Chapter I: Legends Respecting the Gods (1)

The mythical world of the Greeks opens with the gods, anterior as well as superior to man: it gradually descends, first to heroes, and next to the human race. Along with the gods are found various monstrous natures, ultra-human and extra-human, who cannot with propriety be called gods, but who partake with gods and men in the attributes of free-will, conscious agency, and susceptibility of pleasure and pain,—such as the Harpies, the Gorgons, the Grææ, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, Echidna, Sphinx, Chimæra, Chrysaor, Pegasus, the Cyclôpes, the Centaurs, etc. The first acts of what may be termed the great mythical cycle describe the proceedings of these gigantic agents—the crash and collision of certain terrific and overboiling forces, which are ultimately reduced to obedience, or chained up, or extinguished, under the more orderly government of Zeus, who supplants his less capable predecessors, and acquires precedence and supremacy over gods and men—subject, however to certain social restraints from the chief gods and goddesses around him, as well as to the custom of occasionally convoking and consulting the divine agora.

I recount these events briefly, but literally, treating them simply as mythes springing from the same creative imagination, addressing themselves to analogous tastes and feelings, and depending upon the same authority, as the legends of Thebes and Troy. It is the inspired voice of the Muse which reveals and authenticates both, and from which Homer and Hesiod alike derive their knowledge—the one, of the heroic, the other, of the divine, foretime. I maintain, moreover, fully, the character of these great divine agents as Persons, which is the light in which they presented themselves to the Homeric or Hesiodic audience. Uranos, Nyx, Hypnos and Oneiros (Heaven, Night, Sleep and Dream), are Persons, just as much as Zeus and Apollo. To resolve them into mere allegories, is unsafe and unprofitable: we then depart from the point of view of the original hearers, without acquiring any consistent or philosophical point of view of our own.[2] For although some of the attributes and actions ascribed to these persons are often explicable by allegory the whole series and system of them never are so: the theorist who adopts this course of explanation finds that, after one or two simple and obvious steps, the path is no longer open, and he is forced to clear a way for himself by gratuitous refinements and conjectures. The allegorical persons and attributes are always found mingled with other persons and attributes not allegorical; but the two classes cannot be severed without breaking up the whole march of the mythical events, nor can any explanation which drives us to such a necessity be considered as admissible. To suppose indeed that these legends could be all traced by means of allegory into a coherent body of physical doctrine, would be inconsistent with all reasonable presumptions respecting the age or society in which they arose. Where the allegorical mark is clearly set upon any particular character, or attribute, or event, to that extent we may recognize it; but we can rarely venture to divine further, still less to alter the legends themselves on the faith of any such surmises. The theogony of the Greeks contains some cosmogonic ideas; but it cannot be considered as a system of cosmogony, or translated into a string of elementary, planetary, or physical changes.

[2] It is sufficient, here, to state this position briefly: more
will be said respecting the allegorizing interpretation in a
future chapter.

In the order of legendary chronology, Zeus comes after Kronos and Uranos; but in the order of Grecian conception, Zeus is the prominent person, and Kronos and Uranos are inferior and introductory precursors, set up in order to be overthrown and to serve as mementos of the prowess of their conqueror. To Homer and Hesiod, as well as to the Greeks universally, Zeus is the great and predominant god, “the father of gods and men,” whose power none of the other gods can hope to resist, or even deliberately think of questioning. All the other gods have their specific potency and peculiar sphere of action and duty, with which Zeus does not usually interfere; but it is he who maintains the lineaments of a providential superintendence, as well over the phænomena of Olympus as over those of earth. Zeus and his brothers Poseidôn and Hadês have made a division of power: he has reserved the æther and the atmosphere to himself—Poseidôn has obtained the sea—and Hadês the under-world or infernal regions; while earth, and the events which pass upon earth, are common to all of them, together with free access to Olympus.[3]

[3] See Iliad, viii. 405, 463; xv. 20, 130, 185. Hesiod, Theog.
885.

This unquestioned supremacy is the general representation of
Zeus: at the same time the conspiracy of Hêrê, Poseidôn, and
Athênê against him, suppressed by the unexpected apparition of
Briareus as his ally, is among the exceptions. (Iliad, i. 400.)
Zeus is at one time vanquished by Titan, but rescued by Hermês.
(Apollodôr. i. 6, 3).

Zeus, then, with his brethren and colleagues, constitute the present gods, whom Homer and Hesiod recognize as in full dignity and efficiency. The inmates of this divine world are conceived upon the model, but not upon the scale, of the human. They are actuated by the full play and variety of those appetites, sympathies, passions and affections, which divide the soul of man; invested with a far larger and indeterminate measure of power, and an exemption as well from death as (with some rare exceptions) from suffering and infirmity. The rich and diverse types thus conceived, full of energetic movement and contrast, each in his own province, and soaring confessedly above the limits of experience, were of all themes the most suitable for adventure and narrative, and operated with irresistible force upon the Grecian fancy. All nature was then conceived as moving and working through a number of personal agents, amongst whom the gods of Olympus were the most conspicuous; the reverential belief in Zeus and Apollo being only one branch of this omnipresent personifying faith. The attributes of all these agents had a tendency to expand themselves into illustrative legends—especially those of the gods, who were constantly invoked in the public worship. Out of this same mental source sprang both the divine and heroic mythes—the former being often the more extravagant and abnormous in their incidents, in proportion as the general type of the gods was more vast and awful than that of the heroes.

As the gods have houses and wives like men, so the present dynasty of gods must have a past to repose upon;[4] and the curious and imaginative Greek, whenever he does not find a recorded past ready to his hand, is uneasy until he has created one. Thus the Hesiodic theogony explains, with a certain degree of system and coherence, first the antecedent circumstances under which Zeus acquired the divine empire, next the number of his colleagues and descendants.

[4] Arist. Polit. i. 1. ὥσπερ δὲ καὶ τὰ εἴδη ἑαυτοῖς ἀφομοιοῦσιν
ἄνθρωποι, οὕτως καὶ τοὺς βίους, τῶν θεῶν.

First in order of time (we are told by Hesiod) came Chaos; next Gæa, the broad, firm, and flat Earth, with deep and dark Tartarus at her base. Erôs (Love), the subduer of gods as well as men, came immediately afterwards.[5]

[5] Hesiod, Theog. 116. Apollodôrus begins with Uranos and Gæa
(i. 1.); he does not recognize Erôs, Nyx, or Erebos.

From Chaos sprung Erebos and Nyx; from these latter Æthêr and Hêmera. Gæa also gave birth to Uranos, equal in breadth to herself, in order to serve both as an overarching vault to her, and as a residence for the immortal gods; she further produced the mountains, habitations of the divine nymphs, and Pontus, the barren and billowy sea.

