It has already been mentioned that Antenôr and Æneas stand

distinguished from the other Trojans by a dissatisfaction with Priam

and a sympathy with the Greeks, which is by Sophoklês and others

construed as treacherous collusion,[775]—a suspicion indirectly

glanced, though emphatically repelled, by the Æneas of Virgil.[776]

In the old epic of Arktinus, next in age to the Iliad and Odyssey,

Æneas abandons Troy and retires to Mount Ida, in terror at the

miraculous death of Laocoôn, before the entry of the Greeks into the

town and the last night-battle: yet Leschês, in another of the ancient

epic poems, represented him as having been carried away captive by

Neoptolemus.[777] In a remarkable passage of the Iliad, Poseidôn

describes the family of Priam as having incurred the hatred of Zeus,

and predicts that Æneas and his descendants shall reign over the

Trojans: the race of Dardanus, beloved by Zeus more than all his other

sons, would thus be preserved, since Æneas belonged to it. Accordingly,

when Æneas is in imminent peril from the hands of Achilles, Poseidôn

specially interferes to rescue him, and even the implacable miso-Trojan

goddess Hêrê assents to the proceeding.[778] These passages have

been construed by various able critics to refer to a family of

philo-Hellenic or semi-Hellenic Æneadæ, known even in the time of the

early singers of the Iliad as masters of some territory in or near the

Troad, and professing to be descended from, as well as worshipping,

Æneas. In the town of Skêpsis, situated in the mountainous range of

Ida, about thirty miles eastward of Ilium, there existed two noble and

priestly families who professed to be descended, the one from Hectôr,

the other from Æneas. The Skêpsian critic Dêmêtrius (in whose time both

these families were still to be found) informs us that Skamandrius son

of Hectôr, and Ascanius son of Æneas, were the archegets or heroic

founders of his native city, which had been originally situated on

one of the highest ranges of Ida, and was subsequently transferred

by them to the less lofty spot on which it stood in his time.[779]

In Arisbê and Gentinus there seem to have been families professing

the same descent, since the same archegets were acknowledged.[780] In

Ophrynium, Hectôr had his consecrated edifice, and in Ilium both he and

Æneas were worshipped as gods:[781] and it was the remarkable statement

of the Lesbian Menekratês, that Æneas, “having been wronged by Paris

and stripped of the sacred privileges which belonged to him, avenged

himself by betraying the city, and then became one of the Greeks.”[782]

[775] Dionys. Hal. i. 46-48; Sophokl. ap. Strab. xiii. p. 608;

Livy, i. 1; Xenophon, Venat. i. 15.

[776] Æn. ii. 433.

[777] Argument of Ἰλίου Πέρσις; Fragm. 7. of Leschês, in

Düntzer’s Collection, p. 19-21.

Hellanikus seems to have adopted this retirement of Æneas to the

strongest parts of Mount Ida, but to have reconciled it with

the stories of the migration of Æneas, by saying that he only

remained in Ida a little time, and then quitted the country

altogether by virtue of a convention concluded with the Greeks

(Dionys. Hal. i. 47-48). Among the infinite variety of stories

respecting this hero, one was, that after having effected his

settlement in Italy, he had returned to Troy and resumed the

sceptre, bequeathing it at his death to Ascanius (Dionys. Hal. i.

53): this was a comprehensive scheme for apparently reconciling

_all_ the legends.

[778] Iliad, xx. 300. Poseidôn speaks, respecting Æneas—

Ἀλλ᾽ ἄγεθ᾽ ἡμεῖς πέρ μιν ὑπ᾽ ἐκ θανάτου ἀγάγωμεν,

Μήπως καὶ Κρονίδης κεχολώσεται, αἴκεν Ἀχιλλεὺς

Τόνδε κατακτείνῃ· μόριμον δέ οἱ ἐστ᾽ ἀλέασθαι,

Ὄφρα μὴ ἄσπερμος γενεὴ καὶ ἄφαντος ὄληται

Δαρδάνου, ὃν Κρονίδης περὶ πάντων φίλατο παίδων,

Οἱ ἕθεν ἐξεγένοντο, γυναικῶν τε θνητάων.

Ἤδη γὰρ Πριάμου γενεὴν ἤχθῃρε Κρονίων·

Νῦν δὲ δὴ Αἰνείαο βίη Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξει,

Καὶ παίδων παῖδες, τοί κεν μετόπισθε γένωνται.

Again, v. 339, Poseidôn tells Æneas that he has nothing to dread

from any other Greek than Achilles.

[779] See O. Müller, on the causes of the mythe of Æneas and

his voyage to Italy, in Classical Journal, vol. xxvi. p. 308;

Klausen, Æneas und die Penaten, vol. i. p. 43-52.

Dêmêtrius Skêps. ab. Strab. xiii. p. 607; Nicolaus ap. Steph.

Byz. v. Ἀσκανία. Dêmêtrius conjectured that Skêpsis had been the

regal seat of Æneas: there was a village called Æneia near to it

(Strabo, xiii. p. 603).

[780] Steph. Byz. v. Ἀρίσβη, Γεντῖνος. Ascanius is king of Ida

after the departure of the Greeks (Conôn, Narr. 41; Mela, i. 18).

_Ascanius portus_ between Phokæ and Kymê.

[781] Strabo, xiii. p. 595; Lycophrôn, 1208, and Sch.;

Athenagoras, Legat. 1. Inscription in Clarke’s Travels, vol. ii.

p. 86, Οἱ Ἰλιεῖς τὸν πάτριον θεὸν Αἰνείαν. Lucian, Deor. Concil.

c. 12. i. 111. p. 534, Hemst.

[782] Menekrat. ap. Dionys. Hal. i. 48. Ἀχαιοὺς δὲ ἀνίη εἶχε

(after the burial) καὶ ἐδόκεον τῆς στρατιῆς τὴν κεφαλὴν

ἀπηράχθαι. Ὅμως δὲ τάφον αὐτῷ δαίσαντες, ἐπολέμεον γῇ πάσῃ,

ἄχρις Ἴλιος ἑάλω Αἰνείεω ἐνδόντος. Αἰνείης γὰρ ἄτιτος ἐὼν ὑπὸ

Ἀλεξάνδρου, καὶ ἀπὸ γερέων ἱερῶν ἐξειργόμενος, ἀνέτρεψε Πρίαμον,

ἐργασάμενος δὲ ταῦτα, εἷς Ἀχαιῶν ἐγεγόνει.

Abas, in his _Troica_, gave a narrative different from any

other preserved: “Quidam ab Abante, qui _Troica_ scripsit,

relatum ferunt, post discessum a Trojâ Græcorum Astyanacti ibi

datum regnum, hunc ab Antenore expulsum sociatis sibi finitimis

civitatibus, inter quas et Arisba fuit: Ænean hoc ægre tulisse,

et pro Astyanacte arma cepisse ac prospere gestâ re Astyanact

restituisse regnum” (Servius ad Virg. Æneid. ix. 264). According

to Diktys, Antenôr remains king and Æneas goes away (Dikt. v.

17): Antenôr brings the Palladium to the Greeks (Dikt. v. 8).

Syncellus, on the contrary, tells us that the sons of Hectôr

recovered Ilium by the suggestions of Helenus, expelling the

Atenorids (Syncell. p. 322, ed. Bonn).

One tale thus among many respecting Æneas, and that too the most

ancient of all, preserved among the natives of the Troad, who

worshipped him as their heroic ancestor, was, that after the capture

of Troy he continued in the country as king of the remaining Trojans,

on friendly terms with the Greeks. But there were other tales

respecting him, alike numerous and irreconcilable: the hand of

destiny marked him as a wanderer (_fato profugus_), and his ubiquity

is not exceeded even by that of Odysseus. We hear of him at Ænus

in Thrace, in Pallênê, at Æneia in the Thermaic Gulf, in Delus, at

Orchomenos and Mantineia in Arcadia, in the islands of Kythêra and

Zakynthus, in Leukas and Ambrakia, at Buthrotum in Epirus, on the

Salentine peninsula and various other places in the southern region

of Italy; at Drepana and Segesta in Sicily, at Carthage, at Cape

Palinurus, Cumæ, Misenum, Caieta, and finally in Latium, where he lays

the first humble foundation of the mighty Rome and her empire.[783]

And the reason why his wanderings were not continued still further

was, that the oracles and the pronounced will of the gods directed

him to settle in Latium.[784] In each of these numerous places his

visit was commemorated and certified by local monuments or special

legends, particularly by temples and permanent ceremonies in honor of

his mother Aphroditê, whose worship accompanied him everywhere: there

were also many temples and many different tombs of Æneas himself.[785]

The vast ascendency acquired by Rome, the ardor with which all the

literary Romans espoused the idea of a Trojan origin, and the fact

that the Julian family recognized Æneas as their gentile primary

ancestor,—all contributed to give to the Roman version of his legend

the preponderance over every other. The various other places in which

monuments of Æneas were found came thus to be represented as places

where he had halted for a time on his way from Troy to Latium. But

though the legendary pretensions of these places were thus eclipsed

in the eyes of those who constituted the literary public, the local

belief was not extinguished: they claimed the hero as their permanent

property, and his tomb was to them a proof that he had lived and died

among them.

[783] Dionys. Halic. A. R. i. 48-54; Heyne, Excurs. 1 ad Æneid.

iii.; De Æneæ Erroribus, and Excurs. 1 ad Æn. v.; Conôn. Narr.

46; Livy, xl. 4; Stephan. Byz. Αἴνεια. The inhabitants of Æneia

in the Thermaic Gulf worshipped him with great solemnity as their

heroic founder (Pausan. iii. 22, 4; viii. 12, 4). The tomb of

Anchisês was shown on the confines of the Arcadian Orchomenus and

Mantineia (compare Steph. Byz. v. Κάφυαι), under the mountain

called Anchisia, near a temple of Aphroditê: on the discrepancies

respecting the death of Anchisês (Heyne. Excurs. 17 ad Æn. iii.):

Segesta in Sicily founded by Æneas (Cicero, Verr. iv. 33).

[784] Τοῦ δὲ μηκέτι προσωτέρω τῆς Εὐρώπης πλεῦσαι τὸν Τρωϊκὸν

στόλον, οἵ τε χρησμοὶ ἐγένοντο αἴτιοι, etc. (Dionys. Hal. i. 55).

[785] Dionys. Hal. i. 54. Among other places, his tomb was shown

at Berecynthia, in Phrygia (Festus, v. _Romam_, p. 224, ed.

Müller): a curious article, which contains an assemblage of the

most contradictory statements respecting both Æneas and Latinus.

Antenôr, who shares with Æneas the favorable sympathy of the Greeks,

is said by Pindar to have gone from Troy along with Menelaus and Helen

into the region of Kyrênê in Libya.[786] But according to the more

current narrative, he placed himself at the head of a body of Eneti or

Veneti from Paphlagonia, who had come as allies of Troy, and went by

sea into the inner part of the Adriatic Gulf, where he conquered the

neighboring barbarians and founded the town of Patavium (the modern

Padua); the Veneti in this region were said to owe their origin to his

immigration.[787] We learn further from Strabo, that Opsikellas, one

of the companions of Antenôr, had continued his wanderings even into

Ibêria, and that he had there established a settlement bearing his

name.[788]

[786] Pindar, Pyth. v., and the citation from the Νόστοι of

Lysimachus in the Scholia; given still more fully in the Scholia

ad Lycophrôn. 875. There was a λόφος Ἀντηνορίδων at Kyrênê.

[787] Livy, i. 1. Servius ad Æneid. i. 242. Strabo, i. 48; v.

212. Ovid, Fasti, iv. 75.

[788] Strabo, iii. p. 157.

Thus endeth the Trojan war; together with its sequel, the dispersion

of the heroes, victors as well as vanquished. The account here

given of it has been unavoidably brief and imperfect; for in a work

intended to follow consecutively the real history of the Greeks, no

greater space can be allotted even to the most splendid gem of their

legendary period. Indeed, although it would be easy to fill a large

volume with the separate incidents which have been introduced into the

“Trojan cycle,” the misfortune is that they are for the most part so

contradictory as to exclude all possibility of weaving them into one

connected narrative. We are compelled to select one out of the number,

generally without any solid ground of preference, and then to note

the variations of the rest. No one who has not studied the original

documents can imagine the extent to which this discrepancy proceeds;

it covers almost every portion and fragment of the tale.[789]

[789] These diversities are well set forth in the useful

Dissertation of Fuchs De Varietate Fabularum Troicarum (Cologne,

1830).

Of the number of romantic statements put forth respecting Helen

and Achilles especially, some idea may be formed from the fourth,

fifth and sixth chapters of Ptolemy Hêphæstion (apud Westermann,

Scriptt. Mythograph. p. 188, etc.).

But though much may have been thus omitted of what the reader

might expect to find in an account of the Trojan war, its genuine

character has been studiously preserved, without either exaggeration

or abatement. The real Trojan war is that which was recounted by

Homer and the old epic poets, and continued by all the lyric and

tragic composers. For the latter, though they took great liberties

with the particular incidents, and introduced to some extent a new

moral tone, yet worked more or less faithfully on the Homeric scale:

and even Euripidês, who departed the most widely from the feeling

of the old legend, never lowered down his matter to the analogy

of contemporary life. They preserved its well-defined object, at

once righteous and romantic, the recovery of the daughter of Zeus

and sister of the Dioskuri—its mixed agencies, divine, heroic and

human—the colossal force and deeds of its chief actors—its vast

magnitude and long duration, as well as the toils which the conquerors

underwent, and the Nemesis which followed upon their success. And

these were the circumstances which, set forth in the full blaze of

epic and tragic poetry, bestowed upon the legend its powerful and

imperishable influence over the Hellenic mind. The enterprise was one

comprehending all the members of the Hellenic body, of which each

individually might be proud, and in which, nevertheless, those feelings

of jealous and narrow patriotism, so lamentably prevalent in many of

the towns, were as much as possible excluded. It supplied them with

a grand and inexhaustible object of common sympathy, common faith,

and common admiration; and when occasions arose for bringing together

a Pan-Hellenic force against the barbarians, the precedent of the

Homeric expedition was one upon which the elevated minds of Greece

could dwell with the certainty of rousing an unanimous impulse, if not

always of counterworking sinister by-motives, among their audience.

