Part 3

"That ever will Oppress my heart with many a watery hill? And therefore let him choose some other land, Where he shall please, to build at his command Temple and grove set thick with many a tree. For wretched polypuses breed in me, Retiring chambers, and black sea-calves den In my poor soil, for penury of men."[1]

Leto reassures the island, however, and swears to build a great temple there which her son will haunt perpetually, preferring it to all his other shrines. Delos consents, and Apollo is born amid the ministrations of all the goddesses except Hera, who sits indignant and revengeful in the solitudes of Olympus. The child is bathed in the stream and delicately swaddled; but after tasting the nectar and ambrosia which one of the nymphs is quick to offer him, he bursts his bands, calls for his bow and his lyre, and flies upward into the sky announcing that he will henceforth declare the will of Zeus to mortals. Thereupon--

"All the immortals stood In deep amaze.... All Delos, looking on him, all with gold Was loaded straight, and joy'd to be extoll'd. For so she flourished, as a hill that stood Crown'd with the flower of an abundant wood."[2]

This legend, with all that accompanies it concerning the glories of Delos and its gods, and the pilgrimages and games that enlivened the island, was well-conceived to give form and justification to the cultus of the temple, and to delight the votaries whom custom or vague instincts of piety had gathered there. The sacred poet, in another part of this hymn, does the same service to the even greater sanctuary of Delphi. He tells us how Apollo wandered over many lands and waters, and he stops lovingly to recall the names of the various spots that claimed the honour of having at some time been visited by the god. The minstrels, wanderers themselves, loved to celebrate in this way the shores they had seen or heard of, and to fill at the same time their listener's minds with the spell of sonorous names, the sense of space and the thrill of mystery. In his journeys Apollo, the hymn tells us, finally came to the dell and fountain of Delphusa on the skirts of Parnassus. The nymph of the spot, fearing the encroachments of so much more powerful a deity, deceived him and persuaded him to plant his temple on another site, where Parnassus fronts the west, and the overhanging rocks form a cavern. There Apollo established his temple for the succour and enlightenment of mankind, while Trophonius and Agamedes, sons of Erginus, men dear to the immortal gods, built the approaches of stone.

Thus the divine origin of the temple is vindicated, the structure described, and the human architects honoured, whose descendants, very likely, were present to hear their ancestors' praise. But here a puzzling fact challenges the attention and stimulates the fancy of the poet: Apollo was a Dorian deity, yet his chief shrine was here upon Phocian ground. Perhaps some traditions remained to suggest an explanation of the anomaly; at any rate the poet is not at a loss for an account of the matter. The temple being established, Apollo bethought himself what race of priests he should make its ministers: at least, such is the naïve account in the poem, which expects us to forget that temples do not arise in the absence of predetermined servants and worshippers. While pondering this question, however, Apollo cast his eyes on the sea where it chanced that a swift ship, manned by many and excellent Cretans, was merrily sailing: whereupon the god, taking the form of a huge dolphin, leapt into the ship, to the infinite surprise and bewilderment of those worthy merchants, who, as innocent as the fishers of the Galilæan Lake of the religious destiny that awaited them, were thinking only of the pecuniary profits of their voyage. The presence of the god benumbed their movements, and they stood silent while the ship sailed before the wind. And the blast, veering at this place with the changed configuration of the coast, blew them irresistibly to the very foot of Parnassus, to the little haven of Crissa. There Apollo appeared to them once more, this time running down to the beach to meet them in the form of

"A stout and lusty fellow, His mighty shoulders covered with his mane; Who sped these words upon the wings of sound: 'Strangers, who are ye? and whence sail ye hither The watery ways? Come ye to traffic justly Or recklessly like pirates of the deep Rove ye, adventuring your souls, to bring Evil on strangers? Why thus sit ye grieving, Nor leap on land, nor strike the mast and lay it In your black ship? For so should traders do When, sated with the labour of the sea, They quit their painted galley for the shore, And presently the thought of needful food Comes gladsomely upon them.' So he spake, Putting new courage in their breasts. To whom The Cretan captain in his turn replied: 'Since thou art nothing like to things of earth In form or stature, but most like the gods That ever live, Hail, and thrice hail, O Stranger, And may the gods pour blessings on thy head. Now tell me truly, for I need to know, What land is this, what people, from what race Descended? As for us, over the deep Broad sea, we sought another haven, Pylos, Sailing from Crete, for thence we boast to spring; But now our ship is cast upon this shore, For some god steered our course against our will.' Then the far-darter spoke and answered them. 'Friends, in well-wooded Cnossus hitherto Ye have had homes, but ye shall not again Return to your good native town, to find Each his fair house and well-belovèd wife, But here shall ye possess my temple, rich And greatly honoured by the tribes of men. For I am son to Zeus. Apollo is My sacred name. 'Twas I that led you hither Over the mighty bosom of the deep, Intending you no ill; for ye shall here Possess a temple sacred to me, rich, And greatly honoured of all mortal men. The counsels of the deathless gods shall be Revealed to you, and by their will your days Shall pass in honour and in peace for ever. Come then and, as I bid, make haste to do. ... Build by the sea an altar; kindle flame; Sprinkle white barley grains thereon, and pray, Standing about the altar. And as first Ye saw me leap into your swift black bark In likeness of a dolphin, so henceforth Worship me by the name Delphinius, And Delphian ever be my far-seen shrine.'"

