Chapter XVI (2)

The phytologist Theophrastus, in his valuable collection of facts
respecting vegetable organization, is often under the necessity
of opposing his scientific interpretation of curious incidents in
the vegetable world to the religious interpretation of them which
he found current. Anomalous phænomena in the growth or decay of
trees were construed as signs from the gods, and submitted to a
prophet for explanation (see Histor. Plantar. ii. 3, iv. 16; v.
3).

We may remark, however, that the old faith had still a certain
hold over his mind. In commenting on the story of the willow-tree
at Philippi, and the venerable old plane-tree at Antandros
(more than sixty feet high, and requiring four men to grasp it
round in the girth), having been blown down by a high wind, and
afterwards spontaneously resuming their erect posture, he offers
some explanations how such a phænomenon might have happened, but
he admits, at the end, that there may be something extra-natural
in the case, Ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ἴσως ἔξω φυσικῆς αἰτίας ἔστιν, etc.
(De Caus. Plant. v. 4): see a similar miracle in reference to the
cedar-tree of Vespasian (Tacit. Hist. ii. 78).

Euripidês, in his lost tragedy called Μελανίππη Σοφὴ, placed in
the month of Melanippê a formal discussion and confutation of the
whole doctrine of τέρατα, or supernatural indications (Dionys.
Halicar. Ars Rhetoric. p. 300-356, Reisk). Compare the Fables of
Phædrus, iii. 3; Plutarch, Sept. Sap. Conviv. ch. 3. p. 149; and
the curious philosophical explanation by which the learned men of
Alexandria tranquillized the alarms of the vulgar, on occasion of
the serpent said to have been seen entwined round the head of the
crucified Kleomenês (Plutarch, Kleomen. c. 39).

It is one part of the duty of an able physician, according to
the Hippocratic treatise called Prognosticon (c. 1. t. ii. p.
112, ed. Littré), when he visits his patient, to examine whether
there is anything divine in the malady, ἅμα δὲ καὶ εἴ τι θεῖον
ἔνεστιν ἐν τῇσι νούσοισι: this, however, does not agree with the
memorable doctrine laid down in the treatise, De Aëre, Locis et
Aquis (c. 22. p. 78, ed. Littré), and cited hereafter, in this
chapter. Nor does Galen seem to have regarded it as harmonizing
with the general views of Hippocratês. In the excellent
Prolegomena of M. Littré to his edition of Hippocratês (t. i.
p. 76) will be found an inedited scholium, wherein the opinion
of Baccheius and other physicians is given, that the affections
of the plague were to be looked upon as divine, inasmuch as the
disease came from God; and also the opinion of Xenophôn, the
friend of Praxagoras, that the “genus of days of crisis” in fever
was divine; “For (said Xenophôn) just as the Dioskuri, being
gods, appear to the mariner in the storm and bring him salvation,
so also do the days of crisis, when they arrive, in fever.”
Galen, in commenting upon this doctrine of Xenophôn, says that
the author “has expressed his own individual feeling, but has
no way set forth the opinion of Hippocratês:” Ὁ δὲ τῶν κρισίμων
γένος ἡμερῶν εἰπὼν εἶναι θεῖον, ἑαυτοῦ τι πάθος ὡμολόγησεν· οὐ
μὴν Ἱπποκράτους γε τὴν γνώμην ἔδειξεν (Galen, Opp. t. v. p. 120,
ed. Basil).

The comparison of the Dioskuri appealed to by Xenophôn is a
precise reproduction of their function as described in the
Homeric Hymn (Hymn xxxiii. 10): his personification of the “days
of crisis” introduces the old religious agency to fill up a gap
in his medical science.

I annex an illustration from the Hindoo vein of thought:—“It is
a rule with the Hindoos to bury, and not to burn, the bodies of
those who die of the small pox: for (say they) the small pox is
not only caused by the goddess Davey, but is, in fact, _Davey
herself_; and to burn the body of a person affected with this
disease, is, in reality, neither more nor less than _to burn the
goddess_.” (Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections, etc., vol. i. ch.
xxv. p. 221.)