And the incidents comprised in the Trojan cycle were familiarized, not

only to the public mind but also to the public eye, by innumerable

representations both of the sculptor and the painter,—those which were

romantic and chivalrous being better adapted for this purpose, and

therefore more constantly employed, than any other.

Of such events the genuine Trojan war of the old epic was for the most

part composed. Though literally believed, reverentially cherished,

and numbered among the gigantic phænomena of the past, by the

Grecian public, it is in the eyes of modern inquiry essentially a

legend and nothing more. If we are asked whether it be not a legend

embodying portions of historical matter, and raised upon a basis of

truth,—whether there may not really have occurred at the foot of

the hill of Ilium a war purely human and political, without gods,

without heroes, without Helen, without Amazons, without Ethiopians

under the beautiful son of Eôs, without the wooden horse, without the

characteristic and expressive features of the old epical war,—like

the mutilated trunk of Deïphobus in the under-world; if we are asked

whether there was not really some such historical Trojan war as this,

our answer must be, that as the possibility of it cannot be denied,

so neither can the reality of it be affirmed. We possess nothing but

the ancient epic itself without any independent evidence: had it

been an age of records indeed, the Homeric epic in its exquisite and

unsuspecting simplicity would probably never have come into existence.

Whoever therefore ventures to dissect Homer, Arktinus and Leschês,

and to pick out certain portions as matters of fact, while he sets

aside the rest as fiction, must do so in full reliance on his own

powers of historical divination, without any means either of proving

or verifying his conclusions. Among many attempts, ancient as well as

modern, to identify real objects in this historical darkness, that of

Dio Chrysostom deserves attention for its extraordinary boldness. In

his oration addressed to the inhabitants of Ilium, and intended to

demonstrate that the Trojans were not only blameless as to the origin

of the war, but victorious in its issue—he overthrows all the leading

points of the Homeric narrative, and re-writes nearly the whole from

beginning to end: Paris is the lawful husband of Helen, Achilles is

slain by Hectôr, and the Greeks retire without taking Troy, disgraced

as well as baffled. Having shown without difficulty that the Iliad,

if it be looked at as a history, is full of gaps, incongruities and

absurdities, he proceeds to compose a more plausible narrative of his

own, which he tenders as so much authentic matter of fact. The most

important point, however, which his Oration brings to view is, the

literal and confiding belief with which the Homeric narrative was

regarded, as if it were actual history, not only by the inhabitants of

Ilium, but also by the general Grecian public.[790]

[790] Dio Chrysost. Or. xi. p. 310-322.

The small town of Ilium, inhabited by Æolic Greeks,[791] and raised

into importance only by the legendary reverence attached to it, stood

upon an elevated ridge forming a spur from Mount Ida, rather more than

three miles from the town and promontory of Sigeium, and about twelve

stadia, or less than two miles, from the sea at its nearest point.

From Sigeium and the neighboring town of Achilleium (with its monument

and temple of Achilles), to the town of Rhœteium on a hill higher

up the Hellespont (with its monument and chapel of Ajax called the

Aianteium[792]), was a distance of sixty stadia, or seven miles and a

half in the straight course by sea: in the intermediate space was a bay

and an adjoining plain, comprehending the embouchure of the Scamander,

and extending to the base of the ridge on which Ilium stood. This plain

was the celebrated plain of Troy, in which the great Homeric battles

were believed to have taken place: the portion of the bay near to

Sigeium went by the name of the Naustathmon of the Achæans (_i. e._ the

spot where they dragged their ships ashore), and was accounted to have

been the camp of Agamemnôn and his vast army.[793]

[791] Herodot. v. 122. Pausan. v. 8, 3: viii. 12, 4. Αἰολεὺς ἐκ

πόλεως Τρῴαδος, the title proclaimed at the Olympic games; like

Αἰολεὺς ἀπὸ Μουρίνας, from Myrina in the more southerly region of

Æolis, as we find in the list of visitors at the Charitêsia, at

Orchomenos in Bϙtia (Corp. Inscrip. Boeckh. No. 1583).

[792] See Pausanias, i. 35, 3, for the legends current at Ilium

respecting the vast size of the bones of Ajax in his tomb. The

inhabitants affirmed that after the shipwreck of Odysseus, the

arms of Achilles, which he was carrying away with him, were

washed up by the sea against the tomb of Ajax. Pliny gives the

distance at thirty stadia: modern travellers make it some thing

more than Pliny, but considerably less than Strabo.

[793] Strabo, xiii. p. 596-598. Strabo distinguishes the Ἀχαιῶν

Ναύσταθμον, which was near to Sigeium, from the Ἀχαιῶν λιμήν,

which was more towards the middle of the bay between Sigeium and

Rhœteium; but we gather from his language that this distinction

was not universally recognized. Alexander landed at the Ἀχαιῶν

λιμήν (Arrian, i. 11).

Historical Ilium was founded, according to the questionable statement

of Strabo, during the last dynasty of the Lydian kings,[794] that is,

at some period later than 720 B. C. Until after the days of Alexander

the Great—indeed until the period of Roman preponderance—it always

remained a place of inconsiderable power and importance, as we learn

not only from the assertion of the geographer, but also from the fact

that Achilleium, Sigeium and Rhœteium were all independent of it.[795]

But inconsiderable as it might be, it was the only place which ever

bore the venerable name immortalized by Homer. Like the Homeric Ilium,

it had its temple of Athênê,[796] wherein she was worshipped as the

presiding goddess of the town: the inhabitants affirmed that Agamemnôn

had not altogether destroyed the town, but that it had been reoccupied

after his departure, and had never ceased to exist.[797] Their

acropolis was called Pergamum, and in it was shown the house of Priam

and the altar of Zeus Herkeius where that unhappy old man had been

slain: moreover there were exhibited, in the temples, panoplies which

had been worn by the Homeric heroes,[798] and doubtless many other

relics appreciated by admirers of the Iliad.

[794] Strabo, xiii. p. 593.

[795] Herodot. v. 95 (his account of the war between the

Athenians and Mitylenæans about Sigeium and Achilleium); Strabo,

xiii. p. 593. Τὴν δὲ τῶν Ἰλιέων πόλιν τὴν νῦν τέως μὲν κωμόπολιν

εἶναί φασι, τὸ ἱερὸν ἔχουσαν τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς μικρὸν καὶ εὐτελές.

Ἀλέξανδρον δὲ ἀναβάντα μετὰ τὴν ἐπὶ Γρανίκῳ νίκην, ἀναθήμασι τε

κοσμῆσαι τὸ ἱερὸν καὶ προσαγορεῦσαι πόλιν, etc.

Again, Καὶ τὸ Ἴλιον, ὃ νῦν ἐστὶ, κωμόπολίς τις ἦν ὅτε πρῶτον

Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς Ἀσίας ἐπέβησαν.

[796] Besides Athênê, the Inscriptions authenticate Ζεὺς Πολιεὺς

at Ilium (Corp. Inscrip. Bœckh. No. 3599).

[797] Strabo, xiii. p. 600. Λέγουσι δ᾽ οἱ νῦν Ἰλιεῖς καὶ τοῦτο,

ὡς οὐδὲ τέλεως συνέβαινεν ἠφανίσθαι τὴν πόλιν κατὰ τὴν ἅλωσιν ὑπὸ

τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, οὐδ᾽ ἐξηλείφθη οὐδέποτε.

The situation of Ilium (or as it is commonly, but erroneously,

termed, _New Ilium_) appears to be pretty well ascertained, about

two miles from the sea (Rennell, On the Topography of Troy, p.

41-71; Dr. Clarke’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 102).

[798] Xerxês passing by Adramyttium, and leaving the range of

Mount Ida on his left hand, ἤϊε ἐς τὴν Ἰλιάδα γῆν.... Ἀπικομένου

δὲ τοῦ στρατοῦ ἐπὶ τὸν Σκάμανδρον ... ἐς τὸ Πριάμου Πέργαμον

ἀνέβη, ἵμερον ἔχων θεήσασθαι. Θεησάμενος δὲ, καὶ ~πυθόμενος

κείνων ἕκαστα~, τῇ Ἀθηναίῃ τῇ Ἰλιάδι ἔθυσε βοῦς χιλίας· χοὰς δὲ

οἱ μάγοι τοῖσιν ἥρωσιν ἐχέαντο.... Ἅμα ἡμέρῃ δὲ ἐπορεύετο, ἐν

ἀριστερῇ μὲν ἀπέργων Ῥοιτεῖον πόλιν καὶ Ὀφρυνεῖον καὶ Δάρδανον,

ἥπερ δὴ Ἀβύδῳ ὅμουρος ἐστιν· ἐν δεξιῇ δὲ, Γέργιθας Τευκρούς

(Herod. vii. 43).

Respecting Alexander (Arrian, i. 11), Ἀνελθόντα δὲ ἐς Ἴλιον, τῇ

Ἀθηνᾷ θῦσαι τῇ Ἰλιάδι, καὶ τὴν πανοπλίαν τὴν αὑτοῦ ἀναθεῖναι ἐς

τὸν ναὸν, καὶ καθελεῖν ἀντὶ ταύτης τῶν ἱερῶν τινα ὅπλων ἔτι ἐκ

τοῦ Τρωϊκοῦ ἔργου σωζόμενα· καὶ ταῦτα λέγουσιν ὅτι οἱ ὑπασπισταὶ

ἔφερον πρὸ αὐτοῦ ἐς τὰς μάχας. Θῦσαι δὲ αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τοῦ βωμοῦ τοῦ

Διὸς τοῦ Ἑρκείου λόγος κατέχει, μῆνιν Πριάμου παραιτούμενον τῷ

Νεοπτολέμου γένει, ὃ δὴ ἐς αὐτὸν καθῆκε.

The inhabitants of Ilium also showed the lyre which had belonged

to Paris (Plutarch, Alexand. c. 15).

Chandler, in his History of Ilium, chap. xxii. p. 89, seems to

think that the place called by Herodotus the Pergamum of Priam

is different from the historical Ilium. But the mention of the

Iliean Athênê identifies them as the same.

These were testimonies which few persons in those ages were inclined

to question, when combined with the identity of name and general

locality; nor does it seem that any one did question them until the

time of Dêmêtrius of Skêpsis. Hellanikus expressly described this Ilium

as being the Ilium of Homer, for which assertion Strabo (or probably

Dêmêtrius, from whom the narrative seems to be copied) imputes to him

very gratuitously an undue partiality towards the inhabitants of the

town.[799] Herodotus relates, that Xerxês in his march into Greece

visited the place, went up to the Pergamum of Priam, inquired with

much interest into the details of the Homeric siege, made libations to

the fallen heroes, and offered to the Athênê of Ilium his magnificent

sacrifice of a thousand oxen: he probably represented and believed

himself to be attacking Greece as the avenger of the Priamid family.

The Lacedæmonian admiral Mindarus, while his fleet lay at Abydus, went

personally to Ilium to offer sacrifice to Athênê, and saw from that

elevated spot the battle fought between the squadron of Dorieus and

the Athenians, on the shore near Rhœteium.[800] During the interval

between the Peloponnesian war and the Macedonian invasion of Persia,

Ilium was always garrisoned as a strong position; but its domain was

still narrow, and did not extend even to the sea which was so near to

it.[801] Alexander, on crossing the Hellespont, sent his army from

Sestus to Abydus, under Parmenio, and sailed personally from Elæeus

in the Chersonese, after having solemnly sacrificed at the Elæuntian

shrine of Prôtesilaus, to the harbor of the Achæans between Sigeium and

Rhœteium. He then ascended to Ilium, sacrificed to the Iliean Athênê,

and consecrated in her temple his own panoply, in exchange for which

he took some of the sacred arms there suspended, which were said to

have been preserved from the time of the Trojan war. These arms were

carried before him when he went to battle by his armor-bearers. It is

a fact still more curious, and illustrative of the strong working of

the old legend on an impressible and eminently religious mind, that he

also sacrificed to Priam himself, on the very altar of Zeus Herkeius

from which the old king was believed to have been torn by Neoptolemus.

As that fierce warrior was his heroic ancestor by the maternal side, he

desired to avert from himself the anger of Priam against the Achilleid

race.[802]

[799] Strabo, xiii. p. 602. Ἑλλάνικος δὲ χαριζόμενος τοῖς

Ἰλιεῦσιν, οἷος ὁ ἐκείνου μῦθος, συνηγορεῖ τῷ τὴν αὐτὴν εἶναι

πόλιν τὴν νῦν τῇ τότε. Hellanikus had written a work called

Τρωϊκά.

[800] Xenoph. Hellen. i. 1, 10. Skylax places Ilium twenty-five

stadia, or about three miles, from the sea (c. 94). But I do not

understand how he can call Skêpsis and Kebrên πόλεις ἐπὶ θαλάσσῃ.

[801] See Xenoph. Hellen. iii. i. 16; and the description of the

seizure of Ilium, along with Skêpsis and Kebrên, by the chief of

mercenaries, Charidêmus, in Demosthen. cont. Aristocrat. c. 38.

p. 671: compare Æneas Poliorcetic. c. 24, and Polyæn. iii. 14.

[802] Arrian, _l. c._ Dikæarchus composed a separate work

respecting this sacrifice of Alexander, περὶ τῆς ἐν Ἰλίῳ θυσίας

(Athenæ. xiii. p. 603; Dikæarch. Fragm. p. 114, ed. Fuhr).

Theophrastus, in noticing old and venerable trees, mentions the

φηγοὶ (_Quercus æsculus_) on the tomb of Ilus at Ilium, without

any doubt of the authenticity of the place (De Plant. iv. 14);

and his contemporary, the harper Stratonikos, intimates the same

feeling, in his jest on the visit of a bad sophist to Ilium

during the festival of the Ilieia (Athenæ. viii. p. 351). The

same may be said respecting the author of the tenth epistle

ascribed to the orator Æschinês (p. 737), in which his visit of

curiosity to Ilium is described—as well as about Apollônius of

Tyana, or the writer who describes his life and his visit to the

Trôad; it is evident that he did not distrust the ἀρχαιολογία

of the Ilieans, who affirmed their town to be the real Troy

(Philostrat. Vit. Apollôn. Tyan. iv. 11).

The goddess Athênê of Ilium was reported to have rendered

valuable assistance to the inhabitants of Kyzikus, when they were

besieged by Mithridatês, commemorated by inscriptions set up in

Ilium (Plutarch, Lucull. 10).

