xxii. Pherekydês partially deviated from the mythical track or

personal 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, ed. Brandis). Porphyrias, de Antro Nymphar. c. 31, καὶ τοῦ Συρίου Φερεκύδου μυχοὺς καὶ βόθρους καὶ ἄντρα καὶ θύρας καὶ πύλας λέγοντος, καὶ διὰ τούτων αἰνιττομένου τὰς τῶν ψυχῶν γενέσεις καὶ ἀπογενέσεις, etc. Eudêmus the Peripatetic, pupil of Aristotle, had drawn up an account of the Orphic Theogony as well as of the doctrines of Pherekydês, Akusilaus and others, which was still in the hands of the Platonists of the fourth century, though it is now lost. The extracts which we find seem all to countenance the belief that the Hesiodic Theogony formed the basis upon which they worked. See about Akusilaus, Plato, Sympos. p. 178. Clem. Alex. Strom. p. 629.

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

The Hesiodic Theogony, though later in date than the Iliad and Odyssey, was coeval with the earliest period of what may be called Grecian history, and certainly of an age earlier than 700 B. C. It appears to have been widely circulated in Greece, and being at once ancient and short, the general public consulted it as their principal source of information respecting divine antiquity. The Orphic Theogony belongs to a later date, and contains the Hesiodic ideas and persons, enlarged and mystically disguised: its vein of invention was less popular, adapted more to the contemplation of a sect specially prepared than to the taste of a casual audience, and it appears accordingly to have obtained currency chiefly among purely speculative men.[42] Among the majority of these latter, however, it acquired greater veneration, and above all was supposed to be of greater antiquity, than the Hesiodic. The belief in its superior antiquity (disallowed by Herodotus, and seemingly also by Aristotle[43]), as well as the respect for its contents, increased during the Alexandrine age and through the declining centuries of Paganism, reaching its maximum among the New-Platonists of the third and fourth century after Christ: both the Christian assailants, as well as the defenders, of paganism, treated it as the most ancient and venerable summary of the Grecian faith. Orpheus is celebrated by Pindar as the harper and companion of the Argonautic maritime heroes: Orpheus and Musæus, as well as Pamphôs and Olên, the great supposed authors of theogonic, mystical, oracular, and prophetic verses and hymns, were generally considered by literary Greeks as older than either Hesiod or Homer:[44] and such was also the common opinion of modern scholars until a period comparatively recent. It has now been shown, on sufficient ground, that the compositions which passed under these names emanate for the most part from poets of the Alexandrine age, and subsequent to the Christian æra; and that even the earliest among them, which served as the stock on which the later additions were engrafted, belong to a period far more recent than Hesiod; probably to the century preceding Onomakritus (B. C. 610-510). It seems, however, certain, that both Orpheus and Musæus were names of established reputation at the time when Onomakritus flourished; and it is distinctly stated by Pausanias that the latter was himself the author of the most remarkable and characteristic mythe of the Orphic Theogony—the discerption of Zagreus by the Titans, and his resurrection as Dionysos.[45]

[42] The Orphic Theogony is never cited in the ample Scholia on Homer, though Hesiod is often alluded to. (See Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 540). Nor can it have been present to the minds of Xenophanês and Herakleitus, as representing any widely diffused Grecian belief: the former, who so severely condemned Homer and Hesiod, would have found Orpheus much more deserving of his censure: and the latter could hardly have omitted Orpheus from his memorable denunciation:—Πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει· Ἡσίοδον γὰρ ἂν ἐδίδαξε καὶ Πυθαγόρην, αὖτις δὲ Ξενοφάνεά τε καὶ Ἑκαταῖον. Diog. Laër. ix. 1. Isokratês treats Orpheus as the most censurable of all the poets. See Busiris, p. 229; ii. p. 309, Bekk. The Theogony of Orpheus, as conceived by Apollônius Rhodius (i. 504) in the third century B. C., and by Nigidius in the first century B. C. (Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. iv. 10), seems to have been on a more contracted scale than that which is given in the text. But neither of them notice the tale of Zagreus, which we know to be as old as Onomakritus.

[43] This opinion of Herodotus is implied in the remarkable passage about Homer and Hesiod, ii. 53, though he never once names Orpheus—only alluding once to “Orphic ceremonies,” ii. 81. He speaks more than once of the prophecies of Musæus. Aristotle denied the past existence and reality of Orpheus. See Cicero de Nat. Deor. i. 38.

[44] Pindar Pyth. iv. 177. Plato seems to consider Orpheus as more ancient than Homer. Compare Theætêt. p. 179; Cratylus, p. 402; De Republ. ii. p. 364. The order in which Aristophanês (and Hippias of Elis, ap. Clem. Alex. Str. vi. p. 624) mentions them indicates the same view, Ranæ, 1030. It is unnecessary to cite the later chronologers, among whom the belief in the antiquity of Orpheus was universal; he was commonly described as son of the Muse Calliopê. Androtiôn seems to have denied that he was a Thracian, regarding the Thracians as incurably stupid and illiterate. Androtiôn, Fragm. 36, ed. Didot. Ephorus treated him as having been a pupil of the Idæan Dactyls of Phrygia (see Diodôr. v. 64), and as having learnt from them his τελετὰς and μυστήρια, which he was the first to introduce into Greece. The earliest mention which we find of Orpheus, is that of the poet Ibycus (about B. C. 530), ὀνομάκλυτον Ὀρφῆν. Ibyci Fragm. 9, p. 341, ed. Schneidewin.

[45] Pausan. viii. 37, 3. Τιτᾶνας δὲ πρῶτον ἐς ποίησιν ἐσήγαγεν Ὅμηρος, θεοὺς εἶναι σφᾶς ὑπὸ τῷ καλουμένῳ Ταρτάρῳ· καὶ ἔστιν ἐν Ἡρᾶς ὅρκῳ τὰ ἔπη· παρὰ δὲ Ὁμήρου Ὀνομάκριτος, παραλαβὼν τῶν Τιτάνων τὸ ὄνομα, Διονύσῳ τε συνέθηκεν ὄργια, καὶ εἶναι τοὺς Τιτᾶνας τῷ Διονύσῳ τῶν παθημάτων ἐποίησεν αὐτουργούς. Both the date, the character and the function of Onomakritus are distinctly marked by Herodotus, vii. 6.

The names of Orpheus and Musæus (as well as that of Pythagoras,[46] looking at one side of his character) represent facts of importance in the history of the Grecian mind—the gradual influx of Thracian, Phrygian, and Egyptian, religious ceremonies and feelings, and the increasing diffusion of special mysteries,[47] schemes for religious purification, and orgies (I venture to anglicize the Greek word, which contains in its original meaning no implication of the ideas of excess to which it was afterwards diverted) in honor of some particular god—distinct both from the public solemnities and from the gentile solemnities of primitive Greece,—celebrated apart from the citizens generally, and approachable only through a certain course of preparation and initiation—sometimes even forbidden to be talked of in the presence of the uninitiated, under the severest threats of divine judgment. Occasionally such voluntary combinations assumed the form of permanent brotherhoods, bound together by periodical solemnities as well as by vows of an ascetic character: thus the Orphic life (as it was called) or regulation of the Orphic brotherhood, among other injunctions partly arbitrary and partly abstinent, forbade animal food universally, and on certain occasions, the use of woollen clothing.[48] The great religious and political fraternity of the Pythagoreans, which acted so powerfully on the condition of the Italian cities, was one of the many manifestations of this general tendency, which stands in striking contrast with the simple, open-hearted, and demonstrative worship of the Homeric Greeks.

[46] Herodotus believed in the derivation both of the Orphic and Pythagorean regulations from Egypt—ὁμολογέουσι δὲ ταῦτα τοῖσι Ὀρφικοῖσι καλεομένοισι καὶ Βακχικοῖσι, ἐοῦσι δὲ Αἰγυπτίοισι (ii. 81). He knows the names of those Greeks who have borrowed from Egypt the doctrine of the metempsychosis, but he will not mention them (ii. 123): he can hardly allude to any one but the Pythagoreans, many of whom he probably knew in Italy. See the curious extract from Xenophanês respecting the doctrine of Pythagoras, Diogen. Laërt. viii. 37; and the quotation from the Silli of Timôn, Πυθαγόραν δὲ γοήτος ἀποκλίναντ᾽ ἐπὶ δόξαν, etc. Compare Porphyr. in Vit. Pythag. c. 41.

[47] Aristophan. Ran. 1030.—

Ὀρφεὺς μὲν γὰρ τελετάς θ᾽ ἡμῖν κατέδειξε, φόνων τ᾽ ἀπέχεσθαι· Μουσαῖος τ᾽, ἐξακέσεις τε νόσων καὶ χρησμούς· Ἡσίοδος δὲ, Γῆς ἐργασίας, καρπῶν ὥρας, ἀρότους· ὁ δὲ θεῖος Ὅμηρος Ἀπὸ τοῦ τιμὴν καὶ κλέος ἔσχεν, πλὴν τοῦθ᾽, ὅτι χρήστ᾽ ἐδίδασκεν, Ἀρετὰς, τάξεις, ὁπλίσεις ἀνδρῶν; etc.

The same general contrast is to be found in Plato, Protagoras, p. 316; the opinion of Pausanias, ix. 30, 4. The poems of Musæus seem to have borne considerable analogy to the Melampodia ascribed to Hesiod (see Clemen. Alex. Str. vi. p. 628); and healing charms are ascribed to Orpheus as well as to Musæus. See Eurip. Alcestis, 986.

[48] Herod. ii. 81; Euripid. Hippol. 957, and the curious fragment of the lost Κρῆτες of Euripidês. Ὀρφικοὶ βίοι, Plato, Legg. vii. 782.

Festivals at seed-time and harvest—at the vintage and at the opening of the new wine—were doubtless coeval with the earliest habits of the Greeks; the latter being a period of unusual joviality. Yet in the Homeric poems, Dionysos and Dêmêtêr, the patrons of the vineyard and the cornfield, are seldom mentioned, and decidedly occupy little place in the imagination of the poet as compared with the other gods: nor are they of any conspicuous importance even in the Hesiodic Theogony. But during the interval between Hesiod and Onomakritus, the revolution in the religious mind of Greece was such as to place both these deities in the front rank. According to the Orphic doctrine, Zagreus, son of Persephonê, is destined to be the successor of Zeus, and although the violence of the Titans intercepts this lot, yet even when he rises again from his discerption under the name of Dionysos, he is the colleague and coëqual of his divine father.

This remarkable change, occurring as it did during the sixth and a part of the seventh century before the Christian æra, may be traced to the influence of communication with Egypt (which only became fully open to the Greeks about B. C. 660), as well as with Thrace, Phrygia, and Lydia. From hence new religious ideas and feelings were introduced, which chiefly attached themselves to the characters of Dionysos and Dêmêtêr. The Greeks identified these two deities with the great Egyptian Osiris and Isis, so that what was borrowed from the Egyptian worship of the two latter naturally fell to their equivalents in the Grecian system.[49] Moreover the worship of Dionysos (under what name cannot be certainly made out) was indigenous in Thrace,[50] as that of the Great Mother was in Phyrgia, and in Lydia—together with those violent ecstasies and manifestations of temporary frenzy, and that clashing of noisy instruments, which we find afterwards characterizing it in Greece. The great masters of the pipe—as well as the dythyramb,[51] and indeed the whole musical system appropriated to the worship of Dionysos, which contrasted so pointedly with the quiet solemnity of the Pæan addressed to Apollo—were all originally Phrygian.

[49] Herodot. ii. 42, 59, 144.

[50] Herodot. v. 7, vii. 111; Euripid. Hecub. 1249, and Rhêsus, 969, and the Prologue to the Bacchæ; Strabo, x. p. 470; Schol. ad Aristophan. Aves, 874; Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg. 1069; Harpocrat. v. Σάβοι; Photius, Εὐοῖ Σαβοῖ. The “Lydiaca” of Th. Menke (Berlin, 1843) traces the early connection between the religion of Dionysos and that of Cybelê, c. 6, 7. Hoeckh’s Krêta (vol. i. p. 128-134) is instructive respecting the Phrygian religion.

[51] Aristotle, Polit. viii. 7, 9. Πᾶσα γὰρ Βάκχεια καὶ πᾶσα ἡ τοιαύτη κίνησις μάλιστα τῶν ὀργάνων ἐστὶν ἐν τοῖς αὐλοῖς· τῶν δ᾽ ἁρμονίων ἐν τοῖς Φρυγιστὶ μέλεσι λαμβάνει ταῦτα τὸ πρέπον, οἷον ὁ διθύραμβος δοκεῖ ὁμολογουμένως εἶναι Φρύγιον. Eurip. Bacch. 58.—

Αἴρεσθε τἀπιχώρι᾽ ἐν πόλει Φρυγῶν Τύμπανα, Ῥέας τε μητρὸς ἐμὰ θ᾽ εὑρήματα, etc.

