The legends of Dêlos and Delphi, embodied in the Homeric Hymn to

Apollo, indicate, if not a greater dignity, at least a more widely

diffused worship of that god than even of Dêmêtêr. The Hymn is, in

point of fact, an aggregate of two separate compositions, one emanating

from an Ionic bard at Dêlos, the other from Delphi. The first details

the birth, the second the mature divine efficiency, of Apollo; but

both alike present the unaffected charm as well as the characteristic

peculiarities of Grecian mythical narrative. The hymnographer sings,

and his hearers accept in perfect good faith, a history of the past;

but it is a past, imagined partly as an introductory explanation to

the present, partly as a means of glorifying the god. The island

of Dêlos was the accredited birth-place of Apollo, and is also the

place in which he chiefly delights, where the great and brilliant

Ionic festival is periodically convened in his honor. Yet it is a

rock narrow, barren, and uninviting: how came so glorious a privilege

to be awarded to it? This the poet takes upon himself to explain.

Lêtô, pregnant with Apollo, and persecuted by the jealous Hêrê, could

find no spot wherein to give birth to her offspring. In vain did she

address herself to numerous places in Greece, the Asiatic coast and the

intermediate islands; all were terrified at the wrath of Hêrê, and

refused to harbor her. As a last resort, she approached the rejected

and repulsive island of Dêlos, and promised that, if shelter were

granted to her in her forlorn condition, the island should become the

chosen resort of Apollo as well as the site of his temple with its

rich accompanying solemnities.[99] Dêlos joyfully consented, but not

without many apprehensions that the potent Apollo would despise her

unworthiness, and not without exacting a formal oath from Lêtô,—who

was then admitted to the desired protection, and duly accomplished her

long and painful labor. Though Diônê, Rhea, Themis and Amphitritê came

to soothe and succor her, yet Hêrê kept away the goddess presiding

over childbirth, Eileithyia, and thus cruelly prolonged her pangs. At

length Eileithyia came, and Apollo was born. Hardly had Apollo tasted,

from the hands of Themis, the immortal food, nectar and ambrosia,

when he burst at once his infant bands, and displayed himself in full

divine form and strength, claiming his characteristic attributes

of the bow and the harp, and his privileged function of announcing

beforehand to mankind the designs of Zeus. The promise made by Lêtô to

Dêlos was faithfully performed: amidst the numberless other temples

and groves which men provided for him, he ever preferred that island

as his permanent residence, and there the Ionians with their wives

and children, and all their “bravery,” congregated periodically from

their different cities to glorify him. Dance and song and athletic

contests adorned the solemnity, and the countless ships, wealth, and

grace of the multitudinous Ionians had the air of an assembly of gods.

The Delian maidens, servants of Apollo, sang hymns to the glory of

the god, as well as of Artemis and Lêtô, intermingled with adventures

of foregone men and women, to the delight of the listening crowd. The

blind itinerant bard of Chios (composer of this the Homeric hymn,

and confounded in antiquity with the author of the Iliad) had found

honor and acceptance at this festival, and commends himself, in a

touching farewell strain, to the remembrance and sympathy of the Delian

maidens.[100]

[99] According to another legend, Lêtô was said to have been

conveyed from the Hyperboreans to Dêlos in twelve days, in

the form of a she-wolf, to escape the jealous eye of Hêrê. In

connection with this legend, it was affirmed that the she-wolves

always brought forth their young only during these twelve days in

the year (Aristot. Hist. Animal. vii. 35).

[100] Hom. Hymn. Apoll. i. 179.

But Dêlos was not an oracular spot: Apollo did not manifest himself

there as revealer of the futurities of Zeus. A place must be found

where this beneficent function, without which mankind would perish

under the innumerable doubts and perplexities of life, may be exercised

and rendered available. Apollo himself descends from Olympus to

make choice of a suitable site: the hymnographer knows a thousand

other adventures of the god which he might sing, but he prefers this

memorable incident, the charter and patent of consecration for the

Delphian temple. Many different places did Apollo inspect; he surveyed

the country of the Magnêtes and the Perrhæbians, came to Iôlkos,

and passed over from thence to Eubœa and the plain of Lelanton. But

even this fertile spot did not please him: he crossed the Euripus to

Bœotia, passed by Teumêssus and Mykalêssus, and the then inaccessible

and unoccupied forest on which the city of Thêbes afterwards stood.

He next proceeded to Onchêstos, but the grove of Poseidôn was already

established there; next across the Kêphissus to Okalea, Haliartus,

and the agreeable plain and much-frequented fountain of Delphusa, or

Tilphusa. Pleased with the place, Apollo prepared to establish his

oracle there, but Tilphusa was proud of the beauty of her own site,

and did not choose that her glory should be eclipsed by that of the

god.[101] She alarmed him with the apprehension that the chariots

which contended in her plain, and the horses and mules which watered

at her fountain would disturb the solemnity of his oracle; and she

thus induced him to proceed onward to the southern side of Parnassus,

overhanging the harbor of Krissa. Here he established his oracle, in

the mountainous site not frequented by chariots and horses, and near to

a fountain, which however was guarded by a vast and terrific serpent,

once the nurse of the monster Typhaôn. This serpent Apollo slew with an

arrow, and suffered its body to rot in the sun: hence the name of the

place, Pythô,[102] and the surname of the Pythian Apollo. The plan of

his temple being marked out, it was built by Trophônios and Agamêdês,

aided by a crowd of forward auxiliaries from the neighborhood. He now

discovered with indignation, however, that Tilphusa had cheated him,

and went back with swift step to resent it. “Thou shalt not thus,”

he said, “succeed in thy fraud and retain thy beautiful water; the

glory of the place shall be mine, and not thine alone.” Thus saying,

he tumbled down a crag upon the fountain, and obstructed her limpid

current: establishing an altar for himself in a grove hard by near

another spring, where men still worship him as Apollo Tilphusios,

because of his severe vengeance upon the once beautiful Tilphusa.[103]

[101] Hom. Hymn. Apoll. 262.

[102] Hom. Hymn. 363—πύθεσθαι, _to rot_.

[103] Hom. Hymn. Apoll. 381.

Apollo next stood in need of chosen ministers to take care of his

temple and sacrifice, and to pronounce his responses at Pythô.

Descrying a ship, “containing many and good men,” bound on traffic from

the Minoian Knossus in Krête, to Pylus in Peloponnêsus, he resolved

to make use of the ship and her crew for his purpose. Assuming the

shape of a vast dolphin, he splashed about and shook the vessel so

as to strike the mariners with terror, while he sent a strong wind,

which impelled her along the coast of Peloponnêsus into the Corinthian

Gulf, and finally to the harbor of Krissa, where she ran aground.

The affrighted crew did not dare to disembark: but Apollo was seen

standing on the shore in the guise of a vigorous youth, and inquired

who they were, and what was their business. The leader of the Krêtans

recounted in reply their miraculous and compulsory voyage, when Apollo

revealed himself as the author and contriver of it, announcing to them

the honorable function and the dignified post to which he destined

them.[104] They followed him by his orders to the rocky Pythô on

Parnassus, singing the solemn Io-Paian such as it is sung in Krête,

while the god himself marched at their head, with his fine form and

lofty step, playing on the harp. He showed them the temple and site

of the oracle, and directed them to worship him as Apollo Delphinios,

because they had first seen him in the shape of a dolphin. “But how,”

they inquired, “are we to live in a spot where there is neither corn,

nor vine, nor pasturage?” “Ye silly mortals,” answered the god, “who

look only for toil and privation, know that an easier lot is yours. Ye

shall live by the cattle whom crowds of pious visitors will bring to

the temple: ye shall need only the knife to be constantly ready for

sacrifice.[105] Your duty will be to guard my temple, and to officiate

as ministers at my feasts: but if ye be guilty of wrong or insolence,

either by word or deed, ye shall become the slaves of other men, and

shall remain so forever. Take heed of the word and the warning.”

[104] Hom. Hymn. Apoll. 475 _sqq._

[105] Homer. Hymn. Apoll. 535.—

Δεξιτέρῃ μάλ᾽ ἕκαστος ἔχων ἐν χειρὶ μάχαιραν

Σφάζειν αἰεὶ μῆλα· τὰ δ᾽ ἄφθονα πάντα πάρεσται,

Ὅσσα ἐμοίγ᾽ ἀγάγωσι περίκλυτα φῦλ᾽ ἀνθρώπων.

Such are the legends of Dêlos and Delphi, according to the Homeric Hymn

to Apollo. The specific functions of the god, and the chief localities

of his worship, together with the surnames attached to them, are

thus historically explained, being connected with his past acts and

adventures. Though these are to us only interesting poetry, yet to

those who heard them sung they possessed all the requisites of history,

and were fully believed as such, not because they were partially

founded in reality, but because they ran in complete harmony with the

feelings; and, so long as that condition was fulfilled, it was not

the fashion of the time to canvass truth or falsehood. The narrative

is purely personal, without any discernible symbolized doctrine or

allegory, to serve as a supposed ulterior purpose: the particular deeds

ascribed to Apollo grow out of the general preconceptions as to his

attributes, combined with the present realities of his worship. It is

neither history nor allegory, but simple mythe or legend.

The worship of Apollo is among the most ancient, capital, and strongly

marked facts of the Grecian world, and widely diffused over every

branch of the race. It is older than the Iliad or Odyssey, in the

latter of which both Pythô and Dêlos are noted, though Dêlos is not

named in the former. But the ancient Apollo is different in more

respects than one from the Apollo of later times. He is in an especial

manner the god of the Trojans, unfriendly to the Greeks, and especially

to Achilles; he has, moreover, only two primary attributes, his bow and

his prophetic powers, without any distinct connection either with the

harp, or with medicine, or with the sun, all which in later times he

came to comprehend. He is not only, as Apollo Karneius, the chief god

of the Doric race, but also (under the surname of Patrôus) the great

protecting divinity of the gentile tie among the Ionians:[106] he is

moreover the guide and stimulus to Grecian colonization, scarcely any

colony being ever sent out without encouragement and direction from the

oracle at Delphi: Apollo Archêgetês is one of his great surnames.[107]

His temple lends sanctity to the meetings of the Amphiktyonic assembly,

and he is always in filial subordination and harmony with his father

Zeus: Delphi and Olympia are never found in conflict. In the Iliad,

the warm and earnest patrons of the Greeks are Hêrê, Athênê, and

Poseidôn: here too Zeus and Apollo are seen in harmony, for Zeus is

decidedly well-inclined to the Trojans, and reluctantly sacrifices

them to the importunity of the two great goddesses.[108] The worship

of the Sminthian Apollo, in various parts of the Troad and the

neighboring territory, dates before the earliest periods of Æolic

colonization:[109] hence the zealous patronage of Troy ascribed to him

in the Iliad. Altogether, however, the distribution and partialities

of the gods in that poem are different from what they become in later

times,—a difference which our means of information do not enable us

satisfactorily to explain. Besides the Delphian temple, Apollo had

numerous temples throughout Greece, and oracles at Abæ in Phôkis, on

the Mount Ptôon, and at Tegyra in Bœotia, where he was said to have

been born,[110] at Branchidæ near Milêtus, at Klarus in Asia Minor, and

at Patara in Lykia. He was not the only oracular god: Zeus at Dodona

and at Olympia gave responses also: the gods or heroes Trophônius,

Amphiaraus, Amphilochus, Mopsus, etc., each at his own sanctuary and

in his own prescribed manner, rendered the same service.

[106] Harpocration v. Ἀπόλλων πατρῶος and Ἑρκεῖος Ζεύς. Apollo

Delphinios also belongs to the Ionic Greeks generally. Strabo,

iv. 179.

[107] Thucydid. vi. 3; Kallimach. Hymn. Apoll. 56.—

Φοῖβος γὰρ ἀεὶ πολίεσσι φιληδεῖ

Κτιζομέναις, αὐτὸς δὲ θεμείλια Φοῖβος ὑφαίνει.

[108] Iliad, iv. 30-46.

[109] Iliad, i. 38, 451; Stephan. Byz. Ἵλιον, Τένεδος. See also

Klausen, Æneas und die Penaten, b. i. p. 69. The worship of

Apollo Sminthios and the festival of the Sminthia at Alexandria

Troas lasted down to the time of Menander the rhêtôr, at the

close of the third century after Christ.

[110] Plutarch. Defect. Oracul. c. 5, p. 412; c. 8, p. 414;

Steph. Byz. v. Τεγύρα. The temple of the Ptôan Apollo had

acquired celebrity before the days of the poet Asius. Pausan. ix.

23, 3.

The two legends of Delphi and Dêlos, above noticed, form of course

a very insignificant fraction of the narratives which once existed

respecting the great and venerated Apollo. They serve only as

specimens, and as very early specimens,[111] to illustrate what

these divine mythes were, and what was the turn of Grecian faith and

imagination. The constantly recurring festivals of the gods caused

an incessant demand for new mythes respecting them, or at least for

varieties and reproductions of the old mythes. Even during the third

century of the Christian æra, in the time of the rhêtôr Menander,

when the old forms of Paganism were waning and when the stock of

mythes in existence was extremely abundant, we see this demand in

great force; but it was incomparably more operative in those earlier

times when the creative vein of the Grecian mind yet retained its

pristine and unfaded richness. Each god had many different surnames,

temples, groves, and solemnities; with each of which was connected

more or less of mythical narrative, originally hatched in the prolific

and spontaneous fancy of a believing neighborhood, to be afterwards

expanded, adorned and diffused by the song of the poet. The earliest

subject of competition[112] at the great Pythian festival was the

singing of a hymn in honor of Apollo: other _agones_ were subsequently

added, but the ode or hymn constituted the fundamental attribute of

the solemnity: the Pythia at Sikyôn and elsewhere were probably framed

on a similar footing. So too at the ancient and celebrated Charitêsia,

or festival of the Charites, at Orchomenos, the rivalry of the poets

in their various modes of composition both began and continued as the

predominant feature:[113] and the inestimable treasures yet remaining

to us of Attic tragedy and comedy, are gleanings from the once numerous

dramas exhibited at the solemnity of the Dionysia. The Ephesians gave

considerable rewards for the best hymns in honor of Artemis, to be sung

at her temple.[114] And the early lyric poets of Greece, though their

works have not descended to us, devoted their genius largely to similar

productions, as may be seen by the titles and fragments yet remaining.

