CHAPTER XVII.

THE GRECIAN MYTHICAL VEIN COMPARED WITH THAT OF MODERN EUROPE.

Μῦθος—_Sage_—an universal manifestation of the human

mind.—Analogy of the Germans and Celts with the

Greeks.—Differences between them.—Grecian poetry

matchless.—Grecian progress self-operated.—German progress

brought about by violent influences from without.—Operation of

the Roman civilization and of Christianity upon the primitive

German mythes.—Alteration in the mythical genealogies—Odin and

the other gods degraded into men.—Grecian Paganism—what would

have been the case, if it had been supplanted by Christianity

in 500 B. C.—Saxo Grammaticus and Snorro Sturleson contrasted

with Pherekydês and Hellanikus.—Mythopœic tendencies in modern

Europe still subsisting, but forced into a new channel: 1.

Saintly ideal; 2. Chivalrous ideal.—Legends of the Saints—their

analogy with the Homeric theology.—Chivalrous ideal—Romances

of Charlemagne and Arthur.—Accepted as realities of the

fore-time.—Teutonic and Scandinavian epic—its analogy with the

Grecian.—Heroic character and self-expanding subject common to

both.—Points of distinction between the two—epic of the Middle

Ages neither stood so completely alone, nor was so closely

interwoven with religion, as the Grecian.—History of England—how

conceived down to the seventeenth century—began with Brute the

Trojan.—Earnest and tenacious faith manifested in the defence of

this early history.—Judgment of Milton.—Standard of historical

evidence—raised in regard to England—not raised in regard to

Greece.—Milton’s way of dealing with the British fabulous history

objectionable.—Two ways open of dealing with the Grecian mythes:

1, to omit them; or, 2, to recount them as mythes.—Reasons for

preferring the latter.—Triple partition of past time by Varro.

461-489

HISTORY OF GREECE.

PART I.

LEGENDARY GREECE.

CHAPTER I.

LEGENDS RESPECTING THE GODS.

The mythical world of the Greeks opens with the gods, anterior as well

as superior to man: it gradually descends, first to heroes, and next

to the human race. Along with the gods are found various monstrous

natures, ultra-human and extra-human, who cannot with propriety be

called gods, but who partake with gods and men in the attributes

of free-will, conscious agency, and susceptibility of pleasure and

pain,—such as the Harpies, the Gorgons, the Grææ, the Sirens, Scylla

and Charybdis, Echidna, Sphinx, Chimæra, Chrysaor, Pegasus, the

Cyclôpes, the Centaurs, etc. The first acts of what may be termed

the great mythical cycle describe the proceedings of these gigantic

agents—the crash and collision of certain terrific and overboiling

forces, which are ultimately reduced to obedience, or chained up, or

extinguished, under the more orderly government of Zeus, who supplants

his less capable predecessors, and acquires precedence and supremacy

over gods and men—subject, however to certain social restraints from

the chief gods and goddesses around him, as well as to the custom of

occasionally convoking and consulting the divine agora.

I recount these events briefly, but literally, treating them simply

as mythes springing from the same creative imagination, addressing

themselves to analogous tastes and feelings, and depending upon the

same authority, as the legends of Thebes and Troy. It is the inspired

voice of the Muse which reveals and authenticates both, and from which

Homer and Hesiod alike derive their knowledge—the one, of the heroic,

the other, of the divine, foretime. I maintain, moreover, fully, the

character of these great divine agents as Persons, which is the light

in which they presented themselves to the Homeric or Hesiodic audience.

Uranos, Nyx, Hypnos and Oneiros (Heaven, Night, Sleep and Dream), are

Persons, just as much as Zeus and Apollo. To resolve them into mere

allegories, is unsafe and unprofitable: we then depart from the point

of view of the original hearers, without acquiring any consistent or

philosophical point of view of our own.[2] For although some of the

attributes and actions ascribed to these persons are often explicable

by allegory the whole series and system of them never are so: the

theorist who adopts this course of explanation finds that, after one

or two simple and obvious steps, the path is no longer open, and he

is forced to clear a way for himself by gratuitous refinements and

conjectures. The allegorical persons and attributes are always found

mingled with other persons and attributes not allegorical; but the

two classes cannot be severed without breaking up the whole march of

the mythical events, nor can any explanation which drives us to such

a necessity be considered as admissible. To suppose indeed that these

legends could be all traced by means of allegory into a coherent

body of physical doctrine, would be inconsistent with all reasonable

presumptions respecting the age or society in which they arose. Where

the allegorical mark is clearly set upon any particular character,

or attribute, or event, to that extent we may recognize it; but we

can rarely venture to divine further, still less to alter the legends

themselves on the faith of any such surmises. The theogony of the

Greeks contains some cosmogonic ideas; but it cannot be considered

as a system of cosmogony, or translated into a string of elementary,

planetary, or physical changes.

[2] It is sufficient, here, to state this position briefly: more

will be said respecting the allegorizing interpretation in a

future chapter.

In the order of legendary chronology, Zeus comes after Kronos and

Uranos; but in the order of Grecian conception, Zeus is the prominent

person, and Kronos and Uranos are inferior and introductory precursors,

set up in order to be overthrown and to serve as mementos of the

prowess of their conqueror. To Homer and Hesiod, as well as to the

Greeks universally, Zeus is the great and predominant god, “the father

of gods and men,” whose power none of the other gods can hope to

resist, or even deliberately think of questioning. All the other gods

have their specific potency and peculiar sphere of action and duty,

with which Zeus does not usually interfere; but it is he who maintains

the lineaments of a providential superintendence, as well over the

phænomena of Olympus as over those of earth. Zeus and his brothers

Poseidôn and Hadês have made a division of power: he has reserved the

æther and the atmosphere to himself—Poseidôn has obtained the sea—and

Hadês the under-world or infernal regions; while earth, and the events

which pass upon earth, are common to all of them, together with free

access to Olympus.[3]

[3] See Iliad, viii. 405, 463; xv. 20, 130, 185. Hesiod, Theog.

885.

This unquestioned supremacy is the general representation of

Zeus: at the same time the conspiracy of Hêrê, Poseidôn, and

Athênê against him, suppressed by the unexpected apparition of

Briareus as his ally, is among the exceptions. (Iliad, i. 400.)

Zeus is at one time vanquished by Titan, but rescued by Hermês.

(Apollodôr. i. 6, 3).

Zeus, then, with his brethren and colleagues, constitute the present

gods, whom Homer and Hesiod recognize as in full dignity and

efficiency. The inmates of this divine world are conceived upon the

model, but not upon the scale, of the human. They are actuated by the

full play and variety of those appetites, sympathies, passions and

affections, which divide the soul of man; invested with a far larger

and indeterminate measure of power, and an exemption as well from

death as (with some rare exceptions) from suffering and infirmity.

The rich and diverse types thus conceived, full of energetic movement

and contrast, each in his own province, and soaring confessedly above

the limits of experience, were of all themes the most suitable for

adventure and narrative, and operated with irresistible force upon the

Grecian fancy. All nature was then conceived as moving and working

through a number of personal agents, amongst whom the gods of Olympus

were the most conspicuous; the reverential belief in Zeus and Apollo

being only one branch of this omnipresent personifying faith. The

attributes of all these agents had a tendency to expand themselves into

illustrative legends—especially those of the gods, who were constantly

invoked in the public worship. Out of this same mental source sprang

both the divine and heroic mythes—the former being often the more

extravagant and abnormous in their incidents, in proportion as the

general type of the gods was more vast and awful than that of the

heroes.

As the gods have houses and wives like men, so the present dynasty

of gods must have a past to repose upon;[4] and the curious and

imaginative Greek, whenever he does not find a recorded past ready

to his hand, is uneasy until he has created one. Thus the Hesiodic

theogony explains, with a certain degree of system and coherence, first

the antecedent circumstances under which Zeus acquired the divine

empire, next the number of his colleagues and descendants.

[4] Arist. Polit. i. 1. ὥσπερ δὲ καὶ τὰ εἴδη ἑαυτοῖς ἀφομοιοῦσιν

ἄνθρωποι, οὕτως καὶ τοὺς βίους, τῶν θεῶν.

First in order of time (we are told by Hesiod) came Chaos; next Gæa,

the broad, firm, and flat Earth, with deep and dark Tartarus at her

base. Erôs (Love), the subduer of gods as well as men, came immediately

afterwards.[5]

[5] Hesiod, Theog. 116. Apollodôrus begins with Uranos and Gæa

(i. 1.); he does not recognize Erôs, Nyx, or Erebos.

From Chaos sprung Erebos and Nyx; from these latter Æthêr and Hêmera.

Gæa also gave birth to Uranos, equal in breadth to herself, in order to

serve both as an overarching vault to her, and as a residence for the

immortal gods; she further produced the mountains, habitations of the

divine nymphs, and Pontus, the barren and billowy sea.

Then Gæa intermarried with Uranos, and from this union came a numerous

offspring—twelve Titans and Titanides, three Cyclôpes, and three

Hekatoncheires or beings with a hundred hands each. The Titans were

Oceanus, Kœos, Krios, Hyperiôn, Iapetos, and Kronos: the Titanides,

Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnêmosynê, Phœbê, and Têthys. The Cyclôpes were

Brontês, Steropês, and Argês,—formidable persons, equally distinguished

for strength and for manual craft, so that they made the thunder

which afterwards formed the irresistible artillery of Zeus.[6] The

Hekatoncheires were Kottos, Briareus, and Gygês, of prodigious bodily

force.

[6] Hesiod, Theog. 140, 156. Apollod. _ut sup._

Uranos contemplated this powerful brood with fear and horror; as fast

as any of them were born, he concealed them in cavities of the earth,

and would not permit them to come out. Gæa could find no room for them,

and groaned under the pressure: she produced iron, made a sickle,

and implored her sons to avenge both her and themselves against the

oppressive treatment of their father. But none of them, except Kronos,

had courage to undertake the deed: he, the youngest and the most

daring, was armed with the sickle and placed in suitable ambush by the

contrivance of Gæa. Presently night arrived, and Uranos descended to

the embraces of Gæa: Kronos then emerged from his concealment, cut off

the genitals of his father, and cast the bleeding member behind him

far away into the sea.[7] Much of the blood was spilt upon the earth,

and Gæa in consequence gave birth to the irresistible Erinnys, the

vast and muscular Gigantes, and the Melian nymphs. Out of the genitals

themselves, as they swam and foamed upon the sea, emerged the goddess

Aphroditê, deriving her name from the foam out of which she had sprung.

She first landed at Kythêra, and then went to Cyprus: the island felt

her benign influence, and the green herb started up under her soft and

delicate tread. Erôs immediately joined her, and partook with her the

function of suggesting and directing the amorous impulses both of gods

and men.[8]

[7] Hesiod, Theog. 160, 182. Apollod. i. 1, 4.

[8] Hesiod, Theog. 192. This legend respecting the birth of

Aphroditê seems to have been derived partly from her name (ἀφρὸς,

_foam_), partly from the surname Urania, Ἀφροδίτη Οὐρανία, under

which she was so very extensively worshipped, especially both in

Cyprus and Cythêra, seemingly originated in both islands by the

Phœnicians. Herodot. i. 105. Compare the instructive section in

Boeckh’s Metrologie, c. iv. § 4.

Uranos being thus dethroned and disabled, Kronos and the Titans

acquired their liberty and became predominant: the Cyclôpes and the

Hekatoncheires had been cast by Uranos into Tartarus, and were still

allowed to remain there.

Each of the Titans had a numerous offspring: Oceanus, especially,

marrying his sister Têthys, begat three thousand daughters, the Oceanic

nymphs, and as many sons: the rivers and springs passed for his

offspring. Hyperiôn and his sister Theia had for their children Hêlios,

Selênê, and Eôs; Kœos with Phœbê begat Lêtô and Asteria; the children

of Krios were Astræos, Pallas, and Persês,—from Astræos and Eôs sprang

the winds Zephyrus, Boreas, and Notus. Iapetos, marrying the Oceanic

nymph Clymenê, counted as his progeny the celebrated Promêtheus,

Epimêtheus, Menœtius, and Atlas. But the offspring of Kronos were the

most powerful and transcendent of all. He married his sister Rhea, and

had by her three daughters—Hestia, Dêmêtêr, and Hêrê—and three sons,

Hadês, Poseidôn, and Zeus, the latter at once the youngest and the

greatest.

But Kronos foreboded to himself destruction from one of his own

children, and accordingly, as soon as any of them were born, he

immediately swallowed them and retained them in his own belly. In this

manner had the first five been treated, and Rhea was on the point of

being delivered of Zeus. Grieved and indignant at the loss of her

children, she applied for counsel to her father and mother, Uranos and

Gæa, who aided her to conceal the birth of Zeus. They conveyed her by

night to Lyktus in Crête, hid the new-born child in a woody cavern

on Mount Ida, and gave to Kronos, in place of it, a stone wrapped in

swaddling clothes, which he greedily swallowed, believing it to be

his child. Thus was the safety of Zeus ensured.[9] As he grew up his

vast powers fully developed themselves: at the suggestion of Gæa, he

induced Kronos by stratagem to vomit up, first the stone which had

been given to him,—next, the five children whom he had previously

devoured. Hestia, Dêmêtêr, Hêrê, Poseidôn and Hadês, were thus allowed

to grow up along with Zeus; and the stone to which the latter owed

his preservation was placed near the temple of Delphi, where it ever

afterwards stood, as a conspicuous and venerable memorial to the

religious Greek.[10]

[9] Hesiod, Theog. 452, 487. Apollod. i. 1, 6.

[10] Hesiod, Theog. 498.—

Τὸν μὲν Ζεὺς στήριξε κατὰ χθονὸς εὐρυοδείης

Πυθοῖ ἐν ἠγαθέῃ, γυάλοις ὑπὸ Παρνησοῖο,

Σῆμ᾽ ἔμεν ἐξοπίσω, θαῦμα θνητοῖσι βροτοῖσι.

