Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore
The first idea of this History was conceived many years ago, at a time when ancient Hellas was known to the English public chiefly through the pages of Mitford; and my purpose in writing it was to rectify the erroneous statements as to matter of fact which that History contain...
The first idea of this History was conceived many years ago, at a time when ancient Hellas was known to the English public chiefly through the pages of Mitford; and my purpose i...
2. CHAPTER I.Opening of the mythical world.—How the mythes are to be told.—Allegory rarely admissible.—Zeus—foremost in Grecian conception.—The gods—how conceived: human type enlarged.—Past...
3. CHAPTER II.Races of men as they appear in the Hesiodic “Works and Days.”—The Golden.—The Silver.—The Brazen.—The Heroic.—The Iron.—Different both from the Theogony and from Homer.—Explanat...
4. CHAPTER III.Iapetids in Hesiod.—Promêtheus and Epimêtheus.—Counter-manœuvring of Promêtheus and Zeus.—Pandôra.—Pandôra in the Theogony.—General feeling of the poet.—Man wretched, but Zeus n...
5. CHAPTER IV.Structure and purposes of Grecian genealogies.—To connect the Grecian community with their common god.—Lower members of the genealogy historical—higher members non-historical.—T...
6. CHAPTER V.Deukaliôn, son of Promêtheus.—Phthiôtis: his permanent seat.—General deluge.—Salvation of Deukaliôn and Pyrrha.—Belief in this deluge throughout Greece.—Hellên and Amphiktyôn.—S...
7. CHAPTER VI.Legends of Greece, originally isolated, afterwards thrown into series.—_Æolus._—His seven sons and five daughters.—1. _First Æolid line_—Salmôneus, Tyrô.—Pelias and Nêleus.—Pêrô...
8. CHAPTER VII.Misfortunes and celebrity of the Pelopids.—Pelops—eponym of Peloponnêsus.—Deduction of the sceptre of Pelops.—Kingly attributes of the family.—Homeric Pelops.—Lydia, Pisa, etc.,...
9. CHAPTER VIII.Lelex—autochthonous in Lacônia.—Tyndareus and Lêda.—Offspring of Lêda.—1. Castôr, Timandra, Klytæmnêstra, 2. Pollux, Helen.—Castôr and Pollux.—Legend of the Attic Dekeleia.—Idas...
10. CHAPTER IX.Pelasgus.—Lykaôn and his fifty sons.—Legend of Lykaôn—ferocity punished by the gods.—Deep religious faith of Pausanias.—His view of past and present world.—Kallistô and Arkas.—A...
11. CHAPTER XÆakus—son of Zeus and Ægina.—Offspring of Æakus—Pêleus, Telamôn, Phôkus.—Prayers of Æakus—procure relief for Greece—Phôkus killed by Pêleus and Telamôn.—Telamôn, banished, goes...
12. CHAPTER XI.Erechtheus—autochthonous.—Attic legends—originally from different roots—each dême had its own.—Little noticed by the old epic poets.—Kekrops.—Kranaus—Pandiôn.—Daughters of Pandi...
13. CHAPTER XII.Minôs and Rhadamanthus, sons of Zeus.—Europê.—Pasiphaê and the Minôtaur.—Scylla and Nisus.—Death of Androgeos, and anger of Minôs against Athens.—Athenian victims for the Minôta...
14. CHAPTER XIII.Ship Argô in the Odyssey.—In Hesiod and Eumêlus.—Jasôn and his heroic companions.—Lêmnos.—Adventures at Kyzikus, in Bithynia, etc.—Hêraklês and Hylas.—Phineus.—Dangers of the Sy...
15. CHAPTER XIV.Abundant legends of Thêbes.—Amphiôn and Zethus, Homeric founders of Kadmus and Bœôtus—both distinct legends.—Thêbes.—How Thêbes was founded by Kadmus.—Five primitive families at...
16. CHAPTER XV.Great extent and variety of the tale of Troy.—Dardanus, son of Zeus.—Ilus, founder of Ilium.—Walls of Ilium built by Poseidôn.—Capture of Ilium by Hêraklês.—Priam and his offspr...
17. CHAPTER XVI.The mythes formed the entire mental stock of the early Greeks.—State of mind out of which they arose.—Tendency to universal personification.—Absence of positive knowledge—suppli...
18. CHAPTER XVII.Μῦθος—_Sage_—an universal manifestation of the human mind.—Analogy of the Germans and Celts with the Greeks.—Differences between them.—Grecian poetry matchless.—Grecian progress...
19. CHAPTER I.The mythical world of the Greeks opens with the gods, anterior as well as superior to man: it gradually descends, first to heroes, and next to the human race. Along with the god...
