The early inhabitants of Greece, and of the islands in the beautiful
Ægean, were an active race, sprightly, and highly imaginative. Though,
as yet, uncultured and unaided, their vivid conceptions of things
natural and supernatural, visible and invisible, found expression in
_legends_ that embodied their often crude ideas. After some progress in
civilization, and the introduction of letters, these were perfected and
embellished by men of poetic genius, to whom we are indebted for many a
charming story. Are these stories true? Perhaps not, yet they are true
types of the intelligence and thought of the men of that age and country.
Much is unreal. But, if to us with the diviner light, after centuries
of progress, and habits of thought so different, some things appear
childish, and others inexplicable if not absurdly false, we will not
hastily condemn what we fail to understand. Modern writers have done
much to remove from our common heritage of mythical tradition what
seemed repulsive in it; while they preserve for us the exquisite poetry
that breathes especially in Homeric lines, and will survive the most
destructive criticism.
COSMOGONY.
The facts and problems of the visible universe have engaged the attention
of thoughtful men in all ages. The outer sensuous world exists. Whence
came it, and how? The early Greeks had, it seems, no idea of creation, or
of an intelligent creator, yet felt bound to account to themselves for
what they saw.
According to the most common account, the world, with all its solid,
tangible things, was formed from chaos—and by chaos was meant, so far as
appears, not a shapeless confused mass of things in any way objective
to the senses, but merely space, a dark illimitable void wherein dwelt
utter nothingness. As to how the world proceeded thence, there was
little agreement. The most popular view is that, in some unaccountable
manner, Gea (the earth) issued from the vast womb of chaos. The process
once begun the development was surprisingly rapid. Tartarus, the abyss
below, immediately severed itself. Eros (the love that forms and binds
all things) sprung into existence. Gea then begot, of herself, Uranus
(heaven), the mountains, and Pontus (the sea).
Their notions of the structure of the universe are a slight advance on
their ideas of its origin. These give their coloring to many of their
narratives.
“The Greek poets believed the earth to be flat and circular—their own
country occupying the middle of it, the central point being either Mount
Olympus, the abode of the gods, or Delphi, so famous for its oracle.”
Those in the more remote parts, and having never seen the sacred
mountain, supposed its summit quite in the heavens, and occupied by
superior beings. Those who were nearer knew better, but fancied the gods,
or immortals, often came down and frequented its grand solitudes, holding
their councils, or having their pleasures apart from men.
The circular disc of the earth was crossed from east to west and divided
into two equal parts by the “sea,” as they called the Mediterranean, and
its continuation, the Euxine.
Around the earth flowed the “River Ocean,” its course being from south to
north on the western, and in a contrary direction on the eastern side. It
flowed in a steady, equable current, as was supposed, unvexed by storm or
tempest. The sea and all the rivers on earth received their waters from
it.
The northern portion of the earth they supposed inhabited by a happy race
named Hyperboreans, dwelling in blissful bowers, and perpetual spring
beyond the lofty mountains whose caverns were believed to send forth the
piercing blasts of the north-wind, which chilled the people of Hellas
(Greece). Their country was inaccessible by land or sea. They lived
exempt from disease or old age, from toils and warfare. Moore has given
us the “Song of a Hyperborean,” beginning—
“I come from a land in the sun bright deep,
Where golden gardens glow,
Where the winds of the north, becalmed in sleep,
Their conch-shells never blow.”
On the south side of the earth, close to that fancied stream, or “River
Ocean,” dwelt a people happy and virtuous as the Hyperboreans. They were
named Æthiopians. The gods favored them highly, and at times left their
Olympian abodes, going down to share their sacrifices and banquets.
On the western margin of the earth, fast by the “River Ocean,” spread out
a beautiful plain named Elysiam, whither mortals, favored by the gods,
were transported without tasting death, to enjoy an immortality of bliss.
This happy region was also called by them “Fortunate Fields,” and “Isles
of the Blessed.”
