THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG
=284. Wagner's Tetralogy.= In his famous Ring of the Nibelung the
German composer, Richard Wagner, returns to the Norse version of the
stories recounted in the chapter preceding this. He is responsible
not only for the musical score of the four operas of which the Ring
consists, but for the text and scenic arrangement as well. As musical
dramas the four plays constitute the grandest series of the kind that
the world possesses. But even if they were not wedded to such music,
the _Rhine-gold_, the _Valkyrie_, the _Siegfried_, and the _Twilight_
(or _Dusk_) _of the Gods_ would be entitled, for creative invention,
imaginative insight and power, and poetic diction, to rank with notable
dramas, ancient or modern. The tetralogy (or series of four) presents
the whole story of the accursed Nibelung gold, from that dawn when it
was wrested from the daughters of the Rhine to that dusk when it was
restored, having wrought meanwhile the doom of Nibelungs, Volsungs, and
the gods themselves.
=285. The Rhine-gold.= We are at the bottom of the Rhine: a greenish
twilight, and moving water, and everywhere sharp points of rocks
jutting from the depths. Around the central rock three Rhine-daughters
swim, guarding it carefully, but laughing and playing, and chasing one
the other as they guard. To them from a chasm climbs Alberich, the
Nibelung, he who in the old Norse lay was known as Andvari. He views
the maidens with increasing pleasure. He addresses them, he clambers
after them, he strives to catch them; they lure him on, they mock him
and escape his grasp; he woos them each in turn, all unsuccessfully. He
gazes upward--"Could I but catch one"; then once more failing, remains
in speechless rage. Rage soon transformed to wonder: for through the
water from above there filters a brightening glow, a magical light,
streaming from the summit of the central rock where in the splendor of
the morning sun the Rhine-gold laughs a-kindle.
"What is it, ye sleek ones,
That there doth gleam and glow?"[374]
Has he never heard of the Rhine-gold? they ask. Of the wondrous star
whose glory lightens the waves? He has not. He scorns it.
"The golden charm," cries one of the maidens,--
"The golden charm
Wouldst thou not flout
Knewest thou all of its wonders."
"The world's wealth," jeers another,
"Could be won by a man
If out of the Rhine-gold
He fashioned the Ring
That measureless might can bestow...
He who the sway
Of love forswears,
He who delight
Of love forbears,
Only he can master the magic
That forces the gold to a ring!"
"But we fear not thee--oh, no--for thou burnest in love for us."
So, lightly sing the Rhine-daughters; but Alberich, with his eyes on
the gold, has heeded well their chatter. "The world's wealth," he
mutters; "might I win that by the spell of the gold? Nay, though love
be the forfeit, my cunning shall win me delight." Then terribly loud he
cries,
"Mock ye, mock on!
The Nibelung neareth your toy;--"
then, clambering with haste to the summit,
"My hand, it quenches your light;
I wrest from the rock your gold;
I fashion the ring of revenge;
Now, hear me, ye floods--
Accursèd be love henceforth."
Tearing the gold from the rock, he plunges into the depths and
disappears. After him dive the maidens. In vain. Far, far below, from
Nibelheim rises the mocking laughter of Alberich, Lord of the Gold.
The scene changes. An open space on a mountain height becomes visible.
The dawning day lights up a castle, glittering with pinnacles, on
the top of a cliff. Below flows silent the Rhine. At one side, on a
flowery bank, Wotan (Odin), king of the gods, lies sleeping, and Fricka
(Frigga) his wife. They wake. Wotan turns toward his castle, new-built
by the giants, and exults; but Fricka reminds him of the terrible price
that is yet to be paid for its building,--none other, forsooth, than
the person of Freia, the fair one, the goddess of spring and love, she
who tends the garden of the gods, and whose apples, eaten from day to
day, confer eternal youth,--she is the wage that the giants will claim.
"I mind me well of the bargain," returns Wotan, "but I give no thought
to fulfill it. My castle stands; for the wage--fret not thyself."
"Oh, laughing, impious lightness," reproves him Fricka, "thy bargain is
fast, and is still to rue."
Nay, on the moment rushes Freia to them, pleading, pursued by the
giants. "Give her to us!" they cry,--Fasolt and Fafner, mighty twain
that unslumbering had reared the walls of Wotan's castle, to win them a
woman, winsome and sweet.
"Now pay us our wage!"
"Nay," coolly answers Wotan, "other guerdon ask. Freia may I not grant!"
But the giants insist. They accuse the god of faithlessness. He jests
with them, temporizing, awaiting anxiously the arrival of Loge (Loki),
spirit of cunning, at whose suggestion that bargain had been struck.
For even then Loge had secretly assured Wotan that Freia should in the
emergency be ransomed. The giants, indignant at the delay, press on
Freia. She calls on her brothers, Froh (Freyr) and Donner (Thor). They
rush to her rescue: Froh clasps the fair one; Donner plants himself
before the importunates.
"Know ye the weight of my hammer's blow?" thunders he.
There is battle in the air.
Then enters Loge, demon of fire, mischief-maker, traitor, and thief,
whom long ago Wotan had lifted from his evil brood and of him made a
friend and counselor.
"Now hear, crabbèd one; keep thy word," says Wotan, sharply.
Loge appears to be nonplussed. He has restlessly searched to the ends
of the world to find a ransom for Freia; "but naught is so rich that
giant or man will take it as price for a woman's worth and delight." He
has sought amid the forces of water and earth and air; "but naught is
so mighty that giant or man will prefer it above a woman's worth and
delight!" And yet,--slyly Loge lets fall the word,--there is the ruddy
Gold:
"Yea, one I looked on, but _one_, who love's delights forswore, for
ruddy gold renouncing the wealth of woman's grace."
And he recounts the marvels of the Rhine-gold. The giants offer to take
it in lieu of Freia; nay, gods and goddesses as well are held by the
charm of the glittering hoard; by the lure, and the dread too, of the
Ring that, once fashioned, gives measureless might to its lord. Even
now, doubtless, he who has forsworn love has muttered the magic rune
and rounded the sovereign circlet of gold. If so, the gods themselves
shall be his slaves,--slaves of the Nibelung Alberich.
"The ring I must win me," decides Wotan.
"But at the cost of love?" queries Froh.
Loge counsels the theft of the gold from Alberich and its restoration
to the daughters of the Rhine. But the gods are not thus far-sighted,
and the giants insist upon the hoard as their due. They seize Freia,
and bear her away as pledge till that ransom be paid....
"Alack, what aileth the gods?"
It is Loge who speaks. A pale mist falls upon the scene, gradually
growing denser. The light of the heavenly abodes is quenched. Wotan
and all his clan become increasingly wan and aged. Freia of the Garden
is departed: the apples of youth are decaying; "old and gray, worn and
withered, the scoff of the world, dies out the godly race!"
"Up, Loge," calls Wotan, dismayed, "descend with me. To Nibelheim go we
together. To win back our youth, the golden ransom must I gain."
The scene changes to Nibelheim, the subterranean home of the Nibelungs.
Wotan and Loge find Mime, Alberich's brother, bewailing the fate of
the Nibelungs--for Alberich has fashioned the Ring and all below groan
under his tyranny. Even now, reluctantly indeed, Mime is forging the
_Tarnhelm_ for his tyrant brother,--a wishing-cap by whose magic the
wearer may transfer himself through space and assume whatever form he
please, or make himself invisible, at will. Alberich, in the flush
of power, enters, driving before him with brandished whip a host
of Nibelungs from the caverns. They are laden with gold and silver
handiwork. At Alberich's command they heap it in a pile. He draws the
Ring from his finger; the vanquished host trembles and, shrieking,
cowers away.
"What seek ye here?" demands he, looking long and suspiciously at Wotan
and Loge.
They have heard strange tidings, says Wotan, and they come to see the
wonders that Alberich can work. Then Loge induces the Nibelung lord to
exhibit the virtues of the Tarnhelm. Readily beguiled, he displays his
necromantic power. First he transforms himself into a loathly dragon.
The gods pretend dismay:--he can make himself great; can he make
himself small, likewise? "Pah, nothing simpler! Look at me now!" He
dons the Tarnhelm, and lo, a toad!
"There, grasp quickly," says Loge. Wotan places his foot on the toad,
and Loge seizes the Tarnhelm. Alberich becomes visible in his own form,
writhing under Wotan's foot. The gods bind him and drag him to the
chasm by which they had descended.
The scene changes to the open space before Valhalla. Alberich, dragged
in by Loge, is forced to deliver up the hoard and the Tarnhelm and the
Ring. Wotan contemplates the Ring and puts it on. Alberich is set at
liberty.
"Am I now free?" cries he, "free in sooth? Thus greets you then my
freedom's foremost word: As by curse it came to me, accursed forever be
this Ring! As its gold gave measureless might, let now its magic deal
death to its lord. Its wealth shall yield pleasure to none. Care shall
consume him who doth hold it. All shall lust after its delights; yet
naught shall it boot him who wins the prize! To its lord no gain let
it bring; and forever be murder drawn in its wake, till again once more
in my hand, rewon, I hold it!"
So the baffled Nibelung curses, and departs. Then enter Fricka, Donner,
and Froh, followed soon by the giants, who bring Freia back. They
refuse, Fasolt and Fafner, to release the fair goddess until she is
fully redeemed; and they claim not only Tarnhelm and gold, but Ring as
well. With the Ring Wotan refuses to part. In that moment rises from
a rocky cleft the goddess of the earth, Erda, the beloved of heaven's
god, and mother by him of the Valkyries.
"Yield it, Wotan, yield it," she cries warningly. "Flee the Ring's
dread curse."
"What woman warneth me thus?"
"All that e'er was, know I," pronounces Erda:
"How all things are;
How all things shall be.
Hear me! hear me! hear me!
All that e'er was, endeth:
A darksome day
Dawns for your godhood!
Be counseled; give up the Ring."
She vanishes, the all-wise one; and Wotan surrenders the Ring. Freia
is redeemed, and the gods glow again with youth. No sooner have the
giants gained possession of the Ring than they proceed to quarrel over
it. Fafner strikes out with his staff and stretches Fasolt on the
ground. From the dying man he hastily wrests the Ring, puts it into his
sack, and goes on quietly packing the gold. In a solemn silence the
gods stand horrified. Care and fear fetter the soul of Wotan. That he
may shake himself free of them he determines to descend to Erda; she
yet can give him counsel. But first,--for Donner has cleared with his
thunder and lightning the clouds that had overspread the scene,--he
will enter "Valhalla," his castle, golden-gleaming in the evening
sunlight.
"What meaneth the name, then?" asks Fricka, as they cross the rainbow
bridge.
Wotan evades the question, for he still dreads the curse pronounced
by the Nibelung upon all who have owned the Ring; and that name,
"Valhalla," indicates just the means by which he hopes to escape the
curse. He has thought to avert the doom of the gods by gathering in
this Valhalla, or Hall of the Slain, the spirits of heroes fallen in
battle--especially of heroes of a race that shall spring from himself,
the Volsungs (or Wälsungs) yet to be born. They shall do battle for the
gods when sounds the crack of doom. But of all this Wotan says naught.
He will say in the hour of his triumph.
As the gods enter Valhalla the plaints of the Rhine-maidens for the
loss of their gold arise from the river below.
=286.= In =The Valkyrie= Wotan proceeds with his plan. During his
wanderings on earth, under the name of Wälse, he has become the father
of twin children, Siegmund and Sieglinde. These have, in early youth,
been separated by the murderous turmoil of warring clans, but now they
are to be reunited; and Wotan, with a primitive disregard of the fact
that they are brother and sister, intends to make them man and wife,
in order that from them may issue the heroic race that, in the latter
days, shall defend Valhalla from the onslaught of the powers of evil.
The play opens with the interior of a woodland lodge. In the center
rises the stem of a mighty ash tree, about which has been built an
apartment of roughly hewn logs. It is toward evening and a violent
thunderstorm is just subsiding. This is the home of Hunding, chieftain
of the Neiding clan. The door opens, and Siegmund, flying from his
enemies, wounded and weaponless, enters. Seeing no one, he closes the
door, strides toward the fire, and throws himself wearily down on a
bearskin:
"Whoe'er own this hearth,
Here must I rest me."
He remains stretched out motionless. A woman enters from an inner
chamber. It is Sieglinde. She takes compassion on the helpless
fugitive, admires his noble bearing, gives him drink, and bids him
tarry till her husband be home. They gaze upon each other with
ever-increasing interest and emotion. Suddenly Siegmund starts up as if
to go.
"Who pursues thee?" she inquires.
"Ill fate pursues where'er I go. To thee, wife, may it never come.
Forth from thy house I fly."
She calls him back. "Then bide thou here. Thou canst not bring ill fate
where ill fate already makes its home."
He leans against the hearth. Again the eyes of the twain meet.
Hunding enters, regards the stranger with suspicion, notes the
resemblance between him and Sieglinde; but he consents to harbor him
for the night.
"Thy name and fortune?"
"Wehwalt," says Siegmund, "for woe still waits on my steps; Wehwalt,
the son of Wolfe." And thus concealing his race, he tells a story in
other respects true: how in his childhood a cruel host had laid waste
his home and killed his mother and carried away the sister who was his
twin, and how he and his father, the Wolf, for years had battled in the
woodlands against the Neidings.
The Neidings! They are Hunding's clan.
"My house holds thee, Wölfing, to-night. To-morrow defend thee; with
death thou shalt pay for this life!" And Hunding withdraws, Sieglinde
with him.
Siegmund is weaponless. The firelight sends a sudden glow upon the
ash tree, and a sword-hilt there sends back an answering gleam. But
Siegmund knows not what it means. Clad in white, Sieglinde steals from
the inner room. She has left Hunding asleep, overcome by a slumberous
draft.
"Thy coming is life," cries Siegmund.
"A weapon, now, let me show thee," she replies. And she tells how, on
the day of her unhappy wedding, a stranger, all in gray, low-hatted and
one-eyed, had entered the Hunding hall and struck into the ash stem a
sword that none but the bravest of heroes could win, and how all in
turn had tried in vain to draw forth the sword. Now she knows for whom
it was ordained,--
"It was for thee, my deliverer, my hero held in my arms!"
They embrace. He declares his lineage. He is son of him whose eye
proudly glistened from under the low-brimmed hat,--son of Wälse,
the wanderer. He is Siegmund, the Victorious. For him, the sword
Nothung.--And he draws it easily forth.
"Art thou Siegmund?" she cries; "Sieglinde am I. Thine own twin sister
thou winnest at once with the sword."
"Bride and sister be to thy brother; then nourish the Wälsungs for aye!"
So the twain make their compact.
In the second act we are transported to a wild and rocky place. Before
Wotan, fully armed and carrying his spear, stands Brünnhilde, the
warrior maid, likewise fully armed. She is one of the nine Valkyries,
daughters of Wotan and Erda, fostered for battle that they might
forfend the doom foretold by Erda herself,--the shameful defeat of the
gods. Well have the Valkyrs, choosers of the slain, performed their
task, stirring mortal hearts to battle and riding through the air above
to designate the bravest for death, and with their spirits to fill the
halls on Valhalla's height. Now, however, Wotan is ordering Brünnhilde
to haste to the fray,--not on death's errand but on errand of life,--to
shield Siegmund the Wälsung in the fight. The Valkyrie springs shouting
from rock to rock, and disappears behind the mountain crags.
All seems to be arranged. But lo, Fricka, in her ram-drawn car! She
descends and strides toward her scheming spouse. The goddess has heard
the cry of Hunding, calling for vengeance on the twinborn pair who
have rashly wrought him wrong; and as guardian of wedlock she demands
the death of Siegmund in the coming conflict. Wotan tries to persuade
her that Siegmund's success is needful to the gods,--the warrior band
of mortal souls gathered by the Valkyries in the heights of Valhalla
cannot alone suffice to avert the onslaught of the powers of darkness.
"Needed is one who, free from help of godhood, fights free of the
godhead's control. Only such an one is meet for the deed which is
denied to a god to achieve."
But Fricka is not to be deceived nor thwarted in her aim. She brushes
aside the plea of Wotan and his subterfuge,--who has ever heard
that heroes can accomplish what the gods cannot? And as for heroes
unaided--none such is Siegmund.
"Who was it," she asks, "that brought him his conquering sword? and
whose shield is ordained to cover him in the fight?"
"I cannot o'erthrow him," breaks out Wotan; "he has found my sword."
"Destroy its magic then," retorts the implacable queen. "Give word to
thy shouting war-maid that Siegmund fall!"
Wotan is conquered. Sadly he revokes the order given to Brünnhilde.
"Then takest thou from Siegmund thy shield?" cries that one in
amazement.
And the god: "Yea! though Alberich's host threaten our downfall; though
again the Ring be won by the Nibelung, and Valhalla be lost forever.
By bargains bound myself, I may not wrest the Ring from the foeman,
from Fafner the giant. Therefore, to fulfill my purpose, I had thought
to create a Free One who for me should fight. Now, with loathing, I
find ever myself in all my hand has created. The Other for whom I
have longed, that Other I never shall find. Himself must the Free One
create him; my hand shapes nothing but slaves. For when this hand of
mine touched Alberich's Ring, my heart grew greedy of gold. I fled
from the curse, but the curse flies not from me. What I love best must
I surrender; whom most I cherish, I must slay. One thing awaits me
yet--the downfall! Yea, that portended Erda,--Erda, the all-wise.
