QJarttell IttioerBttH Hihrarg Stifatei, Jfnu Hork Cornell University Library BL721 .K27 1838 Mythology of ancient Greece and Italy. B olin 3 1924 029 135 684 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029135684 THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT GREECE AND ITALY. BY THOMAS KEIGHTLEY, AUTHOR OF "the HISTORY OP GREECE," "THE HISTORY OF ROME,'' ETC. Kai irov ri xal jSporCliv ^pevas 'TTTfijo Tov dXaOfi Xoyov AeSaiSaXfievot ^evSeffi woiKiXots 'EJaTrorwjTi /ivBoi. niNAAPOS. SECOND EDITION, CONSIDERABLY ENLARGED AND IMPROVED. LONDON: WHITTAKER AND CO., AVE MARIA LANE. M.DCCC.XXXVIII. THE PLATES ETCHED ON STEEL, By W. H. BKOOKE, F.S.A. imlJJTED BY EICHARD AND JOHN K. TAYLOR, RKD LION COURT, FLEET STREET, PREFACE. IHIS new edition of the Mythology of Greece and Italy is properly speaking a new work. Few pages or even paragraphs remain unaltered, and nearly two-thirds of it are new matter, or have been rewritten. The causes of this change (of which I think an explanation is due) are as follows. The work was originally intended to be a mere school-book, and it was com- menced on that plan ; circumstances caused it to be continued on another, and to be completed on a third ; hence the in- equality in it which every one must have observed. Further, it was written at such hours as I could withdraw from other literary avocations, and with but a moderate apparatus of books ; hence the errors in facts, as I did not always recoUect to verify what I had written from perhaps a bad edition of a classic author. Finally, I was only a learner when I aspired to become a teacher; and though I had attained to correct principles, I had not acquired the habit of applying them with readiness and accuracy. Considering these real defects, and that the work was by an author who was little known, and on a subject against which there was rather a prejudice, and that it appeared du- ring the very height of the Reform fever, when few could think of the calm pursuit of literature, it may be said to have had more success than could have been reasonably anticipated. The praises which it has received from Mr. ThirlwaU and other competent judges have naturally given me much gra- tification ; for as they must have been well aware of its de- fects, it is plain that they thought them to be more than com- pensated by its merits. Of the present Edition I think I may venture to speak with a2 IV PREFACE. more confidence. It is the result of my reading for the last six years, during which I have gone through the whole of the Greek and Latin classics with a view to it ; and I can assert with truth that there are very few of the references in the fol- lowing pages which I have not made myself directly from the originals. It will also be found to contain the results of the inquiries of those eminent scholars whose works are so fre- quently referred to, my obligations to whom I at aU times most cheerfully acknowledge. Should it chance to come under the eye of any of them, and should he happen to find his ideas anywhere adopted without a reference to his work, I trust he will have the candour to impute the omission to in- advertence rather than to design. The soldier in Cervantes' comic romance sings. To the wars my necessities take me away. But if I had money at home I would stay ; so I may say of myself, it was necessity, not any idle visions of fame that led me to make literature my profession ; for had I been free to choose, I had certainly trodden ihe fallentis se- mifa vitcB. Engaged however in the literary career, my first thought was how I might at the same time promote my own interest, and render some service, however trifling, to my country, that it might be said of me, Haud inutiliter vixit. It appeared to me that histories of a better kind than the compilations of Goldsmith were wanting in our schools, and I felt that I could supply the deficiency. The event has more than justified my anticipation ; and the adoption of my books at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, and most of the other great pubHc schools, besides a number of private ones, imme- diately on their appearance, proved, I may say, thfeir merit ; for to nothing else can it be justly ascribed. I have thus the satisfaction of thinking that I shall be instrumental in im- pressing correct ideas in history and politics on the minds of those who will be future legislators, or occupy other important stations in society. The present work is of a different character ; its object is to keep up and extend the taste for classic Uterature, which PREFACE. in my opinion tends so strongly to refine, and at the same time to invigorate the intellect, but which I sometimes fear is rather on the wane in this country. Its size and necessary price (the present containing more by a fifth than the former edition) are perhaps insuperable impediments to its general adoption in schools; but I should hope that it will continue to be used in the Universities, and that in schools the read- ing of it will be recommended to, though not enjoined on, the higher classes. I think I may speak with some confidence of the correctness of the narratives : it must be of advantage ta know the opinions of the leading scholars of the continent; and as to my own, as I advance them without dogmatism, I can see them rejected without displeasure. I confess I wish to entice as many as possible into the pleasing regions of my- thology, for I know from experience how delightful it is to escape at times from the dull realities of the actual world, and lose one's self in the enchanted mazes of primeval fiction. In selecting Mythology I took possession of a field which lay totally unoccupied. This can hardly be said of any other part of classic literature, but many may be- better cultivated than they have been hitherto. Thus the private life of the ancient Greeks and Romans may be more fully elucidated* That of the latter people I intend to make the subject of a fixture work; the former has for many years engaged the attention of my friend Mr. St. John, whose enthusiasm for Greece far exceeds mine ; and his work, when it appears, will, I am confident, be found to contain a vast store of curious knowledge, and will prove a valuable aid to the classic stu- dent. The reader will observe that I employ the Greek termina- tions OS and on in mythic names instead of the Latin us and um. There is no good reason for this last usage, and I think Greek names should be so written as that they might be at once transferred to the original Greek characters. For this purpose the long e and o should be marked as they are in the Index, and if we were to use k instead of c before e and i, writing for instance Kimdn and Kephalos instead of Cimon and Cephalus, it would be all the better. VI PREFACE. The subjects of the plates are all genuine antiques, chiefly taken from the Galerie Mythologique. The errata, which I have carefully marked, are I think very few considering the bulk and nature of the work. In this praise however I claim no share ; it all belongs to the printers, to whom also belongs the praise or blame of the peculiarities in orthography or grammar. The following digression will I hope be excused. It is on a subject — that of literary property — in which, from the nature of my works, I feel myself interested. As our silence is made an argument against us, it becomes every author to take an opportunity of expressing his sentiments on it. The follow- ing are mine. No fallacy can be greater than that of supposing that the public have any rights in this matter unless it be the right of the stronger, according to the simple plan. That they should take who have the power. And they should keep who can. A literary work, whether the creation of genius, like Waverley, or the product of toil and patient industry, like the present, is I conceive property in the fullest sense of the word, as much so as lands or houses. To these last the public have a right, but it is only on giving the full value of them, and on the prin- ciple that private feehngs and interests are not to stand in the way of the public good. But this principle does not apply in any way to literature. What, we may ask, is to be derived from Waverley and such books ? Simply amusement ; and it surely seems very absvird to say that the public has a right to be amused, to which right those of individuals must give way. It is very much as if the public were to insist on ad- mission to theatres and exhibitions on its own terms, the prin- ciple of the O. P. riots of our younger days. No man, be it observed, will be the worse statesman, lawyer, or physician for not having read Waverley, so that the plea of public utility cannot be urged. Even in books of instruction I deny any right in the public. Supposing (a most improbable even^ PREFACE. VU that the study of nlythology should ever become general, the public would have no right to my book except on my own terms. The legitimate course, if these were exorbitant, would be to get some one to write a cheaper and better work on the subject, and thus punish cupidity while respecting the rights of property. I am far however from expecting that full justice will be done us by the legislature. We are a small and a disunited party. It cannot be said of us Hie multum in Fabia valet,, ille Velina ; Cui libet is fasces dabit eripietque curule Importunus ebur. i Our enemies are numerous ; the booksellers have caused print- ers, book-binders, etc. to petition against us; the newspaper press is, with a few honourable exceptions, arrayed against us ; the pplitical ceconomists, who will sacrifice anything, how sacred soever, on the altar of their idol, misnamed Utility, are opposed to us ; and the diffusion of knowledge, the march of intellect, the public good, and similar specious phrases, enable legislators to perpetrate injustice under the show of patriotism and public spirit. I do not think that the great publishing houses can be pro- perly classed among our opponents. They have no objection, to the extension of the period of copyright provided the au- thor be empowered to transfer all his rights to them, and that any extension of the term of those copyrights which they have purchased should go to them also, and not to the author. Theirs indeed is but too often the lion's share, as I know by my own experience. For the Outlines of History in Lard- ner's Cyclopedia I received only 130/., and if I am not greatly misinformed, that sum bears little proportion to what the pro- prietors have already made by it, and the copyright has yet twenty years to run. I appUed in vain for some small share in the gain ; it was contrary I was told to the rules of trade. Nay, when they wanted me to write another work, likely to be as popular, they said they could not afford to give more than 150/. ! I mention these facts not out of ill-will to the Via PREFACE. proprietors, some of whom are the publishers of most of my other works, but simply to let the world see how inadequate is the remuneration sometimes received by the authors of even the most successful works. I would say then, as the pubhshers say they would not give more for a long than for a short term of copyright, let the public be the gainer ; and if an author has parted, or will part, with his copyright, let it become common property at ,the end of his Ufe, or of the twenty-eight years. Otherwise the great publishers wiU be almost the only gainers by a change in the law ; for most authors will transfer to them all their rights if they h9,ve the power to do it. For my own part, 1 view the question with tolerable indif- ference, as even under the present law I know how to extend my copyright. My books, thank Heaven and the liberality of the gentlemen at whose office they are printed, are my own. When the booksellers had refused the present work, they en- abled me to give it to the world, and thus lay the foundation of a moderate independence ; and in that our first transaction originated a friendship which nothing I am confident will dissolve but that event which terminates all human relations. Another friend, Mr. Brooke, was equally hberal -with respect to the plates ; and should mythology ever become popular by •means of this work, they surely are entitled to share in the praise. T. K. London, Oct. 7th, 1838. CONTENTS. MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Pakt I.— the gods. CHAP. I. INTKODUCTION. Of Mythology in general, 1. Origin of Mythology, 2. Theories of the Origin of Mythology, 11. Rules for the Interpretation of Mythes, 14. CHAP. n. GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY. Its Origin, 16. Historic View of Grecian Mythology, 19. Literature of the Grecian Mythology, 26. CHAP. III. MYTHIC VIEWS OF THE WOULD AND ITS OEIGIN. Mythic Cosmology, 31. Cosmogony and Theogony, 42. CHAP. IV. THE TITANS AND THEIR OFFSPRING. Night, 50. Oceanos andTethys, 51. Hyperi6n andTheia, 52. Helios, 53. Selene, 60. Eos, 62. Coios and Phoebe, 64. Crios, 65. Hecate, 65. Kronos and Rhea, 68. CHAP. V. THE HOMERIC GODS IN GENERAL, 72. CHAP. VI. THE KBONIDS. Zeus, 78. Poseid6n, 85. Hades, 89. Hestia, 95. CHAP. VII. HERA, ETC. Hera, 96. Ares, 104. Hephsestos, 10/. Hebe, 110. CHAP. VIII. LETO, ETC. Leto, 112. Phoebos- Apollo, 118. Artemis, 128. CHAP. IX. DIONE, ETC. Dione, 139. Aphrodite, 139. Er6s, 146. X CONTENTS. CHAP. X. FALLAS-ATHENE AND HERMES. Pallas-Athene, 153. Hermes, 159. CHAP. XI. DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE, 170. CHAP. XH. SISTER-GODDESSES. Muses, 185. Seasons or Hours, ISO. Graces, 192. Eileithyiee, 193. Fates, 194. Keres, 195. Furies, 196. CHAP. xni. THEMIS, lEIS, ETC. Themis, 198. Iris, 198, Pseedn, 200. Sleep and Death, 200. Momos, 201. Nemesis, 202. Fortune, 202. Personifications, 203. CHAP. XIV. DIONYSOS, 205. CHAP. XV. FOREIGN DEITIES. Cyhele, 223. CotysandBendis, 225. Artemis of Ephesus, 226. Isis, 226. CHAP. XVI. RURAL DEITIES. Pan, 229. Satyrs, 233. Silenos, 234. Priapos, 235. Nymphs, 237. CHAP. XVII. •WATER DEITIES. Oceanides, 244. Nereus, 244. Nereides, 245. Phorcys, 245. Trit6n, 245. Proteus, 246. Glaucos, 248. Leucothea and Palaemdn, 249. River-gods, 250. CHAP. XVIII. DEITIES OF THE ISLES AND COAST OF OCEAN. Hesperides, 251. Grseae, 252. Gorgons, 252. Harpies, 254. Winds, 255. CHAP. XIX. INHABITANTS OF THE ISLES AND COASTS OF THE WEST-SEA. Lotus-eaters, 259- Cyclopes, 259. Giants, 262. ^olos, 263. Lsestry- gonians, 264. Circe, 266. Sirens, 269. Scylla and Charybdis, 271. PhaethusaandLampetia, 273. Calypso, 274. Phiieacians, 275. Or- tygia and Syria, 278. CONTENTS. XI Part II.— THE HEROES. CHAP. I. INTRODUCTION. • Origin and First State of Man, 281. Ages of the World, 282. lapetos. Atlas, Menoetios, Prometheus and Epimetheus, 286. Pandora, 292. Deucalidn and Pyrrha, 297. Early Inhabitants of Greece, 300. CHAP. II. MTTHKS OF THESSALY. Admetos and Alcestis, 306. Ias6n and Medeia, 307. Peleus and Achil- leus, 312. Ixion, 314. Centaurs and Lapiths, 316. Ceyx and Hal- cyone, 319. CHAP. III. MYTHES OF ^TOLIA. CEneus, 320. Meleagros, 321. CHAP. IV. MYTHES OF B(EOTIA. Cadmos, 325. Semele, 329. Autonoe, Aristseos, and Actaedn, 329. Ino and Athamas, 332. Agaue and Pentheus, 335. Zethos and Amphion, 335. Laios, 340. CEdipiis and locasta, 341. Teiresias, 343. Minyans and Phlegyans, 345. Trophonios and Agamedes, 347. Otos and Ephi- altes, 349. Heracles, 350. CHAP. V. MYTHES OF ATTICA. Cecrops, 375. Cranaos, 378. Erichthonios, 378. Pandi6n, 379. Procne, Philomela, and Tereus, 379. Erechtheus, 381. Procris and Cephalos, 381 . Oreithyia, 383. Creiisa, Zuthos and I6n, 384. Pandi6n II., 385. Nisos and Scylla, 385. ^geus, 385. Theseus, 387. Daedalos and Icaros, 398. CHAP. VI. MYTHES OF CORINTH. Sisyphos, 399. Bellerophontes, 401. CHAP. VII. MYTHES OP ARGOIilS. Inachos and Phoroneus, 405. Argos; 4O0. lo, 406. Danaos and jEgyp- tos, 409. Proetos and the Prcetides, 412. Acrisios, Danae, and Per- seus, 414. Amphitryon and Alcmena, 420. Asclepios, 422. CHAP. VIII. MYTHES OF ARCADIA. Lycaon, 424. Callisto and Areas, 425. Atalanta, 427. CHAP. IX. MYTHES OF LACONIA. Tyndareos and Leda, 429. Helena, 429. Polydeukes and Cast6r, 430. XU CONTENTS. CHAP. X. MTTHES OP ELIS. Salmoneus, 434. Tyro, 434. Neleus and Periclymenos,435. Melampiis and Bias, 436. lamos, 438. Endymi6n, 439. Cteatos and Eurytos, 441. Tantalos, 442. Pelops, 443. Atreus and Thyestes, 447. CHAP. XI. MYTHES OF ACHAIA. Melanippos and ComEetho, 451. Coresos and Callirrhoe, 452. Selemnos and Argyra, 453. CHAP. xn. MYTHES OF THE ISLES. Europa, 454. Minos, Rliadamanthys, and Sarped6n^455. Ariadne and Phsedra, 457. Glaucos, 458. jEacos and Telamon, 460. Ori6n, 461. Pleiades and Hyades, 464. CHAP. XHI. MYTHIC WARS AND EXPEDITIONS. Tlie Argonautic Expedition, 468. The Thebau Wars, 477. The Trojan War, 483. The Returns, 491. MYTHOLOGY OF ITALY. CHAP. I. INTRODUCTION. Early State of Italy and Rome, 501. The Etruscan Religion, 503. The Latin Religion, 505. The Sabellian Religion, 506. CHAP. II. THE SELECT GODS. Jovis, Juppiter, Jupiter, 509. Juno, 511. Minerva, 512. Vesta, 513. Ceres, 514. Venus, 515. Liber, 517. Neptunus, 518. Mercurius, 518. Vulcanus or Mulciber, 518. Apollo, 519. Mamers, Mavors, Mars, 519. Diana, 520. Janus, 521. Saturnus, 523. Ops, Tellus, 524. Genius, 525. Orcus, Ditis or Dis, 527. Sol and Luna, 527. CHAP. III. THE REMAINING ITALIAN DEITIES. Quirinus, 528. Bellona, 528. Libitina, 528. Census, 529. Laverna, Sancus, 530. Summanus, Vejovis, Soranus, 530. Camense, Egeria, Carmenta, 532. Matuta, Aurora, 533. Fortuna, 533. Bonus Even- tus, 533. Vertumnus, 534. Anna Perenna, 534. Terminus, 535. Sil- vanus, 536. Faunus, Lupercus, Inuus, 537. Picus, 538. Pales, 538. Pomona, 539. Flora, 539- Feronia, 540. Falacer, Furina, 540. Va- cuna, Marica, 541. Portunus or Portumnus, 542. Salacia and Venilia 542. Juturna, 542. Penates, 543. Lars, 543. Appendix, 547- Index, 557- DESCRIPTION OP THE PLATES. Plate I. 1. Zeus conquering the Giants. Cameo, engraved by Athenion. G. M. 33. Bracci, Intagliator, i. 30. — 2. Dodonean Zeus. Gold Medal of Alexander I. king of Epirus. G. M. 35. Seguin, Select. Num. 68.-3. The Olympian Zeus. G. M. 34. Mus. Florent. I. Ixvi. 1. — 4. Zeus jEgiochos; the Miiller, Dor. i. 373. INTEODUCTION. y In the island of Samos stood a temple dedicated to the Gaping Dionysos, of whose origin the following legend was related. A Samian named Elpis^ having made a voyage to Africa^ saw as he w^as one day on the seashore a huge lion approaching him with his mouth M'ide open. In his terror he uttered a prayer to Dionysos and fled to a tree, up which he climbed. The lion came and laid himself at the foot of the tree with his mouth still open, as if he required compas- sion, and Elpis saw that a bone was .stuck fast in his teeth which prevented him from eating ; he took pity on him, and came down and relieved him. As long as the ship stayed on the coast the grateful lion brought each day a portion of the produce of his hunting, and Elpis on his return to Samos built a temple to the Gaping Dionysos*. 7. Casual resemblance of sound in words, and foreign, ob- solete or ambiguous terms, were another abundant source of legends. In Greek Xdw; is a stone, and \a6> Volcker, Myth, der Js^g. passim. MiiUer, Proleg. 274, seq. " MiiUer, Proleg. 232. ■* Volcker, however, asserts positively that there is no mythe Vfithout a meaning. Myth, der Jap. 50. This may be true, but the meaning Is often a very trifling one. ' Kasselas, chap. 48. See Niebuhr, Hist, of Rome, i. 480. Lobeck, Aglaoph. 672 seq. Buttmaun, Mytholog. ii. 294, 295. Welcker, Tril. 249. 16 MYTHOLOGY OF GllEECE. Chapter II. grecian mythology. Its Origin. The remote antiquities of Greece are involved in such total obscurity, that nothing certain can be adduced respecting the origin of the people or their mythology. Reasoning from analogy and existing monuments, some men of learning ven- ture to maintain, that the first inhabitants of that country were under the direction of a sacerdotal caste, resembling those of India and Egypt ; but that various circumstances concurred to prevent their attaining to the same power as in those countries. In the Homeric poems, however, by far the earUest portion of Grecian literature, we find no traces of sacerdotal dominion ; and in the subsequent part of our work we shall bring forward some objections against this hypo- thesis*. It is certainly not improbable that these ancient priests, if such there were, may have had their religion arranged sy- stematically, and have represented the various appearances and revolutions of nature under the guise of the loves, the wars, and other actions of these deities, to whom they as- cribed a human form and human passions. But the Grecian mythology, as we find it in the works of the ancients, offers no appearance of a regular concerted system. It is rather a loose collection of various images and fables, many of which are significant of the same objects. The ancient inhabitants of Greece were divided into a great variety of little communities, dwelling separately, parted in general by mountains and other natural barriers. As they were naturally endowed with a Kvely imagination, there gra- dually grew up in each of these little states a body of tales and legends. These tales of gods and heroes were commu- ° See Miiller, Proleg. 249-253. Min. Pol. 9. ITS ORIGIN. 17 nicated by wandering minstrels and travellers from one part of the country to another. Phcenician mariners probably in- troduced stories of the wonders of the East and of the West, which in those remote ages they alone visited; and these sto- ries, it is likely, were detailed with the usual allowance of tra- vellers' licence. Poets, a race indigenous in the favoured clime of Hellas, caught up the tales, and narrated them with all the embellishments a lively fancy could bestow ; and thus at a period long anterior to that at which her history com- mences, Greece actually abounded in a rich and luxuriant system of legendary lore. This is proved by the poems of Homer and Hesiod, which, exclusive of the ancient legends they contain, make frequent allusion to others ; some of which are related by subsequent writers, and many are altogether fallen into oblivion. These poems also bear evident testimony to the long pre- ceding existence of a race of poets, — a fact indeed sulBSciently evinced by the high degree of perfection in the poetic art which they themselves exhibit. Modern mythologists have therefore been naturally led to the supposition of there hav- ing been in ancient Greece acedic schools, in which the verses of preceding bards were taught, and the art of making similar verses was acquired^. One of the ablest of our late inquirers* is of opinion that the original seat of these schools was Pieria, at the northern foot of Mount Olympos. He has been led to this supposition by Heyne's remark, that Homer always calls the Muses Olympian, which remark he extends by ob- serving that the Homeric gods are the Olympian, and no others. In this however we can only see that, as we shall presently show, Olympos was in the time of Homer held to be the seat of the gods. It does not appear to us that any one spot can be regarded as the birth-place of the Grecian religion and mythology ; they were, like the language and manners of the people, a portion of their being; and the " Wolf, it is well known, held this opinion. The Schools of the Prophets among the Hebrews were evidently of the same nature. t Voloker, Myth, der Jap. p. 5. seq. Bottiger, Ideen zur Kunst-Myth. ii. 50. See also MuUer, Proleg. 219. C IB MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. knowledge of the origin of the one is as far beyond our at- tainment as that of the other. The Greeks, like most of the ancient nations, were little inclined to regard as mere capricious fiction any of the legends of the different portions of then- own race or those of foreign countries. Whatever tales they learned, they interwove into their own system ; taking care, however, to avoid contradic- tion as far as was possible. When, therefore, they found any- foreign deities possessing the same attributes as some of their own, they at once inferred them to be the same imder dif- ferent names ; but where the legends would not accord, the deities themselves were regarded as being different, even when they were in reality perhaps the same. "This," says Buttmann*, "was the case when they found traditions of other kings of the gods whom they could not reconcile with their own Zeus, and of queens who could not be brought to agree with their Hera. But a new difficulty here presented itself; for they could not assume several kings and queens reigning at one time. The ancients appear to me to have gotten over this difficulty by saying, that those gods had indeed reigned, but that they had been overcome by their Zeus ; and that the goddesses had indeed cohabited with Zeus, but they had not been his lawfial wives. And this, if I mis- take not, is the true origin of the tale of the Titans being driven out of heaven, and of the concubines of Zeus, who were reckoned among the Titanesses, the daughters of Heaven, and among the daughters of the Titans, such as Metis, The- mis, Leto, Demeter, Dione, who were all, according to dif- ferent legends, spouses of Zeus." With these views of this most ingenious writer we agree, as far as relates to the consorts of the Olympian king, each of whom we look upon as having been his sole and lawful wife in the creed of some one or other of the tribes of Greece. Of the Titans we shall presently have occasion to speak some- what differently. » Mythologus, i. 24. Welcker, Tril. 95. HISTORIC VIEW. 19 Historic View of Grecian Mythology'-. The poets having taken possession of the popular legends, adorned, amplified, added to them, and sought to reduce the whole to a somewhat harmonious system^. They however either studiously abstained from departing from the popular faith, or were themselves too much affected by all that en- vironed them to dream of anything which might shock the opinions of their auditors. Accordiiogly we may be certain that the mythes contained in Homer and Hesiod accord with the current creed of their day, and are a faithful picture of the mode of thinking prevalent in those distant ages. As knowledge of the earth, of nature, her laws and powers, advanced, the false views of them contained in the venerable mythes of antiquity became apparent. The educated some- times sought to reconcile tradition and truth ; but the vulgar still held fast to the legends hallowed by antiquity and sanc- tioned by governments". A prudent silence therefore became the safest course for those who exceeded their contemporaries in knowledge. The philosophers of Greece early arrived at the knowledge of one only God, the original cause and support of all, Anax- agoras is said to have been the first who openly taught this truth ; and he was in consequence charged with atheism, and narrowly escaped the punishment of death. Philosophers took warning, and truth was no longer brought into public view. But such is the nature and connection of things, so profuse the resemblances which the world presents to view, such is the analogy which runs between the operations of mind and those of matter, that several of the Inythes afforded the philosophers an opportunity of holding them forth as the husks in which important moral or physical truths were en- veloped ; in which in reality many such truths had been stu- diously enveloped by ancient priests ani sages*. After an intercourse had been opened with Asia and Egypt, » Heyne ad Apollod. p. 911. aeq. ^ Miiller, Proleg. 212. ' Buttmann, Mythol. i. 45. MiiUer, Proleg. 171. In Lucian (De Luctu, 2.) may be seen a convincing proof of how &mly the vulgar, even in his time, clung to the old notions, " MiiUer, Proleg. 66, 99. Welcker, Tril. 89. c 2 20 MYTHOLOGY OP GREECE. mysteries came greatly into vogue in Greece. In these it is thought^ but perhaps not with sufficient evidence, the priests M'ho directed them used, for the ci-edit of the popular religion whose reputation they were solicitous to maintain, to endea- vour to show its accordance with the truths established by the philosophers, by representing them as being involved in the ancient mythes, which they modified by the aid of fiction and forgery so as to suit their purposes. About this time, also, the system of theocrasy [deoKpaaUt], or mixing up, as we may call it, of the gods together, began to be employed''. It was thus that the wine- god Dionysos was made one with the sun-god Hehos, and this last again, as some think, with the archer-god Phoebos Apollo. As we proceed we shall have frequent occasion to notice this prin- ciple. While in the schools of the philosophers, and the temples devoted to the mysteries, the ancient legends were acquiring a new and recondite sense, another class of raen, the artists, had laid hold of them. The gods of their forefathers were now presented under a new guise to the Greeks, who, as they gazed on the picture or the statue, saw the metaphors of the poets turned to sense, and wings, for example, adorning those deities and mythic personages to whom the poet had in figu- rative style applied the expression winged to denote extraor- dinary swiftness''. The poets soon began to regard the ancient legends as mere materials. The behef in their truth having in a great measure vanished, the poets, especially the later dramatists, thought themselves at liberty to treat them in whatever manner they deemed best calculated to produce the meditated efiect on the feelings of their audience *. They added, abstracted, united, separated, at their pleasure ; ideas imported from Egypt were ' This is the theory of Voss. "We share the doubts of Lobeck (Aglaoph. 1295.) respecting its soundness. The Exegetes, or guides, were more probably the persons who gave explanations of this kind to sti-angers. ' Lobeck, Aglaoph. 78, 79, 614, 615. Maier, Proleg. 91. ' Voss, Myth. Br. passim. ' MiiUer, Proleg. 89-91, 209. Orehomenos, 269. Dorians, i. 59. Welcker Tril. 462, 469. " Quam fecunda tragicorum ingenia in fabuhs variandis, per tot exempla edocti, fuisse putabimus !"— Heyne ad ApoUodor. p. 859. Id. ib 920 HISTORIC VIEW. 21 mixed up with the old tales of gods and heroes ; and ^e fable to be represented on the stage often varied so much from that handed down by tradition, that, as is more especially the case with Euripides, the poet appears at times to have found it necessary to inform his audience in a long prologue of what they were about to witness. Such was the state of the ancient mythology of Greece in her days of greatest intellectual culture. Few of the mythes remained unaltered. Priests, philosophers, and poets com- bined to vary, change, and modify them. The imagination of these various classes produced new mythes, and the local tales of foreign lands were incorporated into the Grecian mythic cycle. When the Ptolemies, those munificent patrons of learning, had assembled around them at Alexandria the scholars and the men of genius of Greece, the science of antiquity was, by the aid of the extensive royal library, assiduously cultivated ; and the ancient mythology soon became a favourite subject of learned investigation. Some worked up the mythes into poems ; others arranged them in prose narratives ; several oc- cupied themselves in the explication of them. At this time what is named Pragmatism, or the effort to reduce the mythes to history, began greatly to prevail". It is probable that this took its rise from the Egyptian priests, who, as we may see in Herodotus, represented their gods as having dwelt and reigned on earth''. Hecatseus of Miletus, one of the earliest Grecian historians, would seem to have laboured to give a rational form to the old legends''; and we may observe in the explanation given by Herodotus, after the Egyptian priests, of the legend of the soothsaying pigeon of Dodona, and in other places of that historian, a similar de- sire''. This mode of rationalising M'as carried to a much greater extent by Ephorus : but the work which may be re- garded as having contributed by far the most to give it vogue, " Miiller, Proleg. 97-99. Lobeck, Aglaoph. 987. seq. Buttmann, i. 197. i" Herodotus, ii. 144. " Hecatseus began bis work in these words : " I write as it appears to me to be true ; for the narratives of the Hellenes are very various and ridiculous, as it seems to me." He said that Cerberos was a serpent that lay at Tsenaron. 1 Herod, u. 54-57. 22 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. was the Sacred History ('le/j^ 'Avar^pav) of Euhemerus, •which was so celebrated in antiquity that we shall here stop to give a brief account of it*. Euhemerus said, in this work, that having had occasion to make a voyage in the Eastern ocean, after several days' sail he came to three islands, one of which was named Panchaia. The inhabitants of this happy isle were distinguished for their piety, and the isle itself for its fertUity and beauty, in the de- scription of which the writer exerted all the powers of his imagination. At a distance of several miles from the chief town, he says, lay a sacred grove, composed of trees of every kind, tall cypresses, laurels, myrtles, palms, and every species of fruit-tree, amidst which ran rivulets of the purest water. A spring within the sacred district poured forth water in such abundance as to form a navigable river, named the Water of the Sun'', which meandered along, fructiiying the whole re- gion, and shaded over by luxuriant groves, in which during the days of summer dwelt numbers of men, while birds of the richest plumage and most melodious throats built their nests in the branches, and dehghted the hearer with their song. Verdant meads, adorned with various flowers, climbing vines, and trees hanging with dehcious fruits, everywhere met the view in this paradise. The inhabitants of the island were divided into priests, warriors, and cultivators. All things were in common except the house and garden of each. The duty of the priests was to sing the praises of the gods, and to act as judges and magistrates : a double share of every- thing fell to them. The task of the miUtaiy class was to de- fend the island against the incursions of pirates, to which it was exposed. The garments of all were of the finest and whitest wool, and they wore rich ornaments of gold. The priests were distinguished by their raiment of pure white linen, and their bonnets of gold tissue. ' The chief remains of this work are to be found in the fifth hook of Diodorus (42. seg.), and in the fragment of the sLt th book preserved by Eusebius in his Evan- geUc Preparation. There are fragments remaining of the Latin translation of En- nius ; and the work is frequently refen-ed to by Sextus Empiricus and the Fathers of the Church. •• This name is borrowed from the Fount of the Sim (cp^rij 'RXiov) at the temple of Ammon. Herod, iv. 181. IIISTOUIC VIEW. 23 The priests derived their lineage from Crete, whence they had been brought by Zeus after he had succeeded his prede- cessors Uranos and Kronos in the empire of the world. In the midst of the grove already described, and at a distance of sixty stadia from the chief town, stood an ancient and mag- nificent temple sacred to TriphyUan Zeus, erected by the god himself while he was yet among men ; and on a golden pillar in the temple the deeds of Uranos, Zeus, Artemis, and Apollo had been inscribed by Hermes in Panchaeic letters, which the voyager says were the same with the sacred characters of the Egyptian priests. Zeus had, according to this monument, been the most potent of monarchs : the chief seat of his do- minion had been Crete, where he died and was buried, after having made five progresses through the world, all whose kings feared and obeyed him. The object of Euhemerus in inventing this Utopia, which by the way many navigators sought after but no one ever found, was evidently to give a blow to the popular rehgion, and even to make it ridiculous ; for though he seems to have treated some of the higher gods, as Zeus for example, with a degree of respect, he was less particular with the infe- rior ones and with the heroes. Thus of Aphrodite he says, that she was the first who reduced gallantry to an art, and made a trade of it, that she might not appear more wanton than other women ^. Cadmos was cook to a king of Sidon, and he ran away with Harmonia, a female flute-player''. The work of Euhemerus was vehemently attacked by all who retained a veneration for the old rehgion, and the writer him- self was stigmatised as an atheist" : but it exerted a great in- fluence over the subsequent historians, as we may perceive in the case of Diodorus of Sicily. It was translated into Latin by Ennius, of whose work some fragments remain "^ ; and the ^neis of Virgil alone will suffice to show the degree in which it aifected the old ItaUan mythology^. Finally, the Fathers " Ennius op. Lactant., Div. Inst. i. 17. '' Athenaeus, xiv. 658. ' See Callimachus, Fr. (Bentl.) 86. Plut. de Is. et Os. 23. Lobeck, 138. ^ " Infidelity was introduced by the Calabrian Greek Ennius, and became na- turalised as morals declined."— Niebuhr, Hist, of Rome, i. 137. « See Ma. vii. 47-49, 177-182 ; viii. 355-359. 24 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. of the Church employed it to advantage in their conflicts with the supporters of the ancient rehgion. While Euhemerus thus fixed on an imaginary island in the Eastern ocean as the original abode of the deities adored in Greece, others, among whom Dionysius of Samos or Myti- lene was the most celebrated, chose the Western coast of Africa for the same purpose^. For this they seemed to have Homeric authority ; as the poet calls Oceanos, whose abode was placed in the West, the origin of the gods'*. According to these writers the coast of Ocean on this side, fertile as Pan- chaia itself, was inhabited by a people named Atlanteians, dis- tinguished for their piety and their hospitality to strangers. The first king who ruled over them was named Uranos. He collected the people, who had previously dwelt dispersedly, into towns, and taught them agriculture, and thus reformed their manners. He gradually reduced under his sway the greater part of the world. By study of the heavens, and thus learning to foretell the celestial phaenomena, he obtained the reputation of being of a nature superior to man ; and when he died, his people gave him divine honours and named the heavens after him. By several wives Uranos was the father of forty-five chil- dren, eighteen of whom, the offspring of Titaia or Earth, were named Titans. The most distinguished of their daughters were Basileia and Rhea, also named Pandora. The former, who was the eldest, aided her mother to rear her brothers and sisters, whence she was called the Great Mother. She succeeded her father in his dominion ; and after some time she married Hyperi6n, one of her brothers, to whom she bore two children, endowed with marvellous sense and beautj'', named Helios and Selena. But the other Titans now grew jealous, and they murdered Hyperi6n, and flung Helios into the river Eridanos, where he was drowned. At the tidings Selena, who loved her brother beyond measm-e, cast herself from the roof of the palace and perished. Basileia lost her senses through grief, and weiit roaming in madness through the country with dishevelled locks, beating drums and cym- ' Diodorus, iii. 56. seg. ' 'Qxeavov re, 9cCiv yiveaiv Kaf firiripa TriBvv. — II. xiv. 201. HISTORIC VIEW. 25 bals. She disappeared at length in a storm of rain, thunder, and lightning. The people raised altars to her as a goddess, and they named the sun and moon after her hapless children. The Titans then divided the realm of their father among themselves. The coast of Ocean fell to Atlas, who named the people and the highest mountain of the country after himself. Like his father he was addicted to astronomy ; he first taught the doctrine of the sphere, whence he was said to support the heavens. Kronos, the most impious and ambitious of the Titans, ruled over Libya, Sicily, and Italy. He espoused his sister Rhea, who bore a son named Zeus, in aU things the opposite of his grim sire ; whence the people, deUghted with his virtues, named him Father, and finally placed him on the throne. Kronos, aided by the other Titans, sought to re- cover his dominion ; but the new monarch defeated him, and then ruled, the lord of the whole world and the benefactor of mankind. After his death he was deified by his grateful subjects. We will not pursue any further these dreams of the my- thographer, for the tasteless system never seems to have gained general credit. We therefore proceed to relate the further course of the Grecian mythology. As we have ah'eady observed, the allegorical system of in- terpretation prevailed at the same time with the historical. This mode of exposition was introduced by the sophists ; So- crates and Plato occasionally employed it ironically ; but its greatest cultivators were the philosophers of the Stoic sect. It was chiefly physical and ethical truths that they deduced from the ancient mythes, and they generally regarded the gods in the light of personifications of the powers of nature. When the Romans became acquainted with Grecian litera- ture, they identified the gods of Greece with such of their own deities as had a resemblance to them. Thus Hermes became Mercuriiis, Aphrodite Venus, and the mythes of the former were by the poets, and perhaps in the popular creed, applied to the latter. As in Greece, some believed, some dis- believed in the popular deities, and the former sought the solution of the mythes in the schools of philosophy or the temples of the mysteries. The valuable work of Cicero ' On 26 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. the Nature of the Gods' shows in an agreeable manner the ideas entertained on this subject by the most accomplished Romans of his time. After the conflict had commenced between Heathenism and Christianity, the allegorising principle was applied to the former with still greater assiduity than heretofore. The New Platonists endeavoured by its aid, in union with Oriental mysticism, to show, that the ancient religion contained all that was required to satisfy the utmost needs of the human soul. The Fathers of the Church laid hold on the weapons thus presented to them, to defend the new and attack the old reUgion. By the aid of the principles of Euhemerus they robbed the gods of Greece of their divinity ; by that of the allegorising principle of the Stoics they extracted truth from the legends of Greek theology, and discovered mystery in the simplest narratives and precepts of the Hebrew Scriptures. Unfortunately in this process many of the mythes and prac- tices of Heathenism became incorporated with the pure reli- gion of the Gospel, and Christianity also had soon a mythology of its own to display. On the final overthrow of Heathenism its mythology slept along with its history and literature the sleep of the dark ages ; but at the revival of learning it was eagerly laid hold on by poets and artists % and it attracted the attention of antiquarians and philosophers. The various theories by which it was sought to reduce it to system, which we have already enumerated, were then re\ived or devised ; and mythology forms at present an important branch of learning and philosophy. Of late years the mythology of Greece has in the hands of men of genius and learning, especially in Germany, resumed the simple and elegant attire which it wore in the days of Homer and Hesiod, and in which the following pages will attempt to present it to the reader. Literature of the Grecian Mythology. A brief view of the literature of the Grecian mythology, or of the works whence our knowledge of it has been derived, ' The earliest modem work on this subject is Boccaccio's Genealogia Deorum , written in the fourteenth century. LITERATURE. 