The Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy (2e éd.)

Of Mythology in general. §

Mythology is the science which treats of the mythes², or various popular traditions and legendary tales, current among a people and objects of general belief.

These mythes are usually the fabulous adventures of the imaginary beings whom the people worship ; the exploits of the ancient heroes of the nation ; the traditions of its early migrations, wars, and revolutions ; the marvellous tales of distant lands brought home by mariners and travellers ; and the moral or physical allegories of its sages and instructors.

The legends which compose a nation’s mythology may be divided into two classes. The first will contain the true or fabulous Events which are believed to have occurred either among the people itself, as its own adventures, and those of {p. 2}its princes and heroes, and which may therefore be called domestic ; or those of ancient or distant nations, handed down by tradition or brought home by voyagers, and these we may entitle foreign. The second class will consist of Doctrines or articles of popular belief, and will comprise the earliest attempts of man to account for the various phænomena of the heavens and the earth, and the changes which appear to have taken place among them. These last are however, in the popular mode of viewing them, as much events as the former, as they were propounded by their inventors in the historic or narrative form.

The wonderful is usually a component part of mythology. The deities of popular belief are very frequent actors in its legends, which differ from ordinary tales and fables in this circumstance, and in that of their having been at one time matters of actual belief.

Mythology may therefore be regarded as the depository of the early religion of the people. It also stands at the head of their history, for the early history of every people, with whom it is of domestic origin, is mythic, its first personages and actions are chiefly imaginary³. It is only gradually that the mist clears away, and real men and deeds similar to those of later times begin to appear ; and the mythic period is frequently of long duration, the stream of history having to run a considerable way, before it can completely work off the marvellous and the incredible.

Origin of Mythology. §

It is an interesting but by no means an easy task to trace out and explain the various causes and occasions that have given origin to the different legends which form the mythology of a people, such as the Greeks for example, with whom it is rich and complicated. We regard the following as the most probable mode of accounting for their existence.

Polytheism, or the belief in a number of beings of a nature superior to man, and who can be of benefit or injury to him, seems congenial to the human mind. It is always the {p. 3}religion of unenlightened tribes, and even in lettered and polished nations it still retains its hold upon the minds of the weak and the ignorant⁴. An appearance so general can only be the result of some law of the mind ; and those who have directed their attention to the language and ideas of man, in different stages of culture, will probably concede that there is a law which impels the human mind to ascribe the attribute of intelligence to the efficient cause of natural phænomena, particularly those which are of rare occurrence. The less the mind is expanded by culture, the more powerful is the operation of this law ; and while the philosopher ascribes all effects to one great intelligent cause, and usually views not so much Him as the secondary unintelligent causes which He employs, — the simpler children of nature, who cannot rise to so just and elevated a conception, see multitude where he contemplates unity, and numerous intelligent causes actively engaged in producing the effects which he refers to one single mind. Either then the true idea of One God has been resolved by the vulgar into that of a plurality ; or the numerous deities of the people have been by the philosopher reduced to one, possessed of the combined powers of all ; or, which is more probable, rather we may say is the truth, both hypotheses are true : man commencing with the knowledge of one God, gradually became a polytheist ; and philosophy, slowly retracing the steps of error, returned to the truth which had been lost.

It is utterly impossible to fix historically the date of the rise of polytheism among any people. Supposing, for the sake of hypothesis, a race to have been from some unassignable cause in a state of total or partial ignorance of the Deity, their belief in many gods may have thus commenced. They saw around them various changes brought about by human agency, and hence they knew the power of intelligence to produce effects. When they beheld other and greater effects, independent of and beyond human power, they felt themselves, from the principle we have already stated, invincibly impelled to ascribe their production to some unseen being, similar but superior to man. Thus when the thunder rolled {p. 4}and the lightning flamed along the sky, the terrified mortal regarded them as sent forth by a god who ruled the heavens ; when the sea rose in mountains and lashed the shore or tossed the bark, the commotion was referred to a god of the sea ; the regular courses, the rising and the setting of the sun and moon, appeared to him plainly to indicate the presiding care of peculiar deities ; the rivers which flowed continuously, which swelled and sank, must be under the control of intelligences ; and trees at regular seasons put forth and shed their foliage beneath the care of unseen deities⁵. In this manner all the parts of external nature would have become animated ; and the thoughts of courage, wisdom, and love, which involuntarily rise in the soul of man, and the ready eloquence which at times flows from his lips, being referable to no known cause, would be attributed to the unseen working of superior beings⁶.

Man is incapable of conceiving pure spirit, and he knows no form so perfect or so beautiful as his own, and none so well adapted to be the vehicle of mind⁷. He naturally, therefore, fell into the habit of assigning a human form to his gods ; but a human form divested of weakness and imperfection, and raised to his highest ideal of beauty, strength and power, yet still varying according to the character and occupation of the deity on whom it was bestowed. Thus the Grecian votary viewed manly strength and vigour as the leading attributes of the god who presided over war and inspired daring thoughts ; while in the god of archery and music beauty and strength appeared united, and dignity and majesty of mien and countenance distinguished the father of gods and men and ruler of heaven.

These deities, so like to man in form, were held to exceed him far in power and knowledge, but to be, like him, under the influence of passion and appetite. They had their favourites and enemies among mankind, were gratified by prayers and offerings, and severely punished slight, neglect or insult. They dwelt in celestial houses, but similar in form {p. 5}to those of man ; and, like man, they stood in daily need of food and repose. Chariots drawn by horses or other animals of celestial breed conveyed them over earth, sea, and air ; their clothing and arms were usually of the form of those of mortals, but of superior workmanship and materials⁸. The gods were not, strictly speaking, eternal : they were born, according to most systems of mythology ; and some, at least, assigned a period to their duration.

In the eyes of their worshipers these gods had each his distinct personal existence and sphere of action. The Greek, for example, fully believed that Helios, the Hindoo that Surya, guided the course of the sun each day. When, therefore, we shall in future speak of gods of the sea, the sun, the moon, we would not be understood to mean personifications of these objects. In truth, a personification of the sea or sun is not a very intelligible expression. We mean by these gods, deities presiding over and directing them, but totally distinct from them ; regents of them, in the sense in which the archangel Uriel is by Milton called the regent of the sun. Personification properly accords only with qualities and attributes ; and we shall in our progress meet with a class of deities, such as Mischief, Strife, Prayers, which are strictly speaking such.

When a people had thus formed for themselves a System of gods so like to man, and yet ruling over the world, it was natural that a body of mythes, or legends of their adventures, and of their dealings with mankind, should gradually arise ; and as they passed from hand to hand, receive various embellishments and additions, till what was at first but a mere dry assertion or conjecture became a marvellous or an agreeable tale. It is the opinion of one of the ablest mythologists of the present day, that there is a certain stage in the culture of a people in which the mythic is the natural mode of representation, to which men are led by a kind of necessity, and in which they act almost unconsciously. He gives as an instance the pestilence in the commencement of the Ilias. Allowing, he says, the carrying away captive of the daughter of Chryses and the {p. 6}pestilence itself to be actual and real facts, all those who heard of them, and who had at the same time a firm belief in the avenging power of Apollo, whose priest Chryses was, would pronounce, with as full conviction as if it had been something which they had seen and experienced themselves, that it was the god who had sent the pestilence on the prayer of his priest⁹. How far this theory is well founded, and whether it will apply with equal force to other mythologies as to that of Greece, is a question which we will not now discuss.

The sources, or the occasions of the production, of mythes may, we think, be arranged under the following heads, which fall into two classes, namely, of things and of names.

1. The sages of remote antiquity appear to have had a peculiar fondness for enveloping moral and physical truths in the garb of symbol, mythe, and allegory ; and the legends which they thus devised form no inconsiderable portion of the various bodies of mythology.

2. As a second source may perhaps be added the pride of family and the flattery of poets, which would seek to cast lustre on the origin of some noble house by placing a deity at the head of its pedigree, or to veil the transgression of one of its daughters by feigning that a god had penetrated the recesses of her chamber, or met her in the wood or at the fountain. Legends of this kind are to be placed among the latest. Indeed we very much doubt if this be a real original source of mythes¹⁰, and we place it here only because it has been generally so regarded.

3. A great number of legends in all countries are indebted for their origin to the extreme desire which men have to assign a cause for the various phænomena of the natural world. The Scandinavian mythology is full of instances, and the subsequent pages will present them in abundance. We cannot however refrain from giving in this place the following instance, as it combines the ancient and modern legendary explanations of the same natural appearance.

It is well known that most of the rivers of the Peloponnese have their sources in lakes situated in the high valley-plains {p. 7}of Arcadia, which are so completely shut in by mountains that the streams leave them by subterranean passages, called by the ancient Arcadians Zerethra (ζέρεθρα, i. e. βέθρα), and by the moderns Katavóthra. The plain of the district of Pheneos had two of these passages piercing the surrounding mountains, one of which gives origin to the river Ladôn. On the rocky faces of two of the hills, which advance into the plain, at a height of about fifty feet, runs a line, below which the colour of the rocks is lighter than it is above. The natural, though probably incorrect inference is, that the waters stood one time at that height. The ancient Arcadians said that Apollo, incensed at Hercules’ having carried off the tripod from Delphi and brought it to Pheneos, inundated the valley, and that Hercules formed the chasms by which the waters ran off¹¹. Others said that Hades carried off the daughter of Demeter through one of these chasms under Mount Cyllene¹². The moderns account for the origin of the chasm by the following legend. Two devils once possessed the lake : they dwelt on opposite sides of it, and were continually quarrelling ; a furious contest at length took place between them on the top of Mount Sactá, whose base was washed by the lake. The devil who lived on the west side adopted the ingenious expedient of pelting his adversary with balls of ox-fat, which sticking to his body and there taking fire, annoyed him beyond measure. To free himself from this inconvenience, the worsted fiend plunged into the lake and dashed through the side of the mountain Sactá, thus forming the passage through which the waters flowed off and left the plain dry¹³.

To this head may be referred the practice of the Greeks to assign the origin of animals and plants to transformations effected by the power of the gods, a practice of which we shall have to record numerous instances¹⁴. Even in the Mohammedan East examples of this procedure (which was probably learned from the Greeks) are to be found ; the origin of the {p. 8}rose is ascribed to the Prophet¹⁵, and the tulip is said to have sprung from the blood of the unhappy painter Ferhad, the lover of the fair Shîrîn¹⁶. Many changes in the natural world have also been effected by the Saints, according to the popular creed in most parts of Europe.

4. The desire to account for the phænomena of the moral world has also led to the invention of legends. Thus the laws of Mena explain the difference of castes in India, by saying that the Bramins, that is the priests, were produced from the mouth of Bramah ; the warriors from his arms ; the traders from his thighs ; the Parias, or lowest class, from his feet. The poor Laplanders account for the difference between themselves and their more fortunate southern neighbours by the following legend. The Swede and the Laplander, they say, were brothers in the beginning, but when there came on a storm the former was terrified, and sought shelter under a board, which God caused to become a house, but the latter remained without ; whence ever since the Swede dwells in a house, while the Laplander lives in the open air¹⁷.

5. Many legends have arisen from the necessity of giving some account of the invention of arts and implements, and of assigning a cause for traditionary ceremonies and observances, the memory of whose true origin had been lost. The festival of the Hyacinthia at Sparta, for example, originally it would seem celebrated in honour of Demeter¹⁸, was probably indebted for its name to the flower Hyacinthos ; and the legend of the boy beloved by Apollo was a later fiction. The Fasti of Ovid will present instances of the application of this principle, and in the following pages we shall have occasion to notice it.

The second class of legends will come under the three following heads.

6. The epithets of gods, when their true origin was unknown or had been lost, were usually explained by some legend. Of this practice also we shall meet with instances as we proceed ; for the present we will content ourselves with a single example.

In the island of Samos stood a temple dedicated to the Gaping Dionysos, of whose origin the following legend was related. A Samian named Elpis, having made a voyage to Africa, saw as he was one day on the seashore a huge lion approaching him with his mouth wide open. In his terror he uttered a prayer to Dionysos and fled to a tree, up which he climbed. The lion came and laid himself at the foot of the tree with his mouth still open, as if he required compassion, and Elpis saw that a bone was stuck fast in his teeth which prevented him from eating ; he took pity on him, and came down and relieved him. As long as the ship stayed on the coast the grateful lion brought each day a portion of the produce of his hunting, and Elpis on his return to Samos built a temple to the Gaping Dionysos¹⁹.

7. Casual resemblance of sound in words, and foreign, obsolete or ambiguous terms, were another abundant source of legends. In Greek λáaς is a stone, and λαòς a people ; hence the legend of Deucaliôn and Pyrrha restoring the human race by flinging stones behind them²⁰. There was a place at Rome called Argiletum : this word, which evidently signifies a place abounding in potter's earth (argilla)²¹, may be divided into two words (Argi letum), signifying death of Argus ; and hence arose a legend noticed by Virgil²². A part of the province of Seistân in Persia is named Neem-rôz, i. e. half-day ; and the popular tradition is, that it was once covered by a lake, which was drained by the Jinns (i. e. Genii) in half a day²³. But, as the writer from whom we have taken this legend justly observes, Neem-rôz is also mid-day ; a term which, in several languages, denotes the south ; and Neem-rôz lies due south of Balkh, the first seat of Persian dominion. To return home, there is a point of land between Hastings and Pevensey, on the coast of Sussex, called Bulverhithe ; that is, plainly, Bulver-landing-place, such being the meaning of the old word hithe. But as this term has gone out of use, the {p. 10}honest fishermen there will gravely tell you, that when William the Conqueror, after landing in Pevensey-bay, was advancing to Hastings, on coming to this place he took a bull’s hide and cut it into thongs, which he tied together, resolving to halt and give battle at the spot where the line he made of them should terminate. These instances may suffice to show the generality of this principle.

8. Finally, metaphorical language understood literally may have given occasion to many legends. Thus cause and effect, and other relations, are in various languages, particularly the Oriental, expressed by terms of kindred. The Hebrews termed sparks, sons of the burning coal ; one who is to die, a son of death. The Arabs call a traveller, a son of the way ; a warrior, a son of battle ; springs, daughters of the earth ; mist, daughter of the sea ; tears, daughters of the eye ; and dreams, daughters of night : an ass is with them the father of hanging ears²⁴. A similar mode of expression prevailed among the Greeks. Pindar²⁵ calls the showers of rain children of the cloud. Æschylus terms smoke the brother of fire²⁶, and dust the brother of mud²⁷ ; and Hipponax²⁸ said that the fig-tree was the sister of the vine. A person born on the bank of a lake or river may have been called its son²⁹ ; one coming by sea have been styled a son of the sea ; and when the metaphor came to be understood literally, persons thus spoken of may have been looked upon as children of the riveror sea-god, and legends have been devised accordingly³⁰. A branch or shoot of Ares (ὄζος Ἄρηος) is the Homeric appellation of a warrior, and in Latin a lucky fellow was styled a son of Fortune.³¹.Our English king Richard I. was called Lion-heart (Cœur de Lion), on account of his valour and intrepidity ; and this title gave occasion to a legend, alluded to by {p. 11}Shakspeare³², of his combat with a lion, and pulling out his heart. The rich melodious language of poets and orators has been often compared by the Greeks and others to the delicious food of the bees ; hence it was fabled that bees settled on the infant lips of Pindar and Plato, of Lucan and St. Ambrose.

Theories of the Origin of Mythology. §

The theory already given appears to us to be the one which most simply and satisfactorily explains the origin of by far the greater portion of the legends of mythology : but, both in ancient and modern times, theories of a different kind have been advanced, and supported with much ingenuity and learning. The ancient systems we shall notice when treating of the progress of Grecian mythology ; in this place we will enumerate those which have been most prevalent in modern times. These may, we think, be divided into three classes : the Historic, the Philosophic, and the Theological.

1. The Historic : according to which all the mythic persons were once real human beings, and the legends are merely the actions of these persons poetically embellished. The chief maintainers of this hypothesis are Bochart³³ and Bryant³⁴, who see in the Grecian mythes the true history of the personages of Sacred Scripture ; Rudbeck³⁵, who regards them as being drawn from the history of the North of Europe ; the Abbé Banier³⁶, who maintains that Grecian mythology is Egyptian and Grecian history in a poetic dress. Banier's countrymen, Larcher, Clavier, Raoul-Rochette, and others have of late years supported this theory, and it has been maintained by Böttiger³⁷ in Germany.

II. The Philosophic : which supposes mythology to be merely the poetical envelope of some branch of human science. The illustrious Bacon³⁸ exercised his ingenuity in deriving ethical and political doctrines from some of the Hellenic mythes. Their concealed wisdom is Ethics according to {p. 12}Natalis Comes³⁹; Chemistry according to Tollius⁴⁰. Finally, Dupuis⁴¹ and some other ingenious writers, chiefly French, look to Astronomy for the solution of the enigmatic legends of antiquity.

III. The Theological : which assigns mythologya higher rank ; regarding it as the theology of polytheistic religions, and seeking to reduce it to harmony with the original monotheism of mankind. Vossius endeavours to show that the fables of heathenism were only a distortion of the revelations made to man by the true God ; and, at the present day, Görres, Creuzer and others⁴², assigning a common source to the systems of India, Egypt, Greece, and other countries, and regarding the East as the original birthplace of mythology, employ themselves in tracing the imagined channels of communication ; and as they esteem every legend, ceremony, usage, vessel, and implement to have been symbolical, they seek to discover what truth, moral, religious, or philosophical lies hid beneath its cover. These men are justly denominated Mystics⁴³. Their whole science is founded on accidental resemblances of names and practices, their ideas are conveyed in a highly coloured figurative style, and a certain vague magnificence appears to envelope their conceptions, — all calculated to impose on the ignorant and the unwary⁴⁴. It is against this system that we are most anxious to warn and guard our readers. In our eyes it is disgusting from its indelicacy as well as its absurdity ; it approaches the confines of impiety, and at times seems even to pass them. The study and adoption of it can hardly fail to injure the intellectual powers, and to produce an indifference toward true religion. {p. 13}In fact, if the theory of these men be true, the necessity for Christianity becomes a question⁴⁵.

Of these three classes the last alone is peculiar to modern times : the two former theories were, as we shall presently see, familiar to the ancients. We must also observe, that all are true to a certain extent. Some mythes are historical, some physical, some moral, some theological ; but no single one of these theories will suffice to account for the whole body of the mythology of any people. Some of them, too, apply more to one system than another : the Scandinavian mythology, for example, is of a more physical character than the Grecian : the Indian is more metaphysical than either the Grecian or the Scandinavian.

The mythologies which offer the widest fields for inquiry are those of ancient Greece, of India, and of Scandinavia. To these may be added that of ancient Egypt. Italy has left no mythology, properly speaking, though for the sake of uniformity we so denominate the account of its deities and religion given in the present work. The Persian cycle, which is preserved in the Shâh-nâmeh of Ferdoust, is purely heroic ; and the Celtic tribes of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands had also a small heroic cycle, of which Cuchullin, Fingal, Gaul, Oscar, and other personages whose names are familiar to the readers of the pseudo-Ossian are the heroes⁴⁶.

It is chiefly to the explanation of the rich and elegant mythology of Greece that modern inquirers hâve applied themselves ; and by the labours of Voss⁴⁷, Buttmann, Müller, Völcker, Welcker and other writers, whose names will appear in the following pages, it has in our opinion been reduced {p. 14}to its true principles, and brought within the sphere of useful and necessary knowledge. The scholars of the North, especially the learned Finn Magnusen, have exerted themselves, and not without success, in developing the true nature and character of the venerable mythology of their forefathers, especially on the physical theory. For the mythology of India philosophy has as yet done but little ; it has been the sport of the wildest mysticism, and has led to the degradation of those of other countries. The Asiatic Researches, and the works of Polier, Ward and some others, with the various translations that have been made from the Sanscrit, present a large mass of materials to the inquirer. Jablonski and Zoega have laboured diligently in the field of Egyptian mythology.

Rules for the Interpretation of Mythes. §

The following rules should be attended to in mythological inquiries.

1. To consider the mythology of each people separately and independently, and not to suppose any connexion between it and any other till both have been examined minutely and carefully, and so many points of resemblance have presented themselves as to leave no doubt of the original identity of the systems⁴⁸. It is to the neglect of this rule that we owe so much of the absurdity to be found in the works of many mythologists, and nothing has tended more to the bringing of the science of mythology into neglect and contempt. The ancient Greeks were led from ignorance to give credit to the cunning priesthood of Egypt, and to believe that they had received their religion from that country ; and it is but too well known how, in our own days, Sir William Jones and his followers have been deceived by their own imaginations, and the impostures of artful pundits, in their efforts to connect the religions of Greece and India.

2. In like manner the mythes themselves should be considered separately, and detached from the system in which they are placed ; for the single mythes existed long before the {p. 15}system, and were the product of other minds than those which afterwards set them in connexion, not unfrequently without fully understanding them⁴⁹.

3. We should pay particular attention to the genealogies which we meet with in mythology, as they frequently form the key to the meaning of a mythe, or even of a whole cycle⁵⁰. Great caution however should be used in the application of this rule, or it may lead us into error and absurdity if carried beyond its legitimate bounds.

4. The same or even greater caution is required in the application of etymology to this subject⁵¹. If applied judiciously it will at times give most valuable results ; if under no guidance but that of caprice and fancy, it will become the parent of all sorts of monsters and lusus naturæ.

5. Finally, though we should never pronounce a mythe which we have not examined to be devoid of signification, we should not too confidently assert that every mythe must have an important meaning, for certainly some have been but the creation of capricious fancy⁵². On these occasions it would be well to bear in mind the following words of Johnson : «The original of ancient customs,» says he, «is commonly unknown, for the practice often continues after the cause has ceased ; and concerning superstitious ceremonies, it is vain to conjecture, for what reason did not dictate reason cannot ex-plain⁵³ » We use the words bear in mind, for if adopted as a principle it will only serve to damp ardour and check inquiry. The rule should be, — this mythe most probably has a meaning, but it is possible it may not have one.

Its Origin. §

The remote antiquities of Greece are involved in such total obscurity, that nothing certain can be adduced respecting the origin of the people or their mythology. Reasoning from analogy and existing monuments, some men of learning venture to maintain, that the first inhabitants of that country were under the direction of a sacerdotal caste, resembling those of India and Egypt ; but that various circumstances concurred to prevent their attaining to the same power as in those countries. In the Homeric poems, however, by far the earliest portion of Grecian literature, we find no traces of sacerdotal dominion ; and in the subsequent part of our work we shall bring forward some objections against this hypothesis⁵⁴.

It is certainly not improbable that these ancient priests, if such there were, may have had their religion arranged systematically, and have represented the various appearances and revolutions of nature under the guise of the loves, the wars, and other actions of these deities, to whom they ascribed a human form and human passions. But the Grecian mythology, as we find it in the works of the ancients, offers no appearance of a regular concerted system. It is rather a loose collection of various images and fables, many of which are significant of the same objects.

The ancient inhabitants of Greece were divided into a great variety of little communities, dwelling separately, parted in general by mountains and other natural barriers. As they were naturally endowed with a lively imagination, there gradually grew up in each of these little states a body of tales and legends. These tales of gods and heroes were {p. 17}communicated by wandering minstrels and travellers from one part of the country to another. Phœnician mariners probably introduced stories of the wonders of the East and of the West, which in those remote ages they alone visited ; and these stories, it is likely, were detailed with the usual allowance of travellers’ licence. Poets, a race indigenous in the favoured clime of Hellas, caught up the tales, and narrated them with all the embellishments a lively fancy could bestow ; and thus at a period long anterior to that at which her history commences, Greece actually abounded in a rich and luxuriant system of legendary lore. This is proved by the poems of Homer and Hesiod, which, exclusive of the ancient legends they contain, make frequent allusion to others ; some of which are related by subsequent writers, and many are altogether fallen into oblivion.

These poems also bear evident testimony to the long preceding existence of a race of poets, — a fact indeed sufficiently evinced by the high degree of perfection in the poetic art which they themselves exhibit. Modern mythologists have therefore been naturally led to the supposition of there having been in ancient Greece aœdic schools, in which the verses of preceding bards were taught, and the art of making similar verses was acquired⁵⁵. One of the ablest of our late inquirers⁵⁶ is of opinion that the original seat of these schools was Pieria, at the northern foot of Mount Olympos. He has been led to this supposition by Heyne's remark, that Homer always calls the Muses Olympian, which remark he extends by observing that the Homeric gods are the Olympian, and no others. In this however we can only see that, as we shall presently show, Olympos was in the time of Homer held to be the seat of the gods. It does not appear to us that any one spot can be regarded as the birth-place of the Grecian religion and mythology ; they were, like the language and manners of the people, a portion of their being ; and the {p. 18}knowledge of the origin of the one is as far beyond our attainment as that of the other.

The Greeks, like most of the ancient nations, were little inclined to regard as mere capricious fiction any of the legends of the different portions of their own race or those of foreign countries. Whatever tales they learned, they interwove into their own system ; taking care, however, to avoid contradiction as far as was possible. When, therefore, they found any foreign deities possessing the same attributes as some of their own, they at once inferred them to be the same under different names ; but where the legends would not accord, the deities themselves were regarded as being different, even when they were in reality perhaps the same.

«This,» says Buttmann⁵⁷, «was the case when they found traditions of other kings of the gods whom they could not reconcile with their own Zeus, and of queens who could not be brought to agree with their Hera. But a new difficulty here presented itself ; for they could not assume several kings and queens reigning at one time. The ancients appear to me to have gotten over this difficulty by saying, that those gods had indeed reigned, but that they had been overcome by their Zeus ; and that the goddesses had indeed cohabited with Zeus, but they had not been his lawful wives. And this, if I mistake not, is the true origin of the tale of the Titans being driven out of heaven, and of the concubines of Zeus, who were reckoned among the Titanesses, the daughters of Heaven, and among the daughters of the Titans, such as Metis, Themis, Leto, Demeter, Dione, who were all, according to different legends, spouses of Zeus.»

With these views of this most ingenious writer we agree, as far as relates to the consorts of the Olympian king, each of whom we look upon as having been his sole and lawful wife in the creed of some one or other of the tribes of Greece. Of the Titans we shall presently have occasion to speak somewhat differently.

Historic View of Grecian Mythology⁵⁸. §

The poets having taken possession of the popular legends, adorned, amplified, added to them, and sought to reduce the whole to a somewhat harmonious system⁵⁹. They however either studiously abstained from departing from the popular faith, or were themselves too much affected by all that environed them to dream of anything which might shock the opinions of their auditors. Accordingly we may be certain that the mythes contained in Homer and Hesiod accord with the current creed of their day, and are a faithful picture of the mode of thinking prevalent in those distant ages.

As knowledge of the earth, of nature, her laws and powers, advanced, the false views of them contained in the venerable mythes of antiquity became apparent. The educated sometimes sought to reconcile tradition and truth ; but the vulgar still held fast to the legends hallowed by antiquity and sanctioned by governments⁶⁰. A prudent silence therefore became the safest course for those who exceeded their contemporaries in knowledge.

The philosophers of Greece early arrived at the knowledge of one only God, the original cause and support of all. Anaxagoras is said to have been the first who openly taught this truth ; and he was in consequence charged with atheism, and narrowly escaped the punishment of death. Philosophers took warning, and truth was no longer brought into public view. But such is the nature and connection of things, so profuse the resemblances which the world presents to view, such is the analogy which runs between the operations of mind and those of matter, that several of the mythes afforded the philosophers an opportunity of holding them forth as the husks in which important moral or physical truths were enveloped ; in which in reality many such truths had been studiously enveloped by ancient priests and sages⁶¹.

After an intercourse had been opened with Asia and Egypt, {p. 20}mysteries came greatly into vogue in Greece. In these it is thought⁶², but perhaps not with sufficient evidence, the priests who directed them used, for the credit of the popular religion whose reputation they were solicitous to maintain, to endeavour to show its accordance with the truths established by the philosophers, by representing them as being involved in the ancient mythes, which they modified by the aid of fiction and forgery so as to suit their purposes.

About this time, also, the system of theocrasy (θεοκραία), or mixing up, as we may call it, of the gods together, began to be employed⁶³. It was thus that the wine-god Dionysos was made one with the sun-god Helios, and this last again, as some think, with the archer-god Phœbos Apollo. As we proceed we shall have frequent occasion to notice this principle.

While in the schools of the philosophers, and the temples devoted to the mysteries, the ancient legends were acquiring a new and recondite sense, another class of men, the artists, had laid hold of them. The gods of their forefathers were now presented under a new guise to the Greeks, who, as they gazed on the picture or the statue, saw the metaphors of the poets turned to sense, and wings, for example, adorning those deities and mythic personages to whom the poet had in figurative style applied the expression winged to denote extraordinary swiftness⁶⁴.

The poets soon began to regard the ancient legends as mere materials.The belief in their truth having in a great measure vanished, the poets, especially the later dramatists, thought themselves at liberty to treat them in whatever manner they deemed best calculated to produce the meditated effect on the feelings of their audience⁶⁵. They added, abstracted, united, separated, at their pleasure ; ideas imported from Egypt were {p. 21}mixed up with the old tales of gods and heroes ; and the fable to be represented on the stage often varied so much from that handed down by tradition, that, as is more especially the case with Euripides, the poet appears at times to have found it necessary to inform his audience in a long prologue of what they were about to witness.

Such was the state of the ancient mythology of Greece in her days of greatest intellectual culture. Few of the mythes remained unaltered. Priests, philosophers, and poets combined to vary, change, and modify them. The imagination of these various classes produced new mythes, and the local tales of foreign lands were incorporated into the Grecian mythic cycle.

When the Ptolemies, those munificent patrons of learning, had assembled around them at Alexandria the scholars and the men of genius of Greece, the science of antiquity was, by the aid of the extensive royal library, assiduously cultivated ; and the ancient mythology soon became a favourite subject of learned investigation. Some worked up the mythes into poems ; others arranged them in prose narratives ; several occupied themselves in the explication of them.

At this time what is named Pragmatism, or the effort to reduce the mythes to history, began greatly to prevail⁶⁶. It is probable that this took its rise from the Egyptian priests, who, as we may see in Herodotus, represented their gods as having dwelt and reigned on earth⁶⁷. Hecatæus of Miletus, one of the earliest Grecian historians, would seem to have laboured to give a rational form to the old legends⁶⁸; and we may observe in the explanation given by Herodotus, after the Egyptian priests, of the legend of the soothsaying pigeon of Dodona, and in other places of that historian, a similar desire⁶⁹. This mode of rationalising was carried to a much greater extent by Ephorus : but the work which may be regarded as having contributed by far the most to give it vogue, {p. 22}was the Sacred History (Ἱϵρὴ Ἀναγραфή) of Euhemerus, which was so celebrated in antiquity that we shall here stop to give a brief account of it⁷⁰.

Euhemerus said, in this work, that having had occasion to make a voyage in the Eastern ocean, after several days’ sail he came to three islands, one of which was named Panchaia. The inhabitants of this happy isle were distinguished for their piety, and the isle itself for its fertility and beauty, in the description of which the writer exerted all the powers of his imagination. At a distance of several miles from the chief town, he says, lay a sacred grove, composed of trees of every kind, tall cypresses, laurels, myrtles, palms, and every species of fruit-tree, amidst which ran rivulets of the purest water. A spring within the sacred district poured forth water in such abundance as to form a navigable river, named the Water of the Sun⁷¹, which meandered along, fructifying the whole region, and shaded over by luxuriant groves, in which during the days of summer dwelt numbers of men, while birds of the richest plumage and most melodious throats built their nests in the branches, and delighted the hearer with their song. Verdant meads, adorned with various flowers, climbing vines, and trees hanging with delicious fruits, everywhere met the view in this paradise. The inhabitants of the island were divided into priests, warriors, and cultivators. All things were in common except the house and garden of each. The duty of the priests was to sing the praises of the gods, and to act as judges and magistrates : a double share of everything fell to them. The task of the military class was to defend the island against the incursions of pirates, to which it was exposed. The garments of all were of the finest and whitest wool, and they wore rich ornaments of gold. The priests were distinguished by their raiment of pure white linen, and their bonnets of gold tissue.

The priests derived their lineage from Crete, whence they had been brought by Zeus after he had succeeded his predecessors Uranos and Kronos in the empire of the world. In the midst of the grove already described, and at a distance of sixty stadia from the chief town, stood an ancient and magnificent temple sacred to Triphylian Zeus, erected by the god himself while he was yet among men ; and on a golden pillar in the temple the deeds of Uranos, Zeus, Artemis, and Apollo had been inscribed by Hermes in Panchæic letters, which the voyager says were the same with the sacred characters of the Egyptian priests. Zeus had, according to this monument, been the most potent of monarchs : the chief seat of his dominion had been Crete, where he died and was buried, after having made five progresses through the world, all whose kings feared and obeyed him.

The object of Euhemerus in inventing this Utopia, which by the way many navigators sought after but no one ever found, was evidently to give a blow to the popular religion, and even to make it ridiculous ; for though he seems to have treated some of the higher gods, as Zeus for example, with a degree of respect, he was less particular with the inferior ones and with the heroes. Thus of Aphrodite he says, that she was the first who reduced gallantry to an art, and made a trade of it, that she might not appear more wanton than other women⁷². Cadmos was cook to a king of Sidôn, and he ran away with Harmonia, a female flute-player⁷³

The work of Euhemerus was vehemently attacked by all who retained a veneration for the old religion, and the writer himself was stigmatised as an atheist⁷⁴ : but it exerted a great influence over the subsequent historians, as we may perceive in the case of Diodorus of Sicily. It was translated into Latin by Ennius, of whose work some fragments remain⁷⁵; and the Æneïs of Virgil alone will suffice to show the degree in which it affected the old Italian mythology⁷⁶. Finally, the Fathers {p. 24}of the Church employed it to advantage in their conflicts withe the supporters of the ancient religion.

While Euhemerus thus fixed on an imaginary island in the Eastern ocean as the original abode of the deities adored in Greece, others, among whom Dionysius of Samos or Mytilene was the most celebrated, chose the Western coast of Africa for the same purpose⁷⁷. For this they seemed to have Homeric authority ; as the poet calls Oceanos, whose abode was placed in the West, the origin of the gods⁷⁸. According to these writers the coast of Ocean on this side, fertile as Panchaia itself, was inhabited by a people named Atlanteians, distinguished for their piety and their hospitality to strangers. The first king who ruled over them was named Uranos. He collected the people, who had previously dwelt dispersedly, into towns, and taught them agriculture, and thus reformed their manners. He gradually reduced under his sway the greater part of the world. By study of the heavens, and thus learning to foretell the celestial phænomena, he obtained the reputation of being of a nature superior to man ; and when he died, his people gave him divine honours and named the heavens after him.

By several wives Uranos was the father of forty-five children, eighteen of whom, the offspring of Titaia or Earth, were named Titans. The most distinguished of their daughters were Basileia and Rhea, also named Pandora. The former, who was the eldest, aided her mother to rear her brothers and sisters, whence she was called the Great Mother. She succeeded her father in his dominion ; and after some time she married Hyperiôn, one of her brothers, to whom she bore two children, endowed with marvellous sense and beauty, named Helios and Selena. But the other Titans now grew jealous, and they murdered Hyperiôn, and flung Helios into the river Eridanos, where he was drowned. At the tidings Selena, who loved her brother beyond measure, cast herself from the roof of the palace and perished. Basileia lost her senses through grief, and went roaming in madness through the country with dishevelled locks, beating drums and {p. 25}cymbals. She disappeared at length in a storm of rain, thunder, and lightning. The people raised altars to her as a goddess, and they named the sun and moon after her hapless children.

The Titans then divided the realm of their father among themselves. The coast of Ocean fell to Atlas, who named the people and the highest mountain of the country after himself. Like his father he was addicted to astronomy ; he first taught the doctrine of the sphere, whence he was said to support the heavens. Kronos, the most impious and ambitious of the Titans, ruled over Libya, Sicily, and Italy. He espoused his sister Rhea, who bore a son named Zeus, in all things the opposite of his grim sire ; whence the people, delighted with his virtues, named him Father, and finally placed him on the throne. Kronos, aided by the other Titans, sought to recover his dominion ; but the new monarch defeated him, and then ruled, the lord of the whole world and the benefactor of mankind. After his death he was deified by his grateful subjects.

We will not pursue any further these dreams of the mythographer, for the tasteless system never seems to have gained general credit. We therefore proceed to relate the further course of the Grecian mythology.

As we have already observed, the allegorical system of interpretation prevailed at the same time with the historical. This mode of exposition was introduced by the sophists ; Socrates and Plato occasionally employed it ironically ; but its greatest cultivators were the philosophers of the Stoic sect. It was chiefly physical and ethical truths that they deduced from the ancient mythes, and they generally regarded the gods in the light of personifications of the powers of nature.

When the Romans became acquainted with Grecian literature, they identified the gods of Greece with such of their own deities as had a resemblance to them. Thus Hermes became Mercurius, Aphrodite Venus, and the mythes of the former were by the poets, and perhaps in the popular creed, applied to the latter. As in Greece, some believed, some disbelieved in the popular deities, and the former sought the solution of the mythes in the schools of philosophy or the temples of the mysteries. The valuable work of Cicero ‘On {p. 26}the Nature of the Gods’ shows in an agreeable manner the ideas entertained on this subject by the most accomplished Romans of his time.

After the conflict had commenced between Heathenism and Christianity, the allegorising principle was applied to the former with still greater assiduity than heretofore. The New Platonists endeavoured by its aid, in union with Oriental mysticism, to show, that the ancient religion contained all that was required to satisfy the utmost needs of the human soul. The Fathers of the Church laid hold on the weapons thus presented to them, to defend the new and attack the old religion. By the aid of the principles of Euhemerus they robbed the gods of Greece of their divinity ; by that of the allegorising principle of the Stoics they extracted truth from the legends of Greek theology, and discovered mystery in the simplest narratives and precepts of the Hebrew Scriptures. Unfortunately in this process many of the mythes and practices of Heathenism became incorporated with the pure religion of the Gospel, and Christianity also had soon a mythology of its own to display. On the final overthrow of Heathenism its mythology slept along with its history and literature the sleep of the dark ages ; but at the revival of learning it was eagerly laid hold on by poets and artists⁷⁹, and it attracted the attention of antiquarians and philosophers. The various theories by which it was sought to reduce it to system, which we have already enumerated, were then revived or devised ; and mythology forms at present an important branch of learning and philosophy.

Of late years the mythology of Greece has in the hands of men of genius and learning, especially in Germany, resumed the simple and elegant attire which it wore in the days of Homer and Hesiod, and in which the following pages will attempt to present it to the reader.

Literature of the Grecian Mythology. §

A brief view of the literature of the Grecian mythology, or of the works whence our knowledge of it has been derived, {p. 27}seems a necessary supplement to the preceding sketch of its history.

The Ilias and the Odyssey, as the two great heroic poems which are regarded as the works of Homer are named, are (with the exception of some parts of the Hebrew Scriptures) the earliest literary compositions now extant. Their origin is enveloped in the deepest obscurity, and the questions whether they are the production of one or of many minds, whether they were originally written, or were orally transmitted for centuries, have for some years engaged the pens of critics. It seems to be now generally agreed that the two poems are the productions of different minds, and that in both there are interpolations, some of which are of no small magnitude, but that notwithstanding they may be regarded as faithful pictures of the manners and opinions of the Achæans or Greeks of the early ages⁸⁰. Beside the Ilias and the Odyssey, the ancients possessed some other narrative poems, which were ascribed, but falsely, to the same author. All these poems, however, have long since perished.

The age of Hesiod is equally uncertain with that of Homer. Three only of the poems ascribed to him have come down to us, viz. the didactic poem named Works and Days, the Theogony, and the Shield of Hercules. Hesiod was also said to be the author of a poem in four books named the Catalogues, or Eoiæ⁸¹, which related the histories of the heroines or distinguished women of the mythic ages ; but of this also only a few fragments have been preserved. The same is the case with the poems named the Melampodia and Ægimios, likewise ascribed to this ancient bard.

Homer and Hesiod were succeeded by a crowd of poets, who sang all the events of the mythic ages. The chief of {p. 28}these were Stasinos of Cyprus, Arctinos of Miletus, Lesches of Lesbos, Cynæthos of Chios, Eumelos of Corinth, Agios of Trœzen, and Eugammôn of Cyrene. Their poems were the Cypria, the Æthiopis, the Little Ilias, the Iliupersis or Taking of Ilion, the Nostoi or Returns of the Chiefs, the Telegonia, or Death of Odysseus, etc. There were also Heracleiæ, or poems on the subject of Hercules, by Peisander, Panyasis, and other poets, a Theseïs on the adventures of Theseus, poems on the wars of Thebes⁸², a Titanomachia, an Amazonia, a Danaïs, a Phoronis, etc.

In the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, the critic Zenodotus of Ephesus united several of these poems with the Ilias and Odyssey into one whole, commencing with the marriage of Heaven and Earth, and ending with the death of Odysseus. This was named the Epic Cycle, and it continued to be read during some centuries of the Christian æra⁸³. Of this, however, the Homeric portion alone has come down to us : for our knowledge of the events contained in the remainder of the Cycle we are indebted to the works of the later poets Quintus Smyrnæus, Coluthus, and Tryphiodorus, and the various scholiasts or commentators and compilers.

The lyric succeeded the epic poets. Mythic legends were necessarily their principal materials, as their verses were mostly dedicated to the worship of the gods, or the praise of victors in the public games, or were sung at banquets or in funeral processions. These too have disappeared, excepting a portion of those of Pindar. It is much to be lamented, in a mythologic view, that so little remains of Stesichorus of Himera.

The tragedians followed : they took their subjects from the epic poems, and their remaining works preserve much mythic lore.

After the epic poetry had ceased, and writing, by means of the Egyptian papyrus, was become more common in Greece, {p. 29}a set of writers arose who related in succinct prose narratives, arranged in historic order, the various mythic legends which formed the Epic Cycle, the Eoiæ, and other poems of the same nature. The principal of these writers were Pherecydes, Acusilaüs, and Hellanicus ; of their works also only fragments remain.

The historians, Herodotus, Thucydides, and their followers, occasionally took notice of the mythic legends. Ephorus and Theopompus were those who devoted most attention to them, as their fragments still remaining show.

The sophists and philosophers employed the mythic form as the vehicle of their peculiar systems and ideas. Such was Prodicus’ beautiful fiction of the Choice of Hercules, and Protagoras’ story of Prometheus and his brother⁸⁴.

We are now arrived at the Alexandrian period. In this the mythes were treated in two different ways. Lycophrôn, Euphoriôn, Apollonius, Callimachus, and the remainder of the Pleias, as they were named, formed poems from them ; while Apollodorus, following Pherecydes, and adding the fictions of the tragedians, framed a continuous narrative, of which an epitome alone has come down to us ; and Crates, Aristarchus, and the other editors of the ancient poets gave the legends a place in their commentaries.

The Latin poets of the Augustan age drew largely on the Alexandrian writers, after whom chiefly they related in their verses the mythic tales of Greece, in general pure and unaltered, as appears from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, of whose legends the Greek originals can,with few exceptions, be pointed out⁸⁵. It was also in this period that Hyginus wrote the mythological work which we now possess.

The summaries of Parthenius, Antoninus Liberalis and others contain numerous mythic legends, as also do the Scholia, or notes on the classic writers of Greece, especially those on Homer, Pindar, Apollonius, and Theocritus ; those of Tzetzes on Hesiod and Lycophrôn, and the tedious commentary of Eustathius on Homer. The notes of Servius on Virgil are also very valuable in this respect, as likewise is the {p. 30}Violet-bed⁸⁶ of the empress Eudocia. It would be tedious to particularise all the other sources of information, for in fact there is hardly a classic writer in either language who does not relate or refer to some of the mythic legends of Greece ; even the Fathers of the Church contribute to augment our knowledge of the mythic tales of the religion against which their literary artillery was directed.

There is one author of a peculiar character, and whose work is of the most interesting nature, we mean Pausanias, who travelled in Greece in the second century of the Christian æra, and gathered on the spot the legends of the temples and the traditions of the people. He has thus preserved a number of mythic narratives unnoticed by preceding writers, which had probably been transmitted from father to son from the most remote times.

If to the sources already enumerated we add the long poem of Nonnus on the adventures of Dionysos, we shall have given the principal authorities for the contents of the following pages. We have been thus succinct on the present occasion, as it is our intention to give a view of the literature of each of the mythic cycles in its proper place⁸⁷.

Mythic Cosmology. §

For the due understanding of the mythology of a people, a knowledge of their cosmology, or views of the world, its nature, extent, and divisions, is absolutely requisite. Without it we shall be for ever falling into error ; and by applying to the productions of the remote and infantile periods of society the just conceptions of the present day in geography and astronomy, give to them a degree of folly and inconsistency with which they cannot justly be charged⁸⁸.

The earliest view of Grecian cosmology that we possess, is that contained in the poems of Homer. Next in antiquity is that of the poems of Hesiod, who flourished somewhat later, for he displays a much more extended knowledge of the earth than Homer appears to have possessed.

As navigation and the intercourse with foreign countries increased, just ideas respecting the more distant regions became more common among the Greeks, and districts were continually reclaimed from fable, and brought into the circuit of truth and knowledge. Not to speak of the philosophers and historians, we may discern in the poets of each succeeding age the progressively extending knowledge of the real character of distant lands. Yet still we must not always expect to find in poets all the knowledge of the age they live in ; they love to imitate their predecessors, they often are unacquainted with the advance of knowledge, they write for the people, who still retain old prejudices. It is thus that in the poets of the Augustan age we shall find the Homeric ideas of the universe, just as in some modern poets we may meet the Ptolemaïc astronomy and judicial astrology, after both had been exploded.

The Greeks of the days of which Homer sings, or rather of the poet’s own time, though well acquainted with navigation, do not appear to have been in the habit of making distant voyages. The Cretans and the Taphians (a people who inhabited some small islands in the Ionian sea) perhaps form an exception. We read in the Odyssey of their piracies committed on Egypt and Sidôn⁸⁹, and of their bartering voyages to Temesa⁹⁰, (perhaps the place of that name in Italy,) where they exchanged iron for copper. But the great authorities of the Greeks respecting foreign lands were probably the Phœnicians, who in the most distant ages visited Africa, Spain, and possibly the shores of the Atlantic ; and it is likely that, after the fashion of travellers and sailors, mingling truth and fiction, they narrated the most surprising tales of the marvels of the remote regions to which they had penetrated.

According to the ideas of the Homeric and Hesiodic ages, it would seem that the World was a hollow globe, divided into two equal portions by the flat disk of the Earth⁹¹. The external shell of this globe is called by the poets brazen⁹² and iron,⁹³, probably only to express its solidity. The superior hemisphere was named Heaven, the inferior one Tartaros. The length of the diameter of the hollow sphere is given thus by Hesiod⁹⁴. It would take, he says, nine days for an anvil to fall from Heaven to Earth ; and an equal space of time would be occupied by its fall from Earth to the bottom of Tartaros. The luminaries which gave light to gods and men shed their radiance through all the interior of the upper hemisphere ; while that of the inferior one was filled with eternal gloom and darkness, and its still air unmoved by any wind.

The Earth occupied the centre of the World in the form of of a round flat disk, or rather cylinder, around which the river Ocean flowed. Hellas was probably regarded as the centre of the Earth, but the poets are silent on this point. They are equally so as to the exact central point, but {p. 33}probably viewed as such Olympos, the abode of the gods. In after times Delphi became the navel of the earth⁹⁵. The Sea divided the terrestrial disk into two portions, which we may suppose were regarded as equal. These divisions do not seem to have had any peculiar names in the time of Homer. The northern one was afterwards named Europe⁹⁶; the southern, at first called Asia alone⁹⁷, was in process of time divided into Asia and Libya⁹⁸. The former comprised all the country between the Phasis and the Nile, the latter all between this river and the western ocean⁹⁹.

In the Sea the Greeks appear to have known to the west of their own country southern Italy and Sicily, though their ideas respecting them were probably vague and uncertain ; and the imagination of the poets, or the tales of voyagers, had placed in the more remote parts of it several islands, such as Ogygia the isle of Calypso, Ææa that of Circe, Æolia that of Æolos, Scheria the abode of the Phæacians, — islands in all probability as ideal and as fabulous as the isles of Panchaia, Lilliput, or Brobdingnag, though both ancients and moderns have endeavoured to assign their exact positions. Along its southern coast lay, it would appear, the countries of the Lotus-eaters, the Cyclopes, the Giants, and the Læstrigonians. These isles and coasts of the western part of the Sea were {p. 34}the scenes of most of the wonders of early Grecian fable. There, and on the isles of the Ocean, the passage to which was supposed to be close to the island of Circe, dwelt the Sirens, the Hesperides, the Grææ, the Gorgons, and the other beings of fable.

The only inhabitants of the northern portion of the earth mentioned by Homer are the Hellenes and some of the tribes of Thrace. But Hesiod¹⁰⁰ sang of a happy race, named the Hyperboreans, dwelling in everlasting bliss and spring beyond the lofty mountains, whose caverns were supposed to send forth the piercing blasts of the north wind¹⁰¹, which chilled the people of Hellas. According to Pindar¹⁰² the country of the Hyperboreans, from which the river Ister flowed, was inaccessible either by sea or land. Apollo was their tutelar deity, to whom they offered asses in sacrifice, while choirs of maidens danced to the sound of lyres and pipes, and the worshipers feasted having their heads wreathed with garlands of the god’s favourite plant, the bay. They lived exempt from disease or old age, from toils and warfare, and, conscious of no evil thoughts or acts, they had not to fear the awful goddess Nemesis¹⁰³.

On the south coast of the Sea, eastwards of the fabulous tribes above enumerated, lay Libya and Egypt. The Sidonians, and a people named the Erembians¹⁰⁴, are also mentioned by Homer, and the Greeks appear to have been well acquainted with the people of the west coast of Lesser Asia. They do not seem to have navigated the Euxine at this time, though they were doubtless not ignorant of it, as Homer names some of the peoples on its southern coast. They must of course have regarded it as a portion of the Sea. We have no means of ascertaining whether they supposed it to communicate with the Ocean, like the western part of the Sea. Of Colchis and Caucasus they seem to have had no knowledge {p. 35}whatever in these early ages. They were equally ignorant of the interior of Asia.

On the eastern side of the earth, close to the stream of Ocean, dwelt a people happy and virtuous as the Hyperboreans. They were named the Æthiopians¹⁰⁵ : the gods favoured them so highly that they were wont to leave at times their Olympian abodes and go to share their sacrifices and banquets¹⁰⁶. A passage of the Odyssey¹⁰⁷ divides the Æthiopians into two tribes, the one on the eastern, the other on the western margin of the earth¹⁰⁸. In later ages, when knowledge of the earth had increased, the Æthiopians or sun-burnt men were placed in the south ; but this is contrary to the views of Homer, who¹⁰⁹ assigns the southern portion of the terrestrial disk to a nation of dwarfs named, from their diminutive stature¹¹⁰, Pygmies, to whose country the cranes used to migrate every winter, and their appearance was the signal of bloody warfare to the puny inhabitants, who had to take up arms to defend their corn-fields against the rapacious strangers.

On the western margin of the earth, by the stream of Ocean, lay a happy place named the Elysian Plain, whither the mortal relatives of the king of the gods were transported without tasting of death, to enjoy an immortality of bliss. Thus Proteus says to Menelaos¹¹¹,

But thee the ever-living gods will send

Unto the Elysian Plain, and distant bounds

Of earth, where dwelleth fair-haired Rhadamanthys :

There life is easiest unto men ; no snow,

Or wintry storm, or rain, at any time

Is there ; but Ocean evermore sends up

Shrill-blowing western breezes to refresh

The habitants ; because thou hast espoused

Helena, and art son-in-law of Zeus.

{p. 36}In the time of Hesiod¹¹² the Elysian Plain was become the Isles of the Blest. Pindar¹¹³ appears to reduce the number of these happy isles to one.