Then Gæa intermarried with Uranos, and from this union came a numerous offspring—twelve Titans and Titanides, three Cyclôpes, and three Hekatoncheires or beings with a hundred hands each. The Titans were Oceanus, Kœos, Krios, Hyperiôn, Iapetos, and Kronos: the Titanides, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnêmosynê, Phœbê, and Têthys. The Cyclôpes were Brontês, Steropês, and Argês,—formidable persons, equally distinguished for strength and for manual craft, so that they made the thunder which afterwards formed the irresistible artillery of Zeus.[6] The Hekatoncheires were Kottos, Briareus, and Gygês, of prodigious bodily force.

[6] Hesiod, Theog. 140, 156. Apollod. _ut sup._

Uranos contemplated this powerful brood with fear and horror; as fast as any of them were born, he concealed them in cavities of the earth, and would not permit them to come out. Gæa could find no room for them, and groaned under the pressure: she produced iron, made a sickle, and implored her sons to avenge both her and themselves against the oppressive treatment of their father. But none of them, except Kronos, had courage to undertake the deed: he, the youngest and the most daring, was armed with the sickle and placed in suitable ambush by the contrivance of Gæa. Presently night arrived, and Uranos descended to the embraces of Gæa: Kronos then emerged from his concealment, cut off the genitals of his father, and cast the bleeding member behind him far away into the sea.[7] Much of the blood was spilt upon the earth, and Gæa in consequence gave birth to the irresistible Erinnys, the vast and muscular Gigantes, and the Melian nymphs. Out of the genitals themselves, as they swam and foamed upon the sea, emerged the goddess Aphroditê, deriving her name from the foam out of which she had sprung. She first landed at Kythêra, and then went to Cyprus: the island felt her benign influence, and the green herb started up under her soft and delicate tread. Erôs immediately joined her, and partook with her the function of suggesting and directing the amorous impulses both of gods and men.[8]

[7] Hesiod, Theog. 160, 182. Apollod. i. 1, 4.

[8] Hesiod, Theog. 192. This legend respecting the birth of
Aphroditê seems to have been derived partly from her name (ἀφρὸς,
_foam_), partly from the surname Urania, Ἀφροδίτη Οὐρανία, under
which she was so very extensively worshipped, especially both in
Cyprus and Cythêra, seemingly originated in both islands by the
Phœnicians. Herodot. i. 105. Compare the instructive section in
Boeckh’s Metrologie, c. iv. § 4.

Uranos being thus dethroned and disabled, Kronos and the Titans acquired their liberty and became predominant: the Cyclôpes and the Hekatoncheires had been cast by Uranos into Tartarus, and were still allowed to remain there.

Each of the Titans had a numerous offspring: Oceanus, especially, marrying his sister Têthys, begat three thousand daughters, the Oceanic nymphs, and as many sons: the rivers and springs passed for his offspring. Hyperiôn and his sister Theia had for their children Hêlios, Selênê, and Eôs; Kœos with Phœbê begat Lêtô and Asteria; the children of Krios were Astræos, Pallas, and Persês,—from Astræos and Eôs sprang the winds Zephyrus, Boreas, and Notus. Iapetos, marrying the Oceanic nymph Clymenê, counted as his progeny the celebrated Promêtheus, Epimêtheus, Menœtius, and Atlas. But the offspring of Kronos were the most powerful and transcendent of all. He married his sister Rhea, and had by her three daughters—Hestia, Dêmêtêr, and Hêrê—and three sons, Hadês, Poseidôn, and Zeus, the latter at once the youngest and the greatest.

But Kronos foreboded to himself destruction from one of his own children, and accordingly, as soon as any of them were born, he immediately swallowed them and retained them in his own belly. In this manner had the first five been treated, and Rhea was on the point of being delivered of Zeus. Grieved and indignant at the loss of her children, she applied for counsel to her father and mother, Uranos and Gæa, who aided her to conceal the birth of Zeus. They conveyed her by night to Lyktus in Crête, hid the new-born child in a woody cavern on Mount Ida, and gave to Kronos, in place of it, a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he greedily swallowed, believing it to be his child. Thus was the safety of Zeus ensured.[9] As he grew up his vast powers fully developed themselves: at the suggestion of Gæa, he induced Kronos by stratagem to vomit up, first the stone which had been given to him,—next, the five children whom he had previously devoured. Hestia, Dêmêtêr, Hêrê, Poseidôn and Hadês, were thus allowed to grow up along with Zeus; and the stone to which the latter owed his preservation was placed near the temple of Delphi, where it ever afterwards stood, as a conspicuous and venerable memorial to the religious Greek.[10]

[9] Hesiod, Theog. 452, 487. Apollod. i. 1, 6.

[10] Hesiod, Theog. 498.—

Τὸν μὲν Ζεὺς στήριξε κατὰ χθονὸς εὐρυοδείης
Πυθοῖ ἐν ἠγαθέῃ, γυάλοις ὑπὸ Παρνησοῖο,
Σῆμ᾽ ἔμεν ἐξοπίσω, θαῦμα θνητοῖσι βροτοῖσι.

We have not yet exhausted the catalogue of beings generated during this early period, anterior to the birth of Zeus. Nyx, alone and without any partner, gave birth to a numerous progeny: Thanatos, Hypnos and Oneiros; Mômus and Oïzys (Grief); Klôthô, Lachesis and Atropos, the three Fates; the retributive and equalizing Nemesis; Apatê and Philotês (Deceit and amorous Propensity), Gêras (Old Age) and Eris (Contention). From Eris proceeded an abundant offspring, all mischievous and maleficent: Ponos (Suffering), Lêthê, Limos (Famine), Phonos and Machê (Slaughter and Battle), Dysnomia and Atê (Lawlessness and reckless Impulse), and Horkos, the ever watchful sanctioner of oaths, as well as the inexorable punisher of voluntary perjury.[11]

[11] Hesiod, Theog. 212-232.

Gæa, too, intermarrying with Pontus, gave birth to Nereus, the just and righteous old man of the sea; to Thaumas, Phorkys and Kêtô. From Nereus, and Doris daughter of Oceanus, proceeded the fifty Nereids or Sea-nymphs. Thaumus also married Elektra daughter of Oceanus, and had by her Iris and the two Harpies, Allô and Okypetê,—winged and swift as the winds. From Phorkys and Kêtô sprung the Dragon of the Hesperides, and the monstrous Grææ and Gorgons: the blood of Medusa, one of the Gorgons, when killed by Perseus, produced Chrysaor and the horse Pegasus: Chrysaor and Kallirrhoê gave birth to Geryôn as well as to Echidna,—a creature half-nymph and half-serpent, unlike both to gods and to men. Other monsters arose from the union of Echidna with Typhaôn,—Orthros, the two-headed dog of Geryôn; Cerberus, the dog of Hadês, with fifty heads, and the Lernæan Hydra. From the latter proceeded the Chimæra, the Sphinx of Thêbes, and the Nemean lion.[12]

[12] Hesiod, Theog. 240-320. Apollodôr. i. 2, 6, 7.

