STUDIES ON HOMER
AND
THE HOMERIC AGE.
BY THE
RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, D.C.L.
M. P. FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
Plenius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore.--HORACE.
OXFORD:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
M.DCCC.LVIII.
STUDIES ON HOMER
AND
THE HOMERIC AGE.
OLYMPUS:
OR,
THE RELIGION OF THE HOMERIC AGE.
BY THE
RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, D.C.L.
M. P. FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
Plenius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore.--HORACE.
OXFORD:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
M.DCCC.LVIII.
[_The right of Translation is reserved._]
THE CONTENTS.
OLYMPUS:
OR
THE RELIGION OF THE HOMERIC AGE.
SECT. I.
_On the mixed character of the Supernatural System,
or Theo-mythology of Homer._
Homer’s method not systematic Page 1
Incongruities of his Theo-mythology point to diversity of
sources 2
Remnants of primitive tradition likely to be found in the
Poems 3
Extra-judaical relations between God and man 6
With tradition it combines invention 9
It is a true Theology corrupted 9
It has not its basis in nature-worship 10
It could not have sprung from invention only 13
Sacrifices admitted to be traditional 15
Tendency of primitive religion to decay 17
Downward course of the idea of God 18
Decline closely connected with Polytheism 20
Inducements to Nature-worship 21
The deterioration of religion progressive 23
Paganism in its old age 25
The impersonations of Homer 26
The nature of the myths of Homer 29
Tradition the proper key to many of them 30
He exhibits the two systems in active impact 32
Steps of the downward process 33
Sources of the inventive portions 35
Originality of the Olympian system 37
SECT. II.
_The traditive element of the Homeric Theo-mythology._
The channels of early religious tradition 39
Some leading early traditions of Scripture 40
As to the Godhead 42
As to the Redeemer 42
As to the Evil One 43
Their defaced counterparts in Homer 43
Deities of equivocal position 46
Threefold materials of the Greek religion 48
Messianic traditions of the Hebrews 49
To be learned from three sources 49
Attributes ascribed to the Messiah 51
The deities of tradition in Homer 54
Minerva and Apollo jointly form the key 55
Notes of their Olympian rank 56
Of their higher antiquity 57
The Secondaries of Minerva 59
The Secondaries of Apollo 60
Argument from the Secondaries 63
Picture of human society in Olympus 64
Dignity and precedence of Minerva 66
Of Apollo 69
Minerva’s relations of will and affection with Jupiter 70
Those of Apollo 71
Apollo the Deliverer of Heaven 72
Power of Minerva in the Shades 73
These deities are never foiled by others 74
The special honour of the Trine Invocation 78
They receive universal worship 79
They are not localized in any abode 82
They are objects together with Jupiter of habitual prayer 83
Exempt from appetite and physical limitations 86
Their manner of appreciating sacrifice 88
Their independent power of punishment 90
They handle special attributes of Jupiter 94
They exercise dominion over nature 98
Relation of Apollo (with Diana) to Death 101
Exemption from the use of second causes 104
Superiority of their moral standard 105
Special relation of Apollo to Diana 108
Disintegration of primitive traditions 108
The Legend of Alcyone 111
Place of Minerva and Apollo in Providential government 113
It is frequently ascribed to them 115
Especially the inner parts of it to Minerva 117
Apollo’s gift of knowledge 119
Intimacy of Minerva’s personal relations with man 121
Form of their relation to their attributes 122
The capacity to attract new ones 124
Wide range of their functions 125
Tradition of the Sun 126
The central wisdom of Minerva 129
The three characters of Apollo 130
The opposition between two of them 131
Minerva and Apollo do not fit into Olympus 133
Origin of the Greek names 133
Summary of their distinctive traits 134
Explanation by Friedreich 138
Treatment of Apollo by Müller 141
After-course of the traditions 142
The Diana of Homer 143
Her acts and attributes in the poems 144
The Latona of Homer 147
Her attributes in the poems 149
Her relation to primitive Tradition 153
Her acts in the poems 154
The Iris of Homer 156
The Atè of Homer 158
The ἀτασθαλίη of Homer 162
Other traditions of the Evil One 162
Parallel citations from Holy Scripture 165
The Future State in Homer 167
Sacrificial tradition in Homer 171
He has no sabbatical tradition 171
SECT. III.