Alexander made to the inhabitants of Ilium many munificent promises,

which he probably would have executed, had he not been prevented

by untimely death: for the Trojan war was amongst all the Grecian

legends the most thoroughly Pan-Hellenic, and the young king of

Macedôn, besides his own sincere legendary faith, was anxious to

merge the local patriotism of the separate Greek towns in one general

Hellenic sentiment under himself as chief. One of his successors,

Antigonus,[803] founded the city of Alexandreia in the Trôad, between

Sigeium and the more southerly promontory of Lektum; compressing into

it the inhabitants of many of the neighboring Æolic towns in the region

of Ida,—Skêpsis, Kebrên, Hamaxitus, Kolônæ, and Neandria, though the

inhabitants of Skêpsis were subsequently permitted by Lysimachus to

resume their own city and autonomous government. Ilium however remained

without any special mark of favor until the arrival of the Romans in

Asia and their triumph over Antiochus (about 190 B. C.). Though it

retained its walls and its defensible position, Dêmêtrius of Skêpsis,

who visited it shortly before that event, described it as being then

in a state of neglect and poverty, many of the houses not even having

tiled roofs.[804] In this dilapidated condition, however, it was still

mythically recognized both by Antiochus and by the Roman consul

Livius, who went up thither to sacrifice to the Iliean Athênê. The

Romans, proud of their origin from Troy and Æneas, treated Ilium with

signal munificence; not only granting to it immunity from tribute,

but also adding to its domain the neighboring territories of Gergis,

Rhœteium and Sigeium—and making the Ilieans masters of the whole

coast[805] from the Peræa (or continental possessions) of Tenedos

(southward of Sigeium) to the boundaries of Dardanus, which had its own

title to legendary reverence as the special sovereignty of Æneas. The

inhabitants of Sigeium could not peaceably acquiesce in this loss of

their autonomy, and their city was destroyed by the Ilieans.

[803] Strabo, xiii. p. 603-607.

[804] Livy, xxxv. 43; xxxvii. 9. Polyb. v. 78-111 (passages which

prove that Ilium was fortified and defensible about B. C. 218).

Strabo, xiii. p. 594. Καὶ τὸ Ἴλιον δ᾽, ὃ νῦν ἐστι, κωμόπολίς τις

ἦν, ὅτε πρῶτον Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς Ἀσίας ἐπέβησαν καὶ ἐξέβαλον Ἀντίοχον

τὸν μέγαν ἐκ τῆς ἐντὸς τοῦ Ταύρου. Φησὶ γοῦν Δημήτριος ὁ Σκήψιος,

μειράκιον ἐπιδημήσας εἰς τὴν πόλιν κατ᾽ ἐκείνους τοὺς καιροὺς,

οὕτως ὠλιγωρημένην ἰδεῖν τὴν κατοικίαν, ὥστε μηδὲ κεραμωτὰς

ἔχειν τὰς στέγας. Ἡγησιάναξ δὲ, τοὺς Γαλάτας περαιωθέντας ἐκ τῆς

Εὐρώπης, ἀναβῆναι μὲν εἰς τὴν πόλιν δεομένους ἐρύματος, παραχρῆμα

δ᾽ ἐκλιπεῖν διὰ τὸ ἀτείχιστον· ὕστερον δ᾽ ἐπανόρθωσιν ἔσχε

πολλήν. Εἶτ᾽ ἐκάκωσαν αὐτὴν πάλιν οἱ μετὰ Φιμβρίου, etc.

This is a very clear and precise statement, attested by an

eye-witness. But it is thoroughly inconsistent with the statement

made by Strabo in the previous chapter, a dozen lines before, as

the text now stands; for he there informs us that Lysimachus,

after the death of Alexander, paid great attention to Ilium,

surrounded it with a wall of forty stadia in circumference,

erected a temple, and aggregated to Ilium the ancient cities

around, which were in a state of decay. We know from Livy that

the aggregation of Gergis and Rhœteium to Ilium was effected, not

by Lysimachus, but by the Romans (Livy, xxxviii. 37); so that the

_first_ statement of Strabo is not only inconsistent with his

second, but is contradicted by an independent authority.

I cannot but think that this contradiction arises from a

confusion of the text in Strabo’s _first_ passage, and that

in that passage Strabo really meant to speak only of the

improvements brought about by Lysimachus in _Alexandreia Trôas_;

that he never meant to ascribe to Lysimachus any improvements in

_Ilium_, but, on the contrary, to assign the remarkable attention

paid by Lysimachus to _Alexandreia Trôas_, as the reason why

he had neglected to fulfil the promises held out by Alexander

to _Ilium_. The series of facts runs thus:—1. Ilium is nothing

better than a κώμη; at the landing of Alexander; 2. Alexander

promises great additions, but never returns from Persia to

accomplish them; 3. Lysimachus is absorbed in Alexandreia Trôas,

into which he aggregates several of the adjoining old towns,

and which flourishes under his hands; 4. Hence Ilium remained a

κώμη when the Romans entered Asia, as it had been when Alexander

entered.

This alteration in the text of Strabo might be effected by the

simple transposition of the words as they now stand, and by

omitting ὅτε καὶ, ἤδη ἐπεμελήθη, without introducing a single

new or conjectural word, so that the passage would read thus:

Μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἐκείνου (Alexander’s) τελευτὴν Λυσίμαχος μάλιστα τῆς

Ἀλεξανδρείας ἐπεμελήθη, συνῳκισμένης μὲν ἤδη ὑπ᾽ Ἀντιγόνου, καὶ

προσηγορευμένης Ἀντιγόνιας, μεταβαλούσης δὲ τοὔνομα· (ἔδοξε γὰρ

εὐσεβὲς εἶναι τοὺς Ἀλεξάνδρον διαδεξαμένους ἐκείνου πρότερον

κτίζειν ἐπωνύμους πόλεις, εἶθ᾽ ἑαυτῶν) καὶ νέων κατεσκεύασε καὶ

τεῖχος περιεβάλετο ὅσον 40 σταδίων· συνῴκισε δὲ εἰς αὐτὴν τὰς

κύκλῳ πόλεις ἀρχαίας, ἤδη κεκακωμένας. Καὶ δὴ καὶ συνέμεινε

... πόλεων. If this reading be adopted, the words beginning

that which stands in Tzschucke’s edition as sect. 27, and which

immediately follow the last word πόλεων, will read quite suitably

and coherently,—Καὶ τὸ Ἴλιον δ᾽, ὃ νῦν ἐστὶ, κωμόπολίς τις ἦν,

ὅτε πρῶτον Ῥωμαῖοι τῆς Ἀσίας ἐπέβησαν, etc., whereas with the

present reading of the passage they show a contradiction, and the

whole passage is entirely confused.

[805] Livy, xxxviii. 39; Strabo, xiii. p. 600. Κατέσκαπται δὲ καὶ

τὸ Σίγειον ὑπὸ τῶν Ἰλιέων διὰ τὴν ἀπείθειαν· ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνοις γὰρ ἦν

ὕστερον ἡ παραλία πᾶσα ἡ μέχρι Δαρδάνου, καὶ νῦν ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνοις

ἔστι.

The dignity and power of Ilium being thus prodigiously enhanced, we

cannot doubt that the inhabitants assumed to themselves exaggerated

importance as the recognized parents of all-conquering Rome. Partly,

we may naturally suppose, from the jealousies thus aroused on the

part of their neighbors at Skêpsis and Alexandreia Trôas—partly from

the pronounced tendency of the age (in which Kratês at Pergamus and

Aristarchus at Alexandria divided between them the palm of literary

celebrity) towards criticism and illustration of the old poets—a

blow was now aimed at the mythical legitimacy of Ilium. Dêmêtrius of

Skêpsis, one of the most laborious of the Homeric critics, had composed

thirty books of comment upon the Catalogue in the Iliad: Hestiæa, an

authoress of Alexandreia Trôas, had written on the same subject: both

of them, well-acquainted with the locality, remarked that the vast

battles described in the Iliad could not be packed into the narrow

space between Ilium and the Naustathmon of the Greeks; the more so,

as that space, too small even as it then stood, had been considerably

enlarged since the date of the Iliad by deposits at the mouth of the

Skamander.[806] They found no difficulty in pointing out topographical

incongruities and impossibilities as to the incidents in the Iliad,

which they professed to remove by the startling theory that the Homeric

Ilium had not occupied the site of the city so called. There was a

village, called the village of the Ilieans, situated rather less than

four miles from the city in the direction of Mount Ida, and further

removed from the sea; here, they affirmed the “holy Troy” had stood.

[806] Strabo, xiii. 599. Παρατίθησι δὲ ὁ Δημήτριος καὶ τὴν

Ἀλεξανδρίνην Ἑστίαιαν μάρτυρα, τὴν συγγράψασαν περὶ τῆς Ὁμήρου

Ἰλιάδος, πυνθανομένην, εἰ περὶ τὴν νῦν πόλιν ὁ πόλεμος συνέστη,

καὶ τὸ Τρωϊκὸν πεδίον ποῦ ἔστιν, ὃ μέταξυ τῆς πόλεως καὶ τῆς

θαλάσσης ὁ ποιητὴς φράζει· τὸ μὲν γὰρ πρὸ τῆς νῦν πόλεως

ὁρώμενον, πρόχωμα εἶναι τῶν ποταμῶν, ὕστερον γεγονός.

The words ποῦ ἔστιν are introduced conjecturally by Grosskurd,

the excellent German translator of Strabo, but they seem to me

necessary to make the sense complete.

Hesitæa is cited more than once in the Homeric Scholia (Schol.

Venet. ad Iliad, iii. 64; Enstath. ad Iliad, ii. 538).

No positive proof was produced to sustain the conclusion, for Strabo

expressly states that not a vestige of the ancient city remained at

the Village of the Ilieans:[807] but the fundamental supposition was

backed by a second accessory supposition, to explain how it happened

that all such vestiges had disappeared. Nevertheless Strabo adopts the

unsupported hypothesis of Dêmêtrius as if it were an authenticated

fact—distinguishing pointedly between Old and New Ilium, and even

censuring Hellanikus for having maintained the received local faith.

But I cannot find that Dêmêtrius and Hestiæa have been followed in

this respect by any other writer of ancient times excepting Strabo.

Ilium still continued to be talked of and treated by every one as the

genuine Homeric Troy: the cruel jests of the Roman rebel Fimbria, when

he sacked the town and massacred the inhabitants—the compensation made

by Sylla, and the pronounced favor of Julius Cæsar and Augustus,—all

prove this continued recognition of identity.[808] Arrian, though a

native of Nicomedia, holding a high appointment in Asia Minor, and

remarkable for the exactness of his topographical notices, describes

the visit of Alexander to Ilium, without any suspicion that the place

with all its relics was a mere counterfeit: Aristidês, Dio Chrysostom,

Pausanias, Appian, and Plutarch hold the same language.[809] But modern

writers seem for the most part to have taken up the supposition from

Strabo as implicitly as he took it from Dêmêtrius. They call Ilium by

the disrespectful appellation of _New_ Ilium—while the traveller in the

Trôad looks for _Old_ Ilium as if it were the unquestionable spot where

Priam had lived and moved; the name is even formally enrolled on the

best maps recently prepared of the ancient Trôad.[810]

[807] Strabo, xiii. p. 599. Οὐδὲν δ᾽ ἴχνος σώζεται τῆς ἀρχαίας

πόλεως—εἰκότως· ἅτε γὰρ ἐκπεπορθημένων τῶν κύκλῳ πόλεων, οὐ

τελέως δὲ κατεσπασμένων, οἱ λίθοι πάντες εἰς τὴν ἐκείνων ἀνάληψιν

μετηνέχθησαν.

[808] Appian, Mithridat. c. 53; Strabo, xiii. p. 594; Plutarch,

Sertorius, c. 1; Velleius Paterc. ii. 23.

The inscriptions attest Panathenaic games celebrated at Ilium

in honor of Athênê by the Ilieans conjointly with various other

neighboring cities (see Corp. Inscr. Boeckh. No. 3601-3602, with

Boeckh’s observations). The valuable inscription No. 3595 attests

the liberality of Antiochus Soter towards the Iliean Athênê as

early as 278 B. C.

[809] Arrian, i. 11; Appian _ut sup._; also Aristidês, Or. 43,

Rhodiaca, p. 820 (Dindorf p. 369). The curious Oratio xi. of Dio

Chrysostom, in which he writes his new version of the Trojan war,

is addressed to the inhabitants of Ilium.

[810] The controversy, now half a century old, respecting Troy

and the Trojan war—between Bryant and his various opponents,

Morritt, Gilbert Wakefield, the British Critic, etc., seems

now nearly forgotten, and I cannot think that the pamphlets on

either side would be considered as displaying much ability, if

published at the present day. The discussion was first raised by

the publication of Le Chevalier’s account of the plain of Troy,

in which the author professed to have discovered the true site of

Old Ilium (the supposed Homeric Troy), about twelve miles from

the sea near Bounarbashi. Upon this account Bryant published some

animadversions, followed up by a second treatise, in which he

denied the historical reality of the Trojan war, and advanced the

hypothesis that the tale was of Egyptian origin (Dissertation on

the War of Troy, and the Expedition of the Grecians as described

by Homer, showing that no such Expedition was ever undertaken,

and that no such city of Phrygia existed, by Jacob Bryant;

seemingly 1797, though there is no date in the title-page:

Morritt’s reply was published in 1798). A reply from Mr. Bryant

and a rejoinder from Mr. Morritt, as well as a pamphlet from G.

Wakefield, appeared in 1799 and 1800, besides an Expostulation by

the former addressed to the British Critic.

Bryant, having dwelt both on the incredibilities and the

inconsistencies of the Trojan war, as it is recounted in

Grecian legend generally, nevertheless admitted that Homer had

a groundwork for his story, and maintained that that groundwork

was Egyptian. Homer (he thinks) was an Ithacan, descended

from a family originally emigrant from Egypt: the war of Troy

was originally an Egyptian war, which explains how Memnôn the

Ethiopian came to take part in it: “upon this history, which

was originally Egyptian, Homer founded the scheme of his two

principal poems, adapting things to Greece and Phrygia by an

ingenious transposition:” he derived information from priests

of Memphis or Thêbes (Bryant, pp. 102, 108, 126). The Ἥρως

Αἰγύπτιος, mentioned in the second book of the Odyssey (15), is

the Egyptian hero, who affords, in his view, an evidence that the

population of that island was in part derived from Egypt. No one

since Mr. Bryant, I apprehend, has ever construed the passage in

the same sense.