We thus see that the Greeks of the early ages knew little of any real people except those to the east and south of their own country, or near the coast of the Mediterranean. Their imagination meantime peopled the western portion of this seawith giants, monsters, and enchantresses ; while theyplaced around the edge of the disk of the earth, which they probably regarded as of no great width, nations enjoying the peculiar favour of the gods, and blessed with happiness and longevity, — a notion which continued to prevail even in the historic times¹¹⁴.

We have already observed that the Ocean of Homer and Hesiod was a river or stream. It is always so called by these poets¹¹⁵, and they describe the sun and the other heavenly bodies as rising out of and sinking into its placid current¹¹⁶. Its course was from south to north up the western side of the earth. It flowed calmly and equably, unvexed by tempests and unnavigated by man. It was termed bark-flowing, deepflowing, soft-flowing, from its nature¹¹⁷. Its waters were sweet, and it was the parent of all fountains and rivers on the earth. As it was a stream, it must have been conceived to have a further bank to confine its course, but the poet of the Odyssey {p. 37}alone notices the transoceanic land, and that only in the western part. He describes it as a region unvisited by the sun, and therefore shrouded in perpetual darkness, the abode of a people whom he names Kimmerians. He also places there Erebos, the realm of Aïdes and Persephoneia, the final dwelling of all the race of men, a place which the poet of the Ilias describes as lying within the bosom of the earth¹¹⁸.

As Homer¹¹⁹ represents the heaven as resting on pillars kept by Atlas, and which were on the earth, and Hesiod¹²⁰ describes the extremities of heaven, earth, sea (πόυτος), and Tartaros as meeting, it would seem to follow that the Ocean lay outside of the hollow sphere of the world, and encompassed the middle of it like a rim. The armillary sphere would thus give us an idea of the Homeric world.

The portion of the hollow sphere above the earth contained Olympos, the abode of the gods ; but there is great difficulty in ascertaining its exact nature and situation. As it is always represented as a mountain, it must have rested on the earth, and yet one passage of the Ilias¹²¹ would seem plainly to speak of it as distinct from the earth ; and the language of the Odyssey respecting it is still more dubious.

Were we to follow analogy, and argue from the cosmology of other races of men, we would say that the upper surface of the superior hemisphere was the abode of the Grecian gods. The Hebrews seem, for example, to have regarded the concave heaven as being solid (hence Moses says, that Jehovah would make their heaven brass and their earth iron)¹²², and its upper surface as the abode of Jehovah and his holy angels, the place where he had formed his magazines of hail, rain, snow, and frost¹²³. According to the notions of the ancient Scandinavians the heaven was solid, and its upper surface, which they named Asgardr (God-abode), was the dwelling of their gods, and the {p. 38}place to which the souls of the virtuous and the valiant dead ascended along the celestial bridge Bifröst, i. e. the Rainbow. The ideas of the ancient Italians and other nations seem to have been similar. Hence we might be led to infer that Olympos, the abode of the Grecian gods, was synonymous with Heaven, and that the Thessalian mountain, and those others which bore the same name, were called after the original heavenly hill¹²⁴. A careful survey, however, of those passages in Homer and Hesiod in which Olympos occurs, will lead us to believe that the Achæans held the Thessalian Olympos, the highest mountain with which they were acquainted, to be the abode of their gods¹²⁵.

The entrance to the city of the gods on Olympos was closed by a gate of clouds kept by the goddesses named the Seasons ; but the cloudy valves rolled open spontaneously to permit the greater gods to pass to and fro on their visits to the earth.¹²⁶

It is an utterly unfounded supposition of the learned Voss¹²⁷, that there were doors at the eastern and western extremities of the heaven, through which the sun-god and other deities ascended from and went down into the stream of Ocean. The celestial luminaries seem rather, according to Homer and Hesiod, to have careered through void air, ‘bringing light to men and gods.’ When in after times the solid heaven was {p. 39}established as the abode of the gods, the necessity for these doors was perhaps felt ; and they were accordingly invented by those who were resolved to leave nothing unexplained.

The stars appear to have been regarded as moving under the solid heaven, for they rose out of and sank into the Ocean stream. The only ones mentioned by name by Homer and Hesiod are the constellations Oriôn, the Bear, the Pleiads, and the Hyads, the single stars Boötes or Arcturus, and Sirius, and the planet Venus, which they seem to have viewed as two distinct stars, in its characters of Morning-star (Eosphoros) and Evening-star (Hesperos.) There is no reason to suppose the Greeks to have had any knowledge of the signs of the Zodiac until after their intercourse with Asia and Egypt had commenced.

Tartaros was, as we have already remarked, unvisited by the light of day. It was regarded as the prison of the gods, and not as the place of torment for wicked men, being to the gods what Erebos was to men, — the abode of those who were driven from the supernal world¹²⁸. The Titans when conquered were shut up in it, and in the Ilias¹²⁹ Zeus menaces the gods with banishment to its murky regions.

Such were the opinions respecting the world and its parts held by the Greeks of the heroic times, and even some ages later. With the advance of knowledge, however, their ideas altered, and they began to conceive more justly on these subjects. The voyages of the Samians and the Phocæans to the West, and the establishment of the Milesian colonies on the shores of the Euxine, and the intercourse thus opened with the interior of Asia, led to the supposition that the earth was oval rather than round, its greater diameter running east and west¹³⁰. In like manner in the time of Pindar¹³¹ and Æschylus¹³² the Ocean had increased to the dimensions of a sea, and Herodotus¹³³ derides those who still regarded it as a river. Finally, the change of religious ideas gradually affected Erebos, the abode of the dead. Elysion was moved down to it as the {p. 40}place of reward for the good, and Tartaros was raised up to it to form the prison in which the wicked suffered the punishment due to their crimes¹³⁴.

It may not be uninteresting ere we quit the subject of the cosmology of the ancient Greeks, to compare with it that invented by our own great poet in his Paradise Lost, more especially as it is a subject which does not seem to have attracted much of the attention of his commentators.

According to Milton the universe previous to the fall of the angels consisted of only two parts, the Heaven of Heavens, or Empyreal Heaven, and Chaos. The former was the abode of God himself and his angels ; it was of immense magnitude, being

…………………………extended wide

In circuit undetermined, square or round,

With opal towers and battlements adorned

Of living saphir.

It stretched into plains and rose into hills, was watered by lucid streams, produced plants and flowers, and contained minerals in its bowels like earth ; like which also it had the vicissitudes of night and day¹³⁵. Chaos was

………………………………… a dark

Illimitable ocean, without bound,

Without dimension, where length, breadth and height,

And time and place are lost.

It contained the ‘embryon atoms’ which the Almighty employed in his creations, being

The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave.

When the rebel angels were cast out of Heaven they fell for the space of nine days ‘through the frighted deep.’ At length Hell, which had meantime been created,

Yawning received them whole and on them closed.

The bottom of this place of torment was of both liquid and solid fire ; it was over-canopied by a ‘fiery concave,’ and its only entrance was closed with lofty portals.

And thrice threefold the gates : three folds were brass,

Three iron, three of adamantine rock

Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire

Yet unconsumed.

These gates were kept by Sin and Death.

After the expulsion of the rebel angels the Son of God,

…………on the wings of Cherubim

Uplifted in paternal glory, rode

Far into Chaos and the world unborn ;

and placing his golden compasses set off the space for the world he was about to create. It formed a hollow globe, and hung from Heaven by a golden chain,

…………in bigness as a star

Of smallest magnitude close by the moon¹³⁶.

The globous earth ‘self-balanced on her centre hung’ in the midst of the round world ; and the sun, the moon, and the other heavenly bodies were set in the firmament to illuminate the earth. The firmament itself was not solid ; it was an

…………expanse of liquid, pure,

Transparent, elemental air.

Creation being thus completed, the Universe consisted of Heaven, Hell, Chaos, and the World with its contents.

It is thus that the most imaginative of modern poets, as we may perhaps venture to style him, created a universe for the scene of the poem, whose object (the noblest that can be conceived) was to

………assert eternal Providence,

And justify the ways of God to men.

Its agreement in some parts with the cosmology of Homer {p. 42}and Hesiod is worthy of attention, as it is probable that in Milton’s days the latter was not generally understood.

Cosmogony and Theogony. §

The origin of the world and the origin of the gods, i. e. cosmogony and theogony, are in the Grecian system, as in those of some other nations, closely united. The sages of antiquity seem to have had a strong persuasion that, to bring creation and similar acts down to the comprehension of tribes led by the senses, it was necessary to represent natural agents as living and active persons ; or they felt a pleasure in exciting admiration, by the narration of the strange and wonderful adventures of beings older and more powerful than mankind¹³⁷.

The lively and creative genius of the Greeks seems particularly to have delighted in this species of fiction. They loved to represent the origin, the union, and the changes of the various parts of nature, under the guise of matrimony and birth (their more cheerful system, unlike those of Asia and Scandinavia, excluding the idea of the death of a god) ; causes with them becoming parents, effects children, the production of an effect being the birth of a divine child.

Every cosmogonic system commences with a Chaos, or state of darkness and confusion. The chief difference among these systems lies in the circumstance that some viewed the earth, others the water, as the immediate origin of organised bodies. In Grecian cosmogony Homer would appear to have followed the former, for he terms Oceanos the origin of all¹³⁸; the latter is the theory adopted in the Theogony of Hesiod. Thales and the Ionian school of philosophy followed the Homeric cosmogony. In the Timæus of Plato it is said that the offspring of Heaven and Earth were Oceanos and Tethys, and that from these sprang Kronos, Rhea, and the other deities. This is apparently, however, an attempt at bringing Homer and Hesiod into harmony.

The venerable Theogony of Hesiod is evidently the parent of all the succeeding ones, and it is itself but the echo of those of bards of far higher antiquity than the Ascræan to whom it {p. 43}is ascribed, and who often was ignorant of the meaning of what he delivered. We will here relate the portion of it which extends from Chaos to the establishment of the empire of Zeus and origin of the gods worshiped in Greece.

Chaos¹³⁹ (Void Space) was first ; then came into being ‘broad-breasted’ Earth, the gloomy Tartaros, and Love. Chaos produced Erebos and Night, and this last bore to Erebos Day and Æther.

Earth now produced Uranos (Heaven), of equal extent with herself, to envelope her, and the Mountains and Pontos (Sea). She then bore to Uranos a mighty progeny : the Titans ; six males, Oceanos, Coios, Crios, Hyperiôn, Iapetos, and the youngest of them Kronos ; and six females, Theia, Rheia (or Rhea), Themis, Mnemosyne, Phœbe, and Tethys. She also bore the three Cyclopes, Brontes, Steropes, and Arges¹⁴⁰ , and the three Hundred-handed (έκαтόγχϵιρς), Cottos, Briareôs, and Gyes. These children were hated by their father, who, as soon as they were born, thrust them out of sight into a cavern of Earth¹⁴¹ , who, grieved at his unnatural conduct, produced the ‘substance of hoary steel,’ and forming from it a sickle, roused her children, the Titans, to rebellion against him : but fear seized on them all except Kronos, who lying in wait with the sickle with which his mother had armed him, mutilated his unsuspecting sire. The drops which fell on the earth from the wound gave birth to the Erinnyes, the Giants, and the Melian nymphs : from what fell into the sea sprang Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty.

Earth bore to her other son Pontos the ‘truth-speaking’ Nereus,Thaumas (Wonder), Phorcys, and ‘fair-cheeked’ Keto. {p. 44}Nereus had by Doris, a daughter of the Titan Oceanos, the fifty Nereïdes or sea-nymphs. Thaumas was by Electra (Brightness), another daughter of Oceanos, father of the swift Iris (Rainbow), and of the ‘well-haired’ Harpies. Keto bore to her brother Phorcys the Grææ, the Gorgons, the Echidna, and the serpent that guarded the golden apples of the Hesperides.

Earth finally bore by Tartaros her last offspring, the hundred-headed Typhoeus, the father of storms and whirlwinds.

The progeny of the Titans was numerous. Oceanos had by his sister Tethys all the rivers that flow on the earth, and the Ocean-nymphs, three thousand in number. Theia bore to Hyperiôn, Helios (Sun), Selena (Moon), and Eôs (Dawn) ; and Phœbe to Coios, Asteria (Starry) and Leto. Crios had by Eurybia (Wide-strength), the daughter of Pontos¹⁴², Astræos (Starry), Pallas, and Perses. To Astræos Eôs bore the winds Zephyros, Boreas, and Notos, and Eosphoros (Dawn-bearer), or Morning-star, and the stars of heaven. Styx, a daughter of Oceanos, was by Pallas the mother of Envy and Victory, Strength and Force ; and Asteria, the daughter of Coios, bore to Perses Hecate.

The fifth Titan, Iapetos, was by Clymene, a daughter of Oceanos, the father of four sons, Atlas, Menœtios, Prometheus and Epimetheus.

Rhea was united to Kronos, and their offspring were Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Aïdes, Poseidôn, and Zeus. Kronos, having learned from his parents, Heaven and Earth, that he was fated to be deprived by one of his sons of the kingdom which he had taken from his father, devoured his children as fast as they were born. Rhea, when about to be delivered of Zeus, besought her parents to teach her how she might save him. Instructed by Earth, she concealed him in a cavern of Crete, and gave a stone in his stead to Kronos. This stone he afterwards threw up¹⁴³, and with it the children whom he had {p. 45}devoured. When Zeus was grown up, he and the other children of Kronos made war on their father and the Titans. The scene of the conflict was Thessaly ; the former fought from Olympos, the latter from Othrys. During ten entire years the contest was undecided ; at length by the counsel of Earth the Kronids released the Hundred-handed, and called them to their aid. The war was then resumed with renewed vigour, and the Titans were finally vanquished and imprisoned in Tartaros under the guard of the Hundred-handed. The Kronids then, by the advice of Earth, gave the supreme power to Zeus, who in return distributed honours and dominion among the associates of his victory.

In this theogony order and philosophical consequence are plainly discernible. We find it faithfully adhering to the cosmological ideas above developed¹⁴⁴. Void Space must naturally have been first : Earth, which was to occupy the centre of the World ; Tartaros, the lowest and deepest gloom ; and Love, the generating principle of life and motion, follow in their due order. As in all cosmogonies darkness precedes light, so Erebos and Night, the one the darkness beneath, the other that above the earth, succeed, and from them spring Day the lower, and Æther the higher light above the earth. Without the intervention of Love, Earth now produces the Heaven, which arches over her ; the Mountains, which rise on her surface and support the heaven ; and the barren salt Sea. United then by Love with Uranos, she gives birth to the Titans, the origins of gods and men, of the celestial luminaries, and the fructifying streams.

The making thunder, lightning, and other celestial phænomena to be children of Heaven and Earth might seem to imply a deeper knowledge of physics than can be justly assigned to these early ages. The cause, however, was a simple one. Uranos being masculine could not produce of himself, and Earth was the only female being that could be united with {p. 46}him. The Cyclopes, that is the Whirlers,¹⁴⁵, whose individual names signify Thunder, Lightning, and Brightness, or Swiftness, represent one kind of celestial phænomena, and the Hundred-handed must therefore be the personifications of another, but what kind is more difficult to ascertain. It is, however, probable that they refer to winter, as the Cyclopes seem more especially related to summer, and that they are the hail, rain and snow of that season : Kottos, that is Smiter, being the hail ; Gyes, the Furrower, the rain ; and Briareôs, the Presser, the snow, which lies deep and heavy on the ground¹⁴⁶; and they were naturally named Hundred-handed, from their acting so extensively at the same moment of time¹⁴⁷.

Of the Titans we shall presently treat at length, and the progeny of Earth and Pontos shall be noticed in another place¹⁴⁸. There remain therefore only to be considered the beings which sprang from the blood of the mutilated Uranos. These are the Erinnyes, the Giants, and the Melian nymphs. Productiveness is the consequence of that act, for which analogy would incline us to look ; and when we divest our mind of the idea of the Giants given by Homer, and which became the prevalent one, we may without difficulty find that they simply signify Producers¹⁴⁹. By the Melian nymphs may perhaps be signified the producers of fruits or cattle¹⁵⁰. The {p. 47}Erinnyes offer most difficulty ; they may be, as some think, telluric powers¹⁵¹, and have undergone a change of character like the Giants, Hermes, and other similar beings ; or their late character — that of punishers of the violators of the order of nature — may have been their original one, and their origin have been ascribed to the first violation of filial duty.

We now proceed to the important mythe of the Titans, and as the view of it given by Völcker seems to us to be more correct than any preceding one, we will lay it before our readers¹⁵².

The six sons and six daughters of Heaven and Earth above enumerated alone are Titans, and the most probable derivation of the name is that which makes it equivalent to Earth-born¹⁵³. The germs of all beings afterwards to be formed lie in them, but they are inclosed within the earth, and cannot act till Uranos is deprived of his procreative power, and Aphrodite is produced. Then the Titans Oceanos and Tethys give origin to the rivers and streams of the earth ; from Coios, Crios, Hyperiôn, Theia, and Phœbe spring the sun, moon, and other luminaries and light-beings ; and the material world being thus completed, Kronos and Rhea give birth to the gods, and Iapetos becomes the father of men¹⁵⁴. Their task being thus completed, and the earth replenished with its fitting inhabitants, the Titans are dismissed, to remain inactive in Tartaros.

The Titan-war therefore could have formed no part of the original mythe. It had its origin in the figurative terms bind and loose, used to signify the checking and permitting of the {p. 48}productive powers of the Titans. Homer knows nothing of this war ; he merely says that Zeus placed Kronos beneath ‘the earth and barren sea¹⁵⁵,’ and in him the opposition between the Olympian gods and the Titans is merely a local one ; the one being the dwellers of the brilliant Olympos, the other the inmates of the gloomy Tartaros¹⁵⁶. Hesiod, who evidently misunderstood the sense of the mythe, first gave it the form of a war, and narrated its details in the most splendid poetry ; but the contradictions and variations in his narrative give convincing proof of its being alien from the ancient cosmogonic mythe. In the hands of the logographers and poets, such as Æschylus, the cosmogony becomes the history of a series of dynasties, and, contrary to Hesiod, the children of all the Titans, except Kronos and Rhea, are counted among the Titans, and set in hostility with the Kronids. Thus Pherecydes¹⁵⁷ commences with saying that Uranos reigned first, and had by Earth the Cyclopes and the Hundred-handed. He casts all these into Tartaros, and then the Titans are born ; who all, except Oceanos¹⁵⁸, at the instigation of their mother, fall on their sire, whom Kronos mutilates. They liberate their imprisoned brethren ; but Kronos, to whom the kingdom is given, binds them again in Tartaros. Then follows the account of the birth of the Kronids, who by freeing the Cyclopes and their brethren win the victory, and the three brothers divide the dominions of their father among them by lot¹⁵⁹.

The Titan-war, as this critic thinks, had its origin and example in those of Typhôn, the Aloeids, and the Giants against the gods. The circumstance of Zeus being termed King (though for another reason), the change of the three celestial sovereigns, and the mutilation of Uranos, aided in making the mythe take this form. The question how Zeus came to the throne was naturally answered by the tale of a revolution and hostility between the two classes of gods. Imitation is also everywhere to be traced. Zeus is made to mutilate Kronos {p. 49}as Kronos did Uranos¹⁶⁰. The latter hides his children under the earth, the former swallows his. Kronos is the youngest child, so is Zeus ; the Titans divide the dominion of the world, so do the Kronids. As Kronos devours his children for fear of their dethroning him, so something similar is recorded of Zeus¹⁶¹. Earth always gives the counsel¹⁶²; and in the Ilias an attempt of the Olympians to bind Zeus is mentioned, in which Briareôs again comes to his aid¹⁶³.

There would also appear to have been some other ancient system of the celestial dynasties, which assigned the place of Uranos and Gæa to Ophiôn and Eurynome. As this last is said to be an Oceanis, and the former name is manifestly derived from the symbol for the earth¹⁶⁴, it would seem to have been one of the systems in which earth and water were regarded as the origin of all beings. It reverses however the usual order, the earth being generally looked on as the female principle. We find no traces of it anterior to the Alexandrian period, when it is noticed by Lycophrôn¹⁶⁵ and Apollonius¹⁶⁶. At a much later age it is alluded to by Nonnus¹⁶⁷. Milton, who, like the Alexandrians, loved to bring forward recondite mythes and traditions, nearly translates the Rhodian poet in the following lines :

And fabled how the serpent whom they called

Ophiôn with Eurynome (the wide-

Encroaching Eve perhaps) had first the rule

Of high Olympus, thence by Saturn driven

And Ops, ere yet Dictæan Jove was born. — Par. Lost, x. 580.

Νύξ. Nox. Night. §

In the Theogony Night is the daughter of Chaos, and sister of Erebos, to whom she bore Day and Æther¹⁶⁸. She is then said to have produced without a sire Fate (Мόρος) and Kêr, Death, Sleep and Dreams, Momos (Mockery), Woe, the Hesperides, Nemesis, Deceit, Love (Φιλότης), Old-age, and Strife¹⁶⁹.

It is not difficult to discern the reasons for giving this progeny to Night. It is a principle of all cosmogony that darkness preceded light, which sprang from it ; a truth here expressed by making Night the parent of Day and Æther. Night is also naturally regarded as the parent of Death, Sleep, Dreams, and their kindred ideas. Philotes, or the union of love, is also for a similar reason the child of Night¹⁷⁰. Deceit, Age, Strife, and Woe are figuratively her offspring ; the Hesperides are so because their abode was near hers in the West. Nemesis is probably a daughter of Night to indicate the secret concealed path which the divine justice often treads to inflict the punishment due to vice. The reason is not so apparent why Night should be the parent of Mockery.

Hesiod places the abode of Night in the West, behind where Atlas supports the heavens¹⁷¹. Night and Day, he says, are there by turns ; when one goes in the other goes out. Day {p. 51}bears light to mortals ; Night, ‘wrapt in a sable cloud, carries Sleep in her arms.’ It is not quite clear whether the poet places the dwelling of Night on this side of or beyond Ocean¹⁷².

In Homer Sleep says to Hera that, when once at her desire he had cast Zeus into a slumber, the god on waking sought him, and would have flung him from the sky down into the sea, but that he took refuge with Night, ‘the subduer of gods and men,’ whom Zeus revering remitted his anger¹⁷³. The poet gives here no intimation of any kindred between Night and Sleep. The dwelling of both would seem to be on Olympos.

Alcman¹⁷⁴ and Sophocles¹⁷⁵ speak of the abode or springs of Night in the North, whilst Apollonius¹⁷⁶ appears to place them within the earth.

It was, as we shall see, the custom of the poets (or perhaps such had been previously the popular creed) to bestow chariots and horses on those deities who had a long course to perform. We do not however find a vehicle assigned to Night by Homer or Hesiod ; but succeeding poets furnished her with one. Æschylus¹⁷⁷ speaks of her ‘dark chariot’ ; Euripides¹⁷⁸ describes her as driving through Olympos, — the sky according to the views of his time ; Theocritus¹⁷⁹ calls the stars ‘the attendants on the car of quiet Night’ ; Apollonius¹⁸⁰ represents Night as yoking her horses at sunset ; and Statius¹⁸¹ makes Sleep her charioteer.

As the name of this deity is common to most of the languages which are akin to the Greek¹⁸², its derivation is not perhaps to be found in any of them.

Ὠκϵανὸς καὶ Тηθύς. Oceanus et Tethys. §

Oceanos, the first-born of the Titans, espoused his sister Tethys. Their offspring were the rivers of the earth, and three thousand daughters, named Oceanides, or Ocean-nymphs¹⁸³. {p. 52}This is all the account of Oceanos given in the Theogony. Homer speaks of him and Tethys as the origin of the gods¹⁸⁴. When Zeus, he says, placed his sire in Tartaros, Rhea committed her daughter Hera to the charge of Oceanos and Tethys, by whom she was carefully nurtured¹⁸⁵.

The abode of Oceanos was in the West¹⁸⁶. He dwelt, according to Æschylus, in a grotto-palace ; beneath his stream, as it would appear¹⁸⁷. In the ‘Prometheus Bound’ of this poet Oceanos comes borne through the air on a griffon, to console and advise the lofty-minded sufferer ; and from the account he gives of his journey it is manifest he came from the West. When Hercules was crossing his stream in the cup of the sungod to fetch the oxen of Geryôn, Oceanos rose, and by agitating his waters tried to terrify him, but on the hero's bending his bow at him he retired¹⁸⁸. In the Ilias¹⁸⁹ Oceanos is said to dread the thunder of Zeus. As in similar cases, it is not always easy to distinguish the god from the stream over which he rules.

The name Oceanos is apparently connected with a family of words signifying water¹⁹⁰; that of Tethys is probably the Rearer, the Nurse, or Grandmother¹⁹¹; some understand by it Mother Earth¹⁹².

ϓπϵρίων καὶ Θϵίη. Hyperion et Thia. §

Hyperiôn and Theia are in the Theogony¹⁹³ the parents of the Sun, Moon, and Dawn. In Homer Hyperiôn is equivalent to Helios¹⁹⁴. Pindar extols Theia as the bestower of wealth on mortals¹⁹⁵.

The interpretation given by the ancients of Hyperiôn as Overgoer, seems liable to little objection¹⁹⁶. Some interpret Theia Swift¹⁹⁷; Müller renders it Bright¹⁹⁸.

Ἠέλιος, Ἣλιος. Sol. Sun. §

Helios was the son of Hyperiôn by Theia, or according to a Homeridian hymn by Euryphaëssa (Wide-shining). His office was to give light to men and gods during the day.

In the Odyssey, when Helios ends his diurnal career, he is said to go under the earth¹⁹⁹ : it is not easy to determine whether the poet meant that he then passed through Tartaros back to the East during the night. At all events neither Homer nor Hesiod evinces any knowledge of the beautiful fiction of the solar cup or basin. The origin of this seems to lie in the simple fact that men, seeing the sun rise in the east and set in the west each day, were naturally led to inquire how his return to the east was effected. If then, as there is reason to suppose, it was the popular belief that a lofty mountainous ring ran round the edge of the earth, it was easy for the poets to feign that on reaching the western stream of Ocean Helios himself, his chariot and his horses, were received into a magic cup or boat made by Hephæstos, which, aided by the current, conveyed him during the night round the northern part of the earth, where his light was only enjoyed by the happy Hyperboreans, the lofty Rhipæans concealing it from the rest of mankind²⁰⁰.

The cup (λέβης or δέπας) of the Sun-god appeared first, we {p. 54}are told, in the Titanomachia of Arctinos or Eumelos²⁰¹. Peisander, in his Heracleia, represented Oceanos giving the hero the Sun-god’s cup to pass over to Erytheia ; and Stesichorus said in his Geryoneïs,

Helios Hyperionides

Into the golden cup went down ;

That, having through the Ocean passed,

He to the depths of sacred gloomy Night might come,

Unto his mother and his wedded wife,

And his dear children ; but the grove with laurel shaded

The son of Zeus went into²⁰².

Mimnermus had the following lines in his poem named Nanno.

Helios is doomed to labour every day ;

And rest there never is for him

Or for his horses, when rose-fingered Eôs

Leaves Ocean and to heaven ascends.

For through the waves his loved bed beareth him,

Hollow and formed of precious gold

By Hephæstos’ hand, and winged ; the water's top

Along, it bears the sleeping god,

From the Hesperides’ to the Æthiops’ land,

Where stand his horses and swift car

Until the air-born Eôs goeth forth :

Then Helios mounts another car.

In these lines of Mimnermus the god, as described above, is carried round the earth during the night ; and in the following passage of the same poet his palace is evidently situated in the East.

Æetes’ city, where swift Helios’ beams

Within his golden chamber lie,

By Ocean’s marge, whither bold Iasôn went²⁰³.

It is also in the East that ‘the stables’ of Helios are placed by Euripides in his Phaëthôn²⁰⁴; while in another passage²⁰⁵ he speaks of the ‘dark stable’ of the Sun-god, doubtless meaning the West. In Stesichorus, as we may observe, the abode of Helios would seem to be in the realm of Night, beyond Ocean. {p. 55}Alexander the Ætolian²⁰⁶, when speaking of the plant by means of which Glaucos became a sea-god, says that it grew for Helios in the Isles of the Blest, and that he gave his horses their evening meal (δόρπον) of it to recruit their vigour. Ovid also, the faithful follower of the Greeks, places the pastures of the solar steeds in the West, where they have ambrosia for grass²⁰⁷; and Statius²⁰⁸, in a beautiful passage, describes the Sun as loosing his steeds on the margin of the western sea, where the Nereïdes and Seasons take off their harness. In Nonnus²⁰⁹, when the god arrives in the West, Phosphoros unyokes the sweating steeds, washes them in the waves of ocean, and then leads them to their stall ; and when they are rested the god drives them round the Ocean to the East. In two other passages of his wild poem²¹⁰ Nonnus places the abode of the Sun in the East. It is remarkable that neither he nor the Latin poets ever allude to the cup. The park and gardens of Helios are thus richly described by Claudian²¹¹ :

Thus having said, his gardens all bedewed

With yellow fires he (Sol) enters, and his vale,

Which a strong-flaming stream surrounding pours

Abundant beams upon the watered grass,

On which the Sun’s steeds pasture. There he binds

With fragrant wreaths his locks, and the bright manes

And yellow reins of his wing-footed steeds.

He does not, however, tell the site of this brilliant spot ; but as the Sun sets out from it on his diurnal course, when his steeds’ manes have been adorned by Lucifer and Aurora, we may presume that it was in the East. It is also in the East that Ovid places the splendid palace of the Sun, where the lucid god sat enthroned, surrounded by the Days, Months, Years, Seasons, Ages, and Hours²¹².

From a consideration of all these passages it may seem to follow, that the ideas of the poets on this subject were very vague and fleeting. Perhaps the prevalent opinion was that the Sun rested himself and his weary steeds in the West, and then returned to the East. We are to recollect that the cup was winged, that is endowed with magic velocity.

Neither Homer nor Hesiod speaks of the chariot of the Sun ; but as the former poet names the horses of Eôs, he must naturally have supposed Helios to have driven similar steeds along the sky. In the Hymns²¹³ Helios appears in a chariot ; Pindar²¹⁴ calls him ‘the ruler of fire-breathing steeds’. It is probable that, like the other Homeric gods, Helios had originally only two horses ; but Euripides and the succeeding poets²¹⁵ give him four, which, according to the Latin poets, are of a dazzling white colour²¹⁶. Their names are Eôs or Eoös (Eastern,) Æthôn or Æthiops (Burning), Bronte (Thunder), Astrape or Sterope (Lightning)²¹⁷.

On the island of Thrinakia, says Homer²¹⁸, fed the flocks and herds of Helios, under the charge of his daughters, the nymphs Phaëthusa and Lampetia (Shining and Gleaming). These were seven herds of oxen, and as many flocks of sheep, fifty in each flock and herd : they neither bred nor died. At Tænaron also this god had a flock of ‘long-wooled’ sheep²¹⁹. He had also herds of oxen at Gortyna in Crete²²⁰, and sacred sheep at Apollonia in Epeiros²²¹.

The Sun was not singular in this circumstance of possessing sacred cattle, but they were dedicated to him more frequently than to other deities for obvious reasons, such as his being, as it were, the celestial shepherd or overseer of the stars, and the god who gave increase to the earth²²².

By Perseïs or Perse (Brightness ?), a daughter of Oceanos, Helios was father of Æetes, and his sister Circe the great enchantress²²³, and of Pasiphae, who espoused Minôs the son of Zeus²²⁴. The nymphs just mentioned, who kept his cattle, were his children by Neæra (Newness ?)²²⁵. Augeas, king of Elis, so rich in flocks and herds, was said to be the offspring of the {p. 57}Sun-god by Iphiboe²²⁶. By the nymph Rhodos, the daughter of Aphrodite, Helios had the seven Heliades, who were the first inhabitants of the isle of Rhodes²²⁷. The Graces are also said to have been daughters of Helios by Ægle (Splendour)²²⁸.

The Ocean-nymph Clymene (Bright ?) bore to Helios a son named Phaëthôn (Gleaming). The claims of this youth to a celestial origin being disputed by Epaphos the son of Zeus, he journeyed to the palace of his sire, from whom he extracted an unwary oath that he would grant him whatever he asked. The ambitious youth instantly demanded permission to guide the solar chariot for one day, to prove himself there by the undoubted progeny of the Sun-god. Helios, aware of the consequences, remonstrated, but to no purpose. The youth persisted, and the god, bound by his oath, reluctantly committed the reins to his hands, warning him of the dangers of the road, and instructing him how to avoid them. Phaëthôn grasps the reins, the flame-breathing steeds spring forward, but soon aware that they are not directed by the well-known hand, they run out of the course ; the world is set on fire, and a total conflagration would have ensued, had not Zeus, at the prayer of Earth, launched his thunder, and hurled the terrified driver from his seat. He fell into the river Eridanos. His sisters, the Heliades, as they lamented his fate were turned into poplar trees²²⁹ on its banks, and their tears, which still continued to flow, became amber as they dropped into the stream. Cycnos, the friend of the ill-fated Phaëthôn, also abandoned himself to mourning, and at length was changed into a swan (κύκνος)²³⁰.

The age of this story is uncertain²³¹, but it has all the {p. 58}appearance of being a physical mythe devised to account for the origin of the electron or amber²³², which seems to have been brought from the Baltic to Greece in the very earliest times. In the opinion of Welcker²³³ it is only the Greek version of a German legend on that subject ; for the tradition of the people of the country was said to be²³⁴, that the amber was produced from the tears of the Sun-god, that is Phœbos Apollo according to the Greeks, who added that he shed these tears when he came to the land of the Hyperboreans, an exile from heaven on account of the fate of his son Asclepios. But as this did not accord with the Hellenic conception of either Helios or Apollo, the Heliades were devised to remove the incongruity. The foundation of the fable lay in the circumstance of amber being regarded as a species of resin which drops from the trees that yield it. The tale of Cycnos is only one of the numerous legends devised by the Greeks to account for the origin of remarkable animals. The Eridanos is said to have been a mere poetic name, there being no stream actually so called ; though it was afterwards given by the poets to the Rhine, the Rhodanus or Rhone, and the Padus or Po, on the banks of which last stream the fable of Phaëthôn was localised.

According to another legend Clytia, a daughter of Oceanos, was beloved by the Sun-god ; but he transferred his affections to Leucothea, daughter of Orchamos (Ruler), king of the eastern regions. The god visited her during the night, in the form of her mother. The virgin was obliged to comply with his wishes, and Clytia filled with jealous rage discovered the secret to Orchamos, who buried his hapless daughter alive. The god, unable to save her, turned her into the frankincense plant, and the neglected Clytia pining away became a sunflower²³⁵.

Here also we have one of the legendary origins of natural productions. The date of the tale is unknown, but it is probably not very ancient ; it is only to be found at present in {p. 59}the Latin poet Ovid²³⁶; but beyond question he took it from a Greek original.

Helios, as the god whose eye surveyed all things²³⁷, was invoked as a witness to solemn oaths²³⁸. As he was not one of the Olympian gods he was not honoured with temples in Greece, but he had altars at Corinth, Argos, and some other places. The chief seat of his worship was the isle of Rhodes, where stood the celebrated Colossus, or statue of brass seventy cubits high, in his honour²³⁹. The legend said²⁴⁰ that, when Zeus and the other Immortals were dividing the earth among them by lot, the Sun happening to be absent got no share. On his reminding Zeus of this, the god was about to make a new allotment, but Helios would not suffer him, saying that he had seen a fertile land lying beneath the ‘hoary sea’, with which he would be content. The gods then swore that it should be the undisturbed possession of the Sun-god, and the isle of Rhodes emerged from the deep.

Helios is represented by artists driving his four-horse chariot, his head surrounded with rays, a whip in his hand, and preceded by Eosphoros. Sometimes he is standing with a flambeau in his hand, and two of his horses near him.

This god was styled²⁴¹, 1. Mortal-delighting ; 2. Mortal-illuminating ; 3. Unwearied ; etc.

The name Helios (Ἣλιος) is perhaps derived from ἕλα,ἕλη, brightness. It seems, however, akin to the names of the Sun in the languages which are of the same family with the Greek²⁴².

Σϵλήνη. Luna. Moon. §

Selene, the sister of Helios, drove her chariot through the sky while he was reposing after the toils of the day. There is, however, no allusion in Homer or Hesiod to the chariot of Selene. One of the Hymns²⁴³ describes her as bathing in Ocean, putting on gleaming raiment, and ascending a chariot drawn by glittering steeds. Theocritus²⁴⁴ also gives Selene horses ; but we do not meet any other mention of her chariot and horses in the Greek poets. In Ovid²⁴⁵ her steeds are snow-white. Statius²⁴⁶ places her in a car drawn by two horses. Pausanias²⁴⁷ says that one of the figures on the base of the throne of Zeus at Olympia was Selene driving a single horse, as it appeared to him ; but others said it was a mule, and they had a silly legend respecting it. The Latin Festus²⁴⁸ is the only writer who speaks of the car of the Moon being drawn by mules²⁴⁹.

The later poets make steers or heifers the draught-cattle of Selene²⁵⁰. This notion had its very natural origin in the contemplation of the horned moon²⁵¹.

In the general and natural mode of representation Selene {p. 61}is the sister of Helios, but another view of the subject made her his daughter, he being the source of her light²⁵²; while a third view made her the mother by him of the four Seasons²⁵³. In one of the Homeridian Hymns²⁵⁴ Selene is called the daughter of Pallas, son of Megamedes.

It was said that Selene was enamoured of Endymiôn, on whom Zeus had bestowed the boon of perpetual youth, but united with perpetual sleep ; and that she used to descend to him every night on the summit of Mount Latmos, the place of his repose²⁵⁵. The god Pan was also said to have gained her love under the form of a snow-white ram²⁵⁶. She bore to Zeus a daughter named Pandia²⁵⁷; and Ersa (Dew) was also the offspring of the king of heaven and the goddess of the moon²⁵⁸.

This last is a pleasing fiction of the lyric poet Alcman. The moon was naturally, though incorrectly, regarded as the cause of dew²⁵⁹ and nothing therefore was more obvious than to say that the dew was the progeny of the moon and sky personified after the usual manner of the Greeks.

In the Homeridian Hymn to Selene she is styled²⁶⁰ : 1. White-armed ; 2. Well-tressed, — two of the usual epithets of the goddesses.

Empedocles²⁶¹ and Euripides²⁶² give the Moon an epithet (γλαυκῶπις) usually appropriated to Pallas Athene, and of which we shall treat in its due place.

The name Selene (Σϵλήνη) is plainly derived from σέλας, brightness, and is one of the large family of words of which ἕλα or ἕλη (Helle, Germ.) may be regarded as the root.

Ήώς. Aurora. Dawn. §

The third of the children of Hyperiôn and Theia was Eôs, or the Dawn. Like Selene she was named by later poets²⁶³ from Pallas, and their reason for so doing is not easy to be discerned. Æschylus would seem to term her the child of Night²⁶⁴, — a very obvious and natural genealogy.

In Homer and Hesiod Eôs is simply the goddess of the dawn, but in the works of succeeding poets she is identified with Hemera, or the Day²⁶⁵.

Homer, who is silent respecting the chariots of Helios and Selene, names the steeds which drew that of Eôs. He calls them Lampos (Shining) and Phaëthôn (Gleaming)²⁶⁶. Æschylus²⁶⁷ {p. 63}and Theocritus²⁶⁸ name the goddess ‘white-horsed’, and Euripides²⁶⁹ describes the ‘white-winged’ Hemera carrying off Tithonos in her golden four-horsed chariot. In another passage of this poet²⁷⁰ we meet the ‘one-horsed’ Eôs, whether riding or driving is not said. Lycophrôn²⁷¹ gives her the winged horse Pegasos for her steed, and the scholiasts inform us that, when this horse had thrown Bellerophôn down to earth, Eôs asked and obtained him from Zeus²⁷².

Eôs was, by Astræos, the mother of the winds Boreas, Zephyros and Notos, and of the stars of heaven²⁷³.

The lovely goddess of the dawn was more than once smitten with the love of mortal man. She carried off Oriôn, and kept him in the isle of Ortygia, till he was slain there by the darts of Artemis²⁷⁴. Cleitos (Bright ?), the son of Mantios, was for his exceeding beauty snatched away by her, ‘that he might be among the gods²⁷⁵.’ She also carried off Cephalos, and had by him a son named Phaëthôn²⁷⁶. But her strongest affection was for Tithonos, son of Laomedôn, king of Troy. When she had carried him off, she besought Zeus to bestow on him immortality. The sovereign of Olympos assented, and Tithonos became exempt from death ; but the love-sick goddess, having forgotten to have youth joined in the gift, began with time to discern old-age creeping over the visage and limbs of her beautiful lover. When she saw his hairs blanching, she abstained from his bed, but still kept him and treated him with due attention in her palace on the eastern margin of the Oceanstream, ‘giving him ambrosial food and fair garments’. But when he was no longer able to move his limbs, she deemed it the wisest course to shut him up in his chamber, whence his feeble voice was incessantly heard²⁷⁷. Later poets say that out of compassion she turned him into a tree-hopper (τϵττιξ, cicada)²⁷⁸. In Homer the goddess is less fastidious, and she is {p. 64}escribed as rising from the bed of the ‘illustrious Tithonos, to bear light to mortals and immortals²⁷⁹.’ Memnôn and Æmathiôn were the children whom Eôs bore to Tithonos²⁸⁰.

In the works of the artists Eôs drives a four-horsed car. Night, the moon, and the stars retire before her. Sometimes she is winged, at other times not.

Eôs was styled by the poets²⁸¹, 1. Rose-fingered ; 2. Rose-armed ; 3. Yellow-robed ; 4. Gold-seated ; 5. Well-seated ; 6. Well-tressed ; 7. Snow-footed ; 8. Fair-lighting ; 9. Mortal-illuming ; 10. Much-seeing ; 11. Air-born²⁸², etc.

The most probable derivation of the name Eôs (Ήὼς, Dor.Ἀὼς) seems to be that from ἂω, to blow, regarding it as the cool morning air, whose gentle breathing precedes the rising of the sun²⁸³.

Ϗοȋος καὶ Фοίβη . Cœus et Phœbe. §

The offspring of this pair of Titans were ‘sable-vested’ Leto (Darkness ?), and ‘well-named’ Asteria (Starry)²⁸⁴, which last espoused Perses, the son of Crios. Leto was destined to be the mother of Apollo and Artemis under the new order of things, which succeeded the time of the Titans.

The name Phœbe plainly signifies Lucid²⁸⁵, and a very obvious etymon will give a similar signification for that of Coios²⁸⁶.

κρKpȋος. Crius. §

This Titan is in the Theogony²⁸⁷ said to be the sire of Astræos, Pallas and Perses, by Eurybia (Wide-force), probably the daughter of Pontos and Earth²⁸⁸. Astræos, as we have just seen, was by Eôs the father of the Winds. Pallas had by Styx the Ocean-nymph, Envy and Victory, Strength and Force ; and Perses married Asteria the daughter of Coios and Phœbe, by whom he had Hecate.

There is some difficulty about these personages, who are hardly ever mentioned by the poets. The origin of the name Krios is not apparent²⁸⁹. Pallas (Shaker ?) would seem from the names of his offspring to be of a moral, not of a physical nature, unlike the progeny of the three preceding Titans. With Astræos (Starry) and Perses (Bright ?), and their children, the difficulty is much less, for they are all physical beings.

We cannot avoid here intimating our suspicion that the two moral beings Themis and Mnemosyne²⁹⁰ were not originally among the Titans. According to all analogy the sage or poet who devised the mythe of the six male and six female Titans must have intended to employ them in pairs in the task of production ; and yet we find Crios united with a daughter of Pontos and Earth, one of a class of beings quite alien from the Titans, and Iapetos with an Ocean-nymph ; while Themis and Mnemosyne are reserved to be the parents of moral beings by Zeus in the new order of things. This is surely not the order one might have anticipated. It is now, however, hardly possible to rectify the error, if it should be such.

Έκάτη. Hecate. §

In the Theogony²⁹¹ this goddess is the daughter of Perses and Asteria. Bacchylides made her a daughter of Night, and Musæus gave her Zeus for a sire in place of Perses²⁹², while {p. 66}others said that she was the offspring of the Olympian king by Pheræa, the daughter of Æolos²⁹³, or by Demeter²⁹⁴. According to Pherecydes her sire was Aristæos²⁹⁵.

It is said in the Theogony²⁹⁶ that Hecate was highly honoured by Zeus, who allowed her to exercise extensive power over land and sea, and to share in all the honours enjoyed by the children of Heaven and Earth. She rewards sacrifice and prayer to her with prosperity. She presides over the deliberations of the popular assembly, over war, and the administration of justice. She gives success in wrestling and horseracing. The fisherman prays to her and Poseidôn ; the herdsman, to her and Hermes, — for she can increase and diminish at her will. Though an only child (in contrast to Apollo and Artemis, who have similar power) she is honoured with all power among the immortals, and is by the appointment of Zeus the rearer of children, whom she has brought to see the light of day.

This passage is, however, plainly an interpolation in the Theogony, with which it is not in harmony. It has all the appearance of being an Orphic composition, and is perhaps the work of the notorious forger Onomacritus²⁹⁷.

The name Hecate is the feminine of Hecatos, one of the epithets of Apollo²⁹⁸, and is itself an epithet of his sister Artemis²⁹⁹. It was a common practice with the Greeks (of which we shall find many instances as we proceed) to form from the epithets of a deity other similar deities, or even hostile and rival beings, sometimes nymphs, or other companions of the original deity. In this manner, supposing Artemis to have been an original moon-goddess, her epithet of Far-shooter (ἑκάτη) may have separated from her, and have become another moon-goddess, for such is the real character of Hecate ; or Hecate may have been the primitive name of the moon-goddess of one of the tribes of Greece.

The system of Theocrasy which we have already mentioned {p. 67}frequently confounded deities who were originally distinct, but it sometimes only re-united those which were really the same, but which had been separated in the progress of time. In Hecate we seem to have instances of both processes ; she was identified with Selene, Artemis, and Eileithyia, all probably moon-goddesses, and with Persephone, of whom the original conception was totally different.

In consequence of this confusion Hecate became the patroness of magic and mistress of the under-world³⁰⁰. She was invoked as the triple goddess³⁰¹, and believed to wander by night along the earth, seen only by the dogs, whose baying announced her approach. She was regarded as beneficent, and the averter of evil³⁰². Her statues, which were dog-headed³⁰³, were set up at Athens and elsewhere in the market-places and at cross-roads ; and at the time of new moon the wealthy persons used to send suppers to be placed before her, which the poor would then come and eat, saying Hecate had eaten them³⁰⁴. The reason of this offering is said to have been that she might prevent the souls of the dead from appearing³⁰⁵.

A name of this goddess was Brimo³⁰⁶. This seems to have been chiefly employed to denote her terrific appearance, especially when she came summoned by magic arts. Apollonius³⁰⁷ describes her as having her head surrounded by serpents twining through branches of oak, while torches flamed in her hands, and the infernal dogs howled around her. Lucian’s ‘liar of the first magnitude,’ Eucrates³⁰⁸, gives a most terrific description of her appearance. In this character she was also sometimes called Empusa³⁰⁹. These were evidently all comparatively late ideas and fictions.

Kρόνος καὶ Ῥєίη ἢ Ῥέα. Saturnus et Ops. §

We are now arrived at the immediate origin of the Olympians, the gods worshiped throughout all Greece.

The mutilation of Uranos by his youngest son Kronos, and the overthrow of the latter by Zeus and his other children, the Kronids, have been already narrated. According to the Theogony³¹⁰ all the Titans (Oceanos, it would appear, excepted) were on this occasion shut up in Tartaros. Homer only names Kronos and Iapetos³¹¹, but he evidently included the others in his view of the subject³¹². At a later period it was said that Zeus had released the Titans³¹³. Hesiod in his didactic poem³¹⁴ says that Kronos ruled over the Isles of the Blest at the end of the earth by the ‘deep-eddying’ ocean ; and Pindar³¹⁵ gives a luxuriant description of this blissful abode, where the departed heroes of Greece dwelt beneath the mild rule of Kronos and his assessor Rhadamanthys. In the ‘Prometheus Loosed’ of Æschylus³¹⁶ the chorus consisted of the twelve Titans, and they came as it would appear from the eastern part of the Ocean-stream.

It was fabled at a late period that Kronos lay asleep, guarded by Briareôs, in a desert island near Britannia in the Western Ocean³¹⁷.

The golden age, so celebrated by poets, is said to have been in the reign of Kronos, when, according to Hesiod³¹⁸,

Men lived like gods, with minds devoid of care,

Away from toils and misery : then was not

Timid old-age, but aye in feet and hands

Equally strong the banquet they enjoyed,

From every ill remote. They died as if

O'ercome with sleep, and all good things were theirs.

The bounteous earth did of herself bring forth

Fruit much and plenteous, and in quietness

Their works midst numerous blessings they pursued.

According to a fragment of the poetic philosopher Empedocles, Kronos married the ‘blooming’ Euonyme, who bore to him ‘beautiful-haired golden’ Aphrodite, the ‘deathless’ Fates, and the ‘variety-bestowing’ Erinnyes³¹⁹.

The only adventure recorded of this god is his amour with the Ocean-nymph Philyra : dreading the jealousy of his wife Rhea, he changed her into a mare, and himself into a horse. The produce of their love was the Centaur Cheirôn, half-man half-horse. Virgil³²⁰, in describing a horse of perfect strength and beauty, says,

Such, at the coming of his wife, the swift

Saturnus’ self upon his equine crest

Poured out a mane, and lofty Pelion filled

With his shrill neighings as away he fled.

This legend, it is said, first appeared in the poem of the Gigantomachia³²¹. It is also noticed by Pindar³²². Probably the praise of Cheirôn by Homer³²³ for his love of justice, led to the making him the offspring of the god who ruled over the golden race of men ; and if, as it would appear, he taught his heroic pupils music as well as other accomplishments, a more suitable {p. 70}mother could not be assigned him than the nymph Lyreloving³²⁴.

It is highly probable that the whole history of this god was originally merely a philosophical mythe. Kronos evidently signifies time³²⁵ : he is the son of Heaven, by the motion of whose luminaries time is measured ; he is married to Rhea (ῥέα, flowingly), and time flows ; he devours his own children, and time destroys what it has brought into existence.

Perhaps, as has been ingeniously conjectured³²⁶, Zeus, the god of the heaven, was poetically named Kroniôn, that is the Son of Time, and this led to the giving a separate and distinct existence to this deity.

Kronos was in after times confounded with the grim deity Moloch, to whom the Tyrians and Carthaginians offered their children in sacrifice. The slight analogy of this practice with the legend of Kronos devouring his children, may have sufficed for the Greeks to infer an identity of their ancient deity with the object of Phœnician worship. It was not improbably the circumstance of both gods being armed with a sickle, which led to the inference of Kronos being the same with the Saturnus of the Latins³²⁷. The fabled flight of this last from Olympos to Hesperia, and his there establishing the golden age, may have been indebted for its origin to the legend of the reign of Kronos over the Islands of the Blest in the western stream of Ocean.

There were no temples of Kronos in Greece³²⁸; but the Athenians had a festival in his honour named the Kronia, which was celebrated on the twelfth day of the month Hecatombæôn, i. e. in the end of July³²⁹, and which, as described to us, strongly resembles the Italian Saturnalia³³⁰.

The only epithet given to Kronos by the elder poets is Crooked-counselled³³¹. This probably refers to his art in mutilating his sire.

Ζєύς. Jovis, Jupiter. §

Zeus is in the Ilias the eldest son of Kronos and Rhea. He and his brothers, Poseidôn and Hades, divided the world by lot among them, and the portion which fell to him was the ‘extensive heaven in air and clouds³⁷⁵.’ All the aerial phænomena, such as thunder and lightning, wind, clouds, snow, and rainbows, are therefore ascribed to him³⁷⁶; and he sends them either as signs³⁷⁷ and warnings, or to punish the transgressions of man, especially the perversions of law and justice, of which he is the fountain³⁷⁸. Zeus is called the ‘father of men and gods’³⁷⁹ ; his power over both is represented as supreme³⁸⁰, and his will is fate. Earthly monarchs obtain their authority from him³⁸¹; they are but his vicegerents, and are distinguished by epithets derived from his name³⁸². In his palace on Olympos Zeus lives after the fashion of a Grecian prince in the midst of his family ; altercations and quarrels occur between him and his queen, Hera³⁸³; and, though in general kind and affectionate to his children, he occasionally menaces or treats them with rigour³⁸⁴.

