πυθέσθαι· ἀλλ᾽ οὐ γὰρ ὁμοίως εὐπρεπὴς ἐς τὴν ἐποποιΐην ἦν τῷ
ἑτέρῳ τῷ περ ἐχρήσατο· ἑς ὃ μετῆκε αὐτὸν, δηλώσας ὡς καὶ τοῦτον
ἐπισταῖτο τὸν λόγον.
Herodotus then produces a passage from the Iliad, with a view to
prove that Homer knew of the voyage of Paris and Helen to Egypt;
but the passage proves nothing at all to the point.
Again (c. 120), his slender confidence in the epic poets breaks
out—εἰ χρή τι τοῖσι ἐποποιοῖσι χρεώμενον λέγειν.
It is remarkable that Herodotus is disposed to identify Helen
with the ξείνη Ἀφροδίτη whose temple he saw at Memphis (c. 112).
Enough has been said to show how wide is the difference between
Herodotus and the logographers with their literal transcript of the
ancient legends. Though he agrees with them in admitting the full
series of persons and generations, he tries the circumstances narrated
by a new standard. Scruples have arisen in his mind respecting
violations of the laws of nature: the poets are unworthy of trust, and
their narratives must be brought into conformity with historical and
ethical conditions, before they can be admitted as truth. To accomplish
this conformity, Herodotus is willing to mutilate the old legend in
one of its most vital points: he sacrifices the personal presence of
Helena in Troy, which ran through every one of the ancient epic poems
belonging to the Trojan cycle, and is indeed, under the gods, the great
and present moving force throughout.
Thucydidês places himself generally in the same point of view
as Herodotus with regard to mythical antiquity, yet with some
considerable differences. Though manifesting no belief in present
miracles or prodigies,[938] he seems to accept without reserve the
preexistent reality of all the persons mentioned in the mythes, and
of the long series of generations extending back through so many
supposed centuries: in this category, too, are included the eponymous
personages, Hellen, Kekrops, Eumolpus, Pandiôn, Amphilochus the son
of Amphiaräus, and Akarnan. But on the other hand, we find no trace
of that distinction between a human and an heroic ante-human race,
which Herodotus still admitted,—nor any respect for Egyptian legends.
Thucydidês, regarding the personages of the mythes as men of the same
breed and stature with his own contemporaries, not only tests the acts
imputed to them by the same limits of credibility, but presumes in them
the same political views and feelings as he was accustomed to trace in
the proceedings of Peisistratus or Periklês. He treats the Trojan war
as a great political enterprise, undertaken by all Greece; brought into
combination through the imposing power of Agamemnôn, not (according to
the legendary narrative) through the influence of the oath exacted by
Tyndareus. Then he explains how the predecessors of Agamemnôn arrived
at so vast a dominion—beginning with Pelops, who came over (as he
says) from Asia with great wealth among the poor Peloponnêsians, and
by means of this wealth so aggrandized himself, though a foreigner, as
to become the eponym of the peninsula. Next followed his son Atreus,
who acquired after the death of Eurystheus the dominion of Mykênæ,
which had before been possessed by the descendants of Perseus: here
the old legendary tale, which described Atreus as having been banished
by his father Pelops in consequence of the murder of his elder brother
Chrysippus, is invested with a political bearing, as explaining the
reason why Atreus retired to Mykênæ. Another legendary tale—the defeat
and death of Eurystheus by the fugitive Herakleids in Attica, so
celebrated in Attic tragedy as having given occasion to the generous
protecting intervention of Athens—is also introduced as furnishing the
cause why Atreus succeeded to the deceased Eurystheus: “for Atreus, the
maternal uncle of Eurystheus, had been entrusted by the latter with
his government during the expedition into Attica, and had effectually
courted the people, who were moreover in great fear of being attacked
by the Herakleids.” Thus the Pelopids acquired the supremacy in
Peloponnêsus, and Agamemnôn was enabled to get together his 1200 ships
and 100,000 men for the expedition against Troy. Considering that
contingents were furnished from every portion of Greece, Thucydidês
regards this as a small number, treating the Homeric catalogue as an
authentic muster-roll, perhaps rather exaggerated than otherwise. He
then proceeds to tell us why the armament was not larger: many more
men could have been furnished, but there was not sufficient money to
purchase provisions for their subsistence; hence they were compelled,
after landing and gaining a victory, to fortify their camp, to divide
their army, and to send away one portion for the purpose of cultivating
the Chersonese, and another portion to sack the adjacent towns. This
was the grand reason why the siege lasted so long as ten years. For
if it had been possible to keep the whole army together, and to act
with an undivided force, Troy would have been taken both earlier and at
smaller cost.[939]
[938] “Ut conquirere fabulosa (says Tacitus, Hist. ii. 50, a
worthy parallel of Thucydidês) et fictis oblectare legentium
animos, procul gravitate cœpti operis crediderim, ita vulgatis
traditisque demere fidem non ausim. Die, quo Bebriaci
certabatur, avem inusitatâ specie, apud Regium Lepidum celebri
vico consedisse, incolæ memorant; nec deinde cœtu hominum aut
circumvolitantium alitum, territam pulsamque, donec Otho se ipse
interficeret: tum ablatam ex oculis: et tempora reputantibus,
initium finemque miraculi cum Othonis exitu competisse.”
Suetonius (Vesp. 5) recounts a different miracle, in which three
eagles appear.
This passage of Tacitus occurs immediately after his magnificent
description of the suicide of the emperor Otho, a deed which he
contemplates with the most fervent admiration. His feelings were
evidently so wrought up that he was content to relax the canons
of historical credibility.
[939] Thucyd. i. 9-12.
Such is the general sketch of the war of Troy, as given by Thucydidês.
So different is it from the genuine epical narrative, that we seem
hardly to be reading a description of the same event; still less
should we imagine that the event was known, to him as well as to us,
only through the epic poets themselves. The men, the numbers, and the
duration of the siege, do indeed remain the same; but the cast and
juncture of events, the determining forces, and the characteristic
features, are altogether heterogeneous. But, like Herodotus, and
still more than Herodotus, Thucydidês was under the pressure of two
conflicting impulses—he shared the general faith in the mythical
antiquity, but at the same time he could not believe in any facts which
contradicted the laws of historical credibility or probability. He was
thus under the necessity of torturing the matter of the old mythes
into conformity with the subjective exigencies of his own mind: he
left out, altered, recombined, and supplied new connecting principles
and supposed purposes, until the story became such as no one could
have any positive reason for calling in question: though it lost the
impressive mixture of religion, romance, and individual adventure,
which constituted its original charm, it acquired a smoothness and
plausibility, and a poetical _ensemble_, which the critics were
satisfied to accept as historical truth. And historical truth it would
doubtless have been, if any independent evidence could have been found
to sustain it. Had Thucydidês been able to produce such new testimony,
we should have been pleased to satisfy ourselves that the war of Troy,
as he recounted it, was the real event; of which the war of Troy, as
sung by the epic poets, was a misreported, exaggerated, and ornamented
recital. But in this case the poets are the only real witnesses, and
the narrative of Thucydidês is a mere extract and distillation from
their incredibilities.
A few other instances may be mentioned to illustrate the views of
Thucydidês respecting various mythical incidents. 1. He treats the
residence of the Homeric Phæakians at Corkyra as an undisputed fact,
and employs it partly to explain the efficiency of the Korkyrean
navy in times preceding the Peloponnesian war.[940] 2. He notices,
with equal confidence, the story of Têreus and Proknê, daughter of
Pandiôn, and the murder of the child Itys by Proknê his mother, and
Philomêla; and he produces this ancient mythe with especial reference
to the alliance between the Athenians and Têrês, king of the Odrysian
Thracians, during the time of the Peloponnesian war, intimating that
the Odrysian Têrês was neither of the same family nor of the same
country as Têreus the husband of Proknê.[941] The conduct of Pandiôn,
in giving his daughter Proknê in marriage to Têreus, is in his view
dictated by political motives and interests. 3. He mentions the
Strait of Messina as the place through which Odysseus is said to have
sailed.[942] 4. The Cyclôpes and the Læstrygones (he says) were the
most ancient reported inhabitants of Sicily; but he cannot tell to what
race they belonged, nor whence they came.[943] 5. Italy derived its
name from Italus, king of the Sikels. 6. Eryx and Egesto in Sicily were
founded by fugitive Trojans after the capture of Troy; also Skionê,
in the Thracian peninsula of Pallênê, by Greeks from the Achæan town
of Pellênê, stopping thither in their return from the siege of Troy:
the Amphilochian Argos in the Gulf of Ambrakia was in like manner
founded by Amphilochus son of Amphiaräus, in his return from the
same enterprise. The remorse and mental derangement of the matricidal
Alkmæôn, son of Amphiaräus, is also mentioned by Thucydidês,[944] as
well as the settlement of his son Akarnan in the country called after
him Akarnania.[945]
[940] Thucyd. i. 25.
[941] Thucyd. ii. 29. Καὶ τὸ ἔργον τὸ περὶ τὸν Ἴτυν αἱ γυναῖκες
ἐν τῇ γῇ ταύτῃ ἔπραξαν· πολλοῖς δὲ καὶ τῶν ποιητῶν ἐν ἀηδόνος
μνήμῃ Δαυλιὰς ἡ ὄρνις ἐπωνόμασται. Εἰκὸς τε καὶ τὸ κῆδος Πανδίονα
ξυνάψασθαι τῆς θυγατρὸς διὰ τοσούτου, ἐπ᾽ ὠφελείᾳ τῇ πρὸς
ἀλλήλους, μᾶλλον ἢ διὰ πολλῶν ἡμερῶν ἐς Ὀδρύσας ὁδοῦ. The first
of these sentences would lead us to infer, if it came from any
other pen than that of Thucydidês, that the writer believed the
metamorphosis of Philomêla into a nightingale: see above, ch. xi.
p. 270.
The observation respecting the convenience of neighborhood for
the marriage is remarkable, and shows how completely Thucydidês
regarded the event as historical. What would he have said
respecting the marriage of Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus,
with Boreas, and the prodigious distance which she is reported
to have been carried by her husband? Ὑπέρ τε πόντον πάντ᾽, ἐπ᾽
ἔσχατα χθονὸς, etc. (Sophoklês ap. Strabo. vii. p. 295.)
From the way in which Thucydidês introduces the mention of this
event, we see that he intended to correct the misapprehension
of his countrymen, who having just made an alliance with the
Odrysian _Têrês_, were led by that circumstance to think of the
old mythical _Têreus_, and to regard him as the ancestor of
_Têrês_.
[942] Thucyd. iv. 24.
[943] Thucyd. vi. 2.
[944] Thucyd. ii. 68-102; iv. 120; vi. 2. Antiochus of Syracuse,
the contemporary of Thucydidês, also mentioned Italus as the
eponymous king of Italy: he farther named Sikelus, who came to
Morgos, son of Italus, after having been banished from Rome. He
talks about Italus, just as Thucydidês talks about Thêseus, as
a wise and powerful king, who first acquired a great dominion
(Dionys. H. A. R. i. 12, 35, 73). Aristotle also mentioned Italus
in the same general terms (Polit. vii. 9, 2).
[945] We may here notice some particulars respecting Isokratês.
He manifests entire confidence in the authenticity of the
mythical genealogies and chronology; but while he treats the
mythical personages as historically real, he regards them at the
same time not as human, but as half-gods, superior to humanity.
About Helena, Thêseus, Sarpêdôn, Cycnus, Memnôn, Achilles, etc.,
see Encom. Helen. Or. x. pp. 282, 292, 295. Bek. Helena was
worshipped in his time as a goddess at Therapnæ (_ib._ p. 295).
He recites the settlements of Danaus, Kadmus, and Pelops in
Greece, as undoubted historical facts (p. 297). In his discourse
called _Busiris_, he accuses Polykratês, the sophist, of a gross
anachronism, in having placed Busiris subsequent in point of date
to Orpheus and Æolus (Or. xi. p. 301, Bek.), and he adds that the
tale of Busiris having been slain by Hêraklês was chronologically
impossible (p. 309). Of the long Athenian genealogy from Kekrops
to Thêseus, he speaks with perfect historical confidence
(Panathenaic. p. 349, Bek.); not less so of the adventures
of Hêraklês and his mythical contemporaries, which he places
in the mouth of Archidamus as a justification of the Spartan
title to Messenia (Or. vi. _Archidamus_, p. 156, Bek.; compare
Or. v. _Philippus_, pp. 114, 138), φάσιν, οἷς περὶ τῶν παλαιῶν
πιστεύομεν, etc. He condemns the poets in strong language for
the wicked and dissolute tales which they circulated respecting
the gods: many of them (he says) had been punished for such
blasphemies by blindness, poverty, exile, and other misfortunes
(Or. xi. p. 309, Bek.).
In general, it may be said that Isokratês applies no principles
of historical criticism to the mythes; he rejects such as appear
to him discreditable or unworthy, and believes the rest.
Such are the special allusions made by this illustrious author in
the course of his history to mythical events. From the tenor of his
language we may see that he accounted all that could be known about
them to be uncertain and unsatisfactory; but he has it much at heart
to show, that even the greatest were inferior in magnitude and
importance to the Peloponnesian war.[946] In this respect his opinion
seems to have been at variance with that which was popular among his
contemporaries.
[946] Thucyd. i. 21-22.
The first two volumes of this history have been noticed in an
able article of the Quarterly Review, for October, 1846; as well
as in the Heidelberger Jahrbücher der Literatur (1846. No. 41.
pp. 641-655), by Professor Kortüm.
While expressing, on several points, approbation of my work, by
which I feel much flattered—both my English and my German critic
take partial objection to the views respecting Grecian legend.
While the Quarterly Reviewer contends that the mythopœic faculty
of the human mind, though essentially loose and untrustworthy,
is never creative, but requires some basis of fact to work
upon—Kortüm thinks that I have not done justice to Thucydidês,
as regards his way of dealing with legend; that I do not allow
sufficient weight to the authority of an historian so circumspect
and so cold-blooded (den kalt-blüthigsten und besonnensten
Historiker des Alterthums, p. 653) as a satisfactory voucher for
the early facts of Grecian history in his preface (Herr G. fehlt
also, wenn er das anerkannt kritische Proœmium als Gewährsmann
verschmäht, p. 654).