Bryant’s Egyptian hypothesis is of no value; but the negative

portion of his argument, summing up the particulars of the Trojan

legend, and contending against its historical credibility, is

not so easily put aside. Few persons will share in the zealous

conviction by which Morritt tries to make it appear that the

1100 ships, the ten years of war, the large confederacy of

princes from all parts of Greece, etc., have nothing but what

is consonant with historical probability; difficulties being

occasionally eliminated by the plea of our ignorance of the time

and of the subject (Morritt, p. 7-21). Gilbert Wakefield, who

maintains the historical reality of the siege with the utmost

intensity, and even compares Bryant to Tom Paine (W. p. 17), is

still more displeased with those who propound doubts, and tells

us that “grave disputation in the midst of such darkness and

uncertainty is a conflict with chimæras” (W. p. 14).

The most plausible line of argument taken by Morritt and

Wakefield is, where they enforce the positions taken by Strabo

and so many other authors, ancient as well as modern, that a

superstructure of fiction is to be distinguished from a basis

of truth, and that the latter is to be maintained while the

former is rejected (Morritt, p. 5; Wake. p. 7-8). To this Bryant

replies, that “if we leave out every absurdity, we can make

anything plausible; that a fable may be made consistent, and we

have many romances that are very regular in the assortment of

characters and circumstances: this may be seen in plays, memoirs,

and novels. But this regularity and correspondence alone will not

ascertain the truth” (Expostulation, pp. 8, 12, 13). “That there

are a great many other fables besides that of Troy, regular and

consistent among themselves, believed and chronologized by the

Greeks, and even looked up to by them in a religious view (p.

13), which yet no one now thinks of admitting as history.”

Morritt, having urged the universal belief of antiquity as

evidence that the Trojan war was historically real, is met

by Bryant, who reminds him that the same persons believed in

centaurs, satyrs, nymphs, augury, aruspicy; Homer maintaining

that horses could speak, etc. To which Morritt replies, “What has

religious belief to do with historical facts? Is not the evidence

on which our faith rests in matters of religion totally different

in all its parts from that on which we ground our belief in

history?” (Addit. Remarks, p. 47).

The separation between the grounds of religious and historical

belief is by no means so complete as Mr. Morritt supposes, even

in regard to modern times; and when we apply his position to the

ancient Greeks, it will be found completely the reverse of the

truth. The contemporaries of Herodotus and Thucydidês conceived

their early history in the most intimate conjunction with their

religion.

Strabo has here converted into geographical matter of fact an

hypothesis purely gratuitous, with a view of saving the accuracy of

the Homeric topography; though in all probability the locality of the

pretended Old Ilium would have been found open to difficulties not

less serious than those which it was introduced to obviate.[811] It

may be true that Dêmêtrius and he were justified in their negative

argument, so as to show that the battles described in the Iliad could

not possibly have taken place if the city of Priam had stood on the

hill inhabited by the Ilieans. But the legendary faith subsisted

before, and continued without abatement afterwards, notwithstanding

such topographical impossibilities. Hellanikus, Herodotus, Mindarus,

the guides of Xerxês, and Alexander, had not been shocked by them: the

case of the latter is the strongest of all, because he had received the

best education of his time under Aristotle—he was a passionate admirer

and constant reader of the Iliad—he was moreover personally familiar

with the movements of armies, and lived at a time when maps, which

began with Anaximander, the disciple of Thalês, were at least known to

all who sought instruction. Now if, notwithstanding such advantages,

Alexander fully believed in the identity of Ilium, unconscious of

these many and glaring topographical difficulties, much less would

Homer himself, or the Homeric auditors, be likely to pay attention to

them, at a period, five centuries earlier, of comparative rudeness and

ignorance, when prose records as well as geographical maps were totally

unknown.[812] The inspired poet might describe, and his hearers would

listen with delight to the tale, how Hectôr, pursued by Achilles, ran

thrice round the city of Troy, while the trembling Trojans were all

huddled into the city, not one daring to come out even at this last

extremity of their beloved prince—and while the Grecian army looked on,

restraining unwillingly their uplifted spears at the nod of Achilles,

in order that Hectôr might perish by no other hand than his; nor were

they, while absorbed by this impressive recital, disposed to measure

distances or calculate topographical possibilities with reference to

the site of the real Ilium.[813] The mistake consists in applying to

Homer and to the Homeric siege of Troy, criticisms which would be

perfectly just if brought to bear on the Athenian siege of Syracuse, as

described by Thucydidês;[814] in the Peloponnesian war[815]—but which

are not more applicable to the epic narrative than they would be to the

exploits of Amadis or Orlando.

[811] For example, adopting his own line of argument (not to

mention those battles in which the pursuit and the flight reaches

from the city to the ships and back again), it might have been

urged to him, that by supposing the Homeric Troy to be four miles

farther off from the sea, he aggravated the difficulty of rolling

the Trojan horse into the town: it was already sufficiently hard

to propel this vast wooden animal full of heroes from the Greek

Naustathmon to the town of Ilium.

The Trojan horse, with its accompaniments Sinon and Laocoôn, is

one of the capital and indispensable events in the epic: Homer,

Arktinus, Leschês, Virgil, and Quintus Smyrnæus, all dwell upon

it emphatically as the proximate cause of the capture.

The difficulties and inconsistencies of the movements ascribed to

Greeks and Trojans in the Iliad, when applied to real topography,

are well set forth in Spohn, _De Agro Trojano_, Leipsic, 1814;

and Mr. Maclaren has shown (Dissertation on the Topography of the

Trojan War, Edinburgh, 1822) that these difficulties are nowise

obviated by removing Ilium a few miles further from the sea.

[812] Major Rennell argues differently from the visit of

Alexander, employing it to confute the hypothesis of Chevalier,

who had placed the Homeric Troy at Bounarbashi, the site supposed

to have been indicated by Dêmêtrius and Strabo:—

“Alexander is said to have been a passionate admirer of the

Iliad, and he had an opportunity of deciding on the spot how far

the topography was consistent with the narrative. Had he been

shown the site of Bounarbashi for that of Troy, he would probably

have questioned the fidelity either of the historical part of the

poem or his guides. It is not within credibility, that a person

of so correct a judgment as Alexander could have admired a poem,

which contained a long history of military details, and other

transactions that could not physically have had an existence.

What pleasure could he receive, in contemplating as subjects

of history, events which could not have happened? Yet he did

admire the poem, and _therefore must have found the topography

consistent_: that is, Bounarbashi, surely, was not shown to him

for Troy.” (Rennell, Observations on the Plain of Troy, p. 128).

Major Rennell here supposes in Alexander a spirit of

topographical criticism quite foreign to his real character. We

have no reason to believe that the site of Bounarbashi was shown

to Alexander as the Homeric Troy, or that any site was shown

to him _except Ilium_, or what Strabo calls New Ilium. Still

less reason have we to believe that any scepticism crossed his

mind, or that his deep-seated faith required to be confirmed by

measurement of distances.

[813] Strabo, xiii. p. 599. Οὐδ᾽ ἡ τοῦ Ἕκτορος δὲ περιδρομὴ ἡ

περὶ τὴν πόλιν ἔχει τι εὔλογον· οὐ γάρ ἐστι περίδρομος ἡ νῦν, διὰ

τὴν συνεχῆ ῥάχιν· ἡ δὲ παλαιὰ ἔχει περιδρομήν.

[814] Mannert (Geographie der Griechen und Römer, th. 6. heft 3.

b. 8. cap. 8) is confused in his account of Old and New Ilium: he

represents that Alexander raised up a new spot to the dignity of

having been the Homeric Ilium, which is not the fact: Alexander

adhered to the received local belief. Indeed, as far as our

evidence goes, no one but Dêmêtrius, Hestiæa, and Strabo appears

ever to have departed from it.

[815] There can hardly be a more singular example of this same

confusion, than to find elaborate military criticisms from the

Emperor Napoleon, upon the description of the taking of Troy in

the second book of the Æneid. He shows that gross faults are

committed in it, when looked at from the point of view of a

general (see an interesting article by Mr. G. C. Lewis, in the

Classical Museum, vol. i. p. 205, “Napoleon on the Capture of

Troy”).

Having cited this criticism from the highest authority on the

art of war, we may find a suitable parallel in the works of

distinguished publicists. The attack of Odysseus on the Ciconians

(described in Homer, Odyss. ix. 39-61) is cited both by Grotius

(De Jure Bell. et Pac. iii. 3, 10) and by Vattel (Droit des Gens,

iii. 202) as a case in point in international law. Odysseus is

considered to have sinned against the rules of international law

by attacking them as allies of the Trojans, without a formal

declaration of war.

There is every reason for presuming that the Ilium visited by Xerxês

and Alexander was really the “holy Ilium” present to the mind of

Homer; and if so, it must have been inhabited, either by Greeks or by

some anterior population, at a period earlier than that which Strabo

assigns. History recognizes neither Troy the city, nor Trojans, as

actually existing; but the extensive region called Trôas, or the

Trôad (more properly Trôïas), is known both to Herodotus and to

Thucydidês: it seems to include the territory westward of an imaginary

line drawn from the north-east corner of the Adramyttian gulf to the

Propontis at Parium, since both Antandrus, Kolônæ, and the district

immediately round Ilium, are regarded as belonging to the Trôad.[816]

Herodotus further notices the Teukrians of Gergis[817] (a township

conterminous with Ilium, and lying to the eastward of the road

from Ilium to Abydus), considering them as the remnant of a larger

Teukrian population which once resided in the country, and which

had in very early times undertaken a vast migration from Asia into

Europe.[818] To that Teukrian population he thinks that the Homeric

Trojans belonged:[819] and by later writers, especially by Virgil and

the other Romans, the names Teukrians and Trojans are employed as

equivalents. As the name Trojans is not mentioned in any contemporary

historical monument, so the name _Teukrians_ never once occurs in the

old epic. It appears to have been first noticed by the elegiac poet

Kallinus, about 660 B. C., who connected it by an alleged immigration

of Teukrians from Krête into the region round about Ida. Others again

denied this, asserting that the primitive ancestor, Teukrus, had come

into the country from Attica,[820] or that he was of indigenous origin,

born from Skamander and the nymph Idæa—all various manifestations of

that eager thirst after an eponymous hero which never deserted the

Greeks. Gergithians occur in more than one spot in Æolis, even so far

southward as the neighborhood of Kymê:[821] the name has no place

in Homer, but he mentions Gorgythion and Kebriones as illegitimate

sons of Priam, thus giving a sort of epical recognition both to

Gergis and Kebrên. As Herodotus calls the old epical Trojans by the

name Teukrians, so the Attic Tragedians call them Phrygians; though

the Homeric hymn to Aphroditê represents Phrygians and Trojans as

completely distinct, specially noting the diversity of language;[822]

and in the Iliad the Phrygians are simply numbered among the allies

of Troy from the far Ascania, without indication of any more intimate

relationship.[823] Nor do the tales which connect Dardanus with

Samothrace and Arcadia find countenance in the Homeric poems, wherein

Dardanus is the son of Zeus, having no root anywhere except in

Dardania.[824] The mysterious solemnities of Samothrace, afterwards so

highly venerated throughout the Grecian world, date from a period much

later than Homer; and the religious affinities of that island as well

as of Krête with the territories of Phrygia and Æolis, were certain,

according to the established tendency of the Grecian mind, to beget

stories of a common genealogy.

[816] Compare Herodot. v. 24-122; Thucyd. i. 131. The Ἰλιὰς γῆ is

a part of the Trôad.

[817] Herodot. vii. 43.

[818] Herodot. v. 122. εἷλε μὲν Αἰολέας πάντας, ὅσοι τὴν Ἰλιάδα

γῆν νέμονται, εἷλε δὲ Γέργιθας, τοὺς ἀπολειφθέντας τῶν ἀρχαίων

Τεύκρων.

For the migration of the Teukrians and Mysians into Europe, see

Herodot. vii. 20; the Pæonians, on the Strymôn, called themselves

their descendants.

[819] Herodot. ii. 118; v. 13.

[820] Strabo, xiii. p. 604; Apollodôr. iii. 12, 4.

Kephalôn of Gergis called Teukrus a Krêtan (Stephan. Byz. v.

Ἀρίσβη).

[821] Clearchus ap. Athæne. vi. p. 256; Strabo, xiii. p. 589-616.

[822] Homer, Hymn. in Vener. 116.

[823] Iliad, ii. 863. Asius, the brother of Hecabê, lives in

Phrygia on the banks of the Sangarius (Iliad, xvi. 717).

[824] See Hellanik. Fragm. 129, 130. ed. Didot; and Kephalôn

Gergithius ap. Steph. Byz. v. Ἀρισβή.

To pass from this legendary world,—an aggregate of streams distinct and

heterogeneous, which do not willingly come into confluence, and cannot

be forced to intermix,—into the clearer vision afforded by Herodotus,

we learn from him that in the year 500 B. C. the whole coast-region

from Dardanus southward to the promontory of Lektum (including the

town of Ilium), and from Lektum eastward to Adramyttium, had been

Æolized, or was occupied by Æolic Greeks—likewise the inland towns

of Skêpsis[825] and Krebên. So that if we draw a line northward from

Adramyttium to Kyzikus on the Propontis, throughout the whole territory

westward from that line, to the Hellespont and the Ægean Sea, all the

considerable towns would be Hellenic, with the exception of Gergis and

the Teukrian population around it,—all the towns worthy of note were

either Ionic or Æolic. A century earlier, the Teukrian population would

have embraced a wider range—perhaps Skêpsis and Krebên, the latter

of which places was colonized by Greeks from Kymê:[826] a century

afterwards, during the satrapy of Pharnabazus, it appears that Gergis

had become Hellenized as well as the rest. The four towns, Ilium,

Gergis, Kebrên and Skêpsis, all in lofty and strong positions, were

distinguished each by a solemn worship and temple of Athênê, and by the

recognition of that goddess as their special patroness.[827]

[825] Skêpsis received some colonists from the Ionic Miletus

(Anaximenês apud Strabo, xiv. p. 635); but the coins of the place

prove that its dialect was Æolic. See Klausen, Æneas und die

Penaten, tom. i. note 180.

