ἴσχον γὰρ πυργηδὸν ἀρηρότες, ἠΰτε πέτρη
ἠλίβατος, μεγάλη, πολιῆς ἁλὸς ἐγγὺς ἐοῦσα,
ἥ τε μένει λιγέων ἀνέμων λαιψηρὰ κέλευθα
κύματά τε τροφόεντα, τά τε προσερεύγεται αὐτήν·
ὣς Δαναοὶ Τρῶας μένον ἔμπεδον οὐδὲ φέβοντο.[24]
_Il._ xv. 617.
But to the Greeks rocky cliffs appeared as a rule pitiless, inhuman,
and heartless, rather than steadfast in a good sense, as above. We may
notice the famous passage in which Patroclus rebukes Achilles for his
hardness of heart:--
νηλεές, οὐκ ἄρα σοί γε πατὴρ ἦν ἱππότα Πηλεύς,
οὐδὲ Θέτις μήτηρ· γλαυκὴ δέ σε τίκτε θάλασσα
πέτραι τ’ ἠλίβατοι, ὅτι τοι νόος ἐστὶν ἀπηνής.[25]
_Il._ xvi. 33.
If Homer is disappointing, Hesiod is far more so. If anywhere in Greek
literature we should expect some recognition of the grandeur of the
mountains, it is undoubtedly in descriptions of their birth. A poet
could hardly hope to find a more Titanic subject than that mighty
travailing of the Earth; but this is all Hesiod finds to say:--
γείνατο δ’ Οὔρεα μακρά, θεῶν χαρίεντας ἐναύλους,
Νυμφέων, αἳ ναίουσιν ἀν’ οὔρεα βησσήεντα.[26]
_Theogony_, 129.
‘Long’ of all mountain epithets! ‘Graceful’ is insult added to injury!
We must suppose that Hesiod would have preferred Amicombe Hill to Great
Mis Tor, the curves of the Downs to the towers of the Dolomites.
It is not surprising that the Nymphs should have stuck in the throat of
certain commentators, who propose to expunge the second line. Certainly
a real mountain is the least suitable habitation for a Nymph, and it
is a pity that no artistic member of the Alpine Club could have been
present to astonish Hesiod with a lightning sketch of large troups of
Nymphs--in the days when Jaeger was unknown, and furs still clothed
their natural owners--shivering like angels on the needle-point of the
Charmoz or on the more appropriate summit of the Jungfrau. There is one
possible explanation, hinted at in the Clouds of Aristophanes, namely,
that the Oceanids were identified with clouds; but this is probably a
later rationalist theory, which would have astonished the early poets
themselves.
There is not one line in Hesiod which shows a real appreciation of
the mountains: some few allusions to Olympus are the nearest approach
to enthusiasm, but the seat of the gods also proves a broken reed
to those who would portray the Greeks as mountain-lovers. It was
necessary that the gods should be able to look down on the earth, yet
the anthropomorphic tendencies of the age subjected them to the same
disadvantage as modern aviators, namely, inability to remain motionless
in the air. It therefore became necessary for them to take possession
of the highest fixed support, Olympus.
Olympus is a real mountain, but for the benefit of its divine tenants,
more especially perhaps of the goddesses, the poets idealised it almost
out of recognition. We have Homer’s description of the summit:--
[Οὔλυμπος] ὅθι φασὶ θεῶν ἕδος ἀσφαλὲς αἰεὶ
ἔμμεναι· οὔτ’ ἀνέμοισι τινάσσεται, οὔτε ποτ’ ὄμβρῳ
δεύεται οὔτε χιὼν ἐπιπίλναται, ἀλλὰ μάλ’ αἴθρη
πέπταται ἀννέφελος, λευκὴ δ’ ἐπιδέδρομεν αἴγλη.[27]
_Od._ vi. 42.
This process of describing an ideal and then locating it in a definite
accessible spot has many parallels, though few in which access and
its consequent disillusionment were so easy; we may compare Atlantis,
Avernus, King Arthur’s Cave on Lliwedd, and the superstition which was
not uncommon a few years ago, that a subtropical Paradise would be
found beyond the outer ice of the Arctic Circle.