No man feels more powerfully than I do the merits of Thucydidês
as an historian, or the value of the example which he set in
multiplying critical inquiries respecting matters recent and
verifiable. But the ablest judge or advocate, in investigating
specific facts, can proceed no further than he finds witnesses
having the means of knowledge, and willing more or less to tell
truth. In reference to facts prior to 776 B. C., Thucydidês had
nothing before him except the legendary poets, whose credibility
is not at all enhanced by the circumstance that he accepted them
as witnesses, applying himself only to cut down and modify their
allegations. His credibility in regard to the specific facts of
these early times depends altogether upon theirs. Now we in our
day are in a better position for appreciating their credibility
than he was in his, since the foundations of historical evidence
are so much more fully understood, and good or bad materials
for history are open to comparison in such large extent and
variety. Instead of wondering that he shared the general faith
in such delusive guides—we ought rather to give him credit for
the reserve with which he qualified that faith, and for the sound
idea of historical possibility to which he held fast as the limit
of his confidence. But it is impossible to consider Thucydidês
as a _satisfactory guarantee_ (Gewährsmann) for matters of fact
which he derives only from such sources.
Professor Kortüm considers that I am inconsistent with myself
in refusing to discriminate particular matters of historical
fact among the legends—and yet in accepting these legends (in
my chap. xx.) as giving a faithful mirror of the general state
of early Grecian society (p. 653). It appears to me that this
is no inconsistency, but a real and important distinction.
Whether Hêraklês, Agamemnôn, Odysseus, etc. were real persons,
and performed all, or a part, of the possible actions ascribed
to them—I profess myself unable to determine. But even assuming
both the persons and their exploits to be fictions, these very
fictions will have been conceived and put together in conformity
to the general social phænomena among which the describer and
his hearers lived—and will thus serve as illustrations of the
manners then prevalent. In fact, the real value of the Preface
of Thucydidês, upon which Professor Kortüm bestows such just
praise, consists, not in the particular facts which he brings out
by altering the legends, but in the rational general views which
he sets forth respecting early Grecian society, and respecting
the steps as well as the causes whereby it attained its actual
position as he saw it.
Professor Kortüm also affirms that the mythes contain “real
matter of fact along with mere conceptions:” which affirmation is
the same as that of the Quarterly Reviewer, when he says that the
mythopœic faculty is not creative. Taking the mythes in the mass,
I doubt not that this is true, nor have I anywhere denied it.
Taking them one by one, I neither affirm nor deny it. My position
is, that, whether there be matter of fact or not, we have no
test whereby it can be singled out, identified, and severed from
the accompanying fiction. And it lies upon those, who proclaim
the practicability of such severance, to exhibit some means of
verification better than any which has been yet pointed out. If
Thucydidês has failed in doing this, it is certain that none of
the many authors who have made the same attempt after him have
been more successful.
It cannot surely be denied that the mythopœic faculty is
_creative_, when we have before us so many divine legends, not
merely in Greece, but in other countries also. To suppose that
these religious legends are mere exaggerations, etc. of some
basis of actual fact—that the gods of polytheism were merely
divinized men, with qualities distorted or feigned—would be to
embrace in substance the theory of Euêmerus.
To touch a little upon the later historians by whom these mythes were
handled, we find that Anaximenês of Lampsacus composed a consecutive
history of events, beginning from the Theogony down to the battle
of Mantineia.[947] But Ephorus professed to omit all the mythical
narratives which are referred to times anterior to the return of the
Herakleids, (such restriction would of course have banished the siege
of Troy,) and even reproved those who introduced mythes into historical
writing; adding, that everywhere truth was the object to be aimed
at.[948] Yet in practice he seems often to have departed from his own
rule.[949] Theopompus, on the other hand, openly proclaimed that he
could narrate fables in his history better than Herodotus, or Ktesias,
or Hellanikus.[950] The fragments which remain to us, exhibit some
proof that this promise was performed as to quantity;[951] though as
to his style of narration, the judgment of Dionysius is unfavorable.
Xenophôn ennobled his favorite amusement of the chase by numerous
examples chosen from the heroic world, tracing their portraits with all
the simplicity of an undiminished faith. Kallisthenês, like Ephorus,
professed to omit all mythes which referred to a time anterior to the
return of the Herakleids; yet we know that he devoted a separate book
or portion of his history to the Trojan war.[952] Philistus introduced
some mythes in the earlier portions of his Sicilian history; but Timæus
was distinguished above all others for the copious and indiscriminate
way in which he collected and repeated such legends.[953] Some of
these writers employed their ingenuity in transforming the mythical
circumstances into plausible matter of history: Ephorus, in particular,
converted the serpent Pythô, slain by Apollo, into a tyrannical
king.[954]
[947] Diodôr. xv. 89. He was a contemporary of Alexander the
Great.
[948] Diodôr. iv. 1. Strabo, ix. p. 422, ἐπιτιμήσας τοῖς
φιλομυθοῦσιν ἐν τῇ τῆς ἱστωρίας γραφῇ.
[949] Ephorus recounted the principal adventures of Hêraklês
(Fragm. 8, 9, ed. Marx.), the tales of Kadmus and Harmonia
(Fragm. 12), the banishment of Ætôlus from Elis (Fragm. 15;
Strabo, viii. p. 357); he drew inferences from the chronology of
the Trojan and Theban wars (Fragm. 28); he related the coming
of Dædalus to the Sikan king Kokalus, and the expedition of the
Amazons (Fragm. 99-103).
He was particularly copious in his information about κτίσεις,
ἀποικίαι and συγγενείαι (Polyb. ix. 1).
[950] Strabo, i. p. 74.
[951] Dionys. Halic. De Vett. Scriptt. Judic. p. 428, Reisk;
Ælian, V. H. iii. 18, Θεόπομπος ... δεινὸς μυθόλογος.
Theopompus affirmed, that the bodies of those who went into the
forbidden precinct (τὸ ἄβατον) of Zeus, in Arcadia, gave no
shadow (Polyb. xvi. 12). He recounted the story of Midas and
Silênus (Fragm. 74, 75, 76, ed. Wichers); he said a good deal
about the heroes of Troy; and he seems to have assigned the
misfortunes of the Νόστοι to an historical cause—the rottenness
of the Grecian ships, from the length of the siege, while the
genuine epic ascribes it to the anger of Athênê (Fragm. 112,
113, 114; Schol. Homer. Iliad, ii. 135); he narrated an alleged
expulsion of Kinyras from Cyprus by Agamemnôn (Fragm. 111);
he gave the genealogy of the Macedonian queen Olympias up to
Achilles and Æakus (Fragm. 232).
[952] Cicero, Epist. ad Familiar. v. 12; Xenophôn de Venation. c.
1.
[953] Philistus, Fragm. 1 (Göller), Dædalus, and Kokalus; about
Liber and Juno (Fragm. 57); about the migration of the Sikels
into Sicily, eighty years after the Trojan war (ap. Dionys. Hal.
i. 3).
Timæus (Fragm. 50, 51, 52, 53, Göller) related many fables
respecting Jasôn, Mêdea, and the Argonauts generally. The
miscarriage of the Athenian armament under Nikias, before
Syracuse, is imputed to the anger of Hêraklês against the
Athenians because they came to assist the Egestans, descendants
of Troy (Plutarch, Nikias, 1),—a naked reproduction of genuine
epical agencies by an historian; also about Diomêdês and the
Daunians; Phaëthôn and the river Eridanus; the combats of the
Gigantes in the Phlegræan plains (Fragm. 97, 99, 102).
[954] Strabo, ix. p. 422.
But the author who pushed this transmutation of legend into history
to the greatest length, was the Messenian Euêmerus, contemporary of
Kassander of Macedôn. He melted down in this way the divine persons
and legends, as well as the heroic—representing both gods and heroes
as having been mere earth-born men, though superior to the ordinary
level in respect of force and capacity, and deified or heroified
after death as a recompense for services or striking exploits. In
the course of a voyage into the Indian sea, undertaken by command of
Kassander, Euêmerus professed to have discovered a fabulous country
called Panchaia, in which was a temple of the Triphylian Zeus: he there
described a golden column, with an inscription purporting to have been
put up by Zeus himself, and detailing his exploits while on earth.[955]
Some eminent men, among whom may be numbered Polybius, followed the
views of Euêmerus, and the Roman poet Ennius[956] translated his
Historia Sacra; but on the whole he never acquired favor, and the
unblushing inventions which he put into circulation were of themselves
sufficient to disgrace both the author and his opinions. The doctrine
that all the gods had once existed as mere men offended the religious
pagans, and drew upon Euêmerus the imputation of atheism; but, on the
other hand, it came to be warmly espoused by several of the Christian
assailants of paganism,—by Minucius Felix, Lactantius, and St.
Augustin, who found the ground ready prepared for them in their efforts
to strip Zeus and the other pagan gods of the attributes of deity. They
believed not only in the main theory, but also in the copious details
of Euêmerus; and the same man whom Strabo casts aside as almost a
proverb for mendacity, was extolled by them as an excellent specimen
of careful historical inquiry.[957]
[955] Compare Diodôr. v. 44-46; and Lactantius, De Falsâ Relig.
i. 11.
[956] Cicero, De Naturâ Deor. i. 42; Varro, De Re Rust. i. 48.
[957] Strabo, ii. p. 102. Οὐ πολὺ οὖν λείπεται ταῦτα τῶν Πύθεω
καὶ Εὐημέρου καὶ Ἀντιφάνους ψευσμάτων; compare also i. p. 47, and
ii. p. 104.
St. Augustin, on the contrary, tells us (Civitat. Dei, vi. 7),
“Quid de ipse Jove senserunt, qui nutricem ejus in Capitolio
posuerunt? Nonne attestati sunt omnes Euemero, qui non fabulosâ
garrulitate, sed _historicâ diligentiâ_, homines fuisse
mortalesque conscripsit?” And Minucius Felix (Octav. 20-21),
“Euemerus exequitur Deorum natales: patrias, sepulcra dinumerat,
et per provincias monstrat, Dictæi Jovis, et Apollinis Delphici,
et Phariæ Isidis, et Cereris Eleusiniæ.” Compare Augustin, Civit.
Dei, xviii. 8-14; and Clemens Alexand. Cohort. ad Gent. pp.
15-18, Sylb.
Lactantius (De Falsâ Relig. c. 13, 14, 16) gives copious
citations from Ennius’s translation of the Historia Sacra of
Euêmerus.
Εὐήμερος, ὁ ἐπικληθεὶς ἄθεος, Sextus Empiricus, adv. Physicos,
ix. § 17-51. Compare Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 42; Plutarch, De
Iside et Osiride, c. 23. tom. ii. p. 475, ed. Wytt.
Nitzsch assumes (Helden Sage der Griechen, sect. 7. p. 84) that
the voyage of Euêmerus to Panchaia was intended only as an
amusing romance, and that Strabo, Polybius, Eratosthenês and
Plutarch were mistaken in construing it as a serious recital.
Böttiger, in his Kunst-Mythologie der Griechen (Absch. ii. s. 6.
p. 190), takes the same view. But not the least reason is given
for adopting this opinion, and it seems to me far-fetched and
improbable; Lobeck (Aglaopham. p. 989), though Nitzsch alludes to
him as holding it, manifests no such tendency, as far as I can
observe.
But though the pagan world repudiated that “lowering tone of
explanation,” which effaced the superhuman personality of Zeus and the
great gods of Olympus, the mythical persons and narratives generally
came to be surveyed more and more from the point of view of history,
and subjected to such alterations as might make them look more like
plausible matter of fact. Polybius, Strabo, Diodôrus, and Pausanias,
cast the mythes into historical statements—with more or less of
transformation, as the case may require, assuming always that there
is a basis of truth, which may be discovered by removing poetical
exaggerations and allowing for mistakes. Strabo, in particular, lays
down that principle broadly and unequivocally in his remarks upon
Homer. To give pure fiction, without any foundation of fact, was in his
judgment utterly unworthy of so great a genius; and he comments with
considerable acrimony on the geographer Eratosthenês, who maintains the
opposite opinion. Again, Polybius tells us that the Homeric Æolus, the
dispenser of the winds by appointment from Zeus, was in reality a man
eminently skilled in navigation, and exact in predicting the weather;
that the Cyclôpes and Læstrygones were wild and savage real men in
Sicily; and that Scylla and Charybdis were a figurative representation
of dangers arising from pirates in the Strait of Messina. Strabo speaks
of the amazing expeditions of Dionysus and Hêraklês, and of the long
wanderings of Jasôn, Menelaus, and Odysseus, in the same category
with the extended commercial range of the Phœnician merchant-ships:
he explains the report of Thêseus and Peirithöus having descended to
Hadês, by their dangerous earthly pilgrimages,—and the invocation
of the Dioskuri as the protectors of the imperiled mariner, by the
celebrity which they had acquired as real men and navigators.
Diodôrus gave at considerable length versions of the current fables
respecting the most illustrious names in the Grecian mythical world,
compiled confusedly out of distinct and incongruous authors. Sometimes
the mythe is reproduced in its primitive simplicity, but for the most
part it is partially, and sometimes wholly, historicized. Amidst this
jumble of dissentient authorities we can trace little of a systematic
view, except the general conviction that there was at the bottom of
the mythes a real chronological sequence of persons, and real matter
of fact, historical or ultra-historical. Nevertheless, there are
some few occasions on which Diodôrus brings us back a step nearer
to the point of view of the old logographers. For, in reference to
Hêraklês, he protests against the scheme of cutting down the mythes
to the level of present reality, and contends that a special standard
of ultra-historical credibility ought to be constituted, so as to
include the mythe in its native dimensions, and do fitting honor to
the grand, beneficent, and superhuman personality of Hêraklês and
other heroes or demi-gods. To apply to such persons the common measure
of humanity (he says), and to cavil at the glorious picture which
grateful man has drawn of them, is at once ungracious and irrational.