We have not yet exhausted the catalogue of beings generated during this

early period, anterior to the birth of Zeus. Nyx, alone and without

any partner, gave birth to a numerous progeny: Thanatos, Hypnos and

Oneiros; Mômus and Oïzys (Grief); Klôthô, Lachesis and Atropos, the

three Fates; the retributive and equalizing Nemesis; Apatê and Philotês

(Deceit and amorous Propensity), Gêras (Old Age) and Eris (Contention).

From Eris proceeded an abundant offspring, all mischievous and

maleficent: Ponos (Suffering), Lêthê, Limos (Famine), Phonos and Machê

(Slaughter and Battle), Dysnomia and Atê (Lawlessness and reckless

Impulse), and Horkos, the ever watchful sanctioner of oaths, as well as

the inexorable punisher of voluntary perjury.[11]

[11] Hesiod, Theog. 212-232.

Gæa, too, intermarrying with Pontus, gave birth to Nereus, the just

and righteous old man of the sea; to Thaumas, Phorkys and Kêtô. From

Nereus, and Doris daughter of Oceanus, proceeded the fifty Nereids

or Sea-nymphs. Thaumus also married Elektra daughter of Oceanus, and

had by her Iris and the two Harpies, Allô and Okypetê,—winged and

swift as the winds. From Phorkys and Kêtô sprung the Dragon of the

Hesperides, and the monstrous Grææ and Gorgons: the blood of Medusa,

one of the Gorgons, when killed by Perseus, produced Chrysaor and the

horse Pegasus: Chrysaor and Kallirrhoê gave birth to Geryôn as well

as to Echidna,—a creature half-nymph and half-serpent, unlike both to

gods and to men. Other monsters arose from the union of Echidna with

Typhaôn,—Orthros, the two-headed dog of Geryôn; Cerberus, the dog

of Hadês, with fifty heads, and the Lernæan Hydra. From the latter

proceeded the Chimæra, the Sphinx of Thêbes, and the Nemean lion.[12]

[12] Hesiod, Theog. 240-320. Apollodôr. i. 2, 6, 7.

A powerful and important progeny, also, was that of Styx, daughter

of Oceanus, by Pallas; she had Zêlos and Nikê (Imperiousness and

Victory), and Kratos and Bia (Strength and Force). The hearty and early

coöperation of Styx and her four sons with Zeus was one of the main

causes which enabled him to achieve his victory over the Titans.

Zeus had grown up not less distinguished for mental capacity than for

bodily force. He and his brothers now determined to wrest the power

from the hands of Kronos and the Titans, and a long and desperate

struggle commenced, in which all the gods and all the goddesses took

part. Zeus convoked them to Olympus, and promised to all who would aid

him against Kronos, that their functions and privileges should remain

undisturbed. The first who responded to the call, came with her four

sons, and embraced his cause, was Styx. Zeus took them all four as his

constant attendants, and conferred upon Styx the majestic distinction

of being the Horkos, or oath-sanctioner of the Gods,—what Horkos was to

men, Styx was to the Gods.[13]

[13] Hesiod, Theog. 385-403.

Still further to strengthen himself, Zeus released the other Uranids

who had been imprisoned in Tartarus by their father,—the Cyclôpes and

the Centimanes,—and prevailed upon them to take part with him against

the Titans. The former supplied him with thunder and lightning, and the

latter brought into the fight their boundless muscular strength.[14]

Ten full years did the combat continue; Zeus and the Kronids occupying

Olympus, and the Titans being established on the more southerly

mountain-chain of Othrys. All nature was convulsed, and the distant

Oceanus, though he took no part in the struggle, felt the boiling,

the noise, and the shock, not less than Gæa and Pontus. The thunder

of Zeus, combined with the crags and mountains torn up and hurled by

the Centimanes, at length prevailed, and the Titans were defeated and

thrust down into Tartarus. Iapetos, Kronos, and the remaining Titans

(Oceanus excepted) were imprisoned, perpetually and irrevocably, in

that subterranean dungeon, a wall of brass being built around them by

Poseidôn, and the three Centimanes being planted as guards. Of the two

sons of Iapetos, Menœtius was made to share this prison, while Atlas

was condemned to stand for ever at the extreme west, and to bear upon

his shoulders the solid vault of heaven.[15]

[14] Hesiod, Theog. 140, 624, 657. Apollodôr. i. 2, 4.

[15] The battle with the Titans, Hesiod, Theog. 627-735. Hesiod

mentions nothing about the Gigantes and the Gigantomachia:

Apollodôrus, on the other hand, gives this latter in some detail,

but despatches the Titans in a few words (i. 2, 4; i. 6, 1). The

Gigantes seem to be only a second edition of the Titans,—a sort

of duplication to which the legendary poets were often inclined.

Thus were the Titans subdued, and the Kronids with Zeus at their head

placed in possession of power. They were not, however, yet quite

secure; for Gæa, intermarrying with Tartarus, gave birth to a new and

still more formidable monster called Typhôeus, of such tremendous

properties and promise, that, had he been allowed to grow into full

development, nothing could have prevented him from vanquishing all

rivals and becoming supreme. But Zeus foresaw the danger, smote him at

once with a thunderbolt from Olympus, and burnt him up: he was cast

along with the rest into Tartarus, and no further enemy remained to

question the sovereignty of the Kronids.[16]

[16] Hesiod, Theog. 820-869. Apollod. i. 6, 3. He makes Typhôn

very nearly victorious over Zeus. Typhôeus, according to Hesiod,

is father of the irregular, violent, and mischievous winds:

Notus, Boreas, Argestês and Zephyrus, are of divine origin (870).

With Zeus begins a new dynasty and a different order of beings. Zeus,

Poseidôn, and Hadês agree upon the distribution before noticed, of

functions and localities: Zeus retaining the Æthêr and the atmosphere,

together with the general presiding function; Poseidôn obtaining

the sea, and administering subterranean forces generally; and Hadês

ruling the under-world or region in which the half-animated shadows of

departed men reside.

It has been already stated, that in Zeus, his brothers and his sisters,

and his and their divine progeny, we find the _present_ Gods; that

is, those, for the most part, whom the Homeric and Hesiodic Greeks

recognized and worshipped. The wives of Zeus were numerous as well as

his offspring. First he married Mêtis, the wisest and most sagacious of

the goddesses; but Gæa and Uranos forewarned him that if he permitted

himself to have children by her, they would be stronger than himself

and dethrone him. Accordingly when Mêtis was on the point of being

delivered of Athênê, he swallowed her up, and her wisdom and sagacity

thus became permanently identified with his own being.[17] His head

was subsequently cut open, in order to make way for the exit and

birth of the goddess Athênê.[18] By Themis, Zeus begat the Hôræ, by

Eurynomê, the three Charities or Graces; by Mnêmosynê, the Muses; by

Lêtô (Latona), Apollo and Artemis; and by Dêmêtêr, Persephonê. Last of

all he took for his wife Hêrê, who maintained permanently the dignity

of queen of the Gods; by her he had Hêbê, Arês, and Eileithyia. Hermês

also was born to him by Maia, the daughter of Atlas: Hêphæstos was born

to Hêrê, according to some accounts, by Zeus; according to others, by

her own unaided generative force.[19] He was born lame, and Hêrê was

ashamed of him: she wished to secrete him away, but he made his escape

into the sea, and found shelter under the maternal care of the Nereids

Thetis and Eurynome.[20] Our enumeration of the divine race, under the

presidency of Zeus, will thus give us,[21]—

[17] Hesiod, Theog. 885-900.

[18] Apollod. i. 3, 6.

[19] Hesiod, Theog. 900-944.

[20] Homer, Iliad, xviii. 397.

[21] See Burckhardt, Homer, und Hesiod. Mythologie, sect. 102.

(Leipz. 1844).

1. The twelve great gods and goddesses of Olympus,—Zeus, Poseidôn,

Apollo, Arês, Hêphæstos, Hermês, Hêrê, Athênê, Artemis, Aphroditê,

Hestia, Dêmêtêr.

2. An indefinite number of other deities, not included among the

Olympic, seemingly because the number _twelve_ was complete without

them, but some of them not inferior in power and dignity to many of

the twelve:—Hadês, Hêlios, Hekatê, Dionysos, Lêtô, Diônê, Persephonê,

Selênê, Themis, Eôs, Harmonia, the Charities, the Muses, the

Eileithyiæ, the Mœræ, the Oceanids and the Nereids, Proteus, Eidothea,

the Nymphs, Leukothea, Phorkys, Æolus, Nemesis, etc.

3. Deities who perform special services to the greater gods:—Iris,

Hêbê, the Horæ, etc.

4. Deities whose personality is more faintly and unsteadily

conceived:—Atê, the Litæ, Eris, Thanatos, Hypnos, Kratos, Bia, Ossa,

etc.[22] The same name is here employed sometimes to designate

the person, sometimes the attribute or event not personified,—an

unconscious transition of ideas, which, when consciously performed, is

called Allegory.

[22] Λιμὸς—_Hunger_—is a person, in Hesiod, Opp. Di. 299.

5. Monsters, offspring of the Gods:—the Harpies, the Gorgons, the Grææ,

Pegasus, Chrysaor, Echidna, Chimæra, the Dragon of the Hesperides,

Cerberus, Orthros, Geryôn, the Lernæan Hydra, the Nemean lion, Scylla

and Charybdis, the Centaurs, the Sphinx, Xanthos and Balios the

immortal horses, etc.

From the gods we slide down insensibly, first to heroes, and then to

men; but before we proceed to this new mixture, it is necessary to

say a few words on the theogony generally. I have given it briefly as

it stands in the Hesiodic Theogonia, because that poem—in spite of

great incoherence and confusion, arising seemingly from diversity of

authorship as well as diversity of age—presents an ancient and genuine

attempt to cast the divine foretime into a systematic sequence. Homer

and Hesiod were the grand authorities in the pagan world respecting

theogony; but in the Iliad and Odyssey nothing is found except passing

allusions and implications, and even in the Hymns (which were commonly

believed in antiquity to be the productions of the same author as the

Iliad and the Odyssey) there are only isolated, unconnected narratives.

Accordingly men habitually took their information respecting their

theogonic antiquities from the Hesiodic poem, where it was ready laid

out before them; and the legends consecrated in that work acquired

both an extent of circulation and a firm hold on the national faith,

such as independent legends could seldom or never rival. Moreover the

scrupulous and sceptical Pagans, as well as the open assailants of

Paganism in later times, derived their subjects of attack from the same

source; so that it has been absolutely necessary to recount in their

naked simplicity the Hesiodic stories, in order to know what it was

that Plato deprecated and Xenophanês denounced. The strange proceedings

ascribed to Uranos, Kronos and Zeus, have been more frequently alluded

to, in the way of ridicule or condemnation, than any other portion of

the mythical world.

But though the Hesiodic theogony passed as orthodox among the later

Pagans,[23] because it stood before them as the only system anciently

set forth and easily accessible, it was evidently not the only system

received at the date of the poem itself. Homer knows nothing of Uranos,

in the sense of an arch-God anterior to Kronos. Uranos and Gæa, like

Oceanus, Têthys and Nyx, are with him great and venerable Gods, but

neither the one nor the other present the character of predecessors of

Kronos and Zeus.[24] The Cyclôpes, whom Hesiod ranks as sons of Uranos

and fabricators of thunder, are in Homer neither one nor the other;

they are not noticed in the Iliad at all, and in the Odyssey they are

gross gigantic shepherds and cannibals, having nothing in common with

the Hesiodic Cyclops except the one round central eye.[25] Of the

three Centimanes enumerated by Hesiod, Briareus only is mentioned in

Homer, and to all appearance, not as the son of Uranos, but as the son

of Poseidôn; not as aiding Zeus in his combat against the Titans, but

as rescuing him at a critical moment from a conspiracy formed against

him by Hêrê, Poseidôn and Athênê.[26] Not only is the Hesiodic Uranos

(with the Uranids) omitted in Homer, but the relations between Zeus

and Kronos are also presented in a very different light. No mention is

made of Kronos swallowing his young children: on the contrary, Zeus

is the eldest of the three brothers instead of the youngest, and the

children of Kronos live with him and Rhea: there the stolen intercourse

between Zeus and Hêrê first takes place without the knowledge of their

parents.[27] When Zeus puts Kronos down into Tartarus, Rhea consigns

her daughter Hêrê to the care of Oceanus: no notice do we find of any

terrific battle with the Titans as accompanying that event. Kronos,

Iapetos, and the remaining Titans are down in Tartarus, in the lowest

depths under the earth, far removed from the genial rays of Hêlios; but

they are still powerful and venerable, and Hypnos makes Hêrê swear an

oath in their name, as the most inviolable that he can think of.[28]

[23] See Göttling, Præfat. ad Hesiod. p. 23.

[24] Iliad, xiv. 249; xix. 259. Odyss. v. 184. Oceanus and Têthys

seem to be presented in the Iliad as the primitive Father and

Mother of the Gods:—

Ὠκεανόν τε θεῶν γένεσιν, καὶ μητέρα Τηθύν. (xiv. 201).

[25] Odyss. ix. 87.

[26] Iliad, i. 401.

[27] Iliad, xiv. 203-295; xv. 204.

[28] Iliad, viii. 482; xiv. 274-279. In the Hesiodic Opp. et Di.,

Kronos is represented as ruling in the Islands of the Blest in

the neighborhood of Oceanus (v. 168).

