Chapter XVI (1)

GRECIAN MYTHES, AS UNDERSTOOD, FELT AND INTERPRETED BY THE GREEKS THEMSELVES.

The preceding sections have been intended to exhibit a sketch of that narrative matter, so abundant, so characteristic and so interesting, out of which early Grecian history and chronology have been extracted. Raised originally by hands unseen and from data unassignable, it existed first in the shape of floating talk among the people, from whence a large portion of it passed into the song of the poets, who multiplied, transformed and adorned it in a thousand various ways.

These mythes or current stories, the spontaneous and earliest growth of the Grecian mind, constituted at the same time the entire intellectual stock of the age to which they belonged. They are the common root of all those different ramifications into which the mental activity of the Greeks subsequently diverged; containing, as it were, the preface and germ of the positive history and philosophy, the dogmatic theology and the professed romance, which we shall hereafter trace each in its separate development. They furnished aliment to the curiosity, and solution to the vague doubts and aspirations of the age; they explained the origin of those customs and standing peculiarities with which men were familiar; they impressed moral lessons, awakened patriotic sympathies, and exhibited in detail the shadowy, but anxious presentiments of the vulgar as to the agency of the gods: moreover they satisfied that craving for adventure and appetite for the marvellous, which has in modern times become the province of fiction proper.

It is difficult, we may say impossible, for a man of mature age to carry back his mind to his conceptions such as they stood when he was a child, growing naturally out of his imagination and feelings, working upon a scanty stock of materials, and borrowing from authorities whom he blindly followed but imperfectly apprehended. A similar difficulty occurs when we attempt to place ourselves in the historical and quasi-philosophical point of view which the ancient mythes present to us. We can follow perfectly the imagination and feeling which dictated these tales, and we can admire and sympathize with them as animated, sublime, and affecting poetry; but we are too much accustomed to matter of fact and philosophy of a positive kind, to be able to conceive a time when these beautiful fancies were construed literally and accepted as serious reality.

Nevertheless it is obvious that Grecian mythes cannot be either understood or appreciated except with reference to the system of conceptions and belief of the ages in which they arose. We must suppose a public not reading and writing, but seeing, hearing and telling—destitute of all records, and careless as well as ignorant of positive history with its indispensable tests, yet at the same time curious and full of eagerness for new or impressive incidents—strangers even to the rudiments of positive philosophy and to the idea of invariable sequences of nature either in the physical or moral world, yet requiring some connecting theory to interpret and regularize the phænomena before them. Such a theory was supplied by the spontaneous inspirations of an early fancy, which supposed the habitual agency of beings intelligent and voluntary like themselves, but superior in extent of power, and different in peculiarity of attributes. In the geographical ideas of the Homeric period, the earth was flat and round, with the deep and gentle ocean-stream flowing around and returning into itself: chronology, or means of measuring past time, there existed none; but both unobserved regions might be described, the forgotten past unfolded, and the unknown future predicted—through particular men specially inspired by the gods, or endowed by them with that peculiar vision which detected and interpreted passing signs and omens.

If even the rudiments of scientific geography and physics, now so universally diffused and so invaluable as a security against error and delusion, were wanting in this early stage of society, their place was abundantly supplied by vivacity of imagination and by personifying sympathy. The unbounded tendency of the Homeric Greeks to multiply fictitious persons, and to construe the phænomena which interested them into manifestations of design, is above all things here to be noticed, because the form of personal narrative, universal in their mythes, is one of its many manifestations. Their polytheism (comprising some elements of an original fetichism, in which particular objects had themselves been supposed to be endued with life, volition, and design) recognized agencies of unseen beings identified and confounded with the different localities and departments of the physical world. Of such beings there were numerous varieties, and many gradations both in power and attributes; there were differences of age, sex and local residence, relations both conjugal and filial between them, and tendencies sympathetic as well as repugnant. The gods formed a sort of political community of their own, which had its hierarchy, its distribution of ranks and duties, its contentions for power and occasional revolutions, its public meetings in the agora of Olympus, and its multitudinous banquets or festivals.[834] The great Olympic gods were in fact only the most exalted amongst an aggregate of quasi-human or ultra-human personages,—dæmons, heroes, nymphs, eponymous (or name-giving) genii, identified with each river, mountain,[835] cape, town, village, or known circumscription of territory,—besides horses, bulls, and dogs, of immortal breed and peculiar attributes, and monsters of strange lineaments and combinations, “Gorgons and Harpies and Chimæras dire.” As there were in every _gens_ or family special gentile deities and foregone ancestors who watched over its members, forming in each the characteristic symbol and recognized guarantee of their union, so there seem to have been in each guild or trade peculiar beings whose vocation it was to coöperate or to impede in various stages of the business.[836]

[834] Homer, Iliad, i. 603; xx. 7. Hesiod, Theogon. 802.

[835] We read in the Iliad that Asteropæus was grandson of the
beautiful river Axius, and Achilles, after having slain him,
admits the dignity of this parentage, but boasts that his own
descent from Zeus was much greater, since even the great river
Achelôus and Oceanus himself is inferior to Zeus (xxi. 157-191).
Skamander fights with Achilles, calling his brother Simoïs to his
aid (213-308). Tyrô, the daughter of Salmôneus, falls in love
with Enipeus, the most beautiful of rivers (Odyss. xi. 237).
Achelôus appears as a suitor of Deianira (Sophokl. Trach. 9).

There cannot be a better illustration of this feeling than what
is told of the New Zealanders at the present time. The chief
Heu-Heu appeals to his ancestor, the great mountain Tonga Riro:
“I am the Heu-Heu, and rule over you all, just as my ancestor
Tonga Riro, the mountain of snow, stands above all this land.”
(E. J. Wakefield, Adventures in New Zealand, vol. i. ch. 17.
p. 465). Heu-Heu refused permission to any one to ascend the
mountain, on the ground that it was his _tipuna_ or ancestor: “he
constantly identified himself with the mountain and called it
his sacred ancestor” (vol. ii. c. 4. p. 113). The mountains in
New Zealand are accounted by the natives masculine and feminine:
Tonga Riro, and Taranaki, two male mountains, quarrelled about
the affections of a small volcanic female mountain in the
neighborhood (_ibid._ ii. c. 4. p. 97).