All nice criticism into the truth of the legendary narratives is
out of place: we show our reverence to the god by acquiescing in
the incredibilities of his history, and we must be content with the
best guesses which we can make, amidst the inextricable confusion
and numberless discrepancies which they present.[958] Yet though
Diodôrus here exhibits a preponderance of the religious sentiment over
the purely historical point of view, and thus reminds us of a period
earlier than Thucydidês—he in another place inserts a series of stories
which seem to be derived from Euêmerus, and in which Uranus, Kronus,
and Zeus appear reduced to the character of human kings celebrated
for their exploits and benefactions.[959] Many of the authors, whom
Diodôrus copies, have so entangled together Grecian, Asiatic, Egyptian,
and Libyan fables, that it becomes impossible to ascertain how much of
this heterogeneous mass can be considered as at all connected with the
genuine Hellenic mind.
[958] Diodôr. iv. 1-8. Ἔνιοι γὰρ τῶν ἀναγινωσκόντων, οὐ
δικαίᾳ χρώμενοι κρίσει, τἀκριβὲς ἐπιζητοῦσιν ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαίαις
μυθολογίαις, ἐπίσης τοῖς πραττομένοις ἐν τῷ καθ᾽ ἡμᾶς χρόνῳ, καὶ
τὰ δισταζόμενα τῶν ἔργων διὰ τὸ μέγεθος, ἐκ τοῦ καθ᾽ αὑτοὺς βίου
τεκμαιρόμενοι, τὴν Ἡρακλέους δύναμιν ἐκ τῆς ἀσθενείας τῶν νῦν
ἀνθρώπων θεωροῦσιν, ὥστε διὰ τὴν ὑπερβολὴν τοῦ μεγέθους τῶν ἔργων
ἀπιστεῖσθαι τὴν γραφήν. Καθόλου γὰρ ἐν ταῖς ἀρχαίαις μυθολογίαις
οὐκ ἐκ παντὸς τρόπου ~πικρῶς τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐξεταστέον~. Καὶ γὰρ ἐν
τοῖς θεάτροις ~πεπεισμένοι μήτε Κενταύρους~ διφυεῖς ἐξ ἑτερογενῶν
σωμάτων ὑπάρξαι, μήτε Γηρυόνην τρισώματον, ~ὅμως προσδεχόμεθα τὰς
τοιαύτας μυθολογίας~, καὶ ~ταῖς ἐπισημασίαις συναύξομεν τὴν τοῦ
θεοῦ τιμήν~. Καὶ γὰρ ἄτοπον, Ἡρακλέα μὲν ἔτι κατ᾽ ἀνθρώπους ὄντα
τοῖς ἰδίοις πόνοις ἐξημερῶσαι τὴν οἰκουμένην, τοὺς δ᾽ ἀνθρώπους,
ἐπιλαθομένους τῆς κοινῆς εὐεργεσίας, ~συκοφαντεῖν~ τὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς
καλλίστοις ἔργοις ἔπαινον, etc.
This is a remarkable passage: first, inasmuch as it sets forth
the total inapplicability of analogies drawn from the historical
past as narratives about Hêraklês; next, inasmuch as it suspends
the employment of critical and scientific tests, and invokes an
acquiescence interwoven and identified with the feelings, as the
proper mode of evincing pious reverence for the god Hêraklês.
It aims at reproducing exactly that state of mind to which the
mythes were addressed, and with which alone they could ever be in
thorough harmony.
[959] Diodôr. iii. 45-60; v. 44-46.
Pausanias is far more strictly Hellenic in his view of the Grecian
mythes than Diodôrus: his sincere piety makes him inclined to faith
generally with regard to the mythical narratives, but subject
nevertheless to the frequent necessity of historicizing or allegorizing
them. His belief in the general reality of the mythical history and
chronology is complete, in spite of the many discrepancies which he
finds in it, and which he is unable to reconcile.
Another author who seems to have conceived clearly, and applied
consistently, the semi-historical theory of the Grecian mythes, is
Palæphatus, of whose work what appears to be a short abstract has been
preserved.[960] In the short preface of this treatise “concerning
Incredible Tales,” he remarks, that some men, from want of instruction,
believe all the current narratives; while others, more searching and
cautious, disbelieve them altogether. Each of these extremes he is
anxious to avoid. On the one hand, he thinks that no narrative could
ever have acquired credence unless it had been founded in truth;
on the other, it is impossible for him to accept so much of the
existing narratives as conflicts with the analogies of present natural
phænomena. If such things ever had been, they would still continue to
be—but they never have so occurred; and the extra-analogical features
of the stories are to be ascribed to the license of the poets.
Palæphatus wishes to adopt a middle course, neither accepting all nor
rejecting all: accordingly, he had taken great pains to separate the
true from the false in many of the narratives; he had visited the
localities wherein they had taken place, and made careful inquiries
from old men and others.[961] The results of his researches are
presented in a new version of fifty legends, among the most celebrated
and the most fabulous, comprising the Centaurs, Pasiphaê, Aktæôn,
Kadmus and the Sparti, the Sphinx, Cycnus, Dædalus, the Trojan horse,
Æolus, Scylla, Geryôn, Bellerophôn, etc.
[960] The work of Palæphatus, probably this original, is alluded
to in the _Ciris_ of Virgil (88):—
“Docta Palæphatiâ testatur voce papyrus.”
The date of Palæphatus is unknown—indeed this passage of the
_Ciris_ seems the only ground that there is for inference
respecting it. That which we now possess is probably an extract
from a larger work—made by another person at some later time: see
Vossius de Historicis Græcis, p. 478, ed. Westermann.
[961] Palæphat. init. ap. Script. Mythogr. ed. Westermann, p.
268. Τῶν ἀνθρώπων οἱ μὲν πείθονται πᾶσι τοῖς λεγομένοις, ὡς
ἀνομίλητοι σοφίας καὶ ἐπιστήμης—οἱ δὲ πυκνότεροι τὴν φύσιν καὶ
πολυπράγμονες ἀπιστοῦσι τὸ παράπαν μηδὲν γενέσθαι τούτων. Ἐμοὶ δὲ
δοκεῖ γενέσθαι πάντα τὰ λεγόμενα· ... γενόμενα δέ τινα οἱ ποιηταὶ
καὶ λογογράφοι παρέτρεψαν εἰς τὸ ἀπιστότερον καὶ θαυμασιώτερον
τοῦ θαυμάζειν ἕνεκα τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. Ἐγὼ δὲ γινώσκω, ὅτι οὐ
δύναται τὰ τοιαῦτα εἶναι οἷα καὶ λέγεται· τοῦτο δὲ καὶ διείληφα,
ὅτι εἰ μὴ ἐγένετο, οὐκ ἄν ἐλέγετο.
The main assumption of the semi-historical theory is here shortly
and clearly stated.
One of the early Christian writers, Minucius Felix, is astonished
at the easy belief of his pagan forefathers in miracles. If ever
such things had been done in former times (he affirms), they
would continue to be done now; as they cannot be done now, we may
be sure that they never were _really_ done formerly (Minucius
Felix, Octav. c. 20): “Majoribus enim nostris tam facilis in
mendaciis fides fuit, ut temerè crediderint etiam alia monstruosa
mira miracula, Scyllam multiplicem, Chimæram multiformem, Hydram,
et Centauros. Quid illas aniles fabulas—de hominibus aves, et
feras homines, et de hominibus arbores atque flores? _Quæ, si
essent facta, fierent; quia fieri non possunt, ideo nec facta
sunt._”
It must be confessed that Palæphatus has performed his promise of
transforming the “incredibilia” into narratives in themselves plausible
and unobjectionable, and that in doing so he always follows some
thread of analogy, real or verbal. The Centaurs (he tells us) were a
body of young men from the village of Nephelê in Thessaly, who first
trained and mounted horses for the purpose of repelling a herd of bulls
belonging to Ixiôn king of the Lapithæ, which had run wild and done
great damage: they pursued these wild bulls on horseback, and pierced
them with their spears, thus acquiring both the name of _Prickers_
(κέντορες) and the imputed attribute of joint body with the horse.
Aktæôn was an Arcadian, who neglected the cultivation of his land for
the pleasures of hunting, and was thus eaten up by the expense of
his hounds. The dragon whom Kadmus killed at Thêbes, was in reality
Drako, king of Thêbes; and the dragon’s teeth which he was said to
have sown, and from whence sprung a crop of armed men, were in point
of fact elephants’ teeth, which Kadmus as a rich Phœnician had brought
over with him: the sons of Drako sold these elephants’ teeth and
employed the proceeds to levy troops against Kadmus. Dædalus, instead
of flying across the sea on wings, had escaped from Krête in a swift
sailing-boat under a violent storm: Kottus, Briareus, and Gygês were
not persons with one hundred hands, but inhabitants of the village of
Hekatoncheiria in Upper Macedonia, who warred with the inhabitants of
Mount Olympus against the Titans: Scylla, whom Odysseus so narrowly
escaped, was a fastsailing piratical vessel, as was also Pegasus, the
alleged winged horse of Bellerophôn.[962]
[962] Palæphat. Narrat. 1, 3, 6, 13, 20, 21, 29. Two short
treatises on the same subject as this of Palæphatus, are printed
along with it, both in the collection of Gale and of Westermann;
the one, _Heracliti de Incredibilibus_, the other _Anonymi de
Incredibilibus_. They both profess to interpret some of the
extraordinary or miraculous mythes, and proceed in a track not
unlike that of Palæphatus. Scylla was a beautiful courtezan,
surrounded with abominable parasites: she ensnared and ruined
the companions of Odysseus, though he himself was prudent enough
to escape her (Heraclit. c. 2. p. 313, West.) Atlas was a great
astronomer: Pasiphaê fell in love with a youth named Taurus; the
monster called the Chimæra was in reality a ferocious queen, who
had two brothers called Leo and Drako; the ram which carried
Phryxus and Hellê across the Ægean was a boatman named Krias
(Heraclit. c. 2, 6, 15, 24).
A great number of similar explanations are scattered throughout
the Scholia on Homer and the Commentary of Eustathius, without
specification of their authors.
Theôn considers such resolution of fable into plausible history
as a proof of surpassing ingenuity (Progymnasmata, cap. 6, ap.
Walz. Coll. Rhett. Græc. i. p. 219). Others among the Rhetors,
too, exercised their talents sometimes in vindicating, sometimes
in controverting, the probability of the ancient mythes. See the
Progymnasmata of Nicolaus—Κατασκευὴ ὅτι εἰκότα τὰ κατὰ Νιόβην,
Ἀνασκευὴ ὅτι οὐκ εἰκότα τὰ κατὰ Νιόβην (ap. Walz. Coll. Rhetor.
i. p. 284-318), where there are many specimens of this fanciful
mode of handling.
Plutarch, however, in one of his treatises, accepts Minotaurs,
Sphinxes, Centaurs, etc. as realities; he treats them as products
of the monstrous, incestuous, and ungovernable lusts of man,
which he contrasts with the simple and moderate passions of
animals (Plutarch, Gryllus, p. 990).
By such ingenious conjectures, Palæphatus eliminates all the incredible
circumstances, and leaves to us a string of tales perfectly credible
and commonplace, which we should readily believe, provided a very
moderate amount of testimony could be produced in their favor. If his
treatment not only disenchants the original mythes, but even effaces
their generic and essential character, we ought to remember that this
is not more than what is done by Thucydidês in his sketch of the
Trojan war. Palæphatus handles the mythes consistently, according to
the semi-historical theory, and his results exhibit the maximum which
that theory can ever present. By aid of conjecture, we get out of the
impossible, and arrive at matters intrinsically plausible, but totally
uncertified; beyond this point we cannot penetrate, without the light
of extrinsic evidence, since there is no intrinsic mark to distinguish
truth from plausible fiction.[963]
[963] The learned Mr. Jacob Bryant regards the explanations of
Palæphatus as if they were founded upon real fact. He admits,
for example, the city Nephelê alleged by that author in his
exposition of the fable of the Centaurs. Moreover, he speaks with
much commendation of Palæphatus generally: “He (Palæphatus) wrote
early, and seems to have been a serious and sensible person; one
who saw the absurdity of the fables upon which the theology of
his country was founded.” (Ancient Mythology, vol. i. p. 411-435.)
So also Sir Thomas Brown (Enquiry into Vulgar Errors, Book I.
chap. vi. p. 221, ed. 1835) alludes to Palæphatus as having
incontestably pointed out the real basis of the fables. “And
surely the fabulous inclination of those days was greater than
any since; which swarmed so with fables, and from such slender
grounds took hints for fictions, poisoning the world ever
after: wherein how far they succeeded, may be exemplified from
Palæphatus, in his Book of Fabulous Narrations.”
It remains that we should notice the manner in which the ancient
mythes were received and dealt with by the philosophers. The earliest
expression which we hear, on the part of philosophy, is the severe
censure bestowed upon them on ethical grounds by Xenophanês of
Kolophôn, and seemingly by some others of his contemporaries.[964]
It was apparently in reply to such charges, which did not admit of
being directly rebutted, that Theagenês of Rhêgium (about 520 B. C.)
first started the idea of a double meaning in the Homeric and Hesiodic
narratives,—an interior sense, different from that which the words
in their obvious meaning bore, yet to a certain extent analogous,
and discoverable by sagacious divination. Upon this principle, he
allegorized especially the battle of the gods in the Iliad.[965] In
the succeeding century, Anaxagoras and Metrodôrus carried out the
allegorical explanation more comprehensively and systematically;
the former representing the mythical personages as mere mental
conceptions, invested with name and gender, and illustrative of ethical
precepts,—the latter connecting them with physical principles and
phænomena. Metrodôrus resolved not only the persons of Zeus, Hêrê,
and Athênê, but also those of Agamemnôn, Achilles, and Hectôr, into
various elemental combinations and physical agencies, and treated
the adventures ascribed to them as natural facts concealed under the
veil of allegory.[966] Empedoklês, Prodikus, Antisthenês, Parmenidês,
Hêrakleidês of Pontus, and in a later age, Chrysippus, and the Stoic
philosophers generally,[967] followed more or less the same principle
of treating the popular gods as allegorical personages; while the
expositors of Homer (such as Stesimbrotus, Glaukôn, and others, even
down to the Alexandrine age), though none of them proceeded to the same
extreme length as Metrodôrus, employed allegory amongst other media
of explanation for the purpose of solving difficulties, or eluding
reproaches against the poet.