2'J seems a necessary supplement to the preceding sketch of its history. The Ilias and the Odyssey, as the two great heroic poems which are regarded as the works of Homer are named, are (with the exception of some parts of the Hebrew Scriptures) the earUest literary compositions now extant. Their origin is enveloped in the deepest obscurity, and the questions whether they are the production of one or of many minds, whether they were originally written, or were orally trans- mitted for centuries, have for some years engaged the pens of critics. It seems to be now generally agreed that the two poems are the productions of different minds, and that in both there are interpolations, some of which are of no small magnitude, but that notwithstanding they may be regarded as faithful pictures of the manners and opinions of the Achae- ans or Greeks of the early ages^. Beside the Ilias and the Odyssey, the ancients possessed some other narrative poems, which were ascribed, but falsely, to the same author. All these poems, however, have long since perished. The age of Hesiod is equally uncertain with that of Homer. Three only of the poems ascribed to him have come down to us, viz. the didactic poem named Works ^nd Days, the Theo- gony, and the Shield of Hercules. Hesiod was also said to be the author of a poem in four books named the Catalogues, or Eoise'', which related the histories of the heroines or distin- guished women of the mythic ages ; but of this also only a few fragments have been preserved. The same is the case with the poems named the Melampodia and ^gimios, like- wise ascribed to this ancient bard. Homer and Hesiod were succeeded by a crowd of poets, who sang aU the events of the mythic ages. The chief of " In the former edition of this work we entered at some length into this suh- ject. We are now aware that it is impossible to say anything satisfactory on it in so limited a compass, and therefore reserve our materials for the composition of a volume on some future occasion. We will here only observe, that besides our general agreement with the critics who regard the poems as interpolated, we hold with Wolf the last six books of the Ilias to be the work of a different poet from the author of the Ilias in general. ° 'Hoiai, fi'om the words ri o'lij, or such as, with which each narrative began. See the commencement of the Shield. 28 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. these were Stasinos of Cyprus, Arctinos of Miletus, Lesches of Lesbos, Cynsethos of Chios, Eumelos of Corinth, Agi^s of Trcezen, and Eugamm6n of Cyrene. Their poems were the Cypria, the ^thiopis, the Little Ilias, the Iliupersis or Ta- king of Ilion, the Nostoi or Returns of the Chiefs, the Tele- gonia, or Death of Odysseus, etc. There were also Heracleise, or poems on the subject of Hercules, by Peisander, Panyasis, and other poets, a Theseis on the adventures of Theseus, poems on the wars of Thebes % a Titanomachia, an Amazonia, a Danais, a Phoronis, etc. In the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, the critic Zenodotus of Ephesus united several of these poems with the Ilias and Odyssey into one whole, commencing with the marriage of Heaven and Earth, and ending with the death of Odysseus. This was named the Epic Cycle, and it con- tinued to be read during some centuries of the Christian sera''. Of this, however, the Homeric portion alone has come down to us : for our knowledge of the events contained in the re- mainder of the Cycle we are indebted to the works of the later poets Quintus Smyrnseus, Coluthus, and Tryphiodorus, and the various schoUasts or commentators and compilers. The lyric succeeded the epic poets. Mythic legends were necessarily their principal materials, as their verses were mostly dedicated to the worship of the gods, or the praise of victors in the public games, or were sung at banquets or in funeral processions. These too have disappeared, excepting a portion of those of Pindar. It is much to be lamented, in a mythologic view, that so little remains of Stesichorus of Himera. The tragedians followed : they took their subjects from the epic poems, and their remaining works preserve much mj'thic lore. After the epic poetry had ceased, and writing, by means of the Egyptian papyrus, was become more common in Greece, " The Thebais was ascribed to Homer. In the opinion of Pausanias (ix. 9. 3.) it was next in merit to the Ilias and Odyssey. There was another Thebais by Antimachus, but written at a much later period. " By fax the best account of the Epic Cycle, its authors and contents, will be found in Welcker's excellent work ' Der epische Cyclus.' (Bonn, 1835.) LITERATURE. 29 a set of writers arose who related in succinct prose narratives, arranged in historic order, the various mythic legends which formed the Epic Cycle, the Eoiae, and other poems of the same nature. The principal of these writers were Pherecydes, Acusilaiis, and Hellanicus ; of their works also only fragments remain. The historians, Herodotus, Thucydides, and their followers, occasionally took notice of the mythic legends. Ephorus and Theopompus were those who devoted most attention to them, as their fragments still remaining show. The sophists and philosophers employed the mythic form as the vehicle of their peculiar systems and ideas. Such was Prodicus' beautiful fiction of the Choice of Hercules, and Pro- tagoras' story of Prometheus and his brother ^ We are now arrived at the Alexandrian period. In this the mythes were treated in two different ways. Lycophrdn, Euphorion, ApoUonius, Callimachus, and the remainder of the Pleias, as they were named, formed poems from them ; while ApoUodorus, following Pherecydes, and adding the fic- tions of the tragedians, framed a continuous narrative, of which an epitome alone has come down to us ; and Crates, Aristarchus, and the other editors of the ancient poets gave the legends a place in their commentaries. The Latin poets of the Augustan age drew largely on the Alexandrian writers, after whom chiefly they related in their verses the mythic tales of Greece, in general pure and unal- tered, as appears from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, of whose legends the Greek originals can, with few exceptions, be pointed out''. It was also in this period that Hyginus wrote the my- thological work which we now possess. The summaries of Parthenius, Antoninus Liberahs and others contain numerous mythic legends, as also do the Scholia, or notes on the classic writers of Greece, especially those on Homer, Pindar, Apollonius, and Theocritus ; those of Tzetzes on Hesiod and Lycophron, and the tedious com- mentary of Eustathius on Homer, The notes of Servius on Virgil are also very valuable in this respect, as likewise is the ' Plato, Protagoras, p. 320. I" As we proceed we shall be careful to do so whenever they can be discovered. 30 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Violet-beda of the empress Eudocia. It would be tedious to particularise all the other sources of information^ for in fact there is hardly a classic writer in either language who does not relate or refer to some of the mythic legends of Greece ; even the Fathers of the Church contribute to augment our knowledge of the mythic tales of the religion against which their Uterary artillery was directed. There is one author of a peculiar character, and whose work is of the most interesting nature, we mean Pausanias, who travelled in Greece in the second century of the Christian aera, and gathered on the spot the legends of the temples and the traditions of the people. He has thus preserved a number of mythic narratives unnoticed by preceding writers, which had probably been transmitted from father to son from the most remote times. If to the sources already enumerated we add the long poem of Nonnus on the adventures of Dionysos, we shall have given the principal authorities for the contents of the follow- ing pages. We have been thus succinct on the present oc- casion, as it is our intention to give a view of the literature of each of the mythic cycles in its proper place''. * 'luivia, or Violarium. It forms the first volume of Villoison's Anecdote Grseca. ' On the subject of this section see Miiller, Proleg. 81. seq. MYTHIC COSMOLOGY. 31 Chapter III. MYTHIC VIEWS OF THE WORLD AND ITS ORIGIN. Mythic Cosmology. Foe the due understanding of the mythology of a people, a knowledge of their cosmology, or views of the world, its na- ture, extent, and divisions, is absolutely requisite. Without it we shall be for ever falling into error ; and by applying to the productions of the remote and infantile periods of society the just conceptions of the present day in geography and astronomy, give to them a degree of folly and inconsistency with which they cannot justly be charged^. The earliest view of Grecian cosmology that we possess, is that contained in the poems of Homer. Next in antiquity is that of the poems of Hesiod, who flourished somewhat later, for he displays a much more, extended knowledge of the earth than Homer appears to have possessed. As navigation and the intercourse with foreign countries increased, just ideas respecting the more distant regions be- came more common among the Greeks, and districts were continually reclaimed from fable, and brought into the circuit of truth and knowledge. Not to speak of the philosophers and historians, we may discern in the poets of each succeed- ing age the progressively extending knowledge of the real character of distant lands. Yet still we must not always ex- pect to find in poets all the knowledge of the age they Uve in; they love to imitate their predecessors, they often are unac- quainted with the advance of knowledge, they write for the people, who still retain old prejudices. It is thus that in the poets of the Augustan age we shall find the Homeric ideas of the universe, just as in some modern poets we may meet the Ptolemaic astronomy and judicial astrology, after both had been exploded. " We recommend the excellent works of Volcker on the Homeric and Mythie Geographies ; and also that of Ukert on the Geography of the Greeks and Romans. 32 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. The Greeks of the days of which Homer sings, or rather of the poet's own time, though well acquainted with navi- gation, do not appear to have been in the habit of making distant voyages. The Cretans and the Taphians (a people who inhabited some small islands in the Ionian sea) perhaps form an exception. We read in the Odyssey of their piracies committed on Egypt and Sid6n% and of their bartering voyages to Temesa'', (perhaps the place of that name in Italy,) where they exchanged iron for copper. But the great autho- rities of the Greeks respecting foreign lands were probably the Phoenicians, who in the most distant ages visited Africa, Spain, and possibly the shores of the Atlantic ; and it is likely that, after the fashion of travellers and sailors, mingling truth and fiction, they narrated the most surprising tales of the marvels of the remote regions to which they had penetrated. According to the ideas of the Homeric and Hesiodic ages, it would seem that the World v/a.s a hollow globe, divided into two equal portions by the flat disk of the Earth". The ex- ternal shell of this globe is called by the poets brazen^ and iron^, probably only to express its solidity. The superior he- misphere was named Heaven, the inferior one Tartaros. The length of the diameter of the hollow sphere is given thus by Hfesiod^, It would take, he says, nine days for an anvil to fall from Heaven to Earth ; and an equal space of time would be occupied by its fall from Earth to the bottom of Tartaros. The luminaries which gave light to gods and men shed their radiance through all the interior of the upper hemisphere ; while that of the inferior one was filled with eternal gloom and darkness, and its stiU air unmoved by any wind. The Earth occupied the centre of the World in the form of of a round flat disk, or rather cylinder, around which the river Ocean floM'ed\ Hellas was probably regarded as the centre of the Earth] but the poets are silent on this point. They are equally so/ as to the exact cen,tral point, but pro- = Od. xiv. 248-264, 452 ; xv. 426, 451. ■> Od. i. 184. ' II. viii. 16. Hes. Th. 720. " II. V. 504 J xvii. 425. Od. iii. 2. Find. Pyth. x. 42. Nem. vi. 6. ' Od. XV. 328 ; xvii. 565. f Tli. 722. MYTHIC COSMOLOGY. " 3.3 bably viewed as such Olympos, the' abode of the gods. In after times Delphi became the navel of the earth^. The Sea divided the terrestrial disk into two portions, which Ave may suppose were regarded as equal. These divisions do not seem to have had any pecuhar names in the time of Homer. The northern one was afterwards named Europe^ ; the southern, at first called Asia alone", was in process of time divided into Asia and Libya"*. The former comprised all the country between the Phasis and the Nile, the latter all between this river and the western ocean". In the Sea the Greeks appear to have known to the west of their own country southern Italy and Sicily, though their ideas respecting them were probably vague and uncertain ; and the imagination of the poets, or the tales of voyagers, had placed in the more remote parts of it several islands, such as Ogygia the isle of Calypso, ^aea that of Circe, .^oUa that of ^olos, Scheria the abode of the Phaeacians, — islands in all probabihty as ideal and as fabulous as the isles of Panchaia, Lilliput, or Brobdingnag, though both ancients and moderns have endeavoured to assign their exact positions. Along its southern coast lay, it would appear, the countries of the Lo- tus-eaters, the Cyclopes, the Giants, and the Lsestrigonians. These isles and coasts of the western part of the Sea were " 'OjM^aXos !-?7s yijs, Find. Pyth. iv. 131. ; vi. 3. Paus. x. 16. 3. There may be some connexion between Delphi and Se\(pis, womb, which gave occasion to the notion. Welcker (Kret. Kol. 45.) makes AeX^os equivalent to TijXe^os. The habit of regarding their own country as the centre of the earth prevails at the present day among the Chinese and the Hindoos ; it was also a principle in the cosmogony of the ancient Persians and Scandinavians. '' The term Europe iirst occurs in the Homeridian hymn to the Dalian Apollo (v. 251 ), where it is opposed to the Peloponnese and the islands, and apparently denotes continental Greece. It would seem therefore to come from eipvs, and to signify mainland. (See Viilck. Hom. Geog. 103.) Bqchart, Buttmann (Mythol. ii. 176.) and others derive it from the Hebrew Ereb (aiy), evening, as signifying the West. See Welcker, Kret. Kol. 55. " Pherecydes (Sch. ApoU. Rh. iv. 1396.) first mentions this division into Europe and Asia. We find it even in Isocrates (Panegyr. 48.) and in Varro (De L. L. iv. p. 13. Bip.). " Herod, iv. 37-41. ' Asia seems to have been at first nothing more than the rich land on the banks of the Cayster. (11. ii. 461. Heyne in loco.)' Libya is in Homer merely a district west of Egypt. D 34 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. the scenes of most of the wonders of early Grecian fable. There, and on the isles of the Ocean, the passage to which was supposed to be close to the island of Circe, dwelt the Sirens, the Hesperides, the Graeae, the Gorgons, and the other beings of fable.. The only inhabitants of the northern portion of the earth mentioned by Homer are the Hellenes and some of the tribes of Thrace. But Hesiod^ sang of a happy race, named the Hyperboreans, dwelhng in everlasting bhss and spring be- yond the lofty mountains, whose caverns were supposed to send forth the piercing blasts of the north windi*, which chilled the people of Hellas. According to Pindar^ the country of the Hyperboreans, from which the river Ister flowed, was inaccessible either by sea or land. Apollo was their tutelar deity, to whom they offered asses in sacrifice, while choirs of maidens danced to the sound of lyres and pipes, and the worshipers feasted haAdng their heads wreathed with garlands of the god's favourite plant, the bay. They lived exempt from disease or old age, from toils and warfare, and, conscious of no evil thoughts or acts, they had not to fear the awftil goddess Nemesis'^. On the south coast of the Sea, eastwai-ds of the fabulous tribes above enumerated, lay Libya and Egypt. The Sido- nians, and a people named the Erembians*, are also men- tioned by Homer, and the Greeks appear to have been well acquainted with the people of the west coast of Lesser Asia. They do not seem to have navigated the Euxine at this time, though they were doubtless not ignorant of it, as Homer names some of the peoples on its southern coast. They must of course have regarded' it as a portion of the Sea. We have no means of ascertaining whether they supposed it to commu- nicate with the Ocean, like the western part of the Sea. Of Colchis and Caucasus they seem to have ^lad no knowledge " Herod; iv. $2. ■ ' 'PtTTai, blasts, whence these mountains were named Bhipieans. ' Find. 01. iii. 24 seq. ; iriii. 63. Pyth. x. 50 seq. Isth. vi. 33. ■■ See Appendix (A). ' Perhaps the Syrians (Ai-am) or the Arabs (Strabo, i. 2.), the ;u beiag inserted before /3, as was done so frequently ; ex. gr. a/j/3poros. MYTHIC COSMOLOGY. 35 whatever in these early ages. They were equally ignorant of the interior of Asia. On the eastern side of the earth, close to the stream of Ocean, dwelt a people happy and virtuous as the Hyperbo- reans. They were named the Ethiopians'": the gods favoured them so highly that they were wont to leave at times their Olympian abodes and go to share their sacrifices and ban- quets^. A passage of the Odyssey" divides the Ethiopians into two tribes, the one on the eastern, the other on the western margin of the earth ^. In later ages, when knowledge of the earth had increased, the Ethiopians or sun-burnt men were placed in the south ; but this is contrary to the views of Ho- mer, who^ assigns the southern portion of the terrestrial disk to a nation of dwarfs named, from their diminutive stature^, Pygmies, to whose country the cranes used to migrate every winter, and their appearance was the signal of bloody warfare to the puny inhabitants, who had to take up arms to defend their corn-fields against the rapacious strangers. On the western margin of the earth, by the stream of Ocean, lay a happy place named the Elysian Plain, whither the mor- tal relatives of the king of the gods were transported without tasting of death, to enjoy an immortality of bhss. Thus Pro- teus says to MenelaosS, But thee the ever-living gods will send Unto the Elysian Plain, and distant bounds Of earth, where dwelleth fair-haired Rhadamanthys : There life is easiest unto men ; no snow, Or wintry storm, or rain, at any time Is there ; but Ocean evermore sends up Shrill-blowing western breezes to refresh The habitants ; because thou hast espoused Helena, and art son-in-law of Zeus. " That is, ilaci: or sitn-bumt men, from aiOui, to ium. " II. i. 423 ; xxiii. 205. Odr i. 22 j v. 282. " Od. i. 23, 24. *■ See Appendix (B). ' II. iii. 3-7. Heyne doubts of the genuineness of this passage. Payne Knight would be content with rejecting w. 6 and 7. It is to be observed that it is not Homer's Custom to use two particles of comparison (liis and rivTs) together, and that the Pygmies seem to contradict the analogy which places races superior to ordinary men on the shores of Ocean. f That is, men only as tall as the fist, from vvyiifi,fist, like our Tom Thumb. « Od. iv. 563. D 2 36 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. In the time of Hesioda the Elysian Plain was become the Isles of the Blest. Pindar^ appears to reduce the number of these happy isles to one. We thus see that the Greeks of the early ages knew little of any real people except those to the east and south of their own country^ or near the coast of the Mediterranean. Their imagination meantime peopled the western portion of this sea with giants, monsters, and enchantresses; while they placed aroiuid the edge of the disk of the earth, which they probably regarded as of no great width, nations enjoying the peculiar favour of the gods, and blessed with happiness and longevity, — a notion which continued to prevail even in the historic times''. We have already observed that the Ocean of Homer and Hesiod was a river or stream. It is always so called by these poets'!, and they describe the sun and the other heavenly bo- dies as rising out of and sinking into its placid current^. Its course was from south to north up the western side of the earth. It flowed calmly and equably, unvexed by tempests and unnavigated by man. It was termed hmfk-jUrwing , deep- flowing, soft-flowing, from its nature^. Its waters were sweet, and it was the parent of all fountains and rivers on the earth. As it was a stream, it must have been conceived to have a further bank to confine its course, but the poet of the Odyssey " Works and Days, 169. " 01. ii. 129. ■= Herod, ui. 105. ^ UoTa/ids, poos poai, H. iii. 5 j xiv. 245 ; xvi. 151 ; XTiii. 240. 402. 60/ ; six. 1 ; XX. 7. Od. xi. 21. 156. 638 ; xii. 1 ; xxii. 197 ; xxiv. 11. Hesiod, W. and D. 566. Th. 242. 841. ' n. ™. 422 ; viii. 485 ; xviii. 239. Od. iii. 1 ; xix. 433 ; xiiii. 242. 347. Hea. W. and D. 566. Thus Milton also, P. L. v. 139. the sun, who scarce uprisen, With wheels yet hovering o'er the ocean-brim. Shot parallel to the earth his dewy ray; and Tasso, Ger. lib. i. 15. Sorgeva il novo sol dai lidi Eoi, Parte gia fuor, ma '1 piu ne I'onde chiuso. ' 'Ail-ippoos, II. rvju. 399. Od. xx. 65. (ai|/ avaaeipiZovros eiv poov eis eov liBojp, Nonnus, xxxviii. 317.) Hes. Th. 776. jSaQippoos, II. vii. 422; xiv. 311. Od. xi. 13; xix. 434. PaBv^peirns, JL xxi. 195. Hes. Th. 265. <£«:aXopp6i7i,s, II. vii. 422. Od. xix. 403. An epithet of Oceanos in Hesiod (Th. 274. 288. 294.) is kXvtos, illustrious, or perhaps bright. See Appendix (C). MYTHIC COSMOLOGY. 37 alone notices the transoceanic land^ and that only in the western part. He describes it as a region unvisited by the sun, and therefore shrouded in perpetual darkness, the abode of a people whom he names Kimmerians. He also places there Erebos, the realm of Aides and Persephoneia, the final dwelling of all the race of men, a place which the poet of the Ilias describes as lying within the bosom of the earth"'. As Homer^ represents the heaven as resting on pillars kept by Atlas, and Vvhich were on the earth, and Hesiod'' describes the extremities of heaven, earth, sea (ttovtos), and Tartaros as meeting, it would seem to follow that the Ocean lay outside of the hollow sphere of the world, and encompassed the middle of it like a rim. The armillary sphere would thus give us an idea of the Homeric world. The portion of the hollow sphere above the earth contained Olympos, the abode of the gods ; but there is great difBculty in ascertaining its exact nature and situation. As it is always represented as a mountain, it must have rested on the earth, and yet one passage of the Ilias* would seem plainly to speak of it as distinct from the earth ; and the language of the Odyssey respecting it is stiU more dubious. Were we to follow analogy, and argue from the cosmology of other races of men, we would say that the upper surface of the superior hemisphere was the abode of the Grecian gods. Tlie Hebrews seem, for example, to have regarded the concave heaven as being solid (hence Moses says, that Jehovah would make their heaven brass and their earth iron) ^, and its upper surface as the abode of Jehovah and his holy angels, the place where he had formed his magazines of hail, rain, snow, and frost ^. According to the notions of the ancient Scandinavians the heaven was solid, and its upper surface, which they named Asgardr {God-abode), was the dwelling of their gods, and the » II. iii. 278 ; ix. 568 ; 3dx. 259 ; xx. 61 ; xxU, 482 ; xxiii. IOC. " Od. i. 54. ° Theog. 736. ^ II. viii. 18-26. Zenodotus however rejected vv. 25, 26, iu which all the difficulty lies. See Schol. in loco. ' Deut. xxviii. 23. ' The very rational supposition of some learned and pious divines, that it did not suit the scheme of Providence to give the Israelites more correct ideas on na- tural subjects than other nations, relieves Scriptiu-e from many difficulties. 38 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. place to which the souls of the virtuous and the valiant dead ascended along the celestial bridge Bifrost, i. e. the Rainbow. The ideas of the ancient Italians and other nations seem to have been similar. Hence we might be led to infer that Olympos, the abode of the Grecian gods, was synonymous with Heaven, and that the Thessalian mountain, and those others which bore the same name, were called after the ori- ginal heavenly hiU'*. A careful survey, however, of those pas- sages in Homer and Hesiod in which Olympos occurs, will lead us to beheve that the Achjeans held the Thessalian Olympos, the highest mountain with which they were acquainted, to be the abode of their gods'*. The entrance to the city of the gods on Olympos was closed by a gate of clouds kept by the goddesses named the Seasons ; but the cloudy valves rolled open spontaneously to permit the greater gods to pass to and fro on their visits to the earth". It is an utterly unfounded supposition of the learned Voss'^, that there were doors at the eastern" and western extremities of the heaven, through which the sun-god and other deities ascended from and went down into the stream of Ocean. The celestial luminaries seem rather, according to Homer and He- siod, to have careered through void air, '^ bringing light to men and gods.' When in after times the solid heaven was ' The Scholiast on ApoUonius Rhodius (i. 598.) enumerates six, namely, in Ma- cedonia, Thessaly, Mysia, Cilicia, Elis, Aicadia ; to which are to he added those of Cyprus, Lesbos, Acamania and Laconia. (Polyb. ii. 65 ; v. 24.) •j Yet how could the poet, who (Od. xi. 312-15.) describes the Aloeids as piling Ossa and Pelion on Olympos, regard this last as the abode of the gods ? ° II. V. 749 ; viii. 393. Thus Milton : Heaven open'd wide Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound On golden hinges moving, to let forth The King of glory.— P. L. vii. 205. And again, v. 374 : He through heaven. That open'd wide her blazing portals, led To God's eternal house direct the way. " Mythol. Briefe, i. 190. Note on Virg. Geor. iii. 261. The passages there quoted (Find. Fr. incert. 100. Apoll. Rh. iii. 159. and Q. Smymsus, xiv. 223.), as is too often the case with him, by no means beai- him out in his theory. Statius is the earliest poet who speaks of these gates. (See Theba'is, i. 158 ; vii. 35 ; v. 1.) Nonnus (xxvii. 2.) describes Eos as opening the gates of the east. MYTHIC COSMOLOGY. 39 established as the abode of the gods, the necessity for these doors was perhaps felt ; and they were accordingly invented by those who were resolved to leave nothing unexplained. The stars appear to have been regarded as moving under the solid heaven, for they rose out of and sank into the Ocean stream. The only ones mentioned by name by Homer and Hesiod are the constellations Ori6n, the Bear, the Pleiads, and the Hyads, the single stars Bootes or Arcturus, and Sirius, and the planet Venus, which they seem to have viewed as two distinct stars, in its characters of Morning-star (jBos- phoros) and Evening-star {Hesperos). There is no reason to suppose the Greeks to have had any knowledge of the signs of the Zodiac until after their intercourse with Asia and Egypt had commenced. Tartaros was, as we have already remarked, unvisited by the light of day. It was regarded as the prison of the gods, and not as the place of torment for wicked men, being to the gods what Erebos was to men,— the abode of those who were driven from the supernal world^. The Titans when conquered were shut up in it, and in the Ilias'' Zeus menaces the gods with banishment to its murky regions. Such were the opinions respecting the world and its parts held by the Greeks of the heroic times, and even some ages later. With the advance of knowledge, however, their ideas altered, and they began to conceive more justly on these sub- jects. The voyages of the Samians and the Phocaeans to the West, and the estabHshment of the Milesian colonies on the shores of the Euxine, and the intercourse thus opened with the interior of Asia, led to the supposition that the earth was oval rather than round, its greater diameter running east and west". In like manner in the time of Pindar'^ and ^schylus^ the Ocean had increased to the dimensions of a sea, and He- rodotus^ derides those who stiU regarded it as a river. Finally, the change of religious ideas gradually affected Erebos, the abode of the dead. Elysion was moved down to it as the » II. viii. 478-481. Hes. Th. 717-721. " II. viu. 13. ' Strabo (iii. 5.) makes the earth the shape of a chlamys. << Pyth. iv. 447. ^ Prom. 431. ' Herod, ii. 23 ; iv. 8. 36. 45. 40 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. place of reward for the good, and Tartaros was raised up to it to form the prison in which the wicked suffered the punish- ment due to their crimes ». It may not be uninteresting ere we quit the subject of the cosmology of the ancient Greeks, to compare with it that in- vented by our own great poet in his Paradise Lost, more es- pecially as it is a subject which does not seem to have attracted much of the attention of his commentators. According to Milton the universe previous to the fall of the angels consisted of only two parts, the Heaven of Heavens, or Empyreal Heaven, and Chaos. The former was the abode of God himself and his angels ; it was of immense magnitude, being extended wide In ciicuit undetermined, Square or round. With opal towers and battlements adorned Of living saphir. It stretched into plains and rose into hills, Avas watered by lucid streams, produced plants and flowers, and contained minerals in its bowels like earth ; like which also it had the ■vicissitudes of night and day''. Chaos was , a dark Illimitable ocean, without bound. Without dimension, where length, breadth and height, And time and place are lost. It contained the ' embryon atoms' which the Almighty em- ployed in his creations, being The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave. " In Hesiod's Shield of Hercules, w. 254. 255., Tartaros is placed in the realm of Aides, — a proof among many that critics are right in assigning a later age to that part of the poem. ^ In reading the Pai'adise Lost one is apt to be struck with the definite mate- rial nature of heaven and its inhabitants, so different from the Paradise of Dante. This last, however, cannot be fairly placed in comparison with it, being, as Ros- setti has shown, only a figiurative representation of things on earth, while Milton gave utterance to his genuine conception of what heaven might really be. The fact is, that ova great poet was, as any one who reads with attention the speech of the angel (Book vii. 469-505.) will see, a materialist, and in him certainly ma- terialism has proved compatible with piety and pmity of heart. MYTHIC COSMOLOGY. 41 When the rebel angels were cast out of Heaven they fell for the space of nine days ' through the frighted deep.' At length Hell, which had meantime been created. Yawning received them whole and on them closed. The bottom of this place of torment was of both hquid and solid fire ; it was over-canopied by a ' fiery concave,' and its only entrance was closed with lofty portals. And thrice threefold the gates : three folds were brass, Three iron, three of adamantine rock Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire Yet unconsumed. These gates were kept by Sin and Death, After the expulsion of the rebel angels the Son of God, on the wings of Cherubim Uplifted in paternal glory, rode Far into Chaos and the world unborn ; and placing his golden compasses set off the space for the world he was about to create. It formed a hollow globe, and hung from Heaven by a golden chain, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude close by the moon". The globous earth ' self-balanced on her centre hung' in the midst of the round world ; and the sun, the moon, and the other heavenly bodies were set in the firmament to illuminate the earth. The firmament itself was not solid ; it was an expanse of liquid, pure. Transparent, elemental air^ Creation being thus completed, the Universe consisted of Heaven, Hell, Chaos, and the World with its contents. It is thus that the most imaginative of modern poets, as we may perhaps ventiu-e to style him, created a universe for the scene of the poem, whose object (the noblest that can be con- ceived) was to assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men. Its agreement in some parts with the cosmology of Homer • What an Idea is given of the immense extent of Heaven by making the World appear in comparison with it but as one of the smallest stars to the moon ! 42 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. and Hesiod is worthy of .attention, as it is probable that in Milton's days the latter was not generally understood. Cosmogony and Theogony. The origin of the world and the origin of the gods, i. e. cos- mogony and theogony, are in the Grecian system, as in those of some other nations, closely united. The sages of antiquity seem to have had a strong persuasion that, to bring creation and similar acts down to the comprehension of tribes ledby^the senses, it was necessary to represent natural agents as living and active persons ; or they felt a pleasure in exciting admiT ration, by the narration of the strange and wonderful adven- tures of beings older and more powerful than mankind*. The lively and creative genius of the Greeks seems parti- cularly to have delighted in this species of fiction. They loved to represent the origin, the union, and the changes of the va- rious parts of nature, under the guise of matrimony and birth (their more cheerful system, unUke those of Asia and Scandi- navia, excluding the idea of the death of a god) ; causes with them becoming parents, efiects children, the production of an effect being the birth of a divine child. Every cosmogonic system commences with a Chaos, or state of darkness and confusion. The chief difiFerence among these systems lies in the circumstance that some viewed the earth, others the water, as the immediate origin of organised bodies. In Grecian cosmogony Homer would appeal* to have followed the former , for he terms Oceanos the origin of all'' ; the latter is the theory adopted in the Theogony of Hesiod. Thales and the Ionian school of philosophy followed the Homeric cosmo- gony. In the Timaeus of Plato it is said that the offspring of Heaven and Eai-th were Oceanos and Tethys, and that from these sprang Kronos, Rhea, and the other deities. This is ap- parently, however, an attempt at bringing Homer and Hesiod into harmony. The venerable Theogony of Hesiod is evidently the parent of all the succeeding ones, and it is itself but the echo of those of bards of far higher antiquity than the Ascraean to whom it " Miiller, Proleg. 270. " n. xiv. 201. COSMOGONY AND TIIEOGONY. 4.3 is ascribed, and who often was ignorant of the meaning of what he dehvered. We will here relate the portion of it which extends from Chaos to the establishment of the em- pire of Zeus and origin of the gods worshiped in Greece. Chaos* {Void Space) was first; then came into being 'broad-breasted' Earth, the gloomy Tartaros, and Love. Chaos produced Erebos and Night, and this last bore to Erebos Day and ^ther. Earth now produced Uranos (Heaven), of equal extent with herself, to envelope her, and the Mountains and Pontes {Sea). She then bore to Uranos a mighty progeny : the Titans ; six males, Oceanos, Coios, Crios, Hyperidn, lapetos, and the youngest of them Kronos ; and six females, Theia, Rheia (or Rhea), Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys. She also bore the three Cyclopes, Brontes, Steropes, and Arges'', and the three Hundred-handed {eKaroyx^eipes:), Cottos, Briare6s, and Gyes. These children were hated by their father, who, as soon as they were born, thrust them out of sight into a cavern of Earth'', who, grieved at his unnatural conduct, produced the ' substance of hoary steel,' and forming from it a sickle, roused her children, the Titans, to rebellion against him : but fear seized on them all except Kronos, who lying in wait with the sickle with which his mother had armed him, mutilated his unsuspecting sire. The drops which fell on the earth from the wound gave birth to the Erinnyes, the Giants, and the MeUan nymphs: from what fell into the sea sprang Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. Earth bore to her other son Pontos the ' truth-spealcing' Nereus,Thaumas {Wonder), Phorcys, and 'fair-cheeked' Keto. " Fiom p^aw, to gape. Ginnunga Gap {Swallowing Throat) is the Chaos of Scandinavian mythology. ^ Gottling (on v. 501.) asserts that the Cyclopes were the progeny of Eaith aloiie. He says this is proved by a comparison of v. 139. Teivaro S' av KuicXwTras, K. T. \. with V. 147. "AWoi S' av Vatrjs re Kal Ovpavov k^eyevovro. We do not see the force of this argument. ° Apollodorus says that it was the Cyclopes and Hundred-handed alone whom Uranos treated thus. Volcker (Myth, der Jap. 283.) says the Titans were also shut up. 44 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Nereus had by Doris, a daughter of the Titan Oceanos, the fifty Nereides or sea-nymphs. Thaumas was by Electra {Brightness), another daughter of Oceanos, father of the swift Iris {Rainbow), and of the 'weU-haired' Harpies. Keto bore to her brother Phorcys the Grseae, the Gorgons, the Echidna, and the serpent that guarded the golden apples of the He- sperides. Earth finally bore by Tartaros her last offspring, the hun- dred-headed Typhoeus, the father of storms and whirlwinds. The progeny of the Titans was numerous. Oceanos had by his sister Tethys all the rivers that flow on the earth, and the Ocean-nymphs, three thousand in number. Theia bore to Hyperion, Hehos {Sun), Selena {Moon), and E6s {Dawn) ; and Phoebe to Coios, Asteria {Starry) and Leto. Crios had by Eurybia {Wide-strength), the daughter of Pontes", Astraeos {Starry), Pallas, and Perses. To Astraeos Eos bore the winds Zephyros, Boreas, and Notos, and Eosphoros {Dawn-bearer), or Morning-star, and the stars of heaven. Styx, a daughter of Oceanos, was by Pallas the mother of Envy and Victory, Strength and Force ; and Asteria, the daughter of Coios, bore to Perses Hecate. The fifth Titan, lapetos, was by Clymene, a daughter of Oceanos, the father of four sons. Atlas, Menoetios, Prome- theus and Epimetheus. Rhea was imited to Kronos, and their offspring were He- stia, Demeter, Hera, Aides, Poseiddn, and Zeus. Kronos, hav- ing learned from his parents. Heaven and Earth, that he was fated to be deprived by one of his sons of the kingdom which he had taken from his father, devoured his children as fast as they were born. Rhea, when about to be delivered of Zeus, besought her parents to teach her how she might save him. Instructed by Earth, she concealed him in a cavern of Crete, and gave a stone in his stead to Kronos. This stone he after- wards threw up^, and with it the children whom he had de- • See V. 239. '' It was shown in after times in the neighbourhood of Delphi (Hes. Th. 498. Pausanias, x. 24. 