Plutarch, Εἰ. in Delph. c. 9; Philochor. Fr. 21, ed. Didot, p. 389. The complete and intimate manner in which Euripidês identifies the Bacchic rites of Dionysos with the Phrygian ceremonies in honor of the Great Mother, is very remarkable. The fine description given by Lucretius (ii. 600-640) of the Phrygian worship is much enfeebled by his unsatisfactory allegorizing.

From all these various countries, novelties, unknown to the Homeric men, found their way into the Grecian worship: and there is one amongst them which deserves to be specially noticed, because it marks the generation of the new class of ideas in their theology. Homer mentions many persons guilty of private or involuntary homicide, and compelled either to go into exile or to make pecuniary satisfaction; but he never once describes any of them to have either received or required purification for the crime.[52] Now in the time subsequent to Homer, purification for homicide comes to be considered as indispensable: the guilty person is regarded as unfit for the society of man or the worship of the gods until he has received it, and special ceremonies are prescribed whereby it is to be administered. Herodotus tells us that the ceremony of purification was the same among the Lydians and among the Greeks:[53] we know that it formed no part of the early religion of the latter, and we may perhaps reasonably suspect that they borrowed it from the former. The oldest instance known to us of expiation for homicide was contained in the epic poem of the Milesian Arktinus,[54] wherein Achillês is purified by Odysseus for the murder of Thersitês: several others occurred in the later or Hesiodic epic—Hêraklês, Pêleus, Bellerophôn, Alkmæôn, Amphiktyôn, Pœmander, Triopas,—from whence they probably passed through the hands of the logographers to Apollodôrus, Diodôrus, and others.[55] The purification of the murderer was originally operated, not by the hands of any priest or specially sanctified man, but by those of a chief or king, who goes through the appropriate ceremonies in the manner recounted by Herodotus in his pathetic narrative respecting Crœsus and Adrastus.

[52] Schol. ad Iliad, xi. 690—οὐ διὰ τὰ καθάρσια Ἰφίτου πορθεῖται ἡ Πύλος, ἐπεί τοι Ὀδυσσεὺς μείζων Νέστορος, καὶ παρ᾽ Ὁμήρῳ οὐκ οἴδαμεν φονέα καθαιρόμενον, ἀλλ᾽ ἀντιτίνοντα ἢ φυγαδευόμενον. The examples are numerous, and are found both in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Iliad, ii. 665 (_Tlêpolemos_); xiii. 697 (_Medôn_); xiii. 574 (_Epeigeus_); xxiii. 89 (_Patroclos_); Odyss. xv. 224 (_Theoclymenos_); xiv. 380 (an _Ætôlian_). Nor does the interesting mythe respecting the functions of Atê and the Litæ harmonize with the subsequent doctrine about the necessity of purification. (Iliad, ix. 498).

[53] Herodot. i. 35—ἔστι δὲ παραπλησίη ἡ κάθαρσις τοῖσι Λυδοῖσι καὶ τοῖσι Ἕλλησι. One remarkable proof, amongst many, of the deep hold which this idea took of the greatest minds in Greece, that serious mischief would fall upon the community if family quarrels or homicide remained without religious expiation, is to be found in the objections which Aristotle urges against the community of women proposed in the Platonic Republic. It could not be known what individuals stood in the relation of father, son or brother: if, therefore, wrong or murder of kindred should take place, the appropriate religious atonements (αἱ νομιζόμεναι λύσεις) could not be applied, and the crime would go unexpiated. (Aristot. Polit. ii. 1, 14. Compare Thucyd. i. 125-128).

[54] See the Fragm. of the Æthiopis of Arktinus, in Düntzer’s Collection, p. 16.

[55] The references for this are collected in Lobeck’s Aglaophamos. Epimetr. ii. ad Orphica, p. 968.

The idea of a special taint of crime, and of the necessity as well as the sufficiency of prescribed religious ceremonies as a means of removing it, appears thus to have got footing in Grecian practice subsequent to the time of Homer. The peculiar rites or orgies, composed or put together by Onomakritus, Methapus,[56] and other men of more than the ordinary piety, were founded upon a similar mode of thinking, and adapted to the same mental exigencies. They were voluntary religious manifestations, superinduced upon the old public sacrifices of the king or chiefs on behalf of the whole society, and of the father on his own family hearth—they marked out the details of divine service proper to appease or gratify the god to whom they were addressed, and to procure for the believers who went through them his blessings and protection here or hereafter—the exact performance of the divine service in all its specialty was held necessary, and thus the priests or Hierophants, who alone were familiar with the ritual, acquired a commanding position.[57] Generally speaking, these peculiar orgies obtained their admission and their influence at periods of distress, disease, public calamity and danger, or religious terror and despondency, which appear to have been but too frequent in their occurrence.

[56] Pausanias (iv. 1, 5)—μετεκόσμησε γὰρ καὶ Μέθαπος τῆς τελετῆς (the Eleusinian Orgies, carried by Kaukon from Eleusis into Messênia), ἔστιν ἅ. Ὁ δὲ Μέθαπος γένος μὲν ἦν Ἀθηναῖος, τελετῆς τε καὶ ~ὀργίων παντοίων συνθέτης~. Again, viii. 37, 3, Onomakritus Διονύσῳ ~συνέθηκεν~ ὄργια, etc. This is another expression designating the same idea as the Rhêsus of Euripidês, 944.—

Μυστηρίων τε τῶν ἀποῤῥήτων φάνας Ἔδειξεν Ὀρφεύς.

[57] Têlinês, the ancestor of the Syracusan despot Gelô, acquired great political power as possessing τὰ ἱρὰ τῶν χθονίων θεῶν (Herodot. vii. 153); he and his family became hereditary Hierophants of these ceremonies. How Têlinês acquired the ἱρὰ Herodotus cannot say—ὅθεν δὲ ἀυτὰ ἔλαβε, ἢ αὐτὸς ἐκτήσατο, τοῦτο οὐκ ἔχω εἶπαι. Probably there was a traditional legend, not inferior in sanctity to that of Eleusis, tracing them to the gift of Dêmêtêr herself.

The minds of men were prone to the belief that what they were suffering arose from the displeasure of some of the gods, and as they found that the ordinary sacrifices and worship were insufficient for their protection, so they grasped at new suggestions proposed to them with the view of regaining the divine favor.[58] Such suggestions were more usually copied, either in whole or in part, from the religious rites of some foreign locality, or from some other portion of the Hellenic world; and in this manner many new sects or voluntary religious fraternities, promising to relieve the troubled conscience and to reconcile the sick or suffering with the offended gods, acquired permanent establishment as well as considerable influence. They were generally under the superintendence of hereditary families of priests, who imparted the rites of confirmation and purification to communicants generally; no one who went through the prescribed ceremonies being excluded. In many cases, such ceremonies fell into the hands of jugglers, who volunteered their services to wealthy men, and degraded their profession as well by obtrusive venality as by extravagant promises:[59] sometimes the price was lowered to bring them within reach of the poor and even of slaves. But the wide diffusion, and the number of voluntary communicants of these solemnities, proves how much they fell in with the feeling of the time and how much respect they enjoyed—a respect, which the more conspicuous establishments, such as Eleusis and Samothrace, maintained for several centuries. And the visit of the Kretan Epimenidês to Athens—in the time of Solôn, and at a season of the most serious disquietude and dread of having offended the gods—illustrates the tranquillizing effect of new orgies[60] and rites of absolution, when enjoined by a man standing high in the favor of the gods and reputed to be the son of a nymph. The supposed Erythræan Sibyl, and the earliest collection of Sibylline prophecies,[61] afterwards so much multiplied and interpolated, and referred (according to Grecian custom) to an age even earlier than Homer, appear to belong to a date not long posterior to Epimenidês. Other oracular verses, such as those of Bakis, were treasured up in Athens and other cities: the sixth century before the Christian æra was fertile in these kinds of religious manifestations.

[58] See Josephus cont. Apiôn. ii. c. 35; Hesych. Θεοὶ ξένιοι; Strabo, x. p. 471; Plutarch, Περὶ Δεισιδαιμον. c. iii. p. 166; c. vii. p. 167.

[59] Plato, Republ. ii. p. 364; Demosthen. de Coronâ, c. 79, p. 313. The δεισιδαίμων of Theophrastus cannot be comfortable without receiving the Orphic communion monthly from the Orpheotelestæ (Theophr. Char. xvi.). Compare Plutarch, Περὶ τοῦ μὴ χρᾶν ἔμμετρα, etc., c. 25, p. 400. The comic writer Phrynichus indicates the existence of these rites of religious excitement, at Athens, during the Peloponnesian war. See the short fragment of his Κρόνος, ap. Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 989—

Ἀνὴρ χορεύει, καὶ τὰ τοῦ καλῶς· Βούλει Διοπείθη μεταδράμω καὶ τύμπανα;

Diopeithês was a χρησμόλογος, or collector and deliverer of prophecies, which he sung (or rather, perhaps, recited) with solemnity and emphasis, in public. ὥστε ποιοῦντες χρησμοὺς αὐτοὶ Διδόασ᾽ ᾄδειν Διοπείθει τῷ παραμαινομένῷ. (Ameipsias ap. Schol. Aristophan. _ut sup._, which illustrates Thucyd. ii. 21).

[60] Plutarch, Solôn, c. 12; Diogen. Laërt. i. 110.

[61] See Klausen, “Æneas und die Penaten:” his chapter on the connection between the Grecian and Roman Sibylline collections is among the most ingenious of his learned book. Book ii. pp. 210-240; see Steph. Byz. v. Γέργις.

To the same age belong the χρησμοὶ and καθαρμοὶ of Abaris and his marvellous journey through the air upon an arrow (Herodot. iv. 36).

Epimenidês also composed καθαρμοὶ in epic verse; his Κουρήτων and Κορυβάντων γένεσις, and his four thousand verses respecting Minôs and Rhadamanthys, if they had been preserved, would let us fully into the ideas of a religious mystic of that age respecting the antiquities of Greece. (Strabo, x. p. 474; Diogen. Laërt. i. 10). Among the poems ascribed to Hesiod were comprised not only the Melampodia, but also ἔπη μαντικὰ and ἐξηγήσεις ἐπὶ τέρασιν. Pausan. ix. 31, 4.

Amongst the special rites and orgies of the character just described, those which enjoyed the greatest Pan-Hellenic reputation were attached to the Idæan Zeus in Krête, to Dêmêtêr at Eleusis, to the Kabeiri in Samothrace, and to Dionysos at Delphi and Thebes.[62] That they were all to a great degree analogous, is shown by the way in which they unconsciously run together and become confused in the minds of various authors: the ancient inquirers themselves were unable to distinguish one from the other, and we must be content to submit to the like ignorance. But we see enough to satisfy us of the general fact, that during the century and a half which elapsed between the opening of Egypt to the Greeks and the commencement of their struggle with the Persian kings, the old religion was largely adulterated by importations from Egypt, Asia Minor,[63] and Thrace. The rites grew to be more furious and ecstatic, exhibiting the utmost excitement, bodily as well as mental: the legends became at once more coarse, more tragical, and less pathetic. The manifestations of this frenzy were strongest among the women, whose religious susceptibilities were often found extremely unmanageable,[64] and who had everywhere congregative occasional ceremonies of their own, apart from the men—indeed, in the case of the colonists, especially of the Asiatic colonists, the women had been originally women of the country, and as such retained to a great degree their non-Hellenic manners and feelings.[65] The god Dionysos,[66] whom the legends described as clothed in feminine attire, and leading a troop of frenzied women, inspired a temporary ecstasy, and those who resisted the inspiration, being supposed to disobey his will, were punished either by particular judgments or by mental terrors; while those who gave full loose to the feeling, in the appropriate season and with the received solemnities, satisfied his exigencies, and believed themselves to have procured immunity from such disquietudes for the future.[67] Crowds of women, clothed with fawn-skins and bearing the sanctified thyrsus, flocked to the solitudes of Parnassus, or Kithærôn, or Taygetus, during the consecrated triennial period, passed the night there with torches, and abandoned themselves to demonstrations of frantic excitement, with dancing and clamorous invocation of the god: they were said to tear animals limb from limb, to devour the raw flesh, and to cut themselves without feeling the wound.[68] The men yielded to a similar impulse by noisy revels in the streets, sounding the cymbals and tambourine, and carrying the image of the god in procession.[69] It deserves to be remarked, that the Athenian women never practised these periodical mountain excursions, so common among the rest of the Greeks: they had their feminine solemnities of the Thesmophoria,[70] mournful in their character and accompanied with fasting, and their separate congregations at the temples of Aphroditê, but without any extreme or unseemly demonstrations. The state festival of the Dionysia, in the city of Athens, was celebrated with dramatic entertainments, and the once rich harvest of Athenian tragedy and comedy was thrown up under its auspices. The ceremonies of the Kurêtes in Krête, originally armed dances in honor of the Idæan Zeus, seem also to have borrowed from Asia so much of fury, of self-infliction, and of mysticism, that they became at last inextricably confounded with the Phrygian Korybantes or worshippers of the Great Mother; though it appears that Grecian reserve always stopped short of the irreparable self-mutilation of Atys.