_The inventive element of the Homeric Theo-mythology._
The character of Jupiter 173
Its fourfold aspect.--1. Jupiter as Providence 174
2. Jupiter as Lord of Air 178
Earth why vacant in the Lottery 179
3. Jupiter as Head of Olympus 181
His want of moral elements 183
His strong political spirit 185
4. Jupiter as the type of animalism 186
Qualified by his parental instincts 189
The Juno of Homer 190
Juno of the Iliad and Juno of the Odyssey 191
Her intense nationality 192
Her mythological functions 193
Her mythological origin 197
The Neptune of Homer 199
His threefold aspect 200
His traits mixed, but chiefly mythological 201
His relation to the Phœnicians 205
His relation to the tradition of the Evil One 206
His grandeur is material 209
The Aidoneus of Homer 210
His personality shadowy and feeble 211
The Ceres or Demeter of Homer 212
Her Pelasgian associations 213
Her place in Olympus 215
Her mythological origin 215
The Proserpine or Persephone of Homer 217
Her marked and substantive character 218
Her connection with the East 220
Her place in Olympus doubtful 223
Her associations Hellenic and not Pelasgian 224
The Mars of Homer 225
His limited worship and attributes 226
Mars as yet scarcely Greek 229
The Mercury of Homer 231
Preeminently the god of increase 233
Mercury Hellenic as well as Phœnician 235
But apparently recent in Greece 237
His Olympian function distinct from that of Iris 238
The poems consistent with one another in this point 241
The Venus of Homer 243
Venus as yet scarcely Greek 244
Advance of her worship from the East 247
Her Olympian rank and character 249
Her extremely limited powers 249
Apparently unable to confer beauty 251
Homer never by intention makes her attractive 252
The Vulcan of Homer 254
His Phœnician and Eastern extraction 255
His marriage with Venus 257
Vulcan in and out of his art 259
The Ἠέλιος of Homer 260
In the Iliad 261
In the Odyssey 262
Is of the Olympian court 263
His incorporation with Apollo 264
The Dionysus or Bacchus of Homer 266
His worship recent 266
Apparently of Phœnician origin 267
He is of the lowest inventive type 269
SECT. IV.
_The Composition of the Olympian Court; and the
classification of the whole supernatural order in Homer._
Principal cases of exclusion from Olympus 271
Case of Oceanus 273
Together with that of Kronos and Rhea 274
The _Dî majores_ of the later tradition 275
Number of the Olympian gods in Homer 275
What deities are of that rank 277
The Hebe and the Paieon of Homer 278
The Eris of Homer 280
Classification of the twenty Olympian deities 282
The remaining supernatural order, in six classes 283
Destiny or Fate in Homer 285
Under the form of Αἶσα 286
Death inexorable to Fate or Deity alike 287
Destiny under the form of Μοῖρα 290
Under the form of μόρος 293
General view of the Homeric Destiny 294
Not antagonistic to Divine will 297
The minor impersonations of natural powers 298
The Ἁρπυῖαι of Homer 300
The Erinues of Homer 302
Their office is to vindicate the moral order 305
Their operation upon the Immortals 306
Their connection with Aides and Persephone 308
Their relation to Destiny 310
Their operation upon man 310
Their occasional function as tempters 312
The translation of mortals 313
The deification of mortals 314
Growth of material for its extension 316
The kindred of the gods (1) the Cyclopes 318
(2) The Læstrygones 319
(3) The Phæacians 320
(4) Æolus Hippotades 322
SECT. V.
_The Olympian Community and its Members considered in
themselves._
The family order in Olympus 325
The political order in Olympus 326
Absence of important restraints upon their collective
action 327
They are influenced by courtesy and intelligence 328
Superiority of the Olympian Immortals 330
Their unity imperfect 331
Their polity works constitutionally 332
The system not uniform 333
They are inferior in morality to men 334
And are governed mainly by force and fraud 335
Their dominant and profound selfishness 337
The cruelty of Calypso in her love 339
Their standard of taste and feeling low 340
The Olympian life is a depraved copy of the heroic 341
The exemption from death uniform 342
The exemption from other limitations partial 345
Sometimes based on peculiar grounds 346
Divine faculties for the most part an extension from the
human 348
Their dependence on the eye 350
Their powers of locomotion 352
Chief heads of superiority to mankind 353
Their superiority in stature and beauty 354
Their libertinism 355
Their keen regard to sacrifice and the ground of it 357
Their circumscribed power over nature 358
Parts of the body how ascribed to them 359
Examples of miracle in Homer 361
Mode of their action on the human mind 363
They do not discern the thoughts 365
SECT. VI.
_The Olympian Community and its Members considered
in their influence on human society and conduct._
Lack of periodical observances and of a ministering class 367
Yet the religion was a real power in life 368
The effect of the corruption of the gods was not yet
fully felt 369
They show little regard to human interests 371
A moral tone is occasionally perceptible 373
Prevalent belief as to their views of man and life 374
It lent considerable support to virtue 377
Their course with respect to Troy 378
Bearing of the religion on social ties 380
And on political relations 382
The Oath 383
Bearing of the religion on the poems 385
As regards Neptune’s wrath in the Odyssey 387
As regards the virtue of purity 388
As regards poetic effect 388
Comparison of its earliest and latest form 390
Gloom prevails in Homer’s view of human destiny 392
The personal belief of Homer 394
SECT. VII.
_On the traces of an origin abroad for the Olympian
Religion._
The Olympian deities classified according to local
extraction 397
Their connection as a body with the Æthiopes 399
Confirms the hypothesis of Persian origin 402
Herodotus on the Scythian religion 402
His report from Egypt about the Greek deities 404
Four several bases of religious systems 405
Anthropophuism in the Olympian religion 406
Nature-worship as described in the Book of Wisdom 406
Its secondary place in the Olympian religion 407
In what sense it follows a prior Nature-worship 409
The principle of Brute-worship 410
Its traces in the Olympian religion 411
Chief vestige: oxen of the Sun 412
Xanthus the horse of Achilles 414
SECT. VIII.