[111] The legend which Ephorus followed about the establishment

of the Delphian temple was something radically different from

the Homeric Hymn (Ephori Fragm. 70, ed. Didot): his narrative

went far to politicize and rationalize the story. The progeny of

Apollo was very numerous, and of the most diverse attributes; he

was father of the Korybantes (Pherekydes, Fragm. 6, ed. Didot),

as well as of Asklêpios and Aristæus (Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. ii.

500; Apollodôr. iii. 10, 3).

[112] Strabo, ix. p. 421. Menander the Rhetor (Ap. Walz. Coll.

Rhett. t. ix. p. 136) gives an elaborate classification of hymns

to the gods, distinguishing them into nine classes,—κλητικοὶ,

ἀποπεμπτικοὶ, φυσικοὶ, μυθικοὶ, γενεαλογικοὶ, πεπλασμένοι,

εὐκτικοὶ, ἀπευκτικοὶ, μικτοί:—the second class had reference to

the temporary absences or departure of a god to some distant

place, which were often admitted in the ancient religion. Sappho

and Alkman in their _kletic_ hymns invoked the gods from many

different places,—τὴν μὲν γὰρ Ἄρτεμιν ἐκ μυρίων μὲν ὄρεων,

μυρίων δὲ πόλεων, ἔτι δὲ ποτάμων, ἀνακαλεῖ,—also Aphroditê and

Apollo, etc. All these songs were full of adventures and details

respecting the gods,—in other words of legendary matter.

[113] Pindar, Olymp. xiv.; Boeckh, Staatshaushaltung der Athener,

Appendix, § xx. p. 357.

[114] Alexander Ætolus, apud Macrobium, Saturn. v. 22.

Both the Christian and the Mahomedan religions have begun during the

historical age, have been propagated from one common centre, and have

been erected upon the ruins of a different pre-existing faith. With

none of these particulars did Grecian Paganism correspond. It took rise

in an age of imagination and feeling simply, without the restraints,

as well as without the aid, of writing or records, of history or

philosophy: it was, as a general rule, the spontaneous product of many

separate tribes and localities, imitation and propagation operating

as subordinate causes; it was moreover a primordial faith, as far as

our means of information enable us to discover. These considerations

explain to us two facts in the history of the early Pagan mind: first,

the divine mythes, the matter of their religion, constituted also

the matter of their earliest history; next, these mythes harmonized

with each other only in their general types, but differed incurably

in respect of particular incidents. The poet who sung a new adventure

of Apollo, the trace of which he might have heard in some remote

locality, would take care that it should be agreeable to the general

conceptions which his hearers entertained respecting the god. He would

not ascribe the cestus or amorous influences to Athênê, nor armed

interference and the ægis to Aphroditê; but, provided he maintained

this general keeping, he might indulge his fancy without restraint in

the particular events of the story.[115] The feelings and faith of

his hearers went along with him, and there were no critical scruples

to hold them back: to scrutinize the alleged proceedings of the gods

was repulsive, and to disbelieve them impious. And thus these divine

mythes, though they had their root simply in religious feelings, and

though they presented great discrepancies of fact, served nevertheless

as primitive matter of history to an early Greek: they were the only

narratives, at once publicly accredited and interesting, which he

possessed. To them were aggregated the heroic mythes (to which we shall

proceed presently),—indeed the two are inseparably blended, gods,

heroes and men almost always appearing in the same picture,—analogous

both in their structure and their genesis, and differing chiefly in the

circumstance that they sprang from the type of a hero instead of from

that of a god.

[115] The birth of Apollo and Artemis from Zeus and Lêtô is among

the oldest and most generally admitted facts in the Grecian

divine legends. Yet Æschylus did not scruple to describe Artemis

publicly as daughter of Dêmêtêr (Herodot. ii. 156; Pausan. viii.

37, 3). Herodotus thinks that he copied this innovation from the

Egyptians, who affirmed that Apollo and Artemis were the sons of

Dionysos and Isis.

The number and discrepancies of the mythes respecting each god

are attested by the fruitless attempts of learned Greeks to

escape the necessity of rejecting any of them by multiplying

homonymous personages,—three persons named Zeus; five named

Athênê; six named Apollo, etc. (Cicero. de Natur. Deor. iii. 21:

Clemen. Alexand. Admon. ad Gent. p. 17).

We are not to be astonished if we find Aphroditê, in the Iliad, born

from Zeus and Dionê,—and in the Theogony of Hesiod, generated from the

foam on the sea after the mutilation of Uranos; nor if in the Odyssey

she appears as the wife of Hêphæstos, while in the Theogony the latter

is married to Aglaia, and Aphroditê is described as mother of three

children by Arês.[116] The Homeric hymn to Aphroditê details the legend

of Aphroditê and Anchisês, which is presupposed in the Iliad as the

parentage of Æneas: but the author of the hymn, probably sung at one

of the festivals of Aphroditê in Cyprus, represents the goddess as

ashamed of her passion for a mortal, and as enjoining Anchisês under

severe menaces not to reveal who the mother of Æneas was;[117] while

in the Iliad she has no scruple in publicly owning him, and he passes

everywhere as her acknowledged son. Aphroditê is described in the hymn

as herself cold and unimpressible, but ever active and irresistible

in inspiring amorous feelings to gods, to men, and to animals. Three

goddesses are recorded as memorable exceptions to her universal

empire,—Athênê, Artemis, and Hestia or Vesta. Aphroditê was one of the

most important of all the goddesses in the mythical world; for the

number of interesting, pathetic and tragical adventures deducible from

misplaced or unhappy passion was of course very great; and in most

of these cases the intervention of Aphroditê was usually prefixed,

with some legend to explain why she manifested herself. Her range of

action grows wider in the later epic and lyric and tragic poets than in

Homer.[118]

[116] Hesiod, Theogon. 188, 934, 945; Homer, Iliad, v. 371;

Odyss. viii. 268.

[117] Homer, Hymn. Vener. 248, 286; Homer, Iliad, v. 320, 386.

[118] A large proportion of the Hesiodic epic related to the

exploits and adventures of the heroic women,—the Catalogue of

Women and the Eoiai embodied a string of such narratives. Hesiod

and Stesichorus explained the conduct of Helen and Klytæmnêstra

by the anger of Aphroditê, caused by the neglect of their

father Tyndareus to sacrifice to her (Hesiod, Fragm. 59, ed.

Düntzer; Stesichor. Fragm. 9, ed. Schneidewin): the irresistible

ascendency of Aphroditê is set forth in the Hippolytus of

Euripidês not less forcibly than that of Dionysos in the Bacchæ.

The character of Daphnis the herdsman, well-known from the first

Idyll of Theocritus, and illustrating the destroying force of

Aphroditê, appears to have been first introduced into Greek

poetry by Stesichorus (see Klausen, Æneas und die Penaten, vol.

i. pp. 526-529). Compare a striking piece among the Fragmenta

Incerta of Sophoklês (Fr. 63, Brunck) and Euripid. Troad. 946,

995, 1048. Even in the Opp. et Di. of Hesiod, Aphroditê is

conceived rather as a disturbing and injurious influence (v. 65).

Adonis owes his renown to the Alexandrine poets and their

contemporary sovereigns (see Bion’s Idyll and the Adoniazusæ of

Theocritus). The favorites of Aphroditê, even as counted up by

the diligence of Clemens Alexandrinus, are however very few in

number. (Admonitio ad Gent. p. 12, Sylb.)

Athênê, the man-goddess,[119] born from the head of Zeus, without

a mother and without feminine sympathies, is the antithesis

partly of Aphroditê, partly of the effeminate or womanized god

Dionysos—the latter is an importation from Asia, but Athênê is a Greek

conception—the type of composed, majestic and unrelenting force. It

appears however as if this goddess had been conceived in a different

manner in different parts of Greece. For we find ascribed to her, in

some of the legends, attributes of industry and home-keeping; she is

represented as the companion of Hêphæstos, patronizing handicraft, and

expert at the loom and the spindle: the Athenian potters worshipped

her along with Promêtheus. Such traits of character do not square with

the formidable ægis and the massive and crushing spear which Homer and

most of the mythes assign to her. There probably were at first at least

two different types of Athênê, and their coalescence has partially

obliterated the less marked of the two.[120] Athênê is the constant

and watchful protectress of Hêraklês: she is also locally identified

with the soil and people of Athens, even in the Iliad: Erechtheus, the

Athenian, is born of the earth, but Athênê brings him up, nourishes

him, and lodges him in her own temple, where the Athenians annually

worship him with sacrifice and solemnities.[121] It was altogether

impossible to make Erechtheus son of Athênê,—the type of the goddess

forbade it; but the Athenian mythe-creators, though they found this

barrier impassable, strove to approach to it as near as they could,

and the description which they give of the birth of Erichthonios, at

once un-Homeric and unseemly, presents something like the phantom of

maternity.[122]

[119] Ἀνδροθέᾳ δῶρον ... Ἀθάνᾳ Simmias Rhodius; Πέλεκυς, ap.

Hephæstion. c. 9. p. 54, Gaisford.

[120] Apollodôr. ap. Schol. ad Sophokl. Œdip. vol. 57; Pausan.

i. 24, 3; ix. 26, 3; Diodôr. v. 73; Plato, Legg. xi. p. 920. In

the Opp. et Di. of Hesiod, the carpenter is the servant of Athênê

(429): see also Phereklos the τέκτων in the Iliad, v. 61: compare

viii. 385; Odyss. viii. 493; and the Homeric Hymn, to Aphroditê,

v. 12. The learned article of O. Müller (in the Encyclopædia of

Ersch and Gruber, since republished among his Kleine Deutsche

Schriften, p. 134 _seq._), _Pallas Athênê_, brings together all

that can be known about this goddess.

[121] Iliad, ii. 546; viii. 362.

[122] Apollodôr. iii. 4, 6. Compare the vague language of Plato,

Kritias, c. iv., and Ovid, Metamorph. ii. 757.

The huntress Artemis, in Arcadia and in Greece proper generally,

exhibits a well-defined type with which the legends respecting her

are tolerably consistent. But the Ephesian as well as the Tauric

Artemis partakes more of the Asiatic character, and has borrowed the

attributes of the Lydian Great Mother as well as of an indigenous

Tauric Virgin:[123] this Ephesian Artemis passed to the colonies of

Phokæa and Milêtus.[124] The Homeric Artemis shares with her brother

Apollo in the dexterous use of the far-striking bow, and sudden death

is described by the poet as inflicted by her gentle arrow. The jealousy

of the gods at the withholding of honors and sacrifices, or at the

presumption of mortals in contending with them,—a point of character so

frequently recurring in the types of the Grecian gods,—manifests itself

in the legends of Artemis: the memorable Kalydônian boar is sent by her

as a visitation upon Œneus, because he had omitted to sacrifice to her,

while he did honor to other gods.[125] The Arcadian heroine Atalanta is

however a reproduction of Artemis, with little or no difference, and

the goddess is sometimes confounded even with her attendant nymphs.

[123] Herodot. iv. 103; Strabo, xii. p. 534; xiii. p. 650. About

the Ephesian Artemis, see Guhl, Ephesiaca (Berlin, 1843), p.

79 _sqq._; Aristoph. Nub. 590; Autokrates in Tympanistis apud

Ælian. Hist. Animal. xii. 9; and Spanheim ad Kallimach. Hymn.

Dian. 36. The dances in honor of Artemis sometimes appear to

have approached to the frenzied style of Bacchanal movement. See

the words of Timotheus ap. Plutarch. de Audiend. Poet. p. 22, c.

4, and περὶ Δεισιδ. c. 10, p. 170, also Aristoph. Lysist. 1314.

They seem to have been often celebrated in the solitudes of the

mountains, which were the favorite resort of Artemis (Kallimach.

Hymn. Dian. 19), and these ὀρειβάσιαι were always causes

predisposing to fanatical excitement.

[124] Strabo, iv. p. 179.

[125] Iliad, ix. 529.

The mighty Poseidôn, the earth-shaker and the ruler of the sea, is

second only to Zeus in power, but has no share in those imperial and

superintending capacities which the Father of gods and men exhibits.