Another passage, quoted from Lucian in a paper by Mr. Douglas
Freshfield, on ‘Mountains and Mankind,’[28] as showing that the Greeks
loved their mountains, is not altogether convincing: Hermes takes
Charon, when he has a day out from Hell, to the twin-crested summit,
and shows him the panorama of land and sea, of rivers and famous
cities. The first impulse is to reject this allusion as proving, not
Lucian’s love for the mountains, but his excellent taste in contrast,
for the holiday of the dweller below the earth should rightly be spent
in its high places. This is true as far as it goes, but apart from
the personal tastes of Lucian, to which we have no more guide in his
works than to those of Shakespeare or any other true dramatist, we must
admit that he here gives us the nearest parallel to those conditions
from which we escape to the contrast of the mountains. London duties,
it is true, compare favourably with those of Charon, but our reward in
escaping from them is greater, just in so far as the Alps are greater
than Parnassus. The principle and the scale of contrast are the same:
this passage would therefore seem to be nearer akin to our modern
mountain-worship than might at first appear. But here again it may be
claimed that the mountain is not made of much account except as the
means of obtaining a wider view of the more fashionable beauties of
nature.
Professor Palgrave asserts that the dramatists seldom show appreciation
of scenery, but we must add to his exceptions Euripides’ description of
the sunrise glow on the mountains:--
Παρνησιάδες δ’ ἄβατοι κορυφαὶ
καταλαμπόμεναι τὴν ἡμερίαν
ἁψῖδα βροτοῖσι δέχονται.[29]
Eur. _Ion._ 87.
An excellent test of the impression made on the Greek mind by any class
of natural phenomenon is to observe to what extent representatives
of that class have been personified; if we apply this test to the
case of the mountains, we shall be amazed at the Greek disregard for
them. When in the case of so abstract a conception as that of time
we find personification, not only of the idea as a whole, but also
of its sub-divisions (Ὧραι), we may naturally expect, not only a
great Personal representative of mountains in general, as Poseidon
represented the sea, but also particular personifications of great
peaks or ranges, which in our eyes have at least as marked an
individuality as rivers or winds.
Yet, with the single exception of Atlas, no mountain in Greek
literature has been represented as an animate being. It is possible
that Tennyson had some precedent for his ‘Mother’ Ida; μητέρα θήρων[30]
is the Homeric phrase. Certainly a close connection exists between
Taÿgetus and Taÿgete, daughter of Atlas, and there is some suggestion
of malevolent personality in the inhospitable behaviour of the
‘Wandering Rocks.’ But these are ill-defined and isolated instances,
which, even if numbered by scores, instead of by scattered units, would
not materially affect the argument.
About Atlas we have many different stories. In the earliest account he
is one of the older family of gods, father of Calypso, ὀλοόφρων,[31]
wizard Atlas, knowing the depths of every sea; and to him are entrusted
the pillars which keep heaven and earth apart.
According to Hesiod, he was the son of the Titan Iapetus, and brother
of Menœtius, Prometheus, and Epimetheus, all of whom incurred the
anger of Zeus--Prometheus and Menœtius for active hostility to him,
Epimetheus and Atlas apparently for no more personal reason than that
their father was one of the hated Titans: for this offence Atlas was
punished by the task of holding up the whole weight of heaven on his
shoulders. It does not seem to have occurred to the early writers that
the extreme edge of an inverted hemisphere is a most unsymmetrical
position for the sole supporter of its weight.
The mountain, Atlas, was evidently the Peak of Teneriffe,[32] of which
the Phœnicians may well have brought a description to Greece. It was
afterwards supposed to be in North Africa, and in consequence dwindled
to a comparatively insignificant range containing no conspicuous peak.
The Titanid and the mountain were ingeniously connected in later times
by the introduction of Perseus with the head of Medusa, which he
showed to Atlas at his own request, thus turning him to stone.
A variation of this story marks an intermediate stage towards the
rationalisation of the myth: in it Atlas is represented as a king who
refuses to show hospitality to Perseus on account of a prophecy of
danger to himself from a son of Zeus; he is turned into stone by the
same means, but as a punishment for his churlishness.
The completely rationalised version represents him as a king in the far
West, skilled in astronomy, and the inventor of the globe. This story
may have had its origin in Homer’s ‘wizard’ Atlas, and was probably
connected with the far older myths of Atlantis and the Garden of the
Hesperides.
