CHAPTER IV.

ROMAN MYTHOLOGY.

In all that has been said up to this time Roman mythology has not once been mentioned. Why not? Properly speaking, there is no such thing. It is an historical fact, that nearly the whole Roman literature, especially that part of it which may be called _belles-lettres_, is scarcely anything but imitation. It did not, like the Greek and Old Norse, spring from the popular mind, by which it was cherished through centuries; but at least a large portion of it was produced for pay and for ornament, mostly in the time of the tyrant Augustus, to tickle his ear and gild those chains that were artfully forged to fetter the peoples of southern Europe. This is a dry but stubborn truth, and it is wonderful with what tenacity the schools in all civilized lands have clung to the Roman or Latin language, after it had become nothing but a corpse; as though it could be expected that any genuine culture could be derived from this dead monster.

It is, however, an encouraging fact that the Teutonic races are indicating a tendency to emancipate themselves from the fetters of Roman bondage, and happy should we be if our English words were emancipated therefrom. We should then use neither _emancipate_, nor _tendency_, nor _indicate_, but would have enough of Gothic words to use in place of them. Ay, the signs of the times are encouraging. Look at what is being done at Oxford and Cambridge, in London and in Edinburgh. Behold what has been done during these later years by Dasent, Samuel Laing, Thorpe, Carlyle, Max Müller, Cleasby, Vigfusson, Magnússon, Morris, Hjaltalin, and others. And look at the publications of the Clarendon press, which is now publishing Icelandic Sagas in the original text. This is right. Every scrap of Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon literature must be published, for we must see what those old heroes, who crushed Rome and instituted a new order of things, thought in every direction. We must find out what their aspirations were. To the credit of the Scandinavians it must here be said, that they began to appreciate their old Icelandic literature much sooner than the rich Englishman realized the value of the Anglo-Saxon, and that the English are indebted to Rasmus Rask, the Danish scholar, for the most valuable contribution to Anglo-Saxon studies; but it must also be admitted, in the first place, that the Scandinavians have done far too little for Icelandic, and, in the next place, that without a preparation in Icelandic, but little progress could be made in the study of Anglo-Saxon. But England, with its usual liberality in literary matters, is now rapidly making amends for the past. And well she might. In the publication of the Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon literature she is the greatest gainer, for it is nothing less than a bridge, that will unite her present and past history. Maurer and Möbius are watching with Argos eyes the interests of Teutonic studies in Germany.

Greek should be studied, for that is no imitation. It is indigenous. It is a crystal clear stream flowing unadulterated from the Castalian fountain of Parnassos. Our warfare, therefore, is not against Greek, but against Latin. We have suffered long enough with our necks under the ponderous Roman yoke in all its venous forms; take it as fetters forged by the Roman emperors, as crosiers in the hands of the Roman popes, or as rods in the hands of the Roman school-masters. The Goths severed the fetters of the Roman emperors, Luther and the Germans broke the crosiers of the Roman popes, but all the Teutons have submissively kissed the rod of the Roman school-master, although this was the most dangerous of the three: it was the deadly weapon concealed in the hand of the assassin.

The Romans were a people of robbers both in political and in a literary sense. Nay, the Roman writers themselves tell us that the divine founder of the city, Romulus, was a captain of _robbers_; that _Mars_, the god of _war_, was his father; and that a _wolf_ (_rapacity_), descending from the mountains to drink, ran at the cry of the child and fed him under a fig-tree, caressing and licking him as if he had been her own son, the infant hanging on to her as if she had been his mother. This Romulus began his great exploits by _killing his own brother_. When the new city seemed to want women, to insure its duration, he proclaimed a magnificent feast throughout all the neighboring villages, at which feast were presented, among other things, the terrible shows of _gladiators_. While the strangers were most intent upon the spectacle, a number of Roman youths rushed in among the Sabines, _seized_ the youngest and fairest of their wives and daughters, and carried them off by _violence_. In vain the parents and husbands protested against this _breach of hospitality_. This same Romulus ended his heroic career by being _assassinated_ by his friends, or, as others say, _torn in pieces_ in the senate-house. Certain it is that the Romans _murdered_ him, and then declared him the guardian spirit of the city; thus worshiping as a god, by name Quirinus, him whom they could not bear as a king. Such falsehoods as the one the senate invented, when they said that Romulus, whom they had murdered, had been taken up into heaven, the Roman writers tell us were constantly taught to the Romans by Numa Pompilius, and by other Sabine and Etrurian priests; and such instruction laid the foundation of their myths. The history of Romulus is, in fact, in miniature, the history of Rome.