He numbers a numerous heroic progeny, usually men of great corporeal

strength, and many of them belonging to the Æolic race: the great

Neleid family of Pylus trace their origin up to him; and he is also

the father of Polyphêmus the Cyclôps, whose well-earned suffering

he cruelly revenges upon Odysseus. The island of Kalaureia is his

Dêlos,[126] and there was held in it an old local Amphiktyony, for the

purpose of rendering to him joint honor and sacrifice: the isthmus of

Corinth, Helikê in Achaia, and Onchêstos in Bœotia, are also residences

which he much affects, and where he is solemnly worshipped. But the

abode which he originally and specially selected for himself was the

Acropolis of Athens, where by a blow of his trident he produced a

well of water in the rock: Athênê came afterwards and claimed the

spot for herself, planting in token of possession the olive-tree

which stood in the sacred grove of Pandrosos: and the decision either

of the autochthonous Cecrops, or of Erechtheus, awarded to her the

preference, much to the displeasure of Poseidôn. Either on this

account, or on account of the death of his son Eumolpus, slain in

assisting the Eleusinians against Erechtheus, the Attic mythes ascribed

to Poseidôn great enmity against the Erechtheid family, which he is

asserted to have ultimately overthrown: Theseus, whose glorious reign

and deeds succeeded to that family, is said to have been really his

son.[127] In several other places,—in Ægina, Argos and Naxos,—Poseidôn

had disputed the privileges of patron-god with Zeus, Hêrê and Dionysos:

he was worsted in all, but bore his defeat patiently.[128] Poseidôn

endured a long slavery, in common with Apollo, gods as they were,[129]

under Laomedôn, king of Troy, at the command and condemnation of Zeus:

the two gods rebuilt the walls of the city, which had been destroyed

by Hêraklês. When their time was expired, the insolent Laomedôn

withheld from them the stipulated reward, and even accompanied its

refusal with appalling threats; and the subsequent animosity of the

god against Troy was greatly determined by the sentiment of this

injustice.[130] Such periods of servitude, inflicted upon individual

gods, are among the most remarkable of all the incidents in the divine

legends. We find Apollo on another occasion condemned to serve Admêtus,

king of Pheræ, as a punishment for having killed the Cyclôpes, and

Hêraklês also is sold as a slave to Omphalê. Even the fierce Arês,

overpowered and imprisoned for a long time by the two Alôids,[131] is

ultimately liberated only by extraneous aid. Such narratives attest

the discursive range of Grecian fancy in reference to the gods, as

well as the perfect commingling of things and persons, divine and

human, in their conceptions of the past. The god who serves is for

the time degraded: but the supreme god who commands the servitude is

in the like proportion exalted, whilst the idea of some sort of order

and government among these superhuman beings was never lost sight of.

Nevertheless the mythes respecting the servitude of the gods became

obnoxious afterwards, along with many others, to severe criticism on

the part of philosophers.

[126] Strabo, viii. p. 374. According to the old poem called

Eumolpia, ascribed to Musæus, the oracle of Delphi originally

belonged to Poseidôn and Gæa, jointly: from Gæa it passed to

Themis, and from her to Apollo, to whom Poseidôn also made over

his share as a compensation for the surrender of Kalaureia to

him. (Pausan. x. 5, 3).

[127] Apollodôr. iii. 14, 1; iii. 15, 3, 5.

[128] Plutarch, Sympos. viii. 6, p. 741.

[129] Iliad, ii. 716, 766; Euripid. Alkêstis, 2. See Panyasis,

Fragm. 12, p. 24, ed. Düntzer.

[130] Iliad, vii. 452; xxi. 459.

[131] Iliad, v. 386.

The proud, jealous, and bitter Hêrê,—the goddess of the once-wealthy

Mykênæ, the _fax et focus_ of the Trojan war, and the ever-present

protectress of Jasôn in the Argonautic expedition,[132]—occupies an

indispensable station in the mythical world. As the daughter of Kronos

and wife of Zeus, she fills a throne from whence he cannot dislodge

her, and which gives her a right perpetually to grumble and to thwart

him.[133] Her unmeasured jealousy of the female favorites of Zeus, and

her antipathy against his sons, especially against Hêraklês, has been

the suggesting cause of innumerable mythes: the general type of her

character stands here clearly marked, as furnishing both stimulus and

guide to the mythopœic fancy. The “Sacred Wedding,” or marriage of Zeus

and Hêrê, was familiar to epithalamic poets long before it became a

theme for the spiritualizing ingenuity of critics.

[132] Iliad, iv. 51; Odyss. xii. 72.

[133] Iliad, i. 544; iv. 29-38; viii. 408.

Hêphæstos is the son of Hêrê without a father, and stands to her in

the same relation as Athênê to Zeus: her pride and want of sympathy

are manifested by her casting him out at once in consequence of his

deformity.[134] He is the god of fire, and especially of fire in its

practical applications to handicraft, and is indispensable as the

right-hand and instrument of the gods. His skill and his deformity

appear alternately as the source of mythical stories: wherever

exquisite and effective fabrication is intended to be designated,

Hêphæstos is announced as the maker, although in this function the

type of his character is reproduced in Dædalos. In the Attic legends

he appears intimately united both with Promêtheus and with Athênê, in

conjunction with whom he was worshipped at Kolônus near Athens. Lemnos

was the favorite residence of Hêphæstos; and if we possessed more

knowledge of this island and its town Hêphæstias, we should doubtless

find abundant legends detailing his adventures and interventions.

[134] Iliad, xviii. 306.

The chaste, still, and home-keeping Hestia, goddess of the family

hearth, is far less fruitful in mythical narratives, in spite of her

very superior dignity, than the knavish, smooth-tongued, keen, and

acquisitive Hermês. His function of messenger of the gods brings him

perpetually on the stage, and affords ample scope for portraying the

features of his character. The Homeric hymn to Hermês describes the

scene and circumstances of his birth, and the almost instantaneous

manifestation, even in infancy, of his peculiar attributes; it explains

the friendly footing on which he stood with Apollo,—the interchange of

gifts and functions between them,—and lastly, the inviolate security

of all the wealth and offerings in the Delphian temple, exposed as

they were to thieves without any visible protection. Such was the

innate cleverness and talent of Hermês, that on the day he was born

he invented the lyre, stringing the seven chords on the shell of a

tortoise:[135] and he also stole the cattle of Apollo in Pieria,

dragging them backwards to his cave in Arcadia, so that their track

could not be detected. To the remonstrances of his mother Maia, who

points out to him the danger of offending Apollo, Hermês replies, that

he aspires to rival the dignity and functions of Apollo among the

immortals, and that if his father Zeus refuses to grant them to him,

he will employ his powers of thieving in breaking open the sanctuary

at Delphi, and in carrying away the gold and the vestments, the

precious tripods and vessels.[136] Presently Apollo discovers the loss

of his cattle, and after some trouble finds his way to the Kyllênian

cavern, where he sees Hermês asleep in his cradle. The child denies

the theft with effrontery, and even treats the surmise as a ridiculous

impossibility: he persists in such denial even before Zeus, who however

detects him at once, and compels him to reveal the place where the

cattle are concealed. But the lyre was as yet unknown to Apollo, who

has heard nothing except the voice of the Muses and the sound of the

pipe. So powerfully is he fascinated by hearing the tones of the lyre

from Hermês, and so eager to become possessed of it, that he is willing

at once to pardon the past theft, and even to conciliate besides the

friendship of Hermês.[137] Accordingly a bargain is struck between the

two gods and sanctioned by Zeus. Hermês surrenders to Apollo the lyre,

inventing for his own use the syrinx or panspipe, and receiving from

Apollo in exchange the golden rod of wealth, with empire over flocks

and herds as well as over horses and oxen and the wild animals of the

woods. He presses to obtain the gift of prophecy, but Apollo is under

a special vow not to impart that privilege to any god whatever: he

instructs Hermês however how to draw information, to a certain extent,

from the Mœræ or Fates themselves; and assigns to him, over and above,

the function of messenger of the gods to Hadês.

[135] Homer. Hymn. Mercur. 18.—

Ἤῳος γεγονὼς, μέσῳ ἥματι ἐγκιθάριζεν,

Ἑσπέριος βοῦς κλέψεν ἑκηβόλου Ἀπόλλωνος, etc.

[136] Homer. Hymn. Merc. 177.—

Εἰμὶ γὰρ ἐς Πύθωνα, μέγαν δόμον ἀντιτορήσων,

Ἔνθεν ἅλις τρίποδας περικαλλέας, ἠδὲ λέβητας

Πορθήσω καὶ χρυσὸν, etc.

[137] Homer. Hymn. Merc. 442-454.

Although Apollo has acquired the lyre, the particular object of his

wishes, he is still under apprehension that Hermês will steal it away

from him again, together with his bow, and he exacts a formal oath by

Styx as security. Hermês promises solemnly that he will steal none of

the acquisitions, nor ever invade the sanctuary of Apollo; while the

latter on his part pledges himself to recognize Hermês as his chosen

friend and companion, amongst all the other sons of Zeus, human or

divine.[138]

[138] Homer. Hymn. Merc. 504-520.—

Καὶ τὸ μὲν Ἑρμῆς

Λητοΐδην ἐφίλησε διαμπερὲς, ὡς ἔτι καὶ νῦν, etc.

· · · · ·

Καὶ τότε Μαίαδος υἱὸς ὑποσχόμενος κατένευσε

Μή ποτ᾽ ἀποκλέψειν, ὅσ᾽ Ἑκήβολος ἐκτεάτισται,

Μηδέ ποτ᾽ ἐμπελάσειν πυκίνῳ δόμῳ· αὐτὰρ Ἀπόλλων

Λητοΐδης κατένευσεν ἐπ᾽ ἀρθμῷ καὶ φιλότητι

Μή τινα φίλτερον ἄλλον ἐν ἀθανάτοισιν ἔσεσθαι

Μήτε θεὸν, μήτ᾽ ἄνδρα Διὸς γόνον, etc.

So came to pass, under the sanction of Zeus, the marked favor shown

by Apollo to Hermês. But Hermês (concludes the hymnographer, with

frankness unusual in speaking of a god) “does very little good: he

avails himself of the darkness of night to cheat without measure the

tribes of mortal men.”[139]

[139] Homer. Hymn. Merc. 574.—

Παῦρα μὲν οὖν ὀνίνησι, τὸ δ᾽ ἄκριτον ἠπεροπεύει

Νύκτα δι᾽ ὀρφναίην φῦλα θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων.

Here the general types of Hermês and Apollo, coupled with the present

fact that no thief ever approached the rich and seemingly accessible

treasures of Delphi, engender a string of expository incidents cast

into a quasi-historical form and detailing how it happened that Hermês

had bound himself by especial convention to respect the Delphian

temple. The types of Apollo seem to have been different in different

times and parts of Greece: in some places he was worshipped as Apollo

Nomios,[140] or the patron of pasture and cattle; and this attribute,

which elsewhere passed over to his son Aristæus, is by our hymnographer

voluntarily surrendered to Hermês, combined with the golden rod of

fruitfulness. On the other hand, the lyre did not originally belong to

the Far-striking King, nor is he at all an inventor: the hymn explains

both its first invention and how it came into his possession. And the

value of the incidents is thus partly expository, partly illustrative,

as expanding in detail the general preconceived character of the

Kyllênian god.

[140] Kallimach. Hymn. Apoll. 47.

To Zeus more amours are ascribed than to any of the other

gods,—probably because the Grecian kings and chieftains were especially

anxious to trace their lineage to the highest and most glorious

of all,—each of these amours having its representative progeny on

earth.[141] Such subjects were among the most promising and agreeable

for the interest of mythical narrative, and Zeus as a lover thus became

the father of a great many legends, branching out into innumerable

interferences, for which his sons, all of them distinguished

individuals, and many of them persecuted by Hêrê, furnished the

occasion. But besides this, the commanding functions of the supreme

god, judicial and administrative, extending both over gods and men, was

a potent stimulus to the mythopœic activity. Zeus has to watch over

his own dignity,—the first of all considerations with a god: moreover

as Horkios, Xenios, Ktêsios, Meilichios, (a small proportion of his

thousand surnames,) he guaranteed oaths and punished perjurers, he

enforced the observance of hospitality, he guarded the family hoard

and the crop realized for the year, and he granted expiation to the

repentant criminal.[142] All these different functions created a

demand for mythes, as the means of translating a dim, but serious,

presentiment into distinct form, both self-explaining and communicable

to others. In enforcing the sanctity of the oath or of the tie of

hospitality, the most powerful of all arguments would be a collection

of legends respecting the judgments of Zeus Horkios or Xenios; the more

impressive and terrific such legends were, the greater would be their

interest, and the less would any one dare to disbelieve them. They

constituted the natural outpourings of a strong and common sentiment,

probably without any deliberate ethical intention: the preconceptions

of the divine agency, expanded into legend, form a product analogous to

the idea of the divine features and symmetry embodied in the bronze or

the marble statue.

[141] Kallimach. Hymn. Jov. 79. Ἐκ δὲ Διὸς βασιλῆες, etc.

[142] See Herodot. i. 44. Xenoph. Anabas. vii. 8, 4. Plutarch,

Thêseus, c. 12.

But it was not alone the general type and attributes of the gods which

contributed to put in action the mythopœic propensities. The rites and

solemnities forming the worship of each god, as well as the details

of his temple and its locality, were a fertile source of mythes,

respecting his exploits and sufferings, which to the people who heard

them served the purpose of past history. The exegetes, or local guide

and interpreter, belonging to each temple, preserved and recounted to

curious strangers these traditional narratives, which lent a certain

dignity even to the minutiæ of divine service. Out of a stock of

materials thus ample, the poets extracted individual collections, such

as the “Causes” (Αἴτια) of Kallimachus, now lost, and such as the Fasti

of Ovid are for the Roman religious antiquities.[143]

[143] Ovid, Fasti, iv. 211, about the festivals of Apollo:—

“Priscique imitamina facti

Æra Deæ comites raucaque terga movent.”

And Lactantius, v. 19, 15. “Ipsos ritus ex rebus gestis (deorum)

vel ex casibus vel etiam ex mortibus, natos:” to the same purpose

Augustin. De Civ. D. vii. 18; Diodôr. iii. 56. Plutarch’s

Quæstiones Græcæ et Romaicæ are full of similar tales, professing

to account for existing customs, many of them religious and

liturgic. See Lobeck, Orphica, p. 675.