[964] Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empir. adv. Mathemat. ix. 193. He also
disapproved of the rites, accompanied by mourning and wailing,
with which the Eleatês worshipped Leukothea: he told them, εἰ
μὲν θεὸν ὑπολαμβάνουσι, μὴ θρηνεῖν· εἰ δὲ ἄνθρωπον, μὴ θύειν
(Aristotel. Rhet. ii. 23).
Xenophanês pronounced the battles of the Titans, Gigantes, and
Centaurs to be “fictions of our predecessors,” πλάσματα τῶν
προτέρων (Xenophan. Fragm. 1. p. 42, ed. Schneidewin).
See a curious comparison of the Grecian and Roman theology in
Dionys. Halicarn. Ant. Rom. ii. 20.
[965] Schol. Iliad. xx. 67: Tatian. adv. Græc. c. 48. Hêrakleitus
indignantly repelled the impudent atheists who found fault
with the divine mythes of the Iliad, ignorant of their true
allegorical meaning: ἡ τῶν ἐπιφυομένων τῷ Ὁμήρῳ τόλμα τοὺς Ἥρας
δεσμοὺς αἰτιᾶται, καὶ νομίζουσιν ὕλην τινα δαψιλῆ τῆς ἀθέου πρὸς
Ὅμηρον ἔχειν μανίας ταῦτα—Ἦ οὐ μέμνῃ ὅτι τ᾽ ἐκρέμω ὑψόθεν, etc.
λέληθε δ᾽ αὐτοὺς ὅτι τούτοις τοῖς ἔπεσιν ἐκτεθεολόγηται ἡ τοῦ
παντὸς γένεσις, καὶ τὰ συνεχῶς ᾀδόμενα τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα τούτων
τῶν στίχων ἐστὶ τάξις (Schol. ad Hom. Iliad. xv. 18).
[966] Diogen. Laërt. ii. 11; Tatian. adv. Græc. c. 37; Hesychius,
v. Ἀγαμέμνονα. See the ethical turn given to the stories of
Circê, the Sirens, and Scylla, in Xenoph. Memorab. i. 3, 7;
ii. 6, 11-31. Syncellus, Chronic. p. 149. Ἑρμηνεύουσι δὲ οἱ
Ἀναξαγόρειοι τοὺς μυθώδεις θεοὺς, νοῦν μὲν τὸν Δία, τὴν δὲ Ἀθηνᾶν
τέχνην, etc.
Uschold and other modern German authors seem to have adopted
in its full extent the principle of interpretation proposed by
Metrodorus—treating Odysseus and Penelopê as personifications of
the Sun and Moon, etc. See Helbig, Die Sittlichen Zustände des
Griechischen Helden Alters, Einleitung, p. xxix. (Leipzig, 1839.)
Corrections of the Homeric text were also resorted to, in order
to escape the necessity of imputing falsehood to Zeus (Aristotel.
De Sophist. Elench. c. 4).
[967] Sextus Empiric. ix. 18; Diogen. viii. 76; Plutarch, De
Placit. Philosoph. i. 3-6; De Poesi Homericâ, 92-126; De Stoicor.
Repugn. p. 1050, Menander, De Encomiis, c. 5.
Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i. 14, 15, 16, 41; ii. 24-25. “Physica
ratio non inelegans inclusa in impias fabulas.”
In the _Bacchæ_ of Euripidês, Pentheus is made to deride the tale
of the motherless infant Dionysus having been sewn into the thigh
of Zeus. Teiresias, while reproving him for his impiety, explains
the story away in a sort of allegory: the μηρὸς Διὸς (he says)
was a mistaken statement in place of the αἰθὴρ χθόνα ἐγκυλούμενος
(Bacch. 235-290).
Lucretius (iii. 995-1036) allegorizes the conspicuous sufferers
in Hadês,—Tantalus, Sisyphus, Tityus, and the Danaïds, as well
as the ministers of penal infliction, Cerberus and the Furies.
The first four are emblematic descriptions of various defective
or vicious characters in human nature,—the deisidæmonic, the
ambitious, the amorous, or the insatiate and querulous man; the
last two represent the mental terrors of the wicked.
In the days of Plato and Zenophôn, this allegorizing interpretation
was one of the received methods of softening down the obnoxious
mythes—though Plato himself treated it as an insufficient defence,
seeing that the bulk of youthful hearers could not see through the
allegory, but embraced the story literally as it was set forth.[968]
Pausanias tells us, that when he first began to write his work,
he treated many of the Greek legends as silly and undeserving of
serious attention; but as he proceeded, he gradually arrived at the
full conviction, that the ancient sages had designedly spoken in
enigmatical language, and that there was valuable truth wrapped up in
their narratives: it was the duty of a pious man, therefore, to study
and interpret, but not to reject, stories current and accredited
respecting the gods.[969] And others,—arguing from the analogy of the
religious mysteries, which could not be divulged without impiety to any
except such as had been specially admitted and initiated,—maintained
that it would be a profanation to reveal directly to the vulgar, the
genuine scheme of nature and the divine administration: the ancient
poets and philosophers had taken the only proper course, of talking
to the many in types and parables, and reserving the naked truth for
privileged and qualified intelligences.[970] The allegorical mode of
explaining the ancient fables[971] became more and more popular in
the third and fourth centuries after the Christian æra, especially
among the new Platonic philosophers; being both congenial to their
orientalized turn of thought, and useful as a shield against the
attacks of the Christians.
[968] Οἱ νῦν περὶ Ὅμηρον δεινοί—so Plato calls these interpreters
(Kratylus, p. 407); see also Xenoph. Sympos. iii. 6; Plato,
Ion. p. 530; Plutarch, De Audiend. Poet. p. 19. ὑπόνοια was the
original word, afterwards succeeded by ἀλληγορία.
Ἥρας δὲ δεσμοὺς καὶ Ἡφαίστου ῥίψεις ὑπὸ πατρὸς, μέλλοντος τῇ
μητρὶ τυπτομένῃ ἀμυνεῖν, καὶ θεομαχίας ὅσας Ὅμηρος πεποίηκεν, οὐ
παραδεκτέον εἰς τὴν πόλιν, ~οὔτ᾽ ἐν ὑπονοίαις πεποιημένας, οὔτ᾽
ἄνευ ὑπονοιῶν~. Ὁ γὰρ νέος οὐχ οἷός τε κρίνειν ὅ,τι τε ὑπόνοια
καὶ ὃ μὴ, ἀλλ᾽ ἃ ἂν τηλικοῦτος ὢν λάβῃ ἐν ταῖς δόξαις, δυσέκνιπτά
τε καὶ ἀμετάστατα φιλεῖ γίγνεσθαι (Plato, Republ. ii. 17. p. 378).
The idea of an interior sense and concealed purpose in the
ancient poets occurs several times in Plato (Theætet. c. 93. p.
180): παρὰ μὲν τῶν ἀρχαίων, μετὰ ποιήσεως ἐπικρυπτομένων τοὺς
πολλοὺς, etc.; also Protagor. c. 20. p. 316.
“Modo Stoicum Homerum faciunt,—modo Epicureum,—modo
Peripateticum,—modo Academicum. Apparet nihil horum esse in illo,
quia omnia sunt.” (Seneca, Ep. 88.) Compare Plutarch, De Defectu
Oracul. c. 11-12. t. ii. p. 702, Wytt., and Julian, Orat. vii. p.
216.
[969] Pausan. viii. 8, 2. To the same purpose (Strabo, x. p.
474), allegory is admitted to a certain extent in the fables
by Dionys. Halic. Ant. Rom. ii. 20. The fragment of the lost
treatise of Plutarch, on the Platæan festival of the Dædala, is
very instructive respecting Grecian allegory (Fragm. ix. t. 5. p.
754-763, ed. Wyt.; ap. Euseb. Præpar. Evang. iii. 1).
[970] This doctrine is set forth in Macrobius (i. 2). He
distinguishes between _fabula_ and _fabulosa narratio_:
the former is fiction pure, intended either to amuse or to
instruct—the latter is founded upon truth, either respecting
human or respecting divine agency. The gods did not like to
be publicly talked of (according to his view) except under
the respectful veil of a fable (the same feeling as that of
Herodotus, which led him to refrain from inserting the ἱεροὶ
λόγοι in his history). The supreme god, the τἀγαθὸν, the πρῶτον
αἴτιον, could not be talked of in fables: but the other gods,
the aërial or æthereal powers and the soul, might be, and
ought to be, talked of in that manner alone. Only superior
intellects ought to be admitted to a knowledge of the secret
reality. “De Diis cæteris, et de animâ, non frustra se, nec ut
oblectent, ad fabulosa convertunt; sed quia sciunt _inimicam
esse naturæ apertam nudamque expositionem sui_: quæ sicut
vulgaribus sensibus hominum intellectum sui, vario rerum tegmine
operimentoque, subtraxit; ita à prudentibus arcana sua voluit
per fabulosa tractari.... Adeo semper ita se et sciri et coli
numina maluerunt, qualiter in vulgus antiquitus fabulata est....
Secundum hæc Pythagoras ipse atque Empedocles, Parmenides quoque
et Heraclides, de Diis fabulati sunt: nec secus Timæus.” Compare
also Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. x. and xxxii. Arnobius exposes the
allegorical interpretation as mere evasion, and holds the Pagans
to literal historical fact (Adv. Gentes, v. p. 185, ed. Elm.).
Respecting the allegorical interpretation applied to the Greek
fables, Böttiger (Die Kunst—Mythologie der Griechen, Abschn. ii.
p. 176); Nitzsch (Heldensage der Griech. sect. 6. p. 78); Lobeck
(Aglaopham. p. 133-155).
[971] According to the anonymous writer ap. Westermann (Script.
Myth. p. 328), every personal or denominated god may be construed
in three different ways: either πραγματικῶς (historically, as
having been a king or a man)—or ψυχικῶς, in which theory Hêrê
signifies the soul; Athênê, _prudence_; Aphroditê, _desire_;
Zeus, _mind_, etc.—or στοιχειακῶς, in which system Apollo
signifies the _sun_; Poseidôn, the _sea_; Hêrê, the upper stratum
of the air, or _æther_; Athênê, the lower or denser stratum;
Zeus, the upper hemisphere; Kronus, the lower, etc. This writer
thinks that all the three principles of construction may be
resorted to, each on its proper occasion, and that neither of
them excludes the others. It will be seen that the first is pure
Euêmerism; the two latter are modes of allegory.
The allegorical construction of the gods and of the divine
mythes is copiously applied in the treatises, both of Phurnutus
and Sallustius, in Gale’s collection of mythological writers.
Sallustius treats the mythes as of divine origin, and the chief
poets as inspired (θεόληπτοι): the gods were propitious to those
who recounted worthy and creditable mythes respecting them, and
Sallustius prays that they will accept with favor his own remarks
(cap. 3 and 4. pp. 245-251, Gale). He distributes mythes into
five classes; theological, physical, spiritual, material, and
mixed. He defends the practice of speaking of the gods under
the veil of allegory, much in the same way as Macrobius (in the
preceding note): he finds, moreover, a good excuse even for
those mythes which imputed to the gods theft, adultery, outrages
towards a father, and other enormities: such tales (he says) were
eminently suitable, since the mind _must at once see_ that the
facts as told are _not_ to be taken as being themselves the real
truth, but simply as a veil, disguising some interior truth (p.
247).
Besides the Life of Homer ascribed to Plutarch (see Gale, p.
325-332), Hêraclidês (_not_ Hêraclidês of Pontus) carries out the
process of allegorizing the Homeric mythes most earnestly and
most systematically. The application of the allegorizing theory
is, in his view, the only way of rescuing Homer from the charge
of scandalous impiety—πάντῃ γὰρ ἠσέβησεν, εἰ μηδὲν ἠλληγόρησεν
(Hêrac. _in init._ p. 407, Gale). He proves at length, that the
destructive arrows of Apollo, in the first book of the Iliad,
mean nothing at the bottom except a contagious plague, caused
by the heat of the summer sun in marshy ground (pp. 416-424).
Athênê, who darts down from Olympus at the moment when Achilles
is about to draw his sword on Agamemnôn, and seizes him by the
hair, is a personification of repentant prudence (p. 435). The
conspiracy against Zeus, which Homer (Iliad, i. 400) relates to
have been formed by the Olympic gods, and defeated by the timely
aid of Thetis and Briareus—the chains and suspension imposed upon
Hêrê—the casting of Hêphæstos by Zeus out of Olympus, and his
fall in Lêmnus—the destruction of the Grecian wall by Poseidôn,
after the departure of the Greeks—the amorous scene between Zeus
and Hêrê on Mount Gargarus—the distribution of the universe
between Zeus, Poseidôn, and Hadês—all these he resolves into
peculiar manifestations and conflicts of the elemental substances
in nature. To the much-decried battle of the gods, he gives a
turn partly physical, partly ethical (p. 481). In like manner,
he transforms and vindicates the adventures of the gods in the
Odyssey: the wanderings of Odysseus, together with the Lotophagi,
the Cyclôps, Circê, the Sirens, Æolus, Scylla, etc., he resolves
into a series of temptations, imposed as a trial upon a man of
wisdom and virtue, and emblematic of human life (p. 496). The
story of Arês, Aphroditê, and Hêphæstos, in the eighth book of
the Odyssey, seems to perplex him more than any other: he offers
two explanations, neither of which seems satisfactory even to
himself (p. 494).
An anonymous writer in the collection of Westermann (pp. 329-344)
has discussed the wanderings of Odysseus upon the same ethical
scheme of interpretation as Hêraclidês: he entitles his treatise
“A short essay on the Wanderings of Odysseus in Homer, worked
out in conjunction with ethical reflections, and rectifying what
is rotten in the story, as well as may be, for the benefit of
readers.” (τὸ μύθου σαθρὸν θεραπεύουσα.) The author resolves the
adventures of Odysseus into narratives emblematic of different
situations and trials of human life. Scylla and Charybdis, for
example (c. 8. p. 338), represent, the one, the infirmities and
temptations arising out of the body, the other, those springing
from the mind, between which man is called upon to steer.
The adventure of Odysseus with Æolus, shows how little good
a virtuous man does himself by seeking, in case of distress,
aid from conjurors and evil enchanters; the assistance of such
allies, however it may at first promise well, ultimately deceives
the person who accepts it, and renders him worse off than he was
before (c. 3. p. 332). By such illustrations does the author
sustain his general position, that there is a great body of
valuable ethical teaching wrapped up in the poetry of Homer.