6.), the legend having been transplanted thither from Crete, its original soil. The whole fable seems to have been unknown to Homer, who al- ways speaks of Zeus as the eldest son of Kronos. COSMOGONY AND THEOGONY. 45 voured. When Zeus was grown up, he and the other children of Kronos made war on their father and the Titans. The scene of the conflict was Thessaly ; the former fought from Olympos, the latter from Othrys. During ten entire years the contest was undecided ; at length by the counsel of Earth the Kronids released the Hundred-handed, and called them to their aid. The war was then resumed with renewed vigour, and the Titans were finally vanquished and imprisoned in Tartaros under the guard of the HundredThanded. The Kro- luds then, by the advice of Earth, gave the supreme power to Zeus, who in 'return distributed honours and dominion among the associates of his victory. In this theogony order and philosophical consequence are plainly discernible. We find it faithfully adhering to the cosmological ideas above developed^. Void Space must na- turally have been first : Earth, which was to occupy the centre of the World; Tartaros, the lowest and deepest gloom; and Love, the generating principle of life and motion, follow in their due order. As in all cosmogonies darkness precedes light, so Erebos and Night, the one the darkness beneath, the other that above the earth, succeed, and fi-om them spring Day the lower, and ^ther the higher light above the earth. Without the intervention of Love, Earth now produces the Heaven, which arches over her; the Mountains, which rise on her, surface and support the heaven; and the barren salt Sea. United then by Love with Uranos, she gives birth to the Ti- tans, the origins of gods and men, of the celestial luminaries, and the fructifying streams. The making thunder, hghtning, and other celestial phaeno- mena to be children of Heaven and Earth might seem to imply a deeper knowledge of physics than can be justly assigned to these early ages. The cause, however, was a simple one. Uranos being mascuhne could not produce of himself, and Earth was the only female being that could be united with ' For the explanation of the Theogony see Hermann, De Antiq. Graecor. My- thologia (Opusc. voL ii. 167. seq.), Briefen an Creuzer, and Ueber dasWesen und die Behandlung der MytholOgie. See also MiiUer, Proleg. pp. 371-379. 46 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. him. The Cyclopes, that is the Whirlers^, whose individual names signify Thunder, Lightning, and Brightness, or Swift- ness, represent one kind of celestial phenomena, and the Hui^ dred-handed must therefore be the personifications of anothe* but what kind is more difficult to ascertain. / It is, howevet, probable that they refer to winter, as the Cyblopes seem more especially related to summer, and that they are the hail, ram and snow of that season : Kottos, that is Smiter, being the hail; Gyes, the Furrower, the rain; andBriareds, the Presser, the snow, which Hes deep and heavy on the ground'' ; and they were naturally named Hundred-handed, from their act- ing so extensively at the same moment of time''. Of the Titans we shall presently treat at length, and the progeny of Earth and Pontos shall be noticed in another place "^. There remain therefore only to be considered the beings which sprang from the blood of the mutilated Uranos. These are the Erinnyes, the Giants, and the Mehan nymphs. Productiveness is the consequence of that act, for which ana- logy would inchne us to look ; and when we divest our mind of the idea of the Giants given by Homer, and which became the prevalent one, we may without difficulty find that they simply signify Producers^. By the Melian nymphs may perhaps be signified the producers of fiTiits or cattle^. The ' Kvk\\J/, rendered by Hermann Volvulus, from kvkXos, is a simple, not a compound substantive, of the same class with iiiiXw^j/, with KipKtoij/, Keirpoi^, HeKo-^, &c. Like Argiletum (above, p. 9.), its form admitting of decomposition gave origin to the one-eyed giants of the Odyssey, who were also knovm to the author of the Theogony : see v. 143. The three lines following are an inteipolation. ^ Korros, from KOTrroi, to smite ; TvTis {Tvyris is wrong, see Gottling in lac.) is the part of the plough to which the share is fixed ; Bpiapeus is akin to /Spiaiu Ppiapds, PpiGm, Ppi9vs, all denoting weight and strength. ° The above explanation is that given by Hermann (Ueber das Wesen, &c. p. 84.). He had given a different one previously (De Myth. Ant. Opusc. ii. 176.), which he rejected for the present more probable one. Welcker (Tril. 147.) understands by the Hundred-handed the water. ^ See below, chap. xvii. and xviii. ^ riyavTeSj Genitahs, from yevw, yiyvu), yiyvdtti. Hermann, ut svp, Opusc. ii. 177. Volcker, Myth, der Jap. 272. note. f MeXcai, from jifiXov, sheep, or apple, pomum (Volcker, ut sup.). Others un- derstand by them Ash-nymphs, from /leXia.' In this last ease they might denote the production of timber-trees. Hermann renders fieXiat Cicurirur, deriving it from the same root with p.eiki> II. 202. 303. " II. 200. 301. " Prom. 300. = Pherecydes ap. Athen. xi. 470. ' II. xxi. 195. s See Appendix (D). •■ Akin to T7)9ri or r(7-9)j, nurse or grandmother, TirBri, nipple, nOiivri, nurse,&c. Hermann renders it Alumnia. ' Schwenk, 102. k Theog. 371. seq. ' n. xix. 398. (compare, however, vi. 513.) Od. 1. 24. 'r-irepiav ^eXios occurs in II. -riii. 480. Od. i. 8 ; xii. 1 33. 263. 346. 374. It is very prohahle that 'Yjrepi'uv is the contraction of "Xnepiovimv. See Passow s. v. Volcker, Horn. Geo" 26 ■" Isth. V. 1. "■ HELIOS. 53 The interpretation given by the ancients of Hyperi6n as Overgoer, seems hable to little objection*. Some interpret Theia Swift^ ; Miiller renders it Bright". 'HeXto?, "HXto9. Sol. Sun. Helios was the son of Hyperi6n by Theia, or according to a Homeridian hymn by Euryphaessa {Wide-shining). His office was to give hght to men and gods during the day. In the Odyssey, when Hehos ends his diurnal career, he is said to go under the earth d; it is not easy to determine whether the poet meant that he then passed through Tartaros back to the East during the night. At all events neither Homer nor Hesiod evinces any knowledge of the beautifol fic- tion of the solar cup or basin. The origin of this seems to he in the simple fact that men, seeing the sun rise in the east and set in the west each day, were naturally led to inquire how his return to the east was efiected. If then, as there is reason to suppose, it was the popular behef that a lofty mountainous ring ran round the edge of the earth, it was easy for the poets to feign that on reaching the westei^ stream of Ocean Hehos himself, his chariot and his horses, were received into a magic cup or boat made by Hephsestos, which, aided by the cmrent, conveyed him dming the night round the northern part of the earth, where his hght was only enjoyed by the happy Hyper- boreans, the lofty Rhipaeans conceahng it from the rest of mankind^. The cup (Ki^rji or SeTra?) of the Sun-god appeared first, we " This is adopted by Volcker, ui sup., and MiiUer, Proleg. 375. Hermann ren- ders it Tollo (subst.). '■ From 6eo>. Volcker, ut supra. Hermann makes it Amhuhna. ° Vro\&§. ut supra. " Od. x. 191. Compare Apoll.Rh.iii. 1191. " The most learned of poets is the only one that has alluded to this fiction in modern times. He evidently had it in view in the following lines : The gilded car of day His glowing axle doth allay In the steep Atlantic stream j And the slope sun his upward beam Shoots against the dusky pole, Pacing toward the other goal Of his chamber in the east. — Comus, 95-101. 54 MYTHOLOGY OF GBEECi:. are told, in the Titanomachia of Arctinos or Eumelos^ Pei- sander, in his Heracleia, represented Oceanos giving the hero the Sun-god's cup to pass over to Efytheia ; and Stesichorus said in his Geryoneis, Helios Hyperionides Into the golden cup went down ; That, having through the Ocean passed. He to the depths of sacred gloomy Night might come. Unto his mother and his wedded wife. And his dear children ; but the grove with laurel shaded The son of Zeus went into '. Mimnermus had the following lines in his poem named Nanno. Helios is doomed to labour every day; And rest there never is for him Or for his horses, when rose-fingered E6s Leaves Ocean and to heaven ascends. For through the waves his loved bed beareth him. Hollow and formed of precious gold By Hephaestos' hand, and winged ; the water's top Along, it bears the sleeping god. From the Hesperides' to the jEthiops' land. Where stand his horses and swift car Until the air-born Eos goeth forth : Then Helios mounts another car. In these lines of Mimnermus the god, as described above, is carried round the earth during the night ; and in the following passage of the same poet his palace is evidently situated in the East. Petes' city, where swift Helios' beams Within his golden chamber lie. By Ocean's marge, whither bold lason went'. It is also in the East that ' the stables' of Helios are placed by Euripides in his Phaethon^ ; while in another passages he speaks of the 'dark stable' of the Sun-god, doubtless meaning the West. In Stesichorus, as we may observe, the abode of Helios would seem to be in the realm of Night, beyond Ocean. ' Athen. xi. 470. b j^_ i_ e_ ■= Id. I. c. This grove MiiUer (Dorians, i. 536.) thinks was in the country of the Hyperboreans. " ^^- '■ '■■■ ' Strabo, i. 2. f Fr. Phaethon. « Alcest. 608. HELIOS. 55 Alexander the ^toliaii% when speaking of the plant by means of which Glaucos became a sea-god, says that it grew for He- lios in the Isles of the Blest, and that he gave his horses their evening meal (Sojottov) of it to recruit their vigour. Ovid also, the faithfid follower of the Greeks, places the pastures of the solar steeds in the West, where they have ambrosia for grass''; and Statins «, in a beautiful passage, describes the Sun as loosing his steeds on the margin of the western sea, where the Nereides and Seasons talte off their harness. In Nonnus*, when the god arrives in the West, Phosphoros unyokes the sweating steeds, washes them in the waves of ocean, and then leads them to their stall ; and when they are rested the god drives them round the Ocean to the East. In two other passages of his wild poem^ Nonnus places the abode of the Sun in the East. It is remarkable that neither he nor the Latin poets ever allude to the cup. The park and gardens of Helios are thus richly .described by Claudian*': Thus having said, his gardens all bedewed With yellow fires he (,Sol) enters, and his vale. Which a strong-flaming stream surrounding pours Abundant beams upon the watered grass. On which the Sun's steeds pasture. There he binds With fragrant wreaths his locks, and the bright manes And yellow reins of his wing-footed steeds. He does not, however, teU the site of this brilliant spot ; but as the Sun sets out from it on his diurnal course, when his steeds' manes have been adorned by Lucifer and Aurora, we may presume that it was in the East. It is also in the East that Ovid places the splendid palace of the Sun, where the lucid god sat enthroned, surrounded by the Days, Months, Years, Seasons, Ages, and Hours s. From a consideration of all these passages it may seem to follow, that the ideas of the poets on this subject were very vague and fleeting. Perhaps the prevalent opinion was that the Sun rested himself and his weary steeds in the West, and then returned to the East. We are to recollect that the cup was winged, that is endowed with magic velocity. * Athen. I. c. ^ Met. iv. 214. ' Theb. iii 407. ■1 Dionys. jdi. 1. seg. " lb. xxxii. 51 ; xxxviii. 297. f In Prim. Cons. Stil. ii. 467. ^ Met. ii. 1. seq. 56 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Neither Homer nor Hesiod speaks of the chariot of the Sun ; but as the former poet names the horses of E6s, he must naturally have supposed Helios to have driven similar steeds along the sky. In the Hymns » Helios appears in a chariot; Pindar i" calls him ' the ruler of fire-breathing steeds'. It is probable that, Uke the other Homeric gods, Helios had ori- ginally only two horses ; but Euripides and the succeeding poets'' give him four, which, according to the Latin poets, are of a dazzhng white colour''. Their names are Eos or Eoos {Eastern), ^thon or JEthiops {Burning), Bronte {Thunder), Astrape or Sterope {lAghtningY. On the island of Thrinakia, says Homer^, fed the flocks and herds of Hehos, under the charge of his daughters, the nymphs Phaethusa and Lampetia {Shining and Gleaming). These were seven herds of oxen, and as many flocks of sheep, fifty in each flock and herd: they neither bred nor died. At Taenaron also this god had a flock of ' long-wooled' sheep s. He had also herds of oxen at Gortyna in Crete'', and sacred sheep at ApoUonia in Epeiros'. The Sun was not singular in this circumstance of possessing sacred cattle, but they were dedicated to him more fi-equently than to other deities for obvious reasons, such as his being, as it were, the celestial shepherd or overseer of the stars, and the god who gave increase to the earth''. By Perseis or Perse {Brightness}), a daughter of Oceanos, Hehos was father of ^etes, and his sister Circe the great en- chantress', and of Pasiphae, who espoused Minos the son of Zeus >". The nymphs just mentioned, who kept his cattle, were his children by Neaera {Newness ?) ". Augeas, king of Elis, so rich in flocks and herds, was said to be the offspring of the " Hymn to Demeter, 88. 89. ' 01. vii. 130. " Eur. Ion. 82. Electr. 871. Fr. Archelaos, 11. Fr. Phaethon, i. "> Acclus, Er. In Person's note on Eur. Phoen. 1. Ovid, Amor. il. 1. 24. Com- pare Propert. U. 15. 32. * Hygin. 183. Sell. Eur. Phoen. I. For Bronte and Sterope, Ovid (Met. ii. 153.) gives Pyroeis (Fieri/), and Phlegon (Burning). I Od. xii. 127. sey. e Horn. Hymn to ApoU. Pyth. 233. » Servius, Virg. Buc. vi. 60. > Herod, ix. 93. ' UXijv Tov rpifovros 'HXiou xSoj'os ^iiaiv. — Msch. Agam. 644 ' Od. X. 137. " ApoUod. i. 9. 1. ■ » Od. xii. 133. HELIOS, 57 Sun-god by Iphiboe^. By the nymph Rhodes, the daughter of Aphrodite, Helios had the seven HeHades, who were the first inhabitants of the isle of Rhodes''. The Graces are also said to have been daughters of Helios by iEgle {Splendour) ". The Ocean-nymph Clymene [Bright ?) bore to Helios a son named Phaethdn {Gleaming). The claims of this youth to a celestial origin being disputed by Epaphos the son of Zeus, he journeyed to the palace of his sire, from whom he extracted an unwary oath that he would grant him whatever he asked. The ambitious youth instantly demanded permission to guide the solar chariot for one day, to prove himself thereby the un- doubted progeny of the Sun-god. Helios, aware of the con- sequences, remonstrated, but to no purpose. The youth per- sisted, and the god, bound by his oath, reluctantly committed the reins to his hands, warning him of the dangers of the road, and instructing him how to avoid them. Phaethon grasps the reins, the flame-breathing steeds spring forward, but soon aware that they are not directed by the well-known hand, they run out of the course ; the world is set on fire, and a total conflagration would have ensued, had not Zeus, at the prayer of Earth, launched his thunder, and hurled the terrified driver from his seat. He fell into the river Eridanos. His sisters, the HeUades, as they lamented his fate were turned into poplar trees'* on its banks, and their tears, which still continued to flow, became amber as they dropped into the stream. Cycnos, the fi:iend of the iQ-fated Phaethdn, also abandoned himself to mourning, and at length was changed into a swan {kvkvos;) *. The age of this story is uncertain^, but it has all the appear- = ApoU. Kh. i. 172.. Apollod. ii. 5. 5. Tzetz. Lye. 41. •> Find. 01. vii. 25. seq, ° Antimachus ap. Paus. ix. 35. 38. •> Virgil in one place (jEn. x. 190.) says poplars, in agreement with the current of authorities ; in another (Buc. vi. 62.) he calls them alders. " Ovid, Met. i. 750. seq. ; ii. 1. seq. Hygin. 152. 154. Nonn. xxxviii. 105. 439. ApoU. Rh. IT. 597. seq. Virg. Buc. vl. 62. (Servius and Voss, in loc.) JEn. x. 1 89. Serv. in loc. Lucret. v. 397. seq. Lucian, D. D. 25. De Electro. ' There are still some fragments remaining of the Hehades of jEschylus and the Phaethon of Euripides. Ovid appears to have followed closely the former drama. Hyginus and the Scholiast on Homer (Od. xi. 325.) give Hesiod as their authority, but it was probably the Astronomy ascribed to that poet, a late pro- duction, to which they referred. 58 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. ance of being a physical mythe devised to account for the origin of the electron or amber% which seems to have been brought from the Baltic to Greece in the very earhest times. In the opinion of Welcker'' it is only the Greek version of a German legend on that subject ; for the tradition of the people of the country was said to be", that the amber was produced from the tears of the Sun-god, that is Phoebos Apollo according to the Greeks, who added that he shed these tears when he came to the land of the Hyperboreans, an exile from heaven on account of the fate of his son Asclepios. But as this did not accord with the Hellenic conception of either Helios or ApoUo, the Hehades were devised to remove the incon- gruity. The foundation of the fable lay in the circiunstance of amber being regarded as a species of resin which drops from the trees that yield it. The tale of Cycnos is only one of the numerous legends devised by the Greeks to accoimt for the origin of remarkable animals. The Eridanos is said to have been a mere poetic name, there being no stream actually so called ; though it was afterwards given by the poets to the Rhine, the Rhodanus or Rhone, and the Padus or Po, on the banks of which last stream the fable of Phaethdn was localised. According to another legend Clytia, a daughter of Oceanos, was beloved by the Sun-god; but he transferred his aflFections to Leucothea, daughter of Orchamos {Ruler), king of the eastern regions. The god visited her during the night, in the form of her mother. The virgin was obliged to comply with his wishes, and Clytia filled with jealous rage discovered the secret to .Orchamos, who buried his hapless daughter alive. The god, unable to save her, turned her into the fi-ankincense plant, and the neglected Clytia pining away became a sun- flower"*. Here also we have one of the legendary origins of natural productions. The date of the tale is unknown, but it is pro- bably not very ancient; it is only to be found at present in ' 'BXeKTpov, as Welcker observes, resembles 4\«™p, an epithet of the Snn. Buttmaim (Ueber das Elektron Mytholog. ii. 337. *e?.) derives ^eicrpoi. from eABw, to draw. ^ Tril. 566. seq. ' Apoll. Rh. ut supra. d Ovid, Met. iv. 190. seq. HELIOS. 59 the Latin poet Ovid^ ; but beyond question he took it from a Greek original. HeUos, as the god whose eye surveyed all things ^^ was in- voked as a witness to solemn oaths". As he was not one of the Olympian gods he was not honoured with temples in Greece, but he had altars at Coianth, Argos, and some other places. The chief seat of his worship was the isle of Rhodes, where stood the celebrated Colossus, or statue of brass seventy cubits high, in his honour^. The legend said" that, when Zeus and the other Immortals were dividing the earth among them by lot, the Sun happening to be absent got no share. On his reminding Zeus of this, the god was about to make a new al- lotment, but Hehos would not suffer him, saying that he had seen a fertile land lying beneath the 'hoary sea', with which he would be content. The gods then swore that it should be the undisturbed possession of the Sun-god, and the isle of Rhodes emerged from the deep. Helios is represented by artists driving his four-horse cha- riot, his head surrounded with rays, a whip in his hand, and preceded by Eosphoros. Sometimes he is standing with a flambeau in his hand, and two of his horses near him. This god was styled^, 1. Mortal-delighting; 2. Mortal-illu- minating; 3. Unwearied; etc. The name HeUos ("HXto?) is perhaps derived from e\a, eXtj, brightness. It seems, however, akin to the names of the Sun in the languages which are of the same family with the Greeks. ° Lactantius Placidus, in his Arguments of Ovid's Metamorphoses, quotes Hesiod for this story. ■i Hymn to Demeter, 62. ' II. iii. 277 ; xix. 259. Compare Virg. Ma. xii. 176. " Pliny, H. N. xxxiv. 7. ' Find. 01. vii. 100. seq. f 1. Tep^i/ijipoTos : 2. (paeai/i^poros : 3. dgafias. s When we lecoUect that s and h are commutable (eTrra, septem, v\ri, silva), as also the semivowels I, n, r (Panormus, Palermo, etc.), we may perhaps say that HeUos, Sol (Latin and Scandinav.), Sonne, Sun (Germ, and Eng.), Sun/a (Sanscrit), are akin. 60 M'XTHOLOGY OS" GREECE. %eKrivr). Luna. Moon. Selene, the sister of Helios, drove her chariot through the sky while he was reposing after the toils of the day. There is, however, no allusion in Homer or Hesiod to the chariot of Selene, One of the Hymns » describes her as bathing in Ocean, putting on gleaming raiment, and ascending a chariot drawn by ghttering steeds. Theocritus'' also gives Selene horses ; but we do not meet any other mention of her chariot and horses in the Greek poets. In Ovid« her steeds are snow- white. Statius* places her in a car drawn by two horses. Pausanias« says that one of the figures on the base of the throne of Zeus at Olympia was Selene driving a single horse, as it appeared to him ; but others said it was a mule, and they had a siUy legend respecting it. The Latin Festus^ is the only ^^riter who speaks of the car of the Moon being drawn by mules s. The later poets make steers or heifers the draught-cattle of Selene\ This notion had its very natural origin in the con- templation of the horned mooni. In the general emd natural mode of representation Selene " Horn. Hymn xxxii. 7. "> IdyU. ii. 163. ° Eem. Amor. 258. Fasti, iv. 374. " Theb. i. 336. See also vm. 271. ' Pans. w. 11. 8. f " Mulus veMculo Limae adhibetur quod tain sterilis ea sit quam mnlus, vel quod ut mulus non sue genere sed equi creetur, sic ea solis non suo, fnlgore luceat." ^ See Voss, Mythol. Briefe, ii. 7. 8. This able critic makes two most extraor- dinary mistakes on this subject. He says that Euripides giyes Selene a chariot (Phoen. 178. seq.), whereas the poet in that place is evidently speaking of the cha- riot of Amphiaraos. Again, he says, " In Nonnus (tii. 244.) she drives in a silver car with unbridled mules." It is the chariot of Semele, not of Selene, that is described by that poet. i" Nonnus, i. 331. 455 ; ii. 405 ; vii. 247 ; xi. 187 j xii. 5 ; xlviii. 320. (fioStv iXdreipa SeXiji/j; is his usual expression). Claudian, R. P. iii. 403. Eidyl, i. 60. Anthol. Lat. i. 1. 56. See also the epigram in the fragments of Ovid. ' Moscbus (IdyU. ii. 87.), when describing the buU into which Zeus changed himself in order to carry off Europa, says, ''lo'a T ew' oW^Xottn Kepa dvereWe Kapf/vov "Avruyos TJjtiro/iOu Kepafis iire KVK\a Aristoph. ap. Eustath. p. 1467. 1. 35. (Fr. Incert. 133.) Euripides ap. Plut. de Is. et Os. 71. " Sch. Aristoph. Plut. 594. Eudocia, 144, ' See Voss, M. B. iii. 190. seq. ° From /Spe/tw, to roar. " Argonaut, iii. 1214-1217. ' Philopseud. 22-24. " Eudocia, 147, F 2 68 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. K/30V0? KoX 'Velr} ri 'Pea. Satumus et Ops. We are now arrived at the immediate origin of the Olym- pianSj the gods worshiped throughout all Greece. The mutilation of Uranos by his youngest son Kronos, and the overthrow of the latter by Zeus and his other children, the Kronids, have been already narrated. According to the The- ogonya aU the Titans (Oceanos, it would appear, excepted) were on this occasion shut up in Tartaros. Homer only names Kronos and lapetos'', but he evidently included the others in his view of the subject. At a later period it was said that Zeus had released the Titans'^. Hesiod in his didactic poem* says that Kronos ruled over the Isles of the Blest at the end of the earth by the ' deep-eddying' ocean ; and Pindar^ gives a luxuriant description of this blissfiil abode, where the de- parted heroes of Greece dwelt beneath the mild rule of Kro- nos and his assessor Rhadamanthys. In the 'Prometheus Loosed' of ^schyluss the chorus consisted of the twelve Ti- tans, and they came as it would appear from the eastern part of the Ocean-stream. It was fabled at a late period that B[ronos lay asleep, guarded by Briare6s, in a desert island near Britannia in the Western Ocean*'. ' Theog. 716. seq. " II. viii. 479. ' H. jdv. 274 ; xv. 225. ■• Knd. Pyth. iv. 518. « Works and Days, 167. seq. ' 01. ii. 123. seq. ^ ^schyL Fr. 178. Welcker, Tiil. 35. seq. ' Pint, de Defect. Orac. 18. De Fac.in Orb. Lunse, 26. Proeopius BelL Goth. iv. 20. " On the coast of the ocean opposite Britannia," says Tzetzes (Lye. 1204.), " dwell fishermen who are subjects of the Franks, but they pay them no tribute, on account, as they say, of their ferrying over the souls of the departed. They go to sleep in their houses in the evening, but after a little time they hear a knocking at the doors, and a voice calling them to their work. They get up and go to the shore, not knowing what the need is j they see boats there, but not their ovni, vrith no one in them ; they get in, row away, and perceive that they are heavy as if laden vrith passengers, but they see no one. In one puU {poiry) they reach the isle of Britannia, which vrith their own boats they can hardly reach in a day and a night. They still see no one, but they hear the voices of those that receive their pas- sengers, and name their fathers and mothers, and themselves, and their ranks and occupations. They then return vrith their boats much Ughtcr, and in one pull they reach their homes." There is a curious legend somewhat similar to this in the Fairy Mythology (i. 202.), the scene of which is in nearly the same spot. KRONOS AND RHEA. 69 The golden age, so celebrated by poets, is said to have been in the reign of Kronos, when, according to Hesiod*, Men lived like gods, with minds devoid of care. Away from toils and misery : then was not Timid old-age, but aye in feet and hands Equally strong the banquet they enjoyed. From every ill remote. They died as if O'ercome with sleep, and all good things were theirs. The bounteous earth did of herself bring forth Fruit much and plenteous, and in quietness Their works midst numerous blessings they pursued. According to a fragment of the poetic philosopher Empe- docles, Kronos married the ' blooming' Euonyme, who bore to him 'beautiful-haired golden' Aphrodite, the 'deathless' Fates, and the ' variety-bestowing' Erinnyes^. The only adventure recorded of this god is his amour with the Ocean-nymph Philyra : dreading the jealousy of his wife Rhea, he changed her into a mare, and himself into a horse. The produce of their love was the Centaur Cheir6n, half-man half-horse. Virgil«, in describing a horse of perfect strength and beauty, says, Such, at the coming of his wife, the swift Saturnus' self upon his equine crest Poured out a mane, and lofty Pelion filled With his shrill neighings as away he fled. This legend, it is said, first appeared in the poem of the Gi- gantomachia^. It is also noticed by Pindar^. Probably the praise of Cheirdn by Homer^ for his love of justice, led to the making him the offspring of the god who ruled over the golden race of men ; and if, as it would appear, he taught his heroic pupils music as well as other accomplishments, a more suitable ' Works and Days, 112. sey. Gottling rejects v. Ill, 01 /iev errt Kpovov riaav or' oipavif kfi^aaiKevev, as not Hesiodic. It Is certainly utterly at variance with the Theogony and with Homer. ^ TrijiaTO S" Evovvfiriv 9a\epbv Kpovos dyKvXoniirtis, 'Ek rov KaXKiKOfios yevero xpvari 'A^poSiTij, Moipai t' dOdvaroi Kai ''Epivvves atoXoSupoi. — Tzetz. Lye. 406. There does not appear the slightest allusion to this strange genealogy anywhere else. We should perhaps read Eurynome for Euonyme, and then Kronos might take the place of Ophion. ° Geor. iii. 193, " Sch. Ap. Rh. iii. 554. ' Pyth. iii. 1-9. f II. xi. 832. 70 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. mother could not be assigned him than the nymph Lyre- loving^. It is highly probable that the whole history of this god was originally merely a philosophical mythe. Kronos evidently signifies time^ : he is the son of Heaven, by the motion of whose luminaries time is measured ; he is married to^ Rhea {pia,flowingly), and time flows ; he devours his own children, and time destroys what it has brought into existence. Perhaps, as has been ingeniously conjectured", Zeus, the god of the heaven, was poetically named Kronion, that is the Son of Time, and this led to the giving a separate and distinct existence to this deity. Kronos was in after times confounded with the grim deity Moloch, to whom the Tyrians and Carthaginians oflFered their children in sacrifice. The slight analogy of this practice with the legend of Kronos devouring his children, may have sufficed for the Greeks to infer an identity of their ancient deity with the object of Phoenician worship. It was not improbably the circumstance of both gods being armed with a sickle, which led to the inference of Kronos being the same with the Sa- tumus of the Latins d. The fabled flight of this last firom Olympos to Hesperia, and his there estabhshing the golden age, may have been indebted for its origin to the legend of the reign of Kronos over the Islands of the Blest in the west- em stream of Ocean. There were no temples of Kronos in Greece*; but the Athenians had a festival in his honovu" named the Kronia, which was celebrated on the twelfth day of the month Heca- tombseon, i. e. in the end of July ^, and which, as described to us, strongly resembles the Italian Saturnalias. ' ^iKvpa, quasi ^iXiXvpa. Welcker, Nachtrag zur TrU. 53. note. ' There is scarcely any difference between Kpovos and xpovos. " Xpovos o vavTuivirariip." Find. 01. ii. 32. HermannrendersKronos Per/Jciw, from Kpaivw. " Welcker, Tril. 96. We cannot, however, agree with this critic that Khea is equivalent to Gsea, Earth. ■i See helow, Mythology of Italy, Satumus ; and Buttmann, Ueber den Kronos Oder Saturnus, Mytholog. ii. 28. seg. ' There was a chapel of Kronos and Rhea at Athens (Pans. i. 18, J.)', and sacri- fices were made to him on the Kronian hill at Olympia. (7(f. vi. 20, 1.) f Demosth. Timocr. 708. c Philochoras ap. Macrob. i. 10. " Ut patres familiarum et friigibus et fruc- KBONOS AND RHEA. 71 The only epithet given to Kronos by the elder poets is Crooked-counselled'^. This probably refers to his art in muti- lating his sire. tibus jam coactis passim cum sends vescerentur...delectari enim deum honore ser- vormn contemplatu laboris." Macrobius also gives the following lines! from the Annals of the old poet Accius. Maxima pars Graium Saturno et maxime Athenae Conficiunt sacra quae Cronia esse iterantur ab ilUs : Cumque diem celebrant, per agros urbesque per omnes Exercent epulas Iseti, famulosque procurant Quisque suos. Nostrisque itidem est mos traditus illinc Iste, ut cum dominis famuli epulentur ibidem. It seems hardly credible that so remarkable a festival should be unnoticed by all the extant Greek writers ; and we cannot help thinking that the Greeks of the later times attempted to pass off their Kronia as the origin of the Saturnalia. Surely the vintage was not over in July. See Bbttiger, Kunst-Myth. i. 222. * ' Ay KvXo/iiiTris. Nonnus (xxv. 234.) calls him Broad-iearded {eipvyeveios). 72 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Chapter V. THE HOMERIC GODS IN GENERA.L. Familiarity is productive of indifference, and the greatest charms of nature and art lose most of their attractions in the eyes of those who are long and intimately acquainted with them. This is particularly the case with the beautifijl my- thology of Greece : we are in general familiar with its legends from an early age, but we view them detached and uncon- nected, ignorant of their place and importance in the system (though a loose one) to which they belong ; they therefore ■ riarely produce their full effect on our minds. But did the Grecian mythology not enter into our literature, and were we to remain unacquainted with it till we should open the vo- lumes of Homer, what a newvrorld would burst on our sight, — how splendid would Olympos and its dwellers then arise to view ! To present the gods in their Olympian abode, and exhibit a sketch of their life and occupations, are the objects of the present chapter. As has been already stated, the Greeks of the early ages regarded the lofty Thessalian mountain named Olympos as the dwelling of their gods. In the Odyssey, where the deities are of a character far more dignified and elevated than in the IHas, the place of then- abode shares in their exaltation ; and it may almost be doubted if the poet who drew the following picture of Olympos could have conceived it to be no more than the summit of a terrestrial mountain. Olympos, where they say the ever firm Seat of the gods is, by the winds unshaken. Nor ever wet with rain, nor ever showered With snow, but cloudless sether o'er it spreads. And glittering light encircles it around. On which the happy gods aye dwell in bliss '. We have observed above, that man loves to bestow his own " Od. vl. 42-46, See Lucret. iii. 18-22. THE HOMERIC GODS IN GENEEAL. 73 form upon Ms gods, as being the noblest that he can conceive. Thosa of Homer are therefore all of the human form, but of far larger dimensions than men*; great size being an object of admiration both in men and women in those early and mar- tial ages. Thus when the goddess Athena^ ascends as driver the chariot of Diomedes, Loud groan'd the beechen axle *ith the weight. For a great god and valiant chief it bore. When in the battle of the gods" Ares is struck to the earth by Athena, he is described as covering seven plethra of ground, and the helmet of the goddess herself would, we are told'', cover the footmen of a hundred towns. The voices of Po- seid6n and Ares are as loud as the shout of nine or ten thou- sand men^. The gods can however increase or diminish their size, as- sume the form of particular men*, or of any animals s, and make themselves visible and invisible at their pleasured Their bodies are also of a finer nature than those of men. It is not blood, but a blood-Uke fluid named ichor, which flows in their veins'. They are susceptible of injury by mortal weapons : the arrows of Hercules violate the divine bodies of Hera and Hades'' ; Diomedes wounds both Aphrodite and Ares'. They require nourishment as men do ; their food is called Ambrosia, their drink Nectar™. Their mode of life exactly resembles that of the princes and nobles of the heroic ages. In the palace of Zeus on Olympos they feast at the approach of evening, and converse of the aifairs of heaven and earth; the nectar is handed round by Hebe {Youth), Apollo delights them with the tones of his lyre, and the Muses in responsive strains ■ Even in the historic days the gods were in the popular idea of larger size than men. See Herod, i. 60. >> II. V. 837. See Horn. Hymn iv. 173. ° II. xxi. 407. ■• II. V. 744. Heyne, in he. ' II. v. 860 ; xiv. 148. ' II. iv. 86 ; xiii. 45. 216. Od. i. 105 ; ii. 268. ^ II. vii. 58 ; xiv. 290. Od. iii. 371. Heyne however (on II. vii. 58.) denies these changes. ^ 1. 11. i. 198. ■ II. V. 340. 416. ' II. v. 392. 395. 1 II. V, 335. 855. " A passage in the Odyssey (xii. 63.) would seem to say that the ambrosia was brought each day by pigeons to Olympos from the shores of Ocean in the bUssful West. See Appendix (F.). 74 MYTHOLOGY OP GREECE. pour forth their melodious voices in song. When the sun descends, each god retires to repose in his own dwelling*. They frequently partake of the hospitality of men'', travel with them", and share in their wars and battles*. With the form, the Homeric gods also partake of the pas- sions of men. They are capricious, jealous, revengeful, will support their favourites through right and wrong, and are im- placable toward their enemies, or even those who have slighted them". Their power was held to extend very far; men re- garded them as the authors of both good and evil ; all human ability and success was ascribed to them. They were beheved to have power over the thoughts of men, and coidd imper- ceptibly suggest such as they pleased*^. They required of men to honour them with prayer, and the sacrifice of oxen, sheep, goats, lambs and kids, and oblations of wine and com, and fragrant herbs s. When offended, they usually remitted their wrath if thus appeased''. The Homeric gods have all different ranks and offices; Olympos being in fact regulated on the model of a Grecian city of the heroic ages. Zeus was king of the region of the air and clouds, which had fallen to him by lot on the dethrone- ment of his father Kronos ; the sea was the realm of his bro- ther Poseidon; the under-world fell to Aides, in the division of their conquests ; Earth and Olympos were common pro- pertyi. Zeus however, as eldest brother^, exercised a supre- macy, and his power was the greatest. The other inhabitants of Olympos were Hera the sister and spouse of Zeus, Apollo the god of music and archery, his sister Artemis the goddess of the chace, and their mother Leto, Aphrodite goddess of love, and her mother Dione, Ares god of wai-, Pallas Athene goddess of prudence and skill, Themis goddess of justice, Hermeias god of gain, Hebe the attendant of the Olympian king and queen, and Iris their messenger, Hephastos the ce- lestial artist and Paeedn the physician, and the Muses, the " II. i. 601. seg. ' II. i. 423. Od. i. 26. 125. sej. ; vu. 201. seg. (Nitzscli m loc.) I Od- ii. 399. seg. o II. y. 592. sey.l xiii. 43. seg. „ J-l'^-^^S. 'IU.53;vffi.218,xvu.468. " II. IV. 49 ; xxiv. 70. •• n. Jx. 497 '"•"^•193. " II. xiii. 355; XV. 164. THE HOMERIC GODS IN GENERAL. 