The religious imagination of the Hindoos also (as described by
Colonel Sleeman in his excellent work, Rambles and Recollections
of an Indian Official), affords a remarkable parallel to that of
the early Greeks. Colonel Sleeman says,—

“I asked some of the Hindoos about us why they called the river
Mother Nerbudda, if she was really never married. Her Majesty
(said they with great respect) would really never consent to
be married after the indignity she suffered from her affianced
bridegroom the Sohun: and we call her _mother_ because she
blesses us all, and we are anxious to accost her by the name
which we consider to be the most respectful and endearing.

“Any Englishman can easily conceive a poet in his highest
calenture of the brain, addressing the Ocean as a steed that
knows his rider, and patting the crested billow as his flowing
mane. But he must come to India to understand how every
individual of a _whole community of many millions can address
a fine river as a living being—a sovereign princess who hears
and understands all they say, and exercises a kind of local
superintendence over their affairs_, without a single temple in
which her image is worshipped, or a single priest to profit by
the delusion. As in the case of the Ganges, _it is the river
itself to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity
residing in it, or presiding over it_—the stream itself is the
deity which fills their imaginations, and receives their homage”
(Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, ch. iii. p.
20). Compare also the remarks in the same work on the sanctity
of _Mother Nerbudda_ (chapter xxvii. p. 261); also of the holy
personality of the earth. “The land is considered as the MOTHER
of the prince or chief who holds it, the great parent from
whom he derives all that maintains him, his family, and his
establishments. If well-treated, she yields this in abundance
to her son; but if he presumes to look upon her with the eye of
_desire_, she ceases to be fruitful; or the Deity sends down
hail or blight to destroy all that she yields. The measuring the
surface of the fields, and the frequently inspecting the crops
by the chief himself or his immediate agents, were considered by
the people in this light—either it should not be done at all,
or the duty should be delegated to inferior agents, whose close
inspection of the _great parent_ could not be so displeasing to
the Deity” (Ch. xxvii. p. 248).

See also about the gods who are believed to reside in trees—the
Peepultree, the cotton-tree, etc. (ch. ix. p. 112), and the
description of the annual marriage celebrated between the sacred
pebble, or pebble-god, Saligram, and the sacred shrub Toolsea,
celebrated at great expense and with a numerous procession (chap.
xix. p. 158; xxiii. p. 185).

[836] See the song to the potters, in the Homeric Epigrams (14):—

Εἰ μὲν δώσετε μίσθον, ἀείσω, ὦ κεραμῆες·
Δεῦρ᾽ ἄγ᾽ Ἀθηναίη, καὶ ὑπείρεχε χεῖρα καμίνου.
Εὖ δὲ μελανθεῖεν κότυλοι, καὶ πάντα κάναστρα
Φρυχθῆναί τε καλῶς, καὶ τιμῆς ὦνον ἀρέσθαι.
... Ἦν δ᾽ ἐπ᾽ ἀναιδείην τρεφθέντες ψευδῆ ἄρῃσθε,
Συγκαλέω δὴ ᾽πειτα καμίνῳ δηλητῆρας·
Σύντριβ᾽ ὅμως, Σμάραγόν τε, καὶ Ἄσβετον, ἠδὲ Σαβάκτην,
Ὠμόδαμόν θ᾽, ὃς τῇδε τέχνῃ κακὰ πολλὰ πορίζει, etc.

A certain kindred between men and serpents (συγγένειάν τινα πρὸς
τοὺς ὄφεις) was recognized in the peculiar gens of the ὀφιογενεῖς
near Parion, who possessed the gift of healing by their touches
the bite of the serpent: the original hero of this gens was said
to have been transformed from a serpent into a man (Strabo, xiii.
p. 588).

The extensive and multiform personifications, here faintly sketched, pervaded in every direction the mental system of the Greeks, and were identified intimately both with their conception and with their description of phenomena, present as well as past. That which to us is interesting as the mere creation of an exuberant fancy, was to the Greek genuine and venerated reality. Both the earth and the solid heaven (Gæa and Uranos) were both conceived and spoken of by him as endowed with appetite, feeling, sex, and most of the various attributes of humanity. Instead of a sun such as we now see, subject to astronomical laws, and forming the centre of a system the changes of which we can ascertain and foreknow, he saw the great god Hêlios, mounting his chariot in the morning in the east, reaching at mid-day the height of the solid heaven, and arriving in the evening at the western horizon, with horses fatigued and desirous of repose. Hêlios, having favorite spots wherein his beautiful cattle grazed, took pleasure in contemplating them during the course of his journey, and was sorely displeased if any man slew or injured them: he had moreover sons and daughters on earth, and as his all-seeing eye penetrated everywhere, he was sometimes in a situation to reveal secrets even to the gods themselves—while on other occasions he was constrained to turn aside in order to avoid contemplating scenes of abomination.[837] To us these now appear puerile, though pleasing fancies, but to an Homeric Greek they seemed perfectly natural and plausible. In his view, the description of the sun, as given in a modern astronomical treatise, would have appeared not merely absurd, but repulsive and impious. Even in later times, when the positive spirit of inquiry had made considerable progress, Anaxagoras and other astronomers incurred the charge of blasphemy for dispersonifying Hêlios, and trying to assign invariable laws to the solar phænomena.[838] Personifying fiction was in this way blended by the Homeric Greeks with their conception of the physical phænomena before them, not simply in the way of poetical ornament, but as a genuine portion of their every-day belief.

[837] Odyss. ii. 388; viii. 270; xii. 4, 128, 416; xxiii. 362.
Iliad, xiv. 344. The Homeric Hymn to Dêmêtêr expresses it neatly
(63)—

Ἡέλιον δ᾽ ἵκοντο, θεῶν σκόπον ἠδὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.

Also the remarkable story of Euênius of Apollônia, his neglect
of the sacred cattle of Hêlios, and the awful consequences of it
(Herodot. ix. 93: compare Theocr. Idyll, xxv. 130).