Arisbê also, near Abydus, seems to have been settled from

Mitylênê (Eustath. ad Iliad. xii. 97).

The extraordinary fertility and rich black mould of the plain

around Ilium is noticed by modern travellers (see Franklin,

Remarks and Observations on the Plain of Troy, London, 1800, p.

44): it is also easily worked: “a couple of buffaloes or oxen

were sufficient to draw the plough, whereas near Constantinople

it takes twelve or fourteen.”

[826] Ephôrus ap. Harpocrat. v. Κεβρῆνα.

[827] Xenoph. Hellen. i. 1, 10; iii. 1, 10-15.

One of the great motives of Dio in setting aside the Homeric

narrative of the Trojan war, is to vindicate Athênê from the

charge of having unjustly destroyed her own city of Ilium (Orat.

xi. p. 310: μάλιστα διὰ τὴν Ἀθηνᾶν ὅπως μὴ δοκῇ ἀδίκως διαφθεῖραι

τὴν ἑαυτῆς πόλιν).

The author of the Iliad conceived the whole of this region as occupied

by people not Greek,—Trojans, Dardanians, Lykians, Lelegians,

Pelasgians, and Kilikians. He recognizes a temple and worship of Athênê

in Ilium, though the goddess is bitterly hostile to the Trojans: and

Arktinus described the Palladium as the capital protection of the city.

But perhaps the most remarkable feature of identity between the Homeric

and the historical Æolis, is, the solemn and diffused worship of the

Sminthian Apollo. Chrysê, Killa and Tenedos, and more than one place

called Sminthium, maintain the surname and invoke the protection of

that god during later times, just as they are emphatically described to

do by Homer.[828]

[828] Strabo, x. p. 473; xiii. p. 604-605. Polemon. Fragm. 31. p.

63, ed. Preller.

Polemon was a native of Ilium, and had written a periegesis of

the place (about 200 B. C., therefore earlier than Dêmêtrius of

Skêpsis): he may have witnessed the improvement in its position

effected by the Romans. He noticed the identical stone upon which

Palamêdês had taught the Greeks to play at dice.

The Sminthian Apollo appears inscribed on the coins of

Alexandreia Trôas; and the temple of the god was memorable even

down to the time of the emperor Julian (Ammian. Marcellin. xxii.

8). Compare Menander (the Rhetor) περὶ Ἐπιδεικτικῶν, iv. 14; apud

Walz. Collect. Rhetor. t. ix. p. 304; also περὶ Σμινθιακῶν, iv.

17.

Σμίνθος, both in the Krêtan and the Æolic dialect, meant a

_field-mouse_: the region seems to have been greatly plagued by

these little animals.

Polemon could not have accepted the theory of Dêmêtrius, that

Ilium was not the genuine Troy: his Periegesis, describing the

localities and relics of Ilium, implied the legitimacy of the

place as a matter of course.

When it is said that the Post-Homeric Greeks gradually Hellenized

this entire region, we are not to understand that the whole previous

population either retired or was destroyed. The Greeks settled in the

leading and considerable towns, which enabled them both to protect one

another and to gratify their predominant tastes. Partly by force—but

greatly also by that superior activity, and power of assimilating

foreign ways of thought to their own, which distinguished them from

the beginning—they invested all the public features and management of

the town with an Hellenic air, distributed all about it their gods,

their heroes and their legends, and rendered their language the medium

of public administration, religious songs and addresses to the gods,

and generally for communications wherein any number of persons were

concerned. But two remarks are here to be made: first, in doing this

they could not avoid taking to themselves more or less of that which

belonged to the parties with whom they fraternized, so that the result

was not pure Hellenism; next, that even this was done only in the

towns, without being fully extended to the territorial domain around,

or to those smaller townships which stood to the town in a dependent

relation. The Æolic and Ionic Greeks borrowed from the Asiatics whom

they had Hellenized, musical instruments and new laws of rhythm and

melody, which they knew how to turn to account: they further adopted

more or less of those violent and maddening religious rites, manifested

occasionally in self-inflicted suffering and mutilation, which were

indigenous in Asia Minor in the worship of the Great Mother. The

religion of the Greeks in the region of Ida as well as at Kyzikus was

more orgiastic than the native worship of Greece Proper, just as that

of Lampsacus, Priapus and Parium was more licentious. From the Teukrian

region of Gergis, and from the Gergithes near Kymê, sprang the original

Sibylline prophecies, and the legendary Sibyll who plays so important

a part in the tale of Æneas: the mythe of the Sibyll, whose prophecies

are supposed to be heard in the hollow blast bursting out from obscure

caverns and apertures in the rocks,[829] was indigenous among the

Gergithian Teukrians, and passed from the Kymæans in Æolis, along with

the other circumstances of the tale of Æneas, to their brethren the

inhabitants of Cumæ in Italy. The date of the Gergithian Sibyll, or

rather of the circulation of her supposed prophecies, is placed during

the reign of Crœsus, a period when Gergis was thoroughly Teukrian.

Her prophecies, though embodied in Greek verses, had their root in a

Teukrian soil and feelings; and the promises of future empire which

they so liberally make to the fugitive hero escaping from the flames of

Troy into Italy, become interesting from the remarkable way in which

they were realized by Rome.[830]

[829] Virgil, Æneid, vi. 42:—

Excisum Euboicæ latus ingens rupis in antrum,

Quo lati ducunt aditus centum, ostia centum;

Unde ruunt totidem voces, responsa Sibyllæ.

[830] Pausanias, x. 12, 8; Lactantius, i. 6, 12; Steph. Byz. v.

Μέρμησσος; Schol. Plat. Phædr. p. 315, Bekker.

The date of this Gergithian Sibyll, or of the prophecies passing

under her name, is stated by Hêrakleidês of Pontus, and there

seems no reason for calling it in question.

Klausen (Æneas und die Penaten, book ii. p. 205) has worked out

copiously the circulation and legendary import of the Sibylline

prophecies.

At what time Ilium and Dardanus became Æolized we have no information.

We find the Mitylenæans in possession of Sigeium in the time of the

poet Alkæus, about 600 B. C.; and the Athenians during the reign of

Peisistratus, having wrested it from them and trying to maintain their

possession, vindicate the proceeding by saying that they had as much

right to it as the Mitylenæans, “for the latter had no more claim to

it than any of the other Greeks who had aided Menelaus in avenging

the abduction of Helen.”[831] This is a very remarkable incident,

as attesting the celebrity of the legend of Troy, and the value of

a mythical title in international disputes—yet seemingly implying

that the establishment of the Mitylenæans on that spot must have been

sufficiently recent. The country near the junction of the Hellespont

and the Propontis is represented as originally held[832] by Bebrykian

Thracians, while Abydus was first occupied by Milesian colonists in

the reign and by the permission of the Lydian king Gygês[833]—to whom

the whole Trôad and the neighboring territory belonged, and upon

whom therefore the Teukrians of Ida must have been dependent. This

must have been about 700 B. C., a period considerably earlier than

the Mitylenæan occupation of Sigeium. Lampsacus and Pæsus, on the

neighboring shores of the Propontis, were also Milesian colonies,

though we do not know their date: Parium was jointly settled from

Miletus, Erythræ and Parus.

[831] Herodot. v. 94. Σίγειον ... τὸ εἷλε Πεισίστρατος αἰχμῇ

παρὰ Μιτυληναίων ... Ἀθηναῖοι, ἀποδεικνύντες λόγῳ οὐδὲν μᾶλλον

Αἰολεῦσι μετεὸν τῆς Ἰλιάδος χώρης, ἢ οὐ καὶ σφι καὶ τοῖσι

ἄλλοισι, ὅσοι Ἑλλήνων συνεξεπρήξαντο Μενέλεῳ τὰς Ἑλένης ἁρπαγάς.

In Æschylus (Eumenid. 402) the goddess Athênê claims the land

about the Skamander, as having been presented to the sons of

Thêseus by the general vote of the Grecian chiefs:—

Ἀπὸ Σκαμάνδρου γῆν καταφθατουμένη,

Ἣν δὴ τ᾽ Ἀχαιῶν ἄκτορές τε καὶ πρόμοι

Τῶν αἰχμαλώτων χρημάτων λάχος μέγα,

Ἔνειμαν αὐτόπρεμνον εἰς τὸ πᾶν ἐμοὶ,

Ἐξαιρετὸν δώρημα Θησέως τόκοις.

In the days of Peisistratus, it seems Athens was not bold enough

or powerful enough to advance this vast pretension.

[832] Charôn of Lampsacus ap. Schol. Apollôn. Rhod. ii. 2;

Bernhardy ad Dionys. Periêgêt. 805. p. 747.

[833] Such at least is the statement of Strabo (xii. p. 590);

though such an extent of Lydian role at that time seems not easy

to reconcile with the proceedings of the subsequent Lydian kings.

CHAPTER XVI.

GRECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT AND INTERPRETED BY THE GREEKS

THEMSELVES.

The preceding sections have been intended to exhibit a sketch of that

narrative matter, so abundant, so characteristic and so interesting,

out of which early Grecian history and chronology have been extracted.

Raised originally by hands unseen and from data unassignable, it

existed first in the shape of floating talk among the people, from

whence a large portion of it passed into the song of the poets, who

multiplied, transformed and adorned it in a thousand various ways.

These mythes or current stories, the spontaneous and earliest growth of

the Grecian mind, constituted at the same time the entire intellectual

stock of the age to which they belonged. They are the common root of

all those different ramifications into which the mental activity of

the Greeks subsequently diverged; containing, as it were, the preface

and germ of the positive history and philosophy, the dogmatic theology

and the professed romance, which we shall hereafter trace each in

its separate development. They furnished aliment to the curiosity,

and solution to the vague doubts and aspirations of the age; they

explained the origin of those customs and standing peculiarities

with which men were familiar; they impressed moral lessons, awakened

patriotic sympathies, and exhibited in detail the shadowy, but anxious

presentiments of the vulgar as to the agency of the gods: moreover they

satisfied that craving for adventure and appetite for the marvellous,

which has in modern times become the province of fiction proper.

It is difficult, we may say impossible, for a man of mature age to

carry back his mind to his conceptions such as they stood when he was a

child, growing naturally out of his imagination and feelings, working

upon a scanty stock of materials, and borrowing from authorities whom

he blindly followed but imperfectly apprehended. A similar difficulty

occurs when we attempt to place ourselves in the historical and

quasi-philosophical point of view which the ancient mythes present to

us. We can follow perfectly the imagination and feeling which dictated

these tales, and we can admire and sympathize with them as animated,

sublime, and affecting poetry; but we are too much accustomed to matter

of fact and philosophy of a positive kind, to be able to conceive a

time when these beautiful fancies were construed literally and accepted

as serious reality.

Nevertheless it is obvious that Grecian mythes cannot be either

understood or appreciated except with reference to the system of

conceptions and belief of the ages in which they arose. We must

suppose a public not reading and writing, but seeing, hearing and

telling—destitute of all records, and careless as well as ignorant of

positive history with its indispensable tests, yet at the same time

curious and full of eagerness for new or impressive incidents—strangers

even to the rudiments of positive philosophy and to the idea of

invariable sequences of nature either in the physical or moral world,

yet requiring some connecting theory to interpret and regularize the

phænomena before them. Such a theory was supplied by the spontaneous

inspirations of an early fancy, which supposed the habitual agency

of beings intelligent and voluntary like themselves, but superior in

extent of power, and different in peculiarity of attributes. In the

geographical ideas of the Homeric period, the earth was flat and round,

with the deep and gentle ocean-stream flowing around and returning into

itself: chronology, or means of measuring past time, there existed

none; but both unobserved regions might be described, the forgotten

past unfolded, and the unknown future predicted—through particular men

specially inspired by the gods, or endowed by them with that peculiar

vision which detected and interpreted passing signs and omens.

If even the rudiments of scientific geography and physics, now so

universally diffused and so invaluable as a security against error and

delusion, were wanting in this early stage of society, their place was

abundantly supplied by vivacity of imagination and by personifying

sympathy. The unbounded tendency of the Homeric Greeks to multiply

fictitious persons, and to construe the phænomena which interested them

into manifestations of design, is above all things here to be noticed,

because the form of personal narrative, universal in their mythes,

is one of its many manifestations. Their polytheism (comprising some

elements of an original fetichism, in which particular objects had

themselves been supposed to be endued with life, volition, and design)

recognized agencies of unseen beings identified and confounded with the

different localities and departments of the physical world. Of such

beings there were numerous varieties, and many gradations both in power

and attributes; there were differences of age, sex and local residence,

relations both conjugal and filial between them, and tendencies

sympathetic as well as repugnant. The gods formed a sort of political

community of their own, which had its hierarchy, its distribution of

ranks and duties, its contentions for power and occasional revolutions,

its public meetings in the agora of Olympus, and its multitudinous

banquets or festivals.[834] The great Olympic gods were in fact only

the most exalted amongst an aggregate of quasi-human or ultra-human

personages,—dæmons, heroes, nymphs, eponymous (or name-giving) genii,

identified with each river, mountain,[835] cape, town, village, or

known circumscription of territory,—besides horses, bulls, and dogs,

of immortal breed and peculiar attributes, and monsters of strange

lineaments and combinations, “Gorgons and Harpies and Chimæras dire.”

As there were in every _gens_ or family special gentile deities and

foregone ancestors who watched over its members, forming in each the

characteristic symbol and recognized guarantee of their union, so there

seem to have been in each guild or trade peculiar beings whose vocation

it was to coöperate or to impede in various stages of the business.[836]

[834] Homer, Iliad, i. 603; xx. 7. Hesiod, Theogon. 802.

[835] We read in the Iliad that Asteropæus was grandson of the

beautiful river Axius, and Achilles, after having slain him,

admits the dignity of this parentage, but boasts that his own

descent from Zeus was much greater, since even the great river

Achelôus and Oceanus himself is inferior to Zeus (xxi. 157-191).

Skamander fights with Achilles, calling his brother Simoïs to his

aid (213-308). Tyrô, the daughter of Salmôneus, falls in love

with Enipeus, the most beautiful of rivers (Odyss. xi. 237).

Achelôus appears as a suitor of Deianira (Sophokl. Trach. 9).