But in spite of this, and much else that can in justice be said against Rome and Latin, we cannot afford to throw the language and literature of the Romans entirely overboard. Their history was too remarkable for that; besides, many scribbled in Latin down through the middle ages, and the Latin language has played so conspicuous a part in English literature, and in the sciences, that no educated man can very well do without it. What we respectfully object to is making it the foundation of all education, this _bringing the scholar up_, so to speak, on Latin language, history and literature; this nourishing and moulding the tender heart and mind on _Roman thought_,—thus making the man, intellectually and morally, a slave bound in Roman chains, while we free-born Goths, the descendants of Odin and Thor, ought to begin our education and receive our first impressions from our own ancestors. The tree should draw its nourishment from its own roots; and we Americans are the youngest and most vigorous branch of that glorious Gothic tree, the beautiful and noble Ygdrasil in the Norse cosmogony, whose three grand roots strike down among the Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians, and Germans. In order fully to comprehend the man, we must study the life of the child; and in order to comprehend ourselves as a people, we must study our own ancient history and literature and make ourselves thoroughly acquainted with the imaginative and prophetic childhood of the Teutonic race. We must give far more attention than we do, first, to English and Anglo-Saxon, and we must, as we have heard Dr. S. H. Carpenter, of the University of Wisconsin most truthfully remark, begin with the most modern English, and then follow it step by step, century by century, back to the most ancient Anglo-Saxon. A _living_ language can be learned ten times as fast as a dead one, and we would apply Dr. Carpenter’s[5] principle still further. We would make one of the living Romantic languages (French, Italian, or Spanish,) a key to the Latin; and above all, we would make modern Greek a preparation for old classic Greek. It cannot be controverted that children learn to read and write a language much sooner and easier if they first learn to speak it, even though the book-speech may differ considerably from the dialect which the child learned from his mother; ample evidence of which fact may be found in the different counties of England and Scotland and throughout the European countries.

In the next place, that is, next after English and Anglo-Saxon, we must study German, Mæso-Gothic and the Scandinavian languages, and especially Icelandic, which is the only _living_ key to the history of the middle ages, and to the Old Norse literature. It is the only language now in use in an almost unchanged form, through a knowledge of which we can read the literature of the middle ages. We must by no means forget that we have Teutonic antiquities to which we stand in an entirely different and far closer relation than we do to Greece or Rome. And the Norsemen have an old literature, which the scholar must of necessity be familiar with in order to comprehend the history of the middle ages.

When we have thus done justice to our own Teutonic race we may turn our attention to the ancient peoples around the Mediterranean Sea, the most important of which in literary and historical respects are the Hebrews, Greeks and Romans. The antiquities of these peoples will always form important departments in our colleges and universities, and it is our duty to study them; but they should not, as they still to a great extent do, constitute the all-absorbing subject of our attention, the _summa summarum_, the foundation and superstructure of our education and culture.

It has been argued by some that the Latin is more terse than English; but did the reader ever reflect that it takes about _sixty syllables_ in Latin to express all that we can say in English with _forty syllables_? The large number of inflectional endings have also been lauded as a point of superior excellence in the Latin; but as a language _grows_ and makes _progress_, it gradually emancipates itself from the thraldom of inflection and contents itself with the abstract, spiritual chain that links the words together into sentences; and did the reader ever run across this significant truth, expressed by George P. Marsh, who says that in Latin you have to be able to analyse and parse a sentence before you can comprehend it, while in English you must comprehend the sentence before you can analyse or parse? _Forward_ has been and will forever be the watchword of languages. They must either progress or die.