I know no passage in which this conception of the heavenly bodies
as Persons is more strikingly set forth than in the words of
the German chief Boiocalus, pleading the cause of himself and
his tribe the Ansibarii before the Roman legate Avitus. This
tribe, expelled by other tribes from its native possessions,
had sat down upon some of that wide extent of lands on the
Lower Rhine which the Roman government reserved for the use of
its soldiers, but which remained desert, because the soldiers
had neither the means nor the inclination to occupy them. The
old chief, pleading his cause before Avitus, who had issued
an order to him to evacuate the lands, first dwelt upon his
fidelity of fifty years to the Roman cause, and next touched
upon the enormity of retaining so large an area in a state of
waste (Tacit. Ann. xiii. 55): “Quotam partem campi jacere, in
quam pecora et armenta militum aliquando transmitterentur?
Servarent sane receptos gregibus, inter hominum famam: modo ne
vastitatem et solitudinem mallent, quam amicos populos Chamavorum
quondam ea arva, mox Tubantum, et post Usipiorum fuisse. Sicuti
cœlum Diis, ita terras generi mortalium datas: quæque vacuæ,
eas publicas esse. _Solem_ deinde respiciens, et _cœtera sidera
vocans, quasi coram_ interrogabat—_vellentne contueri inane
solum? potius mare superfunderent adversus terrarum ereptores_.
Commotus his Avitus,” etc. The legate refused the request, but
privately offered to Boiocalus lands for himself apart from the
tribe, which that chief indignantly spurned. He tried to maintain
himself in the lands, but was expelled by the Roman arms, and
forced to seek a home among the other German tribes, all of whom
refused it. After much wandering and privation, the whole tribe
of the Ansibarii was annihilated: its warriors were all slain,
its women and children sold as slaves.

I notice this afflicting sequel, in order to show that the
brave old chief was pleading before Avitus a matter of life and
death both to himself and his tribe, and that the occasion was
one least of all suited for a mere rhetorical prosopopœia. His
appeal is one sincere and heartfelt to the personal feelings and
sympathies of Hêlios.

Tacitus, in reporting the speech, accompanies it with the
gloss “quasi coram,” to mark that the speaker here passes into
a different order of ideas from that to which himself or his
readers were accustomed. If Boiocalus could have heard, and
reported to his tribe, an astronomical lecture, he would have
introduced some explanation, in order to facilitate to his tribe
the comprehension of Hêlios under a point of view so new to them.
While Tacitus finds it necessary to illustrate by a comment the
_personification of the sun_, Boiocalus would have had some
trouble to make his tribe comprehend the _re-ification of the god
Hêlios_.

[838] Physical astronomy was both new and accounted impious
in the time of the Peloponnesian war: see Plutarch, in his
reference to that eclipse which proved so fatal to the Athenian
army at Syracuse, in consequence of the religious feelings of
Nikias: οὐ γὰρ ἠνείχοντο τοὺς φυσικοὺς καὶ μετεωρολέσχας τότε
καλουμένους ὡς, εἰς αἰτίας ἀλόγους καὶ δυνάμεις ἀπρονοήτους καὶ
κατηναγκασμένα πάθη διατρίβοντας τὸ θεῖον (Plutarch, Nikias, c.
23, and Periklês, c. 32; Diodôr. xii. 39; Dêmêtr. Phaler. ap.
Diogen. Laërt, ix. 9, 1).

“You strange man, Melêtus,” said Socratês, on his trial, to his
accuser, “are you seriously affirming that I do not think Hêlios
and Selênê to be gods, as the rest of mankind think?” “Certainly
not, gentlemen of the Dikastery (_this is the reply of Melêtus_),
Socratês says that the sun is a stone, and the moon earth.” “Why,
my dear Melêtus, you think you are preferring an accusation
against Anaxagoras! You account these Dikasts so contemptibly
ignorant, as not to know that the books of Anaxagoras are
full of such doctrines! Is it from me that the youth acquire
such teaching, when they may buy the books for a drachma in
the theatre, and may thus laugh me to scorn if I pretended to
announce such views as my own—_not to mention their extreme
absurdity_?” (ἄλλως τε καὶ οὕτως ἄτοπα ὄντα, Plato, Apolog.
Socrat. c. 14. p. 26).

The divinity of Hêlios and Selênê is emphatically set forth by
Plato, Legg. x. p. 886-889. He permits physical astronomy only
under great restrictions and to a limited extent. Compare Xenoph.
Memor. iv. 7, 7; Diogen. Laërt. ii. 8; Plutarch, De Stoicor.
Repugnant. c. 40. p. 1053; and Schaubach ad Anaxagoræ Fragmenta,
p. 6.

It was in this early state of the Grecian mind, stimulating so forcibly the imagination and the feelings, and acting through them upon the belief, that the great body of the mythes grew up and obtained circulation. They were, from first to last, personal narratives and adventures; and the persons who predominated as subjects of them were the gods, the heroes, the nymphs, etc., whose names were known and reverenced, and in whom every one felt interested. To every god and every hero it was consistent with Grecian ideas to ascribe great diversity of human motive and attribute: each indeed has his own peculiar type of character, more or less strictly defined; but in all there was a wide foundation for animated narrative and for romantic incident. The gods and heroes of the land and the tribe belonged, in the conception of a Greek, alike to the present and to the past: he worshipped in their groves and at their festivals; he invoked their protection, and believed in their superintending guardianship, even in his own day: but their more special, intimate, and sympathizing agency was cast back into the unrecorded past.[839] To give suitable utterance to this general sentiment,—to furnish body and movement and detail to these divine and heroic pre-existences, which were conceived only in shadowy outline,—to lighten up the dreams of what the past must have been,[840] in the minds of those who knew not what it really had been—such was the spontaneous aim and inspiration of productive genius in the community, and such were the purposes which the Grecian mythes preëminently accomplished.

[839] Hesiod, Catalog. Fragm. 76. p. 48, ed. Düntzer:—

Ξυναὶ γὰρ τότε δαῖτες ἔσαν ξυνοί τε θόωκει,
Ἀθανάτοις τε θοῖσι καταθνήτοις τ᾽ ἀνθρώποις.

Both the Theogonia and the Works and Days bear testimony to
the same general feeling. Even the heroes of Homer suppose a
preceding age, the inmates of which were in nearer contact with
the gods than they themselves (Odyss. viii. 223; Iliad, v. 304;
xii. 382). Compare Catullus, Carm. 64; Epithalam. Peleôs et
Thetidos, v. 382-408.

Menander the Rhetor (following generally the steps of Dionys.
Hal. Art Rhetor. cap. 1-8) suggests to his fellow-citizens at
Alexandria Trôas, proper and complimentary forms to invite a
great man to visit their festival of the Sminthia:—ὥσπερ γὰρ
Ἀπόλλωνα πολλάκις ἐδέχετο ἡ πόλις τοῖς Σμινθίοις, ~ἥνικα ἐξῆν
θεοὺς προφανῶς ἐπιδημεῖν τοῖς ἀνθρώποις~, οὕτω καὶ σὲ ἡ πόλις
νῦν προσδέχεται (περὶ Ἐπιδεικτικ. s. iv. c. 14. ap. Walz. Coll.
Rhetor, t. ix. p. 304). Menander seems to have been a native
of Alexandria Trôas, though Suidas calls him a Laodicean (see
Walz. Præf. ad t. ix. p. xv.-xx.; and περὶ Σμινθιακῶν, sect. iv.
c. 17). The festival of the Sminthia lasted down to his time,
embracing the whole duration of paganism from Homer downwards.

