Delos and its gods, and the pilgrimages and games that enlivened the
island, was well-conceived to give form and justification to the
cultus of the temple, and to delight the votaries whom custom or vague
instincts of piety had gathered there. The sacred poet, in another part
of this hymn, does the same service to the even greater sanctuary of
Delphi. He tells us how Apollo wandered over many lands and waters,
and he stops lovingly to recall the names of the various spots that
claimed the honour of having at some time been visited by the god.
The minstrels, wanderers themselves, loved to celebrate in this way
the shores they had seen or heard of, and to fill at the same time
their listener's minds with the spell of sonorous names, the sense of
space and the thrill of mystery. In his journeys Apollo, the hymn tells
us, finally came to the dell and fountain of Delphusa on the skirts
of Parnassus. The nymph of the spot, fearing the encroachments of so
much more powerful a deity, deceived him and persuaded him to plant
his temple on another site, where Parnassus fronts the west, and the
overhanging rocks form a cavern. There Apollo established his temple
for the succour and enlightenment of mankind, while Trophonius and
Agamedes, sons of Erginus, men dear to the immortal gods, built the
approaches of stone.
Thus the divine origin of the temple is vindicated, the structure
described, and the human architects honoured, whose descendants,
very likely, were present to hear their ancestors' praise. But here
a puzzling fact challenges the attention and stimulates the fancy of
the poet: Apollo was a Dorian deity, yet his chief shrine was here
upon Phocian ground. Perhaps some traditions remained to suggest an
explanation of the anomaly; at any rate the poet is not at a loss
for an account of the matter. The temple being established, Apollo
bethought himself what race of priests he should make its ministers:
at least, such is the naïve account in the poem, which expects us
to forget that temples do not arise in the absence of predetermined
servants and worshippers. While pondering this question, however,
Apollo cast his eyes on the sea where it chanced that a swift ship,
manned by many and excellent Cretans, was merrily sailing: whereupon
the god, taking the form of a huge dolphin, leapt into the ship, to the
infinite surprise and bewilderment of those worthy merchants, who, as
innocent as the fishers of the Galilæan Lake of the religious destiny
that awaited them, were thinking only of the pecuniary profits of their
voyage. The presence of the god benumbed their movements, and they
stood silent while the ship sailed before the wind. And the blast,
veering at this place with the changed configuration of the coast, blew
them irresistibly to the very foot of Parnassus, to the little haven of
Crissa. There Apollo appeared to them once more, this time running down
to the beach to meet them in the form of
"A stout and lusty fellow,
His mighty shoulders covered with his mane;
Who sped these words upon the wings of sound:
'Strangers, who are ye? and whence sail ye hither
The watery ways? Come ye to traffic justly
Or recklessly like pirates of the deep
Rove ye, adventuring your souls, to bring
Evil on strangers? Why thus sit ye grieving,
Nor leap on land, nor strike the mast and lay it
In your black ship? For so should traders do
When, sated with the labour of the sea,
They quit their painted galley for the shore,
And presently the thought of needful food
Comes gladsomely upon them.' So he spake,
Putting new courage in their breasts. To whom
The Cretan captain in his turn replied:
'Since thou art nothing like to things of earth
In form or stature, but most like the gods
That ever live, Hail, and thrice hail, O Stranger,
And may the gods pour blessings on thy head.
Now tell me truly, for I need to know,
What land is this, what people, from what race
Descended? As for us, over the deep
Broad sea, we sought another haven, Pylos,
Sailing from Crete, for thence we boast to spring;
But now our ship is cast upon this shore,
For some god steered our course against our will.'
Then the far-darter spoke and answered them.
'Friends, in well-wooded Cnossus hitherto
Ye have had homes, but ye shall not again
Return to your good native town, to find
Each his fair house and well-belovèd wife,
But here shall ye possess my temple, rich
And greatly honoured by the tribes of men.
For I am son to Zeus. Apollo is
My sacred name. 'Twas I that led you hither
Over the mighty bosom of the deep,
Intending you no ill; for ye shall here
Possess a temple sacred to me, rich,
And greatly honoured of all mortal men.
The counsels of the deathless gods shall be
Revealed to you, and by their will your days
Shall pass in honour and in peace for ever.
