THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE HISTORY OF GREECE. I. II. (Srmati 3M0tnnj in tfje JUtgtt nf at BY GEORGE GROTE, ESQ. "I VOL. I. REPKINTED FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION NEW YORK : HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 320 AND 331 PEARL STREET. 1880. PART I LEGENDARY GREECE J A.v6puv f/puuv *H/u#eot Trporepi) yevei). HESIOD * PART H. mSTORICAL GREECE. Ilo/Uff pcponuv av&punuv. Ho:i*C PREFACE. THE first idea .if this History was conceived ir any years ago, at a time wKtn ancient Hellas was known to the English public chiefly through the pages of Mitford ; and my purpose in writing it was t ) rectify the erroneous statements as to matter of fact which that History contained, as well as to pre- sent the general phe aomena of the Grecian world under what I thought a juster an 1 more comprehensive point of view. My leisure, however, way not at that time equal to the execution of any large literary undertaking ; nor is it until within the last three or four years that I have been able to devote to the work that continuous and exclusive labor, without which, though much may be done to illustrate detached points, no entire or complicated subject can ever be set forth in a man ner worthy to meet the public eye. Meanwhile the state of the English literary world, in ref- erence to ancient Hellas, has been materially changed in more ways than one. If my early friend Dr. ThirlwalPs History of Greece had appeared a few years sooner, I should probably never have conceived the design of the present work at all ; I should certainly not have been prompted to the task by any deficiencies, such as those which I felt and regret- ted in Mitford. The comparison of the two authors affords, indeed, a striking proof of the progress of sound and enlarged Uf PREFACE. views respecting the ancient world during the present gerier ation. Having studied of course the same evidences as Dr Thirwall, I am better enabled than others to bear testimony to the learning, the sagacity, and the candor which pervado his excellent work : and it is the more incumbent on me to give expression to this sentiment, since the particular points on which I shall have occasion to advert to it will, unavoidably, be points of dissent oftener than of coincidence. The liberal spirit of criticism, in which Dr. Thirwall stands so much distinguished from Mitford, is his own : there arc other features of superiority which belong to him conjointly with his age. For during the generation since Mitford 's work, philological studies have been prosecuted in Germany with remarkable success : the stock of facts and documents, com- paratively scanty, handed down from the ancient world, has been combined and illustrated in a thousand different ways : and if our witnesses cannot be multiplied, we at least have numerous interpreters to catch, repeat, amplify, and ex- plain their broken and half-inaudible depositions. Some of the best writers in this department Boeckh, Niebuhr, 0. Miiller have been translated into our language ; so that the English public has been enabled to form some idea of the new lights thrown upon many subjects of antiquity by the in- estimable aid of German erudition. The poets, historians, orators, and philosophers of Greece, have thus been all ren- dered both more intelligible and more instructive than they were to a student in the last century ; and the general pic- ture of the Grecian world may now be conceived with a de- gree of fidelity, which, considering our imperfect materials, it is curious to contemplate. It is that general picture which an historian of Greece is required first to embody in his own mind, and next to lay out before his readers ; a picture not merely such as to delight the imagination by brilliancy of coloring and depth of senti- ment, but also suggestive and improving to the reason NoJ PKEFACE. omitting the points of resemblance as well as of contrast with the better-known forms of modern society, he will especially study to exhibit the spontaneous movement of Grecian intel- lect, sometimes aided but never borrowed from without, and lighting up a small portion of a world otherwise clouded and stationary. He will develop the action of that social system, which, while insuring to the mass of freemen a degree of pro- tection elsewhere unknown, acted as a stimulus to the crea tive impulses of genius, and left the superior minds sufficiently unshackled to soar above religious and political routine, to overshoot their own age, and to become the teachers of pos terity. To set forth the history of a people by whom the first spark was set to the dormant intellectual capacities of our nature, Hellenic phenomena, as illustrative of the Hellenic mind and character, is the task which I propose to myself in the present work ; not without a painful consciousness how much the deed falls short of the will, and a yet more painful con- viction, that full success is rendered impossible by an obstacle which no human ability can now remedy, the insufficiency of original evidence. For, in spite of the valuable expositions of so many able commentators, our stock of information re specting the ancient world still remains lamentably inadequate to the demands of an enlightened curiosity. We possess only what has drifted ashore from the wreck of a stranded vessel ; and though this includes some of the most precious articles amongst its once abundant cargo, yet if any man will cast his eyes over the citations in Diogenes Laertius, Athenseus, or Plutarch, or the list of names in Vossius de Historicis Grae- cis, he will see with grief and surprise how much larger is the proportion which, through the enslavement of the Greeka themselves, the decline of the Roman Empire, the change of religion, and the irruption of barbarian conquerors, has been irrecoverably submerged. We are thus reduced to judge of he whole Hellenic world, eminently multiform as it was, w PREFACE. from a few compositions ; excellent, indeed, in themselves, but bearing too exclusively the stamp of Athens. Of Thucydidea and Aristotle, indeed, both as inquirers into matter of fact, and as free from narrow local feeling, it is impossible to speak too highly ; but, unfortunately, that work of the latter which would have given us the most copious information regarding Grecian political life his collection and comparison of one hundred and fifty distinct town constitutions has not been preserved : and the brevity of Thucydides often gives us but a single word where a sentence would not have been too much, and sentences which we should be glad tor see expanded into paragraphs. Such insufficiency of original and trustworthy materials, a3 compared with those resources which are thought hardly suf- ficient for the historian of any modern kingdom, is neither to be concealed nor extenuated, however much we may lament it. I advert to the point here on more grounds than one. For it not only limits the amount of information which an historian of Greece can give to his readers, compelling him to leave much of his picture an absolute blank, but it also greatly spoils the execution of the remainder. The question of credibility is perpetually obtruding itself, and requiring a decision, which, whether favorable or unfavorable, always in- troduces more or less of controversy ; and gives to those out lines, which the interest of the picture requires to be straight and vigorous, a faint and faltering character. Expressions of qualified and hesitating affirmation are repeated until the reader is sickened ; while the writer himself, to whom this restraint is more painful still, is frequently tempted to break loose from the unseen spell by which a conscientious criticism binds him down, to screw up the possible and probable into certainty, to suppress counterbalancing considerations, and to substitute a pleasing romance in place of half- known and perplexing realities. Desiring, in the present work, to set forth all which can be ascertained, together with PREFACE. Til such conjectures and inferences as can be reasonably deduced from it, but nothing more, I notice, at the outset, that faulty state of the original evidence which renders discussions of credibility, and hesitation in the language of the judge, una- voidable. Such discussions, though the reader may be as- sured that they will become less frequent as we advance into times better known, are tiresome enough, even with the com- paratively late period which I adopt as the historical begin- ning ; much more intolerable would they have proved, had I thought it my duty to start from the primitive terminus of Deukalion or Inachus, or from the unburied Pelasgi and Leleges, and to subject the heroic ages to a similar scrutiny. I really know nothing so disheartening or unrequited as the elaborate balancing of what is called evidence, the compar- ison of infinitesimal probabilities and conjectures all uncerti- fied, in regard to these shadowy times and persons. The law respecting sufficiency of evidence ought to be the same for ancient times as for modern ; and the reader will find in this History an application, to the former, of criteria analogous to those which have been long recognized in the latter. Approaching, though with a certain measure of indulgence, to this standard, I begin the real history of Greece with the first recorded Olympiad, or 776 B. c. To such as are accustomed to the habits once universal, and still not uncommon, in investigating the ancient world, I may ap- pear to be striking off one thousand years from the scroll of history ; but to those whose canon of evidence is derived from Mr. Hallam, M. Sismondi, or any other eminent histo- rian of modern events, I am well assured that I shall appear lax and credulous rather than exigent or sceptical. For the truth is, that historical records, properly so called, do not begin until long after this date : nor will any man, who can- didly considers the extreme paucity of attested facts for two centuries after 776 B. c., be astonished to learn that the state of Greece in 900, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1300, 1400 B. a. tr , viii PREFACE. or auy cailicr century which it may please chronologistg to inc.mcle iu their coirsputed genealogies, cannot be described to him upon anything like decent evidence. I shall hope, when I come to the lives of Socrates and Plato, to illustrate one of the most valuable of their principles, that conscious tind confessed ignorance is a better state of mind, than the fancy, without the reality, of knowledge. Meanwhile, I begin by making that confession, in reference to the real world of Greece anterior to the Olympiads ; meaning the disclaimer to apply to anything like a general history, not to exclude rigorously every individual event. The times which I thus set apart from the region of his- tory are discernible only through a different atmosphere, that of epic poetry and legend. To confound together these disparate matters is, in my judgment, essentially unphilo- sophical. I describe the earlier times by themselves, as con- ceived by the faith and feeling of the first Greeks, and known only through their legends, without presuming to measure how much or how little of historical matter these legendd may contain. If the reader blame me for not assisting him to de- termine this, if he ask me why I do not undraw the curtain and disclose the picture, I reply in the words of the painter Zeuxis, when the same question was addressed to him on ex- hibiting his master-piece of imitative art : " The curtain is the picture." What we now read as poetry and legend was once accredited history, and the only genuine history which the first Greeks could conceive or relish of their past time : the curtain conceals nothing behind, and cannot, by any ingenuity, be withdrawn. I undertake only to show it as it stands, not to efface, still less to repaint it. Three-fourths of the two volumes now presented b the public are destined to elucidate this age of historical faith, as distinguished from the later age of historical reason : to exhibit its basis in the human mind, an omnipresent religious and personal interpretation of nature ; to illustrate it by coaa PREFACE. jl parison with the like mental habit in early modern Europe ; to show its immense abundance and variety of narrative matter, with little care for consistency between one story and another ; lastly, to set forth the causes which overgrew and partially supplanted tho old epical sentiment, and intro- duced, in the room of literal faith, a variety of compromises *nd interpretations. The legendary age of the Greeks receives its principal tharm and dignity from the Homeric poems : to these, there- .bre, and to the other poems included in the ancient epic, an entire chapter is devoted, the length of which must be justi- fied by the names of the Iliad and Odyssey. I have thought it my duty to take some notice of the Wolfian controversy as it now stands in Germany, and have even hazarded some speculations respecting the structure of the Iliad. The so ciety and manners of the heroic age, considered as known in a general way from Homer's descriptions and allusions, are also described and criticized. I next pass to the historical age, beginning at 776 B. c. ; prefixing some remarks upon the geographical features of Greece. I try to make out, amidst obscure and scanty indi- cations, what the state of Greece was at this period ; and I indulge some cautious conjectures, founded upon the earliest verifiable facts, respecting the steps immediately antecedent by which that condition was brought about. In the present volumes, I have only been able to include the history of Sparta and the Peloponnesian Dorians, down to the age of Peisis- tratus and Croesus. I had hoped to have comprised in them the entire history of Greece down to this last-mentioned period, but I find the space insufficient. The history of Greece falls most naturally into six com- partments, of which the first may be looked at as a period of preparation for the five following, which exhaust the free life of collective Hellas. I. Period from 776 B. c. to 560 B. c., the accession of Peisistratus at Athens and of Croesus in Lydia A* f PREFACE. II. From the accession of Peisistratus and Croesus to tha repulse of Xerxes from Greece. III. From the repulse of Xerxes to the close of the Pelo ponnesian war and overthrow of Athens. IV. From the close of the Peloponnesian war to the bat- tle of Leuktra. V. From the battle of Leuktra to that of Chgeroneia. VI. From the battle of Chaeroneia to the end of the gen- eration of Alexander. The five periods, from Peisistratus down to the death of Alexander and of his generation, present the acts of an his- torical drama capable of being recounted in perspicuous suc- cession, and connected bj a sensible thread of unity. I shall interweave in their proper places the important but outlying adventures of the Sicilian and Italian Greeks, introducing such occasional notices of Grecian political constitutions, phi- losophy, poetry, and oratory, as are requisite to exhibit the many-sided activity of this people during their short but brilliant career. After the generation of Alexander, the political action of Greece becomes cramped and degraded, no longer interest- ing to the reader, or operative on the destinies of the future world. We may, indeed, name one or two incidents, especially the revolutions of Agis and Kleomenes at Sparta, which arc both instructive and affecting ; but as a whole, the period, between 300 B. c. and the absorption of Greece by the Ro- mans, is of no interest in itself, and is only so far of value as it helps us to understand the preceding centuries. Tho dignity and value of the Greeks from that time forward be long to them only as individual philosophers, preceptors, as- tronomers, and mathematicians, literary men and critics, med ical practioners, etc. In all these respective capacities, especially in the great schools of philosophical speculation they still constitute the light of the Roman world ; though, as communities, they have lost their own orbit, and have be .-.me satellites of more powerful neighbors. PREFACE. 3] I propose to bring down the history of the Grecian com- munities to the year 300 B. c., or the close of the generation which takes its name from Alexander the Great, and I hope to accomplish this in eight volumes altogether. For the next two or three volumes I have already large preparations made, and I shall publih my third (perhaps my fourth) in the course of the ensuing winter. There are great disadvantages in the publication of one portion of a history apart from the remainder ; for neither the earlier nor the later phenomena can be fully comprehended without the light which each mutually casts upon the other. But the practice has become habitual, and is indeed more than justified by the well-known inadmissibility of " long hopes" into the short span of human life. Yet I cannot but fear that my first two volumes will suffer in the estimation of many readers by coming out alone, and that men who value the Greeks for their philosophy, their politics, and their ora- tory, may treat the early legends as not worth attention. And it must be confessed that the sentimental attributes of the Greek mind its religious and poetical vein here ap- pear in disproportionate relief, as compared with its more vigorous and masculine capacities, with those powers of acting, organizing, judging, and speculating, which will be re- vealed in the forthcoming volumes. I venture, however, to forewarn the reader, that there will occur numerous circum- stances in the after political life of the Greeks, which he will not comprehend unless he be initiated into the course of their legendary associations. He will not understand the frantic terror of the Athenian public during the Peloponnesian war, on the occasion of the mutilation of the statues called Her- mae, unless he enters into the way in which they connected their stability and security with the domiciliation of the goda in the soil : nor will he adequately appreciate the habit of the Spartan king on military expeditions, when he offered his daily public sacrifices on behalf of his army and his coun xii PREFACE. try, " always to ptrform this morning service immediately before sunrise, in order that he might be beforehand in ob- taining the favor of the gods," 1 if he be not familiar with the Homeric conception of Zeus going to rest at night and awaking to rise at early dawn from the side of the " white- armed Here." The occasion will, indeod, often occur for remarking how these legends illustrate and vivify the politi cal phenomena of the succeeding times, and I have only now to urge the necessity of considering them as the beginning of a series, not as an entire work. 1 Xenophon, Repub. LaccdaemDn. cap. xiii. 3. 'A 6e, orav ^vrjTai, ilo<;, fjohappuveiv fiovXofievof TTJV TO* tfc*ti tiivoiav. LONDOK, March S 1S4S. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION OF VOLUMES I. AND II. IN preparing a Second Edition of the first two volumes of my History, I have profited by the remarks and correc- tions of various critics, contained in Reviews, both English and foreign. I have suppressed, or rectified, some positions which had been pointed out as erroneous, or as advanced upon inadequate evidence. I have strengthened my argu- ment in some cases where it appeared to have been imper- fectly understood, adding some new notes, partly for the purpose of enlarged illustration, partly to defend certain opinions which had been called in question. The greater number of these alterations have been made in Chapters XVI. and XXI. of Part I., and in Chapter VI. of Part II. I trust that these three Chapters, more full of speculation, and therefore more open to criticism than any of the others, will thus appear in a more complete and satisfactory form. But I must at the same time add that they remain for the most part unchanged in substance, and that I have seen no sufficient reason to modify my main conclusions even respect- ing the structure of the Iliad, controverted though they have been by some of my most esteemed critics. In regard to the character and peculiarity of Grecian le gend, as broadly distinguished throughout these volumes from Grecian .history, I desire to notice two valuable publications XJV PEEFACE. with which I have only become acquainted since the date of my first edition. One of these is, A Short Essay on Primae- val History, by John Kenrick, M. A. (London, 1846, publish- ed just at the same time as these volumes,) which illustrates with much acute reflection the general features of legend, not only in Greece but throughout the ancient world, see especially pages 65, 84, 92, et seq. The other work is, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, by Colonel Sleeman, first made known to me through an excellent no- tice of my History in the Edinburgh Review for October 1846. The description given by Colonel Sleeman, of the state of mind now actually prevalent among the native population of Hindostan, presents a vivid comparison, helping the modern reader to understand and appreciate the legendary era of Greece. I have embodied in the notes of this Second Edi- tion two or three passages from Colonel Sleeman's instruc- tive work: but the whole of it richly deserves perusal. Having now finished six volumes of this History, without attaining a lower point than the peace of Nikias, in the tenth year of the Peloponnesian war, I find myself compelled to retract the expectation held out in the preface to my First Edition, that the entire work might be completed in eight volumes. Experience proves to me how impossible it is to measure beforehand the space which historical subjects will require. All I can now promise is, that the remainder of the work shall be executed with as much regard to brevity as ia consistent with the paramount duty of rendering it fit for public acceptance. London, April 3, 1849 NAMES OF GODS, GODDESSES, AND HEROES. FOLLOWING the example of Dr. Thirl wall and other excellent scholars, I call the Greek deities by their real Greek names, and not by the Latin equivalents used among the Romans. For the assistance of those readers to whom the Greek names may be less familiar, I here annex a table of the one and the other. Greek. Latin. Zeus, Jupiter. Poseidon, Neptune. Ares, Mars. Dionysus, Bacchus. Hermes, Mercury. Helios, Sol. Hephaestus, Vulcan. Hades, Pluto. Here, Juno. Athene, Minerva. Artemis, Diana. Aphrodite, Venus. Eos, Aurora. Hestia, Vesta. Leto, Latona. Demeter, Ceres. Herokles, Hercules. Askle'pius, JEsculapius. A few words are here necessary respecting the orthography oi Greek names adopted in the above table and generally through- out this history. I have approximated as nearly as I dared to the Greek letters in preference to the Latin ; and on this point I venture upon an innovation which I should have little doubt of vindicating before the reason of any candid English student. For the ordinary practice of substituting, in a Greek name, the English C in place of the Greek K, is, indeed, so obviously incorrect, that it admits of i'.o rational justification. Our own K, piecisety iind in every point, coincides with the Greek K : we have thus tho means of reproducing the Greek name to the eye as well as to the ear, yet we gratuitously take the wrong letter in preference to the right. And the precedent of the Latins is here against us rather than in our favor, for their C really coincided in sound with the Greek K, whereas our C entirely departs from it, and becomes an S, before e, i, i?of Sage an universal manifestation of the human mind. Analogy of the Germans and Celts with the Greeks. Differences between them. Grecian poetry matchless. Grecian progress self-operated. German progress brought about by violent influences from without. Operation of the Roman civilization and of Christianity upon the primitive German mythes. Alteration in the mythical genealogies Odin and the other gods degraded into men. Grecian Paganism what would have been the case, if it had been supplanted by Christianity in 500 B. c. Saxc Grammaticus and Snorro Sturleson contrasted with Pherekydes and Hel- lanikus. Mythopceic tendencies in modern Europe still subsisting, but forced into a new channel : 1. Saintly ideal; 2. Chivalrous ideal. Le- gends of the Saints their analogy with the Homeric theology. Chiv- alrous ideal Romances of Charlemagne and Arthur. Accepted as re- alities of the fore-time. Teutonic and Scandavian epic its analogy with the Grecian. Heroic character and self-expanding subject common to both. Points of distinction between the two epic of the Middle Ages neither stood so completely alone, nor was so closely interwoven with reli- gion, as the Grecian. History of England how conceived down to the seventeenth century began with Brute the Trojan. 'Earnest and tena- cious faith manifested in the defence of this early history. Judgment of Milton. Standard of historical evidence raised in regrad to England - not raised in regard to Greece. Milton's way of dealing with the British fabulous history objectionable. Two ways open of dealing with the Grecian mythes: 1, to omit them; or, 2, to recount them as mythes. Reasons for preferring ihe latter. Triple partition of past time by Varro 461-483. HISTORY OF GREECE. PART I LEGENDARY GREECE. CHAPTER I. LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. THE mythical world of the Greeks opens with the gods, anterior as well as superior to man : it gradually descends, first to heroes, and next to the human race. Along with the gods are found various monstrous natures, ultra-human and extra-human, who cannot with propriety be called gods, but who partake with gods and men in the attributes of freewill, conscious agency, and susceptibility of pleasure and pain, such as the Harpies, the Gorgons, the Groca?, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, Echidna. Sphinx, Chimcera, Chrysaor, Pegasus, the Cyclopes, the Centaurs, etc. The first acts of what may be termed the great mythical cycle describe the proceedings of these gigantic agents the crash and collision of certain terrific and overboiling forces, which are ultimately reduced to obedience, or chained up, or extinguished, under the more orderly government of Zeus, who supplants his less capable predecessors, and acquires precedence and supremacy over gods and men subject, however to certain Racial restraints from the chief goJs and goddesses around TOL. I. 1 100. 2 HISTORY OF GREECE. him, as well as to the custom of occasionally convoking ind consulting the divine agora. I recount these events briefly, but literally, treating them simply as mythes springing from the same creative imagination, addressing themselves to analogous tastes and feelings, and de- pending upon the same authority, as the legends of Thebes and Troy. It is the inspired voice of the Muse which reveals and authenticates both, and from which Homer and Hesiod alike derive their knowledge the one, of the heroic, the other, of the divine, foretime. I maintain, moreover, fully, the character of these great divine agents as Persons, which is the light in which they presented themselves to the Homeric or Hesiodic audience. Uranos, Nyx, Hypnos and Oneiros (Heaven, Night, Sleep and Dream), are Persons, just as much as Zeus and Apollo. To resolve them into mere allegories, is unsafe and unprofitable : we then depart from the point of view of the original hearers, with- out acquiring any consistent or philosophical point of view of our own. 1 For although some of the attributes and actions ascribed to these persons are often explicable by allegory the whole series and system of them never are so : the theorist who adopts this course of explanation finds that, after one or two simple and obvious steps, the path is no longer open, and he is forced to clear a way for himself by gratuitous refinements and conjectures. The allegorical persons and attributes are always found mingled with other persons and attributes not allegorical ; but the two classes cannot be severed without breaking up the whole march of the mythical events, nor can any explanation which drives us to such a necessity be considered as admissible. To suppose indeed that these legends could be all traced by means of alle- gory into a coherent body of physical doctrine, would be incon- sistent with all reasonable presumptions respecting the age or society in which they arose. "Where the allegorical mark is clearly set upon any particular character, or attribute, or event, to that extent we may recognize it ; but we can rarely venture to divine further, still less to alter the legends themselves on the faith of any such surmises. The theogony of the Greeks contains 1 It is sufficient, here, to state this position briefly : more will he said respecting the allegorizing interpretation in a furore LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS. 3 some cosmogonic ideas ; but it cannot be considered as a system of cosmogony, or translated into a string of elementary, planet- ary, or physical changes. In the order of legendary chronology, Zeus comes after Kronos and Uranos ; but in the order of Grecian conception, Zeus is the prominent person, and Kronos and Uranos are inferior and introductory precursors, set up in order to be over- thrown and to serve as mementos of the prowess of their con- queror. To Homer and Hesiod, as well as to the Greeks universally, Zeus is the great and predominant god, " the father of gods and men," whose power none of the other gods can hope to resist, or even deliberately think of questioning. All the other gods have their specific potency and peculiar sphere of action and duty, with which Zeus does not usually interfere ; but it is he who maintains the lineaments of a providential superin- tendence, as well over the phenomena of Olympus as over those of earth. Zeus and his brothers Poseidon and Hades have made a division of power : he has reserved the aether and the atmos- phere to himself Poseidon has obtained the sea and Hades the under-world or infernal regions ; while earth, and the events which pass upon earth, are common to all of them, together with free access to Olympus. 1 Zeus, then, with his brethren and colleagues, constitute the present gods, whom Homer and Hesiod recognize as in full dignity and efficiency. The inmates of this divine world are conceived upon the model, but not upon the scale, of the human. They are actuated by the full play and variety of those appetites, sympathies, passions and affections, which divide the soul of man ; invested with a far larger and indeterminate measure of power, and an exemption as well from death as (with some rare excep- tions) from suffering and infirmity. The rich and diverse types thus conceived, full of energetic movement and contrast, each in his own province, and soaring confessedly above the limits of 1 See Iliad, viii. 405, 463; xv. 20, 130, 185. Hesiod, Theog. 885. This unquestioned supremacy is the general representation of Zeus : at the same time the conspiracy of Here', Poseidon, and Athene 1 against him, suppressed by the unexpected apparition of Briareus as his ally, is among the exceptions. (Iliad, i. 400.) Zeus is at one time vanquished by Titan, but rescued by Hermes. (Apollodor. i. 6, 3). 4 HISTORY 0* GKEECE. experience, were of all themes the most suitable for adventure and narrative, and operated with irresistible force upon the Grecian fancy. All nature was then conceived as moving and working through a number of personal agents, amongst whom the gods of Olympus were the most conspicuous ; the reverential belief in Zeus and Apollo being only one branch of this omni- present personifying faith. The attributes of all these agents had a tendency to expand themselves into illustrative legends especially those of the gods, who were constantly invoked in the public worship. Out of this same mental source sprang both the divine and heroic mythes the former being often the more extravagant and abnormous in their incidents, in proportion as the general type of the gods was more vast and awful than that of the heroes. As the gods have houses and wives like men, so the present dynasty of gods must have a past to repose upon; 1 and the curious and imaginative Greek, whenever he does not find a recorded past ready to his hand, is uneasy until he has created one. Thus the Hesiodic theogony explains, with a certain degree of system and coherence, first the antecedent circumstances under which Zeus acquired the divine empire, next the number of his colleagues and descendants. First in order of time (we are told by Hesiod) came Chaos ; next Grea, the broad, firm, and flat Earth, with deep and dark Tartarus at her base. Eros (Love), the subduer of gods as well as men, came immediately afterwards. 2 From Chaos sprung Erebos and Nyx ; from these latter JEther and Hemera. Gaea also gave birth to Uranos, equal in breadth to herself, in order to serve both as an overarching vault to her, and as a residence for the immortal gods ; she further produced the mountains, habitations of the divine nymphs, and Pontus, the barren and billowy sea. Then Goea intermarried with Uranos, and from this union came a numerous offspring twelve Titans and Titanides, three Cyclopes, and three Hekatoncheires or beings with a hundred 1 Arist. Polit. i. 1. uanep <5e nai TU el6r) tavroZf uo/j.oiovffiv uv&puiroi, ov- rue Ka i T VC Piove, TUV tietiv. * Hesiod, Theog. 11C. Apollodorus begins with Uranos and Gau (i. ! .\ lie does not recognize Eros, Nyx, or Erebos. CTRANOS A^D KRONOS. >, hands each. The Titans were Oceanus, Koeos, Krios, Hyperion, lapetos, and Kronos : the Titanides, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys. The Cyclopes were Brontes, Steropes, and Arges, formidable persons, equally distinguished for strength and for manual craft, so that they made the thunder which afterwards formed the irresistible artillery of Zeus. 1 The Hekatoncheires were Kottos, Briareus, and Gyges, of pro- digious bodily force. Uranos contemplated this powerful brood with fear and hor- ror ; as fast as any of them were born, he concealed them in cavities of the earth, and would not permit them to come out. Gaga could find no room for them, and groaned under the pres- sure : she produced iron, made a sickle, and implored her sons to avenge both her and themselves against the oppressive treatment of their father. But none of them, except Kronos, had courage to undertake the deed : he, the youngest and the most daring, was armed with the sickle and placed in suitable ambush by the contrivance of Gsea. Presently night arrived, and Uranos descended to the embraces of Grea : Kronos then emerged from his concealment, cut off the genitals of his father, and cast the bleeding member behind him far away into the sea. 2 Much of the blood was spilt upon the earth, and Gsea in consequence gave birth to the irresistible Erinnys, the vast and muscular Gigantes, and the Melian nymphs. Out of the genitals themselves, as they swam and foamed upon the sea, emerged the goddess Aphrodite, deriving her name from the foam out of which she had sprung. She first landed at Kythera, and then went to Cyprus : the island felt her benign influence, and the green herb started up under her soft and delicate tread. Eros immediately joined her, and partook with her the function of suggesting and directing the amorous impulses both of gods and men. 3 1 Hesiod, Theog. 140, 156. Apollod. ut sup. 2 Hesiod, Thcog. 160, 182. Apollod. i. 1, 4. 3 Hesiod, Theog. 192. This legend respecting the birth of Aphroditfl seems to have been derived partly from her name (u(j>pb, foam), partly from the surname Urania, ' A^poSirr/ Qvpavia, under which she "was so very exten- sively worshipped, especially both in Cyprus and Cythera, seemingly origi- nated in both islands by the Phoenicians. Herodot. i. 105. Compare th instructive section in Boeckh's Metrologie, c. iv. $ 4. 6 IIISTORY OF GREECE. Uranos being thus dethroned and disabled, Kronos and the Titan? acquired their liberty and became predominant : the Cyclopea and the Hekatoncheires had been cast by Uranos into Tartarus, and were still allowed to remain there. Each of the Titans had a numerous offspring: Oceanus, especially, marrying his sister Tethys, begat three thousand daughters, the Oceanic nymphs, and as many sons : the rivers and springs passed for his offspring. Hyperion and his sister Theia had for their children Helios, Selene, and Eos ; Kreos with Phoebe begat Leto and Asteria ; the children of Krios were Astrasos, Pallas, and PerSes, from Astraeos and Eos sprang the winds Zephyrus, Boreas, and Notus. lapetos, marrying the Oceanic nymph Clymene, counted as his progeny the celebrated Prometheus, Epimetheus, Menoetius, and Atlas. But the off spring of Kronos were the most powerful and transcendent of all. He married his sister Rhea, and had by her three daughters Hestia, Demeter, and Here and three sons, Hades, Poseidon, and Zeus, the latter at once the youngest and the greatest. But Kronos foreboded to himself destruction from one of his own children, and accordingly, as soon as any of them were born, he immediately swallowed them and retained them in his own belly. In this manner had the first five been treated, and Rhea was on the point of being delivered of Zeus. Grieved and indig- nant at the loss of her children, she applied for counsel to her father and mother, Uranos and Gsea, who aided her to conceal the birth of Zeus. They conveyed her by night to Lyktus in Crete, hid the new-born child in a woody cavern on Mount Ida, and gave to Kronos, in place of it, a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he greedily swallowed, believing it to be his child. Thus was the safety of Zeus ensured. 1 As he grew up his vast powers fully developed themselves : at the suggestion of Gsea, he induced Kronos by stratagem to vomit up, first the stone which had been given to him, next, the five children whom he had previously devoured. Hestia, Demeter, Here, Poseidon and Hades, were thus allowed to grow up along with Zeus ; and the stone to which the latter owed his preservation was placed near 1 Hesiod, Theog. 452, 487. Apollod. i. 1, 6. KRONOS AND ZEUS. 7 the temple of Delphi, where it ever afterwards stood, as a con* spicuous and venerable memorial to the religious Greek. 1 We have not yet exhausted the catalogue of beings generated during this early period, anterior to the birth of Zeus. Nyx, alone and without any partner, gave birth to a numerous pro- geny : Thanatos, Hypnos and Oneiros ; Momus and Oi'zys (Grief) ; Klotho, Lachesis and Atropos, the three Fates ; the retributive and equalizing Nemesis ; Apate and Philotes (Deceit and amorous Propensity), Geras (Old Age) and Eris (Conten- tion). From Eris proceeded an abundant offspring, all mischiev- ous and maleficent : Ponos (Suffering), Lethe, Limos (Famine), Phonos and Mache (Slaughter and Battle), Dysnomia and Ate (Lawlessness and reckless Impulse), and Horkos, the ever- watchful sanctioner of oaths, as well as the inexorable punisher of voluntary perjury. 2 Gsea, too, intermarrying with Pontus, gave birth to Kerens, the just and righteous old man of the soa ; to Thaumas, Phorkys and Keto. From Nereus, and Doris daughter of Oceanus, pro- ceeded the fifty Nereids or Sea-nymphs. Thaumus also married Elektra daughter of Oceanus, and had by her Iris and the two Harpies, A116 and Okypete, winged and swift as the winds. From Phorkys and Keto sprung the Dragon of the Hesperides, and the monstrous Graeas and Gorgons : the blood of Medusa, one of the Gorgons, when killed by Perseus, produced Chrysaor and the horse Pegasus: Chrysaor and Kallirrhoe gave birth to Geryon as well as to Echidna, a creature half-nymph and half- serpent, unlike both to gods and to men. Other monsters arose from the union of Echidna with Typhoon, Orthros, the two- headed dog of Geryon ; Cerberus, the dog of Hades, with fifty heads, and the Lernaean Hydra. From the latter proreeded the Chimaera, the Sphinx of Thebes, and the Nemean lion. 1 A powerful and important progeny, also, was that of Styx, 1 Hesiod, Theog. 498. Tbv [lev Zeijf arfjpi^e naril xdovb Tlv&ol iv riyaftiri, yvu7.oi<; VTfd Tlapvqaoio, ST^U' lp.ev t^oiriffu, * Hesiod, Theog. 212-232. * Hesiod, Theog. 240-320. Apollodor. i. 2, 6, 7. 8 HISTORY OF GREECE. daughter of Oceanus, by Pallas ; she had Zelos and Nike (Impe- riousness and Victory), and Kratos and Bia (Strength and Force) The hearty and early cooperation of Styx and her four sons with Zeus was one of the main causes which enabled him to achieve Iiis victory over the Titans. Zeus had grown up not less distinguished for mental capacity than for bodily force. He and his brothers now determined to wrest the power from the hands of Kronos and the Titans, and a long and desperate struggle commenced, in which all the gods and all the goddesses took part. Zeus convoked them to Olym- pus, and promised to all who would aid him against Kronos, that their functions and privileges should remain undisturbed. The first who responded to the call, came with her four sons, and embraced his cause, was Styx. Zeus took them all four as his constant attendants, and conferred upon Styx the majestic distinc- tion of being the Horkos, or oath-sanctioner of the Gods, what Horkos was to men, Styx was to the Gods. 1 Still further to strengthen himself, Zeus released the other Uranids who had been imprisoned in Tartarus by their father, the Cyclopes and the Centimanes, and prevailed upon them to take part with him against the Titans. The former supplied him with thunder and lightning, and the latter brought into the fight their boundless muscular strength. 2 Ten full years did the com- bat continue ; Zeus and the Kronids occupying Olympus, and the Titans being established on the more southerly mountain-chain of Othrys. All nature was convulsed, and the distant Oceanus, though he took no part in the struggle, felt the boiling, the noise, and the shock, not less than Gaea and Pontus. The thunder of Zeus, combined with the crags and mountains torn up and hurled by the Centimanes, at length prevailed, and the Titans were de- feated and thurst down into Tartarus. lapetos, Kronos, and the remaining Titans (Oceanus excepted) were imprisoned, perpetu- ally and irrevocably, in that subterranean dungeon, a wall of brass being built around them by Poseidon, and the three Centimanes being planted as guards. Of the two sons of lapetos, Menoetius was made to share this prison, while Atlas was condemned to 1 Hesiod, Thcog. 385-403. 1 Hesiod, Theog. 140 624,657. Apollodor. i. 2, 4. THE TITANS. 9 etand for ever at the extreme west, and to bear upon his shoui ders the solid vault of heaven. 1 Thus were the Titans subdued, and the Kronids with Zeus at their head placed in possession of power. They were not, how- ever, yet quite secure ; for Gam, intermarrying with Tartarus, gave birth to a new and still more formidable monster called Ty- phoeus, of such tremendous properties and promise, that, had he been allowed to grow into full development, nothing could have prevented him from vanquishing all rivals and becoming supreme. But Zeus foresaw the danger, smote him at once with a thunder- bolt from Olympus, and burnt him up : he was cast along with the rest into Tartarus, and no further enemy remained to question the sovereignty of the Kronids. 2 With Zeus begins a new dynasty and a different order of beings. Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades agree upon the distribution before noticed, of functions and localities : Zeus retaining the ./Ether and the atmosphere, together with the general presiding function ; Poseidon obtaining the sea, and administering subterra* nean forces generally ; and Hades ruling the under-world or re- gion in which the half-animated shadows of departed men reside. It has been already stated, that in Zeus, his brothers and his sisters, and his and their divine progeny, we find the present Gods ; that is, those, for the most part, whom the Homeric and Hesiodic Greeks recognized and worshipped. The wives of Zeus were numerous as well as his offspring. First he married Metis, the wisest and most sagacious of the goddesses ; but Gaea and Uranos forewarned him that if he permitted himself to have children by her, they would be stronger than himself and dethrone liim. Accordingly when Metis was on the point of bein^ deliv- 1 The battle with the Titans, Hesiod, Theog. 627-735. Hesiod mentions nothing about the Gigantes and the Gigantomachia : Apollodorus. on the other hand, gives this latter in some detail, but despatches the Titans in a few words (i. 2, 4; i. 6, 1). The Gigantes seem to be only a second edition of the Titans, a sort of duplication to which the legendary poets were often inclined. * Hesiod, Theog. 820-869. Apollod. i. 6, 3. He makes Typhon very nearly victorious over Zeus. Typhoeus, according to Hesiod, is father of the irregular, violent, and mischievous winds : Notus, Boreas, Argestes and Zephyrus, are of divine origin (870). 1* 10 HISTORY OF GREECE. ered of Athene, he swallowed her up, and her wisdom and saga- city thus became permanently identified with his own being. 1 His head was subsequently cut open, in order to make way for the exit and birth of the goddess Athene. 2 By Themis, Zeus begat the Horae , by Eurynome, the three Charities or Graces ; by Mnemosyne, the Muses ; by Leto (Latona), Apollo and Artemis; and by Demeter, Persephone. Last of all he took for his wife Here, who maintained permanently the dignity of queen of the Gods ; by her he had Hebe, Ares, and Eileithyia. Hermes also was born to him by Maia, tLe daughter of Atlas : Hephaestos was born to Here, according to some accounts, by Zeus ; accord- ing to others, by her own unaided generative force. 3 He was born lame, and Here was ashamed of him : she wished to secrete him away, but he made his escape into the sea, and found shelter under the maternal care of the Nereids Thetis and Eurynome. 4 Our enumeration of the divine race, under the presidency of Zeus, will thus give us, 5 1. The twelve great gods and goddesses of Olympus, Zeus, Poseidon, Appollo, Ares, Hephrcstos, Hermes, Here, Athene, Artemij, Aphrodite, Hestia, Demeter. 2. An indefinite number of other deities, not included among the Olympic, seemingly because the number twelve was complete without them, but some of them not inferior in power and dignity to many of the twelve : Hades, Helios, Hekate, Dionysos, Leto, Dione, Persephone, Selene, Themis, Eos, Harmonia, the Chari- ties, the Muses, the Eilaithyiae, the Moerae, the Oceanids and the Nereids, Proteus, Eidothea, the Nymphs, Leukothea, Phorkys, JEolus, Nemesis, etc. 3. Deities who perform special services to the greater gods: Tris, Hebe, the Horas, etc. 4. Deities whose personality is more faintly and unsteadily conceived : Ate, the Litae, Eris, Thanatos, Hypnos, Kratos, Bia, Ossa, etc. 6 The same name is here employed sometimes to desig- nate the person, sometimes the attribute or event not personi- 1 Hesiod, Theog. 885-900. *Apollod. i. 3, 6. 3 Hesiod, Thcog. 900-944. 4 Homer, Iliad, xviii. 3 )7. See Burckhardt, Homer, und Hesiod. Mythologie, sect. 102. (Leipa 844). Hunger is a person, in Hesiod, Opp. Di. 299. HESIODIC THEOGOXY. U fied, an unconscious transition of ideas, which, when consciously performed, is called Allegory. 5. Monsters, offspring of the Gods: the Harpies, the Gor- gons, the Grseas, Pegasus, Chrysaor, Echidna, Chimzera, the Dra- gon of the Hesperides, Cerberus, Orthros, Geryon, the Lerncean Hydra, the Nemean lion, Scylla and Charybdis, the Centaurs, the Sphinx, Xanthos and Balios the immortal horses, etc. From the gods we slide down insensibly, first to heroes, and then to men ; but before we proceed to this new mixture, it is necessary to say a few words on the theogony generally. I have given it briefly as it stands in the Hesiodic Theogonia, because that poem in spite of great incoherence and confusion, arising seemingly from diversity of authorship as well as diversity of age presents an ancient and genuine attempt to cast the divine foretime into a systematic sequence. Homer and Hesiod were the grand authorities in the pagan world respecting theogony ; but in the Iliad and Odyssey nothing is found except passing allusions and implications, and even in the Hymns (which were commonly believed in antiquity to be the productions of the same author as the Iliad and the Odyssey) there are only isolated, un- connected narratives. Accordingly men habitually took their in- formation respecting their theogonic antiquities from the Hesiodic poem, where it was ready laid out before them ; and the legends consecrated in that work acquired both an extent of circulation and a firm hold on the national faith, such as independent legends could seldom or never rival. Moreover the scrupulous and scep- tical Pagans, as well as the open assailants of Paganism in later times, derived their subjects of attack from the same source ; so that it has been absolutely necessary to recount in their naked simplicity the Hesiodic stories, in order to know what it was that Plato deprecated and Xenophanes denounced. The strange pro- ceedings ascribed to Uranos, Kronos and Zeus, have been more frequently alluded to, in the way of ridicule or condemnation, than any other portion of the mythical world. But though the Hesiodic theogony passed as orthodox among the later Pagans, 1 because it stood before them as the only system anciently set forth and easily accessible, it was evidently not the 1 See Gottling, Prsefat. ad Hesiod. p. 23. 12 HISTORY OF GREECE. only system received at the date of the poem itself. Homer knows nothing of Uranos, in the sense of an arch-God anterior to Kronos. Uranos and Gcea, like Oceanus, Tethys and Nyx, are with him great and venerable Gods, but neither the one nor the other present the character of predecessors of Kronos and Zeus.i The Cyclopes, whom Hesiod ranks as sons of Uranos and fabricators of thunder, are in Homer neither one nor the other; they are not noticed in the Iliad at all, and in the Odyssey they are gross gigantic shepherds and cannibals, having nothing in common with the Hesiodic Cyclops except the one round cen- tral eye. 2 Of the three Centimanes enumerated by Hesiod, Bri- areus only is mentioned in Homer, and to all appearance, not as the son of Uranos, but as the son of Poseidon ; not as aiding Zeus in his combat against the Titans, but as rescuing him at a critical moment from a conspiracy formed against him by Here, Poseidon and Athene. 3 Not only is the Hesiodic Uranos (with the Uranids) omitted in Homer, but the relations between Zeus and Kronos are also presented in a very different light. No mention is made of Kronos swallowing his young children: on the contrary, Zeus is the eldest of the three brothers instead of the youngest, and the children of Kronos live with him and Rhea: there the stolen intercourse between Zeus and Here first takes place without the knowledge of their parents. 4 When Zeus puts Kronos down into Tartarus, Rhea consigns her daughter Here to the care of Oceanus : no notice do we find of any terrific battle with the Titans as accompanying that event. Kronos, lapetos, and the remaining Titans are down in Tartarus, in the lowest depths under the earth, far removed from the genial rays of Helios ; but they are still powerful and venerable, and Hypnos makes Here swear an oath in their name, as the most inviolable that he can think of. 5 1 Iliad, xiv. 249 ; xix. 259. Odyss. v. 184. Oceanus and Tethys seem to bo presented in the Iliad as the primitive Father and Mother of the Gods : 'Q/ceavov re $wv yeveaiv, nai fir/repa TTJ&VV. (xiv. 201). 1 Odyss. ix. 87. 3 Iliad, i. 401. 4 Iliad, xiv. 203-295 ; xv. 204, 6 Iliad, viii. 482 ; xiv. 274-279. In the Hesiodic Opp. et Di., Kronos is represented as ruling in the Islands of the Blest in the neighborhood of Oceanus (v. 168). HOMERIC THEOGONY. 13 In Homer, then, we find nothing beyond the simple fact thai Zeus thrust his father Kronos together with the remaining Titans into Tartarus ; an event to which he affords us a tolerable parallel in certain occurrences even under the presidency of Zeus himself. For the other gods make more than one rebellious attempt against Zeus, and are only put down, partly by his unparalleled strength, partly by the presence of his ally the Centimane Briareus. Kro- nos. like Laertes or Peleus, has become old, and has been sup- plauted by a force vastly superior to his own. The Homeric epic treats Zeus as present, and, like all the interesting heroic charac- ters, a father must be assigned to him : that father has once been the chief of the Titans, but has been superseded and put down into Tartarus along with the latter, so soon as Zeus and the supe- rior breed of the Olympic gods acquired their full development. That antithesis between Zeus and Kronos between the Olym- pic gods and the Titans which Homer has thus briefly brought to view, Hesiod has amplified into a theogony, with many things new, and some things contradictory to his predecessor ; while Eu- melus or Arktinus in the poem called Titanomachia (now lost) also adopted it as their special subject. 1 As Stasinus, Arktinus, Lesches, and others, enlarged the Legend of Troy by composing poems relating to a supposed time anterior to the commencement, or subsequent to the termination of the Iliad, as other poets recounted adventures of Odysseus subsequent to his landing in Ithaka, so Hesiod enlarged and systematized, at the same time that he corrupted, the skeleton theogony which we find briefly indicated in Homer. There is violence and rudeness in the Homeric gods, but the great genius of Grecian epic is no way accountable for the stories of Uranos and Kronos, the standing reproach against Pagan legendary narrative. 1 See the few fragments of the Titanomachia, in Diintzer, Epic. Groec. Fragm. p. 2 ; and Hyne, ad Apollodor. I. 2. Perhaps there was more than one poem on the subject, though it seems that Athenaeus had only read one (viii. p. 277). In the Titanomachia, the generations anterior to Zeus were still further lengthened by making Uranos the son of JEth&r (Fr. 4. Ddntzer). JEgaeon was also represented as son of Pontus and Gaea, and as having fought in the ranks of the Titans: in the Iliad he (the same who is called Briareus) is the fast ally of Zeus. A Titanoyraphia was ascribed to Musaeas (Schol. Apollon. Rhod iii. compare Lactant. de Fals. Eel. i. 21). 14 HISTORY OF GREECE. How far these stories are the invention of Hesiod himself is impossible to determine. 1 They bring us down to a cast of fancy 1 That the Hcsiodic Thcogony is referable to an age considerably later than the Homeric poems, appears now to be the generally admitted opinion j and the reasons for believing so are, in my opinion, satisfactory. Whether the Theogony is composed by the same author as the Works and Days is a disputed point. The Boeotian literati in the days of Pausanias decidedly denied the identity, and ascribed to their Hesiod only the Works and Days : Pausanias himself concurs with them (ix. 31. 4; ix. 35. 1), and Volcker (Mithologie des Japetisch. Geschlechts. p. 14) maintains the same opinion, as well as Gottling (Prsef. ad Hesiod. xxi.) : K. 0. Miiller (History of Grecian Literature, ch. 8. 4) thinks that there is not sufficient evidence to form a decisive opinion. Under the name of Hesiod (in that vague language which is usual in an- tiquity respecting authorship, but which modern critics have not much mend- ed by speaking of the Hesiodic school, sect, or family) passed many differ- ent poems, belonging to three classes quite distinct from each other, but all disparate from the Homeric epic: 1. The poems of legend cast into histo- rical and genealogical series, such as the Eoiai. the Catalogue of Women, etc. 2. The poems of a didactic or ethical tendency, such as the Works and Days, the Precepts of Cheiron, the Art of Augural Prophecy, etc. 3. Sep- arate and short mythical compositions, such as the Shield of Herakles, the Marriage of Keyx (which, however, was of disputed authenticity, Athena;. ii. p. 49), the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, etc. (See Marktscheffel, Praefat. ad Fragment. Hesiod. p. 89). The Theogony belongs chiefly to the first of these classes, but it has also a dash of the second in the legend of Prometheus, etc. : moreover in the por- tion which respects Hckate, it has both a mystic character and a distinct bearing upon present life and customs, which we may also trace in the allu- sions to Krf'te and Delphi. There seems reason to place it in the same age with the Works and Days, perhaps in the half century preceding 700 B. c., and little, if at all, anterior to Archilochus. The poem is evidently conceiv- ed upon one scheme, yet the parts are so disorderly and incoherent, that it is difficult to say how much is interpolation. Hermann has well dissected the exordium ; see the preface to Gaisford's Hesiod (Poetas Minor, p. 63). K. 0. Miiller tells us (ut sup. p. 90), " The Titans, according to the notions of Hesiod, represent a system of things in which elementary beings, natural powers, and notions of order and regularity are united to form a whole. The Cyclopes denote the transient disturbances of this order of nature by storms, end the Hekatoncheires, or hundred-handed Giants, signify the fearful pow- er of the greater revolutions of nature." The poem affords little presump- tion that any such ideas were present to the mind of its author, as, I think, will be seen if we read 140-155, 630-745. The Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Hekatoncheires, can no more be con- strued into physical pha:nomena than Chrysaor, Pegasus, Echidna, the Graeaj, or the Gorgons Zeus, like He'rakle's, or Jason, or Perseus, if his advea- LEGENDS ABOUT ZEUS. 15 more coarse and indelicate than the Homeric, and more nearly resembling some of the Holy Chapters (/fpot P.cfyot) of the more recent mysteries, such (for example) as the tale of Dionysos Za- greus. There is evidence in the Theogony itself that the author was acquainted with local legends current both at Krete and at Delphi ; for he mentions both the mountain-cave in Krete where- in the new-born Zeus was hidden, and the stone near the Del- phian temple the identical stone which Kronos had swallowed " placed by Zeus himself as a sign and wonder to mortal men." Both these two monuments, which the poet expressly refers to, and had probably seen, imply a whole train of accessory and ex- planatory local legends current probably among the priests of Krete and Delphi, between which places, in ancient times, there was an intimate religious connection. And we may trace further in the poem, that which would be the natural feeling of Kretan worshippers of Zeus, an effort to make out that Zeus was jus- tified in his aggression on Kronos, by the conduct of Kronoa himself both towards his father and towards his children : the treatment of Kronos by Zeus appears in Hesiod as the retribu- tion foretold and threatened by the mutilated Uranos against the eon who had outraged him. In fact the relations of Uranos and Gtea are in almost all their particulars a mere copy and duplication of those between Kronos and Rhea, differing only in the mode whereby the final catastrophe is brought about. Now castration was a practice thoroughly abhorrent both to the feelings and to the customs of Greece ; } but it was seen with melancholy fre- turcs are to be described, must have enemies, worthy of himself and his vast type, and whom it is some credit for him to overthrow. Those who contend with him or assist him must be conceived on a scale fit to be drawn on the same imposing canvas : the dwarfish proportions of man will not satisfy the sentiment of the poet or his audience respecting the grandeur and glory of the gods. To obtain creations of adequate sublimity for such an object, the poet may occasionally borrow analogies from the striking acci- dents of physical nature, and when such an allusion manifests itself clearly, the critic does well to point it out. But it seems to me a mistake to treat these approximations to physical phenomena as forming the main scheme of the poet, to look for them everywhere, and to presume them where there is little or no indication. 1 The strongest evvidences of this feeling are exhibited in Herodotus, iii 48; viii 105. See an example of this mutilation inflicted upon a yontb 16 mslORY JF GREECE. quency in the domestic life as well as in the religious worship of Phrygia and other parts of Asia, and it even became the special qualification of a priest of the Great Mother Cybele, 1 as well as of the Ephesian Artemis. The employment of the sickle ascrib- ed to Kronos seems to be the product of an imagination familiar with the Asiatic worship and legends, which were connected with and partially resembled the Kretan. 2 And this deduction be- comes the more probable when we connect it with the first gen- esis of iron, which Hesiod mentions to have been produced for the express purpose of fabricating the fatal sickle ; for metallurgy finds a place in the early legends both of the Trojan and of the Kretan Ida, and the three Idoean Dactyls, the legendary inven- tors of it, are assigned sometimes to one and sometimes to the other. 3 As Hesiod had extended the Homeric series of gods by prefix ing the dynasty of Uranos to that of Kronos, so the Orphic theog' named Adamas by the Thracian king Kotys, in Aristot. Polit. v. 8, 12, and the tale about the Corinthian Periander, Herod, iii. 48. It is an instance of the habit, so frequent among the Attic tragedians, of ascribing Asiatic or Phrygian manners to the Trojans, when Sophocles in his lost play Troilus (ap. Jul. Poll. x. 165) introduced one of the characters of his drama as having been castrated by order of Hecuba, Stfafyi?? yap 6p%Ei(; paaMt; i/cre/ivova' fyiovc, probably the ITaidayajydf, or guardian and companion of the youthful Troilus. See Wclckcr, Griechisch. Trago'd. vol. i. p. 125. 1 Herodot. viii. 105, ebvovxot. Lucian, De Dei SyriA, c. 50. Strabo, xiv. pp. 640-641. 2 Diodor. v. 64. Strabo, x. p. 460. Hoeckh, in his learned work Kreta (vol. i. books 1 and 2), has collected all the information attainable respecting the early influences of Phrygia and Asia Minor upon Krete : nothing seems ascertainable except the general fact ; all the particular evidences are lamen- tably vague. The worship of the Diktaaan Zeus seemed to have originally belonged to the Eteokretes, who were not Hellens, and were more akin to the Asiatic population than to the Hellenic. Strabo, x. p. 478. Hoeckh, Kreta, vol. i. p. 139. 1 J Hesiod, Theogon. 161, Atya 6e Troif/ffaaa yevo^ nolioH utiufiavrof, TeCfe fieya 6penavov, etc. See the extract from the old poem Phordnis ap. Schol Apoli. llhod. 1 1 2 ; and Strabo, x. p. 472. ORPHIC THEOGONY. 17 cii) lengthened it still further. 1 First came Chronos, or Time, as a person, after him JEther and Chaos, out of whom Chronoa produced the vast mundane egg. Hence enr.erged in process of time the first-born god Phanes, or Metis, or Herikapaeos, a per- son of double sex, who first generated the Kosmos, or mundane system, and who carried within him the seed of the gods. He gave birth to Nyx, by whom he begat Uranos and Gsea; as well as to Helios and Selene. 2 From Uranos and Gcea sprang the three Mrerse, or Fates, the three Centimanes and the three Cyclopes : these latter were cast by Uranos into Tartarus, under the foreboding that they would rob him of his dominion. In revenge for this maltreatment of her sons, Gaea produced of herself the fourteen Titans, seven male and seven female : the former were Kreos, Krios, Phorkys, Kronos, Oceanus, Hyperion and lapetos ; the latter were Themis, Tethys, Mnemosyne, Theia, Dione, Phrebe and Rhea. 3 They received the name of Titans because they avenged upon Ura- nos the expulsion of their elder brothers. Six of the Titans, headed by Kronos the most powerful of them all, conspiring against Uranos, castrated and dethroned him : Oceanus alone stood aloof and took no part in the aggression. Kronos assumed the government and fixed his seat on Olympos ; while Oceanus remained apart, master of his own divine stream. 4 The reign 1 See the scanty fragments of the Orphic theogony in Hermann's edition of the Orphica, pp. 448, 504, which it is difficult to understand and piece together, even with the aid of Lobeck's elaborate examination (Aglaopha- mus, p. 470, etc.). The passages are chiefly preserved by Proclus and the later Platonists, who seem to entangle them almost inextricably with their own philosophical ideas. The first few lines of the Orphic Argonautica contain a brief summary of the chief points of the theogony. . * See Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 472-476, 490-500, M.JJTIV am-ppa epovTa #e&i nZvrbv 'HpiKeiralov ; again, Qrjhve not yeverup Kparepbf dede 'Hpt/cen-awc. Compare Lactant. iv. 8, 4: Snidas, v. QUVTJC : Athenagoras, xx. 296: Dio- dor. i. 27. This egg figures, as might be expected, in the cosmogony set forth by the Birds, Aristophan. Av. 695. Nyx gives birth to an egg, oul of which steps the golden Eros , from Eros and Chaos spring the race of birds. 3 Lobeck, Ag. p. 504. Athenagor. xv. p. 64. 4 Lobeck, Ag. p. 507. Plato, Timaeus, p. 41. In the Aiovvaov rp6oi of JEschylus, the old attendants of the god Dionysos were said to have been VOL. I. 20C. 18 HISTORY OF GREECE. of KJOJIOS was a period of tranquillity and happiness, as well a? of extraordinary longevity and vigor. Kronos and Rhea gave birth to Zeus and his brothers and sis- ters. The concealment and escape of the infant Zeus, and the swallowing of the stone by Kronos, are given in the Orphic Theogony substantially in the same manner as by Hesiod, only in a style less simple and more mysticized. Zeus is concealed in the cave of Nyx, the seat of Phanes himself, along with Eide and Adrasteia, who nurse and preserve him, while the armed dance and sonorous instruments of the Kuretes prevent his infant cries from reaching the ears of Kronos. When grown up, he lays a snare for his father, intoxicates him with honey, and having surprised him in the depth of sleep, enchains and cas- trates him. 1 Thus exalted to the supreme mastery, he swallowed and absorbed into himself Metis, or Phanes, with all the preex- isting elements of things, and then generated all things anew out of his own being and conformably to his own divine ideas. 2 So scanty are the remains of this system, that we find it difficult to trace individually the gods and goddesses sprung from Zeus cut up and boiled in a caldron, and rendered again young, by Medeia. PherecydC's and Simonides said that Jason himself had been so dealt with. Schol. Aristoph. Equit. 1321. 1 Lobeck, p. 514. Porphyry, dc Antro Nympharam, c. 16. r]ai yap Trap rov 6iu Eiir' uv 6% ftiv Idrjai VTTO Spvoiv iiipiKofioiai "Ep-yoiaiv [tedvovra p&iaffduv kpi^ofifiuv, AVTIKU p.Lv 6r]aov. '0 not nuaxei o Kpovo? /cat driWf kuTenverai, On the whole, we cannot reasonably- claim for it more than half a century above the age of Onomakritus. The Theogony of Pherekydes of Syros seems to have 20 mSTOITS OF GREECE. Sucli is the tissue of violent fancies comprehended under the title of the Orphic Theogony, and read as such, it appears, by Plato, Isokrates and Aristotle. It will be seen that it is basec? upon the Hesiodic Theogony, but according to the general expan- sive tendency of Grecian legend, much new matter is added : Zeus has in Homer one predecessor, in Hesiod two, and in Orpheus four. The Hesiodic Theogony, though later in date than the Iliad and Odyssey, was coeval with the earliest pariod of what may be called Grecian history, and certainly of an age earlier than 700 B. c. It appears to have been widely circulated in Greece, and being at once ancient and short, the general public consulted it as their principal source of information respecting divine antiquity. The Orphic Theogony belongs to a later date, and contains the Hesiodic ideas and persons, enlarged and mystically disguised : its vein of invention was less popular, adapted more to the con- templation of a sect specially prepared than to the taste of a casual audience, and it. appears accordingly to have obtained cur- rency chiefly among purely speculative men. 1 Among the major- borne some analogy to the Orphic. See Diogen. LaOrt. i. 119, Sturz. Frag- ment. Pherekyd. 5-6, Brandis, Handbuch, ut sup. c. xxii. Pherckydes partially deviated from the mythical track or personal successions set forth by Hesiod. inel ol ye fi e fj. i y fj. s voi avruv Kal Tjjt>. Ibyci Fragm. 9, p. S- 1 !, e-J Schneidewin. 22 HISTORY CF GREECE. compositions which passed under these names emanate for tbo most part from poets of the Alexandrine age, and subsequent to the Christian aera ; and that even the earliest among them, which served as the stock on which the later additions were engrafted, belong to a period far more recent than Hesiod ; probably to the century preceding Onomakritus (B. c. 610-510). It seems, how- ever, certain, that both Orpheus and Musams were names of established reputation at the time Avhen Onomakritus flourished ; and it is distinctly stated by Pausanias that the latter was him- self the author of the most remarkable and characteristic mythe of the Orphic Theogony the discerption of Zagreus by the Titans, and his resurrection as Dionysos. 1 The names of Orpheus and Musaeus (as well as that of Pytha- goras, 2 looking at one side of his character) represent facts of importance in the history of the Grecian mind the gradual influx of Thracian, Phrygian, and Egyptian, religious ceremonies and feelings, and the increasing diffusion of special mysteries,- 1 1 Pausan. viii. 37, 3. Tiravaf de irpurov ef TTOLTJCHV eafiyayev "OfiTjpof, $eoi)f elvai o(j>uf virb TCJ Ka^ovfiiv^ Taprupu KOI lanv kv 'Hpaf op/c ra liri)' rcapti <5t 'O/tT/pov 'Ovo/iaKpirof, 7rapa?L.a/3wv TUV TITUVUV rb ovofia, Atovvay re avve-drjKEV opyia, /cat dvai roi)f Tiruvaf TU Aoi>{i6vuv r' aTre Mowaatof r', kZaneaeif rt voauv not ^p^oyzovf ' r^f kpyaffias, Kapnuv wpaf, uporovf 6 de t?etof " 'A7it> TOV TI/J.IJV Kal K^eof eff^ev, irTJriv roCi?', 'Aperaf, ru^eif, dnXiaetf avfip&v; etc. The same general contrast is to be found in Plato, Protagoras, p. 316 ; tha opinion of Pausanias, ix. 30, 4. The poems of Musams seem to biTe born* MYSTIC RITES AND FRATERNITIES. 28 schemes for religious purification, and orgies (I venture to angli- cize the Greek word, which contains in its original meaning no implication of the ideas of excess to which it was afterwards diverted) in honor of some particular god distinct both from the public solemnities and from the gentile solemnities of primi- tive Greece, celebrated apart from the citizens generally, and approachable only through a certain course of preparation and initiation sometimes even forbidden to be talked of in the presence of the uninitiated, under the severest threats of divine judgment. Occasionally such voluntary combinations assumed the form of permanent brotherhoods, bound together by periodical solemnities as well as by vows of an ascetic character : thus the Orphic life (as it was called) or regulation of the Orphic brother- hood, among other injunctions partly arbitrary and partly absti- nent, forbade animal food universally, and on certain occasions, the use of woollen clothing.' The great religious and political fraternity of the Pythagoreans, which acted so powerfully on the condition of the Italian cities, was one of the many manifestations of this general tendency, which stands in striking contrast with the simple, open-hearted, and demonstrative worship of the Homeric Greeks. Festivals at seed-time and harvest at the vintage and at the opening of the new wine were doubtless coeval with the earli- est habits of the Greeks ; the latter being a period of unusual joviality. Yet in the Homeric poems, Dionysos and Demeter, the patrons of the vineyard and the cornfield, are seldom men- tioned, and decidedly occupy little place in the imagination of the poet as compared with the other gods : nor are they of any con- spicuous importance even in the Hesiodic Theogony. But during the interval between Hesiod and Onomakritus, the revolution in the religious mind of Greece was such as to place both these deities in the front rank. According to the Orphic doctrine, Zagreus, son of Persephone, is destined to be the successor of Zeus, and although the violence of the Titans intercepts this lot, considerable analogy to the Melampodia ascribed to Hesiod (see Clemen. Alex. Str. vi. p. 628) ; and healing charms are ascribed to Orpheus as well RS to Musasus. See Eurip. Alcestis, 986. 1 Herod, ii. 81 ; Euripid. Hippol. 957, and the carious fragment of the loflt Kr-?ref of Euripides. 'Oi)tKol pioi, Plato, Legg. vii. 782. 24 HISTORY OF GREECE. yet even when he rises again from his discerption under lie name of Dionysos, he is the colleague and coequal of his divine father. This remarkable change, occurring as it did during the sixth and a part of the seventh century before the Christian zcra, may be traced to the influence of communication with Egypt (which only became fully open to the Greeks about B. c. 660), as well as with Thrace, Phrygia, and Lydia. From hence new religious ideas and feelings were introduced, which chiefly attached them- selves to the characters of Dionysos and Demeter. The Greeks identified these two deities with the great Egyptian Osiris and Isis, so that what was borrowed from the Egyptian worship of the two latter naturally fell to their equivalents in the Grecian system. 1 Moreover the worship of Dionysos (under what name cannot be certainly made out) was indigenous in Thrace, 2 as that of the Great Mother was in Phyrgia, and in Lydia together with those violent ecstasies and manifestations of tem- porary frenzy, and that clashing of noisy instruments, which we find afterwards characterizing it in Greece. The great mnsters of the pipe as well as the dythyramb, 3 and indeed the whole musical system appropriated to the worship of Dionysos, which 1 Herodot. ii. 42, 59, 144. 2 Herodot v. 7, vii. Ill ; Euripid. Hecub. 1249, and Rhesus, 969. and the Prologue to the Bacchoc ; Strabo, x. p. 470 ; Schol. ad Aristophan. Avcs, 874; Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg. 1069; Harpocrat. v. 2u/3ot; Photius, Evol 2a/?ot. The "Lydiaca" of Th. Menke (Berlin, 1843) traces the early connection between the religion of Dionysos and that of Cybcle, c. 6, 7. Hoeckh's Krc-ta (vol. i. p. 128-134) is instructive rcspectingthe Phrygian religion. 1 Aristotle, Polit. viii. 7, 9. Ilacra yap EuK^eia KO.I Truaa TJ rotavrrj Kivijatf T&V opyavuv EGTIV iv ToZf avAotf TUV cP tipftovtuv kv %a/j.[3uvet. ravra rb TT/JETTOV, olov 6 tfn9>/>a///?of doKfl rlvai Qpvjiov. Eurip. Bacch. 58. Trixupi 1 ev Tro/iet fypvyuv va, 'Pf-af re fir/rpof lfj.il i?' evp^/tara, etc. Plutarch, El. in Delph. c. 9 ; Pliilochor. Fr. 21, cd. Didot, p. 389. The ccm- plete and intimate manner in which Euripide's identifies the Bacchic rites of Dionysos with the Phrygian ceremonies in honor of the Great Mother, is rerj remarkabb. The fine description given by Lucretius (ii. 600-640) of tht Phrygian Trorship is much enfeebled by his unsatisfactory allegorizing POST-HOMERIC CHANGES IN RELIGION. 25 contrasted so pointedly with the quiet solemnity of the Paean addressed to Apollo were all originally Phrygian. From all these various countries, novelties, unknown to the Homeric men, found their way into the Grecian worship : and there is one amongst them which deserves to be specially noticed, because it marks the generation of the new class of ideas in their theology. Homer mentions many persons guilty of private or involuntary homicide, and compelled either to go into exile or to make pecuniary satisfaction ; but he never once describes any of them to have either received or required purification for the crime. 1 Now in the time subsequent to Homer, purification for homicide comes to be considered as indispensable: the guilty person is regarded as unfit for the society of man or the worship of the gods until he has received it, and special ceremonies are prescribed whereby it is to be administered. Herodotus tells us that the ceremony of purification was the same among the Lydi- ans and among the Greeks : 2 we know that it formed no part of the early religion of the latter, and we may perhaps reasonably suspect that they borrowed it from the former. The oldest instance known to us of expiation for homicide was contained in the epic poem of the Milesian Arktinus, 3 wherein Achilles is 1 Schol. ad Iliad, xi. 690 ov 6ia TCL Ka&upaia 'l(j>irov Tropdeirai i] Hi/lof, 7Tt TOL '0 JlXTCTClJf [JLEL^UV NtOTOpOf, KOi Trap' 'QflTjpU OVK oldd/JiEV (t>OVO. KUV(l 1 Te'line's, the ancestor of the Syracusan despot Gelo, acquired great political power as possessing TU l(x\ ruv x&ovluv QEUV (Herodot. vii 153); PRIESTS, PKOrilETS, NEW CEREMONIAL, ETC. 27 peculiar orgies obtained their admission and their influence at periods of distress, disease, public calamity and danger, or re- ligious terror and despondency, which appear to have been but too frequent in their occurrence. The minds of men were prone to the belief that Avhat they were suffering arose from the displeasure of some of the gods, and as they found that the ordinary sacrifices and worship were insufficient for their protection, so they grasped at new sugges- tions proposed to them with the view of regaining the divine favor. 1 Such suggestions were more usually copied, either in whole or in part, from the religious rites of some foreign locality, or from some other portion of the Hellenic world ; and in this manner many new sects or voluntary religious fraternities, prom- ising: to relieve the troubled conscience and to reconcile the sick O or suffering with the offended gods, acquired permanent establish- ment as well as considerable influence. They were generally under the superintendence of hereditary families of priests, who imparted the rites of confirmation and purification to communi- cants generally ; no one who went through the prescribed cere- monies being excluded. In many cases, such ceremonies fell into the hands of jugglers, who volunteered their services to wealthy men, and degraded their profession as well by obtrusive venality as by extravagant promises : 2 sometimes the price was lowered he and his family became hereditary Hierophants of these ceremonies. How Teliae's acquired the ipti Herodotus cannot say O-&EV 6e airH eXafie, T) aiirbf enrrjaaTo, TOVTO OVK l%u emai. Probably there was a traditional legend, not inferior in sanctity to that of Eleusis, tracing them to the gift of Dcmeter herself. 1 See Josephus cont. Apion. ii. c. 35. ; Hesych. Geot glvioi ; Strabo, x. p 471 ; Plutarch, Hepi Aeiaidai/j.ov. c. iii. p. 166 ; c. vii. p. 167. * Plato, Eepubl. ii. p. 364 ; Demosthen. de Conrad, c. 79, p. 313. The deiaidaipuv of Theophrastus cannot be comfortable without receiving the Orphic communion monthly from the Orpheotelestae (Theophr. Char. xvi). Compare Plutarch, Hepl rov py %pav epperpa, etc., c. 25, p. 400. The comic writer Phrynichus indicates the existence of these rites of religious excite- ment, at Athens, during the Peloponnesian war. See the short fragment of his Kpwof , ap. Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 989 - 'AV7)p XOptVEL, Kdl Tfi TOV -&COV KU^Uf ' Bot>/le AiOTreidrj {lETadpufiu Kal Tvpirava ; Diopeithos was a xpff*%yf> or collector and deliverer of prophecy 28 HISTORY OF GREECE. to bring them within reach of the poor and even of slaves. But the wide diffusion, and the number of voluntary communicants ;>{ these solemnities, proves how much they fell in with the feel- ing of the time and how much respect they enjoyed a respect, which the more conspicuous establishments, such as Eleusis and Samothrace, maintained for several centuries. And the visit of the Kretan Epimenides to Athens in the time of Solon, and at a season of the most serious disquietude and dread of having offended the gods illustrates the tranquillizing effect of new orgies 1 and rites of absolution, when enjoined by a man standing high in the favor of the gods and reputed to be the son of a nymph. The supposed Erythraean Sibyl, and the earliest collec- tion of Sibylline prophecies, 2 afterwards so much multiplied and interpolated, and referred (according to Grecian custom) to an age even earlier than Homer, appear to belong to a date not long posterior to Epimenides. Other oracular verses, such as those of Bakis, were treasured up in Athens and other cities : the sixth century before the Christian asra was fertile in these kinds of religious manifestations. Amongst the special rites and orgies of the character just described, those which enjoyed the greatest Pan-Hellenic reputa- tion were attached to the Idaean Zeus in Krete, to Demeter at Eleusis, to the Kabeiri in Samothrace, and to Dionysos at Delphi which he sung (or rather, perhaps, recited) with solemnity and emphasis, in public, wore iroiovvref ^p^a/zotif avrol kidoaa' pdeiv AiOTreidci ru> napafiai- vofievu. (Ameipsias ap. Schol. Aristophan. ut sup., which illustrates Thucyd. ii. 21). 1 Plutarch, Solon, c. 12 ; Diogen. LaCrt. i. 110. 2 See Klausen, " jEneas und die Periaten:" his chapter on the connection between the Grecian and Roman Sibylline collections is among the most ingenious of 'his learned book. Book ii. pp. 210-240; see Steph. Byz. v I'epyif. To the same age belong the xp^^pol and nadapiiol of Abaris and his mar vellous journey through the air upon an arrow (Herodot. iv. 36). Epimenides also composed Kaftapfiol in epic verse ; his Kovpr/Tuv and Kopv/3ut>rv -yeveaif, and his four thousand verses respecting Minos and Rhadamanthys, if they had been preserved, would let us fully into the ideas of a religious mystic of that age respecting the antiquities of Greece. (Strabo, x. p. 474; Diogen. LaCrt. i. 10). Among the poems ascribed to Hesiod were comprised not only the Melampodia, but also f /TV /laiTiitil anTal 6e KUI roi'f uvdpaf irpoicahovvTai. f ru? km Ttheov #epa7m'aj TUV -&ttiv, Kal iopruf, /cat TTorviafffiovf. Plato (De Legg. x. pp. 909, 910) takes great pains to restrain this tendency on the part of sick or suffering persons, especially women, to introduce new sacred rites into his city. * Herodot. i. 146. The wives of the Ionic original settlers at Miletos were Karian women, whose husbands they slew. The violences of the Karian worship are attested by what Herodotus says of the Karian residents in Egypt, at the festival cf Isis at Busiris. The Egyptians at this festival manifested their feeling by beating themselves, the Karians by cutting their faces with knives (ii. 61). The Kapin^ fiovan became proverbial for funeral wailings (Pla*o, Legg. vii. p. 800) : the un- 30 EISTORY OF GREECE. sos,' whom the legends described as clothed in feminine attire, ana leading a troop of /renzied women, inspired a temporary ecstasy, and those who resisted the inspiration, being supposed to disobey his will, were punished either by particular judgments or by mental terrors ; Avhile those who gave full loose to the feeling, in the appropriate season and with the received solemnities, satisfied his exigencies, and believed themselves to have procured immu- nity from such disquietudes for the future. 2 Crowds of women, clothed with fawn-skins and bearing the sanctified thyrsus, flocked to the solitudes of Parnassus, or Kithasron, or Taygetus, during the consecrated triennial period, passed the night there with torches, and abandoned themselves to demonstrations of frantic excitement, with dancing and clamorous invocation of the god : they were said to tear animals limb from limb, to devour the raw measured effusions and demonstrations of sorrow for the departed, some times accompanied by cutting and mutilation self-inflicted by the mournei vras a distinguishing feature in Asiatics and Egyptians as compared with Greeks. Plutarch, Consolat. ad Apollon. c. 22, p. 123. Mournful feeling was, in fact, a sort of desecration of the genuine and primitive Grecian fes- tival, which was a season of cheerful harmony and social enjoyment, where in the god was believed to sympathize (eixbpocjvvrj). See Xenophanes ap. Aristot. Rhetor, ii. 25; Xenophan. Fragm. 1. ed. Schncidewin; Theognis, 776 ; Plutarch, De Superstit, p. 1G9. The unfavorable comments of Diony sius of Halicarnassus, in so far as they refer to the festivals of Greece, apply to the foreign corruptions, not to the native character, of Grecian worship. 1 The Lydian Herakles was conceived and worshipped as a man in female attire : this idea occurs often in the Asiatic religions. Mencke, Lydiaca, c. 8, p. 22. Aiovvaoc upprjv KOI drfi-vs. Aristid. Or. iv. p. 28 ; .yEschyl. Fragm. Edoni, ap. Aristoph. Thesmoph. 135. HodaTrbf 6 jvvvis ; Tif iruTpa ; Tp6vuv Banxduv iuacif fj TUV tfwi?v Kparel Kivrjaif npoapi ITIV, uffirsp tv y the hatred of Here, -which appears frequently as a cause of mischief to Dionysos (Bacchce, 286). Here in her anger had driven him mad when a child, and he had wandered in this state over Egypt and Syria; at length he came to Cybcla in Phrygia, was purified (Ka&ap&elf) by Rhea, and received from her female attire ('Apollodor. iii. 5, 1, with Heyne's note}. This seems to have been the legend adopted to explain the old verse of the Iliad, as well as the maddening attributes of the god generally. There was a standing antipathy between the priestesses and the religious establishments of Here and Dionysos (Plutarch, Tlepl TUV h> HXaraicut; AaiSuXuv, c. 2, torn. v. p. 755, ed. Wytt). Plutarch ridicules the legendary reason commonly assigned for this, and provides a symbolical explanatior which he thinks ver}' satisfactory. * Eurip. Bacch. 325, 464, etc. 3* HISTORY OF GREECE, channel, the Orphic life or brotherhood being one of the varieties. Strabo ascribes to this latter a Thracian original, considering Or- pheus, Musoeus, and Eumolpus as having been all Thracians. 1 It is curious to observe how, in the Bacchaa of Euripides, the two distinct and even conflicting ideas of Dionysos come alternately forward ; sometimes the old Grecian idea of the jolly and exhil- arating god of wine but more frequently the recent and import- ed idea of the terrific and irresistible god who unseats the reason, and whose cestrus can only be appeased by a willing, though tem- porary obedience. In the fanatical impulse which inspired the votaries of the Asiatic Hhea or Cybele, or of the Thracian Kotys, there was nothing of spontaneous joy ; it was a sacred madness, during which the soul appeared to be surrendered to a stimulus from without, and accompanied by preternatural strength and tem- porary sense of power,- altogether distinct from the unrestrain- ed hilarity of the original Dionysia, as we see them in the rural demes of Attica, or in the gay city of Tarentum. There was indeed a side on which the two bore some analogy, inasmuch as, 1 Strabo, x. p. 471. Compare Aristid. Or. iv. p. 28. 2 In the lost Xantrice of ^Eschylus, in which seems to have been included the tale of Pentheus, the goddess Avcraa was introduced, stimulating the Bao chae, and creating in them spasmodic exeitement from head to foot : K TTO- Stiv c5' uvu 'YTrepxerai a-rrapay^f cif uKpov Kupa. etc. (Tragm. 155, Dindorf). His tragedy called Edoni also gave a terrific representation of the Bacchan- als and their fury, exaggerated by the maddening music : THfiKhijai /ze/lof, Mavtaf kirayuybv bfio^av CFr. 54). Such also is the reigning sentiment throughout the greater part of the Bacchae of Euripides ; it is brought out still more impressively in the mourn- ful Atys of Catullus : " Dea magna, Dea Cybele, Dindymi Dea, Domina, Procul a meft tuus sit furor omnis, hera, domo : Alios age incitatos : alios age rabidos ! " We have only to compare this fearful influence with the description ol Dikaeopolis and his exuberant joviality in the festival of the rural Dionysia (Aristoph. Acharn. 1051 seq. ; see also Plato. Legg. i. p. 637J, to see how com pletely the foreign innovations rccolorcd the old Grecian Dionysos, Aiov- vaof 7ro/U>yj7$^f, who appears also in the scene of Dionysos and Ariadn^ in the Symposion of Xenophon, c. 9. The simplicity of the ancient Diony- siac processions is dwelt upon by Plutarch, De Cupidine Divitinrtun, p. 527,- and the original dithyramb addressed by Archilochtis to Dioays 3S Is BO effusion of drunken hilarity ;"Archiloch. Frag. 69, Schncid.J, DIFFERENCES IN THE "WORSHIP OF DIONYSOS. 37 according to the religious point of view of the Greeks, even the spontaneous joy of the vintage feast was conferred by the favor and enlivened by the companionship of Dionysos. It was upon this analogy that the framers of the Bacchic orgies proceeded but they did not the less disfigure the genuine character of the old Grecian Dionysia. Dionysos is in the conception of Pindar the Paredros or com- panion in worship of Demeter : ] the worship and religious esti- mate of the latter has by that time undergone as great a change as that of the former, if we take our comparison with the brief description of Homer and Hesiod : she has acquired 2 much of the awful and soul-disturbing attributes of the Phrygian Cybele. In Homer, Demeter is the goddess of the corn-field, who becomes attached to the mortal man Jasion ; an unhappy passion, since Zeus, jealous of the connection between goddesses and men, puts him to death. In the Heciodic Theogony, Demeter is the mother of Persephone by Zen*, who permits Hades to carry off the latter as his wife : moreover Demeter has, besides, by Jasion a son call- ed Plutos, born in Krete. Even from Homer to Hesiod, the legend of Demeter, has been expanded and her dignity exalted; according to the usual tendency of Greek legend, the expansion goes on still further. Through Jasion, Demeter becomes connect- ed with the mysteries of Samothrace ;- through Persephone, with those of Eleusis. The former connection it is difficult to follow out in detail, but the latter is explained and traced to its origin in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. 1 Pindar, Isthm. vi. 3. ^a/Uo/cporov m'ipc6pov Aj^repof, the epithet marks the approximation of Demeter to the Mother of the Gods. yicpoTuXuv rvTtdvuv T> la^ri, avv ~e fipopof aiiAuv Evadev (Homer. Hymn, xiii.), the Mother of the Gods was worshipped by Pindar himself along with Pan 1 ; she had in his time her temple and ceremonies at Thebes (Pyth. iii. 78 ; Fragm. Dithyr. 5, and the Scholia ad I.) as well as, probably, at Athens (Pausan. i. 3,3). Dionysos and Di'rneteV are also brought together in die chorus of Sopho- kles, Antigone, 1072. pedsif Se TtayKoivoif 'E/levovviaf A^oSf ev Kofaoif j and in Kallimachns, Hymn. Rerer. 70. Bacchus or Dionysos are in the Attic tragedians constantly confounded with the Demetrian lacchos, originally so different, a personification of the mystic word shouted by the Eleusinian communicants. See Strabo, x.p. 468. 8 Euripides in his Chorus in the Helena (1320 seq.) assigns to De'me'te'r all the attributes of Ehea. and blends the two cornoletely into one. 38 HISTORY OF GREECE Though we find different statements respecting the date as well as the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries, yet the popular belief of the Athenians, and the story which found favor at Eleu- sis, ascribed them to the presence and dictation of the goddess Demeter herself; just as the Bacchic rites are, according to the Bacchaa of Euripides, first communicated and enforced on the Greeks by the personal visit of Dionysos to Thebes, the metro- polis of the Bacchic ceremonies. 1 In the Eleusinian legend, pre- served by the author of the Homeric Hymn, she comes volun- tarily and identifies herself with Eleusis ; her past abode in Krete being briefly indicated. 2 Her visit to Eleusis is connected with the deep sorrow caused by the loss of her daughter Perse- phone, who had been seized by Hades, while gathering flowers in a meadow along with the Oceanic Nymphs, and carried off to become his wife in the under-world. In vain did the reluctant Persephone shriek and invoke the aid of her father Zeus : he had consented to give her to Hades, and her cries were heard only by Hekate and Helios. Demeter was inconsolable at the disappear- ance of her daughter, but knew not where to look for her : she wandered for nine days and nights with torches in search of the lost maiden without success. At length Helios, the " spy of gods and men," revealed to her, in reply to her urgent prayer, the rape of Persephone, and the permission given to Hades by Zeus. Demeter was smitten with anger and despair : she renounced Zeus and the society of Olympus, abstained from nectar and ambro- sia, and wandered on earth in grief and fasting until her form could no longer be known. In this condition she came to Eleusis, then governed by the prince Keleos. Sitting down by a well at the wayside in the guise of an old woman, she was found by the daughters of Keleos, who came hither with their pails of brass for water. In reply to their questions, she told them that she had been brought by pirates from Krete to Thorikos, and had made her escape ; she then solicited from them succor and employment as a servant or as a nurse. The damsels prevailed upon their oaother Metaneira to receive her, and to entrust her with the 1 Sophocl. Antigon. BaIi> fiTjrpoirofav Qf/(3av. 8 Homer, Hymn.Cerer. 123. The Hymn to Demeter has been translated, accompanied with valuable illustrative notes, by J. H. Voss (Heidelb. 1826) HOMEItlC HYMN TO DEMETER. 39 nursing of the young Demophoon, their late-born brother, the only son of Keleos. Demeter was received into the house of Metaneira, her dignified form still borne down by grief: she sat long silent and could not be induced either to smile or to taste food, until the maid-servant lambe, by jests and playfulness, suc- ceeded in amusing and rendering her cheerful. She would not taste wine, but requested a peculiar mixture of barley-meal with water and the herb mint. 1 The child Demophoon, nursed by Demeter, throve and grew up like a god, to the delight and astonishment of his parents : she gave him no food, but anointed him daily with ambrosia, and plunged him at night in the fire like a torch, where he remained unburnt. She would have rendered him immortal, had she not been prevented by the indiscreet curiosity and alarm of Meta- neira, who secretly looked in at night, and shrieked with horror at the sight of her child in the fire. 2 The indignant goddess, setting the infant on the ground, now revealed her true character to Metaneira: her wan and aged look disappeared, and she stood confest in the genuine majesty of her divine shape, diffusing a dazzling brightness which illuminated the whole house. " Foolish mother," she said, " thy want of faith has robbed thy son of im- mortal life. I am the exalted Demeter, the charm and comfort both of gods and men: I was preparing for thy son exemption from death and old age ; now it cannot be but he must taste of both. Yet shall he be ever honored, since he has sat upon my knee and slept in my arms. Let the people of Eleusis erect for me a temple and altar on yonder hill above the fountain ; I will myself prescribe to them the orgies which they must religiously perform in order to propitiate my favor." 3 1 Homer, Hymn. Cercr. 202-210. 2 This story was also told with reference to the Egyptian goddess Isis in her wanderings. See Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. c. 16, p. 357. 3 Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 274. "Opyia 6' GVTTI tyuv VTrodtiaofiai, f av eTretra 'Evayeuf epdovrtf ifidv vdov IXdaKrjcrde. The same story is told in regard to the infant Achilles. His mother Thetia was taking similar measures to render him immortal, when his father Pcleni interfered and p rcvented the consummation. Thetis immediately left him in great wrath ( A.pollon, Rhod. iv. 866). 40 HISTORY OF GREECR The terrified Metrjieira was incapable even of lifting up hei child from the ground ; her daughters entered at her cries, and began to embrace and tend their infant brother, but he sorrowed and could not be pacified for the loss of his divine nurse. A1J night they strove to appease the goddess. 1 Strictly executing the injunctions of Demeter. Keleos convoked the people of Elcusis and erected the temple on the spot which she had pointed out. It was speedily completed, and Demeter took up her abode in it, apart from the remaining gods, still pining with grief for the loss of her daughter, and withholding her beneficent aid from mortals. And thus she remained a whole year, a desperate and terrible year: 2 in vain did the oxen draw the plough, and in vain was the barley-seed cast into the furrow, Demeter suffered it not to emerge from the earth. The human race would have been starved, and the gods would have been deprived of their honors and sacrifice, had not Zeus found means to conciliate her. But this was a hard task ; for Demeter resisted the entreaties of Iris and of all the other god- desses and gods whom Zeus successively sent to her. She would be satisfied with nothing less than the recovery of her daughter. At length Zeus sent Hermes to Hades, to bring Persephone away : Persephone joyfully obeyed, but Hades prevailed upon her before she departed to swallow a grain of pomegranate, which rendered it impossible for her to remain the whole year away from him. 3 With transport did Demeter receive back her lost daughter, and the faithful Hekate sympathized in the delight felt by both at the reunion. 4 It was now an easier undertaking to reconcile her with the gods. Her mother Rhea, sent down expressly by Zeus, descended from Olympus on the fertile Rharan plain, then smitten with barrenness like the rest of the earth : she succeeded in appeasing the indignation of Demeter, who consented agaiu ta 1 Homer, Hymn. 290. rot! 6' oil fieiXiacftTO tivfibf, Xeiporepai yap dq piv l\ov TpoOL ijfie TI$TJV(U. * Homer, H. Cer. 305. ALVOTO.TOV tV Ivtavrbv km x$6va TiOvtofloretpav Holt/a' avfipuTTOif, I6e KVVTOTOV. Hymn, v. 375. Hymn, v. 443- DEMETER AT ELEUSIS 41 put forth her relieving hand. The buried seed came up in abun- dance, and the earth was covered with fruit and flowers. She would have wished to retain Persephone constantly with her, but this was impossible ; and she was obliged to consent that her daughter should go down for one-third of each year to the house of Hades, departing from her every spring at the time when the seed is sown. She then revisited Olympus, again to dwell with the gods ; but before her departure, she communicated to the daughters of Keleos, and to Keleos himself, together with Trip- tolemus, Diokles and Eumolpus, the divine service and the so- lemnities which she required to be observed in her honor. 1 And thus began the venerable mysteries of Eleusis, at her special com- mand : the lesser mysteries, celebrated in February, in honor of Persephone ; the greater, in August, to the honor of Demeter herself. Both are jointly patronesses of the holy city and temple. Such is a brief sketch of the temple legend of Eleusis, set forth at length in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. It is interest- ing not less as a picture of the Mater Dolorosa (in the mouth of an Athenian, Demeter and Persephone were always the Mother and Daughter, by excellence), first an agonized sufferer, and then finally glorified, the weal and woe of man being dependent upon her kindly feeling, than as an illustration of the nature and gi "7th of Grecian legend generally. Though we now read this Hymn as pleasing poetry, to the Eleusinians, for whom it was composed, it was genuine and sacred history. They believ- ed in the visit of Demeter to Eleusis, and in the mysteries as a revelation from her, as implicitly as they believed in her existence and power as a goddess. The Eleusinian psalmist shares this be- lief in common with his countrymen, and embodies it in a contin- uous narrative, in which the great goddesses of the place, as well as the great heroic families, figure in inseparable conjunction I 'Hymn v. 475. 'H 6e KLOvaa dF/j.ioTowo'hoif (3aoifavcri Aeifev, TptnTol-spv rt, Aio/cA& re oavvTiv isptiy nal lirfypaStv bpyiairnialv , etc. 42 HISTORY OF GREECE. Keleos is the son of the Eponymous hero Eleusis, and his daugh- ters, with the old epic simplicity, carry their basins to the well for water. Eumolpus, Triptolemus, Diokles, heroic ancestors of the privileged families who continued throughout the historical times of Athens to fulfil their special hereditary functions in the Eleusinian solemnities, are among the immediate recipients of in- spiration from the goddess ; but chiefly does she favor Metaneira and her infant son Demophoon, for the latter of whom her great- est boon is destined, and intercepted only by the weak faith of the mother. Moreover, every incident in the Hymn has a local coloring and a special reference. The well, overshadowed by an olive-tree near which Demeter had rested, the stream Kalli- chorus and the temple-hill, were familiar and interesting places in the eyes of every Eleusinian ; the peculiar posset prepared from barley-meal with mint was always tasted by the Mysts (or com- municants) after a prescribed fast, as an article in the ceremony, while it was also the custom, at a particular spot in the pro- cessional march, to permit the free interchange of personal jokes and taunts upon individuals for the general amusement. And these two customs are connected in the Hymn with the incidents. that Demeter herself had chosen the posset as the first interrup- tion of her long and melancholy fast, and that her sorrowful thoughts had been partially diverted by the coarse playfulness of the servant-maid lambe. In the enlarged representation of the Eleusinian ceremonies, which became established after the incor- poration of Eleusis with Athens, the part of lambe herself was enacted by a woman, or man in woman's attire, of suitable wit and imagination, who was posted on the bridge over the Ke- phissos, and addressed to the passers-by in the procession, l espe- cially the great men of Athens, saucy jeers, probably not less piercing than those of Aristophanes on the stage. The torch- bearing Hekate received a portion of the worship in the nocturnal ceremonies of the Eleusinia : this too is traced, in the Hymn, to her kind and affectionate sympathy with the great goddesses. 1 Aristophanes, Vcsp. 1363. Hesych. v. Tetyvpie. Suidas, v. Compare about the details of the ceremony, Clemens Alexandr. Admon. ad Gent. p. 13. A similar license of unrestrained jocularity appears in the rites of Demeter in Sicily (Diodor. v. 4 ; see also Pausan. vii. 27, 4), and in the worship of Damia and Auxesia at JEgina (Ilcrodot. v. 83). CONSECRATION OF ELEUSIS. 43 Though all these incidents were sincerely believed by the Eleusinians as a true history of the past, and as having been the real initiatory cause of their own solemnities, it is not the less certain that they are simply mythes or legends, and not to be treated as history, either actual or exaggerated. They do not take their start from realities of the past, but from realities of the present, combined with retrospective feeling and fancy, which fills up the blank of the aforetime in a manner at once plausible and im- pressive. What proportion of fact there may be in the legend, or whether there be any at all, it is impossible to ascertain and useless to inquire ; for the story did not acquire belief from its approximation to real fact, but from its perfect harmony with Elcusinian faith and feeling, and from the absence of any standard of historical credibility. The little town of Eleusis derived all its importance from the solemnity of the Demetria, and the Hymn which we have been considering (probably at least as old as 600 B. c.) represents the town as it stood before its absorption into the larger unity of Athens, which seems to have produced an alteration of its legends and an increase of dignity in its great festival. In the faith of an Eleusinian, the religious as well as the patriotic antiquities of his native town were connected with this capital solemnity. The divine legend of the sufferings of Demeter and her visit to Eleusis was to him that which the heroic legend of Adrastus and the Siege of Thebes was to a Sikycnian, or that of Erechtheus and Athene to an Athenian grouping together in the same scene and story the goddess and the heroic fathers of the town. If our information were fuller, we should probably find abundance of other legends respecting the Demetria : the Gephyraei of Athens, to whom belonged the celebrated Harmodi- os and Aristogeiton, and who possessed special Orgies of De- meter the Sorrowful, to which no man foreign to their Gens was ever admitted, 1 would doubtless have told stories not only different but contradictory; and even in other Eleusinian mythes we dis- cover Eumolpus as king of Eleusis, son of Poseidon, and a Thracian, completely different from the character which he bears in the Hymn before us. 2 Neither discrepancies nor want of 1 Herodot, v, 61. * Pausan. i. 38, 3; Apollodor. iii. 15, 4. Hcyne in his Note admits seve* 44 HISTORY OF GREECE evidence, in reference to alleged antiquities, sljocked the faith of a non-historical public. What they wanted was a picture of the past, impressive to their feelings and plausible to their imagina- tion ; and it is important to the reader to remember, while he reads either the divine legends which we are now illustrating or the heroic legends to which we shall soon approach, that he is dealing with a past which never was present, a region essen- tially mythical, neither approachable by the critic nor mensurable by the chronologer. The tale respecting the visit of Demeter, which was told by the ancient Gens, called the Phytalids, 1 in reference to another tem- ple of Demeter between Athens and Eleusis, and also by tha Megarians in reference to a Demetrion near their city, acquired under the auspices of Athens still further extension. The god- dess was reported to have first communicated to Triptolemus at Eleusis the art of sowing corn, which by his intervention was disseminated all over the earth. And thus the Athenians took credit to themselves for having been the medium of communica tion from the gods to man of all the inestimable blessings of agriculture, which they affirmed to have been first exhibited on the fertile Rharian plain near Eleusis. Such pretensions are not to be found in the old Homeric hymn. The festival of the Thes- mophoria, celebrated in honor of Demeter Thesmoplioros at Athens, was altogether different from the Eleusinia, in this mate- rial respect, as well as others, that all males were excluded, and women only were allowed to partake in it : the surname Thesmo- phorus gave occasion to new legends in which the goddess was glorified as the first authoress of laws and legal sanctions to mankind. 2 This festival, for women apart and alone, was also ral persons named Eumolpus. Compare Isokrates, Panegyr. p. 55. Philo- chorus the Attic antiquary could not have received the legend of the Eleusinian Hymn, from the different account which he gave respecting the rape of Persephone 1 (Philoch. Fragm. 46, ed. Didot), and also respecting Keleos (Fr. 28, ibid.). 1 Phy talus, the Eponym or godfather of this gens, had received Demeter as a guest in his house, when she first presented mankind with the fruit of tha fig-tree. (Pausan. i. 37, 2.) * Kallimach. Hymn. Cerer. 19. Sophokles, Triptolemos, Frag 1. Cice K>, Legg ii. 14, and the note of Scrvius ad Virgil. JEn. iv. 58. HOMERIC HYMN TO APOLLO. 45 celebrated at Paros, at Epliesus, and in many other parts of Greece. 1 Altogether, Demeter and Dionysos, as the Grecian counter- parts of the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, seem to have been the great recipients of the new sacred rites borrowed from Egypt, before the worship of Isis in her own name was introduced into Greece : their solemnities became more frequently recluse and mysterious than those of the other deities. The importance of Demeter to the collective nationality of Greece may be gathered from the fact that her temple was erected at Thermopylae, the spot where the Amphiktyonic assemblies were held, close by the temple of the Eponymous hero Amphiktyon himself, and under the surname of the Amphiktyonic Demeter. 2 We now pass to another and not less important celestial per- sonage Apollo. The legends of Delos and Delphi, embodied in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, indicate, if not a greater dignity, at least a more widely diffused worship of that god than even of Demeter. The Hymn is, in point of fact, an aggregate of two separate com- positions, one emanating from an Ionic bard at Delos, the other from Delphi. The first details the birth, the second the mature divine efficiency, of Apollo ; but both alike present the unaffected charm as well as the characteristic peculiarities of Grecian mythical narrative. The hymnographer sings, and his hearers accept in perfect good faith, a history of the past ; but it is a past, imagined partly as an introductory explanation to the present, partly as a means of glorifying the god. The island of Delos was the accredited birth-place of Apollo, and is also the place in which he chiefly delights, where the great and brilliant Ionic fes- tival is periodically convened in his honor. Yet it is a rock narrow, barren, and uninviting : how came so glorious a privilege to be awarded to it? This the poet takes upon himself to explain. Leto, pregnant with Apollo, and persecuted by the jealous Here, could find no spot wherein to give birth to her offspring. In vain did she address herself to numerous places in Greece, the Asiatic coast and the intermediate islands ; all were 1 Hcrodot. vi. 16, 134. &wof Qsaftoffpov Ajy//7/rpof ru tf tpaEva yovaf :"ij>j>ijra Ifpa, 2 Herodot. vii. 200. 46 HISTORY OF GREECE. terrified at the wrath of Here, and refused to harbor her. As a last resort, she approached the rejected and repulsive island of Delos, and promised that, if shelter were granted to her in her forlorn condition, the island should become the chosen resort of Apollo as well as the site of his temple with its rich accompanying solemnities. 