In Homer, then, we find nothing beyond the simple fact that Zeus thrust

his father Kronos together with the remaining Titans into Tartarus;

an event to which he affords us a tolerable parallel in certain

occurrences even under the presidency of Zeus himself. For the other

gods make more than one rebellious attempt against Zeus, and are only

put down, partly by his unparalleled strength, partly by the presence

of his ally the Centimane Briareus. Kronos, like Laërtes or Pêleus,

has become old, and has been supplanted by a force vastly superior to

his own. The Homeric epic treats Zeus as present, and, like all the

interesting heroic characters, a father must be assigned to him: that

father has once been the chief of the Titans, but has been superseded

and put down into Tartarus along with the latter, so soon as Zeus and

the superior breed of the Olympic gods acquired their full development.

That antithesis between Zeus and Kronos—between the Olympic gods and

the Titans—which Homer has thus briefly brought to view, Hesiod has

amplified into a theogony, with many things new, and some things

contradictory to his predecessor; while Eumêlus or Arktinus in the

poem called Titanomachia (now lost) also adopted it as their special

subject.[29] As Stasinus, Arktinus, Leschês, and others, enlarged the

Legend of Troy by composing poems relating to a supposed time anterior

to the commencement, or subsequent to the termination of the Iliad,—as

other poets recounted adventures of Odysseus subsequent to his landing

in Ithaka,—so Hesiod enlarged and systematized, at the same time that

he corrupted, the skeleton theogony which we find briefly indicated

in Homer. There is violence and rudeness in the Homeric gods, but the

great genius of Grecian epic is no way accountable for the stories

of Uranos and Kronos,—the standing reproach against Pagan legendary

narrative.

[29] See the few fragments of the Titanomachia, in Düntzer, Epic.

Græc. Fragm. p. 2; and Hyne, ad Apollodôr. I. 2. Perhaps there

was more than one poem on the subject, though it seems that

Athenæus had only read one (viii. p. 277).

In the Titanomachia, the generations anterior to Zeus were still

further lengthened by making Uranos the son of Æthêr (Fr. 4.

Düntzer). Ægæon was also represented as son of Pontus and Gæa,

and as having fought in the ranks of the Titans; in the Iliad he

(the same who is called Briareus) is the fast ally of Zeus.

A _Titanographia_ was ascribed to Musæus (Schol. Apollôn. Rhod.

iii. 1178; compare Lactant. de Fals. Rel. i. 21).

How far these stories are the invention of Hesiod himself is impossible

to determine.[30] They bring us down to a cast of fancy more coarse

and indelicate than the Homeric, and more nearly resembling some of

the Holy Chapters (ἱεροὶ λόγοι) of the more recent mysteries, such

(for example) as the tale of Dionysos Zagreus. There is evidence

in the Theogony itself that the author was acquainted with local

legends current both at Krête and at Delphi; for he mentions both the

mountain-cave in Krête wherein the new-born Zeus was hidden, and the

stone near the Delphian temple—the identical stone which Kronos had

swallowed—“placed by Zeus himself as a sign and wonder to mortal men.”

Both these two monuments, which the poet expressly refers to, and

had probably seen, imply a whole train of accessory and explanatory

local legends—current probably among the priests of Krête and Delphi,

between which places, in ancient times, there was an intimate religious

connection. And we may trace further in the poem,—that which would

be the natural feeling of Krêtan worshippers of Zeus,—an effort to

make out that Zeus was justified in his aggression on Kronos, by the

conduct of Kronos himself both towards his father and towards his

children: the treatment of Kronos by Zeus appears in Hesiod as the

retribution foretold and threatened by the mutilated Uranos against the

son who had outraged him. In fact the relations of Uranos and Gæa are

in almost all their particulars a mere copy and duplication of those

between Kronos and Rhea, differing only in the mode whereby the final

catastrophe is brought about. Now castration was a practice thoroughly

abhorrent both to the feelings and to the customs of Greece;[31] but

it was seen with melancholy frequency in the domestic life as well as

in the religious worship of Phrygia and other parts of Asia, and it

even became the special qualification of a priest of the Great Mother

Cybelê,[32] as well as of the Ephesian Artemis. The employment of the

sickle ascribed to Kronos seems to be the product of an imagination

familiar with the Asiatic worship and legends, which were connected

with and partially resembled the Krêtan.[33] And this deduction becomes

the more probable when we connect it with the first genesis of iron,

which Hesiod mentions to have been produced for the express purpose of

fabricating the fatal sickle; for metallurgy finds a place in the early

legends both of the Trojan and of the Krêtan Ida, and the three Idæan

Dactyls, the legendary inventors of it, are assigned sometimes to one

and sometimes to the other.[34]

[30] That the Hesiodic Theogony is referable to an age

considerably later than the Homeric poems, appears now to be the

generally admitted opinion; and the reasons for believing so are,

in my opinion, satisfactory. Whether the Theogony is composed by

the same author as the Works and Days is a disputed point. The

Bœotian literati in the days of Pausanias decidedly denied the

identity, and ascribed to their Hesiod only the Works and Days:

Pausanias himself concurs with them (ix. 31. 4; ix. 35. 1), and

Völcker (Mithologie des Japetisch. Geschlechts, p. 14) maintains

the same opinion, as well as Göttling (Præf. ad Hesiod. xxi.): K.

O. Müller (History of Grecian Literature, ch. 8. § 4) thinks that

there is not sufficient evidence to form a decisive opinion.

Under the name of Hesiod (in that vague language which is usual

in antiquity respecting authorship, but which modern critics

have not much mended by speaking of the Hesiodic school, sect,

or family) passed many different poems, belonging to three

classes quite distinct from each other, but all disparate from

the Homeric epic:—1. The poems of legend cast into historical and

genealogical series, such as the Eoiai, the Catalogue of Women,

etc. 2. The poems of a didactic or ethical tendency, such as

the Works and Days, the Precepts of Cheirôn, the Art of Augural

Prophecy, etc. 3. Separate and short mythical compositions,

such as the Shield of Hêraklês, the Marriage of Keyx (which,

however, was of disputed authenticity, Athenæ. ii. p. 49), the

Epithalamium of Pêleus and Thetis, etc. (See Marktscheffel,

Præfat. ad Fragment. Hesiod. p. 89).

The Theogony belongs chiefly to the first of these classes, but

it has also a dash of the second in the legend of Promêtheus,

etc.: moreover in the portion which respects Hekatê, it has both

a mystic character and a distinct bearing upon present life and

customs, which we may also trace in the allusions to Krête and

Delphi. There seems reason to place it in the same age with the

Works and Days, perhaps in the half century preceding 700 B.

C., and little, if at all, anterior to Archilochus. The poem

is evidently conceived upon one scheme, yet the parts are so

disorderly and incoherent, that it is difficult to say how much

is interpolation. Hermann has well dissected the exordium; see

the preface to Gaisford’s Hesiod (Poetæ Minor. p. 63).

K. O. Müller tells us (_ut sup._ p. 90), “The Titans, according

to the notions of Hesiod, represent a system of things in which

elementary beings, natural powers, and notions of order and

regularity are united to form a whole. The Cyclôpes denote the

transient disturbances of this order of nature by storms, and the

Hekatoncheires, or hundred-handed Giants, signify the fearful

power of the greater revolutions of nature.” The poem affords

little presumption that any such ideas were present to the mind

of its author, as, I think, will be seen if we read 140-155,

630-745.

The Titans, the Cyclôpes, and the Hekatoncheires, can no more

be construed into physical phænomena than Chrysaor, Pegasus,

Echidna, the Grææ, or the Gorgons. Zeus, like Hêraklês, or Jasôn,

or Perseus, if his adventures are to be described, must have

enemies, worthy of himself and his vast type, and whom it is

some credit for him to overthrow. Those who contend with him or

assist him must be conceived on a scale fit to be drawn on the

same imposing canvas: the dwarfish proportions of man will not

satisfy the sentiment of the poet or his audience respecting the

grandeur and glory of the gods. To obtain creations of adequate

sublimity for such an object, the poet may occasionally borrow

analogies from the striking accidents of physical nature, and

when such an allusion manifests itself clearly, the critic does

well to point it out. But it seems to me a mistake to treat

these approximations to physical phænomena as forming the _main

scheme_ of the poet,—to look for them everywhere, and to presume

them where there is little or no indication.

[31] The strongest evidences of this feeling are exhibited in

Herodotus, iii. 48; viii. 105. See an example of this mutilation

inflicted upon a youth named Adamas by the Thracian king Kotys,

in Aristot. Polit. v. 8, 12, and the tale about the Corinthian

Periander, Herod. iii. 48.

It is an instance of the habit, so frequent among the Attic

tragedians, of ascribing Asiatic or Phrygian manners to the

Trojans, when Sophoclês in his lost play Troilus (ap. Jul.

Poll. x. 165) introduced one of the characters of his drama as

having been castrated by order of Hecuba, Σκαλμῇ γὰρ ὄρχεις

βασιλὶς ἐκτέμνουσ᾽ ἐμούς,—probably the Παιδαγωγὸς, or guardian

and companion of the youthful Troilus. See Welcker, Griechisch.

Tragöd. vol. i. p. 125.

[32] Herodot. viii. 105, εὐνοῦχοι. Lucian, De Deâ Syriâ, c. 50.

Strabo, xiv. pp. 640-641.

[33] Diodôr. v. 64. Strabo, x. p. 460. Hoeckh, in his learned

work Krêta (vol. i. books 1 and 2), has collected all the

information attainable respecting the early influences of Phrygia

and Asia Minor upon Krête: nothing seems ascertainable except the

general fact; all the particular evidences are lamentably vague.

The worship of the Diktæan Zeus seemed to have originally

belonged to the Eteokrêtes, who were not Hellens, and were more

akin to the Asiatic population than to the Hellenic. Strabo, x.

p. 478. Hoeckh, Krêta, vol. i. p. 139.

[34] Hesiod, Theogon. 161,

Αἶψα δὲ ποιήσασα γένος πολιοῦ ἀδάμαντος,

Τεῦξε μέγα δρέπανον, etc.

See the extract from the old poem _Phorônis_ ap. Schol. Apoll.

Rhod. 1129; and Strabo, x. p. 472.

As Hesiod had extended the Homeric series of gods by prefixing the

dynasty of Uranos to that of Kronos, so the Orphic theogony lengthened

it still further.[35] First came Chronos, or Time, as a person, after

him Æthêr and Chaos, out of whom Chronos produced the vast mundane egg.

Hence emerged in process of time the first-born god Phanês, or Mêtis,

or Hêrikapæos, a person of double sex, who first generated the Kosmos,

or mundane system, and who carried within him the seed of the gods.

He gave birth to Nyx, by whom he begat Uranos and Gæa; as well as to

Hêlios and Selêne.[36]

[35] See the scanty fragments of the Orphic theogony in Hermann’s

edition of the Orphica, pp. 448, 504, which it is difficult to

understand and piece together, even with the aid of Lobeck’s

elaborate examination (Aglaophamus, p. 470, etc.). The passages

are chiefly preserved by Proclus and the later Platonists,

who seem to entangle them almost inextricably with their own

philosophical ideas.

The first few lines of the Orphic Argonautica contain a brief

summary of the chief points of the theogony.

[36] See Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 472-476, 490-500, Μῆτιν σπέρμα

φέροντα θεῶν κλυτὸν Ἠρικεπαῖον; again, Θῆλυς καὶ γενέτωρ κρατερὸς

θεὸς Ἠρικέπαιος. Compare Lactant. iv. 8, 4: Suidas, v. Φάνης:

Athenagoras, xx. 296: Diodôr. i. 27.

This egg figures, as might be expected, in the cosmogony set

forth by the Birds, Aristophan. Av. 695. Nyx gives birth to an

egg, out of which steps the golden Erôs, from Erôs and Chaos

spring the race of birds.

From Uranos and Gæa sprang the three Mœræ, or Fates, the three

Centimanes and the three Cyclôpes: these latter were cast by Uranos

into Tartarus, under the foreboding that they would rob him of his

dominion. In revenge for this maltreatment of her sons, Gæa produced of

herself the fourteen Titans, seven male and seven female: the former

were Kœos, Krios, Phorkys, Kronos, Oceanus, Hyperiôn and Iapetos;

the latter were Themis, Têthys, Mnêmosynê, Theia, Diônê, Phœbê and

Rhea.[37] They received the name of Titans because they avenged upon

Uranos the expulsion of their elder brothers. Six of the Titans, headed

by Kronos the most powerful of them all, conspiring against Uranos,

castrated and dethroned him: Oceanus alone stood aloof and took no part

in the aggression. Kronos assumed the government and fixed his seat

on Olympos; while Oceanus remained apart, master of his own divine

stream.[38] The reign of Kronos was a period of tranquillity and

happiness, as well as of extraordinary longevity and vigor.

[37] Lobeck, Ag. p. 504. Athenagor. xv. p. 64.

[38] Lobeck, Ag. p. 507. Plato, Timæus, p. 41. In the Διονύσου

τρόφοι of Æschylus, the old attendants of the god Dionysos were

said to have been cut up and boiled in a caldron, and rendered

again young, by Medeia. Pherecydês and Simonidês said that Jasôn

himself had been so dealt with. Schol. Aristoph. Equit. 1321.

Kronos and Rhea gave birth to Zeus and his brothers and sisters. The

concealment and escape of the infant Zeus, and the swallowing of the

stone by Kronos, are given in the Orphic Theogony substantially in

the same manner as by Hesiod, only in a style less simple and more

mysticized. Zeus is concealed in the cave of Nyx, the seat of Phanês

himself, along with Eidê and Adrasteia, who nurse and preserve him,

while the armed dance and sonorous instruments of the Kurêtes prevent

his infant cries from reaching the ears of Kronos. When grown up, he

lays a snare for his father, intoxicates him with honey, and having

surprised him in the depth of sleep, enchains and castrates him.[39]

Thus exalted to the supreme mastery, he swallowed and absorbed into

himself Mêtis, or Phanês, with all the preëxisting elements of things,

and then generated all things anew out of his own being and conformably

to his own divine ideas.[40] So scanty are the remains of this system,

that we find it difficult to trace individually the gods and goddesses

sprung from Zeus beyond Apollo, Dionysos, and Persephonê,—the latter

being confounded with Artemis and Hekatê.