A powerful and important progeny, also, was that of Styx, daughter of Oceanus, by Pallas; she had Zêlos and Nikê (Imperiousness and Victory), and Kratos and Bia (Strength and Force). The hearty and early coöperation of Styx and her four sons with Zeus was one of the main causes which enabled him to achieve his victory over the Titans.

Zeus had grown up not less distinguished for mental capacity than for bodily force. He and his brothers now determined to wrest the power from the hands of Kronos and the Titans, and a long and desperate struggle commenced, in which all the gods and all the goddesses took part. Zeus convoked them to Olympus, and promised to all who would aid him against Kronos, that their functions and privileges should remain undisturbed. The first who responded to the call, came with her four sons, and embraced his cause, was Styx. Zeus took them all four as his constant attendants, and conferred upon Styx the majestic distinction of being the Horkos, or oath-sanctioner of the Gods,—what Horkos was to men, Styx was to the Gods.[13]

[13] Hesiod, Theog. 385-403.

Still further to strengthen himself, Zeus released the other Uranids who had been imprisoned in Tartarus by their father,—the Cyclôpes and the Centimanes,—and prevailed upon them to take part with him against the Titans. The former supplied him with thunder and lightning, and the latter brought into the fight their boundless muscular strength.[14] Ten full years did the combat continue; Zeus and the Kronids occupying Olympus, and the Titans being established on the more southerly mountain-chain of Othrys. All nature was convulsed, and the distant Oceanus, though he took no part in the struggle, felt the boiling, the noise, and the shock, not less than Gæa and Pontus. The thunder of Zeus, combined with the crags and mountains torn up and hurled by the Centimanes, at length prevailed, and the Titans were defeated and thrust down into Tartarus. Iapetos, Kronos, and the remaining Titans (Oceanus excepted) were imprisoned, perpetually and irrevocably, in that subterranean dungeon, a wall of brass being built around them by Poseidôn, and the three Centimanes being planted as guards. Of the two sons of Iapetos, Menœtius was made to share this prison, while Atlas was condemned to stand for ever at the extreme west, and to bear upon his shoulders the solid vault of heaven.[15]

[14] Hesiod, Theog. 140, 624, 657. Apollodôr. i. 2, 4.

[15] The battle with the Titans, Hesiod, Theog. 627-735. Hesiod
mentions nothing about the Gigantes and the Gigantomachia:
Apollodôrus, on the other hand, gives this latter in some detail,
but despatches the Titans in a few words (i. 2, 4; i. 6, 1). The
Gigantes seem to be only a second edition of the Titans,—a sort
of duplication to which the legendary poets were often inclined.

Thus were the Titans subdued, and the Kronids with Zeus at their head placed in possession of power. They were not, however, yet quite secure; for Gæa, intermarrying with Tartarus, gave birth to a new and still more formidable monster called Typhôeus, of such tremendous properties and promise, that, had he been allowed to grow into full development, nothing could have prevented him from vanquishing all rivals and becoming supreme. But Zeus foresaw the danger, smote him at once with a thunderbolt from Olympus, and burnt him up: he was cast along with the rest into Tartarus, and no further enemy remained to question the sovereignty of the Kronids.[16]

[16] Hesiod, Theog. 820-869. Apollod. i. 6, 3. He makes Typhôn
very nearly victorious over Zeus. Typhôeus, according to Hesiod,
is father of the irregular, violent, and mischievous winds:
Notus, Boreas, Argestês and Zephyrus, are of divine origin (870).

With Zeus begins a new dynasty and a different order of beings. Zeus, Poseidôn, and Hadês agree upon the distribution before noticed, of functions and localities: Zeus retaining the Æthêr and the atmosphere, together with the general presiding function; Poseidôn obtaining the sea, and administering subterranean forces generally; and Hadês ruling the under-world or region in which the half-animated shadows of departed men reside.

It has been already stated, that in Zeus, his brothers and his sisters, and his and their divine progeny, we find the _present_ Gods; that is, those, for the most part, whom the Homeric and Hesiodic Greeks recognized and worshipped. The wives of Zeus were numerous as well as his offspring. First he married Mêtis, the wisest and most sagacious of the goddesses; but Gæa and Uranos forewarned him that if he permitted himself to have children by her, they would be stronger than himself and dethrone him. Accordingly when Mêtis was on the point of being delivered of Athênê, he swallowed her up, and her wisdom and sagacity thus became permanently identified with his own being.[17] His head was subsequently cut open, in order to make way for the exit and birth of the goddess Athênê.[18] By Themis, Zeus begat the Hôræ, by Eurynomê, the three Charities or Graces; by Mnêmosynê, the Muses; by Lêtô (Latona), Apollo and Artemis; and by Dêmêtêr, Persephonê. Last of all he took for his wife Hêrê, who maintained permanently the dignity of queen of the Gods; by her he had Hêbê, Arês, and Eileithyia. Hermês also was born to him by Maia, the daughter of Atlas: Hêphæstos was born to Hêrê, according to some accounts, by Zeus; according to others, by her own unaided generative force.[19] He was born lame, and Hêrê was ashamed of him: she wished to secrete him away, but he made his escape into the sea, and found shelter under the maternal care of the Nereids Thetis and Eurynome.[20] Our enumeration of the divine race, under the presidency of Zeus, will thus give us,[21]—

[17] Hesiod, Theog. 885-900.

[18] Apollod. i. 3, 6.

[19] Hesiod, Theog. 900-944.

[20] Homer, Iliad, xviii. 397.

[21] See Burckhardt, Homer, und Hesiod. Mythologie, sect. 102.
(Leipz. 1844).

1. The twelve great gods and goddesses of Olympus,—Zeus, Poseidôn, Apollo, Arês, Hêphæstos, Hermês, Hêrê, Athênê, Artemis, Aphroditê, Hestia, Dêmêtêr.

2. An indefinite number of other deities, not included among the Olympic, seemingly because the number _twelve_ was complete without them, but some of them not inferior in power and dignity to many of the twelve:—Hadês, Hêlios, Hekatê, Dionysos, Lêtô, Diônê, Persephonê, Selênê, Themis, Eôs, Harmonia, the Charities, the Muses, the Eileithyiæ, the Mœræ, the Oceanids and the Nereids, Proteus, Eidothea, the Nymphs, Leukothea, Phorkys, Æolus, Nemesis, etc.