_The Morals of the Homeric Age._
The general type of Greek character in the heroic age 417
The moral sense in the heroic age 418
Use of the words ἀγαθός and κακός 421
Of the word δίκαιος 423
Religion and morals were not dissociated 425
Moral elements in the practice of sacrifice 427
Three main motives to virtue. 1. Regard to the gods 427
2. The power of conscience 428
3. Regard for the sentiments of mankind 430
The force and forms of αἰδὼς 431
Other cognate terms 435
Homicide in the heroic age 436
Eight instances in the poems 437
Why viewed with little disfavour 440
Piracy in the heroic age 442
Its nature as then practised 443
Mixed view of it in the poems 444
Family feuds in the heroic age 446
Temperance in the heroic age 447
Self-control in the heroic age 448
Absence of the vice of cruelty 450
Savage ideas occasionally expressed 451
These not unfamiliar to later Greece 453
Wrath in Ulysses 454
Wrath in Achilles 455
Domestic affections in the heroic age 456
Relationships close, not wide 459
Purity in the heroic age 460
Lay of the Net of Vulcan 461
Direct evidence of comparative purity 465
Treatment of the human form 466
Treatment of various characters 467
Outline of Greek life in the heroic age 468
Its morality, and that of later Greece 471
Points of its superiority 472
Inferior as to crimes of violence 475
Some effects of slavery 476
Signs of degeneracy before Homer’s death 477
SECT. IX.
_Woman in the heroic age._
The place of Woman generally, and in heroic Greece 479
Its comparative elevation 480
1. State of the law and custom of marriage 481
Marriage was uniformly single 483
2. Conceived in a spirit of freedom 483
Its place in the career of life 485
Mode of contraction 486
3. Perpetuity of the tie of marriage 487
Adultery 488
Desertion 489
4. Greek ideas of incest 489
5. Fidelity in married life 492
Treatment of spurious children 494
Case of Briseis 495
Mode of contracting marriage 496
Concubinage of Greek chieftains in Troas 497
Dignity of conjugal and feminine manners 499
Social position of the wife 500
Force of conjugal attachments 502
Woman characters of Homer 503
The province of Woman well defined 505
Argument from the position of the goddesses 506
Women admitted to sovereignty 507
And to the service of the gods 509
Their household employments 511
Their service about the bath 512
Explanation of the presumed difficulty 515
Proof from the case of Ulysses in Scheria 517
Subsequent declension of Woman 518
SECT. X.
_The Office of the Homeric Poems in relation to that
of the early Books of Holy Scripture._
Points of literary resemblance 521
Providential functions of Greece and Rome 523
Of the Early records of Holy Scripture 524
The Sacred Books are not mere literary works 525
Providential use of the Homeric poems 527
They complete the code of primitive instruction 529
Human history had no visible centre up to the Advent 531
Nor for some time after it 532
A purpose served by the whole design 533
OLYMPUS,
OR
THE RELIGION OF THE HOMERIC AGE.
SECT. I.
_On the Mixed Character of the Supernatural System, or Theo-Mythology,
of Homer._
Though the poems of Homer are replete, perhaps beyond any others, with
refined and often latent adaptations, yet it may be observed in general
of the modes of representation used by him, that they are preeminently
the reverse of systematic. Institutions or characters, which are in
themselves consistent, probably gain by this method of proceeding,
provided the execution be not unworthy of the design. For it secures
their exhibition in more, and more varied, points of view, than can
possibly be covered by the more didactic process. But the possession of
this advantage depends upon the fact, that there is in them a harmony,
which is their base, and which we have only to discover. Whereas, if
that harmony be wanting, if in lieu of it there be a groundwork of
fundamental discrepancy, then the conditions of effect are wholly
changed. The multiplied variety of view becomes a multiplication
of incongruity; each new aspect offers a new problem: and the more
masterly the hand of the artist, the more arduous becomes the attempt
to comprehend and present in their mutual bearings the pictures he has
drawn, and the suggestions he has conveyed.
Thus it has been with that which, following German example, I have
denominated the Theo-mythology of Homer. By that term it seems not
improper to designate a mixture of theology and mythology, as these two
words are commonly understood. Theology I suppose to mean, a system
dealing with the knowledge of God and the unseen world: mythology, a
system conversant with the inventions of man concerning them. In the
Homeric poems I find both of these largely displayed: but with this
difference, that the first was in visible decline, the second in such
rapid and prolific development, that, while Homer is undoubtedly a
witness to older fable, which had already in his time become settled
tradition, he is also in this department himself evidently and largely
a Maker and Inventor, and the material of the Greek mythology comes out
of his hands far more fully moulded, and far more diversified, than it
entered them.
Of the fact that the Homeric religion does not present a consistent and
homogeneous whole, we have abundant evidence in the difficulties with
which, so soon as the literary age of Greece began, expositors found
themselves incumbered; and which drove them sometimes upon allegory
as a resource, sometimes, as in the case of Plato, upon censure and
repudiation[1].
[1] Döllinger Heid. u. Jud. v. 1. p. 254.