[62] Among other illustrations of this general resemblance, may be counted an epitaph of Kallimachus upon an aged priestess, who passed from the service of Dêmêtêr to that of the Kabeiri, then to that of Cybelê, having the superintendence of many young women. Kallimachus, Epigram. 42. p. 308, ed. Ernest.

[63] Plutarch, (Defect. Oracul. c. 10, p. 415) treats these countries as the original seat of the worship of Dæmons (wholly or partially bad, and intermediate between gods and men), and their religious ceremonies as of a corresponding character: the Greeks were borrowers from them, according to him, both of the doctrine and of the ceremonies.

[64] Strabo, vii. p. 297. Ἅπαντες γὰρ τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας ἀρχηγοὺς οἴονται τὰς γυναῖκας· αὐταὶ δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας προκαλοῦνται ἐς τὰς ἐπὶ πλέον θεραπείας τῶν θεῶν, καὶ ἑορτὰς, καὶ ποτνιασμούς. Plato (De Legg. x. pp. 909, 910) takes great pains to restrain this tendency on the part of sick or suffering persons, especially women, to introduce new sacred rites into his city.

[65] Herodot. i. 146. The wives of the Ionic original settlers at Miletos were Karian women, whose husbands they slew.

The violences of the Karian worship are attested by what Herodotus says of the Karian residents in Egypt, at the festival of Isis at Busiris. The Egyptians at this festival manifested their feeling by beating themselves, the Karians by cutting their faces with knives (ii. 61). The Καρικὴ μοῦσα became proverbial for funeral wailings (Plato, Legg. vii. p. 800): the unmeasured effusions and demonstrations of sorrow for the departed, some times accompanied by cutting and mutilation self-inflicted by the mourner was a distinguishing feature in Asiatics and Egyptians as compared with Greeks. Plutarch, Consolat. ad Apollôn. c. 22, p. 123. Mournful feeling was, in fact, a sort of desecration of the genuine and primitive Grecian festival, which was a season of cheerful harmony and social enjoyment, wherein the god was believed to sympathize (εὐφροσύνη). See Xenophanes ap. Aristot. Rhetor. ii. 25; Xenophan. Fragm. 1. ed. Schneidewin; Theognis, 776; Plutarch, De Superstit. p. 169. The unfavorable comments of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in so far as they refer to the festivals of Greece, apply to the foreign corruptions, not to the native character, of Grecian worship.

[66] The Lydian Hêraklês was conceived and worshipped as a man in female attire: this idea occurs often in the Asiatic religions. Mencke, Lydiaca, c. 8, p. 22. Διόνυσος ἄῤῥην καὶ θῆλυς. Aristid. Or. iv. p. 28; Æschyl. Fragm. Edoni, ap. Aristoph. Thesmoph. 135. Ποδαπὸς ὁ γύννις; τίς πάτρα; τίς ἡ στολή;

[67] Melampos cures the women (whom Dionysos has struck mad for their resistance to his rites), παραλαβὼν τοὺς δυνατωτάτους τῶν νεανίων μετ᾽ ἀλαλαγμοῦ καί τινος ἐνθέου χορείας. Apollodôr. ii. 2, 7. Compare Eurip. Bacch. 861.

Plato (Legg. vii. p. 790) gives a similar theory of the healing effect of the Korybantic rites, which cured vague and inexplicable terrors of the mind by means of dancing and music conjoined with religious ceremonies—αἱ τὰ τῶν Κορυβάντων ἰάματα τελοῦσαι (the practitioners were women), αἱ τῶν ἐκφρόνων Βακχείων ἰάσεις—ἡ τῶν ἔξωθεν κρατεῖ κίνησις προσφερομένη τὴν ἐντὸς φοβερὰν οὖσαν καὶ μανικὴν κίνησιν—ὀρχουμένους δὲ καὶ αὐλουμένους μετὰ θεῶν, οἷς ἂν καλλιερήσαντες ἕκαστοι θύωσιν, κατειργάσατο ἀντὶ μανικῶν ἡμῖν διαθέσεων ἕξεις ἔμφρονας ἔχειν.

[68] Described in the Bacchæ of Euripidês (140, 735, 1135, etc.). Ovid, Trist. iv. i. 41. “Utque suum Bacchis non sentit saucia vulnus, Cum furit Edonis exululata jugis.” In a fragment of the poet Alkman, a Lydian by birth, the Bacchanal nymphs are represented as milking the lioness, and making cheese of the milk, during their mountain excursions and festivals. (Alkman. Fragm. 14. Schn. Compare Aristid. Orat. iv. p. 29). Clemens Alexand. Admonit. ad Gent. p. 9, Sylb.; Lucian, Dionysos, c. 3, T. iii. p. 77, Hemsterh.

[69] See the tale of Skylês in Herod. iv. 79, and Athenæus, x. p. 445. Herodotus mentions that the Scythians abhorred the Bacchic ceremonies, accounting the frenzy which belonged to them to be disgraceful and monstrous.

[70] Plutarch, De Isid. et Osir. c. 69, p. 378; Schol. ad Aristoph. Thesmoph. There were however Bacchic ceremonies practised to a certain extent by the Athenian women. (Aristoph. Lysist. 388).

The influence of the Thracian religion upon that of the Greeks cannot be traced in detail, but the ceremonies contained in it were of a violent and fierce character, like the Phrygian, and acted upon Hellas in the same general direction as the latter. And the like may be said of the Egyptian religion, which was in this case the more operative, inasmuch as all the intellectual Greeks were naturally attracted to go and visit the wonders on the banks of the Nile; the powerful effect produced upon them is attested by many evidences, but especially by the interesting narrative of Herodotus. Now the Egyptian ceremonies were at once more licentious, and more profuse in the outpouring both of joy and sorrow, than the Greek;[71] but a still greater difference sprang from the extraordinary power, separate mode of life, minute observances, and elaborate organization, of the priesthood. The ceremonies of Egypt were multitudinous, but the legends concerning them were framed by the priests, and as a general rule, seemingly, known to the priests alone: at least they were not intended to be publicly talked of, even by pious men. They were “holy stories,” which it was sacrilege publicly to mention, and which from this very prohibition only took firmer hold of the minds of the Greek visitors who heard them. And thus the element of secrecy and mystic silence—foreign to Homer, and only faintly glanced at in Hesiod—if it was not originally derived from Egypt, at least received from thence its greatest stimulus and diffusion. The character of the legends themselves was naturally affected by this change from publicity to secrecy: the secrets when revealed would be such as to justify by their own tenor the interdict on public divulgation: instead of being adapted, like the Homeric mythe, to the universal sympathies and hearty interest of a crowd of hearers, they would derive their impressiveness from the tragical, mournful, extravagant, or terror-striking character of the incidents.[72] Such a tendency, which appears explicable and probable even on general grounds, was in this particular case rendered still more certain by the coarse taste of the Egyptian priests. That any recondite doctrine, religious or philosophical, was attached to the mysteries or contained in the holy stories, has never been shown, and is to the last degree improbable though the affirmative has been asserted by many learned men.

[71] “Ægyptiaca numina fere plangoribus gaudent, Græca plerumque choreis, barbara autem strepitu cymbalistarum et tympanistarum et choraularum.” (Apuleius, De Genio Socratis, v. ii. p. 149, Oudend).

[72] The legend of Dionysos and Prosymnos, as it stands in Clemens, could never have found place in an epic poem (Admonit. ad Gent. p. 22, Sylb.). Compare page 11 of the same work, where however he so confounds together Phrygian, Bacchic, and Eleusinian mysteries, that one cannot distinguish them apart.

Demêtrius Phalêreus says about the legends belonging to these ceremonies—Διὸ καὶ τὰ μυστήρια λέγεται ἐν ἀλληγορίαις ~πρὸς ἔκπληξιν καὶ φρίκην~, ὥσπερ ἐν σκότῳ καὶ νυκτί. (De Interpretatione, c. 101).

Herodotus seems to have believed that the worship and ceremonies of Dionysos generally were derived by the Greeks from Egypt, brought over by Kadmus and taught by him to Melampus: and the latter appears in the Hesiodic Catalogue as having cured the daughters of Prœtus of the mental distemper with which they had been smitten by Dionysos for rejecting his ritual. He cured them by introducing the Bacchic dance and fanatical excitement: this mythical incident is the most ancient mention of the Dionysiac solemnities presented in the same character as they bear in Euripidês. It is the general tendency of Herodotus to apply the theory of derivation from Egypt far too extensively to Grecian institutions: the orgies of Dionysos were not originally borrowed from thence, though they may have been much modified by connection with Egypt as well as with Asia. The remarkable mythe composed by Onomakritus respecting the dismemberment of Zagreus was founded upon an Egyptian tale very similar respecting the body of Osiris, who was supposed to be identical with Dionysos:[73] nor was it unsuitable to the reckless fury of the Bacchanals during their state of temporary excitement, which found a still more awful expression in the mythe of Pentheus,—torn in pieces by his own mother Agavê at the head of her companions in the ceremony, as an intruder upon the feminine rites as well as a scoffer at the god.[74] A passage in the Iliad (the authenticity of which has been contested, but even as an interpolation it must be old)[75] also recounts how Lykurgus was struck blind by Zeus for having chased away with a whip “the nurses of the mad Dionysos,” and frightened the god himself into the sea to take refuge in the arms of Thetis: and the fact, that Dionysos is so frequently represented in his mythes as encountering opposition and punishing the refractory, seems to indicate that his worship under its ecstatic form was a late phænomenon and introduced not without difficulty. The mythical Thracian Orpheus was attached as Eponymos to a new sect, who seem to have celebrated the ceremonies of Dionysos with peculiar care, minuteness and fervor, besides observing various rules in respect to food and clothing. It was the opinion of Herodotus, that these rules, as well as the Pythagorean, were borrowed from Egypt. But whether this be the fact or not, the Orphic brotherhood is itself both an evidence, and a cause, of the increased importance of the worship of Dionysos, which indeed is attested by the great dramatic poets of Athens.

[73] See the curious treatise of Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. c. 11-14. p. 356, and his elaborate attempt to allegorize the legend. He seems to have conceived that the Thracian Orpheus had first introduced into Greece the mysteries both of Dêmêtêr and Dionysos, copying them from those of Isis and Osiris in Egypt. See Fragm. 84, from one of his lost works, tom, v. p. 891, ed. Wyttenb.

[74] Æschylus had dramatized the story of Pentheus as well as that of Lykurgus: one of his tetralogies was the Lykurgeia (Dindorf, Æsch. Fragm. 115). A short allusion to the story of Pentheus appears in Eumenid. 25. Compare Sophocl. Antigon. 985, and the Scholia.

[75] Iliad, vi. 130. See the remarks of Mr. Payne Knight _ad loc._

The Homeric Hymns present to us, however, the religious ideas and legends of the Greeks at an earlier period, when the enthusiastic and mystic tendencies had not yet acquired their full development. Though not referable to the same age or to the same author as either the Iliad or the Odyssey, they do to a certain extent continue the same stream of feeling, and the same mythical tone and coloring, as these poems—manifesting but little evidence of Egyptian, Asiatic, or Thracian adulterations. The difference is striking between the god Dionysos as he appears in the Homeric hymn and in the Bacchæ of Euripidês. The hymnographer describes him as standing on the sea-shore, in the guise of a beautiful and richly-clothed youth, when Tyrrhenian pirates suddenly approach: they seize and bind him and drag him on board their vessel. But the bonds which they employ burst spontaneously, and leave the god free. The steersman, perceiving this with affright, points out to his companions that they have unwittingly laid hands on a god,—perhaps Zeus himself, or Apollo, or Poseidôn. He conjures them to desist, and to replace Dionysos respectfully on the shore, lest in his wrath he should visit the ship with wind and hurricane: but the crew deride his scruples, and Dionysos is carried prisoner out to sea with the ship under full sail. Miraculous circumstances soon attest both his presence and his power. Sweet-scented wine is seen to flow spontaneously about the ship, the sail and mast appear adorned with vine and ivy-leaves, and the oar-pegs with garlands. The terrified crew now too late entreat the helmsman to steer his course for the shore, and crowd round him for protection on the poop. But their destruction is at hand: Dionysos assumes the form of a lion—a bear is seen standing near him—this bear rushes with a loud roar upon the captain, while the crew leap overboard in their agony of fright, and are changed into dolphins. There remains none but the discreet and pious steersman, to whom Dionysos addresses words of affectionate encouragement, revealing his name, parentage and dignity.[76]

[76] See Homer, Hymn 5, Διόνυσος ἢ Λῆσται.—The satirical drama of Euripidês, the Cyclôps, extends and alters this old legend. Dionysos is carried away by the Tyrrhenian pirates, and Silênus at the head of the Bacchanals goes everywhere in search of him (Eur. Cyc. 112). The pirates are instigated against him by the hatred of Hêrê, which appears frequently as a cause of mischief to Dionysos (Bacchæ, 286). Hêrê in her anger had driven him mad when a child, and he had wandered in this state over Egypt and Syria; at length he came to Cybela in Phrygia, was purified (καθαρθεὶς) by Rhea, and received from her female attire (Apollodôr. iii. 5, 1, with Heyne’s note). This seems to have been the legend adopted to explain the old verse of the Iliad, as well as the maddening attributes of the god generally.