Come then and, as I bid, make haste to do.
... Build by the sea an altar; kindle flame;
Sprinkle white barley grains thereon, and pray,
Standing about the altar. And as first
Ye saw me leap into your swift black bark
In likeness of a dolphin, so henceforth
Worship me by the name Delphinius,
And Delphian ever be my far-seen shrine.'"
Thus the establishment of the Dorian god in Phocis is explained, and
the wealth and dignity of his temple are justified by prophecy and
by divine intention. For Apollo is not satisfied with repeatedly
describing the future temple, by an incidental epithet, as opulent;
that hint would not have been enough for the simplicity of those
merchant sailors, new as they were to the mysteries of priestcraft.
It was necessary for Apollo to allay their fears of poverty by a more
explicit assurance that it will be easy for them to live by the altar.
And what is more, Hermes and all the thieves he inspires will respect
the shrine; its treasures, although unprotected by walls, shall be safe
for-ever.
These were truly, as we see, the hymns of a levitical patriotism. With
Homeric breadth and candour they dilated on the miracles, privileges,
and immunities of the sacred places and their servitors, and they thus
kept alive in successive generations an awe mingled with familiar
interest toward divine persons and things which is characteristic of
that more primitive age. Gods and men were then nearer together, and
both yielded more frankly to the tendency, inherent in their nature, to
resemble one another.
The same quality is found in another fragment, the most beautiful and
the most familiar of all. This is the hymn to Demeter in which two
stories are woven together, one telling of the rape of Persephone, and
the other of the reception of Demeter, disguised in her sorrow, into
the household of Celeus, where she becomes the nurse of his infant son
Demophoon. Both stories belong to the religion of Eleusis, where this
version of them seems intended to be sung. The place was sacred to
Demeter and Persephone and its mysteries dealt particularly with the
passage of souls to the nether world and with their habitation there.
The pathetic beauty of the first fable--in which we can hardly abstain
from seeing some symbolical meaning--expresses for us something of the
mystic exaltation of the local rites; while the other tale of Celeus,
his wife, his daughters, and his son, whom his nurse, the disguised
goddess, almost succeeds in endowing with immortality, celebrates the
ancient divine affinities of the chiefs of the Eleusinian state.
The first story is too familiar to need recounting; who has not heard
of the gentle Persephone gathering flowers in the meadow and suddenly
swallowed by the yawning earth and carried away to Hades, the god of
the nether world, to share his sombre but sublime dominion over the
shades?--a dignity of which she is not insensible, much as she grieves
at the separation from her beloved mother; and how Demeter in turn
is disconsolate and (in her wrath and despair at the indifference of
the gods) conceals her divinity, refuses the fruits of the earth, and
wanders about in the guise of an old woman, nursing her grief, until
at last Zeus sends his messenger to Hades to effect a compromise; and
Persephone, after eating the grain of pomegranate that obliges her to
return yearly to her husband, is allowed to come back to the upper
world to dwell for two-thirds of the year in her mother's company.
The underlying allegory is here very interesting. We observe how the
genius of the Greek religion, while too anthropomorphic to retain any
clear consciousness of the cosmic processes that were symbolized by its
deities and their adventures, was anthropomorphic also in a moral way,
and tended to turn the personages which it ceased to regard as symbols
of natural forces into types of human experience. So the parable of
the seed that must die if it is to rise again and live an immortal, if
interrupted, life in successive generations, gives way in the tale of
Demeter and Persephone, to a prototype of human affection. The devotee,
no longer reminded by his religion of any cosmic laws, was not reduced
to a mere superstition,--to a fable and a belief in the efficacy of
external rites,--he was encouraged to regard the mystery as the
divine counterpart of his own experience. His religion in forgetting
to be natural had succeeded in becoming moral; the gods were now
models of human endurance and success; their histories offered sublime
consolations to mortal destiny. Fancy had turned the aspects of Nature
into persons; but devotion, directed upon these imaginary persons,
turned them into human ideals and into patron saints, thereby relating
them again to life and saving them from insignificance.