3. Deities who perform special services to the greater gods:—Iris, Hêbê, the Horæ, etc.

4. Deities whose personality is more faintly and unsteadily conceived:—Atê, the Litæ, Eris, Thanatos, Hypnos, Kratos, Bia, Ossa, etc.[22] The same name is here employed sometimes to designate the person, sometimes the attribute or event not personified,—an unconscious transition of ideas, which, when consciously performed, is called Allegory.

[22] Λιμὸς—_Hunger_—is a person, in Hesiod, Opp. Di. 299.

5. Monsters, offspring of the Gods:—the Harpies, the Gorgons, the Grææ, Pegasus, Chrysaor, Echidna, Chimæra, the Dragon of the Hesperides, Cerberus, Orthros, Geryôn, the Lernæan Hydra, the Nemean lion, Scylla and Charybdis, the Centaurs, the Sphinx, Xanthos and Balios the immortal horses, etc.

From the gods we slide down insensibly, first to heroes, and then to men; but before we proceed to this new mixture, it is necessary to say a few words on the theogony generally. I have given it briefly as it stands in the Hesiodic Theogonia, because that poem—in spite of great incoherence and confusion, arising seemingly from diversity of authorship as well as diversity of age—presents an ancient and genuine attempt to cast the divine foretime into a systematic sequence. Homer and Hesiod were the grand authorities in the pagan world respecting theogony; but in the Iliad and Odyssey nothing is found except passing allusions and implications, and even in the Hymns (which were commonly believed in antiquity to be the productions of the same author as the Iliad and the Odyssey) there are only isolated, unconnected narratives. Accordingly men habitually took their information respecting their theogonic antiquities from the Hesiodic poem, where it was ready laid out before them; and the legends consecrated in that work acquired both an extent of circulation and a firm hold on the national faith, such as independent legends could seldom or never rival. Moreover the scrupulous and sceptical Pagans, as well as the open assailants of Paganism in later times, derived their subjects of attack from the same source; so that it has been absolutely necessary to recount in their naked simplicity the Hesiodic stories, in order to know what it was that Plato deprecated and Xenophanês denounced. The strange proceedings ascribed to Uranos, Kronos and Zeus, have been more frequently alluded to, in the way of ridicule or condemnation, than any other portion of the mythical world.

But though the Hesiodic theogony passed as orthodox among the later Pagans,[23] because it stood before them as the only system anciently set forth and easily accessible, it was evidently not the only system received at the date of the poem itself. Homer knows nothing of Uranos, in the sense of an arch-God anterior to Kronos. Uranos and Gæa, like Oceanus, Têthys and Nyx, are with him great and venerable Gods, but neither the one nor the other present the character of predecessors of Kronos and Zeus.[24] The Cyclôpes, whom Hesiod ranks as sons of Uranos and fabricators of thunder, are in Homer neither one nor the other; they are not noticed in the Iliad at all, and in the Odyssey they are gross gigantic shepherds and cannibals, having nothing in common with the Hesiodic Cyclops except the one round central eye.[25] Of the three Centimanes enumerated by Hesiod, Briareus only is mentioned in Homer, and to all appearance, not as the son of Uranos, but as the son of Poseidôn; not as aiding Zeus in his combat against the Titans, but as rescuing him at a critical moment from a conspiracy formed against him by Hêrê, Poseidôn and Athênê.[26] Not only is the Hesiodic Uranos (with the Uranids) omitted in Homer, but the relations between Zeus and Kronos are also presented in a very different light. No mention is made of Kronos swallowing his young children: on the contrary, Zeus is the eldest of the three brothers instead of the youngest, and the children of Kronos live with him and Rhea: there the stolen intercourse between Zeus and Hêrê first takes place without the knowledge of their parents.[27] When Zeus puts Kronos down into Tartarus, Rhea consigns her daughter Hêrê to the care of Oceanus: no notice do we find of any terrific battle with the Titans as accompanying that event. Kronos, Iapetos, and the remaining Titans are down in Tartarus, in the lowest depths under the earth, far removed from the genial rays of Hêlios; but they are still powerful and venerable, and Hypnos makes Hêrê swear an oath in their name, as the most inviolable that he can think of.[28]

[23] See Göttling, Præfat. ad Hesiod. p. 23.

[24] Iliad, xiv. 249; xix. 259. Odyss. v. 184. Oceanus and Têthys
seem to be presented in the Iliad as the primitive Father and
Mother of the Gods:—

Ὠκεανόν τε θεῶν γένεσιν, καὶ μητέρα Τηθύν. (xiv. 201).

[25] Odyss. ix. 87.

[26] Iliad, i. 401.

[27] Iliad, xiv. 203-295; xv. 204.

[28] Iliad, viii. 482; xiv. 274-279. In the Hesiodic Opp. et Di.,
Kronos is represented as ruling in the Islands of the Blest in
the neighborhood of Oceanus (v. 168).

In Homer, then, we find nothing beyond the simple fact that Zeus thrust his father Kronos together with the remaining Titans into Tartarus; an event to which he affords us a tolerable parallel in certain occurrences even under the presidency of Zeus himself. For the other gods make more than one rebellious attempt against Zeus, and are only put down, partly by his unparalleled strength, partly by the presence of his ally the Centimane Briareus. Kronos, like Laërtes or Pêleus, has become old, and has been supplanted by a force vastly superior to his own. The Homeric epic treats Zeus as present, and, like all the interesting heroic characters, a father must be assigned to him: that father has once been the chief of the Titans, but has been superseded and put down into Tartarus along with the latter, so soon as Zeus and the superior breed of the Olympic gods acquired their full development.

That antithesis between Zeus and Kronos—between the Olympic gods and the Titans—which Homer has thus briefly brought to view, Hesiod has amplified into a theogony, with many things new, and some things contradictory to his predecessor; while Eumêlus or Arktinus in the poem called Titanomachia (now lost) also adopted it as their special subject.[29] As Stasinus, Arktinus, Leschês, and others, enlarged the Legend of Troy by composing poems relating to a supposed time anterior to the commencement, or subsequent to the termination of the Iliad,—as other poets recounted adventures of Odysseus subsequent to his landing in Ithaka,—so Hesiod enlarged and systematized, at the same time that he corrupted, the skeleton theogony which we find briefly indicated in Homer. There is violence and rudeness in the Homeric gods, but the great genius of Grecian epic is no way accountable for the stories of Uranos and Kronos,—the standing reproach against Pagan legendary narrative.

[29] See the few fragments of the Titanomachia, in Düntzer, Epic.
Græc. Fragm. p. 2; and Hyne, ad Apollodôr. I. 2. Perhaps there
was more than one poem on the subject, though it seems that
Athenæus had only read one (viii. p. 277).

In the Titanomachia, the generations anterior to Zeus were still
further lengthened by making Uranos the son of Æthêr (Fr. 4.
Düntzer). Ægæon was also represented as son of Pontus and Gæa,
and as having fought in the ranks of the Titans; in the Iliad he
(the same who is called Briareus) is the fast ally of Zeus.