"'When the dusky foe,' she said,--
'When the dusky foe of love
Grimly getteth a son,
The doom of the gods
Delays not long!'
And of late I have heard that the Nibelung has bought him a wife. Their
son shall inherit,--their son, the child of spite, shall inherit the
empty pomp of the gods!"
It was of Hagen, yet unborn, the baleful curse of the Volsungs, of
Hagen, the traitor, that Erda had prophesied. And thus dimly is
foreshadowed the Twilight of the Gods.
But Brünnhilde?
"Siegmund thou hast taught me to love," murmurs the Valkyrie. Then
boldly,--
"For his sake thy wavering word I defy!"
The war-father turns in wrath upon this new rebellion, and on pain of
eternal penalty enjoins upon his daughter her new duty:
"Fight truly for Fricka! Siegmund strike thou! Such be the Valkyrie's
task!"
The war-maid seeks out Siegmund and announces to him his approaching
death. But that hero's distress at the thought of parting from
Sieglinde stirs her to the quick. And, in the moment of battle,
Brünnhilde disobeys the All-father's injunction;--she shields the
warrior whom she loves. Then suddenly appears Wotan, standing over
Hunding and holding his spear across in front of Siegmund.
"Go back from the spear! In splinters the sword!" shouts the god.
In terror Brünnhilde sinks back. Siegmund's sword breaks on the
outstretched spear, and Hunding pierces the Volsung's breast.
Brünnhilde hastily gathers the bits of the broken sword, lifts
Sieglinde to horse, and escapes through the gorges behind.
The scene changes to the Valkyries' rocky home. Through the drifting
clouds come riding the eight sisters of Brünnhilde, in full armor
each, and each bearing before her the body of some slain hero. They
await Brünnhilde. She, fleeing from Wotan's pursuit, at last arrives.
She implores them to shield Sieglinde from the wrath of the god, but
unsuccessfully; and then she urges Sieglinde to fly. At first, benumbed
by despair, the widowed woman refuses; but when Brünnhilde mentions the
child that is to be born--the world's most glorious hero--she consents.
"Him thou shalt bear, thy son and Siegmund's. For him ward thou
well these mighty splinters of his father's sword. He shall weld
them anew and swing the victorious blade! His name from me let him
take--'Siegfried'; for Siegfried in _triumph_ shall live!"
Comforted and hopeful, Sieglinde betakes herself to that forest far to
the east, where the Nibelung's hoard had been borne by Fafner. There,
in dragon's form, he guarded the gold and the Ring; and thither Wotan
is not likely to pursue.
It thunders and lightens. Wotan, raging terribly, strides from crag to
crag. The other Valkyries are driven from the scene. Brünnhilde hears
her doom:
"The heavenly host
No more shall know thee;
Outcast art thou
From the clan of the gods:
The bond by thee has been broken;
Henceforth from sight of my face art thou banned!"
Immortal, she had followed the might of love; mortal, now she shall
sleep, and that sleep shall endure till one comes to awaken her; and to
him, whosoe'er it may be, she shall be subject thenceforth.
The Valkyrie drops to her knees:
"Ah, let no craven awake me!" she cries. "Surround me with horrors,
with fires that shall fright: that none but the most fearless of heroes
may find me here on the fell!"
Wotan accedes to her petition. He kisses her on both eyes and lays her
unconscious, asleep, in the shade of a broad-branching fir tree. Then,--
"Appear! Come, waving fire,
And wind thee in flames round the fell!
Loge, Loge, appear!"
A sea of flames encircles the spot, and Wotan proclaims:
"He who my spear-point's
Sharpness feareth
Shall cross not this flaming fire!"
Alone, under her long steel shield, sleeps the Valkyrie.
=287. Siegfried.= The drama of Siegfried opens in the cavern of Mime,
in the forest "far to the east" to which Sieglinde had fled. Mime,
the dwarf, is he whom erstwhile his Nibelung brother, Alberich, then
lord of the Ring, had held in thrall at the bottom of the Rhine. Some
years before the events represented in this play, the dwarf had found
Sieglinde dying in the woods, and had received from her Siegfried,
her new-born son, and with him the pieces of Siegmund's broken sword,
Nothung.
Young Siegfried, noble, proud, and strong, has been nurtured in
ignorance of his lineage and destiny, as Mime's son. But of that
lineage and destiny the cunning dwarf is well aware; and while he
trains Siegfried to doughty deeds, he ceaselessly forges at the
splinters of the sword, hoping to reweld them himself and through
Siegfried's might to win victory over Fafner, the present lord of the
Ring, and so achieve unmeasured wealth and the mastery of the world.
But Siegfried despises his foster-father and seeks ever to discover the
story of his own descent. The attempts of Mime to shape anew the pieces
of Nothung fail; and he daily forges other swords, which Siegfried
scorns and breaks at the first trial. In the course of time, however,
there comes to Mime's cave a "Wanderer"--it is Wotan himself--and tells
the dwarf that only one, a man who knows not fear, can remake the
all-conquering sword. He tells him, too, of the mighty spear, fashioned
of the world ash tree's hallowed branches, with which he, Wotan, rules
the earth. But no word he says of the doom that is to befall that spear
at the blow of the conquering sword,--the doom, forsooth, of the gods
themselves.
Mime, after trying in vain to arouse in Siegfried the sense of fear,
suggests to the youth that he try to reforge Nothung. Siegfried seizes
the splinters, pounds them, and files them to powder; melts them
over the charcoal of the ash tree's stem, and, singing at his work,
refashions the sword. While this is doing, through the pauses of
Siegfried's song can be heard the voice of Mime, muttering: "The sword
will be forged ... and Fafner vanquished.... When Siegfried has slain
that dragon ... he will be athirst.... I will brew him a drink.... One
drop will lay him in sleep.... With the sword that he forges I'll kill
him.... Mine, then, the Ring and the hoard!"
At last the sword is shaped and sharpened. Siegfried swings it before
him:
"Nothung, Nothung, conquering sword; again to life have I woke thee!
Strike at the traitor, cut down the knave! See, Mime, thou smith; so
sunders Siegfried's sword!" and he strikes the anvil in twain from top
to bottom. It falls asunder with a great noise, and the dwarf drops
with terror to the ground.
The scene changes to the forest in front of Fafner's cave. Alberich is
watching gloomily by, and the Wanderer rides in to taunt him with false
hope of the Ring.
"A hero nears to set free the hoard," says the Wanderer. "Fafner will
fall. Perchance if Alberich warn the dragon, he may win the Ring in
token of gratitude."
Alberich makes the approaches. Fafner yawns: "I have and I hold; let me
slumber!"
With scornful laughter the Wanderer rides away. But "one day," snarls
Alberich,--"one day shall I see you all fade, ye light-hearted
eternals. The wise one keepeth his watch and surely worketh his spite!"
As the day breaks Siegfried and Mime enter, Siegfried wearing his sword
hung in a girdle of rope, and blithely blowing a horn. Fafner, in the
shape of a huge lizardlike dragon, comes out of his cave and forward
to the stream for water. At sight of the nonchalant youth piping his
wood-notes gay, the monster emits a snort that serves his need of a
laugh,--"I came for drink; now, too, I find food."
The conflict is speedily joined. More than once Siegfried is well-nigh
lost; but his chance comes. The dragon exposes his heart, and Siegfried
sinks his sword into it up to the hilt. In the moment of death, Fafner
warns the young hero to beware of him who stirred him to the fight.
But Siegfried pays little heed. The blood of the dragon bespatters his
hand; it burns. Siegfried involuntarily carries his hand to his lips.
There is a wood bird singing. Siegfried regards him with astonishment.
"Almost," he says, "it seems as wood birds were speaking to me," and he
hearkens.
"Hei!" sings the wood bird; "now Siegfried owns all the Nibelung's
hoard. Let him but search the cavern, and hoard, Tarnhelm, and Ring
will make him the lord of the world!"
"Thanks, dearest birdling," Siegfried replies, and possesses himself of
Tarnhelm and Ring. The hoard he leaves where it was.
"Hei!" sings the wood bird; "Ring and Tarnhelm Siegfried has won. Now
let him not trust the treacherous tongue of the falsest of friends!"
No sooner is that warning given than Mime, who has meanwhile been
wrangling with Alberich over the division of the spoils, creeps forward.
"See, thou art weary; drink of the broth I have brewed, and take rest,"
he says smilingly to Siegfried. But under his breath he is muttering,
"Drink, and choke thee to death," as he pours the draft into the drink
horn and offers it.
"Taste thou my sword, loathsome babbler!" cries the young hero, and
strikes him dead at a blow; then pitches his body on top of the hoard
and stops up the mouth of the cave with the grinning corpse of the
dragon.
"Thanks, friendliest birdling! But happiness yet have I not. Brothers
and sisters hast thou; but I--am so alone; nor brother nor sister, nor
father nor mother. One comrade had I; he laid out to catch me, and now
I have slain him, perforce. Ah, birdling, find me a comrade true!"
"Hei!" chatters the wood bird; "a glorious bride for Siegfried have I.
On a rocky fastness she sleeps, and guarded by fire is her home. Who
fighteth the flames wakens the maid; Brünnhilde, Brünnhilde, he wins
for his own!"
"Where'er thou fliest, follows my foot," shouts Siegfried, bubbling
with joy.
The scene changes. In a wild spot at the foot of a rocky mountain
Wotan, the Wanderer, desiring the success of Siegfried and still
knowing that that success involves the doom of the gods, seeks counsel
from Erda. The all-wise one refuses to answer,--refers him to the
Norns. "The Norns are waking, they wind the rope. The Norns will give
thee answer!"
"Ah, no!" replies the Wanderer. "Their weaving is ever in thrall to
fate. To thee I come that I may learn how to stay the wheel that is
already rolling."
"Ask Brünnhilde!"
"In vain, All-wise One; the piercing sting of care was planted by thee.
Ruin and downfall were foretold by thee. Say to me, now, how a god may
conquer his care!"
"Thou art--_not_ what thou hast said." No more will Erda vouchsafe.
Not what he has said! Then, surely, the gods are beyond redemption. But
not even so shall the harvest be reaped by the Nibelungs. "Nay, to the
Volsung shall be my heritage," decrees Wotan: "to him who has known
me never, though chosen by me; to the lad of dauntless daring, though
untaught by my counsel. Pure from greed, gladdened by love-dreams, he
has won the Nibelung's Ring. Against him the curse of Alberich cannot
avail."
While yet the Wanderer is speaking, Erda descends to endless sleep.
Dawn illumines the scene. Siegfried's bird comes fluttering to the
foreground, but, frighted by vision of the god, takes wing and
disappears. Siegfried presses on.
"My birdling has flown from my eyes," he remarks. "I needs must find
out the rock for myself."
"The way that the wood bird pointed," announces Wotan, encountering
him, "shalt thou not pass!"
"Ho ho! Wouldst thou stay me? Who art thou, then, that here
withstandest?"
"Fear the fell's defender! By my might the slumbering maid is held
enchained. He who should wake her, he who should win her, mightless
would make me forever. Go back, then, foolhardy boy!"
As the Wanderer speaks, the splendor spreads from the flame-girdled
rock above.
"Go back thyself, thou babbler! There where the fires are blazing,--to
Brünnhilde now must I hie!" And Siegfried pushes forward.
The Wanderer bars the way to the mountain: "Once already that sword of
thine, Nothung, has broken on the haft of this sacred spear!"
"'Tis, then, my father's slayer!" thinks Siegfried; and nothing loath
to face that foe, he raises the new-forged sword and strikes to pieces
the All-father's spear!
"Fare on," says Wotan, quietly picking up the fragments, "I cannot
withstand thee."
The god vanishes in darkness. The hero, light-hearted, blowing his
horn, scales the cliffs, passes the fire,--wakes Brünnhilde. She, at
first, with maidenly might struggles against his passion for her and
her growing tenderness for him. She deplores the byrnie, shield and
helm, symbols of her godhead, that he has torn from her. But, mortal
now, she surrenders to a mortal's love:
"O Siegfried, Siegfried, child of delight,
Love thyself,--and turn thee from me;
Oh, bring not thine own to naught!"
And Siegfried:
"I--love thee: didst thou but love me!
Mine am I no more: oh, would that thou wert mine!...
Waken, O maid; live in laughter:
Sweetest delight, be mine, be mine!"
Then she, with a joyful cry:
"Oh, child of delight! Oh, glorious hero!
Thou foolish lord of loftiest deeds!
Laughing must I love thee,
Laughing welcome my blindness;
Laughing let us be lost,
With laughter go down to death....
Farewell, Valhalla's light-giving world:
Thy stately towers let fall in dust!
Farewell, O glittering pomp of the gods!
Complete your bliss, eternal host!
Now rend, ye Norns, your rope of runes:
Dusk of Gods in darkness arise;
Night of downfall dawn in mist!"
And thus, turning their backs on Valhalla, and radiant with the light
of human love, the twain, laughing, face toward death.
=288. The Twilight of the Gods.= The play opens with a prelude. By the
Valkyrie's rock sit the three Norns and sing of past, present, and
future, weaving through the night their rope of runes. As they foretell
the burning of Valhalla and the end of the gods, the rope breaks, and
the Norns disappear into the earth.
The sun rises, and in the first act of the play Siegfried and
Brünnhilde enter from their cave. She sends him forth in quest of
heroic adventures in the world, giving him her horse, Grane, and
receiving from him the Ring as a pledge of his love.
The scene changes, and we behold the interior of the Gibichungs' hall
on the Rhine. Gunther and Gutrune, his sister, are in converse with
Hagen, their half brother,--dark and treacherous son of Grimhilde,
their mother, and of Alberich the Nibelung, erstwhile owner of the
Ring. Hagen alone knows, it would seem, that Siegfried has already
ridden through the flames and won Brünnhilde. The others know merely
that that hero has slain Fafner and is lord of the Tarnhelm, hoard, and
Ring. Hagen, anxious to regain the heritage of the Nibelungs, urges
marriage on Gunther, naming Brünnhilde as a fitting bride for him. As,
however, Siegfried alone can pass through the fire to come at her,
he proposes that Gutrune shall win Siegfried's love and induce him
to serve Gunther. Siegfried's horn is heard, and he presently enters
and is made welcome. Gutrune, at the instigation of Hagen, brings
Siegfried a potion which causes him to love her, and drives clean out
of his mind all memory of Brünnhilde. In the madness of his passion for
Gutrune, Siegfried swears blood-brotherhood with Gunther, and promises
by the aid of the Tarnhelm to make Brünnhilde Gunther's wife, if only
in return Gutrune shall be his. The newly sworn "brothers" depart for
Brünnhilde's rock.
In the next scene we are again before the home of Brünnhilde.
Waltraute, a Valkyrie, comes to beg Brünnhilde to give back the Ring to
the Rhine-maidens, and so avert the doom of the gods.
"What, then, aileth the immortals?" cries Brünnhilde in alarm.
"Since Wotan doomed thee, no more hath he sent us to war," replies
Waltraute. "No more hath he gathered the souls of the slain about him
in Valhalla. Alone he has ridden unceasing through the world. But,
one day, home he came bearing his spear all splintered in his hand.
Wordless, with a sign he bade Valhalla's heroes hew the world ash tree
in pieces and pile it like firewood around the Hall of the Blest. And
from that hour silent he sits on his throne, about him the awe-struck
gods and heroes, the war-maids cowering at his knees. None tastes the
apples of youth. To-day Wotan remembered thee; his eye grew soft and,
as dreaming, he spake:
'If once more the daughters of Rhine
Should win from her finger the Ring,
Of the load of the curse
Were the world and immortals made free.'
Brünnhilde, yield up the Ring, and end all the grief of the world!"
"The Ring?" wails Brünnhilde. "Knowest thou what 'tis to me? One flash
of its fire outvalues all heaven's delight; for the gleam of that Ring
is Siegfried's love!
"From love I never shall turn;
Of his love they never shall rob me,
Though into ruins
Valhalla's splendor should fall!"
Thus Brünnhilde refuses, and sends Waltraute away to take her defiance
to Valhalla.
But retribution is swift, for on the moment Siegfried, changed to
Gunther's shape by the Tarnhelm, comes and claims Brünnhilde as his
bride. She resists and threatens him with the Ring. But now Siegfried,
forgetful of the past, struggles for another with his own dear wife,
overcomes her, and wrests the Ring from her. He then commands her to go
into the cave, whither, after drawing his sword to lay between them as
symbol of his loyalty to Gunther, he follows her.
The second act is outside the Gibichungs' hall. It is early morning of
the next day. After a short scene in which the ever-plotting Alberich
urges Hagen to get the Ring, Siegfried returns and tells Hagen and
Gutrune of the winning of Brünnhilde and her approach with Gunther.
Hagen calls together the vassals to welcome Gunther and his bride.
The royal pair presently arrive and are received with loud acclaim.
Straightway Brünnhilde recognizes Siegfried (who, however, does not
know her) and, seeing the Ring on Siegfried's finger, she asks Gunther
what he has done with the ring he took from her. His confusion reveals
the truth to her, and she proclaims that she is wedded to Siegfried and
not to Gunther. Siegfried swears on the point of Hagen's spear that her
accusation is false. She repeats it, taking the same oath. Siegfried,
Gutrune, and their vassals go out to prepare for the double wedding
celebration; Gunther, Hagen, and Brünnhilde remaining solemnly condemn
Siegfried to death for what seems treachery to one and all. Hagen, left
alone, glories in the prospect of regaining the Ring.