A further illustration of the latter transformation may be found in the
second story contained in our hymn. Demeter, weary of her wanderings
and sick at heart, has come to sit down beside a well, near the house
of Celeus. His four young daughters, dancing and laughing, come to
fetch water in their golden jars,--
"As hinds or heifers gambol in the fields
When Spring is young."
They speak kindly to the goddess, who asks them for employment. "And
for me," she says,--
"And for me, damsels, harbour pitiful
And favouring thoughts, dear children, that I come
To some good man's or woman's house, to ply
My task in willing service of such sort
As agèd women use. A tender child
I could nurse well and safely in my arms,
And tend the house, and spread the master's couch
Recessed in the fair chamber, or could teach
The maids their handicraft."
The offer is gladly accepted, for Celeus himself has an infant son,
Demophoon, the hope of his race: The aged woman enters the dwelling,
making in her long-robed grief a wonderful contrast to the four
sportive girls:--
"Who lifting up their ample kirtle-folds
Sped down the waggon-furrowed way, and shook
Their curls about their shoulders--yellow gold
Like crocuses in bloom."
Once within the house, which she awes with her uncomprehended presence,
the goddess sits absorbed in grief, until she is compelled to smile
for a moment at the jests of the quick-witted maid Iambe, and consents
to take in lieu of the wine that is offered her, a beverage of beaten
barley, water, and herbs. These details are of course introduced to
justify the ritual of Eleusis, in which the clown and the barley-water
played a traditional part.
Thus Demeter becomes nurse to Demophoon, but she has ideas of
her duties differing from the common, and worthy of her unusual
qualifications. She neither suckles nor feeds the infant but anoints
him with ambrosia and lays him at night to sleep on the embers of the
hearth. This his watchful mother discovers with not unnatural alarm;
when the goddess reveals herself and departs, foiled in her desire to
make her nursling immortal.
The spirit that animates this fable is not that poetic frivolity which
we are accustomed to associate with Paganism. Here we find an immortal
in profoundest grief and mortals entertaining an angel unawares; we are
told of supernatural food, and of a burning fire that might make this
mortal put on immortality did not the generous but ignorant impulses of
the natural man break in upon that providential purpose and prevent its
consummation. Eleusis was the natural home for such a myth, and we may
well believe that those initiated into the mysteries there were taught
to dwell on its higher interpretation.
But there are other hymns in a lighter vein in which the play of
fancy is not guided by any moral intuition. The hymn to Hermes is one
perpetual ebullition of irresponsible humour.
Hermes is the child of Maia, a nymph of Cyllene whose cave Zeus has
surreptitiously visited while the white-armed Juno--for, unsympathetic
prude as this goddess may be, she must still be beautiful--slept
soundly in Olympus. The child is hardly born when he catches a
tortoise, kills it, scoops out the shell, and makes a lute of it, upon
which he begins to play delicious music. Not satisfied with that feat,
however, he escapes from his cradle, and drives from their pasture
the kine that Apollo has left feeding there. Accused afterward of this
mischief, he defends himself after the following fashion, while he lies
in his crib, holding his new-made lyre lightly in his hand under the
bedclothes. I quote Shelley's version:--
"'An ox-stealer should be both tall and strong
And I am but a little new-born thing
Who yet, at least, can think of nothing wrong.
My business is to suck, and sleep, and fling
The cradle-clothes about me all day long,
Or, half-asleep, hear my sweet mother sing
And to be washed in water clean and warm
And hushed and kissed and kept secure from harm.'"
* * * * * *
"Sudden he changed his plan, and with strange skill
Subdued the strong Latonian, by the might
Of winning music, to his mightier will.
His left hand held the lyre, and in his right
The plectrum struck the chords: unconquerable
Up from beneath his hand in circling flight
The gathering music rose--and sweet as Love
The penetrating notes did live and move
"Within the heart of great Apollo. He
Listened with all his soul, and laughed for pleasure.
Close to his side stood harping fearlessly
The unabashèd boy, and to the measure
Of the sweet lyre there followed loud and free
His joyous voice: for he unlocked the treasure
Of his deep song, illustrating the birth
Of the bright Gods, and the dark desert Earth;
"And how to the Immortals every one
A portion was assigned of all that is.