[840] P. A. Müller observes justly, in his _Saga-Bibliothek_, in
reference to the Icelandic mythes, “In dem Mythischen wird das
Leben der Vorzeit dargestellt, wie es wirklich dem kindlichen
Verstande, der jugendlichen Einbildungskraft, und dem vollen
Herzen, erscheint.”

(Lange’s Untersuchungen über die Nordische und Deutsche
Heldensage, translated from P. A. Müller, Introd. p. 1.)

The love of antiquities, which Tacitus notices as so prevalent among the Greeks of his day,[841] was one of the earliest, the most durable, and the most widely diffused of the national propensities. But the antiquities of every state were divine and heroic, reproducing the lineaments, but disregarding the measure and limits, of ordinary humanity. The gods formed the starting-point, beyond which no man thought of looking, though some gods were more ancient than others: their progeny, the heroes, many of them sprung from human mothers, constitute an intermediate link between god and man. The ancient epic usually recognizes the presence of a multitude of nameless men, but they are introduced chiefly for the purpose of filling the scene, and of executing the orders, celebrating the valor, and bringing out the personality, of a few divine or heroic characters.[842] It was the glory of bards and storytellers to be able to satisfy those religious and patriotic predispositions of the public, which caused the primary demand for their tales, and which were of a nature eminently inviting and expansive. For Grecian religion was many-sided and many colored; it comprised a great multiplicity of persons, together with much diversity in the types of character; it divinized every vein and attribute of humanity, the lofty as well as the mean—the tender as well as the warlike—the self-devoting and adventurous as well as the laughter-loving and sensual. We shall hereafter reach a time when philosophers protested against such identification of the gods with the more vulgar appetites and enjoyments, believing that nothing except the spiritual attributes of man could properly be transferred to superhuman beings, and drawing their predicates respecting the gods exclusively from what was awful, majestic and terror-striking in human affairs. Such restrictions on the religious fancy were continually on the increase, and the mystic and didactic stamp which marked the last century of paganism in the days of Julian and Libanius, contrasts forcibly with the concrete and vivacious forms, full of vigorous impulse and alive to all the capricious gusts of the human temperament, which people the Homeric Olympus.[843] At present, however, we have only to consider the early, or Homeric and Hesiodic paganism, and its operation in the genesis of the mythical narratives. We cannot doubt that it supplied the most powerful stimulus, and the only one which the times admitted, to the creative faculty of the people; as well from the sociability, the gradations, and the mutual action and reaction of its gods and heroes, as from the amplitude, the variety, and the purely human cast, of its fundamental types.

[841] Titus visited the temple of the Paphian Venus in Cyprus,
“spectatâ opulentiâ donisque regum, quæque _alia lætum_
antiquitatibus Græcorum genus _incertæ vetustati adfingit_, de
navigatione primum consuluit” (Tacit. Hist. ii. 4-5).

[842] Aristotel. Problem. xix. 48. Οἱ δὲ ἡγεμόνες τῶν ἀρχαίων
μόνοι ἦσαν ἥρωες· οἱ δὲ λαοὶ ἄνθρωποι. Istros followed this
opinion also: but the more common view seems to have considered
all who combated at Troy as heroes (see Schol. Iliad, ii. 110;
xv. 231), and so Hesiod treats them (Opp. Di. 158).

In reference to the Trojan war, Aristotle says—καθάπερ ἐν τοῖς
~Ἡρωϊκοῖς~ περὶ Πριάμου μυθεύεται (Ethic. Nicom. i. 9; compare
vii. 1).

[843] Generation by a god is treated in the old poems as an act
entirely human and physical (ἐμιγη—παρελέξατο); and this was the
common opinion in the days of Plato (Plato, Apolog. Socrat. c.
15. p. 15); the hero Astrabakus is father of the Lacedæmonian
king Demaratus (Herod. vi. 66). [Herodotus does not believe the
story told him at Babylon respecting Belus (i. 182).] Euripidês
sometimes expresses disapprobation of the idea (Ion. 350), but
Plato passed among a large portion of his admirers for the
actual son of Apollo, and his reputed father Aristo on marrying
was admonished in a dream to respect the person of his wife
Periktionê, then pregnant by Apollo, until after the birth of the
child Plato (Plutarch, Quæst. Sympos. p. 717. viii. 1; Diogen.
Laërt. iii. 2; Origen, cont. Cels. i. p. 29). Plutarch (in Life
of Numa, c. 4; compare Life of Thêseus, 2) discusses the subject,
and is inclined to disallow everything beyond mental sympathy
and tenderness in a god: Pausanias deals timidly with it, and
is not always consistent with himself; while the later rhetors
spiritualize it altogether. Meander, περὶ Ἐπιδεικτικῶν, (towards
the end of the third century B. C.) prescribes rules for praising
a king: you are to praise him for the gens to which he belongs:
perhaps you may be able to make out that he really is the son
of some god; for many who seem to be from men, are really _sent
down by God_ and are _emanations from the Supreme Potency_—πολλοὶ
τὸ μὲν δοκεῖν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων εἰσὶ, τῇ δ᾽ ἀληθείᾳ παρὰ τοῦ θεοῦ
καταπέμπονται καὶ εἰσιν ἀπόῤῥοιαι ὄντως τοῦ κρείττονος· καὶ γὰρ
Ἡρακλῆς ἐνομίζετο μὲν Ἀμφιτρύωνος, τῇ δὲ ἀληθείᾳ ἦν Διός. Οὕτω
καὶ βασιλεὺς ὁ ἡμέτερος το μὲν δοκεῖν ἐξ ἀνθρώπων, τῇ δὲ ἀληθείᾳ
τὴν καταβολὴν οὐράνοθεν ἔχει, etc. (Menander ap. Walz. Collect.
Rhetor. t. ix. c. i. p. 218). Again—περὶ Σμινθιακῶν—Ζεὺς γένεσιν
παιδῶν ~δημιουργεῖν~ ἐνενόησε—Ἀπόλλων τὴν Ἀσκληπιοῦ γένεσιν
~ἐδημιούργησε~, p. 322-327; compare Hermogenês, about the story
of Apollo and Daphnê, Progymnasm. c. 4; and Julian. Orat. vii. p.
220.