The age immediately prior to this unsettled condition of thought is the really mythopœic age; in which the creative faculties of the society know no other employment, and the mass of the society no other mental demand. The perfect expression of such a period, in its full peculiarity and grandeur, is to be found in the Iliad and Odyssey,—poems of which we cannot determine the exact date, but which seem both to have existed prior to the first Olympiad, 776 B. C., our earliest trustworthy mark of Grecian time. For some time after that event, the mythopœic tendencies continued in vigor (Arktinus, Leschês, Eumêlus, and seemingly most of the Hesiodic poems, fall within or shortly after the first century of recorded Olympiads); but from and after this first century, we may trace the operation of causes which gradually enfeebled and narrowed them, altering the point of view from which the mythes were looked at. What these causes were, it will be necessary briefly to intimate.

The foremost and most general of all is, the expansive force of Grecian intellect itself,—a quality in which this remarkable people stand distinguished from all their neighbors and contemporaries. Most, if not all nations have had mythes, but no nation except the Greeks have imparted to them immortal charm and universal interest; and the same mental capacities, which raised the great men of the poetic age to this exalted level, also pushed forward their successors to outgrow the early faith in which the mythes had been generated and accredited.

One great mark, as well as means, of such intellectual expansion, was the habit of attending to, recording, and combining, positive and present facts, both domestic and foreign. In the genuine Grecian epic, the theme was an unknown and aoristic past; but even as early as the Works and Days of Hesiod, the present begins to figure: the man who tills the earth appears in his own solitary nakedness, apart from gods and heroes—bound indeed by serious obligations to the gods, but contending against many difficulties which are not to be removed by simple reliance on their help. The poet denounces his age in the strongest terms as miserable, degraded and profligate, and looks back with reverential envy to the extinct heroic races who fought at Troy and Thêbes. Yet bad as the present time is, the Muse condescends to look at it along with him, and to prescribe rules for human life—with the assurance that if a man be industrious, frugal, provident, just and friendly in his dealings, the gods will recompense him with affluence and security. Nor does the Muse disdain, while holding out such promise, to cast herself into the most homely details of present existence and to give advice thoroughly practical and calculating. Men whose minds were full of the heroes of Homer, called Hesiod in contempt the poet of the Helots; and the contrast between the two is certainly a remarkable proof of the tendency of Greek poetry towards the present and the positive.

Other manifestations of the same tendency become visible in the age of Archilochus (B. C. 680-660). In an age when metrical composition and the living voice are the only means whereby the productive minds of a community make themselves felt, the invention of a new metre, new forms of song and recitation, or diversified accompaniments, constitute an epoch. The iambic, elegiac, choric, and lyric poetry, from Archilochus downwards, all indicate purposes in the poet, and impressibilities of the hearers, very different from those of the ancient epic. In all of them the personal feeling of the poet and the specialties of present time and place, are brought prominently forward, while in the Homeric hexameter the poet is a mere nameless organ of the historical Muse—the hearers are content to learn, believe, and feel, the incidents of a foregone world, and the tale is hardly less suitable to one time and place than to another. The iambic metre (we are told) was first suggested to Archilochus by the bitterness of his own private antipathies; and the mortal wounds inflicted by his lampoons, upon the individuals against whom they were directed, still remain attested, though the verses themselves have perished. It was the metre (according to the well-known judgment of Aristotle) most nearly approaching to common speech, and well suited both to the coarse vein of sentiment, and to the smart and emphatic diction of its inventor.[852] Simonidês of Amorgus, the younger contemporary of Archilochus, employed the same metre, with less bitterness, but with an anti-heroic tendency not less decided. His remaining fragments present a mixture of teaching and sarcasm, having a distinct bearing upon actual life,[853] and carrying out the spirit which partially appears in the Hesiodic Works and Days. Of Alkæus and Sapphô, though unfortunately we are compelled to speak of them upon hearsay only, we know enough to satisfy us that their own personal sentiments and sufferings, their relations private or public with the contemporary world, constituted the soul of those short effusions which gave them so much celebrity:[854] and in the few remains of the elegiac poets preserved to us—Kallinus, Mimnermus, Tyrtæus—the impulse of some present motive or circumstance is no less conspicuous. The same may also be said of Solôn, Theognis and Phokylidês, who preach, encourage, censure, or complain, but do not recount—and in whom a profound ethical sensibility, unknown to the Homeric poems, manifests itself: the form of poetry (to use the words of Solôn himself) is made the substitute for the public speaking of the agora.[855]

[852] Horat. de Art. Poet. 79:—

“Archilochum proprio rabies armavit Iambo,” etc.