But chief Mnemosyne did Maia's son
Clothe in the light of his loud melodies.
And, as each god was born or had begun,
He in their order due and fit degrees
Sung of his birth and being--and did move
Apollo to unutterable love."
In fact, after the most enthusiastic encomiums on the young god's art,
and on the power of music in general, Apollo offers the child his
protection and friendship:--
"Now, since thou hast, although so very small,
Science of arts so glorious, thus I swear,--
And let this cornel javelin, keen and tall,
Witness between us what I promise here,--
That I will lead thee to the Olympian hall,
Honoured and mighty, with thy mother dear,
And many glorious gifts in joy will give thee
And even at the end will ne'er deceive thee."
Hermes is not insensible to this offer and its advantages; he accepts
it with good grace and many compliments, nor does he wish to remain
behind in the exchange of courtesies and benefits: he addresses Apollo
thus:--
"Thou canst seek out and compass all that wit
Can find or teach. Yet, since thou wilt, come, take
The lyre--be mine the glory giving it--
Strike the sweet chords, and sing aloud, and wake
The joyous pleasure out of many a fit
Of tranced sound--and with fleet fingers make?
Thy liquid-voiced comrade speak with thee,--
It can talk measured music eloquently.
"Then bear it boldly to the revel loud,
Love-wakening dance, or feast of solemn state,
A joy by night or day: for those endowed
With art and wisdom who interrogate
It teaches, babbling in delightful mood
All things which make the spirit most elate.
Soothing the mind with sweet familiar play,
Chasing the heavy shadows of dismay.
"To those that are unskilled in its sweet tongue,
Though they should question most impetuously
Its hidden soul, it gossips something wrong--
Some senseless and impertinent reply.
But thou, who art as wise as thou art strong,
Canst compass all that thou desirest. I
Present thee with this music-flowing shell,
Knowing thou canst interrogate it well...."
Apollo is not slow to learn the new art with which he is ever after
to delight both gods and men; but he is not at first quite at ease in
his mind, fearing that Hermes will not only recapture the lyre but
steal his friend's bow and arrows into the bargain. Hermes, however,
swears by all that is holy never to do so, and the friendship of the
two artful gods is sealed for ever. The minstrel does not forget, at
this point, to remind his hearers, among whom we may imagine not a few
professional followers of Hermes to have been mixed, that the robber's
honour is pledged by his divine patron to respect the treasures of
Apollo's shrines. Let not the votary think, he adds, that Apollo's
oracles are equally useful to good and to bad men: these mysteries
are truly efficacious only for the pious and orthodox who follow the
established traditions of the temple and honour its servants. Apollo
says:--
"He who comes consigned
By voice and wings of perfect augury
To my great shrine shall find avail in me:
"Him I will not deceive, but will assist.
But he who comes relying on such birds
As chatter vainly, who would strain and twist
The purpose of the gods with idle words,
And deems their knowledge light, he shall have missed
His road--whilst I among my other hoards
His gifts deposit...."
The wildest fairy-story thus leads easily to a little drama not
without its human charm and moral inspiration; while the legend is
attached to the cultus, and the cultus is intertwined with the practice
and sanctions of daily life. Even here, in its most playful mood,
therefore, this mythological poetry retains the spirit and function
of religion. Even here sacerdotal interests are not forgotten. Delphi
shall be safe; the lyre is Apollo's by right although it be Hermes' by
invention. A certain amiable harmony is after all drawn from the riot
of foolishness. All is sweet and unmalicious and lovable enough, and
the patronage of both the friendly gods, the enthusiast and the wag,
may be invoked with confidence and benefit.
Not less remarkable, although for other reasons, is the hymn to
Aphrodite. Here we find a more human fable and a more serious tone:
while the poem, if we choose to consider it in its allegorical meaning,
touches one of the deepest convictions of the Greek conscience. All the
gods save three--Athena, Artemis, and Hestia,--are subject to the power
of Aphrodite, Zeus at least as much as the rest. In revenge for this
subjection, Zeus determines to make Aphrodite feel the passion which
she boasts to be able to inspire in others.