The third act discloses an open place on the banks of the Rhine. The
three Rhine-maidens pray to the sun for the return of the Rhine-gold.
Siegfried, who has strayed from his companions on a hunting expedition,
comes to the river bank. The maidens unsuccessfully attempt, by wiles
and warnings of ill fate, to get the Ring from him, and finally swim
away, foretelling his death that very day. Gunther, Hagen, and their
vassals come to the place, and all sit down to rest. At Hagen's
suggestion Siegfried relates the story of his life. But, lo! when he
comes to the episode of his first passage through the fire, a draft
given him by Hagen restores his memory, and innocently he tells of the
waking and winning of Brünnhilde. All start up in amaze; Hagen stabs
Siegfried in the back with his spear, and steals away. Siegfried falls,
and after a few words sung to Brünnhilde, whom he sees as in a vision,
he dies. His body is placed on a bier and borne away by the vassals
with great pomp and state as the sun sets.
In the last scene we have the interior of the Gibichungs' hall as
before. It is night. Gutrune comes from her chamber anxious for
Siegfried. Presently Hagen's voice is heard calling for torches to
light the returning hunters. He enters and, in reply to Gutrune's
questions, tells her that Siegfried has been slain by a wild boar. Then
come the vassals, bearing Siegfried's body. It is placed on a bier in
the center of the hall. Hagen claims the Ring as his right for slaying
Siegfried, but Gunther defies him to touch Gutrune's heritage. They
fight and Gunther falls. As Hagen approaches the corpse to take the
Ring, the dead Siegfried raises his arm threateningly. All start back
in horror, and just then Brünnhilde enters and comes down to the bier.
Here, after ordering a pyre to be built on the river bank, she sings
a funeral song over Siegfried. The body, from which she has taken the
Ring, is then placed on the pyre. Setting the Ring on her own finger,
Brünnhilde calls on the Rhine-maidens to take it in turn from her ashes:
"Let fire, burning this hand
Cleanse, too, the Ring from its curse."
She applies the torch:
"So cast I the brand
On Valhall's glittering walls.--
When ye see in the kindling fire,
Siegfried and Brünnhild' consumed;
When ye see the river-daughters
Bear the Ring away to the deep:
To northward then
Look through the night!
When the heaven there gleams
With a holy glow,
Then know ye all
That Valhall's end ye behold!"
Her horse is brought. She mounts it and springs into the flames, which
flare up and seize on the hall itself. The river overflows and rolls
over the fire. The Rhine-maidens swim up and regain the Ring. Hagen
rushes into the flood to get it from them, but is dragged down to the
depths by their arms as they swim away. In the sky is seen a vision of
Valhalla in flames.
The breed of the gods is gone like breath. The loveless Ring has
worked its curse. Each in his turn its lords have bitten the dust. And
Brünnhilde reads the moral:
"Not goods nor gold
Nor glory of gods
Can fashion a blessing for weal,
Can win a blessing from woe,--
But Love alone!"
FOOTNOTES:
[374] For the translations of the Ring, especially the verse, I am
indebted to the edition of Frederick Jameson (Schott & Co., London).
PART II
THE HISTORY OF MYTH.
CHAPTER XXX
THE ORIGIN AND ELEMENTS OF MYTH
=289. Kinds of Myth.= If we classify the preceding stories according
to the reason of their existence, we observe that they are of two
kinds,--explanatory and æsthetic.
(1) _Explanatory myths_ are the outcome of naïve guesses at the truth,
of mistaken and superstitious attempts to satisfy the curiosity of
primitive and unenlightened peoples, to unveil the mysteries of
existence, make clear the facts of the universe and the experiences
of life, to account for religious rites and social customs of which
the origin is forgotten, to teach the meaning and the history of
things. There are certain questions that nearly every child and
every savage asks: What is the world and what is man? Who made them?
What else did the maker do? and what the first men? Whence came the
commodities of life? Why do we celebrate certain festivals, practice
certain ceremonials, observe solemnities, and partake of sacraments,
and bow to this or the other god? What is death, and what becomes
of us after death? The answers to such questions crystallized
themselves gradually into stories of the creation, of the gods, and
of the heroes--forefathers of men, but magnified, because unfamiliar,
mysterious, and remote.
Old literatures abound in explanatory myths of so highly imaginative
a character that we moderns are tempted to read into them meanings
which probably they never possessed. For the diverse and contradictory
significations that have in recent years been proposed for one and the
same myth could not all, at any one time, have been entertained by the
myth-makers. On the other hand, the current explanations of certain
myths are sufficiently apparent to be probable. "To the ancients,"
says John Fiske,[375] "the moon was not a lifeless body of stones and
clods; it was the horned huntress Artemis, coursing through the upper
ether, or bathing herself in the clear lake; or it was Aphrodite,
protectress of lovers, born of the sea foam in the East, near Cyprus.
The clouds were not bodies of vaporized water; they were cows, with
swelling udders, driven to the milking by Hermes, the summer wind;
or great sheep with moist fleeces, slain by the unerring arrows of
Bellerophon, the sun; or swan-maidens, flitting across the firmament;
Valkyries hovering over the battle field to receive the souls of
falling heroes; or, again, they were mighty mountains, piled one above
another, in whose cavernous recesses the divining wand of the storm-god
Thor revealed hidden treasures. The yellow-haired sun, Ph[oe]bus, drove
westerly all day in his flaming chariot; or, perhaps, as Meleager,
retired for awhile in disgust from the sight of men; wedded at eventide
the violet light ([OE]none, Iole) which he had forsaken in the morning;
sank as Hercules upon a blazing funeral pyre, or, like Agamemnon,
perished in a blood-stained bath; or, as the fish-god, Dagon, swam
nightly through the subterranean waters to appear eastward again at
daybreak. Sometimes Phaëthon, his rash, inexperienced son, would take
the reins and drive the solar chariot too near the earth, causing
the fruits to perish, and the grass to wither, and the wells to dry
up. Sometimes, too, the great all-seeing divinity, in his wrath at
the impiety of men, would shoot down his scorching arrows, causing
pestilence to spread over the land."
(2) _Æsthetic myths_ have their origin in the universal desire for
amusement, in the revulsion of the mind from the humdrum of actuality.
They furnish information that may not be practical, but is delightful;
they elicit emotion--sympathy, tears, and laughter--for characters and
events remote from our commonplace experience but close to the heart of
things, and near and significant and enchanting to us in the atmosphere
of imagination that embraces severed continents, inspires the dead
with life, bestows color and breath upon the creatures of a dream, and
wraps young and old in the wonder of hearing a new thing. The æsthetic
myth, first, removes us from the sordid world of immediate and selfish
needs, and then unrolls a vision of a world where men and things exist
simply for the purpose of delighting us. And the enduring measure of
delight which the æsthetic myth affords is the test of what we call its
_beauty_.
A myth, whether explanatory or æsthetic, is of unconscious growth,
almost never concocted with a view to instruction.
According to their subjects, æsthetic myths are either historic or
romantic. (_a_) If _historic_, they utilize events which have a
skeleton of fact. They supply flesh and sinew of divine or heroic
adventure and character, blood and breath of probability and
imagination. In historic myths the dependence of gods, heroes, and
events upon the stern necessity of an overruling power, of fate or
providence, is especially to be observed. Of this class is the Iliad of
Homer.
(_b_) If _romantic_, the myths are characterized by bolder selection or
creation of fundamental events; indeed, events appear to be chosen with
a view to displaying or developing the character of the hero. In such
myths circumstances are not so important as what the hero does with
circumstances. The hero is more independent than in the historic myth;
his liberty, his choice,--in judgment, in conduct, and in feeling,--his
responsibility, are the center of interest. In romantic myths like the
Odyssey this sense of freedom does not impel the poet to capricious
use of his material. But lesser bards than Homer have permitted their
heroes to run riot in adventures that weary the imagination and offend
the moral judgment.
=290. Divisions of Inquiry.= We are next led to ask how these myths
came into existence, and how it is that the same myth meets us under
various forms in literatures and among peoples widely separate in time
and place. These are questions of the _Origin_ and _Distribution_ of
myths; and in this chapter we shall discuss the former.
=291. Elements of the Myth.= The myths preserved in the literatures of
many civilized nations, such as the Greek, present to the imaginative
and the moral sense aspects fraught with contradiction. In certain
myths the gods display themselves as beautiful, wise, and beneficent
beings; in others they indulge in cruel, foolish, and unbeautiful
practices and adventures. These contradictory elements have been called
the reasonable and the senseless. A myth of Mother Earth (Demeter)
mourning the loss of her daughter, the Springtide, is reasonable; a
myth of Demeter devouring, in a fit of abstraction, the shoulder of
the boy Pelops, and replacing it with ivory, is capricious, apparently
senseless. "It is this silly, senseless, and savage element," as Max
Müller says, "that makes mythology the puzzle which men have so long
found it."
=292. Reasonable Myths.= If myths were always reasonable, it would not
be difficult to reach an agreement concerning some way by which they
may have come into existence.
_Imagination._ If we assume that the peoples who invented these
stories of supernatural beings and events had, with due allowance
for the discrepancy in mental development, imaginations like our
own, there is nothing in the history of reasonable myths to baffle
our understanding. For, at the present time, not only children and
simple-minded men, like sailors or mountaineers, but cultivated men of
ordinary poetic sensibility, bestow attributes of life upon inanimate
things and abstract ideas. The sun is nowadays thirsty, the ship is
a woman, the clouds threaten, charity suffereth long, the waves are
angry, time will tell, and death swallows all things. The sun still
rises, and, as Mr. Jasper maintains, "do move." By personification we,
every day, bestow the attributes of human beings upon inanimate nature,
animals, and abstractions. By our metaphors we perpetuate and diffuse
the poetic illusion; we talk not perhaps of the arrows of Apollo, but
of a sunstroke; our poetry abounds in symbols of the moon, of the
swift-wingèd wind, of the ravening sea. In our metonymies we use the
sign for the thing signified, the crown for the king, the flag for the
honor of the country; and the crown and the flag are to-day possessed
of attributes and individuality just as efficient as those that endowed
the golden handmaids of Vulcan or the eagle of Jove. Nor is hyperbole
any less in use among us than it was among the ancients; we glorify
our political heroes with superlatives, they dignified theirs with
divinity.
_Belief._ But this resemblance in habits of imagination, while it
may help us to appreciate the mental condition of primitive peoples,
accentuates the distinction between our imagination and theirs. They,
at some time or other, believed in these personifications. We do not
believe. But their belief is easier to comprehend when we remember
that the myths of savages are not a deliberate invention of any one
individual, but are constructed by generations of people, and that
many of them cluster about beings who were actually worshiped. Among
primitive nations the sense of awe in the presence of magnificent
objects of nature--mountains, the sky, the sun, the sea--is universal.
It springs from the fact that savages do not deem themselves superior
to nature. They are not conscious of souls whose flight is higher
than that of nature. On the contrary, since sun, sea, and winds move,
the savage invests them with free will and personality like man's. In
proportion, however, as their size is grander or their movement more
tremendous, these objects must be possessed of freedom, personality,
and power exceeding those of man. Why, then, should not the savage
believe, of beings worthy of worship and fear and gratitude, all and
more than all that is accredited to man? Why not confer upon them human
and superhuman passions and powers? If we were living, like the Greek
of old, close to the heart of nature, such personification of natural
powers would be more easy for us to appreciate.
"If for us also, as for the Greek," says Ruskin,[376] "the sunrise
means daily restoration to the sense of passionate gladness and of
perfect life--if it means the thrilling of new strength through every
nerve,--the shedding over us of a better peace than the peace of night,
in the power of the dawn,--and the purging of evil vision and fear by
the baptism of its dew;--if the sun itself is an influence, to us also,
of spiritual good,--and becomes thus in reality, not in imagination,
to us also, a spiritual power,--we may then soon overpass the narrow
limit of conception which kept that power impersonal, and rise with the
Greek to the thought of an angel who rejoiced as a strong man to run
his course, whose voice, calling to life and to labor, rang round the
earth, and whose going forth was to the ends of heaven."
Regarding thus the religious condition of the savage, we may comprehend
the existence of myths and his acceptance of them.
=293. Unreasonable Myths.= But he would maintain this attitude of
acceptance only in the matter of good and beneficent gods and of
righteous or reasonable myths.
For how could a human being believe of the god whom he worshiped and
revered, deeds and attributes more silly and more shameful than man
can conceive of his fellow man? When, therefore, we find senseless
and shameless myths existing side by side with stories of the justice
and righteousness of the same god, we must conclude that, since the
worshiper could not believe both sets of attributes, he preserved his
religious attitude before the good god only by virtue of rejecting the
senseless myth.
A man's religious belief would assist him to entertain only the
reasonable myths. How, then, did the senseless and cruel stories come
into existence? And were they ever believed?
There are many answers to these questions. They may, however, be
classified according to the theory of civilization that they assume.
According to the _Theory of Deterioration_, or Human Depravity, man,
although he had in the beginning knowledge of common facts, pure moral
and religious ideas, and true poetic conceptions, has forgotten, with
the lapse of time, the significance of words, facts, men, and events,
adopted corrupt moral and religious notions, and given license to the
diseased imagining of untrue and unlovely conceptions.
According to the _Theory of Improvement_, or Progress, man, beginning
with crude dreams and fancies about experience, life, the world, and
God, has gradually developed truer and higher conceptions of his own
nature, of his relation to the world about him, of duty, of art, and of
religion.
=294. Theory of Deterioration.= Let us consider first the
interpretations of mythology that assume a backward tendency in early
civilization. They are:
(1) The _Historical_, or better called after its author, Euhemerus
(B.C. 316), the _Euhemeristic_. This explanation assumes that myths
of the gods are exaggerated adventures of historic individuals,
chieftains, medicine men, heroes; and that supernatural events
are distortions of natural but wonderful occurrences. In fact, it
attributes to our forefathers a disease of the memory which prompted
them to pervert facts. Jupiter, Odin, and Hercules were accordingly men
who, after death, had been glorified, then deified, then invested with
numerous characteristics and adventures appropriate to their exalted
conditions of existence.
The custom of worshiping ancestors, still existent in China and other
countries, is adduced in support of this method of investigating myths,
and it is undoubtedly true that the method explains the origin and
growth of some myths. But it accounts rather for the reasonable than
the senseless element of mythical adventure, while it fails to show how
savages come to exaggerate their heroes into beings entirely out of the
realm of that actual experience which is the basis of the historical
assumption.
(2) _The Philological Interpretation_[377] assumes also a disease
of the memory by reason of which men misunderstand and confuse the
meanings of words, and misapply the words themselves. Professor Max
Müller calls this affection a disease of language. In ancient languages
every such word as _day_, _night_, _earth_, _sun_, _spring_, _dawn_,
had an ending expressive of gender, which naturally produced the
corresponding idea of sex. These objects accordingly became in the
process of generations not only persons, but male and female. As, also,
the phrases expressing the existence or the activity of these natural
objects lost their ancient signification under new colloquial coloring,
primitive and simple statements of natural events acquired the garb and
dignity of elaborate and often incongruous narratives, no longer about
natural events, but about persons. Ancient language may, for instance,
have said _sunrise_ follows the _dawn_. The word for sun was masculine;
the word for dawn, feminine. In time the sentence came to mean,
Apollo, the god of the sun, _chases_ Daphne, the maiden of the glowing
dawn. But the word, _Daphne_, meant also a laurel that burned easily,
hence might readily be devoted to the god of the sun. So Daphne, the
maiden, assuming the form of Daphne, the laurel, escaped the pursuit
of her ardent lover, by becoming the tree sacred to his worship.[378]
The merit of the philological method is, that, tracing the name of a
mythical character through kindred languages, it frequently ascertains
for us the family of the myth, brings to light kindred forms of the
myth, discovers in what language the name was born, and sometimes,
giving us the original meaning of the divine name, "throws light on the
legend of the bearer of the name and on its origin and first home."[379]
But unfortunately there is very often no agreement among scholars
about the original meaning of the names of mythical beings. The same
name is frequently explained in half a dozen different ways. The same
deity is reduced by different interpreters to half a dozen elements of
nature. A certain goddess represents now the upper air, now light, now
lightning, and yet again clouds. Naturally the attempts at construing
her adventures must terminate in correspondingly dissimilar and
unconvincing results. In fine, the philological explanation assumes
as its starting point masculine and feminine names for objects of
nature. It does not attempt to show how an object like the ocean came
to be male and not female, or how it came to be a person at all. And
this latter, in studying the origin of myths, is what should first be
ascertained. We must not, however, fall into the error of supposing
that the philologists look for the origin and growth of all myths in
words and the diseases of words. Max Müller grants that mythology does
not always create its own heroes, but sometimes lays hold of real
history. He insists that mythologists should bear in mind that there
may be in every mythological riddle elements which resist etymological
analysis, for the simple reason that their origin was not etymological,
but historical.