75 Graces, and the Seasons. Poseiddn was frequently there ; but Demeter the goddess of agriculture, and Dionysos the god of wine, do not appear among the residents of Olympos. The Nymphs and the River-gods occasionally visited or were summoned to it*. Eos, Helios, and Selene rose every day out of the Ocean-stream, and drove in their chariots through the air, shedding their cheering beams abroad. Of the residents of Olympos, its king and his son Hephse- stos^ alone knew the pleasTjreS^ or the pains of the wedded state. Ares^ aEd Hermeias intrigued occasionally with mortal women, but the character of Phcebos Apollo was of unstained purity <=. Of the goddesses. Aphrodite alone could be charged with breach of chastity"!; Artemis, Pallas Athene, Hebe, and Iris were aU spotless virgins. AU the dwellings of the gods upon Olympos were of brass {XoKko';), the metal which was in the greatest abundance in Greece. Hephaestos was architect and smith ; he formed all the arms, household furniture, chariots, and other articles in use among the Celestials ; but their dress, especially that of the goddesses, appears to have been the workmanship of Athena or the Graces^. The gold which proceeded from the workshop of Hephaestos was filled with automatic power ; his statues were endowed with intelligence*; his tripods could move of themselves; he made the golden shoes, or rather soles {-TreSika) S with which the gods trod the air and the waters, or strode from mountain to mountain upon the earth, which trembled beneath their weight'', with the speed of winds or even of thought'. The chariots of the gods and their ap- ' II. XX. 7. i- II. x\iii. 382. Od. -vin. 266. seq. ° We shall give in the sequel some reasons for regarding II. ix. 559-64. as an interpolation. ^ Od. viii. ut supra. II. v. 247. 248. ' II. V. 735 ; xiv. 178. ' II. xviii. 417. * We much doubt if the favourite theory of Voss (of which the idea appears to have been given by Eustathius) of these soles having a magic power, and that the gods were transported by them, be correct (See Heyne on II. v. 768.) ; another notion of his, that the horses of the gods were shod by Hephaestos, is certainly er- roneous, for the Greeks did not shoe their horses. * II. xiii. 18. ' II. XV. 80. 76 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. purtenances were formed of various metals. That of Hera, for example, is thus described^ : Then Hebe quickly to the chariot put The round wheels, eight-spoked, brazen, on the strong Axle of iron. Gold their fellies were. And undecaying, but thereon of brass The tires'" well fitting, wondrous to behold. Of silver was the rounded nave of each ; The seat was hung by gold and silver cords, And two curved sides encompass'd it about. The pole was silver, and upon its end She tied the beauteous golden yoke, and bound On it the golden traces fair : the steeds Swift-footed then beneath the yoke were led By Hera, eager for the war and strife. These chariots were drawn by horses of celestial breed", which could whirl them to and fro between heaven and earth through the yielding air, or skim with them along the surface of the sea without wetting the axle. They were only used on occasions of taking a long journey, as when Hera^ professes that she is going to the end of the earth to make up the quarrel between Oceanos and Tethys; or on occasions in which the gods wish to appear with state and magnificence*' On ordinary occasions the gods moved by the aid of their golden shoes : when at home in their houses, they, like the men of those ages, went barefoot. The Titans, as we have seen, were twelve in number, six of » II. V. 722. seq. ■> The old, now provincial, term streaks (German Stricken), signifying the sepa- rate pieces of iron which vrere nailed round the wheels of vehicles, seems exactly to coiTespond to the Greek kTriaaiarpa. We can hardly suppose the smiths of Homer's days to have understood the mode of shoeing in a hoop. " The earliest instances to he found of any other species of anim al drawing the chariots of the gods are in Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite, where she describes the chariot of that goddess as drawn by sparrows ; and that of Alcseus to Apollo (below, ch. viii.), where the god has a team of swans. "i II. xiv. 300. II. viii. 41. seq. ; xiii. 23. seq. It is worthy of notice that while the chaiiots of men had sometimes three horses (II. viii. 80-87 ; xvi. 148-154.), or perhaps even four (viii. 185.), those of the gods had never more than two. II. v. 768 j viii. 41-45 ; xiii. 23. Od. xxiii. 245. THE HOMERIC GODS IN GENERAL. 77 each sex. In like manner we find twelve Olympians^ similarly divided. The gods were Zeus, Poseid6n, Hephaestos, Hermes, Apollo, Ares; the goddesses were Hera, Demeter, Hestia, Athena, Aphrodite, and Artemis*. This arrangement could hardly have been known to Homer, who never mentions He- stia, and but incidentally Demeter. The earliest writer by whom we find the twelve gods noticed is Hellanicus, who says^ that DeucaUon built altars to them afi:er the flood. It was perhaps the number of the months of the year that caused twelve to be fixed on as that of the Titans and the Olympians <=; or it may have been because twelve was the political number of the Ionian race, for it seems probable that it was only among them, particularly at Athens'^, that altars were erected to these twelve gods. At Olympia there were six altars to six pairs of deities, but they were not exactly the same with those above enumerated^. In later times it became a common prac- tise to raise altars to the twelve gods^. ' Sch. ApoU. Rh. ii. 532. " Id. iii. 1085. Eudocia, 108. ■= Welcker, Tril. 180. Bottiger, Kunst-Myth. ii. 52. ^ Herod, ii. 7 ; -ri. 108. Thuc. vi. 54. Plato, Laws. v. 745. ' They were Zeus and Poseidon, Hera and Athena, Hermes and Apollo, the Graces and Dionysos, Artemis and Alpheios, Kronos and Khea. Herodorus, ap. Sch. Pind. 01. v. 10. ' Strabo, xiii. 1. 3. Polyb. It. 39. Diodor. xvi. 92 ; xvii. 95. yS MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Chapter VI. THE KRONIDS :— ZEUS, POSEIDON, HADES, HESTIA. The Kronids, or children of Kronos and Rhea, were Zeus, Poseid6n, Hades, Hestia, Hera, and Demeter. The four first we shall place here : the two last, as wives of Zeus, will find their more appropriate situation along with their children. Zeu?. Jovis, Jupiter, Zeus is in the Ilias the eldest son of Kronos and Rhea. He and his brothers, Poseid6n and Hades, divided the world by lot among them, and the portion which fell to him was the ' ex- tensive heaven in air and clouds^.' All the aerial phsenomena, such as thunder and lightning, wind, clouds, snow, and rain- bows, are therefore ascribed to him'' ; and he sends them ei- ther as signs" and warnings, or to punish the transgressions of man, especially the perversions of law and justice, of which he is the fountain $)/yAs, fuereus esmlus. See II. vii. 60. - II. xvi. 233. Od. xiv. 327 ; xix. 296. Hes. Fr. 54. " II. viii. 247 ; xii. 200. seq. Od. ii. 146. ' This word is derived from Ataaoi to excite ; but as it greatly resembles the Greek word for goat (a??, aiybs), the legend of its being covered with the skin of G 2 84 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. lightning, and darkness, and struck terror into mortal hearts, was formed for Zeus by Hephaestos^. In Homer we see it sometimes borne by Apollo'' and by Athena''. The most famous temple of this god was at Olympia in Elis, where eveiy fourth year the Olympian games were celebrated in his honour: he had also a splendid fane in the isle of -iEgina. But, though there were few deities less honoured with temples and statues, aU the inhabitants of Hellas con- spired in the duty of doing homage to the sovereign of the gods. His great oracle was at Dodona, where, even in the Pelasgian period, his priests, the SeUi, announced his will and futurity''. Zeus was represented by the artists as the model of dig- nity and majesty of mien ; his countenance grave but mild. He is seated on a throne, and grasping his sceptre and the thunder. The eagle is standing beside the throne. The epithets of this god in Homer are^, 1. JEgis-holding ; 2. Cloud-collecting; 3. Black-clouding; 4. Thunder-loving; 5, High-seated; 6. Lightening ; 'J . Counselling ; S. Wide-seeing or Wide-thundering ; and others of similar signification. The epithets of Zeus derived from his offices, such as Xenios, as protector of strangers, Horkios, the guardian of oaths, were numerous. He was also named like the other gods from the places where he was worshiped, ex. gr. Clarios, Cithseronios. Toward the end of the month Anthesteri6n (beginning of March), a festival named the Diasia was held at Athens, in which offerings were made to Zeus, the Mild or Appeased, (/tetX^j^tos) *, answering to the sin-offerings of the Mosaic law. At Argos. there was an ancient wooden statue {^oavov) of Zeus, which had a third eye in its forehead. The tradition was that it had been the domestic image of Priamos, and had been brought from Troy by Sthenelos. The three eyes are rightly explained by Fausanias as indicative of the dominion the goat which nursed the god was devised at a subsequent period. See Heyne on II. a. 148. 448. Welcker, Tril. 153. Bbttiger, Kunst-Myth. u. 88. • n. XV. 510. b II. xy. 508. - II. V. 738. Od. xxii. 297. " II. xvi. 233. « 1. aiyioxos : 2. ve^eXqyeperqs : 3. xeXaive^-^s : 4. repwiKepavvos : 5, iyj/i- Juyos : 6. darepowtiT^s : 7. ^)/n^rijs : 8. eiipvowa. ' Thuc. i. 126. POSEIDON. 85 of Zeus (the God) over heaven, earth, (land and water,) and the under-world*. A very simple process will lead us to the true signification of the name of this deity. Its ^olic form is Aeii?, which is almost the same as the deus of the Latin, the affinity of which language to the iEolic Greek is well known''. Zeus {Zeis;) therefore is God, the same as deb';, deus, and akin to the Per- sian Deev or Dew, and the Sanscrit Deva and Deveta". The oblique cases of Zeus come from Al The Greek ? is frequently d in the corresponding Latin termj thus piZa, ra- dix, oKw, odor. See Miiller, Proleg. 289. " See Fairy Mythology, i. 35. " Hes. Th. 243. 936. See also Od. v. 422 ; xii. 60. 97. Apollodorus (i. 4. 4.) says she was an Oceanis. ^ Theog. 931. ' See above, p. 57. ^ Eratosth. Catast. 31. Hygin, P. A. i. 17. " See below, chap. xi. ■ HerophUos aptid Sch. Find. 01. vii. 24. » Qd. xi. 235, 86 MYTHOLOGY OF GEEECE. in their ninth year attempted to scale heaven*. As a ram, he was by Theophane, daughter of Bisaltos, the sire of the gold-_ fleeced ram which carried Phryxos to Colchis ''. The sea- nymph Thobsa bore him the huge Cyclops Polyphemos". The invulnerable Cycnos^ who was slain by Achilles, was also the offspring of this deity^: so also were Theseus, Eumolpos, and other heroes, Poseid6n was worshiped in Arcadia under the title of Hip- pios«. One legend of that country made him the sire of the steed Arei6n''; and another said that when Rhea brought him forth, she pretended to Kronos that she had been dehvered of a foal, which she gave him to devovtrs. The origin of the horse was also ascribed to this god. According to a Thessa- lian legend, he smote a rock in that country with his trident, and forth sprang the first horse, which was named Scyphios''. The vain people of Attica affected to believe that it was on their soil that the sea-god first presented the horse to man- kind'. The winged steed Pegasos is also the offspring of Poseid6n''. In the Ilias, when Zeus returns from Ida to Olympos, it is Poseid6n that unyokes his horses^ ; the same god is said to have given the Harpy-bom steeds of Achilles to Peleus" ; he is joined with Zeus as the teacher of the art of driving the chariot" ; and when Menelaos charges AntUo- chos with foul play in the chariot-race, he requires him to clear himself by an oath to Poseid6n°. AH this indicates a close connexion between the sea-god and the horse. The usual solution given is, that as, according to Herodotus, the worship of Poseid6n came from Libya to Greece, and (the Libyans being an agricultural, not a sea- » Od. xi. 305. K Hygin. 188. Ovid, Met. vi. 117. ' Od. i. 71. 1 Ovid, Met. xii. 72. Sch. Theocr. xvi. 49. ' "iTTTTtos, from 'iniros, a horse. Paus. viii. 10. 2 j 14. 5 ; 25. 7 ; 36. 2 j 37. 10. ' See below, chap. ix. 8 Paus. viii. 8. 2. The legend added that Rhea put her new-bom babe among the lambs (apves) thai pastured thereabouts, whence an adjacent spring was named Ame. " Sch. Find. Pyth. iv. 246. Probus on Geor. i. 13. Lucan, Phars. vi. 396. Scy- phios is evidently related to aKaijios, a siciffor boat. ' Soph. (Ed. Col. 714. Servius, Geor. i. 13. '^ Hes. Th. 278. seq. ' II. viii. 440. "" H. xxiii. 277. ° II. xxUi. 307. " II. xxiii. 584. POSEIDON. 87- faring people) the agents must have been the Phoenicians, who also_, we are assured, brought the first horses into Greece (as the Spaniards did into America, and as much to the asto- nishment of the rude natives), the knowledge of the horse and of Poseiddn thus came together, and they were therefore asso- ciated in the popular mind*. This, we may observe, is all merely gratuitous hypothesis. The absurd passion of Herodotus for deducing the religion of Greece from abroad is so notorious, that few, we should sup- pose, would lay any stress on his testimony in these matters. Had a god of the sea been worshiped in Egypt, beyond ques- tion the historian would have derived Poseiddn from that country. Again, what can be more absurd than to suppose that Greece, a portion of the continent of Europe, to the north of which dwelt the Thracians and Scythians, renowned in all ages for their horses'', should have first received these animals from the coast of Africa? We may therefore, we think, safely dismiss this hypothesis, and look for an explanation of the phaenomenon elsewhere. The horse is the principal means of transport by land, as the ship is by sea ; the one name might therefore be meta- phorically employed for the other. Thus in Homer'^ Penelope says. Why, herald, is my son gone ? for no need Had he to mount the swift-coursed ships, which are For men the horses of the sea, and pass O'er the great deep ; in Plautus* one of the characters says, "That is to say, you have been carried on a wooden horse along the azure roads;" and the Arabs call their camel the ship of the desert. This seems to offer a natural solution of' the difl&culty, the sea-god being regarded as the author of ships, the horses of the sea, and thence by an easy transition of the real animals*. But still when we reflect how widely spread was the habit of re- garding the horse as in some mysterious manner connected " See Bijttiger, Kunst-Myth. ii. 325. seq. , '' See II. xiii. 4. seq. " Od. iv. 707-709. ■> Eudens, i. 5. 10. ° See in Volcker (Myth, der Jap. 133. seq.) an excellent discussion of this sub- ject. 88 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. with the water*, we may hesitate to give our full assent to this theory. It is rather curious to observe the manner in which Poseiddn and PaUas Athene are associated. They were worshiped to- gether, — ^he as Hippios, she as Hippia,— at Colonos rieax Athens*; we find them united in the legend of Bellerophontes"; they contended for the possession of Attica^ and Troez6n« ; in the former case the sea-god was forced to yield, in the latter Zeus decided that they should hold the dominion in common. In lilie manner Poseid6n is said to have contended with Hera for. Argosf, and with Helios for Corinthe ; with Zeus for Mgixisfi, and with Dionysos for Naxos* ; and to have exchanged Delos and Delphi with Apollo for Calauria and Tsenaron^. Mythes of this kind merely indicate a change or a combination of the worship of the deities who are the subjects of them, in the places where the scenes of the supposed contests are laid*. Beside his residence on Olympos, Poseiddn had a splendid palace beneath the sea at ^gse™. Homer gives a noble de- scription of his passage from it on his way to Troy, his cha- riot-wheels but touching the watery plain, and the monsters of the deep gamboling around their king. His most cele- brated temples were at the Corinthian isthmus, Onchestos", Helice°, Troez6n, and the promontories of Sunion, Taenaron, Geraestos, and other headlandsP. Poseid6n is represented, like Zeus, of a serene and majestic aspect ; his form is strong and muscular. He usually bears in his hand the trident, the three-pronged symbol of his power : the dolphin and other marine objects accompany his images. " In the ' Tales and Popular Fictions', 79. seq. will be found some instances. See also Fairy Mythology, ^a*«»j. * Pans. i. 30. 4. = See Part II. chap. vi. Belkrophmtes. "• See Part II. ch. v. Cecrops. " Pans. ii. 30, 5. f Id. ii. 15, 5. B Id. u. 1, 6. " Plut. Symp. ix. 6. ■ Plut. I. c. " Pans. ii. 33, 2. Strabo, viii. 6. It was Helios, not Apollo, that was the pos- sessor of Taenaron. Horn. Hymn ii. 233. seq. ' See Muller, ^ginetica 26. seg. ■" II. xiii. 21. Od. v. 381. » Horn. Hymn u. 52. ° II. viii. 203 ; xx. 404. " ApoU. Rh. iii. 1240. scy. HADES. 89 The poetic epithets of Poseid6n are% 1. Earth-keeping; 2. Earth-shaking; 3. Dark-haired; 4. Wide-ruling; 5. Loud- sounding; etc. In Poseid6n we may discern the original god of water in general, of springs and rivers as well as of the sea. The le- gends respecting him (his amour with Demeter, the earth, for instance,) are on this supposition easy of explanation. The simple Doric form of his name, HoT^Sas, shows its true origin to be from the root IlOXi, and that it is of the same family with TTOTO';, trovTa, iroTafjbo<;, all relating to water and fluidity''. 'Aif?, 'AjSt;?, 'Ai'Swveii?, "AjSr}i;, lIXovTtov. Orcus, Dis. Hades, the brother of Zeus and Poseiddn, was lord of the subterrane region, the abode of the dead. He is described as being inexorable and deaf to supplication, — for from his realms there is no return, — and an object of aversion and hatred both to gods and men<=. All the latter were sure to be looner or later collected into his kingdom. His name appears to denote in- visibility^, significatory of the nature of the realm over which he ruled. At a later period he received the appellation of Plut6n«, as mines within the earth are the producers of the precious metals. This notion, Voss^ thinks, began to prevail when the Greeks first visited Spain, the country most abun- dant in gold. The adventures of this god were few, for the gloomy nature of himself and his realm did not offer much field for such le- gends of the gods as Grecian fancy delighted in ; yet he too had his love-adventures. The tale of his carrying off Perse- phone (which we shall relate at length in the sequel) is one ^ 1. yairioxos: 2. evvoaixSi^v, evvoiriyaios: 3. Kvavoxairnis : 4. eipvfieSitiv, evpvKpeiiov, eipvaOevris : 5. ISapva/iapayos, PapvSowos, fiapvKTViros, epi- KTVTTOe. * MiUler, Proleg. 289. " II. ix. 158. 159. "■ From a and eiSm, to see. ' nXoSros, wealth, ' Myth. Briefe, ii. 175. Heyne (on ApoUod. p. 780.) is of opinion tliat it was first given in the Mysteries. It is employed occasionally by the Attic dramatists (Soph. Antig. 1200. Eur. Ale. 370. Aristoph. Plut. 727.), and became the pre- valent one in later times, when Hades came to signify a place rather than a person. It was very rarely used by the Latin writers. 90 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. of the most celebrated in antiquity. He loved, we are told*, and carried off to Erebos the Oceanis Leuce ; and when she died, he caused a tree, named from her, (^evKrj, white poplar,) to spring up in the Elysian Fields. Another of his loves was the nymph Mentha, whom Persephone out of jealousy turned into the plant which bears her name^. Hades, Homer teUs us«, was once wounded in the shoulder by the arrows of Heracles; but from the ambiguity of the phrase used by the poet (ev irvKai) it is difficult to determine the scene of the conflict. Some say it was at the gate of the nether world, when the hero was sent to drag the dog of Hades to the realms of day*; others that it was in Pylos, where the god was aiding his worshipers against the son of Zeus*. The region over which Hades presides is represented in the Ilias ajid in the Theogony^ as being within the earth : in the Odyssey s it is placed in the dark region beyond the stream of Ocean. Its name is Erebos'' ; the poets everywhere de- scribe it as dreary, dark, and cheerless. The dead, without distinction of good or evil, age or rank, wander about there, conversing of their former state on earth : they are unhappy, and they feel their wretched state acutely. Achilles, the son of a goddess, declares to Odysseus that he would rather be a day-labourer to the poorest cultivator on earth than a king in those regions. They have no strength or power of mind * Servius on Virg. Buc. vii. 61. * Strabo, viii. 344. Sch. Nicand. Alex. 374. Oppiaa. Hal. iii. 486. Ovid, Met. X. 730. *= II. T. 395. seq. "> Sch. II. V. 395. 397. Sch. Od. xi. 605. Eudocia, 207. The other authorities are collected by Heyne in his note on H. v. 397. Voss translates in this sense. ' ApoUod. ii. 7, 3. Paus. vi. 25, 2. Seneca, Here. Furens, 560-5. See Find. 01. ix. 50. with the Scholia. Heyne, Muller, and Buttmann are in favour of this sense of the phrase. ' II. iii. 278 ; ix. 568. seq. ; xx. 61. seq. ; xxiii. 100. Theog. 455. 767. ^ Od. X. 508. seq. ; xi. 1. seq., 635. seq. ; xii. 81. *■ It is weU knovrathat Hades became aflervrards synonymous vrith Erebos (see Appendix G.). Heyne (on II. viii. 368.) makes a strange mistake in saying that Erebos lay between the Earth and Hades, beneath which was Tartaros. Passow {v. epepos) adopts this notion, and adds that Erebos was but a passive to Hades, from which it is expressly distinguished in II. viii. 368. (as person and place cer- tainly). It is plain that neither of those wTiters had correct ideas on this subject. HADES. 91 or body». Some few, enemies of the gods, such as Sisyphos, Tityos, Tantalos, are punished for their crimes, but not apart from the rest of the dead*". Nothing can be more gloomy and comfortless than the whole aspect of the realm of Hades as pictured in the Odyssey. It is in fact surprising, that men who had such a dreary prospect before them should not have been more attached to hfe, and more averse from war and everything that might abridge its period, than the ancient Greeks were". In process of time, when communication with Egypt and Asia had enlarged the sphere of the ideas of the Greeks, the nether-world underwent a total change. It was now divided into two separate regions : Tartaros, which in the time of Homer and Hesiod was thought to he far beneath it, and to be the prison of the Titans, became one of these regions, and the place of punishment for wicked men ; and Elysion^which lay on the shore of the stream of Ocean, the retreat of the children and relatives of the king of the gods, was moved down thither to form the place of reward for good men. A stream encompassed the domains of Hades*, over which the dead, on paying their passage-money {vavXov), were ferried by Char6n«; the three-headed dog Cerberos guarded the entrance^; and the three judges, Min6s, ^acos, and Rhada- manthys, allotted his place of bliss or of pain to each of the " Od. xi. 488. •■ The gennineness of the passage (Od. xi. 568-630.) in which these personages are mentioned was doubted by Aristarchus. Notwithstanding the arguments of Payne Knight (Proleg. § xix.) in defence of it, we incline to the opinion of the Alexandrian critic. ■= See Plato, Hep. iii. 386. b. Voss, Anti-Symb. i. 203, 204. The ancient He- brews seem also to have had gloomy ideas of She61, their under- world; the Celtic and Germanic tribes the contrary. *■ The river which was to be passed is mentioned in the Ilias (xxiii. 73.), but that may have been the ocean-stream. ' The earliest mention of Charon in Grecian poetry seems to be in the ancient poem of the Minyas, quoted by Pausanias, x. 28. See Pind. Fr. Incert. 30. jEschyl. Seven ag. Thebes, 856-62. Agam. 1568. Eur. Ale. 371. 451. Aristoph. Lys. 606. Pint. 278. Frogs, 183. ' Apollo'd. ii. 5, 12. Homer (11. viii. 368.) mentions the dot/ of Hades. Hesiod (Th. 311.) names him Cerberos, and gives him fifty heads. See also Th. 769-773. Others gave him one hundred heads. Horace, Carm. ii. 13, 34. 92 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. dead who was brought before their tribunal*. The river of Oblivion (o tj}? \»;^»?9 Trora/io?)^ was added to those of Ho- mer's trans-Oceanic region *=, of whose waters the dead were led to drink previous to their returning to animate other bo- dies on earth d. In the sixth book of VirgiPs JEneis will be found the richest and fullest description of the new-modified under-world, and for those who love to trace the progress and change of ideas, it will not be an uninteresting employment to compare it with that in the eleventh book of Homer's Odyssey. The poet Claudian^ too has, with his usual ele- gance, drawn a luxuriant description of the bhssful scenes which the under-world would present, to console and recon- cile its future mistress. In reading the ' portentous lies' (as they have well been termed^ of the Egyptian priests on this subject, one is at a loss vshich most to admire at, their audacity, or the credulity of the Greeks, For the former asserted, and the latter be- lieved, that Orpheus and Homer had both learned wisdom on the banks of the Nile; and that the Erebos of Greece, and all its parts, personages and usages, were but transcripts of the mode of burial in Egypt. Here the corpse was, on pay- ment of an obelos, conveyed by a ferryman (named Char6n in the language of Egypt) over the Acherusian lake, after it ' had receiA'ed its sentence from the judges appointed for that purpose. Oceanos was but the Egyptian name of the Nile ; the Gates of the Sun were merely those of HeUopolis ; and Hermes, the conductor of souls s, was familiar to the Egyp- ' This is probably founded on the passage in the Odyssey (xi. 568.) where the hero says he saw Min8s judging in Erebos, but he only judged there as Orion himted, i. e. pursued his occupation as when on earth. According to the fine mythe in Plato (Gorgias,. 523.), jEacos and Rhadamanthys sit at the point in the raead (rptoJij)) where the path branches off to the Isles of the Blest and to Tar- taros (see Virg. Mn. vi. 540.) j the former judges the dead from Europe, the latter those from Asia. If any case proves too difficult for them, it is reserved for the decision of Minos. >> Fluvius, amms,flu,men, Lethaus-um, Virg. ^n. vi. 705, 714, 749. ■= These were Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytos. Od. x. 513, 514. " Vurg. Mn. ut supra. It is not known how or when the doctrine of the Me- tempsychosis came into Greece. We first meet it in Pindar, 01. ii. 123. Fr. Thren. 4. ' De R. P. ii. 282. seq. See also Sil. Ital. xiii. 524. seq; and Tibul. i. 3. 59. seq. ' Lobeck, Aglaoph. 811. b See Od. xxiy. 1-14. HADES. 93 tians; and thus they appropriated all the mythic ideas of Greece. It may give some idea of their hardihood, to ob- serve that they affirmedj on the authority of their sacred books and temple-archives, that Orpheus, Musaeos, Melam- pCls and Dsedalos — not one of whom probably ever existed — had all visited Egypt*. But enough of such mendacity : we should not have noticed it, were it not that the fashion of tracing the religion and institutions of Greece to Egypt is not yet extinct. Before we quit Aidoneus and his realms, we must call at- tention to the circumstance of mankind agreeing to place the abode of departed souls either beneath the earth, or in the re- mote regions of the West. The former notion, it is probable, owes its origin to the simple circumstance of the mortal re- mains of man being deposited by most nations in the bosom of the earth ; and the habits of thinlcing and speaking^which thence arose, led to the notion of the soul also being placed in a region within the earth. The calmness and stillness of evening succeeding the toils of the day, the majesty of the sun sinking as it were to rest amid the glories of the western sky, exert a powerful influence over the human mind, and lead us almost insensibly to picture the West as a region of bliss and tranquilhty. The idea of its being the abode of the departed good, where in calm islands they dwelt 'from eveiy ill remote,' was therefore an obvious one''. Finally, the ana- logy of the conclusion of the day and the setting of the sun with the close of life, may have led the Greeks •=, or it may be the Phoenicians, to place the dwelling of the dead in general .in the dark land on the western shore of Ocean. Hades, we are told by Homer, possessed a helmet which rendered its wearer invisible : it was forged for him by He- phsestos, the later writers say, in the time of the war against the Titans. Pallas Athene, when aiding Diomedes, wore it " Diodor. i. 92, 96. •> The North American Indians place the happy hunting-grounds of the departed far away beyond a stream in the West. The ideas of the Greenlanders, and of some of the tribes of South America, are similar. See Volcker, H. G. 142. = This notion seems almost peculiar to the Odyssey ; the only allusion to it that we have met with elsewhere is in Sophocles (CEd. Tyr. 176.), where Hades is called 'the western god' {aKTciv vpbs cavepov 9eov). 94 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. to conceal her from Ares^ When Perseus went on his ex- pedition against the Gorgons, the helm of invisibility covered his brows'". This helmet of Hades will find its parallel in tales both of the East and the West, now consigned to the nursery. By artists, the god of the nether-world was represented si- milar to his brothers, but he was distinguished from them by his gloomy and rigid mien. He usually bears a two-pronged fork in his hand. The poets called Hades", 1. Subterranean Zeus'^ ; 2, People- collecting; ^.Much-receiving; 4. Gate-keeping; 5. Laughter- less; 6. Horse-renowned; 7- Untamed, or invincible; 8. Strong; 9. Hateful; 10. Cold; etc. At Hermione in Argolis Hades was worshiped under the name of Illustrious {KXv/ievo= Virg. Mn. iv. 698. sey. Hor. Carm. i. 28. 19, 20. Stat. SUv. u. 1. 147. d Theog. 454. * VmA. Neia. xi. 1. seq. ^ Paus. i. 18, 3. 96 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Chapter VII. HERA:— ARES, HEPHiESTOS, HEBE. "Hprj, "Upa. Juno. In Homer this goddess is one of the children of Kronos and Rhea, and wife and sister to Zeus". When the latter placed his sire in Tartaros, Rhea committed Hera to the care of Oceanos and Tethys, by whom she was carefiiUy nmi;ured in their grotto-palace^. She and Zeus had however previously 'mingled in love' unknown to their parents". Hesiod, who gives her the same parents, says that she was the last spouse of Zeus'*. According to the Argive legend, Zeus, who had long secretly loved his sister, watched one day when she was out walking alone near Mount Thronax, and raising a great storm of wind and rain fled shivering and trembling, under the form of a cuckoo, to seek shelter on the knees of the un- suspecting maiden. She covered the poor bird, as she thought him, with her mantle, and Zeus then resuming his proper form accompHshed his wishes. But when she had implored him in the name of her mother to spare her, he gave her a solemn promise to make her his wife", — a promise which he faithfully performed. Henceforth the hiU Thronax was named Coccygion (Cuckoo-hill)^. In the Ilias (for she does not appear in the Odyssey) Hera, as the queen of Zeus, shares in his honours. The god is re- presented as a little in awe of her tongue, yet daunting her by his menaces. On one occasion he reminds her how once, when she had raised a storm, which drove his son Heracles out of his course at sea, he tied her hands together and sus- pended her with anvils at her feet between heaven and eai-th^; and when her son Hephaestos would aid her, he flung him down from Olympose. In this poem the goddess appears dwelling in " II. iv. 59. ' U. xiv. 202. seg. " n. xiv. 295. " Theog. 921. ' Sch. Theocr. xv. 64. from Aristotle. Paus. ii. 17. 4. ' II. XV. 18. seq. ' II. i. 590. seq. compared with xv. 22. HERA. 97 peace and harmony with Leto, Dione, Themis and their chil- dren : later poets speak much of the persecution which Leto underwent from the enmity of Hera, who also, as shall here- after be related, made lo, Semele, Alcmena and other women, pay dear for their intrigues with the Olympian king. The childi-en of Zeus and Hera were Ares, Hebe, the Eilei- thyiae, to which some added the Graces ^ Hephaestos was the progeny of Hera without a sire; she was alsq said to have given origin to the monster Typhadn'^. In the mythic cycles of Dionysos and Heracles Hera acts a prominent part as the persecutor of the heroes of them, who wpre the offspring of Zeus by mortal mothers. In hke man- ner, as the goddess of Argos, she is active in the cause of the Achaeans in the war of ' Troy divine.' In the Argonautic cycle she was the protecting deity of the adventurous Ias6n. There is, in fact, none of the Olympian deities more decidedly Grecian in feeling and character than this goddess. The chief seats of the worship of Hera were Argos, Samos, and Plataea. She was also honoured at Sparta, Corinth, Corcyra, and other places. The victims offered to her were kine, ewe-lambs and sows. The willow, the pomegranate, the dittany, the lily, were her sacred plants. Among birds, the cuckoo, and afterwards the gaudy stately peacock, were appropriated to the Olympian queen. According to the legend the goddess herself formed this last bird fi:om the many-eyed Argos, whom she had set as keeper over the transformed lo. Moschus'= (in whom we first meet this legend), when describing the basket which Europa had in her hand when, as she was gathering flowers, she was carried off by Zeus, says. Around beneath the curved basket's rim Was Hermes form'd, and near to him lay stretch'd Argos, with ever-sleepless eyes supplied ; Out of whose purple blood was rising up A bird, whose wings with many colours glow'd : Spreading his tail, like a swift-sailing ship. The golden basket's edge he cover'd o'er. • Coluth. Rapt. Hel. 88. 173. » Horn. Hymn ii. 127. seq. ' Idyll, ii. 55. seq. 98 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Ovida says that Hera planted the eyes of Argos in the tail of her favourite bird ; and Nonnus'' asserts that Argos him- self was turned into this bird. The peacock {tocos:), we must observe, was unknown in the days of Homer, when, as we have already shown, the gods had not as yet any favourite animals. It is an Indian bird, and was according to Theophrastus introduced into Greece from the East<=. Peafowl were first brought to Samos, where they were kept at the temple of Hera ; and gradually the le- gend was spread that Samos was their native place, and that they were the favourite birds of its goddess. The comic poet Antiphanes, a contemporary of Socrates, says^, 'Tis said the phoenixes are all born in The City of the Sun ; at Athens, owls ; Excellent pigeons Cyprus hath ; and Hera Of Samos owns, they say, the golden breed Of birds, the fair-form'd much-admired peafowl. Whole flocks of them were fed in the sacred grove of the goddess. They were gradually but slowly spread through Greece. The later poets yoked them to the chariot of Hera: thus«. The sea-gods granted : in her easy car. By painted peafowl drawn, Satarnia moves Through the clear air. Few passages in the Ilias are more celebrated than the fol- lowing picture of the love-union of Zeus and Hera on the summit of Ida^: He said ; and in his arms Kronidn seized His spouse. Beneath them bounteous earth sent up Fresh-growing grass : there dewy lotus rose. Crocus and hyacinth, both thick and soft. Which raised them from the ground. On this they lay. And o'er them spread a golden cloud and fair. And glittering drops of dew fell all around. This is, we think justly, regarded as a sportive adaptation by the epic poet of an ancient physical mythe of the imion of Zeus and Hera (heaven and earth, as we shall presently show) " Met. i. 722. ' Dionys. xii. 72. " Its Persian name at the present day is Taotis. 1 Athen. xiv.~C55. "= Ovid, Met. ii. 531. ' 11. xiv. 364. HERA. 99 in spring-time producing vegetation. It is in effect the Sa- cred Marriage (t'ejoos ydfio pijn. h. N. xxiv. 9. " " Novajque nuptas farreum prseferebant."— Plin. H. N. xviii. 3. I* " Nubentis habitu." — ^Varro. ■ In Elis it was woven every fifth year. Paus. v. 16. 2. f Athen. ut sup. HEKA. 101 In Boeotia the popular mythe had taken a somewhat dif- ferent view of the character of Hera, and she appears as the jealous wife, such as she is represented in the Ilias. Hera, the legend said, offended for some cause or another with Zeus, renounced his bed and society. The god in per- plexity sought advice from the autochthon Alalcomenos, and by his counsel gave out that he was going to marry another ; and cutting down a handsome tree, they shaped it into the form of a woman, naming it Dsedala, and arrayed it in the bridal habit. The bridal hymn was sung, the nymphs of the Triton furnished the bath, Boeotia gave pipes and dances, and the pretended bride was placed on a car drawn by kine. When this reached the ears of Hera she could not contain herself, but coming down in a rage from Cithasron, followed by the women of Platsea, she rushed to the car, seized the supposed bride, and tore off her dress. Then discovering the cheat, she became reconciled to her lord, and with joy and laughter took herself the place of the bride, and committed the image to the flames^. This legend was invented to explain the origin of a national festival of Boeotia named the Dsedala. Of this there were two kinds, the Small, celebrated every seven, the Great, every sixty years. According to Pausanias, there was a wood near Alalcomenae where grew the finest oaks in Boeotia, to which the Plataeans repaired, and setting some dressed meat before it, and watching the ravens, marked which of them took the meat, and on what tree he sat. They then cut down that tree, and made an image from it. It is probable that the other cities of Boeotia did the same; and this was called the Little Daedala. When the time of the Great Dsedala came, there were fourteen images ready (one for each of the cities of Boeotia), with which they repaired to the banks of the Asopos. Each image was placed on a car, and a bride- maid [vvfio/3o9), the sons of Ares, and Strife ("EjOt?) his sister, accompany him to the field when he seeks the battle*. Another of his companions is Enyo'' {'Evuw), the daughter of Phorcys and Keto" according to Hesiod, a war-goddess answering to the Bellona of the Ro- mans. The name Enyalios, which is frequently given to him in the Ilias^, corresponds with hers. The figurative language, which expresses origin and resem- blance by terms of paternity, gave a mortal progeny to Ares. As a person who came by sea was figuratively called a son of Poseidon, so a valiant warrior was termed a son, or, as it is sometimes expressed by Homer, a branch or shoot of Ares {o^o<;^'Aprjo<;), But the only tale of his amours related at any length by the poets is that of his intrigue with Aphrodite. Ares — so sang Demodocos to the Phaeacians^ — loved Aphro- dite, and often visited her in the absence of her unsightly hus- band. These visits were not unobserved by Helios (for what can escape the piercing eye of the Sun-god ?), and he gave information to the injured artist. Hephaestos dissembled his rage, and going to his workshop forged a net so subtile as to be invisible, so strong as to be infrangible by even the god of war. He disposed it in such a manner as to catch the lovers: then feigning a journey, set out as it were for Lemnos. Ares, who was on the watch, flew to his expecting mistress : the heedless lovers were caught in the net : the Sun-god gave no- tice ; the husband returned, and standing at his door called all the gods to come and behold the captives. The dwellers of Olympos laughed heartily, and some jokes were passed on the occasion. Poseid6n however took no part in the mirth, but drawing Hephsestos aside pressed him to accommodate the affair. The artist, doubtflil of the honour of the soldier, was loath to assent, till Poseiddn pledged himself to see him paid. He then yielded, and released his prisoners. Ares hastened away to his favourite region of Thrace : Aphrodite fled to hide her shame in her beloved isle of Cyprus. This tale is an evident interpolation in the part of the » II. iv. 440. " II. V. 333. ' Theog. 273. <• II. vii. 166 ; viii. 264 ; xiii. 519 ; xvii. 259 ; xviii. 339 ; xx. 69 ; xxii. 132. ' Od. viii. 266. segf. Ovid, A. A. ii. 561. 