It was the practice to offer to the gods in sacrifice the bones of the

victim only, inclosed in fat: how did this practice arise? The author

of the Hesiodic Theogony has a story which explains it: Promêtheus

tricked Zeus into an imprudent choice, at the period when the gods and

mortal men first came to an arrangement about privileges and duties

(in Mekônê). Promêtheus, the tutelary representative of man, divided

a large steer into two portions: on the one side he placed the flesh

and guts, folded up in the omentum and covered over with the skin: on

the other, he put the bones enveloped in fat. He then invited Zeus to

determine which of the two portions the gods would prefer to receive

from mankind. Zeus “with both hands” decided for and took the white

fat, but was highly incensed on finding that he had got nothing at the

bottom except the bones.[144] Nevertheless the choice of the gods was

now irrevocably made: they were not entitled to any portion of the

sacrificed animal beyond the bones and the white fat; and the standing

practice is thus plausibly explained.[145] I select this as one amongst

a thousand instances to illustrate the genesis of legend out of

religious practices. In the belief of the people, the event narrated in

the legend was the real producing cause of the practice: but when we

come to apply a sound criticism, we are compelled to treat the event as

existing only in its narrative legend, and the legend itself as having

been, in the greater number of cases, engendered by the practice,—thus

reversing the supposed order of production.

[144] Hesiod, Theog. 550.—

Φῆ ῥα δολοφρονέων· Ζεὺς δ᾽ ἄφθιτα μήδεα εἰδὼς

Γνῶ ῥ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ἠγνοίησε δόλον· κακὰ δ᾽ ὄσσετο θυμῷ

Θνητοῖς ἀνθρώποισι, τὰ καὶ τελέεσθαι ἔμελλεν.

Χερσὶ δ᾽ ὅγ᾽ ἀμφοτέρῃσιν ἀνείλετο λευκὸν ἄλειφαρ·

Χώσατο δὲ φρένας, ἀμφὶ χόλος δέ μιν ἵκετο θυμὸν,

Ὡς ἴδεν ὀστέα λευκὰ βοὸς δολίῃ ἐπὶ τέχνῃ.

In the second line of this citation, the poet tells us that Zeus

saw through the trick, and was imposed upon by his own consent,

foreknowing that after all the mischievous consequences of the

proceeding would be visited on man. But the last lines, and

indeed the whole drift of the legend, imply the contrary of this:

Zeus was really taken in, and was in consequence very angry. It

is curious to observe how the religious feelings of the poet

drive him to save in words the prescience of Zeus, though in

doing so he contradicts and nullifies the whole point of the

story.

[145] Hesiod, Theog. 557.—

Ἐκ τοῦ δ᾽ ἀθανάτοισιν ἐπὶ χθονὶ φῦλ᾽ ἀνθρώπων

Καίουσ᾽ ὀστέα λευκὰ θυηέντων ἐπὶ βωμῶν.

In dealing with Grecian mythes generally, it is convenient to

distribute them into such as belong to the Gods and such as belong

to the Heroes, according as the one or the other are the prominent

personages. The former class manifests, more palpably than the latter,

their real origin, as growing out of the faith and the feelings,

without any necessary basis, either of matter of fact or allegory:

moreover, they elucidate more directly the religion of the Greeks, so

important an item in their character as a people. But in point of fact,

most of the mythes present to us Gods, Heroes and Men, in juxtaposition

one with the other and the richness of Grecian mythical literature

arises from the infinite diversity of combinations thus opened out;

first by the three class-types, God, Hero, and Man; next by the strict

keeping with which each separate class and character is handled. We

shall now follow downward the stream of mythical time, which begins

with the Gods, to the Heroic legends, or those which principally

concern the Heroes and Heroines; for the latter were to the full as

important in legend as the former.

CHAPTER II.

LEGENDS RELATING TO HEROES AND MEN.

The Hesiodic theogony gives no account of anything like a creation of

man, nor does it seem that such an idea was much entertained in the

legendary vein of Grecian imagination; which commonly carried back

the present men by successive generations to some primitive ancestor,

himself sprung from the soil, or from a neighboring river or mountain,

or from a god, a nymph, etc. But the poet of the Hesiodic “Works and

Days” has given us a narrative conceived in a very different spirit

respecting the origin of the human race, more in harmony with the sober

and melancholy ethical tone which reigns through that poem.[146]

[146] Hesiod, as cited in the Etymologicon Magnum (probably

the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, as Marktscheffel considers

it, placing it Fragm. 133), gives the parentage of a certain

_Brotos_, who must probably be intended as the first of men:

Βρότος, ὡς μὲν Εὐήμερος ὁ Μεσσήνιος, ἀπὸ Βρότου τινὸς αὐτόχθονος·

ὁ δὲ Ἡσίοδος, ἀπὸ Βρότου τοῦ Αἴθερος καὶ Ἡμέρας.

First (he tells us) the Olympic gods made the golden race,—good,

perfect, and happy men, who lived from the spontaneous abundance of the

earth, in ease and tranquillity like the gods themselves: they suffered

neither disease nor old age, and their death was like a gentle sleep.

After death they became, by the award of Zeus, guardian terrestrial

dæmons, who watch unseen over the proceedings of mankind—with the regal

privilege of dispensing to them wealth, and taking account of good and

bad deeds.[147]

[147] Opp. Di. 120.—

Αὐτὰρ ἐπειδὴ τοῦτο γένος κατὰ γαῖα κάλυψεν

Τοὶ μὲν δαίμονές εἰσι Διὸς μεγάλου διὰ βουλὰς

Ἐσθλοὶ, ἐπιχθόνιοι, φύλακες θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων·

Οἵ ῥα φυλάσσουσίν τε δίκας καὶ σχέτλια ἔργα,

Ἠέρα ἑσσάμενοι, πάντη φοιτῶντες ἐπ᾽ αἶαν

Πλουτόδοται· καὶ τοῦτο γέρας βασιληΐον ἔσχον.

Next, the gods made the silver race,—unlike and greatly inferior, both

in mind and body, to the golden. The men of this race were reckless and

mischievous towards each other, and disdainful of the immortal gods,

to whom they refused to offer either worship or sacrifice. Zeus in his

wrath buried them in the earth: but there they still enjoy a secondary

honor, as the Blest of the under-world.[148]

[148] Opp. Di. 140.—

Αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ καὶ τοῦτο γένος κατὰ γαῖα κάλυψε,

Τοὶ μὲν ὑποχθόνιοι μάκαρες θνητοὶ καλέονται

Δεύτεροι, ἀλλ᾽ ἔμπης τιμὴ καὶ τοῖσιν ὀπηδεῖ.

Thirdly, Zeus made the brazen race, quite different from the silver.

They were made of hard ash-wood, pugnacious and terrible; they were

of immense strength and adamantine soul, nor did they raise or touch

bread. Their arms, their houses, and their implements were all of

brass: there was then no iron. This race, eternally fighting, perished

by each other’s hands, died out, and descended without name or

privilege to Hadês.[149]

[149] The ash was the wood out of which spear-handles were made

(Iliad, xvi. 142): the Νύμφαι Μέλιαι are born along with the

Gigantes and the Erinnyes (Theogon. 187),—“gensque virûm truncis

et duro robore nata” (Virgil, Æneid, viii. 315),—_hearts of oak_.

Next, Zeus made a fourth race, far juster and better than the last

preceding. These were the Heroes or demigods, who fought at the sieges

of Troy and Thêbes. But this splendid stock also became extinct: some

perished in war, others were removed by Zeus to a happier state in the

islands of the Blest. There they dwell in peace and comfort, under

the government of Kronos, reaping thrice in the year the spontaneous

produce of the earth.[150]

[150] Opp. Di. 157.—

Ἀνδρῶν Ἡρώων θεῖον γένος, οἳ καλέονται

Ἡμίθεοι προτέρῃ γενέῃ κατ᾽ ἀπείρονα γαῖαν.

The fifth race, which succeeds to the Heroes, is of iron: it is the

race to which the poet himself belongs, and bitterly does he regret it.

He finds his contemporaries mischievous, dishonest, unjust, ungrateful,

given to perjury, careless both of the ties of consanguinity and of the

behests of the gods: Nemesis and Ædôs (Ethical Self-reproach) have left

earth and gone back to Olympus. How keenly does he wish that his lot

had been cast either earlier or later![151] This iron race is doomed to

continual guilt, care, and suffering, with a small infusion of good;

but the time will come when Zeus will put an end to it. The poet does

not venture to predict what sort of race will succeed.

[151] Opp. Di. 173.—

Μηκέτ᾽ ἔπειτ᾽ ὤφειλον ἐγὼ πέμπτοισι μετεῖναι

Ἀνδράσιν, ἀλλ᾽ ἢ πρόσθε θανεῖν, ἢ ἔπειτα γενέσθαι.

Νῦν γὰρ δὴ γένος ἐστὶ σιδήρεον....

Such is the series of distinct races of men, which Hesiod, or the

author of the “Works and Days,” enumerates as having existed down to

his own time. I give it as it stands, without placing much confidence

in the various explanations which critics have offered. It stands

out in more than one respect from the general tone and sentiment of

Grecian legend: moreover the sequence of races is neither natural nor

homogeneous,—the heroic race not having any metallic denomination,

and not occupying any legitimate place in immediate succession to the

brazen. Nor is the conception of the dæmons in harmony either with

Homer or with the Hesiodic theogony. In Homer, there is scarcely any

distinction between gods and dæmons, while the gods are stated to

go about and visit the cities of men in various disguises for the

purpose of inspecting good and evil proceedings.[152] But in the poem

now before us, the distinction between gods and dæmons is generic.

The latter are invisible tenants of earth, remnants of the once happy

golden race whom the Olympic gods first made: the remnants of the

second or silver race are not dæmons, nor are they tenants of earth,

but they still enjoy an honorable posthumous existence as the Blest of

the under-world. Nevertheless the Hesiodic dæmons are in no way authors

or abettors of evil: on the contrary, they form the unseen police of

the gods, for the purpose of repressing wicked behavior in the world.

[152] Odyss. xvii. 486.

We may trace, I think, in this quintuple succession of earthly races,

set forth by the author of the “Works and Days,” the confluence of

two veins of sentiment, not consistent one with the other, yet both

coëxisting in the author’s mind. The drift of his poem is thoroughly

didactic and ethical: though deeply penetrated with the injustice and

suffering which darken the face of human life, he nevertheless strives

to maintain, both in himself and in others, a conviction that on the

whole the just and laborious man will come off well,[153] and he

enforces in considerable detail the lessons of practical prudence and

virtue. This ethical sentiment, which dictates his appreciation of the

present, also guides his imagination as to the past. It is pleasing

to him to bridge over the chasm between the gods and degenerate man,

by the supposition of previous races,—the first altogether pure, the

second worse than the first, and the third still worse than the second;

and to show further how the first race passed by gentle death-sleep

into glorious immortality; how the second race was sufficiently wicked

to drive Zeus to bury them in the under-world, yet still leaving them

a certain measure of honor; while the third was so desperately violent

as to perish by its own animosities, without either name or honor of

any kind. The conception of the golden race passing after death into

good guardian dæmons, which some suppose to have been derived from a

comparison with oriental angels, presents itself to the poet partly as

approximating this race to the gods, partly as a means of constituting

a triple gradation of post-obituary existence, proportioned to the

character of each race whilst alive. The denominations of gold and

silver, given to the first two races, justify themselves, like those

given by Simonidês of Amorgos and by Phokylidês to the different

characters of women, derived from the dog, the bee, the mare, the ass,

and other animals; and the epithet of brazen is specially explained

by reference to the material which the pugnacious third race so

plentifully employed for their arms and other implements.

[153] There are some lines, in which he appears to believe that,

under the present wicked and treacherous rulers, it is not the

interest of any man to be just (Opp. Di. 270):—

Νῦν δὴ ἐγὼ μήτ᾽ αὐτὸς ἐν ἀνθρώποισι δίκαιος

Εἴην, μήτ᾽ ἐμὸς υἱός· ἐπεὶ κακόν ἐστι δίκαιον

Ἔμμεναι, εἰ μείζω γε δίκην ἀδικώτερος ἕξει·

Ἀλλὰ τόδ᾽ οὔπω ἔολπα τελεῖν Δία τερπικέραυνον.

On the whole, however, his conviction is to the contrary.

Plutarch rejects the above four lines, seemingly on no other

ground than because he thought them immoral and unworthy of

Hesiod (see Proclus _ad loc._). But they fall in perfectly with

the temper of the poem: and the rule of Plutarch is inadmissible,

in determining the critical question of what is genuine or

spurious.

So far we trace intelligibly enough the moralizing vein: we find the

revolutions of the past so arranged as to serve partly as an ethical

lesson, partly as a suitable preface to the present.[154] But fourth

in the list comes “the divine race of Heroes:” and here a new vein

of thought is opened by the poet. The symmetry of his ethical past

is broken up, in order to make way for these cherished beings of the

national faith. For though the author of the “Works and Days” was

himself of a didactic cast of thought, like Phokylidês, or Solôn,

or Theognis, yet he had present to his feelings, in common with his

countrymen, the picture of Grecian foretime, as it was set forth in

the current mythes, and still more in Homer and those other epical

productions which were then the only existing literature and history.

It was impossible for him to exclude, from his sketch of the past,

either the great persons or the glorious exploits which these poems

ennobled; and even if he himself could have consented to such an

exclusion, the sketch would have become repulsive to his hearers.

But the chiefs who figured before Thêbes and Troy could not be well

identified either with the golden, the silver, or the brazen race:

moreover it was essential that they should be placed in immediate

contiguity with the present race, because their descendants, real or

supposed, were the most prominent and conspicuous of existing men.