(3) _The Allegorical Interpretation_ is akin to the philological in its
results. It leads us to explain myths as embodiments in symbolic guise
of hidden meaning: of physical, chemical, or astronomical facts; or of
moral, religious, philosophical truth. The stories would at first exist
as allegories, but in process of time would come to be understood
literally. Thus Cronus, who devours his own children, is identified
with the power that the Greeks called Chronos (Time), which may truly
be said to destroy whatever it has brought into existence. The story
of Io is interpreted in a similar manner. Io is the moon, and Argus
the starry sky, which, as it were, keeps sleepless watch over her. The
fabulous wanderings of Io represent the continual revolutions of the
moon. This method of explanation rests upon the assumption that the
men who made the allegories were proficient in physics, chemistry,
astronomy, etc., and clever in allegory; but that, for some unknown
reason, their descendants becoming stupid, knowledge as well as wit
deserted the race. In some cases the myth was, without doubt, from the
first an allegory; but where the myth was consciously fashioned as
an allegory, in all probability it was preserved as such. It is not,
however, likely that allegories of deep scientific or philosophical
import were invented by savages. Where the myth has every mark of
great antiquity,--is especially silly and senseless and savage,--it
is safe to believe that any profound allegorical meaning, read into
it, is the work of men of a later generation, who thus attempted to
make reasonable the divine and heroic narratives which they could not
otherwise justify and of whose existence they were ashamed. We find,
moreover, in some cases a great variety of symbolic explanations of the
same myth, one with as great claim to credence as another, since they
spring from the same source,--the caprice or fancy of the expounder.
Among the ancients Theagenes of Rhegium, six hundred years before
Christ, suggested the allegorical theory and method of interpretation.
In modern times he has been supported by Lord Bacon, whose "Wisdom of
the Ancients" treats myths as "elegant and instructive fables," and by
many Germans, especially Professor Creuzer.
(4) _The Theological Interpretation._ This premises that mankind,
either in general or through some chosen nationality, received from
God an original revelation of pure religious ideas, and that, with the
systematic and continued perversion of the moral sense, this knowledge
of truth, morality, and spiritual religion fell into corruption.
So in Greek mythology the attributes of the various gods would be
imperfect irradiations of the attributes of the one God. A more limited
conception is, that all mythological legends are derived from the
narratives of Scripture, though the real facts have been disguised
and altered. Thus, Deucalion is only another name for Noah, Hercules
for Samson, Arion for Jonah, etc. Sir Walter Raleigh, in his "History
of the World," says, "Jubal, Tubal, and Tubal-Cain were Mercury,
Vulcan, and Apollo, inventors of pasturage, smithing, and music. The
dragon which kept the golden apples was the serpent that beguiled Eve.
Nimrod's tower was the attempt of the giants against heaven." There
are doubtless many curious coincidences like these, but the theory
cannot, without extravagance, be pushed so far as to account for any
great proportion of the stories. For many myths antedate the scriptural
narratives of which they are said to be copies; many more, though
resembling the scriptural stories, originated among peoples ignorant
of the Hebrew Bible. The theory rests upon two unproved assumptions:
one, that all nations have had a chance to be influenced by the same
set of religious doctrines; the other, that God made his revelation in
the beginning once for all, and has done nothing to help man toward
righteousness since then. The theological theory has been advocated by
Voss and other Germans in the seventeenth century, by Jacob Bryant in
1774, and in this century most ably by Gladstone.[380]
=295.= We are now ready for the explanation of myth-making based upon
the =Theory of Progress=. This is best stated by Mr. Andrew Lang,[381]
whose argument is, when possible, given in his own language. To the
question how the senseless element got into myths, the advocates
of this theory answer that it was in the minds and in the social
condition of the savages who invented the myths. But since we cannot
put ourselves back in history thousands of years to examine the habits
of thought and life of early savages, we are constrained to examine
whether anywhere nowadays there may exist "any stage of the human
intellect in which these divine adventures and changes of men into
animals, trees, stars, this belief in seeing and talking with the dead,
are regarded as possible incidents of daily human life." As the result
of such scientific investigation, numerous races of savages have been
found who at this present day accept and believe just such silly and
senseless elements of myth as puzzle us and have puzzled many of the
cultivated ancients who found them in their inherited mythologies.
The theory of development is, then, that "the savage and senseless
element in mythology is, for the most part, a legacy from ancestors
of civilized races who, at the time that they invented the senseless
stories, were in an intellectual state not higher than that of our
contemporary Australians, Bushmen, Red Indians, the lower races of
South America, and other worse than barbaric people of the nineteenth
century." But what are the characteristics of the mental state of
our contemporary savages? First and foremost, _curiosity_ that leads
them to inquire into the causes of things; and second, _credulity_
that impels them to invent or to accept childish stories that may
satisfy their untutored experience. We find, moreover, that savages
nowadays think of everything around them as having life and the parts
and passions of persons like themselves. "The sky, sun, wind, sea,
earth, mountains, trees, regarded as persons, are mixed up with men,
beasts, stars, and stones on the same level of personality and life."
The forces of nature, animals, and things have for these Polynesians
and Bushmen the same powers and attributes that men have; and in their
opinion men have the following attributes:
"1. Relationship to animals and ability to be transformed, and to
transform others, into animals and other objects.
"2. Magical accomplishments, such as power to call up ghosts, or to
visit ghosts and the region of the dead; power over the seasons, the
sun, moon, stars, weather, and so forth."[382]
The stories of savages to-day abound in adventures based upon qualities
and incidents like these. If these stories should survive in the
literature of these nations after the nations have been civilized,
they would appear senseless and silly and cruel to the descendants of
our contemporary savages. In like manner, "as the ancient Greeks,
Egyptians, and Norsemen advanced in civilization, their religious
thought and artistic taste were shocked by myths which were preserved
by local priesthoods, or in ancient poems, or in popular religious
ceremonials.... We may believe that ancient and early tribes framed
gods like themselves in action and in experience, and that the
allegorical element in myths is the addition of later peoples who had
attained to purer ideas of divinity, yet dared not reject the religion
of their ancestors."[383] The senseless element in the myths would,
by this theory, be, for the most part, a "survival." Instead, then,
of deteriorating, the races that invented senseless myths are, with
ups and downs of civilization, intellectually and morally improved,
to such extent that they desire to repudiate the senseless element in
their mythical and religious traditions, or to explain it as reasonable
by way of allegory. This method of research depends upon the science
of mind--psychology, and the science of man--anthropology. It may be
called the _Anthropological Method_. The theory is that of "survival."
According to this theory many of the puzzling elements of myth resolve
themselves into survivals of primitive philosophy, science, or history.
From the first proceed the cruder systems of physical and spiritual
evolution, the generations of gods and the other-world of ghosts; from
the second, the cruder attempts at explaining the phenomena of the
natural and animal world by endowing them with human and frequently
magical powers; from the third, the narratives invented to account for
the sanctity of certain shrines and rituals, and for tribal customs and
ceremonials, the origin of which had been forgotten. These last are
known as _ætiological_ myths; they pretend to assign the _aitía_, or
_reason_, why Delphi, for instance, should have the oracle of Apollo,
or why the ritual of Demeter should be celebrated at Eleusis and in a
certain dramatic manner.
It is of course probable that occasionally the questionable element of
the myth originated in germs other than savage curiosity and credulity:
for instance, in the adventures of some great hero, or in a disease of
language by which statements about objects came to be understood as
stories about persons, or perhaps in a conscious allegory, or, even,
in the perversion of some ancient purer form of moral or religious
truth. But, in general, the root of myth-making is to be found in the
mental and social condition of primitive man, the confused personality
that he extended to his surroundings, and the belief in magical powers
that he conferred upon those of his tribesmen who were shrewdest and
most influential. This mental condition of the myth-maker should be
premised in all scientific explanations of myth-making.
The transition is easy from the personification of the elements of
nature and the acceptance of fictitious history to the notion of
supernatural beings presiding over, and governing, the different
objects of nature--air, fire, water, the sun, moon, and stars, the
mountains, forests, and streams--or possessing marvelous qualities of
action, passion, virtue, foresight, spirituality, and vice.
The Greeks, whose imagination was lively, peopled all nature with such
invisible inhabitants and powers. In Greece, says Wordsworth,[384]
In that fair clime the lonely herdsman, stretched
On the soft grass through half a summer's day,
With music lulled his indolent repose:
And, in some fit of weariness, if he,
When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear
A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds
Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetched,
Even from the blazing chariot of the sun,
A beardless Youth, who touched a golden lute,
And filled the illumined groves with ravishment.
The nightly hunter, lifting a bright eye
Up towards the crescent moon, with grateful heart
Called on the lovely wanderer who bestowed
That timely light, to share his joyous sport:
And hence, a beaming Goddess with her Nymphs,
Across the lawn and through the darksome grove,
Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes
By echo multiplied from rock or cave,
Swept in the storm of chase; as moon and stars
Glance rapidly along the clouded heaven,
When winds are blowing strong. The traveler slaked
His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thanked
The Naiad. Sunbeams, upon distant hills
Gliding apace, with shadows in their train,
Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed
Into fleet Oreads sporting visibly.
The Zephyrs, fanning, as they passed, their wings,
Lacked not, for love, fair objects whom they wooed
With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque,
Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age,
From depth of shaggy covert peeping forth
In the low vale, or on steep mountain side;
And, sometimes, intermixed with stirring horns
Of the live deer, or goat's depending beard,--
These were the lurking Satyrs, a wild brood
Of gamesome deities; or Pan himself,
The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring God.
The phases of significance and beauty through which the physical or
natural myth may develop are expressed with poetic grace by Ruskin, in
his "Queen of the Air."[385] The reader must, however, guard against
the supposition that any myth has sprung into existence fully equipped
with physical, religious, and moral import. Ruskin himself says, "To
the mean person the myth always meant little; to the noble person,
much." Accordingly, as we know, to the savage the myth was savage;
to the devotee it became religious; to the artist, beautiful; to the
philosopher, recondite and significant--in the course of centuries.
"If we seek," says Ruskin, "to ascertain the manner in which the
story first crystallized into its shape, we shall find ourselves
led back generally to one or other of two sources--either to actual
historical events, represented by the fancy under figures personifying
them, or else to natural phenomena similarly endowed with life by the
imaginative power, usually more or less under the influence of terror.
The historical myths we must leave the masters of history to follow;
they, and the events they record, being yet involved in great, though
attractive and penetrable, mystery. But the stars and hills and storms
are with us now, as they were with others of old; and it only needs
that we look at them with the earnestness of those childish eyes to
understand the first words spoken of them by the children of men. And
then, in all the most beautiful and enduring myths, we shall find not
only a literal story of a real person--not only a parallel imagery of
moral principle--but an underlying worship of natural phenomena, out
of which both have sprung, and in which both forever remain rooted.
Thus, from the real sun, rising and setting; from the real atmosphere,
calm in its dominion of unfading blue and fierce in its descent of
tempest--the Greek forms first the idea of two entirely personal and
corporeal gods (Apollo and Athena), whose limbs are clothed in divine
flesh, and whose brows are crowned with divine beauty; yet so real that
the quiver rattles at their shoulder, and the chariot bends beneath
their weight. And, on the other hand, collaterally with these corporeal
images, and never for one instant separated from them, he conceives
also two omnipresent spiritual influences, of which one illuminates,
as the sun, with a constant fire, whatever in humanity is skillful and
wise; and the other, like the living air, breathes the calm of heavenly
fortitude and strength of righteous anger into every human breast that
is pure and brave.
"Now, therefore, in nearly every [natural] myth of importance, ...
you have to discern these three structural parts--the root and the
two branches. The root, in physical existence, sun, or sky, or cloud,
or sea; then the personal incarnation of that, becoming a trusted and
companionable deity, with whom you may walk hand in hand, as a child
with its brother or its sister; and lastly, the moral significance of
the image, which is in all the great myths eternally and beneficently
true."
What Ruskin calls, above, the historical myth may be the euhemeristic
transformation of real events and personages, as of a flood and those
concerned in it; or it may be the ætiological invention of a story
to account for rituals of which the origin has been forgotten, as
of the Dionysiac revels, with their teaching of liberation from the
sordid limits of mortality. In either case, especially the latter,
the imaginative and moral significance of the historical myth has in
general developed with the advance of civilization.
Myth, in fine, whether natural, historical, or spiritual, "is not to be
regarded as mere error and folly, but as an interesting product of the
human mind. It is sham history, the fictitious narrative of events that
never happened."[386] But that is not the full statement of the case.
Myth is also actual history of early and imperfect stages of thought
and belief; it is the true narrative of unenlightened observation,
of infantine gropings after truth. Whatever reservations scholars
may make on other points, most of them will concur in these: that
some myths came into existence by a "disease of language"; that some
were invented to explain names of nations and of places, and some to
explain the existence of fossils and bones that suggested prehistoric
animals and men; that many were invented to gratify the ancestral pride
of chieftains and clans and to justify the existence of religious
and tribal ceremonials, and the common cult of departed souls, and
that very many obtained consistency and form as explanations of the
phenomena of nature, as expressions of the reverence felt for the
powers of nature, and as personifications, in general, of the passions
and the ideals of primitive mankind.[387]
FOOTNOTES:
[375] Myths and Myth-Makers, p. 18. Proper nouns have been anglicized.
[376] Ruskin, Queen of the Air.
[377] See Max Müller's Chips from a German Workshop, Science of
Religion, etc.; Cox's Aryan Myths, and numerous articles by the learned
authors of Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon.
[378] Max Müller, Essay on Comparative Mythology, Oxford Essays, 1856;
Science of Religion, 2, 548 _n_.
[379] Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 1, 24-25, and Professor
C. P. Tiele, as cited by Lang.
[380] W. E. Gladstone, Homer and the Homeric Age; Juventus Mundi; The
Olympian Religion, _North American Review_, Feb.-May, 1892.
[381] Andrew Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 2 vols., London, 1887;
and Encyc. Brit., 9th ed., article, _Mythology_. Mannhardt, Antike
Wald-und Feldkultus, Berlin, 1877. E. B. Tylor, Anthropology; Primitive
Culture.
[382] Encyc. Brit., _Mythology_.
[383] Chr. A. Lobeck, Aglaophamus: On the Causes of Greek Mythology.
Cited by Lang.
[384] Excursion, Bk. 4.
[385] Concerning which may be accepted the verdict that Mr. Ruskin
passes upon Payne Knight's Symbolical Language of Ancient Art, "Not
trustworthy, being little more than a mass of conjectural memoranda;
but the heap is suggestive, if well sifted."
[386] E. B. Tylor, Anthropology, p. 387. New York, 1881.
[387] See also L. Preller, Griechische Mythologie, 1, 19. Max Müller,
Comparative Mythology, Oxford Essays, 1856, pp. 1-87; also Science of
Religion, 1873, pp. 335-403; Philosophy of Mythology; and Science of
Language, 7th ed., 2, 421-571. Hermann Paul, Grundriss der Germanischen
Philologie, Bd. 1, Lfg. 5, 982-995, Mythologie (von E. Mogk). W. Y.
Sellar, Augustan Poets. Louis Dyer, Studies of the Gods in Greece.
Talfourd Ely, Olympus. A. H. Petiscus, The Gods of Olympus (translated
by Katherine A. Raleigh). E. Rohde, Psyche. B. I. Wheeler, Dionysos and
Immortality.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE DISTRIBUTION OF MYTHS
=296. Theories of Resemblance.= Several theories of the appearance of
the same explanatory or æsthetic myth under various guises, in lands
remote one from another, have been advanced; but none of them fully
unveils the mystery. The difficulty lies not so much in accounting for
the similarity of thought or material in different stories, as for the
resemblance in isolated incidents and in the arrangement of incidents
or plot. The principal theories of the distribution of myths are as
follows:
(1) That the resemblances between the myths of different nations are
purely _accidental_. This theory leaves us no wiser than we were.
(2) That the stories have been _borrowed_ by one nation from another.
This will account for exchange only between nations historically
acquainted with each other. It will not account for the existence of
the same arrangement of incidents in a Greek myth and in a Polynesian
romance.
(3) That all myths, if traced chronologically backward and
geographically from land to land, will be found _to have originated_
_in India_.[388] This theory fails to account for numerous stories
current among the modern nationalities of Europe, of Africa, and of
India itself. It leaves also unexplained the existence of certain myths
in Egypt many centuries before India had any known history: such as, in
all probability, the Egyptian myth of Osiris. The theory, therefore, is
open to the objection made to the theory of borrowing.
(4) That similar myths are based upon _historical traditions_ similar
in various countries or inherited from some mother country. But,
although some historical myths may have descended from a mother race,
it has already been demonstrated (§ 294, (1)) that the historical
(euhemeristic) hypothesis is inadequate. It is, moreover, not likely
that many historical incidents, like those related in the Iliad and
the Odyssey, happened in the same order and as actual history in Asia
Minor, Ithaca, Persia, and Norway. But we find myths containing such
incidents in all these countries.[389]
(5) That the Aryan tribes (from which the Indians, Persians, Phrygians,
Greeks, Romans, Germans, Norsemen, Russians, and Celts are descended)
"started from a common center" in the highlands of Northern India, "and
that from their ancient home they must have carried away, if not the
developed myth, yet the quickening germ from which might spring leaves
and fruits, varying in form and hue according to the soil to which
it should be committed and the climate under which the plant might
reach maturity."[390] Against this theory it may be urged that stories
having only the undeveloped germ or idea in common would not, with
any probability, after they had been developed independently of each
other, possess the remarkable resemblance in details that many widely
separated myths display. Moreover, the assumption of this common stock
considers only Aryan tribes: it ignores Africans, Mongolians, American
Indians, and other peoples whose myths resemble the Aryan, but are
not traceable to the same original germ. The _Aryan germ-theory_ has,
however, the merit of explaining resemblances between many myths of
different Aryan nations.