1 Delos joyfully consented, but not without many apprehensions that the potent Apollo would despise her unwor- thiness, and not without exacting a formal oath from Leto, who was then admitted to the desired protection, and duly accomplish- ed her long and painful labor. Though Dione, Rhea, Themis and Amphitrite came to soothe and succor her, yet Here kept away the goddess presiding over childbirth, Eileithyia, and thus cruelly prolonged her pangs. At length Eileithyia came, and Apollo was born. Hardly had Apollo tasted, from the hands of Themis, the immortal food, nectar and ambrosia, when he burst at once his infant bands, and displayed himself in full divine form and strength, claiming his characteristic attributes of the bow and the harp, and his privileged function of announcing beforehand to mankind the designs of Zeus. The promise made by Leto to Delos was faithfully performed : amidst the numberless other temples and groves which men provided for him, he ever prefer- red that island as his permanent residence, and there the lonians with their wives and children, and all their " bravery," congrega- ted periodically from their different cities to glorify him. Dance and song and athletic contests adorned the solemnity, and the countless ships, wealth, and grace of the multitudinous lonians had the air of an assembly of gods. The Delian maidens, ser- vants of Apollo, sang hymns to the glory of the god, as well as of Artemis and Leto, intermingled with adventures of foregone men and women, to the delight of the listening crowd. The blind itinerant bard of Chios (composer of this the Homeric hymn, and confounded in antiquity with the author of the Iliad) had found honor and acceptance at this festival, and commends himself, in a 1 According to another legend, Leto was said to have been conveyed from the Hyperboreans to Delos in twelve days, in the form of a she-wolf, to escape the jealous eye of Here. In connection with this legend, it was affirmed that the she-wolves always brought forth their young only during these twelve days in the year (Aristot. Hist. Animal, vii. 35). DELOS AND DELPHI. 47 touching farewell strain, to tlie remembrance and sympathy of the Delian maidens. 1 But Delos was not an oracular spot : Apollo did not manifest himself there as revealer of the futurities of Zeus. A place must be found where this beneficent function, without which man- kind would perish under the innumerable doubts and perplexities of life, may be exercised and rendered available. Apollo himself descends from Olympus to make choice of a suitable site : the hymnographer knows a thousand other adventures of the god which he might sing, but he prefers this memorable incident, the charter and patent of consecration for the Delphian temple. Many different places did Apollo inspect ; he surveyed the coun- try of the Magnetes and the Perrhtebians, came to lolkos, and passed over from thence to Eubrea and the plain of Lelanton. But even this fertile spot did not please him : he crossed the Euripus to Bceotia, passed by Teumessus and Mykalessus, and the then inaccessible and unoccupied forest on which the city of Thebes afterwards stood. He next proceeded to Onchestos, but the grove of Poseidon was already established there ; next across the Kephissus to Okalea, Haliartus, and the agreeable plain and much-frequented fountain of Delphasa, or Tilphusa. Pleased with the place, Apollo prepared to establish his oracle there, but Tilphusa was proud of the beauty of her own site, and did not choose that her glory should be eclipsed by that of the god. 2 She alarmed him with the apprehension that the chariots which contended in her plain, and the horses and mules which watered at her fountain would disturb the solemnity of his oracle ; and she thus induced him to proceed onward to the southern side of Parnassus, overhanging the harbor of Krissa. Here he establish- ed his oracle, in the mountainous site not frequented by chariots and horses, and near to a fountain, which however was guarded by a vast and terrific serpent, once the nurse of the monster Typhaon. This serpent Apollo slew with an arrow, and suffered its body to rot in the sun : hence the name of the place, Pytho, 3 and the surname of the Pythian Apollo. The plan of his temple being marked out, it was built by Trophonios and Agamedes, 1 Horn. Hymn. Apoll. i. 179. " Horn. Hymn. Apoll. 262. * Horn. Hymn. 363 nv-dec-Qai, to rot. 48 HISTORY OF GREECE. aided by a crowd of forward auxiliaries from the neighborhood. He now discovered with indignation, however, that Tilphusa had cheated him, and went back with swift step to resent it. " Thou ehalt not thus," he said, " succeed in thy fraud and retain thy beautiful water ; the glory of the place shall be mine, and not thine alone." Thus saying, he tumbled down a crag upon the fountain, and obstructed' her limped current: establishing an altar for himself in a grove hard by near another spring, where men still worship him as Apollo Tilphusios, because of his severe vengeance upon the once beautiful Tilphusa. 1 Apollo next stood in need of chosen ministers to take care of his temple and sacrifice, and to pronounce his responses at Pytho. Descrying a ship, " containing many and good men," bound on traffic from the Minoian Knossus in Krete, to Pylus in Pelopon- nesus, he resolved to make use of the ship and her crew for his purpose. Assuming the shape of a vast dolphin, he splashed about and shook the vessel so as to strike the mariners with ter- ror, while he sent a strong wind, which impelled her along the coast of Peloponnesus into the Corinthian Gulf, and finally to the harbor of Krissa, where she ran aground. The affrighted crew did not dare to disembark : but Apollo was seen standing on the shore in the guise of a vigorous youth, and inquired who they were, and what was their business. The leader of the Kretans recounted in reply their miraculous and compulsory voyage, when Apollo revealed himself as the author and contriver of it, announc- ing to them the honorable function and the dignified post to which he destined them. 2 They followed him by his orders to the rocky Pytho on Parnassus, singing the solemn lo-Paian such as it is sung in Krete, while the god himself marched at their head, with his fine form and lofty step, playing on the harp. He showed them the temple and site of the oracle, and directed them to worship him as Apollo Delphinios, because they had first seen him in the shape of a dolphin. " But how," they inquired, "are we to live in a spot where there is neither corn, nor vine, nor pasturage?" " Ye silly mortals," answered the god, " who look only for toil and privation, know that an easier lot is yours. Ye shall live by the cattle whom crowds of pious visitors will bring to the temple : ye 1 Horn. Hymn. Apoll. 381. * Horn. Hymn. Apoll 475 aqq FIRST COMMENCE JIENT OF THE DELPHIAN ORACLE. 49 shall need only the knife to be constantly ready for sacrifice. 1 Your duty will be to guard my temple, and to officiate as minis- ters at my feasts : but if ye be guilty of wrong or insolence, either by word or deed, ye shall become the slaves of other men, and shall remain so forever. Take heed of the word and the warn- ing." Such are the legends of DSlos and Delphi, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. The specific functions of the god, and the chief localities of his worship, together with the surnames attached to them, are thus historically explained, being connected with his past acts and adventures. Though these are to us only interesting poetry, yet to those who heard them sung they possess- ed all the requisites of history, and were fully believed as such , not because they were partially founded in reality, but because they ran in complete harmony with the feelings ; and, so long as that condition was fulfilled, it was not the fashion of the time to canvass truth or falsehood. The narrative is purely personal, without any discernible symbolized doctrine or allegory, to serve as a supposed ulterior purpose : -the particular deeds ascribed to Apollo grow out of the general preconceptions as to his attributes, combined with the present realities of his worship. It is neither history nor allegory, but simple mythe or legend. The worship of Apollo is among the most ancient, capital, and strongly marked facts of the Grecian world, and widely diffused over every branch of the race. It is older than the Iliad or Odyssey, in the latter of which both Pytho and Delos are noted, though Delos is not named in the former. But the ancient Apollo is different in more respects than one from the Apollo of later times. He is in an especial manner the god of the Trojans, un- friendly to the Greeks, and especially to Achilles ; he has, more- over, only two primary attributes, his boAV and his prophetic powers, without any distinct connection either with the harp, or with medicine, or with the sun, all which in later times he came to comprehend. He is not only, as Apollo Karneius, the chief 1 Homer. Hymn. Apoll. 535. AcgiTepri [taX licaarof S^av v xetpi [ia%aipav Iitiafciv alsl firft^a. TU 8* utydova mivra Kdpearai, "Qooa fftbiy' dydyuai. irtpiic^vTa $vK urdpurruv. VOL. T 3 4oc. 50 HISTORY OF GREECE. god of the Doric race, but also (under the surname of Patrous) the great protecting divinity of the gentile tie among the lonians : * he is moreover the guide and stimulus to Grecian colonization, scarcely any colony being ever sent out without encouragement and direction from the oracle at Delphi: Apollo Archegetes is one of his great surnames. 9 His temple lends sanctity to the meetings of the Amphiktyonic assembly, and he is always in filial subordination and harmony with his father Zeus : Delphi and Olympia are never found in conflict. In the Iliad, the warm and earnest patrons of the Greeks are Here, Athene, and Posei don : here too Zeus and Apollo are seen in harmony, for Zeus is decidedly well-inclined to the Trojans, and reluctantly sacrifices them to the importunity of the two great goddesses. 3 The wor- ship of the Sminthian Apollo, in various parts of the Troad and the neighboring territory, dates before the earliest periods of -Eolic colonization: 4 hence the zealous patronage of Troy as- cribed to him in the Iliad. Altogether, however, the distribution and partialities of the gods in that poem are different from what they become in later times, a difference w r hich our means of information do not enable us satisfactorily to explain. Besides the Delphian temple, Apollo had numerous temples throughout Greece, and oracles at Abae in Phokis, on the Mount Ptoon, and at Tegyra in Boeotia, where he was said to have been born, 5 at Branchidae near Miletus, at Klarus in Asia Minor, and at Patara in Lykia. He was not the only oracular god : Zeus at Dodona and at Olympia gave responses also : the gods or heroes Tropho- nius, Amphiaraus, Amphilochus, Mopsus, etc., each at his own 1 Harpocration v. 'An-o/l/lwv irurpuof and 'Ep/ceiof Zf-uc. Apollo Delplii- riios also belongs to the Ionic Greeks generally. Strabo, iv. 179. 2 Thucydid. vi. 3 ; Kallimach. Hymn. Apoll. 56. 3of yap uel noAieaai iXijdel aic, nvrbf de di-fieihia oZ/3oj- ti2.7jae 6ia/j.7repf, uf ETI nai vvv, etc. ***** Kal TOTE MaiaSof vlbf {nroff^6fj.evof KaTevevue M?/ TTOT' a7ro/c/ln/>eij>, 6V 'E/oy M^cJe Tror' EfiTTE^aariv TTVKIVU tio/uy ' avTap ' ArjTotdrjf KOTevEVGev iir' up&jj. KOI M.TJ Tiva i%,Ttp;v u7i~A.ov ev uftavuToiai MTJTE debv, ufjT 1 uvdpa Aiof yovov, etc. * Homer. Hymn. Merc. 574. Tlavpa [ilv ov*> bvi*rvi, rb 6' uK NVKTO 6C bp$tai7)v Qvha dv^ruv uv&puiruv. ZEUS Abl) HIS ATTRIBUTES. 61 Here the general types of Hermes and Apollo, coupled with the present fact that no thief ever approached the rich an d seem- ingly accessible treasures of Delphi, engender a string of exposi- tory incidents cast into a quasi-historical form and detailing how it happened that Hermes had bound himself by especial convention to respect the Delphian temple. The types of Apollo seem to tave been different in different times and parts of Greece : in some places he was worshipped as Apollo Nomios, 1 or the patron of pasture and cattle ; and this attribute, which elsewhere passed over to his son Aristaeus, is by our hymnographer voluntarily surrendered to Hermes, combined with the golden rod of fruit- fulness. On the other hand, the lyre did not originally belong to the Far-striking King, nor is he at all an inventor : the hymn explains both its first invention and how it came into his posses- sion. And the value of the incidents is thus partly expository, partly illustrative, as expanding in detail the general preconceived character of the Kyllenian god. To Zeus more amours are ascribed than to any of the other gods, probably because the Grecian kings and chieftains were especially anxious to trace their lineage to the highest and most glorious of all, each of these amours having its representative progeny on earth. 2 Such subjects were among the most promis- ing and agreeable for the interest of mythical narrative, and Zeus as a lover thus became the father of a great many legend?, branching out into innumerable interferences, for which his sons, all of them distinguished individuals, and many of them perse- cuted by Here, furnished the occasion. But besides this, the commanding functions of the supreme god, judicial and admin- istrative, extending both over gods and men, was a potent stimu- lus to the mythopoeic activity. Zeus has to watch over his own dignity, the first of all considerations with a god : moreover as Horkios, Xenios, Ktesios, Meilichios, (a small proportion of his thousand surnames,) he guaranteed oaths and punished perjurers, he enforced the observance of hospitality, he guarded the family hoard and the crop realized for the year, and he granted expia 1 Kallimach. Hymn. Apoll. 47 8 Kallimach. Hymn. Jov. 79. ' (! Atof paaiZT/ef, etc. 62 HISTORY OF GREECE lion to the repentant criminal. 1 All thesa different functions created a demand for mythes, as the means of translating a dim, but serious, presentiment into distinct form, both self-explaining and communicable to others. In enforcing the sanctity of the oath or of the tie of hospitality, the most powerful of all argu- ments would be a collection of legends respecting the judgments of Zeus Plorkios or Xenios ; the more impressive and terrific such legends were, the greater would be their interest, and the less would any one dare to disbelieve them. They constituted the natural outpourings of a strong and common sentiment, prob- ably without any deliberate ethical intention : the preconceptions of the divine agency, expanded into legend, form a product analogous to the idea of the divine features and symmetry em- bodied in the bronze or the marble statue. But it was not alone the general type and attributes of the godd which contributed to put in action the mythopoeic propensities. The rites and solemnities forming the worship of each god, as well as the details of his temple and its locality, were a fertile source of mythes, respecting his exploits and sufferings, which to the people who heard them served the purpose of past history. The exegetes, or local guide and interpreter, belonging to each temple, preserved and recounted to curious strangers these tradi- tional narratives, which lent a certain dignity even to the minu- tiae of divine service. Out of a stock of materials thus ample, the poets extracted individual collections, such as the " Causes " (Aiiia) of Kallimachus, now lost, and such as the Fasti of Ovid are for the Roman religious antiquities. 2 It was the practice to offer to the gods in sacrifice the bones of the victim only, inclosed in fat : how did this practice arise ? 1 See Herodot. i. 44. Xenoph. Anabas. vii. 8. 4 Plutarch, Theseus, c. 12. * Ovid, Fasti, iv. 211, about the festivals of Apollo : " Priscique imitamina facti JEra Deae comites raucaque terga movent." And Lactantius, v. 19, 15. "Ipsos ritus ex rebus gestis (deorum) vel ex casibus vel etiam ex mortibus, natos :" to the same purpose Augustin. Do Civ. D. vii. 18 ; Diodor. iii. 56. Plutarch's Quastiones Gracae et Romaic* are full of similar tales, professing to account for existing customs, many f them religious and liturgic. See Lobeck, Orphica, p. 675. LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS 63 The author of the Hesiodic Theogony has a story which explains it : Prometheus tricked Zeus into an imprudent choice, at the peiiod when the gods and mortal men first came to an arrange- ment about privileges and duties (in Mekone). Prometheus, the tutelary representative of man, divided a large steer into two portions : on the one side he placed the flesh and guts, folded up in the omentum and covered over with the skin : on the other, he put the bones enveloped in fat. He then invited Zeus to deter- mine which of the two portions the gods would prefer to receive from mankind. Zeus " with both hands " decided for and took the white fat, but was highly incensed on finding that he had got nothing at the bottom except the bones. 1 Nevertheless the choice of the gods was now irrevocably made : they were not entitled to any portion of the sacrificed animal beyond the bones and the white fat ; and the standing practice is thus plausibly explained. 2 I select this as one amongst a thousand instances to illustrate the genesis of legend out of religious practices. In the belief of the people, the event narrated in the legend was the real producing cause of the practice : but when we come to apply a sound criti- cism, we are compelled to treat the event as existing only in its narrative legend, and the legend itself as having been, in the greater number of cases, engendered by the practice, thui reversing the supposed order of production. 1 Hesiod, Theog. 550. Tvu p 1 ovS 1 rj-yvoiriae doXov KO.KU <5' baaero $tyi

ap Xaxraro 6e pva., u/j.(j>l #6/lof Se fiiv IKETO diudv, 'Qf I6ev 'area Aev/cu /3odf SoKii) iirl In the second line of this citation, the poet tells us that Zeus saw through the trick, and was imposed upon by his own consent, foreknowing that after all the mischievous consequences of the proceeding would be visited on man. But the last lines, and indeed the whole drift of the legend, imply tha contrary of this : Zeus was really taken in, and was in consequence very angry. It is curious to observe how the religions feelings of the poet driva him to save in words the prescience of Zeus, though in doing so he contra- dicts aud nullifies the whole point of the story. a Hesiod, Theog. 557. 'Etc TOV 6' udavuroiaiv knl %dovl vK av&puiruv Kaiova' 1 ntTTfa Aewca ftvijevruv knl Buuuv. 64 HISTOKl OF GREECE. In dealing with Grecian mythes generally, it fs convenient tc distribute them into such as belong to the Gods and such a? belong to the Heroes, according as the one or the other are the prominent personages. The former class manifests, more palpa- bly than the latter, their real origin, as growing out of the faith and the feelings, without any necessary basis, either of matter of fact or allegory : moreover, they elucidate more directly the religion of the Greeks, so important an item in their character as a people. But in point of fact, most of the mythes present to us Gods, Heroes and Men, in juxtaposition one with the other and the richness of Grecian mythical literature arises from the infinite diversity of combinations thus opened out ; first by the three class-types, God, Hero, and Man ; next by the strict keep- ing with which each separate class and character is handled. We shall now follow downward the stream of mythical time, which begins with the Gods, to the Heroic legends, or those which principally concern the Heroes and Heroines ; for the latter were to the full as important in legend as the former. CHAPTER II. LEGENDS RELATING TO HEROES AND MEN. THE Hesiodic theogony gives no account of anything like a creation of man, nor does it seem that such an idea was mucli entertained in the legendary vein of Grecian imagination ; which commonly carried back the present men by successive generations to some primitive ancestor, himself sprung from the soil, or from a neighboring river or mountain, or from a god, a nymph, etc. But the poet of the Hesiodic " Wurks and Days " has given us a narrative conceived in a very different spirit respecting the origin of the human race, more in harmony with the sober and melan- choly ethical tone which reigns through that poem. 1 * Hesiod, as cited in the Etymologicon Magnum (probably the Hesiodit LEGENDS RELATING TO HEROES AND MEN. 65 First (he tells us) the Olympic gods made the golden race, good, perfect, and happy men, who lived from the spontaneous abundance of the earth, in ease and tranquillity like the gods themselves : they suffered neither disease nor old age, and theii death was like a gentle sleep. After death they became, by the award of Zeus, guardian terrestrial daemons, who watch unseen over the proceedings of mankind with the regal privilege of dispensing to them wealth, and taking account of good and bad deeds. 1 Next, the gods made the silver race, unlike and greatly infe- rior, both in mind and body, to the golden. The men of this race were reckless and mischievous towards each other, and dis- dainful of the immortal gods, to whom they refused to offer either worship or sacrifice. Zeus in his wrath buried them in the earth : but there they still enjoy a secondary honor, as the 'Blest of the under-world. 2 Thirdly, Zeus made the brazen race, quite different from the silver. They were made of hard ash-wood, pugnacious and ter- rible ; they were of immense strength and adamantine soul, nor did they raise or touch bread. Their arms, their houses, and their implements were all of brass : there was then no iron. This race, eternally fighting, perished by each other's hands, died out, and descended without name or privilege to Hades. 3 Catalogue of Women, as Marktscheffel considers it, placing it Fragm. 133) gives the parentage of a certain Brotos, who must probably be intended as the first of men : Bporof , (if ftlv Ei>^uepof 6 ~Meaa^viOf , airb BpoTov TIVOC aiiTox&ovoc 6 6s 'tlacodof, into BpoTov TOV A.Wepo<; Kal 'H/*epaf . 1 Opp. Di. 120. AvTup kireid^ TOVTO yevog KOTU. yala KU^VSV Tol /J.EV 6aifj.ovE<; slat Aic>f peyahov 610. Ol pa fyvhuaaovaiv re diftaf KOI tr^eivUo! epya, 'Ht'pa taoa/tevoi, TTUVTT) Qoiruvref kit 1 alav HhovTotiorcu Kal TOVTO yepac fiaaiTiTjiov a%ov. *0pp. Di. 140. AvT&p tirel Kal TOVTO -yevof KaT(i yala Ka7^vij), Tol [iev imo%&6vioi fiuKapef dvrjTol KaTieovTai Aeirepoi, (M? e/ZTr^f TI/J.TJ Kal Totatv btrrjSeZ. 3 The ash was the wood out of which spear-handles were made (Iliad, xvi 142): the NvpQai Me/Upovo^, oare 9a\aoor]f IIa<7!7c J3ev&ea otcJe, s^st 6s TS Kiovaf atrdf MaKpuf , ai yalav TE K.a.1 ovpavbv uiufiif VOL. i. 4 74 HISTORY OF GREECE. As the Homeric theogony generally appears much expanded in Hesiod, so also does the family of lapetus, with their varied adventures. Atlas is here described, not as the keeper of the intermediate pillars between heaven and earth, but as himself condemned by Zeus to support the heaven on his head and hands ; ! while the fierce Mencetius is thrust down to Erebus as a punish- ment for his ungovernable insolence. But the remaining two brothers, Prometheus and Epimetheus, are among the most in teresting creations of Grecian legend, and distinguished in more than one respect from all the remainder. First, the main battle between Zeus and the Titan gods is a contest of force purely and simply mountains are hurled and thunder is launched, and the victory remains to the strongest. But the competition between Zeus and Prometheus is one of craft and stratagem : the victory does indeed remain to the former, but the honors of the fight belong to the latter. Secondly, Prometheus and Epirnetheus (the fore-thinker and the after-thinker 2 ) are char- acters stamped at the same mint and hy the same effort, the express contrast and antithesis of each other. Thirdly, mankind are here expressly brought forward, not indeed as active partners in the struggle, but as the grand and capital subjects interested, as gainers or sufferers by the result. Prometheus appears in the exalted character of champion of the human race, even against lhe formidable superiority of Zeus. In the primitive or Hesiodic legend, Prometheus is not the creator or moulder of man ; it is only the later additions which invest him with this character. 3 The race are supposed as exist- 1 Hesiod, Thcog. 516. "ArAaf amf (Pyth. v. 25), Excuse, the offspring of After-thought. 3 Apollodor. i. 7. 1. Nor is he such either in ^Eschylns, or in the Platonic fable (Protag. c. 30), though this version became at last the mof t popular. Some hardened lumps of clay, remnants of that which had been employed by Prometheus in moulding man, were shown to Pausanias at Panopctis in Phokis(Paus. x. 4, 3). The first Epigram of Erinna (Anthol. i. p. 58, cd. Brunck) seems to alludu LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS. 75 ing, and Prometheus, a member of the dispossessed body of Titan gods, comes forward as their representative and defender. The advantageous bargain which he made with Zeus on their behalf, in respect to the partition of the sacrificial animals, has been re- counted in the preceding chapter. Zeus felt that he had been outwitted, and was exceeding wroth. In his displeasure he with- held from mankind the inestimable comfort of fire, so that the race would have perished, had not Prometheus stolen fire, in de- fiance of the command of the Supreme Ruler, and brought it to men in the hollow of a ferule. 1 Zeus was now doubly indignant, and determined to play off a still more ruinous stratagem. Hephaestos, by his direction, moulded the form of a beautiful virgin ; Athene dressed her, Aphrodite and the Charities bestowed upon her both ornament and fascination, while Hermes infused into her the mind of a dog, a deceitful spirit, and treacherous words. 2 The messenger of the gods conducted this " fascinating mischief" to mankind, at a time when Prometheus was not present. Now Epimetheus had received from his brother peremptory injunctions not to accept from the hands of Zeus any present whatever ; but the beauty of Pandora (so the newly-formed female was called) was not to be resisted. She was received and admitted among men, and from that moment their comfort and tranquillity was exchanged for suffering of every kind. 3 The evils to which mankind are liable had been before enclosed in a cask in their own keeping : Pandora in her malice removed the lid of the cask, and out flew these thousand evils and calamities, to exercise forever their de- stroying force. Hope alone remained imprisoned, and therefore without efficacy, as before the inviolable lid being replaced before she could escape. Before this incident (says the legend) men had lived without disease or suffering ; but now both earth and sea are full of mischiefs, while maladies of every description etalk abroad by day as well as by night,* without any hope for man of relief to come. to Prometheus as moulder of man. The expression of Aristophanes ( Avcs, 689) Tr/laff/iarrt Trijhov does not necessarily refer to Prome'thens. 1 Hesiod, Theog. 5G6 ; Opp. Di. 52. 2 Theog. 580 ; Opp. Di. 50-85. * Opp. Di. 81-90. 4 Opp. Di. 93. Pandora does no; bring with her the cask, as the common 7$ HISTORY OF GREECE. The Theogony gives the legend here recounted, with some va- riations leaving out the part of Epimetheus altogether, as well as the cask of evils. Pandora is the ruin of man, simply as the mother and representative of the female sex. 1 And the varia- tions are thus useful, as they enable us to distinguish the essential from the accessory circumstances of the story. " Thus (says the poet, at the conclusion of his narrative) it is not possible to escape from the purposes of Zeus." 2 His mythe, connecting the calamitous condition of man with the malevolence of the supreme god, shows, first, by what cause such an unfriendly feeling was raised ; next, by what instrumentality its deadly re- sults were brought about. The human race are not indeed the creation, but the protected flock of Prometheus, one of the elder or dispossessed Titan gods : when Zeus acquires supremacy, man- kind along with the rest become subject to him, and are to make the best bargain they can respecting worship and service to be yielded. By the stratagem of their advocate Prometheus, Zeus rersion of this s*ory would have us suppose : the cask exists fast closed in Jie custody of Epimetheus, or of man himself, and Pandora commits the fatal treachery of removing the lid. The case is analogous to that of the closed bap; of unfavorable winds which JEolus gives into the hands of Odysseus, and which the guilty companions of the latter force open, to the entire nun of his hopes (Odyss. x. 19-50). The idea of the two casks on the threshhold of Zeus, lying ready for dispensation one full of evils the other of benefits is Homeric (Iliad, xxiv. 527) : Aotoi yap re TTL-&OI KaraKEiarai kv Atdf ovtiei, etc. Plutarch assimilates to this the mdof opened by Pandora, Consolat. ad Apol- Ion. c. 7. p. 105. The explanation here given of the Hesiodic passage re- lating to Hope, is drawn from an able article in the Wiener Jahrbuchcr, vol. 109(1845), p. 220, Hitter; a review of Schommann's translation of the Pro- metheus of JEschylus. The diseases and evils are inoperative so long as they remain shut up in the cask : the same mischief-making influence which lets them out to their calamitous work, takes care that Hope shall ? till continue a powerless prisoner in the inside. 1 Theog. 590. 'E/c rj?f yap yevof larl yvvaiK&v drj^vrepduv, Ti?c "yctp 'ok&iQV IGTI jevof not tyvha yvvainwv Hypo [teya dvijTolai /zer' avdpdoi vaisrdavai, etc Opp Di 105. vn -KI] lari Atdf voov ZEUS AND PROMETHEUS. 77 is cheated into such a partition of the victims as is eminently un- profitable to him ; whereby Ms wrath is so provoked, that he tries to subtract from man the use of fire. Here however his scheme is frustrated by the theft of Prometheus : but his second attempt is more successful, and he in his turn cheats the unthinking Epime- theus into the acceptance of a present (in spite of the peremptory interdict of Prometheus) by which the whole of man's happiness is wrecked. This legend grows out of two feelings ; partly as to the relations of the gods with man, partly as to the relation of the female sex with the male. The present gods are unkind to- wards man, but the old gods, with whom man's lot was originally cast, were much kinder and the ablest among them stands for- ward as the indefatigable protector of the race. Nevertheless, the mere excess of his craft proves the ultimate ruin of the cause which he espouses. He cheats Zeus out of a fair share of the sacrificial victim, so as both to provoke and justify a retaliation which he cannot be always at hand to ward off: the retaliation is, in his absence, consummated by a snare laid for Epimetheus and voluntarily accepted. And thus, though Hesiod ascribes the calamitous condition of man to the malevolence of Zeus, his piety suggests two exculpatory pleas for the latter : mankind have been the first to defraud Zeus of his legitimate share of the sacrifice and they have moreover been consenting parties to their own ruin. Such are the feelings, as to the relation between the gods and man, which have been one of the generating elements of this legend. The other element, a conviction of the vast mischief arising to man from women, whom yet they cannot dispense with, is frequently and strongly set forth in several of the Greek poeta by Simonides of Amorgos and Phokylides, not less than by the notorious misogynist Euripides. But the miseries arising from woman, however great they might be, did not reach Prometheus himself. For him, the rash champion who had ventured " to compete in sagacity " [ with Zeus, a different punishment was in store. Bound by heavy chains to a pillar, he remained fast imprisoned for several gene- rations : every day did an eagle prey upon his liver, and every night did the liver grow afresh for the next day's suffering. At 1 Theog 534. OVVSK' epifr-o /?ouil<)f virepficvu \poviuvi. 78 HISTORY OF GREECE. length Zeus, eager to enhance the glory of his favorite son Hera cles, permitted the latter to kill the eagle and rescue the cap- tive. 1 Such is the Promethean mythe as it stands in the Hesiodic poems ; its earliest form, as far as we can trace. Upon it was founded the sublime tragedy of -tEschylus, "The Enchained Prometheus," together with at least one more tragedy, now lost, by the same author. 2 -ZEsihylus has made several important alterations; de- scribing the human race, not as having once enjoyed and subse- quently lost a state of tranquillity and enjoyment, but as originally feeble and wretched. He suppresses both the first trick played off by Prometheus upon Zeus respecting the partition of the vic- tim and the final formation and sending of Pandora which are the two most marked portions of the Hesiodic story ; while on the other hand he brings out prominently and enlarges upon the theft of fire, 3 which in Hesiod is but slightly touched. If he has thus relinquished the antique simplicity of the story, he has rendered more than ample compensation by imparting to it a gran- deur of ideal, a large reach of thought combined with appeals to our earnest and admiring sympathy, and a pregnancy of sugges- tion in regard to the relations between the gods and man, which soar far above the Hesiodic level and which render his tragedy the most impressive, though not the most artistically composed, of all Grecian dramatic productions. Prometheus there appears not only as the heroic champion and sufferer in the cause and for the protection of the human race, but also as the gifted teacher of all the arts, helps, and ornaments of life, amongst which fire is only one:' all this against the will and in defiance of the purpose of Zeus, who, on acquiring his empire, wished to destroy the human race and to 1 Theog. 521-532. * Of the tragedy called ILpofiTj^eiif Avopsvof some few fragments yet re mam : IIpofuj&eiiG Tlvpopoe was a satyric drama, according to Dindorf Welcker recognizes a third tragedy, Upojtrj&sijf Hvptyopoc, and a satyric dra- ma, n/>o/7i9et)f Hvpicaeve (Die Grie^hisch. Tragodien, vol. i. p. 30). Th< Btory of Prometheus had also been handled by Sappho in one of her lost songs (Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. vi. 42). 3 Apollodorus too mentions only the theft of fire (i. 7. 1). 4 JSuch. Prom. 442-506. Huaai rexvai /3poToIaiv IK PROMETHEUS AKD HIS SUFFERINGS. 79 beget some new breed. 1 Moreover, new relations between Prome- theus and Zeus are superadded by JEschylus. At the commence- ment of the struggle between Zeus and the Titan gods, Prometheus had vainly attempted to prevail upon the latter to conduct it with prudence ; but when he found that they obstinately declined all wise counsel, and that their ruin was inevitable, he abandoned their cause and joined Zeus. To him and to his advice Zeus owed the victory : yet the monstrous ingratitude and tyranny of the latter is now manifested by nailing him to a rock, for no other crime than because he frustrated the purpose of extinguishing the human race, and furnished to them the means of living with tolerable comfort.' 3 The new ruler Zeus, insolent with his victory over the old gods, tramples down all right, and sets at naught sympathy and obliga- tion, as well towards gods as towards man. Yet the prophetic Prometheus, in the midst of intense suffering, is consoled by the foreknowledge that the time will come when Zeus must again send for him, release him, and invoke his aid, as the sole means of averting from himself dangers otherwise insurmountable. The security and means of continuance for mankind have now been placed beyond the reach of Zeus whom Prometheus proudly defies, glorying in his generous and successful championship, 3 de- spite the terrible price which he is doomed to pay for it. As the ^schylean Prometheus, though retaining the old linea- ments, has acquired a new coloring, soul and character, so he has also become identified with a special locality. In Hesiod, there is no indication of the place in which he is imprisoned ; but JEs- chylus places it in Scythia, 4 and the general belief of the Greeks supposed it to be on Mount Caucasus. So long and so firmly did 1 JEsch. Prom. 231. Pporuv de rtjv TaTiamupuv "kbyov OVK eaxev oitdev', uW uiaTuaac yevof Td TTU.V, e^pT/fev d/lAo Qtriiaat veov. * ;Esch. Prom. 198-222. 123. 6ia TI/V TJiav ^i^orrira fipor&v. 3 JEsch. Prom. 169-770. 4 Prometh. 2. See also the Fragments of the Prometheus Solutus, 177- 179, cd. Dindorf, -where Caucasus is specially named ; but v. 719 of the Pro- metheus Vinctus seems to imply that Mount Caucasus is a place different from that to which the suffering prisoner is chained. 80 HISTORY OF GREECE. this belief continue, that the Roman general Pompey, when in command of an army in Kolchis, made with his companion, the lit- erary Greek Theophanes, a special march to view the spot in Caucasus where Prometheus had been transfixed. 1 CHAPTER IV. HEROIC LEGENDS. -GENEALOGY OF ARGOS. HAVING briefly enumerated the gods of Greece, with their chief attributes as described in legend, we come to those geneal- ogies which connected them with historical men. In the retrospective faith of a Greek, the ideas of worship and ancestry coalesced. Every association of men, large or small, in whom there existed a feeling of present union, traced back that union to some common initial progenitor ; that progenitor being either the common god whom they worshipped, or some semi-divine person closely allied to him. What the feelings of the commu- nity require is, a continuous pedigree to connect them with this respected source of existence, beyond which they do not think of looking back. A series of names, placed in filiation or fraternity, together with a certain number of family or personal adventures ascribed to some of the individuals among them, constitute the ante-historical past through which the Greek looks back to his gods. The names of this genealogy are, to a great degree, gen- tile or local names familiar to the people, rivers, mountains, springs, lakes, villages, demes, etc., embodied as persons, and introduced as acting or suffering. They are moreover called kings or chiefs, but the existence of a body of subjects surround- ing them is tacitly implied rather than distinctly set forth ; for their own personal exploits or family proceedings constitute for the most part the whole matter of narrative. And thus the gene- 1 Appian, Bell. Mithridat. c. 103. HEROIC LEGENDS.- GENEALOGY OP ARGOS. 81 alogy was made to satisfy at once the appetite of the Greeks for romantic adventure, and their demand for an unbroken line of fil- iation between themselves and the gods. The eponymous person- age, from whom the community derive their name, is sometimes the begotten son of the local god, sometimes an indigenous man sprung from the earth, which is indeed itself divinized. It will be seen from the mere description of these genealogies that they included elements human and historical, as well as ele- ments divine and extra-historical. And if we could determine the time at which any genealogy was first framed, we should be able to assure ourselves that the men then represented as present, to- gether with their fathers and grandfathers, were real persons ot flesh and blood. But this is a point which can seldom be ascertain- ed ; moreover, even if it could be ascertained, we must at once set it aside, if we wish to look at the genealogy in the point of view of the Greeks. For to them, not only all the members were alike real, but the gods and heroes at the commencement were in a cer- tain sense the most real ; at least, they were the most esteemed and indispensable of all. The value of the genealogy consisted, not in its length, but in its continuity ; not (according to the feel- ing of modern aristocracy) in the power of setting out a prolong- ed series of human fathers and grandfathers, but in the sense of ancestral union with the primitive god. And the length of the series is traceable rather to humility, inasmuch as the same per- son who was gratified with the belief that he was descended from a god in the fifteenth generation, would have accounted it crimi- nal insolence to affirm that a god was his father or grandfather. In presenting to the reader those genealogies which constitute the supposed primitive history of Hellas, I make no pretence to dis- tinguish names real and historical from fictitious creations ; partly because I have no evidence upon which to draw the line, and part- ly because by attempting it I should altogether depart from the genuine Grecian point of view. Nor is it possible to do more than exhibit a certain selection of such as were most current and interesting ; for the total number of them which found place in Grecian faith exceeds computation. As a general rule, every deme, every gens, every aggregate of men accustomed to combined action, religious or political, had its own. The small and unimportant demes into which Attica wn? VOL. i. 4* Goc. 82 HISTORY Of GREECE. divided had each its ancestral god and heroes, just as much a* the great Athens herself. Even among the villages of Phokis, which Pausanias will hardly permit himself to call towns, deduc- tions of legendary antiquity were not wanting. And it is impor- tant to bear in mind, when we are reading the legendary geneal- ogies of Argos, or Sparta, or Thebes, that these are merely samples amidst an extensive class, all perfectly analogous, and all exhibiting the religious and patriotic retrospect of some frac- tion of the Hellenic world. They are no more matter of his- torical tradition than any of the thousand other legendary genealo- gies which men delighted to recall to memory at the periodical festivals of their gens, their dome, or their village. With these few prefatory remarks, I proceed to notice the most conspicuous of the Grecian heroic pedigrees, and first, that of Argos. The earliest name in Argeian antiquity is that of Inachus, the son of Oceanus and Tethys, who gave his name to the river flow- ing under the walls of the town. According to the chronological computations of those who regarded the mythical genealogies as substantive history, and who allotted a given number of years to each generation, the reign of Inachus was placed 1986 B. c., or about 1100 years prior to the commencement of the recorded Olympiads. 1 The sons of Inachus were Phoroneus and ^Egialeus ; both of whom however were sometimes represented as autochthonous men, the one in the territory of Argos, the other in that of Sik- yen. .ZEgialeus gave his name to the north-western region of the Peloponnesus, on the southern coast of the Corinthian Gulf. 2 The name of Phoroneus was of great celebrity in the Argeian mythical genealogies, and furnished both the title and the sub- ject of the ancient poem called Phoronis, in which he is styled " the father of mortal men." 3 He is said to have imparted to 1 Apollodor. ii. 1. Mr. Fynes Clinton docs not admit the historical reality of Inachus ; but he places Phoroneus seventeen generations, or 570 years prior to the Trojan war, 978 years earlier than the first recorded Olympiad See Fasti Hellenici, vol. iii. c. 1. p. 19. * Pausan. ii. 5, 4. 3 See Duntzer, Fragm. Epic. Grsec. p. 57. The Argeian author Akusilarw treated Phoroneus as the first of men, Fragm. 14. Didot an. Clem. Alex 10. -HERE -THE HERyEOX gj mankind, who had before him lived altogether isolated, the first notiou and habits of social existence, and even the first knowl- edge of fire : his dominion extended over the whole Peloponne- sus. His tomb at Argos, and seemingly also the place called the Phoronic city, in which he formed the first settlement of man- kind, were still shown in the days of Pausanias. 1 The offspring of Phoroneus, by the nymph Teledike, were Apis and Niobe. Apis, a harsh ruler, was put to death by Thelxion and Telchin, having given to Peloponnesus the name of Apia : 2 he was suc- ceeded byArgos, the son of his sister Niobe by the god Zeus. From this sovereign Peloponnesus was denominated Argos. By his wife Evadne, daughter of Strymon, 3 he had four sons, Ekba- sus, Peiras, Epidaurus, and Kriasus. Ekbasus was succeeded by his son Agenor, and he again by his son Argos Panoptes, a Stromat i. p. 321. ^opuvr/ef, a synonym for Argeians; Theocrit. Idyll. xxv. 200. 1 Apollodor. ii. 1, 1 ; Pausan. ii. 15, 5; 19. 5 ; 20, 3. * Apis in ^Eschylus is totally different: larpofiavTif or medical charmer, son of Apollo, who comes across the gulf from Naupactus, purifies the ter- ritory of Argos from noxious monsters, and gives to it the name of Apia (jEschyl. Suppl. 265). Compare Steph. Byz. v. 'A.mri ; Soph. (Edip. Colon. 1303. The name 'Am'a for Peloponnesus remains still a mystery, even after the attempt of Buttmann (Lexilogus, s. 19) to throw light upon it. Eusebius asserts that Niobe was the wife of Inachus and mother- of Pho- roneus, and pointedly contradicts those who call her daughter of Phoroneus (j>acrl 6e Tivef Nto/?7?v $opuveu flvai Bvyarepa, onsp OVK u?.J7$ef (Chronic, p. 23, ed. Scalig.) : his positive tone is curious, upon such a matter. Hellanicus in his Argolica stated that Phoroneus had three sons, Pelasgus, lasus and Agenor, who at the death of their father divided his possessions by lot. Pelasgus acquired the country near the river Erasinus, and built the citadel of Larissa : lasus obtained the portion near to Elis. After their decease, the younger brother Age"nor invaded and conquered the country, at the head of a large body of horse. It was from these three persons that Argos derived three epithets which are attached to it in the Homeric poems "Apyof ne^aoyinbv, '\aaov, 'ImrofloTov (Hellanik. Fr. 38, ed. Didot j Phavorin. v. "Apyof ). This is a specimen of the way in which legendary persons as well as legendary everts were got up to furnish an explanation of Homeric epithets : we may remark as singular, that Hellanicus seems to apply HefaaytKov 'Apyof to a portion of Peloponnesus, while the Homeric Catalogue applies it to Thessaly. 3 Apollod. 1. c. The mention of Strymon seems connected with .Sschylus, Suppl. 255. 84 HISTORY OF GREECE. very powerful prince who is said to have had eyes distributed over all his body, and to have liberated Peloponnesus from sev- eral monsters and wild animals which infested it : l Akusilaus and ^Eschylus make this Argos an earth-born person, while Phere- kydes reports him as son of Arestor. lasus was the son of Argos Panoptes by Ismene, daughter of Asopus. According to the authors whom Apollodorus and Pausanias prefer, the celebrated 16 was his daughter : but the Hesiodic epic (as well as Akusilaus) represented her as daughter of Peiras, while JEschylus and Kastor the chronologist affirmed the primitive king Inachus to have been her father. 2 A favorite theme, as well for the ancient genealogical poets as for the Attic tragedians, were the adven- tures of 16, of whom, while priestess of Here, at the ancient and renowned Heneon between Mykente and Argos, Zeus became amorous. When Here discovered the intrigue and taxed him with it, he denied the charge, and metamorphosed 16 into a white cow. Here, requiring that the cow should be sur- rendered to her, placed her under the keeping of Argos Panop- tes ; but this guardian was slain by Hermes, at the command of Zeus : and Here then drove the cow 16 away from her native land by means of the incessant stinging of a gad-fly, which com- pelled her to wander without repose or sustenance over an immeasurable extent of foreign regions. The wandering 16 gave her name to the Ionian Gulf, traversed Epirus and Illyria, passed the chain of Mount Hsemus and the lofty summits of Caucasus, and swam across the Thracian or Cimmerian Bosporus (which also from her derived its appellation) into Asia. She then went through Scythia, Cimmeria, and many Asiatic regions, until she arrived in Egypt, where Zeus at length bestowed upon her rest, restored her to her original form, and enabled her to give birth to his black son Epaphos. 3 1 Akusil. Fragm. 17, cd. Didot; JEsch. Prometh. 568 ; Phcrekyd. Fragm. 22, ed. Didot ; Hcsiod. ^Egimius. Fr. 2, p. 56, cd. DQntzer : among the varieties of the story, one was that Argos was changed into a peacock (Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 102). Macrobius (i. 19) considers Argos as an alle- gorical expression of the starry heaven ; an idea which Panofska also upholds in one of the recent Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy. 1837, p ?21 tetj. * Apollod. ii. 1, 1 ; Pausan. 5i. 16, 1 ; JEsch. Prom. v. 590-663. 1 JEscM. Prom. v. 790-850; Apollod. ii. 1. ./Eschylus in the Supplied WANDERINGS OF 10. 86 Such is a general sketch of the adventures which the aucienf poets, epic, lyric, and tragic, and the logographers after them, connect with the name of the Argeian 16, one of the numerous tales which the fancy of the Greeks deduced from the amorous dispositions of Zeus and the jealousy of Here. That the scene should be laid in the Argeian territory appears natural, when we recollect that both Argos and Mykenie were under the special guardianship of Here, and that the Heraon between the two was one of the oldest and most celebrated temples in which she was worshipped. It is useful to compare this amusing fiction with the representation reportel to us by Herodotus, and derived by him as well from Phoenician as from Persian antiquarians, of the circumstances which occasioned the transit of 16 from Argos to Egypt, an event recognized by all of them as historical matter of fact. According to the Persians, a Phoenician vessel had arrived at the port near Argos, freighted with goods intended for sale to the inhabitants of the country. After the vessel had remained a few days, and disposed of most of her cargo, several gives a different version of the wanderings of 16 from that which appears in the Prometheus : in the former drama he carries her through Phrygia, Mysia, Lydia, Pamphylia and Cilicia into Egypt (Supplic. 544-566) : nothing is there said about Prometheus, or Caucasus or Scythia, etc. The track set forth in the Supplkes is thus geographically intelligible . that in the Prometheus (though the most noticed of the two) defies all com- prehension, even as a consistent fiction ; nor has the erudition of the com- mentators been successful in clearing it up. See Schutz, Excurs. iv. ad Prometh. Vinct. pp. 144-149 ; Welcker, ^Eschylische Trilogie, pp. 127-146, and especially Volcker, Mythische Geographic der Griech. und Romer, part i. pp. 3-13. The Greek inhabitants at Tarsus in Cilicia traced their origin to Argos: their story was, that Triptolemus had been sent forth from that town in quest of the wandering 16, that he had followed her to Tyre, and then renounced the search in despair. He and his companions then settled partly at Tarsus, partly at Antioch (Strabo, xiv. 673; xv. 750). This is the story of Kadmos and Europe inverted, as happens so often with the Grecian mythes. Homer calls Hermes 'Apyet^ovi-T/f ; but this epithet hardly affords sum cient proof that he was acquainted with the mythe of 16, as Volcker sup poses : it cannot be traced higher than Hesiod. According to some authors, whom Cicero copies, it was on account of the murder of Argos that Hermea was obliged to leave Greece and go into Egypt : then it was that he taughi the Egyptians laws and letters fl)e Natur. Deor. iii. 22). 86 HISTORY OF GREECE. Argeian women, and among them 16 the king's daughter, coming on board to purchase, were seized and carried off by the crew, who sold 16 in Egypt. 1 The Phoenician antiquarians, however, while they admitted the circumstance that 16 had left her own country in one of their vessels, gave a different color to the whole by affirming that she emigrated voluntarily, having been engaged in an amour with the captain of the vessel, and fearing that her parents might come to the knowledge of her pregnancy. Both Persians and Phoenicians described the abduction of 16 as the first of a series of similar acts between Greeks and Asiatics, committed each in revenge for the preceding. First came the rape of Europe from Phoenicia by Grecian adventurers, per- haps, as Herodotus supposed, by Kretans : next, the abduction of Medeia from Kolchis by Jason, which occasioned the retaliatory act of Paris, when he stole away Helena from Menelaos. Up to this point the seizures of women by Greeks from Asiatics, and by Asiatics from Greeks, had been equivalents both in number and in wrong. But the Greeks now thought fit to equip a vast conjoint expedition to recover Helen, in the course of which they took and sacked Troy. The invasions of Greece by Darius and Xerxes were intended, according to the Persian antiquarians, as a long-delayed retribution for the injury inflicted on the Asiatics by Agamemnon and his followers. 2 The account thus given of the adventures of 16, when con- trasted with the genuine legend, is interesting, as it tends to illus* 1 The story in Parthenius (Narrat. 1 ) is built upon this version of 16's adventures. 2 Herodot. i. 1-6. Pausanias (ii. 15, 1) will not undertake to determine whether the account given by Herodotus, or that of the old legend, respect- ing the cause which carried 16 from Argos to Egypt, is the true one : Ephorus (ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 168) repeats the abduction of 16 to Egypt, by the Phoenicians, subjoining a strange account of the Etymology of the name Bosporus. The remarks of Plutarch on the narrative of Herodotus are curious : he adduces as one proof of the Hcmof/deia (bad feeling) of Herod- otus, that the latter inserts so discreditable a narrative respecting 16, daugh- ter of Inachus, " whom all Greeks believe to have been divinized by foreign- ers, to have given name to seas and straits, and to be the source of the most Illustrious regal families." He also blames Herodotus for rejecting Epaphus, 16, lasus and Argos, as highest members of the Perseid genealogy. He calls Herodotus <]>iloj3upl3apoe /Plutarch, De Malign. Herodoti, c. xi. xii. xir pp. 856, 857). ABDUCTIONS OF HEROIC WOMEN. 87 trate the phenomenon which early Grecian history is constantly presenting to us. - the way in which the epical furniture of an unknown past is recast and newly colored so as to meet those changes which take place in the retrospective feelings of the present. The religious and poetical character of the old legend disappears : nothing remains except the names of persons and places, and the voyage from Argos to Egypt : we have in exchange a sober, quasi-historical narrative, the value of which consists in its bearing on the grand contemporary conflicts between Persia and Greece, which filled the imagination of Herodotus and his readers. To proceed with the genealogy of the kings of Argos, lasus was succeeded by Krotopus, son of his brother Agenor ; Kroto- pus by Sthenelas, and he again by Gelanor. 1 In the reign of the latter, Danaos came with his fifty daughters from Egypt to Argos ; and here we find another of those romantic adventures which so agreeably decorate the barrenness of the mythical gen- ealogies. Danaos and JEgyptos were two brothers descending from Epaphos, son of 16 : JEgyptos had fifty sons, who were eager to marry the fifty daughters of Danaos, in spite of the strongest repugnance of the latter. To escape such a necessity, Danaos placed his fifty daughters on board of a penteconter (or vessel with fifty oars) and sought refuge at Argos ; touching in his voyage at the island of Rhodes, where he erected a statue of Athene at Lindos, which was long exhibited as a memorial of his 1 It would be an unprofitable fatigue to enumerate the multiplied and irre- concilable discrepancies in regard to every step of this old Argeian geneal- ogy. Whoever desires to sec them brought together, may consult Schubart, Qucestiones in Antiquitatem Heroicam, Marpurg, 1832, capp. 1 and 2. The remarks which Schubart makes (p. 35) upon Pctit-Radel's Chrono- logical Tables will be assented to by those who follow the unceasing string of contradictions, without any sufficient reason to believe that any one of them is more worthy of trust than the remainder, which he has cited : " Videant alii, quomodo genealogias heroicas, et chronologize rationes, in concordiam redigant Ipse abstineo, probe persuasus, stemmata vera, his- torise fide comprobata, in systema chronologiaa redigi posse : at ore per Bzecnla tradita, a poctis reficta, saepe mutata, prout fabula postulare ideba tnr, ab historiarum deinde conditoribus restituta, scilicet, brevi qualia prostant stemmata chronologic secundum unnos distributae vincul scmpei recusatura esse." 88 msToirr OF GREECE. passage. .ZEgyptos and his sons followed them to Argos and still pressed their suit, to which Danaos found himself compelled to assent ; but on the wedding night he furnished each of his daugh- ters with a dagger, and 'enjoined them to murder their husbands during the hour of sleep. His orders were obeyed by all, with the single exception of Hypermnestra, who preserved her hus- band Lynkeus, incurring displeasure and punishment from her father. He afterwards, however, pardoned her ; and when, by the voluntary abdication of Gelanor, he became king of Argos, Lynkeus was recognized as his son-in-law and ultimately suc- ceeded him. The remaining daughters, having been purified by Athene and Hermes, were given in marriage to the victors in a gymnic contest publicly proclaimed. From Danaos was derived the name of Danai, applied to the inhabitants of the Argeian territory, 1 and to the Homeric Greeks generally. From the legend of the Dana'ides we pass to two barren names of kings, Lynkeus and his son Abas. The two sons of Abas were Akrisios and Prestos, who, after much dissension, divided between them the Argeian territory ; Akrisios ruling at Argos, and Proetos at Tiryns. The families of both formed the theme of romantic stories. To pass over for the present the legend of Bellerophon, and the unrequited passion which the wife of Prcetos conceived for him, we are told that the daughters of Proetos, beautiful, and solicited in marriage by suitors from all Greece r were smitten with leprosy and driven mad, wandering in unseemly guise throughout Peloponnesus. The visitation had overtaken them, according to Hesiod, because they refused to take part in the Bacchic rites; according to Pherekydes and the Argeian Akusilaus, 2 because they had treated scornfully the wooden statue 1 Apollod. ii. 1. The Snppliccs of yEschylus is the commencing drama of a trilogy on this subject of the Danafdes, 'iKerldef, At'ywTmot, Aavat- def. Welcker, Griechisch. Tragodien, vol. i. p. 48 : the two latter are lost. The old epic poem called Danats or DanaTdes, which is mentioned in the Tabula Iliaca as containing 5000 verses, has perished, and is unfortunately , very little alluded to: see Ddntzer, Epic. Graec. Fragm. p. 3; Welcker, Dcr Episch. Kyklns, p. 35. Apollod. I.e.; Pherekyd. ap. Schol. Horn. Odyss. xv. 225; Ilcsiod, Fragm. Marktsch. Fr. 36, 37, 38. These Fragments belong to the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women : Apollodorus seems to refer to some other of the numerous Hesiodic poems, Diodorus (iv. 68) assigns the anger of Diony sos as the cause. DANAE AND PERSEUS. 9 and simple equipments of Here : the religious character of the old legend here displays itself in a remarkable manner. Unable to cure his daughters, Prcetos invoked the aid of the renowned Pylian prophet and leech, Melampus son of Amythaon, who undertook to remove the malady on condition of being rewarded with the third part of the kingdom. Proctos indignantly refused these conditions : but the state of his daughters becoming aggra- vated and intolerable, he was compelled again to apply to Melampus ; who, on the second request, raised his demands still higher, and required another third of the kingdom for his brother Bias. These terms being acceded to, he performed his part of the covenant. He appeased the wrath of Here by prayer and sacrifice; or, according to another account, he approached the deranged women at the head of a troop of young men, with shouting and ecstatic dance, the ceremonies appropriate to the Bacchic worship of Dionysos, and in this manner effected their cure. Melampus, a name celebrated in many different Grecian mythes, is the legendary founder and progenitor of a great and long-continued family of prophets. He and his brother Bias became kings of separate portions of the Argeian territory : he is recognized as ruler there even hi the Odyssey, and the prophet Theoklymenos, his grandson, is protected and carried to Ithaca by Telemachus. 1 Herodotus also alludes to the cure of the women, and to the double kingdom of Melampus and Bias in the Argeian land : he recognizes Melampus as the first person who introduced to the knowledge of the Greeks the name and wor- ship of Dionysos, with its appropriate sacrifices and phallic pro- cessions. Here again he historicizes various features of the old legend in a manner not unworthy of notice. 2 But Danae, the daughter of Akrisios, with her son Perseus 1 Odyss. xv. 240-256. 1 Herod, ix. 34 ; ii. 49: compare Pausan. ii. 18,4. Instead of the Free- tides, or daughters of Prcetos, it is the Argeian women generally whom he represents Melampus as having cured, and the Argeians generally who send to Pylus to invoke his aid : the heroic personality which pervades the prim- itive story Las disappeared. Kallimachus notices the Proetid virgins as the parties suffering from madness, but he treats Artemis as the healing influence (Hymn, ad Dianam 235). 90 HISTORY OF GREECE. acquired still greater celebrity than her cousins the Proetides An oracle had apprized Akrisios that his daughter would give birth to a son by whose hand he would himself be slain. To guard against this danger, he imprisoned Danae in a chamber of brass under ground. But the god Zeus had become amorous of her, and found means to descend through the roof in the form of a shower of gold : the consequence of his visits was the birth of Perseus. When Akrisios discovered that his daughter had given existence to a son, he enclosed both the mother and the child in a coffer, which he cast into the sea. 1 The coffer was carried to the isle of Seriphos, where Diktys, brother of the king Polydektes, fished it up, and rescued both Danae and Perseus. The exploits of Perseus, when he grew up, against the three Phorkides or daughters of Phorkys, and the three Gorgons, are among the most marvellous and imaginative in all Grecian legend : they bear a stamp almost Oriental. I shall not here repeat the details of those unparalleled hazards which the special favor of Athene en- abled him to overcome, and which ended in his bringing back from Libya the terrific head of the Gorgon Medusa, endued with the property of turning every one who looked upon it into stone. In his return, he rescued Andromeda, daughter of Kepheus, who had been exposed to be devoured by a sea-monster, and brought her back as his wife. Akrisios trembled to see him after this victorious expedition, and retired into Thessaly to avoid him ; but Perseus followed him thither, and having succeeded in calming his apprehensions, became competitor in a gymnic contest where his grandfather was among the spectators. By an incautious swing of his quoit, he unintentionally struck Akrisios, and caused his death : the predictions of the oracle were thus at last fulfilled. Stung with remorse at the catastrophe, and unwilling to return to Argos, which had been the principality of Akrisios, Perseus made an exchange with Megapenthes, son of Proetos king of Tiryns. Megapenthes became king of Argos, and Perseus of Tiryns : moreover, the latter founded, within ten miles of Argos, the far -fame I city of Mykenas. The massive walls of this city, 1 The beautiful fragment of Simonides (Fragm. vii. ed. Gaisford. Poet. Man.), describing Danae and the child thus exposed, is familiar to evcrj classical PERSEIDS AT MYKENJL 91 like those of Tiryns, of which remains are yet to be seen, were built for him by the Lykian Cyclopes. 1 We here reach the commencement of the Perseid dynasty of Mykenae. It should be noticed, however, that there were among the ancient legends contradictory accounts of the foundation of this city. Both the Odyssey and the Great Eoiai enumerated, among the heroines, Mykene, the Eponyma of the city; the former poem classifying her with Tyro and Alkmene, the latter describing her as the daughter of Inachus and wife of Arestor. And Akusilaus mentioned an Eponymus Mykeneus, the son of Sparton and grandson of Phoroneus. 2 The prophetic family of Melampus maintained itself in one of the three parts of the divided Argeian kingdom for five gene- rations, down to Amphiaraos and his sons Alkmjeon and Amphi lochos. The dynasty of his brother Bias, and that of Megapen- thes, son of Prostos, continued each for four generations : a list of barren names fills up the interval. 3 The Perseids of Mykenae boasted a descent long and glorious, heroic as well as historical, continuing down to the last sovereigns of Sparta. 4 The issue of Perseus was numerous : his son Alkceos was father of Amphi- tryon ; another of his sons, Elektryon, was father of Alkme"ne ; 5 a third, Sthenelos, father of Eurystheus. After the death of Perseus, Alkoeos and Amphitryon dwelt at Tiryns. The latter became engaged in a quarrel with Elektryon 1 Pans. ii. 15, 4 ; ii. 16, 5. Apollod. ii. 2. Pherekyd. Fragm. 26, Dind. * Odyss. ii. 120. Hesiod. Fragment. 154. Marktscheff. Akusil. Fragm. 16. Pausan. ii. 16, 4. Hekatajus derived the name of the town from the (LVKTjs of the sword of Perseus (Fragm. 360, Dind.). The Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 1247, mentions Mykeneus as son of Sparton, but grandson of Phegeus the brother of Phoroneus. 3 Pausan. ii. 18, 4. 4 Herodot. vi. 53. * In the Hesiodic Shield of Herakles, Alkmene is distinctly mentioned as daughter of Elektryon ; the genealogical poet, Asios, called her the daugh- ter of Amphiaraos and Eriphyle (Asii Fragm. 4, ed. Markt. p. 412). The date of Asios cannot be precisely fixed; but he may be probably assigned to an epoch between the 30th and 40th Olympiad. Asios must have adopted a totally different legend respecting the birth of H6rr.kles and the circumstances preceding it, among which the deaths of her father and brothers are highly influential. Nor could he have accepted the received chronology of the sieges of Thebes and Troy. 92 HISTORY OF GREECE. respecting cattle, and in a fit of passion killed him r 1 moreover the piratical Taphians from the west coast of Akarnania invaded the country, and slew the sons of Elektryon, so that Alkmene alone was left of that family. She was engaged to wed Amphi- tryon ; but she bound him by oath not to consummate the mar- riage until he had avenged upon the Telebooe the death of her brothers. Amphitryon, compelled to flee the country as the murderer of his uncle, took refuge in Thebes, whither Alkmene accompanied him : Sthenelos was left in possession of Tiryns. The Kadmeians of Thabes, together with the Locrians and Pho- cians, supplied Amphitryon with troops, which he conducted against the Telebooe and the Taphians :~ yet he could not have subdued them without the aid of Komgetho, daughter of the Taphian king Pterelaus, who conceived a passion for him, and cut off from her father's head the golden lock to which Poseidon had attached the gift of immortality. 3 Having conquered and expelled his enemies, Amphitryon returned to Thebes, impatient to consummate his marriage: but Zeus on the wedding-night assumed his form and visited Alkmene before him : he had deter- mined to produce from her a son superior to all his prior offspring, "a specimen of invincible force both to gods and men." 4 At the proper time, Alkmene was delivered of twin sons : Herakles the offspring of Zeus, the inferior and unlionored Iphikles, offspring of Amphitryon. 5 When Alkmene was on the point of being delivered at Thebes, Zeus publicly boasted among the assembled gods, at the instiga- tion of the mischief-making Ate, that there was on that day about 1 So runs the old legend in the Hcsiodic Shield of HCraklcs (12-82). Apollodorus (or Pherekydes, whom he follows) softens it down, and repre- sents the death of Elektryon as accidentally caused by Amphitryon. (Apollod. ii. 4, 6. Pherekydes, Fragm. 27, Bind.) * Hesiod, Scut. Here. 24. Theocrit. Idyll, xxiv. 4. Teleboas, the Epo- nym of these marauding people, was son of Poseidon (Anaximander ap. Athense. xi. p. 498). 3 Apollod. ii. 4, 7. Compare the fable of Nisus at Megara, infra, chap xii. p. 302. 4 ITesiod, Scut. Here. 29. opa -deolan 'AixSpuat r' u^.^>rarr/CLv apfc il.KTr)pa forever;. * Ilesiod. Sc. II. 50-56. ZEUS.-ALKMENE.-HERAKLES. 93 io be born on earth, from his breed, a son who should rule over all his neighbors. Here treated this as an empty boast, calling upon him to bind himself by an irremissible oath that the pre- diction should be realized. Zeus incautiously pledged his sol- emn word ; upon which Here darted swiftly down from Olympus to the Achaic Argos, where the wife of Sthenelos (son of Per- seus, and therefore grandson of Zeus) was already seven months gone with child. By the aid of the Eileithyioc, the special god- desses of parturition, she caused Eurystheus, the son of Sthene- los, to be born before his time on that very day, while she retarded the delivery of Alkmene. Then returning to Olympus, she announced the fact to Zeus : " The good man Eurystheus, son of the Perseid Sthenelos, is this day born of thy loins : the sceptre of the Argeians worthily belongs to him." Zeus was thunderstruck at the consummation which he had improvidently bound himself to accomplish. He seized Ate his evil counsellor by the hair, and hurled her forever away from Olympus : but he had no power to avert the ascendency of Eurystheus and the servitude of Herakles. " Many a pang did he suffer, when he saw his favorite son going through his degrading toil in the tasks imposed upon him by Eurystheus." 1 The legend, of unquestionable antiquity, here transcribed from the Iliad, is one of the most pregnant and characteristic in the Grecian mythology. It explains, according to the religious ideas familiar to the old epic poets, both the distinguishing attributes and the endless toil and endurances of Herakles, the most renowned and most ubiquitous of all the semi-divine personages worshipped by the Hellenes, a being of irresistible force, and especially beloved by Zeus, yet condemned constantly to labor for others and to obey the commands of a worthless and cowardly persecutor. His recompense is reserved to the close of his career, when his afflicting trials are brought to a close: he is then admitted to the godhead and receives in marriage Hebe. 2 The Homer, Iliad, xix. 90-133 ; also viii. 361. T?;v alel oreva^eo^'. W ibv 'ikov vlbv bpfjro "Epyov uet/cef e^ovra, VTT' 'Evpva^f/os dr$Awv. 2 Hcsiod, Theogon. 951, re^.eaaf cfrovocvraf ae$/loi'f. Horn. Odyss. xi. 620; Hesiod, Eoeae, Fragm. 24, Diintzer, p. 36, novnoo-arov KOI upiatcv 94 HISTORY OF GREECE. twelve labors, as they are called, too notorious to be here detailed, form a very small fraction of tla e exploits of this mighty being, which filled the Herakleian epics of the ancient poets. He is found not only in most parts of Hellas, but throughout all the riher regions then known to the Greeks, from Gades to the river Thermodon in the Euxine and to Scythia, overcoming all diffi- culties and vanquishing all opponents. Distinguished families are everywhere to be traced who bear his patronymic, and glory in the belief that they are his descendants. Among Achaeans, Kad- meians, and Dorians, Herakles is venerated : the latter especially 'reat him as their principal hero, the Patron Hero- God of the race : the Herakleids form among all Dorians a privileged gens, in which at Sparta the special lineage of the two kings was included. His character lends itself to mythes countless in number as well as disparate in their character. The irresistible force remains constant, but it is sometimes applied with reckless vio- lence against friends as well as enemies, sometimes devoted to the relief of the oppressed. The comic writers often brought him out as a coarse and stupid glutton, while the Athenian phi- losopher Prodikos, without at all distorting the type, extracted from it the simple, impressive, and imperishable apologue still known as the Choice of Hercules. After the death and apotheosis of Herakles, his son Hyllos and his other children were expelled and persecuted by Eurys- theus : the fear of his vengeance deterred both the Trachinian king Keyx and the Thebans from harboring them, and the Athenians alone were generous enough to brave the risk of offer- ing them shelter. Eurystheus invaded Attica, but perished in the attempt by the hand of Hyllos, or by that of lolaos, the old companion and nephew of Herakles. 1 The chivalrous courage which the Athenians had on this occasion displayed in behalf of oppressed innocence, was a favorite theme for subsequent eulogy by Attic poets and orators. All the sons of Eurystheus lost their lives in the battle along with him, so that the Perseid family was now represented only by the Herakleids, who collected an army and endeavored to 1 Apollod. ii. 8, 1 He:atae. ap. Longin. c. 27 ; Diodor. iv. 57 EXILE OF THE HERAKLEIDS. 95 recover the possessions from which they had been expelled. The united forces of lonians, Achseans, and Arcadians, then inhabit- ing Peloponnesus, met the invaders at the isthmus, when Hyllos, the eldest of the sons of Herakles, proposed that the contest should be determined by a single combat between himself and any champion of the opposing army. It was agreed, that if Hyllos were victorious, the Herakleids should be restored to their possessions if he were vanquished, that they should forego all claim for the space of a hundred years, or fifty years, or three generations, for in the specification of the time, accounts differ. Echemos, the hero of Tegea in Arcadia, ac- cepted the challenge, and Hyllos was slain in the encounter ; iu consequence of which the Herakleids retired, and resided along with the Dorians under the protection of JEgimios, son of Dorus. 1 As soon as the stipulated period of truce had expired, they renewed their attempt upon Peloponnesus conjointly with the Dorians, and with complete success : the great Dorian establish- ments of Argos, Sparta, and Messenia were the result. The details of this victorious invasion will be hereafter recounted. Sikyon, Phlios, Epidauros, and Trrezen 2 all boasted of respected eponyms arid a genealogy of dignified length, not exempt from the usual discrepancies but all just as much entitled to a place on the tablet of history as the more renowned JEolids or Herakleids. I omit them here because I wish to impress upon the reader's mind the salient features and character of the legendary world, not to load his memory with a full list of legendary names. 1 Herodot. ix. 26 ; Diodor. iv. 58. * Pausan. ii. 5, 5 ; 12, 5 ; 26, 3. His statements indicate how much the predominance of a powerful neighbor like Argos tended < alter the genea.1 ogies of these inferior towns. 96 HISTORY OF GREECE. CHAPTER V. DEUKALION, HELLEN, AND SONS OF HELLEN. IN the Hesiodic Theogony, as well as in the " Works and Days," the legend of Prometheus and Epimetheus presents an import religious, ethical, and social, and in this sense it is carried forward by jEschylus ; but to neither of the characters is any genealogical function assigned. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women brought both of them into the stream of Grecian legend- ary lineage, representing Deukalion as the son of Prometheus and Pandora, and seemingly his wife Pyrrha as daughter of Epimetheus. 1 Deukalion is important in Grecian mythical narrative under two points of view. First, he is the person specially saved at the time of the general deluge : next, he is the father of Hell6n, the great eponym of the Hellenic race ; at least this was the more current story, though there were other statements which made Hellen the son of Zeus. The name of Deukalion is originally connected with the Lokrian towns of Kynos and Opus, and with the race of the Leleges, but he appears finally as settled in Thessaly, and ruling in the portion of that country called Phthiotis. 2 According to what seems to have been the old legendary account, it is the 1 Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. iii. 1085. Other accounts of the genealogy of Deukalion are given in the Schol. ad Homer. Odyss. x. 2, on the author ity both of Hesiod and Akusilaus. 1 Hesiodic Catalog. Fragm. xi.; Gaisf. Ixx. Dilntzer "Hroi jap Ao/cpdf Ae^eyuv TjyfjoaTo haiJv, Toif pa KOTE KpoviSijf Zet)f, ii Aexrotif IK yaiijf Adaf nope The reputed lineage of Deukalion continued in Phthia down to the time of Dikaearchus, if we may judge from the old Phthiot Pherckrates, whom he introduced in one of his dialogues as a disputant, and whom he expressly announced as a descendant of Deukalion (Cicero, Tuscul. Disp. i. 10). DEUKALION, HELLEN AND SONS OF HELLEN. 97 deluge which transferred him from the one to the other ; but ac- cording to another statement, framed in more historicizing times, he conducted a body of Kuretes and Leleges into Thessaly, and expelled the prior Pelasgian occupants. 1 The enormous iniquity with which earth was contaminated as Apollodorus says, by the then existing brazen race, or as others say, by the fifty monstrous sons of Lykaon provoked Zeus to send a general deluge. 2 An unremitting and terrible rain laid the whole of Greece under water, except the highest mountain-tops, whereon a few stragglers found refuge. Deuka- lion was saved in a chest or ark, which he had been forewarned by his father Prometheus to construct. After floating for nine days on the water, he at length landed on the summit of Mount Parnassus. Zeus having sent Hermes to him, promising to grant whatever he asked, he prayed that men and companions might be sent to him in his solitude : accordingly Zeus directed both him and Pyrrha to cast stones over their heads : those cast by Pyrrha became women, those by Deukalion men. And thus the " stony race of men " (if we may be allowed to translate an ety- mology which the Greek language presents exactly, and which has not been disdained by Hesiod, by Pindar, by Epicharmus. and by Virgil) came to tenant the soil of Greece. 3 Deukalion 1 The latter account is given by Dionys. Halic. i. 1 7 ; the former seems to have been given by Hellanikus, who affirmed that the ark after the deluge stopped upon Mount Othrys, and not upon Mount Parnassus ( Schol. Find. ut. sup.) the former being suitable for a settlement in Thessaly. Pyrrha is the eponymous heroine of Pyrrhrea or Pyrrha, the ancient name of a portion of Thessaly (Rhianus, Fragm. 18. p. 71, ed, Diintzer). Hellanikus had written a work, no\v lost, entitled AevKalauveia : all the fragments of it which are cited have reference to places in Thessaly, Lokris and Phokis. See Preller, ad Hellanitum, p. 12 (Dorpt. 1840). Probably Hellanikus is the main source of the important position occupied by Deuka- lion in Grecian legend. Thrasybulus and Akestodorus represented Deu- kalion as having founded the oracle of Dodona, immediately after the deluge (Etm. Mag. v. Aojdwvaiof ). 1 Apollodorus connects this deluge with the wickedness of the brazen race in Hesiod, according to the practice general with the logographers of string- ing together a sequence out of legends totally unconnected with each other (i- 7, 2). 3 Hesiod, Fragm. 135. ed. Markts. ap. Strabo. vii. p. 322, where the word Aaaf, proposed by Heyne as the reading of the unintelligible text, appears to TOL. I- 5 70C. 98 HISTORY OF GREECE on landing from the ark sacrificed a grateful offering to Zeu* Phyxios, or the God of escape ; he also erected altars in Thessaly to the twelve great gods of Olympus. 1 The reality of this deluge was firmly believed throughout the historical ages of Greece : the chronologers, reckoning up by gen- ealogies, assigned the exact date of it, and placed it at the same time as the conflagration of the world by the rashness of Phae- ton, during the reign of Krotopas king of Argus, the seventh from Inachus. 2 The meteorological work of Aristotle admits and reasons upon this deluge as an unquestionable fact, though he alters the locality by placing it west of Mount Pindus, near Do dona and the river Achelous. 3 He at the same time treats it as a physical phenomenon, the result of periodical cycles in the atmosphere, thus departing from the religious character of the old legend, which described it as a judgment inflicted by Zeus upon a wicked race. Statements founded upon this event were in circulation throughout Greece even to a very late date. The Megarians affirmed that Megaros, their hero, son of Zeus by a local nymph, had found safety from the waters on the lofty sum- me preferable to any of the other suggestions. Pindar, Olymp. ix. 47. 'Arcp 6' Eivuf 6fj.66a.ftov KTqaacr&av hidivov yovov Aaoi <5' uvo/iaadev. Virgil, Gcorgic i. 63. "Undo homines nati, durum genus." Epicharmus ap. Schol. Pindar. Olymp. ix. 56. Hygin. f. 153. Philochorus retained the ety- mology, though he gave a totally different fable, nowise connected with Deukalion, to account for it ; a curious proof how pleasing it was to the fancy of the Greek (see Schol. ad Find. 1. c. 68). 1 Apollod. i. 7, 2. Hellanic. Fragm. 15. Didot. Hellanikus affirmed that the ark rested on Mount Othrys, not on Mount Parnassus (Fragm. 16. Didot). Scrvius (ad Virgil. Eclog. vi. 41) placed it on Mount Athos Hyginus (f. 1 53 ) on Mount jEtna. 2 Tatian adv. Graec. c. 60, adopted both by Clemens and Eusebius. The Parian marble placed this deluge in the reign of Kranaos at Athens, 752 years before the first recorded Olympiad, and 1528 years before the Christian aira ; Apollodorus also places it in the reign of Kranaos, and in that of Nyctimus in Arcadia (iii. 8, 2; 14, 5). The deluge and the ekpyrosis or conflagration arc connected together also in Servius ad Virgil. Bucol. vi. 41 : he refines both of them into a "muta- tionem temporum." 3 Aristot. Meteorol. i. 14. Justin rationalizes the fable by telling us that Deukalion was king of Thessaly, who provided shelter and protection to the fugitives from the deluge (ii. 6, 17) HELLEN AND fflS SONS. 99 mit of their mountain Geraneia, which had not been completely submerged. And in the magnificent temple of the Olympian Zeus at Athens, a cavity in the earth was shown, through which it was affirmed that the waters of the deluge had retired. Even in the time of Pausanias, the priests poured into this cavity holy offerings of meal and honey. 1 In this, as in other parts of Greece, the idea of the Deukalionian deluge was blended with the reli- gious impressions of the people and commemorated by their sa- cred ceremonies. The offspring of Deukalion and Pyrrha were two sons, Hellen and Amphiktyon, and a daughter, Protogeneia, whose son by Zeus was Aethlius : it was however maintained by many, that Hellen was the son of Zeus and not of Deukalion. Hellen had by a nymph three sons, Dorus, Xuthus, and JEolus. He gave to those who had been before called Greeks, 2 the name of Hel- lenes, and partitioned his terrritory among his three children. JEolus reigned in Thessaly ; Xuthus received Peloponnesus, and had by Creiisa as his sons, Achaeus and Ion ; while Dorus occupied the country lying opposite to the Peloponnesus, on the northern side of the Corinthian Gulf. These three gave to the inhabitants of their respective countries the names of .^Eolians, Achasans and lonians, and Dorians. 3 Such is the genealogy as we find it in Apollodorus. In so far as the names and filiation are concerned, many points in it are given differently, or implicitly contradicted, by Euripides and other writers. Though as literal and personal history it deserves 1 Pausan. i. 18, 7 ; 40, 1. According to the Parian marble (s. 5), Deuka- lion had come to Athens after the deluge, and had there himself founded the temple of the Olympian Zeus. The etymology and allegorization of the names of Deukalion and Pyrrha, given by Volcker in his ingenious Mytho- logie des lapetischen Geschlechts (Giessen, 1824). p. 343, appears to me not at all convincing. 2 Such is the statement of Apollodorus (i. 7, 3) ; but I cannot bring my- self to believe that the name (TpcuKol) Greeks is at all old in the legend, or that the passage of Hesiod, in which Graecus and Latims purport to be mentioned, is genuine. See Hesiod, Theogon. 1013. and Catalog. Fragm. xxix. ed. Gottling with the note of Gottling ; also Wachsmuth, Hellen. Alterth. i. 1. p. 311, aad llernharuy, Griech, Litcrat. vol. i. p. 167. 3 Apollod. i. 7, 4. 100 HISTORY OF GREECE. no notice, its import is both intelligible and comprehensive. Il expounds and symbolizes the first fraternal aggregation of Hel- lenic men, together with their territorial distribution and the in- stitutions which they collectively venerated. There were two great holding-points in common for every sec- tion of Greeks. One was the Amphiktyonic assembly, which met half-yearly, alternately at Delphi and at Thermopylae ; ori- ginally and chiefly for common religious purposes, but indirectly and occasionally embracing political and social objects along with them. The other was, the public festivals or games, of which the Olympic came first in importance ; next, the Pythian, Ne- mean and Isthmian, institutions which combined religious so- lemnities with recreative effusion and hearty sympathies, in a man- ner so imposing and so unparalleled. Amphiktyon represents the first of these institutions, and Aethlius the second. As the Am- phiktyonic assembly was always especially connected with Ther- mopylas and Thessally, Amphiktyon is made the son of the Thes- salian Deukalion ; but as the Olympic festival was nowise locally Connected with Deukalion, Aethlius is represented as having Zeus for his father, and as touching Deukalion only through the mater- nal line. It will be seen presently, that the only matter predi- cated respecting Aethlius is, that he settled in the territory of Elis, and begat Endymien : this brings him into local contact with ',he Olympic games, and his function is then ended. Having thus got Hellas as an aggregate with its main cement- ing forces, we march on to its subdivision into parts, through JEolus, Dorus and Xuthus, the three sons of Hellen ; * a distribu* tion which is far from being exhaustive : nevertheless, the gene- alogists whom Apollodorus follows recognize no more than three sons. The genealogy is essentially post-Homeric ; for Homer knows Hellas and the Hellenes only in connection with a portion of 1 How literally and implicitly even the ablest Greeks believed in epony- mous persons, such as Hellen and Ion, as the real progenitors of the races called after him, may be seen by this, that Aristotle gives this common do cent as the definition of yevos (Metaphysic. iv. p. 118, Brandis) : Tevof ^.Eyerat, rb /J.EV rd 6e, aft ov av uai irpurov Kivrjaavrof tlf rd elvat. OVTU yap "kiyovrai ol fj.lv, *E/l^.j?vff rd ytvof, oi (5e, "Iwvcf ry, ol ttv no"EAA^vor, ol de unb 'luvof, elvai npinrov OLUS, DOKUS, AND XUTHUS. 101 Achaia Phthiotis. But as it is recognized in the Hesiodic Cata- logue 1 composed probably within the first century after tha commencement of recorded Olympiads, or before 676 B. c. the peculiarities of it, dating from so early a period, deserve much attention. We may remark, first, that it seems to exhibit to us Dorus and JEolus as the only pure and genuine offspring of Hel- len. For their brother Xuthus is not enrolled as an eponymus ; he neither founds nor names any people ; it is only his sons Achseus and Ion, after his blood has been mingled with that of the Erechtheid Kreiisa, who become eponyms and founders, each of his own separate people. Next, as to the territorial distribution, Xuthus receives Peloponnesus from his father, and unites him- self with Attica (which the author of this genealogy seems to have conceived as originally unconnected with Hellen) by his marriage with the daughter of the indigenous hero, Erechtheus. The issue of this marriage, Achaeus and Ion, present to us the population of Peloponnesus and Attica conjointly as related among themselves by the tie of brotherhood, but as one degree more distant both from Dorians and JEolians. JEolus reigns over the regions about Thessaly, and called the people in those parts .ZEolians ; while Dorus occupies " the country over against Pelo- ponnesus on the opposite side of the Corinthian Gulf," and calls the inhabitants after himself, Dorians. 2 It is at once evident that 1 Hcsiod, Fragm. 8. p. 278, ed. Marktsch. "E/U.T/vof of aloha pj * Apollod. i. 7, 3. *E%.7ii)vof 6e /cat NvfKprjf 'Opa^'iiof (?), Awp toAof. AVTOS JJ.EV ol'v aft avrov rove KaXovfievov^ Tpainoiic irpo f, rolf de xaloiv epeptoe TT/V ^upav. Kat SoCi^of pev %a(3uv riji> ov, K Kpeovffrjf rr/g 'Epe^iJewf 'A^atov i-yevvjjcre ical "lava, u(j>' uv 'A^atot ical 'luvef KaAovvrat. Awpof 6e, ri)v irepav x&pav IleAo- Trovvfj a ov Aa/3wv,rovf /carot/covf u' kavrov AwpteZf k KU- \estv . AtoAof (5e, paaifai-uv TIJV nepl Qerra^iav TOKUV, roiif evot/coCvretf AtoAetf irpoarjyopevae. Strabo (viii. p. 383) and Conon (Narr. 27), who evidently copy from the ame source, represent Dorus as going to settle in the territory property known as Doris. LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVFRSiDF 102 HISTORY OF GREECE. this designation is in no way applicable to the confined district between Parnassus and CEta, which alone is known by the name of Doris, and its inhabitants by that of Dorians, in the historical ages. In the view of the author of this genealogy, the Dorians Are the original occupants of the large range of territory north of the Corinthian Gulf, comprising ^Etolia, Phokis, and the territory of the Ozolian Lokrians. And this farther harmonizes with the other legend noticed by Apollodorus, when he states that JEtolus, son of Endymion, having been forced to expatriate from Peloponnesus, crossed into the Kuretid territory, 1 and was there hospitably received by Dorus, Laodokus and Polypoetes, sons of Apollo and Phthia. He slew his hosts, acquired the ter- ritory, and gave to it the name of JEtolia : his son Pleuron mar- ried Xanthippe, daughter of Dorus ; while his other son, Kalydon, marries JEoliti, daughter of Amythaon. Here again we have the name of Dorus, or the Dorians, connected with the tract subse- quently termed JEtolia. That Dorus should in one place be called the son of Apollo and Phthia, and in another place the son of Hellen by a nymph, will surprise no one accustomed to the fluctuating personal nomenclature of these old legends : moreover the name of Phthia is easy to reconcile with that of Hellen, as both are identified with the same portion of Thessaly, even from the days of the Iliad. This story, that the Dorians were at one time the occupants, or the chief occupants, of the range of territory between the river Achelous and the northern shore of the Corinthian Gulf, is at least more suitable to the facts attested by historical evidence than the legends given in Herodotus, who represents the Dorians as originally in the Phthiotid ; then as passing under Dorus, the son of Hellen, into the Histiaeotid, under the mountains of Ossa and Olympus ; next, as driven by the Kadmeians into the regions of Pindus ; from thence passing into the Dryopid territory, on Mount CEta; lastly, from thence into Peloponnesus. 2 The received 1 Apollod. i. 7, 6. AtruAdf .......... dvyoiv elf TT/V Kovpyrida %upa.v, Kreivaf roi)f inrode^a/ievovf 7 6s Kfiridijoc -yvv)) efifj.evai Alohidao. Homer, Odyss. xi. 234-257 ; xv. 226. 103 HISTORY OF GREECE. various ways, and confined in a loathsome dungecn. Unable to take care of her two children, she had been compelled to expose them immediately on their birth in a little boat on the river Enipeus ; they were preserved by the kindness of a herdsman, and when grown up to manhood, rescued their mother, and revenged her wrongs by putting to death the iron-hearted Sidero. 1 This pathetic tale respecting the long imprisonment of Tyro ia substituted by Sophokles in place of the Homeric legend, which represented her to have become the wife of Kretheus and mother of a numerous offspring. 2 Her father, the unjust Salmoneus, exhibited in his conduct the most insolent impiety towards the gods. He assumed the name and title even of Zeus, and caused to be offered to himself the sacrifices destined for that god : he also imitated the thunder and lightning, by driving about with brazen caldrons attached to his chariot and casting lighted torches towards heaven. Such wicked- ness finally drew upon him the wrath of Zeus, who smote him with a thunderbolt, and effaced from the earth the city which he had founded, with all its inhabitants. 3 Pelias and Neleus, "both stout vassals of the great Zeus," became engaged in dissension respecting the kingdom of lolkos in 1 Diodorus, iv. 68. Sophoklfe's, Fragm. 1. TvpiJ. Sn^of I,i6rjpu> Kal $- povaa Tovvofta. The genius of Sophokles is occasionally seduced by this play upon the etymology of a name, even in the most impressive scenes of his tragedies. See Ajax, 425. Compare Hellanik, Fragm. p. 9, ed. Preller There was a first and second edition of the Tyro TTJC devri-paf Tvpovf. Schol. ad Aristoph. Av. 276. See the few fragments of the lost drama in Dindorf s Collection, p. 53. The plot was in many respects analogous to the Antiop6 of Euripides. 2 A third story, different both from Homer and from Sophokles, respecting; Tyro, is found in Hyginus (Fab. Ix.) : it is of a tragical cast, and borrowed, like so many other tales in that collection, from one of the lost Greek dramas. 3 . Apollod. i 9, 7. Zahfiuvevf r' udtKOf Kal {>Trepdvfj.of Heptjypj/f . Hcsiod, Fragm. Catal. 8. Marktscheffel. Where the city of Salmoneus was situated, the ancient investigators wero not agreed ; whether in the Pisatid, or in Elis, or in Thessaly (see Strabo, viii. p. 356). Euripides in his JEolus placed him on the banks of the Alpheius (Eurip. Fragm. JEol. I). A village and fountain in the Pisatid bore the name of Salmone ; but the mention of the river Enipeus seems to mark Thessaly as the original seat of the legend. But the nalvet& of the told preserved by Apollodorus (Virgil in the JCneid, vi. 586, has retouched U NELEUS. - MELAMPUS. J f, Thessaly. Pelias got possession of it, and dwelt there in plenty and prosperity ; but he had offended the goddess Here by killing Sidero upon her altar, and the effects of her wrath were manifest- ed in his relations with his nephew Jason. 1 Neleus quitted Thessaly, went into Peloponnesus, and there founded the kingdom of Pylos. He purchased by immense marriaja presents, the privilege of wedding the beautiful Chloris, daughter of Amphion, king of Orchomenos, by whom lie had twelve sons and but one daughter 2 the fair and captivating Pero, whom suitors from all the neighborhood courted in mar. riage. But Neleus, " the haughtiest of living men," 3 refused to entertain the pretensions of any of them: he would grant his daughter only to that man who should bring to him the oxen of Iphiklos, from Phylake in Thessaly. These piccious animals were carefully guarded, as well by herdsmen as by a dog whom neither man nor animal could approach. Nevertheless, Bias, the son of Amythaon, nephew of Neleus, being desperately enamored of Pero, prevailed upon his brother Melampus to undertake for his sake the perilous adventure, in spite of the prophetic knowl- edge of the latter, which forewarned him that though he would ultimately succeed, the prize must be purchased by severe cap- tivity and suffering. Melampus, in attempting to steal the oxen, was seized and put in prison ; from whence nothing but his prophetic powers rescued him. Being acquainted with the lan- guage of worms, he heard these animals communicating to each other, in the roof over his head, that the beams were nearly eaten through and about to fall in. He communicated this intelligence to his guards, and demanded to be conveyed to another place of confinement, announcing that the roof would presently fall in and bury them. The prediction was fulfilled, and Phylakos, father of marks its ancient date : the final circumstance of that tale was, that the city and its inhabitants were annihilated. Ephorus makes Salmoneus king of the Epeians and of the Pisatte (Fragm- 15, ed. Didot). The lost drama of Sophokles, called Safy/wvei)f, was a dpafia aarvoiKiv See Dindorf s Fragm. 483. 1 Horn. Od. xi. 280. Apollod. i. 9, 9. icparepu depaTror-re Atdf, etc. * Diodor. iv. 68. J NgXfa re /eya$xyzoi>, ayauo'rarov &OVTUV ("Horn. OdjS3. xv. 228). HO HISTORY OF GREECE. Iphiklos, full of wonder at this specimen cf prophetic pov,er, immediately caused him to be released. He further consulted him respecting the condition of his son Iphiklos, who was child- less ; and promised him the possession of the oxen on condition of his suggesting the means whereby offspring might be ensured. A vulture having communicated to Melampus the requisite information, Podarkes, the son of Iphiklos, was born shortly afterwards. In this manner Melampus obtained possession of the oxen, and conveyed them to Pylos, obtaining for his brother Bias the hand of Pero. 1 How this great legendary character, by mi- raculously healing the deranged daughters of Proetos, procured both for himself and for Bias dominion in Argos, has been re- counted in a preceding chapter. Of the twelve sons of Neleus, one at least, Periklymenos, h*j- Bides the ever-memorable Nestor, was distinguished for his ex ploits as well as for his miraculous gifts. Poseidon, the divine father of the race, had bestowed upon him the privilege of changing his form at pleasure into that of any bird, beast, reptile, or insect. 2 He had occasion for all these resources, and he employed them for a time with success in defending his family against the terrible indig- nation of Herakles, who, provoked by the refusal of Neleus to per- form for him the ceremony of purification after his murder of Iphi- tus, attacked the Neleids at Pylos. Periklymenos by his extraor- dinary powers prolonged the resistance, but the hour of his fate was at length brought upon him by the intervention of Athene, who pointed him out to Herakles while he was perched as a bee upon the hero's chariot. He was killed, and Herakles became completely victorious, overpowering Poseidon, Here, Ares, and Hades, and even wounding the three latter, who assisted in the 1 Horn. Od. xi. 273 ; xv. 234. Apollod. i. 9, 12. The basis of this curi- ous romance is in the Odyssey, amplified by subsequent poets. There are points however in the old Homeric legend, as it is briefly sketched in the fifteenth book of the Cdyssey, which seem to have been subsequently left ont or varied. Neleus seizes the property of Melampus during his absence ; the latter, returning with the oxen from Phylak6, revenges himself upon NClens for the injury. Odyss. xv. 233. * Hcsio3, Catalog, ap Schol. Apollon. Rhod. i. 156; Ovid, Metam. xii. p. 556 ; Eustath. ad Odyss. xi. p. 284. Poseidon carefully protects Antilochni son of Nestor, in the Iliad, xiii. 554-563. NESTOR AND THE NELEIDS. HI defcncB. Eleven of the sons of Neleus perished by his hand, while Nestor, then a youth, was preserved only by his accidental absence at Gerena, away from his father's residence. 1 The proud house of the Neleids was now reduced to Nestor ; but Nestor singly sufficed to sustain its eminence. He appeara not only as the defender and avenger of Pylos against the inso- lence and rapacity of his Epeian neighbors in Elis, but also as aiding the Lapithaa in their terrible combat against the Centaurs, and as companion of Theseus, Peirithous, and the other great legendary heroes who preceded the Trojan war. In extreme old age his once marvellous power of handling his weapons has in- deed passed away, but his activity remains unimpaired, and his sagacity as well as his influence in counsel is greater than ever. He not only assembles the various Grecian chiefs for the arma- ment against Troy, perambulating the districts of Hellas along with Odysseus, but takes a vigorous part in the siege itself, and is of preeminent service to Agamemnon. And after the conclu- sion of the siege, he is one of the few Grecian princes who re- turns to his original dominions, and is found, in a strenuous and honored old age, in the midst of his children and subjects, sit- ting with the sceptre of authority on the stone bench before k's house at Pylos, offering sacrifice to Poseidon, as his fath-jr Neleus had done before him, and mourning only over the de&th 1 Hesiod, Catalog, ap. Schol. Ven. ad Iliad, ii. 336 ; and Steph. Byz. v. Tepijvia; Homer, II. v. 392 ; xi. 693; Apollodor. ii. 7, 3 ; Hesiod, Scut. Here. 360 ; Pindar, 01. ix. 32. According to the Homeric legend, Neleus himself was not killed by He- rakles : subsequent poets or logographers, whom Apollodorus follows, seem to have thought it an injustice, that the offence given by Neleus himself should have been avenged upon his sons and not upon himself ; they there- fore altered the legend upon this point, and rejected the passage in the Iliad as spurious (see Schol. Ven. ad Iliad, xi. 682). The refusal of purification by Neleus to Herakles is a genuine legendary cause : the commentators, who were disposed to spread a coating of history over these transactions, introduced another cause, Neleus, as king of Pylos, had aided the Orchomenians in their war against Herakles and the Thobans (see Sch. Ven. ad Iliad, xi. 689). The neighborhood of Pylos was distinguished for its ancient worship both of Poseidon and of Hades : there were abundant local legends respecting them (see Strabo, viii. pp. 344, 345). 112 HISTORY OF GREECE. of his favorite son Antilochus, who had fallen, along with so many brave companions in arms, in the Trojan war.i After Nestor the line of the Neleids numbers undistinguished names, Borus, Penthilus, and Andropompus, three succes- sive generations down to Melanthus, who on the invasion of Pelo- ponnesus by the Herakleids, quitted Pylos and retired to Athens, where he became king, in a manner which 1 shall hereafter re- count. His son Kodrus was the last Athenian king ; and Neleus, one of the sons of Kodrus, is mentioned as the principal conduc- tor of what is called the Ionic emigration from Athens to Asia Minor. 2 It is certain that during the historical age, not merely the princely family of the Kodrids in Miletus, Ephesus, and other Ionic cities, but some of the greatest families even in Athens itself, traced their heroic lineage through the Neleids up to Po- seidon : and the legends respecting Nestor and Periklymenos would find especial favor amidst Greeks with such feelings and belief. The Kodrids at Ephesus, and probably some other Ionic towns, long retained the title and honorary precedence of kings, even after they had lost the substantial power belonging to the office. They stood in the same relation, embodying both religious worship and supposed ancestry, to the Neleids and Poseidon, as the chiefs of the JEolic colonies to Agamemnon and Orestes. The Athenian despot Peisistratus was named after the son of Nestor in the Odyssey ; and we may safely presume that the heroic worship of the Neleids was as carefully cherished at the Ionic Miletus as at the Italian Metapontum. 3 Having pursued the line of Salmoneus and Neleus to the end of its lengendary career, we may now turn back to that of another son of -35olus, Kretheus, a line hardly less celebrated in respect of the heroic names which it presents. Alkestis, the most beau- tiful of the daughters of Pelias, 4 was promised by her father in 1 About Nestor, Iliad, i. 260-275 ; ii. 370; xi. 670-770; Otlyss. iii. 5, 110, 409. * Hellanik. Fragm. 10, cd. Didot; Pausan. vii. 2, 3; Hcrodot. v. 65; Strabo, xiv. p. 633. Hellanikus, in giving the genealogy from Neleus t Melanthus, traces it through Periklymenos and not through Nestor : the words of Herodotus imply that he must have included Nestor. * Herodot. v. 67 ; Strabo, vi. p 264 ; Mimnermus, Fragm. 9, Schncidewin. 4 Iliad, ii. 715. ALKESTIS AND ADMETUS. US marriage to the man that could bring him a lion and a boar tamed to the yoke and drawing together. Admetus, son of Pheres, the cponymus of Pherse in Thessaly, and thus grandson of Kretheus, was enabled by the aid of Apollo to fulfil this condition, and to win her ; ! for Apollo happened at that time to be in his service as a slave (condemned to this penalty by Zeus for having put to death the Cyclopes), in which capacity he tended the herds and horses with such success, as to equip Eumelus (the son of Adme- tus) to the Trojan war with the finest horses in the Grecian army. Though menial duties were imposed upon him, even to the drudgery of grinding in the mill, 2 he yet carried away with him a grateful and friendly sentiment towards his mortal master, whom he interfered to rescue from the wrath of the goddess Ar- temis, when she was indignant at the omission of her name in his wedding sacrifices. Admetus was about to perish by a premature death, when Apollo, by earnest solicitation to the Fates, obtained for him the privilege that his life should be prolonged, if he could find any person to die a voluntary death in his place. His father and his mother both refused to make this sacrifice for him, but the devoted attachment of his wife Alkestis disposed her to em- brace with cheerfulness the condition of dying to preserve her 1 Apollodor. i. 9, 15 ; Eustath. ad Iliad, ii. 711. 2 Euripid. Alkest. init. Welcker; Griechisch. Tragced. (p. 344) on the lost play of Sophoklus called Admetus or Alkestis ; Horn. Iliad, ii. 766 ; Hygin. Fab. 50-51 (Sophokles, Fr. Inc. 730; Bind. ap. Plutarch. Defect. Orac. p. 417). This talc of the temporary servitude of particular gods, by order of Zeus as a punishment for misbehavior, recurs not unfrequently among the incidents of the mythical world. The poet Panyasis (ap. Clem. Alexand. Adm. ad Gent. p. 23) T/li? fj.ev Ajjfif/TTip, rt^i de K^urdf 'AfiQiyvf/eif, T/l^ Se Hoaeiduuv, r"krj d' upyvporo!; of 'A7ro/lyl(jv 'AvJpt napii -&VT)T> i9r]TEVff[j.v c eviavTov TTir/ 6e Kal o[3pi/i.6\}v[j.o "Apr/f inrb TrarpcJf dvayK^j. The old legend followed out the fundamental idea with remarkable consis- tency : Laomedon, as the temporary master of Poseidon and Apollo, threat- ens to bind them hand and foot, to sell them in the distant islands, and to cut off the ears of both, when they come to ask for their stipulated wages (Iliad, xxi. 455). It was a new turn given to the story by the Alexandrine poets, when they introduced the motive of love, and made the servitude vol- untary on the part of Apsllo (Kallimachus, Hymn. Apoll. 49 ; Tibullus, Eleg ii. 3, 11-30). VOL. I. 80C. 114 HISTORY OF GREECE. husband. She had already perished, when Herakles, the ancieni guest and friend of Admetus, arrived during the first hour of lamentation ; his strength and daring enabled him to rescue the deceased Alkestis even from the grasp of Thanatos (Death), and to restore her alive to her disconsolate husband. 1 The son of Pelias, Akastus, had received and sheltered Peleus when obliged to fly his country in consequence of the involuntary murder of Eurytion. Kretheis, the wife of Akastus, becoming enamored of Peleus, made to him advances which he repu- diated. Exasperated at his refusal, and determined to procure his destruction, she persuaded her husband that Peleus had attempt- ed her chastity : upon which Akastus conducted Peleus out upon a hunting excursion among the woody regions of Mount Pelion, contrived to steal from him the sword fabricated and given by Hephaestos, and then left him, alone and unarmed, to perish by the hands of the Centaurs or by the wild beasts. By the friendly aid of the Centaur Cheiron, however, Peleus was pre- served, and his sword restored to him : returning to the city, he avenged himself by putting to death both Akastus and his perfid- ious wife. 9 But amongst all the legends with which the name of Pelias is connected, by far the most memorable is that of Jason and the Argonautic expedition. Jason was son of ^Eson, grandson of Kretheus, and thus great-grandson of ^Eolus. Pelias, having consulted the oracle respecting the security of his dominion at lolkos, had received in answer a warning to beware of the man who should appear before him with only one sandal. He was celebrating a festival in honor of Poseidon, when it so happened that Jason appeared before him with one of his feet unsandaled : he had lost one sandal in wading through the swollen current of the river Anauros. Pelias immediately understood that this was 1 Eurip. Alkestis, Arg. ; Apollod. i. 9, 15. To bring this beautiful legend more into the color of history, a new version of it was subsequently framed : Herakles was eminently skilled in medicine, and saved the life of Alkestis when she was about to perish from a desperate malady (Plutarch. Amatoi c. 17. vol. iv. p. 53, Wytt.). * The legend of Akastus and Peleus was given in great detail in the Cata- logue of Hcsiod (Catalog. Fragm. 20-21, Marktscheff.) ; Schol. Pindar Njm.iv. 95. Scha.' Apoll. Rhod. i.224 ; Apollod. iii 13, 2. MEDIA AND THE DAUGHrERS OF 1'ELIAS. H5 tlie enemy against whom the oracle had forewarned him. As a means of averting the danger, he imposed upon Jason the des- perate task of bringing back to lolkos the Golden Fleece, the fleece of that ram which had carried Phryxos from Achaia to Kolchis, and which Phryxos had dedicated in the latter country as an offering to the god Ares. The result of this injunction wa3 the memorable expedition of the ship Argo and her crew call- ed the Argonauts, composed of the bravest and noblest youths of Greece which cannot be conveniently included among the legends of the Solids, and is reserved for a separate chapter. The voyage of the Argo was long protracted, and Pelias, per- suaded that neither the ship nor her crew would ever return, put to death both the father and mother of Jason, together with their infant son. ./Eson, the father, being permitted to choose the manner of his own death, drank bull's blood while performing a sacrifice to the gods. At length, however, Jason did return, bringing with him not only the golden fleece, but also Medea, daughter of jEetes, king of Kolchis, as his wife, a woman distinguished for magical skill and cunning, by whose assistance alone the Argo- nauts had succeeded in their project. Though determined to avenge himself upon Pelias, Jason knew he could only succeed by stratagem : he remained with his companions at a short dis- tance from lolkos, while Medea, feigning herself a fugitive from his ill-usage, entered the town alone, and procured access to the daughters of Pelias. By exhibitions of her magical powers she soon obtained unqualified ascendency over their minds. For ex- ample, she selected from the flocks of Pelias a ram in the extrem- ity of old age, cut him up and boiled him in a caldron with herbs, and brought him out in the shape of a young and vigorous lamb: 1 the daughters of Pelias were made to believe that their old father could in like manner be restored to youth. In this persuasion they cut him up with their own hands and cast his linJbs into the 1 This incident was contained in one of the earliest dramas of Euripides, the I7.eAtu<5ef , now lost. Moses of Chore-no (Progymnasm. ap. Maii ad Euseh. p. 43), who gives an extract from the argument, says that the poet ' extreme* inentiendi fines attingit." The 'Pi6ro[ioi of Sophoklos seems also to have turned upon the same catastrophe (sec Fragm. 479, Dindorf.). 116 HISTORY OF GREECE. caldron, trusting that Medea would produce upon him the same; magical effect. Medea pretended that an invocation to the moon was a necessary part of the ceremony : she went up to the top of the house as if to pronounce it, and there lighting the lire- signal concerted with the Argonauts, Jason and his companions burst in and possessed themselves of the town. Satisfied with having thus revenged himself, Jason yielded the principality j>f lolkos to Akastus, son of Pelias, and retired with Medea to Corinth. Thus did the goddess Here gratify her ancient wrath against Pelias : she had constantly watched over Jason, and had carried the " all-notorious " Argo through its innumerable perils, in order that Jason might bring home Medea to accomplish the ruin of his uncle. 1 The misguided daughters of Pelias departed 1 The kindness of Hero towards Jason seems to be older in the legend than her displeasure against Pelias ; at least it is specially noticed in the Odyssey, as the great cause of the escape of the ship Argo : 'AA/l' "Hpr/ no- peirefnf>ev, kird 0tAof qEV 'Iqouv (xii. 70). In the Hesiodic Theogony Pelias stands to Jason in the same relation as Eurystheus to H6rakl6's, a severe taskmaster as well as a wicked and insolent man, v/3piaT7/s IleA^c Kal a.Ta Arcadia : Akastus bis son celebrated splen- did funeral games in honor of his deceased father. 1 Jason and Medea retired from lolkos to Corinth, where they resided ten years : their children were Medeius, whom the Centaur Cheiron educated in the regions of Mount Pelion, 2 and Mermerus and Pheros, born at Corinth. After they had resided there ten years in prosperity, Jason set his affections on Glauke, daughter of Kreon 3 king of Corinth ; and as her father was willing to give her to him in marriage, he determined to repudiate Medea, who received orders forthwith to leave Corinth. Stung with this insult and bent upon revenge, Medea prepared a poisoned robe, and sent it as a marriage present to Glauke : it was unthinkingly accepted and put on, and the body of the un- fortunate bride was burnt up and consumed. Kreon, her father, who tried to tear from her the burning garment, shared her fate and perished. The exulting Medea escaped by means of a chariot with winged serpents furnished to her by her grandfather Helios : she placed herself under the protection of .^Egeus at Athens, by whom she had a son named Medus. She left her young children in the sacred enclosure of the Arkraean Here, relying on the protection of the altar to ensure their safety ; but the Corinthians were so exasperated against her for the murder this process upon Jason himself (Schol. Aristoph, I. c.). Diogenes (ap. Stobae. Florileg. t. xxix. 92) rationalizes the story, and converts Medea from an enchantress into an improving and regenerating preceptress. The death of 2Eson, as described in the text, is given from Diodorus and Apollodorus. Medea seems to have been worshipped as a goddess in other places besides Corinth (see Athenagor. Legat. pro Christ. 12; Macrobius, i. 12, p. 247, Gronov.). 1 These funeral games in honor of Pelias were among the most renowned of the mythical incidents : they were celebrated in a special poem by Stesicho- rus, and represented on the chest of Kypselus at Olympia. Kastor, Melcager. Amphiaraos, Jason, Peleus, Mopsos, etc. contended in them (Pausan. v. 17. 4; Stesichori Fragm. 1. p. 54, ed. Klcwe ; Athe'n. iv. 172). How familiar the details of them were to the mind of z. literary Greek is indirectly attested by Plutarch, Sympos. v. 2, vol. iii. p. 762, Wytt. 2 Hesiod, Theogon. 998. 3 According to the Schol. ad Eurip. Mcd. 20, Jason marries the daughter of Hippotes the son of Kreon, who is the son of Lykaethos. Lykaethos, after the departure of Bellerophon from Corinth, reigned twenty-seven years; then Kreon reigned thirty -five years ; then came Hippotes. 118 HISTORY OF GREECE. of Kreon and Glauke, that they dragged the children away from the altar and put them to death. The miserable Jason perished by a fragment of his own ship Argo, which fell upon him while ho was asleep under it, 1 being hauled on shore, according to the habitual practice of the ancients. The first establishment at Ephyre, or Corinth, had been found- ed by Sisyphus, another of the sons of -ZEolus, brother of Salm6- 1 Apollodor. i. 9, 27 ; Diodor. iv. 54. The Medea of Eurypides, which has fortunately been preserved to us, is too well known to need express reference. He makes Medea the destroyer of her own children, and borrows from this circumstance the most pathetic touches of his exquisite drama. Parmenis- kos accused him of having been bribed by the Corinthians to give this turn to the legend ; and we may regard the accusation as a proof that the older and more current tale imputed the murder of the children to the Corinthians (Schol. Eurip. Mcd. 275, where Didymos gives the story out of the old poem of Kreophylos). See also ^Elian, V. H. v. 21 ; Pausan. ii. 3, 6. The most significant fact in respect to the fable is, that the Corinthians celebrated periodically a propitiatory sacrifice to Here Akrxa and to Merme- rus and Pheres, as an atonement for the sin of having violated the sanctuary of the altar. The legend grew out of this religions ceremony, and was so arranged as to explain and account for it (see Eurip. Med. 1376, with tho Schol. Diodor. iv. 55). Mermerus and Pheres were the names given to the children of Medea and Jason in the old Naupaktian Verses ; in which, however, the legend must have been recounted quite differently, since they said that Jason and Medea had gone from lolkos, not to Corinth, but to Corcyra ; and that Mermerus had perished in hunting on the opposite continent of Epirus. Kinaethon again, another ancient genealogical poet, called the children of Medea and Jason Eriopis and Medos (Pausan. ii. 3, 7). Diodorus gives them different names (iv. 34). Hesiod, in the Theogony, speaks only of -Modems as the son of Jason. Medea does not appear either in the Iliad or Odyssey : in the former, we find Agamede, daughter of Augeas, " who knows all the poisons (or medi- cines) which the earth nourishes" (Iliad, xi. 740) ; in the latter, we have Circe, sister of jEetes, father of Medea, and living in the JEsean island (Odyss. x. 70). Circe is daughter of the god Helios, as Medea is his granddaughter, she is herself a goddess. She is in many points the parallel of Medea; she forewarns and preserves Odysseus throughout his dangers, as Medea aids Jason : according to the Hesiodic story, she has two children by Odysseus, Agnus and Latinus (Theogon. 1001). Odysseus goes to Ephyre to Ilos the on of Mermerus, to procure poison for his arrows : Eustathius treats this Mermerus as the son of Medea (see Odyss. i. 270, and Enst). As Ephyre is the legendary name of Corinth, we may presume this to be a thread of the same mytliical tissue. SISYPHUS THE ^OLID. 119 neus and Kretheus. 1 The -Stolid Sisyphus was d.stinguished as an unexampled master of cunning and deceit. He blocked up the road along the isthmus, and killed the strangers who came along it by rolling down upon them great stones from the moun- tains above. He was more than a match even for the arch thief Autolycus, the son of Hermes, who derived from his father the gift of changing the color and shape of stolen goods, so that they could no longer be recognized : Sisyphus, by marking his sheep under the foot, detected Autolycus when he stole them, and obliged him to restore the plunder. His penetration discovered the amour of Zeus with the nymph JEgina, daughter of the river- god Asopus. Zeus had carried her off to the island of CEnone (which subsequently bore the name of -ZEgina) ; upon which Asopus, eager to recover her, inquired of Sisyphus whither she was gone : the latter told him what had happened, on condition that he should provide a spring of water on the summit of the Acro-Corinthus. Zeus, indignant with Sisyphus for this revela- tion, inflicted upon him in Hades the punishment of perpetually heaving up a hill a great and heavy stone, which, so soon as it attained the summit, rolled back again in spite of all his efforts, with irresistible force into the plain. 2 In the application of the -ZEolid genealogy to Corinth, Sisyphus, the son of JEolus, appears as the first name : but the old Corin- 1 See Euripid. ^Eol. Fragm. 1, Dindorf; Diksearch. Vit. Grsec. p. 22. 2 Respecting Sisyphus, see Apollodor. i. 9, 3 ; iii. 1 2, 6. Pausan. ii. 5, 1 . Schol ad Iliad, i. 180. Another legend about the amour of Sisyphus with Tyro, is in Hygin. fab. GO, and about the manner in which he overreached even Hades ( Pherekydes ap. Schol. Iliad, vi. 153). The stone rolled by Sisyphus in the under-world appears in Odyss. xi. 592. The name of Sisyphus was given during the historical age to men of craft and stratagem, such as Derkyllides (Xenoph. Hellenic, iii. 1, 8). He passed for the real father of Odysseus, though Heyne (ad Apollodor. i. 9, 3^ treats this as another Sisyphus, where- by he destroys the suitableness of the predicate as regards Odysseus. The duplication and triplication of synonymous personages is an ordinary resource for the purpose of reducing the legends into a seeming chronological sequence. Even in the days of Eumelus a religious mystery was observed respecting the tombs of Sisyphus and Neleus, the latter had also died at Corinth, no one could say where they were buried (Tansan. ii. 2, 2). Sisyphus even overreached Persephone 4 , and made his escape from th* *nder- world (Theognis, 702). 120 HISTORY OF GREECE. thian post Eumelus either found or framed an heroic genealogy for his native city independent both of -ZEolus and Sisyphus. According to this genealogy, Ephyre, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, was the primitive tenant of the Corinthian territory, Asopus of the Sikyonian : both were assigned to the god Helios, in adjusting a dispute between him and Poseidon, by Briareus. Helios divided the territory between his two sons .pi'fof connects the name both with the story of roasting the wheat (^pvye(v), and also with the country $pvyia, of which it was pretended that Phryxus was the Eponymus. In6, or Leukothea, was worshipped as a heroine at Megara as well as at Corinth (Pausan. i. 42, 3) : the celebrity of the Isthmian games carried her worship, as well as that of Palremon, throughout most parts of Greece (Cicero, De Nat Deor. iii. 16). She is the only personage of this family noticed either in the Iliad or Odyssey : in the latter poem she is a sea-goddess, who has once been a mortal, daughter of Kadmus ; she saves Odysseus from imminent danger at sea by presenting to him her npfjSefivov (Odyss. v. 433 ; see the refinements of Aristides, Orat. iii. p. 27). The voyage of Phryxus and Helle 4 to Kolchis was related in the Hesiodic Eoiai : we find the names of the children of Phryxus by the daughter of JEe'te's quoted from that poem (Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. ii. 1123} both Hesiod and Pherekyde's mentioned the golden fleece of the ram (Eratosthcn. Catasterism. 19; Pherekyd. Fragm. 53, Didot). Hekatacus preserved the romance of the speaking ram (Schol. Apoll. Rhod I 256) but Hellanikus dropped the story of Helld having fallen inla th LEGENDS AND RITES OF THE ATHAMANTIDS. 12ft The legend of Athamas connects itself with some sanguinary religious rites and very peculiar family customs, which prevailed at Alos, in Achaia Phthiotis, down to a time 1 later than the his- torian Herodotus, and of which some remnant existed at Orcho- aienos even in the days of Plutarch. Athamas was worshipped at Alos as a hero, having both a chapel and a consecrated grove, attached to the temple of Zeus Laphystios. On the family of which he was the heroic progenitor, a special curse and disability stood affixed. The eldest of the race was forbidden to enter the prytaneion or government-house ; and if he was found within the doors of the building, the other citizens laid hold of him on his going out, surrounded him with garlands, and led him in solemn procession to be sacrificed as a victim at the altar of Zeus Laphystios. The prohibition carried with it an exclusion from all the public meetings and ceremonies, political as well as religious, and from the sacred fire of the state : many of the individuals marked out had therefore been bold enough to trans- gress it. Some had been seized on quitting the building and actually sacrificed ; others had fled the country for a long time to avoid a similar fate. The guides who conducted Xerxes and his army through southern Thessaly detailed to him this existing practice, coupled with the local legend, that Athamas, together with Ino, had sought to compass the death of Phryxus, who however had escaped to Kolchis ; that the Achaeans had been enjoined by an oracle to otfer up Athamas himself as an expiatory sacrifice to release the country from the anger of the gods ; but that Kytis- eoros, son of Phryxus, coming back from Kolchis, had intercepted the sacrifice of Athamas, 2 whereby the anger of the gods re- lea: according to him sue died at Pactye in the Chersoncsus (Schol. Apoll. Bhod. ii. 1144). The poet Asius seems to have given the genealogy of Athamas by The misto much in the same manner as we find it in Apollodorus (Pausan. ix. 23, 3). According to the ingenious refinements of Dionysiu.s and Palaephatug (Sehol. ad Apo!l. Rhod. ii. 1144; Palsephat. de Incred. c. 31) the ram of Phryxus was after all a man named Krios, a faithful attendant who aided in his, escape; others imagined a ship with a ram's head at the bow. 1 Plutarch, Quaest. Graec. c. 38. p. 299. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 655. 1 Of the Athamas of Sophokles, turning upon this intended, but not con 126 HISTORY OF GREECE. in; lined still unappeased, and an undying curse rested upon thv rec As a testimony to the fact still existing or believed to exist, this dialogue is quite sufficient, though not the work of Plato. M6v//of <5' iaropel, kv ry rtiv &avp,aaiuv cvvayuyy, ev H&Tiy rfc Qerra- Maf 'A%ai?v uv&puTrov TiriTiel not Xeipuvi KaTadveo'&ai.. (Clemens Alexand. Admon. ad Gent. p. 27, Sylb.) Respecting the sacrifices at the temple of Zeus Lykasus in Arcadia, see Plato, Republ. viii. p. 565. Pausanias (viii. p. 38, 5) seems to have shrunk, when he was upon the spot, even from inquir- ing what they were a striking proof of the fearful idea which he had con- ceived of them. Plutarch (De Defectu Oracul. c. 14) speaks of rue xu/.ai iroiovfievac av&puno^vaiaf. The Schol. ad Lycophron. 229, gives a story of children being sacrificed to Melikertc's at Tenedos ; and Apollodorus (ad Porphyr. de Abstinent^, ii. 55, see Apollod. Fragm. 20, ed. Didot) said that the Lacedaemonians had sacrificed a man to Ares KG? Aa/cedat^ovi'o^f Qrjalv 6 'A7ro/W,6(5or r