A _Titanographia_ was ascribed to Musæus (Schol. Apollôn. Rhod.
iii. 1178; compare Lactant. de Fals. Rel. i. 21).

How far these stories are the invention of Hesiod himself is impossible to determine.[30] They bring us down to a cast of fancy more coarse and indelicate than the Homeric, and more nearly resembling some of the Holy Chapters (ἱεροὶ λόγοι) of the more recent mysteries, such (for example) as the tale of Dionysos Zagreus. There is evidence in the Theogony itself that the author was acquainted with local legends current both at Krête and at Delphi; for he mentions both the mountain-cave in Krête wherein the new-born Zeus was hidden, and the stone near the Delphian temple—the identical stone which Kronos had swallowed—“placed by Zeus himself as a sign and wonder to mortal men.” Both these two monuments, which the poet expressly refers to, and had probably seen, imply a whole train of accessory and explanatory local legends—current probably among the priests of Krête and Delphi, between which places, in ancient times, there was an intimate religious connection. And we may trace further in the poem,—that which would be the natural feeling of Krêtan worshippers of Zeus,—an effort to make out that Zeus was justified in his aggression on Kronos, by the conduct of Kronos himself both towards his father and towards his children: the treatment of Kronos by Zeus appears in Hesiod as the retribution foretold and threatened by the mutilated Uranos against the son who had outraged him. In fact the relations of Uranos and Gæa are in almost all their particulars a mere copy and duplication of those between Kronos and Rhea, differing only in the mode whereby the final catastrophe is brought about. Now castration was a practice thoroughly abhorrent both to the feelings and to the customs of Greece;[31] but it was seen with melancholy frequency in the domestic life as well as in the religious worship of Phrygia and other parts of Asia, and it even became the special qualification of a priest of the Great Mother Cybelê,[32] as well as of the Ephesian Artemis. The employment of the sickle ascribed to Kronos seems to be the product of an imagination familiar with the Asiatic worship and legends, which were connected with and partially resembled the Krêtan.[33] And this deduction becomes the more probable when we connect it with the first genesis of iron, which Hesiod mentions to have been produced for the express purpose of fabricating the fatal sickle; for metallurgy finds a place in the early legends both of the Trojan and of the Krêtan Ida, and the three Idæan Dactyls, the legendary inventors of it, are assigned sometimes to one and sometimes to the other.[34]

[30] That the Hesiodic Theogony is referable to an age
considerably later than the Homeric poems, appears now to be the
generally admitted opinion; and the reasons for believing so are,
in my opinion, satisfactory. Whether the Theogony is composed by
the same author as the Works and Days is a disputed point. The
Bœotian literati in the days of Pausanias decidedly denied the
identity, and ascribed to their Hesiod only the Works and Days:
Pausanias himself concurs with them (ix. 31. 4; ix. 35. 1), and
Völcker (Mithologie des Japetisch. Geschlechts, p. 14) maintains
the same opinion, as well as Göttling (Præf. ad Hesiod. xxi.): K.
O. Müller (History of Grecian Literature, ch. 8. § 4) thinks that
there is not sufficient evidence to form a decisive opinion.

Under the name of Hesiod (in that vague language which is usual
in antiquity respecting authorship, but which modern critics
have not much mended by speaking of the Hesiodic school, sect,
or family) passed many different poems, belonging to three
classes quite distinct from each other, but all disparate from
the Homeric epic:—1. The poems of legend cast into historical and
genealogical series, such as the Eoiai, the Catalogue of Women,
etc. 2. The poems of a didactic or ethical tendency, such as
the Works and Days, the Precepts of Cheirôn, the Art of Augural
Prophecy, etc. 3. Separate and short mythical compositions,
such as the Shield of Hêraklês, the Marriage of Keyx (which,
however, was of disputed authenticity, Athenæ. ii. p. 49), the
Epithalamium of Pêleus and Thetis, etc. (See Marktscheffel,
Præfat. ad Fragment. Hesiod. p. 89).

The Theogony belongs chiefly to the first of these classes, but
it has also a dash of the second in the legend of Promêtheus,
etc.: moreover in the portion which respects Hekatê, it has both
a mystic character and a distinct bearing upon present life and
customs, which we may also trace in the allusions to Krête and
Delphi. There seems reason to place it in the same age with the
Works and Days, perhaps in the half century preceding 700 B.
C., and little, if at all, anterior to Archilochus. The poem
is evidently conceived upon one scheme, yet the parts are so
disorderly and incoherent, that it is difficult to say how much
is interpolation. Hermann has well dissected the exordium; see
the preface to Gaisford’s Hesiod (Poetæ Minor. p. 63).

K. O. Müller tells us (_ut sup._ p. 90), “The Titans, according
to the notions of Hesiod, represent a system of things in which
elementary beings, natural powers, and notions of order and
regularity are united to form a whole. The Cyclôpes denote the
transient disturbances of this order of nature by storms, and the
Hekatoncheires, or hundred-handed Giants, signify the fearful
power of the greater revolutions of nature.” The poem affords
little presumption that any such ideas were present to the mind
of its author, as, I think, will be seen if we read 140-155,
630-745.

The Titans, the Cyclôpes, and the Hekatoncheires, can no more
be construed into physical phænomena than Chrysaor, Pegasus,
Echidna, the Grææ, or the Gorgons. Zeus, like Hêraklês, or Jasôn,
or Perseus, if his adventures are to be described, must have
enemies, worthy of himself and his vast type, and whom it is
some credit for him to overthrow. Those who contend with him or
assist him must be conceived on a scale fit to be drawn on the
same imposing canvas: the dwarfish proportions of man will not
satisfy the sentiment of the poet or his audience respecting the
grandeur and glory of the gods. To obtain creations of adequate
sublimity for such an object, the poet may occasionally borrow
analogies from the striking accidents of physical nature, and
when such an allusion manifests itself clearly, the critic does
well to point it out. But it seems to me a mistake to treat
these approximations to physical phænomena as forming the _main
scheme_ of the poet,—to look for them everywhere, and to presume
them where there is little or no indication.

[31] The strongest evidences of this feeling are exhibited in
Herodotus, iii. 48; viii. 105. See an example of this mutilation
inflicted upon a youth named Adamas by the Thracian king Kotys,
in Aristot. Polit. v. 8, 12, and the tale about the Corinthian
Periander, Herod. iii. 48.

It is an instance of the habit, so frequent among the Attic
tragedians, of ascribing Asiatic or Phrygian manners to the
Trojans, when Sophoclês in his lost play Troilus (ap. Jul.
Poll. x. 165) introduced one of the characters of his drama as
having been castrated by order of Hecuba, Σκαλμῇ γὰρ ὄρχεις
βασιλὶς ἐκτέμνουσ᾽ ἐμούς,—probably the Παιδαγωγὸς, or guardian
and companion of the youthful Troilus. See Welcker, Griechisch.
Tragöd. vol. i. p. 125.