Hence the poet is obliged to assign to them the fourth place in the

series, and to interrupt the descending ethical movement in order to

interpolate them between the brazen and the iron race, with neither

of which they present any analogy. The iron race, to which the poet

himself unhappily belongs, is the legitimate successor, not of the

heroic, but of the brazen. Instead of the fierce and self-annihilating

pugnacity which characterizes the latter, the iron race manifests

an aggregate of smaller and meaner vices and mischiefs. It will not

perish by suicidal extinction—but it is growing worse and worse, and is

gradually losing its vigor, so that Zeus will not vouchsafe to preserve

much longer such a race upon the earth.

[154] Aratus (Phænomen. 107) gives only three successive

races,—the golden, silver, and brazen; Ovid superadds to these

the iron race (Metamorph. i. 89-144): neither of them notice the

heroic race.

The observations both of Buttmann (Mythos der ältesten

Menschengeschlechter, t. ii. p. 12 of the Mythologus) and of

Völcker (Mythologie des Japetischen Geschlechts, § 6, pp.

250-279) on this series of distinct races, are ingenious, and

may be read with profit. Both recognize the disparate character

of the fourth link in the series, and each accounts for it in a

different manner. My own view comes nearer to that of Völcker,

with some considerable differences; amongst which one is, that

he rejects the verses respecting the dæmons, which seem to me

capital parts of the whole scheme.

We thus see that the series of races imagined by the poet of the

“Works and Days” is the product of two distinct and incongruous veins

of imagination,—the didactic or ethical blending with the primitive

mythical or epical. His poem is remarkable as the most ancient didactic

production of the Greeks, and as one of the first symptoms of a

new tone of sentiment finding its way into their literature, never

afterwards to become extinct. The tendency of the “Works and Days” is

anti-heroic: far from seeking to inspire admiration for adventurous

enterprise, the author inculcates the strictest justice, the most

unremitting labor and frugality, and a sober, not to say anxious,

estimate of all the minute specialties of the future. Prudence and

probity are his means,—practical comfort and happiness his end. But

he deeply feels, and keenly exposes, the manifold wickedness and

short-comings of his contemporaries, in reference to this capital

standard. He turns with displeasure from the present men, not because

they are too feeble to hurl either the spear of Achilles or some

vast boundary-stone, but because they are rapacious, knavish, and

unprincipled.

The dæmons first introduced into the religious atmosphere of the

Grecian world by the author of the “Works and Days,” as generically

different from the gods, but as essentially good, and as forming the

intermediate agents and police between gods and men,—are deserving

of attention as the seed of a doctrine which afterwards underwent

many changes, and became of great importance, first as one of the

constituent elements of pagan faith, then as one of the helps to its

subversion. It will be recollected that the buried remnants of the

half-wicked silver race, though they are not recognized as dæmons,

are still considered as having a substantive existence, a name, and

dignity, in the under-world. The step was easy, to treat them as

dæmons also, but as dæmons of a defective and malignant character:

this step was made by Empedoclês and Xenocratês, and to a certain

extent countenanced by Plato.[155] There came thus to be admitted among

the pagan philosophers dæmons both good and bad, in every degree:

and these dæmons were found available as a means of explaining many

phænomena for which it was not convenient to admit the agency of the

gods. They served to relieve the gods from the odium of physical and

moral evils, as well as from the necessity of constantly meddling in

small affairs; and the objectionable ceremonies of the pagan world were

defended upon the ground that in no other way could the exigencies of

such malignant beings be appeased. They were most frequently noticed

as causes of evil, and thus the name (_dæmon_) came insensibly to

convey with it a bad sense,—the idea of an evil being as contrasted

with the goodness of a god. So it was found by the Christian writers

when they commenced their controversy with paganism. One branch of

their argument led them to identify the pagan gods with dæmons in the

evil sense, and the insensible change in the received meaning of the

word lent them a specious assistance. For they could easily show that

not only in Homer, but in the general language of early pagans, all

the gods generally were spoken of as dæmons—and therefore, verbally

speaking, Clemens and Tatian seemed to affirm nothing more against Zeus

or Apollo than was employed in the language of paganism itself. Yet the

audience of Homer or Sophoklês would have strenuously repudiated the

proposition, if it had been put to them in the sense which the word

_dæmon_ bore in the age and among the circle of these Christian writers.

[155] See this subject further mentioned—_infra_, chap. xvi. p.

565.

In the imagination of the author of the “Works and Days,” the dæmons

occupy an important place, and are regarded as being of serious

practical efficiency. When he is remonstrating with the rulers around

him upon their gross injustice and corruption, he reminds them of the

vast number of these immortal servants of Zeus who are perpetually on

guard amidst mankind, and through whom the visitations of the gods will

descend even upon the most potent evil doers.[156] His supposition that

the dæmons were not gods, but departed men of the golden race, allowed

him to multiply their number indefinitely, without too much cheapening

the divine dignity.

[156] Opp. Di. 252. Τρὶς γὰρ μύριοί εἰσιν ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ,

etc.

As this poet has been so much enslaved by the current legends as

to introduce the Heroic race into a series to which it does not

legitimately belong, so he has under the same influence inserted in

another part of his poem the mythe of Pandora and Promêtheus,[157] as

a means of explaining the primary diffusion, and actual abundance,

of evil among mankind. Yet this mythe can in no way consist with his

quintuple scale of distinct races, and is in fact a totally distinct

theory to explain the same problem,—the transition of mankind from

a supposed state of antecedent happiness to one of present toil and

suffering. Such an inconsistency is not a sufficient reason for

questioning the genuineness of either passage; for the two stories,

though one contradicts the other, both harmonize with that central

purpose which governs the author’s mind,—a querulous and didactic

appreciation of the present. That such was his purpose appears not only

from the whole tenor of his poem, but also from the remarkable fact

that his own personality, his own adventures and kindred, and his own

sufferings, figure in it conspicuously. And this introduction of self

imparts to it a peculiar interest. The father of Hesiod came over from

the Æolic Kymê, with the view of bettering his condition, and settled

at Askra in Bœotia, at the foot of Mount Helicon. After his death his

two sons divided the family inheritance: but Hesiod bitterly complains

that his brother Persês cheated and went to law with him, and obtained

through corrupt judges an unjust decision. He farther reproaches his

brother with a preference for the suits and unprofitable bustle of the

agora, at a time when he ought to be laboring for his subsistence in

the field. Askra indeed was a miserable place, repulsive both in summer

and winter. Hesiod had never crossed the sea, except once from Aulis to

Eubœa, whither he went to attend the funeral games of Amphidamas, the

chief of Chalkis: he sung a hymn, and gained as prize a tripod, which

he consecrated to the muses in Helicon.[158]

[157] Opp. Di. 50-105.

[158] Opp. Di. 630-650, 27-45.

These particulars, scanty as they are, possess a peculiar value, as

the earliest authentic memorandum respecting the doing or suffering of

any actual Greek person. There is no external testimony at all worthy

of trust respecting the age of the “Works and Days:” Herodotus treats

Hesiod and Homer as belonging to the same age, four hundred years

before his own time; and there are other statements besides, some

placing Hesiod at an earlier date than Homer, some at a later. Looking

at the internal evidences, we may observe that the pervading sentiment,

tone and purpose of the poem is widely different from that of the Iliad

and Odyssey, and analogous to what we read respecting the compositions

of Archilochus and the Amorgian Simonidês. The author of the “Works

and Days” is indeed a preacher and not a satirist: but with this

distinction, we find in him the same predominance of the present and

the positive, the same disposition to turn the muse into an exponent of

his own personal wrongs, the same employment of Æsopic fable by way of

illustration, and the same unfavorable estimate of the female sex,[159]

all of which may be traced in the two poets above mentioned, placing

both of them in contrast with the Homeric epic. Such an internal

analogy, in the absence of good testimony, is the best guide which we

can follow in determining the date of the “Works and Days,” which we

should accordingly place shortly after the year 700 B. C. The style

of the poem might indeed afford a proof that the ancient and uniform

hexameter, though well adapted to continuous legendary narrative or to

solemn hymns, was somewhat monotonous when called upon either to serve

a polemical purpose or to impress a striking moral lesson. When poets,

then the only existing composers, first began to apply their thoughts

to the cut and thrust of actual life, aggressive or didactic, the verse

would be seen to require a new, livelier and smarter metre; and out

of this want grew the elegiac and the iambic verse, both seemingly

contemporaneous, and both intended to supplant the primitive hexameter

for the short effusions then coming into vogue.

[159] Compare the fable (αἶνος) in the “Works and Days,” v. 200,

with those in Archilochus, Fr. xxxviii. and xxxix., Gaisford,

respecting the fox and the ape; and the legend of Pandôra (v. 95

and v. 705) with the fragment of Simonidês of Amorgos respecting

women (Fr. viii. ed. Welcker, v. 95-115); also Phokylidês ap.

Stobæum Florileg. lxxi.

Isokratês assimilates the character of the “Works and Days” to

that of Theognis and Phokylidês (ad Nikokl. Or. ii. p. 23).

CHAPTER III.

LEGEND OF THE IAPETIDS.

The sons of the Titan god Iapetus, as described in the Hesiodic

theogony, are Atlas, Menœtius, Promêtheus and Epimêtheus.[160] Of

these, Atlas alone is mentioned by Homer in the Odyssey, and even he

not as the son of Iapetus: the latter himself is named in the Iliad as

existing in Tartarus along with Kronos. The Homeric Atlas “knows the

depths of the whole sea, and keeps by himself those tall pillars which

hold the heaven apart from the earth.”[161]

[160] Hesiod, Theog. 510.

[161] Hom. Odyss. i. 120.—

Ἄτλαντος θυγατὴρ ὀλοόφρονος, ὅστε θαλάσσης

Πάσης βένθεα οἶδε, ἔχει δέ τε κίονας αὐτὸς

Μακρὰς, αἳ γαῖάν τε καὶ οὐρανὸν ἀμφὶς ἔχουσιν.

As the Homeric theogony generally appears much expanded in Hesiod, so

also does the family of Iapetus, with their varied adventures. Atlas is

here described, not as the keeper of the intermediate pillars between

heaven and earth, but as himself condemned by Zeus to support the

heaven on his head and hands;[162] while the fierce Menœtius is thrust

down to Erebus as a punishment for his ungovernable insolence. But the

remaining two brothers, Promêtheus and Epimêtheus, are among the most

interesting creations of Grecian legend, and distinguished in more than

one respect from all the remainder.

[162] Hesiod, Theog. 516.—

Ἄτλας δ᾽ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχει κρατερῆς ὑπ᾽ ἀνάγκης

Ἑστηὼς, κεφαλῇ τε καὶ ἀκαμάτοισι χέρεσσι.

Hesiod stretches far beyond the simplicity of the Homeric

conception.

First, the main battle between Zeus and the Titan gods is a contest of

force purely and simply—mountains are hurled and thunder is launched,

and the victory remains to the strongest. But the competition between

Zeus and Promêtheus is one of craft and stratagem: the victory does

indeed remain to the former, but the honors of the fight belong to the

latter. Secondly, Promêtheus and Epimêtheus (the fore-thinker and the

after-thinker[163]) are characters stamped at the same mint and by

the same effort, the express contrast and antithesis of each other.

Thirdly, mankind are here expressly brought forward, not indeed as

active partners in the struggle, but as the grand and capital subjects

interested,—as gainers or sufferers by the result. Promêtheus appears

in the exalted character of champion of the human race, even against

the formidable superiority of Zeus.

[163] Pindar extends the family of Epimêtheus and gives him a

daughter, Πρόφασις (Pyth. v. 25), _Excuse_, the offspring of

After-thought.

In the primitive or Hesiodic legend, Promêtheus is not the creator

or moulder of man; it is only the later additions which invest him

with this character.[164] The race are supposed as existing, and

Promêtheus, a member of the dispossessed body of Titan gods, comes

forward as their representative and defender. The advantageous bargain

which he made with Zeus on their behalf, in respect to the partition of

the sacrificial animals, has been recounted in the preceding chapter.

Zeus felt that he had been outwitted, and was exceeding wroth. In his

displeasure he withheld from mankind the inestimable comfort of fire,

so that the race would have perished, had not Promêtheus stolen fire,

in defiance of the command of the Supreme Ruler, and brought it to men

in the hollow of a ferule.[165]

[164] Apollodôr. i. 7. 1. Nor is he such either in Æschylus, or

in the Platonic fable (Protag. c. 30), though this version became

at last the most popular. Some hardened lumps of clay, remnants

of that which had been employed by Promêtheus in moulding man,

were shown to Pausanias at Panopeus in Phokis (Paus. x. 4, 3).

The first Epigram of Erinna (Anthol. i. p. 58, ed. Branck) seems

to allude to Promêtheus as moulder of man. The expression of

Aristophanês (Aves, 689)—πλάσματα πηλοῦ—does not necessarily

refer to Promêtheus.

[165] Hesiod, Theog. 566; Opp. Di. 52.

Zeus was now doubly indignant, and determined to play off a still more

ruinous stratagem. Hêphæstos, by his direction, moulded the form of

a beautiful virgin; Athênê dressed her, Aphroditê and the Charities

bestowed upon her both ornament and fascination, while Hermês infused

into her the mind of a dog, a deceitful spirit, and treacherous

words.[166] The messenger of the gods conducted this “fascinating

mischief” to mankind, at a time when Promêtheus was not present.

Now Epimêtheus had received from his brother peremptory injunctions

not to accept from the hands of Zeus any present whatever; but the

beauty of Pandôra (so the newly-formed female was called) was not to

be resisted. She was received and admitted among men, and from that

moment their comfort and tranquillity was exchanged for suffering of

every kind.[167] The evils to which mankind are liable had been before

enclosed in a cask in their own keeping: Pandôra in her malice removed

the lid of the cask, and out flew these thousand evils and calamities,

to exercise forever their destroying force. Hope alone remained

imprisoned, and therefore without efficacy, as before—the inviolable

lid being replaced before she could escape. Before this incident

(says the legend) men had lived without disease or suffering; but now

both earth and sea are full of mischiefs, while maladies of every

description stalk abroad by day as well as by night,[168] without any

hope for man of relief to come.