&viof 'ATro^/luvof elvai, KOI OVK 'Epylvov KOI iyij re rce'ido/nai, Kal otmf Trapu Tpouvtov fade Si) pavr 3 Plutarch, De Defectu Oracul. c. 5, p. 411. Strabo, ix. p. 414. The mention of the honeyed cakes, both in Aristophanes (Nub. 508) and Pausa- aias (ix. 39, 5), indicates that the curious preliminary ceremonies, for those who consulted the oracle of Trophonius, remained the same after a lapse of 550 years. Pausanias consulted it himself. There had been at one time an oracle of Teiresias at Orchomenos : but it had become silent at an earlj period (Plutarch. Defect. Oracul. c. 44, p. 434). 4 Homer. Hymn. Apoll. 296. Pausan. ix. 11, 1. VOL. i. 6* 9oc. 130 HISTORY OF body, which alone remained, was insufficient to identify the thief, Like Amphiaraos, whom he resembles in more than one respect, Trophonius was swallowed up by the earth near Lebadeia. 1 From Trophonius and Agamedes the Orchomenian genealogy passes to Ascalaphos and lalmenos, the sons of Ares by Astyo- che, who are named in the Catalogue of the Iliad as leaders of the thirty ships from Orchomenos against Troy. Azeus, the grandfather of Astyoche in the Iliad, is introduced as the brother of Erginus 2 by Pausanias, who does not carry the pedigree lower. The genealogy here given out of Pausanias is deserving of the more attention, because it seems to have been copied from the special history of Orchomenos by the Corinthian Kallippus, who again borrowed from the native Orchomenian poet, Chersias : the works of the latter had never come into the hands of Pausanias. It illustrates forcibly the principle upon which these mythical genealogies were framed, for almost every personage in the series is an Eponymus. Andreus gave his name to the country, Atha- mas to the Athamantian plain ; Minyas, Orchomenos, Koronus, Haliartus, Almos and Hyettos, are each in like manner connected with some name of people, tribe, town or village ; while Chryse and Chrysogeneia have their origin in the reputed ancient weal tli of Orchomenos. Abundant discrepancies are found, however, in respect to this old genealogy, if we look to other accounts. Ac- cording to one statement, Orchomenos was the son of Zeus by Isione, daughter of Danaus ; Minyas was the son of Orchome- nos (or rather of Poseidon) by Hermippe, daughter of Boeotos ; the sons of Minyas were Presbon, Orchomenos, Athamas and Diochthondas. 3 Others represented Minyas as son of Poseidon 1 Pausan. ix. 37, 3. A similar story, but far more romantic and amplified, is told by Herodotus (ii. 121), respecting the treasury vault of Ilhampsini- tus, king of Egypt. Charax (ap. Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 508) gives the same tale, but places the scene in the treasury-vault of Augeas, king of Elis, which he says was built by Trophonius, to whom he assigns a totally different genealogy. The romantic adventures of the tale rendered it emi- nently fit to be interwoven at some point or another of legendary history, in any country. * Pansan. ix. 38, 6 ; 29, 1. 1 Schol. Apollon. Rhod. i. 230. Compare Schol. ad Lycophron. 873. ORCJOMENIAN GENEALOGY. 131 by Kallirrhoe, an Oceanic nymph, 1 while Dionysius called him son of Ares, and Aristodemus, son of Aleas : lastly, there were not wanting authors who termed both Minyas and Orchomenos sons of Eteokles. 2 Nor do we find in any one of these gen- ealogies the name of Amphion, the son of lasus, who figures so prominently in the Odyssey as king of Orchomenos, and whose beautiful daughter Chloris is married to Neleus. Pausanias mentions him, but not as king, which is the denomination given to him in Homer. 3 The discrepancies here cited are hardly necessary in order to prove that these Orchomenian genealogies possess no historical value. Yet some probable inferences appear deducible from the general tenor of the legends, whether the facts and persons of which they are composed be real or fictitious. Throughout all the historical age, Orchomenos is a member of the Boeotian confederation. But the Boeotians are said to have been immigrants into the territory which bore their name from Thessaly ; and prior to the time of their immigration, Orchome- nos and the surrounding territory appear as possessed by the Minyce, who are recognized in that locality both in the Iliad and in the Odyssey, 4 and from whom the constantly recurring Epon- ymus, King Minyas, is borrowed by the genealogists. Poetical legend connects the Orchomenian Minyas on the one side, with Pylos and Tryphylia in Peloponnesus ; on the other side, with Phthiotis and the town of lolkos in Thessaly ; also with Corinth, 5 1 Schol. Pindar, Olymp. xiv. 5. 2 Schol. Pindar, Isthm. i. 79. Other discrepancies in Schol. Vett, ad Uiad. ii. Catalog. 18. 3 Odyss. xi. 283. Pausan. ix. 36, 3. 4 Uiad, ii. 5, 1 1. Odyss. xi. 283. Hesiod, Fragm. Eoiai, 27, Diintz. 'Ifrv <5' 'Opx6fj.evov Mivvqiov. Pindar, Olymp. xiv. 4. HaXaLjdvuv Mivvuv imff~ KOTTOI. Hcrodot. i. 146. Pausanias calls them Minyae even in their dealings with Sylla (ix. 30, 1). Buttmann, in his Dissertation (iiber die Minyae der Altesten Zeit, in the Mythologus, Diss. xxi. p. 218), doubts whether the name Minyse was ever a real name ; but all the passages make against his opinion. * Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 1186. i. 230. 2/c^tof 6e A^/z^rptof $7101 roOf vepl TTJV 'luXicbv oiKovvrae Mivvaf Kakeia-frai ; and i. 763. TT/V jdp 'lu/Udv / Mivueu $KOVV, uf tyr/ai St^uvW^f fa Sty/^i/crotf : also Eustath. ad Iliad, ii. 512. Steph. Byz. v. Mivva. Orchomenos and Pylos ran together in the mind of the poet of the Odyssey, xi. 458. 132 HISTORY OF GREECE. through Sisyphus and his sons. Pherekydes represented Neleus, king of Pylos, as having also been king of Orchoraenos. 1 In the region of Triphylia, near to or coincident with Pylos, a Minyeian river is mentioned by Homer ; and we find traces of residents called Minyaa even in the historical times, though the account given by Herodotus of the way in which they came thither is strange and unsatisfactory. 2 Before the great changes which took place in the inhabitants of Greece from the immigration of the Thesprotians into Thessaly, of the Boeotians into Boeotia, and of the Dorians and -ZEtolians into Peloponnesus, at a date which we have no means of deter mining, the Minyae and tribes fraternally connected with them seem to have occupied a large portion of the surface of Greece, from lolkos in Thessaly to Pylos in the Peloponnesus. The wealth of Orchomenos is renowned even in the Iliad ; 3 and when we study its topography in detail, we are furnished with a proba- ble explanation both of its prosperity and its decay. Orchome- nos was situated on the northern bank of the lake Kopai's, which receives not only the river Kephisos from the valleys of Phokis, but also other rivers from Parnassus and Helicon. The waters of the lake find more than one subterranean egress partly through natural rifts and cavities in the limestone mountains, partly through a tunnel pierced artificially more than a mile in length into the plain on the north-eastern side, from whence they flow into the Eubcean sea near Larymna r 4 and it appears 1 Pherekyd. Fragm. 56, Didot. We see by the !55th Fragment of the same author, that he extended the genealogy of Phryxos to Pherae in Thessaly. 2 Herodot. iv. 145. Strabo, viii. 337-347. Horn. Iliad, xi. 721. Pausan. v. 1, 7. TroTafibv Mivvqiov, near Elis. 3 Iliad, ix. 381. 4 See the description of these channels or Katabothra in Colonel Leakc's Travels in Northern Greece, vol. ii. c. 15, p. 281-293, and still more elabo- rately in Fiedler, Reise durch alle Theile des Konigreichs Griechenlands, Leipzig, 1840. He traced fifteen perpendicular shafts sunk for the purpose of admitting air intc the tunnel, the first separated from the last by about 5900 feet : they are now of course overgrown and stopped up (vol. i. p 115). Forchhammer states the length of this tunnel as considerably greater than what is here stated. He also gives a plan of the Lake Kopa'ts with the sui> AMPHIKTYONY AT KALAUEIA. 183 that, so long as these channels were diligently watched and kept clear, a large portion of the lake was in the condition of alluvial land, preeminently rich and fertile. But when the channels came to be either neglected, or designedly choked up by an enemy, the water accumulated to such a degree, as to occupy the soil of more than one ancient town, to endanger the position of Kopas, and to occasion the change of the site of Orchomenos itself from the plain to the declivity of Mount Hyphanteion. An engineer, Krates, began the clearance of the obstructed water-courses in the reign of Alexander the Great, and by his commission the destroyer of Thebes being anxious to reestablish the extinct prosperity of Orchomenos. He succeeded so far as partially to drain and diminish the lake, whereby the site of more than one ancient city was rendered visible : but the revival of Thebes by Kassander, after the decease of Alexander, arrested the progress of the undertaking, and the lake soon regained its former dimen- sions, to contract which no farther attempt was made. 1 According to the Theban legend, 2 Herakles, after his defeat of Erginus had blocked up the exit of the waters, and converted the Orchomenian plain into a lake. The spreading of these waters is thus connected with the humiliation of the Minyae ; and there can be little hesitation in ascribing to these ancient tenants of Orchomenos, before it became boeotized, the enlargement and preservation of these protective channels. Nor could such an object have been accomplished, without combined action and ac- knowledged ascendency on the part of that city over its neigh- bors, extending even to the sea at Larymna, where the river K6- phisos discharges itself. Of its extended influence, as well aa of its maritime activity, we find a remarkable evidence in the ancient and venerated Amphiktyony at Kalauria. The little is- founding region, which I have placed at the end of the second volume of this History. See also infra, vol. ii. ch. iii. p. 391. 1 We owe this interesting fact to Strabo, who is however both concise and unsatisfactoiy, viii. p. 406-407. It was affirmed that there had been two ancient towns, named Eleusis and Athense, originally founded by Ce crops, situated on the lake, and thus overflowed (Steph. Byz. v. 'Atf^vat Diogen. Laurt. iv. 23. Pausan. ix. 24, 2). For the plain or nursh near Or chomenos, see Plutarch, Sylla, c. 20-22. * Diodor. iv. 1 8. Pausan. ix. 38, 5 134 HISTORY OF GREECE. land so named, near the harbor of Troezen, in Peloponnesus, was sacred to Poseidon, and an asylum of inviolable sanctity. At the temple of Poseidon, in Kalauria, there had existed, from unknown date, a periodical sacrifice, celebrated by seven cities in common Hermione, Epidaurus, -ZEgina, Athens, Prasiae, Nauplia, and the Minyeian Orchomenos. This ancient religious combination dates from the time when Nauplia was independent of Argos, and Prasiae of Sparta : Argos and Sparta, according to the usual practice in Greece, continued to fulfil the obligation each on the part of its respective dependent. 1 Six out of the seven states are at once sea-towns, and near enough to Kalauria to account for their participation in this Amphiktyony. But the junction ol Orchomenos, from its comparative remoteness, becomes inexpli- cable, except on the supposition that its territory reached the sea, and that it enjoyed a considerable maritime traffic a fact which helps to elucidate both its legendary connection with lolkos, and its partnership in what is called the Ionic emigration. 2 The my- thical genealogy, whereby Ptoos, Schreneus and Erythrios are enumerated among the sons of Athamas, goes farther to confirm the idea that the towns and localities on the south-east of the lake recognized a fraternal origin with the Orchomenian Minyae, not less than Koroneia and Haliartus on the south-west. 3 The great power of Orchomenos was broken down, and the city reduced to a secondary and half-dependent position by the Boeotians of Thebes ; at what time, and under what circumstances, history has not preserved. The story, that the Theban hero, Herakles, rescued his native city from servitude and tribute to Orchomenos, since it comes from a Kadmeian and not from an Orchomenian legend, and since the details of it were favorite subjects of commemoration in the Thebian temples, 4 affords a presumption that Thebes was really once dependent on Orcho- 1 Strabo, viii. p. 374. T Hi/ 6e KO.I 'A/^xrww'a Ttf Kepi rd iepdv TOVTO, Trofauv at fierelxov TW &vaiaf ijaavtie 'E/^uwr, 'Emdovpof, \lytva, 'Ai9^va Upacfielf, NavTT/Uetf, 'Op^o/wfOf 6 Mivveioe. 'Tn-ep fiev ovv TUV NavTr/Uem 'Apyetot, vnep Hpaaieuv de kaKe8aifj.6vioi, S-wtTihovv. "Pausan. ix. 17, 1 ; 26,1. 3 See Muller, Orchomenos und die Minyer, p. 214. Pausan. ix. 23, 9 24, 3. The genealogy is as old as the poet Asios, 4 Herod, i. 146. Pausan. vii. 2, 2. THEBES AND OECIIOMENU54. 135 menos. Moreover tbe savage mutilations inflicted by the hero on the tribute-seeking envoys, so faithfully portrayed in his sur- name Rhinokoloustes, infuse into the mythe a portion of that hitter feeling which so long prevailed between Thebes and Or- chomenos, and which led the Thebans, as soon as the battle of Leuctra had placed supremacy in their hands, to destroy and de- populate their rival. 1 The ensuing generation saw the same fate retorted upon Thebes, combined with the restoration of Orcho- menos. The legendary grandeur of this city continued, long after it had ceased to be distinguished for wealth and power, im- perishably recorded both in the minds of the nobler citizens and in the compositions of the poets ; the emphatic language of Pau- sanias shows how much he found concerning it in the old epic. 2 SECTION II. DAUGHTERS OF AEOLUS. With several of the daughters of JEolus memorable mythical pedigrees and narratives are connected. Alcyene married Keyx, the son of Eosphoros, but both she and her husband displayed in a high degree the overweening insolence common in the -ZEolic race. The wife called her husband Zeus, while he addressed her as Here, for which presumptuous act Zeus punished them by changing both into birds. 3 Canace had by the god Poseidon several children, amongst 1 Theocrit. xvi. 104. T i2 'Ereo/c^efOi ftvyarpei; deal, al MLVVEIOT 'Opxofievov (jtiheoiaai, u,Trex$6nev6v nona Ofjflaif. The scholiast gives a sense to these words much narrower than they really bear. See Diodor. xv. 79; Pausan. ix. 15. In the oration which Isokrates places in the mouth of a Platsean, complaining of the oppressions of Thebes, the ancient servitude and tribute to Orchomenos is cast in the teeth of the Thebans (Isokrat. Orat. Plataic. vol. iii. p. 32, Auger). 2 Pausan. ix. 34, 5. See also the fourteenth Olympic Ode of Pindar, ad- dressed to the Orchomenian Asopikus. The learned and instructive work of K. 0. Miiller, Orchomenos und die Minyer, embodies everything which can be known respecting this once-memorable city; indeed the contents of the work extends much farther than its title promises. 3 Apollodor. i. 7, 4. A. Keyx, king of Trachin, the friend of Herakles and protector of the HtVakleids to the extent of his power (Hesiod. Scut Hercul. 355-473 : Apollodor. ii. 7, 5 ; Hekatae. Fragm. 353, Didot.). 136 HISTO IY OF GREECE. whom were Epopeus and Aloeus. 1 Aloeus married Imphimedea, who became enamored of the god Poseidon, and boasted of her intimacy with him. She had by him two sons, Otos and Ephi- altes, the huge and formidable Aloids, Titanic beings, nine fathoms in height and nine cubits in breadth, even in their boy- hood, before they had attained their full strength. These Aloids defied and insulted the gods in Olympus ; they paid their court to Here and Artemis, and they even seized and bound Ares, confining him in a brazen chamber for thirteen months. No one knew where he was, and the intolerable chain would have worn him to death, had not Eriboea, the jealous stepmother of the Aloids, revealed the place of his detention to Hermes, who carried him surreptitiously away when at the last extremity ; nor could Ares obtain any atonement for such an indignity. Otus and Ephialtes even prepared to assault the gods in heaven, piling up Ossa on Olympus and Pelion on Ossa, in order to reach them. And this they would have accomplished had they been allowed to grow to their full maturity ; but the arrows of Apollo put a timely end to their short-lived career. 2 1 Canace 1 , daughter of ./Eolus, is a subject of deep tragical interest both in Euripide's and Ovid. The eleventh Heroic Epistle of the latter, founded mainly on the lost tragedy of the former called ./Eolus, purports to be from Canace to Macareus, and contains a pathetic description of the ill-fated pas- sion between a brother and sister : see the fragments of the _f yeyaairaf ev Lieu apyvpsu. There were temples and divine honors to Zens Molion (Lactantius. de Falsa Kcligionc. i. 221 HO HISTORY OF GREECE Such was their irresistible might, that Herakles was defeated and repelled from Elis : but presently the Eleians sent the two Molionid brothers as TJieori (sacred envoys) to the Isthmian games, and Herakles, placing himself in ambush at Kleonae, sur- prised and killed them as they passed through. For this murder- ous act the Eleians in vain endeavored to obtain redress both at Corinth and at Argos ; which is assigned as the reason for the self-ordained exclusion, prevalent throughout all the historical age, that no Eleian athlete would ever present himself as a com- petitor at the Isthmian games. 1 The Molionids being thus re- moved, Herakles again invaded Elis, and killed Augeas along with his children, all except Phyleus, whom he brought over from Dulichion, and put in possession of his father's kingdom. Ac- cording to the more gentle narrative which Pausanias adopts, Au- geas was not kiUed, but pardoned at the request of Phyleus. 2 He was worshipped as a hero 3 even down to the time of that author. It was on occasion of this conquest of Elis, according to the old mythe which Pindar has ennobled in a magnificent ode, that Herakles first consecrated the ground of Olympia, and established the Olympic games. Such at least was one of the many fables respecting the origin of that memorable institution. 4 Phyleus, after having restored order in Elis, retired again to Dulichion, and left the kingdom to his brother Agasthenes, which again brings us into the Homeric series. For Polyxenos, son of Agasthenes, is one of the four commanders of the Epeian forty ships in the Iliad, in conjunction with the two sons of Eurytos 1 Pausan. v. 2, 4. The inscription cited by Pausanias proves that this was the reason assigned by the Eleian athletes themselves for the exclusion ; but there were several different stories. z Apollodor. ii. 7, 2. Diodor. iv. 33. Pausan. v. 2, 2 ; 3, 2. It seems evi- dent from these accounts that the genuine legend represented Herakles as having been defeated by the Molionids : the unskilful evasions both of Apol- lodorus and Diodorus betray this. Pindar (Olymp. xi. 25-5Q) gives the story without any flattery to Herakles. 3 Pausan. v. 4, 1. 4 The Amenian copy of Eusebius gives a different genealogy respecting Elis and Pisa : Acthlius, Epeius, Endymion, Alexinus ; next CEnomans and Pelops, then Herakle's. Some counted ten generations, others three, between Hrakles and Iphitus, who renewed the discontinued Olympic games (se Armem. Euseb. copy c. xxxii. p. 140). EPEIANS AND ELEIANS. 141 And Kteatos, and with Diores son of Amarynceus. Meges, the eon of Phyleus, commands the contingent from Dulichion and the Echinades. 1 Polyxenos returns safe from Troy, is succeeded by his son Amphimachos, named after the Epeian chief who had fallen before Troy, and he again by another Eleios, in whose time the Dorians and the Herakleids invade Peloponnesus. 2 These two names, barren of actions or attributes, are probably introduced by the genealogists whom Pausanias followed, to fill up the supposed interval between the Trojan war and the Dorian invasion. We find the ordinary discrepancies in respect to the series and the members of this genealogy. Thus some called Epeios son of Aethlius, others son of Endymion : 3 a third pedigree, which car ries the sanction of Aristotle and is followed by Conon, designated Eleios, the first settler of Elis, as son of Poseidon and Eurypyle, daughter of Endymion, and Epeios and Alexis as the two sons of Eleios. 4 And Pindar himself, in his ode to Epharmostus the Locrian, introduces with much emphasis another king of the Epeians named Opus, whose daughter, pregnant by Zeus, was conveyed by that god to the old and childless king Locrus : the child when born, adopted by Locrus and named Opus, became the eponymous hero of the city so called in Locris. 5 Moreover Heka- tseus the Milesian not only affirmed (contrary both to the Iliad and the Odyssey) that the Epeians and the Eleians were different people, but also added that the Epeians had assisted Herakles in his expedition against Augeas and Elis ; a narrative very differ- ent from that of Apollodorus and Pausanias, and indicating besides that he must have had before him a genealogy varying from theirs. 6 It has already been mentioned that - a^Aet avarpaTevffai rot)f 'ETrciovf not avvaveheiv avrip TUV re Avytav no! 'H/Wi> (Hekat. np. Strab. viii. p. 341 ). J42 HISTORY OF GREECE. quitted Peloponnesus in consequence of having slain Apis. 1 The country on the north of the Corinthian gulf, between the rivere F.uenus and Achelous, received from him the name of ^Etolia instead of that of Kuretis ; he acquired possession of it after having slain Dorus, Laodokus and Polypcetes, sons of Apollo and Phthia, by whom he had been well received. lie had by his wife Pronoe (the daughter of Phorbas) two sons, Pleuron and Kalydon, and from them the two chief towns in .ZEtolia were named. 2 Pleuron married Xanthippe, daughter of Dorus, and had for his son Age- nor, from whom sprang Portheus, or Porthaon, and Demonike : Euenos and Thestius were children of the latter by the god Ares.3 Portheus had three sons, Agrius, Melas and CEneus : among the offspring of Thestius were Althaea and Leda, 4 names which bring us to a period of interest in the legendary history. Leda marries Tyndareus and becomes mother of Helena and the Dios- curi: Althaea marries CEneus, and has, among other children, Meleager and Deianeira ; the latter being begotten by the god Dionysus, and the former by Ares. 5 Tydeus also is his son, the 1 Ephorus said that ./'Etolus had been expelled by Salmoneus king of the Epeians and Pisatae (ap. Strabo. viii. p. 357) : he must have had before him a different story and different genealogy from that which is given in the text. 2 Apollodor. i. 7, 6. Dorus, son of Apollo and Phthia, killed by JEtulns, after having hospitably received him, is here mentioned. Nothing at all is known of this ; but the conjunction of names is such as to render it probable that there was some legend connected with them : possibly the assistance given by Apollo to the Kuretes against the JEtolians, and the death of Melca- gcr by the hand of Apollo, related both in the Eoiai and the Minyas CPausan. x. 31, 2), may have been grounded upon it. The story connects itself with what is stated by Apollodorus about Dorus son of Hellen (see supra, p. 136). 3 According to the ancient genealogical poet Asius, Thestius was son of Agenor the son of Pleuron ("Asa Fragm. 6, p. 413, cd. Marktsch.). Compare the genealogy of JEtolia and the general remarks upon it, in Brandstater, Gcschichte des JEtol. Landes, etc., Berlin, 1844, p. 23 seq. * Respecting Lda, sec the statements of Ibykus, PhcrekydSs, Hellanikus, etc. (Schol. Apollon. Rhod. i. 146). The reference to the Corinthiaca of Eumelus is curious : it is a specimen of the matters upon which these old genealogical poems dwelt. 5 Apollodor. i. 8, 1 ; Euripide's, Meleager, Irag. 1. The three sons of Portheus arc named in the Iliad (xiv. 116) as living at Pleuron and Kalyd6n The name CEncus doubtless brings Dionysus into the legend. ALTILEA AND MELEAGEE. 143 father of Diomedes : warlike eminence goes Lund in hand with tragic calamity among the members of this memorable family. "We are fortunate enough to find the legend of Althsea and Meleager set forth at considerable length in the Iliad, in the speech addressed by Phoenix to appease the wrath of Achilles. CEneus, king of Kalydon, in the vintage sacrifices which he offered to the gods, omitted to include Artemis : the misguided man either forgot her or cared not for her ; l and the goddess, provoked by such an insult, sent against the vineyards of CEneus a wild boar, of vast size and strength, who tore up the trees by the root and laid prostrate al 1 their fruit. So terrible was this boar, that nothing less than a numerous body of men could venture to attack him : Melea- ger, the son of CEneus, however, having got together a consider- able number of companions, partly from the Kuretes of Pleuron, at length slew him. But the anger of Artemis was not yet appeased, and she raised a dispute among the combatants respecting the pos- session of the boar's head and hide, the trophies of victory. In this dispute, Meleager slew the brother of his mother Althaea, prince of the Kuretes of Pleuron : these Kuretes attacked the JEtolians of Kalydon in order to avenge their chief. So long as Meleager contended in the field the JEtolians had the superiority. But he presently refused to come forth, indignant at the curses impre- cated upon him by his mother : for Althaea, wrung with sorrow for the death of her brother, flung herself upon the ground in tears, beat the earth violently with her hands, and implored Hades and Persephone to inflict death upon Meleager, a prayer which the unrelenting Erinnys in Erebus heard but too well. So keenly did the hero resent this behavior of his mother, that he kept aloof' from the war ; and the Kuretes not only drove the JEtolians from the field, but assailed the walls and gates of Kaly- don, and were on the point of overwhelming its dismayed inhabi- tants. There was no hope of safety except in the arm of Melea- ger ; but Meleager lay in his chamber by the side of his beautiful wife Kleopatra, the daughter of Idas, and heeded not the necessity. 1 'HAai9er', j? ov/c evorjaev uaaaaro 6e fie-ya tivfiu (Iliad, ix. 533). The da structive influence of Ate is mentioned before, v. 502. The piety of Xenophon reproduces this ancient circumstance, Olvsue 6' t etc. (De Vennt, c. i.J 144 HISTORY OF GREECE. While the shouts of expected victory were heard from the assail- ants at the gates, the ancient men of -ZEtolia and the priests of the gods earnestly besought Meleager to come forth,' offering him hia choice of the fattest land in the plain of Kalydon. His dearest friends, his father CEneus, his sisters, and even his mother herself added their supplications, but he remained inflexible. At length the Kuretes penetrated into the town and began to burn it : at this last moment, Kleopatra his wife addressed to him her pathetic appeal, to avert from her and from his family the desperate hor- rors impending over them all. Meleager could no longer resist he put on his armor, went forth from his chamber, and repelled the enemy. But when the danger was over, his countrymen with- held from him the splendid presents which they had promised, because he had rejected their prayers, and had come forth only when his own haughty caprice dictated. 2 Such is the legend of Meleager in the Iliad : a verse in the second book mentions simply the death of Meleager, without far- ther details, as a reason why Thoas appeared in command of the JEtolians before Troy. 3 Though the circumstance is indicated only indirectly, there seems little doubt that Homer must have con- ceived the death of the hero as brought about by the maternal curse : the unrelenting Erinnys executed to the letter the invoca- tions of Althaea, though she herself must have been willing to re- tract them. Later poets both enlarged and altered the fable. The Hesi- odic Eoiai, as well as the old poem called the Minyas, represented Meleager as having been slain by Apollo, who aided the Kuretes in the war ; and the incident of the burning brand, though quite at variance with Homer, is at least as old as the tragic poet Phry- nichus, earlier than ^schylus. 4 The Mcerae, or Fates, presenting themselves to Althaea shortly after the birth of Meleager, pre- dicted that the child would die so soon as the brand then burning on the fire near at hand should be consumed. Althaea snatched it from the flames and extinguished it, preserving it with the ntmost care, until she became incensed against Meleager for the 1 These priests formed the Chorus in the Meleager of SophoklesCSchol id Iliad, ib. 575> * Iliad, is. 525-595. Iliad, ii. 642. * Paunan. x. 31. 2. The Ulevpuvtai, a lost tragedy of Phrynichus. KALYDONIAN BOAR. 14ft death of her brother. She then cast it into the fire, and as soon as it was consumed the life of Meleager was brought to a close. We know, from the sharp censure of Pliny, that Sophokles heightened the pathos of this subject by his account of the mourn- ful death of Meleager's sisters, who perished from excess of grief. They were changed into the birds called Meleagrides, and their never-ceasing tears ran together into amber. 1 But in the hands of Euripides whether originally through him or not, 2 we can- not tell Atalanta became the prominent figure and motive of the piece, while the party convened to hunt the Kalydonian boar was made to comprise all the distinguished heroes from every quarter of Greece. In fact, as Heyne justly remarks, this event is one of the four aggregate dramas of Grecian heroic life, 3 along with the Argonautic expedition, the siege of Thebes, and the Tro- jan war. To accomplish the destruction of the terrific animal which Artemis in her wrath had sent forth, Meleager assembled not merely the choice youth among the Kuretes and ^Etolians (as we fine in the Iliad), but an illustrious troop, including Kastor and Pollux, Idas and Lynkeus, Peleus and Telamon, Theseus and Peirithous, Ankaeus and Kepheus, Jason, Amphiaraus, Admetus, Eurytion and others. Nestor and Phoenix, who appear as old men before the walls of Troy, exhibited their early prowess as auxiliaries to the suffering Kalydonians. 4 Conspicuous amidst them all stood the virgin Atalanta, daughter of the Arcadian 1 Plin. H. N. xxxvii. 2, 11. 2 There was a tragedy of JSschylus called 'Ara^av-rj, of which nothing remains (Bothe, ^Eschyli Fragm. ix. p. 18). Of the more recent dramatic writers, several selected Atalanfci as their subject ("See Brandstater, Geschichtc JEtoliens, p. 65). 3 There was a poem of Stesichorus, 'Zvo&rjpai ( Stesichor. Fragm. 1 5. p 72> 4 The catalogue of these heroes is in Apollodor. i. 8, 2 ; Ovid, Metamor. via. 300 ; Hygin. fab. 173. Euripides, in his play of Meleager, gave an enu- meration and description of the heroes ("see Fragm. 6 of that play, ed. Matth.J. Nestor, in this picture of Ovid, however, does not appear quite so invincible as in his own speeches in the Iliad. The mythographers thought it neces- sary to assign a reason why Herakles was not present at the Kalydonian adventure : he was just at that time in servitude with Omphale" in Lydia CApollod. ii. 6, 3). This seems to have been the idea of Ephorus, and it is much in Ins style of interpretation (see Ephor. Fragm. 9. ed. Didot.). i. 7 lOoc. 146 HISTORY OF GREECE. Schceneus ; beautiful and matchless for swiftness of foot, but living in the forest as a huntress and unacceptable to Aphrodite. 1 Seve- ral of the heroes were slain by the boar, others escaped by va- rious stratagems : at length Atalanta first shot him in the back, next Amphiaraus in the eye, and, lastly, Meleager killed him. Enamoured of the beauty of Atalanta, Meleager made over to her the chief spoils of the animal, on the plea that she had inflicted the first wound. But his uncles, the brothers of Thestius, took them away from her, asserting their rights as next of kin, 2 if Me- leager declined to keep the prize for himself: the latter, exaspe- rated at this behavior, slew them. Althosa, in deep sorrow for her brothers and wrath against her son, is impelled to produce the fatal brand which she had so long treasured up, and consign it to the flames. 3 The tragedy concludes with the voluntary death both of Althaea and Kleopatra. Interesting as the Arcadian huntress, Atalanta, is in herself, she is an intrusion, and not a very convenient intrusion, into the Homeric story of the Kalydonian boar-hunt, wherein another female Kleopatra, already occupied the foreground. 4 But the more recent version became accredited throughout Greece, and 1 Eurijiid. Mclcag. Fragm. vi. Matt. KvTtpidof 6e fiiar]fj.\ 'Ap/alf 'Ara/lavr?/, Kvvaf "Kal TO? exovaa, etc. There was a drama " Meleager " both of Sophokles and Euripides : of the former hardly any fragments remain, a few more of the latter. * Hyginus, fab. 229. 3 Diodor, iv. 34. Apollodorus (i. 8 ; 2-4) gives first the usual narrative, in- cluding Atalanta; next, the Homeric narrative with some additional circum- stances, but not including either Atalanta or the fire-brand on which Melea- ger's life depended. He prefaces the latter with the words oi 6e in which she had no place at the time when the works on the chest of Kypselus were executed.2 But her native and genuine locality is Arcadia ; where her race-course, near to the town of Methydrion, was shown even in the days of Pausanias. 3 This race-course had been the scene of destruction for more than broken in the voyage from Greece : the other was kept in the temple of Bac- chus in the Imperial Gardens. It is numbered among the memorable exploits of Theseus that he van quished and killed a formidable and gigantic sow, in the territory of Krom- myon near Corinth. According to some critics, this Krommyonian sow waa the mother of the Kalydonian boar (Strabo, viii. p. 380). 1 Strabo, x. p. 466. Ho/le/zou d' iftTrecrovTOf role Qeariutiaic irpbf ( ivea Kal Me^faypew, 6 [tev TloiTjTfc, afifyl ovbf Kepal.ij not depfiari, Karti rfjv irepl TOV Kcnrpov fiv&o"koyiav uf <5e rb elicbf, nepl ftepovf ryq X^P a S> etc. This remark is also similar to Mr. Payne Knight's criticism on the true causes of the Trojan war, which were (he tells us) of a political character, independent of Helen and her abduction (Prolegom. ad Homer, c. 53). 1 Compare Apollodor. iii. 9, 2, and Pausan. v. 17, 4. She is made to wrestle with Peleus at these funeral games, which seems foreign to her char- acter. 3 Paasan. viii. 35, 8. ATALANTA. 149 one unsuccessful suitor. For Atalanta, averse to marriage, had proclaimed that her hand should only be won by the competitor who could surpass her in running : all who tried and failed were condemned to die, and many were the persons to whom her beauty and swiftness, alike unparalleled, had proved fatal. At length Meilanion, who had vainly tried to win her affections by assiduous services in her hunting excursions, ventured to enter the perilous lists. Aware that he could not hope to outrun her except by stratagem, he had obtained by the kindness of Aphro- dite, three golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides, which he successively let fall near to her while engaged in the race. The maiden could not resist the temptation of picking them up, and was thus overcome : she became the wife of Mei- lanion and the mother of the Arcadian Parthenopoeus, one of the seven chiefs who perished in the siege of Thebes. 1 1 Respecting the varieties in this interesting story, see Apollod. iii. 9, 2 ; Hygin. f. 185; Ovid, Metam. x. 560-700; Propert. i. 1,20; ^Elian, V. H xiii. i. Mei/laviwvof au^povearepof. Aristoplmn. Lysistrat 786 and Schol In the ancient representation on the chest of Kypselus (Paus. v. 19, l) f Meilanion was exhibited standing near Atalanta, who was holding a fawn . no match or competition in running was indicated. There is great discrepancy in the naming and patronymic description of the parties in the story. Three different persons are announced as fathers of Atalanta, Schrcneus, Jasus and Msenalos ; the successful lover in Ovid (and seemingly in Euripides also) is called Hippomenes, not Meilanion. In the Hesiodic poems Atalanta was daughter of Schceneus ; Hellanikus called her daughter of Jasus. See Apollodor. I.e.; Kallimach. Hymn to Dian. 214, with the note of Spanheim ; Schol. Eurip. Phceniss. 150; Schol. Theocr. Idyll, iii. 40 ; also the ample commentary of Bachet de Meziriac, Sur les Epitres d'Ovidc, vol. i. p. 366. Servius (ad Virg. Eclog. vi. 61 ; jEneid, iii 113) calls Atalanta a native of Scyros. Both the ancient scholiasts (see Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 769) and the modern commentators, Spanheim and Heync, seek to escape this difficulty by supposing two Atalantas, an Arcadian and a Boeotian: assuming the principle of their conjecture to be admissible, they ought to suppose at least three. Certainly, if personages of the Grecian mythes are to be treated as his- torically real, and their adventures as so many exaggerated and miscolored facts, it will be necessary to repeat the process of multiplying entities to an infinite extent. And this is one among the many reasons for rejecting the fundamental supposition. But when we consider these personages as purely legendary, so that an 150 HISTORY OF GREECE. We have yet another female in the family of (Eneus, \vhos name the legend has immortalized. His daughter Deianeira was sought in marriage by the river Achelous, who presented himself in various shapes, first as a serpent and afterwards as a bulL From the importunity of this hateful suitor she was rescued be the arrival of Herakles, who encountered Achelous, vanquished him and broke off one of his horns, which Achelous ransomed by surrendering to him the horn of Amaltheia, endued with the miraculous property of supplying the possessor with abundance of any food or drink which he desired. Herakles was rewarded for his prowess by the possession of Deianeira, and he made over the horn of Amaltheia as his marriage-present to CEneus. 1 Compelled to leave the residence of CEneus in consequence of having in a fit of anger struck the youthful attendant Eunomus, and involuntarily killed him, 2 Herakles retired to Trachin, cross- ing the river Euenus at the place where the Centaur Nessus was historical basis can neither be affirmed nor denied respecting them, we es cape the necessity of such inconvenient stratagems. The test of identity is then to be sought in the attributes, not in the legal description, in the predicates, not in the subject. Atalanta, whether born of one father or another, whether belonging to one place or another, is beautiful, cold, re- pulsive, daring, swift of foot and skilful with the bow, these attributes constitute her identity. The Scholiast on Theocritus (iii. 40), in vindicating his supposition that there were two Atalantas, draws a distinction founded upon this very principle : he says that the Boeotian Atalanta was rofortf, and the Arcadian Atalanta ipo^aia. But this seems an over-refinement : both the shooting and the running go to constitute an accomplished huntress. In respect to Parthenopacus, called by Euripides and by so many others the son of Atalanta, it is of some importance to add, that Apollodorns, Aristarchus, and Antimachus, the author of the Thebaid, assigned to him a pedigree entirely different, making him an Argeian, the son of Talaos and Lysimache, and brother of Adrastus. (Apollodor. i. 9, 13 ; Aristarch. ap. Schol. Soph. GEd. Col. 1320; Antimachus ap. Schol. JEschyl. Sep. Theb. 532; and Schol. Supplem. ad Eurip. Phceniss. t. viii. p. 461, ed. Matth. Apollodorus is in fact inconsistent with himself in another passage). 1 Sophokl. Trachin. 7. The horn of Amaltheia was described by Phere- kyd6s (Apollod. ii. 7,5); see also Strabo, x. p. 458 and Diodor. iv. 35, who cites an interpretation of the fables (ol ekufovrtf /?" avrtiv Tatties) to th effect that it was symbolical of an embankment of the unruly river by He"- rnkles, and consequent recovery of very fertile land. * Hellanikus (ap. Athen. ix. p. 410) mentioning this incident, in two differ tut works, called the attendant by two different names. (ENEUS.- DEIANEIRA. 151 accustomed to carry over passengers for hire. Nessus carried over Deianeira, but when he had arrived on the other side, began to treat her with rudeness, upon which Herakles slew him with an arrow tinged by the poison of the Lernoean hydra. The dying Centaur advised Deianeira to preserve the poisoned blood which flowed from his wound, telling her that it would operate as a philtre to regain for her the affections of Herakles, in case she should ever be threatened by a rival. Some time afterwards the hero saw and loved the beautiful lole, daughter of Eurytos, king of CEchalia : he stormed the town, killed Eurytos, and made lole his captive. The misguided Deianeira now had recourse to her supposed philtre : she sent as a present to Herakles a splendid tunic, imbued secretly with the poisoned blood of the Centaur. Herakles adorned himself with the tunic on the occasion of offer- ing a solemn sacrifice to Zeus on the promontory of Kenaeon in Euboea : but the fatal garment, when once put on, clung to him indissolubly, burnt his skin and flesh, and occasioned an agony of pain from which he was only relieved by death. Deianeira slew herself in despair at this disastrous catastrophe. 1 1 The beautiful drama of the Trachiniae has rendered this story familiar : compare Apollod. ii. 7, 7. Hygin. f. 36. Diodor. iv. 36-37. The capture of CEchalia (Ofta^ta? a/lwaif) was celebrated in a very an cient epic poem by Kreophylos, of the Homeric and not of the Hesiodic character : it passed with many as the -work of Homer himself. ( See Diint- zer, Fragm. Epic. Graecor. p. 8. Welcker, Dcr Epische Cyclus, p. 229). The same subject was also treated in the Hesiodic Catalogue, or in the Eoiai (see Hesiod, Fragm. 129, ed. Marktsch.) : the number of the children ol Eurytos was there enumerated. This exploit seems constantly mentioned as the last performed by H6ra- kles, and as immediately preceding his death or apotheosis on Mount (Eta: but whether the legend of Deianeira and the poisoned tunic be very old, we cannot tell. The tale of the death of Iphitos, son of Eurytos, by Herakle's, is as ancient as the Odyssey (xxi. 19-40) : but it is there stated, that Eurytos dying kft his memorable bow to his son Iphitos (the bow is given afterwards by Iphi- tos to Odysseus, and is the weapon so fatal to the suitors), a statement not very consistent with the story that GEchalia was taken and Eurytos slain by Herakles. It is plain that these were distinct and contradictory legends. Compare Soph. Trachin. 260-285 (where Iphitos dies before Eurytos), not only with the passage just cited from the Odyssey, but also with Pherekyde's, Fragm. 34, Didot. Hyginus (f. 33) differs altogether in the parentage of Deianeira: he calif 152 HISTORY OF GREECE. We have not yet exhausted the eventful career of CEneus and his family ennobled among the .ZEtolians especially, both bj religious worship and by poetical eulogy and favorite themei not merely in some of the Hesiodic poems, but also in other ancient epic productions, the Alkmasenis and the Cyclic Thebais. 1 By another marriage, CEneus had for his son Tydeus, whose poetical celebrity is attested by the many different accounts given both of the name and condition of his mother. Tydeus, having slain his cousins, the sons of Melas, who were conspiring against CEneus, was forced to become an exile, and took refuge at Argos with Adrastus, whose daughter Deipyle he married. The issue of this marriage was Diomedes, whose brilliant exploits in the siege of Troy were not less celebrated than those of his father at the siege of Thebes. After the departure of Tydeus, CEneus was deposed by the sons of Agrios, and fell into extreme poverty and wretchedness, from which he was only rescued by his grand- son Diomedes, after the conquest of Troy. 2 The sufferings of this ancient warrior, and the final restoration and revenge by Diomedes, were the subject of a lost tragedy of Euripides, which even the ridicule of Aristophanes demonstrates to have been eminently pathetic. 3 Though the genealogy just given of CEneus is in part Ho- meric, and seems to have been followed generally by the mytho- graphers, yet we find another totally at variance with it in Hekataeus, which he doubtless borrowed from some of the old poets : the simplicity of the story annexed to it seems to attest its antiquity. Orestheus, son of Deukalion, first passed into her daughter of Dexamenos : his account of her marriage with Herakle's is in every respect at variance with Apollodorus. In the latter, Mnesimach6 is the daughter of Dexamenos ; Heraklcs rescues her from the importunities of the Centaur Eurytion (ii. 5, 5). 1 See the references in Apollod. i, 8, 45. Pindar, Isthm. iv. 32. Me/lerav 5e aofiaraif Atdf IKOTI irpoafiakov ce^L^ofievoi 'Ev [lev AiraZuv ftvoiaiai ^ocvvatf OiveiSai uparepol, etc. * Hekat. Fragm. 341, Didot. In this story CEneus is connected with tho first discovery of the vine and the making of wine (olvoc) : compare Hygin. f. 129, and Servius ad Virgil. Georgic. i. 9. * See Welcker (Griechisch. Tragod. ii. p. 583) on the lost tragedy called CEneus. THE PELOttDS. 153 Jbitolia, and acquired the kingdom : he was father of Phytios, who was father of OEneus. JEtolus was son ol (Eneus. 1 The original migration of jEtolus from Elis to (Etolia and the subsequent establishment in Elis of Oxylus, his descendant in the tenth generation, along with the Dorian invaders of Pelo- ponnesus were commemorated by two inscriptions, one in the agora of Elis, the other in that of the JEtolian chief town, Thermum, engraved upon the statues of JEtolus and Oxylus, 2 respectively. CHAPTER VII. THE PELOPIDS. AMONG the ancient legendary genealogies, there was none which figured with greater splendor, or which attracted to itself 1 Timokles, Comic, ap. Athenae. vii. p. 223. Tepuv TIC; U.TVX.EI ; Ka-efia&ev rov Olvea. Ovid. Heroid. ix. 153. " Heu ! devota domus ! Solio sedet Agrios alto CEnea dcsertum nuda senecta premit." The account here given is in Hyginus (f. 175) : but it is in many points different both from Apollodorus (i. 8, 6 ; Pausaa ii. 25) and Pherekydes (Fragm. 83, Didot). It seems to be borrowed from the lost tragedy of Euri- pides. Compare Schol. ad Aristoph. Acharn. 417. Antonin. Liberal, c. 37. In the Iliad, CEneus is dead before the Trojan war (ii. 641). The account of Ephorus again is different (ap. Strabo. x. p. 462) ; he joins Alkmason with Diomedes: but his narrative has the air of a tissue of quasi- historical conjectures, intended to explain the circumstance that the .JStolian Diomedes is king of Argos during the Trojan war. Pausanias and Apollodorus affirm that CEneus was buried at CEnoe be- tween Argos and Mantineia, and they connect the name of this place with him. But it seems more reasonable to consider him as the eponymous ter of CEniadae in ./Etolia. * Ephor. Fragm. 29. Didot ap. Strab. x. 7* J54 HISTORY OF GREECE. a higher decree of poetical interest and pathos, than that of the Pelopids Tantalus, Pelops, Atreus and Thyestes, Agamemnon and Menelaus and jEgisthus, Helen and Klytaemnestra, Orestes and Elektra and Hermione. Each of these characters is a star of the first magnitude in the Grecian hemisphere : each name suggests the idea of some interesting romance or some harrowing tragedy : the curse which taints the family from the beginning inflicts multiplied wounds at every successive generation. So, at least, the story of the Pelopids presents itself, after it had been successively expanded and decorated by epic, lyric and tragic poets. It will be sufficient to touch briefly upon events with which every reader of Grecian poetry is more or less familiar, and to offer some remarks upon the way in which they were col- ored and modified by different Grecian authors. Pelops is the eponym or name-giver of the Peloponnesus : to find an eponym for every conspicuous local name was the invaria- ble turn of Grecian retrospective fancy. The name Peloponnesus is not to be found either in the Iliad or the Odyssey, nor any other denomination which can be attached distinctly and specially to the entire peninsula. But we meet with the name in one of the most ancient post-Homeric poems of which any fragments have been preserved the Cyprian Verses a poem which many (seemingly most persons) even of the contemporaries of Herodo- tus ascribed to the author of the Iliad, though Herodotus contra- dicts the opinion. 1 The attributes by which the Pelopid Aga- memnon and his house are marked out and distinguished from the other heroes of the Iliad, are precisely those which Grecian imagination would naturally seek in an eponymus superior wealth, power, splendor and regality. Not only Agamemnon 1 Hesiod. ii. 117. Fragment Epicc. Grsec. Diintzer, ix. Kinrpta, 8. Atya re Avy/cet)? TaiiyeTov irpoae/3aive iroaiv ra^eeoai Trejrni&ijf, 'Axporarov 6' uvaftaf dieSepKETO vqaov unaaav Also the Homeric Hymn. Apoll. 419, 430, and Tyrtaeus, Fragm. I. (Ei vofila) 'Evpeiav IleAoTrof vi/aov u The Schol. ad Iliad, ix. 246, intimates that the name Ue^oTrovvrjffOf occurred m one or more of the Hesiodic epics. WEALTH AND REGALITY OF THE PELOPIDS. 155 himself, but his brother Menelaus, is " more of a king * even than Nestor or Diomedes. The gods have not given to the king of the " much-golden " Mykense greater courage, or strength, or ability, than to T arious other chiefs ; but they have conferred upon him a marked superiority in riches, power and dignity, and have thus singled him out as the appropriate leader of the forces. 1 He enjoys this preeminence as belonging to a privileged family and as inheriting the heaven-descended sceptre of Pelops, the transmission of which is described by Homer in a very remarkable way. The sceptre was made " by Hephaestos, who presented it to Zeus ; Zeus gave it to Hermes, Hermes to the charioteer Pelops ; Pelops gave it to Atreus, the ruler of men ; Atreus at his death left it to Thyestes, the rich cattle-owner ; Thyestes in his turn left it to his nephew Agamemnon to carry, that he might hold dominion over many islands and over all Argos." 2 We have here the unrivalled wealth and power of the " king of men, Agamemnon," traced up to his descent from Pelops, and accounted for, in harmony with the recognized epical agencies, by the present of the special sceptre of Zeus through the hands of Hermes ; the latter being the wealth-giving god, whose bless 1 Iliad, ix. 37. Compare ii. 580. Diomedes addresses Agamemnon - 2oi Pindar, in a very remarkable passage, finds this old legend re- volting to his feelings : he rejects the tale of the flesh of Pelops having been served up and eaten, as altogether unworthy of the gods. 2 Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, was married to Amphion, and had a numerous and flourishing offspring of seven sons and seven daughters. Though accepted as the intimate friend and companion of Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemas, 3 she was presumptuous enough to triumph over that goddess, and to place herself on a footing of higher dignity, on account of the superior number of her children. Apollo and Artemas avenged this in- sult by killing all the sons and all the daughters : Niobe, thus left a childless and disconsolate mother, wept herself to death, and was turned into a rock, which the later Greeks continued always to identify on Mount Sipylus. 4 Some authors represented Pelops as not being a Lydian, but a king of Paphlagonia ; by others it was said that Tantalus, hav- ing become detested from his impieties, had been expelled from Asia by Ilus the king of Troy, an incident which served the double purpose of explaining the transit of Pelops to Greece, and of imparting to the siege of Troy by Agamemnon the charac- ter of retribution for wrongs done to his ancestor. 5 When Pe- lops came over to Greece, he found CEnomaus, son of the god Args and Harpinna, in possession of the principality of Pisa. DiodOr. iv. 77. Horn. Odyss. xi. 582. Pindar gives a different version of the punishment inflicted on Tantalus : a vast stone was perpetually im- pending over his head, and threatening to fall (Olymp. i. 56 ; Isthm. vii. 20). * Pindar, Olymp. i. 45. Compare the sentiment of Iphigeneia in Eurip- ide-s, Iph. Taur. 387. 3 Sappho (Fragm. 82, Schneidewin) A K.a.1 Nto/3a fiuXa filv tyikai ijaav kralpat. Sappho assigned to Niobe eighteen children (Aul. Gell. N. A. iv. A. xx. 7) ; Hesiod gave twenty ; Homer twelve (Apollod. iii. 5). The Lydian historian Xanthus gave a totally different version both of tba genealogy and of the misfortunes of Niche" (Parthen. Narr. 33). 4 Ovid, Metam.vi. 164-311. Pausan.i. 21, 5 ; viii. 2, 3. Apollon. Uhorl ii. 358, and Schol.; Ister. Fragment. 59, Dindorf; Die- I8r. iv. 74. I'ELOPS AND (ENOMAUS. 159 immediately bordering on the district of Olympia. QEnomaus, having been apprized by an oracle that death would overtake him if he permitted his daughter Hippodameia to marry, refused to give her in marriage except to some suitor who should beat him in a chariot-race from Olympia to the isthmus of Corinth ;i the ground here selected for the legendary victory of Pelops deserves attention, inasmuch as it is a line drawn from the assumed centre of Peloponnesus to its extremity, and thus comprises the whole territory with which Pelops is connected as eponym. Any suitor overmatched in the race was doomed to forfeit his life ; and the fleetness of the Pisan horses, combined with the skill of the charioteer Myrtilus, had already caused thirteen unsuccessful competitors to perish by the lance of GEnomaus. 2 Pelops enter- ed the lists as a suitor : his prayers moved the god Poseidon to supply him with a golden chariot and winged horses ; or accord- ing to another story, he captivated the affections of Hippoda- meia herself, who persuaded the charioteer Myrtilus to loosen the wheels of CEnomaus before he started, so that the latter was overturned and perished in the race. Having thus won the hand of Hippodameia, Pelops became Prince of Pisa. 3 He put to death the charioteer Myrtilus, either from indignation at his treachery to CEnomaus, 4 or from jealousy on the score of Hip- podameia : but Myrtilus was the son of Hermes, and though Pelops erected a temple in the vain attempt to propitiate that god, he left a curse upon his race which future calamities were destined painfully to work out. 5 Pelops had a numerous issue by Hippodameia: Pittheus, Troezen and Epidaurus, the eponyms of the two Argolic cities 1 Diodor. iv. 74. 2 Pausanias (vi. 21, 7) had read their names in the Hesiodic Eoiai. 3 Pindar, Olymp. i. 140. The chariot race of Pelops and CEnomaus was represented on the chest of Kypselus at Olympia : the horses of the former were given as having wings (Pausan, v. 17, 4). Pherekydes gave the same story (ap. Schol. ad Soph. Elect. 504). 4 It is noted by Herodotus and others as a remarkable fact, that no mnlea were ever bred in the Eleian territory : an Eleian who wished to breed a mule sent his mare for the time out of the region. The Eleians themselTca ascribed this phenomenon to a disability brought on the land by a carso from the lips of CEnomaus 'Herod, iv. 30; Plutarch, Quaest. Graec. p. 303). 5 Paus. v. 1, 1; Sophok. Elektr. 508; Eurip. Orest. 985, with Schol.. Plato, Kratyl. p 395 160 HISTORY OF GREECE. BO called, are said to have been among them : Atreus and Thy- estes were also his sons, and his daughter Nikippe married Sthe- nelus of Mykenae, and became the mother of Eurystheus. 1 We hear nothing of the principality of Pisa afterwards : the Pisatid villages became absorbed into the larger aggregate of Elis, after a vain struggle to maintain their separate right of presidency over the Olympic festival. But the legend ran that Pelops left his name to the whole peninsula : according to Thucycides, he was enabled to do this because of the great wealth which he had brought with him from Lydia into a poor territory. The histo rian leaves out all the romantic interest of the genuine legends preserving only this one circumstance, which, without being bet- ter attested than the rest, carries with it, from its common-place and prosaic character, a pretended historical plausibility. 2 Besides his numerous issue by Hippodameia, Pelops had an Illegitimate son named Chrysippus, of singular grace and beauty, towards whom he displayed so much affection as to rouse the jealousy of Hippodameia and her sons. Atreus and Thyestes conspired together to put Chrysippus to death, for which they were banished by Pelops and retired to Mykenae, 3 an event which brings us into the track of the Homeric legend. For Thucydides, having found in the death of Chrysippus a suitable ground for the secession of Atreus from Pelops, conducts him at once to Mykenae, and shows a train of plausible circumstances to account for his having mounted the throne. Eurystheus, king of Mykenae, was the maternal nephew of Atreus: when he engaged in any foreign expedition, he naturally entrusted the regency to his uncle ; the people of Mykenae thus became accus- tomed to be governed by him, and he on his part made efforts to conciliate them, so that when Eurystheus was defeated mid slain in Attica, the Mykenaean people, apprehensire of an invasion from the Herakleids, chose Atreus as at once the most powerful 1 Apollod. ii. 4, 5. Pausan. ii. 30, 8; 26, 3 ; v. 8, 1. Hesiod. ap. Schol ad Iliad, xx. 116. * Thucyd. i. 5. 3 We find two distinct legends respecting Chrysippus: his abduction by Laius king of Thebes, on which the lost drama of Euripides called Chry- nippus turned (see Welcker, Griech. Tragodien, ii. p. 536), and his death bj he hands of his half-brothere. Hyginns (f. 85) blends the two together. ATREUS AND THYESTES. 161 and most acceptable person for his successor. 1 Such was the tale which Thucydides derived " from those who had learnt ancient Peloponnesian matters most clearly from their forefathers." The introduction of so much sober and quasi-political history, unfor- tunately unauthenticated, contrasts strikingly with the highly poet- ical legends of Pelops and Atreus, which precede and follow it. Atreus and Thyestes are known in the Iliad only as successive possessors of the sceptre of Zeus, which Thyestes at his death bequeathes to Agamemnon. The family dissensions among this fated race commence, in the Odyssey, with Agamemnon the son of Atreus, and ^Egisthus the son of Thyestes. But subsequent poets dwelt upon an implacable quarrel between the two fathers, The cause of the bitterness was differently represented: some al- leged that Thyestes had intrigued with the Kretan Aerope, the wife of his brother ; other narratives mentioned that Thyestes procured for himself surreptitiously the possession of a lamb with a golden fleece, which had been designedly introduced among the flocks of Atreus by the anger of Hermes, as a cause of enmity and ruin to the whole family. 2 Atreus, after a violent 1 Thucyd. i. 9. heyovai SI oi TU Hel.oirovvr/oiuv cra^eorara fivf/fir/ irapa TUV -irporepov Sedey/iEvoi.. According to Hellanikus, Atreus the elder son re- turns to Pisa after the death of Pelops with a great army, and makes him- self master of his father's principality (Hellanik. ap Schol.ad Iliad, ii. 105) Hellanikus does not seem to have heen so solicitous as Thucydides to bring the story into conformity with Homer. The circumstantial genealogy giv- en in Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 5. makes Atreus and Thyestes reside during their banishment at Makestus in Triphylia : it is given without any special authority, but may perhaps come from Hellanikus. 2 JEschil. Agamem. 1204, 1253, 1608; Hygin. 86 ; Attii Fragm.19. This was the story of the old poem entitled Alkmaeonis ; seemingly also of Phe- rekydes, though the latter rejected the story that Hermes had produced the golden lamb with the special view of exciting discord between the two broth- ers, in order to avenge the death of Myrtilus by Pelops (see Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 996J. A different legend, alluded to in Soph. Aj. 1295 (see Schol. ad foe.), recounted that Aerope 1 had been detected by her father Katreus in unchaste commerce with a low-born person ; he entrusted her in his anger to Nau- plius, with directions to throw her into the sea : Nauplius however not only epared her life, but betrothed her to Pleisthenes, father of Agamemnon and son of Atreus. The tragedy entitled Atreus of the Lctin poet Attius, seems to hav VOL. I. 11 OC. 162 HISTORY OF GREECE. burst of indignation/pretended to be reconciled, and invited Thy- estes to a banquet, in which he served up to him the limbs of his own son, and the father ignorantly partook of the fatal meal. Even the all-seeing Helios is said to have turned back his chariot to the east in order that he might escape the shocking spectacle of this Thyestean banquet : yet the tale of Thyestean revenge the murder of Atreus perpetrated by JEgisthus, the incestuous offspring of Thy estes by his daughter Pelopia is no less replete with horrors. 1 Homeric legend is never thus revolting. Agamemnon and Menelaus are known to us chiefly with their Homeric attributes, which have not been so darkly overlaid by subsequent poets as those of Atreus and Thyestes. Agamemnon and Menelaus are affectionate brothers : they marry two sisters, the daughters of Tyndareus king of Sparta, Klytsemnestra and Helen ; for Helen, the real offspring of Zeus, passes as the daughter of Tyndarius. 2 The " king of men " reigns at Mykenae ; Menelaus succeeds Tyn- dareus at Sparta. Of the rape of Helen, and the siege of Troy consequent upon it, I shall speak elsewhere : I now touch only upon the family legends of the Atreids. Menelaus, on his return from Troy with the recovered Helen, is driven by storms far away to the distant regions of Phoenicia and Egypt, and is ex- posed to a thousand dangers and hardships before he again sets foot in Peloponnesus. But at length he reaches Sparta, resumes his kingdom, and passes the rest of his days in uninterrupted happiness and splendor : being moreover husband of the godlike Helen and son-in-law of Zeus, he is even spared the pangs of death. When the fulness of his days is past he is transported to the Elysian fields, there to dwell along with " the golden-haired Ilhadamanthus " in a delicious climate and in undisturbed re pose. 3 Far different is the fate of the king of men, Agamemnon. brought out, with painful fidelity, the harsh and savage features of this family legend (see Aul. Gell. xiii. 2, and the fragments of Attius now remain ing, together with the tragedy called Thyestes, of Seneca). 1 Hygin. fab. 87-88. * So we must say, in conformity to the ideas of antiquity : compare Ho mer, Diad, xvi. 176 and Herodot. vi. 53. 1 Horn. Odyss. iii. 280-300 ; iv. 83-560. AGAMEMNON AND MLNELAUS. 163 During his absence, the unwarlike ^gisthus, son of Thyestes, had seduced his wife Klytaemnestra, in spite of the special warn- ing of the gods, who, watchful over this privileged family, had sent their messenger Hermes expressly to deter him from the attempt. 1 A venerable bard had been left by Agamemnon as the companion and monitor of his wife, and so long as that guar dian was at hand, JEgisthus pressed his suit in vain. But he got rid of the bard by sending him to perish in a desert island, and then won without difficulty the undefended Klytaemnestra. Igno- rant of what had passed, Agamemnon returned from Troy vic- torious and full of hope to his native country ; but he had scarcely landed when -ZEgisthus invited him to a banquet, and there with the aid of the treacherous Klytasmnestra, in the very hall of fes tivity and congratulation, slaughtered him and his companions " like oxen tied to the manger. " His concubine Kassandra, the prophetic daughter of Priam, perished along with him by the hand of Klytcemnestra herself. 2 The boy Orestes, the only male offspring of Agamemnon, was stolen away by his nurse, and placed in safety at the residence of the Phokian Strophius. For seven years JEgisthus and Klytsemnestra reigned in tran quillity at Mykenae on the throne of the murdered Agamemnon. But in the eighth year the retribution announced by the gods over- took them : Orestes, grown to manhood, returned and avenged his father by killing ^JEgisthus, according to Homer ; subsequent poets add, his mother also. He recovered the kingdom of My- kenae, and succeeded Menelaus in that of Sparta. Hermione, the only daughter of Menelaus and Helen, was sent into the realm of the Myrmidons in Thessaly, as the bride of Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, according to the promise made by her father during the siege of Troy. 3 Here ends the Homeric legend of the Pelopids, the final act of Orestes being cited as one of unexampled glory. 4 Later poets made many additions : they dwelt upon his remorse and hardly- 1 Odyss. i. 38 ; iii. 310. avfamdor Alyiadoto. 2 Odyss. iii. 260-275; iv. 512-537 ; xi. 408. Dcinias in his Argolica, and other historians of that territory, fixed the precise day of the murder of Agamemnon, the thirteenth of the month Gamelion (Schol. ad Sophokl Elektr. 275). 1 Odyss. iii 30C ; iv. 9 4 Odrss. i. 299. 164 HISTORY OP GREECE. earned pardon for the murder of his mother, and upon his de- voted friendship for Pylades ; they wove many interesting tales, too, respecting his sisters Iphigeneia and Elektra and his cousin Hermione, names which have become naturalized in every climate and incorporated with every form of poetry. These poets did not at all scruple to depart from Homer, and to give other genealogies of their own, with respect to the chief persons of the Pelopid family. In the Iliad and Odyssey, Aga- memnon is son of Atreus : in the Hesiodic Eoiai and in Stesicho- rus, he is son of Plsisthenes the son of Atreus. 1 In Homer, he is specially marked as reigning at Mykense ; but Stesichorus, Si monides and Pindar 2 represented him as having both resided and perished at Sparta or at Amyklas. According to the ancient Cyprian Verses, Helen was represented as the daughter of Zeus and Nemesis : in one of the Hesiodic poems she was introduced as an Oceanic nymph, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. 3 The genealogical discrepancies, even as to the persons of the principal heroes and heroines, are far too numerous to be cited, nor is it necessary to advert to them, except as they bear upon the un- availing attempt to convert such legendary parentage into a basi? of historical record or chronological calculation. The Homeric poems probably represent that form of the le- gend, respecting Agamemnon and Orestes, which was current and popular among the ^Eolic colonists. Orestes was the great heroic chief of the ^Eolic emigration ; he, or his sons, or his de- scendants, are supposed to have conducted the Achgeans to seek 1 Hesiod. Fragtn. 60. p. 44, cd. Dantzer; Stesichor. Fragm. 44, Kleine. The Scholiast ad Soph. Elektr. 539, in reference to another discrepancy be- tween Homer and the Hesiodic poems about the children of Helen, remarks that we ought not to divert our attention from that which is moral and sal- utary to ourselves in the poets (T& T/'&IKU Kalxpf)ot.[i.a.r][uv rolf Ivrvyxuvovot), in order to cavil at their genealogical contradictions. Welcker in vain endeavors to show that Pleisthenes was originally intro- duced as the father of Atreus, not as his son (Griech. Tragod. p. 678). 2 Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 40. "Opqpoc kv JJLvn^vatf tpijai r& paaiAela TOV 'Aya/ie/^vovof SriyoY^opof <5e Kal S'./iuvidqc, Iv AaKetiaifiovip. Pindar, Pyth. xi. 31 ; Nem. viii. 21. Stesichorns had composed an 'Opeareia, copied in many points from a still more ancient lyric Oresteia by Xanthus : compare Athen. xii. p. 513, and JElian, V. II. ir. 26. 3 Heaiod, ap. Schol. ad Pindar, Nem. x. 150. AGAMEMNON AND ORESTES. 165 a new home, when they were no longer able to make head against the invading Dorians: the great families at Tenedos and other ^Eolic cities even during the historical rcra, gloried in tracing back their pedigrees to this illustrious source. 1 The legends con- nected with the heroic worship of these mythical ancestors form the basis of the character and attributes of Agamemnon and his family, as depicted in Homer, in which Mykenas appears as the first place in Peloponnesus, and Sparta only as the second : the former the special residence of " the king of men ; " the latter that of his younger and inferior brother, yet still the seat of a member of the princely Pelopids, and moreover the birth-place of the divine Helen. Sparta, Argos and Mykenoe are all three des*<2jnated in the Iliad by the goddess Here as her favorite cities; 2 yet ihe connection of Mykena3 with Argos, though the two towns were only ten miles distant, is far less intimate than the connec- tion of Mykenas with Sparta. When we reflect upon the very peculiar manner in which Homer identifies Here with the Grecian host and its leader, for she watches over the Greeks with the active solicitude of a mother, and her antipathy against the Tro- jans is implacable to a degree which Zeus cannot comprehend, 3 and when we combine this with the ancient and venerated Herseon, or temple of Here, near Mykenas, we may partly ex- plain to ourselves the preeminence conferred upon Mykense in the Iliad and Odyssey. The Heraon was situated between Argos and Mykenae ; in later times its priestesses were named and its affairs administered by the Argeians : but as it was much nearer 1 See the ode of Pindar addressed to Aristagoras of Tenedos (Ncm. xi 35 ; Strabo, xiii. p. 582). There were Penthilids at Mitylene, from Pcnthi- lus, son of Orestes (Aristot. Polit. v. 8, 13, Schneid.). 1 Iliad, iv. 52. Compare Euripid. Herakleid. 350 ' Iliad, iv. 31. Zeus says to Here, Aoj / uoi't^, ri vv as Upta/tof, Tlpia/Mto re iraiocf Toaaa KaKii pefraKov or' uoTrepxec [tevcaivete 'lAtov Ifa/luTrafru kvurifievov KToXiedpov ; Et <5e ay y\ elaeh&ovaa wi 'Qftdv pe/Bpudoic Tlpia.fj.ov Hpiafioio 'A/lXovf re 1 jua;, rort xev %6%.ov kS Again, xviii. 358, if pa vv aelo 'Ef airr; tyivovro ttapijKOfioavTee ' 166 HISTORY OF GREECE. to Mykenae than to Argos, we may with probability conclude that it originally belonged to the former, and that the increasing power of the latter enabled them to usurp to themselves a religious privilege which was always an object of envy and contention among the Grecian communities. The JEolic colonists doubtless took out with them in their emigration the divine and heroic legends, as well as the worship and ceremonial rites, of the He- raeon ; and in those legends the most exalted rank would be as signed to the close-adjoining and administering city. Mykenae maintained its independence even down to the Persian invasion. Eighty of its heavy-armed citizens, in the ranks of Leonidas at Thermopylae, and a number not inferior at Plataea, upheld the splendid heroic celebrity of their city during a season of peril, when the more powerful Argos disgraced itself by a treacherous neutrality. Very shortly afterwards Mykenae was enslaved and its inhabitants expelled by the Argeians. Though this city so long maintained a separate existence, its importance had latterly sunk to nothing, while that of the Dorian Argos was augmented very much, and that of the Dorian Sparta still more. The name of Mykenas is imperishably enthroned in the Iliad and Odyssey ; but all the subsequent fluctuations of the legend tend to exalt the glory of other cities at its expense. The recog nition of the Olympic games as the grand religious festival ol Peloponnesus gave vogue to that genealogy which connected Pe- lops with Pisa or Elis and withdrew him from Mykenae. More- ever, in the poems of the great Athenian tragedians, Mykenae is constantly confounded and treated as one with Argos. If any one of the citizens of the former, expelled at the time of its final subjugation by the Argeians, had witnessed at Athens a drama of -ZEschylus, Sophokles, or Euripides, or the recital of an ode of Pindar, he would have heard with grief and indignation the city of his oppressors made a partner in the heroic glories of his own. 1 But the great political ascendency acquired by Sparta contributed still farther to degrade Mykenae, by disposing subse- quent poets to treat the chief of the Grecian armament against Troy as having been a Spartan. It has been already mentioned that Stesichorus, Simonides and Pindar adopted this version of 1 See the preface of Dissen to the tenth Nem. of Pindar AGAMEMNON AT SPARTA. 167 the legend : we know that Zeus Agamemnon, as well as the here Menelaus, was worshipped at the Dorian Sparta, 1 and the feeling of intimate identity, as well as of patriotic pride, which had grown up in the minds of the Spartans connected with the name of Agamemnon, is forcibly evinced by the reply of the Spartan Sy- agrus to Gelon of Syracuse at the time of the Persian invasion of Greece. Gelon was solicited to lend his aid in the imminent danger of Greece before the battle of Salamis : he offered to furnish an immense auxiliary force, on condition that the supreme command should be allotted to him. " Loudly indeed would the Pelopid Agamemnon cry out (exclaimed Syagrus in rejecting this application), if he were to learn that the Spartans had been de- prived of the headship by Gelon and the Tyracusans." 2 Nearly a century before this event, in obedience to the injunctions of the Delphian oracle, the Spartans had brought back from Tegea to Sparta the bones of " the Laconian Orestes," as Pindar denomi- nates him : 3 the recovery of these bones was announced to them as the means of reversing a course of ill-fortune, and of procuring victory in their war against Tegea. 4 The value which they set upon this acquisition, and the decisive results ascribed to it, ex- hibit a precise analogy with the recovery of the bones of Theseus from Skyros by the Athenian Cimon shortly after the Persian invasion. 5 The remains sought were those of a hero properly belonging to their own soil, but who had died in a foreign land, and of whose protection and assistance they were for that reason deprived. And the superhuman magnitude of the bones, which were contained in a coffin seven cubits long, is well suited to the legendary grandeur of the son of Agamemnon. 1 Clemens Alexandr. Admonit. ad Gent. p. 24. 'Ayapefivova yovv riva Aia kv ~L-xdpTi) Tifiucrdai 2~a0u/lof iaropei. See also CEnomaus ap. Euseb. Praeparat. Evangel, v. 28. 2 Herodot. vii. 159. T H KS fiey' olfiu^cisv 6 HeTiomdrif 'A.yafie/j.vuv, *rw$- uevoe ZitapTtTfTac inrapaipTjff&m TTJV fiyefj.ovi.av v-jrb TeXuvof re Kal ruv Zvp- Kovaiuv : compare Homer, Iliad, vii. 1 25. See what appears to be an imi- tation of the same passage in Josephus, De Bello Judaico, iii. 8, 4. 'H u&ahay' uv arevu^eiav oi iruTpioi VOJJ.QI, etc. * Pindar. Pyth. xi. 16. 4 Herodot. i 68. 'Plutarch. Theseus, c. 36, Cimon, c. 8; Pausan. iii. 3, 6. HISTORY OF GREECE CHAPTER VIII. LACONIAN AND MESSENIAN GENEALOGIES. THE earliest names in Laconian genealogy are, an autoch- thonous Lelex and a Naiad nymph Kleochareia. From this pair sprung a son Eurotas, and from him a daughter Sparta, who be- came the wife of Lacedasmon, son of Zeus and Taygete, daughter of Atlas. Amyklas, son of Lacedcemon, had two sons, Kynortas and Hyacinthus the latter a beautiful youth, the favorite of Apollo, by whose hand he was accidentally killed while playing at quoits : the festival of the Hyacinthia, which the Lacedaemo- nians generally, and the Amyklaeans with special solemnity, cele- brated throughout the historical ages, was traced back to this legend. Kynortas was succeeded by his son Perieres, who mar- ried Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus, and had a numerous issue Tyndareus, Ikarius, Aphareus, Leukippus, and Hippokoon. Some authors gave the genealogy differently, making Perieres, son of .jEolus, to be the father of Kynortas, and OEbalus son of Kynortas, from whom sprung Tyndareus, Ikarius and Hippo- koon. 1 Both Tyndareus and Ikarius, expelled by their brother Hip- pokoon, were forced to seek shelter at the residence of Thestius, king of Kalydon, whose daughter, Leda, Tyndareus espoused. It is numbered among the exploits of the omnipresent Herakles, that he slew Hippokoon and his sons, and restored Tyndareus to his kingdom, thus creating for the subsequent Herakleidan kings a mythical title to the throne. Tyndareus, as well as his brothers, are persons of interest in legendary narrative : he is the father of Kastor, of Timandra, married lo Echemus, the hero of Tegea, 2 and of Klytaemnestra, married to Agamemnon. Pollux and the erer-memorable Helen are the offspring of Leda by Zeus. Jka- 1 Compare Apollocl. iii. 10, 4. Pansan. iii. 1, 4. 3 Hesiod. ap Schol Pindar. Olymp. xi. 79. LACONIAN AND MESSEXIAN GENEALOGIES. i69 nus is the father of Penelope, wife of Odysseus: the contrast between her behavior and that of Klytaemnestra and Helen became the more striking in consequence of their being so nearly related. Aphareus is the father of Idas and Lynkeus, while Leukippus has for his daughters, Phoebe and Eaeira. Accord- ing to one of the Hesiodic poems, Kastor and Pollux were both sons of Zeus by Leda, while Helen was neither daughter of Zeus nor of Tyndareus, but of Oceanus and Tethys. 1 The brothers Kastor and (Polydeukes, or) Pollux are no less celebrated for th'jir fraternal affection than for their great bodily accomplishments : Kastor, the great charioteer and horse-master; Pollux, the first of pugilists. They are enrolled both among the hunters of the Kalydonian boar and among the heroes of the Argonautic expedition, in which Pollux represses the insolence of Amykus, king of the Bebrykes, on the coast of Asiatic Thrace the latter, a gigantic pugilist, from whom no rival has ever escaped, challenges Pollux, but is vanquished and killed in the fight.2 The two brothers also undertook an expedition into Attica, for the purpose of recovering their sister Helen, who had been carried off by Theseus in her early youth, and deposited by him at Aphidna, while he accompanied Perithous to the under-world, in order to assist his friend in carrying off Persephone. The force of Kastor and Pollux was irresistible, and when they re- demanded their sister, the people of Attica were anxious to restore her: but no one knew where Theseus had deposited his prize. The invaders, not believing in the sincerity of this denial, pro- ceeded to ravage the country, Avhich would have been utterly ruined, had not Dekelus, the eponymus of Dekeleia, been able to indicate Aphidna as the place of concealment. The autochtho- nous Titakus betrayed Aphidna to Kastor and Pollux, and Helen 1 Hesiod. ap. Schol. Pindar. Nem. x. 150. Fragm. Hcsiod. Diintzer, 58. p. 44. Tyndarcus was worshipped as a god at Lacedaemon ("Varro ap. Serv. ad Virgil. JEneid. viii. 275). 2 Apollon. Rhod. ii. 1-96. Apollod. i. 9, 20. Theocrit. xxii. 26-133. In the account of Apollonius and Apollodorus, Amykns is slain in the contest; in that of Theocritus he is only conquered and forced to give in, with a promise to renounce for the future his brutal conduct; the, re were several different narratives. See Schol. Apollon. Rhod ii. 106. VOL V 8 170 HISTORY OF GREECE. was recovered : the brothers in evacuating Attica, carried awaj into captivity JEthra, the mother of Theseus. In after-days, when Kastor and Pollux, under the title of the Dioskuri, had come to be worshipped as powerful gods, and when the Athenians were greatly ashamed of this act of Theseus the revelation made by Dekelus was considered as entitling him to the lasting gratitude of his country, as well as to the favorable remembrance of the Lacedaemonians, who maintained the Dekeleians in the constant enjoyment of certain honorary privileges at Sparta, 1 and even spared that deme in all their invasions of Attica. Nor is it improbable that the existence of this legend had some weight in determining the Lacedaemonians to select Dekelia as the place of their occupation during the Peleponnesian war. The fatal combat between Kastor and Polydeukes on the one side, and Idas and Lynkeus on the other, for the possession of the daughters of Leukippus, was celebrated by more than one ancient poet, and forms the subject of one of the yet remaining Idylls of Theocritus. Leukippus had formally betrothed his daughters to Idas and Lynkeus ; but the Tyndarids, becoming enamored of them, outbid their rivals in the value of the cus- tomary nuptial gifts, persuaded the father to violate his promise, and carried off Phoebe and Ilaeira as their brides. Idas and Lynkeus pursued them and remonstrated against the injustice : according to Theocritus, this was the cause of the combat. But there was another tale, which seems the older, and which assigns a different cause to the quarrel. The four had jointly made a predatory incursion into Arcadia, and had driven off some cattle, but did not agree about the partition of the booty Idas carried off into Messenia a portion of it which the Tyndarids claimed as 1 Diodor. iv. 63. Herod, iv. 73. Ae/ce/let>v 6e rtiv TOTE tpyaaafievuv ep- yov xpfoipov ? rbv TruvTa xpovov, uf aiirol 'Adrivaloi "heyovoi. According to other authors, it was Akademus who made the revelation, and the spot called Akademia, near Athens, which the Lacedaemonians spared in con- sideration of this service (Plutarch, The'sens, 31, 32, 33, where he gives several different versions of this tale by Attic writers, framed with the view of exonerating Theseus). The recovery of Helen and the captivity of JEthra were represented on the ancient chest of Kypselus, with the following cnrioui inscription : Tvvdaptda ' EAt'vnv tyiperov, A.l'&pav 6' 'Atfe'vatffv Pausan. v. 19 1 KASTOR AND POLLUX. 171 Iheir own. To re\enge and reimburse themselves, the Tyndarids invaded Messenia, placing themselves in ambush in the hollow of an ancient oak. But Ljnkeus, endued with preternatural pow- ers of vision, mounted to the top of Taygetus, from whence, as he could see over the whole Peleponnesus, he detected them in their chosen place of concealment. Such was the narrative of the ancient Cyprian Verses. Kastor perished by the hand of Idas. Lynkeus by that of Pollux. Idas, seizing a stone pillar from the tomb of his father Aphareus, hurled it at Pollux, knocked him down and stunned him ; but Zeus, interposing at the critical moment for the protection of his son, killed Idas with a thunder- bolt. Zeus would have conferred upon Pollux the gift of immor- tality, but the latter could not endure existence without his brother: he entreated permission to share the gift with Kastor, and both were accordingly permitted to live, but only on every other day. 1 The Dioskuri, or sons of Zeus, as the two Spartan heroes, Kastor and Pollux, were denominated, were recognized in the historical days of Greece as gods, and received divine honors. This is even noticed in a passage of the Odyssey, 2 which is at any rate a very old interpolation, as well as in one of the Homeric hymns. What is yet more remarkable is, that they were invoked during storms at sea, as the special and all-powerful protectors of the endangered mariner, although their attributes and their celebrity seem to be of a character so dissimilar. They were worshipped throughout most parts of Greece, but with preeminent sanctity at Sparta. Kastor and Pollux being removed, the Spartan genealogy passes from Tyndareus to Menelaus, and from him to Orestes. Originally it appears that Messene was a name for the western portion of Lacdnia, bordering on what was called Pylos : it is so represented in the Odyssey, and Ephorus seems to have included it amongst the possessions of Orestes and his descendants. 1 Cypria Carm. Fragm. 8. p. 13, Diintzcr. Lycophron, 538-566 with Schol. Apollod. iii. 11, 1. Pindar, Nem. x. 55-90. irep^fiepov u-davacriav also Homer, Odyss. xi. 302, with the Commentary of Nitzsch, vol. iii. p. 245. The combat thus ends more favorably to the Tyndarids; but probably tha account least favorable to them is the oldest, since their dignity went on con tinually increasing, until at last they became great deities. ' Odyss. xxi. 15. Diodor. xv. 66. 172 HISTORY OF GREECE. Throughout the whole duration of the Messenico-Dorian king, dom, there never was any town called Messene: the town was first founded by Epameinondas, after the battle of Leuctra. The heroic genealogy of Messenia starts from the same name as that of Laconia from the autochthonous Lelex: his younger son, Polykaon, marries Messene, daughter of the Argeian Triopas, and settles the country. Pausanias tells us that the posterity of this pair occupied the country for five generations ; but he in vain searched the ancient genealogical poems to find the names of their descendants. 1 To them succeeded Perieres, son of ^Eolus ; and Aphareus and Leukippus, according to Pausanias, were sons of Perieres. Idas and Lynkeus are the only heroes, distinguished for personal exploits and memorable attributes, belonging to Messenia proper. They are the counterpart of the Dioskuri, and were interesting persons in the old legendary poems. Marpessa was the daughter of Euenus, and wooed by Apollo : nevertheless Idas 2 carried her off by the aid of a winged chariot which he had received from Poseidon, Euenus pursued them, and when he arrived at the river Lykormas, he found himself unable to overtake them : his grief caused him to throw himself into the river, which ever afterwards bore his name. Idas brought Marpe'ssa safe to Messenia, and even when Apollo there claimed her of him, he did not fear to risk a combat with the god. But Zeus interfered as mediator, and permitted the maiden to choose which of the two she preferred. She attached herself to Idas, being apprehensive that Apollo would desert her in her old age : on the death of her husband she slew herself. Both Idas and Lynkeus took part in the Argonautic expedition and in the KalydSnian boar-hunt. 3 1 Pausan. iv. 2, 1. * Iliad, ix. 553. Simonides had handled this story in detail (Schol. Yen. II. ix. p. 553). Bacchylides Cap, Schol. Pindar. Isthm. iv. 92) celebrated in one of his poems the competition among many eager suitors for the hand of Marpessa, under circumstances similar to the competition for Hippodamcia, daughter of CEnomaus. Many unsuccessful suitors perished by the hand of Euenas : their skulls were affixed to the wall of the temple of Poseidon. 3 Apollod. i. 7, 9. Pausan. iv. 2, 5. Apollonius Rhodius describes Idas as fall of boast and self-confidence, heedless of the necessity of divine aid. Probably this was the character of the brothers in the old legend, as the enemies of the Dioskuri. The wrath of the Dioskuri against Messenia was treated, even in the ARCADIAN GENEALOGY. 173 Aphareus, after the death of his sons, founded the tv/wa of Arene, and made over most part of his dominions to hi Neleus, with whom we pass into the Pylian genealogy. CHAPTER IX. ARCADIAN GENEALOGY. THE Arcadian divine or heroic pedigree begins with Pelasgus, whom both Hesiod and Asius considered as an indigenous man, though Akusilaus the Argeian represented him as brother of Argos and son of Zeus by Niobe, daughter of Phoroneus : this logographer wished to establish a community of origin between the Argeians and the Arcadians. Lykaen, son of Pelasgus and king of Arcadia, had, by different wives, fifty sons, the most savage, impious and wicked of man- kind : Maenalus was the eldest of them. Zeus, in order that he might himself become a witness of their misdeeds, presented himself to them in disguise. They killed a child and served it up to him for a meal; but the god overturned the table and struck dead with thunder Lykaon and all his fifty sons, with the single exception of Nyktimus, the youngest, whom he spared at the earnest intercession of the goddess Gsea (the Earth). The town near which the table was overturned received the name of Trapezus (Tabletown). This singular legend (framed on the same etymological type as that of the ants in -ZEgina, recounted elsewhere) seems ancient, and may probably belong to the Hesiodic Catalogue. But Pau- sanias tells us a story in many respects different, which was represented to him in Arcadia as the primitive local account, and which becomes the more interesting, as he tells us that he himself fully believes it. Both tales indeed go to illustrate the same historical times, as the grand cause of the subjection of the Messenians by the Spartans : that wrath had been appeased at the time when Epameinondai reconstituted Messene (Pausan. iy. 27, I). 174 HISTORY OF GREECE. point the ferocity of Lyka6n's character, as well a3 the cruel rites which he practised. The latter was the first who e&tablished the worship and solemn games of Zeus Lykasus : he offered up a child to Zeus, and made libations with the blood upon the altar. Immediately after having perpetrated this act, he was changed into a wolf. 1 "Of the truth of this narrative (observes Pausanias) I feel persuaded : it has been repeated by the Arcadians from old times, and it carries probability along with it. For the men of that day, from their justice and piety, were guests and companions at table with the gods, who manifested towards them approbation when they were good, and anger if they behaved ill, in a palpable man- ner : indeed at that time there were some, who having once been men, became gods, and who yet retain their privileges as such Aristseus, the Kretan Britomartis, Herakles son of Alkmena, Am- phiaraus the son of Oikles, and Pollux and Kastor besides. We may therefore believe that Lykaon became a wild beast, and that Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, became a stone. But in my time, wickedness having enormously increased, so as to overrun the whole earth and all the cities in it, there are no farther examples of men exalted into gods, except by mere title and from adulation towards the powerful: moreover the anger of the gods falls tardily upon the wicked, and is reserved for them after their departure from hence." 1 Apollodor. iii. 8, 1. Hygin. fab. 176. Eratosthen. Catasterism. 8. Pau- san. viii. 2, 2-3. A different story respecting the immolation of the child is in Nikolaus Damask. Frag. p. 41, OrelJi. Lykaon is mentioned as the first founder of the temple of Zeus Lykaeus in Schol. Eurip. Orest. 1662; but nothing is there said about the human sacrifice or its consequences. In the historical times, the festival and solemnities of the Lykaea do not seem to have been distinguished materially from the other agones of Greece (Pindar, Olymp. xiii. 104; Nem. x. 46): Xenias the Arcadian, one of the generals in the army of Cyrus the younger, celebrated the solemnity with great mag- nificence in the march through Asia Minor (Xen. Anab. i. 2, 10). But the fable of the human sacrifice, and the subsequent transmutation of the person who had eaten human food into a wolf, continued to be told in connection with them (Plato, de Republic, viii. c. 15. p. 417). Compare Pliny, H. N. viii. 34. This passage of Plato seems to afford distinct indication that the practice of offering human victims at the altar of the Lykaean Zeus waa neither prevalent nor recent, but at most only traditional and antiquated* and it therefore limits the sense or invalidates the authority of the Pseudo- Platonic dialogue, Minos, c. 5. LYKAON AND HIS SONS. i75 Pausanias then proceeds to censure those who, by multiplying talse miracles in more recent times, tended to rob the old and genuine miracles of their legitimate credit and esteem. The passage illustrates forcibly the views which a religious and in- structed pagan took of his past time how inseparably he blend- ed together in it gods and men, and how little he either recognized or expected to find in it the naked phenomena and historical laws of connection which belonged to the world before him. He treats the past as the province of legend, the present as that of history ; and in doing this he is more sceptical than the persons with whom he conversed, who believed not only in the ancient, but even in the recent and falsely reported miracles. It is true that Pausanias does not always proceed consistently with this position : he often rationalizes the stories of the past, as if he expected to find historical threads of connection ; and sometimes, though more rarely, accepts the miracles of the present. But in the present instance he draws a broad line of distinction between present and past, or rather between what is recent and what is ancient : his criticism is, in the main, analogous to that of Arrian in regard to the Amazons denying their existence during times of recorded history, but admitting it during the early and un- recorded ages. In the narrative of Pausanias, the sons of Lykaon, instead of perishing by thunder from Zeus, become the founders of the various towns in Arcadia. And as that region was subdivided into a great number of small and independent townships, each having its own eponym, so the Arcadian heroic genealogy appears broken up and subdivided. Pallas, Orestheus, Phigalus, Trape- zeus, Mamalus, Mantineus, and Tegeates, are all numbered among the sons of Lykaon, and are all eponyms of various Arcadian towns. 1 The legend respecting Kallisto and Arkas, the eponym of Arcadia generally, seems to have been originally quite independ ent of and distinct from that of Lykaon. Eumelus, indeed, and F.ome other poets made Kallisto daughter of Lykaon ; but neither Hesiod, nor Asius, nor Pherekydes, acknowledged any relation- ship between them. 2 The beautiful Kallisto, companion of 1 P*us. viii. 3. Hygin. fab. 177. 8 Apollod. iii. 8, 2. 176 HISTORY OF GREECE. Artemis in the cLase, had bound herself by a vow of chastity Zeus, either by persuasion or by force, obtained a violation of the vow, to the grievous displeasure both of Here and Artemi?. The former changed Kallisto into a bear, the latter when she was in that shape killed her with an arrow. Zeus gave to the unfortu- nate Kallisto a place among the stars, as the constellation of the Bear: he also preserved the child Arkas, of which she was pregnant by him, and gave it to the Atlantid nymph Maia to bring up. 1 Arkas, when he became king, obtained from Triptolemus and communicated to his people the first rudiments of agriculture ; he also taught them to make bread, to spin, and to weave. He had three sons Azan, Apheidas, and Elatus : the first was the eponym of Azania, the northern region of Arcadia ; the second was one of the heroes of Tegea ; the third was father of Ischys (rival of Apollo for the affections of Koronis)) as well as of jEpytus and Kyllen : the name of JEpytus among the heroes of Arcadia is as old as the Catalogue in the Iliad. 2 Aleus, son of Apheidas and king of Tegea, was the founder of the celebrated temple and worship of Athene Alea in that town. Lykurgus and Kepheus were his sons, Auge his daugh- ter, who was seduced by Herakles, and secretly bore to him a child : the father, discovering what had happened, sent Auge to Nauplius to be sold into slavery : Teuthras, king of Mysia in Asia Minor, purchased her and made her his wife : her tomb was shown at Pergamus on the river Kaikus even in the time of Pausanias. 3 1 Pausan. viii. 3, 2. Apollod. iii. 8, 2. Hcsiod. apud Eratosthen. Catas- terism. 1. Fragm. 182, Marktsch. Hygin. f. 177. 