[39] Lobeck, p. 514. Porphyry, de Antro Nympharum, c. 16. φησὶ

γὰρ παρ᾽ Ὀρφεῖ ἡ Νὺξ, τῷ Διῒ ὑποτιθεμένη τὸν διὰ τοῦ μέλιτος

δόλον,

Εὖτ᾽ ἂν δή μιν ἴδηαι ὑπὸ δρυσὶν ὑψικόμοισι

Ἔργοισιν μεθύοντα μελισσάων ἐριβόμβων,

Αὔτικά μιν δῆσον.

Ὃ καὶ πάσχει ὁ Κρόνος καὶ δεθεὶς ἐκτέμνεται, ὡς Οὐρανός.

Compare Timæus ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 983.

[40] The Cataposis of Phanês by Zeus one of the most memorable

points of the Orphic Theogony. Lobeck, p. 519.; also Fragm. vi.

p. 456 of Hermann’s Orphica.

From this absorption and subsequent reproduction of all things by

Zeus, flowed the magnificent string of Orphic predicates about

him,—

Ζεὺς ἀρχὴ, Ζεὺς μέσσα, Διὸς δ᾽ ἐκ πάντα τέτυκται,—

an allusion to which is traceable even in Plato, de Legg. iv. p.

715. Plutarch, de Defectu Oracul. T. ix. p. 379. c. 48. Diodôrus

(i. 11) is the most ancient writer remaining to us who mentions

the name of Phanês, in a line cited as proceeding from Orpheus;

wherein, however, Phanês is identified with Dionysos. Compare

Macrobius, Saturnal. i. 18.

But there is one new personage, begotten by Zeus, who stands

preëminently marked in the Orphic Theogony, and whose adventures

constitute one of its peculiar features. Zagreus, “the horned child,”

is the son of Zeus by his own daughter Persephonê: he is the favorite

of his father, a child of magnificent promise, and predestined, if he

grow up, to succeed to supreme dominion as well as to the handling

of the thunderbolt. He is seated, whilst an infant, on the throne

beside Zeus, guarded by Apollo and the Kurêtes. But the jealous Hêrê

intercepts his career and incites the Titans against him, who, having

first smeared their faces with plaster, approach him on the throne,

tempt his childish fancy with playthings, and kill him with a sword

while he is contemplating his face in a mirror. They then cut up his

body and boil it in a caldron, leaving only the heart, which is picked

up by Athênê and carried to Zeus, who in his wrath strikes down the

Titans with thunder into Tartarus; whilst Apollo is directed to collect

the remains of Zagreus and bury them at the foot of Mount Parnassus.

The heart is given to Semelê, and Zagreus is born again from her under

the form of Dionysos.[41]

[41] About the tale of Zagreus, see Lobeck, p. 552, _sqq._ Nonnus

in his Dionysiaca has given many details about it:—

Ζαγρέα γειναμένη κέροεν βρέφος, etc. (vi. 264).

Clemens Alexandrin. Admonit. ad Gent. p. 11, 12, Sylb. The story

was treated both by Callimachus and by Euphoriôn, Etymolog. Magn.

v. Ζαγρεὺς, Schol. Lycophr. 208. In the old epic poem Alkmæônis

or Epigoni, Zagreus is a surname of Hadês. See Fragm. 4, p. 7,

ed. Düntzer. Respecting the Orphic Theogony generally, Brandis

(Handbuch der Geschichte der Griechisch-Römisch. Philosophie,

c. xvii., xviii.), K. O. Müller (Prolegg. Mythol. pp. 379-396),

and Zoega (Abhandlungen, v. pp. 211-263) may be consulted with

much advantage. Brandis regards this Theogony as _considerably

older_ than the first Ionic philosophy, which is a higher

antiquity than appears probable: some of the ideas which it

contains, such, for example, as that of the Orphic egg, indicate

a departure from the string of purely personal generations

which both Homer and Hesiod exclusively recount, and a resort

to something like physical analogies. On the whole, we cannot

reasonably claim for it more than half a century above the age of

Onomakritus. The Theogony of Pherekydês of Syros seems to have

borne some analogy to the Orphic. See Diogen. Laërt. i. 119,

Sturz. Fragment. Pherekyd. § 5-6, Brandis, Handbuch, _ut sup._ c.

xxii. Pherekydês partially deviated from the mythical track or

personal successions set forth by Hesiod. ἐπεὶ οἵ γε ~μεμιγμένοι~

αὐτῶν καὶ ~τῷ μὴ μυθικῶς~ ἅπαντα λέγειν, οἷον Φερεκύδης καὶ

ἑτεροί τινες, etc. (Aristot. Metaphys. N. p. 301, ed. Brandis).

Porphyrias, de Antro Nymphar. c. 31, καὶ τοῦ Συρίου Φερεκύδου

μυχοὺς καὶ βόθρους καὶ ἄντρα καὶ θύρας καὶ πύλας λέγοντος, καὶ

διὰ τούτων αἰνιττομένου τὰς τῶν ψυχῶν γενέσεις καὶ ἀπογενέσεις,

etc. Eudêmus the Peripatetic, pupil of Aristotle, had drawn up

an account of the Orphic Theogony as well as of the doctrines of

Pherekydês, Akusilaus and others, which was still in the hands of

the Platonists of the fourth century, though it is now lost. The

extracts which we find seem all to countenance the belief that

the Hesiodic Theogony formed the basis upon which they worked.

See about Akusilaus, Plato, Sympos. p. 178. Clem. Alex. Strom. p.

629.

Such is the tissue of violent fancies comprehended under the title of

the Orphic Theogony, and read as such, it appears, by Plato, Isokratês

and Aristotle. It will be seen that it is based upon the Hesiodic

Theogony, but according to the general expansive tendency of Grecian

legend, much new matter is added: Zeus has in Homer one predecessor, in

Hesiod two, and in Orpheus four.

The Hesiodic Theogony, though later in date than the Iliad and Odyssey,

was coeval with the earliest period of what may be called Grecian

history, and certainly of an age earlier than 700 B. C. It appears to

have been widely circulated in Greece, and being at once ancient and

short, the general public consulted it as their principal source of

information respecting divine antiquity. The Orphic Theogony belongs to

a later date, and contains the Hesiodic ideas and persons, enlarged and

mystically disguised: its vein of invention was less popular, adapted

more to the contemplation of a sect specially prepared than to the

taste of a casual audience, and it appears accordingly to have obtained

currency chiefly among purely speculative men.[42] Among the majority

of these latter, however, it acquired greater veneration, and above all

was supposed to be of greater antiquity, than the Hesiodic. The belief

in its superior antiquity (disallowed by Herodotus, and seemingly also

by Aristotle[43]), as well as the respect for its contents, increased

during the Alexandrine age and through the declining centuries of

Paganism, reaching its maximum among the New-Platonists of the third

and fourth century after Christ: both the Christian assailants, as

well as the defenders, of paganism, treated it as the most ancient and

venerable summary of the Grecian faith. Orpheus is celebrated by Pindar

as the harper and companion of the Argonautic maritime heroes: Orpheus

and Musæus, as well as Pamphôs and Olên, the great supposed authors

of theogonic, mystical, oracular, and prophetic verses and hymns,

were generally considered by literary Greeks as older than either

Hesiod or Homer:[44] and such was also the common opinion of modern

scholars until a period comparatively recent. It has now been shown,

on sufficient ground, that the compositions which passed under these

names emanate for the most part from poets of the Alexandrine age, and

subsequent to the Christian æra; and that even the earliest among them,

which served as the stock on which the later additions were engrafted,

belong to a period far more recent than Hesiod; probably to the century

preceding Onomakritus (B. C. 610-510). It seems, however, certain,

that both Orpheus and Musæus were names of established reputation at

the time when Onomakritus flourished; and it is distinctly stated by

Pausanias that the latter was himself the author of the most remarkable

and characteristic mythe of the Orphic Theogony—the discerption of

Zagreus by the Titans, and his resurrection as Dionysos.[45]

[42] The Orphic Theogony is never cited in the ample Scholia on

Homer, though Hesiod is often alluded to. (See Lobeck, Aglaoph.

p. 540). Nor can it have been present to the minds of Xenophanês

and Herakleitus, as representing any widely diffused Grecian

belief: the former, who so severely condemned Homer and Hesiod,

would have found Orpheus much more deserving of his censure: and

the latter could hardly have omitted Orpheus from his memorable

denunciation:—Πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει· Ἡσίοδον γὰρ ἂν ἐδίδαξε

καὶ Πυθαγόρην, αὖτις δὲ Ξενοφάνεά τε καὶ Ἑκαταῖον. Diog. Laër.

ix. 1. Isokratês treats Orpheus as the most censurable of all

the poets. See Busiris, p. 229; ii. p. 309, Bekk. The Theogony

of Orpheus, as conceived by Apollônius Rhodius (i. 504) in the

third century B. C., and by Nigidius in the first century B.

C. (Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. iv. 10), seems to have been on a

more contracted scale than that which is given in the text. But

neither of them notice the tale of Zagreus, which we know to be

as old as Onomakritus.

[43] This opinion of Herodotus is implied in the remarkable

passage about Homer and Hesiod, ii. 53, though he never once

names Orpheus—only alluding once to “Orphic ceremonies,” ii. 81.

He speaks more than once of the prophecies of Musæus. Aristotle

denied the past existence and reality of Orpheus. See Cicero de

Nat. Deor. i. 38.

[44] Pindar Pyth. iv. 177. Plato seems to consider Orpheus as

more ancient than Homer. Compare Theætêt. p. 179; Cratylus, p.

402; De Republ. ii. p. 364. The order in which Aristophanês (and

Hippias of Elis, ap. Clem. Alex. Str. vi. p. 624) mentions them

indicates the same view, Ranæ, 1030. It is unnecessary to cite

the later chronologers, among whom the belief in the antiquity

of Orpheus was universal; he was commonly described as son of

the Muse Calliopê. Androtiôn seems to have denied that he was

a Thracian, regarding the Thracians as incurably stupid and

illiterate. Androtiôn, Fragm. 36, ed. Didot. Ephorus treated

him as having been a pupil of the Idæan Dactyls of Phrygia (see

Diodôr. v. 64), and as having learnt from them his τελετὰς and

μυστήρια, which he was the first to introduce into Greece. The

earliest mention which we find of Orpheus, is that of the poet

Ibycus (about B. C. 530), ὀνομάκλυτον Ὀρφῆν. Ibyci Fragm. 9, p.

341, ed. Schneidewin.

[45] Pausan. viii. 37, 3. Τιτᾶνας δὲ πρῶτον ἐς ποίησιν ἐσήγαγεν

Ὅμηρος, θεοὺς εἶναι σφᾶς ὑπὸ τῷ καλουμένῳ Ταρτάρῳ· καὶ ἔστιν

ἐν Ἡρᾶς ὅρκῳ τὰ ἔπη· παρὰ δὲ Ὁμήρου Ὀνομάκριτος, παραλαβὼν τῶν

Τιτάνων τὸ ὄνομα, Διονύσῳ τε συνέθηκεν ὄργια, καὶ εἶναι τοὺς

Τιτᾶνας τῷ Διονύσῳ τῶν παθημάτων ἐποίησεν αὐτουργούς. Both

the date, the character and the function of Onomakritus are

distinctly marked by Herodotus, vii. 6.

The names of Orpheus and Musæus (as well as that of Pythagoras,[46]

looking at one side of his character) represent facts of importance

in the history of the Grecian mind—the gradual influx of Thracian,

Phrygian, and Egyptian, religious ceremonies and feelings, and the

increasing diffusion of special mysteries,[47] schemes for religious

purification, and orgies (I venture to anglicize the Greek word,

which contains in its original meaning no implication of the ideas

of excess to which it was afterwards diverted) in honor of some

particular god—distinct both from the public solemnities and from the

gentile solemnities of primitive Greece,—celebrated apart from the

citizens generally, and approachable only through a certain course of

preparation and initiation—sometimes even forbidden to be talked of in

the presence of the uninitiated, under the severest threats of divine

judgment. Occasionally such voluntary combinations assumed the form

of permanent brotherhoods, bound together by periodical solemnities

as well as by vows of an ascetic character: thus the Orphic life (as

it was called) or regulation of the Orphic brotherhood, among other

injunctions partly arbitrary and partly abstinent, forbade animal food

universally, and on certain occasions, the use of woollen clothing.[48]

The great religious and political fraternity of the Pythagoreans,

which acted so powerfully on the condition of the Italian cities, was

one of the many manifestations of this general tendency, which stands

in striking contrast with the simple, open-hearted, and demonstrative

worship of the Homeric Greeks.

[46] Herodotus believed in the derivation both of the Orphic and

Pythagorean regulations from Egypt—ὁμολογέουσι δὲ ταῦτα τοῖσι

Ὀρφικοῖσι καλεομένοισι καὶ Βακχικοῖσι, ἐοῦσι δὲ Αἰγυπτίοισι

(ii. 81). He knows the names of those Greeks who have borrowed

from Egypt the doctrine of the metempsychosis, but he will not

mention them (ii. 123): he can hardly allude to any one but

the Pythagoreans, many of whom he probably knew in Italy. See

the curious extract from Xenophanês respecting the doctrine of

Pythagoras, Diogen. Laërt. viii. 37; and the quotation from the

Silli of Timôn, Πυθαγόραν δὲ γοήτος ἀποκλίναντ᾽ ἐπὶ δόξαν, etc.

Compare Porphyr. in Vit. Pythag. c. 41.