It will be borne in mind by the young reader of their fables, or legends,
that the Greeks of the mythological period were an isolated people,
knowing but little of geography, and nothing of any real people except
those to the east and south of their own country, or near the coast of
the Mediterranean.
The western portion of this sea, of unknown extent, their imagination
peopled with giants and enchantresses, while around them, at unknown
distances, and perhaps but remotely connected with their own earthly
habitation, they placed communities enjoying the peculiar favor of the
gods, having serene happiness and longevity—human, but akin to the
immortals.
Of the heavens above them still less was yet known, though they studied
astronomy, and noted how some bodies moved, while others were apparently
stationary.
Probably they had some vague notion of life and volition in things that
move, and when the sun and moon were said to rise from the ocean and
drive through the air, giving light to gods and men, the language was, to
them, scarcely metaphorical.
Knowing nothing of the revolution of the earth, the succession of days
and nights was accounted for by supposing the sun-god to descend into the
“River Ocean,” and embark in his winged boat, which carried him swiftly
around the northern part of the earth, back to his place of rising in the
east.
Milton, in his “Comus,” thus translates their philosophy on the subject:
Now the gilded car of day
His golden axle doth allay
In the steep Atlantic stream;
And the slope sun his upward beam
Shoots against the dusky pole,
Pacing towards the other goal
Of his chamber in the east.
THE GODS OF OLYMPUS.
Zeus (Jupiter) was the supreme god of both Greek and Roman mythology.
In our English literature on the subject the Latin names occur more
frequently, are more familiar, and are used without further explanation.
Before Homer wrote the “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” Jupiter had come to be
regarded by the Greeks as the father of all gods and men, but he had
not always that distinction. The earlier myths gave his descent, and
according to some legends there was a time when Cronos, father of
Jupiter, was supreme; but even he was not first in the order of the
gods. The imaginary line of their descent stretched far back till lost
in deepest mystery, but it led not to the Everlasting Self-existent
One. According to Hesiod their highest gods were really earth born. The
first beings were Chaos and Gea. The latter gave birth to Uranus—whence
sprang a race of twelve Titans, six males—Oceanus, Cœus, Crius, Hyperion,
Japetus, and Cronus; six females—Thia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phœbe,
and Thetis.
The interpretation of these divinities is difficult, but they doubtless
represented some real or supposed elementary forces of nature.
The different stories respecting things, not known but imagined, were
often at variance, nor need we attempt to harmonize them, as each
district or city had its own version. From other sources it would be
possible to construct a different genealogy, but that here given was
somewhat generally accepted.
Ouranos, or Uranus, is the heaven which is spread like a vail over the
earth, and was much the same to the Greeks as the old Hindu god Varuna,
whose name has a verbal root meaning to vail or conceal.
Having attributed some kind of intelligence and personality to the vast
expanse stretching itself overhead, they represent this sovereign,
Ouranos, as hurling the Cyclops with Bronte, Sterope (thunder and
lightning), and other children of Gea, into the abyss called Tartarus;
and that Gea, in her grief and anger, urged her other children to
insurrection against their father, and to set Cronos instead on his
throne.
When Cronos (time) became king he is represented as so voracious and
cruel that all his children were devoured soon after each was born. The
basis of this legendary fact is evident, as time swallows up the days and
weeks, months and years, as they come each in its order, and thus “bears
all its sons away.”
These acts of Cronos, the reputed cannibal among such as interpret the
fable literally, connect with the history of Jupiter. Rhea, his wife, and
the mother of Jupiter, anxious to save her child, having already lost
five, determined to save her next son from a cruel fate by stratagem. A
stone was given to the husband, wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he
swallowed without examination or suspicion, and the little Jupiter, thus
rescued, was reared by the nymphs in a cave on Mount Diete, or Ida, in
Crete. He was nourished on goat’s milk, and the bees brought him honey to
eat. That the cries of the child might not betray his presence, and the
mother’s strategy, the Curetes, or attendant priests of Rhea, drowned his
voice by the clashing of their weapons.