In the Odyssey the character of this god is, agreeably to the more moral tone of that poem, of a higher and more dignified order. No indecent altercations occur ; both gods and men submit to his power without a murmur, yet he is anxious to show the equity of his decrees and to ‘justify his ways³⁸⁵.’

The Theogony, as we have seen, represents Zeus as the lastborn child of Kronos and Rhea, and according to it the supreme power was freely conferred on him by his brothers, and he thus became the acknowledged head of the Olympian gods, the objects of Grecian worship.

Though Homer names the parents of nearly all the gods who appear in his poems, and it follows thence that they must have been born in some definite places, he never indicates any spot of earth as the natal place of any of his gods³⁸⁶. A very ancient tradition, however, (for it occurs in Hesiod) made the isle of Crete the scene of the birth of the monarch of Olympos. According to this tradition Rhea, when about to be delivered of Zeus, retired to a cavern near Lyctos or Cnossos in Crete. She there brought forth her babe, whom the Melian nymphs received in their arms ; Adrasteia rocked him in a golden cradle, he was fed with honey and the milk of the goat Amaltheia, while the Curetes³⁸⁷ danced about him clashing their arms to prevent his cries from reaching the ears of Kronos³⁸⁸. According to another account the infant deity was fed on ambrosia brought by pigeons from the streams of Ocean, and on nectar which an eagle drew each day with his beak from a rock³⁸⁹. This legend was gradually {p. 80}pragmatised ; Zeus became a mortal king of Crete, and not merely the cave in which he was reared, but the tomb which contained his remains, was shown by the ‘lying Cretans³⁹⁰

The Arcadians, on the other hand, asserted that Zeus first saw the light among their mountains. Rhea, they said, came to Mount Parrhasion, amidst whose thickets she brought forth her divine son. She sought for water to wash the new-born babe, but in vain, for Arcadia was then a land unwatered by streams ; the Ladôn, the Alpheios, and their kindred floods had not yet appeared. “Dear Earth ! do thou too bring forth,” said the goddess, and smiting the mountain with her staff she caused to gush from it a copious flow of water, which she named the Neda, from one of the nymphs who assisted at her labour, and who then conveyed the babe to Cnossos in Crete³⁹¹. The more general tradition, however, was that the nymph Neda and her sisters, Theisoa and Hagno, reared the infant deity in a cavern of Mount Lycæon, where there was a place named Cretes, as other spots in Arcadia were designated by names belonging to places in Crete³⁹².

All, therefore, that we can collect with safety from these accounts is that the worship of the Dictæan Zeus in Crete, and of the Lycæan Zeus in Arcadia, was of the most remote antiquity, and that thence, when the Euhemeristic principle began to creep in among the Greeks, each people supposed the deity to have been born among themselves. The Cretan legend must however be regarded as the more ancient, for the Arcadians evidently attempted to transfer the names of places in it to their own country, a practise of which as we proceed we shall meet with other instances.

In the Theogony the celestial progeny of Zeus are enumerated in the following order³⁹³.

Zeus first espoused Metis (Prudence), who exceeded gods and men in knowledge. But Heaven and Earth having told him that her first child, a maid, would equal himself in strength and counsel, and her second, a son, would be king of gods and men, he cajoled her when she was pregnant, and swallowed her ; and after a time the goddess Pallas Athene sprang {p. 81}from his head. He then married Themis, who bore him the Seasons and Fates. The Oceanis Eurynome next produced him the Graces ; Demeter was then by him the mother of Persephone, Mnemosyne of the Muses, and Leto of Apollo and Artemis. His last spouse was Hera, who bore him Hebe, Ares, and Eileithyia.

According to Homer³⁹⁴ Aphrodite was the daughter of Zeus by Dione. The Theogony further says that Maia, the daughter of Atlas, bore him Hermes³⁹⁵ A later fable said that Asteria, the sister of Leto, flying the love of Zeus, flung herself from heaven down to the sea and became the isle afterwards named Delos³⁹⁶.

Mortal women also bore a numerous progeny to this amorous monarch of the gods, and every species of transmutation and disguise was employed by him to accomplish his object. He assumed the form of her husband Amphitryôn to deceive the modesty of Alcmena, who became the mother of Heracles. Leda was beguiled by him in the shape of a beautiful white swan. Under the form of a shower of gold he penetrated the brazen prison in which Danae was inclosed, and became the father of Perseus. Antiope, the mother of Amphiôn and Zethos, was forced by him in the guise of a satyr. To seduce the Arcadian nymph Callisto he presumed to take the form of Artemis, the goddess of chastity. A bull was the form in which he carried off Europa, the sister of Cadmos ; and a flame of fire or the plumage of an eagle disguised the god from Ægina, the mother of Æacos. By Semele he was the father of Dionysos, who became a god. By Io he had a son named Epaphos. Many other heroes could also boast of being the sons of Zeus by different mothers. Of all these mortal loves {p. 82}we shall give a detailed account when we come to speak of the heroes who sprang from them.

The love of Zeus (and in this there lies a moral) was not always a source of happiness to those whom he honoured with it. Io, for example, underwent a dreadful persecution from Hera, as also did Leto. Semele perished in the flames which invested the lord of the thunder and lightning. Danae and her babe were abandoned to the waves of the sea.

We shall presently show that the name Zeus signifies God. When, therefore, we recollect how usual it was in the oriental and early Greek style to represent magnitude or excellence by associating it with the name of the deity³⁹⁷, it will not surprise us to meet so many Zeus-sprung heroes in the mythology of Greece³⁹⁸. A mere epithet was probably the germ of the mythe ; Zeus was then placed at the head of a genealogy ; and last came the poets, who detailed the amorous history.

It seems to have been an ancient opinion that the gods used to assume the human form and go among mankind to mark their conduct³⁹⁹. To this notion — which carries our minds back to those happy ages commemorated in the Book of Genesis, ‘when angels dwelt and God himself with man’ — we are indebted for some interesting legends told by poets, of Zeus taking the human form, and coming down to view more closely the conduct of mankind over whom he ruled. Such was his visit to Lycaôn king of Arcadia, whom he punished for his impiety ; and that on occasion of which the piety of Hyrieus was rewarded by the birth of Oriôn. The most pleasing tale is that of Philemôn and Baucis, narrated by Ovid in his most agreeable manner, to the following effect⁴⁰⁰.

Zeus and Hermes came one time in the form of men to a town in Phrygia. It was evening ; they sought for hospitality, but every door was closed against them. At length they approached a humble cottage where dwelt an aged man, named Philemôn, with Baucis his wife, of equal years : by them the wayfarers were gladly received. The poet pleases his imagination amidst the luxury of Rome in describing the furniture of their simple abode, and the homely fare, though their best, which they set before their celestial guests, whose quality was at length revealed by the miracle of the wine-bowl being spontaneously replenished as fast as it was drained. They told their hosts that it was their intention to destroy the godless town, and desired them to leave their house and ascend the adjacent hill. The aged pair obeyed : ere they reached the summit they turned round to look, and beheld a lake where the town had stood. Their own house remained, and, as they gazed and deplored the fate of their neighbours it became a temple. On being desired by Zeus to express their wishes, they prayed that they might be appointed to officiate in that temple, and that they might be united in death as in life. Their prayer was granted, and as they were one day standing before the temple, they were suddenly changed into an oak and a lime-tree⁴⁰¹.

It was the habit of the Greeks to appropriate particular plants and animals to the service of their deities. There was generally some reason for this, founded on physical or moral grounds, or on both. Nothing could be more natural than to assign the oak⁴⁰², the monarch of trees, to the celestial king, whose ancient oracle moreover was in the oak-woods of Dodona⁴⁰³. In like manner the eagle was evidently the bird best suited to his service⁴⁰⁴.

The celebrated Ægis⁴⁰⁵, the shield which sent forth thunder, {p. 84}lightning, and darkness, and struck terror into mortal hearts, was formed for Zeus by Hephæstos⁴⁰⁶. In Homer we see it sometimes borne by Apollo⁴⁰⁷ and by Athena⁴⁰⁸.

The most famous temple of this god was at Olympia in Elis, where every fourth year the Olympian games were celebrated in his honour : he had also a splendid fane in the isle of Ægina. But, though there were few deities less honoured with temples and statues, all the inhabitants of Hellas conspired in the duty of doing homage to the sovereign of the gods. His great oracle was at Dodona, where, even in the Pelasgian period, his priests, the Selli, announced his will and futurity⁴⁰⁹.

Zeus was represented by the artists as the model of dignity and majesty of mien ; his countenance grave but mild. He is seated on a throne, and grasping his sceptre and the thunder. The eagle is standing beside the throne.

The epithets of this god in Homer are⁴¹⁰, 1. Ægis-holding ; 2. Cloud-collecting ; 3. Black-clouding ; 4. Thunder-loving ; 5. High-seated ; 6. Lightening ; 7. Counselling ; 8. Wide-seeing or Wide-thundering ; and others of similar signification.

The epithets of Zeus derived from his offices, such as Xenios, as protector of strangers, Horkios, the guardian of oaths, were numerous. He was also named like the other gods from the places where he was worshiped, ex. gr. Clarios, Cithæronios. Toward the end of the month Anthesteriôn (beginning of March), a festival named the Diasia was held at Athens, in which offerings were made to Zeus, the Mild or Appeased, (μειλίχιος)⁴¹¹, answering to the sin-offerings of the Mosaic law. At Argos there was an ancient wooden statue (ξόανον) of Zeus, which had a third eye in its forehead. The tradition was that it had been the domestic image of Priamos, and had been brought from Troy by Sthenelos. The three eyes are rightly explained by Pausanias as indicative of the dominion {p. 85}of Zeus (the God) over heaven, earth, (land and water,) and the under-world⁴¹².

A very simple process will lead us to the true signification of the name of this deity. Its Æolic form is Δεὑς, which is almost the same as the deus of the Latin, the affinity of which language to the Æolic Greek is well known⁴¹³. Zeus (Ζεùς) therefore is God, the same as θεòς, deus, and akin to the Persian Deev or Dew, and the Sanscrit Deva and Deveta⁴¹⁴. The oblique cases of Zeus come from Δὶς and Ζὴν, or Zàv, the former of which is manifestly equivalent to Ζεὑς, and the latter is probably a contraction of the participle ζάων, living.

Ποσειδάων, Ποσειδῶν. Neptunus. §

This son of Kronos and Rhea became the ruler of the sea. His queen was Amphitrite, one of the daughters of Nereus and Doris⁴¹⁵. Their children were Tritôn⁴¹⁶ and Rhode, or Rhodos, which last became the bride of Helios⁴¹⁷. A late legend said that Amphitrite fled the love of the god, but that he came riding on a dolphin, and thus won her affection ; and for his service he placed the dolphin among the stars⁴¹⁸.

Poseidôn, like his brother Zeus, had a numerous progeny both by goddesses and mortals. The fleet steed Areiôn was the offspring of the sea-god and Demeter, both having assumed the equine form⁴¹⁹. According to one account the nymph Rhodos was his daughter by Aphrodite⁴²⁰.

Tyro, the daughter of Salmoneus, and wife of Cretheus, loved the river Enipeus, and frequented his stream ; Poseidôn, under the form of the river-god, ‘mingled in love’ with her, and she became the mother of Pelias and Neleus⁴²¹. Iphimedeia bore him Otos and Ephialtes, those gigantic babes, who {p. 86}in their ninth year attempted to scale heaven⁴²². As a ram, he was by Theophane, daughter of Bisaltos, the sire of the goldfleeced ram which carried Phryxos to Colchis⁴²³. The seanymph Thoösa bore him the huge Cyclops Polyphemos⁴²⁴. The invulnerable Cycnos, who was slain by Achilles, was also the offspring of this deity⁴²⁵: so also were Theseus, Eumolpos, and other heroes.

Poseidôn was worshiped in Arcadia under the title of Hippios⁴²⁶. One legend of that country made him the sire of the steed Areiôn⁴²⁷; and another said that when Rhea brought him forth, she pretended to Kronos that she had been delivered of a foal, which she gave him to devour⁴²⁸. The origin of the horse was also ascribed to this god. According to a Thessalian legend, he smote a rock in that country with his trident, and forth sprang the first horse, which was named Scyphios⁴²⁹. The vain people of Attica affected to believe that it was on their soil that the sea-god first presented the horse to mankind⁴³⁰. The winged steed Pegasos is also the offspring of Poseidôn⁴³¹. In the Ilias, when Zeus returns from Ida to Olympos, it is Poseidôn that unyokes his horses⁴³²; the same god is said to have given the Harpy-born steeds of Achilles to Peleus⁴³³ ; he is joined with Zeus as the teacher of the art of driving the chariot⁴³⁴; and when Menelaos charges Antilochos with foul play in the chariot-race, he requires him to clear himself by an oath to Poseidôn⁴³⁵.

All this indicates a close connexion between the sea-god and the horse. The usual solution given is, that as, according to Herodotus, the worship of Poseidôn came from Libya to Greece, and (the Libyans being an agricultural, not a {p. 87}seafaring people) the agents must have been the Phœnicians, who also, we are assured, brought the first horses into Greece (as the Spaniards did into America, and as much to the astonishment of the rude natives), the knowledge of the horse and of Poseidôn thus came together, and they were therefore associated in the popular mind⁴³⁶.

This, we may observe, is all merely gratuitous hypothesis. The absurd passion of Herodotus for deducing the religion of Greece from abroad is so notorious, that few, we should suppose, would lay any stress on his testimony in these matters. Had a god of the sea been worshiped in Egypt, beyond question the historian would have derived Poseidôn from that country. Again, what can be more absurd than to suppose that Greece, a portion of the continent of Europe, to the north of which dwelt the Thracians and Scythians, renowned in all ages for their horses⁴³⁷, should have first received these animals from the coast of Africa ? We may therefore, we think, safely dismiss this hypothesis, and look for an explanation of the phænomenon elsewhere.

The horse is the principal means of transport by land, as the ship is by sea ; the one name might therefore be metaphorically employed for the other. Thus in Homer⁴³⁸ Penelope says,

Why, herald, is my son gone ? for no need

Had he to mount the swift-coursed ships, which are

For men the horses of the sea, and pass

O'er the great deep ;

in Plautus⁴³⁹ one of the characters says, “That is to say, you have been carried on a wooden horse along the azure roads ;” and the Arabs call their camel the ship of the desert. This seems to offer a natural solution of the difficulty, the sea-god being regarded as the author of ships, the horses of the sea, and thence by an easy transition of the real animals⁴⁴⁰. But still when we reflect how widely spread was the habit of regarding the horse as in some mysterious manner connected {p. 88}with the water⁴⁴¹, we may hesitate to give our full assent to this theory.

It is rather curious to observe the manner in which Poseidôn and Pallas Athene are associated. They were worshiped together, — he as Hippios, she as Hippia, — at Colonos near Athens⁴⁴² ; we find them united in the legend of Bellerophontes⁴⁴³ ; they contended for the possession of Attica⁴⁴⁴ and Trœzên⁴⁴⁵ ; in the former case the sea-god was forced to yield, in the latter Zeus decided that they should hold the dominion in common. In like manner Poseidôn is said to have contended with Hera for Argos⁴⁴⁶, and with Helios for Corinth⁴⁴⁷; with Zeus for Ægina⁴⁴⁸, and with Dionysos for Naxos⁴⁴⁹; and to have exchanged Delos and Delphi with Apollo for Calauria and Tænaron⁴⁵⁰. Mythes of this kind merely indicate a change or a combination of the worship of the deities who are the subjects of them, in the places where the scenes of the supposed contests are laid⁴⁵¹.

Beside his residence on Olympos, Poseidôn had a splendid palace beneath the sea at Ægæ⁴⁵². Homer gives a noble description of his passage from it on his way to Troy, his chariot-wheels but touching the watery plain, and the monsters of the deep gamboling around their king. His most celebrated temples were at the Corinthian isthmus, Onchestos⁴⁵³, Helice⁴⁵⁴, Trœzên, and the promontories of Sunion, Tænaron, Geræstos, and other headlands⁴⁵⁵.

Poseidôn is represented, like Zeus, of a serene and majestic aspect ; his form is strong and muscular. He usually bears in his hand the trident, the three-pronged symbol of his power : the dolphin and other marine objects accompany his images.

The poetic epithets of Poseidôn are⁴⁵⁶, 1. Earth-keeping ; 2. Earth-shaking ; 3. Dark-haired ; 4. Wide-ruling ; 5. Loud-sounding ; etc.

In Poseidôn we may discern the original god of water in general, of springs and rivers as well as of the sea. The legends respecting him (his amour with Demeter, the earth, for instance,) are on this supposition easy of explanation. The simple Doric form of his name, Ποτίδας, shows its true origin to be from the root ΠΟΩ, and that it is of the same family with πότος, πόντος, ποταμòς, all relating to water and fluidity⁴⁵⁷.

Ἀΐς, Ἀΐδης, Ἀϊδωνεὑς, Ἅιδης‚ Πλοὐτων. Orcus, Dis. §

Hades, the brother of Zeus and Poseidôn, was lord of the subterrane region, the abode of the dead. He is described as being inexorable and deaf to supplication, — for from his realms there is no return, — and an object of aversion and hatred both to gods and men⁴⁵⁸. All the latter were sure to be sooner or later collected into his kingdom. His name appears to denote invisibility⁴⁵⁹, significatory of the nature of the realm over which he ruled. At a later period he received the appellation of Plutôn⁴⁶⁰, as mines within the earth are the producers of the precious metals. This notion, Voss⁴⁶¹ thinks, began to prevail when the Greeks first visited Spain, the country most abundant in gold.

The adventures of this god were few, for the gloomy nature of himself and his realm did not offer much field for such legends of the gods as Grecian fancy delighted in ; yet he too had his love-adventures. The tale of his carrying off Persephone (which we shall relate at length in the sequel) is one {p. 90}of the most celebrated in antiquity. He loved, we are told⁴⁶², and carried off to Erebos the Oceanis Leuce ; and when she died, he caused a tree, named from her, λεύκη, white poplar,) to spring up in the Elysian Fields. Another of his loves was the nymph Mentha, whom Persephone out of jealousy turned into the plant which bears her name⁴⁶³.

Hades, Homer tells us⁴⁶⁴, was once wounded in the shoulder by the arrows of Heracles ; but from the ambiguity of the phrase used by the poet (έν πύλῳ) it is difficult to determine the scene of the conflict. Some say it was at the gate of the nether world, when the hero was sent to drag the dog of Hades to the realms of day⁴⁶⁵ ; others that it was in Pylos, where the god was aiding his worshipers against the son of Zeus⁴⁶⁶.

The region over which Hades presides is represented in the Ilias and in the Theogony⁴⁶⁷ as being within the earth : in the Odyssey⁴⁶⁸ it is placed in the dark region beyond the stream of Ocean. Its name is Erebos⁴⁶⁹ ; the poets everywhere describe it as dreary, dark, and cheerless. The dead, without distinction of good or evil, age or rank, wander about there, conversing of their former state on earth : they are unhappy, and they feel their wretched state acutely. Achilles, the son of a goddess, declares to Odysseus that he would rather be a day-labourer to the poorest cultivator on earth than a king in those regions. They have no strength or power of mind {p. 91}or body⁴⁷⁰. Some few, enemies of the gods, such as Sisyphos, Tityos, Tantalos, are punished for their crimes, but not apart from the rest of the dead⁴⁷¹. Nothing can be more gloomy and comfortless than the whole aspect of the realm of Hades as pictured in the Odyssey. It is in fact surprising, that men who had such a dreary prospect before them should not have been more attached to life, and more averse from war and everything that might abridge its period, than the ancient Greeks were⁴⁷².

In process of time, when communication with Egypt and Asia had enlarged the sphere of the ideas of the Greeks, the nether-world underwent a total change. It was now divided into two separate regions : Tartaros, which in the time of Homer and Hesiod was thought to lie far beneath it, and to be the prison of the Titans, became one of these regions, and the place of punishment for wicked men ; and Elysion, which lay on the shore of the stream of Ocean, the retreat of the children and relatives of the king of the gods, was moved down thither to form the place of reward for good men. A stream encompassed the domains of Hades⁴⁷³, over which the dead, on paying their passage-money (ναῦλον), were ferried by Charôn⁴⁷⁴ ; the three-headed dog Cerberos guarded the entrance⁴⁷⁵; and the three judges, Minôs, Æacos, and Rhadamanthys, allotted his place of bliss or of pain to each of the {p. 92}dead who was brought before their tribunal⁴⁷⁶. The river of Oblivion (ὁ τῆς λήθης ποταμὸς)⁴⁷⁷ was added to those of Homer's trans-Oceanic region⁴⁷⁸, of whose waters the dead were led to drink previous to their returning to animate other bodies on earth⁴⁷⁹. In the sixth book of Virgil’s Æneïs will be found the richest and fullest description of the new-modified under-world, and for those who love to trace the progress and change of ideas, it will not be an uninteresting employment to compare it with that in the eleventh book of Homer's Odyssey. The poet Claudian⁴⁸⁰ too has, with his usual elegance, drawn a luxuriant description of the blissful scenes which the under-world would present, to console and reconcile its future mistress.

In reading the ‘portentous lies’ (as they have well been termed⁴⁸¹ ) of the Egyptian priests on this subject, one is at a loss which most to admire at, their audacity, or the credulity of the Greeks. For the former asserted, and the latter believed, that Orpheus and Homer had both learned wisdom on the banks of the Nile ; and that the Erebos of Greece, and all its parts, personages and usages, were but transcripts of the mode of burial in Egypt. Here the corpse was, on payment of an obelos, conveyed by a ferryman (named Charôn in the language of Egypt) over the Acherusian lake, after it had received its sentence from the judges appointed for that purpose. Oceanos was but the Egyptian name of the Nile ; the Gates of the Sun were merely those of Heliopolis ; and Hermes, the conductor of souls⁴⁸², was familiar to the {p. 93}Egyptians ; and thus they appropriated all the mythic ideas of Greece. It may give some idea of their hardihood, to observe that they affirmed, on the authority of their sacred books and temple-archives, that Orpheus, Musæos, Melampûs and Dædalos — not one of whom probably ever existed — had all visited Egypt⁴⁸³. But enough of such mendacity : we should not have noticed it, were it not that the fashion of tracing the religion and institutions of Greece to Egypt is not yet extinct.

Before we quit Aïdoneus and his realms, we must call attention to the circumstance of mankind agreeing to place the abode of departed souls either beneath the earth, or in the remote regions of the West. The former notion, it is probable, owes its origin to the simple circumstance of the mortal remains of man being deposited by most nations in the bosom of the earth ; and the habits of thinking and speaking which thence arose, led to the notion of the soul also being placed in a region within the earth. The calmness and stillness of evening succeeding the toils of the day, the majesty of the sun sinking as it were to rest amid the glories of the western sky, exert a powerful influence over the human mind, and lead us almost insensibly to picture the West as a region of bliss and tranquillity. The idea of its being the abode of the departed good, where in calm islands they dwelt ‘from every ill remote,’ was therefore an obvious one⁴⁸⁴. Finally, the analogy of the conclusion of the day and the setting of the sun with the close of life, may have led the Greeks⁴⁸⁵, or it may be the Phœnicians, to place the dwelling of the dead in general in the dark land on the western shore of Ocean.

Hades, we are told by Homer, possessed a helmet which rendered its wearer invisible : it was forged for him by Hephæstos, the later writers say, in the time of the war against the Titans. Pallas Athene, when aiding Diomedes, wore it {p. 94}to conceal her from Ares⁴⁸⁶. When Perseus went on his expedition against the Gorgons, the helm of invisibility covered his brows⁴⁸⁷. This helmet of Hades will find its parallel in tales both of the East and the West, now consigned to the nursery.

By artists, the god of the nether-world was represented similar to his brothers, but he was distinguished from them by his gloomy and rigid mien. He usually bears a two-pronged fork in his hand.

The poets called Hades⁴⁸⁸, 1. Subterranean Zeus⁴⁸⁹ ; 2. People-collecting ; 3. Much-receiving ; 4. Gate-keeping ; 5. Laughter-less ; 6. Horse-renowned ; 7. Untamed, or invincible ; 8. Strong ; 9. Hateful ; 10. Cold ; etc.

At Hermione in Argolis Hades was worshiped under the name of Illustrious (κλύμενος)⁴⁹⁰, and Persephone under that of Subterrane (χθονία). The former would seem to have been placatory, like Eumenides that of the Erinnyes.

The epithet People-collecting, or driving, seems to refer to an office of Hades, which was afterwards transferred to Hermes. In the original conception of the god of the under-world, he was probably supposed to be himself the agent in removing from the realms of day those who were to be his subjects. Pindar speaks of the staff of Hades, with which he drives down (κατάγει) the dead along the hollow way to Erebos⁴⁹¹. It is also not unworthy of notice, that Macrobius⁴⁹², when speaking of Euripides’ drama of Alcestis, calls Death (Θάνατος), who comes to fetch away the heroine, Orcus, the Latin {p. 95}name of Pluto. In this drama we meet the first mention of a very remarkable notion of the Greeks. The dead seem to have been regarded in the light of victims offered to Hades⁴⁹³ ; and as it was the custom in commencing a sacrifice to pluck some hairs from the forehead of the victim and burn them on the altar, so Death is here represented as coming to cut off a lock of the hair of Alcestis⁴⁹⁴. Of this rite, however, no other mention is, we believe, to be found in Grecian literature. If we may trust to the Latin poets⁴⁹⁵, the duty of performing it belonged to Persephone, a view which seems to contradict all analogy.

Ἱστία, Ἑστία. Vesta. §

An idea of the sanctity of the domestic hearth (ἑστία), the point of assembly of the family, and the symbol of the social union, gave the Greeks occasion to fancy it to be under the guardianship of a peculiar deity, whom they named from it, Hestia. This goddess does not appear in the poem of Homer, though he had abundant opportunities of noticing her. By Hesiod⁴⁹⁶ she is said to have been the daughter of Kronos and Rhea.

The hymn to Aphrodite relates that Hestia, Artemis, and Athena were the only goddesses who escaped the power of the queen of love. When wooed by Poseidôn and Apollo, Hestia, placing her hand on the head of Zeus, vowed perpetual virginity. Zeus, in place of marriage, gave her to sit in the middle of the house ‘receiving fat,’ and to be honoured in all the temples of the gods.

In the Prytaneion of every Grecian city stood the hearth, on which the sacred fire flamed, and where the offerings were made to Hestia⁴⁹⁷. In that of Athens there was a statue of the goddess⁴⁹⁸.

Ἥρη, Ἥρα. Juno. §

In Homer this goddess is one of the children of Kronos and Rhea, and wife and sister to Zeus⁴⁹⁹. When the latter placed his sire in Tartaros, Rhea committed Hera to the care of Oceanos and Tethys, by whom she was carefully nurtured in their grotto-palace⁵⁰⁰. She and Zeus had however previously ‘mingled in love’ unknown to their parents⁵⁰¹. Hesiod, who gives her the same parents, says that she was the last spouse of Zeus⁵⁰². According to the Argive legend, Zeus, who had long secretly loved his sister, watched one day when she was out walking alone near Mount Thronax, and raising a great storm of wind and rain fled shivering and trembling, under the form of a cuckoo, to seek shelter on the knees of the unsuspecting maiden. She covered the poor bird, as she thought him, with her mantle, and Zeus then resuming his proper form accomplished his wishes. But when she had implored him in the name of her mother to spare her, he gave her a solemn promise to make her his wife⁵⁰³, — a promise which he faithfully performed. Henceforth the hill Thronax was named Coccygion (Cuckoo-hill)⁵⁰⁴.

In the Ilias (for she does not appear in the Odyssey) Hera, as the queen of Zeus, shares in his honours. The god is represented as a little in awe of her tongue, yet daunting her by his menaces. On one occasion he reminds her how once, when she had raised a storm, which drove his son Heracles out of his course at sea, he tied her hands together and suspended her with anvils at her feet between heaven and earth⁵⁰⁵ ; and when her son Hephæstos would aid her, he flung him down from Olympos⁵⁰⁶. In this poem the goddess appears dwelling in {p. 97}peace and harmony with Leto, Dione, Themis and their children : later poets speak much of the persecution which Leto underwent from the enmity of Hera, who also, as shall hereafter be related, made Io, Semele, Alcmena and other women, pay dear for their intrigues with the Olympian king.

The children of Zeus and Hera were Ares, Hebe, the Eileithyiæ, to which some added the Graces⁵⁰⁷. Hephæstos was the progeny of Hera without a sire ; she was also said to have given origin to the monster Typhaôn⁵⁰⁸.

In the mythic cycles of Dionysos and Heracles Hera acts a prominent part as the persecutor of the heroes of them, who were the offspring of Zeus by mortal mothers. In like manner, as the goddess of Argos, she is active in the cause of the Achæans in the war of ‘Troy divine’. In the Argonautic cycle she was the protecting deity of the adventurous Iasôn. There is, in fact, none of the Olympian deities more decidedly Grecian in feeling and character than this goddess.

The chief seats of the worship of Hera were Argos, Samos, and Platæa. She was also honoured at Sparta, Corinth, Corcyra, and other places. The victims offered to her were kine, ewe-lambs and sows. The willow, the pomegranate, the dittany, the lily, were her sacred plants. Among birds, the cuckoo, and afterwards the gaudy stately peacock, were appropriated to the Olympian queen.

According to the legend the goddess herself formed this last bird from the many-eyed Argos, whom she had set as keeper over the transformed Io. Moschus⁵⁰⁹ (in whom we first meet this legend), when describing the basket which Europa had in her hand when, as she was gathering flowers, she was carried off by Zeus, says,

Around beneath the curved basket’s rim

Was Hermes form’d, and near to him lay stretch’d

Argos, with ever-sleepless eyes supplied ;

Out of whose purple blood was rising up

A bird, whose wings with many coulours glow’d :

Spreading his tail, like a swift-sailing ship,

The golden basket’s edge he cover’d o’er.

Ovid⁵¹⁰ says that Hera planted the eyes of Argos in the tail of her favourite bird ; and Nonnus⁵¹¹ asserts that Argos himself was turned into this bird.

The peacock (ταὼς), we must observe, was unknown in the days of Homer, when, as we have already shown, the gods had not as yet any favourite animals. It is an Indian bird, and was according to Theophrastus introduced into Greece from the East⁵¹². Peafowl were first brought to Samos, where they were kept at the temple of Hera ; and gradually the legend was spread that Samos was their native place, and that they were the favourite birds of its goddess. The comic poet Antiphanes, a contemporary of Socrates, says⁵¹³,

’Tis said the phœnixes are all born in

The City of the Sun ; at Athens, owls ;

Excellent pigeons Cyprus hath ; and Hera

Of Samos owns, they say, the golden breed

Of birds, the fair-form’d much-admired peafowl.

Whole flocks of them were fed in the sacred grove of the goddess. They were gradually but slowly spread through Greece. The later poets yoked them to the chariot of Hera : thus⁵¹⁴,

The sea-gods granted : in her easy car,

By painted peafowl drawn, Saturnia moves

Through the clear air.

Few passages in the Ilias are more celebrated than the following picture of the love-union of Zeus and Hera on the summit of Ida⁵¹⁵ :

He said ; and in his arms Kroniôn seized

His spouse. Beneath them bounteous earth sent up

Fresh-growing grass : there dewy lotus rose,

Crocus and hyacinth, both thick and soft,

Which raised them from the ground. On this they lay,

And o’cr them spread a golden cloud and fair,

And glittering drops of dew fell all around.

This is, we think justly, regarded as a sportive adaptation by the epic poet of an ancient physical mythe of the union of Zeus and Hera (heaven and earth, as we shall presently show) {p. 99}in spring-time producing vegetation. It is in effect the Sacred Marriage (ἱϵρὸς γάμος) of these deities, which, as we will now proceed to explain, was represented in those places where Hera was principally worshiped.

We have above related the Argive legend in which the cuckoo, the herald of the spring, appears as the agent in the loves of the two deities. There was a fount at Nauplia near Argos named Canachos, by bathing in which Hera, the legend said, renewed each year her virginity⁵¹⁶. In the temple of this goddess near Mycenæ (in which stood her statue, the far-famed labour of Polycleitos) was shown her bed⁵¹⁷ ; a stream called Asteriôn ran by the temple, and on its banks grew the plant of the same name, which was used for weaving the (bridal ?) coronals of the goddess⁵¹⁸. The garland of Hera was termed πυλϵὼν by the Spartans, and was formed of the plant named Kyperos, and of the Helichrysos, which is of the same genus with the Asteriôn⁵¹⁹. At Argos there was a temple of Hera, Antheia (Flowery)⁵²⁰. In all these usages and circumstances the idea of the marriage of Hera, and its being the cause of the spring of plants, may, we think, be discerned.

The tradition of Stymphalos in Arcadia was⁵²¹, that Hera had been brought up there by Temenos, who raised three temples to her, under the names of Virgin, Married (τϵλϵία), and Widow ; the first while she was a maid, the second when she married Zeus, the third when she separated from him. The real cause of these names will however appear from a comparison of this legend with the one just given, and with those which are to follow.

At Samos the temple of Hera stood on the banks of the Imbrasos, and within its precincts was shown a willow (λύγος), beneath whose shade, according to the temple-legend, the goddess was born⁵²². Another name of the Imbrasos was said to be Parthenios⁵²³. Every year an ancient wooden image (βρέτας) of Hera disappeared from the temple ; it was then diligently sought for, and was always found on the sea-shore {p. 100}bound to a willow, whose longest branches were drawn down so as to envelope it. The priestess then loosed it ; it was washed ; a kind of cakes were set before it, and it was brought back to the temple⁵²⁴. In this ceremony also may be discerned a reference to the marriage of Hera. The disappearance of the image looks like the carrying away of the betrothed maiden ; the willow bed, for such it apparently is, refers perhaps to the chastity of the goddess, the willow being regarded as a great promoter of this virtue⁵²⁵; she is bound to it probably to prevent her flight from Zeus. The cakes may have had some analogy with the confarreatio of the Romans⁵²⁶, or our own usage of bride-cakes. In the temple there was a statue of the goddess in the bridal-dress⁵²⁷, and a new bridal-robe was woven for it every year⁵²⁸.

Like most of the usages and ceremonies of Greece, this Samian custom was pragmatised⁵²⁹. The temple, it was said, had been built by the Lelegians and the Nymphs ; Admeta, daughter of Eurystheus, fled thither from Argos ; the goddess appeared in a vision to her, and she became priestess of the temple. Some Tyrrhenian pirates, at the instigation of the Argives, stole the image, in order to draw down the vengeance of the people on Admeta. But lo ! their ship became motionless when the sacred image was brought on board. Interror the pirates carried it back to the shore, and made an offering of cakes to appease it. They then departed, and next day the rude ignorant people of the isle, in their search after it, finding it on the sea-shore, thought it had run away of itself, and bound it to a willow to prevent its doing so again. Admeta then loosed it and restored it to its place in the temple, and hence it was said arose the annual ceremony.

In the name Admeta, it will be observed, we have here again a reference to the chastity of the goddess. The making her an Argive, and daughter of Eurystheus, appears also to intimate that the worship of Hera came to Samos from Argos, and that it belonged to the ante-Dorian period.

In Bœotia the popular mythe had taken a somewhat different view of the character of Hera, and she appears as the jealous wife, such as she is represented in the Ilias.

Hera, the legend said, offended for some cause or another with Zeus, renounced his bed and society. The god in perplexity sought advice from the autochthon Alalcomenos, and by his counsel gave out that he was going to marry another ; and cutting down a handsome tree, they shaped it into the form of a woman, naming it Dædala, and arrayed it in the bridal habit. The bridal hymn was sung, the nymphs of the Tritôn furnished the bath, Bœotia gave pipes and dances, and the pretended bride was placed on a car drawn by kine. When this reached the ears of Hera she could not contain herself, but coming down in a rage from Cithærôn, followed by the women of Platæa, she rushed to the car, seized the supposed bride, and tore off her dress. Then discovering the cheat, she became reconciled to her lord, and with joy and laughter took herself the place of the bride, and committed the image to the flames⁵³⁰.

This legend was invented to explain the origin of a national festival of Bœotia named the Dædala. Of this there were two kinds, the Small, celebrated every seven, the Great, every sixty years. According to Pausanias, there was a wood near Alalcomenæ where grew the finest oaks in Bœotia, to which the Platæans repaired, and setting some dressed meat before it, and watching the ravens, marked which of them took the meat, and on what tree he sat. They then cut down that tree, and made an image from it. It is probable that the other cities of Bœotia did the same ; and this was called the Little Dædala. When the time of the Great Dædala came, there were fourteen images ready (one for each of the cities of Bœotia), with which they repaired to the banks of the Asopos. Each image was placed on a car, and a bridemaid (νυμϕϵύτρια) set beside it. The procession then moved on, each car taking its place by lot, and ascended to the summit of Cithærôn, where an altar of wood stood ready prepared ; a bull was there sacrificed to Zeus, and a cow to Hera ; wine and perfumes, and other victims, were cast on the altar, {p. 102}as also were the images, and the whole was set on fire, and a flame thus raised which was visible to a great distance⁵³¹.

From the very confused account of this festival which has been transmitted to us, it is a matter of much difficulty to ascertain its real character. It seems most probable, however, that it was designed to form an astronomical cycle, and to serve as a calendar of time, and also to operate as a bond of union among the Bœotian states. For our present purpose it is sufficient to remark the union expressed in it of Zeus and Hera, and the sacrifice of the bull and cow to these deities.

There was another legend of Zeus and Hera, of which Cithærôn was also the scene. The maiden Hera, it said, was reared in Eubœa ; but Zeus stole her away, and Cithærôn gave him a shady cavern to conceal her in. When her nurse Macris came in quest of her charge and wanted to search the cavern, Cithærôn would not permit her, saying that Zeus was abiding there with Leto. The nurse then went away, and Hera in consequence of this associated Leto with herself in her temple and altar under the title Of-the-Recess(Μυχία)⁵³².

Here again we meet the Sacred Marriage performed in secret, as at Argos. In Eubœa Hera was called Virgin (Πάρθϵνος)⁵³³ ; and a place there sacred to her was named Parthenion. Macris (which we find personified in the legend) was a name of that island.

The marriage of Zeus and Hera was viewed as the pattern of those of mankind, and the goddess was held to preside over the nuptial league. Hence she was named the Yoker (Ζυγία), the Consecrator (Τϵλϵία), the Marriage-goddess (Гαμήλιος).

As we have already hinted, we are inclined to assent to the opinion of those who view in Zeus the heaven, and in Hera the earth, and regard this holy marriage so continually renewed, and of which the memory was kept up in so many places, as that of heaven and earth in the spring of each returning year, when the showers descend, and foliage, herbage, and flowers cover the face of nature⁵³⁴. As the earth {p. 103}exhibits no symptoms of becoming effete, but brings forth her progeny with undiminished vigour in each succeeding year, the early sages of Greece devised the mythe of the perpetually renewed virginity of the goddess. The physical union of earth and heaven is, we think, plainly discernible in the beautiful passage of Homer above noticed. It is given without any disguise by Euripides⁵³⁵, in whose time the deities of the popular creed were generally regarded as personifications of physical objects and powers ; and he has been imitated by the Latin Epicurean poets Lucretius⁵³⁶ and Virgile⁵³⁷.

The consecration of the cow to Hera is also to be considered as a proof of her being regarded as the earth ; for in the religion of the ancient Germans (which was akin to that of the Greeks) the cow was assigned to the service of the goddess Hertha, or Earth. At Argos the chariot in which the priestess of Hera rode was drawn by oxen⁵³⁸, so too were the cars in the procession of the Dædala, where a cow also was the victim. It has likewise been supposed, not without reason, that the ancient epithet of the goddess, Ox-eyed or Cow-eyed (βοῶπις), refers to this connection between her and that animal⁵³⁹.

Hera was represented by Polycleitos seated on a throne, holding in one hand a pomegranate, the emblem of fecundity ; in the other a sceptre, with a cuckoo on its summit⁵⁴⁰. Her air is dignified and matronly, her forehead broad, her eyes large, and her arms finely formed ; she is dressed in a tunic and mantle.

By Homer and Hesiod Hera is styled⁵⁴¹, 1. Ox-eyed ;2. White-armed ; 3. Gold-seated ; 4. Gold-shod

The origin of the name Hera is somewhat difficult to determine. We may venture to reject the derivations from ἀὴρ, air, and from ἐράω, to love⁵⁴², of which the former refers to a physical theory, according to which Hera was the air and Zeus the æther ; and the latter to that part of her character by which she was the goddess presiding over the nuptial union. As the goddess of the earth in the religion of Argos, her name would seem to come very simply from ἔρα, earth ; yet there is great plausibility in the theory of Ἥρα being the feminine of Ἥρως, anciently Ἥρος⁵⁴³, and that they answered to each other as the Latin herus, hera, and the German Herr, Herrin, and therefore signified Master and Mistress⁵⁴⁴. It is possible, however, that the two derivations may in a certain sense be correct. The goddess may have been originally merely Earth, and then, as she separated from the object over which she presided and became the Olympian queen, she may have been regarded as the great Mistress⁵⁴⁵.

Ἄρης. Mars. §

Ares, the god of war, was the son of Zeus and Hera⁵⁴⁶. His delight was in tumult and strife ; yet his wild fury was always forced to yield to the skill and prudence of Pallas-Athene, guided by whom Diomedes wounds and drives him from the battle⁵⁴⁷ ; and in the conflict of the gods⁵⁴⁸, this goddess herself strikes him to the earth with a stone. To give an idea of his huge size and strength, the poet says in the former case that he roared as loud as nine or ten thousand men ; and in the latter, that he covered seven plethra of ground.

Terror and Fear (Δϵιμὸς and Φόβος), the sons of Ares, and Strife (Ἔρις) his sister, accompany him to the field when he seeks the battle⁵⁴⁹. Another of his companions is Enyo⁵⁵⁰ (Ἐνυὼ), the daughter of Phorcys and Keto⁵⁵¹ according to Hesiod, a war-goddess answering to the Bellona of the Romans. The name Enyalios, which is frequently given to him in the Ilias⁵⁵², corresponds with hers.

The figurative language, which expresses origin and resemblance by terms of paternity, gave a mortal progeny to Ares. As a person who came by sea was figuratively called a son of Poseidôn, so a valiant warrior was termed a son, or, as it is sometimes expressed by Homer, a branch or shoot of Ares (ὄζος Ἄρηος). But the only tale of his amours related at any length by the poets is that of his intrigue with Aphrodite.

Ares — so sang Demodocos to the Phæacians⁵⁵³ — loved Aphrodite, and often visited her in the absence of her unsightly husband. These visits were not unobserved by Helios (for what can escape the piercing eye of the Sun-god ?), and he gave information to the injured artist. Hephæstos dissembled his rage, and going to his workshop forged a net so subtile as to be invisible, so strong as to be infrangible by even the god of war. He disposed it in such a manner as to catch the lovers : then feigning a journey, set out as it were for Lemnos. Ares, who was on the watch, flew to his expecting mistress : the heedless lovers were caught in the net : the Sun-god gave notice ; the husband returned, and standing at his door called all the gods to come and behold the captives. The dwellers of Olympos laughed heartily, and some jokes were passed on the occasion. Poseidôn however took no part in the mirth, but drawing Hephæstos aside pressed him to accommodate the affair. The artist, doubtful of the honour of the soldier, was loath to assent, till Poseidôn pledged himself to see him paid. He then yielded, and released his prisoners. Ares hastened away to his favourite region of Thrace : Aphrodite fled to hide her shame in her beloved isle of Cyprus.

This tale is an evident interpolation in the part of the {p. 106}Odyssey where it occurs. Its date is uncertain ; but the language, the ideas, and the state of society which it supposes, might almost lead us to assign its origin to a comparatively late period. It may be, as is generally supposed, an ancient physical mythe, or rather a combination of two such mythes ; for beauty might naturally have been made the spouse of the god from whose workshop proceeded so many elegant productions of art, and, as we are about to show, another physical view led to the union of Ares and Aphrodite. Still we cannot avoid regarding the present tale rather as a sportive effusion of Grecian wit and satire. In Greece, as everywhere else, wealth and beauty were occasionally united in wedlock ; and there too, as elsewhere, martial renown and showy exterior were passports to the hearts of the fair. If the tale was framed on the coast of Asia, we know that warfare was frequent enough among the Grecian cities there to allow of reputation being gained by deeds of valour⁵⁵⁴.

To the above tale has also been appended by later writers a legendary origin of the cock (ἀλϵκτρυών). It is said that Alectryôn was a youth whom Ares placed to watch while he was with Aphrodite ; and, for neglect of his task, he was changed by the angry god into the bird of his name⁵⁵⁵.

Hesiod says⁵⁵⁶ that Harmonia (Order) was the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. This has evidently all the appearance of a physical mythe, for from Love and Strife (i. e. attraction and repulsion) it is clear, arises the order or harmony of the universe⁵⁵⁷. Terror and Fear are also said by Hesiod⁵⁵⁸ to have been the offspring of Ares and Aphrodite, of whose union with Hephæstos (to whom he gives a different spouse) he seems to have known nothing. In the Ilias we may observe that Ares and Aphrodite are spoken of as brother and sister, much in the same manner as Apollo and Artemis⁵⁵⁹.

The best known of the children of this god by mortal women are Ascalaphos and Ialmenos⁵⁶⁰, Œnomaos king of Pisa, Diomedes of Thrace, Cycnos, Phlegyas, Dryas, Parthenopæos, {p. 107}and Tereus. He was also said to be the sire of Meleagros and other hero-princes of Ætolia⁵⁶¹.

The Hill of Ares (Ἄρϵιος πάγος), at Athens, is said to have derived its appellation from the following circumstance. Halirrhothios, a son of Poseidôn, had offered violence to Alcippe, the daughter of Ares. Her father killed the offender, and he was summoned by Poseidôn before a court of justice for the murder. The trial was held on this hill, the twelve gods sat as judges, and Ares was acquitted⁵⁶². Another tradition derived the name of the hill from the Amazons having there offered sacrifices to Ares, their sire⁵⁶³. It is quite manifest therefore that the real origin of the name was unknown.

The temples and images of Ares were not numerous. He is represented as a warrior, of a severe menacing air, dressed in the heroic style, with a cuirass on, and a round Argive shield on his arm. His arms are sometimes borne by his attendants.

The epithets of Ares were all significative of war. He was styled by Homer and Hesiod⁵⁶⁴, 1. Blood-stained ; 2. Shield-borer ; 3. Man-slaying ; 4. Town-destroyer ;5. Gold-helmed ; 6. Brazen ; 7. People-rouser ; 8. Impetuous, etc.

The name Ares (Ἄρης) would seem to be connected with ἀνὴρ, ἄῤῥην and ἀρϵτὴ (valour), and therefore to be significant of the character of the god. But some late critics seem rather to look to ἔρα, earth, for its origin, and to regard him as having been one of the telluric powers in the Pelasgian creed, and to think that, like those of Hermes and Pallas-Athene, his character changed with the change of manners in Greece⁵⁶⁵.

Ἥϕαιστος Vulcanus. §

Hephæstos, the Olympian artist, is in Homer the son of Zeus and Hera⁵⁶⁶. According to Hesiod⁵⁶⁷ he was the son of {p. 108}Hera alone, who was unwilling to be outdone by Zeus when he had given birth to Pallas-Athene. He was born lame, and his mother was so displeased at the sight of him that she flung him from Olympos. The Ocean-nymph Eurynome and the Nereïs Thetis saved and concealed him in a cavern beneath the Ocean, where during nine years he employed himself in manufacturing for them various ornaments and trinkets⁵⁶⁸. We are not informed how his return to Olympos was effected, but we find him in the Ilias firmly fixed there ; and all the houses, furniture, ornaments, and arms of the Olympians were the work of his hands.

It would be an almost endless task to enumerate all the articles formed by Hephæstos ; we shall however notice some of the chief of them. One thing is remarkable concerning them, that they were all made of the various metals ; no wood, or stone, or any other substance, entering into their composition : they were moreover frequently endowed with automatism.

All the habitations of the gods on Olympos were made by Hephæstos, and were all composed of metal ; as also were their chariots and arms. He made armour for Achilleus and other mortal heroes⁵⁶⁹. The fatal collar of Harmonia was the work of his hands⁵⁷⁰. The brass-footed, brass-throated, fire-breathing bulls of Æetes king of Colchis were the gift of Hephæstos to Æetes’ father Helios⁵⁷¹ ; and he made for Alcinoös, king of the Phæacians, the gold and silver dogs which guarded his house⁵⁷². For himself he formed the golden maidens, who waited on him, and whom he endowed with reason and speech⁵⁷³. He gave to Minôs, king of Crete, the brazen man Talôs, who each day compassed his island three times, to guard it from the invasion of strangers⁵⁷⁴. The brazen cup in which the Sun-god and his horses and chariot are carried round the earth every night was also the work of this god⁵⁷⁵.

The only instances we meet of Hephæstos’ working in any {p. 109}other substance than metal are in Hesiod, where at the command of Zeus he forms Pandora of earth and water⁵⁷⁶, and where he uses gypsum and ivory in the formation of the shield which he makes for Heracles⁵⁷⁷. That framed by him for Achilleus in the Ilias is all of metal.

In the Ilias⁵⁷⁸ the wife of Hephæstos is named Charis ; in Hesiod⁵⁷⁹, Aglaia, the youngest of the Charites ; in the interpolated tale in the Odyssey, Aphrodite the goddess of beauty⁵⁸⁰. He is said to have asked Pallas-Athene in marriage of Zeus, who gave him permission to win her if he could. Hephæstos was a rough wooer, and attempted to offer violence to the goddess. An Athenian legend refers the birth of Erichthonios, one of the mythic kings of Attica, to this circumstance⁵⁸¹.

The favourite haunt of Hephæstos on earth was the isle of Lemnos. It was here he fell when flung from heaven by Zeus for attempting to aid his mother Hera, whom Zeus had suspended in the air with anvils fastened to her feet. As knowledge of the earth advanced, Ætna⁵⁸², Hiera (one of the Liparæan isles)⁵⁸³, and all other places where there was subterranean fire, were regarded as the forges of Hephæstos ; and the Cyclopes were associated with him as his assistants. In Homer, when Thetis wants Hephæstian armour for her son, she seeks Olympos, and the armour is fashioned by the artist-god with his own hand. In the Augustan age, Venus prevails on her husband, the master-smith, to furnish her son Æneas with arms ; and he goes down from Heaven to Hiera, and directs his men the Cyclopes to execute the order⁵⁸⁴. It is thus that mythology changes with modes of life.

Hephæstos and Pallas-Athene are frequently joined together as the communicators to men of the arts which embellish life and promote civilization⁵⁸⁵. The philosophy of this view of the two deities is correct and elegant.

The artist-god is usually represented as of ripe age, with a serious countenance and muscular form : his hair hangs in curls on his shoulders. He generally appears with hammer and tongs at his anvil, in a short tunic, and his right arm bare, sometimes with a pointed cap on his head. The Cyclopes are occasionally placed with him.

The poetic epithets of Hephæstos were derived either from his lameness or from his skill. He was called⁵⁸⁶, 1. Both-feet-lame ;2. Lame-foot, or Bow-legged ; 3. Feeble ; 4. Renowned Artist ; 5. Very-renowned ;6. Wise, etc.

Hephæstos must have been regarded originally as simply the fire-god, a view of his character which we find even in the Ilias⁵⁸⁷. Fire being the great agent in reducing and working the metals, the fire-god naturally became an artist. The former was probably Hephæstos’ Pelasgian, the latter his Achæan character. The simplest derivation of his name therefore seems to be that which, regarding the first letter as euphonie, and Hephæstos as Phæstos (Φαȋτος), deduces it from ϕάω, to give light.⁵⁸⁸.