[47] Aristophan. Ran. 1030.—

Ὀρφεὺς μὲν γὰρ τελετάς θ᾽ ἡμῖν κατέδειξε, φόνων τ᾽ ἀπέχεσθαι·

Μουσαῖος τ᾽, ἐξακέσεις τε νόσων καὶ χρησμούς· Ἡσίοδος δὲ,

Γῆς ἐργασίας, καρπῶν ὥρας, ἀρότους· ὁ δὲ θεῖος Ὅμηρος

Ἀπὸ τοῦ τιμὴν καὶ κλέος ἔσχεν, πλὴν τοῦθ᾽, ὅτι χρήστ᾽ ἐδίδασκεν,

Ἀρετὰς, τάξεις, ὁπλίσεις ἀνδρῶν; etc.

The same general contrast is to be found in Plato, Protagoras,

p. 316; the opinion of Pausanias, ix. 30, 4. The poems of Musæus

seem to have borne considerable analogy to the Melampodia

ascribed to Hesiod (see Clemen. Alex. Str. vi. p. 628); and

healing charms are ascribed to Orpheus as well as to Musæus. See

Eurip. Alcestis, 986.

[48] Herod. ii. 81; Euripid. Hippol. 957, and the curious

fragment of the lost Κρῆτες of Euripidês. Ὀρφικοὶ βίοι, Plato,

Legg. vii. 782.

Festivals at seed-time and harvest—at the vintage and at the opening

of the new wine—were doubtless coeval with the earliest habits of the

Greeks; the latter being a period of unusual joviality. Yet in the

Homeric poems, Dionysos and Dêmêtêr, the patrons of the vineyard and

the cornfield, are seldom mentioned, and decidedly occupy little place

in the imagination of the poet as compared with the other gods: nor are

they of any conspicuous importance even in the Hesiodic Theogony. But

during the interval between Hesiod and Onomakritus, the revolution in

the religious mind of Greece was such as to place both these deities

in the front rank. According to the Orphic doctrine, Zagreus, son of

Persephonê, is destined to be the successor of Zeus, and although the

violence of the Titans intercepts this lot, yet even when he rises

again from his discerption under the name of Dionysos, he is the

colleague and coëqual of his divine father.

This remarkable change, occurring as it did during the sixth and a

part of the seventh century before the Christian æra, may be traced

to the influence of communication with Egypt (which only became

fully open to the Greeks about B. C. 660), as well as with Thrace,

Phrygia, and Lydia. From hence new religious ideas and feelings were

introduced, which chiefly attached themselves to the characters of

Dionysos and Dêmêtêr. The Greeks identified these two deities with the

great Egyptian Osiris and Isis, so that what was borrowed from the

Egyptian worship of the two latter naturally fell to their equivalents

in the Grecian system.[49] Moreover the worship of Dionysos (under

what name cannot be certainly made out) was indigenous in Thrace,[50]

as that of the Great Mother was in Phyrgia, and in Lydia—together

with those violent ecstasies and manifestations of temporary frenzy,

and that clashing of noisy instruments, which we find afterwards

characterizing it in Greece. The great masters of the pipe—as well as

the dythyramb,[51] and indeed the whole musical system appropriated to

the worship of Dionysos, which contrasted so pointedly with the quiet

solemnity of the Pæan addressed to Apollo—were all originally Phrygian.

[49] Herodot. ii. 42, 59, 144.

[50] Herodot. v. 7, vii. 111; Euripid. Hecub. 1249, and Rhêsus,

969, and the Prologue to the Bacchæ; Strabo, x. p. 470; Schol.

ad Aristophan. Aves, 874; Eustath. ad Dionys. Perieg. 1069;

Harpocrat. v. Σάβοι; Photius, Εὐοῖ Σαβοῖ. The “Lydiaca” of Th.

Menke (Berlin, 1843) traces the early connection between the

religion of Dionysos and that of Cybelê, c. 6, 7. Hoeckh’s Krêta

(vol. i. p. 128-134) is instructive respecting the Phrygian

religion.

[51] Aristotle, Polit. viii. 7, 9. Πᾶσα γὰρ Βάκχεια καὶ πᾶσα ἡ

τοιαύτη κίνησις μάλιστα τῶν ὀργάνων ἐστὶν ἐν τοῖς αὐλοῖς· τῶν δ᾽

ἁρμονίων ἐν τοῖς Φρυγιστὶ μέλεσι λαμβάνει ταῦτα τὸ πρέπον, οἷον ὁ

διθύραμβος δοκεῖ ὁμολογουμένως εἶναι Φρύγιον. Eurip. Bacch. 58.—

Αἴρεσθε τἀπιχώρι᾽ ἐν πόλει Φρυγῶν

Τύμπανα, Ῥέας τε μητρὸς ἐμὰ θ᾽ εὑρήματα, etc.

Plutarch, Εἰ. in Delph. c. 9; Philochor. Fr. 21, ed. Didot,

p. 389. The complete and intimate manner in which Euripidês

identifies the Bacchic rites of Dionysos with the Phrygian

ceremonies in honor of the Great Mother, is very remarkable. The

fine description given by Lucretius (ii. 600-640) of the Phrygian

worship is much enfeebled by his unsatisfactory allegorizing.

From all these various countries, novelties, unknown to the Homeric

men, found their way into the Grecian worship: and there is one amongst

them which deserves to be specially noticed, because it marks the

generation of the new class of ideas in their theology. Homer mentions

many persons guilty of private or involuntary homicide, and compelled

either to go into exile or to make pecuniary satisfaction; but he

never once describes any of them to have either received or required

purification for the crime.[52] Now in the time subsequent to Homer,

purification for homicide comes to be considered as indispensable:

the guilty person is regarded as unfit for the society of man or the

worship of the gods until he has received it, and special ceremonies

are prescribed whereby it is to be administered. Herodotus tells us

that the ceremony of purification was the same among the Lydians and

among the Greeks:[53] we know that it formed no part of the early

religion of the latter, and we may perhaps reasonably suspect that

they borrowed it from the former. The oldest instance known to us of

expiation for homicide was contained in the epic poem of the Milesian

Arktinus,[54] wherein Achillês is purified by Odysseus for the

murder of Thersitês: several others occurred in the later or Hesiodic

epic—Hêraklês, Pêleus, Bellerophôn, Alkmæôn, Amphiktyôn, Pœmander,

Triopas,—from whence they probably passed through the hands of the

logographers to Apollodôrus, Diodôrus, and others.[55] The purification

of the murderer was originally operated, not by the hands of any priest

or specially sanctified man, but by those of a chief or king, who goes

through the appropriate ceremonies in the manner recounted by Herodotus

in his pathetic narrative respecting Crœsus and Adrastus.

[52] Schol. ad Iliad, xi. 690—οὐ διὰ τὰ καθάρσια Ἰφίτου πορθεῖται

ἡ Πύλος, ἐπεί τοι Ὀδυσσεὺς μείζων Νέστορος, καὶ παρ᾽ Ὁμήρῳ οὐκ

οἴδαμεν φονέα καθαιρόμενον, ἀλλ᾽ ἀντιτίνοντα ἢ φυγαδευόμενον.

The examples are numerous, and are found both in the Iliad and

the Odyssey. Iliad, ii. 665 (_Tlêpolemos_); xiii. 697 (_Medôn_);

xiii. 574 (_Epeigeus_); xxiii. 89 (_Patroclos_); Odyss. xv.

224 (_Theoclymenos_); xiv. 380 (an _Ætôlian_). Nor does the

interesting mythe respecting the functions of Atê and the Litæ

harmonize with the subsequent doctrine about the necessity of

purification. (Iliad, ix. 498).

[53] Herodot. i. 35—ἔστι δὲ παραπλησίη ἡ κάθαρσις τοῖσι Λυδοῖσι

καὶ τοῖσι Ἕλλησι. One remarkable proof, amongst many, of the deep

hold which this idea took of the greatest minds in Greece, that

serious mischief would fall upon the community if family quarrels

or homicide remained without religious expiation, is to be found

in the objections which Aristotle urges against the community of

women proposed in the Platonic Republic. It could not be known

what individuals stood in the relation of father, son or brother:

if, therefore, wrong or murder of kindred should take place, the

appropriate religious atonements (αἱ νομιζόμεναι λύσεις) could

not be applied, and the crime would go unexpiated. (Aristot.

Polit. ii. 1, 14. Compare Thucyd. i. 125-128).

[54] See the Fragm. of the Æthiopis of Arktinus, in Düntzer’s

Collection, p. 16.

[55] The references for this are collected in Lobeck’s

Aglaophamos. Epimetr. ii. ad Orphica, p. 968.

The idea of a special taint of crime, and of the necessity as well

as the sufficiency of prescribed religious ceremonies as a means of

removing it, appears thus to have got footing in Grecian practice

subsequent to the time of Homer. The peculiar rites or orgies,

composed or put together by Onomakritus, Methapus,[56] and other men

of more than the ordinary piety, were founded upon a similar mode

of thinking, and adapted to the same mental exigencies. They were

voluntary religious manifestations, superinduced upon the old public

sacrifices of the king or chiefs on behalf of the whole society, and

of the father on his own family hearth—they marked out the details of

divine service proper to appease or gratify the god to whom they were

addressed, and to procure for the believers who went through them his

blessings and protection here or hereafter—the exact performance of

the divine service in all its specialty was held necessary, and thus

the priests or Hierophants, who alone were familiar with the ritual,

acquired a commanding position.[57] Generally speaking, these peculiar

orgies obtained their admission and their influence at periods of

distress, disease, public calamity and danger, or religious terror

and despondency, which appear to have been but too frequent in their

occurrence.

[56] Pausanias (iv. 1, 5)—μετεκόσμησε γὰρ καὶ Μέθαπος τῆς

τελετῆς (the Eleusinian Orgies, carried by Kaukon from Eleusis

into Messênia), ἔστιν ἅ. Ὁ δὲ Μέθαπος γένος μὲν ἦν Ἀθηναῖος,

τελετῆς τε καὶ ~ὀργίων παντοίων συνθέτης~. Again, viii. 37,

3, Onomakritus Διονύσῳ ~συνέθηκεν~ ὄργια, etc. This is another

expression designating the same idea as the Rhêsus of Euripidês,

944.—

Μυστηρίων τε τῶν ἀποῤῥήτων φάνας

Ἔδειξεν Ὀρφεύς.

[57] Têlinês, the ancestor of the Syracusan despot Gelô,

acquired great political power as possessing τὰ ἱρὰ τῶν χθονίων

θεῶν (Herodot. vii. 153); he and his family became hereditary

Hierophants of these ceremonies. How Têlinês acquired the ἱρὰ

Herodotus cannot say—ὅθεν δὲ ἀυτὰ ἔλαβε, ἢ αὐτὸς ἐκτήσατο, τοῦτο

οὐκ ἔχω εἶπαι. Probably there was a traditional legend, not

inferior in sanctity to that of Eleusis, tracing them to the gift

of Dêmêtêr herself.

The minds of men were prone to the belief that what they were suffering

arose from the displeasure of some of the gods, and as they found

that the ordinary sacrifices and worship were insufficient for their

protection, so they grasped at new suggestions proposed to them with

the view of regaining the divine favor.[58] Such suggestions were more

usually copied, either in whole or in part, from the religious rites

of some foreign locality, or from some other portion of the Hellenic

world; and in this manner many new sects or voluntary religious

fraternities, promising to relieve the troubled conscience and to

reconcile the sick or suffering with the offended gods, acquired

permanent establishment as well as considerable influence. They were

generally under the superintendence of hereditary families of priests,

who imparted the rites of confirmation and purification to communicants

generally; no one who went through the prescribed ceremonies being

excluded. In many cases, such ceremonies fell into the hands of

jugglers, who volunteered their services to wealthy men, and degraded

their profession as well by obtrusive venality as by extravagant

promises:[59] sometimes the price was lowered to bring them within

reach of the poor and even of slaves. But the wide diffusion, and the

number of voluntary communicants of these solemnities, proves how much

they fell in with the feeling of the time and how much respect they

enjoyed—a respect, which the more conspicuous establishments, such

as Eleusis and Samothrace, maintained for several centuries. And the

visit of the Kretan Epimenidês to Athens—in the time of Solôn, and at a

season of the most serious disquietude and dread of having offended the

gods—illustrates the tranquillizing effect of new orgies[60] and rites

of absolution, when enjoined by a man standing high in the favor of

the gods and reputed to be the son of a nymph. The supposed Erythræan

Sibyl, and the earliest collection of Sibylline prophecies,[61]

afterwards so much multiplied and interpolated, and referred (according

to Grecian custom) to an age even earlier than Homer, appear to belong

to a date not long posterior to Epimenidês. Other oracular verses, such

as those of Bakis, were treasured up in Athens and other cities: the

sixth century before the Christian æra was fertile in these kinds of

religious manifestations.

[58] See Josephus cont. Apiôn. ii. c. 35; Hesych. Θεοὶ ξένιοι;

Strabo, x. p. 471; Plutarch, Περὶ Δεισιδαιμον. c. iii. p. 166; c.

vii. p. 167.

[59] Plato, Republ. ii. p. 364; Demosthen. de Coronâ, c. 79,

p. 313. The δεισιδαίμων of Theophrastus cannot be comfortable

without receiving the Orphic communion monthly from the

Orpheotelestæ (Theophr. Char. xvi.). Compare Plutarch, Περὶ τοῦ

μὴ χρᾶν ἔμμετρα, etc., c. 25, p. 400. The comic writer Phrynichus

indicates the existence of these rites of religious excitement,

at Athens, during the Peloponnesian war. See the short fragment

of his Κρόνος, ap. Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 989—

Ἀνὴρ χορεύει, καὶ τὰ τοῦ καλῶς·

Βούλει Διοπείθη μεταδράμω καὶ τύμπανα;

Diopeithês was a χρησμόλογος, or collector and deliverer of

prophecies, which he sung (or rather, perhaps, recited) with

solemnity and emphasis, in public. ὥστε ποιοῦντες χρησμοὺς αὐτοὶ

Διδόασ᾽ ᾄδειν Διοπείθει τῷ παραμαινομένῷ. (Ameipsias ap. Schol.