There cannot be a better illustration of this feeling than what

is told of the New Zealanders at the present time. The chief

Heu-Heu appeals to his ancestor, the great mountain Tonga Riro:

“I am the Heu-Heu, and rule over you all, just as my ancestor

Tonga Riro, the mountain of snow, stands above all this land.”

(E. J. Wakefield, Adventures in New Zealand, vol. i. ch. 17.

p. 465). Heu-Heu refused permission to any one to ascend the

mountain, on the ground that it was his _tipuna_ or ancestor: “he

constantly identified himself with the mountain and called it

his sacred ancestor” (vol. ii. c. 4. p. 113). The mountains in

New Zealand are accounted by the natives masculine and feminine:

Tonga Riro, and Taranaki, two male mountains, quarrelled about

the affections of a small volcanic female mountain in the

neighborhood (_ibid._ ii. c. 4. p. 97).

The religious imagination of the Hindoos also (as described by

Colonel Sleeman in his excellent work, Rambles and Recollections

of an Indian Official), affords a remarkable parallel to that of

the early Greeks. Colonel Sleeman says,—

“I asked some of the Hindoos about us why they called the river

Mother Nerbudda, if she was really never married. Her Majesty

(said they with great respect) would really never consent to

be married after the indignity she suffered from her affianced

bridegroom the Sohun: and we call her _mother_ because she

blesses us all, and we are anxious to accost her by the name

which we consider to be the most respectful and endearing.

“Any Englishman can easily conceive a poet in his highest

calenture of the brain, addressing the Ocean as a steed that

knows his rider, and patting the crested billow as his flowing

mane. But he must come to India to understand how every

individual of a _whole community of many millions can address

a fine river as a living being—a sovereign princess who hears

and understands all they say, and exercises a kind of local

superintendence over their affairs_, without a single temple in

which her image is worshipped, or a single priest to profit by

the delusion. As in the case of the Ganges, _it is the river

itself to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity

residing in it, or presiding over it_—the stream itself is the

deity which fills their imaginations, and receives their homage”

(Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, ch. iii. p.

20). Compare also the remarks in the same work on the sanctity

of _Mother Nerbudda_ (chapter xxvii. p. 261); also of the holy

personality of the earth. “The land is considered as the MOTHER

of the prince or chief who holds it, the great parent from

whom he derives all that maintains him, his family, and his

establishments. If well-treated, she yields this in abundance

to her son; but if he presumes to look upon her with the eye of

_desire_, she ceases to be fruitful; or the Deity sends down

hail or blight to destroy all that she yields. The measuring the

surface of the fields, and the frequently inspecting the crops

by the chief himself or his immediate agents, were considered by

the people in this light—either it should not be done at all,

or the duty should be delegated to inferior agents, whose close

inspection of the _great parent_ could not be so displeasing to

the Deity” (Ch. xxvii. p. 248).

See also about the gods who are believed to reside in trees—the

Peepultree, the cotton-tree, etc. (ch. ix. p. 112), and the

description of the annual marriage celebrated between the sacred

pebble, or pebble-god, Saligram, and the sacred shrub Toolsea,

celebrated at great expense and with a numerous procession (chap.

xix. p. 158; xxiii. p. 185).

[836] See the song to the potters, in the Homeric Epigrams (14):—

Εἰ μὲν δώσετε μίσθον, ἀείσω, ὦ κεραμῆες·

Δεῦρ᾽ ἄγ᾽ Ἀθηναίη, καὶ ὑπείρεχε χεῖρα καμίνου.

Εὖ δὲ μελανθεῖεν κότυλοι, καὶ πάντα κάναστρα

Φρυχθῆναί τε καλῶς, καὶ τιμῆς ὦνον ἀρέσθαι.

... Ἦν δ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀναιδείην τρεφθέντες ψευδῆ ἄρῃσθε,

Συγκαλέω δὴ ᾽πειτα καμίνῳ δηλητῆρας·

Σύντριβ᾽ ὅμως, Σμάραγόν τε, καὶ Ἄσβετον, ἠδὲ Σαβάκτην,

Ὠμόδαμόν θ᾽, ὃς τῇδε τέχνῃ κακὰ πολλὰ πορίζει, etc.

A certain kindred between men and serpents (συγγένειάν τινα πρὸς

τοὺς ὄφεις) was recognized in the peculiar gens of the ὀφιογενεῖς

near Parion, who possessed the gift of healing by their touches

the bite of the serpent: the original hero of this gens was said

to have been transformed from a serpent into a man (Strabo, xiii.

p. 588).

The extensive and multiform personifications, here faintly sketched,

pervaded in every direction the mental system of the Greeks, and

were identified intimately both with their conception and with their

description of phenomena, present as well as past. That which to

us is interesting as the mere creation of an exuberant fancy, was

to the Greek genuine and venerated reality. Both the earth and the

solid heaven (Gæa and Uranos) were both conceived and spoken of by

him as endowed with appetite, feeling, sex, and most of the various

attributes of humanity. Instead of a sun such as we now see, subject

to astronomical laws, and forming the centre of a system the changes

of which we can ascertain and foreknow, he saw the great god Hêlios,

mounting his chariot in the morning in the east, reaching at mid-day

the height of the solid heaven, and arriving in the evening at the

western horizon, with horses fatigued and desirous of repose. Hêlios,

having favorite spots wherein his beautiful cattle grazed, took

pleasure in contemplating them during the course of his journey, and

was sorely displeased if any man slew or injured them: he had moreover

sons and daughters on earth, and as his all-seeing eye penetrated

everywhere, he was sometimes in a situation to reveal secrets even to

the gods themselves—while on other occasions he was constrained to turn

aside in order to avoid contemplating scenes of abomination.[837] To us

these now appear puerile, though pleasing fancies, but to an Homeric

Greek they seemed perfectly natural and plausible. In his view, the

description of the sun, as given in a modern astronomical treatise,

would have appeared not merely absurd, but repulsive and impious.

Even in later times, when the positive spirit of inquiry had made

considerable progress, Anaxagoras and other astronomers incurred the

charge of blasphemy for dispersonifying Hêlios, and trying to assign

invariable laws to the solar phænomena.[838] Personifying fiction was

in this way blended by the Homeric Greeks with their conception of

the physical phænomena before them, not simply in the way of poetical

ornament, but as a genuine portion of their every-day belief.

[837] Odyss. ii. 388; viii. 270; xii. 4, 128, 416; xxiii. 362.

Iliad, xiv. 344. The Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr expresses it neatly

(63)—

Ἡέλιον δ᾽ ἵκοντο, θεῶν σκόπον ἠδὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.

Also the remarkable story of Euênius of Apollônia, his neglect

of the sacred cattle of Hêlios, and the awful consequences of it

(Herodot. ix. 93: compare Theocr. Idyll, xxv. 130).

I know no passage in which this conception of the heavenly bodies

as Persons is more strikingly set forth than in the words of

the German chief Boiocalus, pleading the cause of himself and

his tribe the Ansibarii before the Roman legate Avitus. This

tribe, expelled by other tribes from its native possessions,

had sat down upon some of that wide extent of lands on the

Lower Rhine which the Roman government reserved for the use of

its soldiers, but which remained desert, because the soldiers

had neither the means nor the inclination to occupy them. The

old chief, pleading his cause before Avitus, who had issued

an order to him to evacuate the lands, first dwelt upon his

fidelity of fifty years to the Roman cause, and next touched

upon the enormity of retaining so large an area in a state of

waste (Tacit. Ann. xiii. 55): “Quotam partem campi jacere, in

quam pecora et armenta militum aliquando transmitterentur?

Servarent sane receptos gregibus, inter hominum famam: modo ne

vastitatem et solitudinem mallent, quam amicos populos Chamavorum

quondam ea arva, mox Tubantum, et post Usipiorum fuisse. Sicuti

cœlum Diis, ita terras generi mortalium datas: quæque vacuæ,

eas publicas esse. _Solem_ deinde respiciens, et _cœtera sidera

vocans, quasi coram_ interrogabat—_vellentne contueri inane

solum? potius mare superfunderent adversus terrarum ereptores_.

Commotus his Avitus,” etc. The legate refused the request, but

privately offered to Boiocalus lands for himself apart from the

tribe, which that chief indignantly spurned. He tried to maintain

himself in the lands, but was expelled by the Roman arms, and

forced to seek a home among the other German tribes, all of whom

refused it. After much wandering and privation, the whole tribe

of the Ansibarii was annihilated: its warriors were all slain,

its women and children sold as slaves.

I notice this afflicting sequel, in order to show that the

brave old chief was pleading before Avitus a matter of life and

death both to himself and his tribe, and that the occasion was

one least of all suited for a mere rhetorical prosopopœia. His

appeal is one sincere and heartfelt to the personal feelings and

sympathies of Hêlios.

Tacitus, in reporting the speech, accompanies it with the

gloss “quasi coram,” to mark that the speaker here passes into

a different order of ideas from that to which himself or his

readers were accustomed. If Boiocalus could have heard, and

reported to his tribe, an astronomical lecture, he would have

introduced some explanation, in order to facilitate to his tribe

the comprehension of Hêlios under a point of view so new to them.

While Tacitus finds it necessary to illustrate by a comment the

_personification of the sun_, Boiocalus would have had some

trouble to make his tribe comprehend the _re-ification of the god

Hêlios_.

[838] Physical astronomy was both new and accounted impious

in the time of the Peloponnesian war: see Plutarch, in his

reference to that eclipse which proved so fatal to the Athenian

army at Syracuse, in consequence of the religious feelings of

Nikias: οὐ γὰρ ἠνείχοντο τοὺς φυσικοὺς καὶ μετεωρολέσχας τότε

καλουμένους ὡς, εἰς αἰτίας ἀλόγους καὶ δυνάμεις ἀπρονοήτους καὶ

κατηναγκασμένα πάθη διατρίβοντας τὸ θεῖον (Plutarch, Nikias, c.

23, and Periklês, c. 32; Diodôr. xii. 39; Dêmêtr. Phaler. ap.

Diogen. Laërt, ix. 9, 1).

“You strange man, Melêtus,” said Socratês, on his trial, to his

accuser, “are you seriously affirming that I do not think Hêlios

and Selênê to be gods, as the rest of mankind think?” “Certainly

not, gentlemen of the Dikastery (_this is the reply of Melêtus_),

Socratês says that the sun is a stone, and the moon earth.” “Why,

my dear Melêtus, you think you are preferring an accusation

against Anaxagoras! You account these Dikasts so contemptibly

ignorant, as not to know that the books of Anaxagoras are

full of such doctrines! Is it from me that the youth acquire

such teaching, when they may buy the books for a drachma in

the theatre, and may thus laugh me to scorn if I pretended to

announce such views as my own—_not to mention their extreme

absurdity_?” (ἄλλως τε καὶ οὕτως ἄτοπα ὄντα, Plato, Apolog.

Socrat. c. 14. p. 26).

The divinity of Hêlios and Selênê is emphatically set forth by

Plato, Legg. x. p. 886-889. He permits physical astronomy only

under great restrictions and to a limited extent. Compare Xenoph.

Memor. iv. 7, 7; Diogen. Laërt. ii. 8; Plutarch, De Stoicor.

Repugnant. c. 40. p. 1053; and Schaubach ad Anaxagoræ Fragmenta,

p. 6.

It was in this early state of the Grecian mind, stimulating so forcibly

the imagination and the feelings, and acting through them upon the

belief, that the great body of the mythes grew up and obtained

circulation. They were, from first to last, personal narratives and

adventures; and the persons who predominated as subjects of them

were the gods, the heroes, the nymphs, etc., whose names were known

and reverenced, and in whom every one felt interested. To every god

and every hero it was consistent with Grecian ideas to ascribe great

diversity of human motive and attribute: each indeed has his own

peculiar type of character, more or less strictly defined; but in all

there was a wide foundation for animated narrative and for romantic

incident. The gods and heroes of the land and the tribe belonged, in

the conception of a Greek, alike to the present and to the past: he

worshipped in their groves and at their festivals; he invoked their

protection, and believed in their superintending guardianship, even

in his own day: but their more special, intimate, and sympathizing

agency was cast back into the unrecorded past.[839] To give suitable

utterance to this general sentiment,—to furnish body and movement and

detail to these divine and heroic pre-existences, which were conceived

only in shadowy outline,—to lighten up the dreams of what the past must

have been,[840] in the minds of those who knew not what it really had

been—such was the spontaneous aim and inspiration of productive genius

in the community, and such were the purposes which the Grecian mythes

preëminently accomplished.

[839] Hesiod, Catalog. Fragm. 76. p. 48, ed. Düntzer:—

Ξυναὶ γὰρ τότε δαῖτες ἔσαν ξυνοί τε θόωκει,

Ἀθανάτοις τε θοῖσι καταθνήτοις τ᾽ ἀνθρώποις.

Both the Theogonia and the Works and Days bear testimony to

the same general feeling. Even the heroes of Homer suppose a

preceding age, the inmates of which were in nearer contact with

the gods than they themselves (Odyss. viii. 223; Iliad, v. 304;

xii. 382). Compare Catullus, Carm. 64; Epithalam. Peleôs et

Thetidos, v. 382-408.

Menander the Rhetor (following generally the steps of Dionys.

Hal. Art Rhetor. cap. 1-8) suggests to his fellow-citizens at

Alexandria Trôas, proper and complimentary forms to invite a

great man to visit their festival of the Sminthia:—ὥσπερ γὰρ

Ἀπόλλωνα πολλάκις ἐδέχετο ἡ πόλις τοῖς Σμινθίοις, ~ἥνικα ἐξῆν

θεοὺς προφανῶς ἐπιδημεῖν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις~, οὕτω καὶ σὲ ἡ πόλις

νῦν προσδέχεται (περὶ Ἐπιδεικτικ. s. iv. c. 14. ap. Walz. Coll.

Rhetor, t. ix. p. 304). Menander seems to have been a native

of Alexandria Trôas, though Suidas calls him a Laodicean (see

Walz. Præf. ad t. ix. p. xv.-xx.; and περὶ Σμινθιακῶν, sect. iv.

c. 17). The festival of the Sminthia lasted down to his time,

embracing the whole duration of paganism from Homer downwards.

[840] P. A. Müller observes justly, in his _Saga-Bibliothek_, in

reference to the Icelandic mythes, “In dem Mythischen wird das

Leben der Vorzeit dargestellt, wie es wirklich dem kindlichen

Verstande, der jugendlichen Einbildungskraft, und dem vollen

Herzen, erscheint.”