2 Homer, Iliad, ii. 604. Pind. Olymp. vi. 44-63. The tomb of JEpytus, mentioned in the Iliad, was shown to Pausania* between Pheneus and Stymphalus (Pausan. viii. 16, 2). JEpytus was a cog- nomen of Hermes (Pausan. viii. 47, 3). The hero Arkas was worshipped at Mantineia, under the special injunc- tion of the Delphian oracle (Pausan. viii. 9, 2). 3 Pausan. viii. 4, 6. Apollod. iii. 9, 1. Diodor. iv. 33. A separate legend respecting Auge and the birth of Telephus was current at Tegea, attached to the temple, statue, and cognomen of Eileithyia in the Tegeatic agora (Pausan. viii. 48, 5). Hekataeus seems to have narrated in dctul the adventures of Auge (Pair san. viii. 4, 4 ; 47, 3. Hekatae. Fragm. 345, Didot). EuripidCs followed a different story about Auge and the birth of Telephei TELEPHUS. 177 The child Telephus, exposed on Mount Parthenius, was won- derfully sustained by the milk of a doe : the herdsmen of Kory- thus brought him up, and he was directed by the Delphian oracle to go and find his parents in Mysia. Teuthras adopted him, and he succeeded to the throne : in the first attempt of the army of Agamemnon against Troy, on which occasion they mistook their point and landed in Mysia, his valor signally contributed to the repulse of the Greeks, though he was at last vanquished and desperately wounded by the spear of Achilles by whom how- ever he was afterwards healed, under the injunction of the ora- cle, and became the guide of the Greeks in their renewed attaoi upon the Trojans. 1 From Lykurgus, 2 the son of Aleus and brother of Auge, we pass to his son Ankseus, numbered among the Argonauts, finally killed in the chase of the Kalydonian boar, and father of Agape- nor, who leads the Arcadian contingent against Troy, (the adventurers of his niece, the Tegeatic huntress Atalanta, have already been touched upon), then to Echemus, son of Aeropus and grandson of the brother of Lykurgus, Kepheus. Echemus is the chief heroic ornament of Tegea. When Hyllus, the son of Herakles, conducted the Herakleids on their first expedi- tion against Peloponnesus, Echemus commanded the Tegean troops who assembled along with the other Peloponnesians at the isthmus of Corinth to repel the invasion : it was agreed that the dispute should be determined by single combat, and Echemus, as the champion of Peloponnesus, encountered and killed Hyllus. in his lost tragedy called Auge (See Strabo, xiii. p. 615). Respecting the Mtxro? of .^Eschylus, and the two lost dramas, 'Afaadai and Mvaol of Sopho- kles, little can be made out. (See Welcker, Griechisch. Tragod. p. 53, 408-414). 1 Telephus and his exploits were much dwelt upon in the lost old epic poem, the Cyprian Verses. See argument of that poem ap. DUntzer, Ep. Fragm. p. 10. His exploits were also celebrated by Pindar (Olymp. ix. 70-79J; he is enumerated along with Hector, Cycnns, Memnon, the most distinguished opponents of Achilles (Isthm. iv. 46). His birth, as well as his adventures, became subjects with most of the great Attic trage- dians. * There were other local genealogies of Tegea deduced from Lykurgus : Botachus, eponym of the Deme Botachidac at that place, was his grandson (Nicolans ap. Steph. Byz. v. Bwra^Wat). VOL. i. 8* 12oc. 178 HISTORY OF GREECE. Pursuant to the stipulation by which they had bound themselves, the Herakleids retired, and abstained for three generations from pressing their claim upon Peloponnesus-. This valorous exploit of their great martial hero was cited and appealed to by the Tegeates before the battle of Plataea, as the principal evidence of their claim to the second post in the combined army, next in point of honor to that of the Lacedaemonians, and superior to that of the Athenians : the latter replied to them by producing as counter-evi- dence the splendid heroic deeds of Athens, the protection of the Herakleids against Eurystheus, the victory over the Kadmeians of Thebes, and the complete defeat of the Amazons in Attica. 1 Nor can there be any doubt that these legendary glories were both recited by the speakers, and heard by the listeners, with profound and undoubting faith, as well as with heart-stirring admiration. One other person there is Ischys, son of Elatus and grand son of Arkas in the fabulous genealogy of Arcadia whom it would be improper to pass over, inasmuch as his name and adventures are connected with the genesis of the memorable god or hero ^Esculapius, or Asklepius. Koronis, daughter of Phleg- yas, and resident near the lake Bcebeis in Thessaly, was beloved by Apollo and became pregnant by him : unfaithful to the god, she listened to the propositions of Ischys son of Elatus, and con- sented to wed him : a raven brought to Apollo the fatal news, which so incensed him that he changed the color of the bird from white, as it previously had been, into black. 2 Artemis, to 1 Herodot. ix. 27. Echcmus is described by Pindar (01. xi. 69) as gaining the prize of wrestling in the fabulous Olympic games, on their first estab- lishment by Herakles. He also found a place in the Hesiodic Catalogue aa husband of Timandra, the sister of Helen and Klytaemnestra (Hesiod Fragm. 105, p. 318, Marktscheff.). * Apollodor. iii. 10,3; Hesiod, Fragm. 141-142, Maiktscheff. ; Strab. b p. 442 ; Pherekydes, Fragm. 8 ; Akusilaus, Fragm. 25, Didot. T^J [lev up 1 dyyeAof ^Ai?e Kopa!;, Ifp^f uirb dairbf Hv&u if q-yct'&eijv, KOI /5' eQpaaev IpY tuSr l 'ka $ot/?v%.uaaerat, uf oi>6eif uA/lof olds ruv Tro/liroiv oi>x oaiov 6e Toiif iucrTa/j,vovf T& ap[iana iuVTOV S 1 lirop 1 'ArpettJyo-t. Polyb. v. 2. Alanidas, Teokeuty /ce^apjyorrtf rjvri 6airi. 9 See his JEginetica, p. 14, his earliest work. 3 Pindar, Olymp. ix. 74. The hero Ajax, son of Ollcus, was especially worshipped at Opus ; solemn festivals and games were celebrated in his honor. ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES CHAPTER XI. ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES. THE most ancient name in Attic archaeology, as far as our means of information reach, is that of Erechtheus, who is men- tioned both in the Catalogue of the Iliad and in a brief allusion of the Odyssey. Born of the Earth, he is brought up by the goddess Athene, adopted by her as her ward, and installed in her temple at Athens, where the Athenians offer to him annual sac- rifices. The Athenians are styled in the Iliad, " the people of Erechtheus." 1 This is the most ancient testimony concerning Erechtheus, exhibiting him as a divine or heroic, certainly a su- perhuman person, and identifying him with the primitive ger- mination (if I may use a term, the Grecian equivalent of which would have pleased an Athenian ear) of Attic man. And he was recognized in this same character, even at the close of the fourth century before the Christian gera, by the Butadae, one of the most ancient and important Gentes at Athens, who boasted of him as their original ancestor: the genealogy of the great Athenian orator Lykurgus, a member of this family, drawn up by his son Abron, and painted on a public tablet in the Erechthe- ion, contained as its first and highest name, Erechtheus, son of Hephsestos and the Earth. In the Erechtheion, Erechtheus was worshipped conjointly with Athene" : he was identified with the god Poseidon, and bore the denomination of Poseidon Erech- 1 Iliad, ii. 546. Odyss. vii. 81. Oi (5' dp' 'Ai?^vaf el%ov &r/fiov 'EpF#;?oc //eya/l^ropof, 6v TTOT' 'A&rjvii Qpeipe, Atdc dvyaTqp, TEKS (5e fridupoe "Apavpa t Ka6 6' Iv ' ' A.&Tjvria' elaev iu kvl niovi vyy, 'Ev#aaiarov Kal Tf/f ^avrjvai. Euripides, Ion. 21- Apollod. iii. 14, 6 ; 15, 1. Compare Plato, Timaeus, c. 6. * Schol. ad Iliad. 5i. 546, where he cites also Kallimachus for the story of Erichthonius. Etymologicon Magn. 'Epex&evc. Plato (Kritias, c. 4) em- ploys vague and general language to describe the agency of HSphPEStos and Athen6, which the old fable in Apollodorus (iii. 14, 6) details in coarser terms. See Ovid, Metam. ii. 757. LhOENDS OF THE ATTIC DEMES AND GENTES. 193 dfirnes or cantons, and included, besides, various religious clans or hereditary sects (if the expression may be permitted) ; that is, a multitude of persons not necessarily living together in the same locality, but bound together by an hereditary communion of sacred rites, and claiming privileges, as well as performing obli- gations, founded upon the traditional authority of divine persons for whom they had a common veneration. Even down to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, the demota of the various Attic demes, though long since embodied in the larger political union of Attica, and having no wish for separation, still retained the recollection of their original political autonomy. They lived in their own separate localities, resorted habitually to their own temples, and visited Athens only occasionally for private or po- litical business, or for the great public festivals. Each of these aggregates, political as well as religious, had its own eponymous god or hero, with a genealogy more or less extended, and a train of mythical incidents more or less copious, attached to his name, according to the fancy of the local exegetes and poets. The eponymous heroes Marathon, Dekelus, Kolonus, or Phlius, had sach their own title to worship, and their own position as themes of legendary narrative, independent of Erechtheus, or Poseidon, or Athene, the patrons of the acropolis common to all of them. But neither the archaeology of Attica, nor that of its various component fractions, was much dwelt upon by the ancient epic poets of Greece. Theseus is noticed both in the Iliad and Odyssey as having carried off from Krete Ariadne, the daugh- ter of Minos thus commencing that connection between the Kretan and Athenian legends which we afterwards find so large- ly amplified and the sons of Theseus take part in the Trojan war. 1 The chief collectors and narrators of the Attic mythes were, the prose logographers, authors of the many compositions called Atthides, or works on Attic archaeology. These writers Hellanikus, the contemporary of Herodotus, is the earliest com- poser of an Atthis expressly named, though Pherekydes also touched upon the Attic fables these writers, I say, interwove into one chronological series the legends which either greatly oc- cupied their own fancy, or commanded the most general reverence 1 ^Ethra, mother of Theseus, is also mentioned (Homer, Iliad, iii. 144). VOL. i. 9 13oc. 194 HISTORY OF GREECE. among their countrymen. In this way the religious and political legends of Eleusis, a town originally independent of Athens, but incorporated with it before the historical age, were worked into one continuous sequence along with those of the Erechtheids. In this way, Kekrops, the eponymous hero of the portion of Attica called Kekropia, came to be placed in the mythical chro- nology at a higher point even than the primitive god or hero Erechtheus. Ogyges is said to have reigned in Attica l 1020 years before the first Olympiad, or 1796 years B. c. In his time happened the deluge of Deukalion, which destroyed most of the inhabitants of the country : after a long interval, Kekrops, an indigenous person, half man and half serpent, is given to us by Apollodorus as the first king of the country : he bestowed upon the land, which had before been called Acte, the name of Kekropia. In his day there ensued a dispute between Athene and Poseidon respecting the possession of the acropolis at Athens, which each of them cov- eted. First, Poseidon struck the rock with his trident, and produced the well of salt water which existed in it, called the Erechtheis : next came Athene, who planted the sacred olive-tree ever afterwards seen and venerated in the portion of Erech- theion called the cell of Pandrosus. The twelve gods decided the dispute ; and Kekrops having testified before them that Athene had rendered this inestimable service, they adjudged the spot to her in preference to Poseidon. Both the ancient olive-tree and the well produced by Poseidon were seen on the acropolis, in the temple consecrated jointly to Athene and Erechtheus, throughout the historical ages. Poseidon, as a mark of his wrath for tho 1 Hellanikus, Fragm. 62 ; Philochor. Fragra. 8, ap. Euseb. Prtep. Evang. x. 10. p. 489. Larcher (Chronologic d'Herodote, ch. ix. s. 1. p. 278) treats both the historical personality and the date of Ogyges as perfectly well au- tbenticatcd. It is not probable that Philochorns should have given any calculation of time having reference to Olympiads ; and hardly conceivable that Hellani- kus should have done so. Justin Martyr quotes Hellanikus and Philochorus as having mentioned Moses, (if atyodpa ap%aiov KOI Tra7*aiov TUV 'Iov6aicji> upxovrof MwiJcrewf fiEfivrjvTcu which is still more incredible even than the assertion of Eusebius about their having fixed the date of OgygfC ly Olym- piads (see Philochor. Fragm. 9). ATHENE AND POSEIDON. 195 preference given to Athene, inundated the Thriasian plain with water. 1 During the reign of Kekrops, Attica was laid waste by Karian pirates on the coast, and by invasions of the Aonian inhabitants from Boeotia. Kekrops distributed the inhabitants of Attica into twelve local sections Kekropia, Tetrapolis, Epakria, Dekeleia, Eleusis, Aphidna, Thorikus, Brauron, Kytherus, Sphettus, Ke- phisius, Phalerus. Wishing to ascertain the number of inhabitants, he commanded each man to cast a single stone into a general heap : the number of stones was counted, and it was found that there were twenty thousand. 2 Kekrops married the daughter of Aktaeus, who (according to Pausanias's version) had been king of the country before him, and had called it by the name of Akttea. 3 By her he had three daughters, Aglaurus, Erse and Pandrosus, and a son, Erysichthon. Kekrops is called by Pausanias contemporary of the Arcadian Lykaon, and is favorably contrasted with that savage prince in re- spect of his piety and humanity. 4 Though he has been often desig- nated in modern histories as an immigrant from Egypt into Attica, 1 Apollod. iii. 14, 1 ; Herodot. viii. 55 ; Ovid. Metam. vi. 72. The story current among the Athenians represented Kekrops as the judge of this con- troversy (Xenoph. Memor. iii. 5, 10). The impressions of the trident of Poseidon were still shown upon the rock in the time of Pausanias (Pausan. i. 26, 4). For the sanctity of the ancient olive-tree, see the narrative of Herodotus (I. c.), relating what happened to it when Xerxes occupied the acropolis. As this tale seems to have attached it- self specially to the local peculiarities of the Erechtheiam, the part which Po- seidon plays in it is somewhat mean: that god appears to greater advantage in the neighborhood of the 'iTrTrorfc Kohuvof, as described in the beautiful Chorus of Sophokles (CEdip. Colon. 690-712). A curious rationalization of the monstrous form ascribed to Kekrops (Si^vTie) in Plutarch (Sera Num. Vindict. p. 551). 2 Philochor. ap. Strabo. ix. p. 397. 3 The Parian chronological marble designates Akteeus as an autochthonous person. Marmor Parium, Epoch. 3. Pausan. i. 2, 5. Philochorus treated Aktasus as a fictitious name (Fragm. 8, ut sup.). 4 Pausan. viii. 2. 2. The three daughters of Kekrops were not unnoticed in the mythes (Ovid, Metam. ii. 739) : the tale of Kephalus, son of Herse by Hermes, who was stolen away by the goddess Eos or Hemera in consequence of his surpassing beauty, was told in more than one of the Hesiodic poenn I Pausan. i. 3, 1; Hesiod. Theog. 986). See also Eurip. Ion. 269. 196 HISTORY OF GREECE. yet the far greater number of ancient authorities represent him as indigenous or earth-born. 1 Erysichthon died without issue, and Kranaus succeeded him, another autochthonous person and another eponymus, for the name Kranai was an old denomination of the inhabitants of At- tica. 2 Kranaus was dethroned by Amphiktyon, by some called an autochthonous man ; by others, a son of Deukalion : Amphik- tyon in his turn was expelled by Erichthonius, son of Hephaestos and the Earth, the same person apparently as Erechtheus, but inserted by Apollodorus at this point of the series. Erichthonius, the pupil and favored companion of Athene, placed in the acropo- lis the original Palladium or wooden statue of that goddess, said to have dropped from heaven : he was moreover the first to cele- brate the festival of the Panathenasa. He married the nymph Pasithea, and had for his son and successor Pandion. 3 Erichtho- nius was the first person who taught the art of breaking in horses to the yoke, and who drove a chariot and four. 4 In the time of Pandion, who succeeded to Erichthonius, Dio- nysus and Demeter both came into Attica : the latter was received by Keleos at Eleusis. 5 Pandion married the nymph Zeuxippe, and had twin sons, Erechtheus and Butes, and two daughters, Prokne and Philomela. The two latter are the subjects of a memo- rable and well-known legend. Pandion having received aid in repelling the Thebans from Tereus, king of Thrace, gave him his daughter Prokne in marriage, by whom he had a son, Itys. The beautiful Philomela, going to visit her sister, inspired the barbarous Thracian with an irresistible passion : he violated her person, con- fined her in a distant pastoral hut, and pretended that she was dead, cutting out her tongue to prevent her from revealing the truth. Af- ter a long interval, Philomela found means to acquaint her sister of the cruel deed which had been perpetrated ; she wove into a gar- ment words describing her melancholy condition, and despatched it 1 Jul. Africanus also (ap. Euscb. x. 9. p. 486-488) calls Kekrops 777/61% and aiirox&uv. * Herod, viii. 44. Kpavaal 'A.'&r/vat, Pindar. 3 Apollod. iii. 14. Pausan. i. 2G, 7. 4 Virgil, Gcorgic iii. 114. 5 The mythe of the visit of Deme'ter to Eleusis, on which occasion she Touchsafed to teach her holy rites to the leading Eleusinians, is more touched upon in a previous chapter (see ante, p. 50). PANDION.- PROKNE. -TEREU3. l'J7 by a trusty messenger. Prokne, overwhelmed with sorrow and an- ger, took advantage of the free egress enjoyed by women during the Bacchanalian festival to go and release her sister : the two sis- ters then revenged themselves upon Tereus by killing the boy Itys, and serving him up for his father to eat : after the meal had been finished, the horrid truth was revealed to him. Tereus snatched a hatchet to put Prokne to death : she fled, along with Philomela, and all the three were changed into birds Prokne became a swal- low, Philomela a nightingale, and Tereus an hoopoe. 1 This tale, so popular with the poets, and so illustrative of the general char- acter of Grecian legend, is not less remarkable in another point of view that the great historian Thucydides seems to allude to it as an historical fact, 2 not however directly mentioning the final metamorphosis. After the death of Pandion, Erechtheus succeeded to the king- dom, and his brother, Butes, became priest of Poseidon Erich- thonius, a function which his descendants ever afterwards exer- cised, the Butadae or Eteobutadae. Erechtheus seems to appear in three characters in the fabulous history of Athens as a god, 1 Apollod. iii. 14, 8 ; JEsch. Supplic. 61; Soph. Elektr. 107 ; Ovid, Meta- morph. vi. 425670. Hyginus gives the fable with some additional circum stances, fab. 45. Antoninus Liberalis (Narr. 11), or Bceus, from whom he copies, has composed a new narrative by combining together the names of Pandareos and Aedon, as given in the Odyssey, xix. 523, and the adven- tures of the old Attic fable. The hoopoe still continued the habit of chasing the nightingale ; it was to the Athenians a present fact. See Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 212. 8 Thucyd, ii. 29. He makes express mention of the nightingale in con- nection with the story, though not of the metamorphosis. See below, chap, xvi. p. 544, note 2. So also does Pausanias mention and reason upon it as a real incident : he founds upon it several moral reflections (i. 5, 4 ; x. 4, 5) : the author of the Aoyoj- 'ETrtra^tof, ascribed to Demosthenes, treats it in the same manner, as a fact ennobling the tribe Pandionis, of which Pandion was the eponymus. The same author, in touching upon Kekrops, the eponymus of the Kekropis tribe, cannot believe literally the story of his being half man and half serpent : he rationalizes it by saying that Kekrops was so called be- cause in wisdom he was like a man, in strength like a serpent (Demosth, p. 1397, 1398, Eeiske). Hcsiod glances at the fable (Opp. Di. 566), optfpoyoij Uavdiovlf upro ^cAidwv ; see also jElian., V. H. xii. 20. The subject wai handled by Sophokles in his lost Tereus. 198 HISTORY OF GREECE. Poseidon Erechtheus 1 as a hero, Erechtheus, son of the Earth and now, as a king, son of Pandion : so much did the ideas of divine and human rule become confounded and blended together in the imagination of the Greeks in reviewing their early times. The daughters of Erechtheus were not less celebrated in Athe- nian legend than those of Pandion. Prokris, one of them, is among the heroines seen by Odysseus in Hades : she became the wife of Kephalus, son of Deiones, and lived in the Attic deme of Thorikus. Kephalus tried her fidelity by pretending that he was going away for a long period ; but shortly returned, disguis- ing his person and bringing with him a splendid necklace. He presented himself to Prokris without being recognized, and suc- ceeded in triumphing over her chastity. Having accomplished this object, he revealed to her his true character : she earnestly besought his forgiveness, and prevailed upon him to grant it. Nevertheless he became shortly afterwards the unintentional au- thor of her death : for he was fond of hunting, and staid out a long time on his excursions, so that Prokris suspected him of visiting some rival. She determined to watch him by concealing herself in a thicket near the place of his midday repose ; and when Kephalus implored the presence of Nephele (a cloud) to protect him from the sun's rays, she suddenly started from her hiding-place : Kephalus, thus disturbed, cast his hunting-spear unknowingly into the thicket and slew his wife. Erechtheus in- terred her with great magnificence, and Kephalus was tried for the act before the court of Areopagus, which condemned him to exile. 2 Kreiisa, another daughter of Erechtheus, seduced by Apollo, becomes the mother of Ion, whom she exposes immediately after his birth in the cave north of the acropolis, concealing the fact from every one. Apollo prevails upon Hermes to convey the new-born child to Delphi, where he is brought up as a servant of the temple, without knowing his parents. Kreiisa marries Xuthus, son of .jiEolus, but continuing childless, she goes with Xuthus to 1 Pjseidon is sometimes spoken of under the name of Erechtheus simply (Lycophron, 158). See Hesychius, v. 'Epex&ei<. * Pherekyd6s,Fragm.77,Didot; ap. Schol. ad Odyss. xi. 320; Hellanikus Fr. 82; ap. Schol. Eurip. Crest 1648. Apollodoras (iii 15, 1) gives the story differently. ATTIC LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES 199 die Delphian oracle to inquire for a remedy. The god presents to them Ion, and desires them to adopt him as their son : their eon Achfeus is afterwards born to them, and Ion and Achasus become the eponyms of the lonians and Achoeans. 1 Oreithyia, the third daughter of Erechtheus, was stolen away by the god Boreas while amusing herself on the banks of the Hissus, and carried to his residence in Thrace. The two sons of this marriage, Zetes and Kalais, were born with wings : they took part in the Argonautic expedition, and engaged in the pur- suit of the Harpies : they were slain at Tenos by Heraklea. Kleopatra, the daughter of Boreas and Oreithyia, was married to Phineus, and had two sons, Plexippus and Pandion ; but Phineus afterwards espoused a second wife, Idaaa, the daughter of Darda- nus, who. detesting the two sons of the former bed, accused them falsely of attempting her chastity, and persuaded Phineus in his wrath to put out the eyes of both. For this cruel proceeding he was punished by the Argonauts in the course of their voyage. 2 On more than one occasion the Athenians derived, or at least believed themselves to have derived, important benefits from this marriage of Boreas with the daughter of their primaeval hero : one inestimable service, rendered at a juncture highly critical for 1 Upon this story of Ion is founded the tragedy of Euripides which bears that name. I conceive many of the points of that tragedy to be of the in- vention of Euripides himself: but to represent Ion as son of Apollo, not of Xuthus, seems a genuine Attic legend. Respecting this drama, see 0. Miil- ler, Hist of Dorians, ii. 2. 13-15. I doubt however the distinction which he draws between the lonians and the other population of Attica. * Apollodor. iii. 15, 2 ; Plato, Phaadr. c. 3 ; Sophok. Antig. 984 ; also the copious Scholion on Apollon. Rhod. i. 21 2. The tale of Phineus is told very differently in the Argonautic expedition as given by Apollonius Rhodius, ii. 180. From Sophokles we learn that this was the Attic version. The two winged sons of Boreas and their chase of the Harpies were no- ticed in the Hesiodic Catalogue (see Schol. Apollon. Rhod. ii. 296). But whether the Attic legend of Oreithyia was recognized in the Hesiodic poems seems not certain. Both JEschylus and Sophokles composed dramas on the subject of Orei- thyia (Longin. de Sublimit. c. 3). " Orithyia Atheniensis, filia Terrigenae, et a Borea in Thraciam rapta." (Servius ad Virg. jEneid. xii. 83). Ter- rigena is the yrj-yevr/c 'Epexdevf. Philochorus (Fragm. 30) rationalized the itory, and said that it alluded to the effects of a violent wind. 200 HISTORY OF GREECE. Grecian independence, deserves to be specified. 1 At the tit of the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, the Grecian fleet was assem- bled at Chalcis and Artemision in Eubcea, awaiting the approach of the Persian force, so overwhelming in its numbers as well by sea as on land. The Persian fleet had reached the coast of Mag- nesia and the south-eastern corner of Thessaly without any ma- terial damage, when the Athenians were instructed by an oracle u to invoke the aid of their son-in-law." Understanding the ad- vice to point to Boreas, they supplicated his aid and that of Orei- thyia, most earnestly, as well by prayer as by sacrifice, 2 and the event corresponded to their wishes. A furious north-easterly wind immediately arose, and continued for three days to afflict the Per- sian fleet as it lay on an unprotected coast : the number of ships driven ashore, both vessels of war and of provision, was immense, and the injury done to the armament was never thoroughly re- paired. Such was the powerful succor which the Athenians de- rived, at a time of their utmost need, from their son-in-law Boreas ; and their gratitude was shown by consecrating to him a new tem- ple on the banks of the Ilissus. The three remaining daughters of Erechtheus he had six in alp were in Athenian legend yet more venerated than their sisters, on account of having voluntarily devoted themselves to death for the safety of their country. Eumolpus of Eleusis was the son of Poseidon and the eponymous hero of the sacred gens called the Eumolpids, in whom the principal functions, appertain- ing to the mysterious rites of Demeter at Eleusis, were vested by hereditary privilege : he made war upon Erechtheus and the 1 Herodot. vii. 189. Ot 6' uv 'A&Tjvatoi ai uXXov xpil aTr lp' lov > T ^ v yafiflpbv tmtcovpov Kateoaa&ai. Bop^f 6e, Karii rbv 'EAA^vwv "koyov lx ei yvvalna 'Arrtx^v, 'Qpef&viijv TTJV 'Epf$^0f. Kara dff rb KfjSof TOVTO, ol 'Adrjvaloi, avupaTifao/tevoi ofa rbv Bop^v -yafj(3pbv elvat, etc. * Suidas and Photius, v. Hupdevoi : Protogeneia and Pandora are given as the names of two of them. The sacrifice of Pandora, in the Iambi of Hipponax (Hipponact. Fragm. xxi. Welck. ap. Athen. ix. p. 3"Q), seems tc allude to this daughter of Erechtheus. LEGENDS AND GENEALOGIES OF ELEUSIS. 201 Athenians, with, the aid of a body of Thracian allies ; indeed it appears that the legends of Athens, originally foreign and un- friendly to those of Eleusis, represented him as having been him- self a Thracian born and an immigrant into Attica. 1 Respecting Eumolpus however and his parentage, the discrepancies much exceed even the measure of license usual in the legendary ge nealogies, and some critics, both ancient and modern, have sought to reconcile these contradictions by the usual stratagem of sup- posing two or three different persons of the same name. Even Pausanias, so familiar with this class of unsworn witnesses, com- plains of the want of native Eleusinian genealogists, 2 and of the extreme license of fiction in which other authors had indulged. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the most ancient testimony before us, composed, to all appearance, earlier than the com- plete incorporation of Eleusis with Athens, Eumolpus appears (to repeat briefly what has been stated in a previous chapter) as one of the native chiefs or princes of Eleusis, along with Tripto- 1 Apollodor. iii. 15,3; Thucyd. ii. 15; Iskorates (Panegyr, t. i. p. 206; Panathenaic. t. ii. p. 560, Auger), Lykurgus, cont. Leocrat. p. 201, Rciske, Pausan. i. 38, 3 ; Euripid. Erechth. Fragm. The Schol. ad. Soph. (Ed. CoL 1048 gives valuable citations from Ister, Akestodorus and Androtion : we see that the inquirers of antiquity found it difficult to explain how the Eumol- pids could have acquired their ascendant privileges in the management of the Eleusinia. seeing that Eumolpus himself was a foreigner. ZTJTEITCIC, ri 6ijTroTe ol Ev/j.o^,7r'i6ai riJv re^eruv i^dpxovai, Zevoi ovrsf. Thucydide's does not call Enmolpus a Thracian : Strabo's language is very large and vague (vii. p. 321): Iskorates says that he assailed Athens in order to vindicate the rights of his father Poseidon to the sovereign patronage of the city. Hy- ginus copies this (fab. 46). * Pausan. i. 38. 3. 'Ehcvaivioi re upxaloi, are ov Trpoaovruv aiai yevea- \6yuv, aAAa re Tr%aaa(r&at Sedunaai KOL fiahiGTa EC T& "yevrj TUV r/puuv. Sea Heyne ad Apollodor. iii. 15, 4. " Eumolpi nomen modo communicatum pluribus, modo plurium hominum res et facta cnmnlata in nnnm. Is ad quern Hercules venisse dicitur, serior aetate fuit : antiquior est is de quo hoc loco agitur antecessisse tamen hunc debet alias, qni cum Triptolemo vixit," etc. See the learned and valuable comments of Lobeck in his Aglao- phamus, torn. i. p. 206-213: in regard to the discrepancies of this narrative ha observes, I think, with great justice (p. 211), " quo uno exemplo ex innu- mrabilibus delecto, arguitur eorum temeritas, qui ex variis discordibusque poetarum et mythographorum narratiunculis, antiquae famae formam et quasi lineamenta recognosci posse sperant." 9 s l(3aai%Evoe, yevofievof perti TOV l-vverov Kal dviarbf, rd re aM.a duKOfffiqae rijv wpav, Kal Kara^vaaf ruv aM.cn *6\cuv TU re povfavrripia Kal Tuf ap^df , f TT)V vvv iroltv wavraf. THESEUS AND HIS ADVENTURES. 207 and long-sighted politician is a subsequent correction, introduced indeed by men of superior mind, but destitute of historical war- ranty, and arising out of their desire to find reasons of their own for concurring in the veneration which the general public paid more easily and heartily to their national hero. Theseus, in the Iliad and Odyssey, fights with the Lapithge against the Centaurs : Theseus, in the Hesiodic poems, is misguided by his passion for the beautiful - rd pvd&6e( VTraxovoai Kal Aa/3cZv ioTopiaf oiftiv' otrov d' uv av&aduc ~ov iridavov irepi- j, Kal pi) 6exi)Tai TTJV irpdfrb elubf pi f iv, evyvufiovuv anpoaruv irppuf rf/v upxawlioyiav 208 HISTORY OF GREECE. tendency of the enlightened men of Athens, from the days of Solon downwards, to refine and politicize the character of The- seus : l even Peisistratus expunge-I from one of the Hesiodic poems the line which described the violent passion of the hero for the fair ./Egle : 2 and the tragic poets found it more congenial to the feelings of their audience to exhibit him as a dignified and liberal sovereign, rather than as an adventurous single-handed fighter. But the logographers and the Alexandrine poets re- mained more faithful to the old fables. The story of Hekale, the hospitable old woman who received and blessed Theseus when he went against the Marathonian bull, and whom he found dead when he came back to recount the news of his success, was treated by Kallimachus : 3 and Virgil must have had his mind full of the unrefined legends when he numbered this Attic Hera- kles among the unhappy sufferers condemned to endless penan.ce in the under-world. 4 Two however among the Theseian fables cannot be dismissed without some special notice, the war against the Amazons, and the expedition against Krete. The former strikingly illustrates the facility as well as the tenacity of Grecian legendary faith ; the latter embraces the story of Daedalus and Minos, two of the most eminent among Grecian ante-historical personages. The Amazons, daughters of Ares and Harmonia, 5 are both 1 See Isokratfis, Panathenaic. (t. ii. p. 510-512, Auger) ; Xcnoph. Memor. iii. 5, 10. In the Helenas Encomium, Isokrates enlarges more upon the per- sonal exploits of Theseus in conjunction with his great political merits (t. ii. p. 342-350, Auger). 3 Plutarch, Theseus, 20. 3 See the epigram of Krinagoras, Antholog. Pal. vol. ii. p. 144 ; cp. xv. ed. Brunck. and Kallimach. Frag. 40. 'Aeidet 6' (Kallimachus) 'E/cuAj/f re (tn^o^eivoio Kafaijv, Kal Qijael Mapaduv oiif itre:-&r]KE novovf. Some beautiful lines are preserved by Suidas, v. 'E7ravAt?>oS;eivoio KaXifig Mvfio6fie&a- gvvbv yap liraiifaov lanv uTraai. 4 Virgil, JEneid, vi. 617. " Sedet aeternumque sedebit Infelix Theseiu ' Pherekyd. Fragm. 25, Didot. THE AMAZONS 209 early creations and frequent reproductions of the ancient epic which was indeed, we may generally remark, largely occupied both with the exploits and sufferings of women, or heroines, the wives and daughters of the Grecian heroes and which recog- nized in Pallas Athene the finished type of an irresistible female warrior. A nation of courageous, hardy and indefatigable women, dwelling apart from men, permitting only a short temporary in- tercourse for the purpose of renovating their numbers, and burn- ing out their right breast with a view of enabling themselves to draw the bow freely, this was at once a general type stimu- lating to the fancy of the poet and a theme eminently popular with his hearers. Nor was it at all repugnant to the faith of the latter who had no recorded facts to guide them, and no other standard of credibility as to the past except such poetical nar- ratives themselves to conceive communities of Amazons as having actually existed in anterior time. Accordingly we find these warlike females constantly reappearing in the ancient poems, and universally accepted as past realities. In the Iliad, when Priam wishes to illustrate emphatically the most numerous host in which he ever found himself included, he tells us that it was assembled in Phyrgia, on the banks of the Sangarius, for the purpose of resisting the formidable Amazons. When Bellero- phon is to be employed on a deadly and perilous undertaking,! by those who indirectly wish to procure his death, he is despatch- ed against the Amazons. In the JEthiopis of Arktinus, describing the post-Homeric war of Troy, Penthesileia, queen of the Ama- zons, appears as the most effective ally of the besieged city, and as the most formidable enemy of the Greeks, succumbing only to the invincible might of Achilles. 2 The Argonautic heroes find the Amazons on the river Thermodon, in their expedition along Iliad, iii. 186 ; vi. 152. 2 See Proclus's Argument of the lost jEthiopis (Fragm. Epicor. Graecor. ed. Diintzcr, p. 16). We are reduced to the first book of Quintus Smyrnaens for some idea of the valor of Penthesileia ; it is supposed to be copied more or less closely from the ./Ethiopia. See Tychsen's Dissertation prefixed to his edition of Quintus, sections 5 and 12. Compare Dio. Chrysostom. Or. JLI. p. 350, Reiske. Philostratns (Heroica, c. 19. p. 751) gives a strange transformation of this old epical- narrative into a descent of Amazons upon the island sacred to Achilles. VOL. I. 140C. 210 HISTORY OF GREECE. the southern coast of the Euxine. To the same spot Heracles goes to attack them, in the performance of the ninth labor im- posed upon him by Eurystheus, for the purpose of procuring the girdle of the Amazonian queen, Hippolyte; 1 and we are told that they had not yet recovered from the losses sustained in this severe aggression when Theseus also assaulted and defeated them, carrying off their queen, Antiope. a This injury they avenged by invading Attica, an undertaking as Plutarch justly observes) "neither trifling nor feminine," especially if according to the statement of Hellanikus, they crossed the Cimmerian Bosporus on the winter ice, beginning their march from the Asiatic side of the Paulus Maeotis. 3 They overcame all the resistances and dif ficulties of this prodigious march, and penetrated even into Athens itself, where the final battle, hard-fought and at one time doubt- ful, by which Theseus crushed them, was fought in the very 1 Apollon. Khod. ii. 966, 1004; Apollod. ii. 5-9; Diodor. ii. 46; iv. 16. The Amazons were supposed to speak the Thracian language ( Schol. Apoll Rhod. ii. 953), though some authors asserted them to be natives of Libyia, others of JEthiopia (ib. 965). Hellanikus (Frag. 33, ap. Schol. Pindar. Nem. iii. 65) said that all the Argonauts had assisted Herakles in this expedition : the fragment of the old epic poem (perhaps the 'Ajitafovto) there quoted mentions Telamon specially. 2 The many diversities in the story respecting Theseus and the Amazon Antiopeare well set forth in Bachet de Meziriac (Commentaires sur Ovide, fcLp.317). Welcker (T)er Epische Cyclus, p. 313) supposes that the ancient epic poem called by Suidas 'A/iofovta, related to the invasion of Attica by the Ama- zons, and that this poem is the same, under another title, as the 'Ar#f of Hegesinous cited by Pausanias : I cannot say that he establishes this con- jecture satisfactorily, but the chapter is well worth consulting. The epic Theseis seems to have given a version of the Amazonian contest in many respects different from that which Plutarch has put together out of the logo- graphers (see Plut. Thes. 28) : it contained a narrative of many unconnect- ed exploits belonging to Theseus, and Aristotle censures it on that account as ill-constructed (Poetic, c. 17). The 'AjUaforfc or 'ApaZoviKu of Onasus can hardly have been (as Heyno supposes, ad Apollod. ii. 5, 9) an epic poem : we may infer from the ration- alizing tendency of the citation from it (Schol. ad Theocrit. xiii. 4G, and Schol. Apollon. Rhod. i. 1207) that it was a work in prose- There was an 'A/faCovic by Possis of Magnesia ("Athenseas, vii. p. 296). * Plutarch, Theseus, 27. Pindar (Olymp. xiii. 84) represents the Amazonf as having come from the extreme north, when Bcllerophon conquers them. INVASION OF ATTICA BY THE AMAZONS. 21 1 heart of the city. Attic antiquaries confidently pointed out tne exact position of the two contending armies : the left wing of the Amazons rested upon the spot occupied by the commemorative monument called the Amazoneion ; the right wing touched the Pnyx, the place in which the public assemblies of the Athenian democracy were afterwards held. The details and fluctuations of the combat, as well as the final triumph and consequent truce, were recounted by these authors with as complete faith and as much circumstantiality as those of the battle of Platasa by Herod- otus. The sepulchral edifice called the Amazoneion, the tomb or pillar of Antiope near the western gate of the city the spot called the Horkomosion near the temple of Theseus even the hill of Areiopagus itself, and the sacrifices which it was custom- ary to offer to the Amazons at the periodical festival of the The- seia were all so many religious mementos of this victory ; l which was moreover a favorite subject of art both with the sculptor and the painter, at Athens as well as in other parts of Greece. No portion of the ante-historical epic appears to have been more deeply worked into the national mind of Greece than this inva- sion and defeat of the Amazons. It was not only a constant theme of the logographers, but was also familiarly appealed to by the popular orators along with Marathon and Salamis, among those antique exploits of which their fellow-citizens might justly be proud. It formed a part of the retrospective faith of Herodotus, Lysias, Plato and Isokrates, 2 and the exact date of the event was settled 1 Plutarch, Theseus, 27-28 ; Pausan. i. 2, 4 ; Plato, Axiochus, c. 2 ; Har- pocration, v. 'Afta&velov ; Aristophan. Lysistrat. 678, with the Scholia. JE>s- chyl. (Eumenid. 685) says that the Amazons assaulted the citadel from the Areiopagus : TLuyov T' 'Apeiov rovS\ 'Afta^ovuv ISpav 2j?vaf r\ or' ^Ai?oj> Qqaeuc Kara &6vov ^TpaTtjXarovffai, Kal itoKiv vEomokiv Tf/v6' v-^'iTTvpyov avreirvpyuaav irore. 9 Herodot. ix. 27, Lysias (Epitaph, c. 3) represents the Amazons as dp- I'ovaat TroAAwv E-&VUV : the whole race, according to him, was nearly extin- guished in their unsuccessful and calamitous invasion of Attica. Isokrates (Panegyric, t. i. p. 206, Auger) says the same ; also Panathenaic, t. iii. p. 560, Auger; Demosth. Epitaph, p. 1391. Reisk. Pausanias quotes Pindar's no- tice of the invasion, and with the fullest belief of its historical reality (vii. 2,4) 212 HISTORY OP GREECE. by the chronologists. 1 Nor did the Athenians stand alone in such a belief. Throughout many other regions of Greece, both Euro- pean and Asiatic, traditions and memorials of the Amazons wer& found. At Megara, at Trrezen, in Laconia near Cape Taenarus, at Chaeroneia in Breotia, and in more than one part of Thessaly, sepulchres or monuments of the Amazons were preserved. The warlike women (it was said), on their way to Attica, had not traversed those countries, without leaving some evidences of their passage. 2 Amongst the Asiatic Greeks the supposed traces of the Amazons were yet more numerous. Their proper territory was asserted to be the town and plain of Themiskyra, near the Grecian colony of Amisus, on the river Thermodon, a region called after their name by Roman historians and geographers. 3 But they were believed to have conquered and occupied in early times a much wider range of territory, extending even to the coast of Ionia and JEolis. Ephesus, Smyrna, Kyme, Myrina, Paphos and Sinope were af- firmed to have been founded and denominated by them. 4 Some Plato mentions the invasion of Attica by the Amazons in the Menexenus (c. 9), but the passage in the treatise DC Legg. c. ii. p. 804, UKOVUV yap 6% /j.i>dovf Trahaiovf TTTreicr[i.ai, etc. is even a stronger evidence of his own be- lief. And Xenophon in the Anabasis, when he compares the quiver and the hatchet of his barbarous enemies to " those which the Amazons carry," evi- dently believed himself to be speaking of real persons, though he could have seen only the costumes and armature of those painted by Mikon and others (Anabas. iv. 4, 10 ; compare ^Eschl. Supplic. 293, and Aristophan. Lysistr. 678; Lucian. Anachars, c. 34. v. iii. p. 318). How copiously the tale was enlarged upon by the authors of the Atthides, we see in Plutarch, Theseus, 27-28. Hekatseus (ap. Steph. Byz. 'A./ua&veiov ; also Fragm. 350, 351, 352, Di- dot) and Xanthus (ap. Hesychium, v. ~Bov7(.e^il7}) both treated of the Ama- zons : the latter passage ought to be added to the collection of the Fragments of Xanthus by Didst. 1 Clemens AlexancJr. Stromat, i. p. 336; Marmor Parium, Epoch. 21. 1 Plutarch, Thes. 27-28. Steph. Byz. v. 'A/zafoveZov. Pausan. ii. 32, 8j iii. 25, 2. 3 Phcrekydes ap. Schol. Apollon. Eh. ii. 373-992 ; Justin, ii. 4 ; Strabo, xii. p. 547, QefiiaKvpav, rd TUV J \fj.a6vuv oinTjTTipiov ; Diodor. ii. 45-46; Sallust ap. Serr. ad Virgil. JEneid. xi. 659 ; Pompon. Mela, i. 19 ; Plin. H. N. vi. 4. The geography of Quintus Curtius (vi. 4) and of Philostratus (He- roic c. 19) is on this point indefinite, and even inconsistent. F/phor. Fragm. 87, Didot. Strabo, xi. p. 505 ; xiii p. 573 ; xiii. p. 622 AMAZONS IN ASIA. 2J3 Authors placed them in Libya or Ethiopia ; and when the Pontic Greeks on the north-western shore of the Euxine had become acquainted with the hardy and daring character of the Sarmatian maidens, who were obliged to have slain each an enemy in battle as the condition of obtaining a husband, and who artificially prevented the growth of the right breast during childhood, - they could imagine no more satisfactory mode of accounting for such attributes than by deducing the Sarmatians from a colony of va- grant Amazons, expelled by the Grecian heroes from their terri- tory on the Thermodon. 1 Pindar ascribed the first establishment of the memorable temple of Artemis at Ephesus to the Amazons. And Pausanias explains in part the preeminence which this tem- ple enjoyed over every other in Greece by the widely diffused renown of its female founders, 2 respecting whom he observes (with perfect truth, if we admit the historical character of the old epic), that women possess an unparalleled force of resolution in resisting adverse events, since the Amazons, after having been first roughly handled by Herakles and then completely defeated Pausan. iv. 31,6 ; vii. 2. 4. Tacit. Ann. iii. 61. Scbol. Apollon. Ehod. ii. 965. The derivation of the name Sinope from an Amazon was given by Heka trcns (Fragm. 352). Themiskyra also had one of the Amazons for its epony- mus (Appian, Bell. Mithridat. 78). Some of the most venerated religious legends at Sinop6 were attached to the expedition of Herakles against the Amazons : Autolykns, the oracle- giving hero, worshipped with great solemnity even at the time when the town was besieged by Lucullus, was the companion of Heracles (Appian, ib. c.83). Even a small mountain village in the territory of Ephesus, called Latorcia, derived its name from one of the Amazons ( Athenae. i. p. 31 ). 1 Herodot. iv. 108-117, where he gives the long tale, imagined by the Pon- tic Greeks, of the origin of the Sarmatian nation. Compare Hippokrates, De Ae're, Locis et Aquis, c. 17; Ephorus, Fragm. 103 ; Skymn. Chius, v. 102; Plato, Legg. vii. p. 804 ; Diodor. ii. 34. The testimony of Hippokrates certifies the practice of the Sarmatian wo- men to check the growth of the right breast : Tdv de^iov 6s fiat^bv OVK Tlaidioiai -yap kovaiv en vijirioiaiv ai fir)Tepef ^aX/cetov rerexyrjfievov 7r' rovTf,) dicnrvpov TTOteovaat, Trpbf rbv fj.aov rt&eaai rdv de^iov nal SXJTE TTJV av^ijaiv ty&eiptw&ai, if de rbv de^iov ufibv nal Bpa^tova xHaav Tt/v ioxvv /cat ri> 7r/^i?of K.6i66vai. Ktesias also compares a warlike Sakian woman to the Amazons (Fragm. Persic, ii. pp. 221,449, Bahr). 2 Pausan. iv. 31,6; vii. 2, 4. Dionys. Perieget. 828 214 HISTORY OF GREECE. by Theseus, could yet find courage to play so conspicuous a part in the defence of Troy against the Grecian besiegers. 1 It is thus that in what is called early Grecian history, as th Greeks themselves looked back upon it, the Amazons were among the most prominent and undisputed personages. Nor will the cir- cumstance appear wonderful if we reflect, that the belief in them was first established at a time when the Grecian mind was fed with nothing else but religious legend and epic poetry, and that the incidents of the supposed past, as received from these sources, were addressed to their faith and feelings, without being required to adapt themselves to any canons of credibility drawn from present experience. But the time came when the historians of Alexander the Great audaciously abused this ancient credence. Amongst other tales calculated to exalt the dignity of that monarch, they affirmed that after his conquest and subjugation of the Per- sian empire, he had been visited in Hyrcania by Thalestris, queen of the Amazons, who admiring his warlike prowess, was anxious to be enabled to return into her own country in a condition to produce offspring of a breed so invincible. 2 But the Greeks had now been accustomed for a century and a half to historical and philosophical criticism and that uninquiring faith, which was readily accorded to the wonders of the past, could no longer be invoked for them when tendered as present reality. For the fable of the Amazons was here reproduced in its naked simplicity, without being ration- alized or painted over with historical colors. Some literary men indeed, among whom were Demetrius ot Skepsis, and the Mitylenaean Theophanes, the companion of Pom- pey in his expeditions, still continued their belief both in Ama- zons present and Amazons past ; and when it becomes notorious that at least there were none sucn on the banks of the Thermodon, these authors supposed them to have migrated from their original locality, and to have settled in the unvisited regions north of Mount Caucasus. 3 Strabo, on the contrary, feeling that the grounds 1 Pausan. i. 15, 2. * Arrian, Exped. Alex, vii. 13; compare iv. 15 ; Quint. Curt. vi. 4; Jus- tin, xlii. 4. The note of Freinshemius on the above passage of Quintus Cur- tins is full of valuable references on the subject of the Amazons. * Strabo, xi. p. 503-504 ; Appian, Bell. Mithridat. c. 103 ; Plutarch, Pott STEABO AND ARRIAN. 215 of disbelief applied with equal force to the ancient stories and to the modern, rejected both the one and the other. But he remarks at the same time, not without some surprise, that it was usual with most persons to adopt a middle course, to retain the Ama zons as historical phenomena of the remote past, but to disallow them as realities of the present, and to maintain that the breed had died out. 1 The accomplished intellect of Julius Caesar did not scruple to acknowledge them as having once conquered and held in dominion a large portion of Asia; 2 and the compromise be- tween early, traditional, and religious faith on the one hand, and pcius, c. 35. Plin. N. H. vi. 7. Plutarch still retains the old description of Amazons from the mountains near the Thermodon. Appian keeps clear of this geographical error, probably copying more exactly the language of The- ophanes, who must have been well aware that when Lucullus besieged The- miskyra, he did not find it defended by the Amazons (see Appian, Bell. Mith- ridat. c. 78). Ptolemy (v. 9) places the Amazons in the imperfectly known regions of Asiatic Sarmatia, north of the Caspian and near the river Rha (Volga). " This fabulous community of women (observes Forbiger) Hand Such der alten Geographic, ii. 77, p. 457) was a phenomenon much too inter- esting for the geographers easily to relinquish." 1 Strabo, xi. p. 505. '\Siov 6e TL ov[t(3ej37)Ke TU> 2,6yo Trepl ruv 'A/j.a6vuv Oi jiev yap aTJkoL rb #ui?c5(5ef KOI TO iaTOpiKov 6tupia/j.Evov %ovai ' TU yap ira- Aaiu Kal ipevtifj Kal TspaTudTj, fiv$oi KaXovvrai' [Note. Strabo does not always speak of the fivdoi in this disrespectful tone ; he is sometimes much displeased with those who dispute the existence of an historical kernel in the inside, especially with regard to Homer.] ij 6' iaropla fiovktrai rdAjytfef, avre xatM- ibv, O.VTE VEOV Kal Tb TEpar66ovf KOifjaaiTo kirl rf/v aA- JiOTpiav, Kal KparrjasiEv ov T<; fiovov, uars Kal [tsxpi rf/f vi>v 'Iwv/af TrpoeTi&Etv, u^a Kal dianovnov arel^aiTO arpariav fJ-expi rrt 'A.TTIKTJC ; "A/l/ld fiijv ravTa ye aiiTti Kal vvv Aeyrrat irepl avruv e irtr si v s i 6e TTJV IdioTijTa Kal T b TT IGT eveadai r a ira?.aia fj.a%.%,ov f) rioi, i7rififi(r&e baa vfuv kit ruv Mf vtkiu TifiupijfiuTuv Mfvuf ineppe UJji'iuv 6aK.pvfj.aTa, OTI oi fiev oil ^vve^enp^avro avru rbv tv Ka/u/c^) ftuvarov ygvo/ievov, vfj.ei 6e neivotffi TTJV /e STraprjyc aprra^-d elaav UTT' uvdpdf papfia- pov -yvvaiKa. If such an answer was ever returned at til, I cannot but think that it most have been from some oracle in Krete itself, not from Delphi. The Delphian oracle could never have so far forgotten its obligations to the general cause of Greece, at that critical moment, which involved moreovei the safety of all its own treasures, as to deter the Kretans from giving assist- Mice. * Hesiod, Theogon. 949; Pausan. i. 1, 4. 4 Kallimach. Hvmn. ad Dian. 189. Strabo (x. p. 476) dwells also upon CHARACTER OF MINOS IN LEGENb. 22* the proprietor of the Labyrinth and of the Minotaur, and the exacter of a periodical tribute of youths and maidens from Athens as food for this monster, lastly, the follower of the fugitive artist Daedalus to Kamikus, and the victim of the three ill-dis posed daughters of Kokalus in a bath. With this strongly- marked portrait, the Minos of Thucydides and Aristotle has scarcely anything in common except the name. He is the first to acquire Tfialassokraty, or command of the JEgaean sea : he ex- pels the Karian inhabitants from the Cyclades islands, and sends thither fresh colonists under his own sons ; he puts down piracy, in order that he may receive his tribute regularly ; lastly, he at- tempts to conquer Sicily, but fails in the enterprise and perishes. 1 Here we have conjectures, derived from the analogy of the Athenian maritime empire in the historical times, substituted in place of the fabulous incidents, and attached to the name of Minos. In the fable, a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens is paid to him periodically by the Athenians ; in the historicized narrative this character of a tribute-collector is preserved, but the tribute is money collected from dependent islands ;2 and Aris- the strange contradiction of the legends concerning Minos : I agree with Hoeckh (Kreta, ii. p. 93) that <5ar. See also c. 8. Aristot. Polit. ii. 7, 2, Ao/ctt <5' rj vr/croc Kai npbf TTJV ap%r/v TJJV 'EWriviKjjv it(j>VKvai Kal Keicr&ai aAwf dib Kal Tqv TT/C -daAuaajjc upx^v Kare- ff%Ev 6 Mfvuf, Kal rae vfjaove raf fiev e^etpaiffaro, rac <5e $Kiae reAoc (}' ETCI i?e//cvoc ry IiiKsXia rdv fi'iov eTefaiiTriGev iKei trepl KU/MKOV. Ephorns (ap. Skymn. Chi. 542) repeated the same statement: he men tioned also the autochthonous king Kres. 2 It is curious that Herodotus expressly denies this, and in language which shows that he had made special inquiries about it : he says that the Karians or Leleges in the islands (who were, according to Thucydides, expelled by Minos) paid no tribute to Minos, but manned his navy, i. e. they stood to Minos much in the same relation as Chios and Lesbos stood to Athena (Herodot. i. 171). One may trace here the influence of those discussions 228 HISTORY OF GREECE. totle points out to us how conveniently Krete is situated to ex- ercise empire over t!ie .ZEgaean. The expedition against Kami kus, instead of being directed to the recovery of the fugitive Daedalus, is an attempt on the part of the great thalassokrat to conquer Sicily. Herodotus gives us generally the same view of the character of Minos as a great maritime king, but his notice of the expedition against Kamicus includes the mention of Dae- dalus as the intended object of it. 1 Ephorus, while he described Minos as a commanding and comprehensive lawgiver imposing his commands under the sanction of Zeus, represented him as the imitator of an earlier lawgiver named Rhadamanthus, and also as an immigrant into Krete from the JEolic Mount Ida, along with the priests or sacred companions of Zeus called the Idaei Dactyli. Aristotle too points him out as the author of the Sys- sitia, or public meals common in Krete as well as at Sparta, other divergences in a new direction from the spirit of the old fables.2 The contradictory attributes ascribed to Minos, together with the perplexities experienced by those who wished to introduce a regular chronological arrangement into these legendary events, has led both in ancient and in modern times to the supposition of two kings named Minos, one the grandson of the other, Minos I., the son of Zeus, lawgiver and judge, Minos II., the thalas- sokrat, a gratuitous conjecture, which, without solving the prob- lem required, only adds one to the numerous artifices employed for imparting the semblance of history to the disparate matter of legend. The Kretans were at all times, from Homer downward, expert and practised seamen. But that they were ever united which must have been prevalent at that time respecting the maritime empire of Athens. 1 Herodot. vii. 170. AeyeTai yap Mivu Kara ^rtjffiv Aaidu'hov airiicofiEVOv if SiKaviriv, TTJV vvv ZinaXirjv Ka^ovfievj/v, aTrodavelv J3tai Ke TTJV lv$' una {Jahev [ieju.7t.at irorl Trerpaf, 'AM,' "Hptj TrapsTTefiiptv, eirei See also Iliad, vii. 470. 2 See Hesiod, Fragm. Catalog/. Fr. 6. p. 33, Diintz. ; Eoiai, Frag. 36. p 39; Frag. 72. p. 47. Compare Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. i. 45; ii. 178-297, 1125; iv. 254-284. Other poetical sources The old epic poem JEgimius, Frag. 5. p. 57, Duntz. 232 HISTORY OF 'GREECE any means of determining what the original story was ; for the narrative, as we have it, borrowed from later sources, is enlarged by local tales from the subsequent Greek colonies Ky zikus, Herakleia, Sinope, and others. Jason, commanded by Pelias to depart in quest of the golden fleece belonging to the speaking ram which had carried away Phryxus and Helle, was encouraged by the oracle to invite the noblest youth of Greece to his aid, and fifty of the most distin guished amongst them obeyed the call. Herakles, Theseus, Telamon and Peleus, Kastor and Pollux, Idas and Lynkeus Zetes and Kalais, the winged sons of Boreas Meleager, Am- phiaraus, Kepheus, Laertes, Autolykus, Menoatius, Aktor, Ergi- nus, Euphemus, Ankoeus, Poeas, Periklymenus, Augeas, Eurytus, Admetus, Akastus, Kseneus, Euryalus, Peneleos and Leitus, Askalaphus and lalmenus, were among them. Argus the son of Phryxus, directed by the promptings of Athene, built the ship, inserting in the prow a piece of timber from the celebrated oak of Dodona, which was endued with the faculty of speech :* Ti- phys was the steersman, Idmon the son of Apollo and Mopsus Kincethdn in tho Herakleia touched upon the death of Hylas near Kius in Mysia (Schol. Apollon. Rhod. i. 1357). The epic poem Naupactia, Frag. 1 to 6, Diintz. p. 61. Eumtlus, Frag. 2, 3, 5, p. 65, Diintz. Epimenides, the Kretan prophet and poet, composed a poem in 6500 lines, 'ApyoCf vavirjjyiav re, nal 'laaovof elf KoA^ovf inron^ovv (Diogen. Lae'r. i. 10, 5), which is noticed more than once in the Scholia on Apollonius, on subjects connected with the poem (ii. 1125 ; iii. 42). See Mimnerm. Frag. 10, Schneidewin, p. 15. Antimachus, in his poem Lyd, touched upon the Argonautic expedition, and has been partially copied by Apollonius Rhod. (Schol. Ap. Rh. i. 1290; 11. 296: iii. 410; iv. 1153). The logographers Pherekydes and Ilekataeus seem to have related the ex- pedition at considerable length. The Bibliothek der alten Literatur und Knnst (Gottingen, 1786, 2Us Stuck, p. 61) contains an instructive Dissertation by Groddeck, Ueber die Argonautika, a summary of the various authorities respecting this expedi- tion. 1 Apollon. Rhod. i. 525 ; iv. 580. Apollodor. i. 9, 16. Valerius Flaccus (i. 300) softens down the speech of the ship Argo into a dream of Jason. Alexander Polyhistor explained what wood was used (Plin. II. N. xiii ARGONAUTS AT LEMNOS. 231 accompanied them as prophets, while Orpheus came to amuse their weariness and reconcile tl.eir quarrels with his harp. 1 First they touched at the island of Lemnos, in which at that time there were no men ; for the women, infuriated by jealousy and ill-treatment, had put to death their fathers, husbands and brothers. The Argonauts, after some difficulty, were received with friendship, and even admitted into the greatest intimacy. They ?iaid some months, and the subsequent population of the island was 1 Apollonius Rhodius, Apollodorus, Valerius Flaccus, the Orphic Argonau- tica, and Hyginus, have all given Catalogues of the Argonautic heroes (there was one also in the lost tragedy called A.JJ/J.VKU of Sophokles, see Welcker Gr. Trag. i. 327) : the discrepancies among them are numerous and irreconcil able. Burmann, in the Catalogus Argonautarum, prefixed to his edition of Valerius Flaccus, has discussed them copiously. I transcribe one or two of the remarks of this conscientious and laborious critic, out of many of a simi- lar tenor, on the impracticability of a fabulous chronology. Immediately before the first article, Acastus " Neque enim in aetatibus Argonautarum ullam rationem temporum constare, neque in stirpe et stemmate deducendA ordinem ipsum naturae congruere videbam. Nam et huic militise adscribi videbam Heroas, qui per nature leges et ordinem fati eo usque vitam ex- trahcre non potuere, ut aliis ab hac expeditione remotis Heroum militiis no- mina dedisse narrari deberent a Poetis et Mythologis. In idem etiam tempus avos et Nepotes conjici, consanguineos setate longe inferiores prioribus nt sequales adjungi, concoquere vix posse videtur." Art. Ancceus : " Scio objici posse, si seriem illam majorem respiciamus, hunc Ancseum simul cum proa vo suo Talao in eandem profectum fuisse expeditionem. Sed similia exem- pla in aliis occurrent, et in fabulis rationem temporum non semper accura- tam licet deducere." Art. Jas6n: "Herculi enim jam provecta aetate ad haesit Theseus juvenis, et in Amazonia expeditione socius fuit, interfuit huic expeditioni, venatui apri Calydonii, et rapuit Helenam, quae circa Trojanum helium maxime floruit : quae omnia si Theseus tot temporum intervallis distincta egit, secula duo vel tria vixisse debuit. Certe Jason Hypsipylem neptem Ariadnes, nee videre, nee Lemni cognoscere potuit." Art. Melea- ger : " Unum est quod alicui longum ordinem majorum recensenti scrupu- lum movere possit : nimis longum intervallum inter ./Eolum et Meleagmm intercedere, ut potuerit interfuisse huic expeditioni : cum nonus fere numer- etur ab JEolo, et plurimi ut Jason, Argus, et alii tertia tantum ab JEolo g^neratione distent. Sed saspe jam notavimus, frustra temporum concor- iLam in fabulis quaeri." Read also the articles Castdr and Pollux, Nest6r Peleus, Staphylus, etc. We may stand excused for keeping clear of a clironology which is fertile only in difficulties, and ends in nothing but ill :sions. 234 HISTORY OF G1CEECE. the fruit of their visit. Hypsipyle, the queen of the island, bore to Jason two sons. 1 They then proceeded onward along the coast of Thrace, up the Hellespont, to the southern coast of the Propontis, inhabited by the Doliones and their king Kyzikus. Here they were kindly entertained, but after their departure were driven back to the same spot by a storm ; and as they landed in the dark, the inhabi- tants did not know them. A battle took place, in which the chief, Kyzikus, was killed by Jason ; whereby much grief was occasioned as soon as the real facts became known. After Kyzi- kus had been interred with every demonstration of mourning and solemnity, the Argonauts proceeded along the coast of Mysia. 2 In this part of the voyage they left Herakles behind. For Hylas, his favorite youthful companion, had been stolen away by the nymphs of a fountain, and Herakles, wandering about in search of him, neglected to return. At last he sorrowfully retired, ex- acting hostages from the inhabitants of the neighboring town of Kius that they would persist in the search. 3 1 Apollodor. i. 9, 17 ; Apollon. Rhod. i. 609-915 ; Herodot. iv. 145. Theocri- tus (Idyll, xiii. 29) omits all mention of Lemnos, and represents the Argu as arriving on the third day from lolkos at the Hellespont. Diodorus (iv 41 ) also leaves out Lemnos. 2 Apollon. Rhod. 940-1020 ; Apollodor. i. 9, 18 3 Apollodor. i. 9, 19. This was the religious legend, explanatory of a cere mony performed for many centuries by the people of Prusa: they ran round .he lake Askanias shouting and clamoring for Hylas " ut littus Hyla, Hyla cmne sonaret." (Virgil, Eclog.) "in cujus memoriam adhuc solemni cursatione lacum populus circuit et Hylam voce clamat." Solinus, C. 42. There is endless discrepancy as to the concern of Herakles with the Argonautic expedition. A story is alluded to in Aristotle (Politic, iii. 9) that the ship Argo herself refused to take him on board, because he was BO much superiot in stature and power to all the other heroes ol yap bd&eiv avrbv uyeiv TJJV 'Apyc) U.CTU TUV uKKuv, d>f {i7rep/3u/lAorra nohi> TUIV nZuTqpuv. This was the story of Pherekydes (Fr. 67, Didot) as well as cf Antimachns (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 1290) : it is probably a very ancient portion of the legend, inasmuch as it ascribes to the ship sentient powers, in consonance with her other miraculous properties. The etymology of Aphetae in Thcs aly was connected with the tale of Herakles having there been put on shore from the Argo (Herodot. vii. 193): Ephorus said that he staid away volun- tarily from fondness for Omphale (Frag. 9, Didot). The old epic poet PHINEUS AND THE HARPIES. 235 They next stopped in the country of the Bebrykians, where the boxing contest took place between the king Amykus and the Argonaut Pollux: 1 they then proceeded onward to Bithynia, the residence of the blind prophet Phineus. His blindness had been inflicted by Poseidon as a punishment for having communi- cated to Phryxus the way to Kolchis. The choice had been al- lowed to him between death and blindness, and he had preferred the latter. 2 He was also tormented by the harpies, winged mon- sters who came down from the clouds whenever his table was set, snatched the food from his lips and imparted to it a foul and unapproachable odor. In the midst of this misery, he hail- ed the Argonauts as his deliverers his prophetic powers having enabled him to foresee their coming. The meal being prepared for him, the harpies approached as usual, but Zetes and Kalais, the winged sons of Boreas, drove them away and pursued them. They put forth all their speed, and prayed to Zeus to be enabled to overtake the monsters ; when Hermes appeared and directed them to desist, the harpies being forbidden further to molest Phineus, 3 and retiring again to their native cavern in Krete. 4 Phineus, grateful for the relief afforded to him by the Argo- nauts, forewarned them of the dangers of their voyage and of the precautions necessary for their safety; and through his suggestions they were enabled to pass through the terrific rocks called Sym- plegades. These were two rocks which alternately opened and Kinsethon said that Ilerakles had placed the Kian hostages at Trachin, and that the Kians ever afterwards maintained a respectful correspondence with that place (Schol. Ap. Eh. i. 1357). This is the explanatory legend con- nected with some existing custom, which we are unable further to unravel 1 See above, chap. viii. p, 1 69. 2 Such was the old narrative of the Hesiodic Catalogue and Eoiai. See Schol. Apollon. Rhod. ii. 181-296. 3 This again was the old Hesiodic story (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 296), Apollodorus (i. 9, 21), Apollonius (178-300), and Valerius Flacc. v iv. 428- 530) agree in most of the circumstances. 4 Such was the fate of the harpies as given in the old Naupaktian Verses (See Fragm. Ep. Grace. Duntzer, Naupakt. Fr. 2. p. 61). The adventure of the Argonauts with Phineus is given by Diodorus in a manner totally different (Diodor. iv. 44) : he seems to follow Dionysius of Mitylene (see Schol. Apolion. Rhod. ii. 207). 236 HISTORY OF GREECE. ehut, with a swift and violent collision, so that it was difficult even for a bird to fly through during the short interval. When the Argo arrived at the dangerous spot, Euphemus let loose a dove, which flew through and just escaped with the loss of a few feath. ers of her tail. This was a signal to the Argonauts, according to the prediction of Phineus, that they might attempt the pas- sage with confidence. Accordingly they rowed with all theii might, and passed safely through: the closing rocks, held for a moment asunder by the powerful arms of Athene, just crushed the ornaments at the stern of their vessel. It had been decreed by the gods, that so soon as any ship once got through, the pas- sage should forever afterwards be safe and easy to all. The rocks became fixed in their separate places, and never again closed. 1 After again halting on the coast of the Maryandinians, where their steersman Tiphys died, as well as in the country of the Amazons, and after picking up the sons of Phryxus, who had been cast away by Poseidon in their attempt to return from Kol- chis to Greece, they arrived in safety at the river Phasis and the residence of JEetes. In passing by Mount Caucasus, they saw the eagle which gnawed the liver of Prometheus nailed to the rock, and heard the groans of the sufferer himself. The sons of Phryxus were cordially welcomed by their mother Chalciope. 5 Application was made to .ZEetes, that he would grant to the Ar- gonauts, heroes of divine parentage and sent forth by the man- date of the gods, possession of the golden fleece : their aid in return was proffered to him against any or all of his enemies. But the king was wroth, and peremptorily refused, except upon conditions which seemed impracticable. 3 Hephaestos had given him two ferocious and untamable bulls, with brazen feet, which breathed fire from their nostrils : Jason was invited, as a proof both of his illustrious descent and of the sanction of the gods to his voyage, to harness these animals to the yoke, so as to plough a large field and sow it with dragon's teeth. 4 Perilous as the condition was, each one of the heroes volunteered to make the 1 Apollodor. i. 9, 22. Apollon. Rhod. ii. 310-615. * Apollodor. i. 9, 23. Apollon. Rhod. ii. 850-1257. * Apollon. Rhod. iii. 320-385. 4 Apollon. Rhod. iii. 410 Apollodor. i. 9, 11 RETURN OF THE ARGONAUTS. 237 attempt. Idmon especially encouraged Jason to undertake it. 1 and the goddesses Here and Aphrodite made straight the way for him. 2 Medea, the daughter of JEetes and Eidvia, having seen the youthful hero in his interview with her father, had con- ceived towards him a passion which disposed her to employ every means for his salvation and success. She had received from Hekate preeminent magical powers, and she prepared for Jason the powerful Prometheian unguent, extracted froman herb which had grown where the blood of Prometheus dropped. The body of Jason having been thus pre-medicated, became invulnerable 3 either by fire or by warlike weapons. He undertook the enter- prise, yoked the bulls without suffering injury, and ploughed the field : when he had sown the dragon's teeth, armed men sprung out of the furrows. But he had been forewarned by Medea to cast a vast rock into the midst of them, upon which they began to fight with each other, so that he was easily enabled to subdue them all. 4 The task prescribed had thus been triumphantly performed. Yet JEetes not only refused to hand over the golden fleece, but even took measures for secretly destroying the Argonauts and burning their vessel. He designed to murder them during the night after a festal banquet; but Aphrodite, watchful for the safety of Jason, 5 inspired the Kolchian king at the critical mo- ment with an irresistible inclination for his nuptial bed. While he slept, the wise Idmon counselled the Argonauts to make their escape, and Medea agreed to accompany them. 5 She lulled to Bleep by a magic potion the dragon who guarded the golden fleece, 1 This was the story of the Naupaktian Verses (Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iii. 515-525) : Apollonius and others altered it. Idmon, according to them, died in the voyage before the arrival at Kolchis. 2 Apollon. Rhod. iii. 50-200. Valer. Flacc. vi. 440-480. Hygin. fab. 22. 3 Apollon. Rhod. iii. 835. Apollodor. i. 9, 23. Valer. Flacc. vii. 356 Ovid, Epist. xii. 15. ' ; Isset anhelatos non praemedicatus in ignes Immemor JEsonides, oraque adunca bourn." 4 Apollon. Rhod. iii. 1230-1400. 5 The Naupaktian Verses stated this (see the Fragm. 6, ed. Ddntzer, p. 61), ap. Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iv. 59-86). 8 Such was the story of the Naupaktian Verses (See Fragm. 6. p 61 Daniser ap. Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iv. 59, 86, 87). 238 HISTORY OF GREECE. placed that much-desired prize on board the vessel, a.id accora panied Jason with his companions in their flight, carrying along with her the young Apsyrtus, her brother. 1 .2Eetes, profoundly exasperated at the flight of the Argonauts with his daughter, assembled his forces forthwith, and put to sea in pursuit of them. So energetic were his efforts that he shortly overtook the retreating vessel, when the Argonauts again owed their safety to the stratagem of Medea. She killed her brother Apsyrtus, cut his body in pieces and strewed the limbs round about in the sea. JEetes on reaching the spot found these sorrow- ful traces of his murdered son ; but while he tarried to collect the scattered fragments, and bestow upon the body an honorable in- terment, the Argonauts escaped. 2 The spot on which the unfor- tunate Apsyrtus was cut up received the name of Tomi. 3 This fratricide of Medea, however, so deeply provoked the indignation of Zeus, that he condemned the Argo and her crew to a trying 1 Apollodor. i. 9, 23. Apoll&n. Rhod. iv. 220. Pherekydes said that Jason killed the dragon (Fr. 74, Did.). 2 This is the story of Apollodorus (i. 9, 24), who seems to follow Phere- kydes (Fr. 73, Didot). Apollonius (iv. 225-480) and Valerius Flaccus (viii. 262 seq.) give totally different circumstances respecting the death of Apsyr- tus ; but the narrative of Pherekydes seems the oldest : so revolting a story as that of the cutting up of the little boy cannot have been imagined in later times. Sophokles composed two tragedies on the adventures of Jason and Medea, both lost the KoA^'dcf and the 2/citfcu. In the former he represented tho murder of the child Apsyrtus as having taken place in the house of JEetes : in the latter he introduced the mitigating circumstance, that Apsyrtus was the sonofyEetes by ft different mother from Medea ( Schol. Apollon Rhod. iv. 223). 3 Apollodor. i. 9, 24, rbv TOTTOV irpoaqyopevas Tfyovf. Ovid. Trist. iii. 9. The story that Apsyrtus was cut in pieces, is the etymological legend expla- natory of the name Tomi. There was however a place called Apsarus, on the southern coast of the Eaxine, west of Trapezus, where the tomb of Apsyrtus was shown, and where it was affirmed that he had been put to death. He was the eponymas of the town, which was said to have been once called Apsyrtus, and only corrupted by a barbarian pronunciation ( Arrian. Periplns, Euxin. p. 6 ; Geogr. Min. v. 1 \. Compare Procop. Bell. Goth. iv. 2. Strabo connects the death of Apsyrtus with the Apsyrtides, islands off th coast of Ulyria, in the Adriatic (vii p. 315). ARGONAUTS IN LIBYA. 239 voyage, full of hardship and privation, before she was permitted to reach home. The returning heroes traversed an immeasurable length both of sea and of river : first up the river Phasis into the ocean which flows round the earth then following the course of that circumfluous stream until its junction with the Nile, 1 they came down the Nile into Egypt, from whence they carried the Argo on their shoulders by a fatiguing land-journey to the lake Tritonis in Libya. Here they were rescued from the extremity of want and exhaustion by the kindness of the local god Triton, who treated them hospitably, and even presented to Euphemus a clod of earth, as a symbolical promise that his descendants should one day found a city on the Libyan shore. The promise was amply redeemed by the flourishing and powerful city of Kyrene, 2 whose princes the Battiads boasted themselves as lineal descend- ants of Euphemus. Refreshed by the hospitality of Triton, the Argonauts found themselves again on the waters of the Mediterranean in their way homeward. But before they arrived at lolkos they visited Circe, at the island of -ZEaea, where Medea was purified for the murder of Apsyrtus : they also stopped at Korkyra, then called Drepan*, where Alkinous received and protected them. The cave in that island where the marriage of Medea with Jason was consum- mated, was still shown in the time of the historian Timaeus, as well as the altars to Apollo which she had erected, and the rites 1 The original narrative was, that the Argo returned by navigating the circumfluous ocean. This would be almost certain, even without positive testimony, from the early ideas entertained by the Greeks respecting geog- raphy ; but we know further that it was the representation of the Hesiodic poems, as well as of Mimnermus, Hekatseas and Pindar, and even of Anti- machns. Schol. Parisina Ap. Khod. iv. 254. 'Eicaraiof 6e 6 'MiTi.^aicf 6i& TOV $aai6of avsh&elv tyrjalv avToiJf elf rbv 'i2/ceavov did. derov 'fiKcavoo elv elf rbv NeiTiov eK 6e TOV NetAov elf rrjv /cai?' rjfio.f tiu^aoacv. 61 nal Ilivdapof iv Hvdioviicaif nal 'Avn'yUa^oc ev Attiy 6ia rot) 'Qiteavov tyaalv eh-delv avToiJf elf TT/V AI^VTJV elra /Jaoracravraf TTJV 'Apyu elf rb f/fiETepov uiK(r&ai TreAayof. Compare the Schol. Edit, ad iv. 259. * See the fourth Pythian Ode of Pindar, and Apollon. Ehod. iv. 1551-1756. The tripod of Jason was preserved by the Euesperitac in Libya, Diod. iv, 56 : but the legend, connecting the Argonauts with the lake Tritonis in Libya; is given with some considerable differences in Herodotus, iv. 179. 240 HISTORY OF GREECE. and sacrifices which she had first instituted. 1 After leaving Korkyra, the Argo was overtaken by a perilous storm near the island of Thera. The heroes were saved from imminent peril by the supernatural aid of Apollo, who, shooting from his golden bow an arrow which pierced the waves like a track of light, caused a new island suddenly to spring up in their track and present to them a port of refuge. The island was called Anaphe ; and the grateful Argonauts established upon it an altar and sacrifices in honor of Apollo JEgletes, which were ever afterwards continued, and traced back by the inhabitants to this originating adventure. 9 On approaching the coast of Krete, the Argonauts were pre- vented from landing by Talos, a man of brass, fabricated by Hephaestos, and presented by him to Minos for the protection of the island. 3 This vigilant sentinel hurled against the approach- ing vessel fragments of rock, and menaced the heroes with de- struction. But Medea deceived him by a stratagem and killed him ; detecting and assailing the one vulnerable point in his body. The Argonauts were thus enabled to land and refresh themselves. They next proceeded onward to .ZEgina, where however they again experienced resistance before they could obtain water then along the coast of Euboea and Locris back to lolkos in *he gulf of Pagasae, the place from whence they had started. The proceedings of Pelias during their absence, and the signal revenge taken upon him by Medea after their return, have already been narrated in a preceding section. 4 The ship Argo herself, in which the chosen heroes of Greece had performed so long a voyage and braved so many dangers, was consecrated by Jason to Poseidon at the isthmus of Corinth. According to another 1 Apollon. Rhod. iv. 1153-1217. Timaeus, Fr. 7-8, Didot. Tipaioc Iv Kepnvpa Xeyuv yeveo&ai roi)f yauovf, ical ntpl rf/f dvaiac laTopel, TI nal vvy liiyuv uyea&ai avrrjv /car' ivtavrbv, M^cte? irpCJTOv dvouarjf kv TCJ roti ATO^- Xwvof i]Cfi fivjjfiela TUV yapuv ISpvoaa-Qat, avvryyi)r V.EV rij? daMiaaiif, ovpzupuv (5e :% froAewf. 'Ovo/zuCowrt 6& rbv per, Nvpptiv rdv de, Nj?pj?(5uv. 1 Apollodor. i. 9, 25. Apollon. Hhod. iv. 1700-1725. * Some called Tales a remnant of the brazen race of men (Schol. Apo'l Rhod. iv. 1641 ). Apollodor. i. 9, 26. Apolloa Rhod. iv 1638. MEMORIALS LEBT BY THE ARGONAUTS. 241 account, she was translated to the stars by Athene, and became a constellation. 1 Traces of the presence of the Argonauts were found not only in the regions which lay between lolkos and Kolchis, but also in the western portion of the Grecian world distributed more or less over all the spots visited by Grecian mariners or settled by Grecian colonists, and scarcely less numerous than the wander- ings of the dispersed Greeks and Trojans after the capture of Troy. The number of Jasonia, or temples for the heroic worship of Jason, was very great, from Abdera in Thrace, 2 eastward along the coast of the Euxine, to Armenia and Medea. The Argonauts had left their anchoring-stone on the coast of Bebrykia, near Kyzikus, and there it was preserved during the historical ages in the temple of the Jasonian Athene. 3 They had founded the great temple of the Idasan mother on the mountain Dindymon, near Kyzikus, and the Hieron of Zeus Urios on the Asiatic point ai the mouth of the Euxine, near which was also the harbor of Phryxus. 4 Idmon, the prophet of the expedition, who was believed to have died of a wound by a wild boar on the Mary- andynian coast, was worshipped by the inhabitants of the Pontic Herakleia with great solemnity, as their Heros Poliuchus, and that too by the special direction of the Delphian god. Autolykus, another companion of Jason, was worshipped as CEkist by the inhabitants of Sinope. Moreover, the historians of Herakleia pointed out a temple of Hekate in the neighboring country of 1 Diodor. iv. 53. Eratosth. Catasterism. c. 35. 2 Strabo.xi. p. 526-531. 3 Apollon. Rhod. i. 955-960, and the Scholia. There was in Kyzikus a temple of Apollo under different tTnuhrjaeis ; Borne called it the temple of the Jasonian Apollo. Another anchor however was preserved in the temple of Rhea on the banks of the Phasis, which was affirmed to he the anchor of the ship Argo. Arrian paw it there, hut seems to have doubted its authenticity CPeriplus, Euxin. Pont. p. 9. Geogr. Min. v. 1). 4 Neanthes ap. strabo. i. p. 45. Apollon. Rhod. i. 1125, and Schol. Stcph. Bvz. v. 4>pffof. Apollonius mentions the fountain called Jasonerc, on the hill of Dindymon. Apollon. Rbod. ii. 532, and the citations from Timosthenes and Herodorus in die Scholia. See also Appian. Syriac. c. 63. TOL. I. 11 IGOC- 242 HISTORY OF GREECE. Paphlagonia, first erected by Medea -, 1 and the important town tf Pantikapteon, on the European side of the Cimmerian Bosponi3, ascribed its first settlement to a son of JEetes. 2 When the return- ing ten thousand Greeks sailed along the coast, called the Jaso- nian shore, from Sinope to Herakleia, they were told that the grandson of uEetes was reigning king of the territory at the mouth of the Phasis, and the anchoring-places where the Argo had stopped were specially pointed out to them. 3 In the lofty re- gions of the Moschi, near Kolchis, stood the temple of Leukothea, founded by Phryxus, which remained both rich and respected down to the times of the kings of Pontus, and where it was an inviolable rule not to offer up a ram. 4 The town of Dioskurias, north of the river Phasis, was believed to have been hallowed by the presence of Kastor and Pollux in the Argo, and to have re- ceived from them its appellation. 5 Even the interior of Medea and Armenia was full of memorials of Jason and Medea and their son Medus, or of Armenus the son of Jason, from whom the Greeks deduced not only the name and foundation of the Medes and Armenians, but also the great operation of cutting a channel through the mountains for the efflux of the river Araxes, which they compared to that of the Peneius in Thessaly. 6 And the 1 See the historians of Hurakleia, Nymphis and Promathidas, Fragm. Orelli, pp. 99, 100-104. Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. iv. 247. Strabo, xii. p. 546. Autolykus, whom he calls companion of Jason, was, according to another legend, comrade of Herakles in his expedition against the Amazons. 2 Stephan. Byz. v. TlavTiKairaiov, Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieget. 311. 3 Xenophon, Anabas. vi. 2, 1 ; v. 7, 37. 4 Strabo, xi. p. 499. * Appian, Mithridatic. c. 101. 8 Strabo, xi. p. 499, 503, 526, 531; i. p. 45-48. Justin, xlii. 3, whose statements illustrate the way in which men found a present home and appli- cation for the old fables, " Jason, primus humanorurn post Herculem et Liberum, qni reges Orientis fuisse tradnntur, cam cceli plagam domuisse dicitnr. Cum Albanis fbedus percussit, qui Herculem ex Italia ab Albano monte, cum, Geryone extincto, armenta ejus per Italiam duceret, secuti dicuntnr ; quique, memores Italioae originis, exercitum Cn. Pompeii hello Mithridatico fratres consalutavere. Itaque Jasoni totns fere Oriens, ut con- ditori, divinos honores templaqne constituit ; qnae Parmenico, dux Alexandra Magni, post multos annos dirui jussit, ne cujusquam nomen in Orientc VCHO rabilius quam Alexandri esset." The Thessalian companions of Alexander the Great, placed by his victors in possession of rich acquisitions in these regions, pleased themselves by MEMORIALS LEFT BY THE ARGONAUTS. 243 Roman general Pompey, after having completed the conquest and expulsion of Mithridates, made long marches through Kolchis into the regions of Caucasus, for the express purpose of contem- plating the spots which had been ennobled by the exploits of the Argonauts, the Dioskuri and Herakles. 1 In the west, memorials either of the Argonauts or of the pur suing Kolchians were pointed out in Korkyra, in Krete, in Epi- rus near the Akrokeraunian mountains, in the islands called Ap- syrtides near the Illyrian coast, at the bay of Caieta as well as at Poseidonia on the southern coast of Italy, in the island of ^Etha- lia or Elba, and in Libya. 2 Such is a brief outline of the Argonautic expedition, one of the most celebrated and widely-diffused among the ancient tales of Greece. Since so many able men have treated it as an un- disputed reality, and even made it the pivot of systematic chro- nological calculations, I may here repeat the opinion long ago expressed by Heyne, and even indicated by Burmann, that the process of dissecting the story, in search of a basis of fact, is one altogether fruitless. 3 Not only are we unable to assign the date vivifying and multiplying all these old fables, proving an ancient kindred between the Modes and Thessalians. See Strabo, xi. p. 530. The temples of Jason were Ti/iupeva otj>6fipa into rdv /3apf3upuv (ib. p. 526J. The able and inquisitive geographer Eratosthenes was among those who fully belie red that Jason had left his ships in the Phasis, and had undertaken a land expedition into the interior country, in which he had conquered Media and Armenia (Strabo, i. p. 48). 1 Appian, Mithridatic. 103 : roi)f KoA^ovc ETTJJEI, KOI?' laroplav T7/f 'Apyo i>avT(Jv Kal AioctKOvpuv Kal 'Hpa/c/leovf imdTjfiiai;, Kal fiuXiara TO 7rai9of Ideiv idehuv, o lipofiri-del ;fuf, QoijBov re jrahaiov KT/TTOV. 1 Odyss. iv. 562. The Islands of the Blessed, in Hesiod, are near UM ocean (Opp. Di. 169). 246 HISTORY OF GREECE. Laestrygones, the Kyklopes, the Lotophagi, the Sirens, the Cim merians and the Gorgons, 1 etc. These are places which (to us the expression of Pindar respecting the Hyperboreans) you can- not approach either by sea or by land : 9 the wings of the poet alone can carry you thither. They were not introduced into the Greek mind by incorrect geographical reports, but, on the con- trary, had their origin in the legend, and passed from thence into the realities of geography, 3 which they contributed much to per- vert and confuse. For the navigator or emigrant, starting with an unsuspicious faith in their real existence, looked out for them in his distant voyages, and constantly fancied that he had seen or heard of them, so as to be able to identify their exact situation. The most contradictory accounts indeed, as might be expected, were often given respecting the latitude and longitude of such fanciful spots, but this did not put an end to the general belief in their real existence. In the present advanced state of geographical knowledge, the story of that man who after reading Gulliver's Travels went to 1 Hesiod, Thcogon. 275-290. Homer, Iliad, i. 423. Odyss. i. 23 ; ix BG-206 ; x 4-83 ; xii. 135. Mimncrm. Fragm. 13, Sclmcidcwin. ' Pindar, Pyth. x. 29. Naval <5' ovrc irs^df luv uv evpoif 'Ef "fTreppopeuv uyuva Qavfiarav tdov. Hap' olf -store Uepaevf idaiaaTO T^ajETuf, etc. Hesiod, and the old epic poem called the Epigoni, both mentioned the Hypei boreans (Herod, iv. 32-34). 3 This idea is well stated and sustained by Volcker (Mythische Geographic der Griechen und Romer, cap. i. p. 11^, and by Nitzsch in his Comments on the Odyssey Introduct. Remarks to b. ix. p. xii.-xxxiii. The twelfth and thirteenth chapters of the History of Orchomenos, by 0. Miillcr, aro also full of good remarks on the geography of the Argonautic voyage (pp. 274-299). The most striking evidence of this disposition of the Greeks is to be found in the legendary discoveries of Alexander and his companions, when they marched over the untrodden regions in the east of the Persian empire (see Arrian, Hist. Al. v. 3 : compare Lucian. Dialog. Mortuor. xiv. vol. i. p. 212. Tauch;, because these ideas were first broached at a time when geo- graphical science was sufficiently advanced to canvass and criticize them. The early settlers in Italy, Sicily and the Euxine, indulged their fanciful vision without the fear of any such monitor: there was no surh thing as i map before the days of Anaximander, the disciple of Thales. OH JrEOGRAPrfY BY LEGEXD. 247 look in his map for Lilliput, appears an absurdity. But those who fixed the exact locality of the floating island of uEolus or the rocks of the Sirens did much the same ;' and, with their ig- norance of geography and imperfect appreciation of historical evidence, the error was hardly to be avoided. The ancient be- lief which fixed the Sirens on the islands of Sirenusa? off the coast of Naples the Kyklopes, Erytheia, and the La^strygoues in Sicily the Lotophagi on the island of Meninx 2 near the Lesser Syrtis the Phasakians at Korkyra and the goddess Circe at the promontory of Circeium took its rise at a time when these regions were first Hellenized and comparatively little visited. Once embodied in the local legends, and attested by vis- ible monuments and ceremonies, it continued for a long time un- assailed ; and Thucydides seems to adopt it, in reference to Kor- kyra and Sicily before the Hellenic colonization, as matter of fact generally unquestionable, 3 though little avouched as to de- tails. But when geograpical knowledge became extended, and the criticism upon the ancient epic was more or less systematized by the literary men of Alexandria and Pergamus, it appeared to many of them impossible that Odysseus could have seen so many wonders, or undergone such monstrous dangers, within limits so narrow, and in the familiar track between the Nile and the Tiber. The scene of his weather-driven course was then shifted further westward. Many convincing evidences were dis- covered, especially by Asklepiades of Myrlea, of his having vis- ited various places in Iberia : 4 several critics imagined that he 1 See Mr. Payne Knight, Prolegg. ad Homer, c. 49. Comparo Spohn i: de extrema Odysscae partc" p. 97. 2 Strabo. xvii. p. 834. An altar of Odysseus was shown upon this island, as well as some other evidences (av/j./30/M.) of his visit to the place. Apollonius Rhodius copies the Odyssey in speaking of the island of Thri- nakia and the cattle of Helios ("iv. 965, with Schol.J. He conceives Sicily as Thrinakia, a name afterwards exchanged for Trinakria. The Scholiast ad Apoll. (1. c.) speaks of Trinax king of Sicily. Compare iv. 291 with the Scholia. 3 Thucyd. i. 25-vi. 2. These local legends appear in the eyes of Strabo convincing evidence (i. p. 23-26), the tomb of the siren Parthenope at Naples, the stories at Cumse and Dikacarchia about the veKvofiavrelov of Avernus, and the existence of places named after Bains and Misenus, the companions of Odysseus, etc. * Etrabo, iii. p. 150-157. Ov yap povov ol KOTU TTJV 'Ira/U'&v KOI 248 HISTORY OF GREECE. had wandered about in the Atlantic Ocean outside of the Strait of Gibraltar, 1 and they recognized a section of Lotophagi on the TOTTOl KOi U/lAoi TlVEf TUV TOIOVTUV G71/J.ia i)irOJpU.^OV r/'/f SKS'LVOV Tr^uvrjf., nal uTiXuv ruv in Tov TpuiKov iTohefiov xepi,yevo/j.eva>v (I adopt Grosskurd's correction of tlie text from yevofievuv to Trepi-yevo/tevuv, in the note to his German translation of Strabo). Asklepiades (of Myrlca in Bithynia, about 170 B. c.) resided some time in Turditania, the south-western region of Spain along the Guadalquivir, as a teacher of Greek literature (-^au^evaa^ T& jpafi[j.aTLKnov. * * * * * Aiqrao iroXiv, TO&I r' w/ 'AKTivef xpvct-V KeiaraL tv '2/teavov napti. xsifaff', Iv' 1 3 Strabo, i. p. 45-46. Ae^f/rpiof 6 2/c^tof Trpdf Neuv#? rdv Kijvdv ij>i XOTI/J.OT ep uf avriheyuv, eiirovra, on. ol ' ' Apyovavrai elf Quoiv rbv i' 'Qfifjpov not TUV uTJiuv o/ioAoyov/zevov irtovv, idpvaavro ra TTJC 'Idataf [j.T}Tpbf Itpti ini KV&KOV op^jyv frjoi fitj S 1 el d tv a i ri)v elf Qua iv uir odr] fiiav rov 'luorovof "Ofirjpov. Again, p. 46, napa^afluv fidprvpa Mifivepftov, of iv rij> 'Qiteavij) Trotrjaaf oltcrjcriv A<^TOV, etc. The adverb QiXoTLfioTcpuf reveals to us the municipal rivalry and conten -EETES.-CIECE.-^A. 51 Strubo vanity tries to refute him), that neither Homer nor Mim- nermus designates Kolchis either as the residence of JEetes, or as the terminus of the Argonautic voyage. Hesiod carried the returning Argonauts through the river Phasis into the ocean. But some of the poems ascribed to Eumelus were the first which mentioned JEetes and Kolchis, and interwove both of them into the Corinthian mythical genealogy. 1 These poems seem to have been composed subsequent to the foundation of Sinope, and to the commencement of Grecian settlement on the Borys- thenes, between the years 600 and 500 B. c. The Greek mari- ners who explored and colonized the southern coast of the Eux- ine, found at the extremity of their voyage the river Phasis and its barbarous inhabitants : it was the easternmost point which Grecian navigation (previous to the time of Alexander the Great) ever attained, and it was within sight of the impassable barrier of Caucasus. 2 They believed, not unnaturally, that they had here found " the house of Eos (the morning) and the rising place of the sun," and that the river Phasis, if they could follow it to its unknown beginning, would conduct them to the circum- fluous ocean. They gave to the spot the name of JEa, and the fabulous and real title gradually became associated together into one compound appellation, the Kolchian JEa, or JEa of Kol- chis. 3 "While Kolchis was thus entered on the map as a fit re- presentative for the Homeric " house of the morning," the nar- row strait of the Thracian Bosporus attracted to itself the poetical fancy of the Symplegades, or colliding rocks, through which the heaven-protected Argo had been the first to pass. The powerful Greek cities of Kyzikus, Herakleia and Sinope, each fertile in local legends, still farther contributed to give this direction to the voyage ; so that in the time of Hekataeus it had become the established belief that the Argo had started frorr lolkos and gone to Kolchis. JEetes thus received his home from the legendary faith and tion between the small town Skepsis and its powerful neighbor Kyzikus, respecting points of comparative archaeology. 1 Eumelus, Fragm. Evpuma 7, Kopiv&iaKu 2-5. pp. 63-68, DQntzer. * Arrian, Periplus Pont. Euxin. p. 1 2 ; ap. Geogr. Minor, vol. i. He saw the Caucasus from Dioskurias. * Heroilot i. 2 ; vii. 193-197. Eurip. Med. 2. Valer. Flacc. v. 57 I 252 HISTORY OF GREECE. fancy of the eastern Greek navigators : his sister Circe, origi- nally his fellow -resident, was localized by the western. The Hesiodic and other poems, giving expression to the imaginative impulses of the inhabitants of Cumse and other early Grecian settlers in Italy and Sicily, 1 had referred the wanderings of Odysseus to the western or Tyrrhenian sea, and had planted the Cyclopes, the Lsestrygones, the floating island of JEolus, the Lotophagi, the Phseacians, etc., about the coast of Sicily, Italy, Libya, and Korkyra. In this way the JEaean island, the resi dence of Circe, and the extreme point of the wanderings of Odysseus, from whence he passes only to the ocean and into Hades came to be placed in the far west, while the JEa, of -ZEetes was in the far east, not unlike our East and West In- dies. The Homeric brother and sister were separated and sent to opposite extremities of the Grecian terrestrial horizon. 2 The track from lolkos to Kolchis, however, though plausible as far as it went, did not realize all the conditions of the genuine fabulous voyage : it did not explain the evidences of the visit of these maritime heroes which were to be found in Libya, in Krete 1 Strabo, i. p. 23. Volcker (Ueber Homerische Geographic, v. 66) is in structive upon this point, as upon the geography of the Greek poets gene- rally. He recognizes the purely mythical character of -5a in Homer and Hesiod, but he tries to prove unsuccessfully, in my judgment that Homer places jEetes in the east, while Circe is in the west, and that Homer refers the Argonautic voyage to the Euxine Sea. 2 Strabo (or Polybius, whom he has just been citing) contends that Homer knew the existence of -oiv, i. p. 20) ; perhaps also Jason might have wandered as far as Italy, as evidences (ffTjjuelu Tiva) are shown that he did (ib.). But the idea that Homer conceived JEetes in the extreme east and Circe in the extreme west, is not reconcilable with the Odyssey. The supposition of Strabo is alike violent and unsatisfactory. Circe was worshipped as a goddess at Circeii (Cicero, Nat. Deor. iii. 19). Hesiod, in the Theogony, represents the two sons of Circe by Odysseus as reigning over all the warlike Tyrrhenians (Theog. 1012), an undefined western sovereignty. The great Mamilian gens at Tusculum traced thkii descent to Odysseus and Circe (Dionys. Hal. iv. 45). RETUKN OF THE ARGONAUTS. 253 m Anaphe, in Korkyra, in the Adriati; Gulf, in Italy and ic JEthalia. It became necessary to devise another route for them in their return, and the Hesiodic narrative was (as I have before observed), that they came back by the circumfluous ocean ; first going up the river Phasis into the circumfluous ocean; follow- ing that deep and gentle stream until they entered the Nile, and came down its course to the coast of Libya. This seem? also to have been the belief of Hekatseus. 1 But presently sev- eral Greeks (and Herodotus among them) began to discard the idea of a circumfluous ocean-stream, which had pervaded their old geographical and astronomical fables, and which explained the supposed easy communication between one extremity of the earth and another. Another idea was then started for the return- ing voyage of the Argonauts. It was supposed that the river Ister, or Danube, flowing from the Hhipaean mountains in tbj north-west of Europe, divided itself into two branches, one of which fell into the Euxine Sea, and the other into the Adriatic. The Argonauts, fleeing from the pursuit of JEetes, had been obliged to abandon their regular course homeward, and had gone from the Euxine Sea up the Ister ; then passing down the othei branch of that river, they had entered into the Adriatic, the Kolchian pursuers following them. Such is the story given by Apollonius Rhodius from Timagetus, and accepted even by so able a geographer as Eratosthenes who preceded him by one generation, and who, though sceptical in regard to the localities visited by Odysseus, seems to have been a firm believer in the reality of the Argonautic voyage. 2 Other historians again, among 1 See above, p. 239. There is an opinion cited from Hekataeus in Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 284. contrary to this, which is given by the same scholiast on iv. 259. But, in spite of the remarks of Klausen (ad Fragment. Heka- tsei, 187. p. 98), I think that the Schol. ad. iv. 284 has made a mistake in citing Hekataeus ; the more so as the scholiast, as printed from the Codex Parisinus, cites the same opinion without mentioning Hekattens. Accord ing to the old Homeric idea, the ocean stream flowed all round the earth, and was the source of all the principal rivers which flowed into the great in- ternal sea, or Mediterranean (see Hekataeus, Fr. 349 ; Klausen, ap. Arrian. ii. 16, where he speaks of the Mediterranean as the (teyuhri ddhaaaa). Re- taining this old idea of the ocean-stream, Hekataeus would naturally belicv<< that the Phasis joined it: nor can I agree with Klausen (ad Fr. 187) thai this implies a degree of ignorance too gross to impute to him. 2 Apollon. Rhod. iv. 287 ; Schol. ad iv. 284 : Pindar, Pyth. iv. 447, witi 25-i ffiSTORY OF GREECi. whom was Tim sous, though they considered the ocean as an out- er sea, and no longer admitted the existence of the old Homeric ocean-stream, yet imagined a story for the return-voyage of the Argonauts somewhat resembling the old tale of Hesiod and HekatJEUs. They alleged that the Argo, after entering into the Palus Maiotis, had followed the upward course of the river Ta< nais ; that she had then been carried overland and launched in a river which had its mouth in the ocean or great outer sea. When in the ocean, she had coasted along the north and west of Europe until she reached Gades and the Strait of Gibraltar, where she entered into the Mediterranean, and there visited the many places specified in the fable. Of this long voyage, in the outer sea to the north and west of Europe, many traces were affirmed to exist along the coast of the ocean. 1 There was again a third version, according to which the Argonauts came back as they went, through the Thracian Bosporus and the Hellespont. In this way geographical plausibility was indeed maintained, but a large portion of the fabulous matter was thrown overboard. 2 Such were the various attempts made to reconcile the Argo- nautic legend with enlarged geographical knowledge and improv- ed historical criticism. The problem remained unsolved, but the Schol. ; Strabo, i. p. 46-57 ; Aristot. Mirabil. Auscult. c. 105. Altars were shown in the Adriatic, which had been erected both by Jason and by Medea (ib). Aristotle believed in the forked course of the Ister, with one embochurc in the Euxine and another in the Adriatic : he notices certain fishes called rpt- \tai, who entered the river (like the Argonauts) from the Euxine, went up it as far as the point of bifurcation and descended into the Adriatic (Histor. Animal, viii. 15). Compare Ukert, Geographic der Gricch. undRomer. vol. iii. p. 145-147, about the supposed course of the Istcr. 1 Diodor. iv. 56 ; Timaeus, Fragm. 53. Goller. Skymnns the geographer also adopted this opinion (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. 284-287). The psendo-Or- phens in the poem called Argonautica seems to give a jumble of all the dif- ferent stories. 2 Diodor. iv. 49. This was the tale both of Sophokles and of Kallimachns (Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 2?4). Sec the Dissertation of Ukert, Beylage iv. vol. i. part 2. p. 320 of his Geographic der Gricchen nnd RSmer, which treats of the Argonautic voy- age at some length ; also J. H. Voss, Alte Weltkunde Qber die Gestalt dei Erdc, published in the second volume of the Kritische Blatter, pp. 162, 314- 326 ; and Forbiger, Handbuch der Ahen Geographie-Einlcitung, p. 8. ARGONAUTIC LEGEND MODIFIED. 255 faith in the l3gend did not the less continue. It was a faith originally generated at a time when the unassisted narrative of the inspired poet sufficed for the conviction of his hearers; it consecrated one among the capital exploits of that heroic and superhuman race, whom the Greek was accustomed at once to look back upon as his ancestors and to worship conjointly with his gods : it lay too deep in his mind either to require historical evidence for its support, or to be overthrown by geographical difficulties as th'ey were then appreciated. Supposed traces of the past event, either preserved in the names of places, or embo- died in standing religious customs with their explanatory com- ments, served as sufficient authentication in the eyes of the curious inquirer. And even men trained in a more severe school of criticism contented themselves with eliminating the palpable con- tradictions and softening down the supernatural and romantic events, so as to produce an Argonautic expedition of their own invention as the true and accredited history. Strabo, though he can neither overlook nor explain the geographical impossibilities of the narrative, supposes himself to have discovered the basis of actual fact, which the original poets had embellished or exag- gerated. The golden fleece was typical of the great wealth of Kolchis, arising from gold-dust washed down by the rivers ; and the voyage of Jason was in reality an expedition at the head of a considerable army, with which he plundered this wealthy coun- try and made extensive conquests in the interior. 1 Strabo has nowhere laid down what he supposes to have been the exact measure and direction of Jason's march, but he must have re- garded it as very long, since he classes Jason with Dionysus and Herakles, and emphatically characterizes all the three as having 1 Strabo, i. p. 45. He speaks here of the voyage of Phryxus, as well as that of Jason, as having been a military undertaking (orpare/a) : so again, iii. p. 149, he speaks of the military expedition of Odysseus TJ rov '06va- oeuf arparia, and i) 'Hpa/c,leot;f arparia (ib.). Again xi. p. 498. Ql fiv-Q-ot, alviTTOfiEvoi rrfv 'luaovof (TTpaTstav irposTi'&ovTOf fiEXpi Kal M.ij6iaf ETI 6% TTDOTEpov TTjv 4>pi'fov. Compare also Justin, xlii. 2-3 ; Tacit. Annal. vi. 34. Strabo cannot speak of the old fables with literal fidelity : he unconscious- ly transforms them into quasi-historical incidents of his own imagination. Diodorus gives a narrative of the same kind, with decent substitutes for the fabulous elements (iv. 40-47-56). 256 HISTORY OF GREECE. traversed wider spaces of ground than any moderns could equal. 1 Such was the compromise which a mind like that of Strabo made with the ancient legends. He shaped or cut them down to the level of his own credence, and in this waste of historical criticism, without any positive evidence, he took to himself the credit of greater penetration than the literal believers, while he escaped the necessity of breaking formally with the bygone heroic world CHAPTER XIV. LEGENDS OF THEBES. THE Boeotians generally, throughout the historical age, though well endowed with bodily strength and courage, 2 are represented as proverbially deficient in intelligence, taste and fancy. But the legendary population of Thebes, the Kadmeians, are rich in mythical antiquities, divine as well as heroic. Both Dionysus and Herakles recognize Thebes as their natal city. Moreover, tho two sieges of Thebes by Adrastus, even taken apart from 1 Strabo, i. p. 48. The far-extending expeditions undertaken in the east- ern regions by Dionysus and Herakles were constantly present to the mind of Alexander the Great as subjects of comparison with himself: he imposed upon his followers perilous and trying marches, from anxiety to equal or surpass the alleged exploits of Semiramis, Cyrus, Perseus, and Herakles. (Arrian, v. 2, 3 ; vi. 24, 3 ; vii. 10, 12. Strabo, iii. p. 171 ; xv. p. 686 ; xvii. p. 81). 2 The eponym Boeotus is son of Poseidon and Arne (Euphorion ap. Eustath. ad Iliad, ii. 507). It was from Arne in Thessaly that the Boeotians were said to have come, when they invaded and occupied Bceotia. Euri- pides made him son of Poseidon and Melanippe. Another legend recited rBoeotus and Hellen as sons of Poseidon and Antiope (Hygin. f. 157-186). The Tanagrsean poetess Korinna (the rival of Pindar, whose compositions in the Boeotian dialect are unfortunately lost) appears to have dwelt upon this native Boeotian genealogy : she derived the Ogygian gates of ThC-bes from Ogygus, son of Bceotus (Schol. Apollon. Rhod. iii. 1178), also the Frajr mcnts of Korinna in Schneidewin's edition, fr. 2. p. 432. LEGENDS OF THEBES. 257 Kadmus, Antiope, Amphion and Zethus, etc., are the most pro- minent and most characteristic exploit?., next to the siege of Troy, of that preexisting race of heroes who lived in the imagination of the historical Hellenes. It is not Kadmus, but the brothers Amphion and Zethus, who are given to us in the Odyssey as the first founders of Thebes and the first builders of its celebrated walls. They are the sons of Zeus by Antiope, daughter of Asopus. The scholiasts who desire to reconcile this tale with the more current account of the foundation of Thebes by Kadmus, tell us that after the death of Amphion and Zethus, Eurymachus, the warlike king of the Phlegyae, invaded and ruined the newly-settled town, so that Kadmus on arriving was obliged to re-found it. 1 But Apollo- dorus, and seemingly the older logographers before him, placed Kadmus at the top, and inserted the two brothers at a lower point in the series. According to them, Belus and Agenor were the sons of Epaphus, son of the Argeian 16, by Libya. Agenor went to Phoenicia and there became king : he had for his off- spring Kadmus, Phoenix, Kilix, and a daughter Europa ; though in the Iliad E*uropa is called daughter of Phoenix.2 Zeus fell in love with Europa, and assuming the shape of a bull, carried her across the sea upon his back from Egpyt to Krete, where she bore to him Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon. Two out of the three sons sent out by Agenor in search of their lost sister, wearied out by a long-protracted as well as fruitless voyage, abandoned the idea of returning home : Kilix settled in Kilikia, and Kadmus in Thrace. 3 Thasus, the brother or nephew of ' Homer, Odyss. xi. 262, and Eustath. ad loc. Compare Schol. ad Iliad, xiii. 301. 2 Iliad, xiv. 321. 16 is nspocaaa Kfiopurup of the Thebans. Eurip. Phce- niss. 247-676. 3 Apollodor. ii. 1, 3; iii. 1,8. In the Hesiodic poems (ap. Schol. Apoll. Khod. ii. 178), Phoenix was recognized as son of Agenov. Pherekydes also described both Phoenix and Kadmus as sons of Agenor (Pherekyd. Fragm. 40, Didot). Compare Servius ad. Virgil. .32neid. 1. 