Jupiter thus remained hidden till he speedily became a young, but very
powerful god. He then attacked and overthrew his father Cronos, whom he
also compelled by a device of Gea, to bring forth the children he had
already devoured. Some of the Titans, as Oceanus, Themis, Mnemosyne,
and Hyperion, at once submitted to the dominion of the new ruler of
the world. The others refused allegiance. But after a contest of years
Jupiter, with the help of the Cyclops and Centimani, overthrew them.
As a punishment they were cast into Tartarus, which was then closed by
Poseidon with brazen gates.
Thessaly, which bears evident traces of having suffered much from natural
convulsions, was supposed to have been the scene of this mighty war.
Jupiter and his adherents fought from Olympus, the Titans from the
opposite mountain of Othrys. Thenceforward the victor shared the empire
of the world with his two brothers, Poseidon and Hades. The former he
made ruler of the ocean and waters, the latter he set over the infernal
regions. This new order of things, however, was by no means at once
securely established. The resentment of Gea led her to produce a younger
and most powerful son, the great Typhœus, a monster with a hundred
fire-breathing heads, whom she sent to attack the thunder-bearer. A
great battle took place which shook heaven and earth, but Jupiter, by
means of his crushing thunderbolts, at length overcame his antagonist,
and cast him into Tartarus, or, according to others, buried him beneath
Mount Ætna, in Sicily, whence at times he still breathes out fire and
flames toward heaven.
“Some tell of another rebellion of the giants against the dominion of
Jupiter. From the plains of Phlegra they sought to scale and storm
Olympus, by piling, through their great strength, Pelion on Ossa; but
after a bloody battle they too were overpowered, and shared the fate of
the Titans. After that no hostile attack ever disturbed the peaceful ease
of the inhabitants of Olympus.”
The character of the acknowledged chief of their deities, who is supposed
against all opposition to control and rule the universe, is not drawn,
in the earlier myths, as one of untarnished excellence. Yet the good
predominates, and he is confessed a beneficent ruler. He was, in time,
reverenced as Jupiter-pater, the source of all life in nature, and the
almoner of abundant blessings for his obedient subjects and children. All
the phenomena of the air were supposed to proceed from him. “He gathers
and disperses the clouds, casts forth the lightnings, stirs up his
thunder, sends down rain, hail, snow, and fertilizing dew upon the earth.
With his ægis he produces storm and tempest, and at his pleasure stills
the warring elements.”
“The ancients, however, were not content to regard Jupiter as merely
a personification of nature. They regarded him also from an ethical
stand-point, from which side he appears far more important and awful.
They saw in him a personification, so to speak, of that principle of
undeviating order and harmony, which pervades both the physical and moral
world. The strict, unalterable laws, by which he rules the community of
the gods, form a strong contrast with the capricious commands of his
father Cronos.”
Hence Jupiter is regarded as the protector and defender of political
order. From him the kings of the earth receive their sovereignty and
their rights; to him they are responsible for a conscientious fulfillment
of their duties. Those of them who pervert justice he never fails to
punish. He also presides over their assemblies, keeps watch over their
orderly course, and suggests to them wise counsels.
One of the most important props of political society is the oath; and
accordingly he watches over oaths, and punishes perjury.
He also watches over boundaries, and accompanies the youths of the land
as they go out to defend the borders of their country, and gives them
victory over the invaders. All civil and political communities enjoy his
protection; but he watches particularly over that association which is
the basis of the political fabric—the family.
The head of every household was, therefore, in a certain sense, the
priest of Jupiter, and presented his offerings in the name of the family.
As Jupiter _hospitalis_, he protects the wanderer, and punishes those
who violate the ancient laws of hospitality by mercilessly turning the
helpless stranger from their door.