[32] Herodot. viii. 105, εὐνοῦχοι. Lucian, De Deâ Syriâ, c. 50.
Strabo, xiv. pp. 640-641.

[33] Diodôr. v. 64. Strabo, x. p. 460. Hoeckh, in his learned
work Krêta (vol. i. books 1 and 2), has collected all the
information attainable respecting the early influences of Phrygia
and Asia Minor upon Krête: nothing seems ascertainable except the
general fact; all the particular evidences are lamentably vague.

The worship of the Diktæan Zeus seemed to have originally
belonged to the Eteokrêtes, who were not Hellens, and were more
akin to the Asiatic population than to the Hellenic. Strabo, x.
p. 478. Hoeckh, Krêta, vol. i. p. 139.

[34] Hesiod, Theogon. 161,

Αἶψα δὲ ποιήσασα γένος πολιοῦ ἀδάμαντος,
Τεῦξε μέγα δρέπανον, etc.

See the extract from the old poem _Phorônis_ ap. Schol. Apoll.
Rhod. 1129; and Strabo, x. p. 472.

As Hesiod had extended the Homeric series of gods by prefixing the dynasty of Uranos to that of Kronos, so the Orphic theogony lengthened it still further.[35] First came Chronos, or Time, as a person, after him Æthêr and Chaos, out of whom Chronos produced the vast mundane egg. Hence emerged in process of time the first-born god Phanês, or Mêtis, or Hêrikapæos, a person of double sex, who first generated the Kosmos, or mundane system, and who carried within him the seed of the gods. He gave birth to Nyx, by whom he begat Uranos and Gæa; as well as to Hêlios and Selêne.[36]

[35] See the scanty fragments of the Orphic theogony in Hermann’s
edition of the Orphica, pp. 448, 504, which it is difficult to
understand and piece together, even with the aid of Lobeck’s
elaborate examination (Aglaophamus, p. 470, etc.). The passages
are chiefly preserved by Proclus and the later Platonists,
who seem to entangle them almost inextricably with their own
philosophical ideas.

The first few lines of the Orphic Argonautica contain a brief
summary of the chief points of the theogony.

[36] See Lobeck, Aglaoph. p. 472-476, 490-500, Μῆτιν σπέρμα
φέροντα θεῶν κλυτὸν Ἠρικεπαῖον; again, Θῆλυς καὶ γενέτωρ κρατερὸς
θεὸς Ἠρικέπαιος. Compare Lactant. iv. 8, 4: Suidas, v. Φάνης:
Athenagoras, xx. 296: Diodôr. i. 27.

This egg figures, as might be expected, in the cosmogony set
forth by the Birds, Aristophan. Av. 695. Nyx gives birth to an
egg, out of which steps the golden Erôs, from Erôs and Chaos
spring the race of birds.

From Uranos and Gæa sprang the three Mœræ, or Fates, the three Centimanes and the three Cyclôpes: these latter were cast by Uranos into Tartarus, under the foreboding that they would rob him of his dominion. In revenge for this maltreatment of her sons, Gæa produced of herself the fourteen Titans, seven male and seven female: the former were Kœos, Krios, Phorkys, Kronos, Oceanus, Hyperiôn and Iapetos; the latter were Themis, Têthys, Mnêmosynê, Theia, Diônê, Phœbê and Rhea.[37] They received the name of Titans because they avenged upon Uranos the expulsion of their elder brothers. Six of the Titans, headed by Kronos the most powerful of them all, conspiring against Uranos, castrated and dethroned him: Oceanus alone stood aloof and took no part in the aggression. Kronos assumed the government and fixed his seat on Olympos; while Oceanus remained apart, master of his own divine stream.[38] The reign of Kronos was a period of tranquillity and happiness, as well as of extraordinary longevity and vigor.

[37] Lobeck, Ag. p. 504. Athenagor. xv. p. 64.

[38] Lobeck, Ag. p. 507. Plato, Timæus, p. 41. In the Διονύσου
τρόφοι of Æschylus, the old attendants of the god Dionysos were
said to have been cut up and boiled in a caldron, and rendered
again young, by Medeia. Pherecydês and Simonidês said that Jasôn
himself had been so dealt with. Schol. Aristoph. Equit. 1321.

Kronos and Rhea gave birth to Zeus and his brothers and sisters. The concealment and escape of the infant Zeus, and the swallowing of the stone by Kronos, are given in the Orphic Theogony substantially in the same manner as by Hesiod, only in a style less simple and more mysticized. Zeus is concealed in the cave of Nyx, the seat of Phanês himself, along with Eidê and Adrasteia, who nurse and preserve him, while the armed dance and sonorous instruments of the Kurêtes prevent his infant cries from reaching the ears of Kronos. When grown up, he lays a snare for his father, intoxicates him with honey, and having surprised him in the depth of sleep, enchains and castrates him.[39] Thus exalted to the supreme mastery, he swallowed and absorbed into himself Mêtis, or Phanês, with all the preëxisting elements of things, and then generated all things anew out of his own being and conformably to his own divine ideas.[40] So scanty are the remains of this system, that we find it difficult to trace individually the gods and goddesses sprung from Zeus beyond Apollo, Dionysos, and Persephonê,—the latter being confounded with Artemis and Hekatê.

[39] Lobeck, p. 514. Porphyry, de Antro Nympharum, c. 16. φησὶ
γὰρ παρ᾽ Ὀρφεῖ ἡ Νὺξ, τῷ Διῒ ὑποτιθεμένη τὸν διὰ τοῦ μέλιτος
δόλον,

Εὖτ᾽ ἂν δή μιν ἴδηαι ὑπὸ δρυσὶν ὑψικόμοισι
Ἔργοισιν μεθύοντα μελισσάων ἐριβόμβων,
Αὔτικά μιν δῆσον.

Ὃ καὶ πάσχει ὁ Κρόνος καὶ δεθεὶς ἐκτέμνεται, ὡς Οὐρανός.

Compare Timæus ap. Schol. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 983.

[40] The Cataposis of Phanês by Zeus one of the most memorable
points of the Orphic Theogony. Lobeck, p. 519.; also Fragm. vi.
p. 456 of Hermann’s Orphica.

From this absorption and subsequent reproduction of all things by
Zeus, flowed the magnificent string of Orphic predicates about
him,—

Ζεὺς ἀρχὴ, Ζεὺς μέσσα, Διὸς δ᾽ ἐκ πάντα τέτυκται,—

an allusion to which is traceable even in Plato, de Legg. iv. p.
715. Plutarch, de Defectu Oracul. T. ix. p. 379. c. 48. Diodôrus
(i. 11) is the most ancient writer remaining to us who mentions
the name of Phanês, in a line cited as proceeding from Orpheus;
wherein, however, Phanês is identified with Dionysos. Compare
Macrobius, Saturnal. i. 18.