There was a standing antipathy between the priestesses and the religious establishments of Hêrê and Dionysos (Plutarch, Περὶ τῶν ἐν Πλαταίαις Δαιδάλων, c. 2, tom. v. p. 755, ed. Wytt). Plutarch ridicules the legendary reason commonly assigned for this, and provides a symbolical explanation which he thinks very satisfactory.

This hymn, perhaps produced at the Naxian festival of Dionysos, and earlier than the time when the dithyrambic chorus became the established mode of singing the praise and glory of that god, is conceived in a spirit totally different from that of the Bacchic Telatæ, or special rites which the Bacchæ of Euripidês so abundantly extol,—rites introduced from Asia by Dionysos himself at the head of a thiasus or troop of enthusiastic women,—inflaming with temporary frenzy the minds of the women of Thebes,—not communicable except to those who approach as pious communicants,—and followed by the most tragical results to all those who fight against the god.[77] The Bacchic Teletæ, and the Bacchic feminine frenzy, were importations from abroad, as Euripidês represents them, engrafted upon the joviality of the primitive Greek Dionysia; they were borrowed, in all probability, from more than one source and introduced through more than one channel, the Orphic life or brotherhood being one of the varieties. Strabo ascribes to this latter a Thracian original, considering Orpheus, Musæus, and Eumolpus as having been all Thracians.[78] It is curious to observe how, in the Bacchæ of Euripidês, the two distinct and even conflicting ideas of Dionysos come alternately forward; sometimes the old Grecian idea of the jolly and exhilarating god of wine—but more frequently the recent and imported idea of the terrific and irresistible god who unseats the reason, and whose _œstrus_ can only be appeased by a willing, though temporary obedience. In the fanatical impulse which inspired the votaries of the Asiatic Rhea or Cybelê, or of the Thracian Kotys, there was nothing of spontaneous joy; it was a sacred madness, during which the soul appeared to be surrendered to a stimulus from without, and accompanied by preternatural strength and temporary sense of power,[79]—altogether distinct from the unrestrained hilarity of the original Dionysia, as we see them in the rural demes of Attica, or in the gay city of Tarentum. There was indeed a side on which the two bore some analogy, inasmuch as, according to the religious point of view of the Greeks, even the spontaneous joy of the vintage feast was conferred by the favor and enlivened by the companionship of Dionysos. It was upon this analogy that the framers of the Bacchic orgies proceeded but they did not the less disfigure the genuine character of the old Grecian Dionysia.

[77] Eurip. Bacch. 325, 464, etc.

[78] Strabo, x. p. 471. Compare Aristid. Or. iv. p. 28.

[79] In the lost _Xantriæ_ of Æschylus, in which seems to have been included the tale of Pentheus, the goddess Λύσσα was introduced, stimulating the Bacchæ, and creating in them spasmodic excitement from head to foot: ἐκ ποδῶν δ᾽ ἄνω Ὑπέρχεται σπαραγμὸς εἰς ἄκρον κάρα, etc. (Fragm. 155, Dindorf). His tragedy called _Edoni_ also gave a terrific representation of the Bacchanals and their fury, exaggerated by the maddening music: Πίμπλησι μέλος, Μανίας ἐπαγωγὸν ὁμοκλάν (Fr. 54).

Such also is the reigning sentiment throughout the greater part of the Bacchæ of Euripidês; it is brought out still more impressively in the mournful Atys of Catullus:—

“Dea magna, Dea Cybele, Dindymi Dea, Domina, Procul a meâ tuus sit furor omnis, hera, domo: Alios age incitatos: alios age rabidos!”

We have only to compare this fearful influence with the description of Dikæopolis and his exuberant joviality in the festival of the rural Dionysia (Aristoph. Acharn. 1051 _seq._; see also Plato. Legg. i. p. 637), to see how completely the foreign innovations recolored the old Grecian Dionysos,—Διόνυσος πολυγηθὴς,—who appears also in the scene of Dionysos and Ariadnê in the Symposion of Xenophôn, c. 9. The simplicity of the ancient Dionysiac processions is dwelt upon by Plutarch, De Cupidine Divitiarum, p. 527; and the original dithyramb addressed by Archilochus to Dionysos is an effusion of drunken hilarity (Archiloch. Frag. 69, Schneid.).

Dionysos is in the conception of Pindar the Paredros or companion in worship of Dêmêtêr:[80] the worship and religious estimate of the latter has by that time undergone as great a change as that of the former, if we take our comparison with the brief description of Homer and Hesiod: she has acquired[81] much of the awful and soul-disturbing attributes of the Phrygian Cybelê. In Homer, Dêmêtêr is the goddess of the corn-field, who becomes attached to the mortal man Jasiôn; an unhappy passion, since Zeus, jealous of the connection between goddesses and men, puts him to death. In the Hesiodic Theogony, Dêmêtêr is the mother of Persephonê by Zeus, who permits Hadês to carry off the latter as his wife: moreover Dêmêtêr has, besides, by Jasiôn a son called Plutos, born in Krête. Even from Homer to Hesiod, the legend of Dêmêtêr, has been expanded and her dignity exalted; according to the usual tendency of Greek legend, the expansion goes on still further. Through Jasiôn, Dêmêtêr becomes connected with the mysteries of Samothrace; through Persephonê, with those of Eleusis. The former connection it is difficult to follow out in detail, but the latter is explained and traced to its origin in the Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr.

[80] Pindar, Isthm. vi. 3. χαλκοκρότου πάρεδρον Δημήτερος,—the epithet marks the approximation of Dêmêtêr to the Mother of the Gods. ᾗ κροτάλων τυπάνων τ᾽ ἰαχὴ, σύν τε βρόμος αὐλῶν Εὔαδεν (Homer. Hymn, xiii.),—the Mother of the Gods was worshipped by Pindar himself along with Pan; she had in his time her temple and ceremonies at Thêbes (Pyth. iii. 78; Fragm. Dithyr. 5, and the Scholia _ad l._) as well as, probably, at Athens (Pausan. i. 3, 3).

Dionysos and Dêmêtêr are also brought together in the chorus of Sophoklês, Antigonê, 1072. μέδεις δὲ παγκοίνοις Ἐλευσινίας Δηοῦς ἐν κόλποις; and in Kallimachus, Hymn. Cerer. 70. Bacchus or Dionysos are in the Attic tragedians constantly confounded with the Dêmêtrian Iacchos, originally so different,—a personification of the mystic word shouted by the Eleusinian communicants. See Strabo, x. p. 468.

[81] Euripidês in his Chorus in the Helena (1320 _seq._) assigns to Dêmêtêr all the attributes of Rhea, and blends the two completely into one.

Though we find different statements respecting the date as well as the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries, yet the popular belief of the Athenians, and the story which found favor at Eleusis, ascribed them to the presence and dictation of the goddess Dêmêtêr herself; just as the Bacchic rites are, according to the Bacchæ of Euripidês, first communicated and enforced on the Greeks by the personal visit of Dionysos to Thêbes, the metropolis of the Bacchic ceremonies.[82] In the Eleusinian legend, preserved by the author of the Homeric Hymn, she comes voluntarily and identifies herself with Eleusis; her past abode in Krête being briefly indicated.[83] Her visit to Eleusis is connected with the deep sorrow caused by the loss of her daughter Persephonê, who had been seized by Hadês, while gathering flowers in a meadow along with the Oceanic Nymphs, and carried off to become his wife in the under-world. In vain did the reluctant Persephonê shriek and invoke the aid of her father Zeus: he had consented to give her to Hadês, and her cries were heard only by Hekatê and Hêlios. Dêmêtêr was inconsolable at the disappearance of her daughter, but knew not where to look for her: she wandered for nine days and nights with torches in search of the lost maiden without success. At length Hêlios, the “spy of gods and men,” revealed to her, in reply to her urgent prayer, the rape of Persephonê, and the permission given to Hadês by Zeus. Dêmêtêr was smitten with anger and despair: she renounced Zeus and the society of Olympus, abstained from nectar and ambrosia, and wandered on earth in grief and fasting until her form could no longer be known. In this condition she came to Eleusis, then governed by the prince Keleos. Sitting down by a well at the wayside in the guise of an old woman, she was found by the daughters of Keleos, who came hither with their pails of brass for water. In reply to their questions, she told them that she had been brought by pirates from Krête to Thorikos, and had made her escape; she then solicited from them succor and employment as a servant or as a nurse. The damsels prevailed upon their mother Metaneira to receive her, and to entrust her with the nursing of the young Dêmophoôn, their late-born brother, the only son of Keleos. Dêmêtêr was received into the house of Metaneira, her dignified form still borne down by grief: she sat long silent and could not be induced either to smile or to taste food, until the maid-servant Iambê, by jests and playfulness, succeeded in amusing and rendering her cheerful. She would not taste wine, but requested a peculiar mixture of barley-meal with water and the herb mint.[84]

[82] Sophocl. Antigon. Βακχᾶν μητρόπολιν Θήβαν.

[83] Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 123. The Hymn to Dêmêtêr has been translated, accompanied with valuable illustrative notes, by J. H. Voss (Heidelb. 1826).

[84] Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 202-210.

The child Dêmophoôn, nursed by Dêmêtêr, throve and grew up like a god, to the delight and astonishment of his parents: she gave him no food, but anointed him daily with ambrosia, and plunged him at night in the fire like a torch, where he remained unburnt. She would have rendered him immortal, had she not been prevented by the indiscreet curiosity and alarm of Metaneira, who secretly looked in at night, and shrieked with horror at the sight of her child in the fire.[85] The indignant goddess, setting the infant on the ground, now revealed her true character to Metaneira: her wan and aged look disappeared, and she stood confest in the genuine majesty of her divine shape, diffusing a dazzling brightness which illuminated the whole house. “Foolish mother,” she said, “thy want of faith has robbed thy son of immortal life. I am the exalted Dêmêtêr, the charm and comfort both of gods and men: I was preparing for thy son exemption from death and old age; now it cannot be but he must taste of both. Yet shall he be ever honored, since he has sat upon my knee and slept in my arms. Let the people of Eleusis erect for me a temple and altar on yonder hill above the fountain; I will myself prescribe to them the orgies which they must religiously perform in order to propitiate my favor.”[86]

[85] This story was also told with reference to the Egyptian goddess Isis in her wanderings. See Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. c. 16, p. 357.

[86] Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 274.—

Ὄργια δ᾽ αὐτὴ ἐγὼν ὑποθήσομαι, ὡς ἂν ἔπειτα Εὐαγέως ἕρδοντες ἐμὸν νόον ἱλάσκησθε.

The same story is told in regard to the infant Achilles. His mother Thetis was taking similar measures to render him immortal, when his father Pêleus interfered and prevented the consummation. Thetis immediately left him in great wrath (Apollôn. Rhod. iv. 866).

The terrified Metaneira was incapable even of lifting up her child from the ground; her daughters entered at her cries, and began to embrace and tend their infant brother, but he sorrowed and could not be pacified for the loss of his divine nurse. All night they strove to appease the goddess.[87]

[87] Homer, Hymn. 290.—

τοῦ δ᾽ οὐ μειλίσσετο θυμὸς, Χειρότεραι γὰρ δή μιν ἔχον τρόφοι ἠδὲ τιθῆναι.

Strictly executing the injunctions of Dêmêtêr, Keleos convoked the people of Eleusis and erected the temple on the spot which she had pointed out. It was speedily completed, and Dêmêtêr took up her abode in it,—apart from the remaining gods, still pining with grief for the loss of her daughter, and withholding her beneficent aid from mortals. And thus she remained a whole year,—a desperate and terrible year:[88] in vain did the oxen draw the plough, and in vain was the barley-seed cast into the furrow,—Dêmêtêr suffered it not to emerge from the earth. The human race would have been starved, and the gods would have been deprived of their honors and sacrifice, had not Zeus found means to conciliate her. But this was a hard task; for Dêmêtêr resisted the entreaties of Iris and of all the other goddesses and gods whom Zeus successively sent to her. She would be satisfied with nothing less than the recovery of her daughter. At length Zeus sent Hermês to Hadês, to bring Persephonê away: Persephonê joyfully obeyed, but Hadês prevailed upon her before she departed to swallow a grain of pomegranate, which rendered it impossible for her to remain the whole year away from him.[89]

[88] Homer, H. Cer. 305.—

Αἰνότατον δ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν ἐπὶ χθόνα πουλυβότειραν Ποίησ᾽ ἀνθρώποις, ἰδὲ κύντατον.