(Lange’s Untersuchungen über die Nordische und Deutsche

Heldensage, translated from P. A. Müller, Introd. p. 1.)

The love of antiquities, which Tacitus notices as so prevalent among

the Greeks of his day,[841] was one of the earliest, the most durable,

and the most widely diffused of the national propensities. But the

antiquities of every state were divine and heroic, reproducing the

lineaments, but disregarding the measure and limits, of ordinary

humanity. The gods formed the starting-point, beyond which no man

thought of looking, though some gods were more ancient than others:

their progeny, the heroes, many of them sprung from human mothers,

constitute an intermediate link between god and man. The ancient epic

usually recognizes the presence of a multitude of nameless men, but

they are introduced chiefly for the purpose of filling the scene,

and of executing the orders, celebrating the valor, and bringing

out the personality, of a few divine or heroic characters.[842] It

was the glory of bards and storytellers to be able to satisfy those

religious and patriotic predispositions of the public, which caused the

primary demand for their tales, and which were of a nature eminently

inviting and expansive. For Grecian religion was many-sided and many

colored; it comprised a great multiplicity of persons, together with

much diversity in the types of character; it divinized every vein

and attribute of humanity, the lofty as well as the mean—the tender

as well as the warlike—the self-devoting and adventurous as well as

the laughter-loving and sensual. We shall hereafter reach a time when

philosophers protested against such identification of the gods with

the more vulgar appetites and enjoyments, believing that nothing

except the spiritual attributes of man could properly be transferred

to superhuman beings, and drawing their predicates respecting the gods

exclusively from what was awful, majestic and terror-striking in human

affairs. Such restrictions on the religious fancy were continually

on the increase, and the mystic and didactic stamp which marked the

last century of paganism in the days of Julian and Libanius, contrasts

forcibly with the concrete and vivacious forms, full of vigorous

impulse and alive to all the capricious gusts of the human temperament,

which people the Homeric Olympus.[843] At present, however, we have

only to consider the early, or Homeric and Hesiodic paganism, and its

operation in the genesis of the mythical narratives. We cannot doubt

that it supplied the most powerful stimulus, and the only one which the

times admitted, to the creative faculty of the people; as well from the

sociability, the gradations, and the mutual action and reaction of its

gods and heroes, as from the amplitude, the variety, and the purely

human cast, of its fundamental types.

[841] Titus visited the temple of the Paphian Venus in Cyprus,

“spectatâ opulentiâ donisque regum, quæque _alia lætum_

antiquitatibus Græcorum genus _incertæ vetustati adfingit_, de

navigatione primum consuluit” (Tacit. Hist. ii. 4-5).

[842] Aristotel. Problem. xix. 48. Οἱ δὲ ἡγεμόνες τῶν ἀρχαίων

μόνοι ἦσαν ἥρωες· οἱ δὲ λαοὶ ἄνθρωποι. Istros followed this

opinion also: but the more common view seems to have considered

all who combated at Troy as heroes (see Schol. Iliad, ii. 110;

xv. 231), and so Hesiod treats them (Opp. Di. 158).

In reference to the Trojan war, Aristotle says—καθάπερ ἐν τοῖς

~Ἡρωϊκοῖς~ περὶ Πριάμου μυθεύεται (Ethic. Nicom. i. 9; compare

vii. 1).

[843] Generation by a god is treated in the old poems as an act

entirely human and physical (ἐμιγη—παρελέξατο); and this was the

common opinion in the days of Plato (Plato, Apolog. Socrat. c.

15. p. 15); the hero Astrabakus is father of the Lacedæmonian

king Demaratus (Herod. vi. 66). [Herodotus does not believe the

story told him at Babylon respecting Belus (i. 182).] Euripidês

sometimes expresses disapprobation of the idea (Ion. 350), but

Plato passed among a large portion of his admirers for the

actual son of Apollo, and his reputed father Aristo on marrying

was admonished in a dream to respect the person of his wife

Periktionê, then pregnant by Apollo, until after the birth of the

child Plato (Plutarch, Quæst. Sympos. p. 717. viii. 1; Diogen.

Laërt. iii. 2; Origen, cont. Cels. i. p. 29). Plutarch (in Life

of Numa, c. 4; compare Life of Thêseus, 2) discusses the subject,

and is inclined to disallow everything beyond mental sympathy

and tenderness in a god: Pausanias deals timidly with it, and

is not always consistent with himself; while the later rhetors

spiritualize it altogether. Meander, περὶ Ἐπιδεικτικῶν, (towards

the end of the third century B. C.) prescribes rules for praising

a king: you are to praise him for the gens to which he belongs:

perhaps you may be able to make out that he really is the son

of some god; for many who seem to be from men, are really _sent

down by God_ and are _emanations from the Supreme Potency_—πολλοὶ

τὸ μὲν δοκεῖν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων εἰσὶ, τῇ δ᾽ ἀληθείᾳ παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ

καταπέμπονται καὶ εἰσιν ἀπόῤῥοιαι ὄντως τοῦ κρείττονος· καὶ γὰρ

Ἡρακλῆς ἐνομίζετο μὲν Ἀμφιτρύωνος, τῇ δὲ ἀληθείᾳ ἦν Διός. Οὕτω

καὶ βασιλεὺς ὁ ἡμέτερος το μὲν δοκεῖν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων, τῇ δὲ ἀληθείᾳ

τὴν καταβολὴν οὐράνοθεν ἔχει, etc. (Menander ap. Walz. Collect.

Rhetor. t. ix. c. i. p. 218). Again—περὶ Σμινθιακῶν—Ζεὺς γένεσιν

παιδῶν ~δημιουργεῖν~ ἐνενόησε—Ἀπόλλων τὴν Ἀσκληπιοῦ γένεσιν

~ἐδημιούργησε~, p. 322-327; compare Hermogenês, about the story

of Apollo and Daphnê, Progymnasm. c. 4; and Julian. Orat. vii. p.

220.

The contrast of the pagan phraseology of this age (Menander had

himself composed a hymn of invocation to Apollo—περὶ Ἐγκωμίων,

c. 3. t. ix. p. 136, Walz.) with that of Homer is very worthy

of notice. In the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women much was said

respecting the marriages and amours of the gods, so as to furnish

many suggestions, like the love-songs of Sapphô, to the composers

of Epithalamic Odes (Menand. _ib._ sect. iv. c. 6. p. 268).

Menander gives a specimen of a prose hymn fit to be addressed to

the Sminthian Apollo (p. 320); the spiritual character of which

hymn forms the most pointed contrast with the Homeric hymn to the

same god.

We may remark an analogous case in which the Homeric hymn to

Apollo is modified by Plutarch. To provide for the establishment

of his temple at Delphi, Apollo was described as having himself,

in the shape of a dolphin, swam before a Krêtan vessel and guided

it to Krissa, where he directed the terrified crew to open the

Delphian temple. But Plutarch says that this old statement was

not correct: the god had not himself appeared in the shape of

a dolphin—he had sent a dolphin expressly to guide the vessel

(Plutarch. de Solertiâ Animal. p. 983). See also a contrast

between the Homeric Zeus, and the genuine Zeus, (ἀληθινὸς)

brought out in Plutarch, Defect. Oracul. c 30. p. 426.

Illicit amours seem in these later times to be ascribed to

the δαίμονες: see the singular controversy started among the

fictitious pleadings of the ancient rhetors—Νόμου ὄντος,

παρθένους καὶ καθαρὰς εἶναι τὰς ἱερείας, ἱερεία τις εὑρέθη

ἀτόκιον φέρουσα, καὶ κρίνεται.... Ἀλλ᾽ ἐρεῖ, φασὶ, διὰ τὰς τῶν

δαιμόνων ἐπιφοιτήσεις καὶ ἐπιβουλὰς περιτεθεῖσθαι. Καὶ πῶς οὐκ

ἀνόητον κομιδῆ τὸ τοιοῦτον; ἔδει γὰρ πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀφαιρεθῆναι τὴν

παρθενίαν φορεῖν τι ἀποτρόπαιον, οὐ μὴν πρὸς τὸ τεκεῖν (Anonymi

Scholia ad Hermogen. Στάσεις, ap. Walz. Coll. Rh. t. vii. p. 162).

Apsinês of Gadara, a sophist of the time of Diocletian, pretended

to be a son of Pan (see Suidas, v. Ἀψίνης). The anecdote

respecting the rivers Skamander and Mæander, in the tenth epistle

ascribed to the orator Æschines (p. 737), is curious, but we do

not know the date of that epistle.

Though we may thus explain the mythopœic fertility of the Greeks, I am

far from pretending that we can render any sufficient account of the

supreme beauty of their chief epic and artistical productions. There is

something in the first-rate productions of individual genius which lies

beyond the compass of philosophical theory: the special breath of the

Muse (to speak the language of ancient Greece) must be present in order

to give them being. Even among her votaries, many are called, but few

are chosen; and the peculiarities of those few remain as yet her own

secret.

We shall not however forget that Grecian language was also an

indispensable requisite to the growth and beauty of Grecian mythes—its

richness, its flexibility and capacity of new combinations, its vocalic

abundance and metrical pronunciation: and many even among its proper

names, by their analogy to words really significant, gave direct

occasion to explanatory or illustrative stories. Etymological mythes

are found in sensible proportion among the whole number.

To understand properly then the Grecian mythes, we must try to

identify ourselves with the state of mind of the original mythopœic

age; a process not very easy, since it requires us to adopt a string

of poetical fancies not simply as realities, but as the governing

realities of the mental system;[844] yet a process which would only

reproduce something analogous to our own childhood. The age was one

destitute both of recorded history and of positive science, but full

of imagination and sentiment and religious impressibility; from these

sources sprung that multitude of supposed persons around whom all

combinations of sensible phænomena were grouped, and towards whom

curiosity, sympathies, and reverence were earnestly directed. The

adventures of such persons were the only aliment suited at once both

to the appetites and to the comprehension of an early Greek; and the

mythes which detailed them, while powerfully interesting his emotions,

furnished to him at the same time a quasi-history and quasi-philosophy:

they filled up the vacuum of the unrecorded past, and explained many of

the puzzling incognita of the present.[845] Nor need we wonder that the

same plausibility which captivated his imagination and his feelings

was sufficient to engender spontaneous belief; or rather, that no

question as to truth or falsehood of the narrative suggested itself to

his mind. His faith is ready, literal and uninquiring, apart from all

thought of discriminating fact from fiction, or of detecting hidden and

symbolized meaning; it is enough that what he hears be intrinsically

plausible and seductive, and that there be no special cause to provoke

doubt. And if indeed there were, the poet overrules such doubts by the

holy and all-sufficient authority of the Muse, whose omniscience is the

warrant for his recital, as her inspiration is the cause of his success.

[844] The mental analogy between the early stages of human

civilization and the childhood of the individual is forcibly

and frequently set forth in the works of Vico. That eminently

original thinker dwells upon the poetical and religious

susceptibilities as the first to develop themselves in the human

mind, and as furnishing not merely connecting threads for the

explanation of sensible phænomena, but also aliment for the

hopes and fears, and means of socializing influence to men of

genius, at a time when reason was yet asleep. He points out

the _personifying instinct_ (“istinto d’ animazione”) as the

spontaneous philosophy of man, “to make himself the rule of the

universe,” and to suppose everywhere a quasi-human agency as

the determining cause. He remarks that in an age of fancy and

feeling, the conceptions and language of poetry coincide with

those of reality and common life, instead of standing apart as a

separate vein. These views are repeated frequently (and with some

variations of opinion as he grew older) in his Latin work _De

Uno Universi Juris Principio_, as well as in the two successive

_rédactions_ of his great Italian work, _Scienza Nuova_ (it

must be added that Vico as an expositor is prolix, and does not

do justice to his own powers of original thought): I select

the following from the second edition of the latter treatise,

published by himself in 1744, _Della Metafisica Poetica_ (see

vol. v. p. 189 of Ferrari’s edition of his Works, Milan, 1836):

“Adunque la sapienza poetica, che fu la prima sapienza della

Gentilità, dovette incominciare da una Metafisica, non _ragionata

ed astratta_, qual è questa or degli addottrinati, ma _sentita

ed immaginata_, quale dovett’ essere di tai primi uomini,

siccome quelli ch’ erano di niun raziocinio, e tutti robusti

sensi e vigorosissime fantasie, come è stato nelle degnità (the

_Axioms_) stabilito. Questa fu la loro propria poesia, la qual

in essi fu una facultà loro connaturale, perchè erano di tali

sensi e di si fatte fantasie naturalmente forniti, nata da

_ignoranza di cagioni_—la qual fu loro madre di maraviglia di

tutte le cose, che quelli ignoranti di tutte le cose fortemente

ammiravano. Tal poesia incominciò in essi divina: perchè nello

stesso tempo ch’essi immaginavano le cagioni delle cose, che

sentivano ed ammiravano, essere Dei, come ora il confermiamo con

gli Americani, i quali tutte le cose che superano la loro picciol

capacità, dicono esser Dei ... nello stesso tempo, diciamo, alle

cose ammirate davano l’essere di sostanze dalla propria lor idea:

ch’è appunto la natura dei fanciulli, che osserviamo prendere tra

mani cose inanimate, e transtullarsi e favellarvi, come fussero

quelle persone vive. In cotal guisa i primi uomini delle nazioni

gentili, come fanciulli del nascente gener umano, dalla lor

idea creavan essi le cose ... per la loro robusta ignoranza, il

facevano in forza d’una corpolentissima fantasia, e perch’ era

corpolentissima, il facevano con una maravigliosa sublimità, tal

e tanta, che perturbava all’eccesso essi medesimi, che fingendo

le si creavano.... Di questa natura di cose umane restò eterna

proprietà spiegata con nobil espressione da Tacito, che vanamente

gli uomini spaventati _fingunt simul creduntque_.”

After describing the condition of rude men, terrified with

thunder and other vast atmospheric phænomena, Vico proceeds

(_ib._ p. 172)—“In tal caso la natura della mente umana porta

ch’ella attribuisca all’effetto la sua natura: e la natura loro

era in tale stato d’uomini tutti robuste forze di corpo, che

urlando, brontolando, spiegavano le loro violentissime passioni,

si finsero il cielo esser un gran corpo animato, che per tal

aspetto chiamavano Giove, che col fischio dei fulmini e col

fragore dei tuoni volesse lor dire qualche cosa.... E si fanno

di tutta la natura un vasto corpo animato, che senta passioni ed

affetti.”