Thus the establishment of the Dorian god in Phocis is explained, and the wealth and dignity of his temple are justified by prophecy and by divine intention. For Apollo is not satisfied with repeatedly describing the future temple, by an incidental epithet, as opulent; that hint would not have been enough for the simplicity of those merchant sailors, new as they were to the mysteries of priestcraft. It was necessary for Apollo to allay their fears of poverty by a more explicit assurance that it will be easy for them to live by the altar. And what is more, Hermes and all the thieves he inspires will respect the shrine; its treasures, although unprotected by walls, shall be safe for-ever.

These were truly, as we see, the hymns of a levitical patriotism. With Homeric breadth and candour they dilated on the miracles, privileges, and immunities of the sacred places and their servitors, and they thus kept alive in successive generations an awe mingled with familiar interest toward divine persons and things which is characteristic of that more primitive age. Gods and men were then nearer together, and both yielded more frankly to the tendency, inherent in their nature, to resemble one another.

The same quality is found in another fragment, the most beautiful and the most familiar of all. This is the hymn to Demeter in which two stories are woven together, one telling of the rape of Persephone, and the other of the reception of Demeter, disguised in her sorrow, into the household of Celeus, where she becomes the nurse of his infant son Demophoon. Both stories belong to the religion of Eleusis, where this version of them seems intended to be sung. The place was sacred to Demeter and Persephone and its mysteries dealt particularly with the passage of souls to the nether world and with their habitation there. The pathetic beauty of the first fable--in which we can hardly abstain from seeing some symbolical meaning--expresses for us something of the mystic exaltation of the local rites; while the other tale of Celeus, his wife, his daughters, and his son, whom his nurse, the disguised goddess, almost succeeds in endowing with immortality, celebrates the ancient divine affinities of the chiefs of the Eleusinian state.

The first story is too familiar to need recounting; who has not heard of the gentle Persephone gathering flowers in the meadow and suddenly swallowed by the yawning earth and carried away to Hades, the god of the nether world, to share his sombre but sublime dominion over the shades?--a dignity of which she is not insensible, much as she grieves at the separation from her beloved mother; and how Demeter in turn is disconsolate and (in her wrath and despair at the indifference of the gods) conceals her divinity, refuses the fruits of the earth, and wanders about in the guise of an old woman, nursing her grief, until at last Zeus sends his messenger to Hades to effect a compromise; and Persephone, after eating the grain of pomegranate that obliges her to return yearly to her husband, is allowed to come back to the upper world to dwell for two-thirds of the year in her mother's company.

The underlying allegory is here very interesting. We observe how the genius of the Greek religion, while too anthropomorphic to retain any clear consciousness of the cosmic processes that were symbolized by its deities and their adventures, was anthropomorphic also in a moral way, and tended to turn the personages which it ceased to regard as symbols of natural forces into types of human experience. So the parable of the seed that must die if it is to rise again and live an immortal, if interrupted, life in successive generations, gives way in the tale of Demeter and Persephone, to a prototype of human affection. The devotee, no longer reminded by his religion of any cosmic laws, was not reduced to a mere superstition,--to a fable and a belief in the efficacy of external rites,--he was encouraged to regard the mystery as the divine counterpart of his own experience. His religion in forgetting to be natural had succeeded in becoming moral; the gods were now models of human endurance and success; their histories offered sublime consolations to mortal destiny. Fancy had turned the aspects of Nature into persons; but devotion, directed upon these imaginary persons, turned them into human ideals and into patron saints, thereby relating them again to life and saving them from insignificance.

A further illustration of the latter transformation may be found in the second story contained in our hymn. Demeter, weary of her wanderings and sick at heart, has come to sit down beside a well, near the house of Celeus. His four young daughters, dancing and laughing, come to fetch water in their golden jars,--

"As hinds or heifers gambol in the fields When Spring is young."

