first steps, as far as the genesis of the mythology throws light upon
them, would appear to have been as follows: objectively, a fundamental
corruption of the idea of God; who, instead of an Omnipotent wisdom and
holiness, now in the main represented on a large scale, in personal
character, the union of appetite and power; subjectively, the primary
idea of religion was wholly lost. Adam, says Lord Bacon, was not
content with universal obedience to the Divine Will as his rule of
action, but would have another standard. This offence, though not
exaggerated into the hideousness of human depravity in its later forms,
is represented without mitigation in the principles of action current
in the heroic age. Human life, as it is there exhibited, has much in
it that is noble and admirable; but nowhere is it a life of simple
obedience to God.
This disintegration of primitive traditions forms the second stage, a
negative one, in the process which produced the Homeric Theo-mythology.
When the divine idea, and also the idea of the relation between man and
his Maker, had once been fundamentally changed, there was now room for
the introduction without limit of what was merely human into religion.
Instead of man’s being formed in the image of God, God was formed in
the image of man. The ancient traditions were made each to assume a
separate individual form; and these shapes were fashioned by magnifying
and modifying processes from the pattern that human nature afforded.
Again, as man does not exist alone and individually, but in the family,
so the _nexus_ of the family was introduced as the basis of a divine
order. This we may call, resting on the etymology of the word, the
divine Œconomy of the Homeric religion.
But as with man, so with the supernatural world, on which his own
genius was now powerfully reflected, families themselves, when
multiplied, required a political order; and therefore, among the gods
also a State and government are formed, a divine polity. Human care, by
a strange inversion, makes parental provision for the good government
of those deities whom it has called into being.
The propagation, for which a physical provision was made among men,
takes place within the mythological circle also, under the laws of his
intelligent nature. The ranks of the Immortals are filled with persons
metaphysically engendered. These persons they represent concrete
forms given to abstract ideas, or, to state nearly the same thing in
other words, personal modes of existence assigned to powers which
man saw as it were alive and at work in the universe, physical or
intelligent, around him. But here too a distinction is to be observed.
Sometimes the deity was set above the natural power, as its governor
and controller: sometimes he merely signified the power itself put in
action. The former mode commonly points to tradition; the latter always
to invention.
And lastly, when a supernatural κοσμὸς or order had thus been
constructed, the principles of affinity between it and the order here
below exercised a reciprocally attractive force. The gods were more and
more humanized, man was more and more invested with deity: deity was
made cheap and common among men, and the interval from earth to heaven
was bridged over by various means. These means were principally; first,
the translation of men into the company of the immortals; secondly, the
introduction of intermediate races; and, thirdly and most of all, the
deification of heroes.
Subordinate to this general view, there arises another question: how
are we to subdivide the inventive parts of the Homeric mythology? What
general statements can be propounded, or criteria supplied, to show how
much Greece fabricated or moulded for herself, and what she owed to
Egypt, or to Phœnicia, or to other lands in the East, whose traditions
she had either inherited or received?
~_Sources of the inventive portions._~
A deep obscurity hangs over this subject. We do not know all that
was contained in each of the various religions of the East at any
one epoch, much less at all the periods within which they may have
contributed materials to the gorgeous fabric of Homer. Many things
were probably common to several of them: and where this was so,
circumstantial evidence cannot avail for determining the source at
which the Poet or his nation borrowed.
But several propositions may be laid down, which will tend towards
describing the path of our inquiry.
First, the accounts which, transmitted by Herodotus, represent Egypt as
the fountain-head of the Greek religion in its mass, are not sustained
by the evidence of Homer. And even with respect to many points where
the nucleus of the Greek system has something corresponding with it
in the Egyptian, it neither follows that it was originally drawn from
Egypt by the Greeks, nor that those from whom the Greeks received
it had obtained it there. Yet there remains room for very important
communications, such, for example, as the oracle of Dodona, or the
worship of Minerva, which may be an historic token of an Egyptian
colony at Athens.
Secondly, the correspondences between the Homeric system and the
Eastern religions, as we know them, are commonly latent, rather than
broad or palpable. This may, in part, be owing to the circumstance that
our accounts of these religions are in great part so much later than
Homer; and a greater resemblance, than is now to be traced, may have
subsisted in his time.
