiss, and metamorphic rocks
were reduced to submission, and tamed sufficiently for the
evoluting purposes of life.

Serpentine, porphyry, greenstone, syenite, and the entire
Trappean crew made fiery charges from the depths below
upon the outposts guarding the life that was above. Some
they devoured, others they hacked, others still they spitted
with their spears, and more they trampled down, using the
dismembered bodies as stepping stones to higher grounds.
And when Life’s cohorts still held their ground and gave
back blow for blow, up to the rescue of its kindred trap

454 THE GODS OF OLD;

eame the volcano, last and most lasting (as we know only
too well) of the warring sons of earth. With arms that
grasped the east and west, with feet that waded in the ever-
during lava, with smoke and steam and sounds terrific,
and above all with fire, did this Anak advance upon the
earth, and from earth to heaven on the cones that served
it for so many heads.

How they fought and how long, how they were subdued
and when, is the subject matter of Hesiod’s deseription,—
a, description inimitable, and scarcely inferior to his Battle
of the Titans.

Notes are superfluous in his case; and we need only
remark that the jyart xelvw is again the fateful Tertiary
period of our earth’s existence, and that the qevai
mentioned by the poet are true to nature and true in order.
Volcanic eruptions are preceded, as a rule, by tremors that
finally merge into distinct shocks of earthquake, and the
sounds (pwvat) proceeding from these have been likened by
writers and observers to ‘‘ thunder,” ‘‘a hollow booming,”
“the rolling of a heavy wagon,” or “the bellowing of
bulls.” Then comes a series of explosive reports, which the
poet alludes to as the ‘‘ barking of dogs”; and the rushing
of steam with a screaming noise like to that from a locomo-
tive. Such accompaniments as thunder, lightning, hurri-
canes, and tidal waves, are well recognised in volcanic and
seismic disturbances :

Adrap émel Tirjvas an’ otpavod é&ddace Zevs,
émddratov Téxe watda Tupwéa Tata wedapy
Taprdpou ev piddryre dia xpucénv “Adpodirny.

od xeipes pév damrot, én’ ioxvti épypar ~xovcat,
kat wd0es dxdparo. kpatepou Geov- ex dé of Gpoy
qv éxarov xearat dios, Sewoto Spdxorras,
ydconar Svopepnat Nederypores, €k b€ of Erawy
beonenins xeadjow vn’ oppict wip dpdpuoce’
maceav § éx xeadéwy wp xaieto SepKopevoto’
hovai & év rdojow goav Sewys xepadjot
mavroinu on leioat, abéoarov" GAAoreE pev yap
pbeyyor® Gate Oeciot cvmenev, Dore F abre
Tavpov épiBpiyew, pévos doxérou Socar, ayaipou,
ore & adre Aéovros dvadéa Ovpdv exovros,

> 5 s > r , ra 9
Adore & ad oxvddcerow éotxdra, Gavpar’ dxodtea
2

ore 8 ad poitery’ vxs & ifyeev otpea paxpd.

AND THE STORY THAT THEY TELL.