Now the contrast with modern habits of thought:—

“Ma siccome _ora_ per la natura delle nostre umane menti troppo

ritirata dai sensi nel medesimo volgo—con le tante astrazioni,

di quante sono piene le lingue—con tanti vocaboli astratti—e

di troppo assottigliata con l’arti dello scrivere, e quasi

spiritualezzata con la practica dei numeri—_ci e naturalmente

niegato di poter formare_ la vasta imagine di cotal donna che

dicono Natura simpatetica, che mentre con la bocca dicono, non

hanno nulla in lor mente, perocchè la lor mente è dentro il

falso, che è nulla; nè sono soccorsi dalla fantasia a poterne

formare una falsa vastissima imagine. Così _ora ci è naturalmente

niegato di poter entrare nella vasta immaginativa di quei primi

uomini_, le menti dei quali di nulla erano assottigliate, di

nulla astratte, di nulla spiritualezzate.... Onde dicemmo

sopra ch’_ora appena intender si può, affatto immaginar non sì

può_, come pensassero i primi uomini che fondarono la umanità

gentilesca.”

In this citation (already almost too long for a note) I have

omitted several sentences not essential to the general meaning.

It places these early divine fables and theological poets (so

Vico calls them) in their true point of view, and assigns to them

their proper place in the ascending movement of human society:

it refers the mythes to an early religious and poetical age, in

which feeling and fancy composed the whole fund of the human

mind, over and above the powers of sense: the great mental change

which has since taken place has robbed us of the power, not

merely of believing them as they were originally believed, but

even of conceiving completely that which their first inventors

intended to express.

The views here given from this distinguished Italian (the

precursor of F. A. Wolf in regard to the Homeric poems, as well

as of Niebuhr in regard to the Roman history) appear to me no

less correct than profound; and the obvious inference from them

is, that attempts to _explain_ (as it is commonly called) the

mythes (_i. e._ to translate them into some physical, moral or

historical statements, suitable to our order of thought) are,

even as guesses, essentially unpromising. Nevertheless Vico,

inconsistently with his own general view, bestows great labor and

ingenuity in attempting to discover internal meaning symbolized

under many of the mythes; and even lays down the position, “che

i primi uomini della Gentilità essendo stati semplicissimi,

quanto i fanciulli, i quali per natura son veritieri: le prime

favole non poterono finger nulla di falso: per lo che dovettero

necessariamente essere _vere narrazioni_.” (See vol. v. p. 194;

compare also p. 99, Axiom xvi.) If this position be meant simply

to exclude the idea of designed imposture, it may for the most

part be admitted; but Vico evidently intends something more. He

thinks that there lies hid under the fables a basis of matter of

fact—not literal but symbolized—which he draws out and exhibits

under the form of a civil history of the divine and heroic times:

a confusion of doctrine the more remarkable, since he distinctly

tells us (in perfect conformity with the long passage above

transcribed from him) that the special matter of these early

mythes is “impossibility accredited as truth,”—“che la di lei

propria materia è _l’impossibile credibile_” (p. 176, and still

more fully in the first _rédaction_ of the _Scienza Nuova_, b.

iii. c. 4; vol. iv. p. 187 of his Works).

When we read the _Canones Mythologici_ of Vico (De Constantia

Philologiæ, Pars Posterior, c. xxx.; vol. iii. p. 363), and

his explanation of the legends of the Olympic gods, Hercules,

Thêseus, Kadmus, etc., we see clearly that the meaning which he

professes to bring out is one previously put in by himself.

There are some just remarks to the same purpose in Karl Ritter’s

_Vorhalle Europäischer Volkergeschichten_, Abschn. ii. p. 150

_seq._ (Berlin, 1820). He too points out how much the faith of

the old world (der Glaube der Vorwelt) has become foreign to our

minds, since the recent advances of “Politik und Kritik,” and how

impossible it is for us to elicit history from their conceptions

by our analysis, in cases where they have not distinctly laid it

out for us. The great length of this note prevents me from citing

the passage: and he seems to me also (like Vico) to pursue his

own particular investigations in forgetfulness of the principle

laid down by himself.

[845] O. Müller, in his _Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen

Mythologie_ (cap. iv. p. 108), has pointed out the mistake of

supposing that there existed originally some nucleus of pure

reality as the starting-point of the mythes, and that upon this

nucleus fiction was superinduced afterwards: he maintains that

the real and the ideal were blended together in the primitive

conception of the mythes. Respecting the general state of mind

out of which the mythes grew, see especially pages 78 and 110 of

that work, which is everywhere full of instruction on the subject

of the Grecian mythes, and is eminently suggestive, even where

the positions of the author are not completely made out.

The short _Heldensage der Griechen_ by Nitzsch (Kiel, 1842, t.

v.) contains more of just and original thought on the subject

of the Grecian mythes than any work with which I am acquainted.

I embrace completely the subjective point of view in which he

regards them; and although I have profited much from reading

his short tract, I may mention that before I ever saw it, I had

enforced the same reasonings on the subject in an article in the

Westminster Review, May 1843, on the _Heroen-Geschichten_ of

Niebuhr.

Jacob Grimm, in the preface to his _Deutsche Mythologie_ (p. 1,

1st edit. Gött. 1835), pointedly insists on the distinction

between “_Sage_” and history, as well as upon the fact that the

former has its chief root in religious belief “Legend and history

(he says) are powers each by itself, adjoining indeed on the

confines, but having each its own separate and exclusive ground;”

also p. xxvii. of the same introduction.

A view substantially similar is adopted by William Grimm, the

other of the two distinguished brothers whose labors have so much

elucidated Teutonic philology and antiquities. He examines the

extent to which either historical matter of fact or historical

names can be traced in the _Deutsche Heldensage_; and he comes to

the conclusion that the former is next to nothing, the latter not

considerable. He draws particular attention to the fact, that the

audience for whom these poems were intended had not learned to

distinguish history from poetry (W. Grimm, _Deutsche Heldensage_,

pp. 8, 337, 342, 345, 399, Gött. 1829).

The state of mind, and the relation of speaker to hearers, thus

depicted, stand clearly marked in the terms and tenor of the ancient

epic, if we only put a plain meaning upon what we read. The poet—like

the prophet, whom he so much resembles—sings under heavenly guidance,

inspired by the goddess to whom he has prayed for her assisting

impulse: she puts the word into his mouth and the incidents into his

mind: he is a privileged man, chosen as her organ and speaking from

her revelations.[846] As the Muse grants the gift of song to whom she

will, so she sometimes in her anger snatches it away, and the most

consummate human genius is then left silent and helpless.[847] It is

true that these expressions, of the Muse inspiring and the poet singing

a tale of past times, have passed from the ancient epic to compositions

produced under very different circumstances, and have now degenerated

into unmeaning forms of speech; but they gained currency originally in

their genuine and literal acceptation. If poets had from the beginning

written or recited, the predicate of singing would never have been

ascribed to them; nor would it have ever become customary to employ the

name of the Muse as a die to be stamped on licensed fiction, unless the

practice had begun when her agency was invoked and hailed in perfect

good faith. Belief, the fruit of deliberate inquiry and a rational

scrutiny of evidence, is in such an age unknown: the simple faith of

the time slides in unconsciously, when the imagination and feeling are

exalted; and inspired authority is at once understood, easily admitted,

and implicitly confided in.

[846] Hesiod, Theogon. 32.—

... ἐνέπνευσαν δέ (the Muses) μοι αὐδὴν

Θείην, ὡς κλείοιμι τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα, πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα,

Καί με κέλονθ᾽ ὑμνεῖν μακάρων γένος αἰὲν ἐόντων, etc.

Odyss. xxii. 347; viii. 63, 73, 481, 489. Δημόδοκ᾽ ... ἢ σέ γε

Μοῦσ᾽ ἐδίδαξε, Διὸς παῖς, ἢ σέγ᾽ Ἀπόλλων: that is, Demodocus has

either been inspired as a poet by the Muse, or as a prophet by

Apollo: for the Homeric Apollo is not the god of song. Kalchas

the prophet receives his inspiration from Apollo, who confers

upon him the same knowledge both of past and future as the Muses

give to Hesiod (Iliad, i. 69):—

Κάλχας Θεστορίδης, οἰωνοπόλων ὄχ᾽ ἄριστος

Ὃς ᾔδη τά τ᾽ ἐόντα, τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα, πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα

Ἣν διὰ μαντοσύνην, τὴν οἱ πόρε Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων.

Also Iliad, ii. 485.

Both the μάντις and the ἀοιδὸς are standing, recognized

professions (Odyss. xvii. 383), like the physician and the

carpenter, δημιόεργοι.

[847] Iliad, ii. 599.

The word mythe (μῦθος, _fabula_, _story_), in its original meaning,

signified simply a statement or current narrative, without any

connotative implication either of truth or falsehood. Subsequently the

meaning of the word (in Latin and English as well as in Greek) changed,

and came to carry with it the idea of an old personal narrative,

always uncertified, sometimes untrue or avowedly fictitious.[848]

And this change was the result of a silent alteration in the mental

state of the society,—of a transition on the part of the superior

minds (and more or less on the part of all) to a stricter and more

elevated canon of credibility, in consequence of familiarity with

recorded history, and its essential tests, affirmative as well as

negative. Among the original hearers of the mythes, all such tests were

unknown; they had not yet learned the lesson of critical disbelief;

the mythe passed unquestioned from the mere fact of its currency, and

from its harmony with existing sentiments and preconceptions. The

very circumstances which contributed to rob it of literal belief in

after-time, strengthened its hold upon the mind of the Homeric man. He

looked for wonders and unusual combinations in the past; he expected

to hear of gods, heroes and men, moving and operating together upon

earth; he pictured to himself the fore-time as a theatre in which the

gods interfered directly, obviously and frequently, for the protection

of their favorites and the punishment of their foes. The rational

conception, then only dawning in his mind, of a systematic course of

nature was absorbed by this fervent and lively faith. And if he could

have been supplied with as perfect and philosophical a history of his

own real past time, as we are now enabled to furnish with regard to

the last century of England or France, faithfully recording all the

successive events, and accounting for them by known positive laws,

but introducing no special interventions of Zeus and Apollo—such a

history would have appeared to him not merely unholy and unimpressive,

but destitute of all plausibility or title to credence. It would

have provoked in him the same feeling of incredulous aversion as a

description of the sun (to repeat the previous illustration) in a

modern book on scientific astronomy.

[848] In this later sense it stands pointedly opposed to ἱστορία,

_history_, which seems originally to have designated matter

of fact, present and seen by the describer, or the result of

his personal inquiries (see Herodot. i. 1; Verrius Flacc. ap.

Aul. Gell. v. 18; Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. iii. 12; and the

observations of Dr. Jortin, Remarks on Ecclesiastical History,

vol. i. p. 59).

The original use of the word λόγος was the same as that of

μῦθος—a current tale, true or false, as the case might be;

and the term designating a person much conversant with the

old legends (λόγιος) is derived from it (Herod. i. 1; ii. 3).

Hekatæus and Herodotus both use λόγος in this sense. Herodotus

calls both Æsop and Hekatæus λογοποιοί (ii. 134-143).

Aristotle (Metaphys. i. p. 8, ed. Brandis) seems to use μῦθος

in this sense, where he says—διὸ καὶ φιλόμυθος ὁ φιλόσοφος

πώς ἐστιν· ὁ γὰρ μῦθος συγκεῖται ἐκ θαυμασίων, etc. In the

same treatise (xi. p. 254), he uses it to signify fabulous

amplification and transformation of a doctrine true in the main.

To us these mythes are interesting fictions; to the Homeric and

Hesiodic audience they were “rerum divinarum et humanarum scientia,”—an

aggregate of religious, physical and historical revelations, rendered

more captivating, but not less true and real, by the bright coloring

and fantastic shapes in which they were presented. Throughout the

whole of “mythe-bearing Hellas”[849] they formed the staple of the

uninstructed Greek mind, upon which history and philosophy were by

so slow degrees superinduced; and they continued to be the aliment of

ordinary thought and conversation, even after history and philosophy

had partially supplanted the mythical faith among the leading men, and

disturbed it more or less in the ideas of all. The men, the women,

and the children of the remote dêmes and villages of Greece, to whom

Thucydidês, Hippocratês, Aristotle, or Hipparchus were unknown, still

continued to dwell upon the local fables which formed their religious

and patriotic antiquity. And Pausanias, even in his time, heard

everywhere divine or heroic legends yet alive, precisely of the type

of the old epic; he found the conceptions of religious and mythical

faith, coëxistent with those of positive science, and contending

against them at more or less of odds, according to the temper of the

individual. Now it is the remarkable characteristic of the Homeric age,

that no such coëxistence or contention had yet begun. The religious and

mythical point of view covers, for the most part, all the phænomena

of nature; while the conception of invariable sequence exists only

in the background, itself personified under the name of the Mœræ,

or Fates, and produced generally as an exception to the omnipotence

of Zeus for all ordinary purposes. Voluntary agents, visible and

invisible, impel and govern everything. Moreover this point of view

is universal throughout the community,—adopted with equal fervor, and

carried out with equal consistency, by the loftiest minds and by the

lowest. The great man of that day is he who, penetrated like others

with the general faith, and never once imagining any other system of

nature than the agency of these voluntary Beings, can clothe them in

suitable circumstances and details, and exhibit in living body and

action those types which his hearers dimly prefigure. Such men were

the authors of the Iliad and the Odyssey; embodying in themselves the

whole measure of intellectual excellence which their age was capable of

feeling: to us, the first of poets—but to their own public, religious

teachers, historians, and philosophers besides—inasmuch as all that

then represented history and philosophy was derived from those epical

effusions and from others homogeneous with them. Herodotus recognizes

Homer and Hesiod as the main authors of Grecian belief respecting the

names and generations, the attributes and agency, the forms and the

worship of the gods.[850]

[849] M. Ampère, in his _Histoire Littéraire de la France_ (ch.

viii. v. i. p. 310) distinguishes the Saga (which corresponds

as nearly as possible with the Greek μῦθος, λόγος, ἐπιχώριος

λόγος), as a special product of the intellect, not capable of

being correctly designated either as history, or as fiction, or

as philosophy:—