They speak kindly to the goddess, who asks them for employment. "And for me," she says,--

"And for me, damsels, harbour pitiful And favouring thoughts, dear children, that I come To some good man's or woman's house, to ply My task in willing service of such sort As agèd women use. A tender child I could nurse well and safely in my arms, And tend the house, and spread the master's couch Recessed in the fair chamber, or could teach The maids their handicraft."

The offer is gladly accepted, for Celeus himself has an infant son, Demophoon, the hope of his race: The aged woman enters the dwelling, making in her long-robed grief a wonderful contrast to the four sportive girls:--

"Who lifting up their ample kirtle-folds Sped down the waggon-furrowed way, and shook Their curls about their shoulders--yellow gold Like crocuses in bloom."

Once within the house, which she awes with her uncomprehended presence, the goddess sits absorbed in grief, until she is compelled to smile for a moment at the jests of the quick-witted maid Iambe, and consents to take in lieu of the wine that is offered her, a beverage of beaten barley, water, and herbs. These details are of course introduced to justify the ritual of Eleusis, in which the clown and the barley-water played a traditional part.

Thus Demeter becomes nurse to Demophoon, but she has ideas of her duties differing from the common, and worthy of her unusual qualifications. She neither suckles nor feeds the infant but anoints him with ambrosia and lays him at night to sleep on the embers of the hearth. This his watchful mother discovers with not unnatural alarm; when the goddess reveals herself and departs, foiled in her desire to make her nursling immortal.

The spirit that animates this fable is not that poetic frivolity which we are accustomed to associate with Paganism. Here we find an immortal in profoundest grief and mortals entertaining an angel unawares; we are told of supernatural food, and of a burning fire that might make this mortal put on immortality did not the generous but ignorant impulses of the natural man break in upon that providential purpose and prevent its consummation. Eleusis was the natural home for such a myth, and we may well believe that those initiated into the mysteries there were taught to dwell on its higher interpretation.

But there are other hymns in a lighter vein in which the play of fancy is not guided by any moral intuition. The hymn to Hermes is one perpetual ebullition of irresponsible humour.

Hermes is the child of Maia, a nymph of Cyllene whose cave Zeus has surreptitiously visited while the white-armed Juno--for, unsympathetic prude as this goddess may be, she must still be beautiful--slept soundly in Olympus. The child is hardly born when he catches a tortoise, kills it, scoops out the shell, and makes a lute of it, upon which he begins to play delicious music. Not satisfied with that feat, however, he escapes from his cradle, and drives from their pasture the kine that Apollo has left feeding there. Accused afterward of this mischief, he defends himself after the following fashion, while he lies in his crib, holding his new-made lyre lightly in his hand under the bedclothes. I quote Shelley's version:--

"'An ox-stealer should be both tall and strong And I am but a little new-born thing Who yet, at least, can think of nothing wrong. My business is to suck, and sleep, and fling The cradle-clothes about me all day long, Or, half-asleep, hear my sweet mother sing And to be washed in water clean and warm And hushed and kissed and kept secure from harm.'" * * * * * * "Sudden he changed his plan, and with strange skill Subdued the strong Latonian, by the might Of winning music, to his mightier will. His left hand held the lyre, and in his right The plectrum struck the chords: unconquerable Up from beneath his hand in circling flight The gathering music rose--and sweet as Love The penetrating notes did live and move

"Within the heart of great Apollo. He Listened with all his soul, and laughed for pleasure. Close to his side stood harping fearlessly The unabashèd boy, and to the measure Of the sweet lyre there followed loud and free His joyous voice: for he unlocked the treasure Of his deep song, illustrating the birth Of the bright Gods, and the dark desert Earth;

"And how to the Immortals every one A portion was assigned of all that is. But chief Mnemosyne did Maia's son Clothe in the light of his loud melodies. And, as each god was born or had begun, He in their order due and fit degrees Sung of his birth and being--and did move Apollo to unutterable love."

In fact, after the most enthusiastic encomiums on the young god's art, and on the power of music in general, Apollo offers the child his protection and friendship:--

"Now, since thou hast, although so very small, Science of arts so glorious, thus I swear,-- And let this cornel javelin, keen and tall, Witness between us what I promise here,-- That I will lead thee to the Olympian hall, Honoured and mighty, with thy mother dear, And many glorious gifts in joy will give thee And even at the end will ne'er deceive thee."