Proclus is full of similar allegorization, both of Homer and
Hesiod: the third Excursus of Heyne ad Iliad. xxiii. (vol. viii.
p. 563), De Allegoriâ Homericâ, contains a valuable summary of
the general subject.
The treatise De Astrologiâ, printed among the works of Lucian,
contains specimens of astrological explanations applied to many
of the Grecian μῦθοι, which the author as a pious man cannot
accept in their literal meaning. “How does it consist with
holiness (he asks) to believe that Æneas was son of Aphroditê,
Minôs of Zeus, or Askalaphus of Mars? No; these were men born
under the favorable influences of the planets Venus, Jupiter, and
Mars.” He considers the principle of astrological explanation
peculiarly fit to be applied to the mythes of Homer and Hesiod
(Lucian, De Astrologiâ, c. 21-22).
It was from the same strong necessity, of accommodating the old mythes
to a new standard both of belief and of appreciation, that both the
historical and the allegorical schemes of transforming them arose;
the literal narrative being decomposed for the purpose of arriving at
a base either of particular matter of fact, or of general physical
or moral truth. Instructed men were commonly disposed to historicize
only the heroic legends, and to allegorize more or less of the divine
legends: the attempt of Euêmerus to historicize the latter was for
the most part denounced as irreligious, while that of Metrodôrus to
allegorize the former met with no success. In allegorizing, moreover,
even the divine legends, it was usual to apply the scheme of allegory
only to the inferior gods, though some of the great Stoic philosophers
carried it farther, and allegorized all the separate personal gods,
leaving only an all-pervading cosmic Mind,[972] essential as a
co-efficient along with Matter, yet not separable from Matter. But
many pious pagans seem to have perceived that allegory pushed to this
extent was fatal to all living religious faith,[973] inasmuch as it
divested the gods of their character of Persons, sympathizing with
mankind and modifiable in their dispositions according to the conduct
and prayers of the believer: and hence they permitted themselves to
employ allegorical interpretation only to some of the obnoxious legends
connected with the superior gods, leaving the personality of the latter
unimpeached.
[972] See Ritter, Geschichte der Philosophie, 2nd edit. part 3.
book 11. chap. 4. p. 592; Varro ap. Augustin. Civitat. Dei, vi.
5, ix. 6; Cicero, Nat. Deor. ii. 24-28.
Chrysippus admitted the most important distinction between Zeus
and the other gods (Plutarch. de Stoicor. Repugnant. p. 1052.)
[973] Plutarch. de Isid. et Osirid. c. 66. p. 377; c. 70. p.
379. Compare on this subject O. Müller, Prolegom. Mythol. p. 59
_seq._, and Eckermann, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, vol. i.
sect. ii. p. 46.
One novelty, however, introduced seemingly by the philosopher
Empedoklês and afterwards expanded by others, deserves notice,
inasmuch as it modified considerably the old religious creed by
drawing a pointed contrast between gods and dæmons,—a distinction
hardly at all manifested in Homer, but recognized in the Works and
Days of Hesiod.[974] Empedoklês widened the gap between the two,
and founded upon it important consequences. The gods were good,
immortal, and powerful agents, having free-will and intelligence,
but without appetite, passion, or infirmity: the dæmons were of
a mixed nature between gods and men, ministers and interpreters
from the former to the latter, but invested also with an agency
and dispositions of their own. They were very long-lived, but not
immortal, and subject to the passions and propensities of men, so
that there were among them beneficent and maleficent dæmons with
every shade of intermediate difference.[975] It had been the mistake
(according to these philosophers) of the old mythes to ascribe to
the gods proceedings really belonging to the dæmons, who were always
the immediate communicants with mortal nature, inspiring prophetic
power to the priestesses of the oracles, sending dreams and omens,
and perpetually interfering either for good or for evil. The wicked
and violent dæmons, having committed many enormities, had thus
sometimes incurred punishment from the gods: besides which, their bad
dispositions had imposed upon men the necessity of appeasing them by
religious ceremonies of a kind acceptable to such beings: hence, the
human sacrifices, the violent, cruel, and obscene exhibitions, the
wailings and fastings, the tearing and eating of raw flesh, which it
had become customary to practise on various consecrated occasions, and
especially in the Dionysiac solemnities. Moreover, the discreditable
actions imputed to the gods,—the terrific combats, the Typhonic and
Titanic convulsions, the rapes, abductions, flight, servitude, and
concealment,—all these were really the doings and sufferings of bad
dæmons, placed far below the sovereign agency—equable, undisturbed, and
unpolluted—of the immortal gods. The action of such dæmons upon mankind
was fitful and intermittent: they sometimes perished or changed their
local abode, so that oracles which had once been inspired became after
a time forsaken and disfranchized.[976]
[974] Hesiod, Opp. et Di. 122: to the same effect Pythagoras and
Thalês (Diogen. Laër. viii. 32; and Plutarch, Placit. Philos. i.
8).
The Hesiodic dæmons are all good: Athenagoras (Legat. Chr. p.
8) says that Thalês admitted a distinction between good and bad
dæmons, which seems very doubtful.
[975] The distinction between Θεοὶ and Δαίμονες is especially set
forth in the treatise of Plutarch, De Defectu Oraculorum, capp.
10, 12, 13, 15, etc. He seems to suppose it traceable to the
doctrine of Zoroaster or the Orphic mysteries, and he represents
it as relieving the philosopher from great perplexities: for it
was difficult to know where to draw the line in admitting or
rejecting divine Providence: errors were committed sometimes in
affirming God to be the cause of everything, at other times in
supposing him to be the cause of nothing. Ἐπεὶ τὸ διορίσαι πῶς
χρηστέον καὶ μέχρι τίνων τῇ προνοίᾳ, χαλεπὸν, οἱ μὲν οὐδενὸς
ἁπλῶς τὸν θεὸν, οἱ δὲ ὁμοῦ τι πάντων αἴτιον ποιοῦντες, ἀστοχοῦσι
τοῦ μετρίου καὶ πρέποντος. Εὖ μὲν οὖν λέγουσιν καὶ οἱ λέγοντες,
ὅτι Πλάτων τὸ ταῖς γεννωμέναις ποιότησιν ὑποκείμενον στοιχεῖον
ἐξευρὼν, ὃ νῦν ὕλην καὶ φύσιν καλοῦσιν, πολλῶν ἀπήλλαξε καὶ
μεγάλων ἀποριῶν τοὺς φιλοσόφους· ἐμοὶ δὲ δοκοῦσι πλείονας λῦσαι
καὶ μείζονας ἀπορίας οἱ τὸ τῶν δαιμόνων γένος ἐν μέσῳ θεῶν καὶ
ἀνθρώπων, καὶ τρόπον τινὰ τὴν κοινωνίαν ἡμῶν σύναγον εἰς ταὐτὸ
καὶ σύναπτον, ἐξευρόντες (c. 10). Ἡ δαιμόνων φύσις ἔχουσα καὶ
πάθος θνητοῦ καὶ θεοῦ δύναμιν (c. 13).
Εἰσὶ γὰρ, ὡς ἐν ἀνθρώποις, καὶ δαίμοσιν ἀρετῆς διάφοραὶ, καὶ τοῦ
παθητικοῦ καὶ ἀλόγου τοῖς μὲν ἀσθενὲς καὶ ἀμαυρὸν ἔτι λείψανον,
ὥσπερ περίττωμα, τοῖς δὲ πολὺ καὶ δυσκατάσβεστον ἔνεστιν, ὧν ἴχνη
καὶ σύμβολα πολλαχοῦ θύσιαι καὶ τελεταὶ καὶ μυθολογίαι σώζουσι
καὶ διαφυλάττουσιν ἐνδιεσπαρμένα (_ib._): compare Plutarch. de
Isid. et Osir. 25. p. 360.
Καὶ μὴν ὅσας ~ἔν τε μύθοις καὶ ὕμνοις λέγουσι καὶ ᾅδουσι~, τοῦτο
μὲν ἁρπαγὰς, τοῦτο δὲ πλάνας θεῶν, κρύψεις τε καὶ φυγὰς καὶ
λατρείας, οὐ θεῶν εἰσίν ἀλλὰ δαιμόνων παθήματα, etc. (c. 15):
also c. 23; also De Isid. et Osir. c. 25. p. 366.
Human sacrifices and other objectionable rites are excused, as
necessary for the purpose of averting the anger of bad dæmons (c.
14-15).
Empedoklês is represented as the first author of the doctrine
which imputed vicious and abominable dispositions to many of the
dæmons (c. 15, 16, 17, 20), τοὺς εἰσαγομένους ὑπὸ Ἐμπεδοκλέους
δαίμονας; expelled from heaven by the gods, θεήλατοι καὶ
οὐρανοπετεὶς (Plutarch, De Vitand. Aër. Alien. p. 830); followed
by Plato, Xenokratês, and Chrysippus, c. 17: compare Plato
(Apolog. Socrat. p. 27; Politic. p. 271; Symposion, c. 28. p.
203), though he seems to treat the δαίμονες as defective and
mutable beings, rather than actively maleficent. Xenokratês
represents some of them both as wicked and powerful in a high
degree:—Ξενοκράτης καὶ τῶν ἡμερῶν τὰς ἀποφράδας, καὶ τῶν
ἑορτῶν ὅσαι πληγάς τινας ἢ κοπετοὺς, ἢ νηστείας, ἢ δυσφημίας,
ἢ αἰσχρολογίαν ἔχουσιν, οὔτε θεῶν τιμαῖς οὔτε δαιμόνων οἴεται
προσήκειν χρηστῶν, ἀλλ᾽ εἶναι φύσεις ἐν τῷ περιέχοντι μεγάλας
μὲν καὶ ἰσχυρὰς, δυστρόπους δὲ καὶ σκυθρωπὰς, αἳ ~χαίρουσι τοῖς
τοιούτοις~, καὶ ~τυγχάνουσαι πρὸς οὐθὲν ἄλλο χεῖρον τρέπονται~
(Plutarch, De Isid. ut Osir. c. 26. p. 361; Quæstion. Rom. p.
283): compare Stobæus, Eclog. Phys. i. p. 62.
[976] Plutarch, De Defect. Orac. c. 15. p. 418. Chrysippus
admitted, among the various conceivable causes to account for
the existence of evil, the supposition of some negligent and
reckless dæmons, δαιμόνια φαυλὰ ἐν οἷς τῷ ὄντι γίνονται καὶ
ἐγκλητέαι ἀμέλειαι (Plutarch, De Stoicor. Repugnant. p. 1051). A
distinction, which I do not fully understand, between θεοὶ and
δαίμονες, was also adopted among the Locrians at Opus: δαίμων
with them seems to have been equivalent to ἥρως (Plutarch,
Quæstion. Græc. c. 6. p. 292): see the note above, pp. 350-351.
This distinction between gods and dæmons appeared to save in a great
degree both the truth of the old legends and the dignity of the
gods: it obviated the necessity of pronouncing either that the gods
were unworthy, or the legends untrue. Yet although devised for the
purpose of satisfying a more scrupulous religious sensibility, it was
found inconvenient afterwards, when assailants arose against paganism
generally. For while it abandoned as indefensible a large portion of
what had once been genuine faith, it still retained the same word
_dæmons_ with an entirely altered signification. The Christian writers
in their controversies found ample warrant among the _earlier_ pagan
authors[977] for treating all the gods as dæmons—and not less ample
warrant among the _later_ pagans for denouncing the dæmons generally as
evil beings.[978]
[977] Tatian. adv. Græcos, c. 20; Clemens Alexandrin. Admonit.
ad Gentes, pp. 26-29, Sylb.; Minuc. Felix, Octav. c. 26. “Isti
igitur impuri spiritus, ut ostensum a Magis, a philosophis, a
Platone, sub statuis et imaginibus consecrati delitescunt, et
afflatu suo quasi auctoritatem præsentis numinis consequuntur,”
etc. This, like so many other of the aggressive arguments of
the Christians against paganism, was taken from the pagan
philosophers themselves.
Lactantius, De Verâ Philosophiâ, iv. 28. “Ergo iidem sunt
Dæmones, quos fatentur execrandos esse: iidem Dii, quibus
supplicant. Si nobis credendum esse non putant, credant Homero;
qui summum illum Jovem Dæmonibus aggregavit,” etc.
[978] See above, Chapter II. p. 70, the remarks on the Hesiodic
Theogony.
Such were the different modes in which the ancient mythes were
treated, during the literary life of Greece, by the four classes above
named—poets, logographers, historians, and philosophers.
Literal acceptance, and unconscious, uninquiring faith, such as they
had obtained from the original auditors to whom they were addressed,
they now found only among the multitude—alike retentive of traditional
feeling[979] and fearful of criticizing the proceedings of the
gods.[980] But with instructed men they became rather subjects of
respectful and curious analysis—all agreeing that the Word as tendered
to them was inadmissible, yet all equally convinced that it contained
important meaning, though hidden yet not undiscoverable. A very large
proportion of the force of Grecian intellect was engaged in searching
after this unknown base, by guesses, in which sometimes the principle
of semi-historical interpretation was assumed, sometimes that of
allegorical, without any collateral evidence in either case, and
without possibility of verification. Out of the one assumption grew a
string of allegorized phænomenal truths, out of the other a long series
of seeming historical events and chronological persons,—both elicited
from the transformed mythes and from nothing else.[981]
[979] A destructive inundation took place at Pheneus in
Arcadia, seemingly in the time of Plutarch: the subterranean
outlet (βάραθρον) of the river had become blocked up, and the
inhabitants ascribed the stoppage to the anger of Apollo, who had
been provoked by the stealing of the Pythian tripod by Hêraklês:
the latter had carried the tripod to Pheneus and deposited it
there. Ἆρ᾽ οὖν οὐκ ἀτοπώτερος τούτων ὁ Ἀπόλλων, εἰ Φενεάτας
ἀπόλλυσι τοὺς νῦν, ἐμφράξας τὸ βάραθρον, καὶ κατακλύσας τὴν χώραν
ἅπασαν αὐτῶν, ὅτι πρὸ χιλίων ἐτῶν, ὥς φασιν, ὁ Ἡρακλῆς ἀνασπάσας
τὸν τρίποδα τὸν μαντικὸν εἰς Φενεὸν ἀπήνεγκε; (Plutarch. de
Serâ Numin. Vindictâ, p. 577; compare Pausan. viii. 14, 1.)