[166] Theog. 580; Opp. Di. 50-85.

[167] Opp. Di. 81-90.

[168] Opp. Di. 93. Pandôra does not _bring with her_ the cask,

as the common version of this story would have us suppose: the

cask exists fast closed in the custody of Epimêtheus, or of man

himself, and Pandôra commits the fatal treachery of removing

the lid. The case is analogous to that of the closed bag of

unfavorable winds which Æolus gives into the hands of Odysseus,

and which the guilty companions of the latter force open, to the

entire ruin of his hopes (Odyss. x. 19-50). The idea of the two

casks on the threshold of Zeus, lying ready for dispensation—one

full of evils the other of benefits—is Homeric (Iliad, xxiv.

527):—

Δοιοὶ γάρ τε πίθοι κατακείαται ἐν Διὸς οὔδει, etc.

Plutarch assimilates to this the πίθος opened by Pandôra,

Consolat. ad Apollôn. c. 7. p. 105. The explanation here given

of the Hesiodic passage relating to Hope, is drawn from an able

article in the Wiener Jahrbücher, vol. 109 (1845), p. 220,

Ritter; a review of Schömmann’s translation of the Promêtheus of

Æschylus. The diseases and evils are inoperative so long as they

remain shut up in the cask: the same mischief-making influence

which lets them out to their calamitous work, takes care that

Hope shall still continue a powerless prisoner in the inside.

The Theogony gives the legend here recounted, with some

variations—leaving out the part of Epimêtheus altogether, as well as

the cask of evils. Pandôra is the ruin of man, simply as the mother

and representative of the female sex.[169] And the variations are

thus useful, as they enable us to distinguish the essential from the

accessory circumstances of the story.

[169] Theog. 590.—

Ἐκ τῆς γὰρ γένος ἐστὶ γυναικῶν θηλυτεράων,

Τῆς γὰρ ὀλώιόν ἐστι γένος· καὶ φῦλα γυναικῶν,

Πῆμα μέγα θνητοῖσι μετ᾽ ἀνδράσι ναιετάουσι, etc.

“Thus (says the poet, at the conclusion of his narrative) it is

not possible to escape from the purposes of Zeus.”[170] His mythe,

connecting the calamitous condition of man with the malevolence of the

supreme god, shows, first, by what cause such an unfriendly feeling

was raised; next, by what instrumentality its deadly results were

brought about. The human race are not indeed the creation, but the

protected flock of Promêtheus, one of the elder or dispossessed Titan

gods: when Zeus acquires supremacy, mankind along with the rest become

subject to him, and are to make the best bargain they can respecting

worship and service to be yielded. By the stratagem of their advocate

Promêtheus, Zeus is cheated into such a partition of the victims as is

eminently unprofitable to him; whereby his wrath is so provoked, that

he tries to subtract from man the use of fire. Here however his scheme

is frustrated by the theft of Promêtheus: but his second attempt is

more successful, and he in his turn cheats the unthinking Epimêtheus

into the acceptance of a present (in spite of the peremptory interdict

of Promêtheus) by which the whole of man’s happiness is wrecked. This

legend grows out of two feelings; partly as to the relations of the

gods with man, partly as to the relation of the female sex with the

male. The present gods are unkind towards man, but the old gods, with

whom man’s lot was originally cast, were much kinder—and the ablest

among them stands forward as the indefatigable protector of the race.

Nevertheless, the mere excess of his craft proves the ultimate ruin of

the cause which he espouses. He cheats Zeus out of a fair share of the

sacrificial victim, so as both to provoke and justify a retaliation

which he cannot be always at hand to ward off: the retaliation is, in

his absence, consummated by a snare laid for Epimêtheus and voluntarily

accepted. And thus, though Hesiod ascribes the calamitous condition

of man to the malevolence of Zeus, his piety suggests two exculpatory

pleas for the latter: mankind have been the first to defraud Zeus of

his legitimate share of the sacrifice—and they have moreover been

consenting parties to their own ruin. Such are the feelings, as to

the relation between the gods and man, which have been one of the

generating elements of this legend. The other element, a conviction

of the vast mischief arising to man from women, whom yet they cannot

dispense with, is frequently and strongly set forth in several of the

Greek poets—by Simonidês of Amorgos and Phokylidês, not less than by

the notorious misogynist Euripidês.

[170] Opp. Di. 105.—

Οὕτως οὔτι πῆ ἐστὶ Διὸς νόον ἐξαλέασθαι.

But the miseries arising from woman, however great they might be,

did not reach Promêtheus himself. For him, the rash champion who

had ventured “to compete in sagacity”[171] with Zeus, a different

punishment was in store. Bound by heavy chains to a pillar, he remained

fast imprisoned for several generations: every day did an eagle prey

upon his liver, and every night did the liver grow afresh for the

next day’s suffering. At length Zeus, eager to enhance the glory of

his favorite son Hêraclês, permitted the latter to kill the eagle and

rescue the captive.[172]

[171] Theog. 534. Οὕνεκ᾽ ἐρίζετο βουλὰς ὑπερμενέϊ Κρονίωνι.

[172] Theog. 521-532.

Such is the Promêthean mythe as it stands in the Hesiodic poems; its

earliest form, as far as we can trace. Upon it was founded the sublime

tragedy of Æschylus, “The Enchained Promêtheus,” together with at

least one more tragedy, now lost, by the same author.[173] Æschylus

has made several important alterations; describing the human race, not

as having once enjoyed and subsequently lost a state of tranquillity

and enjoyment, but as originally feeble and wretched. He suppresses

both the first trick played off by Promêtheus upon Zeus respecting

the partition of the victim—and the final formation and sending of

Pandôra—which are the two most marked portions of the Hesiodic story;

while on the other hand he brings out prominently and enlarges upon

the theft of fire,[174] which in Hesiod is but slightly touched. If

he has thus relinquished the antique simplicity of the story, he has

rendered more than ample compensation by imparting to it a grandeur of

_idéal_, a large reach of thought combined with appeals to our earnest

and admiring sympathy, and a pregnancy of suggestion in regard to the

relations between the gods and man, which soar far above the Hesiodic

level—and which render his tragedy the most impressive, though not

the most artistically composed, of all Grecian dramatic productions.

Promêtheus there appears not only as the heroic champion and sufferer

in the cause and for the protection of the human race, but also as

the gifted teacher of all the arts, helps, and ornaments of life,

amongst which fire is only one:[175] all this against the will and in

defiance of the purpose of Zeus, who, on acquiring his empire, wished

to destroy the human race and to beget some new breed.[176] Moreover,

new relations between Promêtheus and Zeus are superadded by Æschylus.

At the commencement of the struggle between Zeus and the Titan gods,

Promêtheus had vainly attempted to prevail upon the latter to conduct

it with prudence; but when he found that they obstinately declined

all wise counsel, and that their ruin was inevitable, he abandoned

their cause and joined Zeus. To him and to his advice Zeus owed the

victory: yet the monstrous ingratitude and tyranny of the latter is

now manifested by nailing him to a rock, for no other crime than

because he frustrated the purpose of extinguishing the human race, and

furnished to them the means of living with tolerable comfort.[177] The

new ruler Zeus, insolent with his victory over the old gods, tramples

down all right, and sets at naught sympathy and obligation, as well

towards gods as towards man. Yet the prophetic Promêtheus, in the midst

of intense suffering, is consoled by the foreknowledge that the time

will come when Zeus must again send for him, release him, and invoke

his aid, as the sole means of averting from himself dangers otherwise

insurmountable. The security and means of continuance for mankind

have now been placed beyond the reach of Zeus—whom Promêtheus proudly

defies, glorying in his generous and successful championship,[178]

despite the terrible price which he is doomed to pay for it.

[173] Of the tragedy called Προμηθεὺς Λυόμενος some few fragments

yet remain: Προμηθεὺς Πύρφορος was a satyric drama, according to

Dindorf. Welcker recognizes a third tragedy, Προμηθεὺς Πύρφορος,

and a satyric drama, Προμηθεὺς Πυρκαεύς (Die Griechisch.

Tragödien, vol. i. p. 30). The story of Promêtheus had also been

handled by Sapphô in one of her lost songs (Servius ad Virgil.

Eclog. vi. 42).

[174] Apollodôrus too mentions only the theft of fire (i. 7. 1).

[175] Æsch. Prom. 442-506.—

Πᾶσαι τέχναι βροτοῖσιν ἐκ Προμηθέως.

[176] Æsch. Prom. 231.—

βροτῶν δὲ τῶν ταλαιπώρων λόγον

Οὐκ ἔσχεν οὐδέν᾽, ἀλλ᾽ ἀϊστώσας γένος

Τὸ πᾶν, ἔχρῃζεν ἄλλο φιτῦσαι νέον.

[177] Æsch. Prom. 198-222. 123.—

διὰ τὴν λίαν φιλότητα βροτῶν.

[178] Æsch. Prom. 169-770.

As the Æschylean Promêtheus, though retaining the old lineaments, has

acquired a new coloring, soul and character, so he has also become

identified with a special locality. In Hesiod, there is no indication

of the place in which he is imprisoned; but Æschylus places it in

Scythia,[179] and the general belief of the Greeks supposed it to be on

Mount Caucasus. So long and so firmly did this belief continue, that

the Roman general Pompey, when in command of an army in Kolchis, made

with his companion, the literary Greek Theophanês, a special march to

view the spot in Caucasus where Promêtheus had been transfixed.[180]

[179] Prometh. 2. See also the Fragments of the Promêtheus

Solutus, 177-179, ed. Dindorf, where Caucasus is specially named;

but v. 719 of the Promêtheus Vinctus seems to imply that Mount

Caucasus is a place different from that to which the suffering

prisoner is chained.

[180] Appian, Bell. Mithridat. c. 103.

CHAPTER IV.

HEROIC LEGENDS.—GENEALOGY OF ARGOS.

Having briefly enumerated the gods of Greece, with their chief

attributes as described in legend, we come to those genealogies which

connected them with historical men.

In the retrospective faith of a Greek, the ideas of worship and

ancestry coalesced. Every association of men, large or small, in whom

there existed a feeling of present union, traced back that union to

some common initial progenitor; that progenitor being either the common

god whom they worshipped, or some semi-divine person closely allied

to him. What the feelings of the community require is, a continuous

pedigree to connect them with this respected source of existence,

beyond which they do not think of looking back. A series of names,

placed in filiation or fraternity, together with a certain number of

family or personal adventures ascribed to some of the individuals

among them, constitute the ante-historical past through which the

Greek looks back to his gods. The names of this genealogy are, to a

great degree, gentile or local names familiar to the people,—rivers,

mountains, springs, lakes, villages, demes, etc.,—embodied as persons,

and introduced as acting or suffering. They are moreover called kings

or chiefs, but the existence of a body of subjects surrounding them

is tacitly implied rather than distinctly set forth; for their own

personal exploits or family proceedings constitute for the most part

the whole matter of narrative. And thus the genealogy was made to

satisfy at once the appetite of the Greeks for romantic adventure, and

their demand for an unbroken line of filiation between themselves and

the gods. The eponymous personage, from whom the community derive their

name, is sometimes the begotten son of the local god, sometimes an

indigenous man sprung from the earth, which is indeed itself divinized.

It will be seen from the mere description of these genealogies that

they included elements human and historical, as well as elements divine

and extra-historical. And if we could determine the time at which any

genealogy was first framed, we should be able to assure ourselves

that the men then represented as present, together with their fathers

and grandfathers, were real persons of flesh and blood. But this is

a point which can seldom be ascertained; moreover, even if it could

be ascertained, we must at once set it aside, if we wish to look at

the genealogy in the point of view of the Greeks. For to them, not

only all the members were alike real, but the gods and heroes at the

commencement were in a certain sense the most real; at least, they were

the most esteemed and indispensable of all. The value of the genealogy

consisted, not in its length, but in its continuity; not (according

to the feeling of modern aristocracy) in the power of setting out a

prolonged series of human fathers and grandfathers, but in the sense

of ancestral union with the primitive god. And the length of the

series is traceable rather to humility, inasmuch as the same person

who was gratified with the belief that he was descended from a god in

the fifteenth generation, would have accounted it criminal insolence

to affirm that a god was his father or grandfather. In presenting to

the reader those genealogies which constitute the supposed primitive

history of Hellas, I make no pretence to distinguish names real and

historical from fictitious creations; partly because I have no evidence

upon which to draw the line, and partly because by attempting it I

should altogether depart from the genuine Grecian point of view.

Nor is it possible to do more than exhibit a certain selection of

such as were most current and interesting; for the total number of

them which found place in Grecian faith exceeds computation. As a

general rule, every deme, every gens, every aggregate of men accustomed

to combined action, religious or political, had its own. The small

and unimportant demes into which Attica was divided had each its

ancestral god and heroes, just as much as the great Athens herself.

Even among the villages of Phokis, which Pausanias will hardly permit

himself to call towns, deductions of legendary antiquity were not

wanting. And it is important to bear in mind, when we are reading the

legendary genealogies of Argos, or Sparta, or Thêbes, that these are

merely samples amidst an extensive class, all perfectly analogous,

and all exhibiting the religious and patriotic retrospect of some

fraction of the Hellenic world. They are no more matter of historical

tradition than any of the thousand other legendary genealogies which

men delighted to recall to memory at the periodical festivals of their

gens, their deme, or their village.

With these few prefatory remarks, I proceed to notice the most

conspicuous of the Grecian heroic pedigrees, and first, that of Argos.