[89] Hymn, v. 375.

With transport did Dêmêtêr receive back her lost daughter, and the faithful Hekatê sympathized in the delight felt by both at the reunion.[90] It was now an easier undertaking to reconcile her with the gods. Her mother Rhea, sent down expressly by Zeus, descended from Olympus on the fertile Rharan plain, then smitten with barrenness like the rest of the earth: she succeeded in appeasing the indignation of Dêmêtêr, who consented again to put forth her relieving hand. The buried seed came up in abundance, and the earth was covered with fruit and flowers. She would have wished to retain Persephonê constantly with her, but this was impossible; and she was obliged to consent that her daughter should go down for one-third of each year to the house of Hadês, departing from her every spring at the time when the seed is sown. She then revisited Olympus, again to dwell with the gods; but before her departure, she communicated to the daughters of Keleos, and to Keleos himself, together with Triptolemus, Dioklês and Eumolpus, the divine service and the solemnities which she required to be observed in her honor.[91] And thus began the venerable mysteries of Eleusis, at her special command: the lesser mysteries, celebrated in February, in honor of Persephonê; the greater, in August, to the honor of Dêmêtêr herself. Both are jointly patronesses of the holy city and temple.

[90] Hymn, v. 443.

[91] Hymn, v. 475.—

Ἡ δὲ κιοῦσα θεμιστοπόλοις βασιλεῦσι Δεῖξεν, Τριπτολέμῳ τε, Διοκλέϊ τε πληξίππῳ, Εὐμόλπου τε βίῃ, Κελέῳ θ᾽ ἡγήτορι λαῶν, Δρησμοσύνην ἱερῶν· καὶ ἐπέφραδεν ὄργια παισὶν Πρεσβυτέρῃς Κελέοιο, etc.

Such is a brief sketch of the temple legend of Eleusis, set forth at length in the Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr. It is interesting not less as a picture of the Mater Dolorosa (in the mouth of an Athenian, Dêmêtêr and Persephonê were always the Mother and Daughter, by excellence), first an agonized sufferer, and then finally glorified,—the weal and woe of man being dependent upon her kindly feeling,—than as an illustration of the nature and growth of Grecian legend generally. Though we now read this Hymn as pleasing poetry, to the Eleusinians, for whom it was composed, it was genuine and sacred history. They believed in the visit of Dêmêtêr to Eleusis, and in the mysteries as a revelation from her, as implicitly as they believed in her existence and power as a goddess. The Eleusinian psalmist shares this belief in common with his countrymen, and embodies it in a continuous narrative, in which the great goddesses of the place, as well as the great heroic families, figure in inseparable conjunction. Keleos is the son of the Eponymous hero Eleusis, and his daughters, with the old epic simplicity, carry their basins to the well for water. Eumolpus, Triptolemus, Dioklês, heroic ancestors of the privileged families who continued throughout the historical times of Athens to fulfil their special hereditary functions in the Eleusinian solemnities, are among the immediate recipients of inspiration from the goddess; but chiefly does she favor Metaneira and her infant son Dêmophoôn, for the latter of whom her greatest boon is destined, and intercepted only by the weak faith of the mother. Moreover, every incident in the Hymn has a local coloring and a special reference. The well, overshadowed by an olive-tree near which Dêmêtêr had rested, the stream Kallichorus and the temple-hill, were familiar and interesting places in the eyes of every Eleusinian; the peculiar posset prepared from barley-meal with mint was always tasted by the Mysts (or communicants) after a prescribed fast, as an article in the ceremony,—while it was also the custom, at a particular spot in the processional march, to permit the free interchange of personal jokes and taunts upon individuals for the general amusement. And these two customs are connected in the Hymn with the incidents, that Dêmêtêr herself had chosen the posset as the first interruption of her long and melancholy fast, and that her sorrowful thoughts had been partially diverted by the coarse playfulness of the servant-maid Iambê. In the enlarged representation of the Eleusinian ceremonies, which became established after the incorporation of Eleusis with Athens, the part of Iambê herself was enacted by a woman, or man in woman’s attire, of suitable wit and imagination, who was posted on the bridge over the Kephissos, and addressed to the passers-by in the procession,[92] especially the great men of Athens, saucy jeers, probably not less piercing than those of Aristophanês on the stage. The torch-bearing Hekatê received a portion of the worship in the nocturnal ceremonies of the Eleusinia: this too is traced, in the Hymn, to her kind and affectionate sympathy with the great goddesses.

[92] Aristophanês, Vesp. 1363. Hesych. v. Γεφυρίς. Suidas, v. Γεφυρίζων. Compare about the details of the ceremony, Clemens Alexandr. Admon. ad Gent. p. 13. A similar license of unrestrained jocularity appears in the rites of Dêmêtêr in Sicily (Diodôr. v. 4; see also Pausan. vii. 27, 4), and in the worship of Damia and Auxesia at Ægina (Herodot. v. 83).

Though all these incidents were sincerely believed by the Eleusinians as a true history of the past, and as having been the real initiatory cause of their own solemnities, it is not the less certain that they are simply mythes or legends, and not to be treated as history, either actual or exaggerated. They do not take their start from realities of the past, but from realities of the present, combined with retrospective feeling and fancy, which fills up the blank of the aforetime in a manner at once plausible and impressive. What proportion of fact there may be in the legend, or whether there be any at all, it is impossible to ascertain and useless to inquire; for the story did not acquire belief from its approximation to real fact, but from its perfect harmony with Eleusinian faith and feeling, and from the absence of any standard of historical credibility. The little town of Eleusis derived all its importance from the solemnity of the Dêmêtria, and the Hymn which we have been considering (probably at least as old as 600 B. C.) represents the town as it stood before its absorption into the larger unity of Athens, which seems to have produced an alteration of its legends and an increase of dignity in its great festival. In the faith of an Eleusinian, the religious as well as the patriotic antiquities of his native town were connected with this capital solemnity. The divine legend of the sufferings of Dêmêtêr and her visit to Eleusis was to him that which the heroic legend of Adrastus and the Siege of Thêbes was to a Sikyonian, or that of Erechtheus and Athênê to an Athenian grouping together in the same scene and story the goddess and the heroic fathers of the town. If our information were fuller, we should probably find abundance of other legends respecting the Dêmêtria: the Gephyræi of Athens, to whom belonged the celebrated Harmodios and Aristogeitôn, and who possessed special Orgies of Dêmêtêr the Sorrowful, to which no man foreign to their Gens was ever admitted,[93] would doubtless have told stories not only different but contradictory; and even in other Eleusinian mythes we discover Eumolpus as king of Eleusis, son of Poseidôn, and a Thracian, completely different from the character which he bears in the Hymn before us.[94] Neither discrepancies nor want of evidence, in reference to alleged antiquities, shocked the faith of a non-historical public. What they wanted was a picture of the past, impressive to their feelings and plausible to their imagination; and it is important to the reader to remember, while he reads either the divine legends which we are now illustrating or the heroic legends to which we shall soon approach, that he is dealing with a past which never was present,—a region essentially mythical, neither approachable by the critic nor mensurable by the chronologer.

[93] Herodot. v. 61.

[94] Pausan. i. 38, 3; Apollodôr. iii. 15, 4. Heyne in his Note admits several persons named Eumolpus. Compare Isokratês, Panegyr. p. 55. Philochorus the Attic antiquary could not have received the legend of the Eleusinian Hymn, from the different account which he gave respecting the rape of Persephonê (Philoch. Fragm. 46, ed. Didot), and also respecting Keleos (Fr. 28, _ibid._).

The tale respecting the visit of Dêmêtêr, which was told by the ancient Gens, called the Phytalids,[95] in reference to another temple of Dêmêtêr between Athens and Eleusis, and also by the Megarians in reference to a Dêmêtrion near their city, acquired under the auspices of Athens still further extension. The goddess was reported to have first communicated to Triptolemus at Eleusis the art of sowing corn, which by his intervention was disseminated all over the earth. And thus the Athenians took credit to themselves for having been the medium of communication from the gods to man of all the inestimable blessings of agriculture, which they affirmed to have been first exhibited on the fertile Rharian plain near Eleusis. Such pretensions are not to be found in the old Homeric hymn. The festival of the Thesmophoria, celebrated in honor of Dêmêtêr Thesmophoros at Athens, was altogether different from the Eleusinia, in this material respect, as well as others, that all males were excluded, and women only were allowed to partake in it: the surname Thesmophoros gave occasion to new legends in which the goddess was glorified as the first authoress of laws and legal sanctions to mankind.[96] This festival, for women apart and alone, was also celebrated at Paros, at Ephesus, and in many other parts of Greece.[97]

[95] Phytalus, the Eponym or godfather of this gens, had received Dêmêtêr as a guest in his house, when she first presented mankind with the fruit of the fig-tree. (Pausan. i. 37, 2.)

[96] Kallimach. Hymn. Cerer. 19. Sophoklês, Triptolemos, Frag. 1. Cicero, Legg. ii. 14, and the note of Servius ad Virgil. Æn. iv. 58.

[97] Herodot. vi. 16, 134. ἕρκος Θεσμοφόρου Δήμητρος—τὸ ἐς ἔρσενα γόνον ἄῤῥητα ἱερά.

Altogether, Dêmêtêr and Dionysos, as the Grecian counterparts of the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, seem to have been the great recipients of the new sacred rites borrowed from Egypt, before the worship of Isis in her own name was introduced into Greece: their solemnities became more frequently recluse and mysterious than those of the other deities. The importance of Dêmêtêr to the collective nationality of Greece may be gathered from the fact that her temple was erected at Thermopylæ, the spot where the Amphiktyonic assemblies were held, close by the temple of the Eponymous hero Amphiktyôn himself, and under the surname of the Amphiktyonic Dêmêtêr.[98]

[98] Herodot. vii. 200.

We now pass to another and not less important celestial personage—Apollo.

The legends of Dêlos and Delphi, embodied in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, indicate, if not a greater dignity, at least a more widely diffused worship of that god than even of Dêmêtêr. The Hymn is, in point of fact, an aggregate of two separate compositions, one emanating from an Ionic bard at Dêlos, the other from Delphi. The first details the birth, the second the mature divine efficiency, of Apollo; but both alike present the unaffected charm as well as the characteristic peculiarities of Grecian mythical narrative. The hymnographer sings, and his hearers accept in perfect good faith, a history of the past; but it is a past, imagined partly as an introductory explanation to the present, partly as a means of glorifying the god. The island of Dêlos was the accredited birth-place of Apollo, and is also the place in which he chiefly delights, where the great and brilliant Ionic festival is periodically convened in his honor. Yet it is a rock narrow, barren, and uninviting: how came so glorious a privilege to be awarded to it? This the poet takes upon himself to explain. Lêtô, pregnant with Apollo, and persecuted by the jealous Hêrê, could find no spot wherein to give birth to her offspring. In vain did she address herself to numerous places in Greece, the Asiatic coast and the intermediate islands; all were terrified at the wrath of Hêrê, and refused to harbor her. As a last resort, she approached the rejected and repulsive island of Dêlos, and promised that, if shelter were granted to her in her forlorn condition, the island should become the chosen resort of Apollo as well as the site of his temple with its rich accompanying solemnities.[99] Dêlos joyfully consented, but not without many apprehensions that the potent Apollo would despise her unworthiness, and not without exacting a formal oath from Lêtô,—who was then admitted to the desired protection, and duly accomplished her long and painful labor. Though Diônê, Rhea, Themis and Amphitritê came to soothe and succor her, yet Hêrê kept away the goddess presiding over childbirth, Eileithyia, and thus cruelly prolonged her pangs. At length Eileithyia came, and Apollo was born. Hardly had Apollo tasted, from the hands of Themis, the immortal food, nectar and ambrosia, when he burst at once his infant bands, and displayed himself in full divine form and strength, claiming his characteristic attributes of the bow and the harp, and his privileged function of announcing beforehand to mankind the designs of Zeus. The promise made by Lêtô to Dêlos was faithfully performed: amidst the numberless other temples and groves which men provided for him, he ever preferred that island as his permanent residence, and there the Ionians with their wives and children, and all their “bravery,” congregated periodically from their different cities to glorify him. Dance and song and athletic contests adorned the solemnity, and the countless ships, wealth, and grace of the multitudinous Ionians had the air of an assembly of gods. The Delian maidens, servants of Apollo, sang hymns to the glory of the god, as well as of Artemis and Lêtô, intermingled with adventures of foregone men and women, to the delight of the listening crowd. The blind itinerant bard of Chios (composer of this the Homeric hymn, and confounded in antiquity with the author of the Iliad) had found honor and acceptance at this festival, and commends himself, in a touching farewell strain, to the remembrance and sympathy of the Delian maidens.[100]

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

[100] Hom. Hymn. Apoll. i. 179.