Ἤβη. Juventas. Youth. §

Hebe was one of the children of Zeus and Hera⁵⁸⁹. In Olympos she appears as a kind of maid-servant ; she hands round the nectar at the meals of the gods⁵⁹⁰ ; she makes ready the chariot of Hera⁵⁹¹, and she bathes and dresses Ares when his wound has been cured⁵⁹². When Heracles was assumed to the abode of the gods, Youth was given to him in marriage⁵⁹³.

It was apparently to bring the life of the gods more into harmony with that of men, that the office of cup-bearer was afterwards transferred to Ganymedes⁵⁹⁴. Alcæus and Sappho give it to Hermes, the celestial herald⁵⁹⁵, it being the office of the heralds in Homer. A poet named Capito bestowed it (we know not for what reason) on Harmonia⁵⁹⁶.

At Phliûs in the Peloponnese a goddess was worshiped, whom the ancient Phliasians, Pausanias says⁵⁹⁷, called Ganymede, but in his time she was named Hebe. Strabo says⁵⁹⁸ that Hebe was worshiped at Phliûs and Sicyôn under the name of Dia. It is not improbable that from the name of Ganymedes (Joy-promoter), so well suited to a cup-bearer, a feminine title had been formed for Hebe.

Hebe was called by the poets⁵⁹⁹, 1. Fair-ankled ; 2. Gold-wreathed ; 3. Bright-limbed.

Λητώ Latona. §

Leto was daughter of the Titans Coios and Phœbe⁶⁰⁰. In Homer⁶⁰¹ she appears as one of the wives of Zeus, and there occur no traces of enmity between her and Hera. Posterior poets, however, fable much of the persecution she underwent from that goddess⁶⁰². Her children by Zeus were Phœbos-Apollo, and Artemis.

While wandering from place to place with her children, Leto, says a legend most prettily told by Ovid⁶⁰³, arrived in Lycia. The sun was shining fiercely, and the goddess was parched with thirst. She saw a pool, and knelt down at it to drink. Some clowns, who were there cutting sedge and rushes, refused to allow her to slake her thirst. In vain the goddess entreated, representing that water was common to all, and appealing to their compassion for her babes. The brutes were insensible : they not only mocked at her distress, but jumped into and muddied the water. The goddess, though the most gentle of her race, was roused to indignation : she raised her hand to heaven and cried, “May you live for ever in that pool !” Her wish was instantly accomplished, and the churls were turned into frogs.

Niobe, the daughter of Tantalos and wife of Amphiôn, proud of her numerous offspring, ventured to set herself before Leto : the offended goddess called upon her children Apollo and Artemis, and soon Niobe was by the arrows of {p. 113}these deities made a childless mother, and stiffened into stone with grief⁶⁰⁴.

Tityos, the son of Earth or of Zeus and Elara, happened to see Leto one time as she was going to Pytho. Inflamed with love he attempted to offer her violence : the goddess called to her children for aid, and he soon lay slain by their arrows. His punishment did not cease with life : vultures preyed on his liver in Erebos⁶⁰⁵.

Leto was called⁶⁰⁶, 1. Fair-ankled ;2. Sable-vested ;3. Gold-tressed ;4. Much-honoured.

With respect to the origin of this goddess and her name, the most simple hypothesis, in our opinion, is that which regards herself as Night, and esteems her name to be of the same family of words with λήθω, λήθη, and with the Latin lateo and Laverna, and, therefore, to signify concealment or darkness. The parents assigned to her correspond with this hypothesis ; for light, which is made to spring from darkness, may, in a reversed order, be regarded as its origin. The epithet ‘sable-vested⁶⁰⁷‘ and the mildness of character usually ascribed to this goddess⁶⁰⁸, also accord with Night ; and if it should appear that the children of Leto were Sun and Moon, there can hardly remain a doubt of this being her true nature.

Φοȋβος Ἀπόλλων. Apollo. §

Phœbos-Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto. In Homer he is the god of archery, music, and prophecy⁶⁰⁹. His arrows were not merely directed against the enemies of the gods, such as Otos and Ephialtes⁶¹⁰: all sudden deaths of men were {p. 114}ascribed to his darts ; sometimes as a reward, at other times as a punishment. He was also by his shafts the sender of pestilence, and he removed it when duly propitiated. At the banquets of the gods on Olympos, Apollo played on his phorminx or lyre, while the Muses sang⁶¹¹.

Thus they the whole day long till set of sun

Feasted ; nor wanted any one his part

Of the equal feast, or of the phorminx fair

Which Phœbos held, or of the Muses’ lay,

Who sang responding with melodious voice.

Eminent bards, such as Demodocos⁶¹², were held to have derived their skill from the teaching of Apollo or of the Muses. Prophets in like manner were taught by him ; at Pytho he himself revealed the future⁶¹³.

As in Homer and Hesiod no birth-place of any of the gods is noticed, we must regard the tale of the birth of Phœbos-Apollo in the isle of Delos as being posterior to the time of these poets. According to the Homeridian hymn in his honour, it took place in the following manner. Leto, persecuted by Hera, besought all the islands of the Ægæan to afford her a place of rest ; but all feared too much the potent queen of heaven to assist her rival. Delos alone consented to become the birth-place of the future god, provided Leto would pledge herself that he would not contemn her humble isle, and would erect there the temple vowed by his mother. Leto assented with an oath, and the friendly isle received her. For nine days and nights the pains of labour continued. All the goddesses, save Hera and Eileithyia, (whom the art of Hera kept in ignorance of this great event,) were assembled in the isle. Moved with compassion for the sufferings of Leto, they dispatched Iris to Olympos, who brought Eileithyia secretly to Delos. Leto then grasped a palm-tree in the soft mead, on the banks of the Inopos, Earth smiled around, Apollo sprang to light, and the goddesses shouted aloud to celebrate his birth. They washed and swathed the infant deity, and Themis gave him nectar and ambrosia. As soon as he had tasted the divine food, his bands and swaddling-clothes no longer retained him : he sprang up, and called to the goddesses to give him a {p. 115}lyre and a bow, adding that he would thenceforth declare to men the will of Zeus. He then, to the amazement of the assembled goddesses, walked firmly on the ground ; and Delos, exulting with joy, became covered with golden flowers⁶¹⁴.

Callimachus⁶¹⁵ relates the birth of Apollo somewhat differently. According to him, Hera, knowing that the son of Leto would be dearer to Zeus than her own son Ares, was resolved if possible to prevent his birth. Determined therefore that no place should receive the travailing goddess, she took her own station in the sky : she placed her son Ares upon the Thracian mountain Hæmos, and her messenger Iris on Mount Mimas, to watch the islands. All the lands, hills, and rivers of Hellas refused to hearken to the prayers of the goddess. Moved with wrath, the unborn Apollo menaced Thebes for her discourteous refusal, and foretold the future fate of the children of Niobe. The river-god Peneios alone valued justice and humanity more than the wrath of Hera : he checked his stream to give a shelter to the goddess ; but instantly Ares arose, clashed his arms, that the mountains and all Thessaly trembled at the sound, and was about to fling the peaks of Pangæos on the generous stream, who undauntedly awaited the issue ; when Leto passed further on, entreating him not to expose himself to danger on her account. She now turned to the islands, but none would receive her ; and the god called out to her that a floating island was to be his birth-place. At length she met Delos, then called Asteria, which floated among the Cyclades⁶¹⁶. Delos generously invited the wearied goddess to enter her, expressing her willingness to encounter the anger of Hera. This last goddess, when informed by her messenger, remits her anger ; Apollo is born ; a choir of swans comes from the Mæonian Pactolos, and flies seven times round the isle to celebrate his birth ; the Delian nymphs receive and sing the sacred verses of Eileithyia ; the sky gives back the joyful cry ; and Delos, as before, becomes invested in gold.

In the Homeridian hymn to the Pythian Apollo, the manner of his first getting possession of Pytho is thus related. When Apollo resolved to choose the site of his first temple, he came down from Olympos into Pieria : he sought throughout all Thessaly ; thence went to Eubœa, Attica, and Bœotia, but could find no place to his mind. The situation of Tilphussa, near Lake Copaïs, in Bœotia, pleased him ; and he was about to lay the foundations of his temple there, when the nymph of the place, afraid of having her own fame eclipsed by the vicinity of the oracle of Apollo, dissuaded him, by representing how much his oracle would be disturbed by the noise of the horses and mules coming to water at her stream. She recommends to him Crissa beneath Mount Parnassos as a quiet sequestered spot, where no unseemly sounds would disturb the holy silence demanded by an oracle. Arrived at Crissa, the god is charmed by the solitude and sublimity of the scene. He forthwith sets about erecting a temple, which the hands of numerous workmen speedily raise, under the direction of the brothers Trophonios and Agamedes. Meanwhile Apollo slays with his arrows the monstrous serpent which abode there and destroyed the people and cattle of the vicinity. As she lay expiring, the exulting victor cried, “Now rot (πύθευ) there on the man-feeding earth ;” and hence the place and oracle received the appellation of Pytho. The fane was now erected, but priests were wanting. The god, as he stood on the lofty area of the temple, cast his eyes over the sea, and beheld far south of the Peloponnese a Cretan ship sailing for Pylos. He plunged into the sea, and in the form of a porpoise sprang on board the ship. The crew sat in terror and amazement : a south-wind carried the vessel rapidly along : in vain they sought to land at Tænaron ; she would not obey the helm. When they came to the bay of Crissa a west-wind sprang up, and speedily brought the ship into port ; and the god in the form of a blazing star left the vessel, and descended into his temple. Then quick as thought he came as a handsome youth with long locks waving on his shoulders, and accosted the strangers, inquiring who they were and whence they came. To their question in return, of what that place was to which they were come, he replies by informing them {p. 117}who he is, and what his purpose was in bringing them thither. He invites them to land, and says, that as he had met them in the form of a porpoise (δελὶν) they should worship him as Apollo Delphinios, whence the place should also derive its name⁶¹⁷. They now disembark : the god playing on his lyre precedes them, and leads them to his temple, where they become his priests and ministers⁶¹⁸.

As might be expected, the legends of so celebrated an event as the establishment of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, the sacred counsellor of all Greece, are various. The names Pytho and Delphi alone sufficed to give a foundation for some of them. The former, which evidently signifies the Place of Enquiry, a title well suited to an oracle, gave occasion to the legend above related, and also to one of a huge serpent named Pythôn, which, it is said, came out of his den and attacked Leto when she was going by with her children in her arms ; she stood then on a rock, holding the infant Artemis, and urged on her son by calling to him, ἵε, παî, and he dispatched the monster with his arrows⁶¹⁹. This serpent, another version of the legend says, was named Delphine⁶²⁰, for the formation of which name, as we may perceive, Delphi probably gave its aid, as it did also for that of the change of the god into the porpoise, and for his title Delphinios.

The Homeric Apollo is a being of remarkable purity, and the poet seems to have had a strong feeling of the dignity of his character, for he never ventures to use the same familiarity with him as with the other gods, Zeus himself not excepted. Apollo is the friend of man, he protects his worshipers, and he punishes the unjust and impious. At all periods of the {p. 118}Grecian literature we find the character of the ‘pure (ἁγνὸς) god,’ as he was emphatically called, still the same. There is a serene cheerfulness always ascribed to him, he is averse from gloom and the promoter of joy and innocent pleasure⁶²¹; but at the same time dignified in his sentiments and actions. The purity of his character appears also in this, that no amours with either goddesses or mortals are ascribed to him in the Homeric poems⁶²². When however, in subsequent times, heroes and heroic families were made to derive their lineage from the residents of Olympos, Phœbos-Apollo was also provided with his love-adventures by the poets ; yet it is observable that he was not remarkably happy in his love, either meeting with a repulse, or having his amour attended with a fatal termination, and that none of these heroic families could claim him as the head of their genealogy.

«The first love of Phœbos,» says Ovid, «was Daphne, the daughter of Peneios.» Apollo, proud of his victory over the Pythôn, beholding Erôs bending his bow, mocked at the efforts of the puny archer. Erôs incensed flew, and taking his stand on Parnassos shot his golden arrow of love into the heart of the son of Leto, and discharged his leaden one of aversion into the bosom of the nymph of Peneios. Daphne loved the chase, and it alone, indifferent to all other love. Phœbos beheld her, and burned with passion. She flies, he pursues ; in vain he exhausts his eloquence, magnifying his rank, his power, his possessions ; the nymph but urges her speed the more. Fear gave wings to the nymph, love to the god. Exhausted and nearly overtaken, Daphne on the banks of her father’s stream stretched forth her hands, calling on Pencios for protection and change of form. The river-god heard ; bark and leaves covered his daughter, and Daphne became a bay-tree (δάϕνη, laurus). The god embraced its trunk, and declared that it should be ever afterwards his favourite tree⁶²³.

Of this legend we need only observe, that it is one of the many tales devised to give marvel to the origin of natural productions, and that its object is to account for the bay-tree being sacred to Apollo.

Apollo, it is also said by the same poet, thought himself happy in the love and fidelity of Coronis, a maiden of Larissa. His ignorance was his bliss, for the nymph was faithless. The raven, the favourite bird of the god, and then white as his swans, saw the maiden in the arms of a Hæmonian youth, and bore the tidings to his master, who immediately discharged one of his inevitable arrows into the bosom of the frail fair one. Dying she deplores the fate, not of herself, but of her unborn babe. The god repents when too late ; he tries in vain his healing art, and, dropping celestial tears, places her on the funereal pyre : extracting the babe, he gave him to be reared by Cheirôn, the centaur. To punish the raven, he changed his hue from white to black⁶²⁴.

This is probably a legend of some antiquity, for in a fragment of one of the poems ascribed to Hesiod⁶²⁵, it is said that the raven brought tidings to Phœbos of the marriage of Ischys, the son of Eilatos, with Coronis, the daughter of Phlegyas. The tale is also told by Pindar⁶²⁶, but he says nothing of the raven, making the god himself, though at Pytho, discover what was done through his divine power. At his desire Artemis shot the fair offender with her arrows.

Marpessa, the daughter of Evenos, was beloved by Apollo, whose suit was favoured by her father. Idas, another lover, having obtained a winged chariot from Poseidôn, carried off the apparently not reluctant maid. Her father pursued the fugitives, but coming to the river Lycormas, and finding his progress stopped by it, he slew his horses and cast himself into the stream, which from him derived its name Evenos. Meantime Apollo met and took the fair prize from Idas. The matter being referred to Zeus, he allowed the maiden to choose {p. 120}for herself ; and fearing that when she grew old Apollo would desert her, she wisely chose to match with her equal, and gave her hand to her mortal lover⁶²⁷.

Cassandra, daughter of Priamos king of Troy, also attracted the love of this god : the price she set on her favours was the gift of prophecy. The gift was freely given, but the royal maid refused the promised return ; and the indignant deity, unable to recall what he had bestowed, made it useless by depriving her predictions of credit⁶²⁸.

Cyrene, a daughter of the river Peneios, was another of the loves of Phœbos ; he carried her in his golden chariot over the sea to Libya, where she bore him a son named Aristæos⁶²⁹.

The only celestial amour recorded of Apollo is that with the muse Calliope, of which the fruit was Orpheus⁶³⁰. No parents more suitable could be assigned to the poet, whose strains could move the woods and rocks, than the god of poetry and the muse Fair-voice.

Cyparissos and Hyacinthos were two beautiful youths, favourites of Apollo ; but that favour availed not to avert misfortune. The former, having by accident killed a favourite stag, pined away with grief, and was changed into the tree which bears his name⁶³¹. The latter, a youth of Amyclæ, was playing one day at discus-throwing with the god. Apollo made a great cast, and Hyacinthos running too eagerly to take up the discus, it rebounded and struck him in the face. The god, unable to save his life, changed him into the flower which was named from him, and on whose petals Grecian fancy saw traced aἲ, aἲ, the notes of grief⁶³². Other versions of the legend say that Zephyros (West-wind), enraged at Hyacinthos’ having preferred Apollo to himself, blew the discus, {p. 121}when flung by Apollo, against the head of the youth, and so killed him⁶³³. A festival called the Hyacinthia was celebrated for three days in the summer of each year at Amyclæ, in honour of the god and his unhappy favourite⁶³⁴.

The babe saved from the pyre of Coronis was Asclepios, who became so famous for his healing powers. Extending them so far as to restore the dead to life, he drew on himself the enmity of Hades, on whose complaint Zeus with his thunder deprived him of life. Apollo incensed slew the Cyclopes who had forged the thunderbolts, for which bold deed Zeus was about to hurl him down to Tartaros, but, on the entreaty of Leto, he was so far mollified as to be content with the offender’s becoming a servant to a mortal man for the space of a year. Admetos, king of Pheræ, in Thessaly, was the person selected to be honoured by the service of the god, who, according to the more dignified and probable view of the mythe, pastured this prince’s flocks and herds on the verdant banks of the river Amphrysos, making the kine under his charge all bear twins⁶³⁵ ; while according to another he discharged for him even the most servile offices⁶³⁶. When the term of his servitude was expired he was permitted to return to Olympos⁶³⁷.

In this mythic tale of Apollo serving Admetos, Müller sees matter of deeper import than might at first sight be supposed. According to the Delphian tradition, it was for slaying the Pythôn that the god was condemned to servitude. Every {p. 122}eighth year the combat with the Pythôn was the subject of mimic representation at Delphi. A boy who personated Apollo, having in mimic show slain the Pythôn, fled and took his way along the Sacred Road to the vale of Tempe in the north of Thessaly, to be purified as it were from the guilt of the bloodshed ; and having there plucked a branch of bay, in imitation of the act of the god, he returned to Delphi at the head of a theoria⁶³⁸. This mimic flight also represented the servitude of the god, which the legend placed at Pheræ in Thessaly⁶³⁹. Müller therefore, who views in the whole transaction a deep moral sense, and a design to impress upon the minds of men a vivid idea of the guilt of bloodshed, by representing even the pure god Apollo as being punished for slaying the Pythôn, a being of demon-origin, deems the original legend to have been a still bolder stretch of fancy, and that it was to the god of the under-world, to Hades himself, that Apollo was obliged to become a servant⁶⁴⁰. This hypothesis he thinks is confirmed by the names which occur in the legend : for Admetos, he says, must have been an epithet of Hades ; Clymene, the name of Admetos’ mother, is one of Persephone ; and Pheræ was a town sacred to the goddess Hecate, who was connected with the lower-world⁶⁴¹.

It cannot be said positively whether this mythe (which is apparently a temple-legend of Delphi,) was known to Homer. In the Catalogue⁶⁴² the mares of Eumelos Pheretiades are highly praised for their beauty and swiftness, and it is added that Apollo had reared them in Pieria⁶⁴³. At the funeral-games, toward the close of the poem⁶⁴⁴, Eumelos, named Pheretiades and son of Admetos, is one of the competitors in the chariotrace. These notices however, we may observe, occur in the {p. 123}parts of the Hias of which the antiquity is most dubious. It may also be doubted if the temple-legend of Delphi could be as old as the age to which Homer is usually referred. In another of the latter books of the Ilias it is said that Poseidôn and Apollo, by the command of Zeus (we know not why given), served Laomedôn, king of Troy, for a year ; at the end of which time he refused to pay them their wages, and threatened to cut off the cars of both, and even to sell the latter for a slave. The task of Apollo had been to tend the herds of the Trojan king in the valleys of Ida⁶⁴⁵.

Apollo, it is said⁶⁴⁶, was taught divination by Pan, the son of Zeus and the nymph Thymbris. For his musical instrument he was indebted to the invention of his half-brother Hermes. Pan, the god of shepherds, venturing to set his reed-music in opposition to the lyre of Apollo, was pronounced overcome by Mount Tmolos, who had been chosen judge ; and all present approved the decision except king Midas, whose ears were, for their obtuseness, lengthened by the victor to those of an ass⁶⁴⁷. The Silen⁶⁴⁸ Marsyas, having found the pipe which Athena for fear of injuring her beauty had flung away, contended with Apollo before the Muses, and was by him flayed for his temerity when vanquished ; and the tears of the nymphs and rural gods for the fate of their companion gave origin to the stream which bore his name⁶⁴⁹.

This last legend admits of a very simple explanation. Marsyas was a river-god of Phrygia, the country in which the music of wind-instruments was employed in the service of the gods ; the lyre was used by the Greeks in that of Apollo⁶⁵⁰. {p. 124}Hence, to express the superiority of the latter, a contest was feigned between Apollo and Marsyas. At the cavern in the town of Celænæ in Phrygia, whence the stream Marsyas issues, was hung, for some reason which is not very clear, a leathern bag⁶⁵¹, and hence it was fabled that Apollo flayed his vanquished rival⁶⁵².

The Homeric Apollo is a personage totally distinct from Helios, though probably, as will shortly appear, originally the same. When mysteries and secret doctrines were introduced into Greece, these deities were united, or perhaps we might say re-united. Apollo at the same period also took the place of Pæeôn, and became the god of the healing art⁶⁵³.

This god was a favourite object of Grecian worship, and his temples were numerous. Of these the most celebrated were that of Delphi in Phocis, — his acquisition of which we have above related, and where, as the mythe of Pythôn would seem to intimate, a conflict took place between the religion of Apollo, proceeding southwards from Pieria, or westwards from Delos, and the ancient religion of the place, the worship of Gæa or Themis⁶⁵⁴, — and those of Delos, of Patara in Lycia, Claros in Ionia, Grynion in Æolis, Didyma at Miletus ; in all of which his oracles revealed the future.

A very able mythologist of the present day⁶⁵⁵ maintains that the worship of Apollo was originally peculiar to the Dorian race, who were at all times his most zealous votaries. As the Homeric poems prove the worship of this deity to have been common to the Achæan race, and well known on the coasts of Asia long before the Dorian migration, the critic is forced to have recourse to the not very probable supposition of a Dorian colony having left the mountains of Thessaly many years before the Trojan war, and carried the Apollo-religion to Crete, whence it was spread to the coast of Asia, and also conveyed to Delos and Delphi. We cannot assent to this theory. Apollo seems to have been one of the original gods {p. 125}of the Grecian race ; and he was worshiped by one people more than another, on the same principle as in India Vishnoo is in some places more worshiped than Seeva ; Thor was most honoured by the ancient Norwegians, and Odin by the Swedes ; St. Jago is more frequently invoked in Spain, and St. Anthony in Italy, — without the existence and the rights of the others being denied⁶⁵⁶.

Apollo was supposed to visit his various favourite abodes at different seasons of the year :

Such as, when wintry Lycia and the streams

Of Xanthos fair Apollo leaves, and comes

To his maternal Delos, and renews

The dances ; while around his altars shout

Cretans, Dryopians, and the painted race

Of Agathyrsians ; he, along the tops

Of Cynthos walking, with soft foliage binds

His flowing hair, and fastens it in gold ;

His arrows on his shoulders sound⁶⁵⁷.

One of the most beautiful descriptions of these progresses of Apollo was that given by the lyric poet Alcæus. The poem has unfortunately perished, but we find the following analysis of it in the works of the sophist Himerius⁶⁵⁸.

«When Apollo was born, Zeus adorned him with a golden headband and lyre, and gave him moreover a team to drive (the team were swans)⁶⁵⁹. He then sent him to Delphi and the streams of Castalia, thence to declare prophetically right and justice to the Hellenes. He ascended the car, and desired the swans to fly also to the Hyperboreans⁶⁶⁰. The Delphians, when they perceived this, arranged a Pæan and song, and setting choirs of youths around the tripod, called on the god to come from the Hyperboreans. Having given laws for a whole year among those men, when the time was come which he had appointed for the Delphic tripods also to resound, he directed his swans to fly back from the Hyperboreans. It was then summer, and the very middle of it, when Alcæus leads Apollo back from the Hyperboreans ; for when summer {p. 126}shines and Apollo journeys, the lyre itself whispers in a summer-tone of the god. The nightingales sing to him, as the birds should sing in Aleæus ; the swallows and cicadas also sing, not narrating their own fate when among men, but tuning all their melodies to the god. Castalia too flows with poetic silver streams, and Cephissos swells high and bright with his waves, emulating the Enipeus of Homer. For, like Homer. Alcæus ventures to make the very water capable of perceiving the access of the god.»

It was probably on account of their pure white hue that the swans were assigned to the pure god Phœbos-Apollo ; and this connection with the god of music gave origin to the fable, as it is esteemed, of the melody of these birds⁶⁶¹. The wolf was also assigned to this god, on account of his bright colour, as some think, but it is far more likely that it was the similitude of his name to an epithet of the god which gave occasion to it. The noisy chirping tettix (cicada), or tree-hopper, was naturally associated with the god of music ; and as the god of augury Apollo was the patron of the hawk and raven. The bay-tree was the plant dedicated to this deity.

Apollo was represented by the artists in the perfection of united manly strength and beauty. His long curling hair hangs loose, or bound with the strophium behind ; his brows are wreathed with bay ; in his hands he bears his bow or lyre. The wonderful Apollo Belvidere shows at the same time the conception which the ancients had of this benign deity, and the high degree of perfection to which they had attained in sculpture.

Few deities had more appellations than the son of Leto. He was called Delian, Delphian, Pataræan, Clarian, etc. from the places of his worship ; and Smynthian from a Phrygian word signifying mouse, of which animal a legend said he had {p. 127}been the destroyer in Troas. He was also styled⁶⁶², 1. Crooked, probably from the position of the archer when shooting⁶⁶³ ; 2. Herding, as keeping the flocks and herds of the gods, or those of Admetos ; and by the poets, 3. Silver-bowed ; 4. Far-shooter ; 5. Gold-sworded ; 6. Well-haired, and Gold-haired ; 7. Unshorn-locked ; 8. People-rouser, etc.

This god had several epithets apparently connected with the Greek name of the wolf (λύκος) ; but as there was an ancient Greek word signifying light (Λϒ ΚH)⁶⁶⁴, of a similar form, the great probability, in the eyes of all who regard Apollo as the sun-god, or as a moral being of great purity, will be that this last is the real root of these names, and that, as we said above, it was merely similarity of sound that caused the wolf, or the country Lycia, to be regarded as their origin. Thus the god is called by Homer λυκγϵυὴς, which may be rendered with the utmost propriety Light-born,⁶⁶⁵ whereas the usual interpretation, Lycia-born, contradicts the fact of the Homeric gods not having birth-places on earth. Two other epithets of Apollo, λύκιος and λύκϵιος, which are usually rendered Lycian, or Wolf-destroying, or rather Wolfish, may signify Lighted, or Lighting. There are two others (λυκοκτόνος and λυκοϵργὴς) which evidently signify Wolf-killing, but they are of late origin, and formed after the derivation from λύκιος, wolf, had become the prevalent one.

Apollo was also named Agyieus (Ἀγυιϵὺς), as the guardian of the streets and roads (ἀγυιαί). Stone-pillars with pointed heads, placed before the doors of the houses, were the images of the god under this name. This practice was peculiar to the Dorians⁶⁶⁶. Apollo was called Pæan, either from his healing power (from παύω or ΠΑΩ), in which case he would {p. 128}be identical with Pæeôn ; or from his protecting and avenging character (from παίω) The hymn sung to him on the cessation of a plague, or after a victory, was thus named.

The name Phœbos-Apollo is generally regarded as of Grecian origin. The former part critics are unanimous in deriving from ϕάω, to shine ; of which the advocates for the original identity of this deity with Helios see at once the appropriateness : the maintainers of the contrary system interpret Phœbos pure, unstained, making it equivalent to the ἁγνὸς θϵὸς, as he is sometimes called⁶⁶⁷. Apollo is by some derived from ὄλω, to destroy ; by others from an old verb ἀπέλλω, akin to the Latin pello, to drive away ; by others again from ἀέλιος, the sun, with the digamma F between the two first vowels. The strangest etymon of all is that of Buttmann, who, taking the Cretan form ᾽Αβέλιος to be the original one, deduces it, according to his system of tracing the Greek religion from the East, from Jabal and Jubal, the first musician and herdsman according to Scripture⁶⁶⁸.

Ἄρτϵμις. Diana. §

Artemis was daughter of Zeus and Leto, and sister to Apollo. She was the goddess of the chase⁶⁶⁹ ; she also presided over health. The sudden deaths of women were ascribed to her darts⁶⁷⁰, as those of men were to the arrows of her brother, of whom she forms the exact counterpart. Artemis was a spotless virgin ; her chief joy was to speed like a Dorian maid over the hills, followed by a train of nymphs in pursuit of the flying game⁶⁷¹ :

As arrow-joying Artemis along

A mountain moves, either Taÿgetos high,

Or Erymanthos, in the chase rejoiced

Of boars and nimble deer ; and with her sport

The country-haunting nymphs, the daughters fair

Of Ægis-holding Zeus, while Leto joys ;

O’er all she high her head and forehead holds,

Easy to know, though beautiful are all.

The Homerids have also sung the huntress-goddess : one of them in his hymn to her thus describes her occupations⁶⁷² :

Along the shady hills and breezy peaks,

Rejoicing in the chase, her golden bow

She bends, her deadly arrows sending forth.

Then tremble of the lofty hills the tops ;

The shady wood rebelloweth aloud

Unto the bowstring’s twang ; the earth itself

And fishy sea then shudder : but she still

A brave heart bearing goeth all around,

Slaughtering the race of salvage beasts. But when

Beast-marking, arrow-loving Artemis

Would cheer her soul, relaxing her curved bow

She to her brother Phœbos -Apollo’s house

Ample repaireth, to the fertile land

Of Delphi, there to arrange the lovely dance

Of Muses and of Graces ; then hangs up

Her springy bow and arrows, and begins

To lead the dance ; her body all arrayed

In raiment fair. They, pouring forth their voice

Divine, sing Leto lovely-ankled, how

She brought forth children, ‘mid the Deathless far

The best in counsel and in numerous deeds.

Callimachus thus relates the early history of the goddess⁶⁷³.

Artemis while yet a child, as she sat on her father’s knee, besought him to grant her permission to lead a life of perpetual virginity, to get a bow and arrows formed by the Cyclopes, and to devote herself to the chase. She further asked for sixty Ocean-nymphs as her companions, and twenty nymphs from Amnisos in Crete as her attendants. Of towns and cities she required not more than one, satisfied with the mountains, which she never would leave but to aid women in the pains of child-birth. Her indulgent sire assented with a smile, and gave her not one but thirty towns. She speeds to Crete, and thence to Ocean, and selects all her nymphs. On her return she calls at Lipara on Hephæstos and the Cyclopes, who immediately lay aside all their work to execute her orders. She now proceeds to Arcadia, where Pan, the chief god of that country, supplies her with dogs of an excellent breed. Mount Parrhasios then witnessed the first exploit of {p. 130}the huntress-goddess. Five deer larger than bulls, with horns of gold, fed on the banks of the ‘dark-pebbled’ Anauros at the foot of that hill : of these the goddess unaided by her dogs caught four, which she reserved to draw her chariot : the fifth, destined by Hera for the last labour of Heracles, bounded across the Keladôn and escaped.

According to the same poet, the chariot of Artemis and the harness of her deer are all of gold. When she drives to the house of Zeus, the gods come forth to meet her. Hermes takes her bow and arrows, and Apollo used to carry in her game, till Heracles was received into Olympos, when for his strength that office devolved on him. He carries in the bull, or boar, or whatever else she may have brought, exhorting the goddess to let the hares and small game alone, and attach herself to the boars and oxen ; for Heracles, the poet observes, though deified, still retains his appetite. The Amnisiades then unyoke her stags, and bring to them from Hera’s mead some of the trefoil on which the horses of Zeus feed, and fill their golden troughs with water. The goddess herself meantime enters the house of her father, and sits beside her brother Apollo.

The adventures of Artemis were not numerous. She turned, as we shall relate below, Actæôn into a stag, for having unconsciously beheld her when bathing⁶⁷⁴. Callisto was changed by her into a bear, for breach of chastity⁶⁷⁵. Oriôn perished by her arrows⁶⁷⁶. With her brother she destroyed the children of Niobe, who had presumed to prefer herself to Leto⁶⁷⁷ ; and in a fable later than Homer she is said to have detained the Grecian fleet at Aulis, in consequence of Agamemnôn’s having killed a hind which was sacred to her, and to have required the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigeneia. The Aloeids, Otos and Ephialtes, it was said, sought in marriage Hera and Artemis : the latter goddess, changing her form into that of a hind, sprang out between the two brothers, who aiming their darts at the supposed beast, by her art pierced each other and died⁶⁷⁸.

We have already noticed the practice of the Greeks to unite similar deities, or to make one of them principal, and the others companions or attendants ; and also to form nymphs and other subordinate beings attached to the service of the gods out of their epithets. Of these practices Artemis furnishes more examples perhaps than any other deity.

The Cretans worshiped a goddess the same as or very similar to Artemis, whom they named Britomartis, which in their dialect signified Sweet Maid. She was also called Dictynna, a goddess of that name, and of a similar nature, having been perhaps united with her. There was a similar deity named Aphæa worshiped at Ægina, and they were all joined in a legend in the following manner.

The Cretan nymph Britomartis, the daughter of Zeus and Charme, was a favourite companion of Artemis. Minôs falling in love with her, pursued her for the space of nine months, the nymph at times concealing herself from him amidst the trees, at times among the reeds and sedge of the marshes. At length, being nearly overtaken by him, she sprang from a cliff into the sea, where she was saved in the nets (δίκτυα) of some fishermen. The Cretans afterwards worshiped her as a goddess under the name of Dictynna from the above circumstance, which also was assigned as the reason of the cliff from which she threw herself being called Dictæon. At the rites sacred to her, wreaths of pine or lentisk were used instead of myrtle, as a branch of the latter had caught her garments and impeded her flight. Leaving Crete, Britomartis then sailed for Ægina in a boat : the boatman attempted to offer her violence, but she got to shore and took refuge in a grove on that island, where she became invisible (ἀϕανὴς) : hence she was worshiped in Ægina under the name of Aphæa⁶⁷⁹.

The well-known legend of Alpheios and Arethusa offers another remarkable instance of this procedure.

Arethusa, it is said, was an Arcadian nymph, and a companion of the huntress-goddess. As she was one day returning from the chase she came to the clear stream of the Alpheios, and enticed by its beauty stripped herself and entered it, {p. 132}to drive away the heat and the fatigue. She heard a murmur in the stream, and terrified sprang to land. The river-god rose : she fled away naked as she was ; Alpheios pursued her. She sped all through Arcadia, till with the approach of evening she felt her strength to fail, and saw that her pursuer was close upon her. She then prayed to Artemis for relief, and was immediately dissolved into a fountain. Alpheios resumed his aqueous form, and sought to mingle his waters with hers. She fled on under the earth and through the sea, till she rose in the isle of Ortygia at Syracuse, still followed by the amorous stream⁶⁸⁰.

The explanation of this mythe is as follows⁶⁸¹. Artemis was worshiped in Elis under the titles of Alpheiæa, Alpheioa, Alpheionia, and Alpheiusa⁶⁸² ; and there was a common altar to her and Alpheios within the precincts of the Altis at Olympia⁶⁸³. When in the fifth Olympiad Archias the Corinthian founded the colony of Syracuse in Sicily, there were among the colonists some members of the sacerdotal family of the Iamids of Olympia⁶⁸⁴. These naturally exercised much influence in the religious affairs of the colony, whose first seat was the islet of Ortygia. A temple was built there to Artemis Of-the-Stream (Ποταμία), to which perhaps the proximate inducement was the presence of the fount Arethusa, which contained large fishes, and sent forth a copious stream of water into the sea⁶⁸⁵. From the original connexion between Alpheios and Artemis, the notion gradually arose, or it was given out, that the fount contained water of the Alpheios, and thence came the legend of his course under the sea⁶⁸⁶. Eventually, when the poetic notion of Artemis as a love-shunning maiden became the prevalent one⁶⁸⁷, the goddess was made to fly the pursuit of Alpheios⁶⁸⁸. The legend at Letrini was⁶⁸⁹ that he fell in love with {p. 133}her, but seeing no chance of success in a lawful way he resolved to force her. For this purpose he came to Letrini, where she and her nymphs were celebrating a pannychis or wake, and mingled with them. But the goddess, suspecting his design, had daubed her own face and those of her nymphs with mud, so that he was unable to distinguish her, and thus was foiled. Finally she was converted into the coy nymph Arethusa⁶⁹⁰. A late pragmatising form of the pleasing mythe was, that Alpheios was a hunter who was in love with the huntress Arethusa. To escape from his importunities she passed over to Ortygia, where she was changed into a fountain, and Alpheios became a river⁶⁹¹.

In proof of the truth of this fable, it was asserted that a cup (ϕιάλη) which fell into the Alpheios rose in Arethusa, whose pellucid waters also became turbid with the blood of the victims slain at the Olympic games⁶⁹².

We may here observe, that in the Peloponnese the relation between Artemis and the water was very intimate. She was worshiped in several places as Limnatis and Heleia, and there were frequently fountains in her temples. She was therefore probably regarded as a goddess of nature, that gave vigour and growth to plants and animals by the means of water⁶⁹³.

Among the various titles of Artemis were Loxo, Hecaerge, Arge, and Opis, or Upis. She bore the two first as the sister of Apollo Loxias and Hecaergos. She was styled Arge as the swift or the bright goddess, and Upis or Opis as her whose eye was over all. In the isle of Delos however were shown the tombs of Opis and Arge behind the temple of Artemis, and the tradition of the place was, that they, who were two Hyperborean maidens, had been the companions of Apollo and Artemis when they first came to Delos⁶⁹⁴. According to another account, these Hyperborean maidens were three in {p. 134}number, and named Upis, Loxo, and Hecaerge⁶⁹⁵, while a third named only Opis and Hecaerge⁶⁹⁶. There was also a legend of a nymph Arge, who when pursuing a buck cried out to him, «Though you should follow the course of the Sun I will overtake you,» at which the Sun being offended, turned her into a doe⁶⁹⁷. Another legend said that Zeus carried away the nymph Arge from Lyctos in Crete to a hill named Argillos on the banks of the Nile, where she became the mother of Dionysos⁶⁹⁸.

If Artemis was merely one of the names under which the moon was worshiped, it need not surprise us to find her identified with Selene, with Hecate, and even with Persephone, the goddess of the under-world, and to be thence called the three-formed goddess⁶⁹⁹ ruling as Selene in the sky, as Artemis on earth, as Persephone in Erebos. This will also give a very simple reason for her being like Eileithyia, the aider of women in labour. If Artemis was not originally a moon-goddess, these identifications become somewhat difficult of solution⁷⁰⁰.

Artemis was also confounded with the goddess worshiped on the Tauric Chersonese, whose altars were stained with the blood of such unhappy strangers as were cast on that inhospitable shore⁷⁰¹. She was identified too with the goddess of nature adored at Ephesus, whose symbolical figure, by its multitude of breasts and heads of animals hung round it, denoted the fecundity of nature. In Magnesia on the Mæander there was a most stately temple of Artemis-Leucophryne (White-browed)⁷⁰², in which was shown the tomb of a maiden named Leucophryne⁷⁰³, who was probably regarded as bearing a relation to the goddess similar to that borne by Upis and Arge at Delos. Leucophryne was therefore no more than an epithet of Artemis, who had also a temple at Leucophrys on {p. 135}the coast⁷⁰⁴ ; and it becomes a question whether (like Artemis of Ephesus, with whom she must have been identical) she derived her appellation from that town, whose name probably corresponded with its situation on a chalk cliff ; or whether it was expressive of her beauty. As however beauty was not an attribute of the Asiatic goddess, the former is more likely to be the true supposition⁷⁰⁵.

No spot on earth is assigned as the birth-place of Artemis by Homer, in whose time, as we have more than once observed, that practice had not yet commenced ; but as he mentions the island Ortygia as that in which she shot Oriôn⁷⁰⁶, succeeding poets fabled that she was born there⁷⁰⁷. This island was described by Homer as lying in the western sea, the scene of all wonders, and was probably as imaginary as Ogygia, that of Calypso ; but when at a later period the Greeks grew more familiar with those distant regions, zeal for the honour of the poet who had sung so well the wanderings of Odysseus, and the love of definiteness, led them to affix the names which he employs to various places really to be found, and the islet at the mouth of the port of Syracuse was determined to be the Ortygia of the Odyssey⁷⁰⁸.

Artemis is generally represented as a healthy, strong, active maiden, — handsome, but with no gentleness of expression. She wears the Cretan hunting-shoes (ἐνδρομίδϵς), and has her garment tucked up for speed. On her back she bears a quiver, and in her hand a bow or a hunting-spear. She is usually attended by a dog.

At Trœzên there was a temple of Artemis-Lycæa, the erection of which was ascribed to Hippolytos, but the guides could give Pausanias no account of the unusual title Lycæa⁷⁰⁹. Another ambiguous name of this goddess was that of Tauropolos⁷¹⁰.

The chief titles given to Artemis by the poets were⁷¹¹, 1. Arrow-joying ; 2. Gold-bridled ; 3. Gold-shafted ; 4. Deer-slayer ; 5. Beast-marking ; 6. Rushing ; 7. Holy ; 8. Horse-urger, etc.

The name Artemis seems identical with ἀρτεμὴς, integer, whole, uninjured, and therefore sound and pure, probably with reference to the virginity of the goddess. Welcker regards it as an epithet of the same nature with Opis and Nemesis, and says that it is ἄρι-Θέμις⁷¹².

Mythologists are divided into two parties respecting the original nature of Leto and her children, the one regarding them as physical, the other as moral beings. Both however are agreed that the latter is their character in the Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, where, as we have seen, Apollo appears only as the god of prophecy, music and archery, and Artemis as his counterpart in this last office. Voss⁷¹³ therefore (with whom agree Wolf⁷¹⁴, Lobeck⁷¹⁵, Hermann⁷¹⁶, Völcker⁷¹⁷, Nitzsch⁷¹⁸ and Müller⁷¹⁹,) maintains such to have been the original conception of these deities, while Heyne⁷²⁰, Buttmann⁷²¹ and Welcker⁷²², together with Creuzer and the whole body of the mystics, think that in the theocrasy of the ancients, by which Apollo and Artemis were identified with Helios and Selene, they were only restored to their original nature and character. We have more than once hinted our inclination to regard this last as the more correct hypothesis. We will now briefly state the principal arguments on both sides.

In favour of the theory of Apollo and Artemis being sun {p. 137}and moon, it is alleged that they were early so considered. Thus we find the Persian general of Darius sparing the isle of Delos on their account, and making offerings to them evidently as gods of the two great luminaries (Mithras and Mitra in the Persian system)⁷²³. We also meet this view in Plato⁷²⁴ and Euripides⁷²⁵ ; and in the Alexandrine period it was so prevalent, that Callimachus⁷²⁶ blames those who separate these deities from the sun and moon. This however might have been nothing more than the arbitrary procedure of priests and philosophers, and more sure grounds must be sought in the attributes and epithets of these deities anterior to the time of theocrasy.

Apollo and Artemis then are brother and sister, the children of Zeus (that is the deity) and Leto, whose name, by a perfectly unstrained etymology, may be rendered Night ; and the origin of the sun and moon, and their affinity, could not be more appropriately described. Apollo is represented as full of manly vigour, with long unshorn locks, armed with a golden sword and a bow and quiver, from which he sends forth deadly arrows. These waving locks are a simple representation of the beams of the sun, who in the Psalms is described as ‘a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoicing to run his race ;’ a golden sword is the weapon of Freyr, the sun-god of Scandinavian mythology ; and the arrows may well express the penetrating beams of the sun, or the coups de soleil and diseases caused by his action. For a similar reason arrows were given to the goddess of the moon⁷²⁷. The names Phœbos and Artemis, as above explained, agree perfectly with the sun and moon. Apollo being conceived armed with bow and arrows, was naturally held to be the god of archery ; and the sun, whose eye surveys everything, might {p. 138}be looked on as the most suitable revealer of the will of Zeus to men, and thence Apollo be the god of prophecy. The cheerfulness which the appearance of the sun induces over all nature, vivified and refreshed by the repose of the night, and the songs of birds which precede or accompany his rising⁷²⁸, might easily cause the sun-god to be regarded as the god of music, though it is more likely that Apollo owes this character to the employment of the lyre in his worship. Artemis may in like manner have been regarded as the goddess of the chase from her being armed with arrows, or as the beasts of venery feed by night and sleep by day⁷²⁹, or as the moon-goddess was held to preside over the birth and growth of animated beings. Finally, the offering of ripe ears of corn, the ‘golden summer’, to Apollo, and his being prayed to as the averter of mildew and the destroyer of mice and grasshoppers, are reasons for viewing him as a god of nature⁷³⁰.

Against all this it is alleged that these identifications were merely the work of the philosophers of the Ionic school, who sought to assimilate all the deities of the popular creed with material powers or the attributes of the universal intellect ; that the epithets and attributes of Apollo all answer to a moral being of great purity, while the bow and arrows are a natural symbol of the god who sends death from afar ; that nothing can be concluded from his being a patron and protector of agriculture, as he is such as the averter of misfortune in general ; that in his religious character he is no god of nature, not being a deity of generation and production, but represented as ever youthful and unmarried, the tales of his amours being all of a late age, and having no connexion with his worship. Finally, great stress is laid on the fact of Apollo and Artemis being so totally distinct from the sun and moon in all the elder poetry⁷³¹.

Διώνη. Dione. §

In the Ilias⁷³² Dione is a wife of Zeus, and mother of Aphrodite. The name Dione also occurs among the Ocean-nymphs⁷³³, the Nereïdes⁷³⁴ and the Hyades⁷³⁵. At Dodona Dione shared in the honours and the worship of Zeus, being regarded as his queen⁷³⁶. Her name is apparently the feminine of his, and probably signified simply goddess⁷³⁷.

Ἀϕροδίτη. Venus. §

The Aphrodite of the Ilias⁷³⁸ is the daughter of Zeus and Dione, and by the Alexandrian and the Latin poets⁷³⁹ she is sometimes called by the same name as her mother. Hesiod⁷⁴⁰ says she sprang from the foam (ἀϕρὸς) of the sea, into which the mutilated part of Uranos had been thrown by his son Kronos. She first, he adds, approached the land at the island of Cythera, and thence proceeded to Cyprus, where grass grew beneath her feet, and Love and Desire attended her.

One of the Homerids⁷⁴¹ sings, that the moist-blowing west-wind wafted her in soft foam along the waves of the sea, and that the gold-filleted Seasons received her on the shore of Cyprus, clothed her in immortal garments, placed a golden wreath on her head, rings of orichalcum and gold in her pierced ears, and golden chains about her neck, and then led her to the {p. 140}assembly of the Immortals, every one of whom admired, saluted, and loved her, and each god desired her for his wife.

Empedocles said that Aphrodite was the daughter of Kronos⁷⁴².

The husband assigned to this charming goddess is usually the lame artist Hephæstos. Her amour with Ares we have already narrated ; and Hermes, Dionysos, and Poseidôn, it is said, could also boast of her favours. Among mortals, Anchises and Adonis are those whose amours with her are the most famous. The tale of her love-adventure with the former is noticed by Homer⁷⁴³, and it is most pleasingly told by a Homerid ; the following is an analysis of his hymn.

Aphrodite had long exercised uncontrolled dominion over the dwellers of Olympos, uniting in cruel sport both males and females with mortals. But Zeus resolved that she should no longer be exempt from the common lot. Accordingly he infused into her mind the desire of a union of love with mortal man. The object selected was Anchises, a beautiful youth of the royal house of Troy, who was at that time with the herdsmen feeding oxen among the hills and valleys of Ida.

The moment Aphrodite beheld him she was seized with love. She immediately hastened to her temple in Cyprus, where the Graces dressed and adorned her, and then in the full consciousness of beauty she proceeded through the air. When she came to Ida, she advanced toward the stalls, and was accompanied on her way by all the wild beasts of the mountains, whose breasts the exulting goddess filled with love and desire.

Anchises happened to be alone in the cotes at this time, and was amusing his leisure by playing on the lyre. When he beheld the goddess, who had divested herself of the usual marks of divinity, he was amazed at her beauty and the splendour of her attire. He could not avoid regarding her as something more than human ; he accosts her as one of the Immortals, vows an altar to her, and beseeches her to grant him a long and a happy life. But Aphrodite denies her {p. 141}heavenly origin, and feigns that she is a mortal maid and daughter to Otreus king of Phrygia, adding, that while she was dancing, in honour of Artemis, with the nymphs and other maidens, and a great crowd was standing around, Hermes had snatched her away, and carried her through the air over hills and dales and plains, till he had brought her to Ida, where he informed her that she was to be the wife of Anchises ; and then, having instructed her in what she was to do, had departed, leaving her alone in the mountains. She earnestly entreats the Trojan youth to conduct her unsullied to his family, and to dispatch a messenger to her father to treat of the marriage and the dower.

But while thus speaking, the artful goddess filled the heart of the youth with love. Believing her now to be mortal, all his veneration vanishes, and he declares that not even Apollo should prevent his taking advantage of the favourable moment. He seized the hand of the goddess, and ‘led her blushing like the morn’ into the rustic shed.

When evening approached, and the arrival of the herdsmen with the sheep and oxen was at hand, the goddess poured a profound sleep over Anchises. She arose from the skinstrewn couch, and prepared to depart. Resuming the marks of divinity, the brilliant eyes and rosy neck, she stood at the door and called to her slumbering lover to awake and observe the change. Filled with awe, he conceals his face in the clothes and sues for mercy ; but the goddess reassures him, and informs him that she will bear a son, whom she will commit to the mountain-nymphs to rear, and will bring to him when in his fifth year. He is then to feign that the child is the offspring of one of the nymphs ; but the secret of the goddess is to remain inviolate, under pain of his being struck with lightning by Zeus.

So saying, unto breezy Heaven she sped.

Hail, goddess, who o’er well-dwelt Cyprus rulest !

But I will pass from thee to another hymn, —

concludes the poet, according to the regular practice of his brethren.

Myrrha, the daughter of Cinyras, having offended {p. 142}Aphrodite⁷⁴⁴, was by her inspired with a passion for her own father. After a long struggle against it, she gratified it by the aid of her nurse, unknown to its object⁷⁴⁵. When Cinyras found what he had unwittingly done, he pursued his daughter with his drawn sword, to efface her crime in her blood. He had nearly overtaken her, when she prayed to the gods to make her invisible, and they in pity changed her into a myrrh-tree. In ten months afterwards the tree opened, and the young Adonis came to light. Aphrodite, delighted with his beauty, put him into a coffer, unknown to all the gods, and gave him to Persephone to keep. But as soon as she beheld him, the goddess of the under-world refused to part with him ; and the matter being referred to Zeus, he decreed that Adonis should have one third of the year to himself, be another third with Aphrodite, and the remaining third with Persephone. Adonis gave his own portion to Aphrodite, and lived happily with her ; till having offended Artemis, he was torn by a wild boar⁷⁴⁶ and died⁷⁴⁷. The ground where his blood fell was sprinkled with nectar by the mourning goddess, and the flower called the anemone or wind-flower sprang up from it, which by its caducity expresses the brief period of the life of the beautiful son of Myrrha⁷⁴⁸. The rose also derived its present hue from this fatal event ; for as the distracted goddess ran barefoot through the woods and lawns to the aid of her lover, the thorns of the rose-briars tore her delicate skin, and their flowers were thenceforth tinged with red⁷⁴⁹. Other accounts, however, say {p. 143}that the goddess changed Adonis himself into this fragrant flower⁷⁵⁰.

The tale of Adonis is evidently an Eastern mythe. His own name and those of his parents refer to that part of the world⁷⁵¹. He appears to be the same with the Thammuz mentioned by the prophet Ezekiel,

Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured

The Syrian damsels to lament his fate,

While smooth Adonis from his native rock

Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood

Of Thammuz yearly wounded ;

and to be a Phœnician personification of the sun, who during a part of the year is absent, or as the legend expresses it, with the goddess of the under-world ; during the remainder with Astarte, the regent of heaven. A festival in honour of Adonis was annually celebrated at Byblos by the Phœnician women during two days ; the first of which was spent in grief and lamentation, the second in joy and triumph. In Greece, whither these rites were transplanted, the festival was prolonged to eight days. It is uncertain when the Adoneia were first celebrated in that country ; but we find Plato⁷⁵² alluding to the Gardens of Adonis, as pots and boxes of flowers used in them were called, and the ill fortune of the Athenian expedition to Sicily was in part ascribed to the circumstance of the fleet having sailed during that festival⁷⁵³. The Idyll of Theocritus called the Adoniazusæ describes in admirable dramatic style the magnificence with which the feast of Adonis was celebrated in the Græco-Ægyptic city of Alexandria.

