of Egypt, I do not suppose that that country enters at all into his
conception of the Ethiopians. If so, then the representation of
an unity of religion with the Ethiopians, affords a presumption,
conformable undoubtedly to such other presumptions as we have been
able to gather from the poems, that Homer did not regard Egypt as the
principal source of the religious system of Greece.
~_Herodotus on the Scythian religion._~
I do not pretend to find, in any ancient system handed down to us,
even a skeleton of the Olympian scheme; and I conclude it to be most
probable, that the Greeks had to form, or to reform, various members of
it, as well as merely to clothe and embellish them. Yet it appears well
worth while to refer to the account of the Scythian religion given by
Herodotus, whose works form the great depository of knowledge of this
kind beyond the borders of Greece.
The ordinary Scythians, it will be remembered, seem to be of the same
race with the Medes, and to form the stock from which the Pelasgians
separated to turn towards the south of Europe for settlements. They
lived in that pastoral state, anterior to tillage, which Mommsen
observes, through the forms of the Latin language, to have marked the
point before the severance[770]. From the sign of feeding on milk, the
Glactophagi and Hippemolgi of Il. xiii. 5, 6, would appear to belong to
them, and the peaceful habits of the Pelasgians are also represented
in the character that Homer gives, in the same passage, to their
neighbours the Abians.
[770] Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, vol. I. ch. ii.
The gods of the Scythians, according to Herodotus[771], were:
[771] Herod. iv. 59.
1. Vesta.
2. Jupiter.
3. Earth, the supposed wife of Jupiter.
4. Apollo.
5. Celestial Venus.
6. Hercules.
7. Mars.
Even in this very late picture, we find a strong resemblance to what,
from the Homeric text, would appear to have been the primitive cluster
of the Pelasgian divinities. Earth is represented in Demeter, (Γῆ
μήτηρ,) who appears in Il. xiv. 326 as one of the wives of Jupiter. The
Celestial Venus may include traditions of Minerva, and of Artemis,--for
the Scythians called her Artimpasa,--along with those which came to be
represented in the Greek Ἀφροδίτη. All the deities, which from Homer’s
text have appeared to be especially Hellenic, are also, it will be
observed, absent from this list: Juno, Neptune, Aidoneus, Persephone,
Vulcan, and Mercury.
But there were among these Scythians a tribe, called the Βασιλήϊοι
Σκύθαι. It would seem plain from the name, that these must have held
among the Scythians a position, in great measure analogous to that of
the Hellenic tribes among the mass of the Pelasgian population. And
certainly it is not a little curious, that these kingly Scythians added
to the list of properly Pelasgian deities the worship of Thamimasidas,
a god of the sea, apparently equivalent to the Hellenic Poseidon.
Again, let us take the account given by Herodotus of the information
he obtained in Egypt about the Greek mythology. He states to us that,
with certain exceptions, the names of the Greek deities had been known
in Egypt from time immemorial. His exceptions are, Neptune and Juno,
the Dioscuri, Vesta, Themis, the Graces and the Nereids. The statement
may at least be accepted as good to this extent, that the deities here
named were not drawn from Egypt. They include, as will be seen, only
one personification of an idea which we have found cause to consider
Pelasgian, namely, Ἱστίη or _home_; with this Neptune and Juno, who
were Hellic deities; the Dioscouroi, representing in an early stage
the deification of national heroes; the Graces, or the impersonations
of ideas; and the Nereids, or the personification of natural objects.
All of these persons and processes we have already referred to the
influence of the Hellic tribes.
Upon the whole, we appear to have in these accounts a much clearer
representation of the contribution made by the Pelasgian part of the
nation to the Olympian system than we can find gathered elsewhere.
The Egyptian resemblances are chiefly isolated, though it may have
been from that quarter that Pelasgian Attica learned the name and
worship of the deity, which was afterwards developed into the Homeric
Pallas-Athene: but among these Scythians we appear to find a group, who
exhibit to us in combination nearly all that we have reason to believe
specially Pelasgian, and, with the obscure exception of Hercules,
nothing besides. While this group, as being Scythian, would have the
Arian country for its point of origin, it may still be probable that
other parts of the Olympian religion, besides the worship of Neptune,
such as the Juno and the Persephone in particular, had come from the
‘Kingly’ Arians of the hills.