~_Originality of the Olympian system._~
But, thirdly, the differences are not differences of detail or degree.
A different spirit pervades the Homeric creed and worship, from that
which we find in Egyptian, or Median, or Persian systems. One has
grovelling animalism, another has metaphysical aspirations, that we
do not find in the Greek: but this is not all. If the Homeric scheme
is capable of being described, as to its inventive part, by any one
epithet, it will be this, that it is intensely human. I do not speak
of the later mythology; nor of Hesiod, whose Theogony so marvellously
spoils what it systematizes; but of Homer, in whom the ideal Olympus
attained its perfection at a stroke. In his preternatural κοσμὸς there
is, as far as I can see, much more of what is truly Divine, much more
of the residue of primeval tradition, than we can find collected
elsewhere: but there is also much more of what is human. The moral
form is corrupt: but I am now also speaking of it as a work of human
genius, and certainly as one of the most wonderful and splendid of
its products. The deep sympathy with Nature, the refined perception
of beauty, the freedom, the buoyancy, the elastic movement of every
figure on the scene, the intimate sense of association between the
denizens of Olympus and the generations of mortal men, the imposing
development of a Polity on high, the vivid nationality that riveted
its hold on Greece, the richness and inexhaustible diversity of those
embellishments which a vigorous fancy knows how to provide, combine to
make good the title I have asserted, and, if we are to believe that
Homer, in no small part, made what he described, must place his share
in the formation of the system in the very foremost rank even of his
achievements.
At any rate, this one thing, I think, is clear; that whatever Greece
borrowed from the East, she fairly made her own. All was thrown
into the crucible; all came out again from the fire recast, in such
combinations, and clothed in such forms and hues, as the specific
exigencies of the Greek mind required. Hence we must beware of all
precipitate identifications. We must take good heed, for example,
not to assume, that because Athene may be Neith by metathesis,
therefore the features of the Homeric Pallas were really gathered
together in the Egyptian prototype of her name[33]. The strong hand
of a transmuting fancy and intelligence passed as a preliminary
condition upon everything foreign, not only to modify, but probably
also to resolve into parts, and then to reconstruct. So that the
preternatural system of Homer is, above all others, both national and
original, and has, by its own vital energies, helped to maintain those
characteristics even in the deteriorated copies which were made from it
by so many after-generations.
[33] Bunsen’s ‘Egypt’s Place in Universal History,’ b. I. s. vi. A.
SECT. II.
_The traditive Element of the Homeric Theo-mythology._
The earliest Scriptural narrative presents to our view, with
considerable distinctness, three main objects. These are, respectively,
God, the Redeemer, and the Evil One. Nor do we pass even through the
Book of Genesis without finding, that it shadows forth some mysterious
combination of Unity with Trinity in the Divine Nature.
From the general expectation which prevailed in the East at the
period of the Advent, and from the prophecies collected and carefully
preserved in Rome under the name of the Sibylline books, we are at
once led to presume, that the knowledge of the early promise of a
Deliverer had not been confined to the Jewish nation. Their exclusive
character, and that of their religion; their small significance in the
political system and intellectual movement of the world; and the false
as well as imperfect notions which seem to have prevailed elsewhere
respecting them and their law[34]; all make it highly improbable that
these expectations and predictions should have been drawn from them
and their sacred books exclusively. Further, Holy Scripture distinctly
exhibits to us the existence of channels of traditional knowledge
severed from theirs. Thus much we learn particularly from the cases of
Job, who was a prophet and servant of God, though he lived in a country
where idolatry was practised[35]; and of Balaam, who, not being an
Israelite, nor an upright man, was nevertheless a prophet also. Our
Lord, in his answer respecting God as the God of Abraham[36], points
to a great article of belief, not expressly propounded in the Mosaic
books. And again, there are traditions adopted in the New Testament by
apostolic authority, which prove to us that there were some fragments
at least of early tradition remaining, even at a late date, among the
Jews themselves, over and above what had been committed to writing
in the older Scriptures. Such are those given by St. Jude respecting
Balaam himself, the body of Moses, and the prophecy of Enoch[37]. Such
is the record mentioned by St. Paul[38] of Jannes and Jambres, who are
believed to have been the chief magicians of Pharaoh, referred to in
Exodus, c. vii: and whose names are mentioned by Pliny, and, according
to Eusebius, by Numenius the Philosopher[39]. But it is not necessary,
and it might not be safe, to make any large assumption respecting a
traditional knowledge of any parts of early revelation beyond what
Scripture actually contains.