This notion of the mourning for Adonis being a testimony {p. 144}of grief for the absence of the sun during the winter, is not, however, to be too readily acquiesced in. Lobeck⁷⁵⁴ for example asks, with some appearance of reason, why those nations whose heaven was mildest, and their winter shortest, should so bitterly bewail the regular changes of the seasons, as to feign that the gods themselves were carried off or slain ; and he shrewdly observes, that in that case the mournful and the joyful parts of the festival should have been held at different times of the year, and not joined together as they were. He further inquires, whether the ancient nations, who esteemed their gods to be so little superior to men, may not have believed them to have been really and not metaphorically put to death. And in truth it is not easy to give a satisfactory answer to these questions.

According to Homer, Aphrodite had an embroidered girdle (κεστὸς ἱμὰς), which had the gift of inspiring love and desire for the person who wore it. Hera, when about to lull Zeus to sleep by filling him with these affections, borrowed the magic girdle from Aphrodite⁷⁵⁵.

The animals sacred to Aphrodite were swans, doves, and sparrows. Horace⁷⁵⁶ places her in a chariot drawn by swans, and Sappho⁷⁵⁷ in one whose team were sparrows. In one of the odes ascribed to Anacreon a dove announces herself as a present from the goddess to the bard. The bird called Iynx or Fritillus, of which so much use was made in amatory magic, was also sacred to this goddess⁷⁵⁸ ; as was likewise the swallow, the herald of spring, the season of love. Her favourite plants were the rose and the myrtle. She was chiefly worshiped at Cythera and Cyprus⁷⁵⁹ ; in which latter isle her favourite places were Paphôs, Golgoi, Idalion, and Amathûs ; and also at Cnidos, Miletos, Côs, Corinth, Athens, Sparta, etc.

In the more ancient temples of this goddess in Cyprus she was represented under the form of a rude conical stone. But the Grecian sculptors and painters, particularly Praxiteles and [n.p.]Apelles, vied with each other in forming her image the ideal of female beauty and attraction. She appears sometimes rising out of the sea and wringing her locks ; sometimes drawn in a conch by Tritons, or riding on some marine animal. She is usually naked, or but slightly clad. The Venus de’ Medici remains to us a noble specimen of ancient art and perception of the beautiful.

The most usual epithets of Aphrodite were⁷⁶⁰, 1. Smile-loving ; 2. Well-garlanded ; 3. Golden ; 4. Quick-winking ; 5. Well-tressed ; 6. Care-dissolving ; 7. Artful ; 8. Gold-bridled ; etc.

There is none of the Olympians of whom the foreign origin is so probable as this goddess. She is generally regarded as being the same with the Astarte of the Phœnicians. There can, we think, be little doubt of the identification of this last with the Grecian Aphrodite, for the tale of Adonis sufficiently proves it ; and that this took place at a very early period, the name Cypris given to Aphrodite so frequently by Homer evinces. Still we look on Aphrodite to be (as her name seems to denote⁷⁶¹) an originally Grecian deity ; at first, probably, merely cosmogonic, but gradually adopted into the system of the Olympians, and endowed with some of the attributes of Hera, (who was also identified with Astarte), and thus becoming the patroness of marriage⁷⁶². It was probably on account of her being esteemed the same with Astarte, the moon-goddess and queen of heaven, that Aphrodite was so frequently styled the Heavenly (Urania). It is very important to observe that she was so named at her temple in Cythera, which was regarded as the holiest and most ancient of her fanes in Greece. Her antique wooden statue (ξόανον) in this temple was armed, as it also was at Sparta and Corinth⁷⁶³. In this last city she was also styled Urania⁷⁶⁴, and her worship there was eminently Asiatic in character.

Ἕρος, Ἕρως. Cupido, Amor. Love. §

This deity is unnoticed by Homer ; in the Theogony⁷⁶⁵ he is one of the first of beings, and produced without parents. In the Orphic poems he was the son of Kronos⁷⁶⁶. Sappho⁷⁶⁷ made him the offspring of Heaven and Earth, while Simonides assigned him Aphrodite and Ares for parents⁷⁶⁸. In Olên’s hymn to Eileithyia⁷⁶⁹ that goddess was termed the mother of Love, and Alcæus said that ‘well-sandaled Iris bore Love to gold-locked Zephyros⁷⁷⁰.’

The cosmogonic Erôs of Hesiod is apparently a personification of the principle of attraction, on which the coherence of the material world depends. Nothing was more natural than to term Aphrodite the mother of Love, but the reason for so calling Eileithyia, the president of child-birth, is not equally apparent. It may be perhaps that in the hymn ascribed to Olên this goddess was identified with Aphrodite Archaia, to whom Theseus was said to have dedicated an altar at Delos⁷⁷¹ : possibly it was meant to express the increase of conjugal affection produced by the birth of children. The making Love the offspring of the West-wind and the Rainbow would seem to be only a poetic mode of expressing the wellknown fact, that the spring, the season in which they most prevail, is also that of love⁷⁷². In the bucolic and some of the Latin poets the Loves are spoken of in the plural number, but no distinct offices are assigned them⁷⁷³.

Thespiæ in Bœotia was the place in which Erôs was most worshiped. The Thespians used to celebrate games in his honour on Mount Helicôn. The oldest image of the god in their city was of plain stone, but Praxiteles afterwards made {p. 147}for them one of Pcntelican marble of rare beauty⁷⁷⁴. Erôs also had altars at Athens and elsewhere.

The poetic epithets of this deity were⁷⁷⁵, 1. Gold-haired ; 2. Gold-winged ; 3. Sweet-minded.

The god of love was usually represented as a plump-cheeked boy, rosy and naked, with light hair floating on his shoulders. He is always winged, and armed with a bow and arrows⁷⁷⁶.

There was a being named Anterôs (ἀντὶ ἔρως), who was in some cases viewed as the avenger of slighted love⁷⁷⁷ ; in others as the symbol of reciprocal affection⁷⁷⁸. The Platonic philosopher Porphyrius tells the following pretty legend.

Aphrodite, complaining to Themis that her son Erôs continued always a child, was told by her that the cause was his being solitary, and that if he had a brother he would grow apace. Anterôs was soon afterwards born, and Erôs immediately found his wings enlarge, and his person and strength greatly increase. But this was only when Anterôs was near ; for if he was at a distance, Erôs found himself shrink to his original dimensions. The meaning of this fable is so apparent that it needs not explication.

At the time when it was become the mode to exalt the characters of philosophers by ascribing to them all kinds of wonderful works, the sophist Eunapius told the following curious legend in his life of Jamblichus, the author of as marvellous a life of Pythagoras. Jamblichus and his companions having gone to the warm baths of Gadara in Lycia, and bathed in them, a conversation arose among them on the nature of the baths. The philosopher smiled and said, “Though it is not strictly right in me to do so, yet I will show you something new.” He then desired them to inquire of the inhabitants, what were the traditional names of two of the smaller but handsomer of the warm springs. They replied that one of them was called Erôs and the other Anterôs, but that they knew not the cause of their being so styled. Jamblichus, {p. 148}who was just then standing at the brink of the fount of Erôs, touched the water, and murmured a few words over it. Immediately there rose from the bottom a little boy of a fair complexion and moderate size : his hair, of a rich golden hue, hung down his back, which was bright and clean as that of a person who had just bathed. All present were in amazement : the philosopher then leading them to the other spring did as he had done before ; and instantly another Love, similar to the first, except that his hair was of a bright dark hue, rose to light. The two embraced, and clung round the philosopher as if he had been their father ; and after caressing them for some time, he restored them to their native element. His companions, who had been previously disposed to regard him as an impostor, convinced by this wonder, henceforth received his words as those of a divinity.

The adventures of Erôs are not numerous. Some pretty little trifles respecting him will be found in the bucolic poets, and his adventure with Apollo has been already noticed. The most celebrated is that contained in the agreeable tale of his love for Psyche (ψυχὴ, the soul), preserved by Apuleius in his Metamorphoses, and which we will here give in an abridged form.

There were one time a king and a queen who had three daughters, of whom the youngest named Psyche was one of the loveliest creatures earth ever beheld. People crowded from all parts to gaze upon her charms, altars were erected to her, and she was worshiped as a second Venus. The queen of beauty was irritated on seeing her own altars neglected, and her adorers diminishing. She summoned her son ; and conducting him to the city where Psyche dwelt, showed him the lovely maid, and ordered him to inspire her with a passion for some vile and abject wretch. The goddess departed, leaving her son to execute her mandate. Meantime Psyche, though adored by all, was sought as a wife by none. Her sisters, who were far inferior to her in charms, were married, and she remained single, hating that beauty which all admired.

Her father consulted the oracle of Apollo, and was ordered {p. 149}to expose her on a rock, whence she would be carried away by a monster, the terror of heaven, earth, and hell. The oracle was obeyed, and Psyche amidst the tears of the people placed on a lofty rock. Here, while she sat weeping, a zephyr sent for the purpose gently raised and carried her to a charming valley. Overcome by grief she falls asleep, and on awaking beholds a grove with a fountain in the midst of it, and near it a stately palace of most splendid structure. She ventures to enter this palace, goes over it lost in admiration at its magnificence ; when suddenly she hears a voice, telling her that all there is hers, and all her commands will be obeyed. She bathes, sits down to a rich repast, and is regaled with music by invisible performers. At night she retires to bed ; an unseen youth addresses her in the softest accents, and she becomes his wife.

Her sisters had meanwhile come to console their parents for the loss of Psyche, whose invisible spouse informs her of this event, and warns her of the danger likely to arise from it. Moved by the tears of his bride, he however consents that her sisters should come to the palace. The obedient zephyr conveys them thither. They grow envious of Psyche’s happiness, and try to persuade her that her invisible lord is a serpent, who will finally devour her. By their advice she provides herself with a lamp and a razor to destroy the monster. When her husband was asleep she arose, took her lamp from its place of concealment, and approached the couch ; but there she beheld, instead of a dragon, Love himself. Filled with amazement at his beauty, she leaned in rapture over his charms : a drop of oil fell from the lamp on the shoulder of the god : he awoke, and flew away. Psyche caught his leg as he rose, and was raised into the air, but fell ; and as she lay, the god reproached her from a cypress for her breach of faith.

The abandoned Psyche attempted to drown herself in the neighbouring stream ; but, fearing Love, it cast her upon a bank of flowers, where she was found and consoled by the god Pan. She now goes through the world in search of Cupid : she arrives at the kingdom of her sisters ; and, by a false tale of Cupid’s love for them, causes them to cast themselves from {p. 150}the rock on which she had been exposed, and through their credulity they perish. She still roams on, persecuted and subjected to numerous trials by Venus. Pitied but unaided by the higher goddesses Ceres and Juno, the plants and the animals, the reed, the owl, and the eagle give her their advice and assistance. Venus, bent on her destruction, dispatches her to Proserpina with a box to request some of her beauty. Psyche, dismayed at the peril of the journey to the lower regions, ascends a tower, determined to cast herself from it and end her woes ; but the tower pities her, and instructs her how to proceed. She accomplishes her mission in safety. As she is returning, she thinks she may venture to open the box and take a portion for herself, that she may be the more pleasing to her husband. She opens the box, when instead of beauty there issues from it a dense black exhalation, and the imprudent Psyche falls to the ground in a deep slumber from its effects. In this state she is found by Cupid, who had escaped by the window of the chamber where he had been confined by his mother : he awakens her with the point of one of his arrows, reproaches her with her curiosity, and then proceeds to the palace of Jupiter to interest him in her favour. Jupiter takes pity on her, and endows her with immortality : Venus is reconciled, and her marriage with Cupid takes place. The Hours shed roses through the sky, the Graces sprinkle the halls of Heaven with fragrant odours, Apollo plays on his lyre, the Arcadian god on his reeds, the Muses sing in chorus, while Venus dances with grace and elegance to celebrate the nuptials of her son. Thus Cupid was at length reunited to his long-lost Psyche, and their loves were speedily crowned by the birth of a child, whom his parents named Pleasure⁷⁷⁹.

This beautiful fiction is perhaps a philosophic allegory, intended by its inventor for a representation of the mystic union between the divine love and the human soul, and of the trials and purifications which the latter must undergo, in order to be perfectly fitted for an enduring union with the {p. 151}divinity. It is thus explained by the Christian mythologist Fulgentius⁷⁸⁰. “The city in which Psyche dwells is the world ; the king and queen are God and matter ; Psyche is the soul ; her sisters are the flesh and the free-will : she is the youngest, because the body is before the mind ; and she is the fairest, because the soul is higher than free-will, more noble than the body. Venus, i. e. lust, envies her, and sends Cupido, i. e. desire, to destroy her ; but as there is desire of good as well as of evil, Cupid falls in love with her : he persuades her not to see his face, that is, not to learn the joys of desire ; just as Adam, though he could see, did not see that he was naked until he had eaten of the tree of desire. At the impulsion of her sisters she put the lamp from under the bushel, that is, revealed the flame of desire which was hidden in her bosom, and loved it when she saw how delightful it was ; and she is said to have burned it by the dripping of the lamp, because all desire burns in proportion as it is loved, and fixes its sinful mark on the flesh. She is therefore deprived of desire and her splendid fortune, is exposed to perils, and driven out of the palace.”

This fanciful exposition will probably not prove satisfactory to many readers. The following one of a modern writer⁷⁸¹ may seem to come nearer the truth. “This fable, it is said, is a representation of the destiny of the human soul. The soul, which is of divine origin, is here below subjected to error in its prison the body. Hence trials and purifications are set before it, that it may become capable of a higher view of things, and of true desire. Two loves meet it, — the earthly, a deceiver who draws it down to earthly things ; the heavenly, who directs its view to the original, fair and divine, and who gaining the victory over his rival, leads off the soul as his bride.”

According to a third expositor⁷⁸² the mythe is a moral one. It is intended to represent the dangers to which nuptial fidelity was exposed in such a country as degenerate Greece, and at the same time to present an image of a fidelity subjected to numerous temptations and victorious over them all.

The interpretation of an allegory is always hazardous : for fancy presided over its birth, and fancy must always have a large share in the attempts made to develope its secret and real nature. All, therefore, we should ever hope to arrive at is a view of the general sense and meaning. In truth many a tale seems to be allegorical which was never meant to be so by its author, and many a tale is allegorical in which the vulgar discern nothing but amusing narrative. The story of Cupid and Psyche may after all have been, as some think, nothing more than a Milesian tale like that of the Matron of Ephesus⁷⁸³. We, however, rather incline to the opinion of its having been originally a philosophic allegory.

Ere we quit this subject we must observe, that a Greek name for the moth was Psyche (ψυχὴ). The fondness of this insect for approaching at night the flame of the lamp or candle, in which it so frequently finds its death, reminds a mystic philosopher of the fate of the soul destroyed by the desire of knowledge, or absorbed and losing its separate existence in the deity, who dwells in light according to the philosophy of the East. But further, the world presents no illustration so striking or so beautiful of the immortality of the soul, as that of the moth or butterfly bursting on brilliant wings from the dull groveling caterpillar-state in which it had previously existed, fluttering in the blaze of day, and feeding on the most fragrant and sweetest productions of the spring. Hence it was, in all probability, that the Greeks named the butterfly the soul.

The fable of Love and Psyche has been the original of many a pleasing fairy-tale. It has been told in French prose by the naïf and charming La Fontaine. The united powers of Corneille, Moliere, and Quinault produced a tragédie-ballet named Psyche, for the amusement of the court of Louis XIV. In English, the amiable and accomplished Mrs. H. Tighe has narrated the tale of Psyche and her celestial lover in elegant and harmonious Spenserian verse.

Παλλὰς Ἀθηναίη, καὶ Ἀθήνη, Ἀθηνâ. Minerva. §

The Pallas-Athene of both the Homeric poems is the daughter of Zeus ; in one place⁷⁸⁴ it seems to be intimated that she had no other parent. In the Theogony Zeus swallows Metis, and the ‘blue-eyed Tritogeneia’ is born from his head⁷⁸⁵, which Pindar⁷⁸⁶ says Hephæstos opened with a brazen axe ; Athena then sprang forth with a shout which terrified Heaven and Mother Earth, while the king of the gods poured a shower of gold on Rhodes, the sacred isle of the Sun-god. Stesichorus⁷⁸⁷ had already sung how the goddess issued from the head of her sire in perfect panoply, — a circumstance however evidently to be understood in the narrative of Pindar. According to the Homerid⁷⁸⁸ Olympos shook at the divine birth, the earth resounded, the sea was moved, and Helios checked his steeds in their career till the new-born goddess took off her radiant armour. Later authorities assign the task of opening the head of Zeus to Prometheus⁷⁸⁹, or Hermes⁷⁹⁰ .

Pallas-Athene is in Homer, and in the general popular system, the goddess of wisdom and skill. She is in war opposed to Ares, the wild war-god, as the patroness and teacher of just and scientific warfare. She is therefore on the side of the Greeks, and he on that of the Trojans. But on the shield of Achilleus, where the people of the besieged town are represented as going forth to lie in ambush, they are led by Ares and Athena together⁷⁹¹, possibly to denote the union of skill and courage required for that service⁷⁹². Every prudent chief was esteemed to be under the patronage of Athena, and Odysseus was therefore her especial favourite, whom she relieved from all his perils, and whose son Telemachos she also took under her protection, assuming a human form to be his guide and director. In like manner Cadmos, Heracles, Perseus, and other heroes were, as we shall see, favoured and aided by this goddess.

As the patroness of arts and industry in general, Pallas-Athene was regarded as the inspirer and teacher of able artists. Thus she taught Epeios to frame the wooden horse, by means of which Troy was taken⁷⁹³ ; and she also superintended the building of the ship Argo⁷⁹⁴. Athena was likewise expert in female accomplishments ; she wove her own robe and that of Hera, which last she is said to have embroidered very richly⁷⁹⁵. When the hero Iasôn was setting forth in quest of the Golden Fleece, Athena gave him a cloak wrought by herself⁷⁹⁶. She taught this art to mortal females, who had won her affection⁷⁹⁷. When Pandora was formed by Hephæstos for the ruin of man, she was attired by Pallas-Athene⁷⁹⁸.

By the Homerid⁷⁹⁹ Athena and Hephæstos are united as the benefactors and civilisers of mankind by means of the arts which they taught them, and we shall find them in intimate union in the mythic system of Attica.

Homer⁸⁰⁰ thus describes Pallas-Athene arraying herself in the arms of Zeus, when preparing to accompany Hera to the plain where the Greeks and Trojans were engaged in conflict.

{p. 155}But Athenæe, child of Zeus supreme,

The ægis-holder, on her father’s floor

Let fall her peplus various, which she

Herself had wrought, and laboured with her hands.

The tunic then of cloud-collecting Zeus

She on her put, and clad herself in arms

For tearful war ; and round her shoulders cast

The fringed ægis dire, which all about

Was compassed with fear. In it was Strife,

In it was Strength, and in it chill Pursuit ;

In it the Gorgon-head, the portent dire, —

Dire and terrific, the great prodigy

Of ægis-holding Zeus. Upon her head

She placed the four-coned helmet formed of gold,

Fitting the foot-men of a hundred towns.

The flaming car she mounted, seized the spear,

Great, heavy, solid, wherewith the strong-sired

Maiden the ranks of heroes vanquisheth,

With whom she is wroth.

A Mæonian maid named Arachne, proud of her skill in weaving and embroidery, in which arts the goddess had instructed her, ventured to deny her obligation, and challenged her patroness to a trial of skill. Athena, assuming the form of an old woman, warned her to desist from her boasting ; and when she found her admonitions were vain, she resumed her proper form and accepted the challenge. The skill of Arachne was such, and the subject she chose (the love-transformations of the gods) so offensive to Athena, that she struck her several times in the forehead with the shuttle. The high-spirited maid unable to endure this affront hung herself, and the goddess relenting changed her into a spider (ἀράχνη)⁸⁰¹.

The invention of the flute or pipe (αὐλὸς) is also ascribed to this goddess. When Perseus ; says Pindar⁸⁰², had slain Medusa, her two remaining sisters bitterly lamented her death. The snakes which formed their ringlets mourned in concert {p. 156}with them, and Athena hearing the sound was pleased with it, and resolved to imitate it : she in consequence invented the pipe, whose music was named many-headed (πολυκέϕαλος), on account of the number of the serpents whose lugubrious hissing had given origin to it. Others⁸⁰³ say the goddess formed the pipe from the bone of a stag, and bringing it with her to the banquet of the gods began to play on it. Being laughed at by Hera and Aphrodite, on account of her green eyes and her swollen cheeks, she went to a fountain on Mount Ida, and played before the liquid mirror. Satisfied that the goddesses had had reason for their mirth, she threw her pipe away : Marsyas unfortunately found it, and learning to play on it, ventured to become the rival of Apollo. His fate has been already related.

The favourite plant of Athena was the olive, to which she had given origin. Among animals the owl and the serpent were sacred to her. Athena was most honoured in Athens, the city to which she gave name, where the splendid festivals of the Panathenæa were celebrated in her honour. She had also temples at Thebes, Argos, Sparta, and elsewhere. At Tegea she was worshiped under the title of Alea. She contended, as we have seen, with Poseidôn for Athens and Trœzên, and, according to one account, for Argos.

This goddess is represented with a serious thoughtful countenance, her eyes are large and steady, her hair hangs in ringlets on her shoulders, a helmet covers her head ; she wears a long tunic and mantle, she bears the ægis on her breast or on her arm, and the head of the Gorgon is on its centre. She often has bracelets and ear-rings, but her general air is that of a young man in female attire.

Pallas-Athene was called by the poets⁸⁰⁴, 1. Blue- or rather Green-eyed ; 2. Town-destroying ; 3. Town-protecting ; 4. Plun-dering ; 5. Unwearied or Invincible ; 6. People-rouser, &c.

We are now to inquire into the signification of the name of this goddess and her original nature.

The simplest and most natural interpretation of Pallas Athenæe appears to be ‘Athenian Maid,’ and she thus forms a parallel to the ‘Eleusinian Maid’ (Κόρα), Persephone⁸⁰⁵. As this is her constant title in Homer, it is manifest that she had long been regarded as the tutelar deity of Athens. We may therefore safely reject the legends of her being the same with the Neïth of Saïs in Egypt, or a war-goddess imported from the banks of the lake Tritonis in Libya, and view in her one of the deities worshiped by the agricultural Pelasgians, and therefore probably one of the powers engaged in causing the productiveness of the earth. Her being represented in the poetic creed as the goddess of arts and war alone, need not cause us any hesitation, as that transition from physical to moral agents, of which we shall presently give an explanation, was by no means uncommon.

The most probable theory, in our opinion, is that which views in Pallas-Athene the temperate celestial heat and its principal agent on vegetation, the moon⁸⁰⁶. This idea was not unknown to the ancients ; Athena is by Aristotle expressly called the moon⁸⁰⁷ ; on the coins of Attica, anterior to the time of Pericles, there was a moon along with the owl and olivebranch⁸⁰⁸ ; there was a torch-race (λαμπαδοϕορία) at the Panathenæa, a contest with which none but light-bearing deities were honoured⁸⁰⁹ ; at the festival of the Skirophoria the priest of the Sun and the priestess of Athena went together in procession⁸¹⁰ ; a title of Athena was All-dew(Pandrosos)⁸¹¹ ; in the ancient legend of Athens there was a Sacred Marriage between Athena and Hephæstos⁸¹², in whose temple stood a statue of the goddess⁸¹³ ; she was also said to have given fire to the Athenians⁸¹⁴ ; perpetual flame was maintained in her temples at Athens and Alalcomenæ⁸¹⁵. It could hardly have been from {p. 158}any other cause than that of her being regarded as the moon, that the nocturnal owl, whose broad full eyes shine so brightly in the dark, was consecrated to her ; the shield or corselet with the Gorgon’s head on it seems to represent the full-orbed moon ; and finally the epithet Glaucopis, which is as it were appropriated to Athena, is also given to Selene⁸¹⁶.

To these proofs respecting the Athenian goddess we may add that at Tegea Athena was called Alea, that is probably Warmer.⁸¹⁷. At Sparta she was named Ophthalmitis or Eyed, and at Argos Sharp-sighted.⁸¹⁸.

If this theory be correct, the best explanation of the perplexing epithet Tritogeneia would seem to be that which derives it from the three phases of the moon. There are two other interpretations of this name which have had more general currency. The one supposes it to signify Head-sprung, as the word τριτὼ is said to have signified Head in some of the obscurer dialects of Greece⁸¹⁹. But accounts like this are very suspicious, and the later Greeks would have made little scruple about coining a term if they wanted it to suit any purpose. The other interpretation, which makes the banks of the river or lake Tritôn the birth-place of Athena, has found a greater number of supporters ; but as so many countries sought to appropriate the Tritôn to themselves⁸²⁰, the choice among them might seem difficult. The contest, however, has lain between the river or lake Tritôn in Libya and a small stream of the same name in Bœotia. The ancients in general were in favour of the former ; but as there is no reason to suppose that the Greeks knew anything of the Libyan Tritôn in the days of Homer, or probably till after the colony had been settled at Cyrene, this theory seems to have little in its favour. Müller⁸²¹ therefore at once rejects it, and fixes on the banks of the Bœotian brook as the natal spot of the {p. 159}godless. Here, however, again Homer presents a difficulty, for, as we have already observed, the practice of assigning birthplaces on earth to the gods does not seem to have prevailed in his age. Indeed we strongly suspect that the streamlet that flowed by Alalcomenæ got its name in the same manner as the hill Delos at Tegyra, and the grove Ortygia at Ephesus⁸²².

The moon-goddess of the Athenians probably came by her moral and political character in the following manner. It was the practice of the different classes and orders in a state to appropriate the general tutelar deity to themselves by some suitable appellation. The Attic peasantry, therefore, named Athena the Ox-yoker (Βουδϵία), the citizens called her Worker (Ἐργάνη), while the military class styled her Front-fighter (Пρόμαχος). As these last were the ruling order, their view of the character of the goddess became the prevalent one⁸²³ ; yet even in the epic poetry we find the idea of the goddess presiding over the arts still retained.

Some of the ancients regarded Athena as the air⁸²⁴, others as the earth⁸²⁵. There are some mythes which can be explained with so much more ease on this last hypothesis, that we think it not improbable that the Pelasgian goddess of Argos and other places, who had been identified with the Athenian Maid, may have originally been the same with Hera and Demeter⁸²⁶.

Ἐρμϵίας, Ἐρμῆς , Ἐρμάων. Mercurius. §

Hermeias (as Homer and Hesiod always name this god⁸²⁷,) is in one place of the Ilias called the son of Zeus⁸²⁸, but his mother is unnoticed. When, in the same poem, Dione is consoling her wounded daughter⁸²⁹, she reminds her how others of the Celestials had suffered similar calamities inflicted by {p. 160}mortals. Thus Ares, she says, was once shut up in a brazen prison by Otos and Ephialtes, where he languished till Hermeias, being informed of his state, contrived to steal him out of his dungeon. Elsewhere the poet tells us that of all the Trojans Hermeias most loved Phorbas (Feeder), rich in sheep, and bestowed on him wealth (κτῆσιν)⁸³⁰ ; and that Eudoros (Wealthy or Munificent) was the son of Hermeias by Polymela (Sheep-full), the daughter of Phylas (Keeper⁸³¹ ).

Hermeias is opposed in the battle of the gods to Leto, but declines the combat on the plea of the impolicy of making an enemy of one of the consorts of Zeus ; at the same time courtier-like telling her that, if she pleases, she may boast of having vanquished him by main strength⁸³². When the corse of Hectôr was exposed by Achilleus, the gods, pitying the fate of the hero, urged Hermeias to steal it away. On king Priamos’ setting forth to ransom the body of his son, Zeus desires Hermeias to accompany him, reminding him of his fondness for associating with mankind⁸³³. The god obeys his sire, puts on his ‘immortal golden sandals, which bear him over the water and the extensive earth like the blasts of the wind,’ and takes ‘his rod, with which he lays asleep the eyes of what men he will, and wakes again the sleepers.’ He accompanies the aged monarch in the form of a Grecian youth, telling him that he is the son of a wealthy man named Polyctôr (Much-possessing).

In the Odyssey Hermeias takes the place of Iris, who does not appear at all in this poem, and becomes the messenger of Zeus. He still retains his character of a friend to man, and comes unsent to point out to Odysseus the herb Moly, which will enable him to escape the enchantments of Circe⁸³⁴. Eumæos the swine-herd makes an offering to Hermes and the nymphs⁸³⁵. At the commencement of the spurious twenty-fourth book, Hermeias appears in his character of conveyer of souls to the realms of Hades.

Hesiod says⁸³⁶, that the Atlantis Maia bore to Zeus the ‘illustrious Hermes, the herald of the Immortals.’ In another place⁸³⁷ he speaks of him very explicitly as the deity presiding over flocks and herds, saying that the herdsmen prayed to him and Hecate. This poet also ascribes to him the only act injurious to man with which he is charged, namely, a share in the formation of the fatal Pandora, to whom he gave her ‘currish mind and artful disposition⁸³⁸.’

One of the last of the Homerids thus sang the story of the birth and first exploits of this sly deity.

Hermes was born of the mountain-nymph Maia, in a cavern of Mount Cyllene in Arcadia. He had scarcely been laid in his cradle, when he got up and set off for Pieria to steal cows from Apollo. As he was going out he met a tortoise, which he caught up and carried back into the cave ; where quick as thought he killed the animal, took out the flesh, adapted reeds and strings to the shell, and formed from it the phorminx or lyre, on which he immediately played with perfect skill. He then laid it up in his cradle, and resumed his journey.

He arrived by sunset in Pieria, where the oxen of the gods fed under the care of Apollo. He forthwith separated fifty cows from the herd and drove them away, contriving to make them go backwards ; and throwing away his sandals, bound branches of myrtle and tamarisk under his feet, that the herdsman-god might have no clue by which to trace his cattle. As he passed by Onchestos in Bœotia, he saw an old man engaged in planting his vineyard, whom he straitly charged not to tell what he had seen. He then pursued his way by ‘shady hills, resounding vales, and flowery plains,’ and as the moon was rising arrived with his booty on the banks of the Alpheios in the Peloponnese. He there fed and stalled the kine, made a fire, killed, cut up, and dressed two of them, and even made black-puddings of their blood, and then thriftily spread their skins to dry on a rock. He burned the heads and feet, and put out the fire, effacing all signs of it, and flung his twig-sandals into the river. With day-break {p. 162}he slunk home and stole into his cradle, not unobserved by his mother, who reproached him with his deeds ; but he replied, that he was resolved by his actions to procure admission for her and himself to the assembly of the gods.

In the morning Apollo missed his kine : he set out in search of them, met the old man, who informed him of his having seen a child driving cows along. He comes to Pylos, where he sees the traces of his cattle, but is amazed at the strange footprints of their driver. He proceeds to the fragrant cave of the nymph, and Hermes on seeing him gathers himself up under the clothes, afraid of the god. Apollo takes the key, opens and searches the three closets where the nymph kept her clothes, ornaments, and food, but to no purpose. He then threatens the child that he will fling him into Tartaros unless he tells him where the cows are : but Hermes stoutly denies all knowledge of them, and even very innocently asks what cows are. Apollo pulls him out of his cradle, and they agree to go and argue the matter before Zeus. Arrived in Olympos, Apollo relates the theft, and tells what reasons he had for suspecting the baby of being the thief. All this is, to the great amusement of the Celestials, manfully denied and its absurdity shown by the little fellow, who still has his cradle-clothes about him. Zeus however gives it against him, and the two brothers are sent in quest of the missing kine. They come to Pylos, and Hermes drives the cattle out of the cave : Apollo misses two of them ; to his amazement he sees their skins upon the rock, and is still more surprised, when, on going to drive the others on, he finds that the art of Hermes had rooted their feet to the ground. Hermes then begins to play on his lyre, the tones of which so ravish Apollo that he offers him the cows for it. The young god gives him the lyre, and receives the cattle. The divine herdsman also bestows on him his whip, and instructs him in the management of the herds.

They now proceed together to Olympos, where Apollo still suspicious exacts an oath from Hermes that he will never steal his lyre or bow ; and this being complied with, he presents him with ‘a golden, three-leafed, innocuous rod’ the giver of wealth and riches.

The stealing of the cattle of Apollo is somewhat differently related by other writers. According to them⁸³⁹, Apollo, delighted with the society of Hymenæos son of Magnês, a Thessalian youth, neglected the care of his oxen, which pastured along with those of Admetos. Hermes, who in this version of the legend is not a babe, thought the opportunity favourable for stealing a few of the heedless herdsman’s cattle. He first cast the dogs into a deep slumber, and then drove off twelve heifers, a hundred unyoked cows, and a bull. He took the precaution of tying a bundle of twigs to the tail of each to efface their footprints, and brought his prize safely on to the place called the Look-out of Battos, in the Peloponnese. Hearing the lowing of the kine, Battos ran out to look, and immediately knew them to be stolen, but agreed for a certain reward not to give information to any one respecting them. Hermes having arranged this matter drove on, and concealed his stolen kine in a cavern. He then resolved to make trial of the fidelity of Battos, and, changing his form, came and inquired if he had seen any one driving stolen cattle by, offering a cloak as a reward for intelligence. The covetous Battos took the cloak, and turned informer : the god, incensed at his duplicity, struck him with his rod and changed him into a rock, ‘which the cold or the heat never leaves.’

The following prank is also laid to the charge of this sly deity. Watching one day his mother and her sisters when they went to bathe, he stole their clothes, and did not return them till he had amused himself well with laughing at their perplexity⁸⁴⁰.

A god with so many agreeable qualities as Hermes was not very likely to fail of success with the fair sex, both among gods and mankind. Homer, as we have observed above, says that Eudoros, one of Achilleus’ captains, was the son of Hermes by Polymela the daughter of Phylas. The god having seen {p. 164}her, singing in the choir of Artemis, had fallen in love with her. She bore him privately a son, who was reared by her father, herself having married Echecles. By Chione the daughter of Dædaliôn⁸⁴¹, or as others said by Stilbe or Telauge the daughter of Eosphoros⁸⁴², Hermes was the father of Autolycos the noted cattle-stealer. The Thessalian maiden Antianeira bore him two sons, ‘rich in corn-fields,’ Echiôn and Eurytos⁸⁴³. Myrtilos, the charioteer of Œnomaos, was the son of Hermes by one of the daughters of Danaos⁸⁴⁴. The celebrated Sicilian shepherd Daphnis was the offspring of this god and one of the nymphs⁸⁴⁵.

One day Hermes beheld Herse, the daughter of Cecrops, among the maidens who were carrying the sacred baskets to the temple of Pallas-Athene. Smitten with her charms, he entered the royal abode, where the three sisters, Aglauros, Pandrosos and Herse, occupied three separate chambers. That of Herse was in the middle, that of Aglauros on the left. The latter first saw the god, and inquired of him who he was and why he came. Hermes immediately informed her of his rank, and his love for her sister, entreating her good offices in his suit. These she promised on the condition of receiving a large quantity of gold, and drove him out of the house till he should have given it. Pallas-Athene incensed at her unhallowed cupidity, and provoked with her also for other causes, sent Envy to fill her bosom with that baleful passion. Unable then to endure the idea of the felicity of her sister, she sat down at the door, determined not to permit the god to enter. Hermes exerted his eloquence and his blandishments on her in vain ; at length, provoked by her obstinacy, he turned her into a black stone. Herse became the mother of Cephalos⁸⁴⁶.

The only amour of Hermes with any of the dwellers of Olympos was that with Aphrodite, of which the offspring was a son named Hermaphroditos, from the names of his parents, {p. 165}and whose adventure with the Naïs Salmacis is narrated by Ovid in his Metamorphoses⁸⁴⁷. Hermes is in some legends said to be the father of the Arcadian god Pan⁸⁴⁸, and he is even charged with being the sire of the unseemly god of Lampsacus⁸⁴⁹. Both were rural deities.

At Tanagra in Bœotia Hermes was worshiped under the names of Ram-bearer (Κριοϕόρος) and Defender (Пρόμαχος) : the former was given him for having delivered the citizens from a pestilence, by carrying a ram round the walls ; and on the festival of Hermes, the most beautiful of the Tanagrian youths bore a lamb on his shoulders round the walls in honour of the god. The latter title was conferred on him because, when the Eretrians attacked the Tanagrians, Hermes as a young man, and armed with a currycomb, led the latter to victory⁸⁵⁰.

Hermes was regarded as the god of commerce, of wrestling and all the exercises of the palæstra, of eloquence, even of thieving ; in short, of everything relating to gain or requiring art and ingenuity. A certain good-humoured roguery was at all times a trait in his character. In the pleasing tale of Ares and Aphrodite already noticed, the gallant reply of Hermes to the question of Phœbos-Apollo called forth the laughter of the Olympians.

This god is usually represented with a chlamys or cloak neatly arranged on his person, with his petasus or winged hat, and the talaria or wings at his heels. In his hand he bears his caduceus⁸⁵¹ or staff, with two serpents twined about it, and which sometimes has wings at its extremity. The ancient statues of Hermes were nothing more than wooden posts with a rude head and a pointed beard carved on them. They were what is termed ithyphallic, and were set up on the roads and {p. 166}footpaths, and in the fields and gardens. The Hermæ were also pillars of stone, and the head of some other deity at times took the place of that of Hermes ; such were the Hermeracles, Hermathenæ and others. One of these compounds may have given origin to the tale of Hermaphroditos.

By Homer and Hesiod Hermes is called⁸⁵², 1. Argos-slayer ; 2. Beneficent⁸⁵³ ; 3. Kind ; 4. Strong or Powerful⁸⁵⁴ ; 5. Performer or Messenger⁸⁵⁵ ; 6. Well-spying ; 7. Gold-rodded ; 8. Glorious.

Mythologists are pretty generally agreed in recognizing in the Hermes of the original Pelasgian system a telluric power. The simplest derivation of his name is from ἔρα, the earth ; and he is, we may observe, the son of Zeus and Maia, probably Mother Earth⁸⁵⁶. He seems to have been the deity of productiveness in general, but he came gradually to be regarded as presiding more particularly over flocks and herds⁸⁵⁷. From this last view some of his Hellenic attributes may be simply deduced. Thus the god of shepherds was naturally regarded as the inventor of music ; the lyre is ascribed to Hermes as the pipes are to his son Pan, music having been always a recreation of the shepherds in the warm regions of the south. In like manner as the shepherd-lads amuse themselves with wrestling and other feats of strength and activity, their tutelar god easily became the president of the palæstra. {p. 167}So also, trade having of old consisted chiefly in the exchange of cattle, Hermes, the herdsman’s god, was held to be the god of commerce⁸⁵⁸ ; and the skill and eloquence employed in commercial dealings made him to be the god of eloquence, artifice, and ingenuity, and even of cheating⁸⁵⁹. As herdsmen are the best guides in the country, it may be thence that Hermes was thought to protect wayfarers⁸⁶⁰, and thence to be a protector in general⁸⁶¹. For this cause, among others, it may have been that godsends or treasure-trove were ascribed to him⁸⁶².

The rural deity, when thus become active, sly, and eloquent, was well adapted for the office which was assigned him of agent and messenger of the king of the gods, to whom we also find him officiating as cup-bearer⁸⁶³. As a being whose operations extended into the interior of the earth, Hermes would seem to have been in some points of view identified with Hades. In Pindar⁸⁶⁴ this latter deity himself performs the office generally assigned to Hermes, that of conducting the departed to Erebos. Possibly it may have been on this account that Solôn directed the Athenians to swear by Zeus, Poseidôn, and Hermes.

On looking over the adventures of Hermes above related, it will appear that most of them refer to his character as a rural deity⁸⁶⁵. Such are his patronage of Phorbas, and his being the sire of Eudoros in Homer ; the hymn in his honour, which plainly represents him as a rural deity⁸⁶⁶ ; his being the sire of {p. 168}the cattle-stealer Autolycos (Very-wolf) by Chione (Snow) ; of the two heroes ‘rich in corn-fields’ ; and of the shepherd Daphnis, and the gods Pan and Priapos. The rural character of Herse and Aglauros will be shown in the sequel. We shall also find that it was Hermes who gave to Nephele the gold-fleeced ram to save her children from their malignant step-mother⁸⁶⁷. In the poems of the Greek Anthology Hermes is usually represented as a rural deity. In one place⁸⁶⁸ the offering to him is milk and honey ; in other parts of it⁸⁶⁹ fishermen when grown old dedicate their implements to Hermes, either as the god of arts and trade, or as the deity presiding over increase in general.

We will now consider the well-known epithet Argeiphontes, or Argos-slayer, given to this god. The general opinion derives it from the legend of Io, but it has been doubted if that adventure was known to Homer, who calls the deity by this name in passages the genuineness of which cannot well be disputed⁸⁷⁰. The sense of that legend shall be discussed in its proper place ; here we will only observe, that if it should appear to be as old as the age of Homer, there can be no further dispute about the origin of the epithet, though its meaning will still remain a subject of inquiry. Supposing however such not to be the case, it may be asked how the rural deity, the field-god, came by the appellation Argeiphontes ? The word Argos bears in Greek the following senses : 1. White or Shining ; 2. Swift(in speaking of dogs, and thence the name of a dog) ; 3. Idle ; to which we may venture to add, 4. Land, as identical with ἄγρος. The latter half of the compound was generally derived from ϕένω, to kill or destroy ; by some however from ϕαίνω, to show or shine. Hence some interpreted Argeiphontes Free-from-bloodshed, others White- or clear-showing⁸⁷¹ ; and a modern mythologist⁸⁷² renders it White-shining, equivalent to White (λευκὸς), a name by which Hermes was worshiped in Bœotia⁸⁷³. We must confess that we are not {p. 169}satisfied with any of these explanations ; and should the derivation from the story of Io not be approved of, none appears more probable than the one we ourselves formerly suggested, that the term may signify Field-slayer⁸⁷⁴, and be applied to Hermes as the god of husbandry, under whose auspices the land was ploughed up, and the grass or corn cut down. The eyes of Argos might then have originally signified the flowers with which the meads are bespread⁸⁷⁵. It is to be observed that, in the version of the story of Io followed by Ovid⁸⁷⁶, Hermes appears as a goatherd, and kills Argos with the harpe, a rural implement.

We offer this hypothetis, however, only as a conjecture, perhaps we should say as a mere sport of imagination ; for we are inclined to regard the mythe of Io as one of the most remote antiquity.

Δημήτηρ, Δηώ. Ceres. §

Пερσεφόνεια, Περσϕόνη. Proserpina, Libera. §

Demeter and her daughter Persephone are so closely connected, that it would be extremely difficult, or rather impossible, to treat of the one without the other : we therefore combine the two deities.

Demeter, a daughter of Kronos and Rhea, and by Zeus mother of Persephone⁸⁷⁷, was evidently the goddess of the earth, Mother-Earth (γῆ μήτηρ), whom some ancient system married to Zeus, the god of the heavens⁸⁷⁸. In Homer she is but slightly mentioned⁸⁷⁹, and she does not appear among the gods on Olympos. She seems to have been early distinguished from the goddess called Earth⁸⁸⁰, and to have been regarded as the protectress of the growing corn and of agriculture in general.

The most celebrated event in the history of Demeter is the carrying off of her daughter Persephone by Hades, and the search of the goddess after her through the world. It is noticed by Hesiod⁸⁸¹ ; but the Homeridian hymn in her honour contains perhaps the earliest narrative of this event, which, though apparently unknown to Homer, became a favourite theme with succeeding poets, after whom Ovid has related it⁸⁸², and Claudian has sung it in a peculiar poem, of which unfortunately a part is lost.

Persephone, sang the Homerid, was in the Nysian plain {p. 171}with the Ocean-nymphs⁸⁸³ gathering flowers. She plucked the rose, the violet, the crocus, the hyacinth, when she beheld a narcissus of surprising size and beauty, an object of amazement to ‘all immortal gods and mortal men,’ for one hundred flowers grew from one root⁸⁸⁴ ;

And with its fragrant smell wide heaven above

And all earth laughed, and the sea’s briny flood.

Unconscious of danger the maiden stretched forth her hand to seize the wondrous flower, when suddenly the wide earth gaped, Aïdoneus in his golden chariot rose, and catching the terrified goddess carried her off in it shrieking to her father for aid, unheard and unseen by gods or mortals, save only by Hecate the daughter of Persæos, who heard her as she sat in her cave, and by king Helios, whose eye nothing on earth escapes.

So long as the goddess beheld the earth and starry heaven, the fishy sea and beams of the sun, so long she hoped to see her mother and the tribes of the gods ; and the tops of the mountains and the depths of the sea resounded with her divine voice. At length her mother heard ; she tore her head-attire with grief, cast a dark robe around her, and like a bird hurried ‘over moist and dry.’ Of all she inquired tidings of her lost daughter, but neither gods nor men nor birds could give her intelligence. Nine days she wandered over the earth, with flaming torches in her hands, she tasted not of nectar or ambrosia, and never once entered the bath. On the tenth morning Hecate met her, but she could not tell her who it was had carried away Persephone. Together they proceed to Helios ; they stand at the head of his horses, and Demeter entreats that he will say who the ravisher is. The god of the sun gives the required information, telling her that it was Aïdoneus, who by the permission of her sire had carried her {p. 172}away to be his queen ; and he exhorts the goddess to patience, by dwelling on the rank and dignity of the ravisher.

Helios urged on his steeds ; the goddess, incensed at the conduct of Zeus, abandoned the society of the gods, and came down among men. But she now was heedless of her person, and no one recognised her. Under the guise of an old woman, — ‘such,’ says the poet, ‘as are the nurses of law-dispensing kings’ children, and housekeepers in resounding houses,’ — she came to Eleusis, and sat down by a well, beneath the shade of an olive⁸⁸⁵. The three beautiful daughters of Keleos, a prince of that place, coming to the well to draw water, and seeing the goddess, inquired who she was and why she did not go into the town. Demeter told them her name was Dôs, and that she had been carried off by pirates from Crete, but that when they got on shore at Thoricos, she had contrived to make her escape, and had wandered thither. She entreats them to tell her where she is ; and wishing them young husbands and as many children as they may desire, begs that they will endeavour to procure her a service in a respectable family.

The princess Callidice tells the goddess the names of the five princes, who with her father governed Eleusis, each of whose wives would, she was sure, be most happy to receive into her family a person who looked so god-like : but she prays her not to be precipitate, but to wait till she had consulted her mother Metaneira, who had a young son in the cradle, of whom if the stranger could obtain the nursing her fortune would be made.

The goddess bowed her thanks, and the princesses took up their pitchers and went home. As soon as they had related their adventure to their mother, she agreed to hire the nurse at large wages :

And they, as fawns or heifers in spring-time

Bound on the mead when satiate with food ;

So they, the folds fast-holding of their robes

Lovely, along the hollow cart-way ran ;

Their locks upon their shoulders flying wide,

Like unto yellow flowers.

{p. 173}The goddess rose and accompanied them home. As she entered the house a divine splendour shone all around ; Metaneira filled with awe offered the goddess her own seat, which however she declined. Iambe the serving-maid then prepared one for her, where she sat in silence, thinking of her ‘deep-bosomed’ daughter, till Iambe by her tricks contrived to make her smile, and even laugh. But she declined the cup of wine which Metaneira offered her, and would only drink the kykeôn, or mixture of flour and water. She undertook the rearing of the babe, who was named Demophoôn, and beneath her care ‘he throve like a god.’ He ate no food, but Demeter breathed on him as he lay in her bosom, and anointed him with ambrosia, and every night she hid him ‘like a torch within the strength of fire,’ unknown to his parents, who marvelled at his growth⁸⁸⁶.

It was the design of Demeter to make him immortal, but the curiosity and folly of Metaneira deprived him of the intended gift. She watched one night, and, seeing what the nurse was about, shrieked with affright and horror. The goddess threw the infant on the ground, declaring what he had lost by the inconsiderateness of his mother, but announcing that he would be great and honoured, since he had ‘sat in her lap and slept in her arms.’ She tells who she is, and directs that the people of Eleusis should raise an altar and temple to her without the town on the hill Callichoros.

Thus having said, the goddess changed her size

And form, old-age off-flinging, and around

Beauty respired ; from her fragrant robes

A lovely scent was scattered, and afar

Shone light emitted from her skin divine :

And yellow locks upon her shoulders waved ;

While, as from lightning, all the house was filled

With splendour.

She left the house, and the maidens awakening at the noise found their infant-brother lying on the ground. They took him up, and kindling a fire prepared to wash him ; but he cried bitterly, finding himself in the hands of such unskilful nurses.

In the morning the wonders of the night were narrated to Keleos, who laid the matter before the people, and the temple was speedily raised. The mourning goddess took up her abode in it, but a dismal year came upon mankind ; the earth yielded no produce, in vain the oxen drew the curved ploughs in the fields, in vain was the seed of barley cast into the ground ; ‘well-garlanded Demeter’ would suffer no increase. The whole race of man ran risk of perishing, the dwellers of Olympos of losing gifts and sacrifices, had not Zeus discerned the danger and thought on a remedy.

He dispatches ‘gold-winged Iris’ to Eleusis to invite Demeter back to Olympos, but the disconsolate goddess will not comply with the call. All the other gods are sent on the same errand, and to as little purpose. Gifts and honours are proffered in vain ; she will not ascend to Olympos, or suffer the earth to bring forth, till she shall have seen her daughter.

Finding that there was no other remedy, Zeus sends ‘goldrodded Argos-slayer’ to Erebos, to endeavour to prevail on Hades to suffer Persephone to return to the light. Hermes did not disobey : he quickly reached the ‘secret places of earth,’ and found the king at home seated on a couch with his wife, who was mourning for her mother. On making known to Aïdoneus the wish of Zeus, ‘the king of the Subterraneans smiled with his brows’ and yielded compliance. He kindly addressed Persephone, granting her permission to return to her mother. The goddess instantly sprang up with joy, and heedlessly swallowed a grain of pomegranate which he presented to her.

Then many-ruling Aïdoneus yoked

His steeds immortal to the golden car :

She mounts the chariot, and beside her mounts

Strong Argos-slayer, holding in his hands

The reins and whip : forth from the house he rushed,

And not unwillingly the coursers flew.

Quickly the long road they have gone ; not sea

Nor streams of water, nor the grassy dales,

Nor hills retard the immortal coursers’ speed,

But o’er them going they cut the air profound.

Hermes conducted his fair charge safe to Eleusis : Demeter on seeing her ‘rushed to her like a Mænas on the wood-shaded {p. 175}hill,’ and Persephone sprang from the car ‘like a bird,’ and kissed her mother’s hands and head.

When their joy had a little subsided, Demeter anxiously inquired if her daughter had tasted anything while below ; for if she had not, she would be free to spend her whole time with her father and mother ; whereas if but one morsel had passed her lips, nothing could save her from spending onethird of the year with her husband ; she should however pass the other two with her and the gods :

And when in spring-time, with sweet-smelling flowers

Of various kinds the earth doth bloom, thou ‘It come

From gloomy darkness back, — a mighty joy

To gods and mortal men.

Persephone ingenuously confesses the swallowing of the grain of pomegranate, and then relates to her mother the whole story of her abduction. They pass the day in delightful converse :

And joy they mutually received and gave.

‘Bright-veiled Hecate’ arrives to congratulate Persephone, and henceforward becomes her attendant. Zeus sends Rhea to invite them back to heaven. Demeter now complies,

And instant from the deep-soiled cornfields fruit

Sent up : with leaves and flowers the whole wide earth

Was laden :

and she taught ‘Triptolemos, horse-lashing Diocles, the strength of Eumolpos, and Keleos the leader of the people,’ the mode of performing her sacred rites. The goddesses then returned to Olympos. “But come,” cries the Homerid,

But come, thou goddess who dost keep the land

Of odorous Eleusis, and round-flowed

Paros, and rocky Anthrôn, Deo queen,

Mistress, bright-giver, season-bringer, come :

Thyself and child, Persephoneia fair,

Grant freely, for my song, the means of life.