The contrast of the pagan phraseology of this age (Menander had
himself composed a hymn of invocation to Apollo—περὶ Ἐγκωμίων,
c. 3. t. ix. p. 136, Walz.) with that of Homer is very worthy
of notice. In the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women much was said
respecting the marriages and amours of the gods, so as to furnish
many suggestions, like the love-songs of Sapphô, to the composers
of Epithalamic Odes (Menand. _ib._ sect. iv. c. 6. p. 268).

Menander gives a specimen of a prose hymn fit to be addressed to
the Sminthian Apollo (p. 320); the spiritual character of which
hymn forms the most pointed contrast with the Homeric hymn to the
same god.

We may remark an analogous case in which the Homeric hymn to
Apollo is modified by Plutarch. To provide for the establishment
of his temple at Delphi, Apollo was described as having himself,
in the shape of a dolphin, swam before a Krêtan vessel and guided
it to Krissa, where he directed the terrified crew to open the
Delphian temple. But Plutarch says that this old statement was
not correct: the god had not himself appeared in the shape of
a dolphin—he had sent a dolphin expressly to guide the vessel
(Plutarch. de Solertiâ Animal. p. 983). See also a contrast
between the Homeric Zeus, and the genuine Zeus, (ἀληθινὸς)
brought out in Plutarch, Defect. Oracul. c 30. p. 426.

Illicit amours seem in these later times to be ascribed to
the δαίμονες: see the singular controversy started among the
fictitious pleadings of the ancient rhetors—Νόμου ὄντος,
παρθένους καὶ καθαρὰς εἶναι τὰς ἱερείας, ἱερεία τις εὑρέθη
ἀτόκιον φέρουσα, καὶ κρίνεται.... Ἀλλ᾽ ἐρεῖ, φασὶ, διὰ τὰς τῶν
δαιμόνων ἐπιφοιτήσεις καὶ ἐπιβουλὰς περιτεθεῖσθαι. Καὶ πῶς οὐκ
ἀνόητον κομιδῆ τὸ τοιοῦτον; ἔδει γὰρ πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀφαιρεθῆναι τὴν
παρθενίαν φορεῖν τι ἀποτρόπαιον, οὐ μὴν πρὸς τὸ τεκεῖν (Anonymi
Scholia ad Hermogen. Στάσεις, ap. Walz. Coll. Rh. t. vii. p. 162).

Apsinês of Gadara, a sophist of the time of Diocletian, pretended
to be a son of Pan (see Suidas, v. Ἀψίνης). The anecdote
respecting the rivers Skamander and Mæander, in the tenth epistle
ascribed to the orator Æschines (p. 737), is curious, but we do
not know the date of that epistle.

Though we may thus explain the mythopœic fertility of the Greeks, I am far from pretending that we can render any sufficient account of the supreme beauty of their chief epic and artistical productions. There is something in the first-rate productions of individual genius which lies beyond the compass of philosophical theory: the special breath of the Muse (to speak the language of ancient Greece) must be present in order to give them being. Even among her votaries, many are called, but few are chosen; and the peculiarities of those few remain as yet her own secret.

We shall not however forget that Grecian language was also an indispensable requisite to the growth and beauty of Grecian mythes—its richness, its flexibility and capacity of new combinations, its vocalic abundance and metrical pronunciation: and many even among its proper names, by their analogy to words really significant, gave direct occasion to explanatory or illustrative stories. Etymological mythes are found in sensible proportion among the whole number.

To understand properly then the Grecian mythes, we must try to identify ourselves with the state of mind of the original mythopœic age; a process not very easy, since it requires us to adopt a string of poetical fancies not simply as realities, but as the governing realities of the mental system;[844] yet a process which would only reproduce something analogous to our own childhood. The age was one destitute both of recorded history and of positive science, but full of imagination and sentiment and religious impressibility; from these sources sprung that multitude of supposed persons around whom all combinations of sensible phænomena were grouped, and towards whom curiosity, sympathies, and reverence were earnestly directed. The adventures of such persons were the only aliment suited at once both to the appetites and to the comprehension of an early Greek; and the mythes which detailed them, while powerfully interesting his emotions, furnished to him at the same time a quasi-history and quasi-philosophy: they filled up the vacuum of the unrecorded past, and explained many of the puzzling incognita of the present.[845] Nor need we wonder that the same plausibility which captivated his imagination and his feelings was sufficient to engender spontaneous belief; or rather, that no question as to truth or falsehood of the narrative suggested itself to his mind. His faith is ready, literal and uninquiring, apart from all thought of discriminating fact from fiction, or of detecting hidden and symbolized meaning; it is enough that what he hears be intrinsically plausible and seductive, and that there be no special cause to provoke doubt. And if indeed there were, the poet overrules such doubts by the holy and all-sufficient authority of the Muse, whose omniscience is the warrant for his recital, as her inspiration is the cause of his success.