338. Pherekydes ex- pressly mentioned Kilix (Apollod. ib.). Besides the Evpuireia of Stesicho- rus (see Stesichor. Fragm. xv. p. 73, ed. Kleine), there were several other ancient poems on the adventures of Europa ; one in particular by Eumelus (Schol. ad Iliad, vi. 138), which however can hardly be the same as the rd VOL. I. 170C. 258 HISTORY OF GREECE. Kadmus, who had accompanied them in the voyage, settled and gave name to the island of Phasus. Both Herodotus and Euripides represent Kadmus as an emi- grant from Phoenicia, conducting a body of followers in quest oi Europa. The account of Apollodorus describes him as having come originally from Libya or Egypt to Phoenicia : we may presume that this wau also the statement of the earlier logo- graphers Pherekydes and Hellanikus. Conon, who historicizes and politicizes the whole legend, seems to have found two differ- ent accounts ; one connecting Kadmus with Egypt, another bring- ing him from Phoenicia. He tries to melt down the two into one, by representing that the Phoenicians, who sent out Kadmus, had acquired great power in Egypt that the seat of their king- dom was the Egyptian Thebes that Kadmus was despatched, under pretence indeed of finding his lost sister, but really on a project of conquest and that the name Thebes, which he gave to his new establishment in Bceotia, was borrowed from Thebes in Egypt, his ancestorial seat. 1 Kadmus went from Thrace to Delphi to procure information respecting his sister Europa, but the god directed him to take no further trouble about her; he was to follow the guidance of a cow, and to found a city on the spot where the animal should lie down. The condition was realized on the site of Thebes. The neighboring fountain Areia was guarded by a fierce dragon, the offspring of Ares, who destroyed all the persons sent to fetch water. Kadmus killed the dragon, and at the suggestion of Athene sowed his teeth in the earth : 2 there sprang up at once the armed men called the Sparti, among whom he flung stones, lirri TU elf Evpunqv alluded to by Pausanias (ix. 5, 4). See Wollner dc Cyclo Epico, p. 57 (Monster 1825). i * Conon, Narrat. 37. Perhaps the most remarkable thing of all is the tone of unbounded self-confidence with which Conon winds up this tissue of uncertified suppositions irepl [lev Kudfiov Kal Qrjfitiv oiKiaeuc ovrof 6 dAj/tf^f Aoyof rb 6e aAAo pi/doe KOI yojjTela UKO/JC. j * Stesichor. (Fragm. 16; Kleine) ap. Schol. Eurip. Phceniss. 680. Tho place where the heifer had lain down was still shown in the time of Pausa- nias (ix. 12, 1). ! Lysimachus, a lost author who wrote ThebaTca, mentioned Europa as having come with Kadmus to Thebes, and told the story in many other re- pects very differently (Schol Apoll. Rhod. iii. 1179). KADMUS AND HIS DAUGHTERS. 25U and they immediately began to assault each other until all were slain except five. Ares, indignant at this slaughter, was about to kill Kadmus ; but Zeus appeased him, condemning Kadmus to an expiatory servitude of eight years, after which he married Harmonia, the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite presenting to her the splendid necklace fabricated by the hand of Hephass- tos, which had been given by Zeus to Europa. 1 All the gods came to the Kadmeia, the citadel of Thebes, to present congrat- ulations and gifts at these nuptials, which seem to have been hardly less celebrated in tho mythical world than those of Peleus and Thetis. The issue of the marriage was one son, Polydorus, and four daughters, Autonoe, Ino, Semele and Agave. 2 From the five who alone survived of the warriors sprung from the dragon's teeth, arose five great families or gentes in Thebes ; the oldest and noblest of its inhabitants, coeval with the founda- tion of the town. They were called Sparti, and their name seems to have given rise, not only to the fable of the sowing of the teeth, but also to other etymological narratives. 3 All the four daughters of Kadmus are illustrious in fabulous history. Ino, wife of Athamas, the son of ./Eolus, has already been included among the legends of the -SColids. Semele became the mistress of Zeus, and inspired Here with jealousy. Mis- guided by the malicious suggestions of that goddess, she solicited Zeus to visit her with all the solemnity and terrors which sur- 1 Apollodor. iii. 4, 1-3. Pherekydes gave this account of the necklace, which seems to imply that Kadmus must have found his sister Europa. The narrative here given is from Hellanikus ; that of Pherekydes differed from it in some respects : compare Hellanik. Fragm. 8 and 9, and Pherekyd. Frag. 44. The resemblance of this story with that of Jason and JEetes (see above, chap. xiii. p. 237) will strike every one. It is curious to observe how the old logographer Pherekydes explained this analogy in his narrative ; he said that Athene had given half the dragon's teeth to Kadmus and half to ^Eetes (see Schol. Pindar. Isthm. vi. 13). 2 Hesiod, Theogon. 976. Leukothea, the sea-goddess, daughter of Kad mus, is mentioned in the Odyssey, v. 334 ; Diodor. iv. 2. 3 Eurip. Phceniss. 680, with the Scholia; Pherekydes, Fragm. 44 ; Andru- tion, ap. Schol. Pindar. Isthm. vi. 13. Dionysius (1) called the Sparti an e&vof BoiaTiaf (Schol. Phosniss. 1. c.). Even in the days of Plutarch, there were persons living who traced their descent to the Sparti of Thebes (Plutarch, Ser. Num. Vindict. p 563). 260 HISTORY OF GREECE. rounded him when he approached Here herself. The god un- willingly consented, and came in his chariot in the midst of thunder and lightning, under which awful accompaniments the mortal frame of Semele perished. Zeus, taking from her (he child of which she was pregnant, sewed it into his own thigh : after the proper interval the child was brought out and born, and became the great god Dionysus or Bacchus. Hermes took him to Ino and Athamas to receive their protection. Afterwards, however, Zeus having transformed him into a kid to conceal him from the persecution of Here, the nymphs of the mountain Nysa became his nurses. 1 Aulonoe, the third daughter of Kadmus, married the pastoral hero or god Aristaeas, and was mother of Aktaeon, a devoted hunter and a favorite companion of the goddess Artemis. She however became displeased with him either because he looked into a fountain while she was bathing and saw her naked or according to the legend set forth by the poet Stesichorus, because he loved and courted Semele or according to Euripides, be- cause he presumptuously vaunted himself as her superior in the chase. She transformed him into a stag, so that his own dogs set upon and devoured him. The rock upon which Aktaeon used to sleep when fatigued with the chase, and the spring whose transparent waters had too clearly revealed the form of the god- dess, were shown to Pausanias near Plataea, on the road to Megara. 2 1 Apollodor. iii. 4, 2-9 ; Diodor. iv. 2. 8 See Apollodor. iii. 4, 3 ; Stesichor. Fragm. xvii. Kleine ; Pansan. ix. 2, 3; Eurip. Bacch. 337; Diodor. iv. 81. The old logographer Akusilaus copied Stesichorus. Upon this well-known story it is unnecessary to multiply references. I shall however briefly notice the remarks made upon it by Diodorus and by Pausanias, as an illustration of the manner in which the literary Greeks of a later day dealt with their old national legends. Both of them appear implicitly to believe the fact, that Aktoeon was devoured by his own dogs, but they differ materially in the explanation of it Diodorus accepts and vindicates the miraculous interposition of the dis- pleased goddess to punish Aktason, who, according to one story, had boasted of his superiority in the chase to Artemis, according to another story, had presumed to solicit the goddess in marriage, emboldened by the great num- bers of the feet of animals slain in the chase which he had hung up as offer- DIONYS1US AT THEBES 261 Aga 6s KOI uvev deov irei^opai. voaov Tiiiaaav kiripafalv TOV 'AnTaiuvof roijf Kvvaf)." He retains the truth of the final catastrophe, but rationalizes it, excluding the special intervention of Artemis. 262 HISTORY OF GREECE. at the nead of his Asiatic troop of females, to obtain divine hon ors and to establish his peculiar rites in his native city. The venerable Kadraus, together with his daughters and the prophet Teiresias, at once acknowledged the divinity of the new god, and began to offer their worship and praise to him along with the solemnities which he enjoined. But Pentheus vehemently op- posed the new ceremonies, reproving and maltreating the god who introduced them : nor was his unbelief at all softened by the miracles which Dionysus wrought for his own protection and for that of his followers. His mother Agave, with her sisters. and a large body of other women from Thebes, had gone out from Thebes to Mount Kithaeron to celebrate their solemnities under the influence of the Bacchic frenzy. Thither Pentheus followed to watch them, and there the punishment due to his impiety overtook him. The avenging touch of the god having robbed him of his senses, he climbed a tall pine for the purpose of overlooking the feminine multitude, who detected him in this position, pulled down the tree, and tore him in pieces. Agave, mad and bereft of consciousness, made herself the foremost in this assault, and carried back in triumph to Thebes the head of her slaughtered son. The aged Kadmus, with his wife Harmo- nia, retired among the Illyrians, and at the end of their lives were changed into serpents, Zeus permitting them to be trans- ferred to the Elysian fields. 1 1 Apollod. iii. 5, 3-4 ; Thcocrit. Idyll, xxvi. Eurip. Bacch. passim. Such ia the tragical plot of this memorable drama. It is a striking proof of the deep-seated reverence of the people of Athens for the sanctity of the Bacchic ceremonies, that they could have borne the spectacle of Agave on the stage with her dead son's head, and the expressions of triumphant sympathy in her action on the part of the Chorus (1168), MUKOI^ 'Ayavij ! This drama, written near the close of the life of Euripides, and exhibited by his son after his death ( Sehol. Aristoph. Ran. 67 j, contains passages strongly inculcating the necessity of implicit deference to ancestorial authority in matters of re- ligion, and favorably contrasting the uninquiring faith of the vulgar with the dissenting and inquisitive tendencies of superior minds: see v. 196; com- oare w. 389 and 422. Ovdev aoit,Ufj.cr&a roiai Harpiovf itapadoxw;, 61' unpuv Td aoijtbv etipriTat. typevuv. Such reproofs " insanieutis sapientiae " certainly do not fall in with the plot PENTHEUS. - LABD AKUS. - LAIUS. - ANTIOrE. 263 Polydorus and Labdakus successively became kings of Thebes : the latter at his death left an infant son, Laius, who was deprived of his throne by Lykus. And here we approach the legend of Antiope, Zethus and Amphion, whom the fabulists insert at this point of the Theban series. Antiope" is here the daughter of Nyk- teus, the brother of Lykus. She is deflowered by Zeus, and then, while pregnant, flies to Epopeus king of Sikyon : Nykteus dying entreats his brother to avenge the injury, and Lykus accordingly invades Sikyon, defeats and kills Epopeus, and brings back Antiope prisoner to Thebes. In her way thither, in a cave near Eleutherae, which was shown to Pausanias, 1 she is delivered of the twin sons of Zeus Amphion and Zethus who, exposed to perish, are taken up and nourished by a shepherd, and pass their youth amidst herdsmen, ignorant of their lofty descent. Antiope is conveyed to Thebes, where, after undergoing a long persecution from Lykus and his cruel wife Dirke, she at length escapes, and takes refuge in the pastoral dwelling of her sons, now grown to manhood. Dirke pursues and requires her to be delivered up ; but the sons recognize and protect their mother, taking an ample revenge upon her persecutors. Lykus is slain, and Dirke is dragged to death, tied to the horns of a bull. 2 of the drama itself, in which Pentheus appears as a Conservative, resisting the introduction of the new religious rites. Taken in conjunction with the emphatic and submissive piety which reigns through the drama, they coun- tenance the supposition of Tyrwhitt, that Euripides was anxious to repel the imputations, so often made against him, of commerce with the philoso- phers and participation in sundry heretical opinions. Pacuvius in his Penthcns seems to have closely copied Euripides ; see Servius ad Virg. ^Eneid. iv. 469. The old Thespis had composed a tragedy on the subject of Pentheus : Suidas, 9e-&eipa<; rfiv Avuovpyov (AvKou) jvvaiKa Et-eTropftr/drj : it approaches more nearly to the story given in the seventh fable of Hygiuus, and followed by Propertius (iii. 15); thfl 264 HISTORY OF GREECE. Amphion and Zethus, having banished Laius, become kings of Thebes. The former, taught by Hermes, and possessing exquis- ite skill on the lyre, employs it in fortifying the city, the stones of the walls arranging themselves spontaneously in obedience to the rhythm of his song. 1 Zethus marries Aedon, who, in the dark and under a fatal mis- take, kills her son Itylus : she is transformed into a nightingale, while Zethus dies of grief. 2 Amphion becomes the husband of Niobe, daughter of Tantalus, and the father of a numerous off- spring, the complete extinction of which by the hands of Apollo and Artemis has already been recounted in these pages. Here ends the legend of the beautiful Antiope and her twin sons the rude and unpolished, but energetic, Zethus and the refined and amiable, but dreamy, Amphion. For so Euripides, in the drama of Antiope unfortunately lost, presented the twc eighth fable of Hyginus contains the tale of Antiope as given by Euripides and Ennius. The story of Pausanias differs from both. The Scholiast ad Apollon. Rhod. i. 735. says that there were twc persons named Antiope ; one, daughter of Asopus, the other, daughter of Nykteus. Pausanias is content with supposing one only, really the daughter of Nyk- teus, but there was a tyfjfiri that she was daughter of Asopus (ii. 6, 2). Asius made Antiope daughter of Asopus, and mother (both by Zeus and by Epo- peus : such a junction of divine and human paternity is of common occur rence in the Greek legends) of Zethus and Amphion (ap. Paus. 1. c.). The contradictory versions of the story are brought together, though no/ very perfectly, in Sterk's Essay De Labdacidamm Historia, p. 38-43 (Ley- den, 1829). 1 This story about the lyre of Amphion is not noticed in Homer, but il was narrated in the ancient ITD? if 'Evpunr/v which Pausanias had read : the wild beasts as well as the stones were obedient to his strains (Paus ix. 5, 4). Pherekydes also recounted it (Pherekyd. Fragm. 102, Didot). The tablet of inscription (' Avaypap?}) at Sikyon recognized Amphion as the first com poser of poetry and harp-music (Plutarch, de Musica, c. 3. p. 1132). * The tale of the wife and son of Zethus is as old as the Odyssey (xix. 525). Pausanias adds the statement that Zethus died of grief (ix. 5, 5 : Pherekydes, Fragm. 102, Did.). Pausanias, however, as well as Apollodo- ros, tells us that Zethus married Thebe, from whom the name Thebes was given to the city. To reconcile the conflicting pretensions of Zethus and Amphion with those of Kadmus, as founders of Thebes, Pausanias supposes that the latter was the original Settler of the hill of the Kadmeia, while thf two forme* extended the settlement to the lower city (ix. 5, 1-3). LAIUS AND (EDIPUS. 265 brothers, in affectionate union as well as in striking contrast. 1 It is evident that the whole story stood originally quite apart from the Kadmeian family, and so the rudiments of it yet stand in the Odyssey ; but the logographers, by their ordinary connecting artifices, have opened a vacant place for it in the descending se- ries of Theban mythes. And they have here proceeded in a manner not usual with them. For whereas they are generally fond of multiplying entities, and supposing different historical personages of the same name, in order to introduce an apparent smoothness in the chronology they have here blended into one person Amphion the son of Antiope and Amphion the father of Chloris, who seem clearly distinguished from each other in the Odyssey. They have further assigned to the same person all the circumstances of the legend of Niobe, which seems to have been originally framed quite apart from the sons of Antiope. Amphion and Zethus being removed, Laius became king of Thebes. With him commences the ever-celebrated series of ad- ventures of CEdipus and his family. Laius forewarned by the oracle that any son whom he might beget would kill him, caused CEdipus as soon as he was born to be exposed on Mount Kithse- ron. Here the herdsmen of Polybus king of Corinth acciden- tally found him and conveyed him to their master, who brought him up as his own child. In spite of the kindest treatment, however, CEdipus when he grew up found himself exposed to taunts on the score of his unknown parentage, and went to Delphi to inquire of the god the name of his real father. He received for answer an admonition not to go back to his country ; if he did so, it was his destiny to kill his father and become the husband of his mother. Knowing no other country but Corinth, he accord- ingly determined to keep away from that city, and quitted Delphi by the road towards Boeotia and Phokis. At the exact spot 1 See Valckenaer. Diatribe in Eurip. Reliq. cap. 7, p. 58; Welcker, Gricchisch. Tragod. ii. p. 811. There is a striking resemblance between the Antiope of Euripides and the Tyro of Sophokles in many points. Plato in his Gorgias has preserved a few fragments, and a tolerably clear general idea of the characters of Zethus and Amphion (Gorg. 90-92) ; see also Horat. Epist. i. 18, 42. Both Livius and Pacuvius had tragedies on the scheme of this of Eurvjii les, the former seemirgly a translation. VOL. I. 12 266 HISTORY OF GREECE. where the roads leading to these two countries forked, he met Laius in a chariot drawn by mules, when the insolence of one of the attendants brought on an angry quarrel, in which CEdipug killed Laius, not knowing him to be his father. The exact place where this event happened, called the Divided Way 1 , was memorable in the eyes of all literary Greeks, and is specialty adverted to by Pausanias in his periegesis. On the death of Laius, Kreon, the brother of Jokasta, sue ceeded to the kingdom of Thebes. At this time the country was under the displeasure of the gods, and was vexed by a terrible monster, with the face of a woman, the wings of a bird, and th tail of a lion, called the Sphinx 2 sent by the wrath of Here and occupying the neighboring mountain of Phikium. The Sphinx had learned from the Muses a riddle, which she proposed to the Thebans to resolve : on every occasion of failure she took away one of the citizens and ate him up. Still no person could solve the riddle ; and so great was the suffering occasioned, that Kreon was obliged to offer both the crown and the nuptials of his sister Jokasta to any one who could achieve the salvation of the city. At this juncture CEdipus arrived and solved the rid- dle : upon which the Sphinx immediately threw herself from the acropolis and disappeared. As a recompense for this service, CEdipus was made king of Thebes, and married Jokasta, not aware that she was his mother. These main tragical circumstances that CEdipus had ig- norantly killed his father and married his mother belong to the oldest form of the legend as it stands in the Odyssey. The gods (it is added in that poem) quickly made the facts known to mankind. Epikasta (so Jokasta is here called) in an agony of sorrow hanged herself: CEdipus remained king of the Kad- meians, but underwent many and great miseries, such as the 1 See the description of the locality in K. 0. Miiller ( Orchomenos, c. i. p. 37). The tombs of Laius and his attendant were still seen there in the days of Pausanias (x. 5, 2). * Apollodor. iii. 5, 8. An author named Lykus, in his work entitled Tht- balca, ascribed this visitation to the anger of Dionysus (Schol. Hesiod, Theogon. 326). The Sphinx (or Phix, from the Baotian Mount Phikiam) is as old as the Hcsiodic Thcogony, 4>f' bhorjv TEKE, Kadfieioiair (Thcog. 326;. ADVENTURES OF (EDIPUS. 267 Erinnyes, who avenge an injured mother, inflict. 1 A passage in the Iliad implies that he died at Thebes, since it mentions tl e funeral games which were celebrated there in honor of him. His misfortunes were recounted by Nestor, in the old Cyprian verses, among the stories of aforetime. 2 A fatal curse hun- both upon himself and upon his children, Eteokles, Polynikes, Anti- gone and Ismene. According to that narrative which the Attic tragedians have rendered universally current, they were his chil dren by Jokasta, the disclosure of her true relationship to him having been very long deferred. But the ancient epic called (Edipodia, treading more closely in the footsteps of Homer, rep- resented him as having after her death married* a second wife, Euryganeia, by whom the four children were born to him : and the painter Onatas adopted this story in preference to that of Sophokles. 3 1 Odyss. xi. 270. Odysseus, describing what he saw in the under-world. says, Mtjrepa r' Oidtnodao I6ov, Ka^v 'ETri "H (leya ep-yov lpel-ev aldpdyffi vooio, Trifj.afj.evri $ viel 6 6' ov iraTEp 1 i Tf/fiev ' utiap <5' uvurrvaTa i?eot fieaav a 'AA/l' 6 HEV ev Q?j,8ri TTO^VT/PUTU aXyea iru Kadjisiuv fivaaae, &etiv 6/loaf SiH fiovXa 'H d' f/?v eif A/Jao irvhuprao Kparepolo /3p6%ov a'nrvv u

aatv i etc. (iii. 5, 8). Hellanikus (ap. Schol. Eur. Phceniss. 59) mentioned the self-inflicted blind 268 HISTORY OF GREECE The disputes of Eteokles and Polynikes for the throne of their father gave occasion not only to a series of tragical iamily inci- dents, but also to one of the great quasi-historical events of legen- dary Greece the two sieges of Thebes by Adrastus, king of Argos. The two ancient epic poems called the Thebai's and the Epigoni (if indeed both were not parts of one very comprehen- sive poem) detailed these events at great length, and as it appears, with distinguished poetical merit ; for Pausanias pronounces the Cyclic Thebai's (so it was called by the subsequent critics to dis- tinguish it from the more modern Thebai's of Antimachus) infe- rior only to the Iliad and Odyssey ; and the ancient elegiac poet Kallinus treated it as an Homeric composition. 1 Of this once- valued poem we unfortunately possess nothing but a few scanty fragments. The leading points of the legend are briefly glanced at in the Iliad ; but our knowledge of the details is chiefly derived from the Attic tragedians, who transformed the narratives of their predecessors at pleasure, and whose popularity constantly eclips- ed and obliterated the ancient version. Antimachus of Kolophon, contemporary with Euripides, in his long epic, probably took no less liberties with the old narrative. His Thebai'd never became generally popular, but it exhibited marks of study and elabora- tion which recommended it to the esteem of the Alexandrine critics, and probably contributed to discredit in their eyes the old cyclic poem. The logographers, who gave a continuous history of this siege of Thebes, had at least three preexisting epic poems the The- bi'as, the CEdipodia, and the Alkmaeonis, from which they ness of GEdipus; but it seems doubtful whether this circumstance was inclu- ded in the narrative of Pherekydes. 1 Pausan, ix. 9. 3. 'ETroiri&r} 6s f rbv nohepov TOVTOV /cat CTIV/, Qr]3aif T& <5e ITTJ? ravra Ka/l/ltvof, utyiKofievof avruv f [IVTJ/LITJV, e^Tjaev 'Opijpov rdv xoirjoavra elvai. KcMiivy 6e trol.'Xoi TE nal agioi "kdyov Kara ravra lyvuaav iya) de TT)V Troir/ffiv raiirnv fiera ye 'IXiaSa not ra ZTTTI ru If 'Odvaaea iiraivu fiuTiiara. The name in tho text of Pausanias stands KaAatVoc, an unknown person : most of the critics recognize the propriety of substituting Kc/Wtvo?, and Leutsch and Welcker have given very sufficient reasons for doing so. The 'ApQiupEu i&haaia if Qriftas, alluded to in the pseudo-Herodotean life of Homer, seems to I the description of a special passage in this The- ' SIEGES OF THEBES. 269 could borrow. The subject was also handled in some of the He- siodic poems, but we do not know to what extent.' The Thebai's was composed more in honor of Argos than of Thebes, as the first line of it, one of the few fragments still preserved, beto kens. 2 SIEGES OF THEDES. The legend, about to recount fraternal dissension of the most implacable kind, comprehending in its results not only the imme- diate relations of the infuriated brothers, but many chosen com- panions of the heroic race along with them, takes its start from the paternal curse of QEdipus, which overhangs and determines all the gloomy sequel. CEdipus, though king of Thebes and father of four children by Euryganeia (according to the QEdipodia), has become the de- voted victim of the Erinnyes, in consequence of the self-inflicted death of his mother, which he has unconsciously caused, as well as of his unintentional parricide. Though he had long forsworn the use of all the ornaments and luxuries which his father had in- herited from his kingly progenitors, yet when through age he had come to be dependent upon his two sons, Polynikes one day broke through this interdict, and set before him the silver table and the splendid wine-cup of Kadmus, which Laius had always been ac- customed to employ. The old king had no sooner seen these precious appendages of the regal life of his father, than his mind was overrun by a calamitous phrenzy, and he imprecated terrible curses on his sons, predicting that there would be bitter and end- less warfare between them. The goddess Erinnys heard and heeded him ; and he repeated the curse again on another occasion, when his sons, who had always been accustomed to send to him the shoulder of the victims sacrificed on the altar, caused the but- 1 Hesiod, ap. Schol. Iliad, xxiii. 680, which passage does not seem to me so much, at variance with the incidents stated in other poets as Lcntsch imagines. 2 'Apyof aecde, Beu, Trofa'ityiov, evdev uvaKTef (see Leutsch, ib. c. 4. p 29). 270 HISTORY OF GREECE. lock to be served to him in place of it. 1 He resented this as an insult, and prayed the gods that they might perish each by the hand of the other. Throughout the tragedians as well as in the old epic, the paternal curse, springing immediately from the mis- guided CEdipus himself, but remotely from the parricide and incest with which he has tainted his breed, is seen to domineer over the course of events the Erinnys who executes that curse being the irresistible, though concealed, agent. ./Eschylus not only preserves the fatal efficiency of the paternal curse, but even briefly glances at the causes assigned for it in the Thebaiis, with- out superadding any new motives. In the judgment of Sopho- kles, or of his audience, the conception of a father cursing his sons upon such apparently trifling grounds was odious ; and that great poet introduced many aggravating circumstances, describing the old blind father as having been barbarously turned out of doors by his sons to wander abroad in exile and poverty. Though by this change he rendered his poem more coherent and self- justifying, yet he departed, from the spirit of the old legend, 1 Fragm. of the Thebats, ap. Athenae. xii. p. 465, on ov-u TrapedrjKav /c7n.'>- utira u UTrriyopevKei, Jleyuv ovrwf. AiiTup 6 dioysvrjf ijpuf %av&bf lipura [iev Oldiirodi Kah 'Ap-yvpsijv K.aSfj.010 $e6povof avriip eiretTa Xpiiaeov e/z7r/l)?crev Kahdv denae jj6eof olvov AiiTup oy' uf pa. MTIJTI duaaivTO, Kev (5' d/LKJiQTepoif alel Tr6A.e/j,oi re fiaxai re. See Leutsch, Thebaid. Cycl. Reliq, p. 38. The other fragment frcm the same ThebaTs is cited by the Schol. ad Soph CKdip. Colon. 1378. svoijae, ^ayuai paXev, sine re [liidov aldef fj.oi oveideiovref eirefj.ijjav. EVKTO Ait 3aaikf]'i nal uA/loff udavdroiai, Xepaiv vir j i/lA^wv KaTO.fiiJii.Evai *Ai'<5of slau. Ta 81 Trapairhqata T(f) ITTOTTOM Kal Aiff^v/lof iv rolf "ETTTO km Qtjjiaf. In spite of the protest of Schatz, in his note, I think that the scholiast has un- derstood the words iriwrof rpotyus (Sept. ad Theb. 787) in their plain and lust meaning. ADRASTUS OF ARGOS. 271 according to which CEdipus has contracted by his unconscious misdeeds an incurable taint destined to pass onward to his progeny. His mind is alienated, and he curses them, not because he has suffered seriously by their guilt, but because he is made the blind instrument of an avenging Erinnys for the ruin of the house of Laius. 1 After the death of OEdipus and the celebration of his funeral games, at which amongst others, Argeia, daughter of Adrastus (afterwards the wife of Polynikes), was present, 2 his two sons soon quarrelled respecting the succession. The circumstances are differently related ; but it appears that, according to the orig- inal narrative, the wrong and injustice was on the part of Poly- nikes, who, however, was obliged to leave Thebes and to seek shelter with Adrastus, king of Argos. Here he met Tydeus, a fugitive, at the same time, from JEtoiia : it was dark when they arrived, and a broil ensued between the two exiles, but Adrastus came out and parted them. He had been enjoined by an oracle to give his two daughters in marriage to a lion and a boar, and he thought this occasion had now arrived, inasmuch as one of the combatants carried on his shield a lion, the other a boar. He accordingly gave Deipyle in marriage to Tydeus, and Argeia to Polynikes : moreover, he resolved to restore by armed resistance both his sons-in-law to their respective countries. 3 1 The curses of (Edipus arc very frequently and emphatically dwelt upon both by ^Eschylus and Sophokles (Sept. ad Theb. 70-586, 655-697, etc. ; (Edip. Colon. 1293-1378). The former continues the same point of view as the ThebaYs, when he mentions Td? TTSpl-&VfiOVf Karupaf @Aaipi(j>povo<; Oldixoda (727) ; or, "kbjov r' avoia not Apevuv 'Epivvvc (Soph. Antig. 584). The Scholiast on Sophokles ("CEd. Col. 1378) treats the cause assigned by the ancient ThebaYs for the curse vented by CEdipus as trivial and ludicrous. The JEgeids at Sparta, who traced their descent to Kadmus, suffered from terrible maladies which destroyed the lives of their children ; an oracle di- rected them to appease the Erinnyes of Laius and OEdipus by erecting a temple, upon which the maladies speedily ceased (Herodot. iv.). 2 Hesiod. ap. Schol. Iliad, xxiii. 680. 3 Apollodor. iii. 5, 9 ; Hygin. f. 69 ; JSschyl. Sept. ad Theb. 573. Hyginus ays that Polynikes came clothed in the skin of a lion, and Tydeus in that rf a boar ; perhaps after Antimachus, who said that Tydeus had been brought 272 HISTORY OF GREECE. On proposing the expedition to the Argeian chiefs around hint- he found most of them willing auxiliaries ; but Amphiaraus formerly his bitter opponent, but now reconciled to him, and husband of his sister Eriphyle strongly opposed him. 1 He denounced the enterprise as unjust and contrary to the will of the gods. Again, being of a prophetic stock, descended from Melampus, he foretold the certain death both of himself and of the principal leaders, should they involve themselves as accom- plices in the mad violence of Tydeus or the criminal ambition of Polynikes. Amphiaraus, already distinguished both in the Kaly- donian boar-hunt and in the funeral games of Pelias, was in the Theban war the most conspicuous of all the heroes, and absolutely indispensable to its success. But his reluctance to engage in it was invincible, nor was it possible to prevail upon him except through the influence of his wife Eriphyle. Polynikes, having brought with him from Thebes the splendid robe and necklace given by the gods to Harmonia on her marriage with Kadmus, offered it as a bribe to Eriphyle, on condition that she would influence the determination of Amphiaraus. The sordid wife, seduced by so matchless a present, betrayed the lurking-place of her husband, and involved him in the fatal expedition. 2 Amphia- raus, reluctantly dragged forth, and foreknowing the disastrous issue of the expedition both to himself and to his associates, addressed his last injunctions, at the moment of mounting his chariot, to his sons Alkmaeon and Amphilochus, commanding Alkmoeon to avenge his approaching death by killing the venal Eriphyle, and by undertaking a second expedition against Thebes. The Attic dramatists describe this expedition as having been conducted by seven chiefs, one to each of the seven celebrated gates of Thebes. But the Cyclic Thebais gave to it a much up by swineherds (Antimach. Fragm. 27, ed. Diintzer; ap. Schol. Iliad, iv. 400). Very probably, however, the old ThebaTs compared Tydeus and Poly- nikes to a lion and a boar, on account of their courage and fierceness ; a simile quite in the Homeric character. Mnaseas gave the words of the oracle (ip. Schol. Eurip. Phoeniss. 41 1). 1 See Pindar, Nem. ix. 30, with the instructive Scholium 3 Apollodor. iii. 6, 2. The treachery of " the hateful Eriphyle" is noticed in the Odyssey, xi. 327 : Odysseus sees her in the under-world along xith the many wives and daughters of the heroes. MARCH OF ADRASTUS AGAINST THEBES. 273 more comprehensive character, mentioning auxiliaries from Arcadia, Messene, and various parts of Peloponnesus j 1 aud the application of Tydeus and Polynikes at Mykenae in the course of their circuit made to collect allies, is mentioned in the Iliad. They were well received at Mykenae ; but the warning signals given by the gods were so terrible that no Mykencean could venture to accompany them. 2 The seven principal chiefs how- ever were Adrastus, Arnphiaraus, Kapaneus, Hippomedon, Par- thenopaeus.. Tydeus and Polynikes. 3 When the army had advanced as far as the river Asopus, a halt was made for sacrifice and banquet ; while Tydeus was sent to Thebes as envoy to demand the restoration of Polynikes to his rights. His demand was refused ; but finding the chief Kadmeians assembled at the banquet in the house of Eteokles, he challenged them all to con- tend with him in boxing or wrestling. So efficacious was the aid of the goddess Athene that he overcame them all ; and the Kad- meians were so indignant at their defeat, that they placed an ambuscade of fifty men to intercept him in his way back to the army. All of them perished by the hand of this warrior, small in stature and of few words, but desperate and irresistible in the fight. One alone was spared, Maeon, in consequence of special signals from the gods. 4 The Kadmeians, assisted by their allies the Phokians and the Phlegyae, marched out to resist the invaders, and fought a battle 1 Pausan. ii. 20,4; ix. 9, 1. His testimony to this, as he had read and ndmircd the Cyclic Theba'is, seems quite sufficient, in spite of the opinion ot Welcker to the contrary (^Eschylische Trilogie. p. 375). * Iliad, iv. 376. 3 There are differences in respect to the names of the seven : JEschylus (Sept. ad Theb. 461) leaves out Adrastus as one of the seven, and includes Eteoklus instead of him ; others left out Tydeus and Polynikes, and inserted Eteoklus and Mekisteus (Apollodor. iii. 6, 3). Antimachus, in his poetical T/itbats, called Parthenopseus an Argeian, not an Arcadian (Schol. ad ^schyl. Sept. ad. Theb. 532). 4 Iliad, iv. 381-400, with the Schol. The first celebration of the Nemean games is connected with this march of the army of Adrastns against Thebes- they were celebrated in honor of Archemorus, the infant son of Lykurgus, who had been killed by a serpent while his nurse Hypsipyle went to show the fountain to the thirsty Argeian chiefs (Apollod. iii 6,4; Schol. ad Pindar Nem. 1) VOL. i. 12* 18oc 274 HISTORY OF GREECE. near tae Ismenian hill, in which they were defeated and lorced to retire within the walls. The prophet Teiresias acquainted them that if Menockeus, son of Kreon, would offer himself as a victim to Ares, victory would be assured to Thebes. The generous youth, as soon as he learnt that his life was to be the price of safety to his country, went and slew himself before the gates. The heroes along with Adrastus now commenced a vigorous attack upon the town, each of the seven selecting one of the gates to assault. The contest was long and strenuously maintained but the devotion of Menoekeus had procured for the Thebans the protection of the gods. Parthenopseus was killed with a stone by Periklymenus ; and when the furious Kapaneus, having planted a scaling-ladder, had mounted the walls, he was smitten by a thunderbolt from Zeus and cast down dead upon the earth. This event struck terror into the Argeians, and Adrastus called back his troops from the attack. The Thebans now sallied forth to pursue them, when Eteokles, arresting the battle, proposed to decide the controversy by single combat with his brother. The challenge, eagerly accepted by Polynikes, was agreed to by Adrastus : a single combat ensued between the two brothers, in which both were exasperated to fury and both ultimately slain by each other's hand. This equal termination left the result of the general contest still undetermined, and the bulk of the two armies renewed the fight. In the sanguinary struggle which ensued the sons of Astakus on the Theban side displayed the most conspicu- ous and successful valor. One of them, 1 Melanippus, mortally wounded Tydeus while two others, Leades and Amphidikus, killed Eteoklus and Hippomedon. Amphiaraus avenged Tydeug by killing Melanippus ; but unable to arrest the rout of the army, 1 The story recounted that the head of Melanippus was brought to Tydeus as he was about to expire of his wound, and that he knawed it with his teeth, a story touched upon by Sophokles (apud Herodian. in Rhetor. Gnec. t. viii. p. 601, Walz.). The lyric poet Bacchylides (ap. Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 1535) seems to have handled the story even earlier than Sophokles. We find the same allegation embodied in charges against real historical men: the invective of Montanus against Aquilius Regulus, at the beginning of the reign of Vespasian, affirmed, " datam interfectori Pisonis pectin iam a Hegulo, appetitumque morsu Pisonis cap 4" 'Tacit. Hist. iv. 42). AMPHIARAUS. 275 he fled with the rest, closely pursued by Periklymenus. The latter was about to pierce him with his spear, when the beneficence of Zeus rescued him from this disgrace miraculously opening the earth under him, so that Amphiaraus with his chariot and horses was received unscathed into her bosom. 1 The exact spot where this memorable incident happened was indicated by a se- pulchral building, and shown by the Thebans down to the days of Pausanias its sanctity being attested by the fact, that no animal would consent to touch the herbage which grew within the sacred inclosure. Amphiaraus, rendered immortal by Zeus, was wor- sliipped as a god at Argos, at Thebes and at Oropus and for many centuries gave answers at his oracle to the questions of the pious applicant. 2 1 Apollodor. iii. 6,8. Pindar, Olymp. vi. 11; Nem. ix. 13-27. Pausan. ix. 8, 2; 18, 2-4. Euripides, in the Phcenissa: fl!22 s&]q.), describes the battle generally; see also JEsch. S. Th. 392. It appears by Pausanias that the Thebans had poems or legends of their own, relative to this war : they dissented in various points from the Cyclic Thebais (ix. 18, 4). The Thebai's said that Perikly- menus had killed Parthenopams ; the Thebans assigned this exploit to Asphodikus, a warrior not commemorated by any of the poets known to us. The village of Harma, between Tanagra and Mykalessus, was affirmed by some to have been the spot where Amphiaraus closed his life (Strabo, ix. p 404) : Sophokles placed the scene at the Amphiarasium near Oropus (up Strabon. ix. p. 399). 2 Pindar, Olymp. vi. 16. "ETTTO ff ETreiTa nvpuv veicpuv Tefoa&evTuv 'TaAa'iovidas EtTrev iv &tj[3ai(Ti TOIOVTOV n enof HO&EU orpartuf o^'&a^./j.bv fydf 'Afj.OTfpov, pavTiv T* ayadbv nal Sovpl fiaxEa&ai. The scholiast affirms that these last expressions are borrowed by Pindai from the Cyclic Thfibats. The temple of Amphiaraus (Tausan. ii. 23, 2), his oracle, seems to have been inferior in estimation only to that of Delphi CHerodot. i. 52 ; Pausan. i. 34 ; Cicero, Divin. i. 40 J. Croesus sent a rich present to Amphiaraus, TTV&O- fiEvof avrov rriv TE aperftv KOI rijv Kd-&i)v ("Herod. 1. c) ; a striking proof how these interesting legends were recounted and believed as genuine historical facts. Other adventures of Amphiaraus in the expedition against Thebes were commemorated in the carvings on the Thronus at Amyklas ("Pausan. iii. 18,4). ^Eschylns ("Sept. Theb. 611) seems to enter into the The'ban view, doubt- less highly respectful towards Amphiaraus, when he places in the month of the Kadmeian king Eteokles such high encomiums on Amphiaraus, and so marked a contrast with the other chiefs from Argos. 276 HISTORY OF GREECE. Adrastus, thus deprived of the prophet and warrior whom he regarded as " the eye of his army," and having seen the other chiefs killed in the disastrous fight, was forced to take flight sin- gly, and was preserved by the matchless swiftness of his horse Areion, the offspring of Poseidon. He reached Argos on his return, bringing with him nothing except " his garments of woe and his black-maned steed." 1 Kreon, father of the heroic youth Mencekeus, succeeding to the administration of Thebes after the death of the two hostile brothers and the repulse of Adrastus, caused Eteokles to be buried with distinguished honor, but cast out ignominiously the body of Polynikes as a traitor to his country, forbidding every one on pain of death to consign it to the tomb. He likewise refused permission to Adrastus to inter the bodies of his fallen comrades. This proceeding, so offensive to Grecian feeling, gave rise to two further tales ; one of them at least of the highest pathos and interest. Antigone, the sister of Polynikes, heard with indignation the revolting edict consigning her brother's body to the dogs and vultures, and depriving it of those rites which were considered essential to the repose of the dead. Unmoved by the dissuading counsel of an affectionate but timid sister, and unable to procure assistance, she determined to brave the hazard and to bury the body with her own hands. She was detected in the act ; and Kreon, though forewarned by Teiresias of the con- sequences, gave orders that she should be buried alive, as having deliberately set at naught the solemn edict of the city. His son Haemon, to whom she was engaged to be married, in vain inter- ceded for her life. In an agony of despair he slew himself in the sepulchre to which the living Antigone had been consigned ; 1 Pausan. viii. 25, 5, from the Cyclic ThebaTs, Ec^ara Avypd <(ifpuv ai>v 'Apelovi KvavoxaiTq ; also Apollodor. iii. 6, 8. The celebrity of the horse Areion was extolled in the Iliad (xxiii. 346), in the Cyclic Thebals, and also in the Thebats of Antimachus (Pausan. 1. c.) : by the Arcadians of Thelpusia he was said to be the offspring of Dcme- ter by Poseidon, he, and a daughter whose name Pausanias will not com- municate to the uninitiated (fa TO ovofta if uTfTiearovf Aeyetv ov vo/j.iovai t 1. C.). A different story is in the Schol. Iliad, xxiii. 346 ; and in Antimach- us, who affirmed that " Gaea herself had produced him, as a wonder to mor tal men" /ce Antimach. Frag. 16. p. 102 ; Epic. Grace. Frag. ed. Diintzer). SEPULTURE OF THE CHIEFS 277 and bis mother Eurydike, the wife of Kreon, inconsolable for his death, perished by her own hand. And thus the new light which seened to be springing up over the last remaining scion of the devoted family of CEdipus, is extinguished amidst gloom and horrors which overshadowed also the house and dynasty of Kreon. 1 The other tale stands more apart from the original legend, and seems to have had its origin in the patriotic pride of the Athenians. Adrastus, unable to obtain permission from the The- bans to inter the fallen chieftains, presented himself in suppliant e;uise, accompanied by their disconsolate mothers, to Theseus at Eleusis. lie implored the Athenian warrior to extort from the perverse Thebans that last melancholy privilege which no decent or pious Greeks ever thought of withholding, and thus to stand forth as the champion of Grecian public morality in one of its most essential points, not less than of the rights of the subterra- nean gods. The Thebans obstinately persisting in their refusal, Theseus undertook an expedition against their city, vanquished them in the field, and compelled them by force of arms to permit the -sepulture of their fallen enemies. This chivalrous interposi- tion, celebrated in one of the preserved dramas of Euripides, formed a subject of glorious recollection to the Athenians through out the historical age : their orators dwelt upon it in terms of animated panegyric ; and it seems to have been accepted as a real fact of the past time, with not less implicit conviction than the battle of Marathon. 2 But the Thebans, though equally per- suaded of the truth of the main story, dissented from the Athe- nian version of it, maintaining that they had given up the bodies for sepulture voluntarily and of their own accord. The tomb of 1 Sophokl. Antigon. 581. Nvv yap ea^araf vnsp 'Pi&e ereraro dof h> Qidiirov (Jojizoif, etc. The pathetic tale here briefly recounted forms the subject of this beautiful tragedy of Sophokles, the argument of which is supposed by Boeckh to have been borrowed in its primary rudiments from the Cyclic, ThebaTs or the CEdipodia (Boeckh, Dissertation appended to his translation of the Anti- gone, c. x. p. 146) ; see Apollodor. iii. 7, 1. JEschylus also touches upon the heroism of Antigone (Sep. Theb. 981). * Apollodor. iii. 7, 1 ; Eurip. Supp. passim ; Herbdot. ix. 27 ; Plato, Menex *in. c. 9; Lysias, Epitaph, c 4 ; Isokrat. Orat. Panegyr. p 196, Auger 278 HISTORY OF GREECE. the chieftains was shown near Eleusis even ill the days of Pau sanias. 1 A large proportion both of the interesting persons and of the exalted acts of legendary Greece belongs to the female sex. Nor can we on this occasion pass over the name of Evadne, the de- voted widow of Kapaneus, who cast herself on the funeral pile of her husband and perished. 2 The defeat of the seven chiefs before Thebes was amply aven- ged by their sons, again under the guidance of Adrastus : ^Egia- leus son of Adrastus, Thersander son of Polynikes, Alkmaaon and Amphilochus, sons of Amphiaraus, Diomedes son of Tydeus, Sthenelus son of Kapaneus, Promachus son of Parthenopaeus, and Euryalus son of Mekistheus, joined in this expedition. Though all these youthful warriors, called the Epigoni, took part in the expedition, the grand and prominent place appears to have been occupied by Alkmaeon, son of Amphiaraus. Assistance was given to them from Corinth and Megara, as well as from Mes- sene and Arcadia ; while Zeus manifested his favorable disposi- tions by signals not to be mistaken. 3 At the river Glisas the Epigoni were met by the Thebans in arms, and a battle took place in which the latter were completely defeated. Laodamas, eon of Eteokles, killed -ZEgialeus, son of Adrastus ; but he and his army were routed and driven within the walls by the valor and energy of Alkmaeon. The defeated Kadmeians consulted the prophet Teiresias, who informed them that the gods had de- clared for their enemies, and that there was no longer any hope of successful resistance. By his advice they sent a herald to the assailants offering to surrender the town, while they themselves conveyed away their wives and children, and fled under the com 1 Pausan. L 39, 2. 2 Eurip. Supplic. 1004-1110. 3 Homer, Iliad, iv. 406. Sthenelus. the companion of Diomedes and one if the Epigoni, says to Agamemnon, 'H/j.eif TOI irarepuv [icy' upeivovef ev^o/wi?' elvai' 'Hfielf Kal 6f/(3r]c I6of eiA.ofj.ev inTanvtoio, Tlavporepov Xabv ayayovW virb rei%of "Apeiov, HeL-&6fj.evoL repdeaai deuv Kal Zqvde upuyy- A.VTOI SECOND EXPEDITION. -THE EPIGONI. 279 mand of Laodamas to the Hlyrians, 1 upon which tlie Epigoiii entered Thebes, and established Thersander, son of Polynikes, on the throne. Adrastus, who in the former expedition had been the single survivor amongst so many fallen companions, now found himself the only exception to the general triumph and joy of the con- querors : he had lost his son JEgialeus, and the violent sorrow arising from the event prematurely cut short his life. His soft voice and persuasive eloquence were proverbial in the ancient epic.' 2 He was worshipped as a hero both at Argos and at Sik- yon, but with especial solemnity in the last-mentioned place, where his Heroum stood in the public agora, and where his ex- ploits as well as his sufferings were celebrated periodically in ly- ric tragedies. Melanippus, son of Astakus, the brave defender of Thebes, who had slain both Tydeus and Mekistheus, was wor- shipped with no less solemnity by the Thebans. 3 The enmity of these two heroes rendered it impossible for both of them to be worshipped close upon the same spot. Accordingly it came to pass during the historical period, about the time of the Solonian legislation at Athens, that Kleisthene"s, despot of Sikyon, wishing to banish the hero Adrastus and abolish the religious solemnities celebrated in honor of the latter by the Sikyonians, first applied to the Delphian oracle for permission to carry this banishment into effect directly and forcibly. That permission being refused, he next sent to Thebes an intimation that he was anxious to in- troduce their hero Melanippus into Sikyon. The Thebans will- ingly consented, and he assigned to the new hero a consecrated spot in the strongest and most commanding portion of the Sik- yonian prytaneium. He did this (says the historian) " knowing that Adrastus would forthwith go away of his own accord ; since 1 Apollodor. iii. 7, 4. Herodot. v. 57-61. Pausan. ix. 5, 7 ; 9, 2. Diodor. iv. 65-66. Pindar represents Adrastus as concerned in the second expedition against Thebes (Pyth. viii. 40-58). 3 TTiuaaav T' 'Adpfjarov pethixoyripuv ^ot (Tyrtseus, Elcg. 9, 7, Schneide- win); compare Plato, Phaedr. c. 118. "Adrasti pallentis imago" meets the eye of JEneas in the under-world (^Eneid, vi. 480). 3 About Melanippus, see Pindar, Nem. x. 36. His sepulchre was showB near the Pro3tid gates of Tnenes (Pausan. ix. 18, 1). 280 HISTORY OF GREECE. Melanippus was of all persons the most odious to him, as having slain both his son-in-law and his brother." Kleisthenes more- over diverted the festivals and sacrifices which had been offered to Adrastus, to the newly established hero Melanippus ; and the lyric tragedies from the worship of Adrastus to that of Diony- sus. But his dynasty did not long continue after his decease, and the Sikyonians then reestablished their ancient solemnities. 1 Near the Proetid gate of Thebes were seen the tombs of two combatants who had hated each other during life even more than Adrastus and Melanippus the two brothers Eteokles and Polynikes. Even as heroes and objects of worship, they still continued to manifest their inextinguishable hostility : those who offered sacrifices to them observed that the flame and the smokw from the two adjoining altars abhorred all communion, and flev off in directions exactly opposite. The Theban exegetes assured Pausanias of this fact. And though he did not himself witness it, yet having seen with his own eyes a miracle not very dissimi- lar at Pioniae in Mysia, he had no difficulty in crediting their assertion. 2 Amphiaraus when forced into the first attack of Thebes against his own foreknowledge and against the warnings of the 1 This very curious and illustrative story is contained in Herodot. v. 67. 'Eirei oe b i?edf TOVTO ov Kapedidov, drceMaJv bniau (Kleisthenes, returning from Delphi) if ably have been a Catalogue of the Greeks also in the Cyprian Verses ; for a Catalogue of the allies of Troy is specially noticed in the Argument of Proclus (p. 12. Diintzer). Euripides (Iphig. Aid. 165-300) devotes one of the songs of the Chorus to a partial Catalogue of the chief heroes. According to Dictys Cretensis, all the principal heroes engaged in the expedition were kinsmen, all Pelopids (i. 14) : they take an oath not to lay down their arms until Helen shall have been recovered, and they receive from Agamemnon a large sum of gold. 2 For the character of Odysseus, Iliad, iii. 202-220 ; x. 247. Odyss. xiii. 295. The Philoktetes of Sophokles carries out very justly the character of the Homeric Odysseus (see v. 1035) more exactly than the Ajax of the samo poet depicts it. 3 Sophokl. Philoktet. 417, and Schol. also Schol. ad Soph. Ajac. 190. 4 Homer, Odyss. xxiv. 115 ; JEschyl. Agam, 841 ; Sophokl. Philoktet. 1011 292 HISTORY OF GREKCK. heroic glory before the walls of Troy ; nor could the place be taken without both his cooperation and that of his son after him. But they hud forewarned him that this brilliant career would be rapidly brought to a close ; and that if he desired a long life, he must remain tranquil and inglorious in his native land. In spite of the reluctance of his mother Thetis, he preferred few years with bright renown, and joined the Achaean host. 1 When Nes- tor and Odysseus came to Phthia to invite him, both he and his intimate friend Patroclus eagerly obeyed the call. 2 Agamemnon and his powerful host set sail from Aulis ; but being ignorant of the locality and the direction, they landed by mistake in Teuthrania, a part of Mysia near the river Kaikus, and began to ravage the country under the persuasion that it was the neighborhood of Troy. Telephus, the king of the coun- try, 3 opposed and repelled them, but was ultimately defeated and severely wounded by Achilles. The Greeks now, discovering their mistake, retired ; but their fleet was dispersed by a storm and driven back to Greece. Achilles attacked and took Skyrus, and there married Deidamia, the daughter of Lycomedes. 4 Te- lephus, suffering from his wounds, was directed by the oracle to come to Greece and present himself to Achilles to be healed, by applying the scrapings of the spear with which the wound had been given : thus restored, he became the guide of the Greeks when they were prepared to renew their expedition. 5 with the Schol. Argument of the Cypria in Heinrichsen, De Carmin. Cypr. p. 23 (the sentence is left out in Dllntzer, p. 11). A lost tragedy of Sophokles, 'OSvcoeve Maivo/uevoe, handled this subject. Other Greek chiefs were not less reluctant than Odysseus to take part in the expedition : see the tale of Pcemandrus, forming a part of the temple- legend of the Achilleium at Tanagra in Bceotia (Plutarch, Question. Gra;c. p. 299). 1 Iliad, i. 352; ix. 411. Iliad, xi. 782. 3 Telephus was the son of Auge, daughter of king Alcus of Tegea in Arcadia, by HeraklSs : respecting her romantic adventures, see the previous chapter on Arcadian legends Strabo's faith in the story (xii. p. 572). The spot called the Harbor of the Achaeans, near Gryneium, was stated to be the place where Agamemnon and the chiefs took counsel whether they should attack Telephus or not (Skylax, c. 97 ; compare Strabo, xiv. p. 622). 4 Iliad, xi. 664; Argum. Cypr. p. 11, Ddntzer; Diktys Cret. ii. 3- 4. 5 Euripid. Telephus, Frag. 26, Pindorf ; Hygin. f. 101 ; Diktys, ii. 10. Eu ripide's had treated the adventure of Telephus in this lost tnuredv: he gave AGAMEMNON AND IPfflGENEIA. 293 The armament was again assembled at Aulis, but the goddess Artemis, displeased with the boastful language of Agamemnon, prolonged the duration of adverse winds, and the offending chief was compelled to appease her by the well-known sacrifice of his daughter Iphigeneia. 1 They then proceeded to Tenedos, from whence Odysseus and Menelaus were despatched as envoys to Troy, to redemand Helen and the stolen property. In spite of the prudent counsels of Anten6r, who received the two Grecian chiefs with friendly hospitality, the Trojans rejected the demand, and the attack was resolved upon. It was foredoomed by the gods that the Greek who first landed should perish : Protesi- laus was generous enough to put himself upon this forlorn hope, and accordingly fell by the hand of Hector. Meanwhile the Trojans had assembled a large body of allies from various parts of Asia Minor and Thrace : Dardanians under .^Eneas, Lykians under Sarpedon, Mysians, Karians, Maeonians, Alizonians, 2 Phrygians, Thracians, and Paeonians. 3 But vain the miraculous cure with the dust of the spear, Kpiaroiat pivfifiaai. Diktys softens down the prodigy : " Achilles cum Machaone et Podalirio adhibcutes curam vulneri," etc. Pliny (xxxiv. 15) gives to the rust of brass or iron a place in the list of genuine remedies. " Longe omnino a Tiberi ad Caicum : quo in loco etiam Agamemnon errasset, nisi ducem Telephum invenisset" (Cicero, Pro L. Flacco, c. 29). The portions of the Trojan legend treated in the lost epics and the trage dians, seem to have been just as familiar to Cicero as those noticed in the Iliad. Strabo pays comparatively little attention to any portion of the Trojan war except what appears in Homer. He even goes so far as to give a reason why the Amazons did not come to the aid of Priam : they were at enmity with him, because Priam had aided the Phrygians agaist them (Iliad, iii 188 : in Strabo, roZf 'Itiaiv must be a mistake for rots $pv!;iv). Strabo can hardly have read, and never alludes to, Arktinus ; in whose poem the brave and beautiful Penthesileia, at the head of her Amazons, forms a marked epoch and incident of the war (Strabo, xii. 552). 1 Nothing occurs in Homer respecting the sacrifice of Iphigeneia (seo Schol. Yen. ad H. ix. 145). 2 No portion of the Homeric Catalogue gave more trouble to Demetrius of Skepsis and the other expositors than these Alizonians (Strabo, xii. p 549 ; xiii. p. 603) : a fictitious place called Alizonium, in the region of Ida was got up to meet the difficulty (elr' 'A/Ujvtoi>, ToOr 1 rjdrj vov irpbf ryv TUV 'Aht&vuv vnodeaiv, etc., Strabo, 1. c.). 3 See the Catalogue of the Trojans (Iliad, ii. 815-877). fc<)4 HISTORY OF GREECE. was the attempt to oppose the landing of the Greeks : the Tro jans were routed, and even the invulnerable Cycnus, 1 son of Poseidon, one of the great bulwarks of the defence, was slain by Achilles. Having driven the Trojans within their walls, Achilles attacked and stormed Lyrnessus, Pedasus, Lesbos and other places in the neighborhood, twelve towns on the sea-coast and eleven in the interior; he drove off the oxen of ./Eneas and pursued the hero himself, who narrowly escaped with his life : he surprised and killed the youthful Troilus, son of Priam, and captured several of the other sons, whom he sold as prisoners into the islands of the ^Egean. 2 He acquired as his captive the fair Brisgis, while Chryseis was awarded to Agamemnon: he was moreover eager to see the divine Helen, the prize and sti- mulus of this memorable struggle ; and Aphrodite and Thetis contrived to bring about an interview between them.3 At this period of the war the Grecian army was deprived of Palamedes, one of its ablest chiefs. Odysseus had not forgiven the artifice by which Palamedes had detected his simulated in- sanity, nor was he without jealousy of a rival clever and cun- ning in a degree equal, if not superior, to himself; one who had enriched the Greeks with the invention of letters, of dice for 1 Cycnus was said by later writers to be king of Kolonae in the Troail (Strabo, xiii. p. 589-603; Aristotel. Rhetoric, ii. 23). ^Eschylus introduced upon the Attic stage both Cycnus and Memnon in terrific equipments ( Aris- tophan. Ran. 957. OW ^ETT^JITTOV avroiig KVKVOVC ayuv Kal M-E/ivovaf KU- dttvoQahapoirMovf). Compare Welckcr, ^Eschyl. Trilogie, p. 433. 2 Iliad, xxiv. 752; Argument of the Cypria, pp. 11, 12, Diintzer. These desultory exploits of Achilles furnished much interesting romance to the later Greek poets (see Parthenius, Narrat. 21). See the neat summary of the principal events of the war in Quintus Smyrn. xiv. 125-140; Dio Chry- sost. Or. XL p. 338-342. Troilus is only once named in the Iliad (xxiv. 253); he was mentioned also in the Cypria; but his youth, beauty, and untimely end made him an object of great interest with the subsequent poets. Sophokles had a tragedy called Trdilus (Welcker, Griechisch. Tragod. i. p. 124) ; Tdi> avdpoxaida 6ea- noTijv aTrMeaa, one of the Fragm. Even earlier than Sophokle's, his beau- ty was celebrated by the tragedian Phrynichus (Athense. xiii. p. 564; Virgil, -Toi)<; etc rd avrb 'A^p.)6irij icai Qerif. icene which would have been highly interesting in the hands of Homer. MURDER OF PALAMEDES. 295 tuucuement, of night-watches, as well as with other useful sug- gestions. According to the old Cyprian epic, Palamedes was drowned while fishing, by the hands of Odysseus and Diomedes. 1 Neither in the Iliad nor the Odyssey does the name of Palamedes occur : the lofty position which Odysseus occupies in both those poems noticed with some degree of displeasure even by Pin- dar, who described Palamedes as the wiser man of the two is sufficient to explain the omission. 2 But in the more advanced period of the Greek mind, when intellectual superiority came to acquire a higher place in the public esteem as compared with military prowess, the character of Palamedes, combined with his unhappy fate, rendered him one of the most interesting persona- ges in the Trojan legend. ^Eschylus, Sophokles and Euripides each consecrated to him a special tragedy ; but the mode of his death as described in the old epic was not suitable to Athenian ideas, and accordingly he was represented as having been falsely accused of treason by Odysseus, who caused gold to be buried in his tent, and persuaded Agamemnon and the Grecian chiefs that Palamedes had received it from the Trojans. 3 He thus forfeited his life, a victim to the calumny of Odysseus and to the delusion 1 Argum. Cypr. 1. 1.; Pausan. x. 31. The concluding portion of the Cypria seems to have passed under the title of TiaXa^rideia (see Fragm. 16 and 18. p. 15, DUntz. ; Welcker, Der Episch. Cycl. p. 459; Eustath. ad Horn. Odyss. i. 107). The allusion of Quintus Smyrnams (v. 197) seems rather to point to tho story in the Cypria, which Strabo (viii. p. 368) appears not to have read. 2 Pindar, Nem. vii. 21 ; Aristides, Orat. 46. p. 260. 3 See the Fragments of the three tragedians, Ha^a^^f Aristeides, Or. xlvi. p. 260 ; Philostrat. Heroic, x. ; Hygin. fab. 95-105. Discourses for and against Palamedes, one by Alkidamas, and one under the name of Gorgias, are printed in Reiske's Orr. Graec. t. viii. pp. 64, 102 ; Virgil, JEneid, ii. 82, with the ample commentary of Servius Polyaen. Prooe. p. 6. Welcker (Griechisch. Tragod. v. i. p. 130, vol. ii. p. 500) has evolved with ingenuity the remaining fragments of the lost tragedies. According to Diktys, Odysseus and Diomedes prevail upon Palamedes to he let down into a deep well, and then cast stones upon him (ii. 15). Xenophon (De Venatione, c. 1) evidently recognizes the story in tho Cypria, that Odysseus and Diomedes caused the death of Palamedes ; but he cannot believe that two such exemplary men were really guilty of sc iniquitous an act KOKOI 6e ZirpaS-av TO Hpyov. One of the eminences near Napoli still bears the name of Palamidhi. 296 HISTORY OF GREECE. of the leading Greeks. In the last speech made by the philoso- pher Socrates to his Athenian judges, he alludes with sclemnity and fellow-feeling to the unjust condemnation of Palamedes, as analogous to that which he himself was about to suffer, and hia companions seem to have dwelt with satisfaction on the compari- son. Palamedes passed for an instance of the slanderous enmity and misfortune which so often wait upon superior genius. 1 In these expeditions the Grecian army consumed nine years, during which the subdued Trojans dared not give battle without their walls for fear of Achilles. Ten years was the fixed epical duration of the siege of Troy, just as five years was the duration of the siege of Kamikus by the Kretan armament which came to avenge the death of Minos : 2 ten years of preparation, ten years of siege, and ten years of wandering for Odysseus, were periods suited to the rough chronological dashes of the ancient epic, and suggesting no doubts nor difficulties with the original hearers. But it was otherwise when the same events came to be contemplated by the historicizing Greeks, who could not be satis- fied without either finding or inventing satisfactory bonds of co- herence between the separate events. Thucydides tells us that the Greeks were less numerous than the poets have represented, and that being moreover very poor, they were unable to procure adequate and constant provisions : hence they were compelled to disperse their army, and to employ a part of it in cultivating the Chersonese, a part in marauding expeditions over the neigh- borhood. Could the whole army have been employed against Troy at once (he says), the siege would have been much more speedily and easily concluded. 3 If the great historian could per- mit himself thus to amend the legend in so many points, we might have imagined that the simpler course would have been to include the duration of the siege among the list of poetical ex- aggerations, and to affirm that the real siege had lasted only one 1 Plato, Apolog. Socr. c. 32 ; Xenoph. Apol. Socr. 26 ; Mcmor. ir. 3, 33 ; Liban. pro Socr. p. 242, ed. Morell. ; Lucian, Dial. Mort. 20. 2 Herodot. vii. 170. Ten years is a proper mythical period for a grest war to last : the war between the Olympic gods and the Titan gods la**** ten years (Hesiod, Theogon. 636). Compare 300 HISTORY OF GREECE. Thetis celebrated splsndid funeral games in honor of her son, and offered the unrivalled panoply, which Hephsestos had forged and wrought for him, as a prize to the most distinguished warrior in the Grecian army. Odysseus and Ajax became rivals for the distinction, when Athene, together with some Trojan prisoners, who were asked from which of the two their country had sustained greatest injury, decided in favor of the former. The gallant Ajax lost his senses with grief and humiliation : in a fit of phrenzy he slew some sheep, mistaking them for the men who had wronged him, and then fell upon his own sword. 1 Odysseus now learnt from.Helenus son of Priam, whom he had captured in an ambuscade, 2 that Troy could not be taken unless both Philoktetes,and Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, could be pre- vailed upon to join the besiegers. The former, having been stung in the foot by a serpent, and becoming insupportable to the Greeks from the stench of his wound, had been left at Lemnus in diKaf fiedeif. Eustathius (ad Dionys. Perieget. 307) give.? the story of his having followed Iphigeneia thither : compare Antonin. Liberal. 27. Ibykus represented Achilles as having espoused Medea in the Elysian Field (Idyk. Fragm. 18. Schneidewin). Simondes followed this story (ap- Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 815). 1 Argument of ^Ethiopia and llias Minor, and Fragm. 2 of the latter, pp. 17, 18, Duntz.; Quint. Smyrn. v. 120-482; Horn. Odyss. xi. 550: Pindar, Nem. vii. 26. The Ajax of Sophokles, and the contending speeches between Ajax and Ulysses in the beginning of the thirteenth book of Ovid's Meta- morphoses, are too well known to need special reference. The suicide of Ajax seems to have been described in detail in the ^Ethi- opis : compare Pindar. Isthm. iii. 51, and the Scholia ad loc., which show the attention paid by Pindar to the minute circumstances of the old epic. See Fragm. 2 of the 'ttw Hepoif of Arktinus, inDdntz. p. 22, which would seem more properly to belong to the ./Ethiopia. Diktys relates the suicide of Ajax, as a consequence of his unsuccessful competition with Odysseus, not about the arms of Achilles, but about the Palladium, after the taking of the city (v. 14). There were, however, many different accounts of the manner in which Ajax had died, some of which are enumerated in the argument to the drama of Sophokles. Ajax is never wounded in the Iliad : ^schylus made him invulnerable except under ths armjits (see Schol. ad Sophok. Ajac. 833) the Trojans pelted him with mud TGJf papijdEiy iiir!) TOV Ttfaov (Schol Iliad, xiv. 404). 1 Soph. Philokt. 604, NEOPTOLEMUS AT TROY 301 the commencement of the expedition, and had spent ten years 1 in misery on that desolate island ; but he still possessed the peerless bow and arrows of Herakles, which were said to be essential to the capture of Troy. Diomedes fetched Philoktetes from Lem- nus to the Grecian camp, where he was healed by the skill of Machaon, 2 and took an active part against the Trojans en- gaging in single combat with Paris, and killing him with one of the Herakleian arrows. The Trojans were allowed to carry away for burial the body of this prince, the fatal cause of all their suf- ferings ; but not until it had been mangled by the hand of Mene- laus. 3 Odysseus went to the island of Skyrus to invite Neoptole- mus to the army. The untried but impetuous youth gladly obey- ed the call, and received from Odysseus his father's armor, while on the other hand, Eurypylus, son of Telephus, came from Mysia as auxiliary to the Trojans and rendered to them valuable service turning the tide of fortune for a time against the Greeks, and killing some of their bravest chiefs, amongst whom was numbered Peneleos, and the unrivalled leech Machaon. 4 Tho exploits of 1 Soph. Philokt. 703. '2 /ie/lea V v "> "Of W"' olvo^vrov Tro/^arof " fTc/Cf TT] XPOVOV, etC. In the narrative of Diktys fii. 47), Philoktetes returns from Lemnus to Troy much earlier in the war before the death of Achilles, and without any assigned cause. y According to Sophoklts. Herakles sends Asklepius to Troy to heal Philok tetes (Soph. Philokt. 1415). The subject of Philoktetes formed the subject of a tragedy both by JEsch y Ins and by Euripide's (both lost) as well as by Sophokles. 3 Argument. Iliad. Minor. Diintz. 1. c. Kal TOV vetcpbv viroMevehuov Karat- KicrdevTa ave%.6/j.evoi ftd-Krovaiv ol Tp&ef. See Quint. Smyrn, x. 240 : he differs here in many respects from the arguments of the old poems as given by Proclus, both as to the incidents and as to their order in time (Diktys, iv. 20). The wounded Paris flees to CEnone, whom he had deserted in order to follow Helen, and entreats her to cure him by her skill in simples : she re-- fuses, and permits him to die ; she is afterwards stung with remorse, and hangs herself (Quint. Smyrn. x. 285-331; Apollodor. iii. 12, 6; Conon. Narrat. 23 ; see Bachet tie Meziriac, Comment, sur les Epitres d'Ovide, t. i. p. 456J. The story of (Enone is as old as Hellanikus and Kephalon of Ger- gis (see Hellan. Fragm. 126, Didot). 4 To mark the way in which these legendary events pervaded and became embodied in the local worship, I may mention the received practice in the great temple of Asklpius (father of Machaon) at Pergamus, even in th 302 HISTORY OF GREECE Neoptoleraus were numerous, worthy of the glory of his race and the renown of his father. He encountered and slew Eurypylus, together with numbers of the Mysian warriors : he routed the Trojans and drove them within their walls, from whence they never again emerged to give battle : nor was he less distinguished for his good sense and persuasive diction, than for forward energy in the field. 1 Troy however was still impregnable so long as the Palladium, a statue given by Zeus himself to Dardanus, remained in the citadel; and great care had been taken by the Trojans not only to conceal this valuable present, but to construct other statues so like it as to mislead any intruding robber. Nevertheless the enterprising Odysseus, having disguised his person with miserable clothing and self-inflicted injuries, found means to penetrate into the city and to convey the Palladium by stealth away : Helen alone recognized him ; but she was now anxious to return to Greece, and even assisted Odysseus in concerting means for the capture of the town. 2 To accomplish this object, one final stratagem was resorted to. By the hands of Epeius of Panopeus, and at the suggestion of Athene, a capacious hollow wooden horse was constructed, capable of containing one hundred men : the elite of the Grecian heroes, Neoptolemus, Odysseus, Menelaus and others, concealed them- selves in the inside of it, and the entire Grecian army sailed away time of Pausanias. Telephus, father of Eurypylus. was the local hero and mythical king of Teuthrania, in which Pergamus was situated. In the hymns there sung, the proem and the invocation were addressed to Telephus j but nothing was said in them about Eurypylus, nor was it permitted even to mention his name in the temple, " they knew him to be the slayer of Ma- chaon : " apxovTai p.ev UTTO TriTifyov TUV v/nvuv, TrpoatfSovai 6e oidev ( rdv Evpinruhov, oiide upxrjv kv T& vau> dehovaiv bvofiu&iv aiirov, ola hrufT&fUlUt Qovea ovra Ma^aovof (Pausan. iii. 26, 7). The combination of these qualities in other Homeric chiefs is noted in a subsjquent chapter of his work, ch. xx. vol. ii. 1 Argument. Iliad. Minor, p. 17, Diintzer. Homer, Odyss. xi. 510-520. Pausan. iii. 26, 7. Quint. Smyrn. vii. 553 ; viii. 201. 2 Argument. Iliad. Minor, p. 18, Diintz. ; Arctinus ap. Dionys. Hal. i. 69; Homer, Odyss. iv. 246; Quint. Smyrn. x. 354 : Virgil, jEneid. ii. 164, and the 9th Excursus of Heyne on that book. Compare with this legend about the Palladium, the Roman legend respect Ing the Ancylia (Ovid, Fasti, III. 381 ). TROJAN HORSE. -LAOCOON 308 to Tenedos, burning their tents and pretending to have abandoned the siege. The Trojans, overjoyed to find themselves free, issued from the city and contemplated with astonishment the fabric which their enemies had left behind : they long doubted what should be done with it ; and the anxious heroes from within heard the surrounding consultations, as well as the voice of Helen when she pronounced their names and counterfeited the accents of their wives. 1 Many of the Trojans were anxious to dedicate it to the gods in the city as a token of gratitude for their deliver- ance ; but the more cautious spirits inculcated distrust of an enemy's legacy; and Laocoon, the priest of Poseidon, manifested his aversion by striking the side of the horse with his spear. The sound revealed that the horse was hollow, but the Trojans heeded not this warning of possible fraud ; and the unfortunate Laocoon, a victim to his own sagacity and patriotism, miserably perished before the eyes of his countrymen, together with one of his sons, two serpents being sent expressly by the gods out of the sea to destroy him. By this terrific spectacle, together with the perfidious counsels of Sinon, a traitor whom the Greeks had left behind for the special purpose of giving false information, the Trojans were induced to make a breach in their own walls, and to drag the fatal fabric with triumph and exultation into their city.2 1 Odyss. iv. 275 ; Virgil, JEneid, ii. 14; Heyne, Excurs. 3. ad JEneid. ii- Stcsichorus, in his 'I'Xiov Hepaig, gave the number of heroes in the wooden horse as one hundred ( Stesichor. Fragm. 26, ed. Kleine ; compare Athenae- xiii.p. 610). 2 Odyss. viii. 492 ; xi. 522. Argument of the 'I/Uou Iltpaif of Arktinus, p. 21. Diintz. Hydin. f. 108-135. Bacchylides and Euphorion ap. Servium ad Virgil. JEneid. ii. 201. Both Sinon and Laocoon came originally from the old epic poem of Arkti- nus, though Virgil may perhaps have immediately borrowed both them, and other matters in his second book, from a poem passing under the name of Pisander (see Macrob. Satur. v. 2; Heyne, Excurs. 1. adJEn. ii. ; Welcker, Der Episch. Kyklus, v. 97). We cannot give credit either to Arktinus or Pisander for the masterly specimen of oratory which is put into the mouth of Sinon in the JEneid. In Quintus Smyrnaeus (xii. 366), the Trojans torture and mutilate Sinon to extort from him the truth : his endurance, sustained by the inspiration of Here, is proof against the extremity of suffering, and he adheres to his falsa tale. This is probably an incident of the old epic, though the delicate taste 304 HISTORY OF GREECE. The destruction of Troy, according to the decree of the gods, was now irrevocably sealed. While the Trojans indulged in a night of riotous festivity, Sinon kindled the fire-signal to the Greeks at Tenedos, loosening the bolts of the wooden horse, from out of which the enclosed heroes descended. The city, assailed both from within and from without, was thoroughly sacked and de- stroyed, with the slaughter or captivity of the larger portion of its heroes as well as its people. The venerable Priam perished by the hand of Neoptolemus, having in vain sought shelter at the domestic altar of Zeus Herkeios ; but his son Deiphobus, who since the death of Paris had become the husband of Helen, de- fended his house desperately against Odysseus and Menelaus, and sold his life dearly. After he was slain, his body was fearfully mutilated by the latter. 1 - Thus was Troy utterly destroyed the city, the altars and temples, 2 and the population. .^Eneas and Antenor were permit- ted to escape, with their families, having been always more favorably regarded by the Greeks than tlie remaining Trojans. According to one version of the story, they had betrayed the of Virgil, and his sympathy with the Trojans, lias induced him to omit it. Euphorion ascribed the proceedings of Sinon to Odysseus : he also gave a different cause for the death of Laocoon (Fr. 3.J-36. p. 55, cd. Diintz., in toe Fragments of Epic Poets after Alexander the Great). Sinon is traipse 'Odvaaeuf in Pausan. x. 27, 1 . 1 Odyss. viii. 515; Argument of Arktinas, ut sup.; Euripid. Hecub. 903, Virg. JEn. vi. 497 ; Quint. Smyrn. xiii. 35-229 ; Lesches ap. Pausan. x. 27, 2; Diktys, v. 12. Ibykus and SimonidC-s also represented Deiphobus as the uvTcpaaTjjf 'EAev^f (Schol. Horn. Iliad, xiii. 517). The night-battle in the interior of Troy was described with all its fearful details both by Lesches and Arktinus : the ' 1/iiov Hepaif of the latter seems to have been a separate poem, that of the former constituted a portion of the Ilias Minor (see Welcker, Der Epische Kyklus, p. 215): the 'I/Uov Tlepcnc by the lyric poets Sakadas and Stesichorus probably added many new inci- dents. Polygnotus had painted a succession of the various calamitous scenes, drawn from the poem of Lesches, on the walls of the lesche at Delphi, with the name written over each figure (Pausan. x. 25-26). Hellanikus fixed the precise day of the month on which the capture took place (Hellan. Fr. 143-144), the twelfth day of Thargelion. * vF,schyi. Agamemn. 527. Bcj/zot (P aiaroi /cat tfeuv idpv/tara, Kal aireppa irdarif kZ CAPTURE OF TROY. 305 city to the Greeks : a panther's skin had been hung over the door of Antenor's house as a signal for the victorious besiegers to spare it in the general plunder. 1 In the distribution of the prin- cipal captives, Astyanax, the infant son of Hector, was cast from the top of the wall and killed, by Odysseus or Neoptolemus : Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, was immolated on the tomb of Achilles, in compliance with a requisition made by the shade of the deceased hero to his countrymen ; 2 while her sister Kassandra was presented as a prize to Agamemnon. She had sought sanctuary at the altar of Athene, where Ajax, the son of Oileus, making a guilty attempt to seize her, had drawn both upon him- self and upon the army the serious wrath of the goddess, insomuch that the Greeks could hardly be restrained from stoning him to death. 3 Andromache and Helenus were both given to Neopto- lemus, who, according to the Ilias Minor, carried away also JEneas as his captive. 4 Helen gladly resumed her union with Menelaus : she accom- panied him back to Sparta, and lived with him there many years in comfort and dignity, 5 passing afterwards to a happy immortality 1 This symbol of treachery also figured in the picture of Polygnotus. A different story appears in Schol. Iliad, iii. 206. 2 Euripid. Hecub. 38-114, and Troad. 716; Lesches ap.Pausan. x. 25, 9; Virgil, JEneid, iii. 322, and Servius ad loc. A romantic tale is found in Diktys respecting the passion of Achilles for Polyxena (iii. 2). 3 Odyss. xi. 422. Arktinus, Argum. p. 21, Diintz. Theognis, 1232 Pausan. i. 15, 2; x. 26, 3 ; 31, 1. As an expiation of this sin of their national hero, the Lokrians sent to Ilium periodically some of their maidens, to do menial service in the temple of Athene (Plutarch. Ser. Numin. Vindict p. 557, with the citation from Euphorion or Kallimachus, Diintzer, Epicc. Vet. p. 118). 4 Lesches, Fr. 7, DQntz.; ap. Schol. Lycophr. 1263. Compare Schol. ad. 1232, for the respectful recollection of Andromache, among the traditions of ths Molossian kings, as their heroic mother, and Strabo, xiii. p. 594. Such is the story of the old epic ("see Odyss. iv. 260, and the fourth book generally; Argument of Ilias Minor, p. 20. DOntz.). Polygnotus, in thu paintings above alluded to, followed the same tale (Pausan. x. 25, 3^. The anger of the Greeks against Helen, and the statement that Menelaus after the capture of Troy approached her with revengeful purposes, but was so mollified by her surpassing beauty as to cast away his uplifted sword, belongs to the age of the tragedians (JEschyl. Agamem. 685-1455 : Eurip, VOL, I. 200C. 306 HISTOflY OF GREECE. in the Elysian fields. She was worshipped as a goddess with her brothers the Dioskuri and her hushand, having her temple, statue and altar at Therapnas and elsewhere, and various examples of her miraculous interventions were cited among the Greeks. 1 The lyric poet Stesichorus had ventured to denounce her, conjointly with her sister Klytaemnestra, in a tone of rude and plain-spoken severity, resembling that of Euripides and Lycophron afterwards, but strikingly opposite to the delicacy and respect with which she is always handled by Homer, who never admits reproaches against her except from her own lips. 2 He was smitten with blindness, Androm. 600-629 ; Helen. 75-120 ; Troad. 890-1057 ; compare also the fine lines in the JEneid, ii. 567-588). 1 See the description in Herodot. vi. 61, of the prayers offered to her, and of the miracle which she -wrought, to remove the repulsive ugliness of a little Spartan girl of high family. Compare also Pindar, Olymp. iii. 2, and the Scholia at the beginning of the ode; Eurip. Helen. 1662, and Orest. 1652- 1706; Isokrat. Encom. Helen, ii. p. 368, Auger; Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 311. -&edf hon'iadr) irapa rolg "EMijai ; Theodectes ap. Aristot. Pol. i. 2, 19 Qeiuv air' ufiyoiv eayovov pi^ufiuruv. 2 Euripid. Troad. 982 set/.; Lycophron ap. Stcph. Byz. v. A.lyvf, Ste- sichorus ap. Schol. Eurip. Orest. 239 ; Fragm. 9 and 10 of the ' ITiiov Schneidewin : Ovveica Tvvdupeue pi^uv anusi i?oZf fiidc Actfer ' KimptSof Ksiva 6s Tvvdupeu Kovpawi Atyu/iovc Kat MireGitv Further ' EAevj; knova ' amjpe, etc. He had probably contrasted her with other females carried away by force. Stesichorus also affirmed that Iphigeneia was the daughter of Helen, by Theseus, born at Argos before her marriage with Menelaus and made over to Klytaemnestra : this tale was perpetuated by the temple of Eileithyia at Argos, which the Argeians affirmed to have been erected by Helen (Pausan. ii. 22, 7). The ages ascribed by Hellanikus and other logographcrs (Hellan. Fr. 74) to Theseus and Helen he fifty years of age and she a child of seven when he carried her off to Aphidnae, can never have been the original form of any poetical legend : these ages were probably imagined in order to make the mythical chronology run smoothly; for Theseus belongs to the genera- tion before the Trojan war. But we ought always to recollect that Helen never grows old (rrjv ytlp (j>arcf Ifiuev' 1 uyijpu Quint. Smyrn. x. 312), and that her chronology consists only with an immortal being. Servins observes ("ad ^Eneid. ii. 601 ) " Helenam immortalem fuisse indicat tempus. Nam constat fratres ejus cum Argonantis fuisse. Argonautarum filii cum Theba- His ("Thebano Eteoclis et Polynicis bello) dimicavcrunt. Item illorum filii HELEN STE SICHORUS . 307 and made sensible of his impiety; t>ut having repented and com posed a special poem formally retracting the calumny, was per- mitted to recover his sight. In his poem of recantation (the famous palinode now unfortunately lost) he pointedly contradicted the Homeric narrative, affirming that Helen had never been to Troy at all, and that the Trojans had carried thither nothing but her image or eidolon. 1 It is, probably, to the excited religious feelings of Stesichorus that we owe the first idea of this glaring deviation from the old legend, which could never have been recommended by any considerations of poetical interest. Other versions were afterwards started, forming a sort of com- promise between Homer and Stesichorus, admitting that Helen had never really been at Troy, without altogether denying her elopement. Such is the story of her having been detained in Egypt during the whole term of the siege. Paris, on his de- parture from Sparta, had been driven thither by storms, and the Egyptian king Proteus, hearing of the grievous wrong which he contra Trojam bella gesserunt. Ergo, si immortalis Helena non fuisset, tot sine dubio seculis durare non posset." So Xenophon, after enumerating many heroes of different ages, all pupils of Cheiron, says that the life of Cheiron suffices for all, he being brother of Zeus ("De Venatione, c. I). The daughters of Tyndareus are Klytoemnestra, Helen, and Timandra, all open to the charge advanced by Stesichorus : see about Timandra, wife of the Tegeatc Echemus, the new fragment of the Hesiodic Catalogue, recently restored by Geel (Gb'ttling, Pref. Hesiod. p. Ixi.J. It is curious to read, in Bayle's article Hel&ne, his critical discussion of the adventures ascribed to her as if they were genuine matter of history, more or less correctly reported. 1 Plato, Kepublic. ix. p. 587. c. 10. uairep rb 7% 'Elevrie eldulov LTI)- ai^opof (j>ijffi Trept.[ta%i)rov yEveafiai iv Tpoir/, ayvoia TOV dA^tfovc. Isokrat. Encom. Helen, t. ii. p. 370, Auger; Plato, Phacdr. c. 44. p. 243- 244; Max. Tyr. Diss. xi. p. 320, Davis; Conon, Narr. 18; Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 323. Tov fiev Sr^tn^opov kv ry varepov udy T^ejeiv, wf rb irapa- irav ov6e irbeiiaeiev i] 'Ehevi) ovAdfioae. Horace, Od. i. 17 , Epod. xvii. 42. " Infamis Helenas Castor offensus vice, Fraterque magni Castoris, victi prece, Adempta vati reddidere lumina." Pausan. iii. 19, 5. Virgil, surveying the war from the point of view of the Trojans, had no motive to look upon Helen with particular tenderness : Deiphobus imputes to her the basest treachery (JEneid, vL 511. "sceliu vritiale Laexnce. ;" compare ii. 567 ). 308 HISTORY OF GREECE. had committed towards Menelaus, had sen'; him away from the country with severe menaces, detaining Helen until her lawful husband should come to seek her. When the Greeks reclaimed Helen from Troy, the Trojans assured them solemnly, that she neither was, nor ever had been, in the town ; but the Greeks, treating this allegation as fraudulent, prosecuted the siege until their ultimate success confirmed the correctness of the statement, nor did Menelaus recover Helen until, on his return from Troy, he visited Egypt. 1 Such was the story told by the Egyptian priests to Herodotus, and it appeared satisfactory to his his- toricizing mind. " For if Helen had really been at Troy (he argues) she would certainly have been given up, even had she been mistress of Priam himself instead of Paris : the Trojan king, with all his family and all his subjects, would never know- ingly have incurred utter and irretrievable destruction for the purpose of retaining her : their misfortune was, that while they did not possess, and therefore could not restore her, they yet found it impossible to convince the Greeks that such was the fact." 'Assuming the historical character of the war of Troy, the remark of Herodotus admits of no reply ; nor can we great- ly wonder that he acquiesced in the tale of Helen's Egyptian detention, as a substitute for the " incredible insanity" which the 1 Herodot. ii. 120. ov yup drj OVTU ye 0pex>o/3/la/?^f TJV 6 Tlpiafiof, ovS 1 ol uTihoi -npoariKovTee airw, etc. The passage is too long to cite, but is highly curious : not the least remarkable part is the religious coloring which he gives to the new version of the story which he is adopting, "the Trojans, though they had not got Helen, yet could not persuade the Greeks that this was the fact ; for it was the divine will that they should be destroyed root and branch, in order to make it plain to mankind that upon great crimes the gods inflict great punishments." Dio Chrysostom (Or. xi. p. 333) reasons in the same way as Herodotus against the credibility of the received narrative. On the other hand, Iso- krates, in extolling Helen, dwells on the calamities of the Trojan war as a test of the peerless value of the prize CEncom. Hel. p. 360, Aug.) : in the view of Pindar (Olymp. xiii. 56), as well as in that of Hesiod (Opp. Di. 165), Helen is the one prize contended for. Euripides, in his tragedy of Helen, recognizes the detention of Helen in Egypt and the presence of her eUuhov at Troy, but he follows Stesichorus in denying her elopement altogether, Hermes had carried her to Egypt in a cloud (Helen. 35-45, 706) : compare Von Hoff, DC Mytho Hclenoe Euri- pideffi, cap. 2. p. 35 (Leydcn, 1843). RETURN OP THE GRECIAN HEROES. 3Q9 genuine legend imputes to Priam and the Trojans. Pansanias, upon the same ground and by the same mode of reasoning, pro- nounces that the Trojan horse must have been in point of fact a battering-engine, because to admit the literal narrative would be to impute utter childishness to the defenders of the city. And Mr. Payne Knight rejects Helen altogether as the real cause of the Trojan war, though she may have been the pretext of it ; for he thinks that neither the Greeks nor the Trojans could have been so mad and silly as to endure calamities of such magni- tude " for one little woman." 1 Mr. Knight suggests various po- litical causes as substitutes ; these might deserve consideration, either if any evidence could be produced to countenance them, or if the subject on which they are brought to bear could be shown to belong to the domain of history. The return of the Grecian chiefs from Troy furnished matter to the ancient epic hardly less copious than the siege itself, and the more susceptible of indefinite diversity, inasmuch as those who had before acted in concert were now dispersed and iso- lated. Moreover the stormy voyages and compulsory wanderings of the heroes exactly fell in with the common aspirations after an heroic founder, and enabled even the most remote Hellenic settlers to connect the origin of their town with this prominent event of their ante-historical and semi-divine world. And an absence of ten years afforded room for the supposition of many domestic changes in their native abode, and many family misfor- tunes and misdeeds during the interval. One of these heroic '* Returns," that of Odysseus, has been immortalized by the verse )f Homer. The hero, after a series of long-protracted suffering and expatriation, inflicted on him by the anger of Poseidon, at last reaches his native island, but finds his wife beset, his youth- ful son insulted, and his substance plundered, by a troop of inso- lent suitors ; he is forced to appear as a wretched beggar, and to endure in his own person their scornful treatment; but finally, by the interference of Athene coming in aid of his own courage Pansan. i. 23, 8 ; Payne Knight, Prolegg. ad Homer, c. 53. Euphorion construed the wooden horse into a Grecian ship called "Imrof, " The Herte (Euphorion, Fragm. 34. ap. Diintzer, Fragm. Epicc. Graec. p. 55). See Thucyd. i 12; vi. 2. 310 HISTORY OF GREECE. and stratagem, he is enabled to overwhelm his enemies, to resumn his family position, and to recover his property. The return of several other Grecian chiefs was the subject of an epic poem by Hagias, which is now lost, but of which a brief abstract or argu- ment still remains : there were in antiquity various other poems of similar title and analogous matter. 1 As usual with the ancient epic, the multiplied sufferings of this back- voyage are traced to divine wrath, justly provoked by the sins of the Greeks ; who, in the fierce exultation of a victory pur- chased by so many hardships, had neither respected nor even 2 spared the altars of the gods in Troy ; and Athene, who had been their most zealous ally during the siege, was so incensed by their final recklessness, more especially by the outrage of Ajax, son of Oileus, that she actively harassed and embittered their return, in spite of every effort to appease her. The chiefs began to quarrel among themselves ; their formal assembly became a scene of drunkenness ; even Agamemnon and Menelaus lost their fraternal harmony, and each man acted on his own separate resolution. 3 Nevertheless, according to the Odyssey, Nestor, Diomedes, Neoptolemus, Idomeneus and Philoktetes reached home speedily and safely : Agamemnon also arrived in Pelopon- nesus, to perish by the hand of a treacherous wife ; but Mene- laus was condemned to long wanderings and to the severest pri- vations in Egypt, Cyprus and elsewhere, before he could set foot in his native land. The Lokrian Ajax perished on the Gyrasan rock. 4 Though exposed to a terrible storm, he had already reached this place of safety, when he indulged in the rash boast of having escaped in defiance of the gods : no sooner did Po- seidon hear this language, than he struck with his trident tho 1 Suidas, v. N6 The identical tripod which had been gained by Diomedes, as victor in #12 HISTORY OF GREECE. krian followers of Ajax founded the Epizephyrian Lokri on the southernmost corner of Italy, 1 besides another settlement in Libyar I have spoken in another place of the compulsory exile of Teu- kros, who, besides founding the city of Salamis in Cyprus, is said to have established some settlements in the Iberian peninsula. 2 Menestheus the Athenian did the like, and also founded both Ekea in Mysia and Skylletium in Italy. 3 The Arcadian chief Aga- penor founded Paphus in Cyprus. 4 Epeius, of Panopeus in Phokis, the constructor of the Trojan horse with the aid of the goddess Athene, settled at Lagaria near Sybaris on the coast of Italy ; and the very tools which he had employed in that remark- able fabric were shown down to a late date in the temple of Athene at Metapontum. 5 Temples, altars and towns were also pointed out in Asia Minor, in Samos and in Krete, the foundation of Agamemnon or of his followers. 6 The inhabitants of the Gre- cian town of Skione, in the Thracian peninsula called Pallene or Pellene", accounted themselves the offspring of the Pellenians from Achasa in Peloponnesus, who had served under Agamem- n6n before Troy, and who on their return from the siege had been driven on the spot by a storm and there settled.? The Pamphylians, on the southern coast of Asia Minor, deduced their the chariot-race at the funeral games of Patrocltis, was shown at Delphi in the time of Phanias, attested by an inscription, as well as the dagger which had been worn by Helikaon, son of Antenor ("Athene, vi. p. 232). 1 Virgil, JEneid, iii. 399. ; xi. 265 ; and Servius, ibid. Ajax, the son of Olleus, was worshipped there as a hero (Conon, Narr. 18). 2 Strabo, iii. p. 257; Isokrates, Evngor. Encom. p. 192; Justin, xliv. 3. Ajax, the son of Teukros, established a temple of Zeus, and an hereditary priesthood always held by his descendants ("who mostly bore the name of Ajax or Teukros), at Olbe in Kilikia ( Strabo, xir. p. 672). Teukros carried with him his Trojan captives to Cyprus (Athenae. vi. p. 256). 3 Strabo, iii. p. 140-150 ; vi. p. 261 ; xiii. p. 622. See the epitaphs on Teukros and Agapenor by Aristotle (Antholog. Gr. ed. Brunck. i. p. 179-180). 4 Strfcbo, xiv. p. 683 ; Pausan. viii. 5, 2. 6 Strabo, vi. p. 263 ; Justin, xx. 2 ; Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. c. 108. Also tho epigram of the Rhodian Simmias called HeheKvc (Antholog. Gr. Brunck. i. p. 210). Vellei. Patercul. i. 1. Stephan. Byz. v. \ufnrij. Strabo, xiii. p. 605 ; xiv p. 639. Theopompus (Fragm. Ill, Didot) recounted that Agamemnon and fiis followers had possessed themselves of the larger portion of Cyprus 7 Thucydid. iv. 120. MEMORIALS OF THE DISPERSED HEROES. 313 origin from the wanderings of Amphilochus and Kalclias after the siege of Troy : the inhabitants of the Amphilochian Argos on the Gulf of Ambrakia revered the same Amphilochus as their founder. 1 The Orchomenians under lalmenus, on quitting the conquered city, wandered or were driven to the eastern extremity of the Euxine Sea ; and the barbarous Achaeans under Mount Caucasus were supposed to have derived their first establishment from this source. 2 Meriones with his Kretan followers settled at Engyion in Sicily, along with the preceding Kretans who had remained there after the invasion of Minos. The Elyminians in Sicily also were composed of Trojans and Greeks separately driven to the spot, who, forgetting their previous differences, united in the joint settlements of Eryx and Egesta. 3 We hear of Podaleirius both in Italy and on the coast of Karia ; 4 of Aka- mas, son of Theseus, at Amphipolis in Thrace, at Soli in Cyprus, and at Synnada in Phrygia ; 5 of Guneus, Prothous and Eurypy- lus, in Krete as well as in Libya.6 The obscure poem of Ly- cophron enumerates many of these dispersed and expatriated heroes, whose conquest of Troy was indeed a Kadmeian victory (according to the proverbial phrase of the Greeks), wherein the sufferings of the victor were little inferior to those of the van- quished. 7 It was particularly among the Italian Greeks, where they were worshipped with very special solemnity, that their presence as wanderers from Troy was reported and believed. 8 1 Herodot. vii. 91 ; Thucyd. ii. 68. According to the old elegiac poet Kallinos, Kalchas himself had died at Klarus near Kolophon after his march from Troy, but Mopsus, his rival in the prophetic function, had conducted his followers into Pamphylia and Kilikia(Strabo, xii. p. 570; xiv.p. 668). The oracle of Amphilochus at Mallus in Kilikia bore the highest character for exactness and truth-telling in the time of Pausamas, fiavrelov uTpevdeffTarov TUV n' Efj-ov (Paus. i. 34, 2). Another story recognized Leonteus and Poly- pastes as the founders of Aspendus in Kilikia (Eustath. ad Iliad, ii. 138). 2 Strabo, ix. p. 416. 3 Diod&r. iv. 79 ; Thucyd. vi. 2. 4 Stephan, Byz. v. "Zvpva; Lycophron, 1047. 8 JEschines, De Fals& Legat. c. 14 ; Strabo, xiv. p. 683 ; Stephan. Byz. v. 'ZvvvaSa. 6 Lycophron, 877-902, with Scholia; Apollodor. Fragm. p. 386, Heyne. There is also a long enumeration of these returning wanderers and of new settlements in Solinus (Polyhist. c. 2_). 7 Strabo, iii. p. 150. * Aristot. Mirabil. Auscult. 79, 106, 107, 109 ; ill. VOL. I. 14 314 HISTORY OF GREECE, I pass over the numerous other tales which circulated among the ancients, illustrating the ubiquity of the Grecian and Trojan heroes as well as that of the Argonauts, one of the most strik- ing features in the Hellenic legendary world. 1 Amongst them all, the most interesting, individually, is Odysseus, whose roman- tic adventures in fabulous places and among fabulous persons have been made familiarly known by Homer. The goddesses Kalypso and Circe ; the semi-divine mariners of Phacacia, whose ships are endowed with consciousness and obey without a steers- man ; the one-eyed Cyclopes, the gigantic Lasstrygones, and the wind-ruler JEolus ; the Sirens who ensnare by their song, as the Lotophagi fascinate by their food all these pictures formed in- tegral and interesting portions of the old epic. Homer leaves Odysseus reestablished in his house and family ; but so marked a personage could never be permitted to remain in the tameness of domestic life : the epic poem called the Telegonia ascribed to him a subsequent series of adventures. After the suitors had been buried by their relatives, he offered sacrifice to the Nymphs, and then went to Elis to inspect his herds of cattle there pastur- ing : the Eleian Polyxenus welcomed him hospitably, and made him a present of a bowl : Odysseus then returned to Ithaka, and fulfilled the rites and sacrifices prescribed to him by Teiresias in his visit to the under-world. This obligation discharged, he went to the country of the Thesprotians, and there married the queen Kallidike: he headed the Thesprotians in a war against the Brygians, the latter being conducted by Ares himself, who fierce- ly assailed Odysseus ; but the goddess Athene stood by him, and he was enabled to make head against Ares until Apollo came 1 Strabo, i. p. 48. After dwelling emphatically on the long voyages of Dionysus, Herakles, Jason, Odysseus, and Menelaus, he says, Alveiav 6r. Kal 'AvTijvopa Kal 'EVETOVS, Kal d?r/luf roi)f IK TOV TpuiKov note/iov TrTiavy&ev-af elf iraaav TJ)V oiKOV/xevrfv, u^iov u}j TUV naTiaiuv av&puiruv vo/tiaat; Svvepr) yap (5# rotf TOTE *E/l/lj?cw, 6poiue Kal Tolf pafSapoif, 6iu rbv Tijf pa pr) uoirep/Ltoc yeverj Kal aavTOf bT^rai Aapduvov, bv Kpovitirjc irspl irdvruv ty'ifano Traiduv, Ol &ev it-eyevovro, yvvaiK&v re dvtjTa.uv. "Hdj? yd,p Hpiajiov yeve^v f/x&ripe Kpoviuv Nvv 6e 6)) A.lveiao J3i7) Tpueaaiv ava^ei, Kal iraitiuv Ttaidee, TOL KEV fiETOTno&e yevuvrai. Again, v. 339, Poseidon tells JEneas that he has nothing to dread from anj other Greek than Achilles. WORSHIP OF HECTOR AND AENEAS IN THE TROAD. 317 quently transferred by them to the less lofty spot on which il stood in his time. 1 In Arisbe and Gentinus there seem to have been families professing the same descent, since the same arche- gets were acknowledged. 3 In Ophrynium, Hector had his con- secrated edifice, and in Ilium both he and .ZEneas were worshipped as gods : 3 and it was the remarkable statement of the Lesbian Menekrates, that .ZEneas, " having been wronged by Paris and stripped of the sacred privileges which belonged to him, avenged himself by betraying the city, and then became one of the Greeks." 4 One tale thus among many respecting JEneas, and that too the most ancient of all, preserved among the natives of the Troad. who worshipped him as their heroic ancestor, was, that after the capture of Troy he continued in the country as king of the re- maining Trojans, on friendly terms with the Greeks. But there were other tales respecting him, alike numerous and irreconcil- 1 See 0. Miiller, on the causes of the mythe of JEneas and his voyage to Italy, in Classical Journal, vol. xxvi. p. 308 ; Klausen, ^Eneas and die Pen,, ten, vol. i. p. 43-52. Demetrius Skeps. al>. Strab. xiii. p. 607; Nicolaus ap. Steph. Byz. v. ' AoKavia. Demetrius conjectured that Skepsis had been the regal seat of .^Eneas : there was a village called JEneia near to it (Strabo, xiii. p. 603). 2 Steph. Byz. v. 'Apiaflij, Tevrivof. Ascanins is king of Ida after the departure of the Greeks (Conon, Narr. 41 ; Mela, i. 18). Ascanius porlus between Phokse and Kyme. 3 Strabo, xiii. p. 595; Lycophron, 1208, and Sch. ; Athenagoras, Legat I. Inscription in Clarke's Travels, vol. ii. p. 86, Ot 'lAteff rbv irarpiov debv Aiveiav. Lucian, Deor. Concil. c. 12. i. 111. p. 534, Hemst. 4 Menekrat. ap. Dionys. Hal. i. 48. 'A^atoiif 6e avirj dxe (after the buriaj) KO.I idoKeov rrjf arpanfif TTJV Kecjxikjjv a.Tri]pux&ai. "Oftut; 6e rcupov OVTU 6ai- va<), under the mountain called Anchisia, near a temple of Aphrodite : on the discrepancies respecting the death of Anchises (Heyne. Excurs. 17 ad _3Dn. iii.) : Segesta in Sicily founded by JEneas ("Cicero, Verr. iv. 33). * Tov 6e fj.TjKeri irpoourepu rfjf TZvpuirijc Tr^evaai rbv Tpu'inbv aro^ov, ol rt ft i]Ufiol Lyivovro alrioi, etc. (Dionys. Hal. i. 55). ' Dionys. Hal. i. 54. Among other places, his tomb was shown at Bere. cynthia, in Phrygia (Festus, v. Homam, p. 224, ed. Mflller) : a curious article, which contains an assemblage of the most contradictory statements respect ing both ^Eneas and Latinus. .ENEAS FROM TROY TO ROME. 319 an tis way from Troy to Latium. But though the legendary pretensions of these places were thus eclipsed in the eyes of those who constituted the literary public, the local belief was not extinguished : they claimed the hero as their permanent proper- ty, and his tomb was to them a proof that he had lived and died among them. Antenor, who shares with JEneas the favorable sympathy of the Greeks, is said by Pindar to have gone from Troy along with Menelaus and Helen into the region of Kyrene in Libya. 1 But according to the more current narrative, he placed himself at the head of a body of Eneti or Veneti from Paphlagonia, who had come as allies of Troy, and went by sea into the inner part of the Adriatic Gulf, where he conquered the neighboring bar- barians and founded the town of Patavium (the modern Padua) ; the Veneti in this region were said to owe their origin to his im- migration. 2 "We learn further from Strabo, that Opsikellas, one of the companions of Antenor, had continued his wanderings even into Iberia, and that he had there established a settlement bearing his name. 3 Thus endeth the Trojan war; together with its sequel, the dis- persion of the heroes, victors as well as vanquished. The ac- count here given of it has been unavoidably brief and imperfect ; for in a work intended to follow consecutively the real history of the Greeks, no greater space can be allotted even to the most splendid gem of their legendary period. Indeed, although it would be easy to fill a large volume with the separate incidents which have been introduced into the " Trojan cycle," the misfortune is that they are for the most part so contradictory as to exclude all possibility of weaving them into one connected narrative. We are compelled to select one out of the number, generally without any solid ground of preference, and then to note the variations of the rest. No one who has not studied the original documents 1 Pindar, Pyth. v., and the citation from the Nouroi of Lysimachus in the Scholia; given still more fully in the Scholia ad Lyccphron. 875. There was a Aopof 'Avrrivopiduv at Kyrene. *Livy, i. 1. Scrvius ad ^Eneid. i. 242. Strabo, i. 48; v 212. Fasti, iv. 75. i.. 157. 320 HISTORY OF GREECE. can imagine the extent to which this discrepancy proceeds ; il covers almost every portion and fragment of the tale. 1 But though much may have been thus omitted of what the reader might expect to find in an account of the Trojan war, its genuine character has been studiously preserved, without either exaggeration or abatement. The real Trojan war is that which was recounted by Homer and the old epic poets, and continued by all the lyric and tragic composers. For the latter, though they took great liberties with the particular incidents, and in- troduced to some extent a new moral tone, yet worked more or less faithfully on the Homeric scale : and even Euripides, who departed the most widely from the feeling of the old legend, nev er lowered down his matter to the analogy of contemporary life. They preserved its well-defined object, at once righteous and ro- mantic, the recovery of the daughter of Zeus and sister of the Dioskuri its mixed agencies, divine, heroic and human the colossal force and deeds of its chief actors its vast magnitude and long duration, as well as the toils which the conquerors un- derwent, and the Nemesis which followed upon their success. And these were the circumstances which, set forth in the full blaze of epic and tragic poetry, bestowed upon the legend its powerful and imperishable influence over the Hellenic mind. The enterprise was one comprehending all the members of the Hellenic body, of which each individually might be proud, and in which, nevertheless, those feelings of jealous and narrow pa- triotism, so lamentably prevalent in many of the towns, were as much as possible excluded. It supplied them with a grand and inexhaustible object of common sympathy, common faith, and common admiration ; and when occasions arose for bringing to- gether a Pan-Hellenic force against the barbarians, the prece- dent of the Homeric expedition was one upon which the elevated minds of Greece could dwell with the certainty of rousing an unanimous impulse, if not always of counterworking sinister by- 1 These diversities are well set forth in the useful Dissertation of Fuchs Ue Varietate Fabularum Troicarum (Cologne, 1830). Of the number of romantic statements put forth respecting Helen and Achilles especially, some idea may be formed from the fourth, fifth and sixth chapters of Ptolemy Hephsestioit (apud Westennann. Scriptt. Mythograph p. 188, etc.). bPURIOUS TROJAN WAR OF THE HISTORIANS. 321 motives, among their audience. And the incidents comprised in the Trojan cycle were familiarized, not only to the public mind but also to the public eye, by innumerable representations both of the sculptor and the painter, those which were romantic and chivalrous being better adapted for this purpose, and therefore more constantly employed, than any other. Of such events the genuine Trojan war of the old epic was for the most part composed. Though literally believed, reveren- tially cherished, and numbered among the gigantic phenomena of the past, by the Grecian public, it is in the eyes of modern inquiry essentially a legend and nothing more. If we are asked whether it be not a legend embodying portions of historical mat- ter, and raised upon a basis of truth, whether there may not really have occurred at the foot of the hill of Ilium a war purely human and political, without gods, without heroes, without Helen, without Amazons, without Ethiopians under the beautiful son of Eos, without the wooden horse, without the characteristic and ex- pressive features of the old epical war, like the mutilated trunk of Dei'phobus in the under-world ; if we are asked whether there was not really some such historical Trojan war as this, our an- swer must be, that as the possibility of it cannot be denied, so neither can the reality of it be affirmed. We possess nothing but the ancient epic itself without any independent evidence : had it been an age of records indeed, the Homeric epic in its exquisite and unsuspecting simplicity would probably never have come into existence. Whoever therefore ventures to dissect Homer, Arktinus and Lesches, and to pick out certain portions as matters of fact, while he sets aside the rest as fiction, must do so in full reliance on his own powers of historical divination, without any means either of proving or verifying his conclusions. Among many attempts, ancient as well as modern, to identify real objects in this historical darkness, that of Dio Chrysostom deserves at- tention for its extraordinary boldness. In his oration addressed to the inhabitants of Ilium, and intended to demonstrate that the Trojans were not only blameless as to the origin of the war, but victorious in its issue he overthrows all the leading points of the Homeric narrative, and re-writes nearly the whole from be- ginning to end : Paris is the lawful husband of Helen, Achilles ig slain by Hector, and the Greeks retire without taking Troy, dis VOL. i. 14* 21oc. 322 HISTORY OF GREECE. graced as well as baffled. Having shown without difficulty that the Iliad, if it be looked at as a history, is full of gaps, incongrui- ties and absurdities, he proceeds to compose a more plausible nar- rative of his own, which he tenders as so much authentic matter of fact. The most important point, however, which his Oration brings to view is, the literal and confiding belief with which the Homeric narrative was regarded, as if it were actual history, not only by the inhabitants of Ilium, but also by the general Grecian public. 