106 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Odyssey where it occurs. Its date is uncertain ; but the lan- guage, the ideas, and the state of society which it supposes, might almost lead us to assign its origin to a comparatively late period. It may be, as is generally supposed, an ancient physical mythe, or rather a combination of two such mythes ; for beauty might naturally have been made the spouse of the god from whose workshop proceeded so many elegant produc- tions of art, and, as we are about to show, another physical view led to the union of Ares and Aphrodite. Still we can- not avoid regarding the present tale rather as a sportive effu- sion of Grecian wit and satire. In Greece, as everywhere else, wealth and beauty were occasionally tmited in wedlock; and there too, as elsewhere, martial renown and showy exte- rior were passports to the hearts of the fair. If the tale was framed on the coast of Asia, we know that warfare was fre- quent enough among the Grecian cities there to allow of re- putation being gained by deeds of valour*. To the above tale has also been appended by later writers a legendary origin of the cock [aXeKrpvojv). It is said that Alectryon was a youth whom Ares placed to watch while he was with Aphrodite; and, for neglect of his task, he was changed by the angry god into the bird of his name^. Hesiod says" that Harmonia {Order) was the daughter of Ares and Aphrodite. This has evidently all the appearance of a physical mythe, for from Love and Strife (i. e. attraction and repulsion) it is clear, arises the order or harmony of the universe^. Terror and Fear are also said by Hesiod^ to have been the offspring of Ares and Aphrodite, of whose union with Hephaestos (to whom he gives a different spouse) he seems to have known nothing. In the Ilias we may observe that Ares and Aphrodite are spoken of as brother and sister, much in the same manner as Apollo and Artemis^. The best known of the children of this god by mortal women are Ascalaphos and lalmenoss, CEnomaos king of Pisa, Dio- medes of Thrace, Cycnos, Phlegyas, Dryas, Parthenopaeos, ' See Herod, vi. 42. *■ Lucian, Alectr. Eudocia, 34. ' Theog. 937. " Plut. de Is. ct Os. 48. Ajist. Pol. ii. 6. Macrob. Sat. i. 19. Welcker, Kret. Kol. 40. ° Theog. 934. ' II. v. 359. seq. ; xxi. 416. seg. « II. u. 512. ARES. 107 and Tereus. He was also said to be the sire of Meleagros and other hero-princes of ^t.olia^. The Hill of Ares ("Ajoeto? 770709), at Athens, is said to have derived its appellation from the following circumstance. Halirrhothios, a son of Poseiddn, had offered violence to Al- cippe, the daughter of Ares. Her father kiUed the offender, and he was summoned by Poseidon before a court of justice for the murder. The trial was held on this hill, the twelve gods sat as judges, and Ares was acquitted''. Another tra- dition derived the name of the hill from the Amazons having there offered sacrifices to Ares, their sire"'. It is quite mani- fest therefore that the real origin of the name was unknown. The temples and images of Ares were not numerous. He is represented as a warrior, of a severe menacing air, dressed in the heroic style, with a cuirass on, and a round Argive shield on his arm. His arms are sometimes borne by his attendants. The epithets of Ares were all significative of war. He was styled by Homer and Hesiod"!, 1. Blood-stained; 2. Shield- borer; 3. Man-slaying; 4. Town-desiroyer ; 5. Gold-helmed; 6. Brazen ; ']. People-rouser ; 8. Impetuous, etc. The name Ares ("Api;?) would seem to be connected with avy]pi apprjv and d/seri; {valour), and therefore to be significant of the character of the god. But some late critics seem rather to look to epa, earth, for its origin, and to regard him as having been one of the telluric powers in the Pelasgian creed, and to think that, like those of Hermes and Pallas-Athene, his character changed with the change of manners in Greece®. "H(/)ato-T09. Vulcanus. Hephaestos, the Olympian artist, is in Homer the son of Zeus and Hera*. According to Hesiods he was the son of " For all these sons of Ares see Apollodoms, ^assi'm. " ApoUod. iii. 14. Sch. Eur. Orest. 1665. "= jEschyl. Sup. 683-8. ^ \. fiLai(povos: 2. pivoropos: S.dvSpei6vrTis,l3poTo\oiy6s:i.irTo\nr6p9os: 5. xpvffeoTTriXri^ : 6. ;;(a\Keos : 7. \aoaa6os : 8. 6oiipos. ° Welcker in Schwenk. 292. seg. Volcker, Myth, der Jap. 79. ' II. i. 572, 578. * Theog. 927. 108 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Hera alone, who was unwilling to be outdone by Zeus when he had given birth to Pallas-Athene. He was born lame, and his mother was so displeased at the sight of him that she flung him from Olympos. The Ocean-nymph Eurynome and the Nereis Thetis saved and concealed him in a cavern be- neath the Ocean, where during nine years he employed him- self in manufacturing for them various ornaments and trinkets^ We are not informed how his return to Olympos was effected, but we find him in the Ilias firmly fixed there ; and all the houses, furniture, ornaments, and arms of the Olympians were the work of his hands. It would be an almost endless task to enumerate all the articles formed by Hephaestos ; we shall however notice some of the chief of them. One thing is remarkable concerning them, that they were aU made of the various metals; no wood, or stone, or any other substance, entering into their composition : they were moreover frequently endowed with automatism. All the habitations of the gods on Olympos were made by Hephaestos, and were all composed of metal ; as also were their chariots and arms. He made armour for Achilleus and other mortal heroes^. The fatal collar of Harmonia was the work of his hands <=. The brass-footed, brass-throated, fire- breathing bulls of ^etes king of Colchis were the gift of He- phaestos to Petes' father Hehos*; and he made for Alcinoos, king of the Phaeacians, the gold and silver dogs which guarded his house «. For himself he formed the golden maidens, who waited on him, and whom he endowed with reason and speech f. He gave to Minos, king of Crete, the brazen man Tal6s, who each day compassed his island three times, to guard it fi-om the invasion of strangers s. The brazen cup in which the Sun-god and his horses and chariot are carried round the earth every night was also the work of this god''. The only instances we meet of Hephaestos' working jin any ' II. xviii. 394. seq. b II. vUi. 195. ° ApoUod. iii. 4, 3. ApoU. Rh. iii. 230. " Od. vii. 91. Nitzsch in. loc. ' II. xviii. 419. « ApoUod. i. 9, 26. See Part II. chap. xii. MinSs. •■ See above, p. 54. HEPH^STOS. 109 other substance than metal are in Hesiod, where at the com- mand of Zeus he forms Pandora of earth and water % and where he uses gypsum and ivory in the formation of the shield which he makes for Heracles^. That framed by him for Achilleus in the Ilias is all of metal. In the Ilias" the wife of Hephaestos is named Charis; in Hesiod*, Aglaia, the youngest of the Charites ; in the inter- polated tale in the Odyssey, Aphrodite the goddess of beauty^. He is said to have asked Pallas- Athene in marriage of Zeus, who gave him permission to win her if he could, Hephaestos was a rough wooer, and attempted to oifer violence to the goddess. An Athenian legend refers the birth of Erichthonios, one of the mythic kings of Attica, to this circumstance*^. The favourite haunt of Hephaestos on earth was the isle of Lemnos. It was here he fell when flung from heaven by Zeus for attempting to aid his mother Hera, whom Zeus had suspended in the air with anvils fastened to her feet. As knowledge of the earth advanced, ^tnaS, Hiera (one of the Liparaean isles)'', and all other places where there was sub- terranean fire, were regarded as the forges of Hephaestos ; and the Cyclopes were associated with him as his assistants. In Homer, when Thetis wants Hephaestian armour for her son, she seeks Olympos, and the armour is fashioned by the artist-god with his own hand. In the Augustan age, Venus prevails on her husband, the master-smith, to furnish her son ^neas M"ith arms ; and he goes down front Heaven to Hiera, and directs his men the Cyclopes to execute the order'. It is thus that mythology changes with modes of life. Hephaestos and Pallas-Athene are frequently joined to- gether as the communicators to men of the arts which em- belHsh life and promote civihzation"^- The philosophy of this view of the two deities is correct and elegant. ^ Works and Days, 60. •> Shield of Hercules, 141. Thiersch and Gottling, we think, justly regard w. 141-317 as the interpolation of a poet of a much later age. ' II. xviii. 382. " Theog. 945. ' See above, p. 105. ' See below, Part II. chap. vi. ^ jEsch. Prom. 366. * Strabo, vi. 2. Sch. ApoU. Rh. iii. 42. ' jEneis, viii. 407. seg. k Od. vi. 233; xxiii. 160. Horn. Hymn xx. Plato, Politic, p. 177. Viilcker, Myth, der Jap. 21. seq. 110 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. The artist-god is usually represented as of ripe age, with a serious countenance and muscular form : his hair hangs in curls on his shoulders. He generally appears -with hammer and tongs at his anvil, in a short tunic, and his right arm bare, sometimes with a pointed cap on his head. The Cy- clopes are occasionally placed with him. The poetic epithets of Hephaestos were derived either from his lameness or from his skill. He was called^ 1. Both-feet- lame; 2. Lame-foot, or Bow-legged; 3. Feeble; 4. Renovmed Artist; 5. Very-renowned; 6. Wise, etc. Hephsestos must have been regarded originally as simply the fire-god, a view of his character which we find even in the lUas''. Fire being the great agent in reducing and work- ing the metals, the fire-god naturally became an artist. The former was probably Hephsestos' Pelasgian, the latter his Achaean character. The simplest derivation of his name therefore seems to be that which, regarding the first letter as euphonic, and Hephsestos as Phaestos (•I'ato-To?), deduces it from Plut. De Def. Orac. 15. 21. Q. G. 12. .Slian. V. H. iii. 1. " The same notion is expressed in Plutarch (De Dcf. Or. 21.) if the reading ^ven by Wyttembach from Eusebius be the true one, as it most probably is. ■i Proleg. 300. seg. Dorians, i. 338. Eumenides, 152. 159. ' II. ii. 763. t The Venetian MS. (which is Mowed by Wolf) reads Hqep.'p for Uiepiy. See Heyne m hco. According to the hymn to Hermes (v. 22. 70. seq.) the herds of the gods fed in Pieria under the care of Apollo. 8 II. xxiii. 287. PHCEBOS-APOLLO. 123 parts of the Ilias of which the antiquity is most dubious. It may also be doubted if the temple-legend of Delphi could be as old as the age to which Homer is usually referred. In another of the latter books of the Ilias it is said that Poseidon and Apollo, by the command of Zeus (we know not why given), served Laomed6n, king of Troy, for a year; at the end of which time he refused to pay them their wages, and threatened to cut off the ears of both, and even to sell the latter for a slave. The task of Apollo had been to tend the herds of the Trojan king in the valleys of Ida^. Apollo, it is said*", was taught divination by Pan, the son of Zeus and the nymph Thymbris. For his musical instrument he was indebted to the invention of his half-brother Hermes. Pan, the god of shepherds, venturing to set his reed-music in opposition to the lyre of Apollo, was pronounced overcome by Mount Tmolos, who had been chosen judge ; and all pre- sent approved the decision except king Midas, whose ears were, for their obtuseness, lengthened by the victor to those of an ass". The Silen'^ Marsyas, having found the pipe which • Athena for fear of injuring her beauty had flung away, con- tended with Apollo before the Muses, and was by him flayed for his temerity when vanquished ; and the tears of the nymphs and rural gods for the fate of their companion gave origin to the stream which bore his name*. This last legend admits of a very simple explanation. Mar- syas was a river-god of Phrygia, the country in which the music of wind-instruments was employed in the service of the gods ; the lyre was used by the Greeks in that of ApoUo^. " II. xxi. 442. seg. Any one who reflects on the exalted characters of these two gods in the undoubtedly genuine parts of the poem, must have some suspicion of this legend. The building of the wall is spoken of elsewhere (vii. 452.), and it is said to have been the work of both the gods. •■ ApoUod. i. 4. 1. Some MSS. for OviiPpeus read "rjSpews ; others for Havbs read irarpAs. See Heyne in he. This critic seems justly disposed to read fiaOuiv irapd Tov Trarpos, in favour of which is all mythic analogy. According to Ni- cander (Athen. vii. 296.), the sea-god Glaucos was the instructor of Apollo. " This legend is only to be found in Ovid (Met. xi. 153. seg.). ^ Herodotus thus justly names him. See below, chap. rri. Silenos. ' Herod, vii. 26. ApoUod. i. 4. 2. Pans. ii. 7, 9. Plut. de Fluv. 10. Diodor. iii. 59. Hygin. 165. Ovid, Met. vi. 382. seg. Fasti, vi. 703. seg. f Sonante mixtum tibiis carmen lyra, Hac Dorium, illis Baibarum. — Hor. Epod. ix. 5, 124 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Hence, to express the superiority of the latter, a contest was feigned between Apollo and Marsyas. At the cavern in the town of Celaenas in Phrygia, whence the stream Marsyas issues, was hung, for some reason which is not very clear, a leathern bag*, and hence it was fabled that ApoUo flayed his vanquished rival''. The Homeric Apollo is a personage totally distinct from HeUos, though probably, as wiU shortly appear, originally the same. When mysteries and secret doctrines were introduced into Greece, these deities were united, or perhaps we might say re-united. Apollo at the same period also took the place of Paeeon, and became the god of the healing arf. This god was a favourite object of Grecian worship, and his temples were numerous. Of these the most celebrated were that of Delphi in Phocis, — ^his acquisition of which we have above related, and where, as the mythe of Python would seem to intimate, a conflict' took place between the reUgion of Apollo, proceeding southwards from Pieria, or westwards from DeloS, and the ancient reUgion of the place, the worship of Gaea or Themis^, — and those of Delos, of Patara in Lycia, ' Claros in Ionia, Grynion in ^oHs, Didyma at Miletus ; in aU of which his oracles revealed the future. A very able mythologist of the present day^ maintains that the worship of Apollo was originally peculiar to the Dorian race, who were at all times his most zealous votaries. As the Homeric poems prove the worship of this deity to have been common to the Achaean race, and well known on the coasts of Asia long before the Dorian migration, the critic is forced to have recourse to the not very probable supposition of a Dorian colony having left the mountains of Thessaly many years before the Trojan war, and carried the Apollo-rehgion to Crete, whence it was spread to the coast of Asia, and also conveyed to Delos and Delphi. We cannot assent to this theory. Apollo seems to have been one of the original gods ' Herod, ut mpra. Xen. Anab. i. 2, 8. ^lian, V. H. xiii. 20. t See MiUler, Proleg. 113. ° Eur. Ale. 990. Plato, Critias. Hermann, Ueber das Wesen, etc., 108. See below, chap. xiii. PaSn. ^ See ^sch. Eumen. 1. sey. Sch. in he. ' Muller, Dorians, vol. i. book ii. PHCEBOS-APOLLO. 125 of the Grecian race ; and he was worshiped by one people more than another, on the same principle as in India Vishnoo is in some places more worshiped than Seeva; Thor was most honoured by the ancient Noi-wegians, and Odin by the Swedes ; St. Jago is more frequently invoked in Spain, and St. Anthony in Italy, — ^without the existence and the rights of the others being denied*. Apollo was supposed to visit his various favourite abodes at different seasons of the year : Such as, when wintry Lycia and the streams Of Xanthos fair Apollo leaves, and comes To his maternal Delos, and renews The dances ; while around his altars shout Cretans, Dryopians, and the painted race Of Agathyrsians ; he, along the tops Of Cynthos walking, with soft foliage binds His flowing hair, and fastens it in gold ; His arrows on his shoulders sound''. One of the most beautiful descriptions of these progresses of Apollo was that given by the lyric poet Alcaeus. The poem has unfortunately perished, but we find the following analysis of it in the works of the sophist Himerius". " When Apollo was born, Zeus adorned him with a golden headband and lyre, and gave him moreover a team to drive (the team were swans) ^. He then sent him to Delphi and the streams of Castalia, thence to declare prophetically right and justice to the Hellenes. He ascended the car, and de- sired the swans to fly also to the Hyperboreans «. The Del- phians, when they perceived this, arranged a Paean and song, and setting choirs of youths around the tripod, called on the god to come from the Hyperboreans. Having given laws for a whole year among those men, when the time was come which he had appointed for the Delphic tripods also to resound, he directed his swans to fly back from the Hyperboreans. It was then summer, and the very middle of it, when Alcaeus leads Apollo back from the Hyperboreans ; for when summer " See Hock, Kreta, vol. ii. '' Vug. iEneis, iv. 143. " Or. xiv. 10. Voss, M. B. ii. 109. ■■ Claudian (De VI. Con. Honor. 30.) makes his team on this occasion griffons. ' See above, p. 34. 126 MYTHOLOGY OF GBEECE. shines and Apollo journeys, the lyre itself whispers in a sum- mer-tone of the god. The nightingales sing to him, as the birds should sing in Alcaeus ; the swallows and cicadas also sing, not narrating their own fate when among men, but tu- ning aU their melodies to the god. Castaha too flows with poetic silver streams, and Cephissos swells high and bright with his waves, emulating the Enipeus of Homer. For, like Homer, Alcaeus ventures to make the very water capable of perceiving the access of the god." It was probably on account of their pure white hue that the swans were assigned to the pure god Phcebos-ApoUo ; and this connection with the god of music gave origin to the fable, as it is esteemed, of the melody of these birds*. The wolf was also assigned to this god, on account of his bright colour, as some think, but it is far more hkely that it was the similitude of his name to an epithet of the god which gave occasion to it. The noisy chirping tettix {cicada), or tree-hopper, was naturally associated with the god of music ; and as the god of augury Apollo was the patron of the hawk and raven. The bay-tree was the plant dedicated to this deity. Apollo was represented by the artists in the perfection of united manly strength and beauty. His long curling hair hangs loose, or bound with the strophium behind ; his brows are wreathed with bay; in his hands he bears his bow or lyre. The wonderful Apollo Belvidere shows at the same time the conception which the ancients had of this benign deity, and the high degree of perfection to which they had attained in sculpture. Few deities had more appellations than the son of Leto. He was called Delian, Delphian, Patarsean, Clarian, etc. from the places of his worship ; and Smynthian from a Phrygian word signifying mouse, of which animal a legend said he had " There seems however to be some foundation for it. A natui-alist of the pre- sent day says, " This species of swan deserves the title Musicus ; for when in small troops they fly aloft in the air their melodious melancholy voices sound Uke trumpets heard in the distance."— Faber, Geschichte der Vogel Islands, 1822, quoted by Knn Maguusen (Edda Sjemundar, iii. 530), whose own words are, " Cygnorum cantus dulcissimus in Islandia, Scotia, et pluribus regionibus sspissime auditur, ywod etiam nosmet, propria experientia edocti, attestari posmmm." We have ourselves heard the trumpet-tones of a swan. See Voss. Myth. Br. ii. 132. PHCEBOS-APOLLO. 127 been the destroyer inTroas, He was also styled % 1. Crooked, probably from the position of the archer when shooting'' ; 2. Herding, as keeping the flocks and herds of the gods, or those of Admetos; and by the poets, 3. Silver-bowed; 4. Far- shooter; 5. Gold-sworded ; 6. Well-haired, and Gold-haired; 7- Unshorn-locked; 8. People-rouser, etc. This god had several epithets apparently connected with the Greek name of the wolf (Kvkos:) ; but as there was an an- cient Greek word signifying light (ATKH) % of a similar foi-m, the great probability, in the eyes of all who regard Apollo as the sun-god, or as a moral being of great purity, will be that this last is the real root of these names, and that, as we said above, it was merely similarity of sound that caused the woli^ or the country Lycia, to be regarded as their origin. Thus the god is called by Homer XvKTjyevTjf, which may be ren- dered with the utmost propriety Light-born'^, whereas the usual interpretation, Lycia-born, contradicts the fact of the Homeric gods not having birth-places on earth. Two other epithets of Apollo, Xvtao^ and XvKeio<;, which are usually ren- dered Jjycian, or Wolf-destroying, or rather Wolfish, may sig- nify Lighted, or Lighting. There are two others (A,u«oa;t6vo5 and \uK06pr/r] XP'"""'^? '■ ^- evxaiTr/s, ;(putroxair))s : 7. dKepaeKOfiris : 8. Xaoffo-oos. ^ Miiller, Dor. i. 328. It is usually derived from the crooked ambiguous nature of oracular responses ; but Artemis, who never gave oracles, was named Loxo. "• This word is connected vrith XevKos, wMte, and with the Latin Inx, htceo, and the Teutonic Licht and. Light. The terms a.ji,. Artemis was worshiped in Elis under the titles of Alpheiaea, Alpheioa, Alpheionia, and Alpheiusa<= ; and there was a common altar to her and Alpheios within the precincts of the Altis at Olympiad. When in the fifth Olympiad Archias the Corinthian founded the colony of Syracuse in Sicily, there were among the colo- nists some members of the sacerdotal family of the lamids of Olympiad. These naturally exercised much influence in the religious alFairs of the colony, whose first seat was the islet of Ortygia. A temple was built there to Artemis Of-the-Stream (IIoTa/x/a), to which perhaps the proximate inducement was the presence of the fount Arethusa, which contained large fishes, and sent forth a copious stream of water into the sea*. From the original connexion between Alpheios and Artemis, the notion gradually arose, or it was given out, that the fount contained water of the Alpheios, and thence came the legend of his course under the seaS. Eventually, when the poetic notion of Artemis as a love-shunning maiden became the pre- valent one'', the goddess was made to fly the pursuit of Al- pheios'. The legend at Letrini was'' that he fell in love mth " Ovid, Met. v. 572. seq. Moschus, Idyl. vii. *■ See MuUer, Proleg. 135. Dorians, i. 393. ° Paus. vi. 22, 8-10. Strab. viii. 3. Athen. viii. 346. " Above, p. 77. ' Find. 01. vi. 8. f Ibycusap. Sch.Pind.Nem.i.l. Diodor.v. 3. Strabo, -vi. 2. Cicero, Verr. iv. 53. ^ Ibyeus ap. Sch. Theocr. i. 117. Pind. Nem. i. 1. >' Thus the Eleiaus changed the name of the Alpheisea of the Letrinsans to Elaphisea (from eXa^os, Paus. ut snp.), ' Telesilla ap. Ursinus. Pind. wt sup. i' Paus. nt svp. ARTEMIS. 133 her, but seeing no chance of success in a lawful way he re- solved to force her. For this purpose he came to Letrini, where she and her nymphs were celebrating a pannycMs or wake, and mingled with them. But the goddess, suspecting his design, had daubed her own face and those of her nymphs with mud, so that he was unable to distinguish her, and thus was foiled. Finally she was converted into the coy nymph Arethusa^, A late pragmatising form of the pleasing mythe was, that Alpheios was a hunter who was in love with the huntress Arethusa. To escape from his importunities she passed over to Ortygia, where she was changed into a foun- tain, and Alpheios became a river''. In proof of the truth of this fable, it was asserted that a cup {^laXfj) which fell into the Alpheios rose in Arethusa, whose pellucid waters also became turbid with the blood of the vic- tims slain at the Olympic games". We may here observe, that in the Peloponnese the relation between Artemis and the water was very intimate. She was worshiped in several places as Limnatis and Heleia, and there were frequently fountains in her temples. She was therefore probably regarded as a goddess of natiure, that gave vigour and growth to plants and animals by the means of water "i. Among the various titles of Artemis were Loxo, Hecaerge, Arge, and Opis, or Upis. She bore the two first as the sister of Apollo Loxias and Hecaergos. She was styled Arge as the swift or the bright goddess, and Upis or Opis as her whose eye was over all. In the isle of Delos however were shown the tombs of Opis and Arge behind the temple of Artemis, and the tradition of the place was, that they, who were two Hyperborean maidens, had been the companions of Apollo and Artemis when they first came to Delos «. According to another account, these Hyperborean maidens were three in " It is uncertain when this change took place ; it is the goddess who is pursued in TelesiUa, ut sup. (01. 64.). The oracle given to Archias (Paus. v. 7, 3.) is pro- bably a late fiction ; it speaks of the fount of Arethusa. Welcker (Schwenk. 263.) regards this name as being api-OoHtra. It may be only a corruption of Alpheiusa. ' Paus. V. 7, 2. " Ibycus ut mp. Strabo ut sup. Mela, ii. 7. Plin. Hist. Nat. ii. 103. 1 Miiller, Dorians, i. 392. ° Herod, iv. 35. 134 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. number, and named Upis, Loxo, and Hecaerge^ while a third named only Opis and Hecaerge*". There was also a legend of a nymph Arge, who when pursuing a buck cried out to him, "Though you should follow the course of the Sun I will overtake you," at which the Sun being offended, turned her into a doe'=. Another legend said that Zeus carried away the nymph Arge from Lyctos in Crete to a hill named Argillos on the banks of the Nile, where she became the mother of Pionysos"*. 'If Artemis was merely one of the names under which the moon was worshiped, it need not surprise us to find her iden- tified with Selene, with Hecate, and even with Persephone, the goddess of the under-world, and to be thence called the three-formed goddess ^ ruhng as Selene in the sky, as Artemis on earth, as Persephone in Erebos. This will also give a very simple reason for her being like Eileithyia), the aider of women in labour. If Artemis was not originally a moon-goddess, these identifications become somewhat difficult of solution^. Artemis was also confounded with the goddess worshiped on the Tauric Chersonese, whose altars were stained with the blood of such unhappy strangers as were cast on that inho- spitable shores. She was identified too mth the goddess of nature adored at Ephesus, whose symbolical figure, by its multitude of breasts and heads of animals hung round it, de- noted the fecundity of nature. In Magnesia on the Meeander there was a most stately temple of Artemis-Leucophryne {W7iiie-browed)\ in which was shown the tomb of a maiden named Leucophryne', who was probably regarded as bearing a relation to the goddess similar to that borne by Upis and Arge at Delos. Leucophryne was therefore no more than an epithet of Artemis, who had also a temple at Leucophrys on " Callim. Hymn to Delos, 292. >= Melanopos of Cyme ap. Pans. v. 7, 8. ° Hygin. 205. « Plut. de Fluv. xvi. 3. " See below, chap. xii. EileitkjiiB. ' Of Artemis-Callisto and Art.-Iphigeneia, or Oitliia, we shall treat in the Se- cond Part. « Herod, it. 103. Euiip. Iph. in Taiir. " Tacitus, Ann, iii. 62. ' Clem. Alex. Protrept. p. 20. Arnob. adv. Gcntcs, 6. AKTEMIS. 135 the coast SI ; and it becomes a question whether (like Artemis of Ephesus, with whom she must have been identical) she derived her appellation from that town, whose name probably corresponded with its situation on a chaJk chff; or whether it was expressive of her beauty. As however beauty was not an attribute of the Asiatic goddess, the former is more likely to be the true supposition^. No spot on earth is assigned as the birth-place of Artemis by Homer, in whose time, as we have more than once ob- served, that practice had not yet commenced ; but as he men- tions the island Ortygia as that in which she shot Orion", succeeding poets fabled that she was born there "i. This island was described by Homer as lying in the western sea, the scene of all wonders, and was probably as imaginary as Ogygia, that of Calypso ; but when at a later period the Greeks grew more familiar with those distant regions, zeal for the honour of the poet who had sung so well the wanderings of Odysseus, and the love of definiteness, led them to affix the names which he employs to various places really to be found, and the islet at the mouth of the port of Syracuse was determined to be the Ortygia of the Odyssey^. Artemis is generally represented as a healthy, strong, active maiden, — handsome, but with no gentleness of expression. She wears the Cretan hunting-shoes (eVS/ao^/Se?), and has her garment tucked up for speed. On her back she bears a quiver, and in her hand a bow or a hunting-spear. She is usually attended by a dog. At Troez^n there was a temple of Artemis-Lycaea, the erec- tion of which was ascribed to Hippolytos, but the guides could give Pausanias no account of the unusual title Lycaea^. An- other ambiguous name of this goddess was that of Tauropolos s. " Xen. Hell. iii. 2. 19 ; iv. 8. 17. " Buttmaim, Mytholog. ii. 133-135. « Od. v. 121. "■ Hymn to Delian Apollo, 16. Find. Neiu. i. 1-4. Orph. Hymn xxxv. 5. ° See below, chap. xix. Ortygia. f Paus. ii. 31, 4. " Soph. Ajax, 172. Eur. Iph. Taur. 1469. Aristoph. Lys. 447. the scholiast on which says, that according to Xenomedes it was sometimes given to Athena. Steer-driver seems to ns the most probable signification (see above, p. 60.). By some (among whom Euripides may perhaps be classed) it is held to relate to the worship of the goddess by the Taurians. 136 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. The chief titles given to Artemis by the poets were'*, 1. Arrow-joying; 2. Gold-bridled; 3. Gold-shafted; 4. Deer- flayer; 5. Beast-marking ; 6. Rushing; 7- Holy; 8. Horse- urger, etc. The name Artemis seems identical with apTefir)<;, integer, whole, uninjured, and therefore sound and pure, probably with reference" to the virginity of the goddess. Welcker regards it as an epithet of the same nature with Opis and Nemesis, and says that it is apt-^e/Mi;^. Mythologists are divided into two parties respecting the original nature of Leto and her children, the one regarding them as physical, the other as moral beings. Both however are agreed that the latter is their character in the Homeric and Hesiodic poetry, where, as we have seen, Apollo appears only as the god of prophecy, music and archery, and Artemis as his counterpart in this last office. Voss" therefore (with whom agree Wolf'^, Lobeck«, Hermann*, VolckerS, Nitzsch'' and Miiller',) maintains such to have been the original concep- tion of these deities, while Heyne^, Buttmann' and Welcker™, together with Creuzer and the whole body of the mystics, think that in the theocrasy of the ancients, by which Apollo and Artemis were identified with Helios and Selene, they were only restored to their original nature and character. We have more than once hinted our inclination to regard this last as the more correct hypothesis. We wiU now briefly state the principal arguments on both sides. In favour of the theory of Apollo and Artemis being sun " 1. lox^o.ipa : 2. xP^^VViOS : 3. xpuffj/Xajcaros : 4. eXct^j/jSoXos : 5. 6ijpO' uKOTTos: 6. KeXaSeivi) : l.ayvr): S.iirvoaoa. A number of others will be found in Aristophanes. " In Schwenk, 263. ° Myth. Br. ii. 385 ; iii. 53. seq. 1 On II. i. 43, 50. = Aglaoph. 79. ' Ueber das Wesen, etc. 106. seq. E Myth, der Jap. 306. " On Od. iii. 279. * Dorians, i. 309. seq. ^ On II. i. 50 ; and iv. 101. ' Mytholog. i. 1. " ApoUon und Artemis." ■" Tril. 41. 65. 222, ARTEMIS. 13? and moon, it Is alleged that they were early so considered. Thus we find the Persian general of Darius sparing the isle of Delos on their account, and making offerings to them evi- dently as gods of the two great luminaries (Mithras and Mitra in the Persian system) ". We also meet this view in Plato'' and Euripides" ; and in the Alexandrine period it was so prevalent, that Callimachus'l blames those who separate these deities from the sun and moon. This however might have been nothing more than the arbitrary procedure of priests and phi- losophers, and more sure grounds must be sought in the at- tributes and epithets of these deities anterior to the time of theocrasy. Apollo and Artemis then are brother and sister, the chil- dren of Zeus (that is the deity) and Leto, whose name, by a perfectly unstrained etymology, may be rendered Night ; and the origin of the sun and moon, and their affinity, could not be more appropriately described. Apollo is represented as full of manly vigour, with long unshorn locks, armed with a golden sword and a bow and quiver, from which he sends forth deadly arrows. These waving loclcs are a simple repre- sentation of the beams of the sun, who in the Psalms is de- scribed as 'a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoicing to run his race •' a golden sword is the weapon of Frej-r, the sun-god of Scandinavian mythology; and the arrows may weU express . the penetrating beams of the sun, or the coups de soleil and diseases caused by his action. For a similar reason arrows were given to the goddess of the moon^ The names Phcebos and Artemis, as above explained, agree perfectly with the sun and moon. Apollo being conceived armed with bow and arrows, was naturally held to be the god of archery ; and the sun, whose eye surveys everything, might » Herod, vi. 97. ' Laws, xii. 3. ■= Vx. Phaethon. 10. " Fr. 48. ' " A man subject to the rays of the moon and the night-damp air, after the burning heat of the day, was almost sure of a fever. The moon, both here (coast of Africa) and in the West Indies, is more powerful than the sun ; meat hung in the rays of the former becomes tainted sooner than if exposed to the latter." Chamier, Life of a Sailor, i. 270. See Plut. Sympos, iii. 10. The Spanish women (we have read) will expose themselves without fear to the rays of the sun, but they cover themselves up against those of the moon. 138 MTfTHOLOGY OF GREECE. be looked on as the most suitable revealer of the will of Zeus to men, and thence Apollo be the god of prophecy. The cheerfiilness which the appearance of the sun induces over all nature, vivified and refreshed by the repose of the night, and the songs of birds which precede or accompany his rising*, might easily cause the sun-god to be regarded as the god of music, though it is more likely that Apollo owes this character to the employment of the lyre in his worship. Artemis may in like manner have been regarded as the goddess of the chase from her being armed with arrows, or as the beasts of venery feed by night and sleep by day^, or as the moon-goddess was held to preside over the birth and grovrth of animated beings. Finally, the offering of ripe ears of com, the ' golden summer*, to ApoUo, and his being prayed to as the averter of mildew and the destroyer of mice and grasshoppers, are reasons for viewing him as a god of nature". Against all this it is alleged that these identifications were merely the work of the philosophers of the Ionic school, who sought to assimilate all the deities of the popular creed with material powers or the attributes of the universal intellect ; that the epithets and attributes of Apollo aU answer to a moral being of great purity, whUe the bow and arrows are a natural symbol of the god who sends death from afar ; that nothing can be concluded from his being a patron and protector of agriculture, as he is such as the averter of misfortune in ge- neral ; that in his religious character he is no god of nature, not being a deity of generation and production, but repre- sented as ever youthful and unmarried, the tales of his amours being all of a late age, and having no connexion with his wor- ship. Finally, great stress is laid on the fact of Apollo and Artemis being so totally distinct from the sun and moon in all the elder poetry*. " 'Qs rlniv ijde Xa/nrpov rjXtov v (Taffi. — Soph. Elect 17. ^ " Nemoribus quoque adesse dicitur (Diana) quod oumis venatio nocte pascator dieque dormlat." Fulgent, ii.- 19. Bludocia, 148. ■= Miiller, Dorians, i. 309. ■> Mullcr, Dorians, ut supra. Proleg. 262. See also Hermann ut sup. 110. seg. APHRODITE. 139 Chapter IX. DIONE :— APHRODITE, EROS. A.iMvrj. Dione. In the Ilias* Dione is a wife of Zeus, and mother of Aphro- dite. The name Dione also occurs among the Ocean-nymphs'*, the Nereides <= and the Hyades"!. At Dodona Dione shared in the honours and the worship of Zeus, being regarded as his queen^. Her name is apparently the feminine of his, and probably signified simply goddess^. 'A^poBiTrj. Venus. The Aphrodite of the IliasS is the daughter of Zeus and Dione, and by the Alexandrian and the Latin poets'* she is sometimes called by the same name as her mother. Hesiod' says she sprang from the foam (o^pos) of the sea, into which the mutilated part of Uranos had been thrown by his son Kronos. She first, he adds, approached the land at the island of Cythera, and thence proceeded to Cyprus, where grass grew beneath her feet, and Love and Desire attended her. One of the Homerids'^ sings, that the moist-blowing west- wind wafted her in soft foam along the waves of the sea, and that the gold-filleted Seasons received her on the shore of Cy- prus, clothed her in immortal garments, placed a golden wreath on her head, rings of orichalcum and gold in her pierced ears, and golden chains about her neck, and then led her to the as- = n. V. 370. k Hes. Th. 853. " ApoUod. i. 2. 6. ^ Pherecydes ap. Sch. II. xviii. 486. e Demosth. False Emb. 427 i Meidias 531 ; Eplst. 10. ' rrom Ais, Aios, as from the Doric Zdv, Zavu, from Jovis, Jovino, Juno. e II. V. 370. " Theocr. vii. 116. Bion. i. 93. Ovid, A. A. iii. 3. 769. Fasti, ii. 461. Stat. Silv. ii. 7. 2. Pervig. YeneTis passim. Servius (on JEn. iii. 466.) even calls Dione Venus. ' Theog. 188. seq. '^ Hymn vi. 140 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. sembly of the Immortals, every one of whom admired, saluted, and loved her, and each god desired her for his wife. Empedocles said that Aphrodite was the daughter of Kro- nos^. The husband assigned to this charming goddess is usually the lame artist Hephsestos. Her amour with Ares we have already narrated ; and Hermes, Dionysos, and Poseidon, it is said, could also boast of her favours. Among mortals, An- chises and Adonis are those whose amom-s with her are the most famous. The tale of her love-adventure with the former is noticed by Homer'', and it is most pleasingly told by a Ho- merid ; the following is an analysis of his hymn. Aphrodite had long exercised uncontrolled dominion over the dwellers of Olympos, uniting in cruel sport both males and females -with mortals. But Zeus resolved that she should no longer be exempt from the common lot. Accordingly he infused into her mind the desire of a union of love with mortal man. The object selected was Anchises, a beautiful youth of the royal house of Troy, who was at that time with the herds- men feeding oxen among the lulls and valleys of Ida. The moment Aphrodite beheld him she was seized with love. She immediately hastened to her temple in Cyprus, where the Graces dressed and adorned her, and then in the full consciousness of beauty she proceeded through the air. When she came to Ida, she advanced toward the stalls, and was accompanied on her way by all the vdld beasts of the mountains, whose breasts the exulting goddess fiUed with love and desire. Anchises happened to be alone in the cotes at this time, and was amusing his leisure by playing on the lyre. When he beheld the goddess, who had divested herself of the usual marks of divinity, he was amazed at her beauty and the splendour of her attu-e. He could not avoid regarding her as something more than human ; he accosts her as one of the Immortals, vows an altar to her, and beseeches her to grant him a long and a happy life. But Aphrodite denies her " See above, p. 69. i' II. v. 247. 313. APHRODITE. 