[844] The mental analogy between the early stages of human
civilization and the childhood of the individual is forcibly
and frequently set forth in the works of Vico. That eminently
original thinker dwells upon the poetical and religious
susceptibilities as the first to develop themselves in the human
mind, and as furnishing not merely connecting threads for the
explanation of sensible phænomena, but also aliment for the
hopes and fears, and means of socializing influence to men of
genius, at a time when reason was yet asleep. He points out
the _personifying instinct_ (“istinto d’ animazione”) as the
spontaneous philosophy of man, “to make himself the rule of the
universe,” and to suppose everywhere a quasi-human agency as
the determining cause. He remarks that in an age of fancy and
feeling, the conceptions and language of poetry coincide with
those of reality and common life, instead of standing apart as a
separate vein. These views are repeated frequently (and with some
variations of opinion as he grew older) in his Latin work _De
Uno Universi Juris Principio_, as well as in the two successive
_rédactions_ of his great Italian work, _Scienza Nuova_ (it
must be added that Vico as an expositor is prolix, and does not
do justice to his own powers of original thought): I select
the following from the second edition of the latter treatise,
published by himself in 1744, _Della Metafisica Poetica_ (see
vol. v. p. 189 of Ferrari’s edition of his Works, Milan, 1836):
“Adunque la sapienza poetica, che fu la prima sapienza della
Gentilità, dovette incominciare da una Metafisica, non _ragionata
ed astratta_, qual è questa or degli addottrinati, ma _sentita
ed immaginata_, quale dovett’ essere di tai primi uomini,
siccome quelli ch’ erano di niun raziocinio, e tutti robusti
sensi e vigorosissime fantasie, come è stato nelle degnità (the
_Axioms_) stabilito. Questa fu la loro propria poesia, la qual
in essi fu una facultà loro connaturale, perchè erano di tali
sensi e di si fatte fantasie naturalmente forniti, nata da
_ignoranza di cagioni_—la qual fu loro madre di maraviglia di
tutte le cose, che quelli ignoranti di tutte le cose fortemente
ammiravano. Tal poesia incominciò in essi divina: perchè nello
stesso tempo ch’essi immaginavano le cagioni delle cose, che
sentivano ed ammiravano, essere Dei, come ora il confermiamo con
gli Americani, i quali tutte le cose che superano la loro picciol
capacità, dicono esser Dei ... nello stesso tempo, diciamo, alle
cose ammirate davano l’essere di sostanze dalla propria lor idea:
ch’è appunto la natura dei fanciulli, che osserviamo prendere tra
mani cose inanimate, e transtullarsi e favellarvi, come fussero
quelle persone vive. In cotal guisa i primi uomini delle nazioni
gentili, come fanciulli del nascente gener umano, dalla lor
idea creavan essi le cose ... per la loro robusta ignoranza, il
facevano in forza d’una corpolentissima fantasia, e perch’ era
corpolentissima, il facevano con una maravigliosa sublimità, tal
e tanta, che perturbava all’eccesso essi medesimi, che fingendo
le si creavano.... Di questa natura di cose umane restò eterna
proprietà spiegata con nobil espressione da Tacito, che vanamente
gli uomini spaventati _fingunt simul creduntque_.”

After describing the condition of rude men, terrified with
thunder and other vast atmospheric phænomena, Vico proceeds
(_ib._ p. 172)—“In tal caso la natura della mente umana porta
ch’ella attribuisca all’effetto la sua natura: e la natura loro
era in tale stato d’uomini tutti robuste forze di corpo, che
urlando, brontolando, spiegavano le loro violentissime passioni,
si finsero il cielo esser un gran corpo animato, che per tal
aspetto chiamavano Giove, che col fischio dei fulmini e col
fragore dei tuoni volesse lor dire qualche cosa.... E si fanno
di tutta la natura un vasto corpo animato, che senta passioni ed
affetti.”

Now the contrast with modern habits of thought:—

“Ma siccome _ora_ per la natura delle nostre umane menti troppo
ritirata dai sensi nel medesimo volgo—con le tante astrazioni,
di quante sono piene le lingue—con tanti vocaboli astratti—e
di troppo assottigliata con l’arti dello scrivere, e quasi
spiritualezzata con la practica dei numeri—_ci e naturalmente
niegato di poter formare_ la vasta imagine di cotal donna che
dicono Natura simpatetica, che mentre con la bocca dicono, non
hanno nulla in lor mente, perocchè la lor mente è dentro il
falso, che è nulla; nè sono soccorsi dalla fantasia a poterne
formare una falsa vastissima imagine. Così _ora ci è naturalmente
niegato di poter entrare nella vasta immaginativa di quei primi
uomini_, le menti dei quali di nulla erano assottigliate, di
nulla astratte, di nulla spiritualezzate.... Onde dicemmo
sopra ch’_ora appena intender si può, affatto immaginar non sì
può_, come pensassero i primi uomini che fondarono la umanità
gentilesca.”

In this citation (already almost too long for a note) I have
omitted several sentences not essential to the general meaning.
It places these early divine fables and theological poets (so
Vico calls them) in their true point of view, and assigns to them
their proper place in the ascending movement of human society:
it refers the mythes to an early religious and poetical age, in
which feeling and fancy composed the whole fund of the human
mind, over and above the powers of sense: the great mental change
which has since taken place has robbed us of the power, not
merely of believing them as they were originally believed, but
even of conceiving completely that which their first inventors
intended to express.

The views here given from this distinguished Italian (the
precursor of F. A. Wolf in regard to the Homeric poems, as well
as of Niebuhr in regard to the Roman history) appear to me no
less correct than profound; and the obvious inference from them
is, that attempts to _explain_ (as it is commonly called) the
mythes (_i. e._ to translate them into some physical, moral or
historical statements, suitable to our order of thought) are,
even as guesses, essentially unpromising. Nevertheless Vico,
inconsistently with his own general view, bestows great labor and
ingenuity in attempting to discover internal meaning symbolized
under many of the mythes; and even lays down the position, “che
i primi uomini della Gentilità essendo stati semplicissimi,
quanto i fanciulli, i quali per natura son veritieri: le prime
favole non poterono finger nulla di falso: per lo che dovettero
necessariamente essere _vere narrazioni_.” (See vol. v. p. 194;
compare also p. 99, Axiom xvi.) If this position be meant simply
to exclude the idea of designed imposture, it may for the most
part be admitted; but Vico evidently intends something more. He
thinks that there lies hid under the fables a basis of matter of
fact—not literal but symbolized—which he draws out and exhibits
under the form of a civil history of the divine and heroic times:
a confusion of doctrine the more remarkable, since he distinctly
tells us (in perfect conformity with the long passage above
transcribed from him) that the special matter of these early
mythes is “impossibility accredited as truth,”—“che la di lei
propria materia è _l’impossibile credibile_” (p. 176, and still
more fully in the first _rédaction_ of the _Scienza Nuova_, b.
iii. c. 4; vol. iv. p. 187 of his Works).

When we read the _Canones Mythologici_ of Vico (De Constantia
Philologiæ, Pars Posterior, c. xxx.; vol. iii. p. 363), and
his explanation of the legends of the Olympic gods, Hercules,
Thêseus, Kadmus, etc., we see clearly that the meaning which he
professes to bring out is one previously put in by himself.

There are some just remarks to the same purpose in Karl Ritter’s
_Vorhalle Europäischer Volkergeschichten_, Abschn. ii. p. 150
_seq._ (Berlin, 1820). He too points out how much the faith of
the old world (der Glaube der Vorwelt) has become foreign to our
minds, since the recent advances of “Politik und Kritik,” and how
impossible it is for us to elicit history from their conceptions
by our analysis, in cases where they have not distinctly laid it
out for us. The great length of this note prevents me from citing
the passage: and he seems to me also (like Vico) to pursue his
own particular investigations in forgetfulness of the principle
laid down by himself.