~_Extended relations of God to man._~
I know not whether it has been owing to our somewhat narrow jealousies
concerning the function of Holy Scripture, or to our want of faith in
the extended Providence of God, and His manifestations in the world, or
to the real incongruity in the evidence at our command, or to any other
cause, but the fact, at least, seems to me beyond doubt, that our modes
of dealing with the Homeric poems in this cardinal respect have been
eminently unsatisfactory. Those who have found in Homer the elements of
religious truth, have resorted to the far-fetched and very extravagant
supposition, that he had learned them from the contemporary Hebrews,
or from the law of Moses. The more common and popular opinion[2] has
perhaps been one, which has put all such elements almost or altogether
out of view; one which has treated the Immortals in Homer as so many
impersonations of the powers of nature, or else magnified men, and
their social life as in substance no more than as a reflection of his
picture of heroic life, only gilded with embellishments, and enlarged
in scale, in proportion to the superior elevation of its sphere. Few,
comparatively, have been inclined to recognise in the Homeric poems the
vestiges of a real traditional knowledge, derived from the epoch when
the covenant of God with man, and the promise of a Messiah, had not yet
fallen within the contracted forms of Judaism for shelter, but entered
more or less into the common consciousness, and formed a part of the
patrimony of the human race[3].
[2] See Heyne ad Il. i. 603; Terpstra, Antiquitas Homerica, i. 3. And
so late as the Cambridge Essays 1856. p. 149.
[3] See ‘Homerus, pt. i.’ by Archdeacon Williams: ‘Primitive
Tradition,’ 1843, by the same; Edinb. Rev. N^o. 155, art. Homerus, and
the reference, p. 50, to Cesarotti’s Ragionamento Storico-Critico.
But surely there is nothing improbable in the supposition, that in
the poems of Homer such vestiges may be found. Every recorded form of
society bears some traces of those by which it has been preceded: and
in that highly primitive form, which Homer has been the instrument
of embalming for all posterity, the law of general reason obliges us
to search for elements and vestiges belonging to one more primitive
still. And, if we are to inquire in the Iliad and the Odyssey for
what belongs to antecedent manners and ideas, on what ground can it be
pronounced improbable, that no part of these earlier traditions should
be old enough to carry upon them the mark of belonging to the religion,
which the Book of Genesis represents as brought by our first parents
from Paradise, and as delivered by them to their immediate descendants
in general? The Hebrew Chronology, considered in connection with the
probable date of Homer, would even render it difficult or irrational
to proceed upon any other supposition: nor if, as by the Septuagint
or otherwise, a larger period is allowed for the growth of our race,
will the state of this case be materially altered. For the facts must
remain, that the form of society exhibited by Homer was itself in
many points essentially patriarchal, that it contains, in matter not
religious, such, for instance, as the episode of the Cyclops, clear
traces of a yet earlier condition yet more significant of a relation
to that name, and that there is no broadly marked period of human
experience, or form of manners, which we can place between the great
trunk of human history in Holy Scripture, and this famed Homeric
branch, which of all literary treasures appears to be its eldest born.
Standing next to the patriarchal histories of Holy Scripture, why
should it not bear, how can it not bear, traces of the religion under
which the patriarchs lived?
The immense longevity of the early generations of mankind was eminently
favourable to the preservation of pristine traditions. Each individual,
instead of being as now a witness of, or an agent in, one or two
transmissions from father to son, would observe or share in ten times
as many. According to the Hebrew Chronology, Lamech the father of
Noah was of mature age before Adam died: and Abraham was of mature
age before Noah died. Original or early witnesses, remaining so long
as standards of appeal, would evidently check the rapidity of the
darkening and destroying process.
Let us suppose that man now lived but twenty years, instead of
fourscore. Would not this greatly quicken the waste of ancient
traditions? And is not the converse also true?
~_Sufficiently proved from Holy Scripture._~
Custom has made it with us second nature to take for granted a
broad line of demarcation between those who live within the pale of
Revelation, and the residue of mankind. But Holy Scripture does not
appear to recognise such a severance in any manner, until we come to
the revelation of the Mosaic law, which was like the erection of a
temporary shelter for truths that had ranged at large over the plain,
and that were apparently in danger of being totally absorbed in the
mass of human inventions. But before this vineyard was planted, and
likewise outside its fence, there were remains, smaller or greater,
of the knowledge of God; and there was a recognised relation between
Jehovah and mankind, which has been the subject of record from time to
time, and the ground of acts involving the admonition, or pardon, or
correction, or destruction, of individuals or communities.
The latest of these indications, such as the visit of the Wise Men from
the East, are not the most remarkable: because first the captivity in
Babylon, and subsequently the dissemination of Jewish groups through so
many parts of the world, could not but lead to direct communications
of divine knowledge, at least, in some small degree. From such causes,
there would be many a Cornelius before him who became the first-fruits
of the Gentiles. Yet even the interest, which probably led to such
communications from the Jew, must have had its own root in relics of
prior tradition, which attested the common concern of mankind in Him
that was to come. But in earlier times, and when the Jewish nation
was more concentrated, and was certainly obscure, the vestiges of
extra-patriarchal and extra-judaical relations between God and man
are undeniable. They have been traced with clearness and ability in a
popular treatise by the hand of Bishop Horsley[4].