(6) That the existence of similar incidents or situations is to
be explained as resulting from the common facts of human thought,
experience, and sentiment. This may be called the _psychological_
_theory_. It was entertained by Grimm, and goes hand in hand with the
anthropological, or "survivalist," explanation of the elements of
myth. "In the long history of mankind," says Mr. Andrew Lang, "it is
impossible to deny that stories may conceivably have spread from a
single center, and been handed on from races like the Indo-European and
Semitic to races as far removed from them in every way as the Zulus,
the Australians, the Eskimos, the natives of the South Sea Islands.
But while the possibility of the diffusion of myths by borrowing and
transmission must be allowed for, the hypothesis of the origin of myths
in the savage state of the intellect supplies a ready explanation of
their wide diffusion." Many products of early art--clay bowls and stone
weapons--are peculiar to no one national taste or skill, they are
what might have been expected of _human_ conditions and intelligence.
"Many myths may be called 'human' in this sense. They are the rough
product of the early human mind, and are not yet characterized by
the differentiations of race and culture. Such myths might spring up
anywhere among untutored men, and anywhere might survive into civilized
literature."[391]
The distribution of myth, like its origin, is inexplicable by any one
theory. The discovery of racial families and of family traditions
narrows the problem, but does not solve it. The existence of the
same story in unrelated nationalities remains a perplexing fact,
towards the explanation of which the theories of "borrowing" and of
"similar historic tradition," while plausible, are but unsubstantiated
contributions. And until we possess the earliest records of those
unrelated nationalities that have similar myths, or until we discover
monuments and log books of some commercial nation that in prehistoric
times circumnavigated the globe and deposited on remote shores and
islands the seeds of the parent mythic plant, we must accept as our
only scientific explanation the psychological, or so-called _human_,
theory:--Given similar mental condition with similar surroundings,
similar imaginative products, called myths, will result.[392]
FOOTNOTES:
[388] Benfey and Cosquin. See Lang's Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 2, 299.
[389] Lang, Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 2, 300; Cox, Mythology of the
Aryan Nations, 1, 100.
[390] The Rev. Sir G. W. Cox, Mythology of Aryan Nations, 1, 99; also,
same theory, Max Müller's Chips from a German Workshop; Andrew Lang,
Myth, Ritual, and Religion, 2, 297.
[391] Encyc. Brit., 9th ed. Article, _Mythology_. Cf. Tylor's Primitive
Culture, 1, 369; Tylor's Anthropology, p. 397.
[392] See T. C. Johnston's Did the Ph[oe]nicians Discover America? 1892.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE PRESERVATION OF MYTHS
=297. Traditional History.= Before the introduction of writing, myths
were preserved in popular traditions, in the sacred ceremonials
of colleges of priests, in the narratives chanted by families of
minstrels or by professional bards wandering from village to village
or from court to court, and in occasional hymns sung by privileged
harpists, like Demodocus of Phæacia,[393] in honor of a chieftain, an
ancestor, or a god. Many of these early bards are mere names to us.
Most of them are probably as mythical as the songs with which they are
accredited. The following is a brief account of mythical prophets, of
mythical musicians and poets, and of the actual poets and historians
who recorded the mythologies from which English literature draws its
classical myths,--the Greek, the Roman, the Norse, and the German.
=298. In Greece.= (1) _Mythical Prophets._ To some of the oldest bards
was attributed the gift of prophecy. Indeed, nearly every expedition of
mythology was accompanied by one of these seers, priests, or "medicine
men," as we might call them.
_Melampus_ was the first Greek said to be endowed with prophetic
powers. Before his house there stood an oak tree containing a serpent's
nest. The old serpents were killed by the slaves, but Melampus saved
the young ones. One day when he was asleep under the oak, the serpents
licked his ears with their tongues, enabling him to understand the
language of birds and creeping things.[394] At one time his enemies
seized and imprisoned him. But Melampus, in the silence of the night,
heard from the woodworms in the timbers that the supports of the house
were nearly eaten through and the roof would soon fall in. He told
his captors. They took his warning, escaped destruction, rewarded the
prophet, and held him in high honor.
Other famous soothsayers were Amphiaraüs, who took part in the War
of the Seven against Thebes; Calchas, who accompanied the Greeks
during the Trojan War; Helenus and Cassandra, of King Priam's family,
who prophesied for the Trojan forces; Tiresias, the blind prophet of
Thebes; and Mopsus, who attended the Argonauts. The stories of these
expeditions are given in preceding chapters.
(2) _Mythical Musicians and Poets._ Since the poets of antiquity sang
their stories or hymns to an accompaniment of their own upon the harp
or lyre, they were skilled in the art of music as well as in that of
verse.
_Orpheus_, whose adventures have been narrated, passes in tradition for
the oldest of Greek lyrists, and the special favorite, even the son,
of the god Apollo, patron of musicians. This Thracian bard is said to
have taught mysterious truths concerning the origin of things and the
immortality of the soul. But the fragments of Orphic hymns which are
attributed to him are probably the work of philosophers of a much later
period in Greek literature.
Another Thracian bard, _Thamyris_, is said in his presumption to have
challenged the Muses to a trial of skill. Conquered in the contest,
he was deprived of his sight. To _Musæus_, the son of Orpheus, was
attributed a hymn on the Eleusinian mysteries, and other sacred poems
and oracles. Milton couples his name with that of Orpheus:
But, O sad Virgin! that thy power
Might raise Musæus from his bower,
Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as, warbled to the string,
Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek,
And made Hell grant what love did seek.[395]
Other legendary bards or musicians were Linus, Marsyas, and Amphion.
(3) _The Poets of Mythology._ _Homer_, from whose poems of the Iliad
and Odyssey we have taken the chief part of our chapters on the Trojan
War and the return of the Grecians, is almost as mythical a personage
as the heroes he celebrates. The traditionary story is that he was a
wandering minstrel, blind and old, who traveled from place to place
singing his lays to the music of his harp, in the courts of princes or
the cottages of peasants,--a dependent upon the voluntary offerings of
his hearers. Byron calls him "the blind old man of Scio's rocky isle";
and a well-known epigram, alluding to the uncertainty of the fact of
his birthplace, runs:
Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread.
These seven places were Smyrna, Chios (now Scio), Colophon, Ithaca,
Pylos, Argos, and Athens.
Modern scholars have doubted whether the Homeric poems are the work of
any single mind. This uncertainty arises, in part, from the difficulty
of believing that poems of such length could have been committed to
writing in the age usually assigned to these, when materials capable of
transmitting long productions were not yet in use. On the other hand,
it is asked how poems of such length could have been handed down from
age to age by means of the memory alone. This question is answered by
the statement that there was a professional body of men whose business
it was to commit to memory and rehearse for pay the national and
patriotic legends.
Pisistratus of Athens ordered a commission of scholars (about 537 B.C.)
to collect and revise the Homeric poems; and it is probable that at
that time certain passages of the Iliad and Odyssey, as we now have
them, were interpolated. Beside the Iliad and the Odyssey, many other
epics passed in antiquity under Homer's name. The so-called Homeric
Hymns to the gods, which were composed by various poets after the
death of Homer, are a source of valuable information concerning the
attributes of the divinities addressed.
The date assigned to Homer, on the authority of Herodotus, is 850 B.C.
The preservation and further fashioning of myths fell, after Homer's
time, into the hands of the Rhapsodists, who chanted epic songs, and
of the Cyclic poets, who elaborated into various epic _circles_, or
completed wholes, neglected traditions of the Trojan War. Among these
cyclic poems were the Cyprian Lays, which related the beginnings of
the Trojan War and the first nine years of the siege, thus leading up
to the Iliad; the Æthiopis, which continued the Iliad and told of the
death of Achilles; the Little Iliad and the Iliupersis, which narrated
the fall of Troy and magnified the exploits of Ajax and Philoctetes;
and the Nostoi, or Home-Comings, which told the adventures of various
Greek heroes during the period of ten years between the end of the
Iliad and the beginning of the Odyssey. Most of these poems were once
attributed to Homer. They are all lost, but the names of some of their
authors survive. There was also a cycle which told of the two wars
against Thebes.
_Hesiod_ is, like Homer, one of the most important sources of our
knowledge of Greek mythology. He is thought by some to have been a
contemporary of Homer, but concerning the relative dates of the two
poets there is no certainty. Hesiod was born in Ascra in B[oe]otia;
he spent his youth as a shepherd on Mount Helicon, his manhood in the
neighborhood of Corinth, and wrote two great poems, the Works and
Days, and the Theogony, or Genealogy of the Gods. From the former we
obtain a connected account of Greek traditions concerning the primitive
commodities of life, the arts of agriculture and navigation, the sacred
calendar, and the various prehistoric ages. From the latter poem we
learn the Greek mythology of the creation of the world, the family of
the gods, their wars, and their attitude toward primeval man. While
Hesiod may have composed his works at a somewhat later period than
Homer, it is noteworthy that his stories of the gods have more of the
savage or senseless element than those attributed to Homer. The artist,
or artists, of the Iliad and the Odyssey seem to have refined the
stories into poetic gold; Hesiod has gathered them in the ore, like so
many specimens for a museum.
A company of _Lyric Poets_, of whom Stesichorus (620 B.C.), Alcæus
(611 B.C.), Sappho (610 B.C.), Arion (600 B.C.), Simonides of Ceos
(556 B.C.), Ibycus (540 B.C.), Anacreon (530 B.C.), and Pindar (522
B.C.) are the most prominent, have contributed much to our knowledge of
mythology. They have left us hymns to the gods, references to mythical
heroes, and accounts of more or less pathetic legendary adventures.
Of the works of _Sappho_ few fragments remain, but they establish her
claim to eminent poetical genius. Her story is frequently alluded
to. Being passionately in love with a beautiful youth named Phaon,
and failing to obtain a return of affection, she is said to have
thrown herself from the promontory of Leucadia into the sea, under a
superstition that those who should take that "Lover's Leap" would, if
not destroyed, be cured of their love.
Of _Arion_ the greatest work was a dithyramb or choral hymn to the god
of wine. It is said that his music and song were of such sweetness as
to charm the monsters of the sea; and that when thrown overboard on
one occasion by avaricious seamen, he was borne safely to land by an
admiring dolphin. Spenser represents Arion, mounted on his dolphin,
accompanying the train of Neptune and Amphitrite:
Then was there heard a most celestial sound
Of dainty music, which did next ensue
Before the spouse: that was Arion crowned
Who, playing on his harp, unto him drew
The ears and hearts of all that goodly crew;
That even yet the dolphin which him bore
Through the Ægean seas from pirates' view,
Stood still by him astonished at his lore,
And all the raging seas for joy forgot to roar.[396]
_Simonides_ was one of the most prolific of the early poets of Greece,
but only a few fragments of his compositions have descended to us.
He wrote hymns, triumphal odes, and elegies, and in the last species
of composition he particularly excelled. His genius was inclined to
the pathetic; none could touch with truer effect the chords of human
sympathy. The Lamentation of Danaë, the most important of the fragments
which remain of his poetry, is based upon the tradition that Danaë and
her infant son were confined by order of her father Acrisius in a chest
and set adrift on the sea. The myth of her son, Perseus, has already
been narrated.
Myths received their freest and perhaps most ideal treatment at the
hands of the greatest lyric poet of Greece, _Pindar_ (522 B.C.). In his
hymns and songs of praise to gods and in his odes composed for the
victors in the national athletic contests, he was accustomed to use the
mythical exploits of Greek heroes as a text from which to draw morals
appropriate to the occasion.[397]
The three great _Tragic Poets_ of Greece have handed down to us a
wealth of mythological material. From the plays of _Æschylus_ (525
B.C.) we gather, among other noble lessons, the fortunes of the
family of Agamemnon, the narrative of the expedition against Thebes,
the sufferings of Prometheus, benefactor of men. In the tragedies of
_Sophocles_ (495 B.C.) we have a further account of the family of
Agamemnon, myths of [OE]dipus of Thebes and his children, stories
connected with the Trojan War, and the last adventure and the death of
Hercules. Of the dramas of _Euripides_ (480 B.C.) there remain to us
seventeen, in which are found stories of the daughters of Agamemnon,
the rare and beautiful narrative of Alcestis, and the adventures of
Medea. All of these stories have been recounted in their proper places.
The _Comedies of Aristophanes_, also, are replete with matters of
mythological import.
Of the later poets of mythology, only two need be mentioned
here,--_Apollonius_ of Rhodes (194 B.C.), who wrote in frigid style
the story of Jason's Voyage for the Golden Fleece; and _Theocritus_ of
Sicily (270 B.C.), whose rural idyls are at once charmingly natural and
romantic.[398]
(4) _Historians of Mythology._ The earliest narrators in prose of
the myths, legends and genealogies of Greece lived about 600 B.C.
Herodotus, the "father of history" (484 B.C.), embalms various myths
in his account of the conflicts between Asia and Greece. Apollodorus
(140 B.C.) gathers the legends of Greece later incorporated in the
Library of Greek Mythology. That delightful traveler, Pausanias, makes
special mention, in his Tour of Greece, of the sacred customs and
legends that had maintained themselves as late as his time (160 A.D.).
Lucian, in his Dialogues of the Gods and Dialogues of the Dead, awakens
"inextinguishable laughter" by his satire on ancient faith and fable.
=299. Roman Poets of Mythology.= _Virgil_, called also by his surname,
Maro, from whose poem of the Æneid we have taken the story of Æneas,
was one of the great poets who made the age of the Roman emperor,
Augustus, celebrated. Virgil was born in Mantua in the year 70 B.C.
His great poem is ranked next to those of Homer, in that noble class
of poetical composition, the epic. Virgil is inferior to Homer in
originality and invention. The Æneid, written in an age of culture and
science, lacks that charming atmosphere of belief which invests the
naïve, or _popular_, epic. The myths concerning the founding of Rome,
which Virgil has received from earlier writers, he has here fused
into a _literary_ epic. But what the Æneid lacks of epic simplicity,
it makes up in patriotic spirit, in lofty moral and civic ideals, in
correctness of taste, and in stylistic form.
_Ovid_, often alluded to in poetry by his other name, Naso, was born
in the year 43 B.C. He was educated for public life and held some
offices of considerable dignity; but poetry was his delight, and he
early resolved to cultivate it. He accordingly sought the society of
contemporary poets and was acquainted with Horace and saw Virgil,
though the latter died when Ovid was yet too young and undistinguished
to have formed his acquaintance. Ovid spent an easy life at Rome
in the enjoyment of a competent income. He was intimate with the
family of Augustus, the emperor; and it is supposed that some serious
offense given to a member of that family was the cause of an event
which reversed the poet's happy circumstances and clouded the latter
portion of his life. At the age of fifty he was banished from Rome
and ordered to betake himself to Tomi on the borders of the Black
Sea. His only consolation in exile was to address his wife and absent
friends. His letters were all in verse. They are called the "Tristia,"
or Sorrows, and Letters from Pontus. The two great works of Ovid are
his "Metamorphoses" or Transformations, and his "Fasti," or Poetic
Calendar. They are both mythological poems, and from the former we have
taken many of our stories of Grecian and Roman mythology. These poems
have thus been characterized:
"The rich mythology of Greece furnished Ovid, as it may still furnish
the poet, the painter, and the sculptor, with materials for his art.
With exquisite taste, simplicity, and pathos he has narrated the
fabulous traditions of early ages, and given to them that appearance of
reality which only a master hand could impart. His pictures of nature
are striking and true; he selects with care that which is appropriate;
he rejects the superfluous, and when he has completed his work, it is
neither defective nor redundant. The 'Metamorphoses' are read with
pleasure by the young and old of every civilized land."
In an incidental manner, _Horace_, the prince of Roman lyric poets,
and the lyric and elegiac writers, _Catullus_, _Tibullus_, and
_Propertius_, have liberally increased our knowledge of Greek and Roman
myth.[399]
_Seneca_, the teacher of Nero, is best known for his philosophical
treatises; but he wrote, also, tragedies, the materials of which
are well-known Greek legends. _Apuleius_, born in Africa, 114 A.D.,
interests us as the compiler of a clever romance, The Golden Ass;[400]
the most pleasing episode of which, the story of Cupid and Psyche, has
been elsewhere related.[401]
=300. Records of Norse Mythology.=[402] A system of mythology of
especial interest,--as belonging to the race from which we, through
our English ancestors, derive our origin,--is that of the Norsemen,
who inhabited the countries now known as Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and
Iceland. Their mythological lore has been transmitted by means of
Runes, Skaldic poems, the Eddas, and the Sagas.
_The Runes._ The earliest method of writing prevalent among the
Norsemen was by runes. The word means _hidden lore_, or _mystery_.
The earliest runes were merely fanciful signs supposed to possess
mysterious power. As a synonym for _writing_, the term was first
applied to the Northern alphabet, itself derived from ancient Greek
and Roman coins. Of the old Scandinavian runes several specimens have
been found--one an inscription on a golden horn of the third or fourth
century A.D., which was dug up in Schleswig a hundred and sixty years
ago; another, on a stone at Tune in Norway. From such an alphabet the
Anglo-Saxon runes were derived. Inscriptions in later Scandinavian
runes have been discovered in Sweden, Denmark, and the Isle of Man.
The characters are of the stiff and angular form necessitated by the
materials on which they were inscribed,--tombstones, spoons, chairs,
oars, and so forth.[403] It is doubtful whether mythological poems were
ever written in this way; dedications to pagan deities, ditties of the
eleventh century, and love-spells have, however, been found.