[845] O. Müller, in his _Prolegomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen
Mythologie_ (cap. iv. p. 108), has pointed out the mistake of
supposing that there existed originally some nucleus of pure
reality as the starting-point of the mythes, and that upon this
nucleus fiction was superinduced afterwards: he maintains that
the real and the ideal were blended together in the primitive
conception of the mythes. Respecting the general state of mind
out of which the mythes grew, see especially pages 78 and 110 of
that work, which is everywhere full of instruction on the subject
of the Grecian mythes, and is eminently suggestive, even where
the positions of the author are not completely made out.

The short _Heldensage der Griechen_ by Nitzsch (Kiel, 1842, t.
v.) contains more of just and original thought on the subject
of the Grecian mythes than any work with which I am acquainted.
I embrace completely the subjective point of view in which he
regards them; and although I have profited much from reading
his short tract, I may mention that before I ever saw it, I had
enforced the same reasonings on the subject in an article in the
Westminster Review, May 1843, on the _Heroen-Geschichten_ of
Niebuhr.

Jacob Grimm, in the preface to his _Deutsche Mythologie_ (p. 1,
1st edit. Gött. 1835), pointedly insists on the distinction
between “_Sage_” and history, as well as upon the fact that the
former has its chief root in religious belief “Legend and history
(he says) are powers each by itself, adjoining indeed on the
confines, but having each its own separate and exclusive ground;”
also p. xxvii. of the same introduction.

A view substantially similar is adopted by William Grimm, the
other of the two distinguished brothers whose labors have so much
elucidated Teutonic philology and antiquities. He examines the
extent to which either historical matter of fact or historical
names can be traced in the _Deutsche Heldensage_; and he comes to
the conclusion that the former is next to nothing, the latter not
considerable. He draws particular attention to the fact, that the
audience for whom these poems were intended had not learned to
distinguish history from poetry (W. Grimm, _Deutsche Heldensage_,
pp. 8, 337, 342, 345, 399, Gött. 1829).

The state of mind, and the relation of speaker to hearers, thus depicted, stand clearly marked in the terms and tenor of the ancient epic, if we only put a plain meaning upon what we read. The poet—like the prophet, whom he so much resembles—sings under heavenly guidance, inspired by the goddess to whom he has prayed for her assisting impulse: she puts the word into his mouth and the incidents into his mind: he is a privileged man, chosen as her organ and speaking from her revelations.[846] As the Muse grants the gift of song to whom she will, so she sometimes in her anger snatches it away, and the most consummate human genius is then left silent and helpless.[847] It is true that these expressions, of the Muse inspiring and the poet singing a tale of past times, have passed from the ancient epic to compositions produced under very different circumstances, and have now degenerated into unmeaning forms of speech; but they gained currency originally in their genuine and literal acceptation. If poets had from the beginning written or recited, the predicate of singing would never have been ascribed to them; nor would it have ever become customary to employ the name of the Muse as a die to be stamped on licensed fiction, unless the practice had begun when her agency was invoked and hailed in perfect good faith. Belief, the fruit of deliberate inquiry and a rational scrutiny of evidence, is in such an age unknown: the simple faith of the time slides in unconsciously, when the imagination and feeling are exalted; and inspired authority is at once understood, easily admitted, and implicitly confided in.

[846] Hesiod, Theogon. 32.—

... ἐνέπνευσαν δέ (the Muses) μοι αὐδὴν
Θείην, ὡς κλείοιμι τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα, πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα,
Καί με κέλονθ᾽ ὑμνεῖν μακάρων γένος αἰὲν ἐόντων, etc.

Odyss. xxii. 347; viii. 63, 73, 481, 489. Δημόδοκ᾽ ... ἢ σέ γε
Μοῦσ᾽ ἐδίδαξε, Διὸς παῖς, ἢ σέγ᾽ Ἀπόλλων: that is, Demodocus has
either been inspired as a poet by the Muse, or as a prophet by
Apollo: for the Homeric Apollo is not the god of song. Kalchas
the prophet receives his inspiration from Apollo, who confers
upon him the same knowledge both of past and future as the Muses
give to Hesiod (Iliad, i. 69):—

Κάλχας Θεστορίδης, οἰωνοπόλων ὄχ᾽ ἄριστος
Ὃς ᾔδη τά τ᾽ ἐόντα, τά τ᾽ ἐσσόμενα, πρό τ᾽ ἐόντα
Ἣν διὰ μαντοσύνην, τὴν οἱ πόρε Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων.

Also Iliad, ii. 485.

Both the μάντις and the ἀοιδὸς are standing, recognized
professions (Odyss. xvii. 383), like the physician and the
carpenter, δημιόεργοι.

[847] Iliad, ii. 599.

The word mythe (μῦθος, _fabula_, _story_), in its original meaning, signified simply a statement or current narrative, without any connotative implication either of truth or falsehood. Subsequently the meaning of the word (in Latin and English as well as in Greek) changed, and came to carry with it the idea of an old personal narrative, always uncertified, sometimes untrue or avowedly fictitious.[848] And this change was the result of a silent alteration in the mental state of the society,—of a transition on the part of the superior minds (and more or less on the part of all) to a stricter and more elevated canon of credibility, in consequence of familiarity with recorded history, and its essential tests, affirmative as well as negative. Among the original hearers of the mythes, all such tests were unknown; they had not yet learned the lesson of critical disbelief; the mythe passed unquestioned from the mere fact of its currency, and from its harmony with existing sentiments and preconceptions. The very circumstances which contributed to rob it of literal belief in after-time, strengthened its hold upon the mind of the Homeric man. He looked for wonders and unusual combinations in the past; he expected to hear of gods, heroes and men, moving and operating together upon earth; he pictured to himself the fore-time as a theatre in which the gods interfered directly, obviously and frequently, for the protection of their favorites and the punishment of their foes. The rational conception, then only dawning in his mind, of a systematic course of nature was absorbed by this fervent and lively faith. And if he could have been supplied with as perfect and philosophical a history of his own real past time, as we are now enabled to furnish with regard to the last century of England or France, faithfully recording all the successive events, and accounting for them by known positive laws, but introducing no special interventions of Zeus and Apollo—such a history would have appeared to him not merely unholy and unimpressive, but destitute of all plausibility or title to credence. It would have provoked in him the same feeling of incredulous aversion as a description of the sun (to repeat the previous illustration) in a modern book on scientific astronomy.

[848] In this later sense it stands pointedly opposed to ἱστορία,
_history_, which seems originally to have designated matter
of fact, present and seen by the describer, or the result of
his personal inquiries (see Herodot. i. 1; Verrius Flacc. ap.
Aul. Gell. v. 18; Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. iii. 12; and the
observations of Dr. Jortin, Remarks on Ecclesiastical History,
vol. i. p. 59).