20. xxii. Pherekydês partially deviated from the mythical track orpersonal successions set forth by Hesiod. ἐπεὶ οἵ γε ~μεμιγμένοι~ αὐτῶν καὶ ~τῷ μὴ μυθικῶς~ ἅπαντα λέγειν, οἷον Φερεκύδης καὶ ἑτεροί τινες, etc. (Aristot. Metaphys. N. p. 301, e...
21. CHAPTER II.The Hesiodic theogony gives no account of anything like a creation of man, nor does it seem that such an idea was much entertained in the legendary vein of Grecian imagination;...
22. CHAPTER III.The sons of the Titan god Iapetus, as described in the Hesiodic theogony, are Atlas, Menœtius, Promêtheus and Epimêtheus.[160] Of these, Atlas alone is mentioned by Homer in the...
23. CHAPTER IV.In the retrospective faith of a Greek, the ideas of worship and ancestry coalesced. Every association of men, large or small, in whom there existed a feeling of present union, t...
24. part i. pp. 3-13.The Greek inhabitants at Tarsus in Cilicia traced their origin to Argos: their story was, that Triptolemus had been sent forth from that town in quest of the wandering Iô, that...
25. CHAPTER V.In the Hesiodic Theogony, as well as in the “Works and Days,” the legend of Promêtheus and Epimêtheus presents an import religious, ethical, and social, and in this sense it is...
26. CHAPTER VI.If two of the sons of Hellên, Dôrus and Xuthus, present to us families comparatively unnoticed in mythical narrative, the third son, Æolus, richly makes up for the deficiency. F...
27. i. 9, 3) treats this as another Sisyphus, whereby he destroysthe suitableness of the predicate as regards Odysseus. The duplication and triplication of synonymous personages is an ordinary resource for the purpose of reducing the legends...
28. c. 31) the ram of Phryxus was after all a man named Krios, aThe legend of Athamas connects itself with some sanguinary religious rites and very peculiar family customs, which prevailed at Alos, in Achaia Phthiôtis, down to a time[273] la...
29. CHAPTER VII.Among the ancient legendary genealogies, there was none which figured with greater splendor, or which attracted to itself a higher degree of poetical interest and pathos, than t...
30. CHAPTER VIII.The earliest names in Lacônian genealogy are, an autochthonous Lelex and a Naiad nymph Kleochareia. From this pair sprung a son Eurôtas, and from him a daughter Sparta, who beca...
31. CHAPTER IX.The Arcadian divine or heroic pedigree begins with Pelasgus, whom both Hesiod and Asius considered as an indigenous man, though Akusilaus the Argeian represented him as brother...
32. CHAPTER X.The memorable heroic genealogy of the Æakids establishes a fabulous connection between Ægina, Salamis, and Phthia, which we can only recognize as a fact, without being able to t...
33. CHAPTER XI.The most ancient name in Attic archæology, as far as our means of information reach, is that of Erechtheus, who is mentioned both in the Catalogue of the Iliad and in a brief al...
34. CHAPTER XII.Minôs and Rhadamanthus, according to Homer, are sons of Zeus, by Europê,[522] daughter of the widely-celebrated Phœnix, born in Krête. Minôs is the father of Deukaliôn, whose so...
35. CHAPTER XIII.The ship Argô was the theme of many songs during the oldest periods of the Grecian epic, even earlier than the Odyssey. The king Æêtês, from whom she is departing, the hero Jasô...
36. xlii. 3, whose statements illustrate the way in which men found apresent home and application for the old fables,—“Jason, primus humanorum post Herculem et Liberum, qui reges Orientis fuisse traduntur, eam cœli plagam domuisse dicitur. Cum Al...
37. v. 66) is instructive upon this point, as upon the geographyof the Greek poets generally. He recognizes the purely mythical character of Æa in Homer and Hesiod, but he tries to prove—unsuccessfully, in my judgment—that Homer places Æêtês...
38. CHAPTER XIV.The Bϙtians generally, throughout the historical age, though well endowed with bodily strength and courage,[617] are represented as proverbially deficient in intelligence, tast...
39. CHAPTER XV.We now arrive at the capital and culminating point of the Grecian epic,—the two sieges and capture of Troy, with the destinies of the dispersed heroes, Trojan as well as Grecian...
40. CHAPTER XVI.The preceding sections have been intended to exhibit a sketch of that narrative matter, so abundant, so characteristic and so interesting, out of which early Grecian history and...
41. book 11. chap. 4. p. 592; Varro ap. Augustin. Civitat. Dei, vi.[973] Plutarch. de Isid. et Osirid. c. 66. p. 377; c. 70. p. 379. Compare on this subject O. Müller, Prolegom. Mythol. p. 59 _seq._, and Eckermann, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschic...
42. CHAPTER XVII.I have already remarked that the existence of that popular narrative talk, which the Germans express by the significant word _Sage_ or _Volks-Sage_, in a greater or less degree...