Thus far as to the relation between the Homeric theo-mythology and
any religious system or combination to be found elsewhere. Let us
now consider how it stands with reference to each of the principal
elements, out of which the religions of the world were habitually
formed.
~_Four several bases of religious systems._~
There appear to be four leading forms in which, either single or
combined, religion has attracted, and more or less commanded, the
mind of man. It is scarcely needful to add that one alone of these
is genuine, and that the three others are essentially depraved, and
finally self-destructive.
The first is the worship of the Divine Being: of which the Holy
Scriptures form, down to the period with which they close, the
principal record.
The second is the worship of man; founded, of course, upon his
deification. Of this the Greek mythology affords the most conspicuous
and weighty instance.
The third is the worship of external and inanimate nature, which I
mention next, not because of its place in the order of ideas, but
because of its great extension and influence over races of vast
numerical strength, antiquity, and importance.
The fourth is the worship of the inferior creation, or of animate
nature in its lower ranks.
We have considered, in a former section, how far the Greek mythology
was indebted to the first of these sources, the true and pure one.
The second, or anthropophuism, appears to have formed its most proper
and distinctive characteristic. Further, it was the intellectual
rather than the carnal nature of man, which originally determined a
law for the construction of the Olympian system. The great traditive
deities were remodelled according to what Scripture calls the ‘lust of
the mind,’ long before the ‘lust of the flesh’ had touched them. We
see, too, that, of the deities of invention, those which were purely
Hellenic, such as Juno and Themis in particular, represent either noble
and commanding, or else pure, ideas, connected with the development
of human life and society; while it is generally in deities that have
not undergone a full Hellenic remodelling, that we see animal passion
prevail; such as Mars, Venus, Ceres, and Aurora.
~_Nature-worship._~
The third basis of religion is admirably described, together with its
apology, and its condemnation, in the Book entitled the Wisdom of
Solomon[772]:
[772] Wisdom xiii. 1-9.
‘Neither by considering the works did they acknowledge the
workmaster; but deemed either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the
circle of the stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven,
to be the gods which govern the world. With whose beauty if they
being delighted took them to be gods; let them know how much better
the Lord of them is: for the first author of beauty hath created
them. But if they were astonished at their power and virtue, let them
understand by them, how much mightier he is that made them. For, by
the greatness and beauty of the creatures, proportionably the maker
of them is seen. But yet for this they are the less to be blamed;
for they peradventure err, seeking God, and desirous to find him.
For, being conversant in his works, they search him diligently, and
believe their sight: because the things are beautiful that are seen.
Howbeit, neither are they to be pardoned. For if they were able to
know so much, that they could aim at the world; how did they not
sooner find out the Lord thereof?’
And then the Wise Man proceeds to show, that far inferior, again, to
this, is the worship of mere images as gods.
The worship of the elemental powers enters, I think, only as a very
secondary ingredient into the Homeric or Olympian system: it is
everywhere surmounted and circumscribed by developments drawn from
tradition or from the principle of anthropophuism.
It is true that most of the great physical agents are either
personified by him, or else are in immediate connection with some
one of his deities: but there is every appearance that the Greeks
sometimes expelled, sometimes reduced and depressed the principle of
Nature-worship, in their adaptation of foreign materials to Hellenic
uses.
1. Jupiter and Neptune, as we have seen, preside over elements, but
they are not elemental. Their relations to air and sea are entirely
different from those of Vulcan to fire, and yet even he very greatly
transcends the dimensions of a merely elemental god. Their brotherhood
with Aidoneus, who is not elemental at all, indicates, together
with all other signs, that the air and sea are their respective
territories, and are not the basis of their divinity.
2. It seems quite impossible but that, if Nature-worship had been the
basis of the system, the Sun, as the visible king of nature, must
have had a prominent and commanding position in the system; whereas
his place in Homer is even less than secondary. Looking at the realm
of nature, to search out a varied organism, which would supply a
powerful apparatus of instruments operative upon man to a presiding
intelligence, the Greek naturally made Ζεὺς the king of Air. But had he
merely wanted a symbol by which nature itself was to speak, how could
he have forborne to choose the Sun?