When the question is asked, whether Hebrew, Greek or Latin should be preferred by the student, we answer that the choice is not a difficult one to make, and our opinion has in fact already been given. Latin is the language of a race of robbers; most of it is nothing but imitation, and besides it is a mere corpse, while Greek is the only one of the three that is still living, and modern Greek—for that is what we must begin with—is the key to the old Greek literature with its rich, beautiful and original store of mythology, poetry, history, oratory, and philosophy. As Icelandic in the extreme north of Europe is the _living_ key to the middle ages and to the celebrated Old Norse Eddas and Sagas, so modern Greek in the far south is the _living_ language, that introduces us to the spirit of Homer, Herodotus, Demosthenes, and Plato; and thus the norns or fates, who preside over the destinies of men and nations, have in a most wonderful manner knit, or rather woven, us together with the Greeks, and the more we investigate the development and progress of nations and civilization, the more vividly the truth will flash upon our minds, that the Greek and the Icelandic are two silver-haired veterans, who hold in their hands two golden keys,—the one to unlock the treasures of ancient times, the other those of the middle ages; the one the treasures of the south and the other those of the north of Europe. But we must free ourselves from the bondage of Rome!

When we get away from Rome, where slaves were employed as teachers, and pay more attention to the antiquities of Greece, where it was the highest honor that the greatest, noblest and most eloquent men could attain to, to be listened to by youths eager to learn and to be taught, then the present slavery both of the teacher and of the student will cease, but scarcely before then.

The case of Shakespeare is an eminent example to us of what the Goth is able to accomplish, when he breaks the Roman chains. His works are not an imitation of Seneca or Æschylus, nor are they the fruit of a careful study of the _Ars Poetica_ or _Gradus ad Parnassum_. No, he knew but little Latin and less Greek, but what made him the undisputed Hercules in English literature was the heroic spirit of Gothdom which flowed in his veins, and which drove him away from the Latin school before his emotional nature had been flogged and tortured out of him. Shakespeare, and not Roman literature and scholasticism, is the lever that has raised English literature and given it the first rank among all the Teutons. It is not, we repeat, the deluge of Latin words that flood it, that has given this preëminence to English, but it is the genuine Gothic strength that everywhere has tried to break down the Roman walls. The slaves of Latin will find it difficult enough to explain how Shakespeare, who was not for an age, but for all time,—he whose Latin was small and whose Greek was less,—how he, the star of poets, the sweet swan of Avon, was _made_ as well as born. Ay, he was made. _He_ was also one of those who, to cast a living line had to sweat, and strike the second heat upon the Muses’ anvil. It is true that Shakespeare did not arrive at a full appreciation of the Gothic spirit, for he did not have an opportunity to acquaint himself thoroughly with the Gothic myths; but then they ever haunted him like the ghost of Hamlet, accusing their murderer, without finding any avenger. We therefore count Shakespeare on our side of this great question.

May the time speedily come, nay, the time must come, when Greek and Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse and Gothic and German will shake hands over the bloody chasm of Roman vandalism!

We fancy we see more than one who reads this chapter, and does not remember that he is a son of Thor, stretch out his hand for Mjolner, that huge and mighty hammer of Thor, to swing it at us for what we have said and have not said about Rome, Roman mythology, and the Latin language and literature; but, alas! for him, and fortunately for us, the Roman school-master took Thor’s hammer away from him and whipped the strength wherewith to wield it out of him. We only repeat that we know nothing of Roman mythology, but the Greek and Norse are twin sisters, and with the assistance of the Mosaic-Christian religion they have a grand mission in the Gothic-Greek development of the world.

Footnote 5:

Author of _English of the Fourteenth Century_ and of _An Introduction to the Study of the Anglo-Saxon Language_.