_The Skaldic Poems._ The bards and poets of the Norsemen were the
Skalds. They were the depositaries of whatever historic lore there
was; and it was their office to mingle something of intellectual
gratification with the rude feasts of the warriors, by rehearsing,
with such accompaniments of poetry and music as their skill could
afford, the exploits of heroes living or dead. Such songs were called
Drapas. The origin of Skaldic poetry is lost in mythic or prehistoric
darkness, but the Skalds of Iceland continued to play a most important
part in the literary development of the north as late as the end of the
fourteenth century. Without their coöperation, the greater part of the
songs and sagas of genuine antiquity could hardly have reached us. The
Skaldic diction, which was polished to an artistic extreme, with its
pagan metaphors and similes retained its supremacy over literary form
even after the influence of Christianity had revolutionized national
thought.[404]
_The Eddas._ The chief mythological records of the Norse are the Eddas
and the Sagas. The word _Edda_ has usually been connected with the
Icelandic for _great-grandmother_;[405] it has also been regarded
as a corruption of the High German _Erda_, Mother Earth, from whom,
according to the lay in which the word first occurs, the earliest
race of mankind sprang,[406]--or as the _point_ or _head_ of Norse
poetry,[407] or as a tale concerned with _death_,[408] or as derived
from Odde, the home of the reputed collector of the Elder Edda. But,
of recent years, scholars have looked with most favor upon a derivation
from the Icelandic _óðr_, which means mind, or poetry.[409] There are
two Icelandic collections called Eddas: Snorri's and Sæmund's. Until
the year 1643 the name was applied to a book, principally in prose,
containing Mythical Tales, a Treatise on the Poetic Art and Diction, a
Poem on Meters, and a Rhymed Glossary of Synonyms, with an appendix of
minor treatises on grammar and rhetoric--the whole intended as a guide
for poets. Although a note in the Upsala manuscript, of date about 1300
A.D., asserted that this work was "put together" by Snorri Sturlason,
who lived 1178-1241, the world was not informed of the fact until 1609,
when Arngrim Johnsson made the announcement in his Constitutional
History of Iceland.[410] While the main treatises on the poetic art
are, in general, Snorri's, the treatises on grammar and rhetoric have
been, with more or less certitude, assigned to other writers of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It is probable, too, that in the
Mythical Tales, or the Delusion of Gylfi, Snorri merely enlarged and
edited with poetical illustrations the work of earlier hands. The poets
of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries do not speak of Snorri, but
they refer continually to the "rules of Edda," and frequently to the
obscurity and the conventionality of Eddic phraseology, figures, and
art. Even at the present day in Iceland it is common to hear the term
"void of Eddic art," or "a bungler in Eddic art." A rearrangement of
Snorri's Edda, by Magnus Olafsson (1574-1636), is much better known
than the original work.
In 1642, Bishop Bryniolf Sveinsson discovered a manuscript of the
mythological poems of Iceland. Misled by theories of his own and
by a fanciful suggestion of the famous antiquary Biorn of Scardsa,
he attributed the composition of these poems to Sæmund the Wise, a
historian who lived 1056-1133. Henceforth, consequently, Snorri's
work is called the Younger, or Prose Edda, in contradistinction to
Bryniolf's find, which is known as the Elder, the Poetical Edda, or the
Edda of Sæmund. The oldest manuscript of the Poetical Edda is of the
thirteenth century. Its contents were probably collected not later
than 1150. The composition of the poems cannot well be placed earlier
than the ninth or tenth centuries after Christ; and a consideration
of the habits, laws, geography, and vocabulary illustrated by the
poems leads eminent scholars to assign the authorship to emigrants
of the south Norwegian tribes who, sailing westward, "won Waterford
and Limerick, and kinged it in York and East England."[411] The poems
are Icelandic, however, in their general character and history. They
are principally of heroic and mythical import: such as the stories of
Balder's Fate, of Skirnir's Journey, of Thor's Hammer, of Helgi the
Hunding's Bane, and the twenty lays that in fragmentary fashion tell
the eventful history of the Volsungs and the Nibelungs.[412]
_The Sagas._ The Eddas contain many myths and mythical features that
contradict the national character of both Germans and Norsemen, but
the sagas have their roots in Norse civilization and are national
property.[413] Of these mythic-heroic prose compositions the most
important to us is the Volsunga Saga, which was put together probably
in the twelfth century and is based in part upon the poems of the Elder
Edda, in part upon floating traditions, and in part upon popular songs
that now are lost.[414]
=301. Records of German Mythology.=[412] The story of the Volsungs
and the Nibelungs springs from mythological sources common to the
whole Teutonic race. Two distinct versions of the saga survive,--the
Low or North German, which we have already noticed in the lays of
the Elder Edda and in the Norse Volsunga Saga, and the High or South
German, which has been preserved in German folk songs and in the
Nibelungenlied, or Lay of the Nibelungs, that has grown out of them.
The Norse form of the story exhibits a later survival of the credulous,
or myth-making, mental condition. The Lay of the Nibelungs absorbed, at
an earlier date, historical elements, and began sooner to restrict the
personality of its heroes within the compass of human limitations.[415]
Although there are many manuscripts, or fragments of manuscripts, of
the Nibelungenlied that attest its popularity between the thirteenth
and sixteenth centuries, it was not until the Swiss critic, J. J.
Bodmer, published, in 1757, portions of two ancient poems, "The
Revenge of Kriemhild" and "The Lament over the Heroes of Etzel,"
that the attention of modern scholars was called to this famous
German epic. Since that time many theories of the composition of the
Nibelungenlied have been advanced. It has been held by some that the
German epic is an adaptation of the Norse version;[416] by others,
that the Scandinavians, not the Germans, borrowed the story; and by
others still, that the epics, while proceeding from a common cradle,
are of independent growth. The last theory is the most tenable.[417]
Concerning the history of the Nibelungenlied, it has been maintained
that since, during the twelfth century, when no poet would adopt
any other poet's stanzaic form, the Austrian Von Kürenberg used the
stanzaic form of the Nibelungenlied, the epic must be his.[418] It
has also been urged that the poem, having been written down about
1140, was altered in metrical form by younger poets, until, in 1200 or
thereabouts, it assumed the form preserved in the latest of the three
great manuscripts.[419] But the theory advanced by Lachmann is still
of great value: that the poem consists of a number of ancient ballads
of various age and uneven worth; and that, about 1210, a collector,
mending some of the ballads to suit himself, strung them together on a
thread of his own invention.
In fine, the materials of the poem would persuade us not only of
its origin in very ancient popular lays, but of their fusion and
improvement by the imaginative effort of at least one, and probably
of several poets, who lived and wrote between 1120 and 1200 A.D. The
metrical structure, also, would indicate derivation from the German
folk song and modification due to multifarious handling on the part of
popular minstrels and poets of written verse.[420]
=302. Records of Oriental Mythology: Egyptian.=[421] Although
the myths of Egypt, India, and Persia are of intense interest and
importance, they have not materially affected English literature. The
following is, however, a brief outline of the means by which some of
them have been preserved.
The Egyptian records are (1) _The Hieroglyphs_, or sacred inscriptions
in Tombs of the Kings, and other solemn places,--conveying ideas by
symbols, by phonetic signs, or by both; (2) _The Sacred Papyri_,
containing hymns to the gods; (3) _The_ _Books of the Dead_ and of the
_Lower Hemisphere_,--devoted to necromantic incantations, prayers for
the souls of the departed, and other rituals.
=303. Indian Records.= (1) _The Vedas_, or Holy Scriptures of the
Hindus, which fall into four divisions. The most ancient, the Rig-Veda,
consists of hymns of an elevated and spiritual character composed by
families of Rishis, or psalmists, as far back, perhaps, as 3000 B.C.,
not later than 1400 B.C. They give us the religious conceptions of
the Aryans when they crossed the Himalayas and began to push toward
Southern Hindustan. The Sama-Veda is a book of solemn chants and
tunes. The Yajur-Veda comprises prayers for sacrificial occasions,
and interpretations of the same. The Atharva-Veda shows, as might be
expected of the youngest of the series, the influence upon the purer
Aryan creed of superstitions borrowed, perhaps, from the aboriginal
tribes of India. It contains spells for exorcising demons and placating
them.
(2) _The Indian Epics_ of classical standing. They are the Mahâbhârata
and the Râmâyana. Scholars differ as to the chronological precedence.
The Great Feud of the Bhâratas has the air of superior antiquity
because of the numerous hands and generations that have contributed
to its composition. The Adventures of Râma, on the other hand,
recalls a more primitive stage of credulity and of savage invention.
The Mahâbhârata is a storehouse of mythical tradition. It contains
several well-rounded epic poems, the most beautiful of which is the
Episode of Nala,--a prince who, succumbing to a weakness common to
his contemporaries, has gambled away his kingdom. The Great Feud of
the Bhâratas is, indeed, assigned to an author--but his name, Vyâsa,
means simply the Arranger. The Râmâyana purports to have been written
by the poet Vâlmîki. It tells how Sita, the wife of Prince Râma, is
carried off to Ceylon by Râvana, king of the demons, and how Râma, by
the aid of an army of monkeys, bridges the straits between India and
Ceylon and, slaying the demon, recovers his lovely and innocent wife.
The resemblance between the plot and that of the Iliad has inclined
some scholars to derive the Indian from the Greek epic. But, until the
relative antiquity of the poems is established, the Iliad might as well
be derived from the Râmâyana. The theory is unsubstantiated. These
epics of India lack the artistic spirit and grace of the Iliad and the
Odyssey, but they display a keener sympathy with nature and a more
romantic appreciation of the loves and sorrows of mankind.
=304. Persian Records.= _The Avesta_, or Sacred Book of the ancient
Persians, composed in the Zend language and later translated into
medieval Persian,--or Pahlavi,--contains the Gáthás, or hymns of
Zoroaster and his contemporaries, and scriptures of as recent a date
as the fifth century B.C. Zoroaster, a holy man of God, was the
founder or the reformer of the Persian religion. He lived as early
as the fourteenth or fifteenth century B.C., and his system became
the dominant religion of Western Asia from the time of Cyrus (550
B.C.) to the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great. The teachings
of Zoroaster are characterized by beautiful simplicity, and by an
unwavering faith in the ultimate victory of righteousness (Ormuzd) over
evil (Ahriman).
FOOTNOTES:
[393] Odyssey 8, 250.
[394] Cf. the experience of Sigurd.
[395] Il Penseroso, II. 103-108.
[396] _Faerie Queene_, 4, 11, 23.
[397] See E. B. Clapp, Greek Morality and Religion as Set forth by
Pindar (_Hibbert Journal_, 8, 283).
[398] For other authorities and for a few standard translations of the
Greek Classics, see Commentary, § 298.
[399] With regard to translations of these and other Latin poets, see
Commentary, § 299.
[400] Based upon Lucian's Lucius or the Ass, and other Greek stories.
[401] Translation in Walter Pater's Marius the Epicurean.
[402] For literature, see Commentary.
[403] Cleasby and Vigfusson's Icelandic-English Dictionary.
[404] F. W. Horn's Geschichte d. Literatur d. Skandinavischen Nordens,
27-42.
[405] Cleasby and Vigfusson's Dictionary; Lüning's Die Edda, 1859.
[406] The Lay of Rig in Snorri's Edda; Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus
Poeticum Boreale, 2, 514.
[407] Jacob Grimm.
[408] The Celtic _aideadh_: Professor Rhys, _Academy_, January 31, 1880.
[409] Arne Magnússon, see Morley's English Writers, 2, 336, and
Murray's New English Dictionary.
[410] Corpus Poeticum Boreale, 1; xxvii, etc.
[411] Corpus Poeticum Boreale, 1; lxxi; lxiii-lxiv.
[412] For literature, see Commentary.
[413] Paul's Grundriss d. Germanischen Philologie: Bd. 1, Lfg. 5,
_Mythologie_.
[414] Morris and Magnusson's The Story of the Volsungs and Nibelungs.
Horn's Geschichte d. Literatur d. Skandinavischen Nordens, 27-42, 58,
etc.
[415] Werner Hahn, Das Nibelungenlied.
[416] The Grimm Brothers; v. d. Hagen; Vilmar.
[417] Werner Hahn; Jas. Sime, Encyc. Brit. _Nibelungenlied_.
[418] Pfeiffer.
[419] Bartsch, see Encyc. Brit.
[420] Werner Hahn, 18, 58-60.
[421] For translations of Oriental Myths, see Commentary. For mythical
personages, see Index and Dictionary.
COMMENTARY[422]
[It is hoped that this Commentary may be useful to general
readers, to students of art, and to teachers in the secondary
schools, as well as to pupils. The cross references are always to
sections; and the section numbers correspond with those of the
text in the body of the book. The letter C. prefixed to a number
indicates Commentary.]
=3. Chaos=: a gap. Compare the "Beginning Gap" of Norse mythology.
=Eros=: a yearning. =Erebus=: black, from root meaning _to cover_.
=4. Uranus= (Greek _Ouranos_) corresponds with the name of the Indian
divinity Varunas, root _var_, 'to cover.' Uranus is the starry vault
that covers the earth; Varunas became the rain-giving sky. =Titan=: the
honorable, powerful; the king; later, the signification was limited to
the sun. =Oceanus= probably means _flood_. =Tethys=: the nourisher,
nurse. =Hyperion=: the wanderer on high;[423] the sun. =Thea=: the
beautiful, shining; the moon. She is called by Homer Euryphaëssa, the
far-shining. =Iapetus=: the sender, hurler, wounder. =Themis=: that
which is established, law. =Mnemosyne=: memory. Other Titans were
C[oe]us and Ph[oe]be, figurative of the radiant lights of heaven; Creüs
and Eurybië, mighty powers, probably of the sea; Ophion, the great
serpent, and Eurynome, the far-ruling, who, according to Apollonius
of Rhodes, held sway over the Titans until Cronus cast them into the
Ocean, or into Tartarus.
=Cronus= (Greek _Kronos_) is, as his name shows, the god of ripening,
harvest, maturity. =Rhea= comes from Asia Minor, and was there
worshiped as the Mother Earth, dwelling creative among the mountains.
Cronus (_Kronos_) has been naturally, but wrongly, identified with
Chronos, the personification of _Time_, which, as it brings all
things to an end, devours its own offspring; and also with the Latin
Saturn, who, as a god of agriculture and harvest, was represented with
pruning-knife in hand, and regarded as the lord of an ancient golden
age.
The three =Cyclopes= were Brontes, Steropes, and Arges. Cyclops means
the round-eyed. The =Hecatonchires= were Briareus, the strong, called
also Ægæon; Cottus, the striker; Gyes, or Gyges, the vaulter, or
crippler. Gyges is called by Horace (Carm. 2, 17, 14) Centimanus,--the
hundred-handed.
=_Illustrative._= Milton, in Paradise Lost, 10, 581, refers to the
tradition of Ophion and Eurynome, who "had first the rule of high
Olympus, thence by Saturn driven." =Hyperion=: see Shakespeare's
Hamlet, "Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself." Also Henry V,
IV, i; Troilus and Cressida, II, iii; Titus Andronicus, V, iii; Gray,
Progress of Poesy, "Hyperion's march they spy, and glittering shafts
of war"; Spenser, Prothalamion, "Hot Titans beames." On =Oceanus=,
Ben Jonson, Neptune's Triumph. On =Saturn=, see Shakespeare, Much Ado
About Nothing, I, iii; 2 Henry IV, II, iv; Cymbeline, II, v; Titus
Andronicus, II, iii; IV, iii; Milton, Paradise Lost, 1. 512, 519, 583,
and Il Penseroso, 24. See Robert Buchanan, Cloudland, "One like a Titan
cold," etc.; Keats, Hyperion; B. W. Procter, The Fall of Saturn.
=_In Art._= Helios (Hyperion) rising from the sea: sculpture of eastern
pediment of the frieze of the Parthenon (British Museum). Mnemosyne: D.
G. Rossetti (crayons and oil).
=5.= Homer makes Zeus (Jupiter) the oldest of the sons of Cronus;
Hesiod makes him the youngest, in accordance with a widespread savage
custom which makes the youngest child heir in chief.--LANG, Myth,
Ritual, etc., 1, 297. According to other legends Zeus was born in
Arcadia, or even in Epirus at Dodona, where was his sacred grove. He
was in either case reared by the nymphs of the locality. According to
Hesiod, Theog. 730, he was born in a cave of Mount Dicte, in Crete.
=6. Atlas=, according to other accounts, was not doomed to support the
heavens until after his encounter with Perseus.
=8.= See Milton's Hymn on the Nativity, "Not =Typhon= huge ending in
snaky twine." The monster is also called Typhoeus (Hesiod, Theog.
1137). The name means _to smoke_, _to burn_. The monster personifies
fiery vapors proceeding from subterranean places. Other famous =Giants=
were Mimas, Polybotes, Ephialtes, Rh[oe]tus, Clytius. See Preller,
1, 60. Briareus (really a Centimanus) is frequently ranked among the
giants.
=_Illustrative._= Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, I, ii; Milton,
Paradise Lost, 1, 199, and Hymn on the Nativity, 226; M. Arnold,
Empedocles, Act 2; Pope, Dunciad, 4, 66. For giants, in general, see
Milton, Paradise Lost, 3, 464; 11. 642, 688; Samson Agonistes, 148.