[34] See for example, in the Apocrypha, Esther xiii. 1-7.
[35] Horsley’s Dissertation, p. 69.
[36] St. Matt. xxii. 32.
[37] St. Jude, ver. 9, 11, 14.
[38] 2 Tim. iii. 8.
[39] Plin. H. N. xxx. 1. Euseb. Præp. Ev. ix. 8. Whitby, _in loc._
Dwelling therefore on what may be gathered from the Sacred Volume, we
have seen that at the very earliest date it has set before men the
ideas of God, the Redeemer, and the Evil One, and that it has spoken
concerning God as in some sense Three in One. When we take the whole
of the older Sacred Records into view, we may add some particulars
respecting the other two great objects.
~_Messianic traditions of Scripture._~
And first, as to the Deliverer of man. The Redeemer promised was to
be human, for He was to be of human birth. As death was the type of
the primeval curse, so it was from death that He was to deliver.
Again, the woman became a portion of the prophecy, for He was to be
the seed of the woman: and while He is thus plainly indicated to us as
incarnate, He is, on the other hand, mysteriously identified with the
Λόγος, the Divine Word or Wisdom, existing before the world and the
race with which He was to be numbered, and invested with the attributes
of supreme Deity. Although from a certain period the Wisdom and the
Deliverer appear to stand visibly identified, yet the earliest forms of
the traditions, as they stand in Holy Writ, are, to a certain extent,
ideally separate or separable; and the personality of the former is
less clearly, or at least less sharply, marked than that of the latter.
It was always the prevailing tendency of the speculative religions of
the East to withdraw the Supreme Being from direct relations with the
world, and to assign its ordinary government to the Wisdom, more or
less directly impersonated. ‘This,’ says Dean Milman, ‘was the doctrine
from the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Sea, to the Ilissus:
it was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and Indian
philosophy; it was the basis of Zoroastrianism: it was pure Platonism:
it was the Platonic Judaism of the Alexandrian School[40].’
[40] Milman’s Hist. of Christianity, vol. i. p. 72.
Neither were the traditions of the Evil One, more than those respecting
the Messiah, limited to a single aspect. On the contrary, they were
twofold, and they centred round two ideas: the one, that of force; the
other that of fraud: the one, that of a rebellious spirit, whom the
Almighty had cast down, with his abettors, from bliss to torment[41];
and the other, that of a deceiver, who lured man by the promise of what
he desired, and through the medium of his own free will, away from
duty, to his own harm or destruction.
[41] Calmet’s Dict., art. Satan. 2 Pet. ii. 4. St. Jude, ver. 6.
~_Sum of the primitive traditions._~
We may venture rudely to sum up these principal traditions of the first
ages as follows:
First, with respect to the Deity.
1. The Unity and supremacy of the Godhead.
2. A combination with this Unity of a Trinity, in which Trinity the
several Persons, in whatever way their personality be understood, and
whatever distinctions may obtain between them, are in some way of
coequal honour.
Secondly, with respect to the Redeemer, or Messiah.
1. A Redeemer from the curse of death, invested with full humanity,
by whom the divine kingdom was to be vindicated and reestablished, in
despite of its enemies.
2. A Wisdom, which is personal as well as divine, the highest and
first in order, concerned in the foundation and continuing government
of the world[42]. This is the Wisdom which ‘the Lord possessed from
everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was[43].’ ‘I Wisdom
dwell with prudence; and find out knowledge of witty inventions[44].’
‘This is with all flesh according to his gift: and he hath given her to
them that love him[45].’
[42] Proverbs i. 20-33.
[43] Proverbs iii. 19.
[44] See Proverbs viii. _passim_.