But I will think of thee and other songs.

Such is in all probability the oldest account of this celebrated event. In progress of time it underwent various alterations ; the scene was as usual changed, and circumstances {p. 176}were added or modified. In the beautiful versions of it given by the above-mentioned Latin poets, the scene is transferred to the grove and lake in the neighbourhood of Henna in Sicily, the nymph Arethusa gives intelligence of the ravisher, and Ascalaphos (who for his mischief-making is turned into an owl)⁸⁸⁷ tells of Persephone having plucked a pomegranate in the garden of Hades and put seven of the seeds into her mouth. In this, as in other legends, the fancy of poets and vanity of the inhabitants of different places have taken abundance of liberties with the ancient tale.

There are, as we have already observed, no traces of this legend in Homer. Demeter is only incidentally mentioned by him ; and he does not intimate any connexion between her and Persephone, who appears merely as the daughter of Zeus⁸⁸⁸ and queen of Hades. There can be little doubt we think of its being an allegory. Persephone signifies the seed-corn, which when cast into the ground lies there concealed, — that is, she is carried off by the god of the under-world : it reappears, — that is, Persephone is restored to her mother, and she abides with her two-thirds of the year. As however the seed-corn is not a third part of the year in the ground, it is probable that by the space of time which Persephone was to spend with the god in the invisible state, was intended to be expressed the period between the sowing of the seed and the appearance of the ear, during which the corn is away ; and which space of time in some species of grain, barley for instance, is about four months.

The vanity of the people of the hungry soil of Attica made them pretend that corn was first known and agriculture first practised in their country. They fabled that the goddess gave to Triptolemos (Thrice-plough), who occupies the place of Demophoôn in the foregoing legend, her chariot drawn by dragons, in which he flew through the air, distributing corn to the different regions of the earth⁸⁸⁹. This last circumstance {p. 177}betrays the late age of the fiction ; for, as we have already observed, in the time of Homer celestial horses were the only draught-cattle of the gods.

Demeter, though of a gentle character in general, partook of the usual revengeful disposition of the gods. The origin of the Stellio, or spotted lizard, is referred to her having thrown in the face of a boy, who mocked at her as she was drinking some gruel, what was remaining of it in the vessel⁸⁹⁰. She more justly punished with ever-craving hunger Erysichthôn, who impiously cut down her sacred grove. This infliction gave occasion for the exercise of the filial piety and power of selftransformation of the daughter of Erysichthôn, who by her assuming various forms enabled her father to sell her over and over again, and thus obtain the means of living after all his property was gone⁸⁹¹.

This last legend, we may observe, admits of a very simple explication. Erysichthôn is a name akin to ἐρυίβη, mildew ; and Hellanicus⁸⁹² said that he was also called Æthôn (Αἴθων, burning), from his insatiate hunger. The destructive mildew is therefore the enemy of Demeter, to whom, under the title of Erysibia, the Rhodians prayed to avert it⁸⁹³.

Homer says⁸⁹⁴ that Demeter lay with Iasiôn in a ‘thriceploughed’ field, and that Zeus, offended at the deed, struck the mortal lover with his thunder. Hesiod⁸⁹⁵ makes Crete the scene of this event, and adds that Plutos (Wealth) was their offspring. Authorities differ as to the parentage of Iasiôn ; some make him a son of Zeus and Electra, and brother of Dardanos⁸⁹⁶ ; others a son of Minôs or Krates, and the nymph Phronia⁸⁹⁷. The meaning of the mythe is apparent.

At Onceion near Thelpusa, on the banks of the Ladôn in Arcadia, stood a temple of Demeter-Erinnys. The legend connected with it was as follows⁸⁹⁸. When the goddess was in search of her lost daughter, Poseidôn, filled with desire, {p. 178}continually followed her. To elude him she changed herself into a mare, and mingled with the mares of Oncos ; but the seagod assumed the form of a horse, and thus accomplished his wishes. The produce of their union was the celebrated steed Areiôn ; and from the anger of the goddess at being thus abused she was named Erinnys⁸⁹⁹. It was also a part of the tradition that beside Areiôn she bore a daughter to the god, who, the Phigalians said, was the Despœna (Persephone). They also showed a cavern on Mount Elæon, to which Demeter retired when her daughter had been carried off, clothing herself in deep black. The absence of the goddess, said the tradition, caused a general failure of the crops, and mankind were in danger of famine ; but no one knew the place of her retreat till Pan in his huntings chanced to see her. He gave information to Zeus, who sent the Fates to her, at whose persuasion she remitted her anger, and ceased from mourning. She was worshiped at this cave under the name of Black (Mé-λαινα), and her statue in it was clad in black, with the head and mane of a horse⁹⁰⁰.

This last legend has nothing perhaps very peculiar in it ; the former is regarded as one of the many forms in which the physical fact of earth and water being the causes of growth and increase in the natural world have been enveloped⁹⁰¹. Perhaps the Demeter-Erinnys was viewed as the ‘grim’ earth⁹⁰² of winter when torrents spring forth from its womb. These might very aptly be represented by the steed Flowing (ῥείων or ῥέων)⁹⁰³ ; and this view of nature was peculiarly appropriate in Arcadia.

The chief seats of the worship of these deities were Attica ; Arcadia, where they were called the Great Goddesses⁹⁰⁴ , and {p. 179}Persephone in particular Mistress (Δέσποινα)⁹⁰⁵ ; and the fertile isle of Sicily, which was given by Zeus to his daughter on her day of unveiling (ἀνακαλυπρια), that is, at her marriage⁹⁰⁶ ; as also was Thebes according to the poet Euphoriôn⁹⁰⁷.

The form of Demeter is copied from that of Hera. She has the same majestic stature and matronly air, but of a milder character. Her usual symbol are poppies, which sometimes compose a garland for her head, sometimes are held in her hand. She is frequently represented with a torch in her hand, — significant of her search after Persephone. At times she appears in her chariot drawn by dragons.

Persephone is represented seated on a throne with Hades.

The only epithets given to Demeter by Homer are⁹⁰⁸, 1. Blond or Yellow-haired ; and 2. Fair-tressed, the appropriateness of which to the goddess of the corn is apparent. Beside these epithets Hesiod gives her two others ; 3. Well-garlanded ; and 4. Food-full. She was termed by other poets, 5. Youth-rearing ; 6. Bright-fruited ; 7. Bright-gifted ; 8. Season-bringer ; 9. Gold-sickled ; 10. Green ; all epithets well suited to the goddess of agriculture. Demeter was also named, 11. Law-giver, as agriculture was regarded as the source of civil regulations. Under this title she was honoured in a festival named Thes-mophoria at Athens and Ephesus. She had a temple at Megara under the title of, 12. Sheep-bringere⁹⁰⁹. In Bœotia she was worshiped as Demeter-Achaia⁹¹⁰.

The Homeric epithets of Persephone are⁹¹¹, 1. Illustrious ; {p. 180}2. Terrible ; and 3. Holy. Hesiod gives her one of the usual epithets of beauty, 4. White-armed. She was also named, 5. Sable-vested ; 6. White-horsed, etc.

The name of Demeter offers, as we have seen, no difficulty whatever ; but that of her daughter is by no means so easy of explanation ; and here, as in similar cases, the question is, what was the original conception of this goddess ? Was she simply regarded as the queen of the monarch of Erebos, or as the daughter of Mother Earth, and a personification of the corn ? In the latter case critics consider her name to signify Food-shower⁹¹² ; in the former it might mean Light-destroyer, a name corresponding well with Aïdes and Erebos⁹¹³.

We have ventured to offer this conjecture concerning the origin of the name Persephone, because we think critics have gone into an extreme respecting the religious opinions of the ancient Pelasgians. For as there appears reason to suppose their religion to have been of a very rural character, the view generally taken is that they were, like our modern political œconomists, a race who thought only of production and consumption, and regarded no deities but such as were promoters of increase. We however deem that, like every other people, the Pelasgians believed in a future state, and worshiped a deity presiding over that unseen world. It may be doubted whether they gave him a consort (for in the Italian system such was not the case), but the probability is that the Achæans derived that principle of their religion from their Pelasgian forefathers. In such case the spouse of the invisible god might very naturally be termed the Light-destroyer. The epithets of Persephone certainly accord far better with an original queen of Erebos than with the gentle innocent daughter of Demeter.

We cannot take our leave of Demeter and the Kora⁹¹⁴, without saying a few words on the subject of the so celebrated mysteries of Eleusis, in which they were the great objects of adoration. But instead of going into all the mysticism which has been written respecting them, both in ancient and modern times, we will content ourselves with giving some of the results of the inquiries of the learned and judicious Lobeck, referring those anxious for fuller information to his valuable work entitled Aglaophamus.

In the very early ages of Greece and Italy, and probably of most countries, the inhabitants of the various independent districts into which they were divided had very little communication with each other, and a stranger was regarded as little better than an enemy. Each state had its own favourite deities, under whose especial protection it was held to be, and these deities were propitiated by sacrifices and ceremonies, which were different in different places. It is further to be recollected, that the Greeks believed their gods to be very little superior in moral qualities to themselves, and they feared that if promises of more splendid and abundant sacrifices and offerings were made to them, their virtue might not be adequate to resisting the temptation. As the best mode of escaping the calamity of being deserted by their patrons, they adopted the expedient of concealing their names, and of excluding strangers from their worship. Private families in like manner excluded their fellow-citizens from their family-sacrifices ; and in those states where ancient statues, aërolites, and such like were preserved as national palladia, the sight of them was restricted to the magistrates and principal persons in the state⁹¹⁵.

We are to recollect that Eleusis and Athens were long independent of each other⁹¹⁶. The worship of Demeter and the Kora was the national and secret religion of the Eleusinians, from which the Athenians were of course excluded as well as all other Greeks. But when Eleusis was conquered, and the two states coalesced, the Athenians became participators in {p. 182}the worship of these deities ; which however remained so long confined to them as to have given origin to a proverb (Ἀττικοὶ τὰ Ἐλευίνια) applied to those who met together in secret for the performance of any matter⁹¹⁷. Gradually, with the advance of knowledge and the decline of superstition and national illiberality, admission to witness the solemn rites celebrated each year at Eleusis was extended to all Greeks of either sex and of every rank, provided they came at the proper time, had committed no inexpiable offence, had performed the requisite previous ceremonies, and were introduced by an Athenian citizen⁹¹⁸.

These mysteries, as they were termed, were performed with a considerable degree of splendour, at the charge of the state and under the superintendence of the magistrates ; whence it follows as a necessary consequence, that the rites could have contained nothing that was grossly immoral or indecent⁹¹⁹. There does not appear to be any valid reason for supposing, as many do, that a public discourse on the origin of things and that of the gods, and other high and important matters, was delivered by the Hierophant, or person who bore the highest office in the mysteries ; whose name would rather seem to be derived from his exhibiting the sacred things, — ancient statues, probably of the goddesses, — which were kept carefully covered up, and only shown on these solemn occasions. The delivering of a public discourse would in fact have been quite repugnant to the usages of the Greeks in their worship of the gods, and the evidence offered in support of this supposition is extremely feeble. But the singing of sacred hymns in honour of the goddess always formed a part of the service⁹²⁰.

The ancient writers are full of the praises of the Eleusinian mysteries, of the advantage of being initiated, i. e. admitted to participate in them, and of the favour of the gods in life, and the cheerful hopes in death, which were the consequence of it. Hence occasion has been taken to assert, that a system of religion little inferior to pure Christianity was taught in them. But these hopes, and this tranquillity of mind and {p. 183}favour of Heaven, are easy to be accounted for without having recourse to so absurd a supposition. Every act performed in obedience to the will of Heaven is believed to draw down its favour on the performer. The Mussulman makes his pilgrimage to the Kaaba at Mecca, the Catholic to Loretto, Compostella, or elsewhere ; and each is persuaded that by having done so he has secured the divine favour⁹²¹. So the Greek who was initiated at Eleusis, — whose mysteries, owing to the fame in which Athens stood, the able writers who so loudly extolled her and everything belonging to her, the splendour and magnificence with which they were performed, eclipsed all others, — retained ever after a lively sense of the happiness which he had enjoyed when admitted to view the interior of the illuminated temple, and the sacred things which it contained, when to his excited imagination the very gods themselves had seemed visibly to descend from their Olympian abodes, amidst the solemn hymns of the officiating priests⁹²². Hence there naturally arose a persuasion, that the benign regards of the gods were bent upon him through after-life ; and, as man can never divest himself of the belief of his continued existence after death, a vivid hope of enjoying bliss in the next life.

It was evidently the principle already stated, of seeking to discover the causes of remarkable appearances, which gave origin to most of the ideas respecting the recondite sense of the actions and ceremonies which took place in the Eleusinian mysteries. The stranger, dazzled and awed by his own conception of the sacredness and importance of all that he beheld, conceived that nothing there could be without some mysterious meaning. What this might be, he inquired of the officiating ministers, who, as various passages in Herodotus and Pausanias show, were seldom without a legend or Sacred Account (ἱεργος λόγος), as it was called, to explain the dress or ceremony, which owed perhaps its true origin to the caprice or sportive humour of a ruder period. Or if the initiated {p. 184}person was himself endowed with inventive power, he explained the appearances according in general to the system of philosophy which he had embraced⁹²³. It was thus that Porphyrius conceived the Hierophant to represent the Platonic Demiurgos or creator of the world ; the Torch-bearer (Daduchos), the sun ; the Altar-man (Epibomios), the moon ; the Herald (Hierokeryx), Hermes ; and the other ministers, the lesser stars. These fancies of priests and philosophers have been by modern writers formed into a complete system, and S^te Croix in particular describes the Eleusinian mysteries with as much minuteness as if he had been actually himself initiated⁹²⁴.

It is to be observed, in conclusion, with respect to the charges of impiety and immorality brought against the Eleusinian mysteries by some Fathers of the Church, that this arose entirely from their confounding them with the Bacchic, Isiac, Mithraic, and other private mysteries, mostly imported from Asia, which were undoubtedly liable to that imputation. It must always be remembered, that those of Eleusis were public, and celebrated by the state⁹²⁵.

Mούσαι⁹²⁶. Camenæ. Muses. §

In the early ages of the world, when the principle of assigning a celestial cause to every extraordinary effect was in full operation, the powers of song and memory were supposed to be excited by certain goddesses who were denominated Muses. In Homer they are called the daughters of Zeus⁹²⁷, and described as exhilarating the banquets of the gods by their lovely voices, attuned to the lyre of Apollo⁹²⁸. When about to give the catalogue of the ships of the Achæans, the poet invokes the Muses, the daughters of Zeus, to prompt his memory⁹²⁹.

No definite number of the Muses is given by Homer, for we cannot regard as his the verse⁹³⁰ in which they are said to be nine. Perhaps originally, as in the case of the Erinnyes and so many other deities, there was no precise number. Pausanias⁹³¹ gives an old tradition, according to which they were three, — Melete (Practice), Mneme (Memory), and Aœde (Song). Aratus said they were four, the daughters of Zeus and the nymph Plusia (Wealthy), and that their names were, Thelxinoe (Mind-soother), Aœde, Melete, and Arche (Beginning)⁹³². Alcman and some other poets made the Muses the daughters of Heaven and Earth⁹³³. The more received opinion makes them, as in the proœmium to the Theogony⁹³⁴, nine, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory).

The names of the Muses were⁹³⁵, Calliope, Cleio, Melpomene, Euterpe, Erato, Terpsichore, Urania, Thaleia, and Polymnia.

Later ages assigned a particular department to each of the Muses, and represented them in various postures and with various attributes⁹³⁶.

Calliope presided over Epic Poetry ; she was represented holding a close-rolled parchment, and sometimes a trumpet.

Cleio presided over History ; and appeared holding a halfopened roll. The invention of the lute or guitar (κιθάρα) was ascribed to her.

Melpomene, over Tragedy ; she was veiled, and was leaning on a club, and holding a tragic mask in her left hand. Her instrument was the lyre named Barbiton.

Euterpe, over Music ; she held two flutes, and the invention of the tragic chorus was ascribed to her.

Erato, the muse of Marriage-feasts and pantomimic dancing (ὄρχησις), played on the stringed instrument named phorminx. She is said to have invented hymns to the gods.

Terpsichore, the muse of the choric Dance (χορεία), appeared in a dancing posture. She was said to have invented the pipe (αὔλος).

Urania, the muse of Astronomy, held in one hand a globe, in the other a rod with which she was employed in tracing out some figure.

Thaleia, the patroness of Comedy, held a comic mask in one hand, and in the other a crooked staff. She was also regarded as the patroness of husbandry and planting.

Polymnia, the muse of Eloquence and the Mimic art, had the fore-finger of her right hand on her mouth, or carried a roll.

Pieria in Macedonia is said by Hesiod⁹³⁷ to have been the birth-place of the Muses ; and everything relating to them proves the antiquity of the tradition of the knowledge and worship of these goddesses having come from the North into Hellas⁹³⁸. Almost all the mountains, grots, and springs from which they have derived their appellations, or which were sacred to them, are, we may observe, in Macedonia, Thessaly, or Bœotia (Aonia). Such are the mountains Pimpla, Pindos, {p. 187}Parnassos, Helicôn, the founts Hippocrene, Aganippe, Leibethron, Castalia, and the Corycian cave.

The Muses, says Homer⁹³⁹, met the Thracian Thamyras in Dorion (in the Peloponnese), as he was returning from Œchalia. He had boasted that he could excel them in singing ; and enraged at his presumption they struck him blind, and deprived him of his knowledge of music.

Shortly after the birth of the Muses, the nine daughters, it is said, of Pierios king of Æmathia challenged them to a contest of singing. The place of trial was Mount Helicôn. At the song of the latter the sky became dark and all nature was put out of harmony, but at that of the Muses the heaven itself, the stars, the sea, and rivers stood motionless, and Helicôn swelled up with delight, so that his summit would have reached the sky had not Poseidôn directed Pegasos to strike it with his hoof. The Muses then turned the presumptuous maids into nine different kinds of birds⁹⁴⁰.

The Muses did not escape the darts of Love. Calliope bore to Œagros a son named Linos⁹⁴¹, who was killed by his pupil Heracles. She also had by the same sire Orpheus, whose skill on the lyre was such as to move the very trees and rocks, and the beasts of the forest assembled round him as he struck its chords. He was married to Eurydice⁹⁴², whom he tenderly loved ; but a snake having bitten her as she ran through the grass, she died. Her disconsolate husband determined to descend to the under-world, to endeavour to mollify its rulers, and obtain permission for her to return to the realms of light. Hades and Persephone listened to his prayer ; she was allowed to return, on condition of his not looking on her till they were arrived in the upper-world. Fearing that she might not be following him, the anxious husband looked {p. 188}back, and thereby lost her. He now avoided human society ; and despising the rites of Dionysos, was torn to pieces by the Mænades. The Muses collected the fragments of his body, and buried them, and at their prayer Zeus placed his lyre in the skies⁹⁴³.

Cleio, having drawn on herself the anger of Aphrodite by taunting her with her passion for Adonis, was inspired by her with love for Pieros the son of Magnes. She bore him a son named Hyacinthos⁹⁴⁴. Euterpe, or according to some Calliope, or Terpsichore, bore Rhesos to the god of the river Strymôn⁹⁴⁵ ; Melpomene was by Acheloös the mother of the Sirens. Hymenæos, the god of marriage, was said to be the offspring of the divine Urania, but the name of his sire is unknown⁹⁴⁶. Those who took a less sublime view of the sanctity of marriage gave him Dionysos and Aphrodite for parents⁹⁴⁷. He was invoked at marriage festivals⁹⁴⁸. By the Latin poets he is presented to us arrayed in a yellow robe, his temples wreathed with the fragrant plant amaracus, his locks dropping odour, and the nuptial torch in his hand⁹⁴⁹.

Beside the usual epithets common to all goddesses, and derived from beauty and dress, the Muses were styled⁹⁵⁰, 1. Sweet-speaking ; 2. Perfect-speaking ; 3. Loud-voiced ; 4. Honey-breathing.

The most probable derivation of the name Muse (Mοȗσα), seems to be that which deduces it from the obsolete verb MAΩ to inquire or invent. The Lydians, who spoke a language akin to the Greek, called, we are told, the Muses Nymphs, or the Nymphs Muses, apparently using the terms as synonymous⁹⁵¹. We everywhere find the Muses connected with founts ; Eumelos of Corinth said they were three in number, the daughters of Apollo, and he called them Cephiso, Apollonis, and Borysthenis⁹⁵², two of which names are evidently derived from those of rivers ; and the comic poet Epicharmus in his drama named ‘Hebe's Wedding,’ where the gods appeared as thorough bon-vivans, made the seven Muses the daughters of Pieros and Pimpleia (Fattener and Filler), and named them after seven rivers⁹⁵³. They probably figured in this comedy as the presidents of the fish-market. If, however, the Muses were not generally regarded as connected in some way with the water the poet would hardly have thus represented them, as the humour would not have been fully appreciated by the audience. We may further observe that the musical Sirens were placed by the poets at the edge of the water, possibly from a feeling of a connexion between that element and music.

The Latins, it would also appear, connected their Camenæ with the fountains ; for Egeria was one of them, and her fount long continued to be an object of veneration. The Gotho-German race (whose language and religion bear so great an affinity to those of Greece) seem also to have connected music with the water in their ancient religious system ; and this notion still remains part of the popular creed in northern Europe, as is proved by the many legends of the songs of Mermaids, Nixes, Necks, and similar beings of the waters current among the people in Germany and Scandinavia⁹⁵⁴. In fact, this, like {p. 190}almost every other article of popular belief, has its origin in nature. There is music in the sound of water as it purls or murmurs along in the rivulet, (the very terms prattling, babbling, tinkling, and such like, applied to brooks by our poets prove it,) and even the waterfall, especially when heard in the distance, makes melody to the attentive ear. The rivulet is also the favourite haunt of the poet ; its quiet murmur induces calmness over the spirit, and puts the mind into a frame for the reception of poetic images⁹⁵⁵. Hence it has been said, by him who like the early bards of Greece was one of Nature’s own poets, that

The Muse nae poet ever fand her

Till by himsel he learned to wander

Adoun some trotting burn’s meander

And think na lang.

We are therefore inclined to regard as correct the theory which sees in the Muses original nymphs of the springs, to whom the poets ascribed their inspiration⁹⁵⁶.

Ὥραι. Horœ. Seasons or Hours. §

When in the Ilias⁹⁵⁷ Hera and Athena drive out of Olympos in the chariot of the former goddess, to share in the conflict of the Achæans and the Trojans, the gates of heaven, which the Seasons keep, whose charge is to open and close the dense cloud, creak spontaneously to let them pass. On the return of these goddesses, at the mandate of Zeus, the Seasons unyoke their steeds, fasten them in their stalls, and lay up the chariot. They are also mentioned by Poseidôn⁹⁵⁸ as bringing round the period at which he and Apollo were to be paid their wages by Laomedôn.

Hesiod says⁹⁵⁹ that the Seasons were the daughters of Zeus and Themis, and he names them Eunomia (Order), Dike (Justice), and Eirene (Peace), who, he adds, watch over (ὠρεύουσι) {p. 191}the works of mortal men. In another place⁹⁶⁰ he says, that Dike is a virgin revered by the gods of Olympos ; and that when any one acts unjustly, she sits by her father Zeus, and complains of the iniquity of man’s mind, ‘that the people may suffer for the transgressions of their kings.’

By an unknown poet⁹⁶¹ the Horæ are called the daughters of Kronos (Time ?), and by late poets they were named the children of the year, and their number was increased to twelve⁹⁶². Some made them seven or ten in number⁹⁶³.

The Horæ seem to have been originally regarded as the presidents of the three seasons into which the ancient Greeks divided the year⁹⁶⁴. As the day was similarly divided⁹⁶⁵, they came to be regarded as presiding over its parts also ; and when it was further subdivided into hours, these minor parts were placed under their charge and named from them⁹⁶⁶.

Order and regularity being their prevailing attributes, the transition was easy from the natural to the moral world ; and the guardian goddesses of the seasons were regarded as presiding over law, justice, and peace, the great producers of order and harmony among men.

It is possible however, but not agreeable to analogy, that the reverse was the case, and that the transition was from moral to physical ideas.

By Pindar⁹⁶⁷ the Horæ are named, in their moral capacity, the bestowers of wealth, a poetic clothing of the homely maxim ‘honesty is the best policy.’ The Athenians worshiped two Horæ, named Thallo Bloom-giver, and Carpo (Fructifier), viewing them as physical beings⁹⁶⁸. By the poets they were frequently confounded with the Graces, and regarded as the bestowers of beauty⁹⁶⁹.

Homer calls the Horæ⁹⁷⁰, 1. Gold-filleted. The epithets in the Orphic hymns are chiefly derived from the flowers which they produce ; such as, 2. Flower-full ; 3. Odour-full⁹⁷¹ ; etc.

.Χάριτϵς Gratiœ. Graces. §

The Graces, like the Muses and other sister-goddesses, are spoken of by Homer in the plural, and their number is indefinite. They are graceful and beautiful themselves, and the bestowers of all grace and beauty both on persons and things. They wove the robe of Aphrodite⁹⁷² ; the beauty of the two attendants of Nausicaa⁹⁷³ was given them by the Charites ; and the ringlets of the beautiful Euphorbos are compared⁹⁷⁴ to those of these lovely goddesses. Aphrodite⁹⁷⁵ joins in their dance ; and in the song of Demodocos, they wash and anoint her, when filled with shame she flies to Paphôs⁹⁷⁶. Yet though they seem to have been particularly attached to the goddess of love, the queen of heaven had authority over them⁹⁷⁷ ; and she promises Pasithea, one of the youngest of the Graces, for a wife to Sleep, in return for his aid in deceiving Zeus. By later writers she is even said to be their mother⁹⁷⁸.

The Homeridian hymn to Artemis describes that goddess as going to the ‘great house’ of her brother at Delphi, and regulating the dance of the Muses and the Graces.

Zeus, says Hesiod⁹⁷⁹, was by Eurynome, the daughter of Ocean, the father of the ‘three fair-cheeked Graces’ Aglaïa (Splendour), Euphrosyne (Joy), and lovely Thalia (Pleasure). ‘From their eyes,’ continues the poet, ‘as they gazed, distilled care-dispelling love ; and they looked lovely from beneath their brows.’ According to Antimachus⁹⁸⁰, the Graces were the daughters of Helios and Ægle (Splendour) ; and Hermesianax⁹⁸¹ made Peitho (Persuasion) one of their number. In Nonnus their names are Pasithea, Peitho and Aglaïa⁹⁸².

Orchomenos in Bœotia was the chief seat of the worship of these goddesses. Its introduction was ascribed to {p. 193}Eteocles, the son of the river Cephissos. They were three in number, but it was not known what names he had given them⁹⁸³. The Lacedæmonians worshiped but two, whom they named Cleta (Renowned) and Phaënna (Bright)⁹⁸⁴. The Athenians originally adored the same number, under the names of Hegemone (Leader) and Auxo (Increaser)⁹⁸⁵.

The Graces were at all times in the creed of Greece the goddesses presiding over social enjoyments, the banquet, the dance, and all that tended to inspire gaiety and cheerfulness⁹⁸⁶ They are represented as three beautiful sisters, dancing together : sometimes they are naked, sometimes clad.

The Charites had the epithets common to goddesses.

Εἰλείθυιαι. Ilithyiæ. §

The Eileithyiæ, whose office it was to preside over the births of mankind, are in the Ilias⁹⁸⁷ called the daughters of Hera. In the Odyssey⁹⁸⁸ and in Hesiod⁹⁸⁹ their number is reduced to one. We also meet with but one Eileithyia in Pindar⁹⁹⁰, and the subsequent poets in general.

There was a cave at the river Amnisos, near Gortyna in Crete, sacred to Eileithyia, who according to the tradition of the country was born there⁹⁹¹. Eileithyia was worshiped at Delos, where a hymn was sung in her honour ascribed to the ancient Lycian poet Olên. In this she was said to be the mother of Love⁹⁹².

Eileithyia was called⁹⁹³, 1. Labour-aiding ; 2. Gentle-minded⁹⁹⁴, etc.

It is not by any means an improbable supposition, that {p. 194}Eileithyia was originally a moon-goddess, and that the name signifies Light-wanderer⁹⁹⁵. Hence, if Artemis was originally a moon-goddess, the identification of them was easy. The moon was believed by the ancients to have great influence over growth in general⁹⁹⁶ ; and as moreover a woman’s time was reckoned by moons, it was natural to conceive that the moon-goddess presided over the birth of children.

Μοιραι. Parcæ, Fata. Fates. §

In the Ilias, with the exception of one passage⁹⁹⁷, the Moira is spoken of in the singular number and as a person, almost exactly as we use the word Fate. But in the Odyssey this word is used as a common substantive, followed by a genitive of the person, and signifying Decree.

The Theogony of Hesiod limits the Fates, like so many other goddesses, to three, and gives them Zeus and Themis for their parents⁹⁹⁸. In an interpolated passage of the Theogony⁹⁹⁹ they are classed among the children of Night¹⁰⁰⁰, and Plato makes them the daughters of Necessity¹⁰⁰¹. Their names in Hesiod are Clotho (Spinster), Lachesis (Allotter), and Atropos (Unchangeable) ; but he does not speak of their spinning the destinies of men. This office of theirs is however noticed both in the Ilias and the Odyssey. In the former it is said¹⁰⁰² by Hera of Achilleus, that the gods will protect him that day, but that hereafter he will suffer ‘what Aisa [a name synonymous with Moira] span with her thread for him when his mother brought him forth ; ’ and in the latter¹⁰⁰³, Alcinoös says of Odysseus, that he will hereafter suffer ‘what Aisa and the heavy Cataclothes span with the thread for him when his mother brought him forth.’

It is probable that Homer, in accordance with the sublime fiction in the Theogony, regarded the Fates as the offspring of Zeus and Order, for in him they are but the ministers of Zeus, in whose hands are the issues of all things¹⁰⁰⁴. Æschylus¹⁰⁰⁵ makes even Zeus himself subject to the Fates, whose decrees none could escape.

The poets styled the Fates¹⁰⁰⁶, 1. Unerring ; 2. Severe-minded, etc.

Moira probably comes from μϵίρω, and Aisa from δαίω, both signifying to divide. It is a very extraordinary coincidence, that the Noms, the Destinies of Scandinavian theology, should also be spinsters, and three in number¹⁰⁰⁷.

Κῆρες. Mortes. §

The Keres are personifications of violent deaths¹⁰⁰⁸. The word Ker is used by Homer in the singular and in the plural number, and both as a proper and as a common noun, but much more frequently as the former. When a common noun, it seems to be equivalent to fate. Achilleus says, that his mother gave him the choice of two keres ; — one, to die early at Troy ; the other, to die after a long life at home¹⁰⁰⁹.

On the shield of Achilleus¹⁰¹⁰ Ker appears in a blood-stained robe, with Strife and Tumult, engaged in the field of battle ; and on that of Heracles¹⁰¹¹ the Keres are described as raging in the fight, and glutting themselves with the blood of the wounded. By Apollonius¹⁰¹² they are named ‘the swift dogs of Hades,’ a character under which they are also represented by Sophocles¹⁰¹³.

In the Theogony these goddesses are the daughters of {p. 196}Night and sisters of the Moiræ¹⁰¹⁴, who also appear on the shield of Heracles, and with whom they are sometimes confounded¹⁰¹⁵, as they also are with the Erinnyes¹⁰¹⁶. They bear a strong resemblance to the Valkyries (Choosers of the Slain) of Northern mythology.

The Keres were styled¹⁰¹⁷, 1. Implacable ; 2. Stern-looking, etc.

Ἐριννύες. Furiæ. Diræ. Furies. §

These goddesses are frequently named by Homer, but he says nothing of their origin. In the Theogony they spring from the blood of Uranos when mutilated by his son Kronos, whose own children they are according to Empedocles¹⁰¹⁸, while Æschylus and Sophocles call them the children of Night¹⁰¹⁹, and the Orphie Hymns assign them the rulers of Erebos for parents¹⁰²⁰. In the time of the Alexandrians, the Erinnyes, like the Fates and others, were three in number, named Alecto (Unceasing), Megæra (Envier or Denier), and Tisiphone (Blood-avenger).

The Erinnyes were worshiped at Athens as the Venerable (σεμναὶ) Goddesses, and at Sicyôn as the Gracious (Εὐμενίδες)¹⁰²¹, both of which were apparently placatory appellations. They had a temple in Achaia, which if any one polluted with crime dared to enter he lost his reason¹⁰²².

In the poets we find the Erinnyes styled¹⁰²³, 1. Hateful ; 2. Gloom-roaming ; 3. Dark-skinned ; 4. Swift-footed.

The Greek term ἐρινὺς has, we think, been justly defined¹⁰²⁴ as a “feeling of deep offence, of bitter displeasure, at the impious violation of our sacred rights by those most bound to {p. 197}respect them.” This perfectly accords with the origin of the Erinnyes in the Theogony, and with those passages of the Homeric poems in which they are mentioned ; for they are there invoked to avenge the breach of filial duty¹⁰²⁵, and are named as the punishers of perjury¹⁰²⁶ : even beggars have their Erinnyes, that they may not be insulted with impunity¹⁰²⁷ ; and when a horse has spoken in violation of the order of nature, the Erinnyes deprive him of the power of repeating the act¹⁰²⁸. The Erinnyes, these personified feelings, may therefore be regarded as the maintainers of order both in the moral and the natural world. There is however another view taken of these goddesses, in which they are only a form of Demeter and Kora, the great goddesses of the earth. For everything in nature having injurious as well as beneficial effects, the bounteous earth itself becomes at times grim, as it were, and displeased with mankind, and this is Demeter-Erinnys. In the Arcadian legends of this goddess, and in the concluding choruses of the Eumenides of Æschylus, may be discerned ideas of this nature¹⁰²⁹. The epithet given to them by Empedocles would seem to confirm a view of them already noticed¹⁰³⁰.

Θέμις. Themis. Law. §

This goddess appears in the Ilias¹⁰³¹ among the inhabitants of Olympos, and in the Odyssey¹⁰³² she is named as presiding over the assemblies of men, but nothing is said respecting her rank or her origin. By Hesiod¹⁰³³ she is said to be a Titaness, one of the daughters of Heaven and Earth, and to have borne to Zeus, the Fates, and the Seasons, Peace, Order, Justice, — the natural progeny of Law (Θέμις), and all deities beneficial to mankind. In Pindar and the Homeridian Hymns Themis sits by Zeus on his throne to give him counsel¹⁰³⁴.

Themis is said¹⁰³⁵ to have succeeded her mother Earth in the possession of the Pythian oracle¹⁰³⁶, and to have voluntarily resigned it to her sister Phœbe, who gave it as a christeninggift¹⁰³⁷ to Phœbos-Apollo.

Ἴρις. Iris. §

The office of Iris, in the Ilias, is to act as the messenger of the king and queen of Olympos, a duty which is performed by Hermes in the Odyssey, in which poem there is not any mention made of Iris. Homer gives not the slightest hint of who her parents were ; but analogy might lead to the {p. 199}supposition of Zeus being her sire, by some mother who is unknown. Hesiod¹⁰³⁸ says that swift Iris and the Harpies, who fly ‘like the blasts of the winds or the birds,’ were the children of Thaumas (Wonder) by Electra (Brightness) the daughter of Oceanos. It is evidently the Rainbow (ἴρις) that is meant, which is thus personified in the usual theogonic manner. There is little mention of Iris in the subsequent Greek poets ; but, whenever she is spoken of, she appears quite distinct from the celestial phænomenon of the same name. In Callimachus¹⁰³⁹ and the Latin poets¹⁰⁴⁰ Iris is appropriated to the service of Hera ; and by these last she is invariably, and even we may say clumsily, confounded with the rainbow. According to the lyric poet Alcæus, who is followed by Nonnus, Iris was by Zephyros the mother of Love¹⁰⁴¹.

Homer styles Iris Gold-winged¹⁰⁴², and, according to Aristophanes, he likens her to a trembling dove. In the Birds¹⁰⁴³ of that poet Epops says

But how shall men esteem us gods, and not

Jackdaws, since we have wings and fly about ?

To which Peisthetæros replies,

Nonsense ! Egad, Hermes, who is a god,

Wears wings and flies, and many other gods

Do just the same. Thus Victory, mark ye, flies

With golden wings ; and so, egad, does Love :

And like a trembling dove, old Homer saith,

Was Iris.

Iris is called¹⁰⁴⁴, 1. Storm-footed ; 2. Wind-footed ; 3. Swift-footed ; 4. Swift ; 5. Gold-winged, etc.

The name Iris is usually derived from ἐρῶ, ἐἴρω, to say, {p. 200}which suits the office of the goddess, and will accord with the rainbow in a view of it similar to that given in the Book of Genesis. Hermann renders Iris Sertia, from εἴρω to knit or unite, as the rainbow seems to unite heaven and earth.

Παιήων, Παιὼν, Παιάν. Pœeon, Pœon. §

Pæeon is in Homer the family surgeon of Olympos. Nothing is said about his origin. All we are told is, that he cured Ares when wounded by Diomedes¹⁰⁴⁵, and Hades of the wound in his shoulder given him by Heracles¹⁰⁴⁶, and that the Egyptian physicians were of his race¹⁰⁴⁷. His attributes were afterwards transferred to Apollo, with whom he was perhaps originally identical¹⁰⁴⁸.

ϒπνος. καὶ Θάνατος Somnus et Mors. Sleep and Death. §

These two deities are called by Hesiod¹⁰⁴⁹ the children of Night. By Homer they are, for a very natural and obvious reason, said to be twins. When, in the Ilias¹⁰⁵⁰, Sarpedôn the heroic and noble-minded son of Zeus falls by the hands of Patroclos, Apollo at the command of his father washes his body in the waters of the stream, anoints it with ambrosia, and, clothing it in ambrosial garments, commits it to the twin brothers Sleep and Death to convey to Lycia, there to be interred by his relatives and friends.

In the same poem, when Hera¹⁰⁵¹ resolves by her arts and beauty to melt the soul of Zeus in love, and lay him asleep on Mount Gargaros, that Poseidôn may meanwhile give victory to the Achæans, she takes her way thither from Olympos over Lemnos, where she meets Sleep. She accosts him as the king of all gods and men, and prays him to aid in her project, promising as his reward a seat and footstool, the workmanship {p. 201}of Hephæstos. Sleep reminds the goddess of the imminent danger which he formerly ran, for having at her desire sealed the eyes of Zeus in slumber when Heracles was on his return from Troy, during which she raised a storm that drove the hero to Côs ; and Zeus, awaking in a rage, knocked the gods about the house, searching for Sleep, who only escaped by seeking the protection of Night, whom Zeus revered too much to offend. Hera, by urging that the affection of Zeus for the Trojans could not be supposed equal to that for his own son, and finally by offering and swearing to give him one of the younger Graces for his spouse, overcomes the fears of Sleep, who accompanies her to Ida, where taking the shape of a bird he sits in a tree till she has beguiled her lord. Sleep, having accomplished his task, speeds to the battle-field to inform Poseidôn of what he has done.

The Latin poet Ovid¹⁰⁵², probably after some Grecian predecessor, as was usually the case, gives a beautiful description of the cave of Sleep near the land of the Kimmerians, and of the cortége which there attended on him, as Morpheus, Icelos or Phobetêr, and Phantasos ; the first of whom takes the form of man to appear in dreams, the second of animals, the third of inanimate objects.

Death was brought on the stage by Euripides in his beautiful drama of Alcestis. He is deaf to the entreaties of Apollo to spare the Thessalian queen, but, vanquished by Heracles, is forced to resign his victim.

Μωμος. Momus. §

This god of raillery and ridicule does not appear to have been known to Homer. By Hesiod¹⁰⁵³ he is classed among the children of Night. He is alluded to by Plato and Aristotle ; and Lucian¹⁰⁵⁴, as might be expected, makes some use of him.

Νέμεσις. Nemesis. §

This goddess is in the Theogony a daughter of Night¹⁰⁵⁵. The tradition at Rhamnûs in Attica, where she had a temple (whence she was named Rhamnusia), was that Oceanos was her father¹⁰⁵⁶. Helena, the cause of the war of Troy, was figuratively styled the offspring of Zeus and Nemesis¹⁰⁵⁷.

The name of this goddess comes most simply from νέμω, to distribute ; and she was originally regarded as a personification of the power which regulates and orders the natural and the moral worlds. As the castigation of infractions of order was a part of her office, she was chiefly viewed as the punisher of pride, insolence, and arrogance. This is her usual character in the dramatists.

At Smyrna two Nemeses were worshiped¹⁰⁵⁸. The goddess adored at Cyzicos under the name of Adresteia, said by the poet of the Phoronis to be the same with Cybele¹⁰⁵⁹, is named Nemesis by Antimachus¹⁰⁶⁰. This Asiatic Nemesis is probably the goddess of nature¹⁰⁶¹.

Τύχη. Fortuna. Fortune. §

Fortune, that unseen power which exercises such arbitrary dominion over human affairs, was also deified, and had her temples and altars in Greece. By Hesiod and by one of the Homerids¹⁰⁶² she is classed among the Ocean-nymphs. Pindar in one place¹⁰⁶³ calls her ‘the child of Zeus Eleutherios ;’ elsewhere¹⁰⁶⁴ he says that she is one of the Destinies. Alcman called her the sister of Law and Persuasion, and daughter of Forethought (Προμηθία)¹⁰⁶⁵. In her temple at Thebes¹⁰⁶⁶ {p. 203}Fortune held Wealth (Πλοȗτος) in her arms, whether as mother or nurse was uncertain. The image of this goddess made by Bupalos for the Smyrnæans had a hemisphere (πόλος) on its head, and a horn of Amaltheia in its hand¹⁰⁶⁷.

Personifications. §

The practice of personifying natural and moral qualities (of which the preceding articles are instances), seems to have been coeval with Grecian poetry and religion. It was not however by any means peculiar to Greece ; it will probably be found wherever poetry exists¹⁰⁶⁸. But it was only in ancient Greece and Italy that these personifications were objects of worship, and seemed to be regarded as having a real personal existence.

In Homer, to whom as the original fountain we continually revert, we meet a number of these moral qualities appearing as persons. Terror and Fear, the children of Ares and Strife his sister, rouse with him the Trojans to battle¹⁰⁶⁹. Strife is said to be small at first, but at last to raise her head to the heaven. She is sent forth¹⁰⁷⁰ amidst the Achæans by Zeus, bearing the signal of war ; and, standing on the ship of Odysseus in the centre of the fleet, shouts so as to be heard at either extremity. When Ares¹⁰⁷¹ hears of the death of his son Ascalaphos, Terror and Fear are commanded to yoke the steeds to his car for the war.

Prayers (Λιταὶ), says the poet¹⁰⁷², are the daughters of great Zeus, lame and wrinkled, with squinting eyes. They follow Mischief (Ἂτη), and tend those whom she has injured : but Ate is strong and firm-footed, and gets far before them, afflicting men whom they afterwards heal. Elsewhere¹⁰⁷³ he relates that Ate is the daughter of Zeus, who injures (ἀâται) all ; that her feet are tender, and that she therefore does not walk on the ground, but on the heads of men. Having conspired with Hera to deceive her father, he took her by the hair {p. 204}and flung her to earth, with an oath that she should never return to Olympos.

The Theogony of Hesiod contains a number of these personified qualities ; they also occur in the subsequent poets. Thus Æschylus introduced on the stage Strength (Κράτος) and Force (Βία)¹⁰⁷⁴. Sophocles, by a very beautiful and correct figure, terms Fame ‘the child of golden Hope’¹⁰⁷⁵ ; and the Athenians erected an altar to this personification¹⁰⁷⁶, as they also did to Shame and Impetuosity, and above all to Mercy¹⁰⁷⁷ ; for with all their faults, and though from the defects of their political constitution they were occasionally stimulated to deeds of cruelty by their unprincipled demagogues, the Athenians were by nature one of the most humane people in Greece.

The more stern Spartans, we may observe, erected temples to Fear, to Death, and to Laughter¹⁰⁷⁸.

Wealth (Πλοȗτος) was also deified. The Theogony makes him very appropriately the offspring of Demeter by Iasios¹⁰⁷⁹. He appears as an actor in the comedy of Aristophanes named from him, and in the Timôn of Lucian.

Διώνυσος, Διόνυσος, Βάκχος. Liber. §

No deity of Grecian mythology has given occasion to greater mysticism than Dionysos, the god of wine. Creuzer¹⁰⁸⁰, for example, the prince of mystics, deduces his worship from India, and makes him identical with the Seeva of that country. According to him, the Vishnoo-religion had, at a period far beyond that of history, spread itself over the West, and in Greece was known as that of Apollo, the god of the sun and light. The wild religion of Seeva, which had overcome the milder one of Vishnoo on their natal soil, followed it in its progress to the West, proceeded as the religion of Dionysos through Egypt and anterior Asia, mingling itself with the systems of these countries, and entered Greece, where, after a long struggle with the Apollo-system, the two religions finally coalesced, the Dionysiac casting away some of its wildest and most extravagant practices.

This hypothesis rests on no stable evidence ; and it has been, as appears to us, fully refuted and exposed by the sober and sagacious Voss¹⁰⁸¹, who, rejecting all air-built theory, bases his system on fact and testimony alone. We shall here attempt, chiefly under his guidance, to illustrate the changes which it is probable the mythology of this god gradually underwent after the time of Homer.

It has been very justly observed by Lobeck¹⁰⁸², that almost all the passages in Homer in which there is any mention of or allusion to this god have been suspected by the ancient critics, either on account of some circumstances in themselves, or because they occur in places justly liable to suspicion. The first of these passages is that in the sixth book of the Ilias¹⁰⁸³, {p. 206}where Diomedes and Glaucos encounter in the field of battle. Here the former hero, who had just wounded no less than two deities, asks the latter if he is a god, adding, “ I would not fight with the celestial gods ; for the stout Lycurgos, son of Dryas, who contended with the celestial gods, was pot longlived, who once chased the nurses of raging Dionysos through the holy Nyseïon, but they all flung their sacred utensils (θύσλα) to the ground, when beaten by the ox-goad of the man-slaying Lycurgos ; and Dionysos in affright plunged into the waves of the sea, and Thetis received him in her bosom terrified, — for great fear possessed him from the shouting of the man. The gods, who live at ease, then hated him, and the son of Kronos made him blind ; nor was he long-lived, since he was odious to all the immortal gods.” Language more unsuitable surely could not be put into the mouth of Diomedes ; and we may observe that there is a kind of instinct of propriety, as we may term it, which always guides those poets who sing from inspiration and not from art, leading them to ascribe to the personages whom they introduce no ideas and no language but what accurately correspond to their situation and character. This consideration alone, when well weighed, may suffice to render the above passage extremely suspicious.

The passage in the fourteenth book¹⁰⁸⁴, in which Zeus so indecorously recounts his various amours to Hera, is liable to the same objection, and was rejected by Aristarchus and several of the best critics of antiquity. In this the god says that ‘Semele bore him Dionysos, a joy to mortals.’ The place in which Andromache is compared to a Mænas¹⁰⁸⁵, besides that it occurs in one of the latter books, is regarded as an interpolation.

These are the only passages in the Ilias in which there is any allusion to Dionysos. In the Odyssey¹⁰⁸⁶ it is said that Artemis slew Ariadne in the isle of Dia, ‘on the testimony (μαρτuρίῃσιν) of Dionysos’ ; but the circumstance of the o in the second syllable of his name being short in this place satisfied the grammarian Herodian, and ought to satisfy any {p. 207}one, that the line in question is spurious. In the last book of this poem¹⁰⁸⁷ Thetis is said to have brought an urn (ἀμϕιϕορῆα), the gift of Dionysos, to receive the ashes of Achilleus ; but the spuriousness of that part of the poem is well known. It was further observed by the ancient critics, that Marôn, who gave the wine to Odysseus, was the priest of Apollo, not of Dionysos.

Hesiod¹⁰⁸⁸ says, that Cadmeian Semele bore to Zeus ‘the joyfull Dionysos, a mortal an immortal, but now they both are gods.’ Again¹⁰⁸⁹, ‘gold-tressed Dionysos made blond Ariadne the daughter of Minôs his blooming spouse, and Kroniôn made her ageless and immortal.’

Far perhaps inferior in point of antiquity to Hesiod is the Homeridian hymn to Dionysos, which contains the following adventure of the god, — a tale which Ovid¹⁰⁹⁰ has narrated somewhat differently.

Dionysos once let himself be seen as a handsome youth on the shore of a desert island. Some Tyrsenian pirates were sailing by, who when they espied him jumped on shore and made him captive, thinking him to be of royal birth. They bound him with cords ; but these instantly fell off him, and the god sat smiling in silence. The pilot perceiving these apparent signs of divinity, called to the crew that he was a god, and exhorted them to set him on shore, lest he should cause a tempest to come on. But the captain rebuked him sharply, desired him to mind his own business, and declared that they would take their captive to Egypt or elsewhere and sell him for a slave. They then set sail, the wind blew fresh, and they were proceeding merrily along ; when, behold ! streams of fragrant wine began to flow along the ship ; vines with clustering grapes spread over the sail ; and ivy, laden with berries, ran up the mast and sides of the vessel. His shipmates in affright now called aloud to the pilot to make for the land ; but the god assuming the form of a grim lion seized the captain, and the terrified crew to escape him leaped into the sea and became dolphins. The pilot alone remained {p. 208}on board ; the god then declared to him who he was, and took him under his protection.

Another of these hymns relates, that the Nymphs received Dionysos from his father, and reared him in a fragrant cavern of the valleys of Nysa. He was counted among the Immortals ; and when he grew up, he went through the woody vales crowned with bay and ivy : the Nymphs followed him, and the wood was filled with their joyous clamour.

In these poems the mention of the ivy, and the epithet noisy (ἐρίβρομς), testify, as we shall see, their late age. Pindar also calls Dionysos Ivy-bearing (κισσοϕόρος) and noisy (βρόμιος). Herodotus and the tragedians describe what we consider to be the mixed religion of Dionysos.

The idea of mere mortals, or the offspring of gods and mortals, being raised to divine rank and power, does not occur in the Ilias. Ganymedes and Tithonos, who were mortal by both father and mother, were carried off, the former by the gods to be the cup-bearer of Zeus¹⁰⁹¹, the latter by Eôs ; and it is to be presumed, though Homer does not expressly say so, that they were endowed with immortality. But all the halfcaste, as we may call them, Heracles, Achilleus, Sarpedôn, Æneias, have no advantage over their fellow-mortals, except greater strength and more frequent aid from the gods.

But in the Odyssey we find the system of deification commenced. The sea-goddess Ino-Leucothea, who gives Odysseus her veil to save him from being drowned, was, we are told, a daughter of Cadmos (a name which does not occur in the Ilias), ‘who had before been a speaking mortal, but was now allotted the honour of the gods in the depths of the sea.’ And again ; Odysseus beholds in the realms of Hades the image (εἴδωλογ) of Heracles, pursuing his usual occupations when on earth ; but himself we are told ‘enjoys banquets among the immortal gods, and possesses fair-ankled Hebe.’ It is not however said that he had obtained the power of a god¹⁰⁹².

Supposing therefore Dionysos to have been, as his name might appear to indicate, one of the original Grecian deities, (and it is difficult to think that the vine and its produce, with which the ‘sons of the Achæans’ were so familiar, could have been without a presiding god,) he may have been regarded as a son of Zeus by a goddess named Semele, who in after-times, in pursuance of a practice hereafter to be explained, may have been degraded to the rank of a heroine, and Dionysos have consequently become the son of Zeus by a mortal mother. The vintage is in wine-countries at the present day, like haymaking and harvest-home in England, a time of merry-making and festivity ; and the festival of the deity presiding over it may have been a very joyous one, and celebrated with abundance of noise and mirth. Such, we say, may have been (for we venture not to assert it) the original Dionysiac religion of Greece ; and when we recollect the very incidental manner in which Demeter, undoubtedly one of the most ancient deities, is noticed in the Ilias, it should not excite any great surprise to find the poet totally omitting all mention of the wine-god¹⁰⁹³.