The expression of Plutarch, that the abstraction of the tripod
by Hêraklês had taken place 1000 years before, is that of the
critic, who thinks it needful to historicize and chronologize the
genuine legend; which, to an inhabitant of Pheneus, at the time
of the inundation, was doubtless as little questioned as if the
theft of Hêraklês had been laid in the preceding generation.
Agathoclês of Syracuse committed depredations on the coasts
of Ithaca and Korkyra: the excuse which he offered was, that
Odysseus had come to Sicily and blinded Polyphêmus, and that
on his return he had been kindly received by the Phæakians
(Plutarch, _ib._).
This is doubtless a jest, either made by Agathoclês, or more
probably invented for him; but it is founded upon a popular
belief.
[980] “Sanctiusque et reverentius visum, de actis Deorum credere
quam scire.” (Tacit. German. c. 34.)
Aristidês, however, represents the Homeric theology (whether he
would have included the Hesiodic we do not know) as believed
quite literally among the multitude in his time, the second
century after Christianity (Aristid. Orat. iii. p. 25). Ἀπορῶ,
ὅπη πότε χρή με διαθέσθαι μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν, πότερα ὡς τοῖς πολλοῖς δοκεῖ
καὶ Ὁμήρῳ δὲ συνδοκεῖ, θεῶν παθήματα συμπεισθῆναι καὶ ἡμᾶς,
οἷον Ἀρέος δέσμα καὶ Ἀπόλλωνος θητείας καὶ Ἡφαίστου ῥίψεις εἰς
θάλασσαν, οὕτω δὲ καὶ Ἰνοῦς ἄχη καὶ φυγάς τινας. Compare Lucian,
Ζεὺς Τραγῶδος, c. 20, and De Luctu, c. 2; Dionys. Halicar. A. R.
ii. p. 90, Sylb.
Kallimachus (Hymn. ad Jov. 9) distinctly denied the statement
of the Kretans that they possessed in Krête the tomb of Zeus,
and treated it as an instance of Kretan mendacity; while
Celsus did not deny it, but explained it in some figurative
manner—αἰνιττόμενος τροπικὰς ὑπονοίας (Origen. cont. Celsum, iii.
p. 137).
[981] There is here a change as compared with my first edition;
I had inserted here some remarks on the allegorical theory of
interpretation, as compared with the semi-historical. An able
article on my work (in the Edinburgh Review, October 1846),
pointed out that those remarks required modification, and that
the idea of allegory in reference to the construction of the
mythes was altogether inadmissible.
The utmost which we accomplish by means of the semi-historical theory,
even in its most successful applications, is, that after leaving out
from the mythical narrative all that is miraculous or high-colored or
extravagant, we arrive at a series of credible incidents—incidents
which _may, perhaps_, have really occurred, and against which no
intrinsic presumption can be raised. This is exactly the character
of a well-written modern novel (as, for example, several among the
compositions of Defoe), the whole story of which is such as may well
have occurred in real life: it is plausible fiction, and nothing
beyond. To raise plausible fiction up to the superior dignity of
truth, some positive testimony or positive ground of inference must
be shown; even the highest measure of intrinsic probability is not
alone sufficient. A man who tells us that, on the day of the battle
of Platæa, rain fell on the spot of ground where the city of New York
now stands, will neither deserve nor obtain credit, because he can
have had no means of positive knowledge; though the statement is not
in the slightest degree improbable. On the other hand, statements in
themselves very improbable may well deserve belief, provided they be
supported by sufficient positive evidence; thus the canal dug by order
of Xerxês across the promontory of Mount Athos, and the sailing of
the Persian fleet through it, is a fact which I believe, because it
is well-attested—notwithstanding its remarkable improbability, which
so far misled Juvenal as to induce him to single out the narrative
as a glaring example of Grecian mendacity.[982] Again, many critics
have observed that the general tale of the Trojan war (apart from
the superhuman agencies) is not more improbable than that of the
Crusades, which every one admits to be an historical fact. But (even
if we grant this position, which is only true to a small extent), it
is not sufficient to show an analogy between the two cases in respect
to negative presumptions alone; the analogy ought to be shown to hold
between them in respect to positive certificate also. The Crusades
are a curious phænomenon in history, but we accept them, nevertheless,
as an unquestionable fact, because the antecedent improbability is
surmounted by adequate contemporary testimony. When the like testimony,
both in amount and kind, is produced to establish the historical
reality of a Trojan war, we shall not hesitate to deal with the two
events on the same footing.
[982] Juvenal, Sat. x. 174:—
“Creditur olim
Velificatus Athos, et quantum Græcia mendax
Audet in historiâ,” etc.
In applying the semi-historical theory to Grecian mythical narrative,
it has been often forgotten that a certain strength of testimony, or
positive ground of belief, must first be tendered, before we can be
called upon to discuss the antecedent probability or improbability of
the incidents alleged. The belief of the Greeks themselves, without the
smallest aid of special or contemporary witnesses, has been tacitly
assumed as sufficient to support the case, provided only sufficient
deduction be made from the mythical narratives to remove all antecedent
improbabilities. It has been taken for granted that the faith of the
people must have rested originally upon some particular historical
event, involving the identical persons, things, and places which the
original mythes exhibit, or at least the most prominent among them.
But when we examine the pyschagogic influences predominant in the
society among whom this belief originally grew up, we shall see that
their belief is of little or no evidentiary value, and that the growth
and diffusion of it may be satisfactorily explained without supposing
any special basis of matters of fact. The popular faith, so far as
it counts for anything, testifies in favor of the entire and literal
mythes, which are now universally rejected as incredible.[983] We have
thus the very minimum of positive proof, and the maximum of negative
presumption: we may diminish the latter by conjectural omissions and
interpolations, but we cannot by any artifice increase the former: the
narrative ceases to be incredible, but it still remains uncertified,—a
mere commonplace possibility. Nor is fiction always, or essentially,
extravagant and incredible. It is often not only plausible and
coherent, but even more like truth (if a paradoxical phrase may be
allowed) than truth itself. Nor can we, in the absence of any extrinsic
test, reckon upon any intrinsic mark to discriminate the one from the
other.[984]
[983] Colonel Sleeman observes, respecting the Hindoo historical
mind—“History to this people is all a fairy tale.” (Rambles and
Recollections of an Indian Official, vol. i. ch. ix. p. 70.) And
again, “The popular poem of the Ramaen describes the abduction
of the heroine by the monster king of Ceylon, Rawun; and her
recovery by means of the monkey general, Hunnooman. Every word of
this poem, the people assured me was written, if not by the hand
of the Deity himself, at least by his inspiration, which was the
same thing—and it must consequently be true. Ninety-nine out of
a hundred, among the Hindoos, implicitly believe, not only every
word of the poem, but every word of every poem that has ever been
written in Sanscrit. If you ask a man whether he really believes
any very egregious absurdity quoted from these books, he replies,
with the greatest _naïveté_ in the world, Is it not written in
the book; and how should it be there written, if not true? The
Hindoo religion reposes upon an entire prostration of mind,—that
continual and habitual surrender of the reasoning faculties,
which we are accustomed to make occasionally, while engaged at
the theatre, or in the perusal of works of fiction. We allow the
scenes, characters, and incidents, to pass before our mind’s
eye, and move our feelings—without stopping a moment to ask
whether they are real or true. There is only this difference—that
with people of education among us, even in such short intervals
of illusion or _abandon_, any extravagance in the acting, or
flagrant improbability in the fiction, destroys the charm, breaks
the spell by which we have been so mysteriously bound, and
restores us to reason and the realities of ordinary life. With
the Hindoos, on the contrary, the greater the improbability, the
more monstrous and preposterous the fiction—the greater is the
charm it has over their minds; and the greater their learning
in the Sanscrit, the more are they under the influence of this
charm. Believing all to be written by the Deity, or under his
inspirations, and the men and things of former days to have
been very different from men and things of the present day, and
the heroes of these fables to have been demigods, or people
endowed with powers far superior to those of the ordinary men
of their own day—the analogies of nature are never for a moment
considered; nor do questions of probability, or possibility,
according to those analogies, ever obtrude to dispel the charm
with which they are so pleasingly bound. They go on through
life reading and talking of these monstrous fictions, which
shock the taste and understanding of other nations, without
ever questioning the truth of one single incident, or hearing
it questioned. There was a time, and that not far distant, when
it was the same in England, and in every other European nation;
and there are, I am afraid, some parts of Europe where it is
so still. But the Hindoo faith, so far as religious questions
are concerned, is not more capacious or absurd than that of the
Greeks or Romans in the days of Socrates or Cicero: the only
difference is, that among the Hindoos a greater number of the
questions which interest mankind are brought under the head of
religion.” (Sleeman, Rambles, etc., vol. i. ch. xxvi. p. 227:
compare vol. ii. ch. v. p. 51; viii. p. 97.)
[984] Lord Lyttleton, in commenting on the tales of the Irish
bards, in his History of Henry II., has the following just
remarks (book iv. vol. iii. p. 13, quarto): “One may reasonably
suppose that in MSS. written since the Irish received the Roman
letters from St. Patrick, _some_ traditional truths recorded
before by the bards in their unwritten poems may have been
preserved to our times. Yet these cannot be so separated from
many fabulous stories derived from the same sources, as to obtain
a firm credit; it not being sufficient to establish the authority
of suspected traditions, that they can be shown not to be so
improbable or absurd as others with which they are mixed—_since
there may be specious as well as senseless fictions_. Nor can a
poet or bard, who lived in the sixth or seventh century after
Christ, if his poem is still extant, be any voucher for facts
supposed to have happened before the incarnation; though his
evidence (allowing for poetical license) may be received on such
matters as come within his own time, or the remembrance of old
men with whom he conversed. The most judicious historians pay no
regard to the Welsh or British traditions delivered by Geoffrey
of Monmouth, though it is not impossible but that some of these
may be true.”
One definition of a mythe given by Plutarch coincides exactly
with a _specious fiction_: Ὁ μῦθος εἶναι βούλεται λόγος ψευδὴς
ἐοικὼς ἀληθινῷ (Plutarch, Bellone an pace clariores fuerunt
Athenienses, p. 348).
“Der Grund-Trieb des Mythus (Creuzer justly expresses it) das
Gedachte in ein Geschehenes umzusetzen.” (Symbolik der Alten
Welt, sect. 43. p. 99.)
In the semi-historical theory respecting Grecian mythical narrative,
the critic unconsciously transports into the Homeric age those habits
of classification and distinction, and that standard of acceptance
or rejection, which he finds current in his own. Amongst us, the
distinction between historical fact and fiction is highly valued as
well as familiarly understood: we have a long history of the past,
deduced from a study of contemporary evidences; and we have a body
of fictitious literature, stamped with its own mark and interesting
in its own way. Speaking generally, no man could now hope to succeed
permanently in transferring any striking incident from the latter
category into the former, nor could any man deliberately attempt it
without incurring well-merited obloquy. But this _historical sense_,
now so deeply rooted in the modern mind that we find a difficulty
in conceiving any people to be without it, is the fruit of records
and inquiries, first applied to the present, and then preserved and
studied by subsequent generations; while in a society which has not
yet formed the habit of recording its present, the real facts of the
past can never be known; the difference between attested matter
of fact and plausible fiction—between truth and that which is like
truth—can neither be discerned nor sought for. Yet it is precisely upon
the supposition that this distinction is present to men’s habitual
thoughts, that the semi-historical theory of the mythes is grounded.
It is perfectly true, as has often been stated, that the Grecian epic
contains what are called traditions respecting the past—the larger
portion of it, indeed, consists of nothing else. But what are these
traditions? They are the matter of those songs and stories which have
acquired hold on the public mind; they are the creations of the poets
and storytellers themselves, each of whom finds some preëxisting, and
adds others of his own, new and previously untold, under the impulse
and authority of the inspiring Muse. Homer doubtless found many songs
and stories current with respect to the siege of Troy; he received and
transmitted some of these traditions, recast and transformed others,
and enlarged the whole mass by new creations of his own. To the
subsequent poets, such as Arktinus and Leschês, these Homeric creations
formed portions of preëxisting tradition, with which they dealt in the
same manner; so that the whole mass of traditions constituting the tale
of Troy became larger and larger with each successive contributor. To
assume a generic difference between the older and the newer strata of
tradition—to treat the former as morsels of history, and the latter
as appendages of fiction—is an hypothesis gratuitous at the least,
not to say inadmissible. For the further we travel back into the
past, the more do we recede from the clear day of positive history,
and the deeper do we plunge into the unsteady twilight and gorgeous
clouds of fancy and feeling. It was one of the agreeable dreams of the
Grecian epic, that the man who travelled far enough northward beyond
the Rhipæan mountains, would in time reach the delicious country and
genial climate of the virtuous Hyperboreans—the votaries and favorites
of Apollo, who dwelt in the extreme north beyond the chilling blasts
of Boreas. Now the hope that we may, by carrying our researches up the
stream of time, exhaust the limits of fiction, and land ultimately upon
some points of solid truth, appears to me no less illusory than this
northward journey in quest of the Hyperborean elysium.
The general disposition to adopt the semi-historical theory as to the
genesis of Grecian mythes, arises in part from reluctance in critics to
impute to the mythopœic ages extreme credulity or fraud; together with
the usual presumption, that where much is believed some portion of it
must be true. There would be some weight in these grounds of reasoning,
if the ages under discussion had been supplied with records and
accustomed to critical inquiry. But amongst a people unprovided with
the former and strangers to the latter, credulity is naturally at its
maximum, as well in the narrator himself as in his hearers: the idea
of deliberate fraud is moreover inapplicable,[985] for if the hearers
are disposed to accept what is related to them as a revelation from
the Muse, the _œstrus_ of composition is quite sufficient to impart a
similar persuasion to the poet whose mind is penetrated with it. The
belief of that day can hardly be said to stand apart by itself as an
act of reason. It becomes confounded with vivacious imagination and
earnest emotion; and in every case where these mental excitabilities
are powerfully acted upon, faith ensues unconsciously and as a matter
of course. How active and prominent such tendencies were among the
early Greeks, the extraordinary beauty and originality of their epic
poetry may teach us.