[4] Horsley’s Dissertation on the Prophecies of the Messiah dispersed
among the heathen. See also Mr. Harvey’s Observations on the Gnostic
System, pp. iii and seqq., prefixed to his S. Irenæus, Cambridge, 1857.
Williams’s Primitive Tradition, p. 9.
Let us take, for instance, that case of extreme wickedness, which most
severely tries the general proposition. The punishment of Sodom and
Gomorrah for their sins was preceded by a declaration from the Most
High, importing a direct relation with those guilty cities[5]; and two
angels, who had visited Abraham on the plains of Mamre, ‘came to Sodom
at even.’ Ruth the Moabitess was an ancestress, through king David,
of our Lord. Rahab in Jericho, ‘by faith,’ as the Apostle assures us,
entertained the spies of the Israelites. Job, living in a country
where the worship of the sun was practised, had, as had his friends,
the knowledge of the true God. Melchizedek, the priest of On, whose
daughter Joseph married, and Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, are
other conspicuous instances. Later in time, Nineveh, the great Assyrian
capital, received the message of the prophet Jonah, and repented at his
preaching. Here the teaching organ was supplied from among the Jews:
but Balaam exhibits to us the gift of inspiration beyond their bounds.
Once more; many centuries after the Homeric manners had disappeared,
and during the captivity, we find not only a knowledge of God, but
dreams and signs vouchsafed to Assyrian kings, and interpreted for
them by the prophet Daniel. We have, in short, mingling with the whole
course of the Old Testament, a stream of evidence which shows the
partial remnants of the knowledge of God, apart from that main current
of it which is particularly traced for us in the patriarchal and
Mosaic histories. Again, many centuries after Homer, when all traces
of primitive manners had long vanished, still in the Prometheus of
Æschylus, and in the Pollio of Virgil, we have signs, though I grant
they are faint ones, that the celestial rays had not even then ‘faded
into the light of common day’ for the heathen world. It would really
be strange, and that in a high degree, if a record like that of Homer,
with so many resemblances to the earliest manners in other points, had
no link to connect it with them in their most vital part.
[5] See Genesis xviii. 1, 20. xx. 1. Heb. xi. 31.
~_The question one of history._~
The general proposition, that we may expect to find the relics of
Scriptural traditions in the heroic age of Greece, though it leads,
if proved, to important practical results, is independent even of a
belief in those traditions, as they stand in the scheme of revealed
truth. They must be admitted to have been facts on earth, even by those
who would deny them to be facts of heavenly origin, in the shape in
which Christendom receives them: and the question immediately before
us is one of pure historical probability. The descent of mankind from
a single pair, the lapse of that pair from original righteousness,
are apart from and ulterior to it. We have traced the Greek nation
to a source, and along a path of migration, which must in all
likelihood have placed its ancestry, at some point or points, in close
local relations with the scenes of the earliest Mosaic records: the
retentiveness of that people equalled its receptiveness, and its close
and fond association with the past made it prone indeed to incorporate
novel matter into its religion, but prone also to keep it there after
its incorporation.
If such traditions existed, and if the laws which guide historical
inquiry require or lead us to suppose that the forefathers of the
Greeks must have lived within their circle, then the burden of proof
must lie not so properly with those who assert that the traces of them
are to be found in the earliest, that is, the Homeric, form of the
Greek mythology, as with those who deny it. What became of those old
traditions? They must have decayed and disappeared, not by a sudden
process, but by a gradual accumulation of the corrupt accretions, in
which at length they were so completely interred as to be invisible
and inaccessible. Some period therefore there must have been, at which
they would remain clearly perceptible, though in conjunction with much
corrupt matter. Such a period might be made the subject of record, and
if such there were, we might naturally expect to find it in the oldest
known work of the ancient literature.
If the poems of Homer do, however, contain a picture, even though a
defaced picture, of the primeval religious traditions, it is obvious
that they afford a most valuable collateral support to the credit of
the Holy Scripture, considered as a document of history. Still we must
not allow the desire of gaining this advantage to bias the mind in an
inquiry, which can only be of value if it is conducted according to the
strictest rules of rational criticism.
~_Invention combined with tradition._~
We may then, in accordance with those rules, be prepared to expect
that the Hellenic religion will prove to have been in part constructed
from traditional knowledge. The question arises next, Of what other
materials in addition was it composed? The answer can be but one;
Such materials would be supplied by invention. But invention cannot
absolutely create; it can only work upon what it finds already provided
to its hand. The provision made in this instance was simply that with
which the experience of man supplied him. It was mediate or immediate:
mediate, where the Greek received matter from abroad, and wrought upon
it: immediate, where he conceived it for himself. That experience lay
in two spheres--the sphere of external nature, and the sphere of life.
Each of these would afford for the purpose the elements of Power,
Grandeur, Pleasure, Beauty, Utility; and such would be the elements
suited to the work of constructing or developing a system that was to
present objects for his worship. We may therefore reasonably expect
to find in the religion features referable to these two departments
for their origin;--first, the powerful forces and attractive forms of
outward nature; secondly, the faculties and propensities of man, and
those relations to his fellow-men, amidst which his lot is cast, and
his character formed.