[45] Ecclus. i. 8-10. iv. 11-19, _et alibi._ See also Wisdom of
Solomon, i. 6. vi. 12, and seqq. vii.-x. _passim_.
3. The connection of the Redeemer with our race through his descent
from the woman.
Thirdly, with respect to the Evil One.
1. A rebellion of great angels or powers against the Supreme Being; the
defeat of the rebels, and their being cast into the abyss.
2. The going forth among men of a power who tempts them to their
destruction.
A tradition of minor moment, but clearly declared in the earliest
Scripture, may be added: namely,
The announcement of the rainbow, as a token which was to convey an
assurance or covenant from God to man, with respect to the annual order
of nature; an order on which the continuance of the human race depends.
It is impossible to survey these traditions, in their outline, without
seeing how easy it was to find a way from them, by the aid of ideas on
which they seemed to border, and which they brought within easy reach
of wayward thought, towards the principal corruptions of heathenism.
They shadow forth, as they stand, the great dogmas of the Trinity and
the Incarnation: but from the doctrine of the Trinity, thus shadowed
forth, the next step might be into polytheism; while in the doctrine of
the Incarnation, similarly projected, seemed to be laid the foundation
of the Greek anthropomorphism, or the reflection of humanity upon
the supernatural world. Abstract truth has not been found sufficient
to sustain itself among mankind: and in the dispensations of the
All-Wise the promulgation of it has always been associated with the
establishment of a teaching organ, which should bear living witness to
its authority.
Let us now observe how these traditions severally find their imperfect
and deranged counterparts in the heroic age of Greece.
First, as to the Godhead.
Its unity and supremacy is represented in Jupiter, as the administrator
of sovereign power.
The combination of Trinity with Unity is reproduced in the three
Kronid brothers, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto or Aidoneus; all born of the
same parents, and having different regions of the material creation
severally assigned to them by lot.
Next as to the Redeemer.
The first form of this tradition is represented chiefly in Apollo.
But neither the various attributes which were conceived as belonging
to the Deliverer, nor the twofold manifestation of his character
as it appears in Holy Writ, could, we must conclude, be held in
combination by the heathen mind. The character, therefore, underwent a
marked disintegration by severance into distinct parts: and while it
continues, in the main, to form the groundwork of the Homeric Apollo,
certain of its qualities are apparently transferred to his sister
Diana, and others of them are, as it were, repeated in her.
The second form of the tradition is that of the Wisdom, or Λόγος, of
the Gospel of Saint John; and this appears to be represented in the
sublime Minerva of the Homeric system.
Lastly, Latona, the mother of the twin deities, Apollo and Diana,
appears to represent the tradition of the woman, from whom the
Deliverer was to descend.
Thirdly, with respect to the Evil One.
As the derivative idea of sin depended upon that of goodness, and as
the shadow ceases to be visible when the object shadowed has become
more dim, we might well expect that the contraction and obscuration of
the true idea of goodness would bring about a more than proportionate
loss of knowledge concerning the true nature of evil. The impersonation
of evil could only be upheld in a lively or effectual manner, as the
opposite of the impersonation of good: and when the moral standard of
godhead had so greatly degenerated, as we find to be the case even in
the works of Homer, the negation of that standard could not but cease
to be either interesting or intelligible.
~_Traditions of the Evil One in Homer._~
Accordingly we find that the process of disintegration, followed
by that of arbitrary reassortment and combination of elements, had
proceeded to a more advanced stage with respect to the tradition of the
Evil One, than in the other cases.
The general form of the disintegration is this: that the idea of a
rebellion, menacing the divine dominion with violence, is now clothed
in a variety of detached and more or less conflicting forms: while
the far more subtle idea of an influence acting immediately on the
spirit of man, and aiming a blow at the glory of the Deity through his
creatures, whose allegiance it seeks by the perversion of their own
spontaneous agency to withdraw, remains in Homer, still indeed both
visible and single, but enfeebled and obscured to such a degree, that
it, as it were, stands on tiptoe, ready for its final flight from the
sphere of the common perceptions of mankind.
The first, the idea of evil acting by violence, is represented, not
indeed exclusively, but most conspicuously, in the Titans and Giants.