[985] In reference to the loose statements of the Highlanders,
Dr. Johnson observes, “He that goes into the Highlands with a
mind naturally acquiescent, and a credulity eager for wonders,
may perhaps come back with an opinion very different from mine;
for the inhabitants, knowing the ignorance of all strangers in
their language and antiquities, are perhaps not very scrupulous
adherents to truth; yet I do not say that they deliberately speak
studied falsehood, or have a settled purpose to deceive. They
have acquired and considered little, and do not always feel their
own ignorance. They are not much accustomed to be interrogated
by others, and seem never to have thought of interrogating
themselves; _so that if they do not know what they tell to be
true, they likewise do not distinctly perceive it to be false_.
Mr. Boswell was very diligent in his inquiries, and the result of
his investigations was, that the answer to the second question
was commonly such as nullified the answer to the first.” (Journey
to the Western Islands, p. 272, 1st edit., 1775).
It is, besides, a presumption far too largely and indiscriminately
applied, even in our own advanced age, that where much is believed,
something must necessarily be true—that accredited fiction is always
traceable to some basis of historical truth.[986] The influence
of imagination and feeling is not confined simply to the process
of retouching, transforming, or magnifying narratives originally
founded on fact; it will often create new narratives of its own,
without any such preliminary basis. Where there is any general body
of sentiment pervading men living in society, whether it be religious
or political—love, admiration, or antipathy—all incidents tending to
illustrate that sentiment are eagerly welcomed, rapidly circulated
and (as a general rule) easily accredited. If real incidents are not
at hand, impressive fictions will be provided to satisfy the demand.
The perfect harmony of such fictions with the prevalent feeling stands
in the place of certifying testimony, and causes men to hear them not
merely with credence, but even with delight: to call them in question
and require proof, is a task which cannot be undertaken without
incurring obloquy. Of such tendencies in the human mind, abundant
evidence is furnished by the innumerable religious legends which
have acquired currency in various parts of the world, and of which
no country was more fertile than Greece—legends which derived their
origin, not from special facts misreported and exaggerated, but from
pious feelings pervading the society, and translated into narrative
by forward and imaginative minds—legends, in which not merely the
incidents, but often even the personages are unreal, yet in which the
generating sentiment is conspicuously discernible, providing its own
matter as well as its own form. Other sentiments also, as well as the
religious, provided they be fervent and widely diffused, will find
expression in current narrative, and become portions of the general
public belief—every celebrated and notorious character is the source
of a thousand fictions exemplifying his peculiarities. And if it be
true, as I think present observation may show us, that such creative
agencies are even now visible and effective, when the materials of
genuine history are copious and critically studied—much more are we
warranted in concluding that, in ages destitute of records, strangers
to historical testimony, and full of belief in divine inspiration both
as to the future and as to the past, narratives purely fictitious
will acquire ready and uninquiring credence, provided only they be
plausible and in harmony with the preconceptions of the auditors.
[986] I considered this position more at large in an article
in the “Westminster Review” for May, 1843, on Niebuhr’s Greek
Legends, with which article much in the present chapter will be
found to coincide.
The allegorical interpretation of the mythes has been by several
learned investigators, especially by Creuzer, connected with the
hypothesis of an ancient and highly instructed body of priests, having
their origin either in Egypt or in the East, and communicating to the
rude and barbarous Greeks religious, physical, and historical knowledge
under the veil of symbols. At a time (we are told) when language was
yet in its infancy, visible symbols were the most vivid means of acting
upon the minds of ignorant hearers: the next step was to pass to
symbolical language and expressions—for a plain and literal exposition,
even if understood at all, would at least have been listened to with
indifference, as not corresponding with any mental demand. In such
allegorizing way, then, the early priests set forth their doctrines
respecting God, nature, and humanity—a refined monotheism and a
theological philosophy—and to this purpose the earliest mythes were
turned. But another class of mythes, more popular and more captivating,
grew up under the hands of the poets—mythes purely epical, and
descriptive of real or supposed past events. The allegorical mythes,
being taken up by the poets, insensibly became confounded in the same
category with the purely narrative mythes—the matter symbolized was no
longer thought of, while the symbolizing words came to be construed in
their own literal meaning—and the basis of the early allegory, thus
lost among the general public, was only preserved as a secret among
various religious fraternities, composed of members allied together
by initiation in certain mystical ceremonies, and administered by
hereditary families of presiding priests. In the Orphic and Bacchic
sects, in the Eleusinian and Samothracian mysteries, was thus treasured
up the secret doctrine of the old theological and philosophical mythes,
which had once constituted the primitive legendary stock of Greece, in
the hands of the original priesthood and in ages anterior to Homer.
Persons who had gone through the preliminary ceremonies of initiation,
were permitted at length to hear, though under strict obligation of
secrecy, this ancient religious and cosmogonic doctrine, revealing
the destination of man and the certainty of posthumous rewards and
punishments—all disengaged from the corruptions of poets, as well as
from the symbols and allegories under which they still remained buried
in the eyes of the vulgar. The mysteries of Greece were thus traced up
to the earliest ages, and represented as the only faithful depository
channels of that purer theology and physics which had originally
been communicated, though under the unavoidable inconvenience of a
symbolical expression, by an enlightened priesthood coming from abroad
to the then rude barbarians of the country.[987]
[987] For this general character of the Grecian mysteries, with
their concealed treasure of doctrine, see _Warburton_, Divine
Legation of Moses, book ii. sect. 4.
_Payne Knight_, On the Symbolical Language of ancient Art and
Mythology, sect. 6, 10, 11, 40, etc.
_Saint Croix_, Recherches sur les Mystères du Paganisme, sect. 3,
p. 106; sect. 4, p. 404, etc.
_Creuzer_, Symbolik und Mythologie der Alten Völker, sect. 2,
3, 23, 39, 42, etc. Meiners and Heeren adopt generally the same
view, though there are many divergences of opinion between these
different authors, on a subject essentially obscure. Warburton
maintained that the interior doctrine communicated in the
mysteries was the existence of one Supreme Divinity, combined
with the Euemeristic creed, that the pagan gods had been mere men.
See Clemens Alex. Strom. v. p. 582, Sylb.
The view taken by Hermann of the ancient Greek mythology is
in many points similar to that of Creuzer, though with some
considerable difference. He thinks that it is an aggregate
of doctrine—philosophical, theological, physical, and
moral—expressed under a scheme of systematic personifications,
each person being called by a name significant of the function
personified: this doctrine was imported from the East into
Greece, where the poets, retaining or translating the names, but
forgetting their meaning and connection, distorted the primitive
stories, the sense of which came to be retained only in the
ancient mysteries. That true sense, however, (he thinks,) may be
recovered by a careful analysis of the significant names: and
his two dissertations (De Mythologiâ Græcorum Antiquissimâ, in
the Opuscula, vol. ii.) exhibit a specimen of this systematic
expansion of etymology into narrative. The dissent from Creuzer
is set forth in their published correspondence, especially in his
concluding “Brief an Creuzer über das Wesen und die Behandlung
der Mythologie,” Leipzig, 1819. The following citation from his
Latin dissertation sets forth his general doctrine:—
Hermann, De Mythologiâ Græcorum Antiquissimâ, p. 4 (Opuscula,
vol. ii. p. 171): “Videmus rerum divinarum humanarumque scientiam
ex Asiâ per Lyciam migrantem in Europam: videmus fabulosos
poëtas peregrinam doctrinam, monstruoso tumore orientis sive
exutam, sive nondum indutam, quasi de integro Græcâ specie
procreantes; videmus poëtas, illos, quorum omnium vera nomina
nominibus—ab arte, quâ clarebant, petitis—obliterata sunt,
diu in Thraciâ hærentes, raroque tandem etiam cum aliis
Græciæ partibus commercio junctos: qualis Pamphus, non ipse
Atheniensis, Atheniensibus hymnos Deorum fecit. Videmus denique
retrusam paulatim in mysteriorum secretam illam sapientum
doctrinam, vitiatam religionum perturbatione, corruptam inscitiâ
interpretum, obscuratam levitate amœniora sectantium—adeo ut eam
ne illi quidem intelligerent, qui hæreditariam a prioribus poësin
colentes, quum ingenii præstantiâ omnes præstinguerent, tantâ
illos oblivione merserunt, ut ipsi sint primi auctores omnis
eruditionis habiti.”
Hermann thinks, however, that by pursuing the suggestions of
etymology, vestiges may still be discovered, and something like a
history compiled, of Grecian belief as it stood anterior to Homer
and Hesiod: “Est autem in hac omni ratione judicio maxime opus,
quia non testibus res agitur, sed ad interpretandi solertiam
omnia revocanda sunt” (p. 172). To the same general purpose
the French work of M. Emérie David, Recherches sur le Dieu
Jupiter—reviewed by O. Müller: see the Kleine Schriften of the
latter, vol. ii. p. 82.
Mr. Bryant has also employed a profusion of learning, and
numerous etymological conjectures, to resolve the Greek mythes
into mistakes, perversions, and mutilations, of the exploits and
doctrines of oriental tribes long-lost and by-gone,—Amonians,
Cuthites, Arkites, etc. “It was Noah (he thinks) who was
represented under the different names of Thoth, Hermês, Menês,
Osiris, Zeuth, Atlas, Phorôneus, Promêtheus, to which list a
farther number of great extent might be added: the Νοῦς of
Anaxagoras was in reality the patriarch Noah” (Ant. Mythol. vol.
ii. pp. 253, 272). “The Cuthites or Amonians, descendants of
Noah, settled in Greece from the east, celebrated for their skill
in building and the arts” (_ib._ i. p. 502; ii. p. 187). “The
greatest part of the Grecian theology arose from misconception
and blunders, the stories concerning their gods and heroes were
founded on terms misinterpreted or abused” (_ib._ i. p. 452).
“The number of different actions ascribed to the various Grecian
gods or heroes all relate to one people or family, and are at
bottom one and the same history” (_ib._ ii. p. 57). “The fables
of Promêtheus and Tityus were taken from ancient Amonian temples,
from hieroglyphics misunderstood and badly explained” (i. p.
426): see especially vol. ii. p. 160.
But this theory, though advocated by several learned men, has been
shown to be unsupported and erroneous. It implies a mistaken view
both of the antiquity and the purport of the mysteries, which cannot
be safely carried up even to the age of Hesiod, and which, though
imposing and venerable as religious ceremonies, included no recondite
or esoteric teaching.[988]
[988] The Anti-Symbolik of Voss, and still more the Aglaophamus
of Lobeck, are full of instruction on the subject of this
supposed interior doctrine, and on the ancient mysteries
in general: the latter treatise, especially, is not less
distinguished for its judicious and circumspect criticism than
for its copious learning.
Mr. Halhed (Preface to the Gentoo Code of Laws, pp. xiii.-xiv.)
has good observations on the vanity of all attempts to allegorize
the Hindu mythology: he observes, with perfect truth, “The
vulgar and illiterate have always understood the mythology of
their country in its literal sense; and there was a time to
every nation, when the highest rank in it was equally vulgar and
illiterate with the lowest.... A Hindu esteems the astonishing
miracles attributed to a Brima, or a Kishen, as facts of the
most indubitable authenticity, and the relation of them as most
strictly historical.”
Compare also Gibbon’s remarks on the allegorizing tendencies of
the later Platonists (Hist. Decl. and Fall, vol. iv. p. 71).
The doctrine, supposed to have been originally symbolized and
subsequently overclouded, in the Greek mythes, was in reality first
intruded into them by the unconscious fancies of later interpreters. It
was one of the various roads which instructed men took to escape from
the literal admission of the ancient mythes, and to arrive at some new
form of belief, more consonant with their ideas of what the attributes
and character of the gods ought to be. It was one of the ways of
constituting, by help of the mysteries, a philosophical religion apart
from the general public, and of connecting that distinction with the
earliest periods of Grecian society. Such a distinction was both avowed
and justified among the superior men of the later pagan world. Varro
and Scævola distributed theology into three distinct departments,—the
mythical or fabulous, the civil, and the physical. The first had
its place in the theatre, and was left without any interference to
the poets; the second belonged to the city of political community
as such,—it comprised the regulation of all the public worship and
religious rites, and was consigned altogether to the direction of
the magistrate; the third was the privilege of philosophers, but was
reserved altogether for private discussion in the schools, apart from
the general public.[989] As a member of the city, the philosopher
sympathized with the audience in the theatre, and took a devout share
in the established ceremonies, nor was he justified in trying what
he heard in the one or saw in the other by his own ethical standard.
But in the private assemblies of instructed or inquisitive men, he
enjoyed the fullest liberty of canvassing every received tenet, and
of broaching his own theories unreservedly, respecting the existence
and nature of the gods. By these discussions, the activity of the
philosophical mind was maintained and truth elicited; but it was such
truth as the body of the people ought not to hear, lest their faith in
their own established religious worship should be overthrown. In thus
distinguishing the civil theology from the fabulous, Varro was enabled
to cast upon the poets all the blame of the objectionable points in the
popular theology, and to avoid the necessity of pronouncing censure on
the magistrates, who (he contended) had made as good a compromise with
the settled prejudices of the public as the case permitted.
[989] Varro, ap. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, iv. 27; vi. 5-6. “Dicis
fabulosos Deos accommodatos esse ad theatrum, naturales ad
mundum, civiles ad urbem.” “Varro, de religionibus loquens, multa
esse vera dixit, quæ non modo vulgo scire non sit utile, sed
etiam tametsi falsa sint, aliter existimare populum expediat:
et ideo Græcos teletas et mysteria taciturnitate parietibusque
clausisse” (_ibid._ iv. 31). See Villoison, De Triplici Theologiâ
Commentatio, p. 8; and Lactantius, De Origin. Error. ii. 3. The
doctrine of the Stoic Chrysippus, ap. Etymologicon Magn. v.