But there is one new personage, begotten by Zeus, who stands preëminently marked in the Orphic Theogony, and whose adventures constitute one of its peculiar features. Zagreus, “the horned child,” is the son of Zeus by his own daughter Persephonê: he is the favorite of his father, a child of magnificent promise, and predestined, if he grow up, to succeed to supreme dominion as well as to the handling of the thunderbolt. He is seated, whilst an infant, on the throne beside Zeus, guarded by Apollo and the Kurêtes. But the jealous Hêrê intercepts his career and incites the Titans against him, who, having first smeared their faces with plaster, approach him on the throne, tempt his childish fancy with playthings, and kill him with a sword while he is contemplating his face in a mirror. They then cut up his body and boil it in a caldron, leaving only the heart, which is picked up by Athênê and carried to Zeus, who in his wrath strikes down the Titans with thunder into Tartarus; whilst Apollo is directed to collect the remains of Zagreus and bury them at the foot of Mount Parnassus. The heart is given to Semelê, and Zagreus is born again from her under the form of Dionysos.[41]

[41] About the tale of Zagreus, see Lobeck, p. 552, _sqq._ Nonnus
in his Dionysiaca has given many details about it:—

Ζαγρέα γειναμένη κέροεν βρέφος, etc. (vi. 264).

Clemens Alexandrin. Admonit. ad Gent. p. 11, 12, Sylb. The story
was treated both by Callimachus and by Euphoriôn, Etymolog. Magn.
v. Ζαγρεὺς, Schol. Lycophr. 208. In the old epic poem Alkmæônis
or Epigoni, Zagreus is a surname of Hadês. See Fragm. 4, p. 7,
ed. Düntzer. Respecting the Orphic Theogony generally, Brandis
(Handbuch der Geschichte der Griechisch-Römisch. Philosophie,
c. xvii., xviii.), K. O. Müller (Prolegg. Mythol. pp. 379-396),
and Zoega (Abhandlungen, v. pp. 211-263) may be consulted with
much advantage. Brandis regards this Theogony as _considerably
older_ than the first Ionic philosophy, which is a higher
antiquity than appears probable: some of the ideas which it
contains, such, for example, as that of the Orphic egg, indicate
a departure from the string of purely personal generations
which both Homer and Hesiod exclusively recount, and a resort
to something like physical analogies. On the whole, we cannot
reasonably claim for it more than half a century above the age of
Onomakritus. The Theogony of Pherekydês of Syros seems to have
borne some analogy to the Orphic. See Diogen. Laërt. i. 119,
Sturz. Fragment. Pherekyd. § 5-6, Brandis, Handbuch, _ut sup._ c.
xxii. Pherekydês partially deviated from the mythical track or
personal successions set forth by Hesiod. ἐπεὶ οἵ γε ~μεμιγμένοι~
αὐτῶν καὶ ~τῷ μὴ μυθικῶς~ ἅπαντα λέγειν, οἷον Φερεκύδης καὶ
ἑτεροί τινες, etc. (Aristot. Metaphys. N. p. 301, ed. Brandis).
Porphyrias, de Antro Nymphar. c. 31, καὶ τοῦ Συρίου Φερεκύδου
μυχοὺς καὶ βόθρους καὶ ἄντρα καὶ θύρας καὶ πύλας λέγοντος, καὶ
διὰ τούτων αἰνιττομένου τὰς τῶν ψυχῶν γενέσεις καὶ ἀπογενέσεις,
etc. Eudêmus the Peripatetic, pupil of Aristotle, had drawn up
an account of the Orphic Theogony as well as of the doctrines of
Pherekydês, Akusilaus and others, which was still in the hands of
the Platonists of the fourth century, though it is now lost. The
extracts which we find seem all to countenance the belief that
the Hesiodic Theogony formed the basis upon which they worked.
See about Akusilaus, Plato, Sympos. p. 178. Clem. Alex. Strom. p.
629.

Such is the tissue of violent fancies comprehended under the title of the Orphic Theogony, and read as such, it appears, by Plato, Isokratês and Aristotle. It will be seen that it is based upon the Hesiodic Theogony, but according to the general expansive tendency of Grecian legend, much new matter is added: Zeus has in Homer one predecessor, in Hesiod two, and in Orpheus four.

The Hesiodic Theogony, though later in date than the Iliad and Odyssey, was coeval with the earliest period of what may be called Grecian history, and certainly of an age earlier than 700 B. C. It appears to have been widely circulated in Greece, and being at once ancient and short, the general public consulted it as their principal source of information respecting divine antiquity. The Orphic Theogony belongs to a later date, and contains the Hesiodic ideas and persons, enlarged and mystically disguised: its vein of invention was less popular, adapted more to the contemplation of a sect specially prepared than to the taste of a casual audience, and it appears accordingly to have obtained currency chiefly among purely speculative men.[42] Among the majority of these latter, however, it acquired greater veneration, and above all was supposed to be of greater antiquity, than the Hesiodic. The belief in its superior antiquity (disallowed by Herodotus, and seemingly also by Aristotle[43]), as well as the respect for its contents, increased during the Alexandrine age and through the declining centuries of Paganism, reaching its maximum among the New-Platonists of the third and fourth century after Christ: both the Christian assailants, as well as the defenders, of paganism, treated it as the most ancient and venerable summary of the Grecian faith. Orpheus is celebrated by Pindar as the harper and companion of the Argonautic maritime heroes: Orpheus and Musæus, as well as Pamphôs and Olên, the great supposed authors of theogonic, mystical, oracular, and prophetic verses and hymns, were generally considered by literary Greeks as older than either Hesiod or Homer:[44] and such was also the common opinion of modern scholars until a period comparatively recent. It has now been shown, on sufficient ground, that the compositions which passed under these names emanate for the most part from poets of the Alexandrine age, and subsequent to the Christian æra; and that even the earliest among them, which served as the stock on which the later additions were engrafted, belong to a period far more recent than Hesiod; probably to the century preceding Onomakritus (B. C. 610-510). It seems, however, certain, that both Orpheus and Musæus were names of established reputation at the time when Onomakritus flourished; and it is distinctly stated by Pausanias that the latter was himself the author of the most remarkable and characteristic mythe of the Orphic Theogony—the discerption of Zagreus by the Titans, and his resurrection as Dionysos.[45]

[42] The Orphic Theogony is never cited in the ample Scholia on
Homer, though Hesiod is often alluded to. (See Lobeck, Aglaoph.
p. 540). Nor can it have been present to the minds of Xenophanês
and Herakleitus, as representing any widely diffused Grecian
belief: the former, who so severely condemned Homer and Hesiod,
would have found Orpheus much more deserving of his censure: and
the latter could hardly have omitted Orpheus from his memorable
denunciation:—Πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει· Ἡσίοδον γὰρ ἂν ἐδίδαξε
καὶ Πυθαγόρην, αὖτις δὲ Ξενοφάνεά τε καὶ Ἑκαταῖον. Diog. Laër.
ix. 1. Isokratês treats Orpheus as the most censurable of all
the poets. See Busiris, p. 229; ii. p. 309, Bekk. The Theogony
of Orpheus, as conceived by Apollônius Rhodius (i. 504) in the
third century B. C., and by Nigidius in the first century B.
C. (Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. iv. 10), seems to have been on a
more contracted scale than that which is given in the text. But
neither of them notice the tale of Zagreus, which we know to be
as old as Onomakritus.