The earliest name in Argeian antiquity is that of Inachus, the son

of Oceanus and Têthys, who gave his name to the river flowing under

the walls of the town. According to the chronological computations of

those who regarded the mythical genealogies as substantive history,

and who allotted a given number of years to each generation, the reign

of Inachus was placed 1986 B. C., or about 1100 years prior to the

commencement of the recorded Olympiads.[181]

[181] Apollodôr. ii. 1. Mr. Fynes Clinton does not admit the

historical reality of Inachus; but he places Phorôneus seventeen

generations, or 570 years prior to the Trojan war, 978 years

earlier than the first recorded Olympiad. See Fasti Hellenici,

vol. iii. c. 1. p. 19.

The sons of Inachus were Phorôneus and Ægialeus; both of whom however

were sometimes represented as autochthonous men, the one in the

territory of Argos, the other in that of Sikyôn. Ægialeus gave his

name to the north-western region of the Peloponnêsus, on the southern

coast of the Corinthian Gulf.[182] The name of Phorôneus was of great

celebrity in the Argeian mythical genealogies, and furnished both the

title and the subject of the ancient poem called Phorônis, in which he

is styled “the father of mortal men.”[183] He is said to have imparted

to mankind, who had before him lived altogether isolated, the first

notion and habits of social existence, and even the first knowledge of

fire: his dominion extended over the whole Peloponnêsus. His tomb at

Argos, and seemingly also the place called the Phorônic city, in which

he formed the first settlement of mankind, were still shown in the days

of Pausanias.[184] The offspring of Phorôneus, by the nymph Teledikê,

were Apis and Niobê. Apis, a harsh ruler, was put to death by Thelxiôn

and Telchin, having given to Peloponnêsus the name of Apia:[185] he

was succeeded by Argos, the son of his sister Niobê by the god Zeus.

From this sovereign Peloponnêsus was denominated Argos. By his wife

Evadnê, daughter of Strymôn,[186] he had four sons, Ekbasus, Peiras,

Epidaurus, and Kriasus. Ekbasus was succeeded by his son Agênôr,

and he again by his son Argos Panoptês,—a very powerful prince who

is said to have had eyes distributed over all his body, and to have

liberated Peloponnêsus from several monsters and wild animals which

infested it:[187] Akusilaus and Æschylus make this Argos an earth-born

person, while Pherekydês reports him as son of Arestôr. Iasus was the

son of Argos Panoptês by Ismênê, daughter of Asôpus. According to the

authors whom Apollodôrus and Pausanias prefer, the celebrated Iô was

his daughter: but the Hesiodic epic (as well as Akusilaus) represented

her as daughter of Peiras, while Æschylus and Kastor the chronologist

affirmed the primitive king Inachus to have been her father.[188] A

favorite theme, as well for the ancient genealogical poets as for the

Attic tragedians, were the adventures of Iô, of whom, while priestess

of Hêrê, at the ancient and renowned Hêræon between Mykênæ and Argos,

Zeus became amorous. When Hêrê discovered the intrigue and taxed him

with it, he denied the charge, and metamorphosed Iô into a white cow.

Hêrê, requiring that the cow should be surrendered to her, placed her

under the keeping of Argos Panoptês; but this guardian was slain by

Hermês, at the command of Zeus: and Hêrê then drove the cow Iô away

from her native land by means of the incessant stinging of a gad-fly,

which compelled her to wander without repose or sustenance over an

immeasurable extent of foreign regions. The wandering Iô gave her name

to the Ionian Gulf, traversed Epirus and Illyria, passed the chain

of Mount Hæmus and the lofty summits of Caucasus, and swam across

the Thracian or Cimmerian Bosporus (which also from her derived its

appellation) into Asia. She then went through Scythia, Cimmeria, and

many Asiatic regions, until she arrived in Egypt, where Zeus at length

bestowed upon her rest, restored her to her original form, and enabled

her to give birth to his black son Epaphos.[189]

[182] Pausan. ii. 5, 4.

[183] See Düntzer, Fragm. Epic. Græc. p. 57. The Argeian author

Akusilaus treated Phorôneus as the first of men, Fragm. 14.

Didot ap. Clem. Alex. Stromat i. p. 321. Φορωνῆες, a synonym for

Argeians; Theocrit. Idyll. xxv. 200.

[184] Apollodôr. ii. 1, 1; Pausan. ii. 15, 5; 19, 5; 20, 3.

[185] Apis in Æschylus is totally different: ἰατρόμαντις or

medical charmer, son of Apollo, who comes across the gulf from

Naupactus, purifies the territory of Argos from noxious monsters,

and gives to it the name of _Apia_ (Æschyl. Suppl. 265). Compare

Steph. Byz. v. Ἀπίη; Soph. Œdip. Colon. 1303. The name Ἀπία for

Peloponnêsus remains still a mystery, even after the attempt of

Buttmann (Lexilogus, s. 19) to throw light upon it.

Eusebius asserts that Niobê was the wife of Inachus and mother of

Phorôneus, and pointedly contradicts those who call her daughter

of Phorôneus—φασὶ δέ τινες Νιόβην Φορωνέως εἶναι θυγατέρα, ὅπερ

οὐκ ἀληθές (Chronic. p. 23, ed. Scalig.): his positive tone is

curious, upon such a matter.

Hellanikus in his Argolica stated that Phorôneus had three sons,

Pelasgus, Iasus and Agênôr, who at the death of their father

divided his possessions by lot. Pelasgus acquired the country

near the river Erasinus, and built the citadel of Larissa: Iasus

obtained the portion near to Elis. After their decease, the

younger brother Agênôr invaded and conquered the country, at the

head of a large body of horse. It was from these three persons

that Argos derived three epithets which are attached to it in the

Homeric poems—Ἄργος Πελασγικὸν, Ἴασον, Ἱππόβοτον (Hellanik. Fr.

38, ed. Didot; Phavorin. v. Ἄργος). This is a specimen of the way

in which legendary persons as well as legendary events were got

up to furnish an explanation of Homeric epithets: we may remark

as singular, that Hellanikus seems to apply Πελασγικὸν Ἄργος to a

portion of Peloponnêsus, while the Homeric Catalogue applies it

to Thessaly.

[186] Apollod. _l. c._ The mention of Strymôn seems connected

with Æschylus Suppl. 255.

[187] Akusil. Fragm. 17, ed. Didot; Æsch. Prometh. 568; Pherekyd.

Fragm. 22, ed. Didot; Hesiod. Ægimius. Fr. 2, p. 56, ed. Düntzer:

among the varieties of the story, one was that Argos was changed

into a peacock (Schol. Aristoph. Aves, 102). Macrobius (i. 19)

considers Argos as an allegorical expression of the starry

heaven; an idea which Panofska also upholds in one of the recent

Abhandlungen of the Berlin Academy, 1837, p. 121 _seq._

[188] Apollod. ii. 1, 1; Pausan. ii. 16, 1; Æsch. Prom. v.

590-663.

[189] Æschyl. Prom. v. 790-850; Apollod. ii. 1. Æschylus in the

Supplices gives a different version of the wanderings of Iô from

that which appears in the Promêtheus: in the former drama he

carries her through Phrygia, Mysia, Lydia, Pamphylia and Cilicia

into Egypt (Supplic. 544-566): nothing is there said about

Promêtheus, or Caucasus or Scythia, etc.

The track set forth in the Supplices is thus geographically

intelligible, that in the Promêtheus (though the most noticed of

the two) defies all comprehension, even as a consistent fiction;

nor has the erudition of the commentators been successful in

clearing it up. See Schutz, Excurs. iv. ad Prometh. Vinct.

pp. 144-149; Welcker, Æschylische Trilogie, pp. 127-146, and

especially Völcker, Mythische Geographie der Griech. und Römer,

part i. pp. 3-13.

The Greek inhabitants at Tarsus in Cilicia traced their origin

to Argos: their story was, that Triptolemus had been sent forth

from that town in quest of the wandering Iô, that he had followed

her to Tyre, and then renounced the search in despair. He and

his companions then settled partly at Tarsus, partly at Antioch

(Strabo, xiv. 673; xv. 750). This is the story of Kadmos and

Eurôpê inverted, as happens so often with the Grecian mythes.

Homer calls Hermês Ἀργειφόντης; but this epithet hardly affords

sufficient proof that he was acquainted with the mythe of Iô,

as Völcker supposes: it cannot be traced higher than Hesiod.

According to some authors, whom Cicero copies, it was on account

of the murder of Argos that Hermês was obliged to leave Greece

and go into Egypt: then it was that he taught the Egyptians laws

and letters (De Natur. Deor. iii. 22).

Such is a general sketch of the adventures which the ancient poets,

epic, lyric, and tragic, and the logographers after them, connect

with the name of the Argeian Iô,—one of the numerous tales which the

fancy of the Greeks deduced from the amorous dispositions of Zeus and

the jealousy of Hêrê. That the scene should be laid in the Argeian

territory appears natural, when we recollect that both Argos and Mykênæ

were under the special guardianship of Hêrê, and that the Hêræon

between the two was one of the oldest and most celebrated temples

in which she was worshipped. It is useful to compare this amusing

fiction with the representation reported to us by Herodotus, and

derived by him as well from Phœnician as from Persian antiquarians,

of the circumstances which occasioned the transit of Iô from Argos

to Egypt,—an event recognized by all of them as historical matter of

fact. According to the Persians, a Phœnician vessel had arrived at

the port near Argos, freighted with goods intended for sale to the

inhabitants of the country. After the vessel had remained a few days,

and disposed of most of her cargo, several Argeian women, and among

them Iô the king’s daughter, coming on board to purchase, were seized

and carried off by the crew, who sold Iô in Egypt.[190] The Phœnician

antiquarians, however, while they admitted the circumstance that Iô

had left her own country in one of their vessels, gave a different

color to the whole by affirming that she emigrated voluntarily, having

been engaged in an amour with the captain of the vessel, and fearing

that her parents might come to the knowledge of her pregnancy. Both

Persians and Phœnicians described the abduction of Iô as the first of a

series of similar acts between Greeks and Asiatics, committed each in

revenge for the preceding. First came the rape of Eurôpê from Phœnicia

by Grecian adventurers,—perhaps, as Herodotus supposed, by Krêtans:

next, the abduction of Mêdeia from Kolchis by Jasôn, which occasioned

the retaliatory act of Paris, when he stole away Helena from Menelaos.

Up to this point the seizures of women by Greeks from Asiatics, and by

Asiatics from Greeks, had been equivalents both in number and in wrong.

But the Greeks now thought fit to equip a vast conjoint expedition to

recover Helen, in the course of which they took and sacked Troy. The

invasions of Greece by Darius and Xerxes were intended, according to

the Persian antiquarians, as a long-delayed retribution for the injury

inflicted on the Asiatics by Agamemnôn and his followers.[191]

[190] The story in Parthênius (Narrat. 1) is built upon this

version of Iô’s adventures.

[191] Herodot. i. 1-6. Pausanias (ii. 15, 1) will not undertake

to determine whether the account given by Herodotus, or that of

the old legend, respecting the cause which carried Iô from Argos

to Egypt, is the true one: Ephorus (ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. ii.

168) repeats the abduction of Iô to Egypt, by the Phœnicians,

subjoining a strange account of the Etymology of the name

Bosporus. The remarks of Plutarch on the narrative of Herodotus

are curious: he adduces as one proof of the κακοήθεια (bad

feeling) of Herodotus, that the latter inserts so discreditable

a narrative respecting Iô, daughter of Inachus, “whom all Greeks

believe to have been divinized by foreigners, to have given name

to seas and straits, and to be the source of the most illustrious

regal families.” He also blames Herodotus for rejecting Epaphus,

Iô, Iasus and Argos, as highest members of the Perseid genealogy.

He calls Herodotus φιλοβάρβαρος (Plutarch, De Malign. Herodoti,

c. xi. xii. xiv. pp. 856, 857).

The account thus given of the adventures of Iô, when contrasted with

the genuine legend, is interesting, as it tends to illustrate the

phænomenon which early Grecian history is constantly presenting to

us,—the way in which the epical furniture of an unknown past is recast

and newly colored so as to meet those changes which take place in the

retrospective feelings of the present. The religious and poetical

character of the old legend disappears: nothing remains except the

names of persons and places, and the voyage from Argos to Egypt: we

have in exchange a sober, quasi-historical narrative, the value of

which consists in its bearing on the grand contemporary conflicts

between Persia and Greece, which filled the imagination of Herodotus

and his readers.

To proceed with the genealogy of the kings of Argos, Iasus was

succeeded by Krotôpus, son of his brother Agênôr; Krotôpus by

Sthenelas, and he again by Gelanôr.[192] In the reign of the latter,

Danaos came with his fifty daughters from Egypt to Argos; and here we

find another of those romantic adventures which so agreeably decorate

the barrenness of the mythical genealogies. Danaos and Ægyptos were

two brothers descending from Epaphos, son of Iô: Ægyptos had fifty

sons, who were eager to marry the fifty daughters of Danaos, in spite

of the strongest repugnance of the latter. To escape such a necessity,

Danaos placed his fifty daughters on board of a penteconter (or vessel

with fifty oars) and sought refuge at Argos; touching in his voyage at

the island of Rhodes, where he erected a statue of Athênê at Lindos,

which was long exhibited as a memorial of his passage. Ægyptos and

his sons followed them to Argos and still pressed their suit, to which

Danaos found himself compelled to assent; but on the wedding night he

furnished each of his daughters with a dagger, and enjoined them to

murder their husbands during the hour of sleep. His orders were obeyed

by all, with the single exception of Hypermnêstra, who preserved her

husband Lynkeus, incurring displeasure and punishment from her father.