Τελεταί—Χρύσιππος δέ φησι, τοὺς περὶ τῶν θείων λόγους εἰκότως
καλεῖσθαι τελετὰς, χρῆναι γὰρ τούτους τελευταίους καὶ ἐπὶ πᾶσι
διδάσκεσθαι, τῆς ψυχῆς ἐχούσης ἕρμα καὶ κεκρατημένης, καὶ πρὸς
τοὺς ἀμυήτους σιωπᾷν δυναμένης· μέγα γὰρ εἶναι τὸ ἆθλον ὑπὲρ θεῶν
ἀκοῦσαί τε ὀρθὰ, καὶ ἐγκρατεῖς γενέσθαι αὐτῶν.
The triple division of Varro is reproduced in Plutarch,
Amatorius, p. 763. τὰ μὲν μύθῳ, τὰ δὲ νόμῳ, τὰ δὲ λόγῳ, πίστιν ἐξ
ἀρχῆς ἔσχηκε· τῆς δ᾽ οὖν περὶ θεῶν δόξης καὶ παντάπασιν ἡγεμόνες
καὶ διδάσκαλοι γεγόνασιν ἡμῖν οἵ τε ποιηταὶ, καὶ οἱ νομοθέται,
καὶ τρίτον, οἱ φιλόσοφοι.
The same conflicting sentiments which led the philosophers to decompose
the divine mythes into allegory, impelled the historians to melt down
the heroic mythes into something like continuous political history,
with a long series of chronology calculated upon the heroic pedigrees.
The one process as well as the other was interpretative guesswork,
proceeding upon unauthorized assumptions, and without any verifying
test or evidence: while it frittered away the characteristic beauty
of the mythe into something essentially anti-mythical, it sought to
arrive both at history and philosophy by impracticable roads. That the
superior men of antiquity should have striven hard to save the dignity
of legends which constituted the charm of their literature as well as
the substance of the popular religion, we cannot be at all surprised;
but it is gratifying to find Plato discussing the subject in a more
philosophical spirit. The Platonic Socratês, being asked whether he
believed the current Attic fable respecting the abduction of Oreithyia
(daughter of Erechtheus) by Boreas, replies, in substance,—“It would
not be strange if I disbelieved it, as the clever men do; I might
then show my cleverness by saying that a gust of Boreas blew her down
from the rocks above while she was at play, and that, having been
killed in this manner, she was reported to have been carried off by
Boreas. Such speculations are amusing enough, but they belong to men
ingenious and busy-minded overmuch, and not greatly to be envied, if
it be only for this reason, _that, after having set right one fable,
they are under the necessity of applying the same process to a host of
others_—Hippocentaurs, Chimæras, Gorgons, Pegasus, and numberless other
monsters and incredibilities. A man, who, disbelieving these stories,
shall try to find a probable basis for each of them, will display an
ill-placed acuteness and take upon himself an endless burden, for which
I at least have no leisure: accordingly, I forego such researches, and
believe in the current version of the stories.”[990]
[990] Plato, Phædr. c. 7. p. 229:—
PHÆDRUS. Εἶπέ μοι, ὦ Σώκρατες, σὺ τοῦτο τὸ μυθολόγημα πείθει
ἀληθὲς εἶναι;
SOCRATES. Ἀλλ᾽ εἰ ἀπιστοίην, ὥσπερ οἱ σοφοὶ, οὐκ ἂν ἄτοπος εἴην,
εἶτα σοφιζόμενος φαίην αὐτὴν πνεῦμα Βορέου κατὰ τῶν πλησίον
πετρῶν σὺν φαρμακείᾳ παίζουσαν ὦσαι, καὶ οὕτω δὴ τελευτήσασαν
λεχθῆναι ὑπὸ τοῦ Βορέου ἀναρπαστὸν γεγονέναι.... Ἐγὼ δὲ, ὦ
Φαῖδρε, ἄλλως μὲν τὰ τοιαῦτα χαρίεντα ἡγοῦμαι, λίαν δὲ δεινοῦ καὶ
ἐπιπόνου καὶ οὐ πάνυ εὐτυχοῦς ἀνδρὸς, κατ᾽ ἄλλο μὲν οὐδὲν, ὅτι δ᾽
αὐτῷ ἀνάγκη μετὰ τοῦτο τὸ τῶν Ἱπποκενταύρων εἶδος ἐπανορθοῦσθαι,
καὶ αὖθις τὸ τῆς Χιμαίρας. Καὶ ἐπιῤῥεῖ δὲ ὄχλος τοιούτων Γοργόνων
καὶ Πηγάσων, καὶ ἄλλων ἀμηχάνων πλήθη τε καὶ ἀτοπίαι τερατολόγων
τινῶν φύσεων· αἷς εἴ τις ἀπιστῶν προσβιβᾷ κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἕκαστον,
ἅτε ἀγροίκῳ τινὶ σοφίᾳ χρώμενος, πολλῆς αὐτῷ σχολῆς δεήσει. Ἐμοὶ
δὲ πρὸς ταῦτα οὐδαμῶς ἐστι σχολή.... Ὅθεν δὴ χαίρειν ἐάσας ταῦτα,
πειθόμενος δὲ τῷ νομιζομένῳ περὶ αὐτῶν, ὃ νῦν δὴ ἔλεγον, σκοπῶ οὐ
ταῦτα ἀλλ᾽ ἐμαυτὸν, etc.
These remarks of Plato are valuable, not simply because they point
out the uselessness of digging for a supposed basis of truth in the
mythes, but because they at the same time suggest the true reason
for mistrusting all such tentatives. The mythes form a class apart,
abundant as well as peculiar: to remove any individual mythe from its
own class into that of history or philosophy, by simple conjecture,
and without any collateral evidence, is of no advantage, unless you
can perform a similar process on the remainder. If the process be
trustworthy, it ought to be applied to all; and _e converso_, if it
be not applicable to all, it is not trustworthy as applied to any one
specially; always assuming no special evidence to be accessible. To
detach any individual mythe from the class to which it belongs, is to
present it in an erroneous point of view; we have no choice except to
admit them as they stand, by putting ourselves approximatively into the
frame of mind of those for whom they were destined and to whom they
appeared worthy of credit.
If Plato thus discountenances all attempts to transform the mythes by
interpretation into history or philosophy, indirectly recognizing the
generic difference between them—we find substantially the same view
pervading the elaborate precepts in his treatise on the Republic. He
there regards the mythes, not as embodying either matter-of-fact or
philosophical principle, but as portions of religious and patriotic
faith, and instruments of ethical tuition. Instead of allowing the
poets to frame them according to the impulses of their own genius,
and with a view to immediate popularity, he directs the legislator to
provide types of his own for the characters of the gods and heroes,
and to suppress all such divine and heroic legends as are not in
harmony with these preëstablished canons. In the Platonic system, the
mythes are not to be matters of history, nor yet of spontaneous or
casual fiction, but of prescribed faith: he supposes that the people
will believe, as a thing of course, what the poets circulate, and he
therefore directs that the latter shall circulate nothing which does
not tend to ennoble and improve the feelings. He conceives the mythes
as stories composed to illustrate the general sentiments of the poets
and the community, respecting the character and attributes of the gods
and heroes, or respecting the social relations, and ethical duties as
well as motives of mankind: hence the obligation upon the legislator to
prescribe beforehand the types of character which shall be illustrated,
and to restrain the poets from following out any opposing fancies.
“Let us neither believe ourselves (he exclaims), nor permit any one to
circulate, that Thêseus son of Poseidôn and Peirithöus son of Zeus, or
any other hero or son of a god, could ever have brought themselves to
commit abductions or other enormities such as are now falsely ascribed
to them. We must compel the poets to say, either that such persons were
not the sons of gods, or that they were not the perpetrators of such
misdeeds.”[991]
[991] Plato, Repub. iii. 5. p. 391. The perfect ignorance of
all men respecting the gods, rendered the task of fiction easy
(Plato, Kritias, p. 107).
Most of the mythes which the youth hear and repeat (according to Plato)
are false, but some of them are true: the great and prominent mythes
which appear in Homer and Hesiod are no less fictions than the rest.
But fiction constitutes one of the indispensable instruments of mental
training as well as truth; only the legislator must take care that
the fiction so employed shall be beneficent and not mischievous.[992]
As the mischievous fictions (he says) take their rise from wrong
preconceptions respecting the character of the gods and heroes, so the
way to correct them is to enforce, by authorized compositions, the
adoption of a more correct standard.[993]
[992] Plato, Repub. ii. 16. p. 377. Λόγων δὲ διττὸν εἶδος, τὸ
μὲν ἀληθὲς, ψεῦδος δ᾽ ἕτερον; Ναί. Παιδευτέον δ᾽ ἐν ἀμφοτέροις,
πρότερον δ᾽ ἐν τοῖς ψεύδεσιν· ... Οὐ μανθάνεις, ὅτι πρῶτον τοῖς
παιδίοις μύθους λέγομεν· τοῦτο δέ που ὡς τὸ ὅλον εἰπεῖν ψεῦδος,
ἔνι δὲ καὶ ἀληθῆ.... Πρῶτον ἡμῖν ἐπιστατητέον τοῖς μυθοποιοῖς,
καὶ ὃν μὲν ἂν καλὸν μῦθον ποιήσωσιν, ἐγκριτέον, ὃν δ᾽ ἂν μὴ,
ἀποκριτέον ... ὧν δὲ νῦν λέγουσι, τοὺς πολλοὺς ἐκβλητέον ... οὓς
Ἡσίοδος καὶ Ὅμηρος ἡμῖν ἐλεγέτην, καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι ποιηταί. Οὗτοι
γάρ που μύθους τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ψευδεῖς συντιθέντες ἔλεγόν τε καὶ
λέγουσι. Ποίους δὴ, ἦ δ᾽ ὅς, καὶ τί αὐτῶν μεμφόμενος λέγεις;
Ὅπερ, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγὼ, χρὴ καὶ πρῶτον καὶ μάλιστα μέμφεσθαι, ἄλλως τε
καὶ ἐάν τις μὴ καλῶς ψεύδηται. Τί τοῦτο; Ὅταν τις εἰκάζῃ κακῶς
τῷ λόγῳ περὶ θεῶν τε καὶ ἡρώων, οἷοί εἰσιν, ὥσπερ γραφεὺς μηδὲν
ἐοικότα γράφων οἷς ἂν ὅμοια βουληθῇ γράψαι.
The same train of thought, and the precepts founded upon it, are
followed up through chaps. 17, 18, and 19; compare De Legg. xii.
p. 941.
Instead of recognizing the popular or dramatic theology as
something distinct from the civil (as Varro did), Plato
suppresses the former as a separate department and merges it in
the latter.
[993] Plato, Repub. ii. c. 21. p. 382. Τὸ ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ψεῦδος
πότε καὶ τί χρήσιμον, ὥστε μὴ ἄξιον εἶναι μίσους; Ἆρ᾽ οὐ πρός
τε τοὺς πολεμίους καὶ τῶν καλουμένων φίλων, ὅταν διὰ μανίαν ἤ
τινα ἄνοιαν κακόν τι ἐπιχειρῶσι πράττειν, τότε ἀποτροπῆς ἕνεκα
ὡς φάρμακον χρήσιμον γίγνεται; ~Καὶ ἐν αἷς νῦν δὴ ἐλέγομεν ταῖς
μυθολογίαις, διὰ τὸ μὴ εἰδέναι ὅπῃ τἀληθὲς ἔχει περὶ τῶν παλαιῶν,
ἀφομοιοῦντες τῷ ἀληθεῖ τὸ ψεῦδος~, ὅτι μάλιστα, οὕτω χρήσιμον
ποιοῦμεν;
The comments which Plato has delivered with so much force in his
Republic, and the enactments which he deduces from them, are in the
main an expansion of that sentiment of condemnation, which he shared
with so many other philosophers, towards a large portion of the Homeric
and Hesiodic stories.[994] But the manner in which he has set forth
this opinion, unfolds to us more clearly the real character of the
mythical narratives. They are creations of the productive minds in the
community, deduced from the supposed attributes of the gods and heroes:
so Plato views them, and in such character he proposes to amend them.
The legislator would cause to be prepared a better and truer picture of
the foretime, because he would start from truer (that is to say, more
creditable) conceptions of the gods and heroes. For Plato rejects the
mythes respecting Zeus and Hêrê, or Thêseus and Peirithöus, not from
any want of evidence, but because they are unworthy of gods and heroes:
he proposes to call forth new mythes, which, though he admits them at
the outset to be fiction, he knows will soon be received as true, and
supply more valuable lessons of conduct.
[994] The censure which Xenophanês pronounced upon the Homeric
legends has already been noticed: Herakleitus (Diogen. Laërt. ix.
1) and Metrodôrus, the companion and follower of Epicurus, were
not less profuse in their invectives, ἐν γράμμασι τοσούτοις τῷ
ποιητῇ λελοιδόρηται (Plutarch, Non posse suaviter vivi secundum
Epicurum, p. 1086). He even advised persons not to be ashamed
to confess their utter ignorance of Homer, to the extent of not
knowing whether Hectôr was a Greek or a Trojan (Plut. _ib._ p.
1094).
We may consider, then, that Plato disapproves of the attempt to
identify the old mythes either with exaggerated history or with
disguised philosophy. He shares in the current faith, without any
suspicion or criticism, as to Orpheus, Palamêdês, Dædalus, Amphiôn,
Thêseus, Achilles, Cheirôn, and other mythical personages;[995] but
what chiefly fills his mind is, the inherited sentiment of deep
reverence for these superhuman characters and for the age to which they
belonged,—a sentiment sufficiently strong to render him not only an
unbeliever in such legends as conflict with it, but also a deliberate
creator of new legends for the purpose of expanding and gratifying it.
The more we examine this sentiment, both in the mind of Plato as well
as in that of the Greeks generally, the more shall we be convinced
that it formed essentially and inseparably a portion of Hellenic
religious faith. The mythe both presupposes, and springs out of, a
settled basis, and a strong expansive force of religious, social, and
patriotic feeling, operating upon a past which is little better than
a blank as to positive knowledge. It resembles history, in so far as
its form is narrative; it resembles philosophy, in so far as it is
occasionally illustrative; but in its essence and substance, in the
mental tendencies by which it is created as well as in those by which
it is judged and upheld, it is a popularized expression of the divine
and heroic faith of the people.
[995] Plato, Republic iii. 4-5. p. 391; De Legg. iii. 1. p. 677.