Hermes is not insensible to this offer and its advantages; he accepts it with good grace and many compliments, nor does he wish to remain behind in the exchange of courtesies and benefits: he addresses Apollo thus:--

"Thou canst seek out and compass all that wit Can find or teach. Yet, since thou wilt, come, take The lyre--be mine the glory giving it-- Strike the sweet chords, and sing aloud, and wake The joyous pleasure out of many a fit Of tranced sound--and with fleet fingers make? Thy liquid-voiced comrade speak with thee,-- It can talk measured music eloquently.

"Then bear it boldly to the revel loud, Love-wakening dance, or feast of solemn state, A joy by night or day: for those endowed With art and wisdom who interrogate It teaches, babbling in delightful mood All things which make the spirit most elate. Soothing the mind with sweet familiar play, Chasing the heavy shadows of dismay.

"To those that are unskilled in its sweet tongue, Though they should question most impetuously Its hidden soul, it gossips something wrong-- Some senseless and impertinent reply. But thou, who art as wise as thou art strong, Canst compass all that thou desirest. I Present thee with this music-flowing shell, Knowing thou canst interrogate it well...."

Apollo is not slow to learn the new art with which he is ever after to delight both gods and men; but he is not at first quite at ease in his mind, fearing that Hermes will not only recapture the lyre but steal his friend's bow and arrows into the bargain. Hermes, however, swears by all that is holy never to do so, and the friendship of the two artful gods is sealed for ever. The minstrel does not forget, at this point, to remind his hearers, among whom we may imagine not a few professional followers of Hermes to have been mixed, that the robber's honour is pledged by his divine patron to respect the treasures of Apollo's shrines. Let not the votary think, he adds, that Apollo's oracles are equally useful to good and to bad men: these mysteries are truly efficacious only for the pious and orthodox who follow the established traditions of the temple and honour its servants. Apollo says:--

"He who comes consigned By voice and wings of perfect augury To my great shrine shall find avail in me:

"Him I will not deceive, but will assist. But he who comes relying on such birds As chatter vainly, who would strain and twist The purpose of the gods with idle words, And deems their knowledge light, he shall have missed His road--whilst I among my other hoards His gifts deposit...."

The wildest fairy-story thus leads easily to a little drama not without its human charm and moral inspiration; while the legend is attached to the cultus, and the cultus is intertwined with the practice and sanctions of daily life. Even here, in its most playful mood, therefore, this mythological poetry retains the spirit and function of religion. Even here sacerdotal interests are not forgotten. Delphi shall be safe; the lyre is Apollo's by right although it be Hermes' by invention. A certain amiable harmony is after all drawn from the riot of foolishness. All is sweet and unmalicious and lovable enough, and the patronage of both the friendly gods, the enthusiast and the wag, may be invoked with confidence and benefit.

Not less remarkable, although for other reasons, is the hymn to Aphrodite. Here we find a more human fable and a more serious tone: while the poem, if we choose to consider it in its allegorical meaning, touches one of the deepest convictions of the Greek conscience. All the gods save three--Athena, Artemis, and Hestia,--are subject to the power of Aphrodite, Zeus at least as much as the rest. In revenge for this subjection, Zeus determines to make Aphrodite feel the passion which she boasts to be able to inspire in others.

The fair shepherd Anchises feeds his flocks upon Mount Ida, and with him Aphrodite is made to fall in love. She presents herself to him in a human disguise, and meets his advances with a long account of her birth and parentage, and begs him to take her back to her parents, and having asked for her hand and fulfilled all customary formalities, to lead her away as his lawful wife. The passion which at the same time, however, she is careful to breathe into him cannot brook so long a delay: and she yields to his impatience. When about to leave him she awakes him from his sleep, turns upon him the full glance of her divinity, and reveals her name and his destiny. She will bear him a son, Æneas, who will be one of the greatest princes and heroes of Troy; but he himself will be stricken with feebleness and a premature old age, in punishment for the involuntary sacrilege which he has committed.

The description of the disguised goddess, with its Homeric pomp and elaborate propriety, is a noble and masterly one, underlined, as it were, with a certain satirical or dramatic intention; we have the directness of a Nausicaa, with a more luxurious and passionate beauty. The revelation of the goddess is wonderfully made, with that parallel movement of natural causes and divine workings which is so often to be admired in Homer. The divinity of the visitant appears only at the moment of her flight, when she becomes a consecration and an unattainable memory. The sight of deity leaves the eyes dull, like those of the Platonic prisoners returning from the sunlight of truth into the den of appearance. Nay more, a communion with the divinity, closer than is consonant with human frailty, leaves the seer impotent and a burden upon the world; but this personal tragedy is not without its noble fruits to posterity. Anchises suffers, but his son Æneas, the issue of that divine though punishable union, lives to bear, not only the aged Anchises himself, but the gods of Ilium, out of the ruins of Troy.