=10-15. Prometheus=: forethought.[424] =Epimetheus=: afterthought.
According to Æschylus (Prometheus Bound) the doom of Zeus (Jupiter) was
only contingent. If he should refuse to set Prometheus free and should,
therefore, ignorant of the secret, wed Thetis, of whom it was known to
Prometheus that her son should be greater than his father, then Zeus
would be dethroned. If, however, Zeus himself delivered Prometheus,
that Titan would reveal his secret and Zeus would escape both the
marriage and its fateful result. The Prometheus Unbound of Æschylus
is lost; but its name indicates that in the sequel the Titan is freed
from his chains. And from hints in the Prometheus Bound we gather
that this liberation was to come about in the way mentioned above,
Prometheus warning Zeus to marry Thetis to Peleus (whose son, Achilles,
proved greater than his father,--see =191=); or by the intervention
of Hercules who was to be descended in the thirteenth generation from
Zeus and Io (see =161= and =C. 149=); or by the voluntary sacrifice
of the Centaur Chiron, who, when Zeus should hurl Prometheus and his
rock into Hades, was destined to substitute himself for the Titan,
and so by vicarious atonement to restore him to the life of the upper
world. In Shelley's great drama of Prometheus Unbound, the Zeus of
tyranny and ignorance and superstition is overthrown by Reason, the
gift of Prometheus to mankind. =Sicyon= (or Mecone): a city of the
Peloponnesus, near Corinth.
_=Illustrative.=_ Milton, Paradise Lost, "More lovely than =Pandora=
whom the gods endowed with all their gifts." Shakespeare, Titus
Andronicus, II, i, 16.
_=Poems.=_ D. G. Rossetti, Pandora; Longfellow, Masque of Pandora,
Prometheus, and Epimetheus; Thos. Parnell, Hesiod, or the Rise of
Woman. =Prometheus=, by Byron, Lowell, H. Coleridge, Robert Bridges;
Prometheus Bound, by Mrs. Browning; translations of Æschylus,
Prometheus Bound, Augusta Webster, E. H. Plumptre; Shelley, Prometheus
Unbound; R. H. Horne, Prometheus, the Fire-bringer; E. Myers, The
Judgment of Prometheus; George Cabot Lodge, Herakles, a drama. See
Byron's Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte. =The Golden Age=: Chaucer, The
Former Age (_Ætas Prima_); Milton, Hymn on the Nativity.
_=In Art.=_ Ancient: Prometheus Unbound, vase picture (Monuments
Inédits, Rome and Paris). Modern: Thorwaldsen's sculpture, Minerva and
Prometheus. Pandora: Sichel (oil), Rossetti (crayons and oil), F. S.
Church (water colors).
=16. Dante= (_Durante_) =degli Alighieri= was born in Florence, 1265.
Banished by his political opponents, 1302, he remained in exile
until his death, which took place in Ravenna, 1321. His Vita Nuova
(New Life), recounting his ideal love for Beatrice Portinari, was
written between 1290 and 1300; his great poem, the Divina Commedia
(the Divine Comedy) consisting of three parts,--Inferno, Purgatorio,
Paradiso,--during the years of his exile. Of the Divine Comedy, says
Lowell, "It is the real history of a brother man, of a tempted,
purified, and at last triumphant human soul." =John Milton= (b. 1608)
was carried by the stress of the civil war, 1641-1649, away from
poetry, music, and the art which he had sedulously cultivated, into
the stormy sea of politics and war. Perhaps the severity of his later
sonnets and the sublimity of his Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained,
and Samson Agonistes are the fruit of the stern years of controversy
through which he lived, not as a poet, but as a statesman and a
pamphleteer. =Cervantes= (1547-1616), the author of the greatest
of Spanish romances, Don Quixote. His life was full of adventure,
privation, suffering, with but brief seasons of happiness and renown.
He distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto, 1571; but in 1575,
being captured by Algerine cruisers, he remained five years in harsh
captivity. After his return to Spain he was neglected by those in
power. For full twenty years he struggled for his daily bread. Don
Quixote was published in and after 1605. =Corybantes=: the priests of
Cybele, whose festivals were violent, and whose worship consisted of
dances and noise suggestive of battle.
=18. Astræa= was placed among the stars as the constellation Virgo, the
virgin. Her mother was Themis (Justice). Astræa holds aloft a pair of
scales, in which she weighs the conflicting claims of parties. The old
poets prophesied a return of these goddesses and of the Golden Age. See
also Pope's Messiah,--
All crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail,
Returning Justice lift aloft her scale:
and Milton's Hymn on the Nativity, 14, 15. In Paradise Lost, 4, 998 _et
seq._, is a different conception of the golden scales, "betwixt Astræa
and the Scorpion sign." Emerson moralizes the myth in his Astræa.
=19-20. _Illustrative._= B. W. Procter, The Flood of Thessaly. See
Ovid's famous narrative of the Four Ages and the Flood, Metamorphoses,
1, 89-415. =Deucalion=: Bayard Taylor, Prince Deukalion; Milton,
Paradise Lost, 11, 12.
_=Interpretative.=_ This myth combines two stories of the origin of
the Hellenes, or indigenous Greeks,--one, in accordance with which the
Hellenes, as earthborn, claimed descent from Pyrrha (the red earth);
the other and older, by which Deucalion was represented as the only
survivor of the flood, but still the founder of the race (Greek laós),
which he created by casting stones (Greek lâes) behind him. The myth,
therefore, proceeds from an unintended pun. Although, finally, Pyrrha
was by myth-makers made the wife of Deucalion, the older myth of the
origin of the race from stones was preserved. See Max Müller, Sci.
Relig., London, 1873, p. 64.
=21.= For genealogy of the race of Inachus, Phoroneus, Pelasgus, and
Io, see Table D. Pelasgus is frequently regarded as the grandson, not
the son, of Phoroneus. For the descendants of Deucalion and Hellen, see
Table I of this commentary.
=22.= In the following genealogical table (A), the names of the great
gods of Olympus are printed in heavy-face type. Latin forms of names or
Latin substitutes are used.
_=Illustrative.=_ On the =Gods of Greece=, see E. A. Bowring's
translation of Schiller's Die Götter Griechenlands, and Bayard Taylor's
Masque of the Gods. On =Olympus=, see Lewis Morris, The Epic of Hades.
Allusions abound; _e.g._ Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, III, iii;
Julius Cæsar, III, i; IV, iii; Hamlet, V, i; Milton, Paradise Lost, 1,
516; 7, 7; 10, 583; Pope, Rape of the Lock, 5, 48, and Windsor Forest,
33, 234; E. C. Stedman, News from Olympia. See also E. W. Gosse, Greece
and England (On Viol and Flute).
=23. The Olympian Gods.= There were, according to Mr. Gladstone (_No.
Am._ _Rev._ April, 1892), about twenty Olympian deities:[425] (1) The
five really great gods, Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Apollo, and Athene; (2)
Hephæstus, Ares, Hermes, Iris, Leto, Artemis, Themis, Aphrodite, Dione,
Pæëon (or Pæon), and Hebe,--also usually present among the assembled
immortals; (3) Demeter, Persephone, Dionysus, and Thetis, whose
claims are more or less obscured. According to the same authority,
the =Distinctive Qualities of the Homeric Gods= were as follows: (1)
they were immortal; (2) they were incorporated in human form; (3) they
enjoyed power far exceeding that possessed by mortals; (4) they were,
however (with the possible exception of Athene, who is never ignorant,
never deceived, never baffled), all liable to certain limitations of
energy and knowledge; (5) they were subject also to corporeal wants and
to human affections. The =Olympian= =Religion=, as a whole, was more
careful of nations, states, public affairs, than of individuals and
individual character; and in this respect, according to Mr. Gladstone.
it differs from Christianity. He holds, however, that despite the
occasional immoralities of the gods, their general government not only
"makes for righteousness," but is addressed to the end of rendering it
triumphant. Says Zeus, for instance, in the Olympian assembly, "Men
complain of us the gods, and say that we are the source from whence
ills proceed; but they likewise themselves suffer woes outside the
course of destiny, through their own perverse offending." But, beside
this general effort for the triumph of right, there is little to be
said in abatement of the general proposition that, whatever be their
collective conduct, the common speech of the gods is below the human
level in point of morality.[426]
=24-25. Zeus.= In Sanskrit _Dyaus_, in Latin _Jovis_, in German _Tiu_.
The same name for the Almighty (the Light or Sky) used probably
thousands of years before Homer, or the Sanskrit Bible (the Vedas).
It is not merely the blue sky, nor the sky personified,--not merely
worship of a natural phenomenon, but of the Father who is in Heaven.
So in the Vedas we find _Dyaus pitar_, in the Greek _Zeu_ _pater_, in
Latin _Jupiter_ all meaning _father of light_.--MAX MÜLLER, Sci. Relig.
171, 172. =Oracle=: the word signifies also the answers given at the
shrine.
_=Illustrative.=_ Allusions to Jove on every other page of Milton,
Dryden, Pope, Prior, Gray, and any poet of the Elizabethan and Augustan
periods. On the =Love Affairs of Jupiter= and the other gods, see
Milton, Paradise Regained, 2, 182. =Dodona=: Tennyson's Talking Oak:
That Thessalian growth,
On which the swarthy ringdove sat,
And mystic sentence spoke....
Poem: Lewis Morris, Zeus, in The Epic of Hades.
_=In Art.=_ Beside the representations of Jupiter noted in the text may
be mentioned that on the eastern frieze of the Parthenon; the Jupiter
Otricoli in the Vatican; also the Jupiter and Juno (painting) by
Annibale Carracci; the Jupiter (sculpture) by Benvenuto Cellini.
TABLE A. THE GREAT GODS OF OLYMPUS
Uranus
=Gæa
+-- Cronus
| =Rhea
| +-- =Vesta=
| +-- Ceres
| +-- =Juno=
| | +=Jupiter=
| | +-- Hebe
| | +-- =Mars=
| | +-- =Vulcan=
| +-- Pluto
| +-- Neptune
| +-- =Jupiter=
| +-- Minerva
| ==Juno=
| +-- Hebe (see above)
| +-- =Mars= (see above)
| +-- =Vulcan= (see above)
| =Latona
| +-- =Apollo=
| +-- =Diana=
| =Dione
| +-- =Venus=
| =Maia
| +-- =Mercury=
| =Ceres
| +-- Proserpina
| =Semele
| +-- Bacchus
| =Alcmene
| +-- Hercules
+-- Rhea
| =Cronus
| +-- Vesta (see above)
| +-- Ceres (see above)
| +-- Juno (see above)
| +-- Pluto (see above)
| +-- Neptune (see above)
| +-- Jupiter (see above)
+-- C[oe]us
| =Ph[oe]be
| +-- Latona
| =Jupiter
| +-- Apollo (see above)
| +-- Diana (see above)
+-- Ph[oe]be
| =C[oe]us
| +-- Latona (see above)
+-- Iapetus
+-- Epimethius
| +-- Dione
| =Jupiter
| +-- Venus (see above)
+-- Prometheus
+-- Atlas
+-- Maia
=Jupiter
+-- Mercury (see above)
=26. Juno= was called by the Romans Juno Lucina, the special goddess of
childbirth. In her honor wives held the festival of the Matronalia on
the first of March of each year. The Latin =Juno= is for _Diou-n-on_,
from the stem _Diove_, and is the feminine parallel of Jovis, just as
the Greek Dione (one of the loves of Zeus) is the feminine of Zeus.
These names (and Diana, too) come from the root _div_, 'to shine,' 'to
illumine.' There are many points of resemblance between the Italian
Juno and the Greek Dione (identified with Hera, as Hera-Dione). Both
are goddesses of the moon (?), of women, of marriage; to both the cow
(with moon-crescent horns) is sacred. See Roscher, 21, 576-579. But
Overbeck insists that the loves of Zeus are deities of the earth: "The
rains of heaven (Zeus) do not fall upon the moon."
_=Illustrative.=_ W. S. Landor, Hymn of Terpander to Juno; Lewis
Morris, Heré, in The Epic of Hades.
=_In Art._= Of the statues of Juno the most celebrated was that made
by Polyclitus for her temple between Argos and Mycenæ. It was of gold
and ivory. See Paus. 2, 17, 4. The goddess was seated on a throne of
magnificent proportions; she wore a crown upon which were figured
the Graces and the Hours; in one hand she held a pomegranate, in the
other a scepter surmounted by a cuckoo. Of the extant representations
of Juno the most famous are the Argive Hera (Fig. 9 in the text), the
torso in Vienna from Ephesus, the Hera of the Vatican at Rome, the
bronze statuette in the Cabinet of Coins and Antiquities in Vienna, the
Farnese bust in the National Museum in Naples, the Ludovisi bust in the
villa of that name in Rome, the Pompeian wall painting of the marriage
of Zeus and Hera (given by Baumeister, Denkmäler 1, 649; see also
Roscher, 13, 2127), and the Juno of Lanuvium.
=27. Athenë= (Athena) has some characteristics of the warlike kind in
common with the Norse Valkyries, but she is altogether a more ideal
conception. The best description of the goddess will be found in
Homer's Iliad, 5, 730 _et seq._
The derivation of =Athene= is uncertain (Preller). Related, say some,
to _æth[=e]r_, #aithêr#, the clear upper air; say others, to the word
_anthos_, #anthos#, 'a flower'--virgin bloom; or (see Roscher, p. 684)
to _ath[=e]r_, #athêr#, 'spear point.' Max Müller derives Athene from
the root _ah_, which yields the Sanskrit Ahanâ and the Greek Daphne,
the Dawn (?). Hence Athene is the Dawn-goddess; but she is also the
goddess of wisdom, because "the goddess who caused people to wake was
involuntarily conceived as the goddess who caused people to know"
(Science of Language, 1, 548-551). This is poor philology.
Epithets applied to Athene are the bright-eyed, the gray-eyed, the
ægis-bearing, the unwearied daughter of Zeus.
The festival of the =Panathenæa= was celebrated at Athens yearly in
commemoration of the union of the Attic tribes. See =C. 176-181=.
The name =Pallas= characterizes the goddess as the _brandisher_ of
lightnings. Her Palladium--or sacred image--holds always high in air
the brandished lance.
=Minerva=, or =Menerva=, is connected with Latin _mens_, Greek _ménos_,
Sanskrit _manas_, 'mind'; not with the Latin _mane_, 'morning.' The
relation is not very plausible between the awakening of the day and
the awakening of thought (Max Müller, Sci. Lang, 1, 552).
For the meaning of the Gorgon, see Commentary on the myth of Perseus.
_=Illustrative=_. Byron, Childe Harold, 4, 96, the eloquent passage
beginning,
Can tyrants but by tyrants conquer'd be,
And Freedom find no champion and no child
Such as Columbia saw arise when she
Sprung forth a Pallas, arm'd and undefiled?
Shakespeare, Tempest, IV, i; As You Like It, I, iii; Winter's Tale,
IV, iii; Pericles, II, iii; Milton, Paradise Lost, 4, 500; Comus, 701;
Arcades, 23; Lewis Morris' Athene, in The Epic of Hades; Byron, Childe
Harold, 2. 1-15, 87, 91; Ruskin's Lectures entitled "The Queen of the
Air" (Athene); Thomas Woolner's Pallas Athene, in Tiresias.
_=In Art.=_ The finest of the statues of this goddess was by Phidias,
in the Parthenon, or temple of Athena, at Athens. The Athena of the
Parthenon has disappeared; but there is good ground to believe that we
have, in several extant statues and busts, the artist's conception.
(See Frontispiece, the Lemnian Athena, and Fig. 53, the Hope Athena,
ancient marble at Deepdene, Surrey.) The figure is characterized by
grave and dignified beauty, and freedom from any transient expression;
in other words, by repose. The most important copy extant is of the
Roman period. The goddess was represented standing; in one hand a
spear, in the other a statue of Victory. Her helmet, highly decorated,
was surmounted by a Sphinx. The statue was forty feet in height, and,
like the Jupiter, covered with ivory and gold. The eyes were of marble,
and probably painted to represent the iris and pupil. The Parthenon, in
which this statue stood, was also constructed under the direction and
superintendence of Phidias. Its exterior was enriched with sculptures,
many of them from the hand of the same artist. The Elgin Marbles now
in the British Museum are a part of them. Also remarkable are the
Minerva Bellica (Capitol, Rome); the Athena of the Acropolis Museum;
the Athena of the Ægina Marbles (Glyptothek, Munich); the Minerva
Medica (Vatican); the Athena of Velletri in the Louvre. (See Fig. 10.)
In modern sculpture, especially excellent are Thorwaldsen's Minerva
and Prometheus, and Cellini's Minerva (on the base of his Perseus). In
modern painting, Tintoretto's Minerva defeating Mars.
=28.= While the Latin god =Mars= corresponds with Ares, he has also
not a few points of similarity with the Greek Ph[oe]bus; for both
names, Mars and Ph[oe]bus, indicate the quality _shining_. In Rome, the
Campus Martius (field of Mars) was sacred to this deity. Here military
maneuvers and athletic contests took place; here Mars was adored by
sacrifice, and here stood his temple, where his priests, the Salii,
watched over the sacred spear and the shield, _Ancile_, that fell from
heaven in the reign of Numa Pompilius. Generals supplicated Mars for
victory, and dedicated to him the spoils of war. See Roscher, pp. 478,
486, on the fundamental significance, philosophical and physical, of
_Ares_. On the derivation of the Latin name _Mars_, see Roscher (end of
article on Apollo).