3. There is, indeed, an extended use in Homer of the imagery of
Nature-Powers. But however prominent as poetry, this is altogether
subordinate as religion. His Nymphs and River-gods people the unseen,
adorn his verse, and even supply a kind of drapery to the scheme
of religious observances; but it is not by them that the world is
governed. And with them may very well be classed, as far as the present
argument is concerned, the crowd of Homer’s metaphysical impersonations.
4. That Neptune in particular is not properly an elemental power, seems
to be made clear by three things at the least:
a. He can act by land as well as sea; witness his building the wall of
Troy, and appearing as a warrior on the battle-field.
b. The θάλασσα, with which he is connected, is decidedly inferior, in
its merely elemental character, to Oceanus; yet Oceanus has no share in
the government of the world, and no moral personality, while Neptune
has equal dignity with Jupiter, and is not far behind him in strength.
c. The true elemental gods of the θάλασσα, it is plain, according to
Homer, are Nereus and Amphitrite; of whom the first is locally confined
to the depths of the sea, and the other is scarcely a person, and
cannot ideally be disengaged from the curly-headed billows.
5. In the Olympian Court, which is the real centre, according to Homer,
of the government of the world, there is scarcely to be found a pure
example of a Nature-power; there is no one leading deity, in whom that
idea is not wholly subordinate; and in many of the leading deities,
such as Minerva, Apollo, and even Juno, it is hardly to be perceived at
all.
6. As to Juno in particular. When we compare the Greek with the
Eastern religions, it appears that, if the former had been conceived
in the same spirit as the latter, Juno ought to have been the earth,
continually impregnated by the heaven, and yielding those fruits which
would then stand as the proper results of her maternity.
But instead of this, in the great lottery of the universe, earth is
actually left out, and remains undisposed of. It never appears in
Homer, except in a formula of adjuration, in which we may naturally
enough look to find antique ideas; and this seems like a stray vestige
of another system, really founded on Nature-worship. But there Γαῖα
remains, so far as the Greeks are concerned, isolated and undeveloped.
Meantime, for the vegetative life of Earth, wedded to the Heavens, and
bearing herbs and fruits, the Greek mind substitutes the intelligent
life of a Queen-divinity, who with her husband becomes the nucleus of
the Olympian order, and marks the transition from elemental religion to
anthropophuism.
~_Secondary in the Olympian religion._~
There is then a greatly qualified sense, in which assent may be given
to the proposition, that the Olympian dynasty of Homer sits enthroned
upon the ruins of a more ancient Nature-worship, and the sense is
this: that, before Hellenism had an historical existence, there were
systems founded on Nature-worship in the east; that these systems were
tributary to the religion of Olympus, and that its framers made such
use of them as they found convenient.
But from Homer we are not authorized to believe that such a system of
Nature-worship ever preceded in Greece the Olympian system. On the
contrary, the Κρόνος and Ῥέα, the Oceanus and Tethys of Homer, appear
to be younger and not older than his chief Olympian gods; that is, they
appear to be metaphysical creations, called into being to supply an
ideal basis, a _matrix_ or mould, walled in with time and space, for
Jupiter and his wife and brothers to be cast in.
It is not before, but after the time of Homer, namely, in Hesiod, that
we see such development given to this pseudo-archaic system as can
alone allow it to be taken for the image of something that had really
existed as a religion. For example, it would be quite out of keeping
with the tone of Homer were we to find in him the sentiment which is
contained in a fragment of Euripides[773];
[773] Eurip. Fr. i.
ὁρᾶς τὸν ὑψοῦ τόνδ’ ἄπειρον αἰθέρα;
τοῦτον νόμιζε Ζῆνα.
~_Brute-worship._~
We have still to consider the relation of the Olympian scheme to the
last of the four στοιχεῖα. The principle of brute-worship was so marked
a characteristic of the Egyptian idolatry, that it seems to lie at
the very foundation of the system. Perhaps we should be justified in
associating with this principle the inability of the Egyptians to
attain to any high conceptions of beauty. They scarcely could soar
in this respect above the standard of that which they regarded as a
tabernacle meet for divinity to dwell in.