1 The small town of Ilium, inhabited by TEolic Greeks, 2 and raised into importance only by the legendary reverence attached to it, stood upon an elevated ridge forming a spur from Mount Ida, rather more than three miles from the town and promontory of Sigeium, and about twelve stadia, or less than two miles, from the sea at its nearest point. From Sigeium and the neighboring town of Achilleium (with its monument and temple of Achilles), to the town of Rhocteium on a hill higher up the Hellespont (with its monument and chapel of Ajax called the Aianteium 3 ), was a distance of sixty stadia, or seven miles and a half in the straight course by sea : in the intermediate space was a bay and an adjoining plain, comprehending the embouchure of the Sca- mander, and extending to the base of the ridge on which Ilium stood. This plain was the celebrated plain of Troy, in which the great Homeric battles were believed to have taken place : the portion of the bay near to Sigeium went by the name of the Naustathmon of the Achrcans (i. e. the spot where they dragged their ships ashore), and was accounted to have been the camp of Agamemnon and his vast army. 4 1 Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 310-322. 3 Herodot. v. 122. Pausan. v. 8,3: viii. 12, 4. A/oAeif e/c vro/ltwf Tp^a <5of, the title proclaimed at the Olympic games ; like A/oAei)f uiro TAovpivaf, from Myrina in the more southerly region of JEolis, as we find in the list of visitors at the Charitesia, at Orchomenos in Boeotia (Corp. Inscrip. Bocckh. No. 1583> 3 See Pausanias, i. 35, 3, for the legends current at Ilium respecting the v&st size of the bones of Ajax in his tomb. The inhabitants affirme-i thai after the shipwreck of Odysseus, the arms of Achilles, which he was carry- ing away with him, were washed up by the sea against the tomb of Ajax Pliny gives the distance at thirty stadia : modern travellers make it some thing more than Pliny, but considerably less than Strabo. 4 Strabo., xiii. p. 596-598 Strabo distinguishes the 'A Nauffratf/xw. HISTORICAL ILIUM. 323 Historical Ilium was founded, according to the questionable statement of Strabo, during the last dynasty of the Lydian kings, 1 that is, at some period later than 720 B. c. Until after the days of Alexander the Great indeed until the period of Roman preponderance it always remained a place of inconsid- erable power and importance, as we learn not only from the as- sertion of the geographer, but also from the fact that Achilleium, Sigeium and Rhceteium were all independent of it. 2 But incon- siderable as it might be, it was the only place which ever bore the venerable name immortalized by Homer. Like the Homeric Ilium, it had its temple of Athene, 3 wherein she was worshipped as the presiding goddess of the town : the inhabitants affirmed that Agamemnon had not altogether destroyed the town, but that it had been reoccupied after his departure, and had never ceased to exist. 4 Their acropolis was called Pergamum, and in it was shown the house of Priam and the altar of Zeus Herkeius where that unhappy old man had been slain : moreover there were exhibited, in the temples, panoplies which had been worn by the Homeric heroes, 5 and doubtless many other relics appreciated by admirers of the Iliad. which was near to Sigeium, from the 'A^aiwv TH/J.IJV, which was more towards the middle of the bay between Sigeium and Ehoeteium ; but we gather from his language that this distinction was not universally recognized. Alexan- der landed at the 'A^atuv At^v (Arrian, i. 11). 1 Strabo, xiii. p. 593. 3 Herodot. v. 95 (his account of the war between the Athenians and Mity- lenrcans about Sigeium and Achilleium) ; Strabo, xiii. p. 593. TJ?V de TUV 'I/Uewf irohiv TT/V vvv revs ftEv Kw/zoTTO/Uv eivdi (jxifft, rd lepbv ex ovaav T W 'A&Tjvaf fiiKpbv Kal EVTE^if. 'AfoZavdpov Je avaflavra UETU. rr/v eirl TpaviKp VIKIJV, uva.'&Tiii.'iai re KOGfirjaai rb lepdv Kal irpoaayopevaat, nofav, etc. Again, Kal TO "I/Uov, o vvv karl, Kufj.6no7t.ig rif ijv ore irpurov 'Puualoi rjjf 3 Besides Athene, the Inscriptions authenticate Zet)f Ho2-tei>s at Ilium (Corp. Inscrip. Bceckh. No. 3599). 4 Strabo, xiii. p. 600. Aeyovai pvvelov Kal Aapdavov, fyirep di) 'A/JyJtj o/wvpof toriv iv 6e^iy Je, Tepyr&as TevKpovf (Herod- vii. 43). Respecting Alexander (Arrian, i. 11), 'Ave/lflovra 6e if 'IXiov, ry 'Ai??/v(i Qvaat, ry 'Ifaadi, Kal TTJV TravoTT^iav TTJV avTov uvadetvai elf TQV vabv, Kal Ka&efalv uvTl TavTTjf TUV lepuv Tiva 6ir%uv ITL K TOV Tpu'iKov Ipyov au&- fieva Hal Tavra Tilyovoiv OTI ol imaainaTal lepov irpd avTov if raf ftaxaf. Qvaai. ds avTbv inl TOV f3ufj.ov TOV Aidf TOV 'Epxeiov Tioyof /care^ei, prjvtv TLpLa.fj.ov irapaiTovfievov Ttf> NEOTTTOASIIOV yevet, b 6^ if avTov Ka&rJKE. The inhabitants of Ilium also showed the lyre which had belonged to Paris (Plutarch, Alexand. c. 15). Chandler, in his History of Ilium, chap. xxii. p. 89, seems to think that the place called by Herodotus the Pergamum of Priam is different from the historical Ilium. But the mention of the Eiean Athene identifies them aa the same. 1 Strabo, xiii. p. 602. 'EXAuvt/cof 61 %api6ij.Evof Toif 'Ihievffiv, olo? 6 IKELVOV ftv&oc, avvriyopel r> TTJV aiiTrjv slvai 7r67i.iv TTJV vvv Ty TOTE. Hellan- ikus had written a work called Tpu'iKa. *Xenoph. Hellen. i. 1, 10. Skylax places Ilium twenty-five stadia, 01 RELICS AND MEMORIALS AT ILIUM. 326 Peloponnesian war and the Macedonian invasion of Persia. Ilium was always garrisoned as a strong position ; but its domain wag still narrow, and did not extend even to the sea which was so near to it. 1 Alexander, or. crossing the Hellespont, sent his army from Sestus to Abydus, under Parmenio, and sailed person- ally from Elaseus in the Chersonese, after having solemnly sac- rificed at the Elseuntian shrine of Protesilaus, to the harbor of the Achasans between Sigeium and Rhoeteium. He then ascended to Ilium, sacrificed to the Iliean Athene, and consecrated in her temple his own panoply, in exchange for which he took some of the sacred arms there suspended, which were said to have been preserved from tho time of the Trojan war. These arms were carried before him when he went to battle by his armor-bearers. It is a fact still more curious, and illustrative of the strong work- ing of the old legend on an impressible and eminently religious mind, that he also sacrificed to Priam himself, on the very altar of Zeus Herkeius from which the old king was believed to have been torn by Neoptolemus. As that fierce warrior was his heroic ancestor by the maternal side, he desired to avert from himself the anger of Priam against the Achilleid race. 2 about three miles, from the sea (c. 94). But I do not understand how he can call Skepsis and Kebren Trofate tiri da'h.daai). 1 See Xenoph. Hell en. iii. i. 16; and the description of the seizure of Ilium, along with Skepsis and Kebren, by the chief of mercenaries, Chari demus, in Demosthen. cont. Aristocrat, c. 38. p. 671 : compare jEneas Poliorcetic. c. 24, and Polysen. iii. 14. * Arrian, 1 . c. Dikasarchus composed a separate work respecting this sacrifice of Alexander, nepl r^f iv 'lUu dvalas (Athenae. xiii. p. 603; Dikaearch. Fragm. p. 114, ed. Fuhr). Theophrastus, in noticing old and venerable trees, mentions the 7jyol (Quercus cesculus) on the tomb of Ilus at Ilium, without any doubt of the authenticity of the place (De Plant, iv. 14) ; and his contemporary, the harper Stratonikos, intimates the same feeling, in his jest on the visit of a bad sophist to Ilium during the festival of the Ilieia (Athenae. viii. p. 351 ). The same may be said respecting the author of the tenth epistle ascribed to the orator JEschines (p. 737), in which his visit of curiosity to Ilium is described as well as about Apollonius of Tyana, or the writer who describes his life and his visit to the Troad ; it is evident that he did not dis- trust the upxaio'/.oyia of the Ilieans, who affirmed their town to be the real Troy (Philostrat. Vit. Apollon. Tyan. iv. 11). The god Jess Athene of Ilium was reported to have rendered valnnLU 526 HISTORY OF GREECE Alexander made to the inhabitants of Ilium many munificent promises, which he probably would have executed, had he not been prevented by untimely death : for the Trojan war was amongst all the Grecian legends the most thoroughly Pan-Hel- lenic, and the young king of Macedon, besides his own sincere legendary faith, was anxious to merge the local patriotism of the separate Greek towns in one general Hellenic sentiment under himself as chief. One of his successors, Antigonus, 1 founded the city of Alexandreia in the Troad, between Sigeium and the more southerly promontory of Lektum ; compressing into it the inhab- itants of many of the neighboring ^Eolic towns in the region of Ida, Skepsis, Kebren, Hamaxitus, Kolonae, and Neandria, though the inhabitants of Skepsis were subsequently permitted by Lysimachus to resume their own city and autonomous gov- ernment. Ilium however remained without any special mark of favor until the arrival of the Romans in Asia and their triumph over Antiochus (about 190 B. c.). Though it retained its walls and its defensible position, Demetrius of Skepsis, who visited it shortly before that event, described it as being then in a state of neglect and poverty, many of the houses not even having tiled roofs. 2 In this dilapidated condition, however, it was still mythi- assistance to the inhabitants of Kyzikus, when they were besieged by Mithridates, commemorated by inscriptions set up in Ilium (Plutarch, Lucull. 10). 1 Strabo, xiii. p. 603-607. 2 Livy, xxxv. 43 ; xxxvii. 9. Polyb. v. 78-1 1 1 (passages which prove thai Ilium was fortified and defensible about B. c. 218). Strabo, xiii. p. 594. Ka2 rb "lAtov <5', 6 vvv kari. /cej/zoTro/Uf n f r]v, ore Trpurdv 'Pufialot rr)<; 'Aaiaf ine- $i\oav Kal k&fiakov 'Avrioxov rbv peyav K 7% ivrbf TOV Tavpov. $ijai -yovv Art/Ltf/Tpiof 6 2/c^>f) fiEipuxiov iTTid7Jfj.j)aav etf TTJV TTO?IIV Kar' ixeivovf roiif Kaipoi)f, owruf ufayupqfievijv Ideiv rf/v naroiKiav, wore fujdl Kepapuruf e% elv raf arcyaf. 'Hy^o-tuvaf 6e, roiif FaAuraf irfpatudevrae IK rrjc EvpuTrr/f, uva- (ifjvai /J.EV elf T'fjv Ttohiv tieo/usvovf tpvparof, irapaxpi/pa, 6' ^/cAtTretv dia rd aTf'^icfTov ' fiarepov ff knavopduaiv sage KoTJ.fjv. EIr' knanuaav aitrf/v TTU- fav t)l fierti $ifi[)piov, etc. This is a very clear and precise statement, attested by an eye-witness. But it is thoroughly inconsistent with the statement made by Strabo in the previous chapter, a dozen lines before, as the text now stands ; for he there informs us that Lysimachus, after the death of Alexander, paid great atten- tion to Ilium, surrounded it with a wall of forty stadia in circumference, erected a temple, and aggregated to Ilium the ancient cities around, which RESPECT SHOWN TO ILIUM. 32? cally recognized both by Antiochus and by the Roman consul Livius, who went up thither to sacrifice to the Hiean Athene. The Romans, proud of their origin from Troy and JEneas, treat- ed Ilium with signal munificence ; not only granting to it immu- nity from tribute, but also adding to its domain the neighboring territories of Gergis, Rhoeteium and Sigeium and making the Ilieans masters of the whole coast 1 from the Peraea (or conti- were in a state of decay. We know from Livy that the aggregation of Gergis and Rhceteium to Ilium was effected, not by Lysimachus, but by the Romans (Livy, xxxviii. 37}; so that the first statement of Strabo is not only inconsistent with his second, but is contradicted by an independent au- thority. I cannot but think that this contradiction arises from a confusion of the text in Strabo's first passage, and that in that passage Strabo really meant to speak only of the improvements brought about by Lysimachus in Alexan dreia Troas ; that he never meant to ascribe to Lysimachus any improve- ments in Ilium, but, on the contrary, to assign the remarkable attention paid by Lysimachus to Alexandria* Tr6as, as the reason why he had neglected to fulfil the promises held out by Alexander to Ilium. The series of facts runs thus : 1 . Ilium is nothing better than a Kufir; at the landing of Alexander ; 2. Alexander promises great additions, but never returns from Persia to ac- complish them ; 3. Lysimachus is absorbed in Alexandreia Troas, into which he aggregates several of the adjoining old towns, and which flourishes under his hands ; 4. Hence Ilium remained a KU/UJ when the Romans entered Asia, as it had been when Alexander entered. This alteration in the text of Strabo might be effected by the simple trans- position of the words as they now stand, and by omitting OTE KOI, qdij tVe- lieArr&Ti, without introducing a single new or conjectural word, so that the passage would read thus: Merti 6e TT)V EKEIVOV (Alexander's) re^evTr/v Avai- jtaxoc fidfaara T7/f 'Afaav6peiaf k^Efj.e7Ji&ri, avvyKiafievrjC fi.lv 7/671 VTT' 'Avri- y6vov,Kalirpoa7}-yopevo/tEV7]f''AvTiy6vt.af, fierajSa^ovarif de rovvofia' (l<5ofeyup evoefiee dvat roi>f ' A?,eS;uv6pov 6ia6ea/j.svovf EKE'LVOV Tcporspov KTI&IV tKuvv- ftovc Trofaif, $' eavruv) Kal VEUV Kareanevaae Kal TEIXO; irepie^aXETO ocrov 40 aradiuv avvuKiae 6e elf avrrjv r ?.tivaiw ...... 'A^iTvatot, mrvkaarimf ^iryu oiSb> fto&jov AltArim jtrrsi* TW T^uSof xupvc, * w u of 4 nin MfTc'/.fy ruf 'E'/JviK upirayuf- In ^scbylns (Emoenid, 4O2) dess Athene claims the land about the Skamander, as having ben p to the sons of Theseus by the general vote of the Grecian chief* : 'A/irc* 1,K.afiia'f>pav -pjv K. "Hv 6% r 1 'A^atwr iffroprf rr Ktu Ctf TO JTtP FfHif 9 In the days of FeiastrBtn, it seemi Athens was not bold enough or pc w- erf ul enough to advance thii vast preteasicin. * Charon of Lampsacms ap. SchoL Ajjollon. Ehod. ii. 2; Bernhardy 4 Diony. Perit-gt-t 805. p. 747. 3 Sach at least is the statement of Strabo (xiL p. 590) ; fliongh such u ettott of Lydian rule at that time seems not ea?y to reconcile with the f*v- vefiags of the subsequent Lydian kings. 340 HISTORY OF GREECE. considerably earlier than the Mitylenaean occupation of Sigeiuin Lampsacus and PSRSUS, on the neighboring shores of the Propon- tis, were also Milesian colonies, though we do not know their date Pariura was jointly settled from Miletus, Erythrse and Parus. CHAPTER XVI. CRECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT AND INTERPRETED BY THE GREEKS THEMSELVES. THE preceding sections have been intended to exhibit a sketch of that narrative matter, so abundant, so characteristic and so interesting, out of which early Grecian history and chronology ha^e been extracted. Raised originally by hands unseen and from data unassignable, it existed first in the shape of floating talk among the people, from whence a large portion of it passed into the song of the poets, who multiplied, transformed and adorn- ed it in a thousand various ways. These mythes or current stories, the spontaneous and earliest growth of the Grecian mind, constituted at the same time the entire intellectual stock of the age to which they belonged. They are the common root of all those different ramifications into which the mental activity of the Greeks subsequently diverged ; con- taining, as it were, the preface and germ of the positive history and philosophy, the dogmatic theology and the professed romance, which we shall hereafter trace each in its separate development. They furnished aliment to the curiosity, and solution to the vague doubts and aspirations of the age ; they explained the origin of those customs and standing peculiarities with which men were familiar ; they impressed moral lessons, awakened patriotic sym- pathies, and exhibited in detail the shadowy, but anxious presen- timents of the vulgar as to the agency of the gods : moreover they satisfied that craving for adventure and appetite for tho GENERAL REMARKS ON MYTHICAL NARRATIVES. 34J marvellous, which has in modern limes become the province of fiction proper. It is difficult, we may say impossible, for a man of mature age to carry back his mind to his conceptions such as they stood when he was a child, growing naturally out of his imagination and feel- ings, working upon a scanty stock of materials, and borrowing from authorities whom he blindly followed but imperfectly appre- hended. A similar difficulty occurs when we attempt to place ourselves in the historical and quasi-philosophical point of view which the ancient mythes present to us. We can follow perfect- ly the imagination and feeling which dictated these tales, and we can admire and sympathize with them as animated, sublime, and affecting poetry ; but we are too much accustomed to matter of fact and philosophy of a positive kind, to be able to conceive a time when these beautiful fancies were construed literally and accepted as serious reality. Nevertheless it is obvious that Grecian mythes cannot be either understood or appreciated except with reference to the system of conceptions and belief of the ages in which they arose. We must suppose a public not reading and writing, but seeing, hear- ing and telling destitute of all records, and careless as well as ignorant of positive history with its indispensable tests, yet at the same time curious and full of eagerness for new or impressive incidents strangers even to the rudiments of positive philoso- phy and to the idea of invariable sequences of nature either in the physical or moral world, yet requiring some connecting the- ory to interpret and regularize the phenomena before them. Such a theory was supplied by the spontaneous inspirations of an early fancy, which supposed the habitual agency of beings intelligent and voluntary like themselves, but superior in extent of power, and different in peculiarity of attributes. In the geographical ideas of the Homeric period, the earth was flat and round, with the deep and gentle ocean-stream flowing around and returning into itself: chronology, or means of measuring past time, there existed none ; but both unobserved regions might be described, the forgotten past unfolded, and the unknown future predicted through particular men specially inspired by the gods, or endow- ed by them with that peculiar vision which detected and inter preted passing signs and omens. 342 HISTORY OF GREECE. If even the rudiments of scientific geography and physics, now BO universally diffused and so invaluable as a security against error and delusion, were wanting in this early stage of society, their place was abundantly supplied by vivacity of imagination and by personifying sympathy. The unbounded tendency of the Homeric Greeks to multiply fictitious persons, and to construe the phenomena which interested them into manifestations of de- sign, is above all things here to be noticed, because the form of personal narrative, universal in their mythes, is one of its many manifestations. Their polytheism (comprising some elements of an original fetichism, in which particular objects had themselves been supposed to be endued with life, volition, and design) recog- nized agencies of unseen beings identified and confounded with the different localities and departments of the physical world. Of such beings there were numerous varieties, and many grada- tions both in power and attributes ; there were differences of age, sex and local residence, relations both conjugal and filial between them, and tendencies sympathetic as well as repugnant. The gods formed a sort of political community of their own, which had its hierarchy, its distribution of ranks and duties, its conten- tions for power and occasional revolutions, its public meetings in the agora of Olympus, and its multitudinous banquets or festi- vals. 1 The great Olympic gods were in fact only the most exalted amongst an aggregate of quasi-human or ultra-human personages, dsemons, heroes, nymphs, eponymous (or name-giving) genii, identified with each river, mountain, 2 cape, town, village, or known 1 Homer, Iliad, i. 603; xx. 7. Hesiod. Theogon. 802. 2 We read in the Iliad that Asteropoeus was grandson of the beautiful river Axius, and Achilles, after having slain him, admits the dignity of this parentage, but boasts that his own descent from Zeus was much greater, since even the great river Achelous and Oceanus himself is inferior to Zeus (xxi. 157-191). Skamander fights with Achilles, calling his brother Simo'is to his aid (213-308). Tyro, the daughter of Salmoneus, falls in love with Enipcus, the most beautiful of rivers (Odyss. xi. 237). Achelous appears as a suitor of Deianira (Sophokl. Trach. 9). There cannot be a better illustration of this feeling than what is told of the New Zealanders at the present time. The chief Heu-Heu appeals to his ancestor, ihe great mountain Tonga Riro : " I am the Heu-Heu, and rulo over you all, just as my ancestor Tonga Riro, the mountain of snow, stands bove all this land." (E. J. Wakefield, Adventures in New Zealand, vol. i. PERSONIFYING SYMPATHY AND BlAtrtiNAriOX. 343 circumscription of territory, besides horses, bulls, and dogs, of immortal breed and peculiar attributes, and monsters of strange ch. 17. p. 465). Heu-IIeu refused permission to any one to ascend the moun- tain, ou the ground that it was his tipuna or ancestor : " he constantly iden tified himself with the mountain and called it his sacred ancestor" (vol. ii. c. 4. p. 113). The mountains in New Zealand are accounted hy the natives masculine and feminine : Tonga Riro, and Taranaki, two male mountains, quarrelled about the affections of a small volcanic female mountain in the neighborhood (ibid. ii. c. 4. p. 97). The religious imagination of the Hindoos also (as described by Colonel Sleeman in his excellent work, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official), affords a remarkable parallel to that of the early Greeks. Colonel Sleeman says, " I asked some of the Hindoos about us why they called the river Mother Nerbudda, if she was really never married. Her Majesty (said they with great respect) would really never consent to be married after the indignity she suffered from her affianced bridegroom the Sohun: and we call her mother because she blesses us all, and we are anxious to accost her by the name which we consider to be the most respectful and endearing. " Any Englishman can easily conceive a poet in his highest calenture of the brain, addressing the Ocean as a steed that knows his rider, and patting the crested billow as his flowing mane. But he must come to India to un- derstand how every individual of a whole community of many millions can address a fine river as a living being a sovereign princess who hears and un- derstands all t/iey say, and exercises a kind of local superintendence over their affairs, without a single temple in which her image is worshipped, or a single priest to profit by the delusion. As in the case of the Ganges, it is the river itself to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity residing in t, or presiding over it the stream itself is the deity which fills their imagina- tions, and receives their homage" (Rambles and Recollections of an In- dian Official, ch. iii. p. 20). Compare also the remarks in the same work on the sanctity of Mother Nerbudda (chapter xxvii. p. 261) ; also of the holy personality of the earth. " The land is considered as the MOTHER of the prince or chief who holds it, the great parent from whom he derives all that maintains him, his family, and his establishments. If well-treated, she yields this in abundance to her son ; but if he presumes to look upon her with the eye of desire, she ceases to be fruitful ; or the Deity sends down hail or blight to destroy all that she yields. The measuring the surface of ths fields, and the frequently inspecting the crops by the chief himself or hi* immediate agents, were considered by the people in this light either it should not be done at all, or the duty should be delegated to inferior agents, whose close inspection of the great parent could not be so displeasing to the Deity " ( Ch. xxvii. p. 248 ) . See also about the gods who are believed to reside in trees the Peepol- 344 HISTORY OF GREECE. lineaments and combinations, " Gorgons and Harpies and Chi- maeras dire." As there were in every gens or family special gen- tile deities and foregone ancestors who watched over its members, forming in each the characteristic symbol and recognized guar- antee of their union, so there seem to have been in each guild or trade peculiar beings whose vocation it was to cooperate or to impede in various stages of the business. 1 The extensive and multiform personifications, here faintly sketched, pervaded in every direction the mental system of the Greeks, and were identified intimately both with their conception and with their description of phenomena, present as well as past. That which to us is interesting as the mere creation of an exube- rant fancy, was to the Greok genuine and venerated reality. Both the earth and the solid heaven (Gaea and Uranos) were both conceived and spoken of by him as endowed with appetite, feel- ing, sex, and most of the various attributes of humanity. Instead of a sun such as we now see, subject to astronomical laws, and forming the centre of a system the changes of which we can ascertain and foreknow, he saw the great god Helios, mounting his chariot in the morning in the east, reaching at mid-day the height of the solid heaven, and arriving in the evening at the western horizon, with horses fatigued and desirous of repose. tree, the cotton-tree, etc. (ch. ix. p. 112), and the description of the annual marriage celebrated between the sacred pebble, or pebble-god, Saligram, and the sacred shrub Toolsea, celebrated at great expense and with a nume- rous procession (chap. xix. p. 158 ; xxiii. p. 185). J See the song to the potters, in the Homeric Epigrams (14) : Ei filv duaers fiiadov, uelau, u Kepatiqee Atiip' uy' 'A&jjvaiT}, nal vxeipexe %Elpa Ka.fj.ivov. E> 6e (i&av&ELEV Koruli.oi, KO.I navra Kavaarpa $pvxdf]vai TE /caAwf, nal Tipjg uvov upecr&ai. *Hv d' ETT' uvaitieiijv Tpetydevres tfievd^ ttpytn?? , ew <5j) Vetra KOUIV^I J^Ajf-riypaf f, Sfiupayov re, a? 'A, rj5s 'Zapu.KTTjv, of TTjtie Te%vy Kaicu Trohhii. Tropifri, etc. A certain kindred betwejn men and serpents (ovyyeveiuv nva npbf rodj o(j>sif) was recognized in the peculiar gens of the oQioyeveif near Parion, who possessed the gift of healing by their touches the bite of the serpent the original hero of this gens was said to have been transformed from a ser pent into a man (Strabo, xiii. p. 588). (J.EA, URANOS, HELIOS, ETC. 345 Helios, having favorite spots wherein his beautifu. cattle grazed, took pleasure in contemplating them during the course of his journey, and was sorely displeased if any man slew or injured them : he had moreover sons and daughters on earth, and as his all-seeing eye penetrated everywhere, he was sometimes in a situation to reveal secrets even to the gods themselves while on other occasions he was constrained to turn aside in order to avoid contemplating scenes of abomination. 1 To us these now appear puerile, though pleasing fancies, but to an Homeric Greek 1 Odyss. ii. 388; viii. 270; xii. 4, 128, 416; xxiii. 362. Iliad, xiv. 344. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter expresses it neatly (63) 'H (5' IKOVTO, &suv OKOTTOV ?]6e KCU uvdpuv. Also the remarkable story of Euenius of Apollonia, his neglect of the sacred cattle of Helios, and the awful consequences of it (Herodot. ix. 93 : compare Theocr. Idyll, xxv. 130). I know no passage in which this conception of the heavenly bodies as Per sons is more strikingly set forth than in the words of the German chief Boiocalus, pleading the cause of himself and his tribe the Ansibarii before the Roman legate Avitus. This tribe, expelled by other tribes from its native possessions, had sat down upon some of that wide extent of lands on the Lower Rhine which the Roman government reserved for the use of its sol- diers, but which remained desert, because the soldiers had neither the means nor the inclination to occupy them. The old chief, pleading his cause before Avitus, who had issued an order to him to evacuate the lands, first dwelt upon his fidelity of fifty years to the Roman cause, and next touched upon the enor- mity of retaining so large an area in a state of waste (Tacit. Ann. xiii. 55): " Quotam partem campi jacere, in quam pecora et armenta militum aliquan- do transmitterentur ? Scrvarcnt sane receptos gregibus, inter hominum famam : modo ne vastitatem et solitudinem mallent, quam amicos populos Chamavorum quondam ea arva, mox Tubantum, et post Usipiorum fuisse. Sicutt co3lum Diis, ita terras generi mortalium datas : qnaeque vacua;, eas publicas csse. Solem deinde respiciens, et ccetera sidera vocans, quasi coram interrogabat vellentne contueri inane solum ? potius mare superfunderent adver- gus terrarum ereptores. Commotus his Avitus," etc. The legate refused the request, but privately offered to Boiocalus lands for himself apart from the tribe, which that chief indignantly spurned. He tried to maintain himself in the lands, but was expelled by the Roman arms, and forced to seek a home among the other German tribes, all of whom refused it. After much wander- ing and privation, the whole tribe of the Ansibarii was annihilated : its war- riors were all slain, its women and children sold as slaves. I notice this afflicting sequel, in order to show that the brave old chief was pleading before Avitus a matter of life and death bolh to himself and his tribe, and that the occasion was one least of all suited for a mere rhetorical 15* 346 HISTORY OF GREECE. they seemed perfectly natural and plausible. In his view, th description of the sun, as given in a modern astronomical treatise, would have appeared not merely absurd, but repulsive and im- pious. Even in later times, when the positive spirit of inquiry had made considerable progress, Anaxagoras and other astrono- mers incurred the charge of blasphemy for dispersonifying Helios, and trying to assign invariable laws to the solar phenomena. 1 Personifying fiction was in this way blended by the Homeric prosopopoeia. His appeal is one sincere and heartfelt to the personal feelings Bnd sympathies of Helios. Tacitus, in reporting the speech, accompanies it with the gloss " quasi coram," to mark that the speaker here passes into a different order of ideas from that to which himself or his readers were accustomed. If Boiocalus could have heard, and reported to his tribe, an astronomical lecture, he would have introduced some explanation, in order to facilitate to his tribe the com- prehension of Helios under a point of view so new to them. While Tacitus finds it necessary to illustrate by a comment the personification of the sun, Boiocalus would have had some trouble to make his tribe comprehend tho re-ijication of the god Iltlios. 1 Physical astronomy was both new and accounted impious in the time of the Peloponnesian war : sec Plutarch, in his reference to that eclipse which proved so fatal to the Athenian army at Syracuse, in consequence of the religious feelings of Nikias : ov ydprjveixovToroi)f (pvaiKoijf nat //treopo/leff^aj vs aif, elf alriaf dAoyovf KO.I 6vvup.eif uirpovoi/Tovf KOI KOTIJ- dri diaTpiffovraf TO tielov (Plutarch, Nikias, c. 23, and Perikles, c. 32 ; Diodor. xii. 39 ; Demetr. Phaler. ap. Diogcn. Lae'rt, ix. 9, 1 ). " You strange man, Meletus," said Socrates, on his trial, to his accuser, " arc you seriously affirming that I do not think Helios and Selene to be gods, as the rest of mankind think ?" " Certainly not, gentlemen of the Dikastery (this is the reply of Meletus), Socrates says that the sun is a stone, and the moon earth." "Why, my dear Meletus, you think you are preferring an accusation against Anaxagoras ! You account these Dikasts so con- temptibly ignorant, as not to know that the books of Anaxagoras are full of such doctrines ! Is it from me that the youth acquire such teaching, when they may buy the books for a drachma in the theatre, and may thus laugh me to scorn if I pretended to announce such views as my own not to men- tion their extreme absurdity?" (uAAwf re nal ovruf urona ovra, Plato, Apolog. Socrat. c. 14. p. 26). The divinity of Helios and Selene is emphatically set forth by Plato, Lcgg. x. p. 886-889. He permits physical astronomy only under great restrictions and to a limited extent. Compare Xenoph. Memor. iv. 7, 7 ; Diogen. Lafirt. ii. 8 ; Plutarch, De Stoicor. Repugntnt. c. 40. p. 1053 ; and Schaubach ad Anaxagone Fragmenta, p. 6. FORM OF 1'EKSONAL NARRATIVE IN THE MYTHES. 347 L reeks with their conception of the physical phenomena oefore them, not simply in the way of poetical ornament, but as a genu- ine portion of their every -day belief. It was in this early state of the Grecian mind, stimulating so forcibly the imagination and the feelings, and acting through them upon the belief, that the great body of the mythes grew up and obtained circulation. They were, from first to last, personal narratives and adventures ; and the persons who predominated as subjects of them were the gods, the heroes, the nymphs, etc., whose names were known and reverenced, and in whom every one felt interested. To every god and every hero it was consis- tent with Grecian ideas to ascribe great diversity of human mo- tive and attribute : each indeed has his own peculiar type of character, more or less strictly defined ; but in all there was a wide foundation for animated narrative and for romantic incident. The gods and heroes of the land and the tribe belonged, in the conception of a Greek, alike to the present and to the past : he worshipped in their groves and at their festivals ; he invoked their protection, and believed in their superintending guardianship, even in his own day : but their more special, intimate, and sym- pathizing agency was cast back into the unrecorded past. 1 To 1 Hesiod, Catalog. Fragm. 76. p. 48, ed. Duntzer : Swat yap Tore daZref eaav t;vvoi re &OUKC t, ' Atfavarotf re deolai Kara^v^TOif r' uv&puKOtf. Both the Thcogonia and the Works and Days bear testimony to die same general feeling. Even the heroes of Homer suppose a preceding age, the inmates of which were in nearer contact with the gods than they themselves (Odyss. viii. 223; Iliad, v. 304 ; xii. 382). Compare Catullus, Carm. 64; Epithalam. Peleos et Thetidos, v. 382-408. Menander the Rhetor (following generally the steps of Dionys. Hal. Art Rhetor, cap. 1-8) suggests to his fellow-citizens at Alexandria Troas, proper and complimentary forms to invite a great man to visit their festival of the Sminthia : uairep yap ' AffoA/lwva iroMunif Mt'^ero TJ Tro/lif rotf 'S.fiiv&iot.^ T/VIKO t!-7}v '-Stove irpoaviJ e-jridrj/ielv TO If a v$ p u iro tf, OVTU not as. T] 7r6/Uf vvv irpoaSexsrai (;rept 'EirideiKTiK. s. iv. c. 14. ap.Walz. Coll. Rhetor, t. ix. p. 304). Menander seems to have been a native of Aler- andria Troas, though Suidas calls him a Laodicean (see Walz. Prsef. ad t ix. p. xv.-xx. ; and Trept ^iiivdiaKuv, sect. iv. c. 17). The festival of the Sminthia lasted down to his time, embracing the whole duration of paganism from Homer downwards. 348 HISTORY OF GREECE. give suitable utterance to this general sentiment, to furni< body and movement and detail to these divine and heroic prr- existences, which were conceived only in shadowy outline, U lighten up the dreams of what the past must have been, 1 in the minds of those who knew not what it really had been such was the spontaneous aim and inspiration of productive genius in the community, and such were the purposes which the Grecian mythes preeminently accomplished. The love of antiquities, which Tacitus notices as so prevalent among the Greeks of his day, 2 was one of the earliest, the most durable, and the most widely diffused of the national propensi- ties. But the antiquities of every state were divine and heroic, reproducing the lineaments, but disregarding the measure and limits, of ordinary humanity. The gods formed the starting-point, beyond which no man thought of looking, though some gods were more ancient than others : their progeny, the heroes, many of them sprung from human mothers, constitute an intermediate link between god and man. The ancient epic usually recognizes the presence of a multitude of nameless men, but they are intro- duced chiefly for the purpose of filling the scene, and of executing the orders, celebrating the valor, and bringing out the personality, of a few divine or heroic characters. 3 It was the glory of bards and storytellers to be able to satisfy those religious and patriotic predispositions of the public, which caused the primary demand 1 P. A. Miiller observes justly, in his Saga-Bibtiathek, in reference to the Icelandic mythes, " In dem Mythischen wird das Leben der Vorzeit darges- tellt, wie es wirklich dem kindlichen Verstande, der jugcndlichen Einbildung- skraft, und dem vollen Herzen, erscheint." (Xange's Untcrsuchungen iiber die Nordische und Deutsche Heldensage, translated from P. A. Mtiller, Introd. p. 1.) * Titus visited the temple of the Paphian Venus in Cyprus, " spcctatd opulentia donisque regum, quteque alia Icetitm antiquitatibus Graecorum genus incertce vetustati adfingit. de navigatione primum consuluit" (Tacit Hist. ii. 4-5). 3 Aristotel. Problem, xix. 48. Ot <5e #ye//6vec TUV up%aiuv fiovot fyrrav fjpusf oi (5e Aaoi av&puiroi,. Istros followed this opinion also: but tho more common view seems to have considered all who combated at Troy as heroes (see Schol. Iliad, ii. 110; xv. 231), and so Hcsiod treats them (Opp. Di. 158). In rcfci ;nc* to the Trojan war, Aristotle says Kadairep h> rocf ' H p u J> otr nep: Hptufiov uvQeverat (Ethic. Nicom. i. 9; compare vii. I). GOD AND MEN IN COMMUNION. 349 for their tales, and which were of a nature eminently inviting and expansive. For Grecian religion was many-sided and many colored ; it comprised a great multiplicity of persons, together with much diversity in the types of character ; it divinized every vein and attribute of humanity, the lofty as well as the mean the tender as well as the warlike the self-devoting and adven- turous as well as the laughter-loving and sensual. We shall here- after ?each a time when philosophers protested against such identification of the gods with the more vulgar 'appetites and en- joyments, believing that nothing except the spiritual attributes of man could properly be transferred to superhuman beings, and drawing their predicates respecting the gods exclusively from what was awful, majestic and terror-striking in human affairs. Such restrictions on the religious fancy were continually on the in- crease, and the mystic and didactic stamp which marked the last century of paganism in the days of Julian and Libanius, contrasts forcibly with the concrete and vivacious forms, full of vigorous impulse and alive to all the capricious gusts of the human temper- ament, which people the Homeric Olympus. 1 At present, how- 1 Generation by a god is treated in the old poems as un act entirely human and physical (e^iyr) rrapfXe^aro) ; and this was the common opinion in the days of Plato (Plato, Apolog. Socrat. c. 15. p. 15); the hero Astrabakus is father of the Lacedaemonian king Demaratus (Herod, vi. 66). [Herodotus does not believe the story told him at Babylon respecting Belus (i. 182)] Euripides sometimes expresses disapprobation of the idea (Ion. 350), but Plato passed among a large portion of his admirers for the actual son of Apollo, and his reputed father Aristo on marrying was admonished in a dream to respect the person of his wife Periktione, then pregnant by Apollo, until after the birth of the child Plato (Plutarch, Qucest. Sympos. p. 717. viii. 1 ; Diogen. Lafirt. iii. 2 ; Origen, cont. Cels. i. p. 29). Plutarch (in Life of Numa, c. 4 ; compare Life of Theseus, 2) discusses the subject, and is in- clined to disallow everything beyond mental sympathy and tenderness in a god : Pausanias deals timidly with it, and is not always consistent with him- self; while the later rhetors spiritualize it altogether. Meander, irepl 'ETR- 6eiKTiK(Jv, (towards the end of the third century B. c.) prescribes rules for praising a king : you are to praise him for the gens to which he belongs : perhaps you may be able to make out that he really is the son of some god ; for many who seem to be from men, arc really sent down by God&nA are ema- nations ftrm the Supreme Potency noUol rb fiev SOKEIV f uvSpuiruv elai, TI) d 1 utitr&eig, Ttaptl rov #eoC naravi^Ttovra /cat elaiv uirofr/toiai ovruf rov Kpsirrovof Kal -yap 'Hpa/^f ivofii&TO ftev 'Afiirpvui>of, ry 6c d/l^iScta ^ \i6f. Ouru KOI f3aadevf 6 fj^e'-epof rd uev donclv i!; avdpuiruv, ry fe ahy 350 HISTORY OF GREECE. ever, we have only to consider the early, or Homeric and Hesi odic paganism, and its operation in the genesis of the mythical narratives. We cannot doubt that it supplied the most powerful stimulus, and the only one which the times admitted, to the crea- tive faculty of the people ; as well from the sociability, the gra- dations, and the mutual action and reaction of its gods and heroes, as from the amplitude, the variety, and the purely human cast, of its fundamental types. i?o rijv KCL-apohfiv ovpdvo&ev #, etc. (Menander ap. Walz. Collect. Rhe- tor. t. ix. c. i. p. 218). Again irspl 2/j.ivdta.Kuv Zeitf yeveaiv naiduv til] /LI iov pj eiv tvevoTjas 'A7r6/U.wi> TTJV J A.aK%.r]iriov yeveaiv idr/fitovp- y r\ a E, p .322-327 ; compare Hermogenes, about the story of Apollo and Daphne, Progymnasm. c. 4 ; and Julian. Orat. vii. p. 220. The contrast of the pagan phraseology of this age (Menander had him- sHf composed a hymn of invocation to Apollo Kepi '~E,ynu}iiuv, c. 3. t. ix. y. 136, Walz.) with that of Homer is very worthy of notice. In the Hesi- odic Catalogue of Women much was said respecting the marriages and amours of the gods, so as to furnish many suggestions, like the love-songs of Sappho, to the composers of Epithalamic Odes (Menand. ib. sect. iv. c. 6. p. 268). Menander gives a specimen of a prose hymn fit to be addressed to the Sminthian Apollo (p. 320) ; the spiritual character of which hymn forms the most pointed contrast with the Homeric hymn to the same god. We may remark an analogous case in which the Homeric hymn to Apollo is modified by Plutarch. To provide for the establishment of his temple at Delphi, Apollo was described as having himself, in the shape of a dolphin, gwam before a Kretan vessel and guided it to Ivrissa. where he directed the terrified crew to open the Delphian temple. But Plutarch says that this old statement was not correct : the god had not himself appeared in the shape of a dolphin he had sent a dolphin expressly to guide the vessel (Plutarch. de Solertia Animal, p. 983). See also a contrast between the Homeric Zens, and the genuine Zeus, (uTnjdivbs ) brought out in Plutarch, Defect Oracul. c. 30. p. 426. Illicit amours seem in these later times to be ascribed to the daifioveg : sec the singular controversy started among the fictitious pleadings of the ancient rhetors No^ou ovrof, irapdevove Kal Ka&apaf dvai TC itpeiaf, iepeia rif evps'&Ti uroKtov (pepovaa, Kal npiverai ......... 'AA/l' ipei, (j>aal, did, ruf TUV 6ai/j.avuv moiTqaeif Kal iinftovTiuf Trepiredclcrdai Kal vruf ova u.vbr]TQ\ ncnidrj rb TOIOVTOV ; edei yap npbf rd HTJ uyaipEdfivat TTJV nap&eviav opeli r* uirorpoiratov, ov IJ.TJV irpbe rb TEKSIV (Anonymi Scholia ai Hcrmogen. Srdcretf, ap. Walz. Coll. Rh. t. vii. p. 162). Apsines of Gadara, a sophist of the time of Diocletian, pretended to ba a son of Pan (see Suidas, v. 'Aipivtjf). The anecdote respecting the rivers Skamandcr and Marauder, in the tenth epistle ascribed to the orator jEschi- oes (p. 737), is curious, but we do not know the date of that epistle. STIMULUS TO MYTHOPffilC FACULTY. 351 Though we may thus explain the mythopoeic fertility of the t^>eeks, I am far from pretending that we can render any suffi- cient account of the supreme beauty of their chief epic and ar- tistical productions. There is something in the first-rate produc- tions of individual genius which lies beyond the compass of philo- sophical theory : the special breath of the Muse (to speak the language of ancient Greece) must be present in order to give them being. Even among her votaries, many are called, but few are chosen ; and the peculiarities of those few remain as yet her own secret. We shall not however forget that Grecian language was also an indispensable requisite to the growth and beauty of Grecian mythes its richness, its flexibility and capacity of new com- binations, its vocalic abundance and metrical pronunciation : and many even among its proper names, by their analogy to words really significant, gave direct occasion to explanatory or illustra- tive stories. Etymological mythes are found in sensible pro- portion among the whole number. To understand properly then the Grecian mythes, we must try to identify ourselves with the state of mind of the original my- thopreic age ; a process not very easy, since it requires us to adopt a string of poetical fancies not simply as realities, but as the governing realities of the mental system; 1 yet a process 1 The mental analogy between the early stages of human civilization and the childhood of the individual is forcibly and frequently set forth in the works of Vico. That eminently original thinker dwells upon the poetical and religious susceptibilities as the first to develop themselves in the human miad, and as famishing not merely connecting threads for the explanation of sensible phenomena, but also aliment for the hopes and fears, and means of socializing influence to men of genius, at a time when reason was yet asleep. He points out the personifying instinct ("istinto d' animazione "_) as the spontaneous philosophy of man, " to make himself the rule of the uni- verse," and to suppose everywhere a quasi-human agency as the determining cause. He remarks that in an age of fancy and feeling, the conceptions and language of poetry coincide with those of reality and common life, instead of standing apart as a separate vein. These views are repeated frequently (and with some variations of opinion as he grew older) in his Latin work De Una Universi Juris Principio, as well as in the two successive redactions, of his great Italian work, Scienza Nuova (it must be added that Vico as an expositor is prolix, and does not do justice to his own powers of original thought) : I select the following from the second edition of the latter treatise, 352 HISTORY OF GREECE. which would only reproduce something an**ogous to our own childhood. The age was one destitute both of recorded history and of positive science, but full of imagination and sentiment and religious impressibility; from these sources sprung that multitude of supposed persons around whom all combinations of sensible published by himself in 1744. Delia Metafisica Poetica (see vol. v. p. 189 of Ferrari's edition of his Works, Milan, 1836) : " Adunque la sapienza poetica, che fu la prima sapienza della Gentilita, dovette incominciare da una Meta- fisica, non ragionata ed astratta, qual e questa or degli addottrinati, ma sentita ed immaginata, quale dovett' essere di tai primi uomini, siccome quelli ch' erano di niun raziocinio, e tutti robusti sensi e vigorosissime fantasie, come e stato nelle degnita ("the Axioms) stabilito. Questa fu la loro propria poesia, la qual in essi fu una faculta loro connaturale, perchc crano di tali sensi e di si fatte fantasie naturalmente forniti, nata da ignoranza di cagioni la qual fu loro madre di maraviglia di tutte le cose, che quelli ignoranti di tutte le cose fortemente ammiravano. Tal poesia incominci6 in essi divina : perche nello stesso tempo ch' essi immaginavano le cagioni delle cose, che sentivano ed ammiravano, essere Dei, come ora il confermiamo con gli Americani, i quali tntte le cose che superano la loro picciol capacita, dicono esser Dei nello Btesso tempo, diciamo, alle cose ammirate davano 1' essere di sostanzc dalla propria lor idea : ch' e appunto la natura dei fanciulli, che osserviamo pren- dere tra mani cose inanimate, e transtullarsi e favellarvi, come fussero queUe persone vive. In cotal guisa i primi uomini delle nazioni gentili, come fan- ciulli del nascente gener umano, dalla lor idea creavan essi le cose per la loro robusta ignoranza, il facevano in forza d' una corpolcntissima fantasia, e perch' era corpolentissima, il facevano con una maravigliosa sublimita, tal e tanta, che perturbava all' eccesso essi medesimi, che fingendo le si crea- vano Di questa natura di cose umane resto eterna proprietk spiegata con nobil espressione da Tacito, che vanamente gli uomini sp&ventati Jingunt siinul creduntque." After describing the condition of rude men, terrified with thunder and other vast atmospheric phenomena, Vico proceeds (ib. p. 172) "In tal caso la natura della mente umana porta ch' ella attribuisca all' effetto la sua natura : e la natura loro era in tale stato d' uomini tutti robuste forze di corpo, che urlando, brontolando, spiegavano le loro violentissime passioni, si finsero il cielo esser un gran corpo animato, che per tal aspetto chiamavano Giove, che col fischio dei fnlmini e col fragore die tuoni volesse lor dire qualche cosa E si fanno di tutta la natnra un vasto corpo animato, che senta passioni ed affetti." Now the contrast with modern habits of thought : " Ma siccome ora per la natura delle nostre umane menti troppo ritirata dai sensi nel medesimo volgo con le tante astrazioni, di quante sono piene le lingue con tanti vocaboll astratti e di troppo assottigliata con 1' arti dello Bcrivere, e quasi spiritualezzata con la practica dei numeri cie natu- GRECIAN IMAGINATION AND SENTIMENT. 353 phenomena were grouped, and towards whom curiosity, sympa- thies, and reverence were earnestly directed. The adventures of such persons were the only aliment suited at Dnce both to the appetites and to the comprehension of an early Greek ; and the mythes which detailed them, while powerfully interesting his ralmente niegato di poter formare la vasta imagine di cotal donna che dicono Natura simpatelica, che mcntre con la bocca dicono, non hanno nulla in lor mente, perocche la lor mcntc 6 dentro il falso. che e nulla; ne* sono soccorsi dalla fantasia a poterne formare una falsa vastissima imagine. Cosl ora ci & naturalmente niegato di poter entrare nella vasta immaginativa di queiprimi uomini, le menti dci quali di nulla erano assottigliate, di nulla astratte, di nulla spiritualezzate Onde dicemmo sopra ch' ora appena intender si pud, affalto immaginar non s\ pu6, come pensassero i primi uomini che fondarono la umanita gentilesca." In this citation (already almost too long for a note) I have omitted several sentences not essential to the general meaning. It places these early divine fables and theological poets (so Vico calls them) in their true point of view, and assigns to them their proper place in the ascending movement of hu man society : it refers the mythes to an early religious and poetical age, in which feeling and fancy composed the whole fund of the human mind, over and above the powers of sense : the great mental change which has since taken place has robbed us of the power, not merely of believing them as they were originally believed, but even of conceiving completely that which their first inventors intended to express. The views here given from this distinguished Italian (the precursor of F. A. Wolf in regard to the Homeric poems, as well as of Niebnhr in regard to the Roman history) appear to me no less correct than profound ; and the obvious inference from them is, that attempts to explain (as it is commonly called) the mythes (/. e. to translate them into some physical, moral or his- torical statements, suitable to our order of thought) are, even as guesses, essentially unpromising. Nevertheless Vico, inconsistently with his own general view, bestows great labor and ingenuity in attempting to discover internal meaning symbolized under many of the mythes ; and eren lays down the position, " che i primi uomini della Gentilita essendo stati sempli- cissimi, quanto i fanciulli, i quali per natura son veritieri : le prime favole non poterono finger nulla di falso : per lo che dovettero necessariamente es- sere vere narrozioni." (See vol. v. p. 194 ; compare also p. 99, Axiom xvi.) If this position be meant simply to exclude the idea of designed imposture, it may for the most part be admitted ; but Vico evidently intends something more. He thinks that there lies hid under the fables a basis of matter of fact not literal but symbolized which he draws out and exhibits under the form of a civil history of the divine and heroic times : a confusion of doc- trine the more remarkable, since he distinctly tells us (in perfect conformity with the long passage above transcribed from him) that the special matter of VOL. i. 23oc. 354 HISTORY OF GREECE emotions, furnished to him at the same time a quasi-history an 3 quasi-philosophy : they filled up the vacuum of the unrecorded past, and explained many of the puzzling incognita of the pres- ent. 1 Nor need we wonder that the same plausibility which cap- thcsc early mythes is " impossibility accredited as truth," " che la di lei pro- pria materia c /' impossibile credibile" ("p. 176, and still more fully in the first redaction of the Scienza Nuova, b.iii. c. 4 ; vol. iv. p. 187 of his Works). When we read the Canones Myt/toloyici of Vico (De Constantia Philologirc, Pars Posterior, c. xxx. ; vol. iii. p. 363), and his explanation of the legends of the Olympic gods, Hercules, Theseus, Kadmus, etc., wo see clearly that the meaning which he professes to bring out is one previously put in by himself. There arc some just remarks to the same purpose in Karl Rittcr's Vor- halle Europflischer Volker Geschichten, Abschn. ii. p. 150 seq. (Berlin, 1820^) He too points out how much the faith of the old world (der Glaube der Vor- welt) has become foreign to our minds, since the recent advances of "Politik und Kritik," and how impossible it is for us to elicit history from their con- ceptions by our analysis, in cases where they have not distinctly laid it out for us. The great length of this note prevents me from citing the passage : and he seems to me also (like Vico) to pursue his own particular investiga- tions in forgetfulness of the principle laid down by himself. 1 0. Muller, in his Prolegomena zu einer wissenschafdicften Mythologie (cap. iv. p. 108), has pointed out the mistake of supposing that there existed ori- ginally some nucleus of pure reality as the starting-point of the mythes, and that upon this nucleus fiction was superinduced afterwards : he maintains that the real and the ideal were blended together in the primitive conception of the mythes. Respecting the general state of mind out of which the mythes grew, see especially pages 78 and 1 10 of that work, which is everywhere full of instruction on the subject of the Grecian mythes, and is eminently sug- gestive, even where the positions of the author are not completely made out The short Heldensage der Gricchen by Nitzsch (Kiel, 1842, t. v.) contains more of just and original thought on the subject of the Grecian mythes than any work with which I am acquainted. I embrace completely the subjective point of view in which he regards them ; and although I have profited much from reading his short tract, I may mention that before I ever saw it, I had enforced the same reasonings on the subject in an article in the Westminster Review, May 1843, on the Heroen- Geschichten of Niebuhr. Jacob Grimm, in the preface to his Deutsche Myilioloyie p. 1, 1st edit. Gott. 1835), pointedly insists on the distinction between " Sage " and history, as well as upon the fact that the former has its chief root in religious belief " Legend and history (he says) are powers each by itself, adjoining indeed on *he confines, but having each its own separate and exclusive ground , " als3 p. xxvii. of the same introduction. A view substantially similar is adopted by William Grimm, the other of the two distinguished brothers whose labors have so much elucidated Tea EARLY GREEK POETS. 355 tivated his imagination and his feelings was sufficient to engendei spontaneous belief; or rather, that no question as to truth or falsehood of the narrative suggested itself to his mind. His faith is ready, literal and uninquiring, apart from all thought of discriminating fact from fiction, or of -detecting hidden and sym- bolized meaning ; it is enough that what he hears be intrinsically plausible and seductive, and that there be no special cause to pro- voke doubt. And if 'indeed there were, the poet overrules such doubts by the holy and all-sufficient authority of the Muse, whose omniscience is the warrant for his recital, as her inspiration is the cause of his success. The state of mind, and the relation of speaker to hearers, thus depicted, stand clearly marked in the terms and tenor of the an- cient epic, if we only put a plain meaning upon what we read. The poet like the prophet, whom he so much resembles sings under heavenly guidance, inspired by the goddess to whom he has prayed for her assisting impulse : she puts the word into his mouth and the incidents into his mind : he is a privileged man, chosen as her organ and speaking from her revelations. 1 As the tonic philology and antiquities. He examines the extent to which either his- torical matter of fact or historical names can be traced in the Deutsche Helden- saye ; and he comes to the conclusion that the former is next to nothing, the latter not considerable. He draws particular attention to the fact, that the audience for whom these poems were intended had not learned to distin- guish history from poetry (W. Grimm, Deutsche Heldensage, pp. 8, 337, 342 345, 399, Go'tt. 1829). 1 Hesiod, Theogon. 32. kvinvsvaav 6s (the Muses^ fioi av6f]v, Beiqv, uf Kfaioifu ru r' taao/teva, npo r' iovra, Kai [is /ceAov$' vfiveiv fj.aKu.puv -yevof aiev iovruv, etc. Odyss. xxii. 347 ; viii. 63, 73, 481. 489. Ay/ioSon' y ae ye Mot)oZ/5oc 'ATroA Also Iliad, ii. 485. Both the fiavTif and the uoidbf are standing, recognized professions xvii. 383), like the physician and the carpenter, dri 356 HISTORY OF GREECE. Muse grants the gift of song to whem she will, sc she sometimes in her anger snatches it away, and the most consLinmate human genius is then left silent and helpless. 1 It is true that these ex- pressions, of the Muse inspiring and the poet singing a tale of past times, have passed from the ancient epic to compositions pro- duced under very different circumstances, and have now degen- erated into unmeaning forms of speech ; but they gained cur- rency originally in their genuine and literal acceptation. If poets had from the beginning written or recited, the predicate of sing- ing would never have been ascribed to them ; nor would it have ever become customary to employ the name of the Muse as a die to be stamped on licensed fiction, unless the practice had be- gun when her agency was invoked and hailed in perfect good faith. Belief, the fruit of deliberate inquiry and a rational scru- tiny of evidence, is in such an age unknown : the simple faith of the time slides in unconsciously, when the imagination and feel- ing are exalted ; and inspired authority is at once understood, easily admitted, and implicitly confided in. The word mythe (fiv&o?, fabula, story), in its original mean- ing, signified simply a statement or current narrative, without any connotative implication either of truth or falsehood. Subse- quently the meaning of the word (in Latin and English as well as in Greek) changed, and came to carry with it the idea of an old personal narrative, always uncertified, sometimes untrue or avow- edly fictitious. 2 And this change was the result of a silent alter- ation in the mental state of the society, of a transition on the 1 Iliad, ii. 599. 2 In this later sense it stands pointedly opposed to larcpia, history, which seems originally to have designated matter of fact, present and seen by tho describer, or the result of his personal inquiries (see Hcrodot. i. 1 ; Verrius Flacc. ap. Aul. Cell. v. 18 ; Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. iii. 12; and the observa- tions of Dr. Jortin, Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 59). The original use of the word Aoyof was the same as that of fivdof a current tale, true or false, as the case might be ; and the term designating a person much conversant with the old legends (Aoyto? ) is derived from it (Herod. L 1 ; ii. 3). Hekataeus and Herodotus both use /Wyof in this sense. Herodotus calls both JEsop and Hekatams hoyoKoioi (ii. 134-143). Aristotle (Metaphys. i. p. 8, ed. Brandis) seems to use /ivdof in this sense, where he says &ib nal tjiMfiv&of 6 i7i6ao(p6f iruf ionv 6 yap fiirdos avyKeirai kx davjj.aaiuv, etc. In the same treatise Cxi. p. 254), he uses it to signify fabulous amplification and transformation of a doctrine true in tha main. FAITH IN THE EARLY MYTHES. 357 part of the superior minds (and more or less on the part of all) to a stricter and more elevated canon of credibility, in conse quence of familiarity with recorded history, and its essential tests, affirmative as well as negative. Among the original hearers of the mythes, all such tests were unknown ; they had not yet learn- ed the lesson of critical disbelief; the my the passed unquestioned from the mere fact of its currency, and from its harmony with existing sentiments and preconceptions. The very circumstances which contributed to rob it of literal belief in after-time, strength- ened its hold upon the mind of the Homeric man. He looked for wonders and unusual combinations in the past ; he expected to hear of gods, heroes and men, moving and operating together upon earth ; he pictured to himself the fore-time as a theatre in which the gods interfered directly, obviously and frequently, for the protection of their favorites and the punishment of their foes. The rational conception, then only dawning in his mind, of a sys- tematic course of nature was absorbed by this fervent and lively faith. And if he could have been supplied with as perfect and philosophical a history of his own real past time, as we are now enabled to furnish with regard to the last century of England or France, faithfully recording all the successive events, and ac- counting for them by known positive laws, but introducing no special interventions of Zeus and Apollo such a history would have appeared to him not merely unholy and unimpressive, but destitute of all plausibility or title to credence. It would have provoked in him the same feeling of incredulous aversion as a description of the sun (to repeat the previous illustration) in a modern book on scientific astronomy. To us these mythes are interesting fictions ; to the Homeric and Hesiodic audience they were " rerum divinarum et huma- narum scientia," an aggregate of religious, physical and his- torical revelations, rendered more captivating, but not less true and real, by the bright coloring and fantastic shapes in which they were presented. Throughout the whole of u mythe-bearing Hel- las" 1 they formed the staple of the uninstructed Greek mind, 1 M. Ampere, in his Histoire Litteraire de la France (ch. viii. v. i. p. 310) distinguishes the Saga (which corresponds as nearly as possible with the Greek fivdos, Aoyof, ^Tt^wptof Aoyof ), as a special product of the intellect. 358 HISTORY OF GREECE. upon which history and philosophy were hy so slow degrees su- perinduced; and they continued to be the aliment of ordinary thought and conversation, even after history and philosophy had partially supplanted the mythical faith among the leading men, and disturbed it more or less in the ideas of all. The men, the women, and the children of the remote demes and villages of Greece, to whom Thucydides, Hippocrates, Aristotle, or Hippar- chus -were unknown, still continued to dwell upon the local fables which formed their religious and patriotic antiquity. And Pau- sanias, even in his time, heard everywhere divine or heroic le- gends yet alive, precisely of the type of the old epic ; he found the conceptions of religious and mythical faith, coexistent with those of positive science, and contending against them at more or less of odds, according to the temper of the individual. Now it is the remarkable characteristic of the Homeric age, that no such coexistence or contention had yet begun. The religious and mythical point of view covers, for the most part, all the phenomena of nature ; while the conception of invariable se- quence exists only in the background, itself personified under the name of the Mrerae, or Fates, and produced generally as an ex- ception to the omnipotence of Zeus for all ordinary purposes. not capable of being correctly designated either as history, or as fiction, at as philosophy : " II est un pays, la Scandinavie, oil la tradition racontee s'est developpee plus completement qu'ailleurs, oil scs produits ont etc plus soigneusement recueillis et mieux conserve's : dans ce pays, lis ont re T) iv TTOIT)TI.KOIC . "flare ai)TTj(; puK'h.dv tdTi TU iroir/uaTa ravra SiaMy ;3$ai r) uSeiv ovft 1 uv upfioaai npbf Tbv xopov j) Trpbe TTJV Xitpav, el firj Tif elij ^opof diaheKTiKof (Demetr. Phaler, De Interpret, c. 167). Compare also Herodot. ii. 135, who mentions the satirical talent of Sap- pho, employed against her brother for an extravagance about the courtezan Rhodopis. 2 Solon, Fragm. iv. J, ed. Schneidewin : AvTbf Ktjpv!; rj^ov up Ifieprfj^ 2aAa/uvof Koffftov kneuv 6r)v UVT' ayopjjs &e[i.evof, etc. See Brandis, Handbuch der Griechischen Philosophic, sect, xxiv.-xxr Plato states that Solon, in his old age, engaged in the composition of an epic poem, which he left unfinished, on the subject of the supposed island of Atlantis and Attica (Plato, Timacus, p. 21, and Kritias, p. 113). Plu- tarch, Solon, c. 31. FORMATION OF A3T HISTORICAL SENSE. 365 character without the old epical genius ; both the inspiration cf the composer and the sympathies of the audience had become more deeply enlisted in the world before them, and disposed to fasten on incidents of their own actual experience. From Solon and Theognis we pass to the abandonment of all metrical restric tions and to the introduction of prose writing, a fact, the im- portance of which it is needless to dwell upon, marking as well the increased familiarity with written records, as the commence- ment of a separate branch of literature for the intellect, apart from the imagination and emotions wherein the old legends had their exclusive root. Egypt was first unreservedly opened to the Greeks during the reign of Psammetichus, about B. c. 660 ; gradually it became much frequented by them for military or commercial purposes, or for simple curiosity, and enlarged the range of their thoughts and observations, while it also imparted to them that vein of mysticism, which overgrew the primitive simplicity of the Ho- meric religion, and of which I have spoken in a former chapter They found in it a long-established civilization, colossal wonders of architecture, and a certain knowledge of astronomy and geo- metry, elementary indeed, but in advance of their own. Moreover it was a portion of their present world, and it contributed to form in them an interest for noting and describing the actual realities before them. A sensible progress is made in the Greek mind during the two centuries from B. c. 700 to B. c. 500, in the re- cord and arrangement of historical facts : an historical sense arises in the superior intellects, and some idea of evidence as a discrim- inating test between fact and fiction. And this progressive ten- dency was further stimulated by increased communication and by more settled and peaceful social relations between the various members of the Hellenic world, to which may be added material improvements, purchased at the expense of a period of turbu- lence and revolution, in the internal administration of each sepa- rate state. The Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian games became frequented by visitors from the most distant parts of Greece : the great periodical festival in the island of Delos brought together the citizens of every Ionic community, with their wives and children, and an ample display of wealth and ornaments.' 1 Homer, Hymn, ad Apollin. 155 ; Thucydid. iii. 104. 3 66 fflSTORT OF GREECE. Numerous and flourishing colonies were founded in Sicily, the south of Italy, the coasts of Epirus and of the Euxine Sea : the Phokaeans explored the whole of the Adriatic, established Mas- salia, and penetrated even as far as the south of Iberia, with which they carried on a lucrative commerce. 1 The geographical ideas of the Greeks were thus both expanded and rectified : the first preparation of a map, by Anaximander the disciple of Thales, is an epoch in the history of science. We may note the ridicule bestowed by Herodotus both upon the supposed people called Hyperboreans and upon the idea of a circumfluous ocean-stream, as demonstrating the progress of the age in this department of inquiry. 2 And even earlier than Herodotus, Xanthus had no- ticed the occurrence of fossil marine productions in the interior of Asia Minor, which led him to reflections on the changes of the earth's surface with respect to land and water. 3 If then we look down the three centuries and a half which elapsed between the commencement of the Olympic aera and the age of Herodotus and Thucydides, we shall discern a striking advance in the Greeks, ethical, social and intellectual. Posi- tive history and chronology has not only been created, but in the case of Thucydides, the qualities necessary to the historiographer, in their application to recent events, have been developed with a degree of perfection never since surpassed. Men's minds have assumed a gentler as well as a juster cast ; and acts come to be criticized with reference to their bearing on the internal happi- ness of a well-regulated community, as well as upon the stand- 1 Herodot i. 163. 2 Herodot. iv. 36. ye/ltJ 6e opeuv 1% irepiodove ypuipavraf iro/lAovf fjSri, tal oiideva voov e%ovTa<; ef^yjyaa/zevov ol 'QKEOVOV re peovra yputyovai irEpi% rrjv y^v, koiiaav Kvntorepea wf and ropvov, etc., a remark probably directed igainst Hekataeus. Respecting the map of Anaximander, Strabo, i. p. 7 ; Diogen. LaCrt. ii. \ ; Agathemer ap. Geograph. Minor, i. 1. irpuroc erokfiijaE TTJV olmvfisvTjv .V mvaKi ypuijjai. Aristagoras of Miletus, who visited Sparta to solicit aid for the revolted rtnians against Darius, brought with him a brazen tablet or map, by means jf which he exhibited the relative position of places in the Persian cmpiro 'Herodot. v. 49). Xanthus ap. Stoabo. i. p. 50; xii. p. 579. Compare Creuzer, Fragments kanuii, p. 162. COMMENCEMENT OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 36? ing harmony of fraternal states. While Thucydides treats the habitual and licensed piracy, so coolly alluded to in the Homeric poems, as an obsolete enormity, many of the acts described in the old heroic and Theogonic legends were found not less repug- nant to this improved tone of feeling. The battles of the gods with the Giants and Titans, the castration of Uranus by his son Kronus, the cruelty, deceit and licentiousness, often sup- posed both in the gods and heroes, provoked strong disapproba- tion. And the language of the philosopher Xenophanes, who composed both elegiac and iambic poems for the express purpose of denouncing such tales, is as vehement and unsparing as that of the Christian writers, who, eight centuries afterwards, attack- ed the whole scheme of paganism. 1 Nor was it alone as an ethical and social critic that Xeno- phanes stood distinguished. He was one of a great and eminent triad Thales and Pythagoras being the others who, in the sixth century before the Christian aera, first opened up those veins of speculative philosophy which occupied afterwards so large a portion of Grecian intellectual energy. Of the material differences between the three I do not here speak ; I regard them only in reference to the Homeric and Hesiodic philosophy which preceded them, and from which all three deviated by a step, perhaps the most remarkable in all the history of philosophy. In the scheme of ideas common to Homer and to the Hesiodic Theogony (as has been already stated), we find nature distribut- ed into a variety of personal agencies, administered according to the free-will of different Beings more or less analogous to man each of these Beings having his own character, attributes and powers, his own sources of pain and pleasure, and his own espe- cial sympathies or antipathies with human individuals ; each being determined to act or forbear, to grant favor or inflict injury in his own department of phenomena, according as men, or perhaps other Beings analogous to himself, might conciliate or offend him. The Gods, properly so called, (those who bore a proper name and received some public or family worship,) were the most com- manding and capital members amidst this vast network of agents 1 Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empiric, adv. Mathemat. ix. 193 Fragm. 1. Poet Gnsc. cd. Schneidewin. Diogen. Laert. ix. 18. 368 HISTORY OF GREECE. visible and invisible, spread over the universe. 1 The whole vie * of nature was purely religious and subjective, the spontaneous suggestion of the early mind. It proceeded from the instinctive tendencies of the feelings and imagination to transport, to the world without, the familiar type of free-will and conscious per- sonal action : above all, it took deep hold of the emotions, from the widely extended sympathy which it so perpetually called forth between man and nature. 2 The first attempt to disenthral the philosophic intellect from this all-personifying religious faith, and to constitute a method of interpreting nature distinct from the spontaneous inspirations of untaught minds, is to be found in Thales, Xenophanes and Pytha- goras, in the sixth century before the Christian aera. It is in them that we first find the idea of Person tacitly set aside or limited, and an impersonal Nature conceived as the object of study. The divine husband and wife, Oceanus and Tethys, parents of many gods and of the Oceanic nymphs, together with the avenging goddess Styx, are translated into the material sub- stance water, or, as we ought rather to say, the Fluid: and Thales set himself to prove that water was the primitive element, out of which all the different natural substances had been formed. 3 He, as well as Xenophanes and Pythagoras, started the problem of physical philosophy, with its objective character and invariable laws, to be discoverable by a proper and methodical application of the human intellect. The Greek word f&vatg, denoting nature, and its derivatives physics and physiology, unknown in that large sense to Homer or Hesiod, as well as the word Kosmos, to denote the mundane system, first appears with these philosophers. 4 The 1 Hesiod, Opp. Di. 122; Homer, Hymn, ad Vener. 260. 2 A defence of the primitive faith, on this ground, is found in Plutarch, Question. Sympos. vii. 4, 4, p. 703. 3 Aristotel. Metaphys. i. 3. 4 Plutarch, Placit. Philos. ii. 1 ; also Stobseus, Eclog. Physic, i. 22, where the difference between the Homeric expressions and those of the subsequent philosophers is seen. Damm, Lexic. Homeric, v. oY ; Alexander von Ilumboldt, Kosmos, p. 76, the note 9 on page 62 of that admirable work. The title of the treatises of the early philosophers (Melissus, Dercokritus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Alkmaeon, etc.) was frequently Hepi Qvasuf (Galen. Opp. torn. i. p. 56, ed. Basil). STUDY OF IMPERSONAL NAIUEE. 369 elemental analysis of Thales the one unchangeable cosmic sub- stance, varying only in appearance, but not in reality, as suggest- ed by Xenophanes, and the geometrical and arithmetical combinations of Pythagoras, all these were different ways of approaching the explanation of physical phenomena, and each gave rise to a distinct school or succession of philosophers. But they all agreed in departing from the primitive method, and in recognizing determinate properties, invariable sequences, and objective truth, in nature either independent of willing or designing agents, or serving to these latter at once as an indispen- sable subject-matter and as a limiting condition. Xenophanes disclaimed openly all knowledge respecting the gods, and pro- nounced that no man could have any means of ascertaining when he was right and when he was wrong, in affirmations respecting them i 1 while Pythagoras represents in part the scientific tenden- cies of his age, in part also the spirit of mysticism and of special fraternities for religious and ascetic observance, which became diffused throughout Greece in the sixth century before the Chris- tian aera. This was another point which placed him in antipathy with the simple, unconscious and demonstrative faith of the old poets, as well as with the current legends. If these distinguished men, when they ceased to follow the primitive instinct of tracing the phenomena of nature to personal and designing agents, passed over, not at once to induction and observation, but to a misemployment of abstract words, substitut- ing metaphysical eideola in the place of polytheism, and to an exaggerated application of certain narrow physical theories we must remember that nothing else could be expected from the scanty stock of facts then accessible, and that the most profound study of the human mind points out such transition as an inevita- ble law of intellectual progress. 2 At present, we have to compart. 1 Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empiric, vii. 50 ; riii. 326. Kal rd /j.sv ovv trapef ovrif uvrjp Idsv, oiire rt$ kariv 'Elduf afMpl dsuv re Kal uaaa Aeyo irspl irdvruv El -yap Kal TtJ fiaXtara TV%OI rereAeff^evov elir&v, Aurof ofiuf OVK oldc, J6/cof d' ircl Tract rerwcrfci. Compare Aristotel. De Xenophane, Zenone, et Georgii, capp. 1-2. * See the treatise of M. Auguste Comte (Cours de Philosophic Positive), and VOL.I. 16* 24oc 370 HISTORY OF GREECE. them only with that state of the Greek mind' which they partially superseded, and with which they were in decided opposition. The rudiments of physical science were conceived and developed among superior men ; but the religious feeling of the mass was averse to them ; and the aversion, though gradually mitigated, never wholly died away. Some of the philosophers were not backward in charging others with irreligion, while the multitude seems to have felt the same sentiment more or less towards all or towards that postulate of constant sequences, with determinate conditions of occurrence, which scientific study implies, and which they could not reconcile with their belief in the agency of the gods, to whom they were constantly praying for special succor and blessings. The discrepancy between the scientific and the religious point of view was dealt with differently by different philosophers. Thus Socrates openly admitted it, and assigned to each a distinct and independent province. He distributed phenomena into two class- es : one, wherein the connection of antecedent and consequent was invariable and ascertainable by human study, and therefore fu- ture results accessible to a well-instructed foresight ; the other, and those, too, the most comprehensive and important, which the gods had reserved for themselves and their own unconditional agency, wherein there was no invariable or ascertainable se- quence, and where the result could only be foreknown by some omen, prophecy, or other special inspired communication from themselves. Each of these classes was essentially distinct, and required to be looked at and dealt with in a manner radically in- compatible with the other. Socrates held it wrong to apply the scientific interpretation to the latter, or the theological interpre- tation to the former. Physics and astronomy, in his opinion, his doctrine of the three successive stages of the human mind in reference to scientific study the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive ; a doctrine laid down generally in his first lecture (vol. i. p. 4-12), and largely applied and illustrated throughout his instructive work. It is also re-stated and elucidated by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, vol. ii. p. 610. 1 " Human wisdom (('iv&puTclvi] aoipia), as contrasted with the primitiva theology (oi upxaloi KO.I 6iarpipovTrf irepl ruf fteohoyiaf)," to take the word* of Aristotle (Meteo->log. ii. 1. pp. 41-42, ed. Tauchnitz). HIPPOCRArES.-ANAXAGORAS. 371 belonged to the divine class of phenomena, in which human re- search was insane, fruitless, and impious. 1 On the other hand, Hippocrates, the contemporary of Socrates, denied the discrepancy, and merged into one those two classes of phenomena, the divine and the scientifically determinable, which the latter had put asunder. Hippocrates treated all phe- nomena as at once both divine and scientifically determinable. In discussing certain peculiar bodily disorders found among the Scythians, he observes, " The Scythians themselves ascribe the cause of this to God, and reverence and bow down to such suf- ferers, each man fearing that he may suffer the like ; and I my- self think too that these affections, as well as all others, are di- vine : no one among them is either more divine or more human than another, but all are on the same footing, and all divine ; nev- ertheless each of them has its own physical conditions, and not one occurs without such physical conditions." 2 1 Xenoph. Memor. i. 1, 6-9. TapEv avaynaia (Sw/cpu-nyf ) rj TrpoadEiff&ai TEKTOVIKOV uev yap ij Tfa^.KEVTiKov fi yeupymbv ?/ uv&puTruv apxwdv, % TUV TOIOVTUV spyuv i^ETaa- , f/ hoyiGTiicdv, 7) olnovofiiKdv, TJ arparriyiKov yevfadai, navra TU ToiafTa, rifiaTa. KOI av&puTrov jvuftij a/perea, tvopi&v elvai TU 6e fiE-yiara TUV iv d>r/ roif #eot)f E avToif KaraActTrecrt^at, uv oidEV Sfj'Xov flvat rotf dvi9pcj7rotf Toi)f <5e fir)6ev TUV TOIOVTUV olofievovr Elvai datfioviov, uM^u TTUITO r^f uvdpumvi]? yvufirjf, daifiovav M ft^atr^jjfielv Trept avTa (YI'I. 821 ). * Hippocrates, De Afire, Locis et Aquis, c. 22 Cp. 78, ed. Littre, sect. 106 ed. Petersen) : 'Eri re irpbf TOVTEOIOI svvovxiat yiyvovTai ol irfaloToi h t, Kai yvvaKTiia Epyat,ovTai nal uf al ywaiKEf diateyovTai re dfioiuf TE oi TOIOVTOI uvavtioiEir. Oi ftsv oiiv kirixupioi Tr)v aniifv npoe 872 HISTORY OF GREECE. A third distinguished philosopher of the same day, Anaxagoras, allegorizing Zeus and the other personal gods, proclaimed the doctrine of one common pervading Mind, as having first estab- lished order and system in the mundane aggregate, which had once been in a state of chaos and as still manifesting its unin- terrupted agency for wise and good purposes. This general doc- trine obtained much admiration from Plato and Aristotle ; but they at the same time remarked with surprise, that Anaxagoras never made any use at all of his own general doctrine for the ex- planation of the phenomena of nature, that he looked for noth- ing but physical causes and connecting laws, 1 so that in fact the spirit of his particular researches was not materially different from those of Demokritus or Leukippus, whatever might be the difference in their general theories. His investigations in meteor- ology and astronomy, treating the heavenly bodies as subjects for calculation, have been already noticed as offensive, not only to the general public of Greece, but even to Socrates himself among them : he was tried at Athens, and seems to have escaped con demnation only by voluntary exile. 2 rideaai i?eu Kal aepovrai rovreovf roiif uv&puTrovf Kal TtpoaK.vve.ovai, 6e6oi KOTEf Kept kuvTEuv KaaToi. 'E/zot <5e Kal uvrey SoKesi ravra TU Tru.'&ea dele elvai, Kal TuA/.a Travra, Kal oiidev erspov erepov fieiorepov oi>c5 av&pumvu repov, iM.u, navra $ua IKUOTOV 6e e^et (jtiiaiv ruv TOIOVTEUV, Kal ovdit uvev ^vCTiOf yiyve-ai. Kal TOVTO rd Trutfof, wf pol <5o/cm yiyvea&ai, Qpuau, etc. Again, sect. 112. 'A/l/lu yap, uairep Kal trporepov D.s^a, dela fiev Kal TUVTO, tan 6/zotwf rolai a^oiai, jiyvtrai 6e KOTO. Qvaiv iKaara. Compare the remarkable treatise of Hippocrates, De Morbo Sacro, capp I and 18, vol. vi. p. 352-394, ed. Littre. See this opinion of Hippocrateg illustrated by the doctrines of some physical philosophers stated in Aristotle, Physic, ii. 8. ueirep vei b Zevf, ov% oTrwf rbv OITOV av^r/ay, dAA' i$ avuyKTjf, etc. Some valuable observations on the method of Hippocrates are also found in Plato, Phaedr. p. 270. 1 See the graphic picture in Plato, Phaedon. p. 97-98 (cap. 46-47) : com- pare Plato, Legg. xii. p. 967 ; Aristotel. Metaphysic. i. p. 13-14 (ed. Bran- dis) ; Plutarch, Defect. Oracul. p. 435. Simplicius, Commentar. in Aristotel. Physic, p. 38. Kal cmep fiebh $ai- 6uvi 2u/cpdrj;f kyahel ro 'Ava^ayopa, rd tv rai rCtv Kara /zepof alTiohoyiatf (IT) T(f> vfj) KEXpno&vaio"h.oyia. Anaxagoras thought that the superior intelligence of men, as compared with other animals, arose from his possession of hands (Aristot. de Part. Animal ir. 10. p. 687, ed. Bekk.J. 1 Xenophcn, Memorab. iv. 7. Socrates said, Kal rtapa^povfioai TOV raCra GRECIAN RELIGIOUS BELIEF 373 The three eminent men just named, all essentially different from each other, may be taken as illustrations of the philosophical mind of Greece during the last half of tho fifth century B. c. Scientific pursuits had acquired a powerful hold, and adjusted themselves in various -ways with the prevalent religious feelings of the age. Both Hippocrates and Anaxagoras modified their ideas of the divine agency so as to suit their thirst for scientific research. According to the former, the gods were the really ef- ficient agents in the production of all phenomena, the mean and indifferent not less than the terrific or tutelary. Being thus alike connected with all phaenomena, they were specially asso- ciated with none and the proper task of the inquirer was, to find out those rules and conditions by which (he assumed) their agency was always determined, and according to which it might be fore- told. And this led naturally to the proceeding which Plato and Aristotle remark in Anaxagoras, that the all-governing and Infinite Mind, having been announced in sublime language at the beginning of his treatise, was afterward left out of sight, and never applied to the explanation of particular phenomena, be- ing as much consistent with one modification of nature as with fj.epijivuv~a ovdev JJTTOV rj 'Avafayopaf Trapetypovt/aev, 6 neytarov ETtl T ruf TUV -&iJv jUj^avaf e^T)yela-&at, etc. Compare Schaubach, Anax- agorte Fragment, p. 50-141 ; Plutarch, Kikias, 23, and Pcriklus, 6-32 ; Dio gen. Lafirt. ii. 10-14. The Ionic philosophy, from which Anaxagoras receded more in language than in spirit, seems to have been the least popular of all the schools, though some of the commentators treat it as conformable to vulgar opinion, because it confined itself for the most part to phenomenal explanations, and did not recognize the noumena of Plato, or the rd ev VOTJTOV of Pannenides, " qualis fuit lonicorum, quce turn dominabatur, ratio, vulgari opinione et communi sensu comprobata" (Karsten, Parmenidis Fragment., De Pannenidis Philo- sophia, p. 154). This is a mistake : the Ionic philosophers, who constantly searched for and insisted upon physical laws, came more directly into conflict with the sentiment of the multitude than the Eleatic school. The larger atmospheric phenomena were connected in the most intimate manner with Grecian religious feeling and uneasiness (see Demokritus ap. Sect. Empiric, ix. sect. 19-24. p. 552-554, Fabric.) : the attempts of Anax- agoras and Demokritus to explain them were more displeasing to the public than the Platonic speculations (Demokri'us ap. Aristot. Meteorol. ii 7: Siobceus, Eclog. Physic, p. 594 : compare Mullach, Democriti Fragments, lib. iv. j,. 394). 374 mSTORY OF GREECE. another. Now such a view of the divine agency could ne\ei be reconciled with the religious feelings of the ordinary Grecian believer, even as they stood in the time of Anaxagoras ; still less could it have been reconciled with those of the Homeric man, more than three centuries earlier. By him Zeus and Athene were conceived as definite Persons, objects of special reverence, hopes, and fears, and animated with peculiar feelings, sometimes of favor, sometimes of wrath, towards himself or his family or country. They were propitiated by his prayers, and prevailed upon to lend him succor in danger but offended and disposed to bring evil upon him if he omitted to render thanks or sacrifice. This sense of individual communion with, and de- pendence upon them was the essence of his faith ; and with that faith, the all-pervading Mind proclaimed by Anaxagoras which had no more concern with one man or one phenomenon than with another, could never be brought into harmony. Nor could the believer, while he prayed with sincerity for special blessings or protection from the gods, acquiesce in the doctrine of Hippocrates, that their agency was governed by constant laws and physical conditions. That radical discord between the mental impulses of science and religion, which manifests itself so decisively during the most cultivated ages of Greece, and which harassed more or less so many of the philosophers, produced its most afflicting re- sult in the condemnation of Socrates by the Athenians. Accord- ing to the remarkable passage recently cited from Xenophon, it will appear that Socrates agreed with his countrymen in denounc- ing physical speculations as impious, that he recognized the re- ligious process of discovery as a peculiar branch, coordinate with the scientific, and that he laid down a theory, of which the ba- sis was, the confessed divergence of these two processes from the beginning thereby seemingly satisfying the exigencies of re- ligious hopes and fears on the one hand, and those of reason, in her ardor for ascertaining the invariable laws of phenomena, on the other. We may remark that the theory of this religious and extra-scientific process of discovery was at that time sufficiently complete ; for Socrates could point out, that those anomalous phae- nomena which *he gods had reserved for themselves, and into SOCKATES AND THE ATHENIANS. 375 which science was forbidden to pry, were yet accessible to the seekings of the pious man, through oracles, omens, and other excep- tional means of communication which divine benevolence vouch- safed to keep open. Considering thus to how great an extent Socrates was identified in feeling with the religious public of Athens, and considering moreover that his performance of open religious duties was assiduous we might wonder, as Xenophon does wonder, 1 how it could have happened that the Athenian di- kasts mistook him at the end of his life for an irreligious man. But we see, by the defence which Xenophon as well as Plato gives for him, that the Athenian public really considered him, in spite of his own disclaimer, as homogeneous with Anaxagoras and the other physical inquirers, because he had applied similar scientific reasonings to moral and social phaenomena. They look- ed upon him with the same displeasure as he himself felt towards the physical philosophers, and we cannot but admit that in this respect they were more unfortunately consistent than he was. It is true that the mode of defence adopted by Socrates contributed much to the verdict found against him, and that he was further weighed down by private offence given to powerful individuals and professions ; but all these separate antipathies found their best account in swelling the cry against him as an over-curious scep- tic, and an impious innovator. Now the scission thus produced between the superior minds and the multitude, in consequence of the development of science and the scientific point of view, is a fact of great moment in the history of Greek progress, and forms an important contrast be- tween the age of Homer and Hesiod and that of Thucydides ; though in point of fact even the multitude, during this later age, were partially modified by those very scientific views which they regarded with disfavor. And we must keep in view the prim- itive religious faith, once universal and unobstructed, but subse- quently disturbed by the intrusions of science ; we must follow the great change, as well in respect to enlarged intelligence as to refinement of social and ethical feeling, among the Greeks, from the Hesiodic times downward, in order to render some ac- count of the altered manner in which the ancient mythes camo 1 Xenophon, Memorab i. 1 376 HISTORY OF GREECE. to be dealt with. These mythes, the spontaneous growth of a creative and personifying interpretation of nature, had struck root in Grecian associations at a time when the national faith required no support from what we call evidence. They wore note submitted, not simply to a feeling, imagining, and believing public, but also to special clause? of instructed men. philoso- phers, historians, ethical teachers, and critics, and to a public partially modified by their ideas 1 as well as improved by a wider practical experience. They were not intended for such an au- dience ; they had ceased to be in complete harmony even with the lower strata of intellect and sentiment, much more so with the higher. But they were the cherished inheritance of a past time ; they were interwoven in a thousand ways with the religious faith, the patriotic retrospect, and the national worship, of every Gre- cian community ; the general type of the mythe was the ancient, familiar, and universal form of Grecian thought, which even the most cultivated men had imbibed in their childhood from the poets, 9 and by which they were to a certain degree unconsciously 1 It is carious to see that some of the most recondite doctrines of the IV thagnreaa philosophy were actually brought before the general Syraai^v.i public in the comedies of Epiehannus : " In comcEdiis suis personas sa?pe ita eoDoqra fecit, at sententias Pythagoricas et in onrrersum sublimia rita> pne- ceptt inuusceret" (Grysar, De Doriensinm Comoedn. p. 111. Col. I The fragments perjured in Diogen. LaeTt (iiL 9-17) present both criticisms upon the Hesiodk doctrine of a primaeval duos, and an exposition of the archetypal and tm^tM^ ideas ("as opposed to the fluctuating phenomena of sense) which Plato afterwards adopted and systematized. Epkharmus seems to hare combined with this abstruse philosophy a strong rein of comic shrewdness and some turn to scepticism (Cicero. toL ad Attic. L 19) : nt crebro mihi vafer ille Sicnlns Epiehannus insnsnnvt suam." Clemens Alex. Strom, r. p. 258. Noft cai fUfamff 1 man- of#pa Tofrra ruv aprruv. Z^uev up^i^uu cot xoywr^ty ravra ydp au^ei Also his contemptuous ridicule of the prophetesses of his time who cheated foolish women out of their money, pretending to universal knowledge, co2 Torra jryvucKom ru njpdr Ijoyu (ap Polluc. ix. 81). See, about Epicharmns. O. MnQer, Dorians, ir. 7, 4. These dramas seem to hare been exhibited at Syracuse between 4SO-460 B. c, anterior eren to Chionides and Magnes at Athens CAristot Poet. c. 3): he says ^o A i y irporepof, which can hardly be literally exact. The cri: the Horatiaaage looked upon Epicharmns as the prototype of Planrus (llor Epistol.ii. 1. 53). * The third book of the republic of Plato is particularly striking in refer- POETS AND LOGOGBAPHERS. 377 enslaved. Taken as a whole the mythea aad acquired prescript tire and ineffaceable possession: to attack, call in question, or repudiate them, was a task painful even to undertake, and far beyond the power of any one to accomplish. For these reasons the anti-mythic vein of criticism was of no effect as a destroying force, but nevertheless its dissolving de- composing and transforming influence was very considerable. To accommodate the ancient mythes to an improved tone of sentiment and a newly created canon of credibility, was a function which even the wisest Greeks did not disdain, and which occupied no small proportion of the whole intellectual activity of the nation. The mythes were looked at from a point of view completely foreign to the reverential curiosity and literal imaginative faith of the Homeric man ; they were broken up and recast in order to force them into new moulds such as their authors had never conceived. We may distinguish four distinct classes of minds, in the literary age now under examination, as having taken them in hand the poets, the logographers, the philosophers, and the historians. With the poets and logographers, the mythical persons are real predecessors, and the mythical world an antecedent fact ; but it is divine and heroic reality, not human ; the present is only half- brother of the past (to borrow 1 an illustration from Pindar in his allusion to gods and men), remotely and generically, but not closely and specifically, analogous to it. As a general habit, the old feelings and the old unconscious faith, apart from all proof or evidence, still remain in their minds ; but recent feelings have grown up which compel them to omit, to alter, sometimes even to reject and condemn, particular narratives. Pindar repudiates some stories and transforms others, because they are inconsistent with his conceptions of the gods. Thus he formally protests against the tale that Pelops had been killed and served up at table by his father, for the immortal gods to eat ; he shrinks from the idea of imputing to them so horrid an appe- Bnce to the use of the poets in education : see also his treatise De I-egg. viL p. 810-811- Some teachers made their pupils learn -whole poets by heArt (6Aot>f rrotriTaf iKuav&avuv], others preferred extracts and selections. 1 Piuuar,Ne:n. vi. 1. Compare Simonides, Fragm. 1 (Gaisford). 378 HISTOHY OF GREECE. tite ; he pronounces the tale to have been originally fabricated by a slanderous neighbor. Nor can he bring himself to recount the quarrels between different gods. 1 The amours of Zeus and Apollo are no way displeasing to him ; but he occasionally sup- presses some of the simple details of the old mythe, as deficient in dignity : thus, according to the Hesiodic narrative, Apollo was informed by a raven of the infidelity of the nymph Koronis : but the mention of the raven did not appear to Pindar consistent with the majesty of the god, and he therefore wraps up the mode of detection in vague and mysterious language. 2 He feels con- siderable repugnance to the character of Odysseus, and intimates more than once that Homer has unduly exalted him, by force of poetical artifice. With the character of the JEakid Ajax, on the other hand, he has the deepest sympathy, as well as with his untimely and inglorious death, occasioned by the undeserved pre- ference of a less worthy rival. 3 He appeals for his authority usu- ally to the Muse, but sometimes to "ancient sayings of men," accompanied with a general allusion to story-tellers and bards, admitting, however, that these stories present great discrepancy, and sometimes that they are false. 4 Yet the marvellous and the supernatural afford no ground whatever for rejecting a story : Pindar makes an express declaration to this effect in re- ference to the romantic adventures of Perseus and the Gorgon's head. 5 He treats even those mythical characters, which con- flict the most palpably with positive experience, as connected by a real genealogical thread with the world before him. Not merely the heroes of Troy and Thebes, and the demigod seamen of Jas6n and the ship Argo, but also the Centaur Cheiron, the hundred-headed Typhos, the giant Alkyoneus, Antceus, Bellero- 1 Pindar, Olymp. i. 30-55 ; ix. 32-45. 2 Pyth. iii. 25. See the allusions to Semele, Alkmena, and Danae, Pyth. iii. 98; Nem. x. 10. Compare also supra, chap. ix. p. 245. a Pindar. Nem. vii. 20-30 ; viii. 23-31. Isthm. iii. 50-60. It seems to be sympathy for Ajax, in odes addressed to noble JEginetan victors, which induces him thus to depreciate Odysseus ; for he eulogizes Sisy- phus, specially on account of his cunning and resources ("Olymp. xiii. 50) in the ode addressed to Xenophon the Corinthian. 4 Olymp. i. 28 ; Nem. viii. 20 ; Pyth. i. 93 ; Olymp. vii. 55 ; Nem. vi. t3 +U.VTI va in cases where Homer would have mentioned the divine assistance. 3 Nem. x. 37-51. Compare the family legend of the Athenian Dem it- erates, in Plato, Lysis, p. 295. * Nem. v. 12-16. mSTORY OP GREECE. The Prometheus of .^Eschylus is a far more exalted conception than his keen-witted namesake in Hesiod, and the more homely details of the ancient Thebais and CEdipodia were in like manner modified by Sophokles. 1 The religious agencies of the old epic are constantly kept prominent, and the paternal curse, the wrath of deceased persons against those from whom they have sustained wrong, the judgments of theErinnys against guilty or foredoomed persons, sometimes inflicted directly, sometimes brought about through dementation of the sufferer himself (like the Homeric Ate), are frequent in their tragedies. 2 1 See above, chap. xiv. p. 368. on the Legend of the Siege of Thebes. 2 The curse of CEdipus is the determining force in the Sept. ad Theb., 'Apa T\ 'Epivviie Trarpbf % peyaadevije (v. 70) ; it reappears several times in the course of the drama, with particular solemnity in the mouth of Eteokles (695-709, 725, 785, etc. ) ; he yields to it as an irresistible force, as carrying the family to ruin : 'E;ret TO Trpayfta Kupr' ET "Iru or' ovpov, KVfia KUKVTOV Tiax^v. $oij3(f) arvyjj&EV TTUV rd Aatov ytvof. * * * * * $$6yyov upaiov oiitoif Bia ^aAivtiv r' uvavdu uevei (Karaaxeiv), v. 346. The Erinnys awaits Agamemnon even at the moment of his victorious consummation at Troy (467 ; compare 762-990, 1336-1433) : she is most to be dreaded after great good fortune : she enforces the curse which ancestral crimes have brought upon the house of Atreus Trpurapxof UTTJ irahaial ufiapriai 66/j.uv (1185-1197, ChoOph. 692) the curse imprecated by the outraged Thyestes (1601). In the ChoSphorae, Apollo menaces Orestes with the wrath of his deceased father, and all the direful visitations of the Erinnyes, unless he undertakes to revenge the mur- der ("271-296). Alaa and 'EptwOf bring on blood for blood (647). But the moment that Orestes, placed between these conflicting obligations (925), has achieved it, he becomes himself the victim of the Erinnyes, who drive him mad even at the end of the Choephorae (e'wf 6' ET' E^puv E'I/J.I, 1026), and who make their appearance bodily, and pursue him throughout the third drama of this feo.rful trilogy. The Eidolon of Klytsemnestra impels them to vengeance (Eumenid. 96) and even spurs them on when they appear to relax. JISCHYLUS. 381 JEschylus in two of his remaining pieces brings forward the gods as the chief personages, and far from sharing the objection of Pindar to dwell upon dissensions of the gods, he introduces Prometheus and Zeus in the one, Apollo and the Eumenides in the other, in marked opposition. The dialogue, first superinduced by him upon the primitive Chorus, gradually became the most important portion of the drama, and is more elaborated in Sopho- kles than in JEschylus. Even in Sophokles, however, it still generally retains its ideal majesty as contrasted with the rhetori- cal and forensic tone which afterwards crept in ; it grows out of the piece, and addresses itself to the emotions more than to the reason of the audience. Nevertheless, the effect of Athenian political discussion and democratical feeling is visible in both these dramatists. The idea of rights and legitimate privileges as op- posed to usurping force, is applied by JEschylus even to the so- ciety of the gods : the Eumenides accuse Apollo of having, with the insolence of youthful ambition, " ridden down " their old preroga- Apollo conveys Orestes to Athens, whither the Erinnyes pursue him, and prosecute him before the judgment-scat of the goddess Athene, to whom they submit the award ; Apollo appearing as his defender. The debate between " the daughters of Night " and the god, accusing and defending, is eminently curious (576-730) : the Erinnyes are deeply mortified at the humil- iation put upon them when Orestes is acquitted, but Athene at length recon- ciles them, and a covenant is made whereby they become protectresses of Attica, accepting of a permanent abode and solemn worship (1006J : Orestes returns to Argos, and promises that even in his tomb he will watch that none of his descendants shall ever injure the land of Attica ( 770). The solemn trial and acquittal of Orestes formed the consecrating legend of the Hill and Judi cature of Areiopagus. This is the only complete triology of JEschylus which we possess, and the avenging Erinnyes (416) are the movers throughout the whole unseen in the first two dramas, visible and appalling in the third. And the appearance of Cassandra under the actual prophetic fever in the first, contributes still farther to impart to it a coloring different from common humanity. The general view of the movement of the Oresteia given in Welcker (.iEschyl. Trilogie, p. 445) appears to me more conformable to Hellenic ideas than that of Klausen (Theologumena -f, otf kv 'Idaiu itdy^ Atof iraTppov (3u(i6(; EOT' kv al&epi, KOVTTU atyiv e^trj/xW alfia fiainovuv. There is one real exception to this statement the Persae which ia founded upon an event of recent occurrence ; and one apparent exception the Prometheus Vinctus. But in that drama no individual mortal is made to appear; we can hardly consider 16 as an tyf/pepof (253). 2 For the characteristics of ^Esohylus sec Aristophan. Ran. 755, ad fin. passim. The competition between JEschylus and Euripides turns upon yvw- VOL. i. 17 25oc. 386 HISTORY OF GREECE. as of didactic prolixity, may also be detected. It is .ZEechylus, not Sophokles, who forms the marked antithesis to Euripides ; it is JEschylus, not Sophokles, to whom Aristophanes awards the prize of tragedy, as the poet who assigns most perfectly to the heroes of the past those weighty words, imposing equipments, simplicity of great deeds with little talk, and masculine energy superior to the corruptions of Aphrodite, which beseem the com- rades of Agamemnon and Adrastus. 1 How deeply this feeling, of the heroic character of the mythi- cal world, possessed the Athenian mind, may be judged by the bitter criticisms made on Euripides, whose compositions were pervaded, partly by ideas of physical philosophy learnt under Anaxagoras, partly by the altered tone of education and the wide diffusion of practical eloquence, forensic as well as political, at ftai u-yadal, 1497 ; the weight and majesty of the words, 1362; irpurof TUV 'EyWjyvuv Tropywaaf pf/[iaTa aefiva, 1001, 921, 930 ("sublimis et gravis et grandiloquus saspe usque ad vitinm," Quintil. x. 1 ) ; the imposing appearance of his heroes, such as Memnon and Cycnus, 961 ; their reserve in speech, 908 ; his dramas " full of Ares " and his lion-hearted chiefs, inspiring the auditors with fearless spirit in defence of their country, 1014, 1019, 1040; his contempt of feminine tenderness, 1042. JEscu. Olid' oZcJ' ovdelf TJVTLV' tpuaav irwTror' enoirjaa yvvaiKa. EURIP. Ma At', ovde -yap fyv r^f 'Apo6iTijf ovdev aoi. JEsCH. ftrjde 7' iireii] 'A/13.' knl ffoi roi Kal roir ffolaiv iroTMi TroWov 'vu/catfotro. To the same general purpose Nnbes (1347-1356), composed so many years earlier. The weight and majesty of the JEschylean heroes (j3apof, rb ueyako- irpeiref) is dwelt upon in the life of JEschylns, and Sophokles is said to have derided it "Qamp yup 6 2o0oK/l^f e/leye, rbv A/o^v/lov (JmTreTrat^wf o-yKOv, etc. (Plutarch, De Prefect, in Virt. Sent. c. 7), unless we are to un- derstand this as a mistake of Plutarch quoting Sophokles instead of Euri- pide's, as he speaks in the Frogs of Aristophanes, which is the opinion both of Lessing in his Life of Sophokles and of Welcker C^Eschyl. Trilogie, p. 525). 1 See above, Chapters xiv. and xv. JEschylus seems to have been a greater innovator as to the matter of the mfthes than either Sophokles or Euripides (Dionys. Halic. Judic. de Vett. Seript. p. 422, Reisk.). For the close adherence of Sophokles to the Homeric epic, see Athense. vii. p. 277; Diogen. Lafirt. iv. 20; Suidas, v. TloMpuv ^schylus puts into the mouth of the Eumenides a serious argument derived from the behavior of Zeus in chaining his father Kronos (Eumen. 640} ALTERED TONE OF EURIPIDES. 387 Athens. 1 While Aristophanes assails Euripides as the represen. tative of this "young Athens," with the utmost keenness of sarcasm, other critics also concur in designating him as having vulgarized the mythical heroes, and transformed them into mere characters of common life, loquacious, subtle, and savoring oi the market-place. 2 In some of his plays, sceptical expressions and sentiments were introduced, derived from his philosophical studies, sometimes confounding two or three distinct gods into one, sometimes translating the personal Zeus into a substantial JEther with determinate attributes. He put into the mouths of some of his unprincipled dramatic characters, apologetic speeches which were denounced as ostentatious sophistry, and as setting out a triumphant case for the criminal. 3 His thoughts, his words, and the rhythm of his choric songs, were all accused of being deficient in dignity and elevation. The mean attire and miserable attitude 1 See Valckenaer, Diatribe in Euripid. Fragm. capp. 5 and 6. The fourth and fifth lectures among the Dramatisclie Vorlesungen of August Wilhelm Schlegel depict both justly and eloquently the difference between JEschylus, Sophokles and Euripides, especially on this point of the gradual sinking of the mythical colossus into an ordinary man; about Euripides especially in lecture 5, vol.i. p. 206, ed. Heidelberg 1809. 2 Aristot. Poetic, c. 46. Olov KOI So^oitA^f fyj?, avrdf psv olovf del Tcotelv Ei'pLTTidji^ (Jr, olol eiai. The Kanae and Acharneis of Aristophanes exhibit fully the reproaches urged against Euripides : the language put into the mouth of Euripide's li the former play (vv. 935-977) illustrates specially the point here laid down. Plutarch (T)e Glorid Atheniens. c. 5) contrasts n ~EvpimSov oo(j>ia ical ij So^oK^eoCf toyiorrif. Sophokles either adhered to the old mythes or intro duced alterations into them in a spirit comformable to their original charac- ter, while Euripides refined upon them. The comment of Demetrius Phale- reus connects rb hoyiov expressly with the maintenance of the dignity of the tales. "Apfoyuat de and TOV peyafaHrpEnoiif, onep vvv A 6 y / o v bvoiid&vaiv (c.38). 3 Aristophan. Kan. 770, 887, 1066. Euripides says to JEschylus, in regard to the language employed by both of them, ? Hv ovv ffi) /ley^c A.VKa(3rjTTOve Kal Hapvacrauv rjp.lv ^e/Ei?^, rovr' tarl rb pj/ffru dtdaaneiv, lus replies, 'AA/l', u KdKoiaipov, yvu/iuv KOI diavoiuv laa Kal rw/zo/loyo{ivra (Welcker, Griechisch. Tragod. Eurip. Stheneb. p. 782). Compare the fragments of his Bellero- plion (15-25, Matthiae), and of his Chrysippus (7, ib.). A striking story ia found in Seneca, Epistol. 