_=Illustrative in Art.=_ Of archaic figures, that upon the so-called
François Vase in Florence represents =Ares= bearded and with the armor
of a Homeric warrior. In the art of the second half of the fifth
century B.C., he is represented as beardless, standing with spear and
helmet and, generally, _chlamys_ (short warrior's cloak); so the marble
Ares statue (called the Borghese Achilles) in the Louvre. There is a
later type (preferred in Rome) of the god in Corinthian helmet pushed
back from the forehead, the right hand leaning on a spear, in the left
a sword with point upturned, over the left arm a _chlamys_. The finest
representation of the deity extant is the _Ares Ludovisi_ in Rome,
probably of the second half of the fourth century B.C.,--a sitting
figure, beautiful in form and feature, with an Eros playing at his
feet. (See Fig. 11.) Modern sculpture: Thorwaldsen's relief, Mars and
Cupid. Modern painting, Raphael's Mars (text, Fig. 12).
=29.= On the derivation of =Hephæstus=, see Roscher, p. 2037. From
Greek _aph[=e]_, 'to kindle,' or _pha_, 'to shine,' or _spha_, 'to
burn.' The Latin =Vulcan=, while a god of fire, is not represented by
the Romans as possessed of technical skill. It is said that Romulus
built him a temple in Rome and instituted the Vulcanalia,--a festival
in honor of the god. The name _Vulcanus_, or _Volcanus_, is popularly
connected with the Latin _fulgere_, 'to flash' or 'lighten,' _fulgur_ a
'flash of lightning,' etc. It is quite natural that, in many legends,
fire should play an active part in the creation of man. The primitive
belief of the Indo-Germanic race was that the fire-god, descending to
earth, became the first man; and that, therefore, the spirit of man was
composed of fire. Vulcan is also called by the Romans Mulciber, from
_mulceo_, 'to soften.'
_=Illustrative.=_ Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, V, i; Much Ado About
Nothing, I, i; Troilus and Cressida, I, iii; Hamlet, III, ii; Milton,
Paradise Lost, 1, 740:
From morn
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve,
A summer's day; and with the setting sun
Dropt from the zenith, like a falling star,
On Lemnos, the Ægean isle.
_=In Art.=_ Various antique illustrations are extant of the god as a
smith with hammer, or at the forge (text, Fig. 13); one of him working
with the Cyclopes; a vase painting of him adorning Pandora; one of him
assisting at the birth of Minerva; and one of his return to Olympus
led by Bacchus and Comus. Of modern paintings the following are
noteworthy: J. A. Wiertz, Forge of Vulcan; Velasquez, Forge of Vulcan
(Museum, Madrid) (text, Fig. 56); the Forge of Vulcan by Tintoretto.
Thorwaldsen's piece of statuary, Vulcan forging Arrows for Cupid, is
justly famous.
=30. Castalia=: on the slopes of Parnassus, sacred to Apollo and the
Muses. =Cephissus=: in Phocis and B[oe]otia. (Another Cephissus flows
near Athens.)
_=Interpretative.=_ The birth, wanderings, return of =Apollo=, and
his struggle with the Python, etc., are explained by many scholars
as symbolic of the annual course of the sun. Apollo is born of Leto,
who is, according to hypothesis, the Night from which the morning
sun issues. His conflict with the dragon reminds one of Siegfried's
combat and that of St. George, The =dragon= is variously interpreted
as symbolical of darkness, mephitic vapors, or the forces of winter,
which are overcome by the rays of the springtide sun. The dragon is
called Delphyne, or Python. The latter name may be derived simply from
that part of Phocis (Pytho) where the town of Delphi was situate, or
that again from the Greek root _p[=u]th_, 'to rot,' because there the
serpent was left by Apollo to decay; or from the Greek _p[)u]th_,
'to inquire,' with reference to the consultation of the Delphian or
Pythian oracle. "It is open to students to regard the =dolphin= as
only one of the many animals whose earlier worship is concentrated
in Apollo, or to take the creature for the symbol of spring when
seafaring becomes easier to mortals, or to interpret the dolphin as the
result of a _volks-etymologie_ (popular derivation), in which the name
_Delphi_ (meaning originally a hollow in the hills) was connected with
_delphis_, the dolphin."--LANG, Myth, Ritual, etc., 2, 197. Apollo is
also called =Lycius=, which means, not the wolf-slayer, as is sometimes
stated, for the wolf is sacred to Apollo, but either the wolf-god
(as inheriting an earlier wolf-cult) or the golden god of Light. See
Preller and Roscher. This derivation is more probable than that from
_Lycia_ in Asia Minor, where the god was said originally to have been
worshiped. To explain certain rational myths of Apollo as referring to
the annual and diurnal journeys of the sun is justifiable. To explain
the savage and senseless survivals of the Apollo-myth in that way is
impossible.
=Festivals.= The most important were as follows: (1) The =Delphinia=,
in May, to celebrate the genial influence of the young sun upon
the waters, in opening navigation, in restoring warmth and life to
the creatures of the wave, especially to the dolphins, which were
highly esteemed by the superstitious seafarers, fishermen, merchants,
etc. (2) The =Thargelia=, in the Greek month of that name, our May,
which heralded the approach of the hot season. The purpose of this
festival was twofold: to propitiate the deity of the sun and forfend
the sickness of summer; to celebrate the ripening of vegetation
and return thanks for first-fruits. These festivals were held in
Athens, Delos, and elsewhere. (3) The =Hyacinthian= fast and feast
of Sparta, corresponding in both features to the Thargelian. It was
held in July, in the oppressive days of the Dog Star, Sirius. (4) The
=Carnean= of Sparta, celebrated in August. It added to the propitiatory
features of the Hyacinthian, a thanksgiving for the vintage. (5)
Another vintage-festival was the =Pyanepsian=, in Athens. (6) The
=Daphnephoria=: "Familiar to many English people from Sir Frederick
Leighton's picture. This feast is believed to have symbolized the
year.... An olive branch supported a central ball of brass, beneath
which was a smaller ball, and thence little globes were hung." "The
greater ball means the sun, the smaller the moon, the tiny globes
the stars, and the three hundred and sixty-five laurel garlands used
in the feast are understood to symbolize the days." (_Proclus and
Pausanias._)--LANG, Myth, Ritual, etc., 2. 194, 195. Apollo is also
called the =Sminthian=, or Mouse-god, because he was regarded either
as the protector or as the destroyer of mice. In the Troad mice were
fed in his temple; elsewhere he was honored as freeing the country
from them. As Mr. Lang says (Myth, Ritual, etc., 2, 201), this is
intelligible "if the vermin which had once been sacred became a pest in
the eyes of later generations."
=Oracle of Delphi.= It had been observed at a very early period that
the goats feeding on Parnassus were thrown into convulsions when they
approached a certain long deep cleft in the side of the mountain. This
was owing to a peculiar vapor arising out of the cavern, and a certain
goatherd is said to have tried its effects upon himself. Inhaling the
intoxicating air, he was affected in the same manner as the cattle
had been; and the inhabitants of the surrounding country, unable to
explain the circumstance, imputed the convulsive ravings to which he
gave utterance while under the power of the exhalations to a divine
inspiration. The fact was speedily spread abroad, and a temple was
erected on the spot. The prophetic influence was at first variously
attributed to the goddess Earth, to Neptune, Themis, and others, but
it was at length assigned to Apollo, and to him alone. A priestess was
appointed whose office it was to inhale the hallowed air, and she was
named the Pythia. She was prepared for this duty by previous ablution
at the fountain of Castalia, and being crowned with laurel was seated
upon a tripod similarly adorned, which was placed over the chasm whence
the divine afflatus proceeded. Her inspired words while thus situated
were interpreted by the priests.
Other famous oracles were that of =Trophonius= in B[oe]otia and that of
the Egyptian =Apis=. Since those who descended into the cave at Lebadea
to consult the oracle of Trophonius were noticed to return dejected
and melancholy, the proverb arose which was applied to a low-spirited
person, "He has been consulting the oracle of Trophonius."
At Memphis the sacred bull Apis gave answer to those who consulted him,
by the manner in which he received or rejected what was presented to
him. If the bull refused food from the hand of the inquirer, it was
considered an unfavorable sign, and the contrary when he received it.
It used to be questioned whether oracular responses ought to be
ascribed to mere human contrivance or to the agency of evil spirits.
The latter opinion would of course obtain during ages of superstition,
when evil spirits were credited with an influence over human affairs.
A third theory has been advanced since the phenomena of mesmerism
have attracted attention: that something like the mesmeric trance was
induced in the Pythoness, and the faculty of clairvoyance called into
action.
Scholars have also sought to determine when the pagan oracles ceased
to give responses. Ancient Christian writers assert that they became
silent at the birth of Christ, and were heard no more after that date;
Milton adopts this view in his Hymn on the Nativity, and in lines of
solemn and elevated beauty pictures the consternation of the heathen
idols at the advent of the Saviour:
The Oracles are dumb;
No voice or hideous hum
Runs through the archèd roof in words deceiving.
Apollo from his shrine
Can no more divine,
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving.
No nightly trance, or breathèd spell
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.
_=Illustrative.=_ Spenser, Faerie Queene, 1, 2, 2; 1, 2, 29; 1, 11, 31;
1, 12, 2. Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella; as, for instance,
the pretty conceit beginning
Ph[oe]bus was judge between Jove, Mars, and Love,
Of those three gods, whose arms the fairest were.
Dekker, The Sun's Darling; Burns (as in the Winter Night) and other
Scotch song-writers find it hard to keep Ph[oe]bus out of their verses;
Spenser, Epithalamion; Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, II, i
(Apollo and Daphne); Cymbeline (Cloten's Serenade); Love's Labour's
Lost, IV, iii; Taming of the Shrew, Induction ii; Winter's Tale, II, i;
III, i; III, ii; Titus Andronicus, IV, i; Drayton, Song 8; Tickell, To
Apollo making Love; Swift, Apollo Outwitted; Pope, Essay on Criticism,
34; Dunciad, 4, 116; Prologue to Satires, 231; Miscellaneous, 7, 16;
Armstrong, The Art of Preserving Health.
_=Poems.=_ Drummond of Hawthornden, Song to Ph[oe]bus; Keats, Hymn
to Apollo; A. Mary F. Robinson, A Search for Apollo, and In Apollo's
Garden; Shelley, Homer's Hymn to Apollo; Aubrey De Vere, Lines under
Delphi; Lewis Morris, Apollo, in The Epic of Hades; R. W. Dixon, Apollo
Pythius.
=The Python.= Milton, Paradise Lost, 10, 531; Shelley, Adonais.
=Oracles.= Milton, Paradise Lost, 1. 12, 515; 5, 382; 10, 182; Paradise
Regained, 1. 395, 430, 456, 463; 3, 13; 4, 275; Hymn on the Nativity,
173. In Cowper's poem of Yardley Oak there are mythological allusions
appropriate to this subject. On Dodona, Byron, Childe Harold, 2, 53;
Tennyson, The Talking Oak. Byron alludes to the oracle of Delphi when
speaking of Rousseau, whose writings he conceives did much to bring on
the French Revolution: Childe Harold, 3, 81,--
For then he was inspired, and from him came,
As from the Pythian's mystic cave of yore,
Those oracles which set the world in flame,
Nor ceased to burn till kingdoms were no more.
_=In Art.=_ One of the most esteemed of all the remains of ancient
sculpture is the statue of Apollo, called the Belvedere from the name
of the apartment of the Pope's palace at Rome in which it is placed
(see Fig. 15). The artist is unknown. It is conceded to be a work of
Roman art, of about the first century of our era (and follows a type
fashioned by a Greek sculptor of the Hellenistic period, probably
in bronze). A variation of the type has been discovered in a bronze
statuette which represents Apollo holding in the left hand an ægis.
Some scholars have therefore surmised that the Apollo of the original
was similarly equipped. The Belvedere Apollo, however, is a standing
figure, in marble, more than seven feet high, naked except for the
cloak which is fastened around the neck and hangs over the extended
left arm. It is restored to represent the god in the moment when he
has shot the arrow to destroy the monster Python. The victorious
divinity is in the act of stepping forward. The left arm which seems
to have held the bow is outstretched, and the head is turned in the
same direction. In attitude and proportion the graceful majesty of the
figure is unsurpassed. The effect is completed by the countenance,
where, on the perfection of youthful godlike beauty, there dwells the
consciousness of triumphant power. To this statue Byron alludes in
Childe Harold, 4, 161:
Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,
The God of life, and poetry, and light,--
The Sun, in human limbs arrayed, and brow
All radiant from his triumph in the fight;
The shaft hath just been shot--the arrow bright
With an immortal's vengeance; in his eye
And nostril, beautiful disdain, and might
And majesty flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity.
The standing figure in our text reproduces this conception.[427] Also
famous in sculpture are the "Adonis" Apollo of the Vatican (Fig. 14,
text); the Greek bronze from Thessaly (Fig. 16, text); the Palatine
Apollo in the Vatican (Fig. 66, text); the Apollo Cithar[oe]dus of
the National Museum, Naples, and the Glyptothek, Munich; the Lycian
Apollo; the Apollo Nomios; Apollo of Thera; the Apollo of Michelangelo
(National Museum, Florence). A painting of romantic interest is Paolo
Veronese's St. Christina refusing to adore Apollo. Of symbolic import
is the Apollo (Sunday) by Raphael in the Vatican. Ph[oe]bus and Boreas
by J. F. Millet.
=32. Latona.= A theory of the numerous =love-affairs= of Jupiter
is given in =24= of the text. =Delos= is the central island of
the Cyclades group in the Ægean. With its temple of Apollo it was
exceedingly prosperous.
_=Interpretative.=_ Latona (Leto), according to ancient interpreters,
was night,--the shadow, therefore, of Juno (Hera), if Hera be the
splendor of heaven. But the early myth-makers would hardly have
reasoned so abstrusely. It is not at all certain that the name _Leto_
means darkness (Preller 1, 190, note 4); and even if light is born of
or after darkness, the sun (Apollo) and the moon (Artemis, or Diana)
can hardly be considered to be twins of Darkness (Leto), for they do
not illuminate the heavens at the same time.--LANG, Myth, Ritual, etc.,
2, 199.
_=Illustrative.=_ Byron's allusion to Delos in Don Juan, 3, 86:
The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Ph[oe]bus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.
See Milton's Sonnet, "I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs,"
for allusion to Latona.
_=In Art.=_ In the shrine of Latona in Delos there was, in the days of
Athenæus, a shapeless wooden idol.
=Diana.= The Latin =Diana= means either "goddess of the bright
heaven," or "goddess of the bright day." She is frequently identified
with Artemis, Hecate, Luna, and Selene. According to one tradition,
Apollo and Diana were born at =Ortygia=, near Ephesus. =Diana of the
Ephesians=, referred to (Acts xix, 28), was a goddess of not at all the
maidenly characteristics that belonged to the Greek Artemis (Roscher,
p. 591; A. Lang, 2, 217). Other titles of Artemis are Munychia, the
moon-goddess; Calliste, the _fair_, or the _she-bear_; Orthia, the
_severe_, worshiped among the Taurians with human sacrifices; Agrotera,
the _huntress_; Pythia; Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth; Cynthia,
born on Mount Cynthus.
_=Illustrative.=_ Spenser, Faerie Queene, 1, 7, 5; 1, 12, 7;
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, V, i, "Come, ho, and wake Diana
with a hymn," etc.; Twelfth Night, I, iv; Midsummer Night's Dream,
I, iv; All's Well that Ends Well, I, iii; IV, ii; IV, iv; Butler,
Hudibras, 3, 2, 1448. _=Poems=_: B. W. Procter, The Worship of Dian;
W. W. Story, Artemis; E. W. Gosse, The Praise of Artemis; E. Arnold,
Hymn of the Priestess of Diana; Wordsworth, To Lycoris; Lewis Morris,
Artemis, in The Epic of Hades; A. Lang, To Artemis. =Ph[oe]be= (Diana):
Spenser, Epithalamion; Keats, To Psyche. =Cynthia= (Diana): Spenser,
Prothalamion, Epithalamion; Milton, Hymn on the Nativity; H. K. White,
Ode to Contemplation.
_=In Art.=_ In art the goddess is represented high-girt for the chase,
either in the act of drawing an arrow from her quiver or watching her
missile in its flight. She is often attended by the hind. Sometimes,
as moon-goddess, she bears a torch. Occasionally she is clad in a
_chiton_, or robe of many folds, flowing to her feet. The Diana of the
Hind (_à la Biche_), in the Palace of the Louvre (see Fig. 18), may be
considered the counterpart of the Apollo Belvedere. The attitude much
resembles that of Apollo, the sizes correspond and also the styles of
execution. The Diana of the Hind is a work of a high order, though
by no means equal to the Apollo. The attitude is that of hurried and
eager motion, the face that of a huntress in the excitement of the
chase. The left hand of the goddess is extended over the forehead of
the hind which runs by her side, the right arm reaches backward over
the shoulder to draw an arrow from the quiver. Fig. 19 in the text is
the Artemis Knagia (Diana Cnagia), named after Cnageus, a servant of
Diana who assisted in transferring the statue from Crete to Sparta. In
Dresden there is a statue of Artemis in the style of Praxiteles (Fig.
68, text); and in the Louvre an ancient marble called the Artemis of
Gabii (Fig. 77, text).