The same principle appears to have found its way into Persia probably
at a late date, and from the Median, not the Eteo-persian, source
of the religious traditions of the country. Malcolm[774] has given
us the copies, from remains found in the country, of the Persian
representations, probably however late ones, of their divinities,
exhibiting strange mixtures of human form with that of the brute.
[774] Malcolm’s Hist. of Persia, vol. i.
It would therefore be wonderful if we failed to find in the Greek
mythology some traces, however faint, of an element that not only
existed in Asia, but displayed so much vigour there, as to have entered
deeply into the religion that even now sways a considerable portion
of its population, if not, indeed, to form the one really capital and
operative article of that religion.
Döllinger[775] has noted the points connected with the state and being
of animals, which might suggest ideas capable of being developed into
this repulsive system. Such are the unity and tranquillity of animal
life--it being borne in mind that domesticated animals were those
which supplied the chief type of deity. Such, again, is the instinct
of the future, bearing a nearer outward resemblance to foreknowledge
than would any anticipations founded on forethought, reasoning, and
experience. Above all, there seems to be force in the remark that man,
by his marked individuality, and by the freedom of the will, is, as it
were, disabled from becoming the mere organ of another existence. The
gods in assuming human form, assumed in a great degree human nature
also. But the passive and neutral nature of animals offered itself as
a medium without taste or colour, such as needed not in any manner to
alter or modify the powers of which it was to be the vehicle.
[775] Döllinger, Heid. u. Jud. b. vi. 130. p. 424.
Had the idea been in its origin that of an inherent sacredness of
animals as such, it is not probable that we should have seen such
extraordinary anomalies in its development as those which permitted the
same animal to be adored in one province of Egypt, and immolated in the
next[776].
[776] Döllinger, ibid. 132.
~_Its vestiges in the Olympian religion._~
The grossness of brute-worship was completely refined away by the
Greeks during the process of transfer to their own mythology. The
vestiges of the system, and they are no more than vestiges, still
traceable in the Homeric poems, are apparently as follows:
1. I find the chief note of it in the extraordinary sacredness of the
oxen of the Sun: a sacredness inconsistent and inexplicable, if it be
tried only by the circumjacent incidents of the Odyssey, and by the
laws of the Greek mythology.
The offence of the crew of Ulysses consisted simply in this; that[777],
after exhausting every effort to maintain themselves, when they have
at length no alternative before them except that of starving, they
consumed some of the best among these oxen for food. They observed,
as far as they could, all the proper religious rites, but they used
leaves instead of barley, and water for wine, inasmuch as neither of
the usual requisites were forthcoming. They promised a temple also to
the Sun, to be built on their return, and to be enriched with abundant
votive offerings. Lastly, I think, any one who reads the manly and
just speech of Eurylochus, in which he proposes the sacrilege, will
judge that the sympathies of the Poet are with him. In this speech, he
states the necessity; he next proceeds to vow the erection of a temple,
and dedication of its ornaments in the event of safe return. Then he
concludes by declaring, that if vengeance is, notwithstanding, to be
taken on them, he for his part would far rather die once for all like
a man than famish in the solitary island. There is not in the tone of
the speech the slightest indication of impiety[778].
[777] Od. xii. 352-65.
[778] Od. xii. 339-51.
The terrible punishment inflicted was prefigured by extraordinary
portents. The empty hides of the animals crawled about[779], and the
flesh lowed on the very spits. Here we see at its climax the fine Greek
imagination, working upon the foundation supplied by the Egyptian
superstition, and extracting from the coarsest earthy matter the means
of true poetical sublimity.
[779] 394-6.
It is impossible to conceive a case, in which the offence committed is
more exclusively of the kind termed positive, or more entirely severed
from moral guilt, until we include the element to which the poems do
not expressly refer, of the elevated sanctity attaching to the animal
itself. The Homeric fiction is[780], that they were the playthings of
the Sun in his leisure hours. But to forbid the use of any of these
animals for food, even under the direst necessity, would have been
simply to caricature the nature of positive commands, in the very same
spirit as that which would have had, not the sabbath made for man, but
man made for the sabbath. Still, when once we let in the assumption
that these animals had essentially sacred lives, which might not
be taken away, then the offence becomes a moral one of frightful
profanation, and the vengeance so rigorously exacted is intelligible.