The fair shepherd Anchises feeds his flocks upon Mount Ida, and with
him Aphrodite is made to fall in love. She presents herself to him in a
human disguise, and meets his advances with a long account of her birth
and parentage, and begs him to take her back to her parents, and having
asked for her hand and fulfilled all customary formalities, to lead her
away as his lawful wife. The passion which at the same time, however,
she is careful to breathe into him cannot brook so long a delay: and
she yields to his impatience. When about to leave him she awakes him
from his sleep, turns upon him the full glance of her divinity, and
reveals her name and his destiny. She will bear him a son, Æneas, who
will be one of the greatest princes and heroes of Troy; but he himself
will be stricken with feebleness and a premature old age, in punishment
for the involuntary sacrilege which he has committed.
The description of the disguised goddess, with its Homeric pomp and
elaborate propriety, is a noble and masterly one, underlined, as
it were, with a certain satirical or dramatic intention; we have
the directness of a Nausicaa, with a more luxurious and passionate
beauty. The revelation of the goddess is wonderfully made, with that
parallel movement of natural causes and divine workings which is so
often to be admired in Homer. The divinity of the visitant appears
only at the moment of her flight, when she becomes a consecration and
an unattainable memory. The sight of deity leaves the eyes dull, like
those of the Platonic prisoners returning from the sunlight of truth
into the den of appearance. Nay more, a communion with the divinity,
closer than is consonant with human frailty, leaves the seer impotent
and a burden upon the world; but this personal tragedy is not without
its noble fruits to posterity. Anchises suffers, but his son Æneas, the
issue of that divine though punishable union, lives to bear, not only
the aged Anchises himself, but the gods of Ilium, out of the ruins of
Troy.
Such analogies carry us, no doubt, far beyond the intention of the hymn
or of the exoteric religion to which it ministers. The story-teller's
delight in his story is the obvious motive of such compositions, even
when they reflect indirectly the awe in which the divine impersonations
of natural forces were held by the popular religion. All that we may
fairly imagine to have been in the mind of the pious singer is the
sense that something divine comes down among us in the crises of our
existence, and that this visitation is fraught with immense although
vague possibilities of both good and evil. The gods sometimes appear,
and when they do they bring us a foretaste of that sublime victory of
mind over matter which we may never gain in experience but which may
constantly be gained in thought. When natural phenomena are conceived
as the manifestation of divine life, human life itself, by sympathy
with that ideal projection of itself, enlarges its customary bounds,
until it seems capable of becoming the life of the universe. A god
is a conceived victory of mind over Nature. A visible god is the
consciousness of such a victory momentarily attained. The vision soon
vanishes, the sense of omnipotence is soon dispelled by recurring
conflicts with hostile forces; but the momentary illusion of that
realized good has left us with the perennial knowledge of good as an
ideal. Therein lies the essence and the function of religion.
That such a function was fulfilled by this Homeric legend, with all its
love of myth and lust of visible beauty, is witnessed by another short
hymn, which we may quote almost entire by way of conclusion. It is
addressed to Castor and Polydeuces, patrons of sailors no less than of
horsemen and boxers. It is impossible to read it without feeling that
the poet, however entangled he may have been in superstition and fable,
grasped that high essence of religion which makes religion rational. He
felt the power of contemplation to master the contradictions of life
and to overspread experience, sublime but impalpable, like a rainbow
over retreating storms:--
"Ye wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove
... Mild Pollux, void of blame,
And steed-subduing Castor, heirs of fame.
These are the powers who earth-born mortals save
And ships, whose flight is swift along the wave.
When wintry tempests o'er the savage sea
Are raging, and the sailors tremblingly
Call on the Twins of Jove with prayer and vow,
Gathered in fear upon the lofty prow,
And sacrifice with snow-white lambs--the wind
And the huge billow bursting close behind
Even then beneath the weltering waters bear
The staggering ship,--they suddenly appear,
On yellow wings rushing athwart the sky,
And lull the blasts in mute tranquillity
And strew the waves on the white ocean's bed,
Fair omen of the voyage; from toil and dread
The sailors rest, rejoicing in the sight,
And plough the quiet sea in safe delight."[3]
[1] Chapman's version.
[2] Chapman's version.
[3] Shelley's translation.
III
THE DISSOLUTION OF PAGANISM