Compare Epist. i. 19, 23, and Epod. vi. 12; Aristot. Rhetor. iii.
8, 7, and Poetic. c. 4—also Synesius de Somniis—ὥσπερ Ἀλκαῖος καὶ
Ἀρχίλοχος, οἳ δεδαπανήκασι τὴν εὐστομίαν εἰς τὸν οἰκεῖον βίον
ἑκάτερος (Alcæi Fragment. Halle, 1810, p. 205). Quintilian speaks
in striking language of the power of expression manifested by
Archilochus (x. 1, 60).

[853] Simonidês of Amorgus touches briefly, but in a tone of
contempt upon the Trojan war—~γυναικὸς οὕνεκ᾽~ ἀμφιδηριωμένους
(Simonid. Fragm. 8. p. 36. v. 118); he seems to think it absurd
that so destructive a struggle should have taken place “_pro unâ
mulierculâ_,” to use the phrase of Mr. Payne Knight.

[854] See Quintilian, x. 1, 63. Horat. Od. i. 32; ii. 13.
Aristot. Polit. iii. 10, 4. Dionys. Halic. observes (Vett.
Scriptt. Censur. v. p. 421) respecting Alkæus—πολλαχοῦ γοῦν τὸ
μέτρον εἴ τις περιέλοι, ῥητορικὴν ἂν εὕροι πολιτείαν; and Strabo
(xiii. p. 617), τὰ στασιωτικὰ καλούμενα τοῦ Ἀλκαίου ποιήματα.

There was a large dash of sarcasm and homely banter aimed at
neighbors and contemporaries in the poetry of Sapphô, apart from
her impassioned love-songs—ἄλλως σκώπτει τὸν ἄγροικον νύμφιον καὶ
τὸν θυρωρὸν τὸν ἐν τοῖς γάμοις, εὐτελέστατα καὶ ἐν πέζοις ὀνόμασι
μᾶλλον ἢ ἐν ποιητικοῖς. Ὥστε αὐτῆς μᾶλλόν ἐστι τὰ ποιήματα ταῦτα
διαλέγεσθαι ἢ ἄδειν· οὐδ᾽ ἂν ἅρμοσαι πρὸς τὸν χόρον ἢ πρὸς τὴν
λύραν, εἰ μή τις εἴη χόρος διαλεκτικός (Dêmêtr. Phaler, De
Interpret. c. 167).

Compare also Herodot. ii. 135, who mentions the satirical talent
of Sapphô, employed against her brother for an extravagance about
the courtezan Rhodôpis.

[855] Solôn, Fragm. iv. 1, ed. Schneidewin:—

Αὐτὸς κήρυξ ἦλθον ἀφ᾽ ἱμερτῆς Σαλαμῖνος
Κόσμον ἐπέων ᾠδὴν ἀντ᾽ ἀγορῆς θέμενος, etc.

See _Brandis_, Handbuch der Griechischen Philosophie, sect.
xxiv.-xxv. Plato states that Solôn, in his old age, engaged in
the composition of an epic poem, which he left unfinished, on the
subject of the supposed island of Atlantis and Attica (Plato,
Timæus, p. 21, and Kritias, p. 113). Plutarch, Solôn, c. 31.

Doubtless all these poets made abundant use of the ancient mythes, but it was by turning them to present account, in the way of illustration, or flattery, or contrast,—a tendency which we may usually detect even in the compositions of Pindar, in spite of the lofty and heroic strain which they breathe throughout. That narrative or legendary poetry still continued to be composed during the seventh and sixth centuries before the Christian æra is not to be questioned; but it exhibited the old epical character without the old epical genius; both the inspiration of the composer and the sympathies of the audience had become more deeply enlisted in the world before them, and disposed to fasten on incidents of their own actual experience. From Solôn and Theognis we pass to the abandonment of all metrical restrictions and to the introduction of prose writing,—a fact, the importance of which it is needless to dwell upon,—marking as well the increased familiarity with written records, as the commencement of a separate branch of literature for the intellect, apart from the imagination and emotions wherein the old legends had their exclusive root.