The superstition of early times saw in all physical phenomena
manifestations of the divine will, and this, their earliest and chief
deity, was naturally regarded as the source of inspiration, revealing his
will to men in the thunder, lightning, flight of birds, and dreams. He
not only had his oracle at Dodona, which was the most ancient in Greece,
but also revealed the future by the mouth of his favorite son, Apollo.
In hours of real trouble and grief, Achilles and other Achaians prayed
to Jupiter, not only as irresistible in might, but also as just and
righteous.
Yet others, and possibly the same persons under other circumstances, and
in different moods, represented him as partial, unjust, fond of pleasure,
changeable in his affections, and unfaithful in his love.
Greater inconsistencies and contradictions in character can scarcely be
conceived of. How such confused and contradictory notions could occupy
the same mind, may seem inexplicable. The Greek name of their deity, a
corporeal being, was used by men having many excellent qualities, to
express all they thought of, or felt, toward God, the greatest and best,
worthy to be trusted and worshiped, but anthropomorphic still, having
human instincts and passions, in the essential elements of his exalted
nature, “altogether like unto themselves.” Their ethical conceptions were
marred by unconsciously projecting their common humanity into the field
of view in which their god was contemplated.
But the name that became sacred also meant the physical heaven, the sky
with its clouds and vapor, and all embracing atmosphere; and as the earth
by a beautiful metaphor was spoken of as the bride of the sky, which was
said to overshadow the earth with his love, in every land causing the
birth of all things that live and grow, so this idea of production—its
primary application forgotten by a people gross and sensual—transferred
to a deity of human form and passions, grew up into strange stories of
license, or unlawful love. It is by no means certain that the poets and
moralists, or ethical writers accepted the grosser myths as true or
expressive of their own conceptions. The probability is against it. For,
while Hesiod, following the popular theology describes the descent of the
gods, their earthly loves, intrigues and gross immoralities, yet he, at
times, turns sharply away from all such things as loathsome, to “thoughts
of that pure and holy Zeus (Jupiter), who looks down from heaven to see
if men will do justice, love mercy, and seek after God.”
Some regard the conceded goodness of the supreme beings as sufficient
reason for misbelieving all the stories that were to their discredit; or
if the stories were credited they would disprove their supposed divinity.
Euripides said:
“If the gods do aught unseemly, then they are not gods at all.”
The great poets did not invent the myths, but found them the only
embodiment of the crude theology that was current among the masses,
perfected them by eliminating some of the grosser parts, and sought to
use them in the cause of virtue and civilization.
Even those seeming most irrational, when traced to their primary source
and analyzed, were found to have something of truth, and the glimmer of
their light was welcomed where without it the darkness had been yet more
profound.
Dr. Ziller in his lecture on the development of Monotheism in Greece
says: “The great Greek poets were her first thinkers, her sages, as they
were afterward called. They sang of Zeus (Jupiter), and exalted him as
the defender of righteousness, the representation of moral order.
“Archilocus says that ‘Zeus weighs and measures all the actions of good
and evil men, as well as those of animals.’ ‘He is,’ said Terpandros
somewhat later, ‘the source and ruler of all things.’ According to
Simonides, ‘the principle of all created things rests with him, and he
rules the universe by his will.’”
Thus, as time went on, ideas of the divinity were elevated, and Zeus,
whose parentage and birth are chronicled as after the manner of men,
became, in the general conception, the personification of the world’s
government, which was delivered from the fatality of destiny, and from
the promptings of caprice.
Destiny, which according to the early mythical representation, it was
impossible to escape, is resolved into the will of Zeus, and the other
gods, which were at first supposed to be able to oppose him, became his
faithful ministers. Such is the teaching of Solon and Epicharmos.