He afterwards, however, pardoned her; and when, by the voluntary

abdication of Gelanôr, he became king of Argos, Lynkeus was recognized

as his son-in-law and ultimately succeeded him. The remaining

daughters, having been purified by Athênê and Hermês, were given in

marriage to the victors in a gymnic contest publicly proclaimed. From

Danaos was derived the name of Danai, applied to the inhabitants of the

Argeian territory,[193] and to the Homeric Greeks generally.

[192] It would be an unprofitable fatigue to enumerate the

multiplied and irreconcilable discrepancies in regard to every

step of this old Argeian genealogy. Whoever desires to see

them brought together, may consult Schubart, Quæstiones in

Antiquitatem Heroicam, Marburg, 1832, capp. 1 and 2.

The remarks which Schubart makes (p. 35) upon Petit-Radel’s

Chronological Tables will be assented to by those who follow

the unceasing string of contradictions, without any sufficient

reason to believe that any one of them is more worthy of trust

than the remainder, which he has cited:—“Videant alii, quomodo

genealogias heroicas, et chronologiæ rationes, in concordiam

redigant. Ipse abstineo, probe persuasus, stemmata vera,

historiæ fide comprobata, in systema chronologiæ redigi posse:

at ore per sæcula tradita, a poetis reficta, sæpe mutata, prout

fabula postulare videbatur, ab historiarum deinde conditoribus

restituta, scilicet, brevi, qualia prostant stemmata—chronologiæ

secundum annos distributæ vincula semper recusatura esse.”

[193] Apollod. ii. 1. The Supplices of Æschylus is the commencing

drama of a trilogy on this subject of the Danaïdes,—Ἱκετίδες,

Αἰγύπτιοι, Δαναΐδες. Welcker, Griechisch. Tragödien, vol. i. p.

48: the two latter are lost. The old epic poem called Danaïs or

Danaïdes, which is mentioned in the Tabula Iliaca as containing

5000 verses, has perished, and is unfortunately very little

alluded to: see Düntzer, Epic. Græc. Fragm. p. 3; Welcker, Der

Episch. Kyklus, p. 35.

From the legend of the Danaïdes we pass to two barren names of kings,

Lynkeus and his son Abas. The two sons of Abas were Akrisios and

Prœtos, who, after much dissension, divided between them the Argeian

territory; Akrisios ruling at Argos, and Prœtos at Tiryns. The families

of both formed the theme of romantic stories. To pass over for the

present the legend of Bellerophôn, and the unrequited passion which

the wife of Prœtos conceived for him, we are told that the daughters

of Prœtos, beautiful, and solicited in marriage by suitors from all

Greece, were smitten with leprosy and driven mad, wandering in unseemly

guise throughout Peloponnêsus. The visitation had overtaken them,

according to Hesiod, because they refused to take part in the Bacchic

rites; according to Pherekydês and the Argeian Akusilaus,[194] because

they had treated scornfully the wooden statue and simple equipments of

Hêrê: the religious character of the old legend here displays itself in

a remarkable manner. Unable to cure his daughters, Prœtos invoked the

aid of the renowned Pylian prophet and leech, Melampus son of Amythaôn,

who undertook to remove the malady on condition of being rewarded

with the third part of the kingdom. Prœtos indignantly refused these

conditions: but the state of his daughters becoming aggravated and

intolerable, he was compelled again to apply to Melampus; who, on the

second request, raised his demands still higher, and required another

third of the kingdom for his brother Bias. These terms being acceded

to, he performed his part of the covenant. He appeased the wrath of

Hêrê by prayer and sacrifice; or, according to another account, he

approached the deranged women at the head of a troop of young men,

with shouting and ecstatic dance,—the ceremonies appropriate to the

Bacchic worship of Dionysos,—and in this manner effected their cure.

Melampus, a name celebrated in many different Grecian mythes, is the

legendary founder and progenitor of a great and long-continued family

of prophets. He and his brother Bias became kings of separate portions

of the Argeian territory: he is recognized as ruler there even in the

Odyssey, and the prophet Theoklymenos, his grandson, is protected and

carried to Ithaca by Telemachus.[195] Herodotus also alludes to the

cure of the women, and to the double kingdom of Melampus and Bias

in the Argeian land: he recognizes Melampus as the first person who

introduced to the knowledge of the Greeks the name and worship of

Dionysos, with its appropriate sacrifices and phallic processions. Here

again he historicizes various features of the old legend in a manner

not unworthy of notice.[196]

[194] Apollod. 1. c.; Pherekyd. ap. Schol. Hom. Odyss. xv. 225;

Hesiod, Fragm. Marktsch. Fr. 36, 37, 38. These Fragments belong

to the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Apollodôrus seems to refer

to some other of the numerous Hesiodic poems. Diodôrus (iv. 68)

assigns the anger of Dionysos as the cause.

[195] Odyss. xv. 240-256.

[196] Herod. ix. 34; ii. 49: compare Pausan. ii. 18, 4. Instead

of the Prœtides, or daughters of Prœtos, it is the Argeian

women generally whom he represents Melampus as having cured,

and the Argeians generally who send to Pylus to invoke his aid:

the heroic personality which pervades the primitive story has

disappeared.

Kallimachus notices the Prœtid virgins as the parties suffering

from madness, but he treats Artemis as the healing influence

(Hymn. ad Dianam 235).

But Danaê, the daughter of Akrisios, with her son Perseus acquired

still greater celebrity than her cousins the Prœtides. An oracle had

apprized Akrisios that his daughter would give birth to a son by whose

hand he would himself be slain. To guard against this danger, he

imprisoned Danaê in a chamber of brass under ground. But the god Zeus

had become amorous of her, and found means to descend through the roof

in the form of a shower of gold: the consequence of his visits was the

birth of Perseus. When Akrisios discovered that his daughter had given

existence to a son, he enclosed both the mother and the child in a

coffer, which he cast into the sea.[197] The coffer was carried to the

isle of Seriphos, where Diktys, brother of the king Polydektês, fished

it up, and rescued both Danaê and Perseus. The exploits of Perseus,

when he grew up, against the three Phorkides or daughters of Phorkys,

and the three Gorgons, are among the most marvellous and imaginative

in all Grecian legend: they bear a stamp almost Oriental. I shall

not here repeat the details of those unparalleled hazards which the

special favor of Athênê enabled him to overcome, and which ended in his

bringing back from Libya the terrific head of the Gorgon Medusa, endued

with the property of turning every one who looked upon it into stone.

In his return, he rescued Andromeda, daughter of Kêpheus, who had been

exposed to be devoured by a sea-monster, and brought her back as his

wife. Akrisios trembled to see him after this victorious expedition,

and retired into Thessaly to avoid him; but Perseus followed him

thither, and having succeeded in calming his apprehensions, became

competitor in a gymnic contest where his grandfather was among the

spectators. By an incautious swing of his quoit, he unintentionally

struck Akrisios, and caused his death: the predictions of the oracle

were thus at last fulfilled. Stung with remorse at the catastrophe,

and unwilling to return to Argos, which had been the principality of

Akrisios, Perseus made an exchange with Megapenthês, son of Prœtos king

of Tiryns. Megapenthês became king of Argos, and Perseus of Tiryns:

moreover, the latter founded, within ten miles of Argos, the far-famed

city of Mykênæ. The massive walls of this city, like those of Tiryns,

of which remains are yet to be seen, were built for him by the Lykian

Cyclôpes.[198]

[197] The beautiful fragment of Simonidês (Fragm. vii. ed.

Gaisford. Poet. Min.), describing Danaê and the child thus

exposed, is familiar to every classical reader.

[198] Paus. ii. 15, 4; ii. 16, 5. Apollod. ii. 2. Pherekyd.

Fragm. 26, Dind.

We here reach the commencement of the Perseid dynasty of Mykênæ. It

should be noticed, however, that there were among the ancient legends

contradictory accounts of the foundation of this city. Both the Odyssey

and the Great Eoiai enumerated, among the heroines, Mykênê, the Eponyma

of the city; the former poem classifying her with Tyrô and Alkmênê, the

latter describing her as the daughter of Inachus and wife of Arestôr.

And Akusilaus mentioned an Eponymus Mykêneus, the son of Spartôn and

grandson of Phorôneus.[199]

[199] Odyss. ii. 120. Hesiod. Fragment. 154. Marktscheff.—Akusil.

Fragm. 16. Pausan. ii. 16, 4. Hekatæus derived the name of the

town from the μύκης of the sword of Perseus (Fragm. 360, Dind.).

The Schol. ad Eurip. Orest. 1247, mentions Mykêneus as son of

Spartôn, but grandson of Phêgeus the brother of Phorôneus.

The prophetic family of Melampus maintained itself in one of the

three parts of the divided Argeian kingdom for five generations, down

to Amphiaraos and his sons Alkmæôn and Amphilochos. The dynasty of

his brother Bias, and that of Megapenthês, son of Prœtos, continued

each for four generations: a list of barren names fills up the

interval.[200] The Perseids of Mykênæ boasted a descent long and

glorious, heroic as well as historical, continuing down to the last

sovereigns of Sparta.[201] The issue of Perseus was numerous: his son

Alkæos was father of Amphitryôn; another of his sons, Elektryôn, was

father of Alkmênê;[202] a third, Sthenelos, father of Eurystheus.

[200] Pausan. ii. 18, 4.

[201] Herodot. vi. 53.

[202] In the Hesiodic Shield of Hêraklês, Alkmênê is distinctly

mentioned as daughter of Elektryôn; the genealogical poet, Asios,

called her the daughter of Amphiaraos and Eriphyle (Asii Fragm.

4, ed. Markt. p. 412). The date of Asios cannot be precisely

fixed; but he may be probably assigned to an epoch between the

30th and 40th Olympiad.

Asios must have adopted a totally different legend respecting the

birth of Hêraklês and the circumstances preceding it, among which

the deaths of her father and brothers are highly influential. Nor

could he have accepted the received chronology of the sieges of

Thêbes and Troy.

After the death of Perseus, Alkæos and Amphitryôn dwelt at Tiryns.

The latter became engaged in a quarrel with Elektryôn respecting

cattle, and in a fit of passion killed him:[203] moreover the piratical

Taphians from the west coast of Akarnania invaded the country, and

slew the sons of Elektryôn, so that Alkmênê alone was left of that

family. She was engaged to wed Amphitryôn; but she bound him by oath

not to consummate the marriage until he had avenged upon the Têleboæ

the death of her brothers. Amphitryôn, compelled to flee the country

as the murderer of his uncle, took refuge in Thêbes, whither Alkmênê

accompanied him: Sthenelos was left in possession of Tiryns. The

Kadmeians of Thêbes, together with the Locrians and Phocians, supplied

Amphitryôn with troops, which he conducted against the Têleboæ and

the Taphians:[204] yet he could not have subdued them without the aid

of Komæthô, daughter of the Taphian king Pterelaus, who conceived a

passion for him, and cut off from her father’s head the golden lock

to which Poseidôn had attached the gift of immortality.[205] Having

conquered and expelled his enemies, Amphitryôn returned to Thêbes,

impatient to consummate his marriage: but Zeus on the wedding-night

assumed his form and visited Alkmênê before him: he had determined to

produce from her a son superior to all his prior offspring,—“a specimen

of invincible force both to gods and men.”[206] At the proper time,

Alkmênê was delivered of twin sons: Hêraklês the offspring of Zeus,—the

inferior and unhonored Iphiklês, offspring of Amphitryôn.[207]

[203] So runs the old legend in the Hesiodic Shield of Hêraklês

(12-82). Apollodôrus (or Pherekydês, whom he follows) softens

it down, and represents the death of Elektryôn as accidentally

caused by Amphitryôn. (Apollod. ii. 4, 6. Pherekydês, Fragm. 27,

Dind.)

[204] Hesiod, Scut. Herc. 24. Theocrit. Idyll. xxiv. 4. Teleboas,

the Eponym of these marauding people, was son of Poseidôn

(Anaximander ap. Athenæ. xi. p. 498).

[205] Apollod. ii. 4, 7. Compare the fable of Nisus at Megara,

_infra_, chap. xii. p. 302.

[206] Hesiod, Scut. Herc. 29. ὄφρα θεοῖσιν Ἀνδράσι τ᾽ ἀλφηστῇσιν

ἀρῆς ἀλκτῆρα φυτεύσῃ.

[207] Hesiod. Sc. H. 50-56.

When Alkmênê was on the point of being delivered at Thêbes, Zeus

publicly boasted among the assembled gods, at the instigation of the

mischief-making Atê, that there was on that day about to be born on

earth, from his breed, a son who should rule over all his neighbors.

Hêrê treated this as an empty boast, calling upon him to bind himself

by an irremissible oath that the prediction should be realized. Zeus

incautiously pledged his solemn word; upon which Hêrê darted swiftly

down from Olympus to the Achaic Argos, where the wife of Sthenelos

(son of Perseus, and therefore grandson of Zeus) was already seven

months gone with child. By the aid of the Eileithyiæ, the special

goddesses of parturition, she caused Eurystheus, the son of Sthenelos,

to be born before his time on that very day, while she retarded the

delivery of Alkmênê. Then returning to Olympus, she announced the

fact to Zeus: “The good man Eurystheus, son of the Perseid Sthenelos,

is this day born of thy loins: the sceptre of the Argeians worthily

belongs to him.” Zeus was thunderstruck at the consummation which he

had improvidently bound himself to accomplish. He seized Atê his evil

counsellor by the hair, and hurled her forever away from Olympus: but

he had no power to avert the ascendency of Eurystheus and the servitude

of Hêraklês. “Many a pang did he suffer, when he saw his favorite son

going through his degrading toil in the tasks imposed upon him by

Eurystheus.”[208]