Egypt was first unreservedly opened to the Greeks during the reign of Psammetichus, about B. C. 660; gradually it became much frequented by them for military or commercial purposes, or for simple curiosity, and enlarged the range of their thoughts and observations, while it also imparted to them that vein of mysticism, which overgrew the primitive simplicity of the Homeric religion, and of which I have spoken in a former chapter. They found in it a long-established civilization, colossal wonders of architecture, and a certain knowledge of astronomy and geometry, elementary indeed, but in advance of their own. Moreover it was a portion of their present world, and it contributed to form in them an interest for noting and describing the actual realities before them. A sensible progress is made in the Greek mind during the two centuries from B. C. 700 to B. C. 500, in the record and arrangement of historical facts: an _historical sense_ arises in the superior intellects, and some idea of evidence as a discriminating test between fact and fiction. And this progressive tendency was further stimulated by increased communication and by more settled and peaceful social relations between the various members of the Hellenic world, to which may be added material improvements, purchased at the expense of a period of turbulence and revolution, in the internal administration of each separate state. The Olympic, Pythian, Nemean, and Isthmian games became frequented by visitors from the most distant parts of Greece: the great periodical festival in the island of Dêlos brought together the citizens of every Ionic community, with their wives and children, and an ample display of wealth and ornaments.[856] Numerous and flourishing colonies were founded in Sicily, the south of Italy, the coasts of Epirus and of the Euxine Sea: the Phokæans explored the whole of the Adriatic, established Massalia, and penetrated even as far as the south of Ibêria, with which they carried on a lucrative commerce.[857] The geographical ideas of the Greeks were thus both expanded and rectified: the first preparation of a map, by Anaximander the disciple of Thalês, is an epoch in the history of science. We may note the ridicule bestowed by Herodotus both upon the supposed people called Hyperboreans and upon the idea of a circumfluous ocean-stream, as demonstrating the progress of the age in this department of inquiry.[858] And even earlier than Herodotus, Xanthus had noticed the occurrence of fossil marine productions in the interior of Asia Minor, which led him to reflections on the changes of the earth’s surface with respect to land and water.[859]

[856] Homer, Hymn. ad Apollin. 155; Thucydid. iii. 104.

[857] Herodot. i. 163.

[858] Herodot. iv. 36. γελῶ δὲ ὁρέων Γῆς περιόδους γράψαντας
πολλοὺς ἤδη, καὶ οὐδένα νόον ἔχοντας ἐξηγησάμενον· οἳ Ὠκέανόν τε
ῥέοντα γράφουσι πέριξ τὴν γῆν, ἐοῦσαν κυκλοτερέα ὡς ἀπὸ τόρνου,
etc., a remark probably directed against Hekatæus.

Respecting the map of Anaximander, Strabo, i. p. 7; Diogen.
Laërt. ii. 1; Agathemer ap. Geograph. Minor. i. 1. πρῶτος
ἐτόλμησε τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐν πίνακι γράψαι.

Aristagoras of Milêtus, who visited Sparta to solicit aid for the
revolted Ionians against Darius, brought with him a brazen tablet
or map, by means of which he exhibited the relative position of
places in the Persian empire (Herodot. v. 49).

[859] Xanthus ap. Strabo. i. p. 50; xii. p. 579. Compare Creuzer,
Fragmenta Xanthi, p. 162.