Aristophan. _ut sup._, which illustrates Thucyd. ii. 21).

[60] Plutarch, Solôn, c. 12; Diogen. Laërt. i. 110.

[61] See Klausen, “Æneas und die Penaten:” his chapter on the

connection between the Grecian and Roman Sibylline collections

is among the most ingenious of his learned book. Book ii. pp.

210-240; see Steph. Byz. v. Γέργις.

To the same age belong the χρησμοὶ and καθαρμοὶ of Abaris and his

marvellous journey through the air upon an arrow (Herodot. iv.

36).

Epimenidês also composed καθαρμοὶ in epic verse; his Κουρήτων

and Κορυβάντων γένεσις, and his four thousand verses respecting

Minôs and Rhadamanthys, if they had been preserved, would let us

fully into the ideas of a religious mystic of that age respecting

the antiquities of Greece. (Strabo, x. p. 474; Diogen. Laërt. i.

10). Among the poems ascribed to Hesiod were comprised not only

the Melampodia, but also ἔπη μαντικὰ and ἐξηγήσεις ἐπὶ τέρασιν.

Pausan. ix. 31, 4.

Amongst the special rites and orgies of the character just described,

those which enjoyed the greatest Pan-Hellenic reputation were attached

to the Idæan Zeus in Krête, to Dêmêtêr at Eleusis, to the Kabeiri in

Samothrace, and to Dionysos at Delphi and Thebes.[62] That they were

all to a great degree analogous, is shown by the way in which they

unconsciously run together and become confused in the minds of various

authors: the ancient inquirers themselves were unable to distinguish

one from the other, and we must be content to submit to the like

ignorance. But we see enough to satisfy us of the general fact, that

during the century and a half which elapsed between the opening of

Egypt to the Greeks and the commencement of their struggle with the

Persian kings, the old religion was largely adulterated by importations

from Egypt, Asia Minor,[63] and Thrace. The rites grew to be more

furious and ecstatic, exhibiting the utmost excitement, bodily as well

as mental: the legends became at once more coarse, more tragical, and

less pathetic. The manifestations of this frenzy were strongest among

the women, whose religious susceptibilities were often found extremely

unmanageable,[64] and who had everywhere congregative occasional

ceremonies of their own, apart from the men—indeed, in the case of the

colonists, especially of the Asiatic colonists, the women had been

originally women of the country, and as such retained to a great degree

their non-Hellenic manners and feelings.[65] The god Dionysos,[66]

whom the legends described as clothed in feminine attire, and leading

a troop of frenzied women, inspired a temporary ecstasy, and those who

resisted the inspiration, being supposed to disobey his will, were

punished either by particular judgments or by mental terrors; while

those who gave full loose to the feeling, in the appropriate season and

with the received solemnities, satisfied his exigencies, and believed

themselves to have procured immunity from such disquietudes for the

future.[67] Crowds of women, clothed with fawn-skins and bearing the

sanctified thyrsus, flocked to the solitudes of Parnassus, or Kithærôn,

or Taygetus, during the consecrated triennial period, passed the

night there with torches, and abandoned themselves to demonstrations

of frantic excitement, with dancing and clamorous invocation of the

god: they were said to tear animals limb from limb, to devour the raw

flesh, and to cut themselves without feeling the wound.[68] The men

yielded to a similar impulse by noisy revels in the streets, sounding

the cymbals and tambourine, and carrying the image of the god in

procession.[69] It deserves to be remarked, that the Athenian women

never practised these periodical mountain excursions, so common among

the rest of the Greeks: they had their feminine solemnities of the

Thesmophoria,[70] mournful in their character and accompanied with

fasting, and their separate congregations at the temples of Aphroditê,

but without any extreme or unseemly demonstrations. The state festival

of the Dionysia, in the city of Athens, was celebrated with dramatic

entertainments, and the once rich harvest of Athenian tragedy and

comedy was thrown up under its auspices. The ceremonies of the Kurêtes

in Krête, originally armed dances in honor of the Idæan Zeus, seem also

to have borrowed from Asia so much of fury, of self-infliction, and

of mysticism, that they became at last inextricably confounded with

the Phrygian Korybantes or worshippers of the Great Mother; though it

appears that Grecian reserve always stopped short of the irreparable

self-mutilation of Atys.

[62] Among other illustrations of this general resemblance, may

be counted an epitaph of Kallimachus upon an aged priestess,

who passed from the service of Dêmêtêr to that of the Kabeiri,

then to that of Cybelê, having the superintendence of many young

women. Kallimachus, Epigram. 42. p. 308, ed. Ernest.

[63] Plutarch, (Defect. Oracul. c. 10, p. 415) treats these

countries as the original seat of the worship of Dæmons (wholly

or partially bad, and intermediate between gods and men), and

their religious ceremonies as of a corresponding character: the

Greeks were borrowers from them, according to him, both of the

doctrine and of the ceremonies.

[64] Strabo, vii. p. 297. Ἅπαντες γὰρ τῆς δεισιδαιμονίας ἀρχηγοὺς

οἴονται τὰς γυναῖκας· αὐταὶ δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἄνδρας προκαλοῦνται ἐς

τὰς ἐπὶ πλέον θεραπείας τῶν θεῶν, καὶ ἑορτὰς, καὶ ποτνιασμούς.

Plato (De Legg. x. pp. 909, 910) takes great pains to restrain

this tendency on the part of sick or suffering persons,

especially women, to introduce new sacred rites into his city.

[65] Herodot. i. 146. The wives of the Ionic original settlers at

Miletos were Karian women, whose husbands they slew.

The violences of the Karian worship are attested by what

Herodotus says of the Karian residents in Egypt, at the festival

of Isis at Busiris. The Egyptians at this festival manifested

their feeling by beating themselves, the Karians by cutting their

faces with knives (ii. 61). The Καρικὴ μοῦσα became proverbial

for funeral wailings (Plato, Legg. vii. p. 800): the unmeasured

effusions and demonstrations of sorrow for the departed, some

times accompanied by cutting and mutilation self-inflicted by the

mourner was a distinguishing feature in Asiatics and Egyptians

as compared with Greeks. Plutarch, Consolat. ad Apollôn. c. 22,

p. 123. Mournful feeling was, in fact, a sort of desecration of

the genuine and primitive Grecian festival, which was a season

of cheerful harmony and social enjoyment, wherein the god was

believed to sympathize (εὐφροσύνη). See Xenophanes ap. Aristot.

Rhetor. ii. 25; Xenophan. Fragm. 1. ed. Schneidewin; Theognis,

776; Plutarch, De Superstit. p. 169. The unfavorable comments

of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in so far as they refer to the

festivals of Greece, apply to the foreign corruptions, not to the

native character, of Grecian worship.

[66] The Lydian Hêraklês was conceived and worshipped as a man in

female attire: this idea occurs often in the Asiatic religions.

Mencke, Lydiaca, c. 8, p. 22. Διόνυσος ἄῤῥην καὶ θῆλυς. Aristid.

Or. iv. p. 28; Æschyl. Fragm. Edoni, ap. Aristoph. Thesmoph. 135.

Ποδαπὸς ὁ γύννις; τίς πάτρα; τίς ἡ στολή;

[67] Melampos cures the women (whom Dionysos has struck mad for

their resistance to his rites), παραλαβὼν τοὺς δυνατωτάτους τῶν

νεανίων μετ᾽ ἀλαλαγμοῦ καί τινος ἐνθέου χορείας. Apollodôr. ii.

2, 7. Compare Eurip. Bacch. 861.

Plato (Legg. vii. p. 790) gives a similar theory of the

healing effect of the Korybantic rites, which cured vague and

inexplicable terrors of the mind by means of dancing and music

conjoined with religious ceremonies—αἱ τὰ τῶν Κορυβάντων ἰάματα

τελοῦσαι (the practitioners were women), αἱ τῶν ἐκφρόνων Βακχείων

ἰάσεις—ἡ τῶν ἔξωθεν κρατεῖ κίνησις προσφερομένη τὴν ἐντὸς φοβερὰν

οὖσαν καὶ μανικὴν κίνησιν—ὀρχουμένους δὲ καὶ αὐλουμένους μετὰ

θεῶν, οἷς ἂν καλλιερήσαντες ἕκαστοι θύωσιν, κατειργάσατο ἀντὶ

μανικῶν ἡμῖν διαθέσεων ἕξεις ἔμφρονας ἔχειν.

[68] Described in the Bacchæ of Euripidês (140, 735, 1135,

etc.). Ovid, Trist. iv. i. 41. “Utque suum Bacchis non sentit

saucia vulnus, Cum furit Edonis exululata jugis.” In a fragment

of the poet Alkman, a Lydian by birth, the Bacchanal nymphs are

represented as milking the lioness, and making cheese of the

milk, during their mountain excursions and festivals. (Alkman.

Fragm. 14. Schn. Compare Aristid. Orat. iv. p. 29). Clemens

Alexand. Admonit. ad Gent. p. 9, Sylb.; Lucian, Dionysos, c. 3,

T. iii. p. 77, Hemsterh.

[69] See the tale of Skylês in Herod. iv. 79, and Athenæus, x. p.

445. Herodotus mentions that the Scythians abhorred the Bacchic

ceremonies, accounting the frenzy which belonged to them to be

disgraceful and monstrous.

[70] Plutarch, De Isid. et Osir. c. 69, p. 378; Schol. ad

Aristoph. Thesmoph. There were however Bacchic ceremonies

practised to a certain extent by the Athenian women. (Aristoph.

Lysist. 388).

The influence of the Thracian religion upon that of the Greeks cannot

be traced in detail, but the ceremonies contained in it were of a

violent and fierce character, like the Phrygian, and acted upon Hellas

in the same general direction as the latter. And the like may be said

of the Egyptian religion, which was in this case the more operative,

inasmuch as all the intellectual Greeks were naturally attracted to go

and visit the wonders on the banks of the Nile; the powerful effect

produced upon them is attested by many evidences, but especially by

the interesting narrative of Herodotus. Now the Egyptian ceremonies

were at once more licentious, and more profuse in the outpouring both

of joy and sorrow, than the Greek;[71] but a still greater difference

sprang from the extraordinary power, separate mode of life, minute

observances, and elaborate organization, of the priesthood. The

ceremonies of Egypt were multitudinous, but the legends concerning them

were framed by the priests, and as a general rule, seemingly, known

to the priests alone: at least they were not intended to be publicly

talked of, even by pious men. They were “holy stories,” which it was

sacrilege publicly to mention, and which from this very prohibition

only took firmer hold of the minds of the Greek visitors who heard

them. And thus the element of secrecy and mystic silence—foreign to

Homer, and only faintly glanced at in Hesiod—if it was not originally

derived from Egypt, at least received from thence its greatest

stimulus and diffusion. The character of the legends themselves was

naturally affected by this change from publicity to secrecy: the

secrets when revealed would be such as to justify by their own tenor

the interdict on public divulgation: instead of being adapted, like

the Homeric mythe, to the universal sympathies and hearty interest of

a crowd of hearers, they would derive their impressiveness from the

tragical, mournful, extravagant, or terror-striking character of the

incidents.[72] Such a tendency, which appears explicable and probable

even on general grounds, was in this particular case rendered still

more certain by the coarse taste of the Egyptian priests. That any

recondite doctrine, religious or philosophical, was attached to the

mysteries or contained in the holy stories, has never been shown,

and is to the last degree improbable though the affirmative has been

asserted by many learned men.

[71] “Ægyptiaca numina fere plangoribus gaudent, Græca plerumque

choreis, barbara autem strepitu cymbalistarum et tympanistarum

et choraularum.” (Apuleius, De Genio Socratis, v. ii. p. 149,

Oudend).

[72] The legend of Dionysos and Prosymnos, as it stands in

Clemens, could never have found place in an epic poem (Admonit.

ad Gent. p. 22, Sylb.). Compare page 11 of the same work,

where however he so confounds together Phrygian, Bacchic, and

Eleusinian mysteries, that one cannot distinguish them apart.

Demêtrius Phalêreus says about the legends belonging to

these ceremonies—Διὸ καὶ τὰ μυστήρια λέγεται ἐν ἀλληγορίαις

~πρὸς ἔκπληξιν καὶ φρίκην~, ὥσπερ ἐν σκότῳ καὶ νυκτί. (De

Interpretatione, c. 101).

Herodotus seems to have believed that the worship and ceremonies of

Dionysos generally were derived by the Greeks from Egypt, brought

over by Kadmus and taught by him to Melampus: and the latter appears

in the Hesiodic Catalogue as having cured the daughters of Prœtus of

the mental distemper with which they had been smitten by Dionysos for

rejecting his ritual. He cured them by introducing the Bacchic dance

and fanatical excitement: this mythical incident is the most ancient

mention of the Dionysiac solemnities presented in the same character

as they bear in Euripidês. It is the general tendency of Herodotus

to apply the theory of derivation from Egypt far too extensively to

Grecian institutions: the orgies of Dionysos were not originally

borrowed from thence, though they may have been much modified by

connection with Egypt as well as with Asia. The remarkable mythe

composed by Onomakritus respecting the dismemberment of Zagreus was

founded upon an Egyptian tale very similar respecting the body of

Osiris, who was supposed to be identical with Dionysos:[73] nor was it

unsuitable to the reckless fury of the Bacchanals during their state of

temporary excitement, which found a still more awful expression in the

mythe of Pentheus,—torn in pieces by his own mother Agavê at the head

of her companions in the ceremony, as an intruder upon the feminine

rites as well as a scoffer at the god.[74] A passage in the Iliad (the

authenticity of which has been contested, but even as an interpolation

it must be old)[75] also recounts how Lykurgus was struck blind by Zeus

for having chased away with a whip “the nurses of the mad Dionysos,”

and frightened the god himself into the sea to take refuge in the arms

of Thetis: and the fact, that Dionysos is so frequently represented in

his mythes as encountering opposition and punishing the refractory,

seems to indicate that his worship under its ecstatic form was a late

phænomenon and introduced not without difficulty. The mythical Thracian

Orpheus was attached as Eponymos to a new sect, who seem to have

celebrated the ceremonies of Dionysos with peculiar care, minuteness

and fervor, besides observing various rules in respect to food and

clothing. It was the opinion of Herodotus, that these rules, as well as

the Pythagorean, were borrowed from Egypt. But whether this be the fact

or not, the Orphic brotherhood is itself both an evidence, and a cause,

of the increased importance of the worship of Dionysos, which indeed is

attested by the great dramatic poets of Athens.