[43] This opinion of Herodotus is implied in the remarkable
passage about Homer and Hesiod, ii. 53, though he never once
names Orpheus—only alluding once to “Orphic ceremonies,” ii. 81.
He speaks more than once of the prophecies of Musæus. Aristotle
denied the past existence and reality of Orpheus. See Cicero de
Nat. Deor. i. 38.

[44] Pindar Pyth. iv. 177. Plato seems to consider Orpheus as
more ancient than Homer. Compare Theætêt. p. 179; Cratylus, p.
402; De Republ. ii. p. 364. The order in which Aristophanês (and
Hippias of Elis, ap. Clem. Alex. Str. vi. p. 624) mentions them
indicates the same view, Ranæ, 1030. It is unnecessary to cite
the later chronologers, among whom the belief in the antiquity
of Orpheus was universal; he was commonly described as son of
the Muse Calliopê. Androtiôn seems to have denied that he was
a Thracian, regarding the Thracians as incurably stupid and
illiterate. Androtiôn, Fragm. 36, ed. Didot. Ephorus treated
him as having been a pupil of the Idæan Dactyls of Phrygia (see
Diodôr. v. 64), and as having learnt from them his τελετὰς and
μυστήρια, which he was the first to introduce into Greece. The
earliest mention which we find of Orpheus, is that of the poet
Ibycus (about B. C. 530), ὀνομάκλυτον Ὀρφῆν. Ibyci Fragm. 9, p.
341, ed. Schneidewin.

[45] Pausan. viii. 37, 3. Τιτᾶνας δὲ πρῶτον ἐς ποίησιν ἐσήγαγεν
Ὅμηρος, θεοὺς εἶναι σφᾶς ὑπὸ τῷ καλουμένῳ Ταρτάρῳ· καὶ ἔστιν
ἐν Ἡρᾶς ὅρκῳ τὰ ἔπη· παρὰ δὲ Ὁμήρου Ὀνομάκριτος, παραλαβὼν τῶν
Τιτάνων τὸ ὄνομα, Διονύσῳ τε συνέθηκεν ὄργια, καὶ εἶναι τοὺς
Τιτᾶνας τῷ Διονύσῳ τῶν παθημάτων ἐποίησεν αὐτουργούς. Both
the date, the character and the function of Onomakritus are
distinctly marked by Herodotus, vii. 6.

The names of Orpheus and Musæus (as well as that of Pythagoras,[46] looking at one side of his character) represent facts of importance in the history of the Grecian mind—the gradual influx of Thracian, Phrygian, and Egyptian, religious ceremonies and feelings, and the increasing diffusion of special mysteries,[47] schemes for religious purification, and orgies (I venture to anglicize the Greek word, which contains in its original meaning no implication of the ideas of excess to which it was afterwards diverted) in honor of some particular god—distinct both from the public solemnities and from the gentile solemnities of primitive Greece,—celebrated apart from the citizens generally, and approachable only through a certain course of preparation and initiation—sometimes even forbidden to be talked of in the presence of the uninitiated, under the severest threats of divine judgment. Occasionally such voluntary combinations assumed the form of permanent brotherhoods, bound together by periodical solemnities as well as by vows of an ascetic character: thus the Orphic life (as it was called) or regulation of the Orphic brotherhood, among other injunctions partly arbitrary and partly abstinent, forbade animal food universally, and on certain occasions, the use of woollen clothing.[48] The great religious and political fraternity of the Pythagoreans, which acted so powerfully on the condition of the Italian cities, was one of the many manifestations of this general tendency, which stands in striking contrast with the simple, open-hearted, and demonstrative worship of the Homeric Greeks.

[46] Herodotus believed in the derivation both of the Orphic and
Pythagorean regulations from Egypt—ὁμολογέουσι δὲ ταῦτα τοῖσι
Ὀρφικοῖσι καλεομένοισι καὶ Βακχικοῖσι, ἐοῦσι δὲ Αἰγυπτίοισι
(ii. 81). He knows the names of those Greeks who have borrowed
from Egypt the doctrine of the metempsychosis, but he will not
mention them (ii. 123): he can hardly allude to any one but
the Pythagoreans, many of whom he probably knew in Italy. See
the curious extract from Xenophanês respecting the doctrine of
Pythagoras, Diogen. Laërt. viii. 37; and the quotation from the
Silli of Timôn, Πυθαγόραν δὲ γοήτος ἀποκλίναντ᾽ ἐπὶ δόξαν, etc.
Compare Porphyr. in Vit. Pythag. c. 41.

[47] Aristophan. Ran. 1030.—

Ὀρφεὺς μὲν γὰρ τελετάς θ᾽ ἡμῖν κατέδειξε, φόνων τ᾽ ἀπέχεσθαι·
Μουσαῖος τ᾽, ἐξακέσεις τε νόσων καὶ χρησμούς· Ἡσίοδος δὲ,
Γῆς ἐργασίας, καρπῶν ὥρας, ἀρότους· ὁ δὲ θεῖος Ὅμηρος
Ἀπὸ τοῦ τιμὴν καὶ κλέος ἔσχεν, πλὴν τοῦθ᾽, ὅτι χρήστ᾽ ἐδίδασκεν,
Ἀρετὰς, τάξεις, ὁπλίσεις ἀνδρῶν; etc.

The same general contrast is to be found in Plato, Protagoras,
p. 316; the opinion of Pausanias, ix. 30, 4. The poems of Musæus
seem to have borne considerable analogy to the Melampodia
ascribed to Hesiod (see Clemen. Alex. Str. vi. p. 628); and
healing charms are ascribed to Orpheus as well as to Musæus. See
Eurip. Alcestis, 986.

[48] Herod. ii. 81; Euripid. Hippol. 957, and the curious
fragment of the lost Κρῆτες of Euripidês. Ὀρφικοὶ βίοι, Plato,
Legg. vii. 782.