It is evident that we have to thank the Phœnicians for bringing one
great mountain so prominently before the Greeks that alone of all
mountains in their literature it is endued with personality. But it
is lamentable to observe how the affairs of Atlas, once released
from Phœnician control, descend into the bourgeois rut of semi-divine
nonentity. He proceeded to marry a nymph, who bore him seven other
nymphs, of whom Maia, mother of Hermes, is alone conspicuous. These
nymphs lived together on Mount Cyllene until forced to fly from Orion,
whom they escaped by the conventional stage-device of metamorphosis,
becoming first doves (πελείαδες) and then the constellation of the
Pleiades.
Mr. Bury[33] traces a connection between the epithet ὀρειᾶν as applied
to the Pleiades and the name Ὠαρίων, translating
ἐστι δ’ ἐοικὸς
ὀρειᾶν γε Πελειάδων
μὴ τήλοθεν Ὠαρίων’ ἀνεῖσθαι.
by ‘It is meet that the rising of the Mountain Hunter should not be
far from the Mountain Pleiades.’ This would be unique among Greek
references to the mountains if the remotest etymological connection
could be traced between Ὠαρίων and ὄρος; but this is rather a B in
‘Both’ derivation, and it may be mentioned for what it is worth that
the name Orion is otherwise explained for us by Ovid.[34]
One alone of the Pleiad nymphs is justified, to a follower of Mr.
Bury, in her mountain abode. If we accept Ἀλκυόνη as a personification
of ἄλκη,[35] we must certainly allow her to enthrone herself on the
highest peaks of the ancient world, provided, of course, that she was
not so presumptuous as to sit on her father.
It is clear, therefore, that the Greeks owed the introduction of
the mountain into the Titan story to the Phœnicians’ description of
Teneriffe, and that they elaborated the myth with very little regard
for geography and none at all for consistency. In spite of Mr. Bury’s
gallant salvage work, we must confess that the mountain element is lost
from the story as soon as it is left in the hands of the Greeks, who
treat it as a hen treats the duckling she has hatched: an adaptable
duckling, for as a metamorphosis story it has made a very good chicken,
though in the process it shames its proper parents.
In Theocritus we find an exception to the absence of mountain
personification in Menalkas’ Αἴτνα, μᾶτερ ἔμα,[36] but it stands alone:
the Cyclops, who was quite as much the child of Ætna, seems to regard
the mountain merely as an ice-box providing him with cool water:--
ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ, τό μοι ἁ πολυδένδρεος Αἴτνα
λευκᾶς ἐκ χίονος πότον ἀμβρόσιον προίητι.[37]
It would be hard, in speaking of the snows of a mountain, to find a
less appropriate epithet than πολυδένδρεος.
There is little else in Theocritus about the mountains except that
Daphnis
χιὼν ὥς τις κατετάκετο μακρὸν ὑφ’ Αἷμον.
ἢ Ἄθω ἢ Ῥοδόπαν ἢ Καύκασον ἐσχατόωντα.[38]
If we compare Pindar’s descriptions of the mountains with those of any
other Greek poet, it is not hard to make ourselves believe that he
knew something of their secrets. But as soon as we set these passages
side by side with the rest of his own work, we see them sink back into
insignificance. He wrote four or five great mountain lines, but for
each of these he wrote ten for the valleys, fifty for the stars, a
hundred for the sea.
Still, we cannot often find a mountain honoured in Greek with such an
epithet as ὑψιμέδων,[39] usually applied to Zeus alone; and Pindar also
makes the first mention of the ‘age’ of the hills:--
Φλιοῦντος ὑπ’ ὠγυγίοις ὄρεσι.[40]
It is not clear why a hill should in general be considered older than
a plain: they are said to have emerged from the Deluge within quite a
short time of each other. But it would be pedantic to summon scientists
and insist on accuracy at the cost of such hoary phrases as ‘the
eternal hills,’ which are still the delight of those pessimists who
habitually allude to mankind as ἐφημέριδες.
Among Pindar’s descriptive phrases we may notice ἔμβολον Ἀσίας, of the
headland of Caria. The word, to a Greek, could not but suggest its
naval use, the ‘prow’ of Asia riding unmoved upon the waves.
Actual references to mountaineering are so rare that we are tempted to
find an exception in
καὶ πάγον
Κρόνου προσεφθέγξατο· πρόσθε γὰρ
νώνυμνος, ἇς Οἰνόμαος ἆρχε, βρέχετο πολλᾷ
νιφάδι[41]
by supposing it to be the only surviving record of a first ascent by
the Theban Heracles, who claimed in consequence the right to name
the summit ascended. Paley would add to the dangers and credit of
the expedition by finding in ‘βρέχετο πολλᾷ νιφάδι’ ‘a curious and
noteworthy tradition of a glacial or post-glacial period!’