141 heavenly origin, and feigns that she is a mortal maid and daughter to Otreus king of Phrygia, adding, that while she •was dancing, in honour of Artemis, with the nymphs and other maidens, and a great crowd was standing around, Hermes had snatched her away, and carried her through the air over hills and dales and plains, till he had brought her to Ida, where he informed her that she was to be the wife of An- chises ; and then, having instructed her in what she was to do, had departed, leaving her alone in the mountains. She earnestly entreats the Trojan youth to conduct her unsullied to his family, and to dispatch a messenger to her father to treat of the marriage and the dower. But while thus speaking, the artfiil goddess filled the heart of the youth with love. Believing her now to be mortal, all his veneration vanishes, and he declares that not even Apollo should prevent his taking advantage of the favourable mo- ment. He seized the hand of the goddess, and 'led her blushing like the morn' into the rustic shed. When evening approached, and the arrival of the herdsmen with the sheep and oxen was at hand, the goddess poured a profound sleep over Anchises. She arose from the skin- strewn couch, and prepared to depart. Resuming the marks of divinity, the brilliant eyes and rosy neck, she stood at the door and called to her slumbering lover to awake and observe the change. Filled with awe, he conceals his face in the clothes and sues for mercy ; but the goddess reassures him, and informs him that she will bear a son, whom she will com- mit to the mountain-nymphs to rear, and will bring to him when in his fifth year. He is then to feign that the child ia' the offspring of one of the nymphs; but the secret of the goddess is to remain inviolate, under pain of his being struck with lightning by Zeus. So saying, unto breezy Heaven she sped. Hail, goddess, who o'er well-dwelt Cyprus rulest ! But I will pass from thee to another hymn, — concludes the poet, according to the regular practice of his brethren. Myrrha, the daughter of Cinyras, having offended Aphro- 142 MYTHOLOGY OF GKEECE. dite% was by her inspired with a passion for her own father. After a long struggle against it, she gratified it by the aid of her nurse, unknown to its object''. When Cinyras found what he had unwittingly done, he pursued his daughter with his drawn sword, to efface her crime in her blood. He had nearly overtaken her, when she prayed to the gods to make her in- visible, and they in pity changed her into a myrrh-tree. In ten months afterwards the tree opened, and the young Adonis came to light. Aphrodite, delighted with his beauty, put him into a coffer, unknown to all the gods, and gave him lb Per- sephone to keep. But as soon as she beheld him, the god- dess of the under-world reftised to part with him ; and the matter being referred to Zeus, he decreed that Adonis should have one third of the year to himself, be another third with Aphrodite, and the remaining third with Persephone. Adonis gave his own portion to Aphrodite, and lived happily with her; till having offended Artemis, he was torn by a vdld boar" and died*. The ground where his blood fell was sprinkled with nectar by the mourning goddess, and the flower called the anemone or wind-flower sprang up from it, which by its cadu- city expresses the brief period of the life of the beautiful son of Myrrha®. The rose also derived its present hue from this fatal event ; for as the distracted goddess ran barefoot through the woods and lawns to the aid of her lover, the thorns of the rose-briars tore her delicate skin, and their flowers were thenceforth tinged- with red^. Other accounts, however, say " By asserting that her hair was more beautiful than that of the goddess. Sch. Theocr. 1. 109. '' Hesiod (ap. Apollod. iii. 14.) said that Adonis was the son of Phoenix and Alphesihoea. It is uncertain whether he made the latter daughter of the former or not. Panyasis {Id. ih.) made him the offspring of Theias, king of Assyria, by his own daughter Smyrna. ° Ares, out of jealousy, took it is said the form of a boar for the purpose of killing him. Sch. Theocr. iii. 47. Eudocia,24. Tzetz. Lye. 831. Npnnus, xxix. 135 ; xU. 210. ■" Apollod. ut supra. Ovid, Met. x. 298. et seq. Eudocia and Tzetzes, ut supra. Anton. Liberal. 34. Bion. i. ' Nicander ap. Sch. Theocr. v. 92. Ovid. lb. 731. Others said that the ane- mone, which was white before, was turned red by the blood of Adonis. Eudocia and Tzetzes, ut supra. f Eudocia and Tzetzes, nf supra. APHHODITE. 143 that the goddess changed Adonis himself into this fragrant flower*. The tale of Adonis is evidently an Eastern mythe. His own name and those of his parents refer to that part of the world''. He appears to be the same with the Thammuz men- tioned by the prophet Ezekiel, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate. While smooth Adonis from his native rock Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood Of Thammuz yearly wounded; and to be a Phoenician personification of the sun^ who dming a part of the year is absent, or as the legend expresses it, with the goddess of the under-world ; during the remainder with Astarte, the regent of heaven. A festival in honour of Adonis was annually celebrated at Byblos by the Phoenician Women during two days ; the first of which was spent in grief and lamentation, the second in joy and triumph. In Greece^ whither these rites were transplanted, the festival was pro- longed to eight days. It is uncertain when the Adoneia Avere first celebrated in that country; but we find Plato'' alluding to the Gardens of Adonis, as pots and boxes of flowers used in them were called, and the ill fortune of the Athenian ex- pedition to Sicily was in part ascribed to the circumstance of the fleet having sailed during that festival*. The Idyll of Theo- critus called the Adoniazusas describes in admirable dramatic style the magnificence mth which the feast of Adonis was celebrated in the Graeco-^gyptic city of Alexandria. This notion of the mourning for Adonis being a testimony ° Serv. Buc. x. 18. Bion (i. 65.) ascribes the origin of the rose to the blood, that of the anemone to the tears of the goddess: AT/ta poSov TiKTei, rd. dk Saicpva tuv dvefidvav. For a less elegant Mohammedan legend of the origin of the rose, see above, p. 8. ^ Adonis is the Semitic in« (JdSn) Lord. Cinyras comes from -1133 (Kinnor), the Greek Kivipa, whence KivvpiZiii, to lament, as in the Irish keening. Myrrha is "na {M6r) Myrrh. " Phaedrus. Spenser, who treats the Grecian mythology in the most arbitrary manner, gives, in the Faerie Quene, a peculiar view of the gardens of Adonis. See also Milton, Comus, 992, seq. The Italian poet Marini has made AdoUs the hero of a long poem. '' Pint. Nicias, 13. 144 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. of grief for the absence of the sun dirring the winter, is not, however, to be too readily acquiesced in. Lobeck^ for ex- ample asks, with some appearance of reason, why those na- tions whose heaven was mildest, and their winter shortest, should so bitterly bewail the regular changes of the seasons, as to feign that the gods themselves were carried off or slain; and he shrewdly observes, that in that case the mournful and the joyful parts of the festival should have been held at dif- ferent times of the year, and not joined together as they were. He further inquires, whether the ancient nations, who esteemed their gods to be so little superior to men, may not have be- lieved them to have been really and not metaphorically put to death. And in truth it is not easy to give a satisfactory answer to these questions. According to Homer, Aphrodite had an embroidered girdle (*;es eTriTeWerai, rivixa irep yi) "AvOeaiv elapivois GaXKei de^ofievt). — Theogais, 1275. See Plut. tit mpra, for another explication of this fiction. ' Theocr. vii. 96. Bion. i. passim. Hot. Cami. i. 19. 1. EROS. 147 for them one of Penteliean marble of rare beauty^. Erds also had altars at Athens and elsewhere. The poetic epithets of this deity were'', 1. Gold-haired; 2. Gold-winged ; 3. Sweet-minded. The god of love was usually represented as a plump-cheeked boy, rosy and naked, with light hair floating on his shoulders. He is always winged, and armed with a bow and arrows". There was a being named Anter6s {avrl epco> 1. y^pvaoKOfitis ; 2. ;;(p«(ro7rr«pos ; 3. yXysiBv/ios. " Nonnus (vii. 194.) seems to represent his an'ows as tipt with flowers. The arrows of Cama, the Hindoo Eros, are thus pointed, ■i Paus. i. 30. 1. Plut. Amat. 20. = Plato, Phsedr. 255. Paus. vi. 23. 4. L 2 148 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. who was just then standing at the brink of the fount of Eros, touched the water, and murmured a few words over it. Im- mediately there rose from the bottom a little boy of a fair com- plexion and moderate size : his hair, of a rich golden hue, hung down his Ijack, which was bright and clean as that of a per- son who had just bathed. All present were in amazement : the philosopher then leading them to the other spring did as he had done before ; and instantly another Love, similar to the first, except that his hair was of a bright dark hue, rose to light. The two embraced, and clung round the philoso- pher as if he had been their father ; and after caressing them for some time, he restored them to their native element. His companions, who had been previously disposed to regard him as an impostor, convinced by this wonder, henceforth received his words as those of a divinity. The adventures of Eros are not numerous. Some pretty Httle trifles respecting him will be found in the bucolic poets, and his adventure with Apollo has been already noticed. The most celebrated is that contained in the agreeable tale of his love for Psyche {■^v)(r], the «omZ), preserved by Apuleius in his Metamorphoses, and which we wiU here give in an abridged form. There were one time a king and a queen who had three daughters, of whom the youngest named Psyche was one of the loveliest creatm"es earth ever beheld. People crowded from all parts to gaze upon her charms, altars were erected to her, and she was worshiped as a second Venus. The queen of beauty was irritated on seeing her own altars neglected, and her adorers diminishing. She summoned her son ; and conducting him to the city 'w^here Psyche dwelt, showed him the lovely maid, and ordered him to inspire her with a pas- sion for some vile and abject wretch. The goddess departed, leaving her son to execute her mandate. Meantime Psyche, though adored by all, was sought as a wife by none. Her sisters, who were far inferior to her in charms, were married, and she remained single, hating that beauty which all ad- mired. Her father consulted the oracle of Apollo, and was ordered EROS. 149 to expose her on a rock, whence she would be carried away by a monster, the terror of heaven, earth, and hell. The oracle was obeyed, and Psyche amidst the tears of the people placed on a lofty rock. Here, while she sat weeping, a zephyr sent for the purpose gently raised and carried her to a charm- ing valley. Overcome by grief she falls asleep, and on awa- king beholds a grove with a fountain in the midst of it, and near it a stately palace of most splendid structure. She ven- tures to enter this palace, goes over it lost in admiration at its magnificence; when suddenly she hears a voice, telling her that all there is hers, and all her commands will be obeyed. She bathes, sits down to a rich repast, and is regaled with music by invisible performers. At night she retires to bed ; an unseen youth addresses her in the softest accents, and she becomes his wife. Her sisters had meanwhile come to console their parents for the loss of Psyche, whose invisible spouse informs her of this event, and warns her of the danger likely to arise from it. Moved by the tears of his bride, he however consents that her sisters should come to the palace. The obedient zephyr con- veys them thither. They grow envious of Psyche's happiness, and try to persuade her that her invisible lord is a serpent, who will finally devour her. By their advice she provides herself with a lamp and a razor to destroy the monster. When her husband was asleep she arose, took her lamp from its place of concealment, and approached the couch ; but there she beheld, instead of a dragon. Love himself. Filled with amazement at his beauty, she leaned in rapture over his charms : a drop of oil fell from the lamp on the shoxilder of the god : he awoke, and flew away. Psyche caught his leg as he rose, and was raised into the air, but fell ; and as she lay, the god reproached her from a cypress for her breach of faith. The abandoned Psyche attempted to drown herself in the neighboiuing stream ; but, fearing Love, it cast her upon a bank of flowers, where she was found and consoled by the god Pan. She now goes through the world in search of Cupid: she arrives at the kingdoin of her sisters ; and, by a false tale of Cupid's love for them, causes them to cast themselves from 150 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. the rock on which she had been exposed, and through their credulity they perish. She still roams on, persecuted and sub- jected to numerous trials by Venus. Pitied but imaided by the higher goddesses Ceres and Juno, the plants and the ani- mals, the reed, the owl, and the eagle give her their advice and assistance. Venus, bent on her destruction, dispatches her to Proserpina with a box to request some of her beauty. Psyche, dismayed at the peril of the journey to the lower re- gions, ascends a tower, determined to cast herself from it and end her woes ; but the tower pities her, and instructs her how to proceed. She accomphshes her mission in safety. As she is returning, she thinks she may venture to open the box and take a portion for herself, that she may be the more pleasing to her husband. She opens the box, when instead of beauty there issues from it a dense black exhalation, and the impru- dent Psyche falls to the ground in a deep slumber from its effects. In this state she is found by Cupid, who had escaped by the window of the chamber where he had been confined by his mother : he awakens her with the point of one of his arrows, reproaches her with her curiosity, and then proceeds to the palace of Jupiter to interest him in her favour. Jupiter takes pity on her, and endows her with immortahty : Venus is reconciled, and her marriage with Cupid takes place. The Hoiu's shed roses through the sky, the Graces sprinkle the halls of Heaven with fragrant odours, Apollo plays on his lyre, the Arcadian god on his reeds, the Muses sing in chorus, while Venus dances with grace and elegance to celebrate the nuptials of her son. Thus Cupid was at length reunited to his long-lost Psyche, and their loves were speedily crowned by the birth of a child, whom his parents named Pleasure*. This beautiful fiction is perhaps a philosophic allegory, intended by its inventor for a representation of the mystic union between the divine love and the human soul, and of the trials and purifications which the latter must undei^o, in order to be perfectly fitted for an enduring vmion with the ° And from her fair unspotted side Two blissful twins are to be born, Youth and Joy ; so Jove hath sworn. — Comm, 1009. EROS. 151 divinity. It is thus explained by the Christian mythologist Fulgentius ^. " The city in which Psyche dwells is the world ; the king and queen are God and matter ; Psyche is the soul; her sisters are the flesh and the free-will: she is the youngest, because the body is before the mind; and she is the fairestj because the soul is higher than free-will, more noble than the body. Venus, i. e. lust, envies her, and sends Cupido, i. a. desire, to destroy her; but as there is desire of good as well as of evil, Cupid falls in love with her : he per- suades her not to see his face, that is, not to learn the joys of desire ; just as Adam, though he could see, did not see that he was naked until he had eaten of the tree of desire. At the impulsion of her sisters she put the lamp from under the bushel, that is, revealed the flame of desire which was hidden in her bosom, and loved it when she saw how delightful it was ; and she is said to have burned, it by the dripping of the lamp, because aU desire burns in proportion as it is loved, and fixes its sinful mark on the flesh. She is therefore de- prived of desire and her splendid fortune, is exposed to perils, and driven out of the palace." This fanciful exposition wiU probably not prove satisfactory to many readers. The following one of a modern writer'' may seem to come nearer the truth. " This fable, it is said, is a representation of the destiny of the human soul. The soul, which is of divine origin, is here below subjected to error in its prison the body. Hence trials and purifications are set before it, that it may become capable of a higher view of things, and of true desire. Two loves meet it, — ^the earthly, a deceiver who draws it down to earthly things ; the heavenly, who directs its view to the original, fair and divine, and who gaining the victory over his rival, leads off the soul as his bride." According to a third expositor" the mythe is a moral one. It is intended to represent the dangers to which nuptial fide- lity was exposed in such a country as degenerate Greece, and at the same time to present an image of a fidelity subjected to numerous temptations and victorious over them all. " Mythologicon, iii. 6. '' Hirt. ap. Creuzer, Symbolik, iii. 573. " Thorlacius, ap. eiindem, ib. 152 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. The interpretation of an allegory is always hazardous : for fancy presided over its birth, and fancy must always have a large share in the attempts made to develope its secret and real nature. AU, therefore, we should ever hope to arrive at is a view of the general sense and meaning. In truth many a tale seems to be allegorical which was never meant to be so by its author, and many a tale is allegorical in which the vulgar discern nothing but amusing narrative. The story of Cupid and Psyche may after all have been, as some think, nothing more than a Milesian tale like that of the Matron of Ephesus*. We, however, rather incline to the opinion of its having been originally a philosophic allegory. Ere we quit this subject we must observe, that a Greek name for the moth was Psyche {' See also II. v. 61 ; xv. 412. e II. v. 735 5 xiv. 178. ' ApoU. Bh. i. 721. s Od. XX. 72. h jjes. Th. 573. ' Horn. Hymn, xx. ' 11. v. 733. PALLAS-ATHENE. 155 But Athenjee, child of Zeus supreme. The aegis-holder, on her father's floor Let fall her peplus various, which she Herself had wrought, and laboured with her hands. The tunic then of cloud-collecting Zeus She on her put, and clad herself in arms For tearful war ; and round her shoulders cast The fringed aegis dire, which all about Was compassed with fear. In it was Strife, In it was Strength, and in it chill Pursuit ; In it the Gorgon-head, the portent dire, — Dire and terrific, the great prodigy Of aegis-Holding Zeus. Upon her head She placed the four-coned helmet formed of gold. Fitting the foot-men of a hundred towns. The flaming car she mounted, seized the spear. Great, heavy, solid, wherewith the strong-sired Maiden the ranks of heroes vanquisheth. With whom she is wroth. A Mseonian maid named Arachne, proud of her skill in weaving and embroidery, in which arts the goddess had in- structed her, ventured to deny her obligation, and challenged her patroness to a trial of skill. Athena, assuming the form of an old woman, warned her to desist from her boasting; and when she found her admonitions were vain, she resumed her proper form and accepted the challenge. The skiU of Arachne was such, and the subject she chose (the love-transformations of the gods) so offensive to Athena, that she struck her several times in the forehead with the shuttle. The high-spirited maid unable to endure this aflfront hung herself, and the god- dess relenting changed her into a spider {apdyvrf) *. The invention of the flute or pipe {avko<;) is also ascribed to this goddess. When Perseus, says Pindar'', had slain Me- dusa, her two remaining sisters bitterly lamented her death. The snakes which formed their ringlets mourned in concert " Ovid, Met. vi. 1. seq., — the name as usual giving origin to the fable. We know not what Greek authority Ovid followed in this legend, probably Nicander. Virgil alludes to it, aut invisa Minervae Laxos in foribiis suspendit aranea casses. — Gear. iv. 24fi. See Servius and Probus in loc. ^ Pyth. xii. 15. seq. cum Schol. Nonnus, xxiv. 37 ; xl. 227. seq. 156 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. with them, and Athena hearing the sound was pleased with it, and resolved to imitate it: she in consequence invented the pipe, whose music was named many-headed (TroXv/ee^aXo?), on account of the number of the serpents whose lugubrious hissing had given origin to it. Others* say the goddess formed the pipe from the bone of a stag, and bringing it with her to the banquet of the gods began to play on it. Being laughed at by Hera and Aphrodite, on account of her green eyes and her swollen cheeks, she went to a fountain on Mount Ida, and played before the liquid mirror. Satisfied that the goddesses had had reason for their mirth, she threw her pipe away : Marsyas unfortimately found it, and learning to play on it, ventured to become the rival of Apollo. His fate has been already related. The favourite plant of Athena was the olive, to which she . had given origin. Among animals the owl and the serpent were sacred to her. Athena was most honoured in Athens, the city to which she gave name, where the splendid festivals of the Panathenaea were celebrated in her honour. She had also temples at Thebes, Argos, Sparta, and elsewhere. At Tegea she was worshiped under the title of Alea. She con- tended, as we have seen, with Poseidon for Athens and Troezen, and, according to one account, for Argos. This goddess is represented with a serious thoughtful coun- tenance, her eyes are large and steady, her hair hangs in ring- lets on her shoulders, a helmet covers her head; she wears a long tunic and mantle, she bears the aegis on her breast or on her arm, and the head of the Gorgon is on its centre. She often has bracelets and ear-rings, but her general air is that of a young man in female attire. Pallas- Athene was called by the poets'", 1. Blue- or rather Green-eyed; 2. Town-destroying; 3. Tovm-protecting; A.Plun- dering ; 5. Unvjearied or Invincible ; G. People-rouser, he. We are now to inquire into the signification of the name of this goddess and her original natiu-e. " Hyginus, Fab. 165. '" 1. yXauKu/jTis : 2. TroXiwopOos ; 3. ?ro\iovxos, epvtsiirToKit : i. dyeXeia: 5. (xTpvTiiivti ; 6. \ao(7ffdos. PALLAS-ATIIENE. 157 The simplest and most natural interpretation of Pallas Athensee appears to be ' Athenian Maid/ and she thus forms a pajrallel to the 'Eleusinian Maid' {Kopa), Persephone". As this is her constant title in Homer, it is manifest that she had long been regarded as the tutelar deity of Athens. We may therefore safely reject the legends of her being the same ynth. the Neith of Sais in Egypt, or a war-goddess imported from the banks of the lake Tritonis in Libya, and view in her one of the deities worshiped by the agricultural Pelasgians, and therefore probably one of the powers engaged in causing the productiveness of the earth. Her being represented in the poetic creed as the goddess of arts and war alone, need not cause us any hesitation, as that transition from physical to moral agents, of Avhich we shall presently give an explanation, was by no means uncommon. The most probable theory, in our opinion, is that which views in Pallas-Athene the temperate celestial heat and its principal agent on vegetation, the moon''. This idea was not tmknown to the ancients ; Athena is by Aristotle expressly called the moon" ; on the coins of Attica, anterior to the time of Pericles, there was a moon along with the owl and olive- branch''; there was a torch-race {'Ka/j,'7raSotf>opia) at the Pan- athenaea, a contest with which none but light-bearing deities were honoured^; at the festival of the Skirophoria the priest of the Sun and the priestess of Athena went together in pro- cession^; a title of Athena was All-dew (Pandrosos) s ; in the ancient legend of Athens there was a Sacred Marriage be- tween Athena and Hephaestos'', in whose temple stood a statue of the goddess' ; she was also said to have given fire to the Athenians'^; perpetual flame was maintained in her temples at Athens and Alalcomense'. It could hardly have been from = MiiUer, Proleg. 244. See also Eudoeia, 4. Schwenk, 230. Welcker, Tril. 282. IlaWds is the same as irdWa^, originally maid. There was a temple of Athena Koria near Cleitor in Arcadia. Pans. viii. 21. 4. " Miiller, Minerva PoUas, 5. Proleg. 213. Welcker, Tril. 277. seq. ' Amob. iii. 31. " Eckliel, D. N. ii. p. 163. 209. ' As Hephsestos, Prometheus, etc. See Miiller, Min. Pol. ut supra. f Sch. Aristoph. Eccles. 18. ^ Id. Lys. 439. ■i See below, Part II. c. v. Erichthonios. '' Pans. i. 14. 5. " Plut. Cim. 10. ' Paus. i. 26. 7 ; ix. 34. 1. 158 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. any other cause than that of her being regarded as the moon, that the nocturnal owl, whose broad full eyes shine so brightly in the dark, was consecrated to her ; the shield or corselet with the Gorgon's head on it seems to represent the fiill-orbed moon ; and finally the epithet Glaucopis, which is as it were appropriated to Athena, is also given to Selene*. To these proofs respecting the Athenian goddess we may add that at Tegea Athena was called Alea, that is probably Warmer^. At Sparta she was named Ophthalmitis or Eyed, and at Argos Sharp-sighted'^. If this theory be correct, the best explanation of the per- plexing epithet Tritogeneia would seem to be that which derives it from the three phases of the moon. There are two other interpretations of this name which have had more ge- neral currency. The one supposes it to signify Head-Sprung, as the word rpiTot is said to have signified Head in some of the obscurer dialects of Greece "*. But accounts like this are very suspicious, and the later Greeks would have made httle scruple about coining a term if they wanted it to suit any purpose. The other interpretation, which makes the banks of the river or lake Triton the birth-place of Athena, has found a greater number of supporters ; but as so many coun- tries sought to appropriate the Triton to themselves*, the choice among them might seem difficult. The contest, how- ever, has lain between the river or lake Triton in Libya and a small stream of the same name in Boeotia. The ancients in general were in favour of the former ; but as there is no reason to suppose that the Greeks knew anything of the Libyan Trit6n in the days of Homer, or probably tiU after the colony had been settled at Cyrene, this theory seems to have httle in its favour. MiiUer^ therefore at once rejects it, and fixes on the banks of the Boeotian brook as the natal spot of the god- ° See above, p. 62. and Appendix, C. >■ Pans. viii. 4, 3 ; 9. 3. <= /A i. 26. 7 ; ix. 34. 1. " That of the Athamanes, according to Nicander of Colophon, Hesych. s. v. Etpa. Mag. and Fhotius, s. v. ; that of the Cretans, Eustath. on 11. iv. p. 524. viii. p. 696. Od. iii. p. 1473 ; that of the Bceotians, Tzetz. Lye. 519. ° There were Tritons in Boeotia, Thessaly (Sch. ApoU. Rh. i. 109.), Arcadia (Pans, viii. 26. 6.), Crete (Diodor. v. 72.), Thrace (Interp. to Vib. Sequester, p. 285.). f Orchom. 355. PALLAS-ATHENE. 159 dess. Here, however, again Homer presents a difficulty, for, as we have already observed, the practice of assigning birth- places on earth to the gods does not seem to have prevailed in his age. Indeed we strongly suspect that the streamlet that flowed by Alalcomense got its name in the same manner as the hill Delos at Tegyra, and the grove Ortygia at Ephesus^. The moon-goddess of the Athenians probably came by her moral and political character in the following manner. It was the practice of the difierent classes and orders in a state to appropriate the general tutelar deity to themselves by some suitable appellation. The Attic peasantry, therefore, named Athena the Ox-yoker (BouSe^a), the citizens called her Worker (FipydvTj), while the military class styled her Front-fighter (Upofiaxo'i). As these last were the ruling order, their view of the character of the goddess became the prevalent one'' ; yet even in the epic poetry we find the idea of the goddess presiding over the arts still retained. Some of the ancients regarded Athena as the air", others as the earth*. There are some mythes which can be ex- plained with so much more ease on this last hypothesis, that we think it not improbable that the Pelasgian goddess of Argos and other places, who had been identified with the Athenian Maid, may have originally been the same with Hera and Demeter^. '^pfieia's, 'Epfirj^, 'Epfidtov. Mercurius. Hermeias (as Homer and Hesiod always name this god^,) is in one place of the Ilias called the son of ZeusS, but his mother is unnoticed. When, in the same poem, Dione is consoling her wounded daughter'^, she reminds her how others of the Celestials had suffered similar calamities inflicted by " See below, chap, xv., Jrtemis of Rhesus. "> See Miiller, Min. Pol. p. 1. " Dlodor. i. 12. Tzetz. Lye. 519. ■> Heraclid. Alleg. Horn. p. 444. Vblcker, Myth, der Jap. 191. ' For Athena Hlppia and Gorge, see below. Part II. Bellerophontes and Perseus. ' Wherever the form 'Ep^ris occurs, the passage may be regarded as an inter- polation. s II. xxiv. 333. " II. V. 390. 160 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. mortals. Thus Ares, she says, was once shut up in a brazen prison by Otos and Ephialtes, where he languished till Her- meias, being informed of his state, contrived to steal him out of his dungeon. Elsewhere the poet tells us that of all the Trojans Hermeias most loved Phorbas (Feeder), rich in sheep, and bestowed on him wealth {Krrja-iv) * ; and that Eudoros {Wealthy or Munificent) was the son of Hermeias by Polymela {Sheep-full), the daughter of Phylas {Keeper^). Hermeias is opposed in the battle of the gods to Leto, but declines the combat on the plea of the impolicy of making an enemy of one of the consorts of Zeus ; at the same time cour- tier-like telling her that, if she pleases, she may boast of having vanquished him by main strength". When the corse of Hector was exposed by Achilleus, the gods, pitying the fate of the hero, urged Hermeias to steal it away. On king Priamos' setting forth to ransom the body of his son, Zeus desires Hermeias to accompany him, reminding him of his fondness for associating with mankind*. The god obeys his sire, puts on his ' immortal golden sandals, which bear him over the water and the extensive earth like the blasts of the wind,' and takes ' his rod, with which he lays asleep the eyes of what men he will, and wakes again the sleepers.' He accompanies the aged monarch in the form of a Grecian youth, telling him that he is the son of a M^ealthy man named Polyct6r [Much- In the Odyssey Hermeias takes the place of Iris, who does not appear at all in this poem, and becomes the messenger of Zeus. He still retains his character of a friend to man, and comes unsent to point out to Odysseus the herb Moly, which wiU enable him to escape the enchantments of Circe «. Eu- mseos the swine-herd makes an offering to Hermes and the nymphs^. At the commencement of the spurious twenty- fourth book, Hermeias appears in his character of conveyer of souls to the realms of Hades. » II. xiv. 490. ^ II. xiv. 180. Perhaps Phylas, like 0iiU^s, ^iiWoi/, comes from 0ww. ° 11- XX. 35 ; xxi. 498. Sch. II. A. 267. ' Find. Pyth. iv. 318. Apoll. Eh. 1. 51. sen. ■> Sch. Eur. Orest. 995. ' Diodor. iv. 84. Parthenius, Erot. 24, — ^both from Timseus. ' Ovid, Met. u. 708. seq. Apollod. iii. 14. Hyginus (160.) says that Cephalos was the son of Hermes by Creusa, the daughter of Erechtheus. HEBMKS. 1G5 and whose adventure with the Nai's Salmacis is narrated by Ovid in his Metamorphoses ^ Hermes is in some legends said to be the father of the Arcadian god Pan^, and he is even charged with being the sire of the unseemly god of Lampsacus*. Both were rural deities. At Tanagra in Boeotia Hermes was worshiped under the names of Ram-bearer (Kpio Buttmann (Lexil. i. v.) makes diaKTopos to be from the same root with Sia- Kovos, and identical in signification, i. e. messenger. Miiller (Proleg. 355.) consi- ders it too dubious a term to admit of any positive conclusion being drawn &om it. • TifiMaiasdypOTVpi Kovptfi. — Eurip. £lec. 466. ' Hence he was called vdfiios (Aristoph. Thes. 977. e^opos yctp rStv Bpeiifiaruv o Beds says the Scholiast) ; and he was worshiped at Coroneia under the title of e-miiiiiXios (Pans. ix. 34, 3.). HERMES. 167 So also, trade having of old consisted chiefly in the exchange of cattle, Hermes, the herdsman's god, was held to be the god of commerce*; and the skill and eloquence employed in commercial dealings made him to be the god of eloquence, artifice, and ingenuity, and even of cheating''. As herdsmen are the best guides in the country, it may be thence that Hermes was thought to protect wayfarers", and thence to be a protector in general*. For this cause, among others, it may have been that godsends or treasure-trove were ascribed to him^. The rural deity, when thus become active, sly, and eloquent, was well adapted for the office which was assigned him of agent and messenger of the king of the gods, to whom we also find him officiating as cup-bearer^. As a being whose operations extended into the interior of the earth, Hermes woxild seem to have been in some points of view identified with Hades. In Pindars this latter deity himself performs the office generally assigned to Hermes, that of conducting the departed to Erebos. Possibly it may have been on this ac- count that Solon directed the Athenians to swear by Zeus, Poseid6n, and Hermes. On looking over the adventures of Hermes above related, it will appear that most of them refer to his character as a rural deity''. Such are his patronage of Phorbas, and his being the sire of Eudoros in Homer ; the hymn in his honoui-, which plainly represents him as a I'ural deity' ; his being the sire of ^ This is the only point of similarity between the Grecian Hermes and the Italian Mercurius. ^ Hence probably his epithet SoXios. Aristoph. Plut. 1158. Thes. 1202. Pans, vii. 27, 1. As the giver of gain he was called /cepSwos. Luc. Tim. 41. Eudocia, p. 256. "^ 'Epfiiis Tro/iTraios. IIo/iTralos ia9e rovSe voijialvMv efibv 'lieertiv. — jEsch. Eum. 91. where we may observe the allusion to the rural character of the god. ■• He is said to have been called arpoipaios (Et. Mag. s. v.), from the turning (arpof^) of the door on its hinges, as his statue was placed at the door. ' What was thus found was called epptaiov. When Lucian's Timon comes on the treasure he cries out 'Epfin KepSde. f See above, p. 111. ^ 01. ix. 50. seq. See above, p. 94. » MUUer, Proleg. 355. ■ See w. 491, 567. 168 MYTHOLOGY OF GREKCE. the cattle-stealer Autolycos {Very-wolf) by Chione [Smw]', of the two heroes ' rich in corn-fields^ ; and of the shepherd Daphnis, and the gods Pan and Priapos. The rural character of Herse and Aglauros will be shown in the sequel. We shall also find that it was Hermes who gave to Nephele the gold- fleeced ram to save her children from their malignant step- mother^ In the poems of the Greek Anthology Hermes is usually represented as a rural deity. In one place'' the of- fering to him is milk and honey; in other parts of it" fisher- men when grown old dedicate their implements to Hermes, either as the god of arts and trade, or as the deity presiding over increase in general. We will now consider the well-known epithet Argeiphontes, or Argos-slayer, given to this god. The general opinion de- rives it from the legend of lo, but it has been doubted if that adventure was known to Homer, who calls the deity by this name in passages the genuineness of which cannot well be disputed*. The sense of that legend shall be discussed in its proper place ; here we will only observe, that if it should ap- pear to be as old as the age of Homer, there can be no further dispute about the origin of the epithet, though its meaning will still remain a subject of inquiry. Supposing however such not to be the case, it may be asked how the nu-al deity, the field-god, came by the appellation Argeiphontes? The word Argos bears in Greek the following senses : 1. White or Shining ; 2. Swift (in speaking of dogs, and thence the name of a dog) ; 3. Idle ; to which we may venture to add, 4. Land, as identical with wypo mentioned", and she does not appear among the gods on Olym- pos. She seems to have been early distinguished from the goddess called Earth "^j and to have been regarded as the pro- tectress of the growing corn and of agriculture in general. The most celebrated event in the history of Demeter is the carrying off of her daughter Persephone by Hades, and the search of the goddess after her through the world. It is no- ticed by Hesiod^ ; but the Homeridian hymn in her honour contains perhaps 'the earliest narrative of this event, which, though apparently unknown to Homer, became a favourite theme with succeeding poets, after whom Ovid has related it^, and Claudian has sung it in a peculiar poem, of which unfor- tunately a part is lost. Persephone, sang the Homerid, was in the Nysian plain ' Hes. Th. 454. 912. '' The Scythians said Earth was the wife of their Zeus. Herod, iv. 59. " II. V. 500. ' hlond Demeter' is represented as presiding over the winnowing of corn. In Od. v. 125. her amour with lasion is related, ■i Gsea is joined with Zeus and Helios as a person. H. iii. 104. 278. Officium commune Ceres et Terra tuentur ; Hsec prschet causam frugibus, ilia locum. — Ovid, Fasti i. 6?3. ' Theog. 914. ' Met. v. 341. seq. Fasti iv. 417- scq. DEMETEB. PERSEPHONE. l7l with the Ocean-nymphs" gathering flowers. She plucked the rose, the violet, the crocus, the hyacinth, when she beheld a narcissus of sxuprising size and beauty, an object of amaze- ment to ' all immortal gods and mortal men,' for one hundred flowers grew from one root'' ; And with its fragrant smell wide heaven above And all earth laughed, and the sea's briny flood. Unconscious of danger the maiden stretched forth her hand to seize the wondrous flower, when suddenly the wide earth gaped, Aidoneus in his golden chariot rose, and catching the terrified goddess carried her off in it shrieking to her father for aid, unheard and imseen by gods or mortals, save only by Hecate the daughter of Persaeos, who heard her as she sat in her cave, and by king Helios, whose eye nothing on earth es- capes. So long as the goddess beheld the earth and starry heaven, the fishy sea and beams of the sun, so long she hoped to see her mother and the tribes of the gods ; and the tops of the mountains and the depths of the sea resounded with her di- vine voice. At length her mother heard ; she tore her head- attire with grief, cast a dark robe around her, and like a bird hurried ' over moist and dry.' Of all she inquired tidings of her lost daughter, but neither gods nor men nor birds could give her intelhgence. Nine days she wandered over the earth, with flaming torches in her hands, she tasted not of nectar or ambrosia, and never once entered the bath. On the tenth morning Hecate met her, but she could not tell her who it was had carried away Persephone. Together they proceed to Helios ; they stand at the head of his horses, and Demeter entreats that he will say who the ravisher is. The god of the sun gives the required information, telling her that it was Aidoneus, who by the permission of her sire had carried her * According to some accounts Aphrodite, Athena, and Artemis were the com- panions of their sister Persephone on this occasion (Hygin. 146. Claud. K. P. ii. 11-35. Stat. Achil.ii. 150.). Others gave her the Sirens as attendants (Apoll. Rh. iv. 896.). ■■ Her plucking the narcissus was noticed in an ancient hymn ascribed to Pam- phos. Pans. ix. 31, 9. 