“Be assured that nothing escapes the eyes of the divinities. God
watches over us, and to him nothing is impossible.” This impulse of the
imaginative faculty combined with the process of reason is most plainly
seen in the conceptions of the three great poets of the fifth century,
Pindar, Æschylus, and Sophocles. In the words of Pindar: “All things
depend on God alone; all which befalls mortals, whether it be good or
evil fortune, is due to Zeus; he can draw light from darkness, and can
vail the sweet light of day in obscurity. No human action escapes him;
happiness is found only in the way which leads to him; virtue and wisdom
flow from him alone.”
We need not multiply quotations to show that as the Greeks advanced
in civilization the earlier barbaric notions were left for those more
elevating, and though mostly polytheists till visited by Christian
teachers, their theology, or what was believed respecting the divine
beings, was more worthy of them and had in general an elevating influence
on their character. Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Hermes, Athene, Poseidon,
Hera, Hephaistus, Hestia, Demeter, Aphrodite and Jupiter himself formed
the body which in the days of Thucydides was worshiped, and called “the
twelve gods of Olympus.”
This ordering or classification is not recognized in the poems of Homer.
Hesiod more particularly describes the manner of their birth and the
attributes of the Olympic gods, and hence that poem is called a Theogony.
Having mentioned the chief, the others may be briefly noticed in their
order. Phœbus Apollo was called Phœbus, as being the god of light; in
Homeric phrase the “Far glancing Apollo”—the last name meaning, some
say, destroyer, because his rays, when powerful, can destroy the life
of animals and plants. At first the name meant the sun, but in later
times he was regarded as the god of light who was not confined to his
habitation in the sun. “He is called the son of Zeus, because the sun,
like Athene, or the dawn, springs in the morning from the sky—and son of
Leto because the night, as going before his rising, may be considered as
mother of the sun.”
One legendary story of his birth runs as follows: Leto, distressed,
wandered through many lands seeking in vain for a resting place. At last
she came to Delos (the bright land), and said if she could there find
shelter it should become glorious as the birthplace of Phœbus, and that
men should come from all parts to enrich his temple with their gifts.
Here, then, Phœbus was born; heaven was propitious and the floating
Delos, a hard and stony land, was anchored and covered itself with
verdure and golden flowers. The nymphs clothed him with a spotless robe,
and when Themis fed him with nectar and ambrosia, the food of gods,
hating all things impure, he was at once prepared to battle with and
drive away the evil powers of darkness.
With his bright arrows he slew the giant Tityus, and the Python, a
monster near Delphi, that destroyed both men and cattle.
These and similar myths respecting his matchless conquering power
forcibly declare the influence of the sun’s rays in scattering the night
and dark gloom of winter. But though Phœbus Apollo thus appears as
the foe of all that is evil or impure, other myths represent him as a
terrible god of death, sending pestilences and dealing out destruction to
men and animals by means of the arrows he scatters abroad.
Remembering the natural significance of the name this is perfectly
consistent with the genial influence attributed to him. The sun’s rays do
indeed put to flight the darkness of night and the cold of winter, but
their intense heat also causes disease and death.
This is beautifully portrayed in the fable of the death of Hyacinthus
that will be given in the next number. His reputation as a god of health,
all powerful to protect against physical maladies is not damaged, though,
in exceptional cases, his rays smite and destroy. But the healing that
he brings is not alone for the outward “ills that flesh is heir to.”
Diseases of the mind he cures or mitigates. Sin and crime flee from the
light, and troubled souls, that escape from guilt, find consolation.
Even those pursued by the Furies he sometimes receives with tenderness
and pity—a fine instance of which is found in the oft told story of
Orestes.
Much of his healing power connects with his character as god of music,
and from the fact of its soothing, tranquilizing influence on the soul of
man.
His favorite instrument was the lyre, on which he played with masterly
skill at the banquets of the gods, while the Muses accompanied him with
their wondrous strains. He was regarded as the leader of the Muses and
all the great singers of antiquity, as Orpheus and Linus, are mythically
represented as his sons.
Of his prophetic character, statues, temples, and worship we will speak
hereafter.
TEMPERANCE TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE; OR, THE POISON PROBLEM.
BY FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D.