The original use of the word λόγος was the same as that of
μῦθος—a current tale, true or false, as the case might be;
and the term designating a person much conversant with the
old legends (λόγιος) is derived from it (Herod. i. 1; ii. 3).
Hekatæus and Herodotus both use λόγος in this sense. Herodotus
calls both Æsop and Hekatæus λογοποιοί (ii. 134-143).

Aristotle (Metaphys. i. p. 8, ed. Brandis) seems to use μῦθος
in this sense, where he says—διὸ καὶ φιλόμυθος ὁ φιλόσοφος
πώς ἐστιν· ὁ γὰρ μῦθος συγκεῖται ἐκ θαυμασίων, etc. In the
same treatise (xi. p. 254), he uses it to signify fabulous
amplification and transformation of a doctrine true in the main.

To us these mythes are interesting fictions; to the Homeric and Hesiodic audience they were “rerum divinarum et humanarum scientia,”—an aggregate of religious, physical and historical revelations, rendered more captivating, but not less true and real, by the bright coloring and fantastic shapes in which they were presented. Throughout the whole of “mythe-bearing Hellas”[849] they formed the staple of the uninstructed Greek mind, upon which history and philosophy were by so slow degrees superinduced; and they continued to be the aliment of ordinary thought and conversation, even after history and philosophy had partially supplanted the mythical faith among the leading men, and disturbed it more or less in the ideas of all. The men, the women, and the children of the remote dêmes and villages of Greece, to whom Thucydidês, Hippocratês, Aristotle, or Hipparchus were unknown, still continued to dwell upon the local fables which formed their religious and patriotic antiquity. And Pausanias, even in his time, heard everywhere divine or heroic legends yet alive, precisely of the type of the old epic; he found the conceptions of religious and mythical faith, coëxistent with those of positive science, and contending against them at more or less of odds, according to the temper of the individual. Now it is the remarkable characteristic of the Homeric age, that no such coëxistence or contention had yet begun. The religious and mythical point of view covers, for the most part, all the phænomena of nature; while the conception of invariable sequence exists only in the background, itself personified under the name of the Mœræ, or Fates, and produced generally as an exception to the omnipotence of Zeus for all ordinary purposes. Voluntary agents, visible and invisible, impel and govern everything. Moreover this point of view is universal throughout the community,—adopted with equal fervor, and carried out with equal consistency, by the loftiest minds and by the lowest. The great man of that day is he who, penetrated like others with the general faith, and never once imagining any other system of nature than the agency of these voluntary Beings, can clothe them in suitable circumstances and details, and exhibit in living body and action those types which his hearers dimly prefigure. Such men were the authors of the Iliad and the Odyssey; embodying in themselves the whole measure of intellectual excellence which their age was capable of feeling: to us, the first of poets—but to their own public, religious teachers, historians, and philosophers besides—inasmuch as all that then represented history and philosophy was derived from those epical effusions and from others homogeneous with them. Herodotus recognizes Homer and Hesiod as the main authors of Grecian belief respecting the names and generations, the attributes and agency, the forms and the worship of the gods.[850]

[849] M. Ampère, in his _Histoire Littéraire de la France_ (ch.
viii. v. i. p. 310) distinguishes the Saga (which corresponds
as nearly as possible with the Greek μῦθος, λόγος, ἐπιχώριος
λόγος), as a special product of the intellect, not capable of
being correctly designated either as history, or as fiction, or
as philosophy:—

“Il est un pays, la Scandinavie, où la tradition racontée s’est
développée plus complètement qu’ailleurs, où ses produits ont
été plus soigneusement recueillis et mieux conservés: dans ce
pays, ils ont reçu un nom particulier, dont l’équivalent exact ne
se trouve pas hors des langues Germaniques: c’est le mot _Saga,
Sage, ce qu’on dit, ce qu’on raconte_,—la tradition orale. Si
l’on prend ce mot non dans une acception restreinte, mais dans
le sens général où le prenait Niebuhr quand il l’appliquoit, par
exemple, aux traditions populaires qui ont pu fournir à Tite Live
une portion de son histoire, la Saga doit être comptée parmi
les produits spontanés de l’imagination humaine. La Saga a son
existence propre comme la poësie, comme l’histoire, comme le
roman. Elle n’est pas la poësie, parcequ’elle n’est pas chantée,
mais parlée; elle n’est pas l’histoire, parcequ’elle est denuée
de critique; elle n’est pas le roman, parcequ’elle est sincère,
parcequ’elle a foi à ce qu’elle raconte. Elle n’invente pas, mais
répète: elle peut se tromper, mais elle ne ment jamais. Ce récit
souvent merveilleux, que personne ne fabrique sciemment, et que
tout le monde altère et falsifie sans le vouloir, qui se perpétue
à la manière des chants primitifs et populaires,—ce récit, quand
il se rapporte non à un héros, mais à un saint, s’appelle une
légende.”

[850] Herodot. ii. 53.

History, philosophy, etc., properly so called and conforming to our ideas (of which the subsequent Greeks were the first creators), never belonged to more than a comparatively small number of thinking men, though their influence indirectly affected more or less the whole national mind. But when positive science and criticism, and the idea of an invariable sequence of events, came to supplant in the more vigorous intellects the old mythical creed of omnipresent personification, an inevitable scission was produced between the instructed few and the remaining community. The opposition between the scientific and the religious point of view was not slow in manifesting itself: in general language, indeed, both might seem to stand together, but in every particular case the admission of one involved the rejection of the other. According to the theory which then became predominant, the course of nature was held to move invariably on, by powers and attributes of its own, unless the gods chose to interfere and reverse it; but they had the power of interfering as often and to as great an extent as they thought fit. Here the question was at once opened, respecting a great variety of particular phænomena, whether they were to be regarded as natural or miraculous. No constant or discernible test could be suggested to discriminate the two: every man was called upon to settle the doubt for himself, and each settled it according to the extent of his knowledge, the force of his logic, the state of his health, his hopes, his fears, and many other considerations affecting his separate conclusion. In a question thus perpetually arising, and full of practical consequences, instructed minds, like Periklês, Thucydidês, and Euripidês, tended more and more to the scientific point of view,[851] in cases where the general public were constantly gravitating towards the religious.

[851] See Plutarch, Perikl. capp. 5, 32, 38; Cicero, De Republ.
i. 15-16, ed. Maii.