But Dêlos was not an oracular spot: Apollo did not manifest himself there as revealer of the futurities of Zeus. A place must be found where this beneficent function, without which mankind would perish under the innumerable doubts and perplexities of life, may be exercised and rendered available. Apollo himself descends from Olympus to make choice of a suitable site: the hymnographer knows a thousand other adventures of the god which he might sing, but he prefers this memorable incident, the charter and patent of consecration for the Delphian temple. Many different places did Apollo inspect; he surveyed the country of the Magnêtes and the Perrhæbians, came to Iôlkos, and passed over from thence to Eubœa and the plain of Lelanton. But even this fertile spot did not please him: he crossed the Euripus to Bœotia, passed by Teumêssus and Mykalêssus, and the then inaccessible and unoccupied forest on which the city of Thêbes afterwards stood. He next proceeded to Onchêstos, but the grove of Poseidôn was already established there; next across the Kêphissus to Okalea, Haliartus, and the agreeable plain and much-frequented fountain of Delphusa, or Tilphusa. Pleased with the place, Apollo prepared to establish his oracle there, but Tilphusa was proud of the beauty of her own site, and did not choose that her glory should be eclipsed by that of the god.[101] She alarmed him with the apprehension that the chariots which contended in her plain, and the horses and mules which watered at her fountain would disturb the solemnity of his oracle; and she thus induced him to proceed onward to the southern side of Parnassus, overhanging the harbor of Krissa. Here he established his oracle, in the mountainous site not frequented by chariots and horses, and near to a fountain, which however was guarded by a vast and terrific serpent, once the nurse of the monster Typhaôn. This serpent Apollo slew with an arrow, and suffered its body to rot in the sun: hence the name of the place, Pythô,[102] and the surname of the Pythian Apollo. The plan of his temple being marked out, it was built by Trophônios and Agamêdês, aided by a crowd of forward auxiliaries from the neighborhood. He now discovered with indignation, however, that Tilphusa had cheated him, and went back with swift step to resent it. “Thou shalt not thus,” he said, “succeed in thy fraud and retain thy beautiful water; the glory of the place shall be mine, and not thine alone.” Thus saying, he tumbled down a crag upon the fountain, and obstructed her limpid current: establishing an altar for himself in a grove hard by near another spring, where men still worship him as Apollo Tilphusios, because of his severe vengeance upon the once beautiful Tilphusa.[103]

[101] Hom. Hymn. Apoll. 262.

[102] Hom. Hymn. 363—πύθεσθαι, _to rot_.

[103] Hom. Hymn. Apoll. 381.

Apollo next stood in need of chosen ministers to take care of his temple and sacrifice, and to pronounce his responses at Pythô. Descrying a ship, “containing many and good men,” bound on traffic from the Minoian Knossus in Krête, to Pylus in Peloponnêsus, he resolved to make use of the ship and her crew for his purpose. Assuming the shape of a vast dolphin, he splashed about and shook the vessel so as to strike the mariners with terror, while he sent a strong wind, which impelled her along the coast of Peloponnêsus into the Corinthian Gulf, and finally to the harbor of Krissa, where she ran aground. The affrighted crew did not dare to disembark: but Apollo was seen standing on the shore in the guise of a vigorous youth, and inquired who they were, and what was their business. The leader of the Krêtans recounted in reply their miraculous and compulsory voyage, when Apollo revealed himself as the author and contriver of it, announcing to them the honorable function and the dignified post to which he destined them.[104] They followed him by his orders to the rocky Pythô on Parnassus, singing the solemn Io-Paian such as it is sung in Krête, while the god himself marched at their head, with his fine form and lofty step, playing on the harp. He showed them the temple and site of the oracle, and directed them to worship him as Apollo Delphinios, because they had first seen him in the shape of a dolphin. “But how,” they inquired, “are we to live in a spot where there is neither corn, nor vine, nor pasturage?” “Ye silly mortals,” answered the god, “who look only for toil and privation, know that an easier lot is yours. Ye shall live by the cattle whom crowds of pious visitors will bring to the temple: ye shall need only the knife to be constantly ready for sacrifice.[105] Your duty will be to guard my temple, and to officiate as ministers at my feasts: but if ye be guilty of wrong or insolence, either by word or deed, ye shall become the slaves of other men, and shall remain so forever. Take heed of the word and the warning.”

[104] Hom. Hymn. Apoll. 475 _sqq._

[105] Homer. Hymn. Apoll. 535.—

Δεξιτέρῃ μάλ᾽ ἕκαστος ἔχων ἐν χειρὶ μάχαιραν Σφάζειν αἰεὶ μῆλα· τὰ δ᾽ ἄφθονα πάντα πάρεσται, Ὅσσα ἐμοίγ᾽ ἀγάγωσι περίκλυτα φῦλ᾽ ἀνθρώπων.

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

The worship of Apollo is among the most ancient, capital, and strongly marked facts of the Grecian world, and widely diffused over every branch of the race. It is older than the Iliad or Odyssey, in the latter of which both Pythô and Dêlos are noted, though Dêlos is not named in the former. But the ancient Apollo is different in more respects than one from the Apollo of later times. He is in an especial manner the god of the Trojans, unfriendly to the Greeks, and especially to Achilles; he has, moreover, only two primary attributes, his bow and his prophetic powers, without any distinct connection either with the harp, or with medicine, or with the sun, all which in later times he came to comprehend. He is not only, as Apollo Karneius, the chief god of the Doric race, but also (under the surname of Patrôus) the great protecting divinity of the gentile tie among the Ionians:[106] he is moreover the guide and stimulus to Grecian colonization, scarcely any colony being ever sent out without encouragement and direction from the oracle at Delphi: Apollo Archêgetês is one of his great surnames.[107] His temple lends sanctity to the meetings of the Amphiktyonic assembly, and he is always in filial subordination and harmony with his father Zeus: Delphi and Olympia are never found in conflict. In the Iliad, the warm and earnest patrons of the Greeks are Hêrê, Athênê, and Poseidôn: here too Zeus and Apollo are seen in harmony, for Zeus is decidedly well-inclined to the Trojans, and reluctantly sacrifices them to the importunity of the two great goddesses.[108] The worship of the Sminthian Apollo, in various parts of the Troad and the neighboring territory, dates before the earliest periods of Æolic colonization:[109] hence the zealous patronage of Troy ascribed to him in the Iliad. Altogether, however, the distribution and partialities of the gods in that poem are different from what they become in later times,—a difference which our means of information do not enable us satisfactorily to explain. Besides the Delphian temple, Apollo had numerous temples throughout Greece, and oracles at Abæ in Phôkis, on the Mount Ptôon, and at Tegyra in Bœotia, where he was said to have been born,[110] at Branchidæ near Milêtus, at Klarus in Asia Minor, and at Patara in Lykia. He was not the only oracular god: Zeus at Dodona and at Olympia gave responses also: the gods or heroes Trophônius, Amphiaraus, Amphilochus, Mopsus, etc., each at his own sanctuary and in his own prescribed manner, rendered the same service.

[106] Harpocration v. Ἀπόλλων πατρῶος and Ἑρκεῖος Ζεύς. Apollo Delphinios also belongs to the Ionic Greeks generally. Strabo, iv. 179.

[107] Thucydid. vi. 3; Kallimach. Hymn. Apoll. 56.—

Φοῖβος γὰρ ἀεὶ πολίεσσι φιληδεῖ Κτιζομέναις, αὐτὸς δὲ θεμείλια Φοῖβος ὑφαίνει.

[108] Iliad, iv. 30-46.

[109] Iliad, i. 38, 451; Stephan. Byz. Ἵλιον, Τένεδος. See also Klausen, Æneas und die Penaten, b. i. p. 69. The worship of Apollo Sminthios and the festival of the Sminthia at Alexandria Troas lasted down to the time of Menander the rhêtôr, at the close of the third century after Christ.

[110] Plutarch. Defect. Oracul. c. 5, p. 412; c. 8, p. 414; Steph. Byz. v. Τεγύρα. The temple of the Ptôan Apollo had acquired celebrity before the days of the poet Asius. Pausan. ix. 23, 3.

The two legends of Delphi and Dêlos, above noticed, form of course a very insignificant fraction of the narratives which once existed respecting the great and venerated Apollo. They serve only as specimens, and as very early specimens,[111] to illustrate what these divine mythes were, and what was the turn of Grecian faith and imagination. The constantly recurring festivals of the gods caused an incessant demand for new mythes respecting them, or at least for varieties and reproductions of the old mythes. Even during the third century of the Christian æra, in the time of the rhêtôr Menander, when the old forms of Paganism were waning and when the stock of mythes in existence was extremely abundant, we see this demand in great force; but it was incomparably more operative in those earlier times when the creative vein of the Grecian mind yet retained its pristine and unfaded richness. Each god had many different surnames, temples, groves, and solemnities; with each of which was connected more or less of mythical narrative, originally hatched in the prolific and spontaneous fancy of a believing neighborhood, to be afterwards expanded, adorned and diffused by the song of the poet. The earliest subject of competition[112] at the great Pythian festival was the singing of a hymn in honor of Apollo: other _agones_ were subsequently added, but the ode or hymn constituted the fundamental attribute of the solemnity: the Pythia at Sikyôn and elsewhere were probably framed on a similar footing. So too at the ancient and celebrated Charitêsia, or festival of the Charites, at Orchomenos, the rivalry of the poets in their various modes of composition both began and continued as the predominant feature:[113] and the inestimable treasures yet remaining to us of Attic tragedy and comedy, are gleanings from the once numerous dramas exhibited at the solemnity of the Dionysia. The Ephesians gave considerable rewards for the best hymns in honor of Artemis, to be sung at her temple.[114] And the early lyric poets of Greece, though their works have not descended to us, devoted their genius largely to similar productions, as may be seen by the titles and fragments yet remaining.

[111] The legend which Ephorus followed about the establishment of the Delphian temple was something radically different from the Homeric Hymn (Ephori Fragm. 70, ed. Didot): his narrative went far to politicize and rationalize the story. The progeny of Apollo was very numerous, and of the most diverse attributes; he was father of the Korybantes (Pherekydes, Fragm. 6, ed. Didot), as well as of Asklêpios and Aristæus (Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 500; Apollodôr. iii. 10, 3).

[112] Strabo, ix. p. 421. Menander the Rhetor (Ap. Walz. Coll. Rhett. t. ix. p. 136) gives an elaborate classification of hymns to the gods, distinguishing them into nine classes,—κλητικοὶ, ἀποπεμπτικοὶ, φυσικοὶ, μυθικοὶ, γενεαλογικοὶ, πεπλασμένοι, εὐκτικοὶ, ἀπευκτικοὶ, μικτοί:—the second class had reference to the temporary absences or departure of a god to some distant place, which were often admitted in the ancient religion. Sappho and Alkman in their _kletic_ hymns invoked the gods from many different places,—τὴν μὲν γὰρ Ἄρτεμιν ἐκ μυρίων μὲν ὄρεων, μυρίων δὲ πόλεων, ἔτι δὲ ποτάμων, ἀνακαλεῖ,—also Aphroditê and Apollo, etc. All these songs were full of adventures and details respecting the gods,—in other words of legendary matter.

[113] Pindar, Olymp. xiv.; Boeckh, Staatshaushaltung der Athener, Appendix, § xx. p. 357.

[114] Alexander Ætolus, apud Macrobium, Saturn. v. 22.

Both the Christian and the Mahomedan religions have begun during the historical age, have been propagated from one common centre, and have been erected upon the ruins of a different pre-existing faith. With none of these particulars did Grecian Paganism correspond. It took rise in an age of imagination and feeling simply, without the restraints, as well as without the aid, of writing or records, of history or philosophy: it was, as a general rule, the spontaneous product of many separate tribes and localities, imitation and propagation operating as subordinate causes; it was moreover a primordial faith, as far as our means of information enable us to discover. These considerations explain to us two facts in the history of the early Pagan mind: first, the divine mythes, the matter of their religion, constituted also the matter of their earliest history; next, these mythes harmonized with each other only in their general types, but differed incurably in respect of particular incidents. The poet who sung a new adventure of Apollo, the trace of which he might have heard in some remote locality, would take care that it should be agreeable to the general conceptions which his hearers entertained respecting the god. He would not ascribe the cestus or amorous influences to Athênê, nor armed interference and the ægis to Aphroditê; but, provided he maintained this general keeping, he might indulge his fancy without restraint in the particular events of the story.[115] The feelings and faith of his hearers went along with him, and there were no critical scruples to hold them back: to scrutinize the alleged proceedings of the gods was repulsive, and to disbelieve them impious. And thus these divine mythes, though they had their root simply in religious feelings, and though they presented great discrepancies of fact, served nevertheless as primitive matter of history to an early Greek: they were the only narratives, at once publicly accredited and interesting, which he possessed. To them were aggregated the heroic mythes (to which we shall proceed presently),—indeed the two are inseparably blended, gods, heroes and men almost always appearing in the same picture,—analogous both in their structure and their genesis, and differing chiefly in the circumstance that they sprang from the type of a hero instead of from that of a god.