The second, or the idea of evil acting by deceit, is represented in the
Ἄτη of Homer.
Lastly: the rainbow of Holy Scripture is represented in the Homeric
Iris.
These, then, speaking generally, are the principal remnants from
primitive traditions, of which, if of any thing of the kind, we may
expect to find the vestiges within the Olympian Court.
~_Varying degrees of the traditive character._~
In order to throw a fuller light upon the subject, I shall chiefly
examine the characters of the Homeric deities, and of the more
important among them in particular, not as a body but individually.
An opposite practice has for the most part prevailed. It has been
assumed that they are homogeneous; they have been treated as a class,
subject to the same laws; and variations, not to be accounted for
from mythological _data_, have been viewed as mere solecisms in the
conception of the class. This has mainly tended, I believe, to thrust
the truth of the case into dark corners. But the properties which
distinguish the Homeric Immortals in common from men are in reality
less important than those which establish rules of discrimination
within their own body, and which point to the very different sources
that have supplied the materials incorporated into different portions
of the scheme.
In the enumeration which it will be requisite to make, it might be
allowable to treat Neptune and Pluto as traditive divinities, because
in their relation to Jupiter, which abstractedly is one of equal birth
and equal honour, they appear to share in representing the primitive
tradition, which combined a trine personality with unity in the
godhead. Effect was given to this tradition by supposing the existence
of three deities, who were united by the bond of brotherhood, and of
whom each had an important portion of the universe assigned to his
immediate superintendence. But for the assignment of attributes to
these personages, when severally constituted, tradition seems to have
afforded no aid. Jupiter, as the eldest and most powerful, became heir
general, as it were, to whatever ideas were current respecting the one
supreme God: or the point might be otherwise stated, as for instance
thus, that the conception which the Greeks derived from elsewhere of a
supreme God, they, on taking it over, shaped into the Eldest Brother of
their Trinity. But the concentration of ideas of supremacy upon him was
at variance with, and enfeebled the notion of, the trine combination.
The tradition itself, moreover, did not determine provinces for
Neptune or Pluto; and consequently, though these deities may be
considered traditional with regard to their basis, they belonged to
the invented class as respects character and attributes, and it is in
conjunction with that class that I propose to consider them.
Again, Jupiter does not fully represent any one specific tradition: but
he assembles irregularly around him the fragments of such traditions as
belonged to the relation between men and the One Ruler of the universe.
On the one hand he is in competition with other impersonations; on the
other hand, with abstractions, which, if they wanted the life, yet had
not forfeited the purity of godhead.
Latona, again, will be known rather by relative and negative, than by
absolute and positive, signs; except as to the point of her maternity.
So Diana does not equally divide with Apollo, her twin brother, the
substance of the tradition that they jointly represent; but rather is
the figure of a person on whom the residue, consisting of properties
that the Homeric Apollo could not receive, is bestowed. It is mainly in
her ancillary relation to Apollo that she should be viewed.
It will of course be my object to bring out, as clearly and fully as
I can, that portion of the evidence, which proves the presence of a
strong traditive element in the Theomythology of Homer.
But it is not free from difficulty to determine the best mode of
proceeding with this view. The traditive part of the materials is not
separated by a broad and direct line from the inventive; nor has it
been lodged without admixture in any of the members of the Olympian
system. Like the fables of the East, it has undergone the transforming
action of the Greek mind, and it is throughout the scheme variously
mingled and combined with ideas of human manufacture. There is scarcely
any element of the old revelation that is presented to our view under
unaltered conditions: scarcely any personage of the divine order, as
represented by the Poet, stands in the same relation of resemblance
to those primeval traditions, which are to be traced in his figure
and attributes. The ancient truths are not merely imperfect; they
are dislocated, and, with heavy waste of material in the process,
afterwards recast.
On account of this bewildering diversity, it will, I conceive, be most
conducive to my purpose if I commence the inquiry with those deities in
whom the propositions I maintain are best represented: for the present
putting aside others, in whom the representation of tradition, either
from the overpowering presence of other elements, or from the general
insignificance of the character, is less effective.