172 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. away to be his queen ; and he exhorts the goddess to patience, by dwelling on the rank and dignity of the ravisher. Helios urged on his steeds ; the goddess, incensed at the conduct of Zeus, abandoned the society of the gods, and came down among men. But she now was heedless of her person, and no one recognised her. Under the guise of an old woman, — ' such,' says the poet, ' as are the nurses of law-dispensing kings' children, and housekeepers in resounding houses,' — she came to Eleusis, and sat down by a well, beneath the shade of an olive ^. The three beautiful daughters of Keleos, a prince of that place, coming to the well to draw water, and seeing the goddess, inquired who she was and why she did not go into the town. Demeter told them her name was D6s, and that she had been carried off by pirates from Crete, but that when they got on shore at Thoricos, she had contrived to make her escape, and had wandered thither. She entreats them to tell her where she is ; and wishing them young hus- bands and as many children as they may desire, begs that they vrill endeavour to procure her a service in a respectable family. The princess Callidice tells the goddess the names of the five princes, who with her father governed Eleusis, each of whose vdves would, she was sure, he most happy to receive into her family a person who looked so god-like : but she prays her not to be precipitate, but to wait till she had con- sulted her mother Metaneira, who had a young son in the cradle, of whom if the stranger could obtain the nursing her fortune would be made. The goddess bowed her thanks, and the princesses took up their pitchers and went home. As soon as they had related their adventure to their mother, she agreed to hire the nurse at large wages : And they, as fawns or heifers in spring-time Bound on the mead when satiate with food ; So they, the folds fast-holding of their robes Lovely, along the hollow cart- way ran ; Their locks upon their shoulders flying wide. Like unto yellow flowers. " The tradition was that she sat on the stone thence named Laughterlcss (,dyi- Xaaros). Sch. Aiistoph, Knights, 782. DEMETEE. PERSEPHONE. l73 The goddess rose and accompanied them home. As she en- tered the house a divine splendour shone all around ; Meta- neira filled with awe offered the goddess her own seat, which however she declined. lambe the serving-maid then pre- pared one for her, where she sat in silence, thinking of her ' deep-bosomed' daughter, till lambe by her tricks contrived to make her smile, and even laugh. But she declined the cup of wine which Metaneira offered her, and would only- drink the kykedn, or mixture of flour and water. ' She under- took the rearing of the babe, who -was named Demophoon, and beneath her care ' he throve like a god.' He ate no food, but Demeter breathed on him as he lay in her bosom, and anointed him with ambrosia, and every night she hid him ' like a torch within the strength of fire,' unknown to his pa- rents, who marvelled at his growth*. It was the design of Demeter to make him immortal, but the curiosity and folly of Metaneira deprived him of the in- tended gift. She watched one night, and, seeing what the nurse was about, shrieked with affright and horror. The god- dess threw the infant on the ground, declaring what he had lost by the inconsiderateness of his mother, but announcing that he would be great and honoured, since he had ' sat in her lap and slept in her arms.' She tells who she is, and di- rects that the people of Eleusis should raise an altar and temple to her without the town on the hill Callichoros. Thus having said, the goddess changed her size And form, old-age off-flinging, and around Beauty respired ; from her fragrant robes A lovely scent was scattered, and afar Shone light emitted from her skin divine : And yellow locks upon her shoulders waved ; While, as from lightning, all the house was filled With splendour. She left the house, and the maidens awakening at the noise found their infant-brother lying on the ground. They took him up, and kindling a fire prepared to wash him; but he cried bitterly, finding himself in the hands of such unskilful nurses. " The Egyptians had a similar story of their Isis, borrowed no doubt, like so many others, from the Greeks. See Plut. De. Is. et Os. 15. 16. 174 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. In the morning the wonders of the night were narrated to Keleosj who laid the matter before the people, and the temple was speedily raised. The mourning goddess took up her abode in it, but a dismal year came upon mankind ; the earth yielded no produce, in vain the oxen drew the curved ploughs in the fields, in vain was the seed of barley cast into the ground ; 'well-garlanded Demeter' would suffer no increase. The whole race of man ran risk of perishing, the dwellers of Olympos of losing gifts and sacrifices, had not Zeus discerned the danger and thought on a remedy. He dispatches ' gold-winged Iris' to Eleusis to invite De- meter back to Olympos, but the disconsolate goddess will not comply with the call. All the other gods are sent on the same errand, and to as httle purpose. Gifts and honours are proffered in vain ; she will not ascend to Olympos, or suffer the earth to bring forth, till she shall have seen her daughter. Finding that there was no other remedy, Zeus sends ' gold- rodded Argos-slayer' to Erebos, to endeavour to prevail on Hades to suffer Persephone to return to the light. Hermes did not disobey: he quickly reached the 'secret places of earth,' and found the king at home seated on a couch with his wife, who was mourning for her mother. On making known to Aidoneus the wish of Zeus, ' the king of the Sub- terraneans smiled with his brows' and yielded compliance. He kindly addressed Persephone, granting her permission to return to her mother. The goddess instantly sprang up with joy, and heedlessly swallowed a grain of pomegranate which he presented to her. Then many-ruling Aidoneus yoked His steeds immortal to the golden car : She mounts the chariot, and heside her mounts Strong Argos-slayer, holding in his hands The reins and whip : forth from the house he rushed, And not unwillingly the coursers flew. Quickly the long road they have gone ; not sea Nor streams of water, nor the grassy dales. Nor hills retard the immortal coursers' speed. But o'er them going they cut the air profound. Hermes conducted his fair charge safe to Eleusis : Demeter on seeing her ' rushed to her like a Msenas on the wood-shaded DEMETER. PERSEPHONE. l75 hill/ and Persephone sprang from the car ' like a bird,' and kissed her mother's hands and head. When their joy had a httle subsided, Demeter anxiously inquired if her daughter had tasted anything while below ; for if she had not, she would be free to spend her whole time with her father and mother ; whereas if but one morsel had passed her lips, nothing could save her from spending one- third of the year with her husband ; she should however pass the other two with her and the gods : And when in spring-time, with sweet-smelling flowers Of various kinds the earth doth bloom, thou 'It come From gloomy darkness back, — a mighty joy To gods and mortal men. Persephone ingenuously confesses the swallowing of the grain of pomegranate, and then relates to her mother the whole story of her abduction. They pass the day ui delightful con- verse : And joy they mutually received and gave. 'Bright-veiled Hecate' an-ives to congratulate Persephone, and henceforward becomes her attendant. Zeus sends Rhea to invite them back to heaven. Demeter now complies. And instant from the deep-soiled cornfields fruit Sent up : with leaves and flowers the whole wide earth Was laden : and she taught ' Triptolemos, horse-lashing Diodes, the strength of Eumolpos, and Keleos the leader of the people,' the mode of performing her sacred rites. The goddesses then returned to Olympos. " But come," cries the Homerid, But come, thou goddess who dost keep the land Of odorous Eleusis, and round-flowed Paros, and rocky Anthr6n, Deo queen. Mistress, bright-giver, season-bringer, come : ITiyself and child, Persephoneia fair. Grant freely, for my song, the means of life. But I will think of thee and other songs. Such is in all probabihty the oldest account of this cele- brated event. In progress of time it underwent various al- terations ; the scene was as usual changed, and circumstances 176 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. were added or modified. In the beautiful versions of it given by the above-mentioned Latin poets, the scene is transferred to the grove and lake in the neighbourhood of Henna in Si- cily, the nymph Arethusa gives intelligence of the ravisher, and Ascalaphos (who for his mischief-maMng is turned into an owl) * tells of Persephone having plucked, a pomegranate in the garden of Hades and put seven of the seeds into her mouth. In this, as in other legends, the fancy of poets and vanity of the inhabitants of different places have taken abund- ance of liberties with the ancient tale. There are, as we have already observed, no traces of this legend in Homer. Demeter is only incidentally mentioned by him ; and he does not intimate any connexion between her and Persephone, who appears merely as the daughter of Zeus'" and queen of Hades. There can be little doubt we think of its being an allegory. Persephone signifies the seed- corn, which when cast into the ground lies there concealed, — that is, she is carried off by the god of the under-world : it reappears, — that is, Persephone is restored to her mother, and she abides with her two-thirds of the year. As however the seed-corn is not a third part of the year in the ground, it is probable that by the space of time which Persephone was to spend with the god in the invisible state, was intended to be expressed the period between the sowing of the seed and the appearance of the ear, during which the corn is away ; and which space of time in some species of grain, barley for in- stance, is about four months. The vanity of the people of the hungry soil of Attica made them pretend that corn was first known and agriculture first practised in their country. They fabled that the goddess gave to Triptolemos {Thrice-plough), who occupies the place of De- mopho6n in the foregoing legend, her chariot drawn by dra- gons, in which he flew through the air, distributing corn to the different regions of the earth". This last circumstance * Another legend says that Demeter placed a stone atop of him in Erebos, which Heracles rolled away. Apollod. i. 5, 3 ; ii. 5, 12. » Od. xi. 217. « CaUim. Hymn vi. 22. Paus. i. 14, 2. Ovid, Met. v. 645. Hygin. 147. P. A. ii. 14. Sers'. on Geor. i. 19. DEMETER. PERSEPHONE. 1^7 betrays the late age of the fiction ; for, as we have already observedj in the time of Homer celestial horses were the only draught-cattle of the gods. ' Demeter, though of a gentle character in general, partook of the usual revengeful disposition of the gods. The origin of the SteUio, or spotted hzard, is referred to her having thrown in the face of a boy, who mocked at her as she was drinking some gruel, what was remaining of it in the vessel^. She more justly punished with ever-craving hunger Erysichthon, who impiously cut down her sacred grove. This infliction gave occasion for the exercise of the fihal piety and power of self- transformation of the daughter of Erysichthon, who by her as- suming various forms enabled her father to sell her over and over again, and thus obtain the means of living after all his property was gone*". This last legend, we may observe, admits of a very simple explication. Erysichthon is a name akin to ipva-i^rj, mildew ; and HeUanicus" said that he was also called ^th6n {AWwv, burning/), from his insatiate hunger. The destructive mildew is therefore the enemy of Demeter, to whom, under the title of Erysibia, the Rhodians prayed to avert it*. Homer says« that Demeter lay with lasion in a ' thrice- ploughed' field, and that Zeus, ofiended at the deed, struck the mortal lover with his thunder. Hesiod^ makes Crete the scene of this event, and adds that Plutos {Wealth) was their offspring. Authorities differ as to the parentage of Iasi6n ; some make him a son of Zeus and Electra, and brother of DardanosS; others a son of Minos or Krates, and the nymph Phronia*'. The meaning of the mythe is apparent. At Onceion near Thelpusa, on the banks of the Ladon in Arcadia, stood a temple of Demeter-Erinnys. The legend connected with it was as follows*. When the goddess was in search of her lost daughter, Poseid6n, filled with desire, con- " Nicander ap. Anton. Lib. 24. Ovid, Met. v. 451. "> Nicander ap. Anton. Lib. 17. Ovid, Met. viii. 738. seq. Tzetz. Lye. 1393. It is related somevfhat diiFerently by Callimachus, Hymn vi. ' Athen. x. 416. '' MuUer, Proleg. 162. " Od. V. 125. ' Theog. 969. « Hellanicus ap. Sch. Od. v. 125. " Sch. Od. ut sup. Sch. Theocr. iii. 50. ■ Pans. viii. 25, 4. N 178 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. tinually followed her. To elude him she changed herself into a mare, and mingled with the mares of Oncos ; but the sea- god assumed the form of a horse, and thus accomplished his wishes. The produce of their union was the celebrated steed Areidn; and from the anger of the goddess at being thus abused she was named Erinnys''. It was also a part of the tradition that beside Areidn she bore a daughter to the god, who, the Phigalians said, was the Despoena (Persephone). They also showed a cavern on Mount Elseon, to which De- meter retired when her daughter had been carried off, cloth- ing herself in deep black. The absence of the goddess, said - the tradition, caused a general failure of the crops, and man- kind were in danger of famine ; but no one knew the place of her retreat till Pan in his huntings chanced to see her. He gave information to Zeus, who sent the Fates to her, at whose persuasion she remitted her anger, and ceased from mourning. She was worshiped at this cave under the name of Black (Me- 'Kawa), and her statue in it was clad in black, with the head and mane of a horse^. This last legend has nothing perhaps very peculiar in it ; the former is regarded as one of the many forms in which the physical fact of earth and water being the causes of growth and increase in the natural world have been enveloped". Perhaps the Demeter-Erinnys was viewed as the 'grim' earth'' of winter when torrents spring forth from its womb. These might very aptly be represented by the steed Flowing (peicav or pewv) " ; and this view of nature was peculiarly appropriate in Arcadia. The chief seats of the worship of these deities were Attica; Arcadia, where they were called the Great Goddesses^, and " "On t6 Bv/iifi ;^pfl(79ai KaXovaiv ipivveiv oi 'ApxaSes. Pavis. ut supra. ^ Paus. viii. 42, 1. " Volcker, Myth, der Jap. 165. seq. ^ Grim Nature's visage hoar. — Bums' Vision. ' Like Kpe'mv, Kpkuiv, the a is merely euphonic. The cyclic Thebais named Areion Kvavoxair-fis, and Antimachus said of him, A{ir^ ycu ave^wrce, (rejSas QvTfirotaiv ideaOai. The place of his birth is Onceion the tumid (oyKos) j he is the steed of Adrastos the fruitful {aSpbs, aSpoavvri), Paus. ut supra. f Paus. viii. 31, 1 ; iv. 26, 8. Soph. (Ed, Col. 082. DEMETER. PERSEPHONE. l79 Persephone in particulai- Mistress {Aia-Troiva) '^ ; and the fertile isle of Sicily, which M'as given by Zeus to his daughter on her day of unveiling {avaKoXvirr'^pta), that is, at her marriage^ ; as also was Thebes according to the poet Euphorion". The form (jf Demeter is copied from that of Hera, She has the same majestic stature and matronly air, but of a milder character. Her usual symbol are poppies, which sometimes compose a garland for her head, sometimes are held in her hand. She is frequently represented with a torch in her hand, — significant of her search after Persephone. At times she appears in her chariot drawn by dragons. Persephone is represented seated on a throne with Hades. The only epithets given to Demeter by Homer are*!, 1. Blond or Yellow-haired; and 2. Fair-tressed, the appropriateness of which to the goddess of the corn is apparent. Beside these epithets Hesiod gives her two others; S.WelUgarlanded; and 4. Food-full. She was termed by other poets, 5 . Youth-rearing; G. Bright-fruited; ']. Bright-gifted; 8. Season-bringer; 9. Gold- sickled; 10. Green; all epithets well suited to the goddess of agriculture. Demeter was also named, 11. Law-giver, as agriculture was regarded as the source of civil regulations. Under this title she was honoured in a festival named Thes- mophoria at Athens and Ephesus. She had a temple at Me- gara under the title of, 12. Sheep-bringer^. In Bceotia she was worshiped as Demeter-Achaia^. The Homeric epithets of Persephone areS, I. Illustrious; ' Paus. viii. 10, 10 ; 27, 6 ; 35, 2 ; 36, 9 j 37, 1-10 ; 42, 1. ^ Plut. Timol. 8. ■= Sch. Eur. Phoen. 693. See Muller, Orchora. 217. Dor. i. 415. ^ 1. KavBri : 2. icaWiTrXoKafios: 3. evsTeijiavos: 4. itoKvfop^r]: 5. Kswporpo^os: 6. dyXaoKapTTOs: J.dyXaoSwpos: 8. (ipi)06pos : 9. xpi'aaopos: 10. ;)|;W)): 11. 0e Id. 14. 28. 31. o M. 116 " /(?. 63. 193. Miiller, Prolcg. 250. 251. DEMETEK. PERSEPHONE. 183 favour of Heaven, are easy to be accounted for without having recourse to so absurd a supposition. Every act performed in obedience to the will of Heaven is believed to draw down its favour on the performer. The Mussulman makes his pil- grimage to the Kaaba at Mecca, the Catholic to Loretto, Com- posteUa, or elsewhere ; and each is persuaded that by having done so he has secured the divine favour^. So the Greek who was initiated at Eleusis, — whose mysteries, owing to the fame in which Athens stood, the able writers who so loudly extolled her and everything belonging to her, the splendour and magnificence with which they were performed, echpsed all others, — retained ever after a lively sense of the happiness which he had enjoyed when admitted to view the interior of the illuminated temple, and the sacred things which it con- tained, when to his excited imagination the very gods them- selves had seemed visibly to descend from their Olympian abodes, amidst the solemn hymns of the officiating priests'*. Hence there naturally arose a persuasion, that the benign re- gards of the gods were bent upon him through after-Ufe ; and, as man can never divest himself of the beUef of his continued existence after death, a vivid hope of enjoying bliss in the next life. It was evidently the principle already stated, of seeking to discover the causes of remarkable appearances, which gave origin to most of the ideas respecting the recondite sense of the actions and ceremonies which took place in the Eleusinian mysteries. The stranger, dazzled and awed by his own con- ception of the sacredness and importance of all that he beheld, conceived that nothing there could be without some myste- rious meaning. What this might be, he inquired of the offi- ciating ministers, who, as various passages in Herodotus and Pausanias show, were seldom without a legend or Sacred Account {lepb'i \6yoq), as it was called, to explain the dress or ceremony, which owed perhaps its true origin to the caprice or sportive humour of a ruder period. Or if the initiated " Aglaoph. 70. 71. 1= Id. 44. seq. 63. See Mortimer's description of the effect of the soleran service in St. Peter's at Rome on his mind, in Schiller's Marie Stuart, act 1. sc. 6. See also Shakspcare's Winter's Tale, act iii. so. 1. 184 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. person was himself endowed with inventive power, he ex- plained the appearances according in general to the system of philosophy which he had embraced''. It was thus that Porphyrius conceived the Hierophant to represent the Pla- tonic Demiurgos or creator of the world ; the Torch-bearer (Daduchos), the sun ; the Altar-man {Epibomios), the moon ; the Herald {Hierokeryx), Hermes; and the other ministers, the lesser stars. These fancies of priests and philosophers have been by modern writers formed into a complete system, and S'^ Croix in particular describes the Eleusinian mysteries with as much minuteness as if he had been actually himself initiated''. It is to be observed, in conclusion, with respect to the charges of impiety and immorality brought against the Eleu- sinian mysteries by some Fathers of the Church, that this arose entirely from their confounding them with the Bacchic, Isiac, Mithraic, and o^er private mysteries, mostly imported from Asia, which were undoubtedly hable to that imputation. It must always be remembered, that those of Eleusis were public, and celebrated by the state". « Aglaoph. 180. 181. *> See Warburton, Divine Legation. S" Croix, Recherches sur les Mysteres, &c. Creuzer, Symbolilc. ' Aglaoph. 116. 197. 202. 1263. MiiUer, Proleg. 248. seq. MUSES. 185 Chapter XII. SISTER-GODDESSES,— MUSES, SEASONS, GRACES, EILEITHYIiE, FATES, KERBS, FURIES. Moi)<7ai*. Camente. Muses, In the early ages of the world, when the principle of assign- ing a celestial cause to every extraordinary effect was in fuU operation, the powers of song and memory were supposed to be excited by certain goddesses who were denominated Muses. In Homer they are called the daughters of Zeus'', and de- scribed as exhilarating the banquets of the gods by their lovely voices, attuned to the lyre of Apollo ■=. When about to give the catalogue of the ships of the Achseans, the poet invokes the Muses, the daughters of Zeus, to prompt his memory "i. No definite number of the Muses is given by Homer, for we cannot regard as his the verse ^ in which they are said to be nine. Perhaps originally, as in the case of the Erinnyes and so many other deities, there was no precise number. Pausanias*^ gives an old tradition, according to which they were three, — Melete {Practice), Mneme {Memory), and Aoede {Song). Aratus said they were four, the daughters of Zeus and the nymph Plusia {Wealthy), and that their names were, Thelxinoe {Mind-soother), Aoede, Melete, and Arche {Begin- ning) s. Alcman and some other poets made the Muses the daughters of Heaven and Earth**. The more received opi- nion makes them, as in the procemium to the Theogony', nine, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne {Memory). The names of the Muses were''. Calliope, Cleio, Melpomene, Euterpe, Erato, Terpsichore, Urania, Thaleia, and Polymnia. " Dor. Miiirai, Mol. Mohai. <• II. ii. 490. Od. i. 10. ' II. i. 604. -^ II. ii. 484. = Od. xxiv. 60. f Paus. ix. 29. 1. ^ Cic. De N. D. iii. 21. Eiidocia 294. ■• Diod. iv. 7. Paus. ut sup. 4. ' Theog. 53. seg. 76. '•■ KaWioirt) (Fair-Voice), KXeiii {Frochimer), MeXiro/ievri {Songsfress), Eircpiri) (Delighter), 'Epardi (Amiable), 'Tep\pix6ptj (Dance-lover), Ovpavia (Celestial), QaKeia (Blooming), UoXvpvta (Hpmnful). 186 MYTHOLOGY OP GEEECE. Later ages assigned a particular department to each of the Muses, and represented them in various postures and with various attributes*. Calhope presided over Epic Poetry ; she was represented holding a close-rolled parchment, and sometimes a trumpet. Cleio presided over History ; and appeared holding a half- opened roll. The invention of the lute or guitar {Kiddpa) was ascribed to her. Melpomene, over Tragedy ; she was veiled, and was lean- ing on a club, and holding a tragic mask in her left hand. Her instrument was the lyre named Barbiton. Euterpe, over Music ; she held two flutes, and the inven- tion of the tragic chorus was ascribed to her. Erato, the muse of Marriage-feasts and pantomimic dancing {opy7)(7b Argiopc according to Hermesianax. 188 MYTHOLOGY OF GBEECE. backj and thereby lost her. He now avoided human society; and despising the rites of Dionysos, was torn to pieces by the Msenades. The Muses collected the fragments of his body, and buried them, and at their prayer Zeus placed his lyre in the skies ^. Cleio, having drawn on herself the anger of Aphrodite by taunting her M'ith her passion for Adonis, was inspired by her with love for Pieros the son of Magnes. She bore him a son named Hyacinthos''. Euterpe, or according to some CaUiope, or Terpsichore, bore Rhesos to the god of the river Strymon''; Melpomene was by Acheloos the mother of the Sirens. Hy- menaeos, the god of marriage, was said to be the offspring of the divine Urania, but the name of his sire is unknown ■*. Those who took a less sublime view of the sanctity of mar- riage gave him Dionysos and Aphrodite for parents^. He was invoked at marriage festivals *. By the Latin poets he is presented to us arrayed in a yellow robe, his temples wreathed with the fragrant plant amaracus, his locks dropping odour, and the nuptial torch in his hands. Beside the usual epithets common to all goddesses, and derived from beauty and dress, the Muses were styled'^, 1. Sweet-speaking; 2. Perfect-speaking; 3. Loud-voiced; 4. Honey-breathing. " ApoUod. ut sup. Apoll. Rh. i. 23. Hermesianax ap. Athen. xiii. 597. Ovid, Met, Ha, Virg. Georg. iv. 454. seq. Conon, 45. Eudocia, 318. Diod. iv. 25. No mention of Orpheus occurs in Homer or Hesiod. Pindar (Pyth. iv. 313. sej.) reckons him among the Argonauts. It were idle to notice the fancies of Creuzer and others respecting the mysteries introduced by him into Greece long before the time of Homer. According to these mystics (Symb. iii. 148. sey.) he was a priest of the Light-religion, — that of Apollo or Vishnoo, — and vainly resisted the raving orgies of the Dionysos- or Seeva-worship when it reached Greece. See Lobeck's Aglaophamus for all that the most extensive learning, joined with sense and sane philosophy, has been able to do toward elucidating the real nature and character of the poems and institutions ascribed to Orpheus. See also Miiller, Proleg. 379. seq. The name Orpheus is perhaps connected with optpvos, opijiavos, epejios, m-bus, funius. •> Apollod. Mf SMjo. "Id.ib. Eur. Rhes.joasstm. Sch. II. x. 435. Catullus, Ixi. 2. Nonnus, xxxiii. 67. ^ Servius, Mn. iv. 127. ' 'Q 'yp.iiv, 'Yjikvai avaK. Eur. Troad. 310. Hymen o Hymentee. CatuU. ut sup. ^ CatuU. nt sup. Ovid. Her. xx. 157. seq. Met. a. 1. seq. ^ 1, r'idveireis: 2. dpTtCTrcini: 3. \iyv^9oyyoi: i. fieKinvooi. MUSES. 189 The most probable derivation of the name Muse (Moutra), seems to be that which deduces it from the obsolete verb MAO to inquire or invent. The Lydians, who spoke a language akin to the Greek, called, we are told, the Muses Nymphs, or the Nymphs Muses, apparently using the terms as synony- mous''. We everywhere find the Muses connected with founts; Eumelos of Corinth said they were three in number, the daughters of Apollo, and he called them Cephiso, Apollonis, and Borysthenis'', two of which names are evidently derived from those of rivers ; and the comic poet Epicharmus in his drama named ' Hebe's Wedding,' where the gods appeared as thorough bon-vivans, made the seven Muses the daughters of Pieros and Pimpleia [Fattener and Filler), and named them after seven rivers". They probably figured in this comedy as the presidents of the fish-market. If, however, the Muses were not generally regarded as connected in some way with the water the poet would hardly have thus represented them, as the humour would not have been fully appreciated by the audience. We may further observe that the musical Sirens were placed by the poets at the edge of the water, possibly from a feeling of a connexion between that element and music. The Latins, it would also appear, connected their Camena with the fountains ; for Egeria was one of them, and her fount long continued to be an object of veneration. The Gotho- German race (whose language and religion bear so great an affinity to those of Greece) seem also to have connected music with the water in their ancient rehgious system; and this no- tion still remains part of the popular creed in northern Europe, as is proved by the many legends of the songs of Mermaids, Nixes, Necks, and similar beings of the waters current among the people in Germany and Scandinavia''. In fact, this, like ' Steph. Byz. v. ruppij/Jos. Sch. Theocr. vii. 92. Suidas, Photius, Hesych. V. vvfiipri. Serv. Buc. vii. 21. " Eudocia, 294. Tzetz. Hesiod, Works, init. ' Eudocia and Tzetzes, ut sup. The names as amended by Hermann are Neilo, Tritone, Asopo, Achelois, Heptapora, and Rhodia, (the two last from rivers named by Homer, Il.xii. 20. and Hesiod, Th. 341.) the seventh, Tiriplo, is evidently cor- rupt J Hermann proposes Pactolo. ■* The reader will find several of these legends in the Fairy Mythology. See for example, vol. i. 234-244. 190 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. almost every other article of popular belief, has its origin in nature. There is music in the sound of water as it purls or murmurs along in the rivulet, (the very terms prattling, bab- bling, tinkling, and such like, applied to brooks by our poets prove it,) and even the waterfall, especially when heard in the distance, makes melody to the attentive ear. The rivulet is also the favourite haunt of the poet ; its quiet murmur induces calmness over the spirit, and puts the mind into a frame for the reception of poetic images*. Hence it has been said, by him who like the early bards of Greece was one of Nature's own poets, that The Muse nae poet ever fand her Till by himsel he learned to wander Adoun some trotting burn's meander And think na lang. We are therefore incUned to regard as correct the theory which sees in the Muses original nymphs of the springs, to whom the poets ascribed their inspiration''. "D,pai. HoreB. Seasons or Hours. When in the Ilias'' Hera and Athena drive out of Olympos in the chariot of the former goddess, to share in the conflict of the Achaeans and the Trojans, the gates of heaven, which the Seasons keep, whose charge is to open and close the dense cloud, creak spontaneously to let them pass. On the return of these goddesses, at the mandate of Zeus, the Seasons un- yoke their steeds, fasten them in their stalls, and lay up the chariot. They are also mentioned by Poseid6n* as bringing round the period at which he and Apollo were to be paid their wages by Laomed6n. Hesiod says"^ that the Seasons were the daughters of Zeus and Themis, and he names them Eunomia [Order), Dike (Ji«s- fjce),andEirene {Peace), who, he adds, watch over {wpevovai) " Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer-eves by haunted stream. — Milton. i* See Hermann 'De Musis fluvialibus Epicharmi et Eumeli' (Optisc. ii. 288.) and Buttman, Mytholog. i. 273-294. Creuzer first advanced this theory. "= II. V. 749 ; viu. 393. ■> II. xxi. 450. <^ Theog. 903. SEASONS. 191 the works of mortal men. In another place* he says, that Dike is a virgin revered by the gods of Olympos ; and that when any one acts unjustly, she sits by her father Zeus, and com- plains of the iniquity of man's mind, 'that the people may suffer for the transgressions of their kings.' By an unknown poet'' the Horse are called the daughters of Kronos (Time ?), and by late poets they were named the children of the year, and their number was increased to twelve**. Some made them seven or ten in number*!. The Horse seem to have been originally regarded as the presidents of the three seasons into which the ancient Greeks divided the year^. As the day was similarly divided*, they came to be regarded as presiding over its parts also-; and when it was further subdivided into hours, these minor parts were placed under their charge and named from thems. Order and regularity being their prevailing attributes, the transition was easy from the natural to the moral world ; and the guardian goddesses of the seasons were regarded as pre- siding over law, justice, and peace, the great producers of order and harmony among men. It is possible however, but not agreeable to analogy, that the reverse was the case, and that the transition was from moral to physical ideas. By Pindar'* the Horae are named, in their moral capacity, the bestowers of wealth, a poetic clothing of the homely maxim ' honesty is the best policy.' The Athenians worshiped two Horse, named Thallo Bloom-giver, and Carpo {Fructifier), viewing them as physical beings*. By the poet.s they were frequently confounded with the Graces, and regarded as the bestowers of beauty''. Homer calls the Horse', 1. Gold-filleted. The epithets in the Oi'phic hymns are chiefly derived from the flowers which they produce; such as, 2. Flower-full; 3. Odour-full^; etc. » Works, 254. '' Apud Stobseum. See the lines in Lobeck, p. 600. " Nonuus, xi. 486; xii. 17. " Hygin. 183. = Welcker, TriL 500. note. ' II. xxi. 111. ^ Quint. Smyr. ii. 595. Nonnus, ut sup. ^ 01. xiii. 9. ' Pans. ix. 35. 2. " Theocr. i. 150. Mosch. ii. 160. Apoll. Rh. ap. Athen. -vii. 283. ' 1. ;j(;pi;(7aj«?ri;Kes ; 2. 7ro\vdv9eiwi : 3. iroXioSfioi. " The Greek TroXis and the Germanic vott,fnll, are plainly the same word, and 192 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. X.dpire<;. Graiiae. Graces. xpire';. The Graces^ like the Muses and other sister-goddesses, are spoken of by Homer in the plural, and their number is inde- finite. They are graceful and beautiful themselves, and the bestowers of all grace and beauty both on persons and things. They wove the robe of Aphrodite" ; the beauty of the two attendants of Nausicaa'' was given them by the Charites ; and the ringlets of the beautiful Euphorbos are compared'' to those of these lovely goddesses. Aphrodite "^ joins in their dance ; and in the song of Demodocos, they wash and anoint her, when filled with shame she flies to Paphds^. Yet though they seem to have been particularly attached to the goddess of love, the queen of heaven had authority over them^; and she promises Pasithea, one of the youngest of the Graces, for a wife to Sleep, in return for his aid in deceiving Zeus. By later writers she is even said to be their mothers. The Homeridian hymn to Artemis describes that goddess as going to the ' great house' of her brother at Delphi, and regulating the dance of the Muses and the Graces. Zeus, says Hesiod'^, was by Eurynome, the daughter of Ocean, the father of the ' three fair-cheeked Graces' Aglai'a (Splendour), Euphrosyne [Joy), and lovely Thaha {Pleasure). ' From their eyes,' continues the poet, ' as they gazed, distilled care-dispelling love ; and they looked lovely from beneath their brows.' According to Antimachus', the Graces were the daughters of Hehos and ^gle {Splendour) ; and Hermesianax'^ made Peitho {Persuasion) one of their number. In Nonnus their names are Pasithea, Peitho and Aglaia^. Orchomenos in Boeotia was the chief seat of the worship of these goddesses. Its introduction was ascribed to Eteo- used alike in composition. The former is placed at the beginning, the latter at the end of the compound. * II. V. 338. and that of Dionysos, ApoU. Rh. iv. 425. <> Od. vi. 18. " II. xvii. 51. " Od. xviii. 194. ' Od. viii. 364. See also the beautiful fragment of the Cypria. Athen. xv. 682. ' II. xiv. 267. e Nonnus, xxxi. 184. Eudocia, 430. K Theog. 907. ■ Paus. ix. 35. 5. k id. ut sup. ' Dionys. xxiv. 263. EILEITHYI^. 193 cles, the son of the river Cephissos. They were three in num- ber, but it was not known what names he had given them*. The Lacedaemonians worshiped but two, whom they named Cleta {Renowned) andPhaenna {Bright) ^. The Athenians origi- nally adored the same number, under the names of Hegemone {Leader) and Auxo {Increaser) "=. The Graces were at all times in the creed of Greece the goddesses presiding over social enjoyments, the banquet, the dance, and aU that tended to inspire gaiety and cheerfulness*. They are represented as three beautiful sisters, dancing toge- ther : sometimes they are naked, sometimes clad. The Charites had the epithets common to goddesses. ^IkelQviai, Ilithym. The Bileithyiffi, whose office it was to preside over the births of mankind, are in the Ilias^ called the daughters of Hera. In the Odyssey^ and in Hesiode their number is re- duced to one. We also meet with but one Eileithyia in Pin- dar'i, and the subsequent poets in general. There was a cave at the river Amnisos, near Gortyna in Crete, sacred to Eileithyia, who according to the tradition of the country was born there*. Eileithyia was worshiped at Delos, where a hymn was sung in her honour ascribed to the ancient Lycian poet 016n. In this she M'as said to be the mother of Love''. Eileithyia was called', 1. Labour-aiding; 2. Gentle-mind- ed"^, etc. It is not by any means an improbable supposition, that " Paus. lit sup. Hesiod, ap. Sch. Find. 01. xiv. 1. Find. 01. xiv. l.seg. Theocr. xvi. 104. '' Pans, ut sup. and iii. 18, 6. " Paus. ui sup. ^ Pind. 01. xiv. 7-18. ' II. xi. 270. Pans. i. 44, 3. In II. xvi. 187, and xix. 103. Eileithyia occurs in the singular. ' Od. xix. 188. ^ Theog. 922. " 01. -vi. 72. Nem. vii. 1. ■ Od. ut supra. ' Paus. i. 18, 5; viii. 21, 3; ix. 27, 2. ' 1. fioyoirroKos : 2. vpavntiris. ■" Mild as any maid Full of sweet hope her [Lucina's] brow seemed, and her eyes Darting fresh comfort like the morning skies. — Drayton, Mooncalf. O 194 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Eileithyia was originally a moon-goddess, and that the name signifies lAght-wanderer^. Hence, if Artemis was originally a moon-goddess, the identification of them was easy. The moon was believed by the ancients to have great influence over growth in general'' ; and as moreover a woman^s time was reckoned by moons, it was natural to conceive that the moon-goddess presided over the birth of children. Molpai. Parc(B, Fata. Fates. In the Ilias, with the exception of one passage", the Moira is spoken of in the singular number and as a person, almost exactly as we use the word Fate. But in the Odyssey this word is used as a common substantive, followed by a genitive of the person, and signifying Decree. The Theogony of Hesiod limits the Fates, like so many other goddesses, to three, and gives them Zeus and Themis for their parents*. In an interpolated passage of the Theo- gony^ they are classed among the children of Night", and Plato makes them the daughters of Necessity^. Their names in Hesiod are Clotho [Spinster), Lachesis {Allotter), and Atropos {UncJiangeable) ; but he does not speak of their spin- ning the destinies of riien. This office of theirs is however noticed both in the Ilias and the Odyssey. In the former it is saids by Hera of Achilleus, that the gods will protect him that day, but that hereafter he will suffer ' what Aisa [a name synonymous with Moira] span with her thread for him when his mother brought him forth;' and in the latter'', Alcinoiis says of Odysseus, that he will hereafter sufier 'what Aisa and the heavy Cataclothes span with the thread for him when his mother brought him forth.' " From eXr) light, and Qva to move rapidly. See Welcker, Kret. Kol. pp. 11. 19. ' " Crescente luna frumenta gi'andescunt." Plin. H. N. xviii. 30. See also ii. 99, X. 54, and elsewhere. Plut. de Is. et Os. 41. Q. R. 77. Eudocia, 11. Lucil. ap, Gell. XX. 8. Hor. Serm. ii. 4, 30. Fnlgent. ii. 19. " The moon is helieved by the Hindoo natmralists to have a powerful effect on vegetation, especially on certain plants." Wilford in Asiat. Res. iii. 385. 4to edit. <■ 11. XX. 49. " Theog. 904. ' Theog. 217. ' Rep. X. 617. B n. XX. 127. ■> Od. vii. 197. Buttmann, following the Scholia, Eustath and Hesychius, would read kutA kXUBbs, instead of Kara/cXwScs. Nitzsch defends the common reading. KEBES. 195 It is probable that Homer, in accordance with the sublime fiction in the Theogony, regarded the Fates as the offspring of Zeus and Order, for in him they are but the ministers of Zeus, in whose hands are the issues of all things ^ ^schylus^ makes even Zeus himself subject to the Fates, whose decrees none could escape. The poets styled the Fates", 1. Unerring; 2. Severe-minded, etc. Moira probably comes from fieipa, and Aisa from hala, both signifying to divide. It is a very extraordinary coinci- dence, that the Norns, the Destinies of Scandinavian theology, should also be spinsters, and three in number^. K?7joe?. Mortes. The Keres are personifications of violent deaths®. The word Ker is used by Homer in the singular and in the plural num- ber, and both as a proper and as a common noun, but much more frequently as the former. When a common noun, it seems to be equivalent to fate. Achilleus says, that his mother gave him the choice of two keres; — one, to die early at Troy; the other, to die after a long life at home^. On the shield of Achilleus s Ker appears in a blood-stained robe, with Strife and Tumult, engaged in the field of battle ; and on that of Heracles'' the Keres are described as raging in the fight, and glutting themselves with the blood of the wounded. By ApoUonius' they are named 'the swift dogs of Hades,' a character imder which they are also represented by Sophocles''. In the Theogony these goddesses are the daughters of " See Nitzsch on Od. iii. 236. ^ Prom. 515. See also Herod, i. 91. " 1. dirXavees : 2. ^apv^poves. ^ The Norns are named Urdur, Verdandi, and Skuld {Past, Present, Future). Plato {I. c.) introduces the Moirae singing rd yeyevora, rd ovra, rd fieXkovra, " quo nuUus mihi succurrit auctor," says Lobeck, 970. = II. xi. 332 ; xii. 326. See Wolf on II. i. 97 ; ii. 302. Nitzsch on Od. iii. 236. Pans. V. 19, 6. ' II. ix. 410. ^ II. xviii. 535. Compare Hes. Shield, 156. •i Hes. Shield, 249. (See above, p. 40.) Pans, nt sup. Welcker, Nach. zur Tril. 346. ' Argon, iv. 1666. " Elec. 1387. o 2 196 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Night and sisters of the Moirae% who also appear on the shield of Heracles^ and with whom they are sometimes confounded*, as they also are with the Erinnyes<>. They bear a strong re- semblance to the Valkyries {Choosers of the Slain) of Northern mythology. The Keres were styled <*, 1. Implacable ; 2. Stern-lookinff, etc. 