[73] See the curious treatise of Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid.

c. 11-14. p. 356, and his elaborate attempt to allegorize the

legend. He seems to have conceived that the Thracian Orpheus had

first introduced into Greece the mysteries both of Dêmêtêr and

Dionysos, copying them from those of Isis and Osiris in Egypt.

See Fragm. 84, from one of his lost works, tom, v. p. 891, ed.

Wyttenb.

[74] Æschylus had dramatized the story of Pentheus as well as

that of Lykurgus: one of his tetralogies was the Lykurgeia

(Dindorf, Æsch. Fragm. 115). A short allusion to the story of

Pentheus appears in Eumenid. 25. Compare Sophocl. Antigon. 985,

and the Scholia.

[75] Iliad, vi. 130. See the remarks of Mr. Payne Knight _ad loc._

The Homeric Hymns present to us, however, the religious ideas and

legends of the Greeks at an earlier period, when the enthusiastic and

mystic tendencies had not yet acquired their full development. Though

not referable to the same age or to the same author as either the

Iliad or the Odyssey, they do to a certain extent continue the same

stream of feeling, and the same mythical tone and coloring, as these

poems—manifesting but little evidence of Egyptian, Asiatic, or Thracian

adulterations. The difference is striking between the god Dionysos

as he appears in the Homeric hymn and in the Bacchæ of Euripidês.

The hymnographer describes him as standing on the sea-shore, in the

guise of a beautiful and richly-clothed youth, when Tyrrhenian pirates

suddenly approach: they seize and bind him and drag him on board

their vessel. But the bonds which they employ burst spontaneously,

and leave the god free. The steersman, perceiving this with affright,

points out to his companions that they have unwittingly laid hands

on a god,—perhaps Zeus himself, or Apollo, or Poseidôn. He conjures

them to desist, and to replace Dionysos respectfully on the shore,

lest in his wrath he should visit the ship with wind and hurricane:

but the crew deride his scruples, and Dionysos is carried prisoner

out to sea with the ship under full sail. Miraculous circumstances

soon attest both his presence and his power. Sweet-scented wine is

seen to flow spontaneously about the ship, the sail and mast appear

adorned with vine and ivy-leaves, and the oar-pegs with garlands. The

terrified crew now too late entreat the helmsman to steer his course

for the shore, and crowd round him for protection on the poop. But

their destruction is at hand: Dionysos assumes the form of a lion—a

bear is seen standing near him—this bear rushes with a loud roar upon

the captain, while the crew leap overboard in their agony of fright,

and are changed into dolphins. There remains none but the discreet

and pious steersman, to whom Dionysos addresses words of affectionate

encouragement, revealing his name, parentage and dignity.[76]

[76] See Homer, Hymn 5, Διόνυσος ἢ Λῆσται.—The satirical drama

of Euripidês, the Cyclôps, extends and alters this old legend.

Dionysos is carried away by the Tyrrhenian pirates, and Silênus

at the head of the Bacchanals goes everywhere in search of him

(Eur. Cyc. 112). The pirates are instigated against him by the

hatred of Hêrê, which appears frequently as a cause of mischief

to Dionysos (Bacchæ, 286). Hêrê in her anger had driven him mad

when a child, and he had wandered in this state over Egypt and

Syria; at length he came to Cybela in Phrygia, was purified

(καθαρθεὶς) by Rhea, and received from her female attire

(Apollodôr. iii. 5, 1, with Heyne’s note). This seems to have

been the legend adopted to explain the old verse of the Iliad, as

well as the maddening attributes of the god generally.

There was a standing antipathy between the priestesses and the

religious establishments of Hêrê and Dionysos (Plutarch, Περὶ

τῶν ἐν Πλαταίαις Δαιδάλων, c. 2, tom. v. p. 755, ed. Wytt).

Plutarch ridicules the legendary reason commonly assigned for

this, and provides a symbolical explanation which he thinks very

satisfactory.

This hymn, perhaps produced at the Naxian festival of Dionysos,

and earlier than the time when the dithyrambic chorus became the

established mode of singing the praise and glory of that god, is

conceived in a spirit totally different from that of the Bacchic

Telatæ, or special rites which the Bacchæ of Euripidês so abundantly

extol,—rites introduced from Asia by Dionysos himself at the head of a

thiasus or troop of enthusiastic women,—inflaming with temporary frenzy

the minds of the women of Thebes,—not communicable except to those

who approach as pious communicants,—and followed by the most tragical

results to all those who fight against the god.[77] The Bacchic Teletæ,

and the Bacchic feminine frenzy, were importations from abroad,

as Euripidês represents them, engrafted upon the joviality of the

primitive Greek Dionysia; they were borrowed, in all probability, from

more than one source and introduced through more than one channel, the

Orphic life or brotherhood being one of the varieties. Strabo ascribes

to this latter a Thracian original, considering Orpheus, Musæus, and

Eumolpus as having been all Thracians.[78] It is curious to observe

how, in the Bacchæ of Euripidês, the two distinct and even conflicting

ideas of Dionysos come alternately forward; sometimes the old Grecian

idea of the jolly and exhilarating god of wine—but more frequently

the recent and imported idea of the terrific and irresistible god

who unseats the reason, and whose _œstrus_ can only be appeased by a

willing, though temporary obedience. In the fanatical impulse which

inspired the votaries of the Asiatic Rhea or Cybelê, or of the Thracian

Kotys, there was nothing of spontaneous joy; it was a sacred madness,

during which the soul appeared to be surrendered to a stimulus from

without, and accompanied by preternatural strength and temporary sense

of power,[79]—altogether distinct from the unrestrained hilarity of the

original Dionysia, as we see them in the rural demes of Attica, or in

the gay city of Tarentum. There was indeed a side on which the two bore

some analogy, inasmuch as, according to the religious point of view of

the Greeks, even the spontaneous joy of the vintage feast was conferred

by the favor and enlivened by the companionship of Dionysos. It was

upon this analogy that the framers of the Bacchic orgies proceeded

but they did not the less disfigure the genuine character of the old

Grecian Dionysia.

[77] Eurip. Bacch. 325, 464, etc.

[78] Strabo, x. p. 471. Compare Aristid. Or. iv. p. 28.

[79] In the lost _Xantriæ_ of Æschylus, in which seems to

have been included the tale of Pentheus, the goddess Λύσσα

was introduced, stimulating the Bacchæ, and creating in them

spasmodic excitement from head to foot: ἐκ ποδῶν δ᾽ ἄνω Ὑπέρχεται

σπαραγμὸς εἰς ἄκρον κάρα, etc. (Fragm. 155, Dindorf). His tragedy

called _Edoni_ also gave a terrific representation of the

Bacchanals and their fury, exaggerated by the maddening music:

Πίμπλησι μέλος, Μανίας ἐπαγωγὸν ὁμοκλάν (Fr. 54).

Such also is the reigning sentiment throughout the greater

part of the Bacchæ of Euripidês; it is brought out still more

impressively in the mournful Atys of Catullus:—

“Dea magna, Dea Cybele, Dindymi Dea, Domina,

Procul a meâ tuus sit furor omnis, hera, domo:

Alios age incitatos: alios age rabidos!”

We have only to compare this fearful influence with the

description of Dikæopolis and his exuberant joviality in the

festival of the rural Dionysia (Aristoph. Acharn. 1051 _seq._;

see also Plato. Legg. i. p. 637), to see how completely the

foreign innovations recolored the old Grecian Dionysos,—Διόνυσος

πολυγηθὴς,—who appears also in the scene of Dionysos and Ariadnê

in the Symposion of Xenophôn, c. 9. The simplicity of the ancient

Dionysiac processions is dwelt upon by Plutarch, De Cupidine

Divitiarum, p. 527; and the original dithyramb addressed by

Archilochus to Dionysos is an effusion of drunken hilarity

(Archiloch. Frag. 69, Schneid.).

Dionysos is in the conception of Pindar the Paredros or companion in

worship of Dêmêtêr:[80] the worship and religious estimate of the

latter has by that time undergone as great a change as that of the

former, if we take our comparison with the brief description of Homer

and Hesiod: she has acquired[81] much of the awful and soul-disturbing

attributes of the Phrygian Cybelê. In Homer, Dêmêtêr is the goddess

of the corn-field, who becomes attached to the mortal man Jasiôn;

an unhappy passion, since Zeus, jealous of the connection between

goddesses and men, puts him to death. In the Hesiodic Theogony, Dêmêtêr

is the mother of Persephonê by Zeus, who permits Hadês to carry off

the latter as his wife: moreover Dêmêtêr has, besides, by Jasiôn a son

called Plutos, born in Krête. Even from Homer to Hesiod, the legend

of Dêmêtêr, has been expanded and her dignity exalted; according

to the usual tendency of Greek legend, the expansion goes on still

further. Through Jasiôn, Dêmêtêr becomes connected with the mysteries

of Samothrace; through Persephonê, with those of Eleusis. The former

connection it is difficult to follow out in detail, but the latter is

explained and traced to its origin in the Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr.

[80] Pindar, Isthm. vi. 3. χαλκοκρότου πάρεδρον Δημήτερος,—the

epithet marks the approximation of Dêmêtêr to the Mother of the

Gods. ᾗ κροτάλων τυπάνων τ᾽ ἰαχὴ, σύν τε βρόμος αὐλῶν Εὔαδεν

(Homer. Hymn, xiii.),—the Mother of the Gods was worshipped by

Pindar himself along with Pan; she had in his time her temple and

ceremonies at Thêbes (Pyth. iii. 78; Fragm. Dithyr. 5, and the

Scholia _ad l._) as well as, probably, at Athens (Pausan. i. 3,

3).

Dionysos and Dêmêtêr are also brought together in the chorus of

Sophoklês, Antigonê, 1072. μέδεις δὲ παγκοίνοις Ἐλευσινίας Δηοῦς

ἐν κόλποις; and in Kallimachus, Hymn. Cerer. 70. Bacchus or

Dionysos are in the Attic tragedians constantly confounded with

the Dêmêtrian Iacchos, originally so different,—a personification

of the mystic word shouted by the Eleusinian communicants. See

Strabo, x. p. 468.

[81] Euripidês in his Chorus in the Helena (1320 _seq._) assigns

to Dêmêtêr all the attributes of Rhea, and blends the two

completely into one.

Though we find different statements respecting the date as well as

the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries, yet the popular belief of

the Athenians, and the story which found favor at Eleusis, ascribed

them to the presence and dictation of the goddess Dêmêtêr herself;

just as the Bacchic rites are, according to the Bacchæ of Euripidês,

first communicated and enforced on the Greeks by the personal visit of

Dionysos to Thêbes, the metropolis of the Bacchic ceremonies.[82] In

the Eleusinian legend, preserved by the author of the Homeric Hymn,

she comes voluntarily and identifies herself with Eleusis; her past

abode in Krête being briefly indicated.[83] Her visit to Eleusis is

connected with the deep sorrow caused by the loss of her daughter

Persephonê, who had been seized by Hadês, while gathering flowers in

a meadow along with the Oceanic Nymphs, and carried off to become his

wife in the under-world. In vain did the reluctant Persephonê shriek

and invoke the aid of her father Zeus: he had consented to give her to

Hadês, and her cries were heard only by Hekatê and Hêlios. Dêmêtêr was

inconsolable at the disappearance of her daughter, but knew not where

to look for her: she wandered for nine days and nights with torches in

search of the lost maiden without success. At length Hêlios, the “spy

of gods and men,” revealed to her, in reply to her urgent prayer, the

rape of Persephonê, and the permission given to Hadês by Zeus. Dêmêtêr

was smitten with anger and despair: she renounced Zeus and the society

of Olympus, abstained from nectar and ambrosia, and wandered on earth

in grief and fasting until her form could no longer be known. In this

condition she came to Eleusis, then governed by the prince Keleos.

Sitting down by a well at the wayside in the guise of an old woman, she

was found by the daughters of Keleos, who came hither with their pails

of brass for water. In reply to their questions, she told them that she

had been brought by pirates from Krête to Thorikos, and had made her

escape; she then solicited from them succor and employment as a servant

or as a nurse. The damsels prevailed upon their mother Metaneira

to receive her, and to entrust her with the nursing of the young

Dêmophoôn, their late-born brother, the only son of Keleos. Dêmêtêr was

received into the house of Metaneira, her dignified form still borne

down by grief: she sat long silent and could not be induced either to

smile or to taste food, until the maid-servant Iambê, by jests and

playfulness, succeeded in amusing and rendering her cheerful. She would

not taste wine, but requested a peculiar mixture of barley-meal with

water and the herb mint.[84]

[82] Sophocl. Antigon. Βακχᾶν μητρόπολιν Θήβαν.

[83] Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 123. The Hymn to Dêmêtêr has been

translated, accompanied with valuable illustrative notes, by J.