A if cg 4 2 La a” a
kat vu Kev &mhero epyov duhyavoy jyart Keive,
kal kev dye Ovntoicr xai abavdrooty dvakey,
? A WF FEN ? A > ~ ~
el pi) dp’ O£0 vénoe warp avdpav re Gedy re.
oxhnpov 8 éBpdvrnce Kai EBptpov, duct dé yaia
Le , 7 > 4 > AY ?
apepdadéov xovaBnoe Kal otpavds etpis drepbev,
wévros tT’ ’Oxeavod Te poat Kal rdprapa yains.
wogal 8 tn’ aOavdrowot péyas medepiCer’ ”OAvprros
Gpvupévoto dvaxros’ drectevaxtte dé yata.
xatpa 8 in’ dudorépoy xdrexev ioetdéa mévrov
Bpovrijs Té oTepomijs re, wupés 7’ did Toto meddpov,
MpyoTHpav avépav re Kepauvod te preyeOovros.
eee Sé yOav waca xal oipavis 7O€ Oddacoa’
Bie & ap’ aud’ ards mepi 7’ dui re Kipara papa
pug tn’ abavdrav, evoors 8 doBeoros épdpet*
4 a>, oi a7 Z a?
tpéoa’ Aids, évépotot kaTrapOievacw dvdcowr,
Te ny e e , K ‘4 > 4 af
Tives & vmoraprdpiot, Kpdvov duds édrres,
7 mn
doBéaotov xedddoto Kal aivas Snioriros.
Zebs 5, del odv xdpOuvev gov pévos, etrero 8’ dda,
Bporvriy re orepomny re Kat aiaddevta Kepavvdr,
mAnEey dm Oddupmoto erdApevos’ api dé rdcas
A é A ~ fe
-Enpeoe Geonecias xearas Sewoto weAdpov.
aitdp émel d7 piv Sdpace TAny_ow ipdooas,
Fptre yurwbeis, otevdxtle dé yaia weAwpy"
PrS§E SC xepavvabévros awécavto Toi dvakros
a > , tnt ca
ovpeos ev Bnoonow ‘Airyys ratmadoecons,
wAnyévros' oA} 8 weAd@py Kalero yaia
arpa Ocomecin kal erijxero, kaocirepos os
réxyn tr’ aitnav td 7’ ebrpyrov xodvouo
Gadrécis, ne ciSnpos, Swep xparepwrards éoTw,
3 ka -
otipeos év Bnoonet dapaCdspevos mupt Knr€éa
et e is , cA
Tykerat ev xOovi Sin Ud’ “Hdaiorov maddunow.
&s apa rixero yaia céha wupos aidopevoto.

pie 8€ pv Oup@ dxaxady és Tdprapov etpiv.—Theog. 820.

When Zeus the Titans had expelled from heaven,
Revolving earth, with Tartarus conjoined

In love’s most ardent tie, Typhosus bore,

Last and most lasting of her children all.

His hands, that served as barriers for strength,
Baffled comparison ; his parts below

Were everduring as a mighty god’s;

A hundred snaky, dreadful dragon heads,

That licked all over were with lurid tongues,
Spraug from his shoulders; and from eyes of his,
Under the brows of these most wondrous heads,
There darted fire,—from every head of his

That gazed upon the light was kindled fire.

And sounds of every sort and hard to tell

A going were in all those fearful heads :

They one time sounded like to warring gods ;

455

THE GODS OF OLD.

At others to the roaring of a bull

Loud-bellowing, lordly, and of strength unmatched, —
Or that of lion swayed by hungry feel ;

Anon twas, strange to hear, like barking dogs;

And yet again it rushed with: hissing scream,

And the long ranges echoed from below. ,

And haply now a deed past mending quite

On that most noted day were done, and ruled

O’er gods and mortals he might have, had not

The sire of gods and men been quick to see.

Then he the thunder hoarse, intense, sent forth ;

And earth’s expanse, and heaven’s broad dome above,
The sea, the ocean’s springs, and nether depths,
Rang with the deaf’ning sound; then roused to wrath
This Anak’s everduring feet convulsed

The earth, and shook Olympus far and wide.

Then did the burning tide beneath these two

Invade the dark-blue sea, while ever raged

The thunder, lightning, stormy winds, the bolt,

And fire from this phenomenon so strange.

Then steamed the all of earth, and heaven, and sea;
Then surged the long waves round and round the shores
Under the rushing of immortal powers ;

And ceaseless quaking of the earth was roused.

The god that rules the dead and gone beneath,

Th’ abysmal Titans all round Kronos ranged,

Shook with the ceaseless din and dreadful strife.

But now when Zeus massed ali his strength, and grasped
His weapons, thunder, lightning, flaming bolt,
Bushing from his Olympian home he sprang

He smote, and blew off all the awesome heads

Of this phenomenon so passing strange. aa
At length when scourged and tamed with blows it fell
Dismembered down, and earth revolving shook,

This thunder-scarred, this blasted Anak’s fire

Broke loose in time-worn glens of Atna’s mount;

And by the awful heat revolving earth

Was far and wide consumed, and melted like

The tin that’s melted ’neath a wide-oped pit

Under the cunning skill of brawny men,—

Or iron, most tenacious, that, reduced

By ardent fire in mountain depths, is fused

Within the glorious earth ‘neath Vulcan’s hands.

By the wild blaze of deflagrating fire

‘Was earth consumed like this: then anguished sore

She plunged it down to wide and troubled depths.

* w
Wee

THE END.

BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.

vin Gua”

JUN = - aug. A func fm 3

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