115 ; and Plutarch, de Audiend. Poetis, c. 4. t. i. p. 70, Wytt. 1 Aristophan. Ran. 840. Kat Trrw^oTrote not See also Aristophan. Acharn. 385-422. For an unfavorable criticism upon such proceeding, see Aristotat. Poet. 27. * Aristophan. Ran. 1050. EDMIP. Uorepov ffoi>K5vTa?.6-yov TOVTOV rrepl rijf Qaidpctf S-wtdrjita ; JEsca. M irovripbv rovye TroiijT?/v Kal fj/fj iraptr/eiv /tr/de diduaneiv. In the Hercules Furens, Euripides outs in relief and even exaggerates the CENSURES ON EURIPIDES. 389 daughters to the six sons of 2Eolus is of Homeric origin, and stands now, though briefly stated, in the Odyssey : but the in- cestuous passion of Macareus and Canace, embodied by Euripides 1 in the lost tragedy called jEolus, drew upon him severe censure. Moreover, he often disconnected the horrors of the old legends with those religious agencies by which they had been originally forced on, prefacing them by motives of a more refined character, which carried no sense of awful compulsion : thus the considera- tions by which the Euripidean Alkmaeon was reduced to the ne- cessity of killing his mother appeared to Aristotle ridiculous. 2 After the time of this great poet, his successors seem to have followed him in breathing into their characters the spirit of com- mon life, but the names and plot were still borrowed from the stricken mythical families of Tantalus, Kadmus, etc.: and the heroic exaltation of all the individual personages introduced, as contrasted with the purely human character of the Chorus, is worst elements of the ancient mythes : the implacable hatred of Here towards Herakles is pushed so far as to deprive him of his reason (by sending dowr Iris and the unwilling Avaaa), and thus intentionally to drive him to slay hit wife and children with his own hands. 1 Aristoph. Ean. 849, 1041,1080; Thesmophor. 547 ; Nubes, 1354. Grauert, De McditL Grsecorum Comcedi& in Rheinisch. Museum, 2nd Jahrs. 1 Heft, p. 51. It suited the plan of the drama of JEoIus, as composed by Euripides, to place in the mouth of Macareus a formal recommendation of incestuous marriages : probably this contributed much to offend the Athenian public. See Dionys. Hal. Rhetor, ix. p. 355. About the liberty of intermarriage among relatives, indicated in Homer, parents and children being alone excepted, see Terpstra, Antiquitas Homericat cap. xiii. p. 104. Ovid, whose poetical tendencies led him chiefly to copy Euripides, observes (Trist. ii. 1,380) " Omne genus scripti gravitate Tragcedia vincit, Ha;c quoque materiam semper amoris habet. Nam quid in Hippolyto nisi creese flamma novercae ? Nobilis est Canace fratris amore sui." This is the reverse of the truth in regard to ^Eschylus and Sophokles, an<3 only very partially true in respect to Euripides. * Aristot. Ethic. Nicom. iii. 1, 8. Kat yap TOV ~Evpimdov 'ATiK^aluva ye^ola jalveTai. ril avayKu.aa.vTa. /irj-poKTOVT/aai (In the lost tragedy called ' iuv 6 390 HISTORY OF GREECE. still numbered by Aristotle among the essential points of th theory of tragedy. 1 The tendency then of Athenian tragedy powerfully mani- fested in JEschylus, and never wholly lost was to uphold an unquestioning faith and a reverential estimate of the general mythical world and its personages, but to treat the particular nar- ratives rather as matter for the emotions than as recitals of actual fact. The logographers worked along with them to the first of these two ends, but not to the second. Their grand object was, to cast the mythes into a continuous readable series, and they were in consequence compelled to make selection between inconsistent or contradictory narratives ; to reject some narra- tives as false, and to receive others as true. But their prefer- ence was determined more by their sentiments as to what was appropriate, than by any pretended historical test. Pherekydes, Akusilaus and Hellanikus 2 did not seek to banish miraculous or fantastic incidents from the mythical world ; they regarded it as peopled with loftier beings, and expected to find in it phenomena not paralleled in their own degenerate days. They reproduced the fables as they found them in the poets, rejecting little except the discrepancies, and producing ultimately what they believed to be not only a continuous but an exact and trustworthy history of the past wherein they carry indeed their precision to such a length, that Hellanicus gives the year, and even the day of the rapture of Troy. 3 Hekatasus of Miletus (500 B. c.), anterior to Pherekydes and Hellanikus, is the earliest writer in whom we can detect any dis- position to disallow the prerogative and specialty of the mythes, and to soften down their characteristic prodigies, some of which 1 Aristot. Poetic. 26-27. And in his Problemata also, in giving the reason why the Hypo-Dorian and Hypo-Phrygian musical modes were never as- signed to the Chorus, he says TavTa <5 ajifyu xopif) fiev avapfioara, rolf 6e Pausan. iii. 25, 4. He seems to have written expressly concerning the fabu- lous Hyperboreans, and to have upheld the common faith against doubts which had begun to rise in his time : the derisory notice of Hyperboreans in Herodotus is probably directed against Hekatacus, iv. 36 ; Schol. Apollon. Rhod. ii. 675 ; Diodor. ii. 47. It is maintained by Mr. Clinton (Fast. Hell. ii. p. 480) and others (see not. ad Fragment. Hecatei, p. 30, ed. Didot), that the work on the Hyperboreans was written by Hekataeus of Abdera, a literary Greek of the age of Ptolemy Philadelphus not by Hekatasus of Miletus. I do not concur in this opin- ion. I think it much more probable that the earlier Hekataeus was the author spoken of. The distinguished position held by Hekataeus at Miletus is marked not only by the notice which Herodotus takes of his opinions on public matters, but also by his negotiation with the Persian satrap Artaphernes on behalf of his countrymen (Diodor. Excerpt, xlvii. p. 41, ed. Dindorf }. 2 Herodot. ii. 143 3 Marcellin. Vit- Thucyd. ir.it 4 Herodot. ii. 143. J92 HISTORY OF GREECE. past had no other materials to work upon except the mythes} but these they found already cast by the logographers into a con- tinuous series, and presented as an aggregate of antecedent his- tory, chronologically deduced from the times of the gods. In common with the body of the Greeks, both Herodotus and Thu- cydides had imbibed that complete and unsuspecting belief in the general reality of mythical antiquity, which was interwoven with the religion and the patriotism, and all the public demonstrations of the Hellenic world. To acquaint themselves with the genuine details of this foretime, was an inquiry highly interesting to them : but the increased positive tendencies of their age, as well as their own habits of personal investigation, had created in them an his- torical sense in regard to the past as well as to the present. Hav ing acquired a habit of appreciating the intrinsic tests of histor- ical credibility and probability, they found the particular narra- tives of the poets and logographers, inadmissible as a whole even in the eyes of Hekataeus, still more at variance with their stricter canons of criticism. And we thus observe in them the constant struggle, as well as the resulting compromise, between these two opposite tendencies ; on one hand a firm belief in the reality of the mythical world, on the other hand an inability to accept the details which their only witnesses, the poets and logographers, told them respecting it. Each of them however performed the process in his own way Herodotus is a man of deep and anxious religious feeling ; he often recognizes the special judgments of the gods as determining historical events : his piety is also partly tinged with that mystical vein which the last two centuries had gradually infused into the religion of the Greeks for he is apprehensive of giving offence to the gods by reciting publicly what he has heard respecting them ; he frequently stops short in his narrative and intimates that there is a sacred legend, but that he will not tell it : in othei cases, where he feels compelled to speak out, he entreats forgive- ness for doing so from the gods and heroes. Sometimes he will not even mention the name of a god, though he generally thinks himself authorized to do so, the names being matter of public notoriety. 1 Such pious reserve, which the open-hearted Herodo* 1 Herodot. ii. 3, 51, 61, 65, 170. He alludes briefly (c. 51 ) to an Ipbf /loyo? which was communicated in the Samothracian mysteries, but he does not THE MYTHES AS VIEWED BY HERODOTUS. 393 fus avowedly proclaims as chaining up his tongue, affords a strik- ing contrast with the plain-spoken and unsuspecting tone of the ancient epic, as well as of the popular legends, wherein the gods and their proceedings were the familiar and interesting subjects of common talk as well as of common sympathy, without ceasing to inspire both fear and reverence. Herodotus expressly distinguishes, in the comparison of Poly- krates with Minos, the human race to which the former belonged, from the divine or heroic race which comprised the latter. 1 But he has a firm belief in the authentic personality and parentage of all the names in the mythes. divine, heroic and human, as well as in the trustworthiness of their chronology computed by gene- rations. He counts back 1600 years from his own day to that of Semele, mother of Dionysus ; 900 years to Herakles, and 800 years to Penelope, the Trojan war being a little earlier in date.2 Indeed even the longest of these periods must have seemed to him comparatively short, seeing that he apparently accepts the prodi- gious series of years which the Egyptians professed to draw from a recorded chronology 17,000 years from their god HeraklSs, and 15,000 years from their god Osiris or Dionysus, down to their king Amasis 3 (550 B. c.) So much was his imagination familiarized with these long chronological cotaputations barren of events, that he treats Homer and Hesiod as u men of yesterday," though separated from his own age by an inter v?\l which he reck- ons as four hundred years. 4 mention what it was : also about the Thcsmophoria, 01 Ttfarrj of Demeter (c. 171> Kal irtpl fiev TOVTUV roaavra Tj/tiv slnovat, KCU napu i ~>v deuv KOI r/puuv ei'fisveia eh (c. 45). Compare similar scruples on the part of Pausanias (viir. 25 and 37). The passage of Herodotus (ii. 3) is equivocal, and has b.^en understood in more ways than one (see Lobeck, Aglaopham. p. 1287). The aversion of Dionysius of Halikarnassus to reveal the divine secrets is not less powerful (see A. R. i. 67, 68), and Pausanias passim. 1 Herod, iii. 122. 2 Herod, ii. 145. 3 Herodot. ii. 43-145. Kal ravra Alyinrnoi urpeKsuf aal tniaTaoi K wf elirelv ^679. 'HoYodo* yap Kdl 'QfiTipov Ti^tKijjv TtTpctKoaioiai Ireai &OKEU pev npeopvrefovs yev* n^tff, KaC ov nTifoai. 17* 394 HISTORY OF GREECE. Herodotus had been profoundly impressed with what he saw and heard in Egypt. The wonderful monuments, the eviden antiquity, and the peculiar civilization of that country, acquired such preponderance in his mind over his own native legends, that he is disposed to trace even the oldest religious names or institu- tions of Greece to Egyptian or Phoenician original, setting aside in favor of this hypothesis the Grecian legends of Dionysus and Pan. 1 The oldest Grecian mythical genealogies are thus made ultimately to lose themselves in Egyptian or Phoenician antiquity, and in the full extent of these genealogies Herodotus firmly be- lieves. It does not seem that any doubt had ever crossed his mind as to the real personality of those who were named or de- scribed in the popular mythes : all of them have once had reality, either as men, as heroes, or as gods. The eponyms of cities, demes and tribes, are all comprehended in this affirmative cate- gory ; the supposition of fictitious personages being apparently never entertained. Deukalion, Hellen, Dorus, 2 Ion, with his four sons, the eponyms of the old Athenian tribes, 3 the au- tochthonous Titakus and Dekelus, 4 Danaus, Lynkeus, Perseus, Amphitryon, Alkmena, and Herakles, 5 Talthybius, the heroic progenitor of the privileged heraldic gens at Sparta, the Tyn- darids and Helena, 6 Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Orestes, 7 > Nestor and his son Peisistratus, Asopus, Thebe, and ^Egina, Inachus and 16, JEetes and Medea, 8 Mebnippus, Adrastus, and Amphiaraus, as well as Jason and the Argo, 9 all these are occupants of the real past time, and predecessors of himself and his contemporaries. In the veins of the Lacedaemonian kings flowed the blood both of Kadmus and of Danaus, their splendid pedigree being traceable to both of these great mythical names : Herodotus carries the lineage up through Herakles first to Per- seus and Danae, then through Danae to Akrisius and the Egyp- tian Danaus ; but he drops the paternal lineage when he comes 1 Herodot. ii. 146. * Herod, i. 56. 3 Herod, v. 66. 4 Herod, ix. 73. 8 Herod, ii, 43-44, 91-98, 171-182 (the Egyptians admitted the truth of the Greek legend, that Perseus had come to Libya to fetch the Gorgon's bead). Hcrod.ii. 113-120 ; iv. 145 ; vii. 134. 7 Herod, i. 67-68 ; ii. 113. vii. 159 Herod L 1, 2, 4 ; v 81. 65. Herod, i. 52 ; ir. 145 ; v. 67 ; vii. 19.1 BELIEF OF HERODOTUS IN MYTHICAL PERSONS. 393 to Perseus (inasmuch as Perseus is the son of Zeus by Danae, without any reputed human father, such as Amphitryon was to Herakles), and then follow the higher members of the series through Danae alone. 1 He also pursues the same regal geneal- ogy, through the mother of Eurystbenes and Procles, up to Poly- nikes, CEdipus, Laius, Labdakus, Polydorus and Kadmus; and he assigns various ancient inscriptions which he saw in the temple of the Ismenian Apollo at Thebes, to the ages of Laius and CEdipus. 2 Moreover, the sieges of Thebes and Troy, the Ar- gonautic expedition, the invasion of Attica by the Amazons, the protection of the Herakleids, and the defeat and death of Eurystheus, by the Athenians, 3 the death of Mekisteus and Tydeus before Thebes by the hands of Melanippus, and the touching calamities of Adrastus and Amphiaraus connected with the same enterprise, the sailing of Kastor and Pollux in the Argo, 4 the abductions of 16, Europa, Medea and Helena, the emigration of Kadmus in quest of Europa, and his coming to Boeotia, as well as the attack of the Greeks upon Troy to re- cover Helen, 5 all these events seem to him portions of past history, not less unquestionably certain, though more clouded over by distance and misrepresentation, than the battles of Salamis and Mykale. But though Herodotus is thus easy of faith in regard both to the persons and to the general facts of Grecian mytbea, yet when he comes to discuss particular facts taken separately, we find him applying to them stricter tests of historical credibility, and often disposed to reject as well the miraculous as the extravagant. Thus even with respect to Herakles, he censures the levity of the Greeks in ascribing to him absurd and incredible exploits ; he tries their assertion by the philosophical standard of nature, or of determinate powers and conditions governing the course of events. " How is it consonant to nature (he asks), that Herakles, being, as he was, according to the statement of the Greeks, a man, should kill many thousand persons ? I pray that indulgence may be shown to me both by gods and heroes for saying so much 1 Herod, vi. 52-53. z Herod, iv. 147 ; v. 59-61. 3 Herod y. 61 ; ix. 27-28- 4 Herod, i. 52 ; iv. 145; v. 67 5 Herod, i. 1-4 ; ii. 49, 113 : iv. 147 ; v. 94. 3G HISTORY OF GREECE. as this." The religious feelings of Herodotus here told him that he was trenching upon the utmost limits of admissible scepti cism. 1 Another striking instance of the disposition of Herodotus to rationalize the miraculous narratives of the current mythes, is to be found in his account of the oracle of Dodona and its alleged Egyptian origin. Here, if in any case, a miracle was not only in full keeping, but apparently indispensable to satisfy the exi- gences of the religious sentiment ; anything less than a miracle would have appeared tame and unimpressive to the visitors of so revered a spot, much more to the residents themselves. Accord- ingly, Herodotus heard, both from the three priestesses and from the Dodonasans generally, that two black doves had started at the same time from Thebes in Egypt : one of them went to Libya, where it directed the Libyans to establish the oracle of Zeus Ammon ; the other came to the grove of Dodona, and perched on one of the venerable oaks, proclaiming with a human voice that an oracle of Zeus must be founded on that very spot. The injunction of the speaking dove was respectfully obeyed. 2 Such was the tale related and believed at Dodona. But He- rodotus had also heard, from the priests at Thebes in Egypt, a different tale, ascribing the origin of all the prophetic establish- ments, in Greece as well as in Libya, to two sacerdotal women, who had been carried away from Thebes by some Phoenician 1 Herod, ii. 45. Atyovot 6e no^il /cat aA/la uvemaKeirTac ol ' tvfjdTis Se avTEuv /cat ode 6 /j.ii'&of ka-i, rbv ?repi TOV 'Hpa/cAeof hiyovai .... . . . "En 6e eva. eovra rbv 'Hpa.K7i.ea, KOI ETI UV&PUKOV (if drj aai, /c w c v ail X e i Tro/lAaf fj.vpta.6af ipovevaai ; Kal mpl HEV TOVTUV roaavra ijp.v ELTTOVCI^ /cat napa TUV tieuv nal Trapa TUV rjpuuv evficvsia elrj. We may also notice the manner in which the historian criticizes the strat agem whereby Peisistratus established himself as despot at Athens by dressing up the stately Athenian woman Phye in the costume of the goddess Athene, and passing off her injunctions as the commands of the goddess : the Athenians accepted her with unsuspecting faith, and received Peisistratus at her command. Herodotus treats the whole affair as a piece of extrava- gant silliness, 7r/)fiy//a ev^tfeorarov //a/cpai (i. 60). 2 Herod, ii. 55. Aadavaiuv 6e al Iprftai ...... eTieyov raiira, avvup.oX6yei Kal ol dTCkoL Audwvatot ol nepi TO ipov. The miracle sometimes takes another form ; the oak at Dodona was itselj once endued with speech (Dionys. Hal. Ars. Rhetoric, i. 6 ; Strabo). HERODOTUS AND THE MIRACLE OF DODONA. 397 merchants and sold, the one in Greece, the other in Libya. The Theban priests boldly assured Herodotus that much pains had been taken to discover what had become of these women so ex- ported, and that the fact of their having been taken to Greece and Libya had been accordingly verified. 1 The historian of Halicarnassus cannot for a moment think of admitting the miracle which harmonized so well with the feelings of the priestesses and the Dodonaeans. 2 " How (he asks) could a dove speak with human voice ? " But the narrative of the priests at Thebes, though its prodigious improbability hardly requires to be stated, yet involved no positive departure from the laws of nature and possibility, and therefore Herodotus makes no diffi- culty in accepting it. The curious circumstance is, that he turns the native Dodonoean legend into a figurative representation, or rather a misrepresentation, of the supposed true story told by the Theban priests. According to his interpretation, the woman who came from Thebes to Dodona was called a dove, and affirmed to utter sounds like a bird, because she was non-Hellenic and spoke a foreign tongue : when she learned to speak the language of the country, it was then said that the dove spoke with a human voice. And the dove was moreover called black, because of the woman's Egyptian color. That Herodotus should thus bluntly reject a miracle, recount- ed to him by the prophetic women themselves as the prime cir- cumstance in the origines of this holy place, is a proof of the hold which habits of dealing with historical evidence had acquired over his mind ; and the awkwardness of his explanatory media- tion between the dove and the woman, marks not less his anxie- ty, while discarding the legend, to let it softly down into a story quasi-historical and not intrinsically incredible. We may observe another example of the unconscious tendency 1 Herod, ii. 54, 8 Herod, ii. 57. 'ETT TEuvy According to one statement, the word Ilefaiaf in the Thessalian dialect meant both a dove and a prophetess (Scriptor. Rer. Mythicarum, ed. Bcde, i. 96). Had there been any truth in this, Herodotus could hardly have failed to notice it, inasmuch as it vrould exactly have helped him out of the difficulty which he felt 398 HISTORY OF GREECE. of Herodotus to eliminate from the mythes the idea of special aid from the gods, in his remarks upon Melampus. He desig* nates Melampus " as a clever man, who had acquired for himself the art of prophecy ;" and had procured through Kadmus much information about the religious rites and customs of Egypt, many of which he introduced into Greece 1 especially the name, the sacrifices, and the phallic processions of Dionysus : he adds, " that Melampus himself did not accurately comprehend or bring out the whole doctrine, but wise men who came after him made the necessary additions." 2 Though the name of Melampus is here maintained, the character described 3 is something in the vein of Pythagoras totally different from the great seer and leech of the old epic mythes the founder of the gifted family of the Amythaonids, and the grandfather of Amphiaraus. 4 But that which is most of all at variance with the genuine legendary spirit, is the opinion expressed by Herodotus (and delivered with some emphasis as his own), that Melampus " was a clever man, who had acquired for himself prophetic powers." Such a supposition would have appeared inadmissible to Homer or Hesiod, or indeed to Solon, in the preceding century, in whose view even inferior arts come from the gods, while Zeus or Apollo bestows the power 1 Herod, ii. 49. 'Ey> [ilv vvv bv, uavTLKrjv re wur> avar^aai, Kal Trv&6fj.evov air' AiyvnTov, d/l/la re Tro/lAd earjyfiaaadai "E^rjai, not TU irepl rbv Aiovvoov, vkiya. aiiruv napaUu^avra. 2 Herod, ii. 49. 'Arpe/ceuf /J.EV ov Kavra av7J\.c.j3uv rbv Tiovov tyyvt (Me- lampus) iaral petyvuf tZeqrrjvav. 3 Compare Herod. iv. 95 : ii. 81. 'EAAiJvuv ov rip uo&eveaTarv Goiarfj 4 Homer, Odyss. xi. 290 ; xv. 225. Apollodor. i. 9, 11-12. Hesiod, Eoiai, Pragm. 55, ed. Duntzer (p. 43) 'AA^v ftev yiip idunev 'OAv/iTrtof A.laKi6riai, N ov v 6' A.fiv&aovidaif, TT^OVTOV d' ITTO/J' A r /jtiJ^fft. also Frag. 34 (p. 38), and Frag. 65 (p. 45) ; Schol. Apoll. Rhod. i. 118. Herodotus notices the celebrated mythical narrative of Melampus healing the deranged Argive women (ix. 34); according to the original legend, tho daughters of Proetus. In the Hesiodic Eoiai (Fr. 16, Diintz.; Ape Hod. ii. 2) the distemper of the Proetid females was ascribed to their having repudiated the rites and worship of Dionysus (Akusilaus, indeed, assigned a different cause), which shows that the old fable recognized a connection between Melampus and these rites ELIMINATION OF MYTHICAL NARRATIVE. 399 of prophesying.! The intimation of such an opinion by Herodo- tus, himself a thoroughly pious man, marks the sensibly diminish- ed omnipresence of the gods, and the increasing tendency to look for the explanation of phenomena among more visible and deter- minate agencies. We may make a similar remark on the dictum of the historian respecting the narrow defile of Tempe, forming the embouchure of the Peneus and the efflux of all the waters from the Thessa- lian basin. The Thessalians alleged that this whole basin of Thessaly had once been a lake, but that Poseidon had split the chain of mountains and opened the efflux ; 2 upon which primi- 1 Homer, Iliad, i. 72-87 ; xv. 412. Odyss. xv. 245-252 ; iv. 233. Some times the gods inspired prophecy for the special occasion, without confer ring upon the party the permanent gift and status of a prophet (compare Odyss. i. 202 ; xvii. 383). Solon, Fragm. xi. 48-53, Schneidewin : "AA/lov [tdvTiv E&qKev uva ^/cuepyof ' "Eyvw 6' uvSpl KOKbv rifh.o$e.v Ipxofievo Herodotus himself reproduces the old belief in the special gift of prophetic power by Zeus and Apollo, in the story of Euenius of Apollonia (ix. 94). See the fine ode of Pindar, describing the birth and inspiration of Jamus, eponymous father of the great prophetic family in Elis called the Jamids (Herodot. ix. 33), Pindar, Olymp. vi. 40-75. About Teiresias, Sophoc. (Ed. Tyr. 283-410. Neither Nestor nor Odysseus possesses the gift of prophecy. 2 More than one tale is found elsewhere, similar to this, about the defile of Tempe : " A tradition exists that this part of the country was once a lake, and that Solomon commanded two deeves, or genii, named Ard and Beel, to turn off the water into the Caspian, which they effected by cutting a passage through the mountains ; and a city, erected in the newly-formed plain, was named after them Ard-u-beel." (Sketches on the Shores of the Caspian, by W. R. Holmes. ) Also about the plain of Santa Fe di Bogota, in South America, that it was once under water, until Bochica cleft the mountains and opened a channel of egress (Humboldt, Vues des Cordilleras, p. 87-88); and about the plateau of Kashmir (Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. i. p 102), drained in a like miraculous manner by the saint Kasyapa. The manner] in which conjectures, derived from local configuration or peculiarities, are often made to assume the form of traditions, is well remarked by the same illustrious* traveller : " Ce qui se presente comme une tradition, n'est souvent que ie reflet de 1'impression que laisse 1'aspect des lieux. Des banes de coquilles a demi-fossiles, repandues dans les isthmes ou sut des plateaux, font naitre 400 HISTORY OF GREECE. tive belief, thoroughly conformable to the genius of Homer and Hesiod, Herodotus comments as follows : " The Thessalian state- ment is reasonable. For whoever thinks that Poseidon shakes the earth, and that the rifts of an earthquake are the work of that god, will, on seeing the defile in question, say that Poseidon has caused it. For the rift of the mountains is, as appeared to me (when I saw it), the work of an earthquake." Herodotus admits the reference to Poseidon, when pointed out to him, but it stands only in the background : what is present to his mind is the phenomenon of the earthquake, not as a special act, but as part of a system of habitual operations. 1 memo chcz Ics hommes les moins avances dans la culture intcllectuclle, 1'idec de grandcs inondations, d'anciennes communications entre des bassins limitrophes. Des opinions, que Ton pourroit appeler systematiques, se trou- venf dans les forets de 1'Ore'noque comme dans les fles de la Mer du Snd Dans 1'une et dans 1'autre de ces contrees, elles ont pris la forme des tracli tions." (A. von Humboldt, Asie Centrale, vol. ii. p. 147.) Compare a similar remark in the same work and volume, p. 286-294. 1 Herodot. vii. 129. (Poseidon was worshipped as Uerpaio^ in Thessaly, in commemoration of this geological interference : Schol. Pindar. Pyth. iv. 245.) Td <5e irahaibv /leyerat, owe iovrof KU TOV avhuvof itai dieicpoov TOVTOV, T0t)f TTOTUfiovf TOVTOV f f>fov~af iroieiv Tt/v Qeaaahiqv naaav TrcAayoj. Ai>-rot fj,ev vvv Qsaaa^oi "keyovai Hoaeideuva Troif/ffai TOV aiiAdiva, 6V ov pset 6 Hijveibf, OIKOTO, heyovTef. "Ocrrtf yap vo/j,iei HoaeitiEuva TTJV yf/v asifiv, teal TU. SuareiJTa {nrb asia/iov TOV -&eov TOVTOV epya elvai, nal u,v IKEIVO I6uv 0an? rioaeideuva -rroi^ffat. 'Eor^ yap aeicrftov epyov, (jf ipol tyaiveTO elvai, rj tiiaaTOffie TUV ovpeuv. In another case (viii. 129), Herodotus believes that Poseidon produced a preternaturally high tide, in order to punish the Per- sians, who had insulted his temple near Potidaea : here was a special motive for the god to exert his power. This remark of Herodotus illustrates the hostile ridicule cast by Aristo- phanes (in the Nubes) upon Socrates, on the score of alleged impiety, be- cause he belonged to a school of philosophers (though in point of fact he discountenanced that line of study) who introduced physical laws and forces in place of the personal agency of the gods. The old man Strepsiades in quires from Socrates, WJio rains ? Who thunders ? To which SocratCs re plies, " Not Zeus, but the Nephelffi. i. e. the clouds : you never saw rain vr ith- out clouds." Strepsiades then proceeds to inquire " But who is it that compels the clouds to move onward ? is it not Zeus ?" Socrates " Not at all; it is aethereal rotation." Strepsiades " Rotation 1 ? that had escaped me : Zeus then no longer exists, and Rotation reigns in his place." STEEPS. 'O 6' uvayna^uv sort Tif avTiif (Ne^eAaf), ou% o Zetfc, ware bat; LEGEND OP TBOY IN HERODOTUS. 401 Herodotus adopts the Egyptian version of the legend of Troy, founded on that capital variation which seems to have originated with Stesichorus, and according to which Helen never left Sparta at all her eidolon had been taken to Troy in her place. Upon this basis a new story had been framed, midway between Homer and Stesichorus, representing Paris to have really carried oif Helen from Sparta, but to have been driven by storms to Egypt, SOCRAT. 'H/ctar', d?J>.' ai&t-pioe STREPS. Aivo$ ; TOVTI 'O Zeijf OVK &v, u/l/l' UVT' avrov Alvog vvvl To the same effect v. 1454, AiVof ftaaihevsi rbv Af }e}.7i?iaKue " Rota tion has driven oat Zeus, and reigns in his place." If Aristophanes had had as strong a wish to turn the public antipathies against Herodotus as against Socrates and Euripides, the explanation hero given would hare afforded him a plausible show of truth for doing so ; and it is highly probable that the Thcssalians would have been sufficiently dis- pleased with the view of Herodotus to sympathize in the poet's attack upon him. The point would have been made (waiving metrical considerations) 2 s t IT fj. b f j3aai2,VEi, rbv HocreiSuv' k^E^/ij^aKuf. The comment of Herodotus upon the Thessalian view seems almost as if it were intended to guard against this very inference. Other accounts ascribed the cutting of the defile of Tempe to Hcrnkles (Diodor. iv. 18). Respecting the ancient Grecian faith, which recognized the displeasure of Poseidon as the cause of earthquakes, see Xenoph. Hellen. iii. 3, 2 ; Thucy did. i. 127 ; Strabo, xii. p. 579 ; Diodor. xv. 48-49. It ceased to give univer- sal satisfaction even so early as the time of Thales and Anaximenes (see Aristot. Meteorolog. ii. 7-8 ; Plutarch, Placit. Philos. iii. 15 ; Seneca, Natural. Qusest. vi. 6-23 ) ; and that philosopher, as well as Anaxagoras, Dcmocritus and others, suggested different physical explanations of the fact. Notwith- standing a dissentient minority, however, the old doctrine still continued to be generally received : and Diodorus, in describing the terrible earthquake in 373 B. c., by which Helike and Bura were destroyed, while he notices those philosophers (probably Kallisthenes, Sencc. Nat. Quoest. vi. 23) who substituted physical causes and laws in place of the divine agency, rejects their views, and ranks himself with the religious public, who traced this for- midable phenomenon to the wrath of Poseidon (xv. 48-49). The Romans recognized many different gods as producers of earthquakes ; an unfortunate creed, since it exposed them to the danger of addressing their prayers to the wrong god: " Undo in ritualibus et pontificiis obser- ratur, obtemperantibns sacerdotiis caute, ne alio Deo pro alio norainato, cam quis eorum terrain concutiat, piacula committantur." (Ammian. Mar cell. xvii. 7.) VOL. I. 260C. 402 HISTORY OF GREECE. where she remained during the whole siege of Troy, having been detained by Proteus, the king of the country, until Menelaua came to reclaim her after his triumph. The Egyptian pi-iests, with their usual boldness of assertion, professed to have heard the whole story from Menelaus himself the Greeks had be- seiged Troy, in the full persuasion that Helen and the stolen treasures were within the walls, nor would they ever believe the repeated denials of the Trojans as to the fact of her presence. In mtimating his preference for the Egyptian narrative, Herodotus betrays at once his perfect and unsuspecting confidence that he is dealing with genuine matter of history, and his entire distrust of the epic poets, even including Homer, upon whose authority that supposed history rested. His reason for rejecting the Homeric version is that it teems with historical improbabilities. If Helen had been really in Troy (he says), Priam and the Trojans would never have been so insane as to retain her to their own utter ruin : but it was the divine judgment which drove them into the miserable alternative of neither being able to surrender Helen, nor to satisfy the Greeks of the real fact that they had never had possession of her in order that mankind might plainly read, in the utter destruction of Troy, the great punishments with which the gods visit great misdeeds. Homer (Herodotus thinks) had heard this story, but designedly departed from it, because it was not so suitable a subject for epic poetry. 1 Enough has been said to show how wide is the difference be- tween Herodotus and the logographers with their literal tran- script of the ancient legends. Though he agrees with them in admitting the full series of persons and generations, he tries the circumstances narrated by a new standard. Scruples have arisen in his mind respecting violations of the laws of nature : the poets 1 Herod, ii. 116. doxeei tie /J.OL nal "Oftijpoe TOV "koyov TOVT ov -yilp ofioiuf tinrpSTrTJf fyv If TTJV EiroTtourjv rjv T$ ETepfi TU> nep ix.prjaa.TO if b /lerjjKe avrov, tiqTiuaaf wf Kal TOVTOV emaTaiTO TOV Tvbyov, Herodotus then produces a passage from the Iliad, with a view to prove that Homer knew of the voyage of Paris and Helen to Egypt; but tho passage proves nothing at all to the point. Again (c. 120), his slender confidence in the epic poets breaks but d xpq TI roiai iTfOTfoiolai xpeupevov heyeiv. It is remarkable that Herodotus is disposed to identify Helen with the fr'tvy 'AfipotiiTij whose temple he saw at Memphis (c. 112). THE MYTHES AS TREATED BY THUCYDIDES. 4Q3 are unworthy of trust, and their narratives must be brought into conformity with historical and ethical conditions, before they can be admitted as truth. To accomplish this conformity, Herodotus is willing to mutilate the old legend in one of its most vital points: he sacrifices the personal presence of Helena in Troy, which ran through every one of the ancient epic poems belonging to the Trojan cycle, and is indeed, under the gods, the great and present moving force throughout. Thucydides places himself generally in the same point of view as Herodotus with regard to mythical antiquity, yet with some con- siderable differences. Though manifesting no belief in present miracles or prodigies, 1 he seems to accept without reserve the pre- existent reality of all the persons mentioned in the mythes, and of the long series of generations extending back through so many supposed centuries : in this category, too, are included the epony- mous personages, Hellen, Kekrops, Eumolpus, Pandion, Amphi- lochus the son of Amphiaraus, and Akaman. But on the other hand, we find no trace of that distinction between a human and an heroic ante-human race, which Herodotus still admitted, nor any respect for Egyptian legends. Thucydides, regarding the personages of the mythes as men of the same breed and stature with his own contemporaries, not only tests the acts imputed to them by the same limits of credibility, but presumes in them the same political views and feelings as he was accustomed to trace in the proceedings of Peisistratus or Perikles. He treats the Trojan war as a great political enterprise, undertaken by all Greece ; brought into combination through the imposing power of 1 " Ut conquirere fabulosa (says Tacitus, Hist. ii. 50, a worthy parallel of Thucydides) et fictis oblectare legentium animos, procul gravitate ccepti operis crcdiderim, ita vulgatis traditisque demcre fidcm non ansim. Die, quo Bebriaci certabatur, avem inusitatA specie, apud Regium Lepidum ccle- bri vico consedisse, incolaa memorant ; nee deinde ccetu hominum aut cir- eumvolitantium alitum, territam pulsamque, donee Otho se ipse interficeret : turn ablatam ex oculis : et tempora reputantibus, initiura finemque miraculi cum Othonis exitu competisse." Suetonius (Vesp. 5) recounts a different miracle, in which three eagles appear. This passage of Tacitus occurs immediately after his magnificent descrip- tion of the suicide of the emperor Otho, a deed which he contemplates with the most fervent admiration. His feelings were evidently so wi ought uji that he was content to relax the canons of historical credibility. 404 HISTORY OF GREECE. Agamemnon, not (according to the legendary narrative) through the influence of the oath exacted by Tyndareus. Then he ex- plains how the predecessor of Agamemnon arrived at so vast a dominion beginning with Pelops, who came over (as he says) from Asia with great wealth among the poor Peloponnesians, and by means of this wealth so aggrandized himself, though a foreigner, as to become the eponym of the peninsula. Next fol- lowed his son Atreus, who acquired after the death of Eurystheus the dominion of Mykense, which had before been possessed by the descendants of Perseus : here the old legendary tale, which described Atreus as having been banished by his father Pelops in consequence of the murder of his elder brother Chrysippus, is invested with a political bearing, as explaining the reason why Atreus retired to My kerne. Another legendary tale the defeat and death of Eurystheus by the fugitive Herakleids in Attica, so celebrated in Attic tragedy as having given occasion to the gen- erous protecting intervention of Athens is also introduced as furnishing' the cause why Atreus succeeded to the deceased Eurys- theus : " for Atreus, the maternal uncle of Eurystheus, had been entrusted by the latter with his government during the expedition into Attica, and had effectually courted the people, who were moreover in great fear of being attacked by the Herakleids." Thus the Pelopids acquired the supremacy in Peloponnesus, and Agamemnon was enabled to get together his 1200 ships and 100,000 men for the expedition against Troy. Considering that contingents were furnished from every portion of Greece, Thucy- dides regards this as a small number, treating the Homeric cata- logue as an authentic muster-roll, perhaps rather exaggerated than otherwise. He then proceeds to tell us why the armament was not larger : many more men could have been furnished, but there was not sufficient money to purchase provisions for their subsistence ; hence they were compelled, after landing and gaining a victory, to fortify their camp, to divide their army, and to send away one portion for the purpose of cultivating the Chersonese, and another portion to sack the adjacent towns. This was the grand reason why the siege lasted so long as ten years. For if it had been possible to keep the whole army together, and to act THUCYDIDES OS IBS WAR OF TROY. 405 with an undivided force, Troy would have been taken both earlier and at smaller cost. 1 Such is the general sketch of the war of Troy, as given by Thucydides. So diffeient is it from the genuine epical narrative, that we seem hardly to be reading a description of the same event ; still less should we imagine that the event was known, to him as well as to us, only through the epic poets themselves. The men, the numbers, and the duration of the siege, do indeed remain the same ; but the cast and juncture of events, the deter- mining forces, and the characteristic features, are altogether het- erogeneous. But, like Herodotus, and still more than Herodotus, Thucydides was under the pressure of two conflicting impulses he shared the general faith in the mythical antiquity, but at the same time he could not believe in any facts which contradict- ed the laws of historical credibility or probability. He was thus under the necessity of torturing the matter of the old mythes into conformity with the subjective exigencies of his own mind : he left out, altered, recombined, and supplied new connecting principles and supposed purposes, until the story became such as no one could have any positive reason for calling in question : though it lost the impressive mixture of religion, romance, and individual adventure, which constituted its original charm, it ac- quired a smoothness and plausibility, and a poetical ensemble, which the critics were satisfied to accept as historical truth. And historical truth it would doubtless have been, if any independent evidence could have been found to sustain it. Had Thucydides been able to produce such new testimony, we should have been pleased to satisfy ourselves that the war of Troy, as he recounted it, was the real event ; of which the war of Troy, as sung by the epic poets, was a misreported, exaggerated, and ornamented re- cital. But in this case the poets are the only real witnesses, and the narrative of Thucydides is a mere extract and distillation from their incredibilities. A few other instances may be mentioned to illustrate the views of Thucydides respecting various mythical incidents. 1. He treats the residence of the Homeric Phaeakians at Corkyra as an undisputed fact, and employs it partly to explain the efficiency of 1 Thucyd. i. 9-12. 406 HISTORY OF GREECE. the Korkyrean navy in times preceding the Peloponnesiaa war. 1 2. He notices, with equal confidence, the story of Tereus and Prokne, daughter of Pandion, and the murder of the child Itys by Prokne his mother, and Philomela; and he produces this ancient mythe with especial reference to the alliance between the Athenians and Teres, king of the Odrysian Thracians, during the time of the Peloponnesian war, intimating that the Odrysian Teres was neither of the same family nor of the same country as Tereus the husband of Prokne. 2 The conduct of Pandion, in giving his daughter Prokne in marriage to Tereus, is in his view dictated by political motives and interests. 3. He mentions the Strait of Messina as the place through which Odysseus is said to have sailed. 3 4. The Cyclopes and the Laestrygones (he says) were the most ancient reported inhabitants of Sicily ; but he can- not tell to what race they belonged, nor whence they came. 4 5. Italy derived its name from Italus, king of the Sikels. 6. Eryx and Egesto in Sicily were founded by fugitive Trojans after thf capture of Troy ; also Skione, in the Thracian peninsula of Pal lene, by Greeks from the Achaean town of Pellene, stopping thither in their return from the siege of Troy : the Amphilochian Argos in the Gulf of Ambrakia was in like manner founded by 1 Thucyd. i. 25. 2 Thucyd. ii. 29. Kai rb epjov rb irepl rbv 'Irvv ai yvvalKEf h ry yy TO.VTJJ lirpa^av Tro/Motf 6e not TUV TTOIIJTUV h> urjdovof fivrnii) AavAfdf fj opvif iiruvofiacrTai. E/:6f 6e not rb K7j6of Hav6iova wai/>av tf 'Otipvoaf 66ov. Tlie first of these sentences would lead us to infer, if it came from any other pen than that of Thucydides, that the writer believed the metamorphosis of Philomela into a nightingale : see above, ch. xi. p. 270. The observation respecting the convenience of neighborhood for the mar- riage is remarkable, and shows how completely Thucydides regarded the event as historical. What would he have said respecting the marriage of Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, with Boreas, and the prodigious distance which she is reported to have been carried by her husband ? 'ICnep re TOVTOV navr\ in' laxara %&ovbs, etc. (Sophokles ap. Strabo. vii. p. 295.) From the way in which Thucydides introduces the mention of this event, we see that he intended to correct the misapprehension of his countrymen, who having just made an alliance with the Odrysian Ttrs, were led by that circumstance to think of the old mythical T6reus, and to regard him as the ancestor of TZrts. 3 Thucyd. iv. 24. 4 Thucyd. vi. 2. MYTHICAL KOTICES IN THUC\DIDES. 4Q7 Amphilochus son of Amphiaraus, in his return from the same enterprise. The remorse and mental derangement of the matri- cidal Alkmaeon, son of Amphiaraus, is also mentioned by Thucy- dides, 1 as well as the settlement of his son Akarnan in the country called after him Akarnania. 2 Such are the special allusions made by this illustrious author in the course of his history to mythical events. From the tenor of his language we may see that he accounted all that could be known about them to be uncertain and unsatisfactory; but he has it much at heart to show, that even the greatest were inferior in 1 Thucyd. ii. 68-102 ; iv. 120; vi. 2. Antiochos of Syracuse, the contem porary of Thucydides, also mentioned Italus as the eponymous king of Italy . he farther named Sikelus, who came to Morgos, son of Italus, after having been banished from Rome. He talks about Italus, just as Thucydides talks about Theseus, as a wise and powerful king, who first acquired a great dominion (Dionys. H. A. R. i. 12, 35, 73). Aristotle also mentioned Italus in the same general terms (Polit. vii. 9, 2). 2 We may here notice some particulars respecting Isokrates. He mani fests entire confidence in the authenticity of the mythical genealogies and chronology ; but while he treats the mythical personages as historically real, he regards them at the same time not as human, but as half-gods, superior to humanity. About Helena, Theseus, Sarpedon, Cycnus, Memnon, Achil- les, etc., see Encom. Helen. Or. x. pp. 282, 292, 295. Bek. Helena was wor- shipped in his time as a goddess at Therapn (ib. p. 295). He recites the settlements of Danaus, Kadmns, and Pelops in Greece, as undoubted histori- cal facts (p. 297). In his discourse called Busiris, he accuses Polykrates, tho sophist, of a gross anachronism, in having placed Busiris subsequent in poin* of date to Orpheus and JEolus (Or. xi. p. 301, Bek.), and he adds that th tale of Busiris having been slain by Herakles was chronologically impossible (p. 309). Of the long Athenian genealogy from Kekrops to Theseus, h* speaks with perfect historical confidence (Tanathenaic. p. 349, Bek.) ; no' less so of the adventures of Herakles and his mythical contemporaries, whicl he places in the mouth of Archidamus as a justification of the Spartan till* to Messenia (Or. vi. Archidamus, p. 156, Bek. ; compare Or. v. Philippus, pp 114, 138), (j>affiv, olf Kept TUV Kahaiuv iriarevouev, etc. He condemns th* poets in strong language for the wicked and dissolute tales which they cir- culated respecting the gods : many of them (he says) had been punished fo> such blasphemies by blindness, poverty, exile, and other misfortunes (Or. x> p. 309, Bek.). In general, it may be said that Isokrates applies no principles of historica' criticism to the mythes ; he rejects such as appear to him discreditable o unworthy, and believes the rest. 408 HISTORY OF GREEClfi. magnitude and importance to the Peloponncsian war. 1 In this respect his opinion seems to have been at variance with that which was popular among his contemporaries. 1 Thucyd. i. 21-22. The first two volumes of this history have been noticed in an able article of the Quarterly Review, for October, 1846 ; as well as in the Heidelberger JahrbUcher der Literatur (1846. No. 41. pp. 641-655), by Professor Kortiim. While expressing, on several points, approbation of my work, by which I feel much flattered both my English and my German critic take partial objection to the views respecting Grecian legend. While the Quarterly Re- viewer contends that the mythopocic faculty of the human mind, though essentially loose and untrustworthy, is never creative, but requires some basis of fact to work upon Kortiim thinks that I have not done justice to Thucy- dides, as regards his way of dealing with legend ; that I do not allow suffi- cient weight to the authority of an historian so circumspect and so cold- blooded (den kalt-blQthigsten und besonncnstcn Historiker des Alterthums, p. 653) as a satisfactory voucher for the early facts of Grecian history in his preface (Tlerr G. Fehlt also, wenn er das anerkannt kritische Pro-cemium als Gewahrsmann verschmaht, p. 654). No man feels more powerfully than I do the merits of Thucydides as au historian, or the value of the example which he set in multiplying critical in- quiries respecting matters recent and verifiable. But the ablest judge or advocate, in investigating specific facts, can proceed no further than he finds witnesses having the means of knowledge, and willing more or less to tell truth. In reference to facts prior to 776 B. c., Thucydides had nothing before him except the legendary poets, whose credibility is not at all enhanced by the circumstance that he accepted them as witnesses, applying himself only to cut down and modify their allegations. His credibility in regard to the specific facts of these early times depends altogether upon theirs. Now we in our day are in a better position for appreciating their credibility than he was in his, since the foundations of historical evidence are so much more fully understood, and good or bad materials for history are open to comparison in such large extent and variety. Instead of wondering that he shared the general faith in such delusive guides we ought rather to give him credit for the reserve with which he qualified that faith, and for the sound idea of historical possibility to which he held fast as the limit of his confidence. But it is impossible to consider Thucydides as a satisfactory guarantee (Gewahrsmann^ for matters of fact which he derives only from such sources. Professor Kortiim considers that I am inconsistent with myself in refusing to discriminate particular matters of historical fact among the legends and yet in accepting these legends (in my chap.xx.^ as giving a faithful imr. ror of the general state of early Grecian society ("p. 653^. It appears to me that this is no inconsistency, but a real and important distinction. Whether HerakKs, Agamemnon, Odysseus, etc. were real persons, and performed all. EPHORUS, TMEOPOMPUS, XENOPHON, ETC. 409 To touch a little upon the later historians by whom these mythes were handled, we find that Anaximenes of Lampsacus composed a consecutive history of events, beginning from the Theogony down to the battle of Mantineia. 1 But Ephorus pro- fessed to omit all the mythical narratives which are referred to times anterior to the return of the Herakleids, (such restriction would of course have banished the siege of Troy,) and even re- proved those who introduced mythes into historical writing; adding, that everywhere truth was the object to be aimed at. 2 Yet in practice he seems often to have departed from his own rule. 3 Theopompus, on the other hand, openly proclaimed that or a part, of the possible actions ascribed to them I profess myself unable to determine But even assuming both the persons and their exploits to be fictions, these very fictions will have been conceived and put together in con- formity to the general social phenomena among which the describer and his bearers lived and will thus serve as illustrations of the manners then preva- lent. In fact, the real value of the Preface of Thucydides, upon which Pro- fessor Korttlni bestows such just praise, consists, not in the particular facts which he brings out by altering the legends, but in the rational general views which he sets forth respecting early Grecian society, and respecting the steps as well as the causes whereby it attained its actual position as he saw it. Professor Kortiim also affirms that the mythes contain " real matter of fact along with mere conceptions :" which affirmation is the same as that of the Quarterly Reviewer, when he says that the mythopceic faculty is not creative. Taking the mythes in the mass, I doubt not that this is true, nor have I anywhere denied it. Taking them one by one, I neither affirm nor deny it. My position is, that, whether there be matter of fact or not, we have no test whereby it can be singled out, identified, and severed from the accom- panying fiction. And it lies upon those, who proclaim the practicability of such severance, to exhibit some means of verification better than any which has been yet pointed out. If Thucydides has failed in doing this, it is cer- tain that none of the many authors who have made the same attempt after him have been more successful. It cannot surely be denied that the mythopceic faculty is creative, when wo have before us so many divine legends, not merely in Greece, but in other countries also. To suppose that these religious legends are mere exaggera- tions, etc. of some basis of actual fact that the gods of polytheism were merely divinized men, with qualities distorted or feigned would be to em- brace m substance the theory of Euemerus. 1 Dioddr. xv. 89. He was a contemporary of Alexander the Great 8 Diodor. iv. 1. Strabo, ix. p. 422, emrifirjaa^ role tyihonvdovGiv h> TTJ 1% ' Ephorus recounted the principal adventures of Herakles (Fragm. 8, 9. TOL, 1 18 410 HISTORY OF GREECE. he could narrate fables in his history better than Herodotus, 01 Ktesias, or Hellanicus. 1 The fragments which remain to us, exhibit some proof that this promise was performed as to quan- tity ; 2 though as to his style of narration, the judgment of Dio- nysius is unfavorable. Xenophon ennobled his favorite amuse- ment of the chase by numerous examples chosen from the heroic world, tracing their portraits with all the simplicity of an undi- minished faith. Kallisthenes, like Ephorus, professed to omit all mythes which referred to a time anterior to the return of the Hera kleids ; yet we know that he devoted a separate book or portion of his history to the Trojan war. 3 Philistus introduced some mythes in the earlier portions of his Sicilian history ; butTimaeus was dis- tinguished above all others for the copious and indiscriminate way in which he collected and repeated such legends. 4 Some of these ed- Marx.), the talcs of Kadmus and Harmonia (Fragm. 12), the banish- ment of JEtolus from Elis (Fragm. 15 ; Strabo, viii. p. 357) ; he drew in- ferences from the chronology of the Trojan and Theban wars (Fragm. 28) ; he related the coming of Daedalus to the Sikan king Kokalus, and the expe- dition of the Amazons {Fragm. 99-103). He was particularly copious in his information about Krtaeif, cnroiKiai and avyytvdai (Polyb. ix. 1). 1 Strabo, i. p. 74. 8 Dionys. Halic. De Vett. Scriptt. Judic. p. 428, Rcisk ; 2Elian, V. H. iii. 18, GcoTTo/ZTroc dcLvoq /zvtfoAoyoc. Theopompus affirmed, that the bodies of those who went into the forbid- den precinct (rb ujSarov) of Zeus, in Arcadia, gave no shadow (Polyb. xvi. 12). He recounted the story of Midas and Silenus (Fragm. 74, 75, 76, ed. Wichers) ; he said a good deal about the heroes of Troy ; and he seems to have assigned the misfortunes of the Noorot to an historical cause the rot- tenness of the Grecian ships, from the length of the siege, while the genuine epic ascribes it to the anger of Athene (Fragm. 112, 113, 114; Schol. Homer. Iliad, ii. 135) ; he narrated an alleged expulsion of Kinyras from Cyprus by Agamemnon ( Fragm. Ill); he gave the genealogy of the Mace donian queen Olympias up to Achilles and ./Eakus (Fragm. 232). 3 Cicero, Epist. ad Familiar, v. 12 ; Xenophon de Venation, c. 1. 4 Philistus, Fragm. 1 (Goller), Daedalus, and Kokalns; about Liber and Juno (Fragm. 57) ; about the migration of the Sikels into Sicily, eighty years after the Trojan war (ap. Dionys. Hal. i. 3). Timaeus Fragm. 50, 51, 52, 53, Goller) related many fables respecting Jason, Medea, and the Argonauts generally. The miscarriage of the Athe nian armament under Nikias, before Syracuse, is imputed to the anger of Rrakles against the Athenians because they came to assist the Egcstara EUEMERUS. 4H writers employed their ingenuity in transforming the mythical circumstances into plausible matter of history : Ephorus, in par- ticular, converted the serpent Pytho, slain by Apollo, into a ty- rannical king. 1 But the author who pushed this transmutation of legend into history to the greatest length, was the Messenian Euemerus, con- remporary of Kassander of Macedon. He melted down in this way the divine person? and legends, as well as the heroic rep- resenting both gods and heroes as having been mere earthborn men, though superior to the ordinary level in respect of force and capacity, and deified or heroified after death as a recompense for services or striking exploits. In the course of a voyage into the Indian sea, undertaken by command of Kassander, Euemerus professed to have discovered a fabulous country called Panchaia, in which was a temple of the Triphylian Zeus: he there de- scribed a golden column, with an inscription purporting to have been put up by Zeus himself, and detailing his exploits while on earth. 2 Some eminent men, among whom may be numbered Polybius, followed the views of Euemerus, and the Roman poet Ennius 3 translated his Historia Sacra ; but on the whole he never acquired favor, and the unblushing inventions which he put into circulation were of themselves sufficient to disgrace both the au- thor and his opinions. The doctrine that all the gods had once existed as mere men offended the religious pagans, and drew upon Euemerus the imputation of atheism ; but, on the other hand, it came to be warmly espoused by several of the Christian assailants of paganism, by Minucius Felix, Lactantius, and St. Augustin, who found the ground ready prepared for them in their efforts to strip Zeus and the other pagan gods of the attri- butes of deity. They believed not only in the main theory, but also in the copious details of Euemerus ; and the same man whom Strabo casts aside as almost a proverb for mendacity, was ex- descendants of Troy (Plutarch, Nikias, 1), a naked reproduction of gen- uine epical agencies by an historian ; also about Diomedes and the Dauni- ans ; Phae'thon and the river Eridanus ; the combats of the Gigantes in the Phlegrsean plains (Fragm. 97, 99, 102). 1 Strabo, ix. p. 422. 3 Compare Diodor. v. 44-46 ; and Lactantius, De Falsi Relig. i. 11. 3 Cicero, De NaturA Deor. i. 42 ; Varro, De Re Rust. i. 48. 412 HISTORY OF GREECE. tolled by them as an excellent specimen of careful historical inquiry. 1 But though the pagan world repudiated that " lowering tone of explanation," which effaced the superhuman personality of Zeus and the great gods of Olympus, the mythical persons and narratives generally came to be surveyed more and more from the point of view of history, and subjected to such alterations as might make them look more like plausible matter of fact. Po lybius, Strabo, Diodorus, and Pausanias, cast the mythes into historical statements with more or less of transformation, as 'he case may require, assuming always that there is a basis of truth, which may be discovered by removing poetical exaggera- tions and allowing for mistakes. Strabo, in particular, lays down that principle broadly and unequivocally in his remarks upon Homer. To give pure fiction, without any foundation of fact, was in his judgment utterly unworthy of so great a genius ; and he comments with considerable acrimony on the geographer Era- tosthenes, win maintains the opposite opinion. Again, Polybius tells us that the Homeric JEolus, the dispenser of the winds by 1 Strabo, ii. p. 102. Ov 7ro/U) ovv faiTrerai ravraruv Rvdeu nai 'Evrj/j.t-poi Kai 'A.v TiQavovf ipevaparuv ; compare also i. p. 47, and ii. p. 104. St. Augustin, on the contrary, tells us (Civitat. Dei, vi. 7), " Quid de ipsc Jove senserunt, qui nutricem ejus in Capitolio posuerunf? Nonne attestati sunt omnes Euemero, qui non fabulosA garrulitate, sed historicd diligentid, homines fuisse mortalesque conscripsit ? " And Minucius Felix (Octav. 20- 21 ), " Euemerus exequitur Deorum natales : patrias, sepulcra dinumerat, et per provincias monstrat, Dictasi Jovis, et Apollinis Delphici, ct Pharia; Isidis, ct Cercris Eleusiniae." Compare Augustin, Civit. Dei, xviii. 8-14; and Clemens Alexand. Cohort, ad Gent. pp. 15-18, Sylb. Lactantius (De Falsi Relig. c. 13, 14, 16) gives copious citations from Ennius's translation of the Historia Sacra of Euemerus. Ei>J7//epof, 6 kTnKhrr&els u&eof, Sextns Empiricus, adv. Physicos, ix. 17- 51. Compare Cicero, De Nat. Dcor. i. 42; Plutarch, DC Iside et Osiride, c. 23. torn. ii. p. 475, ed. Wytt. Nitzsch assumes (Helden Sage der Griechen, sect. 7. p. 84^ that the voy- age of Euemerus to Panchaia was intended only as an amusing romance, and that Strabo, Polybius, Eratosthenes and Plutarch were mistaken in con- struing it as a serious recital. Bottiger, in his Kunst-Mythologie der Grie- chen ( Absch. ii. s. 6. p. 190), takes the same view. But not the least reason is given for adopting this opinion, and it seems to me far-fetched and improbable; Lobeck (Aglaopham. p. 989), though Nitzsch alludes to him as hcMing it nanifests no such tendency, as far as I can observe. POLYBIUS, DIODOKU V ETC. 413 appointment from Zeus, was in reality a man eminently skilled in navigation, and exact in predicting the weather ; that the Cy- clopes and Laestrygones were wild and savage real men in Sicily ; and that Scylla and Charybdis were a figurative representation of dangers arising from pirates in the Strait of Messina. Strabo speaks of the amazing expeditions of Dionysus and Herakles, and of the long wanderings of Jason, Menelaus, and Odysseus, in the same category with the extended commercial range of the Phoanician merchant-ships : he explains the report of Theseus and Peirithous having descended to Hades, by their dangerous earthly pilgrimages, and the invocation of the Dioskuri as the protectors of the imperiled mariner, by the celebrity which they had acquired as real men and navigators. Diodorus gave at considerable length versions of the current fables respecting the most illustrious names in the Grecian myth- ical world, compiled confusedly out of distinct and incongruous authors. Sometimes the mythe is reproduced in its primitive simplicity, but for the most part it is partially, and sometimes wholly, historicized. Amidst this jumble of dissentient authori- ties we can trace little of a systematic view, except the general conviction that there was at the bottom of the mythes a real chronological sequence of persons, and real matter of fact, his- torical or ultra-historical. Nevertheless, there are some few occasions on which Diodorus brings us back a step nearer to the point of view of the old logographers. For, in reference to Herakles, he protests against the scheme of cutting down the mythes to the level of present reality, and contends that a special standard of ultra-historical credibility ought to be constituted, so as to include the mythe in its native dimensions, and do fitting honor to the grand, beneficent, and superhuman personality of Herakles and other heroes or demi-gods. To apply to such per- sons the common measure of humanity (he says), and to cavil at the glorious picture which grateful man has drawn of them, is at once ungracious and irrational. All nice criticism into the truth of the legendary narratives is out of place : we show our reve- rence to the god by acquiescing in the incredibilities of his his- toi-y, and we must be content with the best guesses which we can make, amidst the inextricable confusion and numberless discrep* 414 HISTORY OF GREECE. ancles which they present. 1 Yet though Diodorus here exhibits a preponderance of the religious sentiment over the purely his- torical point of view, and thus reminds us of a period earlier than Thucydides he in another place inserts a series of stories which seem to be derived from Euemerus, and in which Uranus, Kronus, and Zeus appear reduced to the character of human kings celebrated for their exploits and benefactions. 2 Many of the authors, whom Diodorus copies, have so entangled together Grecian, Asiatic, Egyptian, and Libyan fables, that it becomes impossible to ascertain how much of this heterogeneous mass can be considered as at all connected with the genuine Hellenic mind. Pausanias is far more strictly Hellenic in his view of the Gre- cian mythes than Diodorus : his sincere piety makes him inclined to faith generally with regard to the mythical narratives, but subject nevertheless to the frequent necessity of historicizing or allegorizing them. His belief in the general reality of the myth- ical history and chronology is complete, in spite of the many 1 Diodor. iv. 1-8. 'Evioi yap TUV uvayivuGKovruv, ov dtnaia xpufisvoi. Kpiaei, TUKpipee iTnl^TjTovaiv iv ralf upxaiair; fiv&oTioyiatf, iiricnjc rotf Trparro/ievotf iv ru ai9' fipuf xpovu, Kai ra 6iara^6fj.Eva TUV spyuv 6ia rb fieje-^ag, kit rot) tad' avrove fliov TEKuaipofiEVOL, r?/v 'Hpax^lovf dvvafiiv in TTJC aadrveiae rav vvv uv&puiruv &Eupovaiv, uare 6iu TTJV VTTEpjBo^v rov fieyi'&ov^ TUV Ipyuv uTTiff-elcr&ai TTJV -ypa^f/v. Ka&bhov yap ev rale upxalaif fivdohoyiaif OVK e navrbf rpoitov IT i Kpuf rrjv a/l^i?etav kfctT aareov. Kal ylip iv Toif dearpoic IT eir e 10 uev 01 /J.TJT E K ev T av pov diQvEic 1% irspoye- vuv ffufiuTuv imapgai, [tyre Trjpvovrjv rpiaufiarov, 5 fiu f rue roiavras [iv&o'koyias, nal raif in tart paai atf ofiev T^V rov t^eov rififjv. Kal yap UTOTTOV, 'Hpa/c^ta ftev In Kar uv&puTiOVf ovTa roif idioif novoif i^rjftEpuaai T?jv oiKovftEvriv, Toitf d' av&pu* rrouf , ETU%.a-&Ofi.evovc TJJS KOIVTJC EVEpyEalaf, cvKotyavT elv rov Inl rolf KaMLiaToif spyoif Inaivov, etc. This is a remarkable passage : first, inasmuch as it sets forth the total inap- plicability of analogies drawn from the historical past as narratives about Hurakles ; next, inasmuch as it suspends the employment of critical and scientific tests, and invokes an acquiescence interwoven and identified with the feelings, as the proper mode of evincing pious reverence for the god Herakles. It aims at reproducing exactly that state of mind to which tha mythes were addressed, and with which alone they could ever b in thorough harmony. * Diodor. iii 45-60 ; v. 44-46. PAL^PIIATUhL 415 discrepancies which he finds in it, and which he is unable to reconcile. Another author who seems to have conceived clearly, and applied consistently, the semi-historical theory of the Grecian mythes, is Palsephatus, of whose work what appears to be a short abstract has been preserved. 1 In the short preface of this trea- tise " concerning Incredible Tales," he remarks, that some men, from want of instruction, believe all the current narratives ; while others, more searching and cautious, disbelieve them altogether. Each of these extremes he is anxious to avoid. On the one hand, he thinks that no narrative could ever have acquired cre- dence unless it had been founded in truth ; on the other, it is impossible for him to accept so much of the existing narratives as conflicts with the analogies of present natural phenomena. If such things ever had been, they would still continue to be but they never have so occurred; and the extra-analogical features of the stories are to be ascribed to the license of the poets. Pala& phatus wishes to adopt a middle course, neither accepting al' nor rejecting all : accordingly, he had taken great pains to sepa- rate the true from the false in many of the narratives ; he hac 1 visited the localities wherein they had taken place, and maxL careful inquiries from old men and others. 2 The results of his 1 The work of Palrcphatus, probably this original, is alluded to in the Cirisof Virgil (88): " Docta Palsephatid testatur voce papyrus." The date of Palaephatns is unknown indeed this passage of the Cms seems the only ground that there is for inference respecting it. That which we now possess is probably an extract from a larger work made by another person at some later time : see Vossius de Historicis Gratis, p. 478, ed. Westermann. 2 Palsephat. init. ap. Script. Mythogr. ed. Westermann, p. 268. Tuv uvd-punuv ol HEV Treidovrai TTUVI rolf Aeyopevoi?, <5f avop^riroi ao(j>ia<; Kal iTnaT7i[ij]<; ol de iruKvoTtpoi TTJV ipvaiv Kal irohvTrpayfiovee amaTovai TO irapinrav (jL^Ssv yevea&ai TOVTUV. 'E/zo2 6e doKKi yevecr&ai iravra T& Tityo- fj.eva- yevofieva 6e nva oi KoiTjral Kal AoyoypaQoi iraperpe^av elf rb uTUffrorepov Kal davfiaaMTepov rot) -&avfiu^eiv IVCKO roi>c uv&puirovg. 'Eyw 6'e yivuaKu, on ov dvvarai TU roiavra elvat ola Kal T^JETCLL ' TOVTO 6e Kal TmA)70a, on el firi eyevero, OVK uv tteyero. The main assumption of the semi-historical theory is here shortly and learly stated. One of the early Christian writers, Minucius Felix, is astonished at the asy belief of his pagan forefathers in miracles If ever such thiags had 416 HISTORY OF GREECE. researches are presented in a new version of fifty legends, amoK.g the most celebrated and the most fabulous, comprising the Cen taurs, Pasiphae, Aktseon, Kadmus and the Sparti, the SphinXj Cycnus, Daedalus, the Trojan horse, ^Eolus, Scylla, Geryon, Bellerophon, etc. It must be confessed that Palasphatus has performed his promise of transforming the " incredibilia " into narratives in themselves plausible and unobjectionable, and that in doing so he alwaya follows some thread of analogy, real or verbal. The Centaurs (he tells us) were a body of young men from the village of Nephele in Thessaly, who first trained and mounted horses foi the purpose of repelling a herd of bulls belonging to Ixion king of the Lapithce, which had run wild and done great damage : they pursued these wild bulls on horseback, and pierced them with their spears, thus acquiring both the name of Prickers (y.t'i'roQsg) and the imputed attribute of joint body with the horse. Aktason was an Arcadian, who neglected the cultivation of his land for the pleasures of hunting, and was thus eaten up by the expense of his hounds. The dragon whom Kadmus killed at Thebes, was in reality Drako, king of Thebes ; and the dragon's teeth which he was said to have sown, and from whence sprung a crop of armed men, were in point of i'act elephants' teeth, which Kadmus as a rich Phoenician had brought over with him : the sons of Drako sold these elephants' teeth and employed the proceeds to levy troops against Kadmus. Daedalus, instead of flying across the sea on wings, had escaped from Krete in a swift sailing-boat under a violent storm: Kottus, Briareus, and Gyges Avere not persons with one hundred hands, but inhabitants of the village of Hekatoncheiria in Upper Macedonia, who warred with the inhabitants of Mount Olympus against the Titans : Scylla, whom Odysseus so narrowly escaped, was a fast- been done in former times (he affirms), they would continue to be done now ; as they cannot be done now, we may be sure that they never were really done formerly fMinucius Felix, Octav. c. 20) : " Majoribus enim nostris tarn facilig in mendaciis fides fuit, ut temere crediderint etiam alia monstruosa mira miracula, Scyllam multiplicem, Chimseram multiformem, Hydram, et Cen- tauros. Quid illas aniles fabulas do hominibus aves, et feras homines, cl de hominibns arbores atque florcs ? Qua, si cssent facta, ficrent ; quia for, now posaunt, idea nee facta sunt." MYTHES AS HANDLED BY THE PHILOSOPHERS. 417 sailing piratical vessel, as was also Pegasus, the alleged winged horse of Bellerophon. 1 By such ingenious conjectures, Paloephatus eliminates all the incredible circumstances, and leaves to us a string of tales per- fectly credible and commonplace, which we should readily believe, provided a very moderate amount of testimony could be pro- duced in their favor. If his treatment not only disenchants the original mythes, but even effaces their generic and essential char- acter, we ought to remember that this is not more than what is done by Thucydides in his sketch of the Trojan war. Palacpha- tus handles the mythes consistently, according to the semi-his- torical theory, and his results exhibit the maximum which that theory can ever present. By aid of conjecture, we get out of the impossible, and arrive at matters intrinsically plausible, but to- 1 Palaephat Narrat 1, 3, 6, 13, 20, 21, 29. Two short treatises on the same subject as this of Palaephatus, are printed along with it, both in the collection of Gale and of "Westermann ; the one, Heraditi de Incredibilibus, the othef Anonymi de Incredibilibus. They both profess to interpret some of the extra- ordinary or miraculous mythes, and proceed in a track not unlike that of Palsephatus. Scylla was a beautiful courtezan, surrounded with abominable parasites : she ensnared and ruined the companions of Odysseus, though he himself was prudent enough to escape her (Heraclit. c. 2. p. 313, West.) Atlas was a great astronomer : Pasiphae fell in love with a youth named Taurus ; the monster called the Chimaera was in reality a ferocious queen, who had two brothers called Leo and Drako ; the ram which carried Phryxu* and Hellu across the ^Egean was a boatman named Krias (Heraclit. c. 2, 6. 15,24). A great number of similar explanations are scattered throughout the Scholia on Homer and the Commentary of Eustathius, without specification of their authors. Theon considers such resolution of fable into plausible history as a proof of surpassing ingenuity CProgymnasmata, cap. 6, ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett Grcec. i. p. 219). Others among the Rhetors, too, exercised their talents sometimes in vindicating, sometimes in controverting, the probability of the ancient mythes. See the Progymnasmata of Nicolaus KaTaoKevr) on eiKora TU KOTO. Ni6/3r}i> 'Avacncevrj on OVK ckora rH /card Nto/J^v (ap. Walz. Coll. Rhetor, i. p. 284-318), where there are many specimens of this fanciful mode of handling. Plutarch, however, in one of his treatises, accepts Minotaurs, Sphinxes, Centaurs, etc. as realities ; he treats them as products of the monstrous, incestuous, and ungovernable lusts of man, which he contrasts with th' simple and moderate passions of animals (Plutarch, Gryllus, p. 990) VOL. i. 18* 27oc 418 HISTORY OF GREECE tally uncertified ; beyond this point we cannot penetrate, without the light of extrinsic evidence, since there is no intrinsic mark tc distinguish truth from plausible fiction. 1 It remains that we should notice the manner in which the an- cient mythes were received and dealt with by the philosophers. The earliest expression which we hear, on the part of philosophy, is the severe censure bestowed upon them on ethical grounds by Xenophanes of Kolophon, and seemingly by some others of his contemporaries. 2 It was apparently in reply to such charges, which did not admit of being directly rebutted, that Theagenes of Rhegium (about 520 B. c.) first started tho idea of a double meaning in the Homeric and Hesiodic narratives, an interior sense, different from that which the words in their obvious mean- ing bore, yet to a certain extent analogous, and discoverable by sagacious divination. Upon this principle, he allegorized espe- cially the battle of the gods in the Iliad. 2 In the succeeding cen- 1 The learned Mr. Jacob Bryant regards the explanations of Paloephatus afifidvovai, pri dprivelv el 6e av&puTrov, pi dveiv ( Aristotel. Rhet. ii. 23). Xenophanes pronounced the battles of the Titans, Gigantes, and Centaurs to be " fictions of our predecessors," irfa'xTfiaTa rCtv irporspuv (Xenophan. Fragm. 1. p. 42, ed. Schneidewin). See a carious comparison of the Grecian and Roman theology in Dicnys. Halicarn. Ant. Rom. ii. 20. * Schol. Iliad, xx. 67 : Tatian. adv. Graec. c. 48. Heraklcitus indignantly repelled the impudent atheists who found fault with the divine mythes of th ALLEGORIZING TENDENCY. 413 hiry, Anaxagoras and Metrodorus carried out the allegorical ex pianation more comprehensively and systematically ; the former representing the mythical personages as mere mental conceptions, invested with name and gender, and illustrative of ethical pre- cepts, the latter connecting them with physical principles and phenomena. Metrodorus resolved not only the persons of Zeus, Here, and Athene, but also those of Agamemnon, Achilles, and Hec- tor, into various elemental combinations and physical agencies, and treated the adventures ascribed to them as natural facts concealed under the veil of allegory. 1 Empedokles, Prodikus, Antisthenes, Pannenides, Herakleides of Pontus, and in a later age, Chrysip- pus, and the Stoic philosophers generally, 2 followed more or less Iliad, ignorant of their true allegorical meaning: i] ruv irfi 'O/iT/pu ro^fia Toi)f "Hpaf Ssajtovf alriarai, Kal vofti&vaiv vkj]v riva TTjg U.-&EOV Trpd? 'O/j.ijpov e^etv fiaviaf ravra 'H ov p.ep>ij on T' injio&ev, etc. h&rr&e (5' aiiroi)f on rovroig roZf ETTECLV f/crrfoo/loytyra Travrof -yeveaif, KOI TU avvtxuf pfirjvevovffi de ol 'Ava^ayopetot rovf fiv&udei<; i9eoi)f, vovv JJLEV TOV Ata, TT/V 6s 'Adrjvav rex vr ) v i e ^c. Uschold and other modern German authors seem to have adopted in its full extent the principle of interpretation proposed by Metrodorus treat- in" 1 Odysseus and Penelope as personifications of the Sun and Moon, etc See Helbig, Die Sittlichen Zustande des Griechischen Helden Alters, Einlei tung, p. xxix. (Leipzig, 1839.) Corrections of the Homeric text were also resorted to, in order to escape the necessity of imputing falsehood to Zeus (Aristotel. De Sophist. Elench. c. 4). * Sextus Empiric, ix. 18; Diogen. viii. 76; Plutarch, De Placit. Philo- soph. i. 3-6; De Poesi Homerica, 92-126 ; De Stoicor. Repugn, p. 1050, Menander, De Encomiis, c. 5. Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 14, 15, 16,41; ii. 24-25. u Physica ratio non inelegans inclusa in impias fahulas." In the Bacchce of Euripides, Pentheus is made to deride the tale of the motherless infant Dionysus having been sewn into the thigh of Zeus. Tei- resias, while reproving him for his impiety, explains the story away in a sort of allegory : the f^flp^S Atdf (he says_) was a mistaken statement in place of the aldrip %& va tytwciofyiewc (Bacch 235-290). Lucretius (iii. 995-1036) allegorizes the conspicuous sufferers in Hades, Tantalus, Sisyphus, Tityus, and the Danafds, as well as the ministers of 420 mSTORY OF GREECE. the same principle of treating the popular gods as allegorical per- sonages ; while the expositors of Homer (such as Stesimbrotus, Glaukon, and others, even down to the Alexandrine age), though none of them proceeded to the same extreme length as Metrodd- rus, employed allegory amongst other media of explanation for the purpose of solving difficulties, or eluding reproaches against the poet. In the days of Plato and Zenophon, this allegorizing interpre- tation was one of the received methods of softening down the ob- noxious mythes though Plato himself treated it as an insuffi- cient defence, seeing that the bulk of youthful hearers could not see through the allegory, but embraced the story literally as it was set forth. 1 Pausanias tells us, that when he first began to write his work, he treated many of the Greek legends as silly and undeserving of serious attention ; but as he proceeded, he gradu- ally arrived at the full conviction, that the ancient sages had de- signedly spoken in enigmatical language, and that there was val- uable truth wrapped up in their narratives : it was the duty of a pious man, therefore, to study and interpret, but not to reject, penal infliction, Cerberus and the Furies. The first four are emblematic descriptions of various defective or vicious characters in human nature, the deisidsDmoriic, the ambitious, the amorous, or the insatiate and querulous man ; the last two represent the mental terrors of the wicked. 1 Oi vvv irspl "Ofijjpov SeLvoi so Plato calls these interpreters (Kratylus, p. 407) ; see also Xenoph. Sympos. iii. 6 ; Plato, Ion. p. 530 ; Plutarch, De Audiend. Poet. p. 19. iirovoia was the original word, afterwards succeeded by ukhriyopia. *Kpaf <5e deafj.oi>f Kal 'Htyaiorov piipeif virb irarpbf, fie^Xovrof Ty fj.r]Tpl TVTT- TOfisvy u/jLvvelv, Kal -&cofj.ax'iaf oaac "Qftepof irEnoirjKev, ov TrapadeKTcov elf T7jv iroTitv, ovT 1 iv VTTOV oiaif jrefroiij/nevaf, OVT' uv ev i> TTOV o i- u> v. 'O yap VEOf ov%' oldf re Kpivetv 5,Tt re imovoia Kal o fi%, a/lA' a cb TTj^iKovTOf )v Au/Jj; ev ralf (Jofatf, 6vcreKvnrTa re Kal a/^Eraorara tiikel yiy- VEO&ai (Plato, Republ. ii. 17. p. 578). The idea of an interior sense and concealed purpose in the ancient poets occurs several times in Plato (Theaetet. c. 93. p. 180) : -rapti filv ruv apx a ' iuv > fiera TroiqaEUf ETUKpvTTTo/Lievuv rot)f 7ro/l/loi)f, etc. ; also Protagor. C. 20. p. 316. " Modo Stoicum Homerum faciunt, modo Epicurcum, modo Peripa- teticum, modo Academicum. Apparat nihil horum csse in illo, quig omnia sunt." (Seneca, Ep. 88.) Compare Plutarch, De Defectu Oracul. c 11-12. t. ii. p. 702, Wytt., and Julian, Orat. vii. p. 216. PAUSANIAS AND HIS VIEW OF THE MYTHES. 421 stories current and accredited respecting the gods. 1 And others, arguing from the analogy of the religious mysteries, which could not be divulged without impiety to any except such as had been specially admitted and initiated, maintained that it would be a profanation to reveal directly to the vulgar, the genuine scheme of nature and the divine administration : the ancient poets and philosophers had taken the only proper course, of talking to the many in types and parables, and reserving the naked truth for privileged and qualified intelligences. 2 The allegorical mode of explaining the ancient fables 3 became more and more popular in 1 Pausan. viii. 8, 2. To the same purpose (Strabo, x. p. 474), allegory is admitted to a certain extent in the fables by Dionys. Halic. Ant. Rom. ii. 20. The fragment of the lost treatise of Plutarch, on the Platsean festival of the Dsedala, is very instructive respecting Grecian allegory (Fragm. ix. t. 5. p. 754-763, ed. Wyt. ; ap. Euseb. Praepar. Evang. iii. 1). * This doctrine is set forth in Macrobius (i. 2). He distinguishes between fabula and fdbulosa narratio : the former is fiction pure, intended either to amuse or to instruct the latter is founded upon truth, either respecting human or respecting divine agency. The gods did not like to be publicly talked of (according to his view) except under the respectful veil of a fabh (the same feeling as that of Herodotus, which led him to refrain from insert- ing the lepol hbyoi in his history). The supreme god, the ru-yadtiv, the TrpuTov aiTiov, could not be talked of in fables : but the other gods, the ae'ria. or sethereal powers and the soul, might be, and ought to be, talked of in that manner alone. Only superior intellects ought to be admitted to a knowledge of the secret reality. ' De Diis caeteris, et de anima, non frustra se, nee ut oblectent, ad fabulosa convertunt ; sed quia sciunt inimicam esse naturae aper- tam nudamque expositioncm sui : quse sicut vulgaribus sensibus hominum intellectum sui, vario rerum tegmine operimentoque, subtraxit ; ita pru dentibus arcana sua voluit per fabulosa tractari Adeo semper ita se et sciri et coli numina maluerunt, qualiter in vulgus antiquitus fabulata est, Secundum hsec Pythagoras ipse atque Empedocles, Parmenides quo- que et Heraclides, de Diis fabulati sunt: necsecus Timseus." Compare also Maximus Tyrius, Dissert, x. and xxxii. Arnobius exposes the allegorical interpretation as mere evasion, and holds the Pagans to literal historical fact (Adv. Gentcs, v. p. 185, ed. Elm.> Eespecting the allegorical interpretation applied to the Greek fables, Bottiger (Die Kunst Mythologie der Griechen, Abschn. ii. p. 17GJ Nitzech (Heldensage der Griech. sect. 6. p. 78) ; Lobeck (Aglaopham. p. 133-155). 'According to the anonymous writer ap. Westermann (Script. Myth, p, 328), every personal or denominated god may be construed in three different ways : either Trpajyzan/cwf (historically, as having been a king or a man)' 422 H1JTORY OF GREECE. the third and fourth centuries after the Christian aera, especially among the new Platonic philosophers ; being both congenial to r ipvxiKuf, in which theory Here signifies the soul; Athene, prudence, Aphrodite, desire ; Zeus, mind, etc. or orotyetaKwf, in which system Apollo signifies the s?i; Poseidon, the sea; Here, the upper stratum of the air, or cetltr ; AtheuC, the lower or denser stratum ; Zens, the upper hemisphere ; Kronus, the lower, etc. This writer thinks that all the three principles of construction may be resorted to, each on its proper occasion, and that neither of them excludes the others. It will be seen that the first is pure Euemer- ism ; the two latter are modes of allegory. The allegorical construction of the gods and of the divine mythes is copi- ously applied in the treatises, both of Phurnutus and Sallustius, in Gale's collection of mythological writers. Sallustius treats the mythes as of divine origin, and the chief poets as inspired (tieohrinTot): the gods were propitious to those who recounted worthy and creditable mythes respecting them, and Sallustius prays that they will accept with favor his own remarks (cap. 3 and 4. pp. 245-251, Gale). He distributes mythes into five classes; theo- logical, physical, spiritual, material, and mixed. He defends the practice of speaking of the gods under the veil of allegory, much in the same way as Macrobius (in the preceding note) : he finds, moreover, a good excuse even for those mythes which imputed to the gods theft, adultery, outrages towards a father, and other enormities: such tales (he says) were eminently suitable, since the mind must at once see that the facts as told are not to be taken as being themselves the real truth, but simply as a veil, disguising some interior truth (p. 247J. Besides the Life of Homer ascribed to Plutarch (see Gale, p. 325-332). Heraclides (not Heraclides of Pontus} carries out the process of allegorizing the Homeric mythes most earnestly and most systematically. The applica- tion of the allegorizing theory is, in his view, the only way of rescuing Homer from the charge of scandalous impiety iruvTy yilp Tiaeftrjaev, el fiqdev fa?itjy6p7)aev (Herac. in init. p. 407, Gale). He proves at length, that the destructive arrows of Apollo, in the first book of the Iliad, mean nothing at the bottom except a contagious plague, caused by the heat of the summer sun in marshy ground (pp. 416-424). Athene, who darts down from Olym- pus at the moment when Achilles is about to draw his sword on Agamem- non, and seizes him by the hair, is a personification of repentant prudence (p. 435). The conspiracy against Zeus, which Homer (Iliad, i. 400) relates to have been formed by the Olympic gods, and defeated by the timely aid of Thetis and Briareus the chains and suspension imposed upon Here the casting of Hephaestos by Zeus out of Olympus, and his fall in Lemnus the destruction of the Grecian wall by Poseidon, after the departure of the Greeks the amorous scene between Zeus and Here on Mount Gargarus the distribution of the universe between Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades all these he resolves into peculiar manifestations and conflicts of the elemental 9ubstances in nature. To the much-decried battle of the gods, he gives a LATEK PLATONIC PHILOSOPHERS. 423 their orientalized turn of thought, and useful as a shield against the attacks of the Christians. It was from the same strong necessity, of accommodating the old mythes to a new standard both of belief and of appreciation, that both the historical and the allegorical schemes of transform- ing them arose ; the literal narrative being decomposed for the purpose of arriving at a base either of particular matter of fact, turn partly physical, partly ethical (p. 481). In like manner, he transforms and vindicates the adventures of the gods in the Odyssey : the wanderings of Odysseus, together with the Lotophagi, the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens, ^Eolus, Scylla, etc., he resolves into a series of temptations, imposed as a trial upon a man of wisdom and virtue, and emblematic of human life ("p. 496). The story of Ares, Aphrodite, and Hephsestos, in the eighth book of the Odyssey, seems to perplex him more than any other : he offers two explanations, neither of which seems satisfactory even to himself (p. 494). An anonymous writer in the collection of Westermann (pp. 329-344) has discussed the wanderings of Odysseus upon the same ethical scheme of in- terpretation as Heraclides : he entitles his treatise " A short essay on the Wanderings of Odysseus in Homer, worked out in conjunction with ethical reflections, and rectifying what is rotten in the story, as well as may be, for the benefit of readers." (rd /iv&ov aaftpbv depai^evovaa.) The author resolves the adventures of Odysseus into narratives emblematic of different situations and trials of human life. Scylla and Charybdis, for example (c. 8. p. 338), represent, the one, the infirmities and temptations arising out of the body, the other, those springing from the mind, between which man is called upon to steer. The adventure of Odysseus with jEolus, shows how little good a virtuous man does himself by seeking, in case of distress, aid from conjurors and evil enchanters ; the assistance of suah allies, however it may at first promise well, ultimately deceives the person who accepts it, and renders him worse off than he was before (c. 3. p. 332). By such illustrations does the author sustain his general position, that there is a great body of valuable ethical teaching wrapped up in the poetry of Homer. Proclus is full of similar allegorization, both of Homer and Hesiod : the third Excursus of Heyne ad Iliad, xxiii. (vol. viii. p. 563), De AllegoriA Homerica, contains a valuable summary of the general subject. The treatise De Astrologia, printed among the works of Lucian, contains specimens of astrological explanations applied to many of the Grecian uii&ot, which the author as a pious man cannot accept in their literal mean- ing. " How does it consist with holiness (he asks) to believe that JEneas was son of Aphrodite, Minos of Zeus, or Askalaphus of Mars ? No ; thesa were men born under the favorable influences of the planets Venus, Jupiter, and Mars." He considers the principle cf astrological explanation peculiarly fit to be applied to the mythes of Homer and Hesiod (Lucian, De Astrologia, 21-92). 424 HISTORY OF GREECE. or of general physical or moral truth. Instructed men were commonly disposed to historicize only the heroic legends, and to allegorize more or less of the divine legends : the attempt of Euemerus to historicize the latter was for the most part denounced as irreligious, while that of Metrodorus to allegorize the former met with no success. In allegorizing, moreover, even the divine legends, it was usual to apply the scheme of allegory only to the inferior gods, though some of the great Stoic philosophers car- ried it farther, and allegorized all the separate personal gods, leaving only an all-pervading cosmic Mind, 1 essential as a co- efficient along with Matter, yet not separable from Matter. But many pious pagans seem to have perceived that allegory pushed to this extent was fatal to all living religious faith, 2 inasmuch as it divested the gods of their character of Persons, sympathizing with mankind and modifiable in their dispositions according to the conduct and prayers of the believer: and hence they per- mitted themselves to employ allegorical interpretation only to some of the obnoxious legends connected with the superior gods, leaving the personality of the latter unimpeached. One novelty, however, introduced seemingly by the philosopher Empedokles and afterwards expanded by others, deserves notice, inasmuch as it modified considerably the old religious creed by drawing a pointed contrast between gods and daemons, a dis- tinction hardly at all manifested in Homer, but recognized in the Works and Days of Hesiod. 3 Empedokles widened the gap be- tween the two, and founded upon it important consequences. The gods were good, immortal, and powerful agents, having freewill 1 See Hitter, Geschichtc der Philosophic, 2nd edit, part 3. book 11. chap. 4. p. 592 ; Varro ap. Augustin. Civitat. Dei, vi. 5, ix. 6 ; Cicero, Nat. Deor. ii. 24-28. Chrysippus admitted the most important distinction between Zeus and the other gods (Plutarch, de Stoicor. Repugnant, p. 1052.) 2 Plutarch, de Isid. et Osirid. c. 66. p. 377 ; c. 70. p. 379. Compare on this subject O. Miiller, Prolegom. Mythol. p. 59 seq., and Eckermann, Lehr- buch der Religions Geschichte, vol. i. sect. ii. p. 46. 3 Hesiod, Opp. ct Di. 122 : to the same effect Pythagoras and ThalSs lTiogen. LaCr. viii. 32 ; and Plutarch, Placit. Philos. i. 8). The Hesiodic daemons are all gocd : Athenagoras (Legal. Chr. p. 8) sayi that Thalfis admitted a distinction between good and bad daeiuors. wnich icems very doubtful. CHARACTER OF THE DEMONS. 425 and intelligence, but without appetite, passion, or infirmity : the demons were of a mixed nature between gods and men, ministers and interpreters frcm the former to the latter, but invested also with an agency and dispositions of their own. They were very long-lived, but not immortal, and subject to the passions and pro- pensities of men, so that there were among them beneficent and inaleficient daemons with every shade of intermediate difference. 1 1 The distinction between Beol and hat/iovef is especially set forth in the treatise of Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum, capp. 10, 12, 13, 15, etc. He seems to suppose it traceable to the doctrine of Zoroaster or the Orphic mysteries, and he represents it as relieving the philosopher from great per- plexities : for it was difficult to know where to draw the line in admitting or rejecting divine Providence : errors were committed sometimes in affirming God to be the cause of everything, at other times in supposing him to be the cause of nothing. 'Eirsl TO diopiaat Trwf xprjaTeov Kal fiexpt TLVUV rfj irpovoia, Xafanbv, ol fiev ovdevb? dnvlaif TOV tfeov, ol 6e bfiov TI TCO.VTUV alrtov JTOI- aviTff , uaTOXovai TOV fierpiov not TrpeTrovrof . Eii fiev ovv Xeyovaiv ol Ac- yovTef, OTI IIAaruv rb Talc yevvu[j,Evai TroioTijaiv viroKel[ievov aroixelov i^evpijv, b vvv v7t,7jv Kal ifrvaiv Ka^ovaiv, TCO^UV arni^a^e Kal fieyaXuv UKO- ptuv Toi)<; tyikooofyovs efiol t5e doKovai TrXsiovaf Aiicrat Kal [tei&vae UTropictf ol rb TUV daifiovuv yevo<; kv fiEtru deuiv Kal uv&pUTruv, Kal rpoirov riva rrjv noivuviav rifj.uv avvayov elf ravro Kal aiivaTtrov, i^evpovTEf (c. 10}. 'H Sat- uovuv (j>vaif exovaa Kal 7rdi?of &VIJTOV Kal -&EOV 6vvaftiv (c. 13). 'Elal yap, wf Iv av&puiroL<;, Kal daifioaiv aperrjf 6ia(j>opal, Kal TOV Tra&rjTiKOv tal akoyov roif (J.EV aa&evst; Kal upavpbv ITI faiipavov, uairep TrepiTTUfta, TOI( ie TToTii) Kal SvuKaTuafieaTov eveaTiv, uv lxvi) Kal oiiftfloha TroXhaxov ftvaiai Kal rekeTal Kal ^ni?oAoytat au^ovai Kal 6iav2.u.TTOvaiv evdiea7rapfj.eva (ib.) : compare Plutarch, de Isid. et Osir. 25. p. 360. Kal fir/v baa<; EVT e [tv'&oif Kal v \ivoiq Tieyovai Kal a S ov a i t -OVTO fj.ev apTrayae, TOVTO 6s nhavaf i^euv, Kpirfieif TS Kal vyuKal Aarpaaf, ov deuv elaiv aAAa fiaipov-jv 7rai?^ara, etc. (c. 15) : also c. 23 ; also De Isid. et Osir. c. 25. p. 366. Human sacrifices and other objectionable rites are excused, as necessary for the purpose of averting the anger of bad demons (c. 14-15). Empedokles is represented as the first author of the doctrine which im- puted vicious and abominable dispositions to many of the daemons (c. 15, 16, 17, 20), roilf elaayonevovf virb 'E/i/reeJoKAeovf doi/zovaf ; expelled from heaven by the gods, i?e^Aarot Kal ovpavoireTele (Plutarch, De Vitand. Afir. Alien, p. 830) ; followed by Plato, Xenokrates, and Chrysippus, c. 17 : com- pare Plato (Apolog. Socrat. p. 27 ; Politic, p. 271 ; Symposion, c. 28. p. 203), though he seems to treat the SaifiovEs as defective and mutable beings, rather than actively maleficent. Xenokrates represents some of them both as wick- ed and powerful in a high degree : Sevcwcpan/f Kal TUV tifiepuv raf into- 426 HISTORY OF GREECE. It had been the mistake (according to these philosophers) of the old mythes to ascribe to the gods proceedings really belonging to the daemons, who were always the immediate communicants with mortal nature, inspiring prophetic power to the priestesses of thft oracles, sending dreams and omens, and perpetually interfering either for good or for evil. The wicked and violent daemons, having committed many enormities, had thus sometimes incurred punishment from the gods : besides which, their bad dispositions had imposed upon men the necessity of appeasing them by reli- gious ceremonies of a kind acceptable to such beings : hence, the human sacrifices, the violent, cruel, and obscene exhibitions, the wailings and fastings, the tearing and eating of raw flesh, which it had become customary to practise on various consecrated occa- sions, and especially in the Dionysiac solemnities. Moreover, the discreditable actions imputed to the gods, the terrific combats, the Typhonic and Titanic convulsions, the rapes, abductions, flight, servitude, and concealment, all these were really the doings and sufferings of bad daemons, placed far below the sovereign agency equable, undisturbed, and unpolluted of the immortal gods. The action of such daemons upon mankind was fitful and inter- mittent : they sometimes perished or changed their local abode, so that oracles which had once been inspired became after a time forsaken and disfranchized. 1 This distinction between gods and daemons appeared to save in a great degree both the triuh of the old legends and the dig- dpadac, KOI TL>V iopruv oaai TrA^yaf rivaf Jj /COTTETOISC, f/ rtjarelag, fj f/ aloxpoTioyiav e%ovaiv, OVTS #ewi> rcualf ovre iatpavov OIETO.I XprjffTuv, aMC slvat (j>vasi$ ev rai irepisxovTi /neyu^ac IJ.EV nal iff%*vpuf, tivarpo- irovf 6e nal aKvdpuiru<;, ai xaipovai roif TOIOVTOIS, nal TV/XU v ova a i ?rpdf ovdev a/lAo ^e?pov rp ETTO v rat (Plutarch, DC Isid. ut Osir. c. 26. p. 361 ; Qusestion. Rom. p. 283) : compare Stobseus, Eclog. Phys. i. p. 62. 1 Plutarch, De Defect. Orac. c. 15. p. 418. Chrysippns admitted, among the various conceivable causes to account for the existence of evil, the suppo ition of some negligent and reckless daemons, daipovia (j>av%a iv ole T$ ovrt ytvovrai xal ky unreal ap&eiat (Plutarch, De Stoicor. Repugnant, p. 1051). A distinction, which I do not fully understand, between tftot and pdS;ac rd (iupadpov, KOI KaraK^vctaf TTJV xupav unaoav aiivdv, 6rt irpb %i/iiuv eruv, <5f (paciv, 6 'Hpa/cA^c avaffTrdaaf ~bv ipt7ro<5a TOV (lavrmbv els Qevebv a7n?vey/c; (Plutarch, de Ser& Numin. Vindicta, p. 577 ; compare Pausan. viii. 14, 1.) The expression of Plutarch, that the abstraction of the tripod by Herakles had taken place 1000 yean 428 HISTORY OP GREECE ceedings of the gods. 1 Bat with instructed men they became rather subjects of respectful and curious analysis all agreeing that the Word as tendered to them was inadmissible, yet all equally convinced that it contained important meaning, though hidden yet not undiscoverable. A very large proportion of the force of Grecian intellect was engaged in searching after this unknown base, by guesses, in which sometimes the principle of semi-his torical interpretation was assumed, sometimes that of allegori cal, without any collateral evidence in either case, and without possibility of verification. Out of the one assumption grew a string of allegorized phenomenal truths, out of the other a long series of seeming historical events and chronological persons, both elicited from the transformed mythes and from nothing else. 2 before, is that of the critic, who thinks it needful to historicize and chronol- ogize the genuine legend ; which, to an inhabitant of Pheneus, at the time of the inundation, was doubtless as little questioned as if the theft of Herakles had been laid in the preceding generation. Agathocles of Syracuse committed depredations on the coasts of Ithaca and Korkyra : the excuse which he offered was, that Odysseus had come to Sicily and blinded Polyphemus, and that on his return he had been kindly received by the Phaeakians (Plutarch, ib.). This is doubtless a jest, either made by Agathocles, or more probably in- vented for him ; but it is founded upon a popular belief. 1 " Sanctiusque et revercntius visum, de actis Deorum credere quam scirc." (Tacit. German, c. 34.) Aristides, however, represents the Homeric theology (whether he would have included the Hesiodic we do not know) as believed quite literally among the multitude in his time, the second century after Christianity (Aristid. Orat. iii. p. 25). 'ATropw, OTT-J? TTOTE %pr] fie 6ia&ea-&ai jie^ vpuv, Trorepa (if rotf Tro/lAotf 6oKei Kal 'Qfif/pu 6e avvdoKei, vctiv KadrifiaTa avfnreia'&^vai KOI fjftuf, olov 'Apeof deafia Kal 'A7r6/l/li>of &t]TEia<; Kal 'HfyalaTov pcipeie elf Sdhaaaav, OVTU 6e Kal 'Ivovf a%i] nal Qvyuf nvaf. Compare Lucian, Zet)f Tpaywdof, c. 20, and De Luctu, c. 2 ; Dionys. Halicar. A. R. ii. p. 90, Sylb. Kallimachus ("Hymn, ad Jov. 9) distinctly denied the statement of the Kretans that they possessed in Krete the tomb of Zeus, and treated it as an instance of Kretan mendacity ; while Celsus did not deny it, but explained it in some figurative manner alviTToftevof TpoxiKuf vnovoias ( Origen. cont Celsum, iii. p. 137). * There is here a change as compared with my first edition ; I had inserted here some remarks on the allegorical theory of interpretation, as compared with the semi-historical. An able article on my work (in the Edinburgh JSUHEME OF INTERPRETATION. 429 fhe utmost which we accomplish by means of the semi-his Un-ical theory, even in its most successful applications, is, that after leaving out from the mythical narrative all that is miracu- lous or high-colored or extravagant, we arrive at a series of credi- ble incidents incidents which may, perhaps, have really occur red, and against which no intrinsic presumption can be raised. This is exactly the character of a well-written modern novel (as, for example, several among the compositions of Defoe), the whole story of which is such as may well have occurred in real life : it is plausible fiction, and nothing beyond. To raise plausible fic- tion up to the superior dignity of truth, some positive testimony or positive ground of inference must be shown ; even the highest measure of intrinsic probability is not alone sufficient. A man who tells us that, on the day of the battle of Plataca, rain fell on the spot of ground where the city of New York now stands, will neither deserve nor obtain credit, because he can have had no means of positive knowledge ; though the statement is not in the slightest degree improbable. On the other hand, statements in themselves very improbable may well deserve belief, provided they be supported by sufficient positive evidence ; thus the canal dug by order of Xerxes across the promontory of Mount Athos, and the sailing of the Persian fleet through it, is a fact which 1 believe, because it is well-attested notwithstanding its remark- able improbability, which so far misled Juvenal as to induce him to single out the narrative as a glaring example of Grecian men- dacity. 1 Again, many critics have observed that the general tale of the Trojan war (apart from the superhuman agencies) is not more improbable than that of the Crusades, which every one ad- mits to be an historical fact. But (even if we grant this position, which is only true to a small extent), it is not sufficient to show an analogy between the two cases in respect to negative presump- tions alone ; the analogy ought to be shown to hold between them Kcview, October 1846), pointed out that those remarks required modification, and that the idea of allegory in reference to the construction f the mytlitt was altogether inadmissible. 1 Juvenal, Sat. x. 174 : " Creditur olim Velificatus Athos, et quantum Graecia mendax Audet in historic! ," etc. 430 HISTORY OF GREECE. in respect to positive certificate also. The Crusades are a curious phenomenon in history, but we accept them, nevertheless, as an unquestionable fact, because the antecedent improbability is sur- mounted by adequate contemporary testimony. When the like testimony, both in amount and kind, is produced to establish the historical reality of a Trojan war, we shall not hesitate to deal with the two events on the same footing. In applying the semi-historical theory to Grecian mythical nar- rative, it has been often forgotten that a certain strength of testi- mony, or positive ground of belief, must first be tendered, before we can be called upon to discuss the antecedent probability or improbability of the incidents alleged. The belief of the Greeks themselves, without the smallest aid of special or contemporary witnesses, has been tacitly assumed as sufficient to support the case, provided only sufficient deduction be made from the mythi- cal narratives to remove all antecedent improbabilities. It has been taken for granted that the faith of the people must have rested originally upon some particular historical event, involving the identical persons, things, and places which the original mythes exhibit, or at least the most prominent among them. But when we examine the pyschagogic influences predominant in the so- ciety among whom this belief originally grew up, we shall see that their belief is of little or no evidentiary value, and that the growth and diffusion of it may be satisfactorily explained without supposing any special basis of matters of fact. The popular faith, so far as it counts for anything, testifies in favor of the en- tire and literal mythes, which are now universally rejected as incredible.. 1 We have thus the very minimum of positive proof, 1 Colonel Sleeman observes, respecting the Hindoo historical mind " History to this people is all a fairy tale." (Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, vol. i. ch. ix. p. 70.) And again, " The popular poem of the Ramaen describes the abduction of the heroine by the monster king of Ceylon, Rawun ; and her recovery by means of the monkey general, Hun- nooman. Every word of this poem, the people assured me was written, if not by the hand of the Deity himself, at least by his inspiration, which was the same thing and it must consequently be true. Ninety-nine out of a hundred, among the Hindoos, implicitly believe, not only every word of the poem, but every word of every poem that has ever been written in Sanscrit. If you ask a man whether he really believes any very egregious absurdity quoted from these books, he replies, with the greatest naivete in the world, li TRUTH INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM FICTION 43 J and the maximum of negative presumption : we may diminish the latter by conjectural omissions and interpolations, but we can- not by any artifice increase the former : the narrative ceases to be incredible, but it still remains uncertified, a mere common- place possibility. Nor is fiction always, or essentially, extrava- gant and incredible. It is often not only plausible and coherent but even more like truth (if a paradoxical phrase may be allow- ed) than truth itself. Nor can we, in the absence of any extrin- Bic test, reckon upon any intrinsic mark to discriminate the one from the other. 1 it not written in the book ; and how should it be there written, if not true ? The Hindoo religion reposes upon an entire prostration of mind, that continual and habitual surrender of the reasoning faculties, which we are accustomed to make occasionally, while engaged at the theatre, or in the perusal of works of fiction. We allow the scenes, characters, and incidents, to pass before our mind's eye, and move our feelings without stopping a moment to ask whether they are real or true. There is only this difference that with people of education among us, even in such short intervals of illusion or abandon, any extravagance in the acting, or flagrant improbability in the fiction, destroys the charm, breaks the spell by which we have been so mysteriously bound, and restores us to reason and the realities of ordinary life. With the Hindoos, on the contrary, the greater the improbability, the more monstrous and preposterous the fiction the greater is the charm it has over their minds ; and the greater their learning in the Sanscrit, the more are they under the influence of this charm. Believing all to be written by the Deity, or under his inspirations, and the men and things of former days to have been very different from men and things of the present day. and the heroes of these fables to have been demigods, or people endowed with powers far superior to those of the ordinary men of their own day the analogies of nature are never for a moment considered j nor do questions of probability, or possibility, according to those analogies, ever obtrude to dispel the charm with which they are so pleasingly bound. They go on through life reading and talking of these monstrous fictions, which shock the taste and understanding of other nations, without ever questioning the truth of one single incident, or hearing it questioned. There was a tim*, and that not far distant, when it was the same in England, and in every other European nation ; and there are, I am afraid, some parts of Europe where it is so still. But the Hindoo faith, so far as religious questions are concerned, is not more capacious or absurd than that of the Greeks or Ro- mans in the days of Socrates or Cicero : the only difference is, that among the Hindoos a greater number of the questions which interest mankind ara brought under the head of religion." (Sleeman, Rambles, etc., rol. i. ch. xxvi. p. 227 : compare vol. ii. ch. v. p. 51 ; viii. p. 97.) 1 Lord Lyttleton, in commenting on the tales of the Irish bards, in hi* 432 HISTORY OF GREECE. In the semi-historical theory respecting Grecian mythical aar rative, the critic unconsciously transports into the Homeric age those habits of classification and distinction, and that standard of acceptance or rejection, which he finds current in his own. Amongst us, the distinction between historical fact and fiction is highly valued as well as familiarly understood : we have a long history of the past, deduced from a study of contemporary evi- dences ; and we have a body of fictitious literature, stamped with its own mark and interesting in its own way. Speaking generally, no man could now hope to succeed permanently in transferring any striking incident from the latter category into the former, nor could any man deliberately attempt it without incurring well-merited obloquy. But this historical sense, now so deeply rooted in the modern mind that we find a difficulty in con- ceiving any people to be without it, is the fruit of records and inquiries, first applied to the present, and then preserved and studied by subsequent generations ; while in a society which has not yet formed the habit of recording its present, the real facts of the past can never be known ; the difference between attested History of Henry II., has the following just remarks (book iv. vol. iii. p. 13, quarto) : " One may reasonably suppose that in MSS. written since the Irish received the Roman letters from St. Patrick, some traditional truths recorded before by the bards in their unwritten poems may have been preserved to our times. Yet these cannot be so separated from many fabulous stories derived from the same sources, as to obtain a firm credit ; it not being sufficient to establish the authority of suspected traditions, that they can be shown not to be so improbable or absurd as others with which they are mixed since there may be specious as well as senseless fictions. Nor can a poet or bard, who lived in the sixth or seventh century after Christ, if his poem is still extant, be any voucher for facts supposed to have happened before the in carnation ; though his evidence ("allowing for poetical license) may bo received on such matters as come within his own time, or the remembrance of old men with whom he conversed. The most judicious historians pay no regard to the Welsh or British traditions delivered by Geoffrey of Monmouth, though it is not impossible but that some of these may be true." One definition of a my the given by Plutarch coincides exactly with a tpecious fiction : *O ftiidof dvai (JoiiheTai Aoyof ipevdijf cottcuf akt]$iviJ (Pin- tarch, Bellone an pace clariores fucmnt Athenienses, p. 348). " Der Grand- Trieb des Mythus (Crenzer jnstly expresses it) das G- dachtc in ein Geschehenes omzusctzen." (Symbolik der Alien Welt, sect. 43. p. 99.) SEMI HISTORICAL 'fHEORY. 