To pass from conjecture to certainty, it appears quite clear that the part of Thrace lying along the northern coast of the Ægæan was in the earliest times a chief seat of the Dionysiac religion, where the worship of the god of wine was celebrated with great noise and tumult by the people of that country ; and, supposing the passage in the sixth book of the Ilias to be genuine, some account of it had possibly reached the ears of Homer. The Thracian worship of Dionysos, it is not improbable, was not introduced into Greece till after the time when the Æolians colonised the coast of Asia about the Hellespont¹⁰⁹⁴. Here they became acquainted with the enthusiastic orgies of the Great Mother, and of the god Sabazios ; who, as it would appear, was similar to Dionysos¹⁰⁹⁵, and an object of veneration both to Phrygians and Thracians, and who was worshiped under the form of an ox, as being the patron of agriculture. As polytheism is not jealous, and readily permits {p. 210}the introduction of new deities into the system, particularly if their attributes or festivals have a resemblance to any of the old ones¹⁰⁹⁶, the worship of this new god was adopted by the Grecian colonists, and diffused over the isles and continent of Greece : not, however, without considerable opposition from the sober common-sense of several individuals of eminence, as appears by the mythic tales of Labdacos, Pentheus and Perseus, which are apparently real occurrences thrown back into the mythic age¹⁰⁹⁷. The original Grecian festivals, though of a joyous cheerful character, were so widely different from the raving orgies and wild licentiousness of this Dionysiac religion, that it is quite evident the latter could not have been known in Greece during the Achæan period¹⁰⁹⁸.

There can be no doubt of the Dionysiac religion, with its nocturnal orgies and indecent extravagance, having been very prevalent among the Greeks at the time when the Ionians were permitted to settle in Egypt. It is in no small degree surprising with what facility the Grecian and Egyptian systems coalesced, with what open-mouthed credulity the Grecian settlers and travellers swallowed all the fictions of the cunning priesthood of that country, and with what barefaced assurance the latter palmed on their unsuspecting auditors the most incredible lies. In reading the Euterpe of Herodotus, one might fancy one’s self beholding Captain Wilford listening with devout belief to his artful Pundit¹⁰⁹⁹ ; so little suspicion does the Father of History betray of his having been played upon by the grave linen-clad personages who did him the honour to initiate him in their mysteries.

The theory boldly advanced by the Egyptian priesthood was, that all the religion of Greece had been imported into {p. 211}that country by colonies of Egyptians — a people, by the way, without ships, or materials for building them, who had no ports, and who held the sea in abhorrence¹¹⁰⁰ — who civilised the mast-eating savages that roamed its uncultivated wilds, and instructed them in the nature and worship of the gods. The deities of Greece were therefore to find their prototypes in Egypt ; and Dionysos was honoured by being identified with Osiris, the great god of the land of Nile¹¹⁰¹. Herodotus informs us how Melampûs, who introduced his worship into Greece, had learned it from Cadmos the Phœnician, who had derived his knowledge of course from Egypt¹¹⁰². As the realm of Osiris did not abound in vines¹¹⁰³, the ivy with its clustering berries which grew there was appropriated to the god¹¹⁰⁴ ; and it now became one of the favourite plants of Dionysos, as appears by the Homeridian hymn above-cited.

The Egyptians had fabled that their god Osiris had made a progress through the world, to instruct mankind in agriculture and planting¹¹⁰⁵. The Greeks caught up the idea, and represented the son of Semele — for the popular faith did not give up the old legend of his Theban birth — as roaming through the greater part of the earth. In the Bacchæ of Euripides the god describes himself as having gone through Lydia, Phrygia, Persia, Bactria, Media, Arabia, and the coast of Asia, inhabited by mingled Greeks and barbarians, throughout all which he had established his dances and his religious rites.

When Alexander and his army had penetrated to the modern Caubul, they found ivy and wild vines on the sides of Mount Meros and on the banks of the Hydaspes ; they also met processions, accompanied by the sound of drums and party-coloured dresses, like those worn in the Bacchic orgies of Greece and Lesser Asia. The flatterers of the conqueror {p. 212}thence took occasion to fable that Dionysos had, like Heracles and their own great king, marched as a conqueror throughout the East ; had planted there the ivy and the vine ; had built the city Nysa ; and named the mountain Meros, from the circumstance of his birth from the thigh (μηρòς) of Zeus¹¹⁰⁶. At length, during the time of the Græco-Bactric kingdom, some Greek writers, on whom it is not impossible the Bramins imposed, as they have since done on the English, gave out that Dionysos was a native Indian, who, having taught the art of wine-making in that country, made a conquering expedition through the world, to instruct mankind in the culture of the vine and other useful arts. And thus the knowledge of the vine came to Greece, from a land which does not produce that plant¹¹⁰⁷.

This last is the absurd hypothesis which we have seen renewed in our own days, and supported by all the efforts of ingenious etymology.

The story of the Grecian Dionysos is as follows¹¹⁰⁸. Zeus, enamoured of the beauty of Semele the daughter of Cadmos, visited her in secret. Hera’s jealousy took alarm, and under the form of an old woman she came to Semele, and, by exciting doubts of the real character of her lover, induced her when next he came to exact a promise that he would visit her as he was wont to visit Hera. An unwary promise was thus drawn from the god before he knew what he was required to perform ; and he therefore entered the bower of Semele in his chariot, the lightning and thunder flaming, flashing and roaring around him. Overcome with terror, Semele, who was now six months gone with child, expired in the flames, and Zeus took the babe, which was prematurely expelled from her womb, and sewed it up in his thigh. In due time it came to the birth, and Zeus then naming it Dionysos gave it to {p. 213}Hermes to convey to Ino, the sister of Semele, with directions to rear it as a girl.

Hera, whose revenge was not yet satiated, caused Athamas, the husband of Ino, to go mad ; and Zeus, to save Dionysos from the machinations of Hera, changed him into a kid, under which form Hermes conveyed him to the nymphs of Nysa, who were afterwards made the Hyades, and by whom he was reared. When he grew up he discovered the culture of the vine, and the mode of extracting its precious liquor ; but Hera struck him with madness, and he roamed through great part of Asia. In Phrygia Rhea cured him, and taught him her religious rites, which he now resolved to introduce into Hellas. When passing through Thrace he was so furiously assailed by Lycurgos, a prince of the country, that he was obliged to take refuge with Thetis in the sea ; but he avenged himself by driving Lycurgos mad, who killed his own son Dryas with a blow of an axe, taking him for a vine-branch ; and his subjects afterwards bound him and left him on Mount Pangæon, where he was destroyed by wild horses, for such was the will of Dionysos.

When Dionysos reached his native city, the women readily received the new rites, and ran wildly through the woods of Cithærôn. Pentheus, the ruler of Thebes, however, set himself against them ; but Dionysos caused him to be torn to pieces by his mother and his aunts. The daughters of Minyas, Leucippe, Aristippe and Alcathoe, also despised his rites, and continued plying their looms, while the other women ran through the mountains. He came as a maiden, and remonstrated, but in vain ; he then assumed the form of various wild beasts ; serpents filled their baskets ; vines and ivy twined round their looms, while wine and milk distilled from the roof ; but their obstinacy was unsubdued. He finally drove them mad ; they tore to pieces the son of Leucippe, and then went roaming through the mountains, till Hermes touched them with his wand, and turned them into a bat, an owl, and a crow¹¹⁰⁹.

Dionysos next proceeded to Attica, where he taught a man named Icarios the culture of the vine. Icarios having made wine, gave of it to some shepherds, who thinking themselves poisoned killed him. When they came to their senses they buried him ; and his daughter Erigone, being shown the spot by his faithful dog Mæra, hung herself through grief¹¹¹⁰. At Argos the rites of Dionysos were received, as at Thebes, by the women, and opposed by Perseus, the son of Zeus and Danae ; Zeus however reduced his two sons to amity¹¹¹¹, and Dionysos thence passed over to Naxos, where he met Ariadne. It was on his way thither that his adventure with the Tyrrhenians occurred. Dionysos afterwards descended to Erebos, whence he fetched his mother, whom he now named Thyone, and ascended with her to the abode of the gods¹¹¹².

Like every other portion of the Grecian mythology, the history of the vine-god was pragmatised when infidelity became prevalent. That most tasteless of historians Diodorus gives us, probably from the cyclograph Dionysius, the following narrative¹¹¹³.

Ammôn, a monarch of Libya, was married to Rhea, a daughter of Uranos ; but meeting near the Ceraunian mountains a beautiful maiden named Amaltheia, he became enamoured of her. He made her mistress of the adjacent fruitful country, which from its resembling a bull’s horn in form was named the Western Horn, and then Amaltheia’s Horn, which last name was afterwards given to places similar to it in fertility. Amaltheia here bore him a son, whom, fearing the jealousy of Rhea, he conveyed to a town named Nysa, situated not far from the Horn, in an island formed by the river Tritôn. He committed the care of him to Nysa, one of the daughters of Aristæos ; while Athena, who had lately sprung from the earth on the banks of the Tritôn, was appointed to keep guard against the assaults of Rhea. This delicious isle, which was precipitous on all sides, with a single entrance through a narrow glen thickly shaded by trees, is described in a similar manner with Panchaia, and other happy retreats of the same {p. 215}nature. It therefore had verdant meads, abundant springs, trees of every kind, flowers of all hues, and evermore resounded with the melody of birds¹¹¹⁴. After he grew up, Dionysos became a mighty conqueror and a benefactor of mankind, by whom he was finally deified.

Though the adventures of Dionysos were occasionally the theme of poets, especially of the dramatists, they do not appear to have been narrated in continuity, like those of Heracles, until long after the decline of Grecian poetry. It was in the fifth century of the Christian æra, that Nonnus, a native of Panopolis in Egypt, made the history of Dionysos the subject of a poem, containing forty-eight books, the wildest and strangest that can well be conceived, more resembling the Ramayuna of India than anything to be found in ancient or modern occidental literature. Its chief subject is the war of Dionysos against Deriades king of the Indians, the details of which are probably the inventions of the poet¹¹¹⁵ ; in other parts he seems to have adhered with tolerable fidelity to his authorities, and the ‘Dionysiacs’ may be regarded as a vast repertory of Bacchic fable, perhaps deserving of more attention than has hitherto been bestowed on it¹¹¹⁶.

The worship of this god prevailed in almost all parts of Greece. Men and women joined in his festivals, dressed in Asiatic robes and bonnets ; their heads wreathed with vine-and ivy-leaves, with fawn-skins (νεβρίδες) flung over their shoulders, and thyrses or blunt spears twined with vine-leaves in their hands, they ran bellowing through the country Io {p. 216}Bacche ! Euoi ! Iacche ! etc., swinging their thyrses, beating on drums, and sounding various instruments. Indecent emblems were carried in processions, at which modest virgins assisted ; and altogether few ceremonies more immoral or indecent are celebrated in India at the present day, than polished Athens performed in the Phrygio-Grecian Dionysia¹¹¹⁷, though ancient and modern mystics endeavour to extract profound and solemn mysteries from them.

The women, who bore a chief part in these frantic revels, were called Mænades, Bacchæ, Thyiades, Euades, names of which the origin is apparent.

Dionysos was represented in a variety of modes and characters by the ancient artists. The Theban Dionysos appears with the delicate lineaments of a maiden, rather than those of a young man ; his whole air and gait are effeminate ; his long flowing hair is, like that of Apollo¹¹¹⁸, collected behind his head, wreathed with ivy or a fillet ; he is either naked, or wrapped in a large cloak, and the nebris is sometimes flung over his shoulders ; he carries a crook or a thyrse, and a panther generally lies at his feet. In some monuments Dionysos appears bearded, in others horned (the Bacchos-Sabazios), whence in the mysteries he was identified with Osiris, and regarded as the Sun. He is sometimes alone, at other times in company with Ariadne or the youth Ampelos.

His triumph over the Indians is represented in great pomp. The captives are chained and placed on wagons or elephants, and among them is carried a large cratêr full of wine ; Dionysos is in a chariot drawn by elephants or panthers, leaning on Ampelos, preceded by Pan, and followed by Silenos, the Satyrs, and the Mænades, on foot or on horseback, who make the air resound with their cries and the clash of their instruments. The Indian Bacchos is always bearded.

It is with reason that Sophocles¹¹¹⁹ styles Dionysos manynamed (πολυνυμος), for in the Orphic hymns alone we meet {p. 217}upwards of forty of his appellations. Some of the principal of them are, Bacchos¹¹²⁰ and Bromios, from the noise with which his festivals were celebrated ; Bassareus, from the fox-skin dresses named bassaræ worn by the Thracians ; Dithyrambos, from the odes of that name, or from his double birth (δὶς ϴύρɑ) ; Eleleus and Euios, from the shouting ; Lyæos, as loosing from care ; Lenœos, from the wine-press.

[n.p.]Dionysos was also called¹¹²¹, 1. Muse-leader ; 2. Bull-headed ; 3. Fire-born ; 4. Dance-rouser ; 5. Mountain-rover ; 6. Sleep-giver, etc.

It seems probable that in the original conception of Dionysos he was not merely the wine-god, for such restricted notions are contrary to the genius of the ancient Grecian religion, in which each people assigned its peculiar deities a very extensive sphere of action, as gods of the sun, the moon, the heaven, the earth, and other parts of nature. Dionysos was therefore, it is likely, regarded as a deity presiding over growth and increase in general ; and as Hermes, who seems to have been originally of coextensive power with him, was gradually restricted and made a god of cattle alone, so Dionysos may have been limited to the care of plants, particularly the vine¹¹²².

Water and heat being the great causes of growth, we find this deity closely connected with both these elements. Thus the infant Dionysos is committed to the water-goddess Ino, and to the Hyades and to Silenos. His temples at Athens¹¹²³ and Sparta¹¹²⁴ were in places named marshes (ἐν λίμνɑις), and he was styled Of-the-Marsh (Λιμνɑȋος), and Marsh-sprung (Λιμνηγενὴς). In some places he was called the Rainer (Ὕης)¹¹²⁵ ; {p. 218}his festival, the Anthesteria, was celebrated in the spring, the season of showers, and it was so named from the flowers and blossoms, of which he was the author ; whence he was named the Flowery ¹¹²⁶.

The relation of Dionysos to the celestial heat is expressed in the story of his birth, and also in the dog Mæra (Μɑȋρɑ), another name for Sirius the dog-star¹¹²⁷ ; the name of his companion Marôn¹¹²⁸ also seems to refer to heat ; and perhaps the true origin of the god’s own epithet, Μηρογϵνὴς, usually rendered Thigh-born, lies in this word. It is not impossible that the real root of his mother’s name may be ϭέλɑς. ¹¹²⁹.

In favour of this god’s presiding over cattle is alleged the well-known circumstance of the goat being the victim offered to him ; his being in his infancy conveyed to Nysa in the form of a kid, and his being worshiped under that name. He also wore the goatskin dress of the goatherds ; and in Attica and Hermione he was named Μϵλάνɑιγις, a name which in the former place was connected with the fabulous origin of the festival of the Apaturia. Welcker is of opinion that Dionysos was originally the object of worship to the lower classes, the goatherds, and such like (in Attica the tribe of the Ægicoreis) ; and that as they gradually rose in consideration, their god was associated with those of the nobles ; and that thence he always appeared of an inferior rank to those with whom he was joined. This critic accounts on the same principle for the very slight mention of Dionysos in the Homeric poems, namely, that he was of too low a rank to be an actor of importance in those aristocratie verses, which only told of kings and nobles, and the gods whom they adored¹¹³⁰.

The name Dionysos is one of the most difficult to explain {p. 219}in Grecian mythology. After Voss’s able exposure we may venture to reject the notion of its being the same with Devanishi, a title of the Hindoo god Seeva, and view in Dionysos a Grecian god with a Grecian name. The most probable (though by no means quite satisfactory) interpretation of it is God-of-Nysa, which last place occurs frequently in his legend. Like Tritôn, however, it has been multiplied, for we find a Nysa on Helicôn in Bœotia¹¹³¹, in Thrace, in Naxos, at the foot of Mount Tmolos in Lydia, in Arabia, in India, in Africa, and elsewhere¹¹³² ; besides that indefinite one whence Persephone was carried away by Hades. It therefore is a matter of uncertainty which was the original Nysa.

Κυβέλη. Κυβήβη. Rhea. Ops. §

Cybele, called also the Great Mother, was regarded by the Phrygians and Lydians¹¹³⁷ as the goddess of nature or of the earth. Her temples stood on the summits of hills ; such as that of Dindymos in the isle of Cyzicos, of Berecynthos, Sipylos, Cybelos ; from which last she is said to have derived her name, though the reverse is more likely to be the truth. At Pessinos was preserved the aërolite¹¹³⁸ which was held to be her heaven-sent image.

The following pragmatised account of Cybele is given by Diodorus.

Cybele was daughter to king Mæôn and his queen Dindyme. She was exposed by her father on Mount Cybelos, where she was suckled by panthers and lionesses, and was afterwards reared by shepherdesses, who named her Cybele. {p. 224}When she grew up she displayed great skill in the healing art, and cured all the diseases of the children and cattle. They thence called her the Mountain-Mother. While dwelling in the woods she formed a strict friendship with Marsyas, and had a love-affair with a youth named Attis. She was afterwards acknowledged by her parents ; but her father, on discovering her intimacy with Attis, seized that unhappy youth and put him to death. Grief deprived Cybele of her reason : with dishevelled locks she roamed, to the sound of the drums and pipes which she had invented, over various regions of the earth, even as far as the country of the Hyperboreans, teaching mankind agriculture : her companion was still the faithful Marsyas. Meantime a dreadful famine ravaged Phrygia : the oracle, on being consulted, directed that the body of Attis should be buried, and divine honours be paid to Cybele. A stately temple was accordingly erected to her at Pessinos by king Midas¹¹³⁹.

It is apparent from this account that Cybele, Marsyas, and Attis were all ancient Phrygian deities. Marsyas, as we have seen, was a river-god ; and Attis, whose name occurs frequently in the dynasties of the Lydian kings, (who according to the usual practice were named after their god,) was probably, like Adonis, a personification of the Sun, of whose union with Earth we have apparently another instance in Amphiôn and Niobe. The Lydian legend of the birth of Attis is curious and significant¹¹⁴⁰.

Like Asiatic worship in general, that of Cybele was enthusiastic. Her priests, named Galli and Corybantes, ran about with dreadful cries and howlings, beating on timbrels, clashing cymbals, sounding pipes, and cutting their flesh with knives. The box-tree and the cypress were considered sacred to her ; as from the former she made the pipes, and Attis was said to have been changed into the latter.

We find from Pindar and the dramatists¹¹⁴¹ that the worship {p. 225}and the mysteries of the Great Mother were common in Greece, particularly at Athens, in their time.

The worship of Cybele was introduced into Rome a. u. c. 547, when a solemn embassy was sent to Attalus king of Pergamus, to request the image at Pessinos which had fallen from heaven. The monarch readily yielded compliance, and the goddess was conveyed to Rome ; where a stately temple was built to receive her, and a solemn festival named the Megalesia was celebrated every year in her honour¹¹⁴². As the Greeks had confounded her with Rhea, so the Latins made her one with their Ops, the goddess of the earth¹¹⁴³.

In works of art Cybele exhibits the matronly air and composed dignity which distinguish Hera and Demeter. Sometimes she is veiled, and seated on a throne with lions at her side ; at other times riding in a chariot drawn by lions. Her head is always crowned with towers. She frequently beats on a drum, and bears a sceptre in her hand.

The name Cybele is probably derived from the cymbals (Κύμβος, Κύμβɑλɑ) used in her worship.

Κότυς ἢ Κοτυττὼ Κɑὶ Βϵνδȋς. Cotytto et Bendis. §

Cotys or Cotytto was a goddess worshiped by the Thracians, whose kings were frequently named from her. She was apparently identical with the Phrygian Cybele¹¹⁴⁴. Her worship was introduced at Athens and at Corinth, where it was celebrated in private with great indecency and licentiousness¹¹⁴⁵.

Bendis, another Thracian goddess, had some analogy with Artemis and Hecate¹¹⁴⁶, and she was probably the same with Cybele. Her worship also was adopted at Athens ; her temple named the Bendideion was in the Peiræeus¹¹⁴⁷, and a festival named the Bendideia was celebrated in her honour¹¹⁴⁸.

Αρτϵμις ἐν Εϕέσῳ. Diana Ephesia. §

The Ephesian Artemis was another Asiatic goddess whose worship was adopted by the Greeks. From their confounding her with their own Artemis, it would seem that they regarded her as the Moon-goddess ; though her attributes might lead to an identification of her with Cybele¹¹⁴⁹.

The most ancient statue of the Artemis of Ephesus was a black stone which had fallen from heaven, — an aërolite of course. Her subsequent ones were a sort of Pantheôn, a compound of various attributes. She is covered with breasts and with the heads of animals, and stands an image either of the natural fecundity of the earth, or of that supposed to be induced by the influence of the moon.

Nothing can be clearer than that this goddess was originally distinct from the Artemis of the Greeks. Yet in after times we find them so completely identified, that the Ephesians in the reign of Tiberius maintained¹¹⁵⁰ , “that Apollo and Diana were not born in Delos, as was commonly supposed ; but that the river Cenchrius and the grove Ortygia, where the travailing Latona, resting against an olive-tree which still existed, brought forth these deities, were with them.” In like manner the people of Tegyra in Bœotia appropriated to themselves the birth of Apollo, calling a hill near his temple Delos, and two springs Palm and Olive ; they also took to themselves the Delphian legends of Tityos and Pythôn¹¹⁵¹. We even find the whole mythic cycle of Leto, Apollo, and Artemis, transferred to Egypt, — Leto becoming Buto, Apollo Oros, and Artemis Bubastes, and an island in the Nile, said (for Herodotus could not perceive it to move) to be a floating one, Delos¹¹⁵².

Ισις. Isis. §

Isis was one of the chief deities of Egypt and spouse of Osiris. Her worship was introduced during the Alexandrian period into Greece, and afterwards into Rome. The Isiac {p. 227}mysteries were among the secret ones, and abounded in gross superstition, vile juggling, and scandalous indecency. As the goddess herself is by Herodotus¹¹⁵³ identified with the Grecian Demeter, we are to suppose that she was one of those personifications of nature, or of the productive power of the earth, which we find among most ancient nations.

Egypt is once mentioned in the Ilias¹¹⁵⁴. In the Odyssey¹¹⁵⁵ Egypt, the Egyptians, and the river Ægyptos are spoken of ; and from these passages we may perhaps collect, that the Greeks, particularly the Cretans, used in those times to make piratical incursions on Egypt. Hesiod¹¹⁵⁶ names the Nile.

“Homer’s Egypt,” says Zoega¹¹⁵⁷, “seems to me altogether fabulous ; it presents nothing local, nothing characteristic. His Egyptians are Greeks, the presents which they give to Menelaos are such as a Greek would have given. Egyptian antiquity knows nothing of tripods. The poet had merely picked up some obscure reports of a rich city, Thebes, an island, Pharos, and that the Egyptians were good physicians, and used a kind of opium. The historic circumstances of the voyage of Menelaos, his adventures there, etc. are fictions. From this point of view many difficulties are removed, and many fine systems fall to pieces. The land of Egypt no longer increases in extent a whole day’s journey toward the north, Memphis is no longer founded after the destruction of Troy. The more ancient Greeks named the Delta Egypt, the rest Thebes, for which reason Memphis might very well be the Thebes of Homer. This poet had no knowledge of the true site of Thebes.”

From Herodotus¹¹⁵⁸ we learn, that when (Ol. 27.) the Egyptian prince Psammitichos was driven by his competitors for the throne to seek shelter in the marshes of the Delta, he was told by the oracle of Buto that brazen men from the sea would {p. 228}be his avengers. Shortly afterwards some Carians and Ionians, who were out a-pirating, were driven by stress of weather to Egypt, where they landed and began to plunder the country. As, after the Grecian fashion, they wore brass armour (a sight unusual to the Egyptians¹¹⁵⁹ ), word was brought to Psammitichos that brazen men had landed and were plundering. Calling to mind the oracle, he sent to invite them to enter his service : they consented, and with their aid he made himself master of Egypt. He assigned them a settlement near the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile, whence their descendants were about eighty years afterwards removed to Memphis by Amasis to serve as his guards¹¹⁶⁰. This monarch appointed the town named Naucratis, which he allowed the Greeks to build on the Canobic arm of the Nile, to be the emporium of the trade of Greece and Egypt, just as Canton is that of the trade between China and Europe. Vessels were allowed to enter that port alone ; and if driven into any other by stress of weather, they were obliged to sail for it, or their cargoes, if the wind was still rough, were conveyed thither in barges round the Delta. Amasis, who was a great favourer of the Greeks, permitted them to erect altars and consecrate pieces of land (τϵμένα) to their national deities. These religious colonies extended far up the country, and we even find the Samians in one of the Oases¹¹⁶¹.

When the Ionians and Carians settled in Egypt, Psammitichos put some Egyptian children under their care, to be instructed in the Greek language ; and, as everything in that country was regulated on the principle of castes, these and their descendants formed the caste of Interpreters, whom Herodotus found there two centuries afterwards¹¹⁶². We may thus see at once how in a space of two hundred years, by means of these interpreters, and of the introduction of the worship of the Grecian deities, the artful priesthood of Egypt may have contrived to frame the system above noticed, of the derivation of the religion and civilization of Greece from the land of Nile.

From this digression we return to the gods of Greece.

Πάν. Pan. §

This god is unnoticed by Homer and Hesiod, but according to one of the Homerids he was the son of Hermes by an Arcadian nymph¹¹⁶³. Hermes, he says, smitten with love for the daughter of Dryops (Woody), abandoned Olympos and took service as a shepherd in Arcadia. He succeeded in gaining the heart of the ‘well-tressed nymph,’ and a child was the result of their secret interviews. But so monstrous was his appearance, that the nurse on beholding him fled away in affright. Hermes immediately caught him up, wrapped him carefully in a hare-skin, and carried him away to Olympos : then taking his seat with Zeus and the other gods, he produced his babe. All the gods, especially Dionysos, were delighted with the little stranger ; and they named him Pan (i. e. All), because he had charmed them all.

Others fabled that Pan was the son of Hermes by Penelope, whose love he gained under the form of a goat, as she was tending in her youth the flocks of her father on Mount Taÿgeton¹¹⁶⁴. Some even went so far as to say that he was the offspring of the amours of Penelope with all her suitors¹¹⁶⁵. According to Epimenides¹¹⁶⁶, Pan and Arcas were the children of Zeus and Callisto. Aristippus made Pan the offspring of Zeus and the nymph Œneïs¹¹⁶⁷, others again said he was a child of Heaven and Earth¹¹⁶⁸. There was also a Pan said to be the son of Zeus and the nymph Thymbris or Hybris, the instructor of Apollo in divination¹¹⁶⁹.

The worship of Pan seems to have been confined to Arcadia till the time of the battle of Marathôn, when Pheidippides, the courier who was sent from Athens to Sparta to call on the Spartans for aid against the Persians, declared that, as he was passing by Mount Parthenion near Tegea in Arcadia, he heard the voice of Pan calling to him, and desiring him to ask the Athenians why they paid no regard to him, who was always, and still would be, friendly and assisting to them. After the battle the Athenians consecrated a cave to Pan under the Acropolis, and offered him annual sacrifices¹¹⁷⁰.

Long before this time the Grecian and Egyptian systems of religion had begun to mingle and combine. The goatformed Mendes of Egypt was now regarded as identical with the horned and goat-footed god of the Arcadian herdsmen¹¹⁷¹ ; and Pan was elevated to great dignity by priests and philosophers, becoming a symbol of the universe, for his name signified all. Further, as he dwelt in the woods, he was called Lord of the Hyle (ό τῆς ὓλης κύρις)¹¹⁷² ; and as the word hyle (ὓλη) by a lucky ambiguity signified either wood or primitive matter, this was another ground for exalting him. It is amusing to read how all the attributes of the Arcadian god were made to accord with this notion. “Pan,” says Servius¹¹⁷³, “is a rustic god, formed in similitude of nature ; whence he is called Pan, i. e. All : for he has horns in similitude of the rays of the sun and the horns of the moon : his face is ruddy, in imitation of the æther : he has a spotted fawn-skin on his breast, in likeness of the stars : his lower parts are shaggy, on account of the trees, shrubs, and wild-beasts : he has goat’s feet, to denote the stability of the earth : he has a pipe of seven reeds, on account of the harmony of the heaven, in which there are seven sounds : he has a crook, that is a curved staff, on account of the year, which runs back on itself, because he is the god of all nature. It is feigned by the poets, that he struggled with Love and was conquered by him, because, as we read, Love conquers all, omnia vincit amor.”

In Arcadia, his native country, Pan appears never to have

attained to such distinction. So late as the days of the Ptolemies, Theocritus¹¹⁷⁴ could thus allude to the treatment which he sometimes there experienced from his worshipers :

And if thou do so, Pan beloved, may ne’er

The Arcadian boys thy shoulders and thy sides

Pelt with their squills when little meat is had ;

But if thou otherwise incline, may pain

Seize thee when all thy skin is torn with nails,

And in hot nettles may thou lie to rest :

which the scholiast tells us was the Arcadians’ mode of treating the god when they were unsuccessful in hunting¹¹⁷⁵.

The Homerid already quoted, who is older than Pindar¹¹⁷⁶, describes in a very pleasing manner the occupations of Pan. He is lord of all the hills and dales : sometimes he ranges along the tops of the mountains, sometimes pursues the game in the valleys, roams through the woods, floats along the streams, or drives his sheep into a cave, and there plays on his reeds music not to be excelled by that of the bird “who among the leaves of flower-full spring laments, pouring forth her moan, a sweet-sounding lay.”

And with him the clear-singing mountain-nymphs

Move quick their feet, by the dark-watered spring

In the soft mead, where crocus, hyacinths,

Fragrant and blooming, mingle with the grass

Confused, and sing, while echo peals around

The mountain’s top.

The god meanwhile moves his feet rapidly as he joins in the dance, with the skin of a lynx on his back, and delighted with the sweet song.

In after times the care of Pan was held to extend beyond the herds. We find him regarded as the guardian of the bees¹¹⁷⁷, and as the giver of success in fishing and fowling¹¹⁷⁸.

The god of herdsmen was not without his amours ; he is said to have captivated the goddess of the night, Selene, under the form of a white ram¹¹⁷⁹. He was fortunate in an amour with the nymph Echo, by whom he had a daughter named Iambe¹¹⁸⁰ ; but he could not gain the love of Syrinx, another of the nymphs. Syrinx was a Naïs of Nonacris in Arcadia, and devoted to the service of Artemis : as she was returning one day from the chase, and passed by Mount Lycæon, Pan beheld her and loved ; but when he would address her, she fled. The god pursued : she reached the river Ladôn, and unable to cross it implored the aid of her sister-nymphs ; and when Pan thought to grasp the object of his pursuit, he found his arms filled with reeds. While he stood sighing at his disappointment, the wind began to agitate the reeds, and produced a low musical sound. The god took the hint, cut seven of the reeds, and formed from them his syrinx (σύριγξ) or pastoral pipe¹¹⁸¹. Another of his loves was the nymph Pitys, who was also loved by Boreas. The nymph favoured more the god of Arcadia, and the wind-god in a fit of jealousy blew her down from the summit of a lofty rock. A tree of her own name (πίτυς, pine) sprang up where she died, and it became the favourite plant of Pan¹¹⁸².

What are called Panic terrors were ascribed to Pan ; for loud noises, whose cause could not easily be traced, were not unfrequently heard in mountainous regions ; and the gloom and loneliness of forests and mountains fill the mind with a secret horror, and dispose it to superstitious apprehensions : hence perhaps it is, that madness was believed to be the consequence of encountering the rural deities.

The ancients had two modes of representing Pan. The first, according to the description already given, as horned and goat-footed, with a wrinkled face and a flat nose¹¹⁸³. But the artists sought to soften the idea of the god of shepherds, {p. 233}and they portrayed him as a young man hardened by the toils of a country life. Short horns sprout on his forehead, to characterize him ; he bears his crook and his syrinx ; and he is either naked, or clad in the light cloak called chlamys¹¹⁸⁴.

Like many other gods who were originally single, Pan was multiplied in course of time, and we meet Pans in the plural¹¹⁸⁵.

Pan was called¹¹⁸⁶, 1. Goat-footed ; 2. Noise-loving ; 3. Dance-loving ; 4. Bright-locked ; 5. Cave-dwelling ; 6. Sea-roaming.

The name Pan (Πὰν) is probably nothing more than the contraction of πάων, feeder or owner¹¹⁸⁷, and was probably in its origin an epithet of Hermes. Buttmann connects Pan with Apollo Nomios, regarding his name as the contraction of Pæan¹¹⁸⁸. Welcker says it was the Arcadian form of Φάων, Φὰν, apparently regarding him as the sun¹¹⁸⁹.

Σάτυροι. Satyri. Satyrs. §

Hesiod¹¹⁹⁰ is the first who mentions the Satyrs ; he says that they, the Curetes and the mountain-nymphs, were the offspring of the five daughters of Hecatæos by the daughter of Phoroneus.

The Laconian term for a Satyr was Tityros¹¹⁹¹, which also signified the buck-goat or the ram¹¹⁹² that led the flock. Æschylus calls a Satyr Buck-goat (τράγος)¹¹⁹³. In all views of the Satyrs they appear to be a rough, shaggy kind of beings.

The Satyrs were associated with Dionysos, and they formed the chorus of the species of drama named from them. It is not unlikely that they are indebted for their deification to {p. 234}the festivals of that god, and that they were originally merely the rustics who formed the chorus, and danced at them in their goat-skin dresses¹¹⁹⁴. Their name may be merely the reduplication of ϴήρ¹¹⁹⁵.

Σϵιληνὸς, Σιληνός. Silenus. §

Hermes and the Silens ‘mingle in love’ with the nymphs in pleasing caverns, according to a Homerid¹¹⁹⁶, and Pindar¹¹⁹⁷ calls Silenos the Naïs’ husband. Socrates used to compare himself, on account of his wisdom, his baldness, and his flat nose, to the Silens born of the divine Naïdes¹¹⁹⁸. Others said that Silenos was a son of Earth, and sprung from the blood-drops of Uranos¹¹⁹⁹. Marsyas is called a Silen¹²⁰⁰. Like the seagods, Silenos was noted for wisdom.

It would therefore appear that a Silen was simply a rivergod¹²⁰¹ ; and the name probably comes from ἴλλω, ϵἰλέω, to roll, expressive of the motion of the streams¹²⁰². The connexion between Silenos and Dionysos and the Naïdes thus becomes easy of explanation, all being deities relating to moisture.

Midas, king of the Brygians in Macedonia, had at the foot of Mount Bermion a garden, in which grew spontaneously roses with sixty petals, and of extraordinary fragrance¹²⁰³. To this garden Silenos was in the habit of repairing ; and Midas¹²⁰⁴, or his people, by pouring wine into the fount from which he was wont to drink, intoxicated him, and he was thus captured¹²⁰⁵. Midas put various questions to him respecting the {p. 235}origin of things, and the events of past times¹²⁰⁶. One was, What is best for men ? Silenos was long silent ; at length, when he was constrained to answer, he said, “Ephemeral seed of a toilsome fate and hard fortune, why do ye oblige me to tell what it were better for you not to know ? Life is most free from pain when one is ignorant of future evils. It is best of all for man not to be born…… the second is, for those who are born to die as soon as possible¹²⁰⁷.” He also, it is said¹²⁰⁸, gave the king a long account of an immense country which lay without the Ocean-stream, the people of which once invaded the land of the Hyperboreans.

According to another version of this legend¹²⁰⁹, as Dionysos was in Lydia on his return from the conquest of the East, some of the country people met Silenos staggering about, and binding him with his own garlands, led him to their king. Midas entertained him for ten days, and then conducted him to his foster-son, who, in his gratitude, desired the king to ask what gift he would. Midas craved that all he touched might turn to gold. His wish was granted ; but when he found his very food converted to precious metal, and himself on the point of starving in the midst of wealth, he prayed the god to resume his fatal gift. Dionysos directed him to bathe in the Pactolos, and hence that river became auriferous¹²¹⁰.

Silenos was represented as old, bald, and flat-nosed, riding on a broad-backed ass, usually intoxicated, and carrying his can (cantharus), or tottering along supported by his staff of fennel (ferula)¹²¹¹.

Πρίαπος. Priapus. §

Priapos was introduced late into Grecian mythology¹²¹². He was a rural deity, worshiped by the people of Lampsacus, a city on the Hellespont famous for its vineyards. Priapos was {p. 236}not — as is supposed, from the employment usually assigned him by the Romans after they had adopted his worship – merely the god of gardens, but of fruitfulness in general. “This god,” says Pausanias¹²¹³, “is honoured elsewhere by those who keep sheep and goats, or stocks of bees ; but the Lampsacenes regard him more than any of the gods, calling him the son of Dionysos and Aphrodite.” In Theocritus¹²¹⁴, the shepherds set his statue with those of the Nymphs at a shady fountain, and a shepherd prays to him, promising sacrifices if he will free him from love ; and by Virgil¹²¹⁵ bees are placed under his care. Fishermen also made offerings to him as the deity presiding over the fisheries¹²¹⁶ ; and in the Anthology¹²¹⁷ Priapos Of-the-Haven (Λιμϵνίτας) is introduced, giving a pleasing description of the spring, and inviting the mariners to put to sea. The Priaps are enumerated by Moschus¹²¹⁸ among the rural gods :

And Satyrs wailed and sable-cloaked Priaps ;

And Pans sighed after thy sweet melody.

It was fabled¹²¹⁹ that Priapos was the son of Aphrodite by Dionysos¹²²⁰, whom she met on his return from his Indian expedition at the Lampsacene town Aparnis. Owing to the malignity of Hera, he was born so deformed that his mother was horrified and renounced (ἀπαρνϵῖτο) him, whence the place derived its name. Others said¹²²¹ that he was the son of Dionysos by Chione, or a Naïs ; others¹²²², that he had a long-eared father, — Pan or a Satyr perhaps, or it may be his own sacred beast the ass¹²²³ ; others gave him Hermes¹²²⁴ or Adonis¹²²⁵, or even Zeus himself for a sire¹²²⁶.

Priapos, like the other rural gods, is of a ruddy complexion. His cloak is filled with all kinds of fruits : he has a sithe in his hand, and usually a horn of plenty. He is rarely without his indecent symbol of productiveness.

Νύμϕαι. Nymphæ. Nymphs. §

The imagination of the Greeks peopled all the regions of earth and water with beautiful female forms called Nymphs, divided into various orders, according to the place of their abode. Thus¹²²⁷ 1. the Mountain-nymphs (Oreiades) haunted the mountains ; 2. the Dale-nymphs (Napœœ), the valleys ; 3. the Mead-nymphs (Leimoniades), the meadows ; 4. the Water-nymphs (Naïdes, Naïades), the rivers, brooks, and springs ; 5. the Lake-nymphs (Limniades), the lakes and pools. There were also, 6. the Tree-nymphs (Hamadryades), who were born and died with the trees ; 7. the Wood-nymphs in general (Dryades)¹²²⁸ ; and 8. the Fruit-tree-nymphs or Flocknymphs (Meliades)¹²²⁹, who watched over gardens or flocks of sheep.

The Nymphs occur in various relations to gods and men. Their amours, of which we have seen some instances, were numerous. The charge of rearing various gods and heroes was committed to them : they were, for instance, the nurses of Dionysos, Pan, and even Zeus himself ; and they also brought up Aristæos and Æneias. They were moreover the attendants of the goddesses ; they waited on Hera and Aphrodite, and in huntress-attire pursued the deer over the mountains in the company of Artemis.

In the Fairy Mythology¹²³⁰, a work, for which, as our first effort in this department of literature, and which recalls the memory of many agreeable hours, we certainly feel a partiality, we thus expressed ourselves on the subject of the Nymphs.

“In the Homeric poems, the most ancient portion of Grecian literature, we meet the various classes of Nymphs. In the Odyssey, they are the attendants of Calypso, herself a goddess and a nymph. Of the female attendants of Circe,

the potent daughter of Helios, also designated as a goddess and a nymph, it is said,

They spring from fountains and from sacred groves,

And holy streams that flow into the sea¹²³¹.

Yet these Nymphs are of divine nature ; and when Zeus, the father of the gods, calls together his council,

None of the streams, save Ocean, stayed away,

Nor of the Nymphs, who dwell in beauteous groves,

And springs of streams, and verdant grassy slades¹²³².

The good Eumæos prays to the Nymphs to speed the return of his master, reminding them of the numerous sacrifices which Odysseus had offered to them. In another part of the poem¹²³³ their sacred cave is thus described :

But at the harbour’s head a long-leafed olive

Grows, and near to it lies a lovely cave,

Dusky and sacred to the Nymphs, whom men

Call Naiades. In it large craters lie,

And two-eared pitchers, all of stone ; and there

Bees build their combs. In it, too, are long looms

Of stone, and there the Nymphs do weave their robes,

Sea-purple, wondrous to behold. Aye-flowing

Waters are there. Two entrances it hath ;

That to the north is pervious unto men ;

That to the south more sacred is, and there

Men enter not, but ‘tis the Immortals’ path.

Yet though thus exalted in rank, the Homeric Nymphs frequently ‘blessed the bed’ of heroes ; and many a warrior who fought before Troy could boast descent from a Nais or a Nereïs.

“One of the most interesting species of Nymphs are the Hamadryades, those personifications of the vegetable life of {p. 239}plants¹²³⁴. In the Homeridian hymn to Aphrodite, we find the following full and accurate description of them. Aphrodite, when she informs Anchises that she is pregnant, and of her shame to have it known among the gods, says of the child¹²³⁵, —

But him, when first he sees the sun’s clear light,

The Nymphs shall rear, the mountain-haunting Nymphs,

Deep-bosomed, who on this mountain great

And holy dwell, who neither goddesses

Nor women are¹²³⁶. Their life is long ; they eat

Ambrosial food, and with the Deathless frame

The beauteous dance. With them, in the recess

Of lovely caves, well-spying Argos-slayer

And the Sileni mix in love. Straight pines

Or oaks high-headed spring with them upon

The earth man-feeding, soon as they are born ;

Trees fair and flourishing ; on the high hills

Lofty they stand ; the Deathless’ sacred grove

Men call them, and with iron never cut.

But when the Fate of death is drawing near,

First wither on the earth the beauteous trees,

The bark around them wastes, the branches fall,

And the Nymph’s soul at the same moment leaves

The sun’s fair light.

“They possessed power to reward and punish those who prolonged or abridged the existence of their associate-tree. In the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius, Phineus thus explains to the heroes the cause of the poverty of Peræbios¹²³⁷ :

But he was paying the penalty laid on

His father’s crime ; for one time, cutting trees

Alone among the hills, he spurned the prayer

Of the Hamadryas Nymph, who, weeping sore,

With earnest words besought him not to cut

The trunk of an oak tree, which, with herself

Coeval, had endured for many a year.

But, in the pride of youth, he foolishly

Cut it ; and to him and his race the Nymph

Gave ever after a lot profitless.

“The scholiast gives on this passage the following tale from Charôn of Lampsacus :

A man, named Rhœcos, happening to see an oak just ready to fall to the ground, ordered his slaves to prop it up. The Nymph, who had been on the point of perishing with the tree, came to him and expressed her gratitude to him for having saved her life, and at the same time desired him to ask what reward he would. Rhœcos then requested her to permit him to be her lover, and the Nymph acceded to his desire. She at the same time charged him strictly to avoid the society of every other woman, and told him that a bee should be her messenger. One time the bee happened to come to Rhœcos as he was playing at draughts, and he made a rough reply. This so incensed the Nymph that she deprived him of sight.

Similar was the fate of the Sicilian Daphnis. A Naïs loved him, and forbade him to hold intercourse with any other woman under pain of loss of sight. Long he abstained, though tempted by the fairest maids of Sicily. At length a princess contrived to intoxicate him : he broke his vow, and the threatened penalty was inflicted¹²³⁸.”

The nymph Echo had been, as we have seen, beloved by the god Pan. She was also, we are assured, of a most accommodating disposition to Zeus ; and while he was engaged in his pranks with the other nymphs, Echo, being of a very loquacious character, used to keep Hera in chat till the nymphs had time to make their escape. When Hera discovered the artifice, she declared by way of punishment, that in future she should have but little use of her tongue ; and immediately she lost all power of doing any more than repeat the sounds which she heard. Echo happening to see the beautiful youth Narcissos, the son of the river-god Cephissos by the nymph Leiriope (Lily-voice), as he was hunting, became deeply enamoured of him. She followed his steps everywhere, but was long unable to accost him. At length

It happed the youth was from his faithful band

Of comrades parted, and he called aloud,

{p. 241}Is any here ? and Echo answered, Here.

Amazed, on every side he turns his view,

And in loud tones cries, Come ; and Echo calls

The caller. Back he looks, and, no one yet

Approaching, cries, Why fliest thou ? and receives

As many words in answer. By the sound

Of the alternate voice deceived, he still

Persists, and says, Let us meet here ; and, ne’er

To sound more grateful answering, Echo cried,

Let us meet here, and issued from the wood.

But at the sight of her the youth fled. Vexed at the ill success of her advances, and ashamed to appear, she henceforth lurked in solitary caverns, and her love wore her away till nothing remained but her voice and bones. The former still remains, and may be heard among the hills ; the latter were turned to stone. Narcissos, however, suffered the penalty of his hard-heartedness to her and other nymphs and maidens ; for seeing his own figure in a clear spring, he became enamoured of it, and pined away till he was converted into the flower which bears his name¹²³⁹.

These are fables invented, in the usual manner, to account for the origin of the echo and the narcissus. The Scandinavians say that the echo is the voice of the Trolls ; the original natives of the West Indies regarded the echoes as the voices of the departed, who still dwelt in the woods and mountains¹²⁴⁰. The narcissus grows abundantly about Mount Helicôn, the scene of Narcissos’ transformation. Its name in Persian is Nirgis, which proves the derivation from ναρкέω to be wrong. It was sacred to Demeter and the Kora¹²⁴¹.

It was fabled, that in the early ages of Southern Italy, when the people there were in the pastoral state, the Epimelian- or Flock-nymphs were once seen dancing at a place called the Sacred Rocks in Messapia. The young shepherds quitted their flocks to gaze on them ; and, ignorant of their quality, declared that they could dance better themselves. The nymphs were offended, and after a long dispute the shepherds began to contend with them. The motions of the rustics were of {p. 242}course awkward and ungraceful, those of the nymphs light and elegant, as became goddesses. The former were vanquished ; and the nymphs cried out to them, “O youths, you have been contending with the Epimelian nymphs ! you shall therefore be punished.” The shepherds instantly became trees where they stood, at the temple of the nymphs ; and to this day, says Nicander, a voice as of lamentation is heard at night to issue from the grove. The place is called that of the Nymphs and the Youths¹²⁴².

Dryops, the son of the river Spercheios, who dwelt at Mount Œta, had a daughter named Dryope. She fed the flocks of her father, and the Hamadryades conceived a strong affection for her. They made her their playfellow, and taught her to dance and sing hymns to the gods. Apollo beheld her dancing with them, and fell in love with her. He changed himself into a tortoise, with which they began to play and amuse themselves. Dryope placing it in her bosom, the god changed himself into a serpent : the nymphs fled in affright, and he gained his object. Dryope returned home, and shortly afterwards married Andræmôn the son of Mylos. Her son by Apollo was named Amphissos, who founded at the foot of Œta a town of the same name, and ruled over the whole of that part of the country. He built a temple to Apollo ; at which when Dryope appeared one day, the Hamadryades carried her away and concealed her in the wood. In her stead they caused a poplar to grow up, and a spring of water to gush out beside it. The nymphs communicated their own nature to Dryope ; and her son Amphissos out of gratitude raised them a temple, and instituted games, at which no woman was permitted to be present ; because when Dryope was taken away, two maidens who were present informed the people of it, and the nymphs incensed turned them both into fir-trees¹²⁴³.

Terambos, who dwelt at the foot of Mount Othrys, abounded in flocks, which he himself fed on the mountains. The nymphs assisted him, for they were charmed with his singing and his music, in which he excelled all the men of his time, {p. 243}being the inventor of the lyre and the shepherd’s pipe, and they often danced to his melody. Pan also loved him, and one time warned him to drive his flocks down into the plain, as a most terrific winter was coming on : but Terambos, elate with youth and confidence, despised the admonition of the friendly deity, and even mocked at and ridiculed the gentle amiable nymphs, saying that they were not the children of Zeus at all, but of Deino daughter of the Spercheios, and that Poseidôn had once when in love with one of them turned the rest into poplars, and kept them in that form as long as he thought proper. Soon however the presage of Pan proved true : the winter came on ; all the streams and torrents were frozen, the snow fell in great quantities, and the flocks of Terambos vanished along with the paths and the trees. The nymphs then changed Terambos himself into the animal called by the Thessalians kerambyx (кϵράμβυξ), or cockchafer, ‘of which the boys make a plaything, and cutting off the head carry it about ; and the head with the horns is like the lyre made from the tortoise¹²⁴⁴ ’

The word Nymph (νύμϕη) seems to have originally signified bride, and was probably derived from a verb ΝϒΒΩ, to cover or veil¹²⁴⁵. It was gradually applied to married¹²⁴⁶ or marriageable young women, for the idea of youth was always included. It is in this last sense that the goddesses of whom we treat were called Nymphs.

̕Ωкϵανίδϵς, ̕Ωкϵαȋναι. Ocean-nymphs. §

The Ocean-nymphs, three thousand in number, were daughters of Oceanos and Tethys, and sisters of the rivers. Their office was to rear the children of men. From their names they appear to be personifications of the various qualities and appearances of water¹²⁴⁷.

Νηρϵύς. Nereus. §

Nereus, though not mentioned by name in Homer, is frequently alluded to under the title of the Sea-elder (ἅλιος γέρων), and his daughters are called Nereïdes. According to Hesiod¹²⁴⁸ he was the son of Pontos and Earth, and was distinguished for his knowledge and his love of truth and justice, whence he was termed an elder : the gift of prophecy was also assigned him. When Heracles was in quest of the apples of the Hesperides, he was directed by the nymphs to Nereus : he found the god asleep, and seized him. Nereus on awaking changed himself into a variety of forms, but in vain : he was obliged to instruct him how to proceed before the hero would release him¹²⁴⁹. He also foretold to Paris, when he was carrying away Helena, the evils he would bring on his country and family¹²⁵⁰.

Nereus was married to Doris, one of the Ocean-nymphs, and by her he had the nymphs named Nereïdes¹²⁵¹.

Νηρηΐδϵς. Nereïdes. §

The Nereïdes, or nymphs of the sea, were fifty in number ; but the mythologists do not agree exactly in the names which they put into the catalogue. The best known of them are, Amphitrite the wife of Poseidôn, Thetis the mother of Achilleus, and Galateia, who was loved by the Cyclôps Polyphemos.

The Nereïdes, like all the other female deities, were originally conceived to be of a beautiful form, with skin of a delicate whiteness and long flowing hair. A constant epithet of Thetis is silver-footed (ἀργυροπέξα) ; and it was for venturing to compare herself in beauty with the Nereïdes, that Cassiope brought such misfortune on her daughter Andromeda. But the painters and sculptors, who contributed so much to degrade the other gods, robbed the sea-nymphs also of their charms, by bestowing on them green hair, and turning their lower parts into those of a fish ; thus giving them a form exactly corresponding with the modern idea of a mermaid.

The individual names of the Nereïdes are significatory of the qualities and phænomena of the sea.