[115] The birth of Apollo and Artemis from Zeus and Lêtô is among the oldest and most generally admitted facts in the Grecian divine legends. Yet Æschylus did not scruple to describe Artemis publicly as daughter of Dêmêtêr (Herodot. ii. 156; Pausan. viii. 37, 3). Herodotus thinks that he copied this innovation from the Egyptians, who affirmed that Apollo and Artemis were the sons of Dionysos and Isis.

The number and discrepancies of the mythes respecting each god are attested by the fruitless attempts of learned Greeks to escape the necessity of rejecting any of them by multiplying homonymous personages,—three persons named Zeus; five named Athênê; six named Apollo, etc. (Cicero. de Natur. Deor. iii. 21: Clemen. Alexand. Admon. ad Gent. p. 17).

We are not to be astonished if we find Aphroditê, in the Iliad, born from Zeus and Dionê,—and in the Theogony of Hesiod, generated from the foam on the sea after the mutilation of Uranos; nor if in the Odyssey she appears as the wife of Hêphæstos, while in the Theogony the latter is married to Aglaia, and Aphroditê is described as mother of three children by Arês.[116] The Homeric hymn to Aphroditê details the legend of Aphroditê and Anchisês, which is presupposed in the Iliad as the parentage of Æneas: but the author of the hymn, probably sung at one of the festivals of Aphroditê in Cyprus, represents the goddess as ashamed of her passion for a mortal, and as enjoining Anchisês under severe menaces not to reveal who the mother of Æneas was;[117] while in the Iliad she has no scruple in publicly owning him, and he passes everywhere as her acknowledged son. Aphroditê is described in the hymn as herself cold and unimpressible, but ever active and irresistible in inspiring amorous feelings to gods, to men, and to animals. Three goddesses are recorded as memorable exceptions to her universal empire,—Athênê, Artemis, and Hestia or Vesta. Aphroditê was one of the most important of all the goddesses in the mythical world; for the number of interesting, pathetic and tragical adventures deducible from misplaced or unhappy passion was of course very great; and in most of these cases the intervention of Aphroditê was usually prefixed, with some legend to explain why she manifested herself. Her range of action grows wider in the later epic and lyric and tragic poets than in Homer.[118]

[116] Hesiod, Theogon. 188, 934, 945; Homer, Iliad, v. 371; Odyss. viii. 268.

[117] Homer, Hymn. Vener. 248, 286; Homer, Iliad, v. 320, 386.

[118] A large proportion of the Hesiodic epic related to the exploits and adventures of the heroic women,—the Catalogue of Women and the Eoiai embodied a string of such narratives. Hesiod and Stesichorus explained the conduct of Helen and Klytæmnêstra by the anger of Aphroditê, caused by the neglect of their father Tyndareus to sacrifice to her (Hesiod, Fragm. 59, ed. Düntzer; Stesichor. Fragm. 9, ed. Schneidewin): the irresistible ascendency of Aphroditê is set forth in the Hippolytus of Euripidês not less forcibly than that of Dionysos in the Bacchæ. The character of Daphnis the herdsman, well-known from the first Idyll of Theocritus, and illustrating the destroying force of Aphroditê, appears to have been first introduced into Greek poetry by Stesichorus (see Klausen, Æneas und die Penaten, vol. i. pp. 526-529). Compare a striking piece among the Fragmenta Incerta of Sophoklês (Fr. 63, Brunck) and Euripid. Troad. 946, 995, 1048. Even in the Opp. et Di. of Hesiod, Aphroditê is conceived rather as a disturbing and injurious influence (v. 65).

Adonis owes his renown to the Alexandrine poets and their contemporary sovereigns (see Bion’s Idyll and the Adoniazusæ of Theocritus). The favorites of Aphroditê, even as counted up by the diligence of Clemens Alexandrinus, are however very few in number. (Admonitio ad Gent. p. 12, Sylb.)

Athênê, the man-goddess,[119] born from the head of Zeus, without a mother and without feminine sympathies, is the antithesis partly of Aphroditê, partly of the effeminate or womanized god Dionysos—the latter is an importation from Asia, but Athênê is a Greek conception—the type of composed, majestic and unrelenting force. It appears however as if this goddess had been conceived in a different manner in different parts of Greece. For we find ascribed to her, in some of the legends, attributes of industry and home-keeping; she is represented as the companion of Hêphæstos, patronizing handicraft, and expert at the loom and the spindle: the Athenian potters worshipped her along with Promêtheus. Such traits of character do not square with the formidable ægis and the massive and crushing spear which Homer and most of the mythes assign to her. There probably were at first at least two different types of Athênê, and their coalescence has partially obliterated the less marked of the two.[120] Athênê is the constant and watchful protectress of Hêraklês: she is also locally identified with the soil and people of Athens, even in the Iliad: Erechtheus, the Athenian, is born of the earth, but Athênê brings him up, nourishes him, and lodges him in her own temple, where the Athenians annually worship him with sacrifice and solemnities.[121] It was altogether impossible to make Erechtheus son of Athênê,—the type of the goddess forbade it; but the Athenian mythe-creators, though they found this barrier impassable, strove to approach to it as near as they could, and the description which they give of the birth of Erichthonios, at once un-Homeric and unseemly, presents something like the phantom of maternity.[122]

[119] Ἀνδροθέᾳ δῶρον ... Ἀθάνᾳ Simmias Rhodius; Πέλεκυς, ap. Hephæstion. c. 9. p. 54, Gaisford.

[120] Apollodôr. ap. Schol. ad Sophokl. Œdip. vol. 57; Pausan. i. 24, 3; ix. 26, 3; Diodôr. v. 73; Plato, Legg. xi. p. 920. In the Opp. et Di. of Hesiod, the carpenter is the servant of Athênê (429): see also Phereklos the τέκτων in the Iliad, v. 61: compare viii. 385; Odyss. viii. 493; and the Homeric Hymn, to Aphroditê, v. 12. The learned article of O. Müller (in the Encyclopædia of Ersch and Gruber, since republished among his Kleine Deutsche Schriften, p. 134 _seq._), _Pallas Athênê_, brings together all that can be known about this goddess.

[121] Iliad, ii. 546; viii. 362.

[122] Apollodôr. iii. 4, 6. Compare the vague language of Plato, Kritias, c. iv., and Ovid, Metamorph. ii. 757.

The huntress Artemis, in Arcadia and in Greece proper generally, exhibits a well-defined type with which the legends respecting her are tolerably consistent. But the Ephesian as well as the Tauric Artemis partakes more of the Asiatic character, and has borrowed the attributes of the Lydian Great Mother as well as of an indigenous Tauric Virgin:[123] this Ephesian Artemis passed to the colonies of Phokæa and Milêtus.[124] The Homeric Artemis shares with her brother Apollo in the dexterous use of the far-striking bow, and sudden death is described by the poet as inflicted by her gentle arrow. The jealousy of the gods at the withholding of honors and sacrifices, or at the presumption of mortals in contending with them,—a point of character so frequently recurring in the types of the Grecian gods,—manifests itself in the legends of Artemis: the memorable Kalydônian boar is sent by her as a visitation upon Œneus, because he had omitted to sacrifice to her, while he did honor to other gods.[125] The Arcadian heroine Atalanta is however a reproduction of Artemis, with little or no difference, and the goddess is sometimes confounded even with her attendant nymphs.

[123] Herodot. iv. 103; Strabo, xii. p. 534; xiii. p. 650. About the Ephesian Artemis, see Guhl, Ephesiaca (Berlin, 1843), p. 79 _sqq._; Aristoph. Nub. 590; Autokrates in Tympanistis apud Ælian. Hist. Animal. xii. 9; and Spanheim ad Kallimach. Hymn. Dian. 36. The dances in honor of Artemis sometimes appear to have approached to the frenzied style of Bacchanal movement. See the words of Timotheus ap. Plutarch. de Audiend. Poet. p. 22, c. 4, and περὶ Δεισιδ. c. 10, p. 170, also Aristoph. Lysist. 1314. They seem to have been often celebrated in the solitudes of the mountains, which were the favorite resort of Artemis (Kallimach. Hymn. Dian. 19), and these ὀρειβάσιαι were always causes predisposing to fanatical excitement.

[124] Strabo, iv. p. 179.

[125] Iliad, ix. 529.

The mighty Poseidôn, the earth-shaker and the ruler of the sea, is second only to Zeus in power, but has no share in those imperial and superintending capacities which the Father of gods and men exhibits. He numbers a numerous heroic progeny, usually men of great corporeal strength, and many of them belonging to the Æolic race: the great Neleid family of Pylus trace their origin up to him; and he is also the father of Polyphêmus the Cyclôps, whose well-earned suffering he cruelly revenges upon Odysseus. The island of Kalaureia is his Dêlos,[126] and there was held in it an old local Amphiktyony, for the purpose of rendering to him joint honor and sacrifice: the isthmus of Corinth, Helikê in Achaia, and Onchêstos in Bœotia, are also residences which he much affects, and where he is solemnly worshipped. But the abode which he originally and specially selected for himself was the Acropolis of Athens, where by a blow of his trident he produced a well of water in the rock: Athênê came afterwards and claimed the spot for herself, planting in token of possession the olive-tree which stood in the sacred grove of Pandrosos: and the decision either of the autochthonous Cecrops, or of Erechtheus, awarded to her the preference, much to the displeasure of Poseidôn. Either on this account, or on account of the death of his son Eumolpus, slain in assisting the Eleusinians against Erechtheus, the Attic mythes ascribed to Poseidôn great enmity against the Erechtheid family, which he is asserted to have ultimately overthrown: Theseus, whose glorious reign and deeds succeeded to that family, is said to have been really his son.[127] In several other places,—in Ægina, Argos and Naxos,—Poseidôn had disputed the privileges of patron-god with Zeus, Hêrê and Dionysos: he was worsted in all, but bore his defeat patiently.[128] Poseidôn endured a long slavery, in common with Apollo, gods as they were,[129] under Laomedôn, king of Troy, at the command and condemnation of Zeus: the two gods rebuilt the walls of the city, which had been destroyed by Hêraklês. When their time was expired, the insolent Laomedôn withheld from them the stipulated reward, and even accompanied its refusal with appalling threats; and the subsequent animosity of the god against Troy was greatly determined by the sentiment of this injustice.[130] Such periods of servitude, inflicted upon individual gods, are among the most remarkable of all the incidents in the divine legends. We find Apollo on another occasion condemned to serve Admêtus, king of Pheræ, as a punishment for having killed the Cyclôpes, and Hêraklês also is sold as a slave to Omphalê. Even the fierce Arês, overpowered and imprisoned for a long time by the two Alôids,[131] is ultimately liberated only by extraneous aid. Such narratives attest the discursive range of Grecian fancy in reference to the gods, as well as the perfect commingling of things and persons, divine and human, in their conceptions of the past. The god who serves is for the time degraded: but the supreme god who commands the servitude is in the like proportion exalted, whilst the idea of some sort of order and government among these superhuman beings was never lost sight of. Nevertheless the mythes respecting the servitude of the gods became obnoxious afterwards, along with many others, to severe criticism on the part of philosophers.

[126] Strabo, viii. p. 374. According to the old poem called Eumolpia, ascribed to Musæus, the oracle of Delphi originally belonged to Poseidôn and Gæa, jointly: from Gæa it passed to Themis, and from her to Apollo, to whom Poseidôn also made over his share as a compensation for the surrender of Kalaureia to him. (Pausan. x. 5, 3).

[127] Apollodôr. iii. 14, 1; iii. 15, 3, 5.

[128] Plutarch, Sympos. viii. 6, p. 741.

[129] Iliad, ii. 716, 766; Euripid. Alkêstis, 2. See Panyasis, Fragm. 12, p. 24, ed. Düntzer.

[130] Iliad, vii. 452; xxi. 459.

[131] Iliad, v. 386.