433 matter of fact and plausible fiction between truth and that which is like truth can neither be discerned nor sought for. Yet it is precisely upon the supposition that this distinction is present to niens habitual thoughts, that the semi-historical theory of the mythes is grounded. It is perfectly true, as has often been stated, that the Grecian epic contains what are called traditions respecting the past the larger portion of it, indeed, consists of nothing else. But what are these traditions ? They are the matter of those songs and stories which have acquired hold on the public mind ; they are the creations of the poets and storytellers themselves, each of whom finds some preexisting, and adds others of his own, new ind previously untold, under the impulse and authority of the mspiring Muse. Homer doubtless found many songs and stories current with respect to the siege of Troy ; he received and trans- mitted some of these traditions, recast and transformed others, and enlarged the whole mass by new creations of his own. To the subsequent poets, such as Arktinus and Lesches, these Ho- meric creations formed portions of preexisting tradition, with which they dealt in the same manner ; so that the whole mass of traditions constituting the tale of Troy became larger and larger /ith each successive contributor. To assume a generic differ- ence between the older and the newer strata of tradition to >reat the former as morsels of history, and the latter as appen- lages of fiction is an hypothesis gratuitous at the least, not to say inadmissible. For the further we travel back into the past, >he more do we recede from the clear day of positive history, ind the deeper do we plunge into the unsteady twilight and gorgeous clouds of fancy and feeling. It was one of the agree- able dreams of the Grecian epic, that the man who travelled far enough northward beyond the Rhipsean mountains, would in time reach the delicious country and genial climate of the virtuous Hyperboreans the votaries and favorites of Apollo, who dwelt in the extreme north beyond the chilling blasts of Boreas. Now v jie hope that we may, by carrying our researches up the stream of time, exhaust the limits of fiction, and land ultimately upon 5ome points of solid truth, appears to me no less illusory than Jiis northward journey in quest of the Hyperborean elysium. roL. i. 19 28oc. 434 HISTORY OF GREECE. The general disposition to adopt the semi-historical theory as to the genesis of Grecian mythes, arises in part from reluctance in critics to impute to the mythopceic ages extreme credulity or fraud ; together with the usual presumption, that where much is believed some portion of it must be true. There would be some weight in these grounds of reasoning, if the ages under discus- sion had been supplied with records and accustomed to critical inquiry. But amongst a people unprovided with the former and strangers to the latter, credulity is naturally at its maximum, as well in the narrator himself as in his hearers : the idea of delib- erate fraud is moreover inapplicable, 1 for if the hearers are dis- posed to accept what is related to them as a revelation from the Muse, the oestrus of composition is quite sufficient to impart a similar persuasion to the poet whose mind is penetrated with it. The belief of that day can hardly be said to stand apart by itself as an act of reason. It becomes confounded with vivacious im- agination and earnest emotion ; and in every case where these mental excitabilities are powerfully acted upon, faith ensues un- consciously and as a matter of course. How active and promi- nent such tendencies were among the early Greeks, the extraor- dinary beauty and originality of their epic poetry may teach us. It is, besides, a presumption far too largely and indiscriminately applied, even in our own advanced age, that where much is be- lieved, something must necessarily be true that accredited fiction is always traceable to some basis of historical truth. 2 The 1 In reference to the loose statements of the Highlanders, Dr. Johnson ob- serves, " He that goes into the Highlands with a mind naturally acquies- cent, and a credulity eager for wonders, may perhaps come back with an opinion very different from mine ; for the inhabitants, knowing the ignorance of all strangers in their language and antiquities, are perhaps not very scru- pulous adherents to truth ; yet I do not say that they deliberately speak stud- ied falsehood, or have a settled purpose to deceive. They have acquired and considered little, and do not always feel their own ignorance. They are not much accustomed to be interrogated by others, and seem never to have thought of interrogating themselves ; so that if they do not know what they tell to be true, they likewise do not distinctly perceive it to be false. Mr. Boswell was very dili- gent in his inquiries, and the result of his investigations was, that the answer to the second question was commonly such as nullified the answer to the first." (Journey to the Western Islands, p. 272, 1st edit., 1775). * I considered this position more at large in an article in the " Westminster PLAUSIBLE FICTION, HOW GENERATED 435 influence of imagination and feeling is not confined simply to the process of retouching, transforming, or magnifying nanatives originally founded on fact ; it will often create new narratives of its own, without any such preliminary basis. Where there is any general body of sentiment pervading men living in society, whether it be religious or political love, admiration, or antipathy all incidents tending to illustrate that sentiment are eagerly wel- comed, rapidly circulated and (as a general rule) easily accred- ited. If real incidents are not at hand, impressive fictions will be provided to satisfy the demand. The perfect harmony of such fictions with the prevalent feeling stands in the place of certi- fying testimony, and causes men to hear them not merely with credence, but even with delight : to call them in question and require proof, is a task which cannot be undertaken without in- curring obloquy. Of such tendencies in the human mind, abun- dant evidence is furnished by the innumerable religious legends which have acquired currency in various parts of the world, and of which no country was more fertile than Greece legends which derived their origin, not from special facts misreported and exaggerated, but from pious feelings pervading the society, and translated into narrative by forward and imaginative minds legends, in which not merely the incidents, but often even the personages are unreal, yet in which the generating sentiment is conspicuously discernible, providing its own matter as well as its own form. Other sentiments also, as well as the religious, pro- vided they be fervent and widely diffused, will find expression in current narrative, and become portions of the general public be- lief every celebrated and notorious character is the source of a thousand fictions exemplifying his peculiarities. And if it be true, as I think present observation may show us, that such crea- tive agencies are even now visible and effective, when the mate- rials of genuine history are copious and critically studied much more are we warranted in concluding that, in ages destitute of records, strangers to historical testimony, and full of belief in divine inspiration both as to the future and as to the past, narra tives purely fictitious will acquire ready and uninquiring credence, .Review" for May, 1843, on Niebuhr's Greek Legends, with wlvch article much in the present chapter will be found to coincide. 436 HISTORY OF GREECE provided only they be plausible and in harmony will: tl precon- ceptions of the auditors. The allegorical interpretation of the mythes has been by seve- ral learned investigators, especially by Creuzer, connected with the hypothesis of an ancient and highly instructed body of priests, having their origin either in Egypt or in the East, and communi- cating to the rude and barbarous Greeks religious, physical, and historical knowledge under the veil of symbols. At a time (we are told) when language was yet in its infancy, visible symbols were the most vivid means of acting upon the minds of ignorant hearers : the next step was to pass to symbolical language and expressions for a plain and literal exposition, even if understood at all, would at least have been listened to with indifference, as not corresponding with any mental demand. In such allegoriz ing way, then, the early priests set forth their doctrines respect- ing God, nature, and humanity a refined monotheism and a theological philosophy and to this purpose the earliest mythes were turned. But another class of mythes, more popular and more captivating, grew up under the hands of the poets mythes purely epical, and descriptive of real or supposed past events. The allegorical mythes, being taken up by the poets, insensibly became confounded in the same category with the purely narra- tive mythes the matter symbolized was no longer thought of, while the symbolizing words came to be construed in their own literal meaning and the basis of the early allegory, thus lost among the general public, was only preserved as a secret among various religious fraternities, composed of members allied together by initiation in certain mystical ceremonies, and administered by hereditary families of presiding priests. In the Orphic and Bac- chic sects, in the Eleusinian and Samothracian mysteries, was thus treasured up the secret doctrine of the old theological and philosophical mythes, which had once constituted the primitive legendary stock of Greece, in the hands of the original priest- hood and in ages anterior to Homer. Persons who had gone through the preliminary ceremonies of initiation, were permitted at length to hear, though under strict obligation of secrecy, thu ancient religious and cosmogonic doctrine, revealing the destina- tion of man and the certainty of posthumous rewards and punish- THEORIES OF LEARNED MEN. 437 ments all disengaged from the corruptions of poets, as well as from the symbols and allegories under which they still remained buried in the eyes of the vulgar. The mysteries of Greece were thus traced up to the earliest ages, and represented as the only faithful depository channels of that purer theology and physics which had originally been communicated, though under the unavoidable inconvenience of a symbolical expression, by an enlightened priesthood coming from abroad to the then rude barbarians of the country. 1 1 For this general character of the Grecian mysteries, with their concealed treasure of doctrine, see Warburton. Divine Legation of Moses, book ii. sect. 4. Payne Knight, On the Symbolical Language of ancient Art and Mytholo- gy, sect. 6, 10, 11,40, etc. Saint Croix, Rechcrches sur les Mysteres du Paganisme, sect. 3, p. 106; sect 4, p. 404, etc. Creuzer, Symbolik und Mythologie der Alton Volker, sect. 2, 3, 23, 39, 42, etc. Meiners and Hceren adopt generally the same view, though there are many divergences of opinion between these different authors, on a sub- ject essentially obscure. Warburton maintained that the interior doctrine communicated in the mysteries was the existence of one Supreme Divinity, combined with the Eucmeristic creed, that the pagan gods had been mere men. Sec Clemens Alex. Strom, v. p. 582, Sylb. The view taken by Hermann of the ancient Greek mythology is in many points similar to that of Creuzer, though with some considerable difference. He thinks that it is an aggregate of doctrine philosophical, theological, physical, and moral expressed under a scheme of systematic personifica- tions, each person being called by a name significant of the function personi- fied : this doctrine was imported from the East into Greece, where the poets, retaining or translating the names, but forgetting their meaning and connec- tion, distorted the primitive stories, the sense of which came to be retained only in the ancient mysteries. That true sense, however, (he thinks,) maybe recovered by a careful analysis of the significant names : and his two disser- tations (Dc Mythologii Grrecorum Antiqnissima, in the Opuscula, vol. ii.) exhibit a specimen of this systematic expansion of etymology into narrative. The dissent from Creuzer is set forth in their published correspondence, especially in his concluding " Brief an Creuzer iibcr das Wesen und die Behandlung der Mythologie," Leipzig, 1819. The following citation from his Latin dissertation sets forth his general doctrine : Hermann, De Mythologii Graecorum Antiquissima, p. 4 (Opuscula, vol. ii. p. 171): " Videmus rerum divinarum humanarumque scientiam ex Asii per Lyciam migrantcm in Europam : videmus fabulosos poetas pere- grinam doctrinam, monstruoso tumore orientis sive exutam, sive nondtrwj 438 HISTOEY OF GREECE. But this theory, though advocated by several learnt d men, has been shown to be unsupported and erroneous. It implies a mis- taken view both of the antiquity and the purport of the myste- ries, which cannot be safely carried up even to the age of Hesiod, and which, though imposing and venerable as religious ceremo- nies, included no recondite or esoteric teaching.! iiidutam, quasi do intcgro Grieca specie procrcantcs ; videmus poetas, illos, quorum omnium vcra nomina nominibus ab arte, quft clarebant, petitis - obliterate sunt, diu in Thracii hserentes, raroque tandem etiam cum aliig Graeciaj partibus commcrcio junctos : qualis Pamphus, non ipse Atheniensis, Athcniensibus hymnos Deorum fecit. Videmus denique retrusam paulatim in mysteriorum secrctam illam sapientum doctrinam, vitiatam religionum perturbatione. corruptam inscitii interpretum, obscuratam levitate amoeniora sectantium adeo ut earn ne illi quidcm intelligerent, qui hoereditariam a prioribus poOsin colentes, quum ingenii prajstantii omnes pracstinguerent, tantA illos oblivione merserunt, ut ipsi sint primi auctores omnis eruditionis habiti." Hermann thinks, however, that by pursuing the suggestions of etymology, vestiges may still be discovered, and something like a history compiled, of Grecian belief as it stood anterior to Homer and Hesiod : " Est autem in hac omni ratione judicio maxime opus, quia non testibus res agitur, sed ad intcrprctandi solcrtiam omnia revocanda sunt" (p. 172). To the same gene- ral purpose the French work of M. Emerie David, Rechcrches sur le Dieu Jupiter reviewed by O. Miiller: see the Klcine Schriften of the latter, vol. ii. p. 82. Mr. Bryant has also employed a profusion of learning, and numerous etymological conjectures, to resolve the Greek mythes into mistakes, perver- sions, and mutilations, of the exploits and doctrines of oriental tribes long- lost and by-gone, Amonians, Cuthites, Arkites, etc. " It was Noah (ha thinks) who was represented under the different names of Thoth, Hermes, Menes, Osiris, Zeuth, Atlas, Phoroncus, Prometheus, to which list a farther number of great extent might be added : the NoCf of Anaxagoras was in reality the patriarch Noah" (Ant. Mythol. vol. ii. pp. 253, 272). " The Cuth- ites or Amonians, descendants of Noah, settled in Greece from the east, celebrated for their skill in building and the arts" (ib. i. p. 502; ii. p. 187). The greatest part of the Grecian theology arose from misconception and blunders, the stories concerning their gods and heroes were founded on terms misinterpreted or abused" (ib. i. p. 452). " The number of different actions ascribed to the various Grecian gods or heroes all relate to one people or family, and are at bottom one and the same history" (ib. ii. p. 57). " The fables of Prometheus and Tityus were taken from ancient Amonian temples, from hieroglyphics misunderstood and badly explained" (i. p. 426) : see especially vol. ii. p. 160. 1 The Anti-Symbolik of Voss, and still more the Aglaophamus of Lobeck, TRIPLE THEOLOGY OF PAGAflW^l. 439 Hie doctrine, supposed to have been originally symbolizel and subsequently overclouded, in the Greek mythes, was in reality first intruded into them by the unconscious fancies of later inter- preters. It was one of the various roads which instructed men took to escape from the literal admission of the ancient mythes, and to arrive at some new form of belief, more consonant with their ideas of what the attributes and character of the gods ought to be. It was one of the tvays of constituting, by help of the mysteries, a philosophical religion apart from the general public, and of connecting that distinction with the earliest periods of Grecian society. Such a distinction was both avowed and justi- fied among the superior men of the later pagan world. Varro and Scaevola distributed theology into three distinct departments, the mythical or fabulous, the civil, and the physical. The first had its place in the theatre, and was left without any inter- ference to the poets ; the second belonged to the city of political community as such, it comprised the regulation of all the public worship and religious rites, and was consigned altogether to the direction of the magistrate ; the third was the privilege of philo- sophers, but was reserved altogether for private discussion in the schools, apart from the general public. 1 As a member of the arc full of instruction on the subject of this supposed interior doctrine, and on the ancient mysteries in general : the latter treatise, especially, is not less distinguished for its judicious and circumspect criticism than for its copious learning. Mr. Halhed (Preface to the Gentoo Code of Laws, pp. xiii.-xiv.) has good observations on the vanity of all attempts to allegorize the Hindu mytholo- gy : he observes, with perfect truth, " The vulgar and illiterate have always understood the mythology of their country in its literal sense ; and thero was a time to every nation, when the highest rank in it was equally vulgar and illiterate with the lowest A Hindu esteems the astonishing miracles attributed to a Briina, or a Kishcn, as facts of the most indubitable authenticity, and the relation of them as most strictly historical." Compare also Gibbon's remarks on the allegorizing tendencies of the later Phitonists (Hist. Decl. and Fall, vol. iv. p. 71). 1 Varro, ap. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, iv. 27 ; vi. 5-6. " Dicis fabulosos Dcos accommodates esse ad theatrum, naturales ad mundum, civiles ad urbem." " Varro, de religionibus loquens, multa esse vera dixit, qua non modo vulgo scire non sit utile, sed etiam tametsi falsa sint, aliter existimare populum expediat: et ideo Grajcos teletas et mysteria taciturnitate parieti basque clausisse" (ibid, iv in See Villoison, De Triplici Theologii Cora 440 HISTORY OF GREECE. city, the philosopher sympathized with the audience in the thea- tre, and took a devout share in the established ceremonies, nor was he justified in trying what he heard in the one or saw in the other by his own ethical standard. But in the private as semblies of instructed or inquisitive men, he enjoyed the fullest liberty of canvassing every received tenet, and of broaching his own theories unreservedly, respecting the existence and nature of the gods. By these discussions, the activity of the philosophi- cal mind was maintained and truth elicited ; but it was such truth as the body of the people ought not to hear, lest their faith in their own established religious worship should be overthrown. In thus distinguishing the civil theology from the fabulous, Vairo was enabled to cast upon the poets all the blame of the objec- tionable points in the popular theology, and to avoid the neces- sity of pronouncing censure on the magistrates, who (he contend- ed) had made as good a compromise with the settled prejudices of the public as the case permitted. The same conflicting sentiments which led the philosophers to decompose the divine mythes into allegory, impelled the histo- rians to melt down the heroic mythes into something like contin- uous political history, with a long series of chronology calculated upon the heroic pedigrees. The one process as well as the other was interpretative guesswork, proceeding upon unauthorized as- sumptions, and without any verifying test or evidence : while it frittered away the characteristic beauty of the my the into some- thing essentially anti-mythical, it sought to arrive both at history and philosophy by impracticable roads. That the superior men of antiquity should have striven hard to save the dignity of legends which constituted the charm of their literature as well as the sub- stance of the popular religion, we cannot be at all surprised ; but mentatio, p. 8 ; and Lactantius, De Origin. Error, ii. 3. The doctrine of the Stoic Chrysippus, ap. Etymologicon Magn. v. Te/lerot Xpvcwnror tie $r)ai, rove Trepl TIJV tieiuv Tioyovf tlnoTUf Kaheltrdai TE/Urcif, xpn val f^P rovrovf re/levratovf Kal inl Ttuai. 6i6daKed(f>, TU 6e vofiy, rti 6e /toy^i, mariv i apxqf ECTXTJKE- rf/f 6' oiv iftpt l vrnd-dcrni Kal rplrov, il OPINION OF PLATO. 441 it is gratifying to find Plato discussing the subject in a more philosophical spirit. The Platonic Socrates, being asked whethe- he believed the current Attic fable respecting the abduction of Oreithyia (daughter of Erechtheus) by Boreas, replies, in sub- stance, " It would not be strange if I disbelieved it, as the clever men do ; I might then show my cleverness by saying that a gust of Boreas blew her down from the rocks above while she was at play, and that., having been killed in this manner, she was reported to have been carried off by Boreas. Such speculations are amusing enough, but they belong to men ingenious and busy- minded overmuch, and not greatly to be envied, if it be only for this reason, that, after having set right one fable, they are under the necessity of applying the same process to a host of others Hippo- centaurs, Chimaeras, Gorgons, Pegasus, and numberless other monsters and incredibilities. A man, who, disbelieving these stories, shall try to find a probable basis for each of them, will display an ill-placed acuteness and take upon himself an endless burden, for which I at least have no leisure : accordingly, I forego such researches, and believe in the current version of tht O * stories." 1 These remarks of Plato are valuable, not simply because they point out the uselessness of digging for a supposed basis of truth in the mythes, but because they at the same time suggest the true reason for mistrusting all such tentatives. The mythes form 1 Plato, Phsedr. c. 7. p. 229 : PHJEDRUS. EZra fioi, u 2u/cparf, ai> TOVTO TO //utfoAoy^/za ire'idei u/tijdtf dvai ; SOCRATES. 'A?^' d uiriaToiijv, vamp ol aool, OVK uv UTOTTOS eiijv, elra coyi&nevof tyairiv avrrjv irvevua Eopeov KOTU TUV irM/atov nerpuv avv ijtap- fiaKeia iraifrvaav uaat, Kal OVTU 61) T&evrfiffaaav /Ux#^vaf fab TOV Eopeov avapKaarbv yeyovevai 'E/6> <5e, a Qaidpe, uMuc [v ru roiavra Xapievra r)yov;j.aL, 'kia.v c5e Setvov Kal Imirovov Kal oil iravv evrv^ovs uvtipbc, car' a/Uo \ikv ovdev, OTI & aiTia xp^fitvof, 7roWf/f avT$ ff^oAw de^aei. 'Eftol 6e npbt ravTa ovdapue EOTI O^fy *0t?ev 6r) xaipciv luoac TOVTO, ontvos 6e -C> voui&fievv ncpl avruv, b vvvor) tf.eyov, OKOKV ov Tov, etc. 19* 442 HISTORY OF GREECE a class apart, abundant as well as peculiar : to remove any indi- vidual mythe from its own class into that of history or philosophy, by simple conjecture, and without any collateral evidence, is of no advantage, unless you can perform a similar process on the re- mainder. If the process be trustworthy, it ought to be applied to all ; and e converso, if it be not applicable to all, it is not trust- worthy as applied to any one specially ; always assuming no special evidence to be accessible. To detach any individual mythe from the class to which it belongs, is to present it in an erroneous point of view ; we have no choice except to admit them as they stand, by putting ourselves approximatively into the frame of mind of those for whom they were destined and to whom they appeared worthy of credit. If Plato thus discountenances all attempts to transform the mythes by interpretation into history or philosophy, indirectly recognizing the generic difference between them we find sub- stantially the same view pervading the elaborate precepts in his treatise on the Republic. He there regards the mythes, not as embodying either matter-of-fact or philosophical principle, but as portions of religious and patriotic faith, and instruments of ethical tuition. Instead of allowing the poets to frame them according io the impulses of their own genius, and with a view to imme diate popularity, he directs the legislator to provide types of his own for the characters of the gods and heroes, and to suppress all such divine and heroic legends as are not in harmony with these [^reestablished canons. In the Platonic system, the mythes are not to be matters of history, nor yet of spontaneous or casual fic- tion, but of prescribed faith : he supposes that the people will believe, as a thing of course, what the poets circulate, and he therefore directs that the latter shall circulate nothing which does not tend to ennoble and improve the feelings. He conceives the mythes as stories composed to illustrate the general sentiments of the poets and the community, respecting the character and attributes of the gods and heroes, or respecting the social relations, and ethical duties as well as motives of mankind : hence the obli- gation upon the legislator to prescribe beforehand the types of character which shall be illustrated, and to restrain the poets from following out any opposing fancies. " Let us neither believe our- ielves (he exclaims), nor permit any one to cii-culate, that The- OPINION OF PLATO. 443 sous son of Poseidon and Peirithous son of Zeus, or any other hero or son of a god, could ever have brought themselves to commit abductions or other enormities such as are now falsely ascribed to them. We must compel the poets to say, either that such persons were not the sons of gods, or that they were not the perpetrators of such misdeeds." 1 Most of the mythes which the youth hear and repeat (accord- ing to Plato) are false, but some of them are true : the great and prominent mythes which appear in Homer and Hesiod are no less fictions than the rest. But fiction constitutes one of the indis- pensable instruments of mental training as well as truth ; only the legislator must take care that the fiction- so employed shall bo beneficent and not mischievous. 9 As the mischievous fictions (he says) take their rise from wrong preconceptions respecting tne character of the gods and heroes, so the way to correct them is to enforce, by authorized compositions, the adoption of a more correct standard.3 1 Plato, llepub. iii. 5. p. 391. The perfect ignorance of all men respecting ihe gods, rendered the task of fiction easy (Plato, Kritias, p. 107). 2 Plato, Kepub. ii. 16. p. 377. Aoyuv Se dnrbv ddog, rb fj.lv dA^tfef, ipev- Sof d' erepov ; Nat. UaiSevTeov cJ' kv u^oTepoif, irpoTepov f TO 67iov elTrelv ^evdof, evt 6s /cat uhridij ......... Upurov ijp.lv Ima- raTrjTEOV Toif nv&OTTOiole, nal ov HEV uv Ka?.bv (ivdov iroifjauffiv, tyKpireov, w <5' uv pf), diroKpiTt-ov ...... uv 6e vvv /leyovtrt, rovf Trohhoiif iK(3Xr]TKOV ...... ove 'Haiodof teal "O//7?pof f/pv Weyer7?v, KOI ol uMoi iroir)rai. OVTOI yap nov fivdov' role uv&puiroif ifievdelf oWTt&tvTt( iheyov re nal 7*eyovci. lloiovf drj, TI 6' of, not TI aiiTuv fie^onevof "kiyeiq ; "Oirep, %v d' iyti, XP>1 l irp&Tov nal //aAtCTra /lepfea&cu, dAAwf re KOI kdv Tig firj /caAwf ^ev6r]TaL. Tt TOVTO ; "Gray Tt$ e'lKafy awf ru Myv nepl t?ewv re nal ypuav, oloi daiv, wCTTrep ypa^evf firidev totKOTa ypaQuv olf uv ofioia /Jov^rat ypfyai. The same train of thought, and the precepts founded upon it, are followed np through chaps. 17, 18, and 19 ; compare De Legg. xii. p. 941. Instead of recognizing the popular or dramatic theology as something distinct from the civil (as Varro did), Plato suppresses the former as a sep- arate department and merges it in the latter. 3 Plato, Repub. ii. c. 21. p. 382. Td ev rolf Aoyot? $v6of noTe KO.I TI w CLfiov, uffTe fir) afrov elvai piaovf ; T A/>' ov Trpof re roi)f irofa/iiovf Kal ruv Kalovfitvuv (j>i7iuv, OTOV dtu fiaviav % Tiva uvoiav KOKOV TI imxetpum -n-paT- TEIV, TOTE aTrorpoTT//? foe/ca (if fdpfictKOv xprjoipov yiyverai ; Ka* ev al( Ejofiev raff ,j.vS oloyiais, 6 iH rd p) eldevai birr, l%ei *epl TUV TraAatwv, u^ofio lov v ref r

. p. 1094) * Plato, Republic iii. 4-5. p. 391 ; De I/Jgg. Hi. 1. p. 677. GRECIAN CHRONOLOGY FOUNDED ON MYTHES. 445 that of the Greeks generally, the more shall we be com inccd that it formed essentially and inseparably a portion of Hellenic religious faith. The mythe both presupposes, and springs out of, a settled basis, and a strong expansive force of religious, social, and patriotic feeling, operating upon a past which is little better than a blank as to positive knowledge. It resembles history, in so far as its form is narrative ; it resembles philosophy, in so far as it is occasionally illustrative ; but in its essence and substance, in the mental tendencies by which it is created as well as in those by which it is judged and upheld, it is a popularized expression of the divine and heroic faith of the people. Grecian antiquity cannot be at all understood except in con- nection with Grecian religion. It begins with gods and it ends with historical men, the former being recognized not simply as gods, but as primitive ancestors, and connected with the latter by a long mythical genealogy, partly heroic and partly human. Now the whole value of such genealogies arises from their being taken entire ; the god or hero at the top is in point of fact the most im- portant member of the whole j 1 for the length and continuity of the series arises from anxiety on the part of historical men to join themselves by a thread of descent with the being whom they worshipped in their gentile sacrifices. Without the ancestorial god, the whole pedigree would have become not only acephalous, but worthless and uninteresting. The pride of the Herakleids, Asklepiads, JEakids, Neleids, Daedalids, etc. was attached to the primitive eponymous hero and to the god from whom they sprung, not to the line of names, generally long and barren, through which the divine or heroic dignity gradually dwindled down into com- mon manhood. Indeed, the length of the genealogy (as I have before remarked) was an evidence of the humility of the his- torical man, which led him to place himself at a respectful dis- tance from the gods or heroes ; for Hekatajus of Miletus, who ranked himself as the fifteenth descendant of a god, might per- 1 For a description of similar tendencies in the Asiatic religions, see Movers, Die Phonizier, ch. v. p. 153 (Bonn, 1841): he points out the same phenomena as in the Greek, coalescence between the ideas of ancestry and worship, confusion between gods and men in the past, increasing tendency to Euemerize (pp. 156-1 57 )t 446 HISTORY OF GREECE. haps have accounted it an overweening impiety in any living man to claim a god for his immediate father. The whole chronology of Greece, anterior to 776 u. c., consists of calculations founded upon these mythical genealogies, espe- cially upon that of the Spartan kings and their descent from Herakles, thirty years being commonly taken as the equiva- lent of a generation, or about three generations to a century. This process of computation was altogether illusory, as applying historical and chronological conditions to a case on which they had no bearing. Though the domain of history was seemingly enlarged, the religious element was tacitly set aside : when the heroes and gods were chronologized, they became insensibly ap- proximated to the limits of humanity, and the process indirectly gave encouragement to the theory of Euemerus. Personages originally legendary and poetical were erected into definite land- marks for measuring the duration of the foretime, thus gaining in respect to historical distinctness, but not without loss on the score of religious association. Both Euemerus and the subsequent Christian writers, who denied the original and inherent divinity of the pagan gods, had a great advantage in carrying their chro- nological researches strictly and consistently upwards for all chronology fails as soon as we suppose a race superior to common humanity. Moreover, it is to be remarked that the pedigree of the Spartan kings, which Apollodorus and Eratosthenes selected as the basis of their estimate of time, is nowise superior in credibility and trustworthiness to the thousand other gentile and family pedigrees with which Greece abounded ; it is rather indeed to be numbered among the most incredible of all, seeing that Herakles as a pro- genitor is placed at the head of perhaps more pedigrees than any other Grecian god or hero. 1 The descent of the Spartan king Leonidas from Herakles rests upon no better evidence than that of Aristotle or Hippocrates from Asklepius, 2 of Evagoras or 1 According to that which Aristotle seems to recognize (Histor. Animal. vii. 6), Herakles was father of seventy- two sons, but of only one daughter he was essentially df>f>ev6-yovo<;, illustrating one of the physical peculiarities noticed by Aristotle. Euripides, towever, mentions daughters of Herakles in the plural number (Euripid. Herakleid. 45). * Hippocrates was twentieth in descent from Herakles, and nineteenth MYTHICAL GENEALOGIES. 447 Thucydides from jEakus, of Socrates from Dsedalus, of the Spartan heraldic family from Talthybius, of the prophetic lamid family in Elis from lamus, of the root-gatherers in Pelion from Cheiron, and of Hekataeus and his gens from some god in the sixteenth ascending line of the series. There is little exaggeration in saying, indeed, that no permanent com- bination of men in Greece, religious, social, or professional, was without a similar pedigree ; all arising out of the same exigences of the feelings and imagination, to personify as well as to sanctify the bond of union among the members. Every one of these gentes began with a religious and ended with an historical person. At some point or other in the upward series, entities of history were exchanged for entities of religion ; but where that point is to be found Ave are unable to say, nor had the wisest of the an- cient Greeks any means of determining. Thus much, however, we know, that the series taken as a whole, though dear and pre- cious to the believing Greek, possesses no value as chronological evidence to the historian. When Hekatoeus visited Thebes in Egypt, he mentioned to the Egyptian priests, doubtless with a feeling of satisfaction and pride, the imposing pedigree of the gens to which he belonged, with fifteen ancestors in ascending line, and a god as the initial progenitor. But he found himself immeasurably overdone by the priests " who genealogized against him." 1 They showed to him three hundred and forty-one wooden colossal statues, representing the succession of chief priests in the temple in uninterrupted series from father to son, through a space of 11,300 years. Prior to the commencement of this long period (they said), the gods dwelling along with men, had exercised sway in Egypt ; but they from Asklepius (Vita Hippocr. by Soranus, ap. "Westermann, Scriptor. Biographic, viii. 1) ; about Aristotle, see Diogen. LaCrt. v. 1. Xenophon, the physician of the emperor Claudius, was also an Asklepiad ("Tacit. Ann. xii. 61). In Ehodes, the neighboring island to Kos, was the gens 'A^iudai, or sons of Helios, specially distinguished from the 'A.Maaral of mere associated worshippers of Helios, rb notvdv ruv 'A/Ua<5uv nai riJv 'A.\taoTuv ("see the Inscription in Boeckh's Collection, No. 2525, with Boeckh's comment). 1 Herodot. ii. 144. 'E/cara^j <5e yeverjlMyriaavTi. kuvrbv, Kal avadfjaavrt if iitKaiSEKaTuv i?edv, uvTeyeveri^oyriaav km Ty uptdfiqoet, ov denofievoi Trap' C, airb &eov yeven&ai av&puirov uvrsysverj^oy^ffav 6e ude, etc 448 HISTORY OF GREECE, i repudiated altogether the idea of men begotten by godi or of heroes. 1 But these counter-genealogies, are, in respect to trustwcrthinfess and evidence, on the same footing. Each represents partly the religious faith, partly the retrospective imagination, of the persons from whom it emanated ; in each, the lower members of the series (to what extent we cannot tell) are rsal, the upper members fabu- lous ; but in each also the series derived all its interest and all its imposing effect from being conceived unbroken and entire. Herodotus is much perplexed by the capital discrepancy between the Grecian and Egyptian chronologies, and vainly employs his ingenuity in reconciling them. There is no standard of objective evidence by which either the one or the other of them can be tried : each has its own subjective value, in conjunction with the faith and feelings of Egyptians and Greeks, and each presup- poses in the believer certain mental prepossessions which are not to be found beyond its own local limits. Nor is the greater or less extent of duration at all important, when we once pass the limits of evidence and verifiable reality. One century of recorded time, adequately studded with authentic and orderly events, pre- sents a greater mass and a greater difficulty of transition to the imagination than a hundred centuries of barren genealogy. Her- odotus, in discussing the age of Homer and Hesiod, treats an an- terior point of 400 years as if it were only yesterday ; the reign of Henry VI. is separated from us by an equal interval, and the reader will not require to be reminded how long that interval now appears. The mythical age was peopled with a mingled aggregate of gods, heroes, and men, so confounded together that it was often impossible to distinguish to which class any individual name belonged. In regard to the Thracian god Zalmoxis, the Helles- pontic Greeks interpreted his character and attributes according to the scheme of Euemerism. They affirmed that he had been a man, the slave of the philosopher Pythagoras at Samos, and that he had by abilities and artifice established a religious ascen- dency over the minds of the Thracians, and obtained from them 1 Herod, ii. 143-145. Kcu ravra AiyvTrrioi uTpeKsug fyaalv lirioraadai, aia rt %o-yiofievoi Kal aid ano-ypa6~ii>oi TU free. CONFUSION BETWEEN GODS AND MEN. 44'j divine honors. Herodotus cannot bring himself to believe this story, but he frankly avows his inability to determine whether Zalmoxis was a god or a man,* nor can he extricate himself from a similar embarrassment in respect to Dionysus and Pan. Amidst the confusion of the Homeric fight, the goddess Athene confers upon Diomedes the miraculous favor of dispelling the mist from his eyes, so as to enable him to discriminate gods from men ; and nothing less than a similar miracle could enable a critical reader of the mythical narratives to draw an ascertained boundary-line between the two 2 But the original hearers of the mythes felt neither surprise nor displeasure from this confusion of the divine with the human individual. They looked at the past with a film 1 Herod, iv. 94-96. After having related the Euemeristic version given by the Hellespont^ Greeks, he concludes with his characteristic frankness and simplicity 'E/w tie, rrepl per TOVTOV KOI TOV Karayaiov oiKfjfiaToe, ovre umaTeu, ovre uv Tuarevu TL TJ.IJV. doKeu Se TroUoiai ereai nporepov rbv Za/l- uo^iv TOVTOV yeviadai Tlv&ayopeu. Etre 6e eyeveTO TIC Zutyo&e uv&puirof, SIT' EOTI daipuv rif TeTrjat ovTOf km%upiOf, ^afperw. So Plutarch (Numa c. 19) will not undertake to determine whether Janus was a god or a king Eire 6ai/j.av, etTS paaiTiede yevouevos, etc. Herakleitus the philosopher said that men were &eol dvyrol, and the gods were av&puTtoi udavaroi (Lucian, Vitar. Auctio. c. 13. rol. i. p. 303, Tauch. compare the same author, Dialog. Mortuor. iii. vol. i. p. 182, ed. Tauchn). 3 Iliad, v. 127: 'A^Ai)v d* av TOI UTT' bda'k[iuv S7(.ov, % irplv iTrqev, *0(j>p' ev yLyvuanTjf rjfj.ev &sbv, fade Kal uvopa. Of this undistinguishable confusion between gods and men, striking illus- trations are to be found both in the third book of Cicero de Natura Deorum (16-21), and in the long disquisition of Strabo (x. pp. 467-474) respecting the Kabeiri, the Korybantes, the Dactyls of Ida ; the more so, as he cites the statements of Pherekydes, Akusilaus, Demetrius of Skepsis, and others. Under the Etonian empire, the lands in Greece belonging to the immortal gods were exempted from tribute. The Roman tax-collectors refused to recognize as immortal gods any persons who had once been men ; but this rale could not be clearly applied (Cicero, Nat. Deor. iii. 20). See the re- marks of Pausanias (ii. 26, 7) about Asklepius : Galen, too, is doubtful about Asklepius and Dionysus 'AcvcA^Triof ye TOI Kal Atovvoof, eZr* avdpuiw irporepov rjffTTjv, CITE Kal dp^i?v $W (Galen in Protreptic. 9. torn. i. p. 22, cd. Ktlhn). Xenophon (De Vcnat. c. i) considers Cheiron as the brother ot Zens. The ridicule of Lucian (Dccrum Concilium, t. iii. p 527-538, Hems.) brings out still more forcibly the confusion here indicated. VOL. T. 29oe. 450 HISTORY OF GREECE. of faith over their eyes neither knowing the value, nor desiring the attainment, of an unclouded vision. The intimate companion- ship, and the occasional mistake of identity between gods and men, were in full harmony with their reverential restrospect. And we, accordingly, see the poet Ovid in his Fasti, when he un- dertakes the task of unfolding the legendary antiquities of early Rome, reacquiring, by the inspiration of Juno, the power of seeing gods and men in immediate vicinity and conjunct action, such as it existed before the development of the critical and his- torical sense. 1 To resume, in brief, what has been laid down in this and the preceding chapters respecting the Grecian mythes : 1. They are a special product of the imagination and feelings, radically distinct both from history and philosophy : they cannot be broken down and decomposed into the one, nor allegorized into the other. There are indeed some particular and even assignable mythes, which raise intrinsic presumption of an allegorizing ten- dency ; and there are doubtless some others, though not specially assignable, which contain portions of matter of fact, or names of real persons, embodied in them. But such matter of fact cannot be verified by any intrinsic mark, nor we are entitled to presume its existence in any given case unless some collateral evidence can be produced. 2. We are not warranted in applying to the mythical world the rules either of historical credibility or chronological sequence. Its personages are gods, heroes, and men, in constant juxtaposition and reciprocal sympathy ; men, too, of whom we know a large proportion to be fictitious, and of whom we can never ascertain how many may have been real. No series of such personages can serve as materials for chronological calculation. 1 Ovil, Fasti, vi. G-20 : "Fas mihi prsecipue vultus vidisse Deorura, Vcl quia sum vates, vel quia sacra cano . . . Ecce Deas vidi Horrueram, tacitoque animum pallore fatebar: Cum Dea, quos fecit, sustulit ipsa metus. Namque ait O vates, Romani conditor anni, Ausc per exiguos magna referre modos ; Jns tibi fecisti numcn cceleste videndi, Cam placuit numeris condcre fcsta tais." GENERAL RECAPITULATION. 451 3. The mythes were originally produced in an age which had no records, no philosophy, no criticism, no canon of belief, and scarcely any tincture either of astronomy or geography but which, on the other hand, was full of religious faith, distinguished for quick and susceptible imagination, seeing personal agents where we look only for objects and connecting laws; an age, moreover, eager for new narrative, accepting with the unconscious impressibility of children (the question of truth or falsehood being never formally raised) all which ran in harmony with its pre- existing feelings, and penetrable by inspired prophets and poets in the same proportion that it was indifferent to positive evidence. To such hearers did the primitive poet or story-teller address himself: it was the glory of his productive genius to provide suitable narrative expression for the faith and emotions which he shared in common with them, and the rich stock of Grecian mythes attests how admirably he performed his task. As the gods and the heroes formed the conspicuous object of national reverence, so the mythes were partly divine, partly heroic, partly both in one. 1 The adventures of Achilles, Helen, and Diomedes, of (Edipus and Adrastus, of Meleager and Athiea, of Jason and the Argo, were recounted by the same tongues, and accepted with the same unsuspecting confidence, as those of Apollo and Artemis, of Ares and Aphrodite, of Poseidon and Herakles. 4. The time however came, when this plausibility ceased to be complete. The Grecian mind made an important advance, social- ly, ethically, and intellectually. Philosophy and history were constituted, prose writing and chronological records became famil- iar ; a canon of belief more or less critical came to be tacitly recognized. Moreover, superior men profited more largely by the stimulus, and contracted habits of judging different from the 1 The fourth Eclogue of Virgil, under the form of a prophecy, gives a faithful picture of the heroic and divine past, to which the legends of Troj nd (he Argonauts belonged : c Hie Deftm vitam accipiet, Divisque videbit Permixtos heroas," etc. " Alter erit turn Tiphys et altera quse vehat Argo Delectos heroas : erunt etiam altera bella, Atquc iteram ad Trojam magnus mittetur Achilles." 452 HISTORY OF GREECE. vulgar : the god Elenchus 1 (to use a personification of Menander) the giver and prover of truth, descended ir.to their minds. Into the new intellectual medium, thus altered in its elements, and no longer uniform in its quality, the mythes descended by inherit- ance ; but they were found, to a certain extent, out of harmony even with the feelings of the people, and altogether dissonant with those of instructed men. But the most superior Greek was still a Greek, and cherished the common reverential sentiment towards the foretime of his country. Though he could neither believe nor respect the mythes as they stood, he was under an imperious mental necessity to transform them into a state worthy of his belief and respect. Whilst the literal mythe still continued to float among the poets and the people, critical men interpreted, altered, decomposed, and added, until they found something which satisfied their minds as a supposed real basis. They manufac- tured some dogmas of supposed original philosophy, and a long series of fancied history and chronology, retaining the mythical names and generations even when they were obliged to discard or recast the mythical events. The interpreted mythe was thus promoted into a reality, while the literal mythe was degraded into a fiction. 2 1 Lucian, Pseudol. c. 4. IlapaK/l^reof rjfi.lv ruvMevdvdpov TrpoAoyuv eZf, f>^ai^ iJedf, ov% o uarifioraTOf TUV ircl rrjv avaftatvoVTuv. (See Meineke ad Menandr. p. 284.) * The following passage from Dr. Ferguson's Essay on Civil Society (part ii. sect. i. p. 126) bears well on the subject before us : " If conjectures and opinions formed at a distance have not a sufficient authority in the history of mankind, the domestic antiquities of every nation must for this very reason be received with caution. They are, for the most part, the mere conjectures or the fictions of subsequent ages ; and even where at first they contained some resemblance of truth, they still vary with the imagination of those by whom they were transmitted, and in every genera- tion receive a different form. They are made to bear the stamp of the times through which they have passed in the form of tradition, not of the ages to which their pretended descriptions relate ............ When traditionary fables are rehearsed by the vulgar, they bear the marks of a national chart c- ter, and though mixed with absurdities, often raise the imagination and more the heart: when made the materials of poetry, and adorned by the skill and the eloquence of an ardent and superior mind, they instruct the understand- ing as well as engage the passions. It is only in the management of mere antiquaries, or stript of the ornaments which the laws of history forbid tben SUBSEQUENT AGE OF INTERPRETATION. 453 The habit of distinguishing the interpreted from the literal mythe has passed from the literary men of antiquity to those of the modern world, who have for the most part construed the divine mythes as allegorized philosophy, and the heroic mythea as exaggerated, adorned, and over-colored history. The early ages of Greece have thus been peopled with quasi-historical per- sons and quasi-historical events, all extracted from the mythes after making certain allowances for poetical ornament But we must not treat this extracted product as if it were the original substance ; we cannot properly understand it except by viewing it in connection with the literal mythes out of which it was ob- tained, in their primitive age and appropriate medium, before the superior minds had yet outgrown the common faith in an all- personified Nature, and learned to restrict the divine free-agency by the supposition of invariable physical laws. It is in this point of view that the mythes are important for any one who would correctly appreciate the general tone of Grecian thought and feeling ; for they were the universal mental stock of the Hellenic world common to men and women, rich and poor, instructed and ignorant ; they were in every one's memory and in every one's mouth, 1 while science and history were confined to corn- to wear, that they become unfit even to amuse the fancy or to serve any purpose whatever. "It -were absurd to quote the fable of the Iliad or the Odyssey, the legend of Hercules, Theseus, and (Edipus, as authorities in matters of fact relating to the history of mankind ; but they may, with great justice, be cited to ascertain what were the conceptions and sentiments of the age in which they were composed, or to characterize the genius of that people with whose imaginations they were blended, and by whom they were fondly rehearsed and admired. In this manner, fiction may be admitted to vouch for tin "enius of nations, while history has nothing to offer worthy of credit" = To the same purpose, M. Paulin Paris (in his Lettre a M. H. de Mon- merqne', prefixed to the Koman de Berte aux Grans Pi&, Paris, 1836), re- specting the"romansof the Middle Ages: P#t)f in. Traitiuv Iv re %6poi( KO! iriarH jyyotyu'voto. etc. The treatise of Lucian, De Saltatione, fo POPULARITY OF GRECIAN MY fAAS. 455 A similar effect was produced by the multiplied religious fes- tivals and processions, as well as by the oracles and prophecies a. curious proof how much these mythes were in every one's memory, and how large the range of knowledge of them was which a good dancer pos- sessed (see particularly c. 76-79. t. ii. p. 308-310, Hemst). Antiphanes ap. Athenae. vi. p. 223 : tflaicapiov EOTLV f/ rpayydia nolrjua Kara ITUVT\ el ye irpurov oi TiCtyoi imb TUV fiearuv elaiv eyvupiffftevoi nplv Kai TIV' EiTrelv wf VTiOfiv^aai ftovov del TOV TtoiTjTrjv. OldiiTovv ~yap ui> ye u, T& cT uA/la Travr' laacriv 6 rraTr)p Aaifof. [tfjTrjp 'loKuarri, tftr/arepef, Traldes rivef Tl 7T(T1?' (WTOf, Tl TTETTOtTJKEV. *Av ITU^IV 'A%.Kfj.aiuva, nal TU rraidia rrjv p.TjTep' 1 ayavaKTuv 6' "Adpaaroc; einJcuf rj^ei, Ttufav (T UTTEIGIV, etc. The first pages of the eleventh Oration of Dia Chrysostom contain some striking passages both as to the universal acquaintance with the mythes, and as to their extreme popularity (Or. xi. p. 307-312, KeiskJ. See also the commencement of Heraklides, De Allegorift Homeric^ (ap. Scriptt. Myth. ed. Gale, p. 408), about the familiarity with Homer. The Lyde of the poet Antimachus was composed for his own consolation under sorrow, by enumerating the 7/puif/ccif ovfiQopus (Plutarch, Consolat. ad Apollon. c. 9. p. 106 : compare .^Eschines cont. Ktesiph. c. 48) : a sepul- chral inscription in Thera, on the untimely death of Admetus, a youth of the heroic gens ^Egidse, makes a touching allusion to his ancestors Peleus and Pheres (Boeckh, C. 1. 1 ii. p. 1087). A curious passage of Aristotle is preserved by Demetrius Phalereus (Hcpi 'EpfiJjveiaf, c. 144), "Oau -yup avrirrif nal fiovuTTjc slfil, fyikopr&oTepos yeyova (compare the passage in the Nikomachean Ethics, i. 9, fiovuTije nal ureKvof). Stahr refers this to a letter of Aristotle written in his old age, the mythes being the consolation of his solitude ("Aristotelia, i. p. 201). For the employment of the mythical names and incidents as topics of pleasing and familiar comparison, see Menander, IIep2 'EmdeiKTiK. IT- capp. 9 and 11, ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett. t. ix. pp. 283-294. The degree in which they passed into the ordinary songs of women is illustrated by a touching epigram contained among the Chian Inscriptions published in Boeckh's Collection (No. 2236) : Btrnj nal Qaivls, i%j] Ttfiepij (?), al avvepr&oi, A.i irevixpal, ypaiai, T7j J Afj.(j>oTepai Kuiai, -xpurai yevo u Upbf ).v%vov Euripid. Hippolyt. 1424 ; Pausan. ii. 32, 1 ; Lucian, De De& Syria, c. 60. vol. iv. p. 287, Tauch. It is curious to see in the account of Pausanias how all the petty peculiar- ities of the objects around became connected with explanatory details grow ing out of this affecting legend. Compare Pansan. i. 22, 2. 4 Pausan. ix. 40, G. * Plutarch, Marcell. c. 20 ; Pausan. ia. 3, 6. TOL. I. 20 458 HISTORY OF GREECE. relics of Epeius and Philoktetes were not wanting, while Strabu raises his voice with indignation against the numerous Palladia which were shown in different cities, each pretending to be the genuine image from Troy. 1 It would be impossible to specify the number of chapels, sanctuaries, solemnities, foundations of one sort or another, said to have been first commenced by heroic or mythical personages, by Herakles, Jason, Medea, Alkmason, Diomedes, Odysseus, Danaus, and his daughters, 2 etc. Perhaps in some of these cases particular critics might raise objections, but the great bulk of the people entertained a firm and undoubted belief in the current legend. If we analyze the intellectual acquisitions of a common Gre- cian townsman, from the rude communities of Arcadia or Phokis even up to the enlightened Athens, we shall find that, over and above the rules of art or capacities requisite for his daily wants, it consisted chiefly of the various mythes connected with his gens, his city, his religious festivals, and the mysteries in which he might have chosen to initiate himself, as well as with the works of art and the more striking natural objects which he might see around him, the whole set off and decorated by some knowl- edge of the epic and dramatic poets. Such was the intellectual and imaginative reach of an ordinary Greek, considered apart from the instructed few : it was an aggregate of religion, of so- cial and patriotic retrospect, and of romantic fancy, blended into one indivisible faith. And thus the subjective value of the mythes, looking at them purely as elements of Grecian thought and feeling, will appear indisputably great, however little there may be of objective reality, either historical or philosophical, discoverable under them. Nor must we omit the incalculable importance of the mythes as stimulants to the imagination of the Grecian artist in sculp- ture, in painting, in carving, and in architecture. From the divine and heroic legends and personages were borrowed those 1 Pausan. viii. 46, 1 ; Diogcn. Laer. viii. 5 ; Strabo, vi. p. 263 ; Appian, Bell. Mithridat. c. 77 ; ^schyl. Eumen. 380. Wachsmuth has collected the numerous citations out of Pausanias on thii subject (Hellenische Altcrthnmskunde, part ii. sect. 115. p. 111). 2 Herodot. ii. 182; Plutarch, Pyrrh. c. 32 ; Schol. Apoll. Khod ir. 1217- Diodor. iv. 56. MYTHES STIMULANTS TO GRECIAN ART. 459 paintings, statues, and reliefs, which rendered the temping, por- ticos, and public buildings, at Athens and elsewhere, objects of surpassing admiration ; and such visible reproduction contributed again to fix the types of the gods and heroes familiarly and in- delibly on the public mind. 1 The figures delineated on cups and vases, as well as on the walls of private houses, were chiefly drawn from the same source the mythes being the great store- house of artistic scenes and composition. To enlarge on the characteristic excellence of Grecian art would here be out of place : I regard it only in so far as, having originally drawn its materials from the mythes, it reacted upon the mythical faith and imagination the reaction imparting strength to the former as well as distinctness to the latter. To one who saw constantly before him representations of the battles of the Centaurs or the Amazons, 2 of the exploits performed by Perseus and Bellerophon, of the incidents composing the Trojan war or the Kalydonian boar-hunt the process of belief, even in the more fantastic of these conceptions, became easy in pro- portion as the conception was familiarized. And if any person had been slow to believe in the efficacy of the prayers of JEa- kus, whereby that devout hero once obtained special relief from Zeus, at a moment when Greece was perishing with long-con- tinued sterility, his doubts would probably vanish when, on visit- ing the .ZEakeium at JEgina, there were exhibited to him the statues of the very envoys who had come on the behalf of the distressed Greeks to solicit that .ZEakus would pray for them. 3 A Grecian temple 4 was not simply a place of worship, but the actual dwelling-place of a god, who was believed to be introduced by the solemn dedicatory ceremony, and whom the imagination of the people identified in the most intimate manner with his apeTais, the subjects of the works of Polygnotus at Athens (Melanthius ap. Plutarch. Cimon. c. 4) : compare Theocrit. xv. 138. 3 The Centauromachia and the Amazonomachia are constantly associated together in the ancient Grecian reliefs (see the Expedition Scientifique de More'e, t. ii. p. 16, in the explanation of the temple of Apollo Epikureius at Phigaleia) . 3 Pausan. ii. 29, 6. * Ernst Curtius, Die Akropolis von Athen, Berlin, 1844, p. 18. Arnobim a.! Gentes, vi. p 203, ed. Elmenhorst. GREECE. statue. The presence or removal of the statue was conceived ae identical with that of the being represented, and while the statue was solemnly washed, dressed, and tended with all the re- spectful solicitude which would have been bestowed upon a real person, 1 miraculous tales were often rife respecting the manifesta- tion of real internal feeling in the wood and the marble. At perilous or critical moments, the statue was affirmed to have sweated, to have wept, to have closed its eyes, or brandished the spear in its hands, in token of sympathy or indignation. 2 Such legends, springing up usually in times of suffering and danger, and finding few men bold enough openly to contradict them, ran in complete harmony with the general mythical faith, and tended 1 See the case of the JEginetans lending the ./Eakids for a time to tho Thebans ("Ilerodot. v. 80), who soon, however, returned them : likewise send- ing the ^Eakids to the battle of Salamis (viii. 64-80). The Spartans, when they decreed that only one of their two kings should be out on military service, decreed at the same time that only one of the Tyndarids should go out with them (v. 75) : they once lent the Tyndarids as aids to the envoys of Epizephyrian Locri, who prepared for them a couch on board their ship (Diodor. Excerpt, xvi. p. 15, Dindorf_). The Thebans grant their hero Melanippus to Kleisthenes of Sikyon (V. 68). What was sent, must proba- bly have been a consecrated copy of the genuine statue. Respecting the solemnities practised towards the statues, see Plutarch, Alkibiad. 34 ; Kallimach. Hymn, ad Lavacr. Palladis, init. with the note of Spanheim ; K. 0. Mailer, Archaeologie der Kunst, 69 ; compare Plutarch, Question. Romaic. 61. p. 279; and Tacit. Mor. Germ. c. 40; Diodor. xvii. 49. The manner in which the real presence of a hero was identified with hia statue (rbv Siicaiov del &ebv O'IKOL fteveiv au^ovra rot)f idpv/j.vov. Mcnan- der, Fragm. 'Hvioxof, p. 71, Meineke), consecrated ground, and oracle, is nowhere more powerfully attested than in the Herofca of Philostratus (capp. 2-20. pp. 674-692; also De Vit Apollon. Tyan. iv. 11), respecting Protesi- laus at ElaMis, Ajax at the Aianteium, and Hector at Ilium : Protesilaus appeared exactly in the equipment of his statue, xXajtfda iv^irrat, n>e, rbv QeTToXiKov rpoTrov, uairep Kal rb uyafywz TOVTO (p. 674). The presence and sympathy of the hero Lykus is essential to the satisfaction of the Athe- nian dikasts (Aristophan. Vesp. 389-820) : the fragment of Lucilius, quoted by Lactantius, De Falsa Religione (i. 22), is curious. Toif fjpuai role /card TJ)V TTofav Kal TTJV cjpai> 16 pvfievoif (Lycurgus cont. Leocrat. c. 1 ). * Plutarch, Timoleon, c. 12; Strabo, vi. p. 264. Theophrastus treats tha perspiration as a natural phenomenon in the statues made of cedar-wood (Histor. Plant, v. 10). Plutarch discusses the credibility of this sort of miracles in his Life of Coriolanus, c. 37-38. ANCIENT AND MODERN MYTHICAL VEEN- 46i to strengthen it in all its various ramifications. The renewed activity of the god or hero both brought to mind and accredited the preexisting mythes connected with his name. When Boreas, during the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, and in compliance with the fervent prayers of the Athenians, had sent forth a provi- dential storm, to the irreparable damage of the Persian armada, 1 the sceptical minority (alluded to by Plato), who doubted the mythe of Boreas and Oreithyia, and his close connection thus ac quired with Erechtheus, and the Erechtheids generally, must for the time have been reduced to absolute silence. CHAPTER XVII. THE GRECIAN MYTHICAL VEIN COMPARED WITH THAT OF MODERN EUROPE. I HAVE already remarked that the existence of that popular narrative talk, which the Germans express by the significant word Sage or Volks-Sage, in a greater or less degree of perfection or development, is a phenomenon common to almost all stages of society and to almost all quarters of the globe. It is the natural effusion of the unlettered, imaginative, and believing man, and its maximum of influence belongs to an early state of the human mind ; for the multiplication of recorded facts, the diffu- sion of positive science, and the formation of a critical standard of belief, tend to discredit its dignity and to repress its easy and 1 Herodot. vii. 189. Compare the gratitude of the Megalopolitans to Boreas for having preserved them from the attack of the Lacedaemonian king Agis (Pausan. viii. 27, 4. viii. 36, 4). When the Ten Thousand Greeks were on their retreat through the cold mountains of Armenia, Boreas blew in their faces, " parching and freezing intolerably." One of the prophets recommended that a sacrifice should be offered to him, which was done, " and the painful effect of the wind appeared to every one forthwith to cease in a marked manner;" (nal TTUOI 6fi nepi^avu; edo^e XT/^GI rd fafairbv roi icvEvnaTo<;. Xenoph. Anab. iv. 5, 3.) 4C2 HISTORY OF GREECE. abundant flow. It supplies to the poet both materials to reoom- bine and adorn, and a basis as well as a stimulus for further in ventions of his own ; and this at a time when the poet is religioua teacher, historian, and philosopher, all in one, not, as he be- comes at a more advanced period, the mere purveyor of avowed, though interesting, fiction. Such popular stories, and such historical songs (meaning by historical, simply that which is accepted as history) are found in most quarters of the globe, and especially among the Teutonic and Celtic populations of early Europe. The old Gothic songs were cast into a continuous history by the historian Ablavius ;! and the poems of the Germans respecting Tuisto the earth-born god, his son Mannus, and his descendants the eponyms of the va- rious German tribes, 2 as they are briefly described by Tacitus, remind us of Hesiod, or Eumelus, or the Homeric Hymns. Jacob Grimm, in his learned and valuable Deutsche Mythologie, lias exhibited copious evidence of the great fundamental analogy, along with many special differences, between the German, Scan- dinavian, and Grecian mythical world ; and the Dissertation of Mr. Price (prefixed to his edition of Warton's History of En glish Poetry) sustains and illustrates Grimm's view. The same personifying imagination the same ever-present conception of the will, sympathies, and antipathies of the gods as the producing c.auses of phenomena, and as distinguished from a course of na- ture with its invariable sequence the same relations between gods, heroes, and men, with the like difficulty of discriminating the one from the other in many individual names a similar wholesale transfer of human attributes to the gods, with the ab- sence of human limits and liabilities a like belief in Nymphs, Giants, and other beings, neither gods nor men the same co- alescence of the religious with the patriotic feeling and faith these are positive features common to the early Greeks with the early Germans : and the negative conditions of the two 1 Jornandes, De Reb. Geticis, c.app. 4-6. z Tacit. Mor. German, c. 2. " Celebrant carminibus antiquis, quod unum npud cos memorise et annalium genus est, Tuistonem Deum terri editum, et filium Mannum, originem gentis conditoresque. Quidam licentki vetustatia, plnres Deo ortos, pluresque gentis appellationes, Marsos, Gambrivios, Sa* TOB. Vandaliosque affirmant : eaquo vera et antiqua nomina." MYTIIES AMONG THE EARLY GERMANS. 463 we not less analogous the absence of prose writing, positive/ records, and scientific culture. The preliminary basis and encouragements for the mythopceic faculty were thus extremely similar. But though the prolific forces were the same in kind, the re- sults were very different in degree, and the developing circum- stances were more different still. First, the abundance, the beauty, and the long continuance of early Grecian poetry, in the purely poetical age, is a phasnome- non which has no parallel elsewhere. Secondly, the transition of the Greek mind from its poetical to its comparatively positive state was self-operated, accomplished by its own inherent and expansive force aided indeed, but by no means either impressed or provoked, from without. From the poetry of Homer, to the history of Thucydides and the philoso- phy of Plato and Aristotle, was a prodigious step, but it was the native growth of the Hellenic youth into an Hellenic man ; and what is of still greater moment, it was brought about without breaking the thread either of religious or patriotic tradition without any coercive innovation or violent change in the mental feelings. The legendary world, though the ethical judgments and rational criticisms of superior men had outgrown it, still retained its hold upon their feelings as an object of affectionate and reve- rential retrospect. Far different from this was the development of the early Ger- mans. "We know little about their early poetry, but we shall run no risk of error in affirming that they had nothing to compare with either Iliad or Odyssey. Whether, if left to themselves, they would have possessed sufficient progressive power to make a step similar to that of the Greeks, is a question which we cannot answer. Their condition, mental as well as political, was violently changed by a foreign action from without. The in- fluence of the Roman empire introduced artificially among them new institutions, new opinions, habits, and luxuries, and, above all, a new religion; the Romanized Germans becoming them- selves successively the instruments of this revolution with regard to such of their brethren as still remained heathen. It was a revolution often brought about by penal and coercive means : th 464 HISTORY OP GREECE. old gods Thor and Woden were formally deposed and renounce^ their images were crumbled into dust, and the sacred oaks of worship and prophecy hewn down. But even where conver- sion was the fruit of preaching and persuasion, it did not the less Dreak up all the associations of a German with respect to that mythical world which he called his past, and of wMch the ancient gods constituted both the charm and the sanctity : he had now only the alternative of treating them either as men or as daemons. 1 That mixed religious and patriotic retrospect, formed by the coalescence of piety with ancestral feeling, which constituted the appropriate sentiment both of Greeks and of Germans towards their unrecorded antiquity, was among the latter banished by Christianity: and while the root of the old mythes was thus cankered, the commemorative ceremonies and customs with which they were connected, either lost their consecrated character or disappeared altogether. Moreover, new influences of great im- portance were at the same time brought to bear. The Latin language, together with some tinge of Latin literature the habit of writing and of recording present events the idea of a sys- tematic law and pacific adjudication of disputes, all these form ed a part of the general working of Roman civilization, even after the decline of the Koman empire, upon the Teutonic and Celtic 1 On the hostile influence exercised by the change of religion on the old Scandinavian poetry, see an interesting article of Jacob Grimm in the Got- tingen Gclehrte Anzeigen, Feb. 1830, pp. 268-273 ; a review of Olaf Tryggv- son's Saga. The article Helden, in his Deutsche Mythologie, is also full of instruction on the same subject: see also the Einleitung to the book, p. 11, 2nd edition. A similar observation has been made with respect to the old mythes of the pagan Russians by Eichhoff : " L'etablissement du Christianisme, ce gage du bonheur dcs nations, fut vivement apprecie par les Rosses, qui dans leur jaste reconnaissance, le personnifierent dans un he'ros. Vladimir le Grand, ami des arts, protecteur de la religion qu'il prot^gea, et dont les fruits firent oublier les fautes, devint 1'Arthus et le Charlemagne de la Rus- sie, et sea hauls faits furent un mythe national qui domina tons ceux da paganisme. Autour de lui se groupercnt ces gnerriers aux formes athle'ti- ques, an cceur gcne'reux, dont la poesie aime a entourer le berceau mysteri- eux dcs peuples : et les exploits du vaillant Dobrinia, de Rogdai, d'llia, de Curilo, animerent les ballades nationales. et vivent encore dans de nalft r<$cits." (Eichhoff, Histoire do la Langue et Littdrature des Slaves, Paris, 1839, part iii. ch. 2. p. 190.) SArtLY GERMAN GENEALOGIES TO ODIN. 465 tribes. A class of specially-educated men was formed, upon a Latin basis and upon Christian principles, consisting too almost entirely of priests, who were opposed, as well by motives of rival- ry as by religious feeling, to the ancient bards and storytellers of the community : the " lettered men" 1 were constituted apart from " the men of story," and Latin literature contributed along with religion to sink the mythes of untaught heathenism. Charle- magne, indeed, at the same time that he employed aggressive and violent proceedings to introduce Christianity among the Saxons, also took special care to commit to writing and preserve the old heathen songs. But there can be little doubt that this step was the suggestion of a large and enlightened understanding peculiar to himself. The disposition general among lettered Christiana of that age is more accurately represented by his son Louis le Debonnaire, who, having learned these songs as a boy, came to abhor them when he arrived at mature years, and could never be induced either to repeat or tolerate them. 2 According to the old heathen faith, the pedigree of the Saxon, Anglian, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish kings, probably also those of the German and Scandinavian kings generally, was traced to Odin, or to some of his immediate companions or heroic sons. 3 I have already observed that the value of these genealo- 1 This distinction is curiously brought to view by Saxo Grammaticus, where he says of an Englishman named Lucas, that he was " literis quidem tenuiter instructus, sed historiarum scientia apprime eruditus" (p. 330, apud Dahlmann's Historische Forschungen, vol. i. p. 176). 2 " Barbara et antiquissima carmina (says Eginhart, in his Life of Charle- magne), quibus veterum regum actus et bella canebantur, conscripsit." Theganus says of Louis le Debonnaire, " Poetica carmina gentilia, qul" in juventute didicerat, respuit, nee legere, nee audire, nee docere, voluif (De Gestis Ludovici Imperatoris ap. Pithceum, p. 304, c. xix.) 3 See Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie, art. Helden, p. 356, 2nd edit. Her, gist and Horsa were fourth in descent from Odin (Venerable Bede, Hist i 15). Thiodolff, the Scald of Harold Haarfager king of Norway, traced the pedigree of his sovereign through thirty generations to Yngarfrey, the son of Niord, companion of Odin at Upsal ; the kings of Upsal were called Yng- linger, and the song of Thiodolff, Ynglingatal (Dahlmann, Histor. Forschung, i. p. 379). Eyvind, another Scald, a century afterwards, deduced the pedi- gree of Jarl Hacon from Saming, son of Yngwifrey (p. 381). Are Frode, the Icelandic historian, carried up his own genealogy through thirty-six generations to Yngwe ; a genealogy which Torfao* Accepts as trustworthy VOL. i. 20* 30oc. 466 HISTORY OF GREECE. gies consisted not so much in their length, as in the revereuea attached to the name serving as primitive source. After the worship attached to Odin had been extinguished, the genealogi- cal line was lengthened up to Japhet or Noah, and Odin, no longer accounted worthy to stand at the top, was degraded into one of the simple human members of it. 1 And Ave find this alteration of the original mythical genealogies to have taken place even among the Scandinavians, although the introduction of Christianity was in those parts both longer deferred, so as to opposing it to the line of kings given by Saxo Grammaticus (p. 352). Tor- faeus makes Harold Haarfagcr a descendant from Odin through twenty-seven generations ; Alfred of England through twenty-three generations ; Offa of Mercia through fifteen (p. 362). See also the translation by Lange of P. A. Miiller's Saga Bibliothek, Introd. p. xxviii. and the genealogical tables pre- fixed to Snorro Sturlcson's Edda. Mr. Sharon Turner conceives the human existence of Odin to be distinct- ly proved, seemingly upon the same evidence as Euemcrus believed in tho human existence of Zens (History of the Anglo-Saxons, Appendix to b. ii. ch. 3. p. 219, 5th edit). 1 Dahlmann, Histor. Forschnng. t. i. p. C"X). There is a valuable article on this subject in the Zeitschrift fur Geschichts Wissenschaft (Berlin, vol. i. pp. 237-282) by Stuhr, " Uber einige Hauptfragen des Nordischen Alterthums," wherein the writer illustrates both the strong motive and the effective ten- dency, on the part of the Christian clergy who had to deal with these newly- converted Teutonic pagans, to Euemerize the old gods, and to represent a genealogy, which they were unable to efface from men's minds, as if it con sisted only of mere men. Mr. John Kemble (Uber die Stammtafel der "Westsachsen, ap. Stuhr, p. 254) remarks, that " nobilitas," among that people, consisted in descent fro re Odin and the other gods. Colonel Sleeman also deals in the same manner with the religious legends of the Hindoos, so natural is the proceeding of Euemerus, towards any religion in which a critic does not believe : " They (the Hindoos) of course think that the incarnation of their three great divinities were beings infinitely superior to prophets, being in all their attributes and prerogatives equal to the divinities themselves. But we are disposed to think that these incarnations were nothing more than great men whom thsir flatterers and poets have exalted into gods, this was tfie way in which men made their gods in ancient Greece and Egypt. All that the poets have sung of the actions of these men is now received as revelation from heaven: though nothing can be more monstrous than the actions ascribed to tho best Incarnation, Krishna, of the best of the gods, Vishnoo." (Sleeman, Ramble* and Recollections of an Indian Official, vol. i. ch. viii. 61.) SCANDINAVIAN SCALDS. 467 leave time for a more ample development of the heathen poetical vein and seems to have created a less decided feeling of anti pathy (especially in Iceland) towards the extinct faith. 1 The poems and tales composing the Edda, though first committed to writing after the period of Christianity, do not present the ancient gods in a point of view intentionally odious or degrading. The transposition above alluded to, of the genealogical root from Odin to Noah, is the more worthy of notice, as it illustrates the genuine character of these genealogies, and shows that they sprung, not from any erroneous historical data, but from the turn of the religious feeling; also that their true value is derived from their being taken entire, as connecting the existing race of men with a divine original. If we could imagine that Grecian paganism had been superseded by Christianity in the year 500 B.C., the great and venerated gentile genealogies of Greece would have undergone the like modification ; the Herakleids, Pelopids, jEakids, Asklepiads, &c., would have been merged in some larger aggregate brandling out from the archaeology of the Old Testa- ment. The old heroic legends connected with these ancestral names would either have been forgotten, or so transformed as to suit the new vein of thought; for the altered worship, ceremo- nies, and customs would have been altogether at variance with them, and the mythical feeling would have ceased to dwell upon those to whom prayers were no longer offered. If the oak of Dodona had been cut down, or the Theoric ship had ceased to be sent from Athens to Delos, the mythes of Theseus and of the two black doves would have lost their pertinence, and died away. As it was, the change from Homer to Thucydides and Aristotle took place internally, gradually, and imperceptibly. Philosophy and history were superinduced in the minds of the superior few. but the feelings of the general public continued unshaken the sa- cred objects remained the same both to the eye and to the heart 1 See P. E. Miiller, Uber den Ursprung und Vcrfall der Islandischen Historiographie, p. 63. In the Leitfaden zur Nordischen Alterthumskunde, pp. 4-5 ( Copenhagen, 1837), is an instructive summary of the different schemes of interpretation applied to the northern mythes: 1, the historical; 2, the geographical; 3 the astronomical ; 4, the physical >, the allegorical, 468 mSTORY OF GREECE and the worship of the ancient gods was even adorned by new architects and sculptors who greatly strengthened its imposing effect. While then in Greece the mythopoeic stream continued in the same course, only with abated current and influence, in modern Europe its ancient bed was blocked up, and it was turned into new and divided channels. The old religion though as an as- cendent faith, unanimously and publicly manifested, it became extinct still continued in detached scraps and fragments, and under various alterations of name and form. The heathen gods and goddesses, deprived as they were of divinity, did not pass out of the recollection and fears of their former worshippers, but were sometimes represented (on principles like those of Eueme- rus) as having been eminent and glorious men sometimes de- graded into daemons, magicians, elfs, fairies, and other supernatural agents, of an inferior grade and generally mischievous cast. Christian writers, such as Saxo Grammaticus and Snorro Stur- leson, committed to writing the ancient oral songs of the Scandiv- ian Scalds, and digested the events contained in them into contin- uous narrative performing in this respect a task similar to that of the Grecian logographers Pherekydes and Hellanikus, in reference to Hesiod and the Cyclic poets. But while Pherekydes and Hellanikus compiled under the influence of feelings substan- tially the same as those of the poeis on whom they bestowed their care, the Christian logographers felt it their duty to point out the Odin and Thor of the old Scalds as evil daemons, or cunning enchanters, who had fascinated the minds of men into a false belief in their divinity. 1 In some cases, the heathen recitals and ideas 1 Interea tamen homines Christiani in numina non credant ethnica, nee alitcr fidem narrationibus hisce adstruere vel adhibere debent, quam in libri hujus prooemio monitum est de causis et occasionibus cur et quomodo genu3 humanum a vef fide aberraverit." (Extract from the Prose Edda, p. 75, in the Lexicon Mythologicum ad calcem Eddae Ssemund. vol. iii. p. 357, Co- penliag. edit.) A similar warning is to be found in another passage cited by P. E. Miiller Tiber den Ursprung und V^rfall der Islandischen Historiographie, p. 138 Copenhagen, 1813 ; compare the Prologue to the Prose Edda, p. 6, and Mal- let, Introduction a 1'Histoire de Dannemarc, ch. vii. pp. 114-132. Saxo Grammaticus represents Odin sometimes as a magician, sometimes U an evil daemon, sometimes as a high priest or pontiff of heathenism, who LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS. 469 were modified so as to suit Christian feeling. But when preserved without such a change, they exhibited themselves palpably, and were designated by their compilers, as at variance with the reli- gious belief of the people, and as associated either with impos- ture or with evil spirits. A new vein of sentiment had arisen in Europe, unsuitable in- deed to the old mythes, yet leaving still in force the demand for mythical narrative generally. And this demand was satisfied, speaking generally, by two classes of narratives, the legends of ths Catholic Saints and the Romances of Chivalry, corre- sponding to two types of character, both perfectly accommodated to the feelings of the time, the saintly ideal and the chivalrous ideal. Both these two classes of narrative correspond, in character as- well as in general purpose, to the Grecian mythes being sto- ries accepted as realities, from their full conformity with the pre- dispositions and deep-seated faith of an uncritical audience, and prepared beforehand by their authors, not with any reference to imposed so powerfully upon the people around him as to receive divine hon- ors. Thor also is treated as having been an evil daemon. (See Lexicon Mythologic. ut supra, pp. 567, 915.) Respecting the function of Snorro as logographer, see Prsefat. ad Eddam, at supra, p. xi. He is much more faithful, and less unfriendly to the old re- ligion, than the other logographers of the ancient Scandinavian Sagas. (Leit- faden der Nordischen Alterthiimer, p. 14, by the Antiquarian Society of Copenhagen, 1837.) By a singular transformation, dependent upon the same tone of mind, the authors of the French Chansons de Geste, in the twelfth century, turned Apollo into an evil dastnon, patron of the Mussulmans (see the Roman of Garin le Loherain, par M. Paulin Paris, 1833, p. 31 ) : " Car mieux vaut Diex que ne fait Apollis." M. Paris observes, " Get ancien Dieu des beaux arts est 1'un des demons le plus souvent de'signe's dans nos poOmes, comme patron des Musulmans." The prophet Mahomet, too, anathematized the old Persian epic anterior to his religion. " C'est a 1'occasion de Naser Ibn al-Hareth, qui avait apporte' de Perse PHistoire de Rustem et d'Isfendiar, et la faisait reciter par des chan- teuses dans les assemblies des Koreischites, que Mahomet pronon^a le vera iuivant (of the Koran): II y a des hommes qui achetent des contes frivoles, pour detourner par-la les hommes dc la voie de Dien, d'une maniereinsensee, et pour la livrer a la rise'e : mais leur punit.on les couvrira de honte.' (Mohl, Preface au Livre dea Rois deFsrdoasi, p. xiii.) 470 HISTORY OF GREECE. the conditions of historical proof, but for the purpose of callin forth sympathy, emotion, or reverence. The type of the saintly character belongs to Christianity, being the history of Jesui Christ as described in the gospels, and that of the prophets in the Old Testament ; whilst the lives of holy men, who acquired a religious reputation from the fourth to the fourteenth century of the Christian rcra, were invested with attributes, and illustrated witli ample details, tending to assimilate them to this revered model. The numerous miracles, the cure of diseases, the expul- sion of daemons, the temptations and sufferings, the teachings and commands, with which the biography of Catholic saints abounds, grew chiefly out of this pious feeling, common to the writer and to his readers. Many of the other incidents, recounted in the same performances, take their rise from misinterpreted al- legories, from ceremonies and customs of which it was pleasing to find a consecrated origin, or from the disposition to convert the etymology of a name into matter of history : many have also been suggested by local peculiarities, and by the desire of stimulating or justifying the devotional emotions of pilgrims who visited some consecrated chapel or image. The dove was connected, in the faith of the age, with the Holy Ghost, the serpent with Satan ; lions, wolves, stags, unicorns, etc. were the subjects of other em- blematic associations ; and such modes of belief found expression for themselves in many narratives which brought the saints into conflict or conjoint action with these various animals. Legends of this kind, so indefinitely multiplied and so preeminently pop- ular and affecting, in the Middle Ages, are not exaggerations of particular matters of fact, but emanations in detail of some cur- rent faith or feeling, which they served to satisfy, and by which they were in turn amply sustained and accredited. 1 1 The legends of the Saints have been touched upon by M. Guizot (Cours d'Histoire Modcrne, le<;on xvii.) and by M. Ampere (Histoirc'Littcraire de la France, t. ii. cap. 14, 15, 16) ; but a far more copious and elaborate account of them, coupled with much just criticism, is to be found in the valuable Essai sur les Le'gendes Pieuses du Moycn Age, par L. F. Alfred Maurr, Paris, 1843. M. Guizot scarcely adverts at all to the more or less of matter of fact con tained in these biographies : he regards them altogether as they grew out of *nd answered to the predominant emotions and mental exigences of the age : ' Au milieu d'un celuge de faMcs absurdes, la morale delate avcc un grno^ LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS. 471 Every reader of Pausanias will recognize the great general analogy between the stories recounted to him at the temples which he visited, and these legends of the Middle Ages. Though the type of character which the latter illustrate is indeed mate- rially different, yet the source as well as the circulation, the gen- erating as well as the sustaining forces, were in both cases the same. Such legends were the natural growth of a religious faith, empire " (p. 159, ed. 1829). " Les le'gendes ont etc pour les Chretiens de ce temps (qu'on me permette cette comparaison purement litteraire) ce que sont pour les Oricntaux ces longs re'eits, ces histoires si brillantes et si variees, ilont les Mille et une Nuits nous donnent un <:chantillon. C'e'tait Ik que I'imagination populaire errait librement dans un monde inconnu, merveil- leux, plein de mouvement et de poe'sie" (p. 175, ibid). M. Guizot takes his comparison with the tales of the Arabian Nights, as heard by an Oriental with uninquiring and unsuspicious credence. Viewed with reference to an instructed European, who reads these narratives as pleasing but recognized fiction, the comparison would not be just ; for no one in that age dreamed of questioning the truth of the biographies. All the remarks of M. Guizot assume this implicit faith in them as literal histories : perhaps, in estimating the feelings to which they owed their extraordinary popularity, he allows too little predominance to the religious feeling, and too onuch influence to other mental exigences which then went along with it ; oiore especially as he remarks, in the preceding lecture (p. 116), "Le carac- \:ere ge'ne'ral de 1'epoque cst la concentration du de'veloppement intellectuel dans la sphere religicuse." How this absorbing religious sentiment operated in generating and accred- iting new matter of narrative, is shown with great fulness of detail in tho work of M. Maury : " Tous les ecrits du moyen age nous apportent la preuve de cette preoccupation exclusive des esprits vers 1'Histoire Sainte et les prodiges qui avaient signale 1'avenement du Christianisme. Tous nous montrent la pensee dc Dieu et du Ciel, dominant les moindres ceuvres de cette epoque de nafve et de cre'dule simplicite. D'ailleurs, n'etaite-ce pas le moine, le clerc, qui constituaient alors les seuls ecrivains? Qu'y a-t-il d'etonnant que le sujet habituel de leurs meditations, de leurs e'tudes, se refletat sans cesse dans leurs ouvrages T Partout reparaissait a I'imagination Je'sus et ses Saints : cette image, 1'esprit Paccueillait avec soumission et obeissance : il n'osait pas encore envisager ces celestes pensees avec 1'ceil de la critique, armc de de'fiance et de doute ; au contraire, 1'intelligence les acceptait toutes indistinctement et s'en nourrissait avec avidite. Ainsi s'ac- cre'ditaient tous les jours de nouvelles fables. Unefoi vice veut sans cesse de nouveaux fails qu'elle puisse croire, comme la charite veut de nouveaux bien- faits pours s'exercer" (p. 43). The remarks on the History of St. Christo- pher, whose perse nality was allegorized by '*ithcr and Melanclhon, ai curious Cp. 57). 472 HISTORY OF GREECE. earnest, unexamining, and irterwoven with the feelings at a time when the reason does not need to be cheated. The lives of the Saints bring us even back to the simple and ever-operative theo logy of the Homeric age ; so constantly is the hand of God ex hibited even in the minutest details, for the succor of a favored individual, so completely is the scientific point of view, re- specting the phenomena of nature, absorbed into the religious. 1 During the intellectual vigor of Greece and Rome, a sense of the invariable course of nature and of the scientific explanation of phenomena had been created among the superior minds, and through them indirectly among the remaining community ; thus limiting to a certain extent the ground open to be occupied by a religious legend. With the decline of the pagan literature and philosophy, before the sixth century of the Christian aera, this scientific conception gradually passed out of sight, and left the mind free to a religious interpretation of nature not less simple and naif than that which had prevailed under the Homeric pa- ganism. 2 The great religious movement of the Reformation, and 1 " Dans les prodigcs que Ton admettait avoir d& ndcessairement s'opcrcr au tombeatf du saint nouvellement canonise, 1'expression, ' Caeci visum, claudi gressum, muti loquelam, surdi auditum, paralytici debitum membro rum officium, recuperabant,' ctait devenue plfttot une formule d r usage que la relation litte'rale du fait." (Maury, Essai sur les Legendes Pieuses dt Moyen Age, p. 5.) To the same purpose M. Ampere, ch. 14. p. 361 : " II y a un certain nom- bre de fails que 1'agiographie reproduit constamment, quelque soit son heros : ordinairement ce persounage a eu dans sa jeunesse une vision qui lui a revele son avenir : ou bicn, une prophetic lui a annonce ce qu'il serait un jour. Plus tard, il opere un certain nombre de miracles, toujours lea memes; il exorcise des possedes, ressuscite des morts, il est avcrti de sa fia par un songe. Puis sur son tombeau s'accomplissent d'autres merveilles a-peu-pres semblables." 2 A few words from M. Ampere to illustrate this : " C'est done au sixieme siecle qne la legende se constitue : c'est alors qaelle prend completemcnt le caractere na'i'f qui lui appartient : qu'elle est elle-meme, qu'elle se separe de toute influence etrangere. En meme temps, 1'ignorance devient de plus en . plus grossiere, et par suite la credulite s'accroit : les calamites du temps sent plus lourdes, et 1'on a un plus grand besoin de remedc et de consolation Les re'cits miraculeux se substituent aux argumcns de la the'ologie. Les miracles sont devenus la meilleure demonstration du Christianisme c'est la seule que puissent comprendre les esprits grossiers des barbares " (c, 15. p. 373). Again, c. 17. p 401 : " Un des caracteres de la legende est de meler con LEGENDS OF THE SAINTS. 47J the gradual formation: of critical and philosophical habits in the modern mind, have caused these legends of the Saints, once stammcnt le pueril au grand : il faut 1'avouer, elle defigure parfois un peu ces homines d'une trempe si forte, en mettant sur leur compte des anecdotes dont le caractere n'est pas toujours se'rieux ; elle en a use ainsi pour St. Columban, dont nous verrons tout a 1'heure le role vis-a-vis de Brunehaut et des chefs Merovingiens. La le'gende auroit pu so dispenser de nous apprendre, comment un jour, il se fit rapporter par un corbeau les ganta qu'il avait perdus : comment, un autre jour, il empecha la biere de couler d'un tonneau perce, et diverses merveilles, certainement indignes de sa memoire." The miracle by which St. Columban employed the raven to fetch back his lost gloves, is exactly in the character of the Homeric and Hesiodic age : the earnest faith, as well as the reverential sympathy, between the Homeric man and Zeus or Athene, is indicated by the invocation of their aid for nm own sufferings of detail, and in his own need and danger. The criticism of M. Ampere, on the other hand, is analogous to that of the later pagans, after the conception of a course of nature had become established in men's minds, so far as that exceptional interference by the gods was understood to be, comparatively speaking, rare, and only supposable upon what were called great emergences. In the old Hesiodic legend (see above, ch. ix. p. 245}, Apollo is apprized by a raven of the infidelity of the nymph Koronis to him TU [lev up uyye- 3of Tj7.de Kopa^, etc. (the raven appears elsewhere as companion of Apollo, Plutarch, de Isid. et Os. p. 379, Herod, iv. 15.) Pindar, in his version of th legend, eliminated the raven, without specifying how Apollo got his knowl edge of the circumstance. The Scholiasts praise Pindar much for having rejected the puerile version of the story l-iraivel rbv Hivdapov 6 'Aprfpuv OTL TtapaKpovaufievoc TTJV Trepl rbv Kooaxa IttTOpiav, avrbv <5i' iavrov h/vune- vai (pijai rbv 'A.irc/A?M xaipstv ovv iuaag r> TOIOVTU /ivdp r i /I e u (, OVT i TiTj p u6 e i, etc. compare also the criticisms of the Schol. ad Soph. CEdip. Kol. 1378, on the old epic ThcbaYs ; and the remarks of Arrian (Exp. Al. iii. 4) on the divine interference by which Alexander and his army were enabled to find their way across the sand of the desert to the temple of Ammon. In the eyes of M. Ampere, the recital of the biographer of St. Columban appears puerile (ov-u I6ov uSe tieovf uvuav6a QifavvTaf, Odyss. iii. 221); in the eyes of that biographer, the criticism of M. Ampere would have ap- peared impious. When it is once conceded that phenomena are distributa ble under two denominations, the natural and the miraculous, it must be left to the feelings of each individual to determine what is and what is not, a suitable occasion for a miracle. Diodorus and Pausanias differed in opinion (as stated in a previous chapter) about the death of Actaeon by his own bounds, the former maintaining that the case was one fit for the speciaj intervention of the goddess Artemis; the latter, that it was not so. Th 474 HISTORY OP GREECE. the charm and cherished creed of a numerous public, 1 to pass altogether out of credit, without even being regarded, among Protestants at least, as worthy of a formal scrutiny into the evi- dence, a proof of the transitory value of public belief, how- ever sincere and fervent, as a certificate of historical truth, if it be blended with religious predispositions. question is one dcterminable only by the religious feelings and conscience of the two dissentients: no common standard of judgment can be imposed upon them ; for no reasonings derived from science or philosophy are available, inas- much as in this case the very point in dispute is, whether the scientific point of view be admissible. Those who are disposed to adopt the supernatural belief, will find in every case the language open to them wherewith Diony- sius of Halicarnassus (in recounting a miracle wrought by Vesta, in the early times of Roman history, for the purpose of rescuing an unjustly accused virgin) reproves the sceptics of his time: "It is well worth while (he observes) to recount the special manifestation (eTrupaveiav) which the goddess showed to these unjustly accused virgins. For these circumstances, extraordinary as they are, have been held worthy of belief by the Romans, and historians have talked much about them. Those persons, indeed, who ndopt the atheistical schemes of philosophy (if, indeed, we must call them philosophy), pulling in pieces as they do all the special manifestions (dTracraf Aiaavpovres TUS txiyavs'iaf ruv -&EUV} of the gods which have taken place among Greeks or barbarians, will of course turn these stories also into ridi oule, ascribing them to the vain talk of men, as if none of the gods cared at all for mankind. But those who, having pushed their researches farther, believe the gods not to be indifferent to human affairs, but favorable to good men and hostile to bad will not treat these special manifestations as more incredible than others." (Dionys. Halic. ii. 68-69.) Plutarch, after noticing the great number of miraculous statements in circulation, expresses his anxiety to draw a line between the true and the false, but cannot find where: "excess, both of credulity and of incredulity (he tells us) in such matters is dangerous ; caution, and nothing too much, is the best course." CCamillus, c. 6.) Polybius is for granting permission to historians to recount a sufficient number of miracles to keep up a feeling of piety in the multi tude, but not more : to measure out the proper quantity (Tie observes) is difficult, but not impossible (Juajra/juypa^of ianv ij iroaorrif, ov ^v inrapd- ypafioe -ye, xvi. 12). 1 The great Bollandist collection of the Lives of the Saints, intended to comprise the whole year, did not extend beyond the nine months from January to October, which occupy fifty-three large volumes. The month of April fills three of those volumes, and exhibits the lives of 1472 saints Had the collection run over the entire year, the total number of such biog raphies could hardly have been less than 25,000, and might have been even greater (see Guizot, Cours d'Histoirc Modcrne, leqon xvii. p. 1571 LEGENDS OF CHIVALRY. 475 The same mythopoeic vein, and the same susceptibility and facility of belief, which had created both supply and demand fof the legends of the Saints, also provided the abundant stock of romantic narrative poetry, in amplification and illustration of the chivalrous ideal. What the legends of Troy, of Thebes, of the Kalydonian boar, of OEdipus, Theseus, etc. were to an early Greek, the tales of Arthur, of Charlemagne, of the Niebelungen, were to an Englishman, or Frenchman, or German, of the twelfth or thirteenth century. They were neither recognized fiction nor authenticated history : they were history, as it is felt and wel- comed by minds unaccustomed to investigate evidence, and un- conscious of the necessity of doing so. That the Chronicle of Turpin, a mere compilation of poetical legends respecting Charle- magne, was accepted as genuine history, and even pronounced to be such by papal authority, is well known ; and the authors of the Romances announce themselves, not less than those of the old Grecian epic, as being about to recount real matter of fact. 1 (t is certain that Charlemagne is a great historical name, and it 1 See Warton's History of English Poetry, vol. i. dissert, i. p. xvii. Again, wi sect. iii. p. 140: : ' Vincent de Bcauvais, who lived under Louis IX. of France ("about 1260), and who, on account of his extraordinary erudition, v/as appointed preceptor to that king's sons, very gravely classes Archbishop Turpin's Charlemagne among the real histories, and places it on a level n'ith Suetonius and Caesar. He was himself an historian, and has left a large history of the world, fraught with a variety of reading, and of high repute in the Middle Ages ; but edifying and entertaining as this work might have been to his contemporaries, at present it serves only to record their prejudices and to characterize their credulity." About the full belief in Arthur and the Tales of the Round Table during the fourteenth century, and about the strange historical mistakes of the poet Gower in the fifteenth, see the same work, sect. 7. vol. ii. p. 33 ; sect. 19. vol. ii. p. 239. " L'auteur de la Chronique de Turpin (says M. Sismondi, Litterature du Midi, vol. i. ch. 7. p. 289) n'avait point 1'intention de briller aux yeux du public par une invention heureuse, ni d'amuser les oisifs par des contes mer- vcilleux qu'ils reconnoitroient pour tels : il pre'sentait aux Fran The Chevaliers of the Saint Graal were a sort of ideal of the Knights Templars : " Une race de princes heVoIques, originaires de 1'Asic, fut pre'dcstinee par le ciel memo a la garde du Saint Graal. Perille fut le premier de cette race, qui s'etant converti au Chris- tianisme, passa en Europe sous 1'Empereur Vespasien," etc. ; then follows a string of fabulous incidents : the epical agency is similar to that of Hornet M. Paulin Paris, in his Prefaces to the Romans des Douzc Pairs do France, has controverted many of the positions of M. Fauriel, and with suc- cess, so far as regards the Provencal origin of the Chansons de Geste, usertcd by the latter. In regard to the Romances of the Round Table, he 478 HISTOKY OF GREECE. The romances of chivalry represented, to those who heard them, real deeds of the foretime " glories of the foregone men," to use the Hesiodic expression 1 at the same time that they em- bodied and filled up the details of an heroic ideal, such as that age could conceive and admire a fervent piety, combined with strength, bravery, and the love of adventurous aggression, directed sometimes against infidels, sometimes against enchanters or mon- sters, sometimes in defence of the fair sex. Such characteristics wore naturally popular, in a century of feudal struggles and uni- agrees substantially with M. Fauriel ; but he tries to assign a greater histo- rical value to the poems of the Carlovingian epic, very- unsuccessfully, in my opinion. But his own analysis of the old poem of Garin native growth, from the occurrences bearing the impress of a foreign origiu SUBJECTIVE VIEW OF THE MYTHES. 487 that which he leaves out than in that which he retains. To omit the miraculous and the fantastic,, (it is that which he really mean? by " the impossible and the absurd,") is to suck the lifeblood out of these once popular narratives, to divest them at once both of their genuine distinguishing mark, and the charm by which they acted on the feelings of believers. Still less ought we to consent to break up and disenchant in a similar manner the rnythes of ancient Greece, partly because they possess the mythical beauties and characteristics in far higher perfection, partly be- cause they sank deeper into the mind of a Greek, and pervaded both the public and private sentiment of the country to a much greater degree than the British fables in England. Two courses, and two only, are open ; either to pass over the mythes altogether, which is the way in which modern historians treat the old British fables, or else to give an account of them as rnythes ; to recognize and respect their specific nature, and to abstain from confounding them with ordinary and certifiable his- tory. There are good reasons for pursuing this second method in reference to the Grecian mythes ; and when so considered, they constitute an important chapter in the history of the Grecian mind, and indeed in that of the human race generally. The his- torical faith of the Greeks, as well as that of other people, in reference to early and unrecorded times, is as much subjective and peculiar to themselves as their religious faith : among the Greeks, especially, the two are confounded with an intimacy which nothing less than great violence can disjoin. Gods, heroes, and men religion and patriotism matters divine, heroic, and human were all woven together by the Greeks into one indi- visible web, in which the threads of truth and reality, whatever they might originally have been, were neither intended to be, We shall gain little, perhaps, by such a course for the history of human events ; but it will be an important accession to our stock of knowledge on the his- tory of the human mind. It will infallibly display, as in the analysis of eveiy similar record, the operations of that refining principle which is ever obliter- ating the monotonous deeds of violence that fill the chronicle of a nation's early career, and exhibit the brightest attribute in the catalogue of man's intellectual endowments, a glowing and vigorous imagination^ bestowing upon all the impulses of the mind a splendor and virtuous dignity, which, however fallacious historically considered, are never without a powerfully redeeming good, the ethical tendency of all theii lessons " 488 HISTORY OF GREECE. nor were actually, distinguishable. Composed of such materials, and animated bj the electric spark of genius, the mythical an- tiquities of Greece formed a whole at once trustworthy and captivating to the faith and feelings of the people ; but neither trustworthy nor captivating, when we sever it from these sub- jective conditions, and expose its naked elements to the scrutiny of an objective criticism. Moreover, the separate portions of Grecian mythical foretime ought to be considered with reference to that aggregate of which they form a part : to detach the divine from the heroic legends, or some one of the heroic legends from the remainder, as if there were an essential and generic difference between them, is to present the whole under an erroneous point of view. The mythes of Troy and Thebes are no more to be handled objectively, with a view to detect an historical base, than those of Zeus in Krete, of Apollo and Artemis in Delos, of Hermes, or of Prometheus. To single out the Siege of Troy from the other mythes, as if it were entitled to preeminence as an ascertained historical and chronological event, is a proceeding which destroys the true character and coherence of the mythical world : we only transfer the story (as has been remarked in the preceding chapter) from a class with which it is connected by every tie both of common origin and fraternal affinity, to another with which it has no relationship, except such as violent and gratuitous criticism may enforce. By drawing this marked distinction between the mythical and the historical world, between matter appropriate only for sub- jective history, and matter in which objective evidence is attain- able, we shall only carry out to its proper length the just and well-known position long ago laid down by Varro. That learned man recognized three distinguishable periods in the time pre- ceding his own age ; " First, the time from the beginning of mankind down to the first deluge ; a time wholly unknown. Sec- ondly, the period from the first deluge down to the first Olympiad, which is called the mythical period, because many fabulous things are recounted in it. Thirdly, the time from the first Olympiad down to ourselves, which is called the historical period, because the things done in it are comprised in true histories." 1 Varro ap. Censorin. de Die Natal i ; Varronis Fragm. p. 219, ed. Scali- ger, 1623. " Varro tria discrimina temporum csse trartit. Primum ab hont- PARTITION OF PAST TIME BY VAERO. 439 Taking the commencement of true or objective history at the point indicated by Varro, I still consider the mythical and histor- ical periods to be separated by a wider gap than he would havo admitted. To select any one year as an absolute point of com- mencement, is of course not to be understood literally : but in point of fact, this is of very little importance in reference to the present question, seeing that the great mythical events the sieges of Thebes and Troy, the Argonautic expedition, the Kaly- donian boar-hunt, the Return of the Herakleids, etc. are all placed long anterior to the first Olympiad, by those who have apph'ed chronological boundaries to the mythical narratives. The period immediately preceding the first Olympiad is one exceed- ingly barren of events ; the received chronology recognizes four hundred years, and Herodotus admitted five hundred years, from that date back to the Trojan war. inum principio usque ad cataclysmnm priorem, quod propter ignorantiam vocatur aSrjhov. Secundum, a cataclysmo priore ad Olympiadem primam, quod quia in eo multa fabulosa referuntur, Mylhicon nominator. Tertinra n primal Olympiade ad nos ; quod dicitur Historiccn, quia res in co gest rcris historiis continentur." To the same purpose Africanue, ap. Eusebium, Praep. Er. xx. p. 487: )JLexpi pev 'Ofa>nma6uv, ov6sv d/cpt/Jcf laroprjTai rolf 'EAA^ffi, nuvruv ovyc*- v, nai Karti pqiev ai-roif TUV Trpb rot) ovpfuvovvTuv, etc. A 000 572 635 1