Φόρкυς, Φόρкος. Phorcus. §

Phorcys is called by Homer a Ruler (μέδων) of the Sea and a Sea-elder. A harbour in Ithaca¹²⁵² is said to belong to him.

Hesiod¹²⁵³ makes him a son of Pontos and Earth, and father by Keto of the Grææ, the Gorgons, the Echidna, and the serpent which watched the golden apples¹²⁵⁴.

Τρίτων. Triton. §

According to Hesiod¹²⁵⁵, Tritôn was a son of Poseidôn and Amphitrite, who, ‘keeping to the bottom of the sea, dwelt with his mother and royal father in a golden house.’ Later {p. 246}poets made him his father’s trumpeter. He was also multiplied, and we read of Tritons in the plural number.

Like the Nereïdes, the Tritons were degraded to the fishform. Pausanias¹²⁵⁶ tells us that the women of Tanagra in Bœotia, going into the sea to purify themselves for the orgies of Bacchos, were, while there, assailed by Tritôn ; but on praying to their god, he vanquished their persecutor. Others, he adds, said that Tritôn used to carry off the cattle which were driven down to the sea, and to seize all small vessels ; till the Tanagrians placing bowls of wine on the shore, he drank of them, and becoming intoxicated threw himself down on the shore to sleep ; where as he lay, a Tanagrian cut off his head with an axe. He relates these legends to account for the statue of Tritôn at Tanagra being headless. He then subjoins, — 

“I have seen another Tritôn among the curiosities of the Romans, but it is not so large as this of the Tanagrians. The form of the Tritons is this : — the hair of their head resembles the parsley that grows in marshes, both in colour and in the perfect likeness of one hair to another, so that no difference can be perceived among them : the rest of their body is rough with small scales, and is of about the same hardness as the skin of a fish : they have fish-gills under their ears : their nostrils are those of a man, but their teeth are broader, and like those of a wild beast : their eyes seem to me azure ; and their hands, fingers and nails are of the form of the shells of shell-fish : they have, instead of feet, fins under their breast and belly, like those of the porpoise.”

Πρωτεύς. Proteus. §

In the fourth book of the Odyssey Homer introduces this sea-god. He styles him, like Nereus and Phorcys, a Seaelder¹²⁵⁷, and gives him the power of foretelling the future¹²⁵⁸. He calls him Egyptian, and the servant of Poseidôn¹²⁵⁹, and says that his task was keeping the seals or sea-calves¹²⁶⁰. When Menelaos was wind-bound at the island of Pharos, opposite {p. 247}Egypt, and he and his crew were suffering from want of food, Eidothea the daughter of Proteus accosted him, and bringing seal-skins directed him to disguise himself and three of his companions in them ; and when Proteus at noon should come up out of the sea and go to sleep amidst his herds, to seize and hold him till he disclosed some means of relief from his present distress.

Menelaos obeys the nymph ; and Proteus drives up and counts his herds, and then lies down to rest. The hero immediately seizes him, and the god turns himself into a lion, a serpent, a pard, a boar, water, and a tree. At length, finding he cannot escape, he resumes his own form, and reveals to Menelaos the remedy for his distress. He at the same time informs him of the situation of his friends, and particularly notices his having seen Odysseus in the island of Calypso, — a clear proof that his own abode was not confined to the coast of Egypt.

This part of the Odyssey has been beautifully imitated by Virgil in the fourth book of his Georgics, where Aristæos on the loss of his bees seeks in a similar way a remedy from Proteus. The scene is here transferred to the peninsula of Pallene, and the god is described as of a blue colour, the hue which painters had been pleased to bestow on the marine deities : he has also a chariot drawn by the biped sea-horses.

Homer does not name the parents of this marine deity, and there is no mention of him in the Theogony. Apollodorus makes him a son of Poseidôn¹²⁶¹, and Euripides would seem to make Nereus his sire¹²⁶².

Those who embraced the theory of representing the gods as having been originally mere men, said that Proteus was a king of Egypt ; and the Egyptian priests told how he detained Helena when Paris was driven to Egypt, and gave him an image or phantom in her stead, and then restored her to Menelaos¹²⁶³.

The name of this deity, signifying First (πρὸ, πρῶτος), was too inviting to escape the mystics. They regarded him as a {p. 248}symbol of the original matter which developed itself into the four elements whose form he took : the lion was æther, the serpent earth, the tree air, and the water itself¹²⁶⁴.

Γλαῦκος. Glaucus. §

Glaucos, as is evident from his name, was an original god of the sea, probably only another form of Poseidôn, whose son he is in some accounts¹²⁶⁵. Like the marine gods in general, he had the gift of prophecy ; we find him appearing to the Argonauts¹²⁶⁶ and to Menelaos¹²⁶⁷, and telling them what had happened, or what was to happen. In later times sailors were continually making reports of his soothsaying¹²⁶⁸. Some said he dwelt with the Nereïdes at Delos, where he gave responses to all who sought them¹²⁶⁹ ; according to others, he visited each year all the isles and coasts with a train of monsters of the deep (κήτεα), and unseen foretold in the Æolic dialect all kinds of evil. The fishermen watched for his approach, and endeavoured by fastings, prayer and fumigations to avert the ruin with which his prophecy menaced the fruits and cattle. At times he was seen among the waves, and his body appeared covered with muscles, sea weed and stones. He was heard evermore to lament his fate in not being able to die¹²⁷⁰.

This last circumstance refers to the common pragmatic history of Glaucos. He was a fisherman, it was said¹²⁷¹, of Anthedôn in Bœotia, and observing one day the fish which he had caught and thrown on the grass to bite it, and then to jump into the sea, his curiosity excited him to taste it also ; immediately on his doing so he followed their example, and thus became a sea-god. It was also said¹²⁷² that he obtained his immortality by tasting the grass which had revived a hare he had run down in Ætolia ; also¹²⁷³ that he built and steered {p. 249}the Argo, and that during the voyage Zeus made him a god of the sea.

Glaucos, we are told¹²⁷⁴, seeing Ariadne in Naxos, where she had been abandoned by Theseus, became enamoured of her ; but Dionysos seized him, bound him with a vine-band, and drove him from the island. His love for Scylla we shall presently relate.

Λυκοθέα και Παλαίμων. Matuta et Portunus. §

Ino, the daughter of Cadmos and wife of Athamas, flying from her husband, with her little son Melicertes in her arms, sprang from a cliff into the sea. The gods out of compassion made her a goddess of the sea under the name of Leucothea, and him a god under that of Palæmôn. Both were held powerful to save from shipwreck, and were invoked by sailors. The fable appears to be ancient ; as Leucothea, who gives her veil to Odysseus when tossed in a storm, is called ‘fair-ankled Ino, daughter of Cadmos,’ and her transformation is mentioned¹²⁷⁵.

Palæmôn was usually represented riding on a dolphin. The Isthmian games were celebrated in his honour¹²⁷⁶.

We should suppose it hardly necessary to remind the reader, that, according to all analogy of Grecian mythology, Palæmôn and Ino-Leucothea (a form like Phœbos-Apollo, Pallas-Athene) were original water-deities. Leucothea is supposed to be derived from the white waves, and Ino may be merely Ilo, and be connected with ἕλος, ἰλύς¹²⁷⁷. Palæmôn (Champion) seems to refer to the Isthmian games¹²⁷⁸. Melicertes is said to be a name of Poseidôn ; it may however be the Phœnician Melcart, introduced into the Cadmeian cycle when Cadmos became a Sidonian.

Πόταμι. Fluvii. River-gods. §

Each river was held to have its presiding deity, who deity in it and directed its waters. These gods had their houses and children ; and the love-adventures of some of them, such as Alpheios and Acheloös, are recorded by the poets. The rivers were all the sons of Oceanos and Tethys¹²⁷⁹.

The River-gods were represented of a handsome human form, crowned with reeds, and wearing dark-blue mantles of fine texture. They were often given the head or horns of a bull, indicative of their roaring or winding, of their strength or of their influence on agriculture¹²⁸⁰. A bull was the sacrifice to them, as to Poseidôn¹²⁸¹.

Ἑσπρίδες. Hesperides. Western-Maids. §

According to Hesiod the ‘clear-voiced’ Hesperides dwelt¹²⁸² ‘beyond (πέρην) the bright Ocean’ opposite where Atlas stood supporting the heaven, and they had charge of the trees that bore the golden fruit. In this task they were aided by a serpent named Ladôn¹²⁸³. These apples were said to have been the gift of Earth to Hera on her weddingday¹²⁸⁴. One of the tasks imposed on Heracles was that of procuring some of them for Eurystheus.

Hesiod says that the Hesperides were the daughters of Night without a father. Others, however, to assimilate them to their neighbours, the Grææ and Gorgons, gave them Phor-cys and Keto for parents¹²⁸⁵. Their names are said to have been Ægle, Erytheia, Hestia, and Arethusa¹²⁸⁶, or rather Ægle, Hespere, and Erytheïs¹²⁸⁷.

The abode of these Western-Maids was evidently an island in the Ocean, and not the gloomy land beyond it ¹²⁸⁸ ; for the {p. 252}poets, led by the analogy of the lovely appearance of the western sky at sunset, viewed the West as a region of brightness and glory. Hence they placed in it the Isles of the Blest, the ruddy isle Erytheia, on which the bright oxen of Hades and Geryoneus pastured, the isle of the Hesperides, in which grew the golden fruit, and other places of light and bliss.

When Atlas had been fixed as a mountain in the extremity of Libya, the dwelling of the Hesperides was usually placed in his vicinity ; others set it in the country of the Hyperboreans¹²⁸⁹. Their apples are supposed, and not entirely without reason, to have been a fiction, indebted for its origin to the accounts of the oranges of Africa and Spain.

Гραίαι. Grææ. Grey-Maids. §

The ‘fair-cheeked’ Grææ were daughters of Phorcys and Keto ; they were hoary-haired from their birth, whence their name. They were two in number, ‘well-robed’ Pephredo (Horrifier), and ‘yellow-robed’ Enyo (Shaker) ¹²⁹⁰. We find them always united with the Gorgons, whose guards they were according to Æschylus¹²⁹¹. This poet¹²⁹² describes them as ‘three long-lived maids, swan-formed, having one eye and one tooth in common, on whom neither the sun with his beams nor the nightly moon ever looks’¹²⁹³. Perseus, he says, intercepted the eye as they were handing it from the one to the other, and having thus blinded the guards was enabled to come on the Gorgons unperceived. The name of the third sister given by the later writers is Deino (Terrifier)¹²⁹⁴.

Гοργόνες.Gorgones. Gorgons. §

Homer speaks of an object of terror which he calls Gorgo, and the Gorgeian Head. He places the former on the shield {p. 253}of Agamemnôn¹²⁹⁵ ; and when describing Hectôr eager for slaughter, he says that he had ‘the eyes of Gorgo and of man-destroying Ares’¹²⁹⁶. The Gorgeian Head was on the ægis of Zeus¹²⁹⁷, and the hero of the Odyssey fears to remain in Erebos lest ‘Persephoneia should send out the Gorgeian head of the dire monster’¹²⁹⁸ against him¹²⁹⁹. Along with the Grææ, according to the Theogony¹³⁰⁰, Keto bore to Phorcys the Gorgons, ‘who dwelt beyond the bright Ocean in the extremity toward night, where the clear-voiced Hesperides abide.’ It names them Stheino, Euryale and Medusa, which last alone was mortal. Poseidôn, it is added, lay with her in a ‘soft mead amid the spring-flowers,’ and when her head was cut off by Perseus, the ‘great’ Chrysaôr (Gold-sword) and the steed Pegasos (Fount-horse) sprang forth. Æschylus calls the Gor-gons the ‘three sisters of the Grææ, winged, serpent-fleeced, hateful to man, whom no one can look on and retain his breath¹³⁰¹.’ They were also represented as winged on the ancient coffer of Kypselos at Olympia¹³⁰². On the shield of Heracles the Gorgons are girt with serpents¹³⁰³. Others describe them as having their heads environed with scaly snakes, and with huge teeth like those of swine, brazen hands and golden wings. Their looks, it is added, turned all who beheld them to stone¹³⁰⁴.

The Gorgons and the Grææ are always mentioned together, and they seem to have been appropriated to the mythe of Perseus. We might therefore suppose them to have been a pure poetic fiction, were it not that, as we shall show, the Gorgon in that mythe, Medusa, is merely another form of Pallas-Athene. It is therefore not improbable that the theory of some mythologists of the present day may be the true one ; namely, that the two Gorgons and two Grææ are {p. 254}only personifications of the terrors of the sea, the former denoting the large strong billows of the wide open main, the latter the white-crested waves that dash against the rocks of the coast¹³⁰⁵. They must have originally belonged to the Sea (Pontos), whose grandchildren they are, and not to the calm soft-flowing Ocean, whither they were transported when they had ceased to be regarded as personifications, and had been introduced into the mythe of Perseus. As in this mythe Medusa (Mistress) — whose name is of a nature totally different from theirs — was added to the Gorgons, the principle of uniformity probably led to a similar increase of the Grææ.

All these beings are, we think, placed by the Theogony in Oceanic isles ; they may however have dwelt on the opposite coast, though we believe few who are well versed in the cosmology of those times will assign them that gloomy region ; most certainly they are not on this side of Ocean. Hither, however, they were all removed in the course of time, and even to the Syrtes and Cyrene¹³⁰⁶. In short, with the exception of Hesiod, every writer of antiquity places them somewhere in Libya. This however is not to be wondered at, for it is only a part of the system of localisation, which assigned a definite abode in well-known countries to all the beings of fable, which brought for example the transoceanic Kimme-rians over to the fertile plains of Campania in Italy¹³⁰⁷.

Ἅρπυιαι. Harpyiœ. Harpies. §

The Harpies or Snatchers¹³⁰⁸ of Homer¹³⁰⁹ and Hesiod are personifications of storm-winds (θύελλαι). The former says nothing of their form or parentage ; the latter terms them well-haired, (a usual mark of beauty,) and says that they were sisters of Iris, daughters of Thaumas and Electra, swift {p. 255}as birds or as the blasts of wind¹³¹⁰. Their names, he says, are Aello (Storm) and Ocypete (Swift-flyer). Homer says that Xanthos and Balios, the steeds of Achilleus, were the offspring of Zephyros by the Harpy Podarge (Swift-foot), whom he met grazing in a mead by the stream of Ocean¹³¹¹. Virgil names one of the Harpies Celæno¹³¹².

In the Argonautic cycle the Harpies appear as the tormentors of Phineus. They are there represented as odious offensive monsters with female faces, and the bodies, wings, and claws, of birds¹³¹³.

Ἄνεμοι. Venti. Winds. §

The winds are represented in the Ilias as gods¹³¹⁴ : Iris goes to them as they are feasting in the dwelling of Zephyros, to inform them of the prayer of Achilleus that they would inflame the pyre of Patroclos. In the Odyssey¹³¹⁵, the winds are not directed by separate deities, but are all under the charge of Æolos. We may, as a matter of course, observe that the Wind-gods of Homer are not winged.

The Winds were divided into wholesome and noxious. The former, which were Boreas (North), Zephyros (West), and Notos (South), were according to Hesiod¹³¹⁶ the children of Astræos (Starry) and Eôs (Dawn). The other winds, he says¹³¹⁷, (probably meaning only those which blow from the East,) are the race of Typhoeus, whom he describes as the last and most terrible child of Earth. In Greece, as over the rest of Europe, we may observe the east-wind is pernicious.

Boreas (Βορέας) was called Clear weather- or Frost-producer (αἰθρηγενής) ¹³¹⁸. He loved Oreithyia, the daughter of Erechtheus king of Athens, and carried her off¹³¹⁹. The Athenians ascribed {p. 256}the destruction of the fleet of Xerxes by a storm to the partiality of Boreas for the country of Oreithyia, and built a temple to him after that event¹³²⁰. Boreas is also said by Homer¹³²¹ to have turned himself into a horse out of love to the mares of Erichthonios, and to have begotten on them twelve foals.

Zephyros (Ζέϕυρς) is described by Homer as a strong-blowing wind, but he was afterwards regarded as gentle and soft-breathing. Love was the offspring of Zephyros and Iris¹³²², and one of the Seasons bore to this wind-god a son named Carpos (Fruit) ¹³²³.

The South- (Νότος) and East-wind (Εὔρος) have been left without adventures. The Winds have all wings or horses and chariots in the works of the later poets and the artists.

The names Euros and Zephyros probably come from ἠὼς and ζόϕος, which denoted the East and West¹³²⁴. Boreas is thought to be Oreas (from ὄρος), as rushing from the mountains. Notos perhaps signified wet, and is akin to the German nass.

Λωτοϕύγοι Lotophagi. Lotus-eaters. §

Odysseus, when doubling the Cape of Malea in Laconia on his return from Troy¹³³⁵, encountered a violent north-east wind (βορέης), which drove him for nine days along the sea, till he reached the country of the Lotus-eaters. Here, after watering, he sent three of his men to discover who the inhabitants were. These men on coming among the Lotus-eaters were kindly entertained by them, and given some of their own food, the Lotus-plant, to eat. The effect of this plant was such, that those who tasted of it lost all thoughts of home, and wished to remain in that country. It was by main force that Odysseus dragged these men away, and he was even obliged to tie them under the benches of his ship.

As the coast of Cyrene lies opposite the Peloponnese, and is much nearer to it than Egypt is to Crete, we must suppose the country of the Lotus-eaters to have been far more to the west. They seem in the poet’s view to have been the last tribe of ordinary men in that direction, and to have dwelt on the verge of the land of fable. The Lotus, under the name of Jujuba, is, we may observe, a part of the food of the people of the north coast of Africa at the present day.

Κύκλωπϵς. Cyclopes. §

When Odysseus left the country of the Lotus-eaters, he sailed on further, i. e. westwards¹³³⁶, and came to that of the Cyclopes, which could not have been very far distant, or the poet would in that case, as he always does, have specified the number of days occupied in the voyage. The Cyclopes are described as a rude lawless race, who neither planted nor sowed, but whose land was so fertile as spontaneously to produce them wheat, barley, and vines. They had no social {p. 260}institutions, neither assemblies nor laws, but dwelt separately, each in his cave, on the tops of lofty mountains, and each without regard to others governed his own wife and children.

In front of a harbour of their land lay a well-wooded fertile isle, abundantly stocked with goats. But the Cyclopes, having no ships, could not derive any advantage from it. Odysseus, leaving the rest of his fleet at the island, went with one ship to the country of the Cyclopes. Here he entered the cave of the Cyclôps Polyphemos, who was a son of Poseidôn by the nymph Thoösa, the daughter of Phorcys. The Cyclôps on his return in the evening with his flocks, finding strangers there, inquired who they were ; and on Odysseus saying that they had been shipwrecked, and appealing to his mercy and reverence for the gods, he declared that the Cyclopes regarded not the gods, for they were much more powerful than they : he then seized two of the Greeks, and dashing them to the ground like young whelps killed and devoured them. When he fell asleep Odysseus was going to kill him, till recollecting the huge rock, — one which the teams of two-and-twenty fourwheeled waggons could not move, — with which he had closed the door, he refrained. Against the next evening Odysseus had prepared a piece of the Cyclôps’ own olive-staff, which was as large as the mast of a merchant-vessel ; and when the monster had devoured two more of his victims gave him wine to drink, and then while he was sleeping profoundly, heated the stick in the fire, and aided by four of his companions bored out his eye with it. Polyphemos roaring out with pain, the other Cyclopes came to inquire what had befallen him ; but on his informing them that Nobody (Οὔτις) — the name which Odysseus had given himself — was killing him, thinking it was some disease they left him, recommending him to pray to his father. Next morning, when Polyphemos turned out his sheep and goats, his prisoners fastened themselves under their bellies, and so escaped. Odysseus, when a little way out at sea called out his real name, and the Cyclôps hurled immense rocks at him, which were near sinking his ship.

Nothing is said by the poet respecting the size of the {p. 261}Cyclopes in general, but every effort is made to give an exaggerated idea of that of Polyphemos. When Odysseus first sees him, he compares him to ‘a woody peak of lofty mountains, when it appears separate from others.’ The crash of the bundle of wood which he brings home in the evening, when it is cast on the ground, terrifies the Greeks who were hiding in his cave : the teams of twenty-two waggons could not move the rock with which he closed his door : his staff was in length and thickness equal to the mast of a large ship : the first rock which he flings at the ship of Odysseus was ‘the top of a great hill,’ and falling before the vessel it drove her back to the shore ; the second was still larger.

Yet, possibly, we are not to infer that the Cyclopes were in general of such huge dimensions or cannibal habits. Polyphemos was not of the ordinary Cyclôps-race, being the son of Poseidôn and a sea-nymph : he is also said¹³³⁷ to have been the strongest of the Cyclopes. It is not a little remarkable, that neither in the description of the Cyclopes in general, nor of Polyphemos in particular, is there any notice taken of their being one-eyed ; yet in the account of the blinding of the latter, it seems to be assumed as a thing well known. We may hence perhaps infer that Homer followed the usual derivation of the name¹³³⁸.

Both ancients and moderns agree in regarding Sicily as the country of the Cyclopes¹³³⁹ : we however cannot help thinking that it was on the coast of Libya. It lay at no great distance from that of the Lotus-eaters, which was evidently on that coast. The poet merely says, ‘We then sail on further, and come to the land of the Cyclopes ;’ and if it had been an island, he would, as usual, have noticed the circumstance : he would also have told us with what wind they sailed to it, if it had been at anything like the distance which Sicily is from Libya : and further, though the fertility of Sicily may accord with that of the Cyclopes’ land, yet it does not offer the caverns on mountain-tops in which they abode, nor can any island answering to that of the Odyssey, stretching before a harbour, {p. 262}be shown in it. If the little islet of Ortygia in front of Syracuse should be thought of, we reply, that it in no point accords with the description in the poem.

It is thus that the Thunder, Lightning, and Flame of the Theogony became one-eyed giants in the hands of our poet. When they had been localised in the neighbourhood of volcanoes it was a simple process to convert them into smiths, the assistants of Hephæstos¹³⁴⁰. As they were now artists in one line, it gave no surprise to find them engaged in a task adapted to their huge strength, namely that of rearing the massive walls of Tiryns, thence named Cyclopian, for which purpose they were brought by Prœtos from Lycia¹³⁴¹.

Polyphemos’ love for the Nereïs Galateia is well known from the bucolic poets¹³⁴². The river Acis in Sicily was originally a shepherd, whom in his jealous rage the monster crushed beneath a rock for being more acceptable to the nymph of the waters than himself¹³⁴³.

Γίγαντϵς. Gigantes. Giants. §

The Giants would seem to have dwelt westwards of the Cyclopes, the original country of the Phæacians lying between their respective territories¹³⁴⁴. They are called wild tribes (ἄγρια ϕῦλα), but akin to the gods¹³⁴⁵, by whom it would appear they were destroyed for their impiety¹³⁴⁶. They were apparently of huge stature¹³⁴⁷ ; yet the daughter of Eurymedôn, their last king, was by Poseidôn mother of the king of the Phæacians, a people of the ordinary size¹³⁴⁸.

It was probably the poet’s saying that they were destroyed by the gods (though the reverse may be the truth) that gave occasion to the fiction of a Giant-war. The peninsula of Pallene is said to have been the place of conflict, and with the aid of the hero Heracles the gods subdued their formidable foes. The principal champions on the side of the Giants were Porphyriôn, Alcyoneus and Encelados, on the last of whom {p. 263}Athena flung the isle of Sicily, where his motions cause the eruptions of Ætna¹³⁴⁹.

It is said¹³⁵⁰ that Earth, enraged at the destruction of the Giants, brought forth the huge Typhôn to contend with the gods. The stature of this monster reached the sky, fire flashed from his eyes ; he hurled glowing rocks with loud cries and hissing against heaven, and flame and storm rushed from his mouth. The gods in dismay fled to Egypt, and concealed themselves under the forms of various animals. Zeus however, after a severe conflict, overcame him, and placed him beneath Ætna¹³⁵¹, or, as others said¹³⁵²,

………………….. that Serbonian bog,

Betwixt Damieta and Mount Casius old,

Where armies whole have sunk.

Typhon, or Typhaôn, is apparently the same with Typhoeus, though Hesiod makes a difference between them. Their names come from τύϕω, to smoke, and they are evident personifications of storms and of volcanic eruptions. Typhôn is made the sire of the Chimæra, Echidna, and other monsters. The Greeks gave his name to the Egyptian dæmon Baby, the opponent of Osiris.

The flight of the gods into Egypt is a bungling attempt at connecting the Greek mythology with the animal worship of that country¹³⁵³.

Αἴολος ἐν Αἰολίῃ. Æolus in Æolia. §

After their escape from the Cyclôps, Odysseus and his companions sailed further on, and came to the floating-isle (πλώτη νῆσος) of Æolos Hippotades ¹³⁵⁴, ‘dear to the immortal gods.’ This island was entirely surrounded by a wall of brass and by smooth precipitous rocks : and here Æolos dwelt in continual {p. 264}joy and festivity, with his wife and his six sons and as many daughters, whom, after the fashion set by Zeus, he had married to each other. The isle had no other tenants. The office of directing and ruling the winds had been conferred on Æolos by Zeus ; and when he was dismissing Odysseus, after having hospitably entertained him for an entire month, he gave him all the winds but Zephyros tied up in a bag of ox-hide. For nine days and nights the ships ran merrily before the wind : on the tenth they were within sight of Ithaca ; when Odysseus, who had hitherto held the helm himself, fell asleep : his comrades, who fancied that Æolos had given him treasure in the bag, opened it : the winds rushed out, and hurried them back to Æolia. Judging from what had befallen them that they were hated by the gods, the director of the winds drove them with reproaches from his isle.

As Æolia was a floating isle, it is evidently as needless to look for its exact position as for that of Laputa¹³⁵⁵. At the time when Odysseus came to it, it must have been lying near the country of the Cyclopes ; but we are not told whether it remained immovable during the month that he spent in it, or the time that elapsed between his departure and return. The Latin poets, following the later Greeks, have placed Æolos in the Liparæan islands¹³⁵⁶.

Λαιστρυγόνϵς. Læstrygonians. §

The country of the Læstrygonians lay very far to the west. Odysseus, when driven from his isleby Æolos, sailed on further for six days and nights, at the end of which time he reached the land of the Læstrygonians ; and the distance thence to the isle of Ææa, which we shall show to be near the extremity of the Sea, could not have been considerable, as the length of time consumed in the passage thither is not specified.

The Læstrygonians are another of those huge androphagous races, whom the invention of the poet has placed on the coast of Libya. Unlike the Cyclopes, they lived in the social state ; {p. 265}their king was named Antiphates, their town Læstrygonia or Telepylos (it is uncertain which), and the fountain near it Artakia. There was a port at a little distance from the city, which all the ships of Odysseus, but the one he was himself on board of, entered. A herald with two others were then sent to the city : they met the daughter of Antiphates at the fount Artakia, and were by her directed to her father’s house. On entering it they were terrified at the sight of his wife, who was ‘as large as the top of a mountain.’ She instantly called her husband from the market-place, who seized one of them and killed and dressed him for dinner. The other two made their escape, pursued by the Læstrygonians, who with huge rocks destroyed all the ships and their crews which were within the harbour, — that of Odysseus, which had not entered, alone escaping.

When describing the country of the Læstrygonians, the poet says¹³⁵⁷,

Lamos’ high town,

Far-gated Læstrygonia, where aloud

The herdsman as he drives in calls, and he

Who drives out hears him. There a sleepless man

Might double wages earn ; as neatherd one,

And one as keeper of the snowy sheep ;

For near the paths are of the day and night.

The ancients explained this by the custom of pasturing the oxen at night, on account of the gad-fly (οἶστρος), whose persecution was thereby avoided : but, as Völcker justly observes, there was nothing so remarkable in this practice as to induce the poet to place it among the wonders of the West. It is much more probable that the solution of the difficulty will be found in the notion, presently to be noticed, of the abode of the Sun and Dawn being in the West, which may have engendered a belief that at the western extremity of the earth the night was of extremely short continuance¹³⁵⁸.

Notwithstanding the great distance which lay between the country of the Cyclopes and that of the Læstrygonians, most of the localisers of the Homeric fables place both of them in {p. 266}Sicily¹³⁵⁹. Others regarded Formiæ on the west coast of Italy¹³⁶⁰ as the abode of the Læstrygonians ; acting in this consistently : for when the floating island of Æolos was determined to be one of the Liparæan isles, and the cape of Circæum to be that of Circe, it followed of course that the land of the Læstrygonians which lay somewhere between them must be on the coast of Italy.

Κίρκη ἐν Αἰαίῃ. Circe in Ææa. §

When Odysseus and his surviving companions had escaped from the Læstrygonians, they sailed on, that is still westwards, till they came to the isle of Ææa¹³⁶¹, the abode of Circe. This isle may be regarded as the most westerly of those scattered by the poet over the Mediterranean, for it appears to have lain on the very edge of the Ocean-stream ; and all the other isles and coasts mentioned in the poem, except Ogygia the isle of Calypso, lie manifestly between it and Greece.

Circe is one of those deities whom Homer calls human-speaking (αὐδήϵσσαι), and who do not seem to have possessed the power of moving through the air or along the water, but dwelt continually in one place. She is said by him¹³⁶² to be the daughter of Helios by the Oceanis Persa, and own sister of the wise (ὀλοόϕρων)¹³⁶³ Æætes.

The island of Circe was small ; her abode was in the centre of it, deeply embosomed in wood. She dwelt alone, attended by four nymphs ; and all persons who approached her dwelling were turned by her magic art into swine. When the comrades of Odysseus, whom he sent to explore her residence, had tasted of the drugged draught which she set before them, {p. 267}she struck them with her wand, and immediately they underwent the usual change. But when Odysseus himself, hearing of their misfortune, set out to release them or share their fate, he was met by Hermes, who gave him a plant named Moly, potent against her magic, and directed him how to act. Accordingly when she reached him the medicated bowl he drank of it freely, and Circe thinking it had produced its usual effect, striking him with her wand bade him go join his comrades in their sty. But Odysseus drawing his sword threatened to slay her ; and the terrified goddess bound herself by a solemn oath to do him no injury. She afterwards at his desire restored his companions to their pristine form, and they all abode in her dwelling for an entire year.

At the end of that period they were anxious to depart, but the goddess told the hero that he must previously cross the Ocean, and enter the abode of Aïdes, to consult the blind prophet Teiresias. Accordingly they left Ææa rather late in the day, as it would appear, and impelled by a favouring north wind their ship reached by sunset the opposite coast of Ocean, the land of perpetual gloom. Odysseus obeyed the directions of the goddess in digging a small pit, into which he poured mulse, wine, water, flour, and the blood of the victims. The dead came trooping out of the house of Aïdes, and Odysseus there saw the heroines of former days, and conversed with the shades of Agamemnôn and Achilleus. Terror at length came over him ; he hastened back to his ship ; the stream carried it along, and they reached Ææa while it was yet night.

We have here a proof that the course of the Ocean was northwards ; the north-wind (βορέας) is required to carry them over (the House of Aïdes lying probably south-west of Ææa), and the current and the breeze of its surface bring them back. It would also appear that, as soon as the ship left the Ocean and entered the Sea, it was at Ææa.

Circe is said to have had by Odysseus a son named Telegonos (Far-born), who, as we shall see, unwittingly slew his own father. The Theogony¹³⁶⁴ gives them for offspring Agrios and Latinos, ‘who afar in the recess of the holy isles ruled {p. 268}over all the renowned Tyrsenians.’ Hesiod said elsewhere¹³⁶⁵ that Helios had brought Circe in his chariot to her isle off the coast of Tyrrhenia.

It is curious to observe the liberties which the later writers allowed themselves to take with the narratives of Homer and Hesiod. These poets expressly say that Æætes and Circe were brother and sister, and children of the Sun, yet Dionysius the cyclographer makes Circe the daughter of Æætes by Hecate, the daughter of his brother Perses. This pragmatiser goes on to say that she was married to the king of the Sarmatians, whom she poisoned, and seized his kingdom ; but governing tyrannically she was expelled, and then fled to a desert isle of the Ocean, or as some said to the headland named from her in Italy¹³⁶⁶ ; for in the localisation of the imaginary isles and regions visited by Odysseus, the promontory of Circæum on the coast of Latium was fixed on for the abode of Circe. The fact of its not being an island offered no difficulty, as it was asserted that it once had been surrounded with water to a great extent¹³⁶⁷.

The Latin poets thence took occasion to connect Circe with their own scanty mythology. It was fabled, for example, that she had been married to king Picus, whom by her magic art she changed into a bird¹³⁶⁸. Another legend made her the mother of Faunus by the god of the sea¹³⁶⁹.

The Moly (μῶλν), is said by these late writers to have sprung from the blood of a giant slain by Helios, in aid of his daughter in her island. Its name, we are told, comes from the fight (μῶλος) ; its flower is white, as the warrior was the Sun¹³⁷⁰.

In Ææa, the poet says¹³⁷¹, are ‘the house and dance-place of Eôs, and the rising of the Sun.’ By this he is usually understood to mean that Ææa, in opposition to the country beyond the Ocean, from which his hero had just returned, lay within the realms of day¹³⁷². This may very possibly be the truth ; {p. 269}but we cannot help fancying that our poet, in the plenitude of his authority, had seized on the Argonautic cycle, and transferred Æætes and Ææa to the West, from their proper place in the East¹³⁷³ ; and he may have retained the description of Ææa, which accords perfectly with its eastern position¹³⁷⁴, but which requires a sleight of ingenuity, like that just noticed, to make it suit the West.

On surveying the ‘beautiful wonders’ of the Odyssey, it is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance which many of them bear to those of the Thousand and One Nights. Odysseus and Circe remind us at once of king Beder and queen Labe ; and the Cyclopes and the Læstrygonians will find their parallel in the adventures of Sindbad. Are these, it may be asked, mere coincidences, or did the tales of the West find their way to the East ? On this question we have offered some remarks elsewhere, to which we must refer the curious¹³⁷⁵.

Σϵιρῆνϵς. Sirenes. Sirens. §

Leaving Ææa on their homeward voyage, Odysseus and his companions came first to the island of the Sirens. These were two maidens¹³⁷⁶ who sat in a mead close to the sea, and with their melodious voices so charmed those who were sailing by, that they forgot home and everything relating to it, and abode there till their bones lay whitening on the strand. By the directions of Circe, Odysseus stopped the ears of his companions with wax, and had himself tied to the mast, and thus was the only person who heard the song of the Sirens and escaped.

Hesiod¹³⁷⁷ described the mead of the Sirens as blooming with flowers (ἀνθϵμόϵσσα), and their voice he said¹³⁷⁸ stilled the winds. Their names were said to be Aglaiopheme (Clear-voice) and Thelxiepeia (Magic-speech) ; and it was feigned that they threw themselves into the sea with vexation at the escape of Odysseus¹³⁷⁹. But the author of the Orphic Argonautics places them {p. 270}on a rock near the shore of Ætna, and makes the song of Orpheus end their enchantment, and cause them to fling themselves into the sea, where they were changed into rocks¹³⁸⁰.

It was afterwards fabled that they were the daughters of the river-god Acheloös by the Muse Terpsichore or Calliope, or by Sterope, daughter of Porthaôn¹³⁸¹. Some said that they sprang from the blood which ran from him when his horn was torn off by Heracles¹³⁸². Sophocles calls them the daughters of Phorcys¹³⁸³ ; and Euripides terms them the children of Earth¹³⁸⁴. Their number was also increased to three, and their names are given with much variety. According to some they were called Leucosia, Ligeia and Parthenope¹³⁸⁵, while others named them Thelxiope or Thelxinoe, Molpe, Aglaophonos¹³⁸⁶ ; and others, again, Peisinoe, Aglaope, Thelxiepeia¹³⁸⁷. One was said to play on the lyre, another on the pipes, and the third to sing¹³⁸⁸.

Contrary to the usual process, the mischievous part of the character of the Sirens was in process of time left out, and they were regarded as purely musical beings with entrancing voices. Hence Plato in his Republic¹³⁸⁹ places one of them on each of the eight celestial spheres, where their voices form what is called the music of the spheres ; and when (Ol. 94, l.) the Lacedæmonians had laid siege to Athens, Dionysos, it is said, appeared in a dream to their general, Lysander, ordering him to allow the funeral rites of the new Siren to be {p. 271}celebrated, which was at once understood to be Sophocles, then just dead¹³⁹⁰.

Eventually, however, the artists laid hold on the Sirens, and furnished them with the feathers, feet, wings, and tails of birds.

The ordinary derivation of the word Siren is from σϵίρα, a chain, to signify their attractive power. To us the Semitic Shîr (שּﬧ), song, seems more likely to be the true root, and we regard them as one of the wonders told of by the Phœnician mariners¹³⁹¹.

Σκύλλη καὶ Χάρυβδις. Scylla and Charybdis. §

Having escaped the Sirens, and shunned the Wandering Rocks, which Circe had told him lay beyond the mead of these songsters, Odysseus came to the terrific Scylla and Charybdis, between which the goddess had informed him his course lay. She said¹³⁹² he would come to two lofty cliffs opposite each other, between which he must pass. One of these cliffs towers to such a height that its summit is for ever enveloped in clouds, and no man even if he had twenty hands and as many feet could ascend it. In the middle of this cliff, she says, is a cave facing the west, but so high that a man in a ship passing under it could not shoot up to it with a bow. In this den dwells Scylla (Bitch), whose voice sounds like that of a young whelp : she has twelve feet, and six long necks, with a terrific head and three rows of close-set teeth on each. Evermore she stretches out these necks and catches the porpoises, sea-dogs, and other large animals of the sea which swim by, and out of every ship that passes each mouth takes a man.

The opposite rock, the goddess informs him, is much lower, for a man could shoot over it. A wild fig-tree grows on it, stretching its branches down to the water : but beneath, {p. 272}‘divine Charybdis’ three times each day absorbs and regorges the dark water. It is much more dangerous, she adds, to pass Charybdis than Scylla.

As Odysseus sailed by, Scylla took six of his crew ; and when, after he had lost his ship and companions, he was carried by wind and wave, as he floated on a part of the wreck, between the monsters, the mast by which he supported himself was sucked in by Charybdis. He held by the fig-tree till it was thrown out again, and resumed his voyage.

Such is the earliest account we have of these monsters, in which indeed it may be doubted if Charybdis is to be regarded as an animate being. The whole fable is evidently founded on the wonderful tales of sailors respecting the distant regions of the Mediterranean. The ancients, who were so anxious to localise all the wonders of Homer, made the straits of Messina the abode of Scylla and Charybdis ; but as there is no whirlpool there at all resembling Charybdis, the most that can be said is, that that strait may have given occasion to the fable. Homer, however, would seem to place the cliffs of Scylla and Charybdis somewhere between the Wandering Rocks and Thrinakia (if this last be Sicily) ; for it is after passing those rocks that Odysseus comes to the latter island, on which the oxen of the Sun grazed.

In Homer the mother of Scylla is named Cratæis¹³⁹³ ; but her sire is not spoken of. Stesichorus called her mother Lamia¹³⁹⁴ ; Hesiod said she was the daughter of Phorbas and Hecate¹³⁹⁵ ; Arcesilaos said, of Phorcys and Hecate¹³⁹⁶ ; others asserted that Tritôn was her sire¹³⁹⁷.

Later poets feigned that Scylla was once a beautiful maiden, who was fond of associating with the Nereïdes. The sea-god Glaucos beheld and fell in love with her¹³⁹⁸ ; and being rejected, applied to Circe to exercise her magic arts in his favour. Circe {p. 273}wished him to transfer his affections to herself ; and filled with rage at his refusal, she infected with noxious juices the water in which Scylla was wont to bathe, and thus transformed her into a monster¹³⁹⁹. According to another account the change in Scylla’s form was effected by Amphitrite, in consequence of her intimacy with Poseidôn¹⁴⁰⁰. Charybdis was said to have been a woman who stole the oxen of Heracles, and was in consequence struck with thunder by Zeus, and turned into a whirlpool¹⁴⁰¹.

Φαέθοσα καὶ Λαμττϵτίη ἐν Θρινακίη. Phaëthusa and Lampetia in Thrinakia. §

Both Teiresias and Circe¹⁴⁰² had straitly charged Odysseus to shun the isle of Thrinakia, on which the flocks and herds of the Sun-god fed, under the care of his daughters Phaëthusa and Lampetia, and to which he would come immediately after escaping Scylla and Charybdis. Odysseus was desirous of obeying the injunctions which he had received ; but as it was evening when he came to the island, his companions forced him to consent to their landing and passing the night there. They promised to depart in the morning, and took an oath to abstain from the cattle of the Sun. During the night a violent storm came on ; and for an entire month afterwards a strong south-east wind (Euros and Notos) blew, which confined them to the island. When their provisions were exhausted, they lived on such birds and fish as they could catch. At length, while Odysseus was sleeping, Eurylochos prevailed on them to slaughter some of the sacred oxen in sacrifice to the gods, and to vow by way of amends a temple to Helios¹⁴⁰³. Odysseus on awaking was filled with horror and despair at what they had done ; and the displeasure of the gods was manifested by {p. 274}prodigies ; for the hides crept along the ground, and the flesh lowed on the spits. They fed for six days on the sacred cattle ; on the seventh the storm fell, and they left the island ; but as soon as they had lost sight of land, a terrible west-wind, accompanied by thunder, lightning, and pitch darkness, came on. Zeus struck the ship with a thunderbolt : it went to pieces, and all the sacrilegious crew were drowned.

The resemblance between Thrinakia and Trinacria¹⁴⁰⁴, a name of Sicily, has induced both ancients and moderns to acquiesce in the opinion of the two islands being identical. Against this opinion we will observe, that Thrinakia was a desert isle (νῆσος ἐρήμηη)¹⁴⁰⁵, that is, an uninhabited isle ; and that during the whole month that Odysseus and his men were in it they did not meet with any one, and could procure no food but birds and fish ; that it is called the excellent isle of the god¹⁴⁰⁶, whose peculiar property it therefore must have been ; that according to the analogy of the Odyssey it must have been a small island, for such were Ææa, Ogygia, and all that we meet ; — not one of which circumstances agrees with Sicily. It seems therefore the more probable supposition, that the poet regarded Thrinakia as an islet of about the same size as those of Circe and Calypso, belonging to the Sun-god, and tenanted only by his flocks and herds, and his two daughters their keepers. He must also have conceived it to lie much more to the west than Sicily, for it could not have been more than the third day after leaving Ææa that Odysseus arrived at it.

Καλυψ ἐν Ὠγυγίῃ. Calypso in Ogygia. §

Odysseus, when his ship had gone to pieces, fastened the mast and keel together, and placed himself on them. The wind changing to the south-east (νότος) carried him back to Scylla and Charybdis. As he came by the latter, she absorbed the mast and keel, but the hero caught hold of the fig-tree, and held by it till they were thrown out again. He then floated along for nine days ; and on the tenth reached Ogygia¹⁴⁰⁷, the {p. 275}isle of Calypso, by whom he was most kindly received and entertained. She detained him there for eight years, designing to make him immortal, and to keep him with her for ever : but Hermes arriving with a command from Zeus, she was obliged to consent to his departure. She gave the hero tools to build a raft or light vessel, supplied him with provisions, and reluctantly took a final leave of him.

Calypso, that is The Concealer (the poet after his usual manner giving her a significant name), is called by Homer¹⁴⁰⁸ the daughter of Atlas : Hesiod¹⁴⁰⁹ makes her an Oceanis, and Apollodorus¹⁴¹⁰ a Nereïs. Like Circe she was a human-speaking goddess, and dwelt in solitary state with her attendant nymphs ; but her abode was a cavern, while the daughter of Helios possessed a mansion of cut stone. Her isle presented such a scene of silvan beauty as charmed even Hermes, one of the dwellers of Olympos¹⁴¹¹.

The poet seems to have conceived Ogygia to lie in the northwestern part of the West-sea, far remote from all the other isles and coasts ; and he thus brought his hero into all parts of that sea, and informed his auditors of all its wonders. A south-east wind carried Odysseus thither on his mast in nine days and nights from Charybdis. When he left Ogygia, sailing on his raft, as directed by Calypso, with the constellation of the Bear on his left, that is in an easterly or southeasterly direction, he came on the eighteenth day within sight of Scheria, the country of the Phæacians.

Οἱ Φαίηκς ἐν Σχϵρίῃ. The Phæacians in Scheria. §

The Phæacians dwelt originally, we are told, in Hypereia, near the Cyclopes¹⁴¹² ; but being oppressed by that savage race, they migrated to the isle of Scheria. They were led thither by their king Nausithoös, the son of Poseidôn by Peribœa the youngest daughter of Eurymedôn king of the Giants¹⁴¹³. They were, like the Cyclopes and Giants, a people akin to the gods¹⁴¹⁴, {p. 276}who appeared manifestly, and feasted among them when they offered sacrifices¹⁴¹⁵, and did not conceal themselves from solitary wayfarers when they met them¹⁴¹⁶. They had abundance of wealth, and lived in the enjoyment of it undisturbed by the alarms of war ; for as they ‘dwelt remote from gain-seeking man’¹⁴¹⁷, no enemy ever approached their shores ; and they did not even require to make use of bows and quivers¹⁴¹⁸. Their chief employment was navigation : their ships, which went with the velocity of the wing of birds or of thought¹⁴¹⁹, were, like the Argo, endued with intelligence : they knew every port, and needed no pilot when impelled by the rowers¹⁴²⁰.

As Odysseus sailed on his raft from Ogygia, the isle of Scheria appeared to him on the eighteenth day ‘like a shield in the dark sea’¹⁴²¹ ; and when the storm by which Poseidôn destroyed his raft had subsided, he was carried along, as he swam, by a strong northerly wind for two days and nights, and on the third day he got on shore in that island¹⁴²². The princess Nausicaa, when reproving the false alarm of her maids at the sight of him, says¹⁴²³, “Do you think he is an enemy ? There is not a living mortal, nor will there be, who will come bearing war to the land of the Phæacians ; for they are very dear to the Immortals. We dwell apart in the wavefull sea, the last ; nor does any other mortal mingle with us : but this is some unfortunate wanderer who has come hither.” In another place, when noticing the occasion for scandal which her appearance in company with Odysseus might give, she supposes some one to say¹⁴²⁴, “Is it some stranger who has strayed from his ship that she has taken under her care, since there are no people near us ?” All this would seem to indicate some very remote position ; and a passage in which Alcinoös says, that the Phæacians had conveyed Rhadamanthys to Eubœa¹⁴²⁵ and returned on the same day, might lead to the supposition of Scheria being to the west of Ithaca ; for the {p. 277}abode of Rhadamanthys was the Elysian Plain on the shore of Ocean¹⁴²⁶. It was on the west side of Ithaca, we may observe, that the Phæacians landed Odysseus ; and if we are right in placing the Cyclopes on the coast of Libya, Scheria most probably lay in the sea somewhere to the north of it. The truth is, the Phæacians and their island are altogether as imaginary as any of the isles and tribes which we have already noticed, — all as ideal as those visited by Sindbad or Gulliver, — a circumstance which in reality gives additional charms to this most delightful poem¹⁴²⁷.

The place determined by both ancients and moderns to be Scheria is the island of Corcyra¹⁴²⁸, the modern Corfu, which lies at a very short distance from the coast of Epeiros. It would not perhaps be allowable to urge, that the circumstances of the preceding paragraph do not by any means apply to Corcyra, for we know not what the Ionian Singer’s idea of it may have been. All we will say is, that his language respecting it accords much better with some imaginary western isle than with Corcyra ; and that if the Cyclopes were on the coast of Libya, Corcyra could not have been Scheria. The firm persuasion of the identity of these two islands seems to have been produced by two passages of the poem, the one in which Eurymedusa, the attendant of Nausicaa, is said to have been brought from Apeiros, which is taken to be Epeiros¹⁴²⁹ ; the other the fictitious narrative of Odysseus to Penelope¹⁴³⁰, in which, speaking in an assumed character, he says that Odysseus, when shipwrecked after leaving Thrinakia, had reached Scheria, and had gone thence to Thesprotia, which was consequently supposed to be near it ; and as Corcyra was the principal island in that direction, it was at once inferred to be that of the Phæacians. Völcker lays great stress on the circumstance of Penelope seeing nothing incongruous in the narrative ; but it surely does not follow that she knew {p. 278}anything of either Thrinakia or Scheria, and Odysseus may have taken the liberty of assigning a false position to this last place. We finally think, that if Thesprotia and its oracle at Dodona were so well known to the poet as they seem to have been, he never could have described the Phæacians, supposing Corcyra to be their island, as dwelling so remote.

Two islands remain to be considered, in order to finish our view of the isles and coasts of the Homeric West-sea. These are

Ὀρτγία καὶ Συρία. Ortygia and Syria. §

Calypso says¹⁴³¹ to Hermes, that ‘rose-fingered’ Eôs took Oriôn, and that ‘gold-seated’ Artemis slew him with her gentle darts in Ortygia. Eumæos¹⁴³², describing his native isle Syria, says that it lies beyond (καθύπϵρθϵν) Ortygia, where are the turnings (τρπαὶ) of the sun. Syria, he proceeds, is not large, but it is fruitful, abounding in sheep, in pasturage, in vines, and in corn : it is never visited by famine or by any disease ; but when the people grow old, ‘silver-bowed Apollo comes with Artemis and kills them with his gentle darts.’ It contained two towns ; between the inhabitants of which, who were governed by one king, all things in it were divided. The Phœnicians and Taphians visited it for the sake of trade.

It is almost impossible, we should think, not to recognise in Ortygia and Syria two happy isles of the West-sea, apparently sacred to Apollo and Artemis ; and we must marvel at those ancients and moderns who place them in the Ægæan, making the one the same as Delos¹⁴³³, and the other identical with Syros, one of the Cyclades¹⁴³⁴. The Phœnicians, be it observed, who stole away Eumæos, sailed with a favourable wind {p. 279}homewards during six days : on the seventh Eumæos’ nurse died, and wind and water carried them on to Ithaca, where they sold him to Laërtes. Their course was therefore evidently from the west or north-west toward Sidôn, as Ithaca lay in their way. When however the Greeks settled in Sicily, they named the islet before the port of Syracuse Ortygia ; and the tongue of land opposite to it was probably pronounced to be Syria.

The ‘turnings of the sun’ seems merely to denote a westerly position, and to be an expression of the same nature with that of the ‘risings of the sun’ being in Ææa. Müller¹⁴³⁵ sees in it a reference to the sun-dial of Pherecydes of Syros, and regards the verse which mentions it as the interpolation of a rhapsodist.

The narrative of Eumæos may serve to throw some light on the trade of the Phœnicians in those early ages. Supposing Syria to have lain to the west of Greece, it follows that this people were known to make commercial voyages in that direction ; and we may also collect from it that it was chiefly ornamental articles (ἀθύρματα) which they offered for sale. The ship whose crew carried off Eumæos continued an entire year at Syria, to dispose of her cargo and lay in one in return, — a circumstance which may tend to illustrate the three years’ voyages of the fleets of king Solomon¹⁴³⁶. It also appears that the Greeks made voyages to both the East and the West ; for the nurse of Eumæos was daughter of Arybas a wealthy Sidonian, who had been carried away from her native country by Taphian pirates, and sold to the father of Eumæos.

We have now completed our survey of the magic isles and coasts, the mild and savage tribes, the gentle or pernicious goddesses, with which poetic imagination, working probably on the ‘shipman’s tale’ of marvellous adventure and frequent peril, had filled the little-explored waters of the Mediterranean. While presenting our own hypothesis respecting them, {p. 280}we wish not to conceal those of others, or dogmatically demand assent to what we advance. Our object has been to endeavour by these elucidations to enhance the delight which every person of taste must feel when perusing one of the most charming monuments of human genius, — the Odyssey of Homer.

Farewell ye continents, and of the deep

Ye isles, and Ocean’s waters, and the Sea’s

Great streams, ye springs and rivers, and ye hills

Wood-hung ; for I have now gone o’er the whole

Flood of the sea, and all the winding track

Of continents. But may the blissful gods

Themselves the meed due to my song bestow¹⁴³⁷