If this be so, then, in the result thus compounded out of tradition
purporting to be revealed, and out of invention strictly human, we
ought to recognise, so long as both classes of ingredients are in
effective coexistence, not strictly a false theology, but a true
theology falsified: a true religion, into which falsehood has entered,
and in which it is gradually overlaying and absorbing the original
truth, until, when the process has at length reached a certain point,
it is wholly hidden and borne down by countervailing forces, so that
the system has for practical purposes become a false one, and both may
and should be so termed and treated.
I admit that very different modes of representing the case have been
in vogue. Sometimes by those to whom the interest of Christianity
is precious, and sometimes in indifference or hostility to its
fortunes, it is held that the basis of the Greek mythology is laid in
the deification of the powers of nature. The common assumptions have
been such as the following: That the starting-point of the religion
of the heroic age is to be sought only in the facts of the world, in
the ideas and experience of man. That nature-worship, the deification
of elemental and other physical powers, was the original and proper
basis of the system. That this system, presumably self-consistent,
as having been founded on a given principle, was broken up by the
intervention of theogonic revolutions. That the system, of which
Jupiter was at the head, was an imperfect reconstruction of a scheme of
divine rule out of the fragments of an earlier religion, and that it
supplanted the elder gods. In short, the Greek mythology is represented
as a corrupt edition, not of original revealed religion, but of a
Nature-worship which, as it seems to be assumed, was separated by a
gulf never measured, and never passed, from the primitive religious
traditions of our race. Further it seems to be held, that the faults
and imperfections of the pagan religion have their root only in a
radical inability of the human mind to produce pure deity; that they do
not represent the depravation of an ancient and divine gift, but rather
the simple failure of man in a work of invention. Indeed, we need not
wonder that it should fail in a process which, critically considered,
can mean little else than mere exaggeration of itself and from its own
experience[6], and which must be so apt to become positive caricature.
[6] See Nägelsbach, Homerische Theologie, i. 1. ii. 1. Also (if I
understand it rightly), Döllinger’s Heidenthum und Judenthum, ii. 1. §.
1. p. 54.
~_The basis was not in Nature-worship._~
Again, Dean Prideaux, in his Connection of Sacred and Profane History,
gives the following genesis of the Greek mythology. From the beginning,
he says, there was a general notion among men, founded on a sense that
they were impure, of the necessity of a mediator with God. There being
no mediator clearly revealed, man chose mediators for himself, and took
the sun, moon, and stars, as high intelligences well fitted for the
purpose. Hence we find Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Mercury, Venus,
and Diana, to be first ranked in the polytheism of the ancients: for
they were their first gods[7].
[7] Prideaux, i. 3. vol. i. p. 198.
This theory is not in correspondence with the facts of the heroic age.
There is no sense whatever of an impurity disabling men from access
to God; no clear or general opinion of the necessity of mediation; no
glimpse even of a god superior to Jupiter and the rest with whom they
were on behalf of man to mediate.
And, again, the opinion, that the origin of the religion lay in
Nature-worship, has had the support both of high and also of recent
authorities. The eminent and learned Dr. Döllinger, in his ‘Heidenthum
und Judenthum,’ says, that the deification of Nature, its forces,
or the particular objects it offered to the senses, constituted the
groundwork of the Greek, as well as of the other heathen religions. The
idea of God continued to be powerful even when it had been darkened,
and the godhead was felt as present, and active everywhere in the
physical order. In working out his general rule for each mythological
deity in particular, this author conceives the original form of their
existence to have been that of a Nature-power, even where the vestiges
of such a conception have, under subsequent handling, become faint
or imperceptible. Thus Juno, Minerva, Latona, Diana, and others in
succession, are referred to such an origin[8].
[8] Heidenthum und Judenthum, b. ii. sect. 1, 2. pp. 54-81.
Now in dealing with this hypothesis, I would ask, what then has become
of the old Theistic and Messianic traditions? and how has it happened
they have been amputated by a process so violent as to make them to
leave, even while the state of society continued still primitive, no
trace behind them? But further. I would urge with confidence that the
ample picture of the religion of the heroic ages, as we have it in
Homer, which is strictly for this purpose in the nature of a fact,
cannot be made to harmonize with the hypothesis which refers it to
such a source. The proof of this statement must depend mainly on the
examination which we have to institute in detail: but I am anxious
at once to bring it into view, and to refer briefly to some of the
grounds on which it rests, because it is susceptible of demonstration
by evidence as contradistinguished from theory. On the other hand,
when I proceed farther, evidence and theory must of necessity be mixed
up together; and dissent from a particular mode of tracing out the
association between the traditional and inventive elements of the
system might unawares betray the reader into the conclusion, that no
such distinct traditional elements were to be found, but that all,
or nearly all, was pure fable. I say, then, there is much in the
theo-mythology of Homer, which, if it had been a system founded in
fable, could not have appeared there. It stands before us like one of
our old churches, having different parts of its fabric in the different
styles of architecture, each of which speaks for itself, and which we
know to belong to the several epochs in the history of the art, when
their characteristic combinations were respectively in vogue.
~_Nor is the system from invention only._~
While on the one hand it has deities, such as Latona, without any
attributes at all, on the other hand, we find in it both gods and
goddesses, with an assemblage of such attributes and functions as have
no common link by which invention could have fastened them together.