But all other mountain scenes in Pindar, whether adorned with glaciers
or not, pale before the description of the eruption of Ætna:--
τᾶς ἐρεύγονται μὲν ἀπλάτου πυρὸς ἁγνόταται
ἐκ μυχῶν παγαί· ποταμοὶ δ’ ἁμέραισιν μὲν προχέοντι ῥόον καπνοῦ
αἴθων’, ἀλλ’ ἐν ὄρφναισιν πέτρας
φοίνισσα κυλινδομένα φλὸξ ἐς βαθεῖαν φέρει πόντου πλάκα σὺν πατάγῳ.
κεῖνο δ’ Ἁφαίστοιο κρουνοὺς ἑρπετὸν
δεινοτάτους ἀναπέμπει· τέρας μὲν θαυμάσιον προσιδέσθαι, θαῦμα δὲ καὶ
παρεόντων ἀκοῦσαι.[42]
Pind. _Pyth._ i. 15.
We need not enjoy this description any the less for feeling that Pindar
is not thinking of Ætna the mountain, nor even of Ætna the volcano,
but only of the eruption, which is not in his eyes an eruption of Ætna
but of the monstrous breath of Typhoeus. The mountain is dismissed
with little more than the usual trite epithets--κίων οὐρανία, νιφοέσσα,
πάνετες χιόνος ὀξείας τιθήνα,[43] of which the last phrase conveys an
even more false suggestion than the similar χιονοτρόφος κιθαίρων.[44]
Although references to the mountains are even more rare in drama, this
particular eruption is ‘foretold’ by Prometheus:--
ἐκραγήσονταί ποτε
ποταμοὶ πυρὸς δάπτοντες ἀγρίαις γνάθοις
τῆς καλλικάρπου Σικελίας λευροὺς γύας·
τοιόνδε Τυφὼς ἐξαναζέσει χόλον
θερμῆς ἀπλήστου βέλεσι πυρπνόου ζάλης
καίπερ κεραυνῷ Ζηνὸς ἠνθρακωμένος.[45]
Æsch. _P.V._ 367.
Here Ætna has neither part nor lot in the eruption: Typhoeus is made
responsible for the whole, in spite of the fact that he has already
been reduced to ashes.
The mountains which form the setting of the Prometheus Vinctus are
regarded solely as a bleak, inhospitable, and, above all, inhuman,
background for the sufferings of the Titan. It is amazing to us that
when he is left alone and calls upon the forms of nature around, only
the mountains have no place in the circle of silent witnesses to whom
he cries:--
ὦ δῖος αἰθὴρ καὶ ταχύπτεροι πνοαί,
ποταμῶν τε πηγαί, ποντίων τε κυμάτων
ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα, παμμῆτόρ τε Γῆ
καὶ τὸν πανόπτην κύκλον Ἡλίου καλῶ.
The rushing of winged winds, the sources of the rivers, the
multitudinous laughter of the distant sea, Earth, the Mother of All,
and the all-seeing orb of the Sun--all these are to look upon his
torments; but the mountains are degraded by their omission below the
very springs which rise upon them.
It may be suggested, as an explanation, that motion formed an essential
part of the Greek idea of beauty; for motion is the outward and visible
sign of life. We may observe that the words δῖος αἴθηρ make the air
for a moment the medium of thought, expressed in which ‘wind’ is the
pure and abstract idea of motion.
Prometheus, then, calls for sympathy there alone where motion (or, in
the case of Earth, motherhood) gives promise of life and sympathy.
It is interesting, in view of the fact that brightness was also an
element in the Greek conception of beauty, to notice that no phase of
the sea so combines these two qualities of brightness and motion as its
‘multitudinous laughter.’ The path of gold of the rising sun may be
brighter, a storm more swift in motion, but the perfect combination of
the two ideals is here described.
It is natural that brightness or light should be held in such honour,
but it is more surprising that beauty should be associated with motion
in many cases in which the connection seems to us extremely remote.
The winds are the most conspicuous case of this: the Greeks personified
more winds than they could name points of the compass, and Greek
poetry is almost as full of the winds as of the sea.