[780] 379-81.
I do not mean that Homer recognises that dogma which the Egyptians then
affirmed, and which at this present epoch, after the lapse of three
thousand years, has wrought myriads of Hindoos to madness. The religion
of Greece included no such idea, and the religious practice of the
Greeks wholly precluded it. But in this instance we see a part of the
Egyptian religion _in transitu_, in the very process of transmutation
that it was to undergo when passing into the Greek mythology, which
utterly repudiated its substance, but strove to retain an image of
it under poetic forms, betraying by their inconsistency their exotic
origin.
The consummation of the whole tale lies in this: that the vengeance
is not the mere personal act of the Sun, but is inflicted by Jupiter
himself on behalf of the whole Olympian Court, to which the appeal had
been already made[781].
[781] Od. xii. 377, 405, 415.
2. Another instance, confirmatory of the statement of Döllinger as to
the _rationale_ of brute-worship, is to be found in the curious passage
of the Iliad where Xanthus, the horse of Achilles, is endowed with
speech. The gift is from Juno, but the limit of the gift is carefully
defined[782]:
[782] Il. xix. 407.
αὐδήεντα δ’ ἔθηκε θεὰ λευκώλενος Ἥρη.
It was utterance that Juno gave, not intelligence. The matter to be
spoken was not a gift. The horse proceeds, evidently by a native
insight into the future, to intimate to Achilles his coming fate; at
first more darkly (v. 409); but when he comes nearer the point and
glances at a man as the ordained instrument of doom (416),
ἀλλὰ σοὶ αὐτῷ
μόρσιμόν ἐστι θεῷ τε καὶ ἀνέρι ἶφι δαμῆναι·
then, I suppose lest the animal should proceed to particularize, and,
though prophetic yet unwise, should break the current of the hero’s
thought and action at the critical moment by naming Paris--the Ἐρινύες
are made to interfere; they restore the order of nature, and stay the
exercise of Juno’s irregular and abnormal gift.
3. The immortality of these horses is probably conceived in the same
spirit. We may the more easily understand it to be a poetical rendering
of the Egyptian belief in the divinity of many animals, when we
recollect that exemption from death is, with Homer, the one and perhaps
only essential characteristic of deity, so that his gods are ordinarily
defined by it as ἀθάνατοι.
4. We have another indication of relation to the same ideas, in the
assumption by deities of the forms of various birds: namely, by
Minerva, as Od. i. 320; iii. 372; Il. vii. 59; Od. xxii. 240; by
Apollo, Il. vii. 59; by Sleep, Il. xiv. 290; and by Ino Leucothee, Od.
v. 353. In this instance we again see the refining power of the Greek
imagination. It is only the forms of birds which are assumed by Homeric
deities: creatures more ethereal, though not more intellectual, than
the other brute races; and whose figure, when assumed, at once bestows
in visible form an attribute of high superiority to man, namely, the
increased facility and speed of locomotion.
5. One or two other traces may be suggested, but they are slighter
and more dubious. It is possible that Homer drew from this source the
Olympian horses of Juno (Il. v. 720, 768-72) and the sea-horses of
Neptune (Il. xiii. 23). A similar notion may be involved, when the
Poet makes Apollo stoop to feed the horses of Admetus in Pieria, and
the oxen of Laomedon on Ida (Il. ii. 766, and xxi. 448). The serpent
(δρακὼν) appears in Homeric portents as a symbol, but without peculiar
meaning.
The horse was not one of the sacred animals of Egypt; and when Homer
placed it in such near relations with deity, as he has done in these
places and elsewhere, he may not only have indulged a personal
predilection, but he also may have been converting the crudity of
Egyptian material to the form and uses of the Greek religion, in the
normal exercise of his vocation.
One concluding word may be said in extenuation of the indignity which,
according to our ideas, attaches to the worship of the inferior
animals. In the worship of the elemental powers we see error, but in
the worship of beasts we see shame, and even brutality. Perhaps this
distinction may be due as much to pride as to pious susceptibility.