They are such, likewise, as to bring about cross divisions and cross
purposes, that the Greek force of imagination, and the Greek love of
symmetry, would have alike eschewed. How could invention have set
up Pallas as the goddess at once of peace and its industries, of
wisdom, and of war? Its object would clearly have been to impersonate
attributes; and to associate even distinct, much less conflicting
attributes, in the same deity, would have been simply to confuse them.
How again could it have combined in Apollo, who likewise turns the
courses of rivers by his might, the offices of destruction, music,
poetry, prophecy, archery, and medicine? Again, if he is the god of
medicine, why have we Paieon? if of poetry, why have we the Muses? If
Minerva be (as she is) goddess of war, why have we Mars? if of the work
of the Artificer, why have we also Vulcan? if of prudence and sagacity,
and even craft[9], why Mercury?
[9] Il. xxii. 247.
And again, the theory is, that the chief personages of the mythology
are representatives of the great powers of the physical universe. I
ask, therefore, how it happens that in the Homeric, or, as we may call
it, primitive form of the system, these great powers of the universe
are for the most part very indistinctly and partially personified,
whereas we see in vivid life and constant movement another set of
figures, having either an obscure or partial relation, or no relation
at all, to those powers? Such a state of the evidence surely strikes
at the very root of the hypothesis we are considering: but it is
the state of the evidence which we actually find before us. Take for
instance Time, Ocean, Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars, Air; all these prime
natural objects and agents are either not personified at all in Homer,
or so indistinctly and mutely personified that they are the mere
zoophytes of his supernatural world, of which the gorgeous life and
brilliant movement are sustained by a separate set of characters.
Of these more effective agents, some are such as it is impossible
rationally to set down for mere impersonations of ideas; while others
are plainly constituted as lords over, and not beings derivative from,
those powers or provinces of nature, with which they are placed in
special relations. It cannot for instance rationally be said that the
Homeric Jupiter is a mere impersonation of the air which he rules, or
the Homeric Neptune of the sea, or the Homeric Aidoneus (or Aides) of
the nether world. For to the first of these three, many functions are
assigned having no connection with the air. As for example, when he
gives swiftness of foot to Æneas on Mount Ida, that he might escape
the pursuit of Achilles[10]. In the case of the second, there is a
rival figure, namely, Nereus, who never that we know of leaves the sea,
who is the father of the Sea-nymphs, and who evidently fulfils the
conditions of Sea impersonated far better than does Neptune; Neptune,
who marched upon the battle-field in Troas, and who, with Apollo, had
himself built the walls of Ilium. Besides all this, the sea, to which
Neptune belongs, is itself not one of the great elemental powers of
the universe, but is derived, like rivers, springs, and wells, from
Father Ocean, who fears indeed the thunderbolt of Jupiter, but is not
bound to attendance even in the great chapter of Olympus[11]. As
to Aidoneus, he can hardly impersonate the nether world, because in
Homer he does not represent or govern it, but only has to do with that
portion of it, which is inhabited by the souls of departed men. For,
as far beneath his realm as Earth is beneath Heaven, lies the dark
Tartarus of Homer, peopled with Κρόνος and his Titans. Nor, on the
other hand, do we know that the Elysian fields of the West were subject
to his sway. The elemental powers are in Homer, though not altogether,
yet almost altogether, extrinsic to his grand Olympian system.
[10] Il. xx. 92.
[11] Il. xxi. 195-9. xx. 7.
Without, then, anticipating this or that particular result from
the inquiry into the mode and proportions in which traditional and
inventive elements are combined in the poems of Homer, it may safely
be denied that his picture of the supernatural world could have been
drawn by means of materials exclusively supplied by invention from the
sources of nature and experience.
~_Traditive origin of Sacrifice._~
And indeed there is one particular with respect to which the admission
will be generally made, that the Greek mythological system stood
indebted at least to a primitive tradition, if not to a direct command;
I mean the institution of sacrifice. This can hardly be supposed to
have been an original conception in every country; and it distinctly
points us to one common source. Sacrifice was, according to Dr.
Döllinger[12], an inheritance which descended to the Greeks from the
pristine time before the division of the nations. Without doubt the
transmission of ritual, depending upon outward action, is more easy
than that of ideas. But the fact that there was a transmission of
something proves that there was a channel for it, open and continuous:
and the circumstances might be such as to allow of the passage of
ideas, together with institutions, along it.
[12] Heid. u. Jud. iv. 5. p. 202.
It cannot be necessary to argue on the other side in any detail in
order to show, that for much of his supernatural machinery, Homer
was indebted to invention, whether his own or that of generations,
or nations, which had preceded him. Had his system been one purely
traditional in its basis, had it only broken into many rays the
integral light of one God, it would have presented to us no such deity
as Juno, who is wholly without prototype, either abstract or personal,
in the primitive system, and no such mere reflections of human passions
as are Mars and Venus: not to speak of those large additions, which
we are to consider as belonging not so much to the basis and general
outline of the system, as to the later stages of its development.