H. Voss (Heidelb. 1826).

[84] Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 202-210.

The child Dêmophoôn, nursed by Dêmêtêr, throve and grew up like a

god, to the delight and astonishment of his parents: she gave him no

food, but anointed him daily with ambrosia, and plunged him at night

in the fire like a torch, where he remained unburnt. She would have

rendered him immortal, had she not been prevented by the indiscreet

curiosity and alarm of Metaneira, who secretly looked in at night, and

shrieked with horror at the sight of her child in the fire.[85] The

indignant goddess, setting the infant on the ground, now revealed her

true character to Metaneira: her wan and aged look disappeared, and she

stood confest in the genuine majesty of her divine shape, diffusing

a dazzling brightness which illuminated the whole house. “Foolish

mother,” she said, “thy want of faith has robbed thy son of immortal

life. I am the exalted Dêmêtêr, the charm and comfort both of gods and

men: I was preparing for thy son exemption from death and old age; now

it cannot be but he must taste of both. Yet shall he be ever honored,

since he has sat upon my knee and slept in my arms. Let the people

of Eleusis erect for me a temple and altar on yonder hill above the

fountain; I will myself prescribe to them the orgies which they must

religiously perform in order to propitiate my favor.”[86]

[85] This story was also told with reference to the Egyptian

goddess Isis in her wanderings. See Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid.

c. 16, p. 357.

[86] Homer, Hymn. Cerer. 274.—

Ὄργια δ᾽ αὐτὴ ἐγὼν ὑποθήσομαι, ὡς ἂν ἔπειτα

Εὐαγέως ἕρδοντες ἐμὸν νόον ἱλάσκησθε.

The same story is told in regard to the infant Achilles. His

mother Thetis was taking similar measures to render him immortal,

when his father Pêleus interfered and prevented the consummation.

Thetis immediately left him in great wrath (Apollôn. Rhod. iv.

866).

The terrified Metaneira was incapable even of lifting up her child

from the ground; her daughters entered at her cries, and began to

embrace and tend their infant brother, but he sorrowed and could not

be pacified for the loss of his divine nurse. All night they strove to

appease the goddess.[87]

[87] Homer, Hymn. 290.—

τοῦ δ᾽ οὐ μειλίσσετο θυμὸς,

Χειρότεραι γὰρ δή μιν ἔχον τρόφοι ἠδὲ τιθῆναι.

Strictly executing the injunctions of Dêmêtêr, Keleos convoked the

people of Eleusis and erected the temple on the spot which she had

pointed out. It was speedily completed, and Dêmêtêr took up her abode

in it,—apart from the remaining gods, still pining with grief for the

loss of her daughter, and withholding her beneficent aid from mortals.

And thus she remained a whole year,—a desperate and terrible year:[88]

in vain did the oxen draw the plough, and in vain was the barley-seed

cast into the furrow,—Dêmêtêr suffered it not to emerge from the earth.

The human race would have been starved, and the gods would have been

deprived of their honors and sacrifice, had not Zeus found means to

conciliate her. But this was a hard task; for Dêmêtêr resisted the

entreaties of Iris and of all the other goddesses and gods whom Zeus

successively sent to her. She would be satisfied with nothing less than

the recovery of her daughter. At length Zeus sent Hermês to Hadês, to

bring Persephonê away: Persephonê joyfully obeyed, but Hadês prevailed

upon her before she departed to swallow a grain of pomegranate, which

rendered it impossible for her to remain the whole year away from

him.[89]

[88] Homer, H. Cer. 305.—

Αἰνότατον δ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν ἐπὶ χθόνα πουλυβότειραν

Ποίησ᾽ ἀνθρώποις, ἰδὲ κύντατον.

[89] Hymn, v. 375.

With transport did Dêmêtêr receive back her lost daughter, and the

faithful Hekatê sympathized in the delight felt by both at the

reunion.[90] It was now an easier undertaking to reconcile her with

the gods. Her mother Rhea, sent down expressly by Zeus, descended from

Olympus on the fertile Rharan plain, then smitten with barrenness like

the rest of the earth: she succeeded in appeasing the indignation of

Dêmêtêr, who consented again to put forth her relieving hand. The

buried seed came up in abundance, and the earth was covered with fruit

and flowers. She would have wished to retain Persephonê constantly

with her, but this was impossible; and she was obliged to consent that

her daughter should go down for one-third of each year to the house of

Hadês, departing from her every spring at the time when the seed is

sown. She then revisited Olympus, again to dwell with the gods; but

before her departure, she communicated to the daughters of Keleos, and

to Keleos himself, together with Triptolemus, Dioklês and Eumolpus, the

divine service and the solemnities which she required to be observed in

her honor.[91] And thus began the venerable mysteries of Eleusis, at

her special command: the lesser mysteries, celebrated in February, in

honor of Persephonê; the greater, in August, to the honor of Dêmêtêr

herself. Both are jointly patronesses of the holy city and temple.

[90] Hymn, v. 443.

[91] Hymn, v. 475.—

Ἡ δὲ κιοῦσα θεμιστοπόλοις βασιλεῦσι

Δεῖξεν, Τριπτολέμῳ τε, Διοκλέϊ τε πληξίππῳ,

Εὐμόλπου τε βίῃ, Κελέῳ θ᾽ ἡγήτορι λαῶν,

Δρησμοσύνην ἱερῶν· καὶ ἐπέφραδεν ὄργια παισὶν

Πρεσβυτέρῃς Κελέοιο, etc.

Such is a brief sketch of the temple legend of Eleusis, set forth at

length in the Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr. It is interesting not less as a

picture of the Mater Dolorosa (in the mouth of an Athenian, Dêmêtêr and

Persephonê were always the Mother and Daughter, by excellence), first

an agonized sufferer, and then finally glorified,—the weal and woe of

man being dependent upon her kindly feeling,—than as an illustration

of the nature and growth of Grecian legend generally. Though we now

read this Hymn as pleasing poetry, to the Eleusinians, for whom it

was composed, it was genuine and sacred history. They believed in the

visit of Dêmêtêr to Eleusis, and in the mysteries as a revelation from

her, as implicitly as they believed in her existence and power as a

goddess. The Eleusinian psalmist shares this belief in common with his

countrymen, and embodies it in a continuous narrative, in which the

great goddesses of the place, as well as the great heroic families,

figure in inseparable conjunction. Keleos is the son of the Eponymous

hero Eleusis, and his daughters, with the old epic simplicity, carry

their basins to the well for water. Eumolpus, Triptolemus, Dioklês,

heroic ancestors of the privileged families who continued throughout

the historical times of Athens to fulfil their special hereditary

functions in the Eleusinian solemnities, are among the immediate

recipients of inspiration from the goddess; but chiefly does she favor

Metaneira and her infant son Dêmophoôn, for the latter of whom her

greatest boon is destined, and intercepted only by the weak faith of

the mother. Moreover, every incident in the Hymn has a local coloring

and a special reference. The well, overshadowed by an olive-tree near

which Dêmêtêr had rested, the stream Kallichorus and the temple-hill,

were familiar and interesting places in the eyes of every Eleusinian;

the peculiar posset prepared from barley-meal with mint was always

tasted by the Mysts (or communicants) after a prescribed fast, as an

article in the ceremony,—while it was also the custom, at a particular

spot in the processional march, to permit the free interchange of

personal jokes and taunts upon individuals for the general amusement.

And these two customs are connected in the Hymn with the incidents,

that Dêmêtêr herself had chosen the posset as the first interruption of

her long and melancholy fast, and that her sorrowful thoughts had been

partially diverted by the coarse playfulness of the servant-maid Iambê.

In the enlarged representation of the Eleusinian ceremonies, which

became established after the incorporation of Eleusis with Athens, the

part of Iambê herself was enacted by a woman, or man in woman’s attire,

of suitable wit and imagination, who was posted on the bridge over

the Kephissos, and addressed to the passers-by in the procession,[92]

especially the great men of Athens, saucy jeers, probably not less

piercing than those of Aristophanês on the stage. The torch-bearing

Hekatê received a portion of the worship in the nocturnal ceremonies

of the Eleusinia: this too is traced, in the Hymn, to her kind and

affectionate sympathy with the great goddesses.

[92] Aristophanês, Vesp. 1363. Hesych. v. Γεφυρίς. Suidas,

v. Γεφυρίζων. Compare about the details of the ceremony,

Clemens Alexandr. Admon. ad Gent. p. 13. A similar license of

unrestrained jocularity appears in the rites of Dêmêtêr in Sicily

(Diodôr. v. 4; see also Pausan. vii. 27, 4), and in the worship

of Damia and Auxesia at Ægina (Herodot. v. 83).

Though all these incidents were sincerely believed by the Eleusinians

as a true history of the past, and as having been the real initiatory

cause of their own solemnities, it is not the less certain that they

are simply mythes or legends, and not to be treated as history,

either actual or exaggerated. They do not take their start from

realities of the past, but from realities of the present, combined

with retrospective feeling and fancy, which fills up the blank of

the aforetime in a manner at once plausible and impressive. What

proportion of fact there may be in the legend, or whether there be

any at all, it is impossible to ascertain and useless to inquire;

for the story did not acquire belief from its approximation to real

fact, but from its perfect harmony with Eleusinian faith and feeling,

and from the absence of any standard of historical credibility. The

little town of Eleusis derived all its importance from the solemnity

of the Dêmêtria, and the Hymn which we have been considering (probably

at least as old as 600 B. C.) represents the town as it stood before

its absorption into the larger unity of Athens, which seems to have

produced an alteration of its legends and an increase of dignity in

its great festival. In the faith of an Eleusinian, the religious as

well as the patriotic antiquities of his native town were connected

with this capital solemnity. The divine legend of the sufferings of

Dêmêtêr and her visit to Eleusis was to him that which the heroic

legend of Adrastus and the Siege of Thêbes was to a Sikyonian, or

that of Erechtheus and Athênê to an Athenian grouping together in the

same scene and story the goddess and the heroic fathers of the town.

If our information were fuller, we should probably find abundance of

other legends respecting the Dêmêtria: the Gephyræi of Athens, to whom

belonged the celebrated Harmodios and Aristogeitôn, and who possessed

special Orgies of Dêmêtêr the Sorrowful, to which no man foreign to

their Gens was ever admitted,[93] would doubtless have told stories

not only different but contradictory; and even in other Eleusinian

mythes we discover Eumolpus as king of Eleusis, son of Poseidôn, and

a Thracian, completely different from the character which he bears in

the Hymn before us.[94] Neither discrepancies nor want of evidence, in

reference to alleged antiquities, shocked the faith of a non-historical

public. What they wanted was a picture of the past, impressive to their

feelings and plausible to their imagination; and it is important to

the reader to remember, while he reads either the divine legends which

we are now illustrating or the heroic legends to which we shall soon

approach, that he is dealing with a past which never was present,—a

region essentially mythical, neither approachable by the critic nor

mensurable by the chronologer.

[93] Herodot. v. 61.

[94] Pausan. i. 38, 3; Apollodôr. iii. 15, 4. Heyne in his

Note admits several persons named Eumolpus. Compare Isokratês,

Panegyr. p. 55. Philochorus the Attic antiquary could not have

received the legend of the Eleusinian Hymn, from the different

account which he gave respecting the rape of Persephonê (Philoch.

Fragm. 46, ed. Didot), and also respecting Keleos (Fr. 28,

_ibid._).

The tale respecting the visit of Dêmêtêr, which was told by the

ancient Gens, called the Phytalids,[95] in reference to another temple

of Dêmêtêr between Athens and Eleusis, and also by the Megarians in

reference to a Dêmêtrion near their city, acquired under the auspices

of Athens still further extension. The goddess was reported to have

first communicated to Triptolemus at Eleusis the art of sowing corn,

which by his intervention was disseminated all over the earth. And thus

the Athenians took credit to themselves for having been the medium of

communication from the gods to man of all the inestimable blessings

of agriculture, which they affirmed to have been first exhibited on

the fertile Rharian plain near Eleusis. Such pretensions are not to

be found in the old Homeric hymn. The festival of the Thesmophoria,

celebrated in honor of Dêmêtêr Thesmophoros at Athens, was altogether

different from the Eleusinia, in this material respect, as well as

others, that all males were excluded, and women only were allowed to

partake in it: the surname Thesmophoros gave occasion to new legends

in which the goddess was glorified as the first authoress of laws and

legal sanctions to mankind.[96] This festival, for women apart and

alone, was also celebrated at Paros, at Ephesus, and in many other

parts of Greece.[97]

[95] Phytalus, the Eponym or godfather of this gens, had received

Dêmêtêr as a guest in his house, when she first presented mankind

with the fruit of the fig-tree. (Pausan. i. 37, 2.)

[96] Kallimach. Hymn. Cerer. 19. Sophoklês, Triptolemos, Frag. 1.

Cicero, Legg. ii. 14, and the note of Servius ad Virgil. Æn. iv.

58.

[97] Herodot. vi. 16, 134. ἕρκος Θεσμοφόρου Δήμητρος—τὸ ἐς ἔρσενα

γόνον ἄῤῥητα ἱερά.

Altogether, Dêmêtêr and Dionysos, as the Grecian counterparts of the

Egyptian Isis and Osiris, seem to have been the great recipients of the

new sacred rites borrowed from Egypt, before the worship of Isis in

her own name was introduced into Greece: their solemnities became more

frequently recluse and mysterious than those of the other deities. The

importance of Dêmêtêr to the collective nationality of Greece may be

gathered from the fact that her temple was erected at Thermopylæ, the

spot where the Amphiktyonic assemblies were held, close by the temple

of the Eponymous hero Amphiktyôn himself, and under the surname of the

Amphiktyonic Dêmêtêr.[98]

[98] Herodot. vii. 200.

We now pass to another and not less important celestial

personage—Apollo.