The proud, jealous, and bitter Hêrê,—the goddess of the once-wealthy Mykênæ, the _fax et focus_ of the Trojan war, and the ever-present protectress of Jasôn in the Argonautic expedition,[132]—occupies an indispensable station in the mythical world. As the daughter of Kronos and wife of Zeus, she fills a throne from whence he cannot dislodge her, and which gives her a right perpetually to grumble and to thwart him.[133] Her unmeasured jealousy of the female favorites of Zeus, and her antipathy against his sons, especially against Hêraklês, has been the suggesting cause of innumerable mythes: the general type of her character stands here clearly marked, as furnishing both stimulus and guide to the mythopœic fancy. The “Sacred Wedding,” or marriage of Zeus and Hêrê, was familiar to epithalamic poets long before it became a theme for the spiritualizing ingenuity of critics.

[132] Iliad, iv. 51; Odyss. xii. 72.

[133] Iliad, i. 544; iv. 29-38; viii. 408.

Hêphæstos is the son of Hêrê without a father, and stands to her in the same relation as Athênê to Zeus: her pride and want of sympathy are manifested by her casting him out at once in consequence of his deformity.[134] He is the god of fire, and especially of fire in its practical applications to handicraft, and is indispensable as the right-hand and instrument of the gods. His skill and his deformity appear alternately as the source of mythical stories: wherever exquisite and effective fabrication is intended to be designated, Hêphæstos is announced as the maker, although in this function the type of his character is reproduced in Dædalos. In the Attic legends he appears intimately united both with Promêtheus and with Athênê, in conjunction with whom he was worshipped at Kolônus near Athens. Lemnos was the favorite residence of Hêphæstos; and if we possessed more knowledge of this island and its town Hêphæstias, we should doubtless find abundant legends detailing his adventures and interventions.

[134] Iliad, xviii. 306.

The chaste, still, and home-keeping Hestia, goddess of the family hearth, is far less fruitful in mythical narratives, in spite of her very superior dignity, than the knavish, smooth-tongued, keen, and acquisitive Hermês. His function of messenger of the gods brings him perpetually on the stage, and affords ample scope for portraying the features of his character. The Homeric hymn to Hermês describes the scene and circumstances of his birth, and the almost instantaneous manifestation, even in infancy, of his peculiar attributes; it explains the friendly footing on which he stood with Apollo,—the interchange of gifts and functions between them,—and lastly, the inviolate security of all the wealth and offerings in the Delphian temple, exposed as they were to thieves without any visible protection. Such was the innate cleverness and talent of Hermês, that on the day he was born he invented the lyre, stringing the seven chords on the shell of a tortoise:[135] and he also stole the cattle of Apollo in Pieria, dragging them backwards to his cave in Arcadia, so that their track could not be detected. To the remonstrances of his mother Maia, who points out to him the danger of offending Apollo, Hermês replies, that he aspires to rival the dignity and functions of Apollo among the immortals, and that if his father Zeus refuses to grant them to him, he will employ his powers of thieving in breaking open the sanctuary at Delphi, and in carrying away the gold and the vestments, the precious tripods and vessels.[136] Presently Apollo discovers the loss of his cattle, and after some trouble finds his way to the Kyllênian cavern, where he sees Hermês asleep in his cradle. The child denies the theft with effrontery, and even treats the surmise as a ridiculous impossibility: he persists in such denial even before Zeus, who however detects him at once, and compels him to reveal the place where the cattle are concealed. But the lyre was as yet unknown to Apollo, who has heard nothing except the voice of the Muses and the sound of the pipe. So powerfully is he fascinated by hearing the tones of the lyre from Hermês, and so eager to become possessed of it, that he is willing at once to pardon the past theft, and even to conciliate besides the friendship of Hermês.[137] Accordingly a bargain is struck between the two gods and sanctioned by Zeus. Hermês surrenders to Apollo the lyre, inventing for his own use the syrinx or panspipe, and receiving from Apollo in exchange the golden rod of wealth, with empire over flocks and herds as well as over horses and oxen and the wild animals of the woods. He presses to obtain the gift of prophecy, but Apollo is under a special vow not to impart that privilege to any god whatever: he instructs Hermês however how to draw information, to a certain extent, from the Mœræ or Fates themselves; and assigns to him, over and above, the function of messenger of the gods to Hadês.

[135] Homer. Hymn. Mercur. 18.—

Ἤῳος γεγονὼς, μέσῳ ἥματι ἐγκιθάριζεν, Ἑσπέριος βοῦς κλέψεν ἑκηβόλου Ἀπόλλωνος, etc.

[136] Homer. Hymn. Merc. 177.—

Εἰμὶ γὰρ ἐς Πύθωνα, μέγαν δόμον ἀντιτορήσων, Ἔνθεν ἅλις τρίποδας περικαλλέας, ἠδὲ λέβητας Πορθήσω καὶ χρυσὸν, etc.

[137] Homer. Hymn. Merc. 442-454.

Although Apollo has acquired the lyre, the particular object of his wishes, he is still under apprehension that Hermês will steal it away from him again, together with his bow, and he exacts a formal oath by Styx as security. Hermês promises solemnly that he will steal none of the acquisitions, nor ever invade the sanctuary of Apollo; while the latter on his part pledges himself to recognize Hermês as his chosen friend and companion, amongst all the other sons of Zeus, human or divine.[138]

[138] Homer. Hymn. Merc. 504-520.—

Καὶ τὸ μὲν Ἑρμῆς Λητοΐδην ἐφίλησε διαμπερὲς, ὡς ἔτι καὶ νῦν, etc. · · · · · Καὶ τότε Μαίαδος υἱὸς ὑποσχόμενος κατένευσε Μή ποτ᾽ ἀποκλέψειν, ὅσ᾽ Ἑκήβολος ἐκτεάτισται, Μηδέ ποτ᾽ ἐμπελάσειν πυκίνῳ δόμῳ· αὐτὰρ Ἀπόλλων Λητοΐδης κατένευσεν ἐπ᾽ ἀρθμῷ καὶ φιλότητι Μή τινα φίλτερον ἄλλον ἐν ἀθανάτοισιν ἔσεσθαι Μήτε θεὸν, μήτ᾽ ἄνδρα Διὸς γόνον, etc.

So came to pass, under the sanction of Zeus, the marked favor shown by Apollo to Hermês. But Hermês (concludes the hymnographer, with frankness unusual in speaking of a god) “does very little good: he avails himself of the darkness of night to cheat without measure the tribes of mortal men.”[139]

[139] Homer. Hymn. Merc. 574.—

Παῦρα μὲν οὖν ὀνίνησι, τὸ δ᾽ ἄκριτον ἠπεροπεύει Νύκτα δι᾽ ὀρφναίην φῦλα θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων.

Here the general types of Hermês and Apollo, coupled with the present fact that no thief ever approached the rich and seemingly accessible treasures of Delphi, engender a string of expository incidents cast into a quasi-historical form and detailing how it happened that Hermês had bound himself by especial convention to respect the Delphian temple. The types of Apollo seem to have been different in different times and parts of Greece: in some places he was worshipped as Apollo Nomios,[140] or the patron of pasture and cattle; and this attribute, which elsewhere passed over to his son Aristæus, is by our hymnographer voluntarily surrendered to Hermês, combined with the golden rod of fruitfulness. On the other hand, the lyre did not originally belong to the Far-striking King, nor is he at all an inventor: the hymn explains both its first invention and how it came into his possession. And the value of the incidents is thus partly expository, partly illustrative, as expanding in detail the general preconceived character of the Kyllênian god.

[140] Kallimach. Hymn. Apoll. 47.

To Zeus more amours are ascribed than to any of the other gods,—probably because the Grecian kings and chieftains were especially anxious to trace their lineage to the highest and most glorious of all,—each of these amours having its representative progeny on earth.[141] Such subjects were among the most promising and agreeable for the interest of mythical narrative, and Zeus as a lover thus became the father of a great many legends, branching out into innumerable interferences, for which his sons, all of them distinguished individuals, and many of them persecuted by Hêrê, furnished the occasion. But besides this, the commanding functions of the supreme god, judicial and administrative, extending both over gods and men, was a potent stimulus to the mythopœic activity. Zeus has to watch over his own dignity,—the first of all considerations with a god: moreover as Horkios, Xenios, Ktêsios, Meilichios, (a small proportion of his thousand surnames,) he guaranteed oaths and punished perjurers, he enforced the observance of hospitality, he guarded the family hoard and the crop realized for the year, and he granted expiation to the repentant criminal.[142] All these different functions created a demand for mythes, as the means of translating a dim, but serious, presentiment into distinct form, both self-explaining and communicable to others. In enforcing the sanctity of the oath or of the tie of hospitality, the most powerful of all arguments would be a collection of legends respecting the judgments of Zeus Horkios or Xenios; the more impressive and terrific such legends were, the greater would be their interest, and the less would any one dare to disbelieve them. They constituted the natural outpourings of a strong and common sentiment, probably without any deliberate ethical intention: the preconceptions of the divine agency, expanded into legend, form a product analogous to the idea of the divine features and symmetry embodied in the bronze or the marble statue.

[141] Kallimach. Hymn. Jov. 79. Ἐκ δὲ Διὸς βασιλῆες, etc.

[142] See Herodot. i. 44. Xenoph. Anabas. vii. 8, 4. Plutarch, Thêseus, c. 12.

But it was not alone the general type and attributes of the gods which contributed to put in action the mythopœic propensities. The rites and solemnities forming the worship of each god, as well as the details of his temple and its locality, were a fertile source of mythes, respecting his exploits and sufferings, which to the people who heard them served the purpose of past history. The exegetes, or local guide and interpreter, belonging to each temple, preserved and recounted to curious strangers these traditional narratives, which lent a certain dignity even to the minutiæ of divine service. Out of a stock of materials thus ample, the poets extracted individual collections, such as the “Causes” (Αἴτια) of Kallimachus, now lost, and such as the Fasti of Ovid are for the Roman religious antiquities.[143]

[143] Ovid, Fasti, iv. 211, about the festivals of Apollo:—

“Priscique imitamina facti Æra Deæ comites raucaque terga movent.”

And Lactantius, v. 19, 15. “Ipsos ritus ex rebus gestis (deorum) vel ex casibus vel etiam ex mortibus, natos:” to the same purpose Augustin. De Civ. D. vii. 18; Diodôr. iii. 56. Plutarch’s Quæstiones Græcæ et Romaicæ are full of similar tales, professing to account for existing customs, many of them religious and liturgic. See Lobeck, Orphica, p. 675.

It was the practice to offer to the gods in sacrifice the bones of the victim only, inclosed in fat: how did this practice arise? The author of the Hesiodic Theogony has a story which explains it: Promêtheus tricked Zeus into an imprudent choice, at the period when the gods and mortal men first came to an arrangement about privileges and duties (in Mekônê). Promêtheus, the tutelary representative of man, divided a large steer into two portions: on the one side he placed the flesh and guts, folded up in the omentum and covered over with the skin: on the other, he put the bones enveloped in fat. He then invited Zeus to determine which of the two portions the gods would prefer to receive from mankind. Zeus “with both hands” decided for and took the white fat, but was highly incensed on finding that he had got nothing at the bottom except the bones.[144] Nevertheless the choice of the gods was now irrevocably made: they were not entitled to any portion of the sacrificed animal beyond the bones and the white fat; and the standing practice is thus plausibly explained.[145] I select this as one amongst a thousand instances to illustrate the genesis of legend out of religious practices. In the belief of the people, the event narrated in the legend was the real producing cause of the practice: but when we come to apply a sound criticism, we are compelled to treat the event as existing only in its narrative legend, and the legend itself as having been, in the greater number of cases, engendered by the practice,—thus reversing the supposed order of production.

[144] Hesiod, Theog. 550.—

Φῆ ῥα δολοφρονέων· Ζεὺς δ᾽ ἄφθιτα μήδεα εἰδὼς Γνῶ ῥ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ἠγνοίησε δόλον· κακὰ δ᾽ ὄσσετο θυμῷ Θνητοῖς ἀνθρώποισι, τὰ καὶ τελέεσθαι ἔμελλεν. Χερσὶ δ᾽ ὅγ᾽ ἀμφοτέρῃσιν ἀνείλετο λευκὸν ἄλειφαρ· Χώσατο δὲ φρένας, ἀμφὶ χόλος δέ μιν ἵκετο θυμὸν, Ὡς ἴδεν ὀστέα λευκὰ βοὸς δολίῃ ἐπὶ τέχνῃ.

In the second line of this citation, the poet tells us that Zeus saw through the trick, and was imposed upon by his own consent, foreknowing that after all the mischievous consequences of the proceeding would be visited on man. But the last lines, and indeed the whole drift of the legend, imply the contrary of this: Zeus was really taken in, and was in consequence very angry. It is curious to observe how the religious feelings of the poet drive him to save in words the prescience of Zeus, though in doing so he contradicts and nullifies the whole point of the story.

[145] Hesiod, Theog. 557.—

Ἐκ τοῦ δ᾽ ἀθανάτοισιν ἐπὶ χθονὶ φῦλ᾽ ἀνθρώπων Καίουσ᾽ ὀστέα λευκὰ θυηέντων ἐπὶ βωμῶν.

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