Let us now endeavour to inquire what mental, moral, and physical
influences would be likely, in early times, to give form and direction
to that alterative process, which the primitive ideas of religion, when
removed beyond the precinct of Revelation and the knowledge of the
Sacred Records, had to undergo.
This law of decline we may examine, first ideally, according to the
influences likely to operate on the course of thought with respect to
religion: and then with reference to that which is specifically Greek,
by sketching in outline the actual mode of handling the material at
command, which resulted in the creation of the Homeric or Olympian
system. The first belongs to the metaphysical genesis of the system:
the second to its historical formation.
~_Tendency of primitive religion to decay._~
So long as either the Sacred Records, or the Light which supplied
them, remained within reach, there were specific means either in
operation, or at least accessible, which, as far as their range
extended, would serve to check error, whether of practice or
speculation, and to clear up uncertainty, as the sundial verifies
or corrects the watch. But the stream darkened more and more, as it
got farther from the source. The Pagan religion could boast of its
unbroken traditions; like some forms of Christianity, and like the
government of France until 1789. But its uninterrupted course was
really an uninterrupted aberration from the line of truth; and to
boast of the evenness of its motion was in effect to boast of the
deadness of the conscience of mankind, which had not virtue enough even
to disturb progressive degeneracy by occasional reproach. In later
times, the Pagan system had its three aspects: it was one thing for
the populace, another for statesmen, and a third for philosophers.
But in Homer’s time it had suffered no criticism and no analysis: the
human self-consciousness was scarcely awakened; introspection had
not begun its work. Imagination and affection continually exercised
their luxuriant energies in enlarging and developing the system of
preternatural being and action. However copiously the element of
fiction, nay, of falsehood, entered into it, yet for the masses of
mankind it was still subjectively true[13].
[13] Grote, Hist. Greece, vol. i. p. 467.
All was forward movement. Man had not, as it were, had time to ask
himself, is this a lie? or even, whither does it tend? His soul, in
those days of infancy, never questioned, always believed. Logical
inconsistency, even moral solecism, did not repel it, nor slacken the
ardour of its energies in the work of construction: construction of
art, construction of manners, construction of polity, construction of
religion. This is what we see, in glowing heat, throughout the poems of
Homer, and it is perhaps the master key to their highest interest. They
show us, in the province we are now considering, heroes earning their
title to the Olympian life, mute nature everywhere adjusting herself to
the scheme of supernatural impersonations, and religion allied to the
human imagination, as closely as it was afterwards by Mahomet wedded
to the sword. Everywhere we see that which is properly called myth,
in the process of formation. Early mythology is the simple result of
the working of the human mind, in a spirit of belief or of credulity,
upon the material offered to it by prior tradition, by the physical
universe, by the operations of the mind, and by the experience of life.
We may, as follows, accompany the vicious series through which thought
might probably be led, with respect to the theory of religion.
If we begin with the true and pure idea of God, it is the idea of a
Being infinite in power and intelligence, and though perfectly good,
yet good by an unchangeable internal determination of character, and
not by the constraint of an external law.
Such was the starting-point, from which the human mind had to run
its career of religious belief or speculation. But the maintenance
subjectively of the original form of the image in its clearness
depended, of course, upon the condition of the observing organ; and
that organ, again, depended for its health on the healthiness of the
being to whom it belonged. Hence we must look into the nature of man,
in order to know what man would think respecting the nature of God.
~_Downward course of the idea of God._~
Now man, the prey of vicious passions, though he holds deeply rooted
within himself the witness to an extrinsic and objective law of
goodness, which he needs in order to develop what he has of capacity
for good, and to bring into subjection the counteracting and rebellious
elements, is nevertheless prevailingly under the influence of these
last. Hence, in the absence of special and Divine provision for the
remedy of his inward disease, although both conscience and also the
dispensations of Providence shadow forth to him a law of goodness from
without, yet the sense of any internal law of goodness in himself
becomes, with the lapse of time, more and more dim and ineffectual.
Thus, as he reflects back upon his own image conceptions of the Deity,
the picture that he draws first fails in that, wherein he himself is
weakest. Now, the perception of mere power depends upon intellect
and sense: and as neither intellect nor sense have received through
sin the same absolutely mortal wound which has reached his spiritual
being, he can therefore still comprehend with clearness the idea and
the uses of power, both mental and physical. Accordingly, the Godhead
is for him preternaturally endowed with intelligence and force. But
how was he to keep alive from his own resources the moral elements
of the divine ideal? Coercive goodness, goodness by an external law,
goodness dependent upon responsibility, was, by the nature of the case,
inapplicable to Deity as such: while of goodness by an internal law, he
had lost all clear conception, and he could not give what he had not
got.
Of course it is not meant, that this was a conscious operation. Rarely
indeed, in reflective and critical periods, does it happen that man can
keep a log-book of wind, weather, and progress, for the mind, or tell
from what quarter of the heavens have proceeded the gales that impel it
on its course.
But, by this real though unconscious process, goodness would soon
disappear from his conception of the Godhead, while high power and
intelligence might remain. And hence it is not strange, if we find
that Homer’s deities, possessed of power beyond their faculty of moral
direction, are for the most part, when viewed in the sphere of their
personal conduct, on a lower level than his heroes.