'Epivvve^. Furiee. Dirce. Furies. These goddesses are frequently named by Homer, but he says nothing of their origin. In the Theogony they spring from the blood of Uranos when mutilated by his son Kronos, whose own children they are according to Empedocles*, while ^schylus and Sophocles call them the children of Night^, and the Orphic Hymns assign them the rulers of Erebos for parents s. In the time of the Alexandrians, the Erinnyes, like the Fates and others, were three in number, named Alecto {Unceasing), Megaera {Envier or Denier), and Tisiphone {Blood- avenger). The Erinnyes were worshiped at Athens as the Venerable {a-eijival) Goddesses, and at Sicyon as the Gracious {Evfj,€viBei)\ both of which were apparently placatory appellations. They had a temple in Achaia, which if any one polluted with crime dared to enter he lost his reason'. In the poets we find the Erinnyes styled'', 1. Hateful; 2. Gloomr-roaming ; 3. Dark-skinned; 4. Swift-footed. The Greek term ipi.vii^ has, we think, been justly defined' as a ^' feeling of deep offence, of bitter displeasure, at the im- pious violation of our sacred rights by those most bound to " Theog. 217. " Quint. Sm. u. 510; x. 286; xiu. 235. ' jEschyl. Seven ag. Thebes, 1058. Eum.959. Soph. (Ed. Tyr. 472. Eur. Her. Fur. 866. Elec. 1250. Virg. Mn. viu. 701. ■■ 1. dfieiXixoi: 2. SeivioTtoi. ' See above, p. 69. f jEsch. Eumen. 317, 413. Soph. (Ed. Col. 40, 106. Compare Vug. Mn. vi. 250 ; vii. 320 ; xii. 845. Ovid, Met. iv. 451. « Hymn Ixx. » Paus. ii. 11, 4. ' Id. vii. 25, 7. ' 1. (TTVycpai : 2. riepotpoiries ; 3. Kuav6xp<^T0i \ 4. Tavvnodes. ' Miiller, Eumen. 186. FURIES. 197 respect them." This perfectly accords with the origin of the Erinnyes in the Theogony, and with those passages of the Homeric poems in which they are mentioned ; for they are there invoked to avenge the breach of filial duty% and are named as the punishers of perjury'': even beggars have their Erinnyes, that they may not be insulted with impunity"^; and when a horse has spoken in violation of the order of nature, the Erinnyes deprive him of the power of repeating the act*. The Erinnyes, these personified feelings, may therefore be re- garded as the maintainers of order both in the moral and the natural world. There is however another view taken of these goddesses, in which they are only a form of Demeter and Kora, the great goddesses of the earth. For everything in nature having injurious as well as beneficial effects, the boun- teous earth itself becomes at times grim, as it were, and dis- pleased with mankind, and this is Demeter-Erinnys. In the Arcadian legends of this goddess, and in the concluding cho- ruses of the Eumenides of iEschylus, may be discerned ideas of this nature^. The epithet given to them by Empedocles would seem to confirm a view of them already noticed^. ' II. ix. 454, 568 ; compare II. xxi. 412. Od. ii. 135. " II. xix. 258 ; compare II. iii. 278. ' Od. xvii. 475. •^ II. xix. 418. ' See above, p. 178. See MuUer, Eumen. 191. seq. ' See above, p. ^68. ■^f. 198 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Chapter XIII. THEMIS, IRIS, P^EON, SLEEP, DEATH, MOMOS, NEMESIS, FORTUNE, PERSONIFICATIONS. @6/it9. Themis, Law. This goddess appears in the IJias^ among the inhabitants of Olympos, and in the Odyssey^ she is named as presiding over the assemblies of men, but nothing is said respecting her rank or her origin. By Hesiod<= she is said to be a Titaness, one of the daughters of Heaven and Earth, and to have borne to Zeus, the Fates, and the Seasons, Peace, Order, Justice, — the natural progeny of Law (©e/ii?), and all deities beneficial to mankind. In Pindar and the Homeridian Hymns Themis sits by Zeus on his throne to give him counsel'*. Themis is said^ to have succeeded her mother Earth in the possession of the Pythian oracle*, and to have voluntarily resigned it to her sister Phoebe, who gave it as a christening- gifts to Phoebos-Apollo. "I/3i?. Iris. The office of Iris, in the Ihas, is to act as the messenger of the king and queen of Olympos, a duty which is performed by Hermes in the Odyssey, in which poem there is not any mention made of Iris. Homer gives not the slightest hint of who her parents were ; but analogy might lead to the suppo- • II. XV. 87 ; XX. 4. " Od. ii. 68. ° Theog. 135. 901. seq. Find. 01. xiii. 6. Fr. Incert. 100. ■* Find. 01. viii. 28. Horn. Hymn xxiii. • ^sch. Eum. 1. seq. Eur. Iph. Taur. 1260. Ovid, Met. i. 321. ' Welcker (Tril. 39.) says that Themis is merely an epithet of Earth. Hermann also makes Themis a physical being, rendering her name Statina ; while Bottiger (Kunst-Myth. ii. 110.) more justly, we apprehend, says, " she is the oldest purely allegoiical personification of a virtue." 8 yeve9\iov Soaiv. We know not how else to express it. It was the gift be- stowed on the child the day it was named, which was usually the eighth day after the birth. See Terence, Phormio, i. 1, 12. IRIS. 199 sition of Zeus being her sire, by some mother who is unknown. Hesiod* says that swift Iris and the Harpies, who fly 'like the blasts of the winds or the birds/ were the children of Thaumas (Wonder) by Electra (Brightness) the daughter of Oceanos. It is evidently the Rainbow (ipi''i) that is meant, which is thus personified in the usual theogonic manner. There is little mention of Iris in the subsequent Greek poets; but, whenever she is spoken of, she appears quite distinct from the celestial phsenomenon of the same name. In Callimachus^ and the Latin poets" Iris is appropriated to the service of Hera ; and by these last she is invariably, and even we may say clumsily, confounded with the rainbow. According to the lyric poet Alcasus, who is followed by Nonnus, Iris was by Zephyros the mother of Love"*. Homer styles Iris Gold-winged^, and, according to Aristo- phanes, he likens her to a trembling dove. In the Birds ^ of that poet Epops says But how shall men esteem us gods, and not Jackdaws, since we have wings and fly about ? To which Peisthetseros replies. Nonsense ! Egad, Hermes, who is a god. Wears wings and flies, and many other gods Do just the same. Thus Victory, mark ye, flies With golden wings ; and so, egad, does Love : And like a trembling dove, old Homer saith. Was Iris. ' Iris is called &, 1. Storm-footed; 2. Wind-footed; 3. Svnft- footed; 4. Swift; 5. Gold-winged, etc. The name Iris is usually derived from ipSy, e'lpa, to say, " Theog. 265. ■• Hymn to Deles, 216. seq. ' Virg. jEn. Iv. 694. seq. ; v. 606. seq. ; ix. 2. Ovid, Met. i. 270 ; xi. 585. seq. Stat. Th. X. 81, 118. Val. Flac. vii. 186. ^ See above, p. 146. " II. viii. 398 ; xi. 185. This is the only Une in Homer which makes against Voss's theory, of none of Homer's gods being vringed. It is remarkable that P. Knight, who seems to have knovra nothing of that theory, rejects the episodes viu. 350-484; xi. 179-217. ' Ver. 574. He probably had in view Horn. Hymn i. 114. " 1. deXKoirovs : 2. TToSrjveftos : 3. TToSas ijKea : 4. raxeia : 5. xpvaoirrepoi. 200 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. which suits the office of the goddess, and will accord with the rainbow in a view of it similar to that given in the Book of Genesis, Hermann renders Iris Sertia, from etpa to knit or unite, as the rainbow seems to unite heaven and earth. liai'/iav, Ilatwv, Hatdv. Paeon, P Theog. 214. ° Herraot. 20. True Hist. ii. 3. Nigr. 32. 202 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE, Ne/ieo-t?. Nemesis. This goddess is in the Theogony a daughter of Night^. The tradition at Rhamnus in Attica, where she had a temple (whence she was named Rhamnusia), was that Oceanos was her father''. Helena, the cause of the war of Troy, was figu- ratively styled the offspring of Zeus and Nemesis". The name of this goddess comes most simply from vifiio, to distribute ; and she was originally regarded as a personifi- cation of the power which regulates and orders the natural and the moral worlds. As the castigation of infractions of order was a part of her ofiice, she was chiefly viewed as the punisher of pride, insolence, and arrogance. This is her usual character in the dramatists. At Smyrna two Nemeses were worshiped*. The goddess adored at Cyzicos under the name of Adresteia, said by the poet of the Phoronis to be the same vrith Cybele*, is named Nemesis by Antimachus^. This Asiatic Nemesis is probably the goddess of natures. Tv^H' Fortuna. Fortune. Fortune, that unseen power which exercises such arbitrary dominion over human affairs, was also deified, and had her temples and altars in Greece. By Hesiod and by one of the Homerids'i she is classed among the Ocean-nymphs. Pindar in one place* calls her ' the child of Zeus Eleutherios ;' else- where'' he says that she is one of the Destinies. Alcman called her the sister of Law and Persuasion, and daughter of Forethought {UpoiJ/r)6elay. In her temple at Thebes'" For- " Theog. 223. ^ Pans. i. 33, 4. « See below, Part II. chap. k. " Pans. vii. 5, 3. » Jpitd Sch. ApoU. Eh. i. 1129. ' "Bern Se tis Ne/teffis fjeyaXij 0el>s, »J raSe iravra Tlphs fiaKapoiv eXaxe' fiiafithv Si ol e'uraro jrpwros 'ASpijffTos, TTora/toio vapd p6ov AtaijTroto, "Ev6a rerijiriTai re koi 'kSpi]areia KoKelrat. — Jpud Stiab. xiii. 1. « See Welcker in Schwenk, 261. 304. " Theog. 260. Horn. Hymn to Dem. 420. i 01. xiii. 1. geg. ■■ Ft. Incert. 75. Paus. vii. 26, 8. ' Apiid Plut. de Fort. Rom. 4. ■" Pans. ix. 16 2. PERSONIFICATIONS. 203 tune held Wealth (IIXouto?) in her arms, whether as mother or nurse was uncertain. The image of this goddess made by Bupalos for the SmyrnEeans had a hemisphere (ttoXo?) on its head, and a horn of Amaltheia in its hand». Personifications. The practice of personifying natural and moral quahties (of which the preceding articles are instances), seems to have been coeval with Grecian poetry and religion. It was not however by any means peculiar to Greece ; it will probably be found wherever poetry exists''. But it was only in ancient Greece and Italy that these personifications were objects of worship, and seemed to be regarded as having a real personal existence. In Homer, to whom as the original fountain we continually revert, we meet a number of these moral qualities appearing as persons. Terror and Fear, the children of Ares and Strife his sister, rouse with him the Trojans to battle". Strife is said to be small at first, but at last to raise her head to the heaven. She is sent forth* amidst the Achseans by Zeus, bearing the signal of war ; and, standing on the ship of Odys- seus in the centre of the fleet, shouts so as to be heard at either extremity. When Ares" hears of the death of his son Ascalaphos, Terror and Fear are commanded to yoke the steeds to his car for the war. Prayers (Atrat), says the poet^, are the daughters of great Zeus, lame and wrinkled, with squinting eyes. They follow Mischief ("Ati;), and tend those whom she has injured : but Ate is strong and firm-footed, and gets far before them, af- flicting men whom they afterwards heal. Elsewhere s he re- lates that Ate is the daughter of Zeus, who injures {oaTUL) aU ; that her feet are tender, and that she therefore does not walk on the ground, but on the heads of men. Having con- spired with Hera to deceive her father, he took her by the hair " Paus. iv. 30, 6. i" See the fine personification of Wisdom in the Proverbs of Solomon, ch. viii. « II. iv. 440. " II. xi. 3. ° II. xv. 120. f II. ix. 502. = II. xix. 91. seq. 204 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. and flung her to earth, with an oath that she should never re- turn to Olympos. The Theogony of Hesiod contains a number of these per- sonified qualities ; they also occur in the subsequent poets. Thus ^schylus introduced on the stage Strength (Kparo?) and Force {Bia) *. Sophocles, by a very beautiful and correct figure, terms Fame 'the child of golden Hope'^; and the Athenians erected an altar to this personification", as they also did to Shame and Impetuosity, and above all to Mercy*; for with all their faults, and though fi-om the defects of their poHtical constitution they were occasionally stimulated to deeds of cruelty by their unprincipled demagogues, the Athenians were by nature one of the most humane people in Greece. The more stem Spartans, we may observe, erected temples to Fear, to Death, and to Laughter". Wealth (nXouTo?) was also deified. The Theogony makes him very appropriately the ofispring of Demeter by lasios*. He appears as an actor in the comedy of Aristophanes named fi-om him, and in the Timon of Lucian. " Prom. init. * CEd. Tyr. 157. ■^ Paus. 1. 17, 1. See Hesiod, Works, 760-4. jEschines ag. Timarch. 18. False Embassy, 47. Virg. ^n. iv. 173. seq. Stat. Th. iii. 426. VaL Flac. ii. 116. »ey. For the House of Fame see Ovid, Met. xii. 39. seq. and Chaucer and Pope. ■i Paus. uf sup. ' Plut. Cleom. 9. ' Theog. 969; see above, p. 177. DIONYSOS. 205 Chapter XIV. DIONYSOS. Aimvvao'i, Ai6vva-o<;, Ba/f%09. Liber. No deity of Grecian mythology has given occasion to greater mysticism than Dionysos, the god of wine. Creuzer% for example, the prince of mystics, deduces his worship from India, and makes him identical with the Seeva of that country. According to him, the Vishnoo-religion had, at a period far beyond that of history, spread itself over the West, and in Greece was known as that of Apollo, the god of the sun and light. The wild religion of Seeva, which had overcome the milder one of Vishnoo on their natal soil, followed it in its progress to the West, proceeded as the religion of Dionysos through Egypt and anterior Asia, mingling itself with the systems of these countries, and entered Greece, where, after a long struggle with the Apollo-system, the two religions finally coalesced, the Dionysiac casting away some of its wildest and most extravagant practices. This hypothesis rests on no stable evidence; and it has been, as appears to us, fully refuted and exposed by the sober and sagacious Voss^, who, rejecting all air-built theory, bases his system on fact and testimony alone. We shall here at- tempt, chiefly under his guidance, to illustrate the changes which it is probable the mythology of this god gradually un- derwent after the time of Homer. It has been very justly observed by Lobeck<', that almost all the passages in Homer in which there is any mention of or allusion to this god have been suspected by the ancient critics, either on account of some circumstances in themselves, or because they occur in places justly liable to suspicion. The first of these passages is that in the sixth book of the Ilias'', •' SymUolik. '' Anti-Symbolik. = Aglaophamus, p. 285. ■' II. vi. 130. 206 MYTHOLOGY OF GBEBCB. where Diomedes and Glaucos encounter in the field of battle. Here the former hero, who had just wounded no less than two deities, asks the latter if he is a god, adding, " I would not fight with the celestial gods ; for the stout Lycurgos, son of Dryas, who contended with the celestial gods, was not long- lived, who once chased the mu-ses of raging Dionysos through the holy Nyseibn, but they all flung their sacred utensils (dva-ffXa) to the ground, when beaten by the ox-goad of the man-slaying Lycurgos ; and Dionysos in afiright plunged into the waves of the sea, and Thetis received him in her bosom terrified, — for great fear possessed him from the shouting of the man. The gods, who live at ease, then hated himj and the son of Kronos made him blind ; nor was he long-lived, since he was odious to all the immortal gods." Language more unsuitable surely could not be put into the mouth of Piomedes ; and we may observe that there is a kind of in- stinct of propriety, as we may term it, which always guides those poets who sing from inspiration and not from art, lead- ing them to ascribe to the personages whom they introduce no ideas and no language but what accurately coiTespond to their situation and character. This consideration alone, when well weighed, may suffice to render the above passage ex- tremely suspicious. The passage in the fourteenth book% in which Zeus so in- decorously recounts his various amours to Hera, is liable to the same objection, and was rejected by Aristarchus and se- veral of the best critics of antiquity. In this the god says that ' Semele bore him Dionysos, a joy to mortals.' The place in which Andromache is compared to a Maenas'', besides that it occurs in one of the latter books, is regarded as an interpo- lation. These are the only passages in the Ilias in which there is any allusion to Dionysos. In the Odyssey' it is said that Artemis slew Ariadne in the isle of Dia, ' on the testimony {fiapTvplya-iv) of Dionysos' ; but the circumstance of the o in the second syllable of his name being short in this place sa- tisfied the grammarian Herodian, and ought to satisfy any " II. xiv. 325. !> II. xxii. 460. ° Od. xi. 325. DIONYSOS. 207 one, that the line in question is spurious. In the last book of this poem^ Thetis is said to have brought an urn (a/t^t- ^opfja), the gift of Dionysos, to receive the ashes of Achilleus ; but the spuriousness of that part of the poem is well known. It was further observed by the ancient critics, that Maron, who gave the wine to Odysseus, was the priest of Apollo, not of Dionysos. Hesiod^ says, that Cadmeian Semele bore to Zeus ' the joy- full Dionysos, a mortal an immortal, but now they both are gods.' Again •=, ' gold-tressed Dionysos made blond Ariadne the daughter of Minds his blooming spouse, and Kronion made her ageless and immortal.' Far perhaps inferior in point of antiquity to Hesiod is the Homeridian hymn to Dionysos, which contains the following adventure of the god, — a tale which Ovid'* has narrated some- what differently. Dionysos once let himself be seen as a handsome youth on the shore of a desert island. Some Tyrsenian pirates were sailing by, who when they espied him jumped on shore and made him captive, thinking him to be of royal birth. They bound him with cords ; but these instantly fell off him, and the god sat smiling in silence. The pilot perceiving these apparent signs of divinity, called to the crew that he was a god, and exhorted them to set him on shore, lest he should cause a tempest to come on. But the captain rebuked him sharply, desired him to mind his own business, and declared that they would take their captive to Egypt or elsewhere and sell him for a slave. They then set sail, the wind blew fresh, and they were proceeding merrily along ; when, behold ! streams of fragrant wine began to flow along the ship j vines with clustering grapes spread over the sail ; and ivy, laden with berries, ran up the mast and sides of the vessel. His shipmates in affiight now called aloud to the pilot to make for the land ; but the god assuming the form of a grim lion seized the captain, and the terrified crew to escape him leaped into the sea and became dolphins. The pilot alone remained » Od. xxiv. 74. ' Theog. 940. " Theog. 947. " Met. iii. 532. seq. Hygin. 134. 208 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. on board ; the god then declared to him who he was, and took him under his protection. Another of these hymns relates, that the Nymphs received Dionysos from his father, and reared him in a fragrant cavern of the valleys of Nysa. He was counted among the Immor- tals ; and when he grew up, he went through the woody vales crowned with bay and ivy : the Nymphs followed him, andthe wood was fiUed with their joyous clamour. In these poems the mention of the ivy, and the epithet noisy {ipl^pofio's), testify, as we shall see, their late age. Pin- dar also calls Dionysos Ivy-bearing {Kt<7cro^6po^) and noisy (^pofiio'i). Herodotus and the tragedians describe what we consider to be the mixed religion of Dionysos. The idea of mere mortals, or the offspring of gods and mor- tals, being raised to divine rank and power, does not occur in the Ilias. Ganymedes and Tithonos, who were mortal by both father and mother, were carried off, the former by the gods to be the cup-bearer of Zeus% the latter by E6s ; and it is to be presumed, though Homer does not expressly say so, that they were endowed with immortality. But all the half- caste, as we may call them, Heracles, Achilleus, Sarpedon, ^neias, have no advantage over their feUow-mortals, except greater strength and more frequent aid from the gods. But in the Odyssey we find the system of deification com- menced. The sea-goddess Ino-Leucothea, who gives Odys- seus her veil to save him from being drowned, was, we are told, a daughter of Cadmos (a name which does not occur in the Ilias), ' who had before been a speaking mortal, but was now allotted the honour of the gods in the depths of the sea.' And again; Odysseus beholds in the realms of Hades the image (etSwXov) of Heracles, pursuing his usual occupations when on earth ; but himself we are told ' enjoys banquets among the immortal gods, and possesses fair-ankled Hebe.' It is not however said that he had obtained the power of a god''. " II. XX. 234. '' Od. V. 333 ; xi. 601. The last of these passages is undoubtedly spurious, and the first is perhaps not altogether free from suspicion. Ym DIONYSOS. 209 Supposing therefore Dionysos to have been, as his name might appear to indicate, one of the original Grecian deities, (and it is difficult to think that the vine and its produce, with which the ' sons of the Achseans' were so familiar, could have been without a presiding god,) he may have been regarded as a son of Zeus by a goddess named Semele, who in after-times, in pursuance of a practice hereafter to be explained, may have been degraded to the rank of a heroine, and Dionysos have consequently become the son of Zeus by a mortal mother. The vintage is in wine-countries at the present day, like hay- making and harvest-home in England, a time of merry-making and festivity ; and the festival of the deity presiding over it may have been a very joyous one, and celebrated with abun- dance of noise and mirth. Such, we say, may have been (for we venture not to assert it) the original Dionysiac religion of Greece ; and when we recollect the very incidental manner in which Pemeter, undoubtedly one of the most ancient deities, is noticed in the Ilias, it should not excite any great surprise to find the poet totally omitting all mention of the wine-god^. To pass from conjectm-e to certainty, it appears quite clear that the part of Thrace lying along the northern coast of the ^gaean was in the earliest times a chief seat of the Dionysiac religion, where the worship of the god of wine was celebrated with great noise and tumult by the people of that country ; and, supposing the passage in the sixth book of the Ihas to be genuine, some account of it had possibly reached the ears of Homer. The Thracian worship of Dionysos, it is not im- probable, was not introduced into Greece till after the time when the JEolians colonised the coast of Asia about the Hel- lespont''. Here they became acquainted with the enthusiastic orgies of the Great Mother, and of the god Sabazios ; who, as it would appear, was similar to Dionysos", and an object of veneration both to Phrygians and Thracians, and who was worshiped under the form of an ox, as being the patron of agriculture. As polytheism is not jealous, and readily permits ^ See end of this chapter. >> Not till a century or two after the time of Homer, in the opinion of Lobeck (Aglaophamus, p. 672.). ■= Sch. Aristoph. Birds, 873. Lys. 388. Wasps, 9. P 210 MYTHOLOGY OK GREECE. the introduction of new deities into the system, particularly if their attributes or festivals have a resemblance to any of the old ones% the worship of this new god was adopted by the Grecian colonists, and diffiised over the isles and continent of Greece c not, however, without considerable opposition from the sober common-sense of several individuals of eminence, as appears by the mythic tales of Labdacos, Pentheus and Perseus, which are apparently real occurrences thrown back into the mythic age^. The original Grecian festivals, though of a joyous cheerful character, were so widely different from the raving orgies and wild licentiousness of this Dionysiac re- ligion, that it is quite evident the latter could not have been known in Greece during the Achaean period". There can be no doubt of the Dionysiac religion, with its nocturnal orgies and indecent extravagance, having been very prevalent among the Greeks at the time when the lonians were permitted to settle in Egypt. It is in no small degree surprising with what facility the Grecian and Egyptian sy- stems coalesced, with what open-mouthed creduhty the Gre- cian settlers and travellers swallowed all the fictions of the cunning priesthood of that country, and with what barefaced assurance the latter palmed on their unsuspecting auditors the most incredible lies. In reading the Euterpe of Hero- dotus, one might fancy one's self beholding Captain Wdford listening with devout behef to his artful Pundifi ; so httle sus- picion does the Father of History betray of his having been played^upon by the grave linen-clad personages who did him the honour to initiate him in their mysteries. The theory boldly advanced by the Egyptian priesthood was, that all the rehgion of Greece had been imported into ' It was thus that there was a great resemblance observed between the Dio- nysia of Athens and the Saturnalia of Eome. '' Had the consul Postumius (Livy, xxxix. 8.) lived before history was written at Kome, and had the Bacchic orgies obtained a footing in that city, he would probably have figured as a Pentheus in the mythic annals of Rome; " Mythology," says Miiller (Dor. i. 293.), " often first clothes the events of history in a febulous garb, and then refers them to an early and unknown time." ' Miiller, Dor. i. 10. " jEgyptia nuniina gaudent plangoribus, Grseca choreis, Bar- bara strepitu cymbalistarum et tympanistarum et ceraularum." — Apnl. de Gent, p. 49. ^ See the Asiatic Researches. DIONYSOS. 211 that country by colonies of Egyptians — a people, by the way, without ships, or materials for building them, who had no ports, and who held the sea in abhorrence* — who civilised the mast-eating savages that roamed its uncultivated wilds, and instructed them in the nature and worship of the gods. The deities of Greece were therefore to find their prototypes in Egypt ; and Dionysos was honoured by being identified with Osiris, the great god of the land of Nile''. Herodotus informs us how Melampus, who introduced his worship into Greece, had learned it from Cadmos the Phoenician, who had derived his knowledge of course fi.-om Egypt". As the realm of Osiris did not abound in vines*, the ivy with its clustering berries which grew there was appropriated to the god«; and it now became one of the favourite plants of Dionysos, as ap- pears by the Homeridian hymn above-cited. The Egyptians had fabled that tHeir god Osiris had made a progress through the world, to instruct mankind in agri- culture and planting*. The Greeks caught up the idea, and represented the son of Semele — for the popular faith did not give up the old legend of his Theban birth — as roaming through the greater part of the earth. In the Bacchae of Euripides the god describes himself as having gone through Lydia, Phrygia, Persia, Bactria, Media, Arabia, and the coast of Asia, inhabited by mingled Greeks and barbarians, through- out all which he had established his dances and his religious rites. When Alexander and his army had penetrated to the mo- dern Caubul, they found ivy and wild vines on the sides of Mount Meros and on the banks of the Hydaspes ; they also met processions, accompanied by the sound of drums and party-coloured dresses, like those worn in the Bacchic orgies of Greece and Lesser Asia. The flatterers of the conqueror » Ukert, I. i. 41. Heeren, Idem II. ii. 225. 288. 377. !• Herod, u. 144. ° J^- "• 49- " Herodotus (ii. 77.) says positively that there were no vines in Egypt. Egyp- tian vines are mentioned in Genesis, xl. 9. Num. xx. 5 ; and the vintage is the subject of one of the ancient Egyptian paintings now in the British Museum. ' Plutarch (De Is. et Os. 37.) says that the Egyptians called it Chenosiris, i. e. Plant of Osiris. f Diodor.i. 17. Plut. dels. etOs. 13. Eudocia, 110. Compare Tibull. i. 7. 29. sey. P 2 212 MYTHOLOGY OP GREECE. thence took occasion to fable that Dionysos had, like Heracles and their own great king, marched as a conqueror throughout the East ; had planted there the ivy and the vine ; had built the city Nysa ; and named the mountain Meros, from the cir- cumstance of his birth from the thigh {firipos;) of Zeus*. At length, during the time of the Graeco-Bactric kingdom, some Greek writers, on whom it is not impossible the Bramins im- posed, as they have since done on the English, gave out that Dionysos was a native Indian, who, having taught the art of wine-making in that country, made a conquering expedition through the world, to instruct mankind in the culture of the vine and other useful arts. And thus the knowledge of the vine came to Greece, from a land which does not produce that plant''. This last is the absurd hypothesis which we have seen re- newed in our own days, and supported by all the efforts of ingenious etymology. The story of the Grecian Dionysos is as follows «. Zeus, enamoured of the beauty of Semele the daughter of Cadmos, visited her in secret. Hera's jealousy took alarm, and under the form of an old woman she came to Semele, and, by ex- citing doubts of the real character of her lover, induced her when next he came to exact a promise that he would visit her as he was wont to visit Hera. An unwary promise was thus drawn from the god before he knew what he was required to perform; and he therefore entered the bower of Semele in his • chariot, the lightning and thunder flaming, flashing and roar- ing around him. Overcome with terror, Semele, who was now six months gone with child, expired in the flames, and Zeus took the babe, which was prematurely expelled from her womb, and sewed it up in his thigh. In due time it came to the birth, and Zeus then naming it Dionysos gave it to " Diodor. ii. 38. Arrian, Hist. Indie, mb init. * Plut. Aq. et Ig. Comp. 7. Diodor. iii. 63. A. W. Schlegel, though in general inclined to what we call the mystic theory, expressly denies in his Indian Lihrary that the Greeks had, previous to the conquests of Alexander, any idea of an expe- dition of Bacchos to or from India. We ask the advocates of the Indian origin of the Bacchic religion for their proofs, and get nothing in reply but confident asser- tion or slight resemblances of names and ceremonies. " Apollod. iii. 4-5. Ovid, Met. iii. 253. *ey. Hygin. 167. 179. Eudoc. 118. 373. DIONYSOS. 213 Hermes to convey to Ino, the sister of Semele, with direc- tions to rear it as a girl. Hera, whose revenge was not yet satiated, caused Athamas, the husband of Ino, to go mad ; and Zeus, to save Dionysos from the machinations of Hera, changed him into a kid, under which form Hermes conveyed him to the nymphs of Nysa, who were afterwards made the Hyades, and by whom he was reared. When he grew up he discovered the culture of the vine, and the mode of extracting its precious hquor ; but Hera struck him with madness, and he roamed through great part of Asia. In Phrygia Rhea cured him, and taught him her religious rites, which he now resolved to introduce into Hellas. When passing through Thrace he was so furiously assailed by Lycurgos, a prince of the country, that he was obliged to take refuge with Thetis in the sea ; but he avenged himself by- driving Lycurgos mad, who killed his own son Dryas with a blow of an axe, taking him for a vine-branch ; and his sub- jects afterwards bound him and left him on Mount Pangseon, where he was destroyed by wild horses, for such was the will of Dionysos. When Dionysos reached his native city, the women readily received the new rites, and ran wildly through the woods of Cithaeron. Pentheus, the ruler of Thebes, however, set himself against them ; but Dionysos caused him to be torn to pieces by his mother and his aunts. The daughters of Minyas, Leu- cippe, Aristippe and Alcathoe, also despised his rites, and con- tinued plying their looms, while the other women ran through the mountains. He came as a maiden, and remonstrated, but in vain ; he then assumed the form of various wild beasts ; serpents filled their baskets ; vines and ivy twined found their looms, while wine and milk distilled from the roof; but their obstinacy M'as unsubdued. He finally drove them mad ; they tore to pieces the son of Leucippe, and then went roaming through the mountains, till Hermes touched them with his wand, and turned them into a bat, an owl, and a crow». " Corinna and Nicander ap. Anton. Lib. 10. iElian V. H. iii. 42. Plut. Q. G. 38. Ovid, Met. iv. 1. seq. The pleasing tale of Pyramus and Thisbe introduced by this poet (perhaps a Milesian one) is nowhere else to be found. Nonnus (vi. 339. seg.) tells a strange legend of the love of Pyramos (so he names the Nile) for Thisbe. Are these Pyramid and Thebes ? 214 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Dionysos next proceeded to Attica, where he taught a man named Icarios the cultm-e of the vine. Icarios having made wine, gave of it to some shepherds, who thinking themselves poisoned killed him. When they came to their senses they buried him ; and his daughter Erigone, being shown the spot by his faithful dog Msera, hung herself through griefs At Argos the rites of Dionysos were received, as at Thebes, by the women, and opposed by Perseus, the son of Zeus and Danae ; Zeus however reduced his two sons to amity^, and Dionysos thence passed over to Naxos, where he met Ariadne. It was on his way thither that his adventure with the Tyrrhe- nians occurred. Dionysos afterwards descended to Erebos, whence he fetched his mother, whom he now named Thyone, and ascended with her to the abode of the gods'=. Like every other portion of the Grecian mythology, the history of the vine-god was pragmatised when infidelity be- came prevalent. That most tasteless of historians Diodorus gives us, probably from the cyclograph Dionysius, the follow- ing narrative"*. Ammon, a monarch of Libya, was married to Rhea, a daughter of Uranos ; but meeting near the Ceraunian moun- tains a beautiful maiden named Amaltheia, he became ena- moured of her. He made her mistress of the adjacent fruitful country, which from its resembhng a bull's horn in form was named the Western Horn, and then Amaltheia's Horn, which last name was afterwards given to places similar to it in fer- tility. Amaltheia here bore him a son, whom, fearing the jealousy of Rhea, he conveyed to a town named Nysa, situated not far from the Horn, in an island formed by the river Triton. He committed the care of him to Nysa, one of the daughters of Aristasos ; while Athena, who had lately sprung from the earth on the banks of the Triton, was appointed to keep guard against the assaults of Rhea. This deUcious isle, which was precipitous on all sides, with a single entrance through a narrow glen thickly shaded by trees, is described in a similar manner with Panchaia, and other happy retreats of the same " ApoUod. iii. 14. 7. Hygin. 130. ' See Pai't II. ch. vii. Perseus. " ApoUod. iii. 5. 3. Pans. ii. 31, 2 ; 37, 5. Diodor. iii. 62 ; iv. 25. Hor. Carm. ii. 19. 29. seg. "■ Diodor, iii. 68. spy. DIONYSOS. 215 nature. It therefore had verdant meads, abundant springs, trees of every kind, flowers of all hues, and evermore re- sounded with the melody of birds*. After he grew up, Dio- nysos became a mighty conqueror and a benefactor of man- kind, by whom he was finally deified. Though the adventures of Dionysos were occasionally the theme of poets, especially of the dramatists, they do not ap- pear to have been narrated in continuity, like those of He- racles, until long after the decline of Grecian poetry. It was in the fifth century of the Christian aera, that Nonnus, a na- tive of Panopolis in Egypt, made the history of Dionysos the subject of a poem, containing forty-eight books, the wildest and strangest that can well be conceived, more resembling the Ramayuna of India than anything to be found in ancient or modern occidental hterature. Its chief subject is the war of Dionysos against Deriades Icing of the Indians, the details of which are probably the inventions of the poet'' ; in other parts he seems to have adhered with tolerable fidelity to his authorities, and the 'Dionysiacs' may be regarded as a vast repertory of Bacchic fable, perhaps deserving of more atten- tion than has hitherto been bestowed on if. The worship of this god prevailed in almost aU parts of Greece. Men and women joined in his festivals, dressed in Asiatic robes and bonnets ; their heads wreathed with vine- and ivy-leaves, with fawn-skins (ve/Sp/Se?) flung over their shoulders, and thyrses or blunt spears twined with vine-leaves in their hands, they ran bellowing through the country lo " that Nyseian isle Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham, Whom Gentiles Ammon call and Libyan Jove, Hid Amalthea and her florid son. Young Bacchus, from his step-dame Rhea's eye. MUton, P. L. iv. 275. The Poet makes here one of his usual slips of memory (Tales and Popular Fictions, p. 22.), for Amalthea was not hid in the isle. I" Stephanus Byzautinus (». TaZa) quotes the ' Bassarics', a poem by one Dio- nysius, which treated of this war. ' Nonnus appears to have been well versed in the various poems ascribed to Orpheus, in which Dionysos was the subject of strange mystery. As our object is alone the genuine mythology of Hellas, we do not enter on those matters. See Lobeck's Aglaophamus. 216 MYTHOLOGY OF GREECE. Bacche! Euoi! lacche! etc., swinging their thyrses, beating on drums, and sounding various instruments. Indecent em- blems were carried in processions, at which modest virgins assisted ; and altogether few ceremonies more immoral or in- decent are celebrated in India at the present day, than po- lished Athens performed in the Phrygio- Grecian Dionysia% though ancient and modern mystics endeavour to extract pro- found and solemn mysteries from them. The women, who bore a chief part in these frantic revels, were called Mcenades, Bacchce, Thyiades, Euades, names of which the origin is apparent. Dionysos was represented in a variety of modes and cha- racters by the ancient artists. The Theban Dionysos appears with the delicate lineaments of a maiden, rather than those of a young man ; his whole air and gait are effeminate ; his long flowing hair is, like that of Apollo^, collected behind his head, WTcathed Avith ivy or a fillet ; he is either naked, or wrapped in a large cloak, and the nebris is sometimes flung over his shoulders ; he carries a crook or a thyrse, and a panther ge- nerally lies at his feet. In some monuments Dionysos appears bearded, in others horned (the Bacchos-Sabazios), whence in the mysteries he was identified with Osiris, and regarded as the Sun. He is sometimes alone, at other times in company with Ariadne or the youth Ampelos. His triumph over the Indians is represented in great pomp. The captives are chained and placed on wagons or elephants, and among them is carried a large cratir fuU of wine ; Dio- nysos is in a chariot drawn by elephants or panthers, leaning on Ampelos, preceded by Pan, and followed by Silenos, the Satyrs, and the Masnadea, on foot or on horseback, who make the air resound with their cries and the clash of their instru- ments. The Indian Bacchos is always bearded. It is with reason that Sophocles"' styles Dionysos many- named {iroXvcovvfj.o^), for in the Orphic hymns alope we meet " See Demosth. Nesera, I3?l. Aristoph. Peace. ' Soils seterna est Phoebo Bacchoque juventas ; Nam decet intonsus crinis utrumque deum. — Tibull. i, 4. 37. ' Antigone, 1115. DIONYSOS. 217 upwards of forty of his appellations. Some of the principal of them are, Bacchos^ and Bromios, from the noise with which his festivals were celebrated; Bassareus, from the fox-skin dresses named bassarts worn by the Thracians ; Dithyrambos, from the odes of that name, or from his double birth (S19 6vpa) ; Eleleus and Euios, from the shouting; Lyceos, a.^ loosing from care ; LeruBOS, from the wine-press. Dionysos was also called'', \. Muse-leader ; 2. Bull-headed; 3. Fire-born; 4. Dance-rouser ; 5. Mountain-rover; 6. Sleep- giver, etc. It seems probable that in the original conception of Dio- nysos he was not merely the wine-god, for such restricted notions are contrary to the genius of the ancient Grecian re- ligion, in which each people assigned its peculiar deities a very extensive sphere of action, as gods of the sun, the moon, the heaven, the earth, and other parts of nature. Dionysos was therefore, it is likely, regarded as a deity presiding over growth and increase in general ; and as Hermes, who seems to have been originally of coextensive power with him, was gradually restricted and made a god of cattle alone, so Dio- nysos may have been limited to the care of plants, particu- larly the vine". Water and heat being the great causes of growth, we find this deity closely connected with both these elements. Thus the infant Dionysos is committed to the water-goddess Ino, and to the Hyades and to Silenos. His temples at Athens^ and Sparta^ were in places named marshes (eV X^tvats), and he was styled Of-the-Marsh {Ai/jiva2o