This is especially marked in the Iliad, where anything which shows the
movement of the wind, whether snow, the sea, a cornfield, mist, or
clouds, is described again and again, while still air is only mentioned
in a few scattered passages.
In one of these snow is described falling through a calm[46] to
represent the same showers of stones which had just been compared to
snow driven by a tempest; so it is evident that no importance attaches
to the calmness, but both passages convey the sense of motion, though
in a slightly different degree.
In another very remarkable passage Homer makes use of stationary clouds
round a mountain-top as a type of steadfastness:--
ἀλλ’ ἔμενον νεφέλῃσιν ἐοικότες, ἅς τε Κρονίων
νηνεμίης ἔστησεν ἐπ’ ἀκροπόλοισιν ὄρεσσιν
ἀτρέμας, ὄφρ’ εὕδῃσι μένος Βορέαο καὶ ἄλλων
ζαχρηῶν ἀνέμων, οἵ τε νέφεα σκιόεντα
πνοιῇσιν λιγυρῇσι διασκιδνᾶσιν ἀέντες·
ὣς Δαναοὶ Τρῶας μένον ἔμπεδον οὐδὲ φέβοντο.[47]
_Il._ v. 522.
But for the most part the mists and the clouds, and even the sea, must
be stirred to motion by the wind before they are considered worthy of a
Greek poet’s attention.
The allusions to the wind-stirred sea are innumerable; the eddies of
war are often compared to a whirlwind; the misty clouds are broken
apart by the wind to reveal, now the dark waves of the sea, now the
black peaks of a mountain:--
ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ἀφ’ ὑψηλῆς κορυφῆς ὄρεος μεγάλοιο
κινήσῃ πυκινὴν νεφέλην στεροπηγερέτα Ζεύς,
ἔκ τ’ ἔφανεν πᾶσαι σκοπιαὶ καὶ πρώονες ἄκροι
καὶ νάπαι, οὐρανόθεν δ’ ἄρ’ ὑπερράγη ἄσπετος αἰθήρ.[48]
_Il._ xvi. 297.
But here the unmoved rock is merely a background of darkness, in
contrast to the light of the clouds, as in the Prometheus it is a
background of stillness to the motion of the drama.
We have also, in the theory that motion was essentially connected with
the ancient ideal of beauty, some explanation of the fact that rounded
heights, clothed with leafy woods where the wind could
‘fling
Their placid green to silver of delight.’
seemed more beautiful to the Greeks than scarps of naked rock; and it
is natural that the poets of such an ideal, superficial though it may
seem to us, should pass by the silent majesty of Ætna with careless
customary epithets until the fires within burst their bounds and poured
ostentatiously to the sea in ‘eddies of blood-red flame.’
It would seem that the Greeks felt fear and awe alone of the great
mountains, as was natural; for they had no intimate knowledge of them,
nor ever sought in the mountains the emotions reserved for those
who match their strength against the great forces of nature. These
sensations, in the Greek, were inspired by the sea. But for us the
spell of the mountains has grown stronger than that of the waves, for
the days are gone in which the sea alone was the home of peril and
mystery. We follow the spirit of the Greeks, not the letter of their
song; for though they sang of the sea, it was of her freedom and
strength, of her secrets and dangers, and of these much has passed from
her. Though we may still cross the seas on which the _Argo_ sailed, the
greater part of their romance is dead, and the Admiralty charts are its
epitaph. Scylla and Charybdis are mapped; there is, for the vandal to
read, a latitude and a longitude of Tyre.
We have still with us the seas of romance, of the Sagas, of the
Odyssey, of the Ancient Mariner; we may still look from
‘Magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faëry lands forlorn.’
But these are armchair adventures, fireside voyages: these we must
share with the cripple and the old. We who are young may find in the
mountains new worlds of adventure and romance of which the Greeks knew
nothing; but though the beauties, the perils, the rewards are changed,
the spirit is the same. No sea hero of the Greeks would be long a
stranger among mountaineers: where now but in the mountains should
Odysseus wander, πολύτλας, πολύμητις, first in every quest of perilous
glory, crowning the hopes of long years of wanderers?
Our mountain-worship is then no new creed, nor artificial dogma, but a
new epiphany of the spirit of Hellas; and the spirit will be the same,
even though the men of later ages find their romance beneath the seas
whereon the Greeks sought it, or above the mountains in which our quest
is set.