If then we look down the three centuries and a half which elapsed between the commencement of the Olympic æra and the age of Herodotus and Thucydidês, we shall discern a striking advance in the Greeks,—ethical, social and intellectual. Positive history and chronology has not only been created, but in the case of Thucydidês, the qualities necessary to the historiographer, in their application to recent events, have been developed with a degree of perfection never since surpassed. Men’s minds have assumed a gentler as well as a juster cast; and acts come to be criticized with reference to their bearing on the internal happiness of a well-regulated community, as well as upon the standing harmony of fraternal states. While Thucydidês treats the habitual and licensed piracy, so coolly alluded to in the Homeric poems, as an obsolete enormity, many of the acts described in the old heroic and Theogonic legends were found not less repugnant to this improved tone of feeling. The battles of the gods with the Giants and Titans,—the castration of Uranus by his son Kronus,—the cruelty, deceit and licentiousness, often supposed both in the gods and heroes, provoked strong disapprobation. And the language of the philosopher Xenophanês, who composed both elegiac and iambic poems for the express purpose of denouncing such tales, is as vehement and unsparing as that of the Christian writers, who, eight centuries afterwards, attacked the whole scheme of paganism.[860]

[860] Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathemat. ix. 193. Fragm.
1. Poet. Græc. ed. Schneidewin. Diogen. Laërt. ix. 18.

Nor was it alone as an ethical and social critic that Xenophanês stood distinguished. He was one of a great and eminent triad—Thalês and Pythagoras being the others—who, in the sixth century before the Christian æra, first opened up those veins of speculative philosophy which occupied afterwards so large a portion of Grecian intellectual energy. Of the material differences between the three I do not here speak; I regard them only in reference to the Homeric and Hesiodic philosophy which preceded them, and from which all three deviated by a step, perhaps the most remarkable in all the history of philosophy. In the scheme of ideas common to Homer and to the Hesiodic Theogony (as has been already stated), we find nature distributed into a variety of personal agencies, administered according to the free-will of different Beings more or less analogous to man—each of these Beings having his own character, attributes and powers, his own sources of pain and pleasure, and his own especial sympathies or antipathies with human individuals; each being determined to act or forbear, to grant favor or inflict injury in his own department of phænomena, according as men, or perhaps other Beings analogous to himself, might conciliate or offend him. The Gods, properly so called, (those who bore a proper name and received some public or family worship,) were the most commanding and capital members amidst this vast network of agents visible and invisible, spread over the universe.[861] The whole view of nature was purely religious and subjective, the spontaneous suggestion of the early mind. It proceeded from the instinctive tendencies of the feelings and imagination to transport, to the world without, the familiar type of free-will and conscious personal action: above all, it took deep hold of the emotions, from the widely extended sympathy which it so perpetually called forth between man and nature.[862]

[861] Hesiod, Opp. Di. 122; Homer, Hymn. ad Vener. 260.

[862] A defence of the primitive faith, on this ground, is found
in Plutarch, Quæstion. Sympos. vii. 4, 4, p. 703.

The first attempt to disenthral the philosophic intellect from this all-personifying religious faith, and to constitute a method of interpreting nature distinct from the spontaneous inspirations of untaught minds, is to be found in Thalês, Xenophanês and Pythagoras, in the sixth century before the Christian æra. It is in them that we first find the idea of Person tacitly set aside or limited, and an impersonal Nature conceived as the object of study. The divine husband and wife, Oceanus and Têthys, parents of many gods and of the Oceanic nymphs, together with the avenging goddess Styx, are translated into the material substance _water_, or, as we ought rather to say, the Fluid: and Thalês set himself to prove that water was the primitive element, out of which all the different natural substances had been formed.[863] He, as well as Xenophanês and Pythagoras, started the problem of physical philosophy, with its objective character and invariable laws, to be discoverable by a proper and methodical application of the human intellect. The Greek word Φύσις, denoting _nature_, and its derivatives _physics_ and _physiology_, unknown in that large sense to Homer or Hesiod, as well as the word _Kosmos_, to denote the mundane system, first appears with these philosophers.[864] The elemental analysis of Thalês—the one unchangeable cosmic substance, varying only in appearance, but not in reality, as suggested by Xenophanês,—and the geometrical and arithmetical combinations of Pythagoras,—all these were different ways of approaching the explanation of physical phænomena, and each gave rise to a distinct school or succession of philosophers. But they all agreed in departing from the primitive method, and in recognizing determinate properties, invariable sequences, and objective truth, in nature—either independent of willing or designing agents, or serving to these latter at once as an indispensable subject-matter and as a limiting condition. Xenophanês disclaimed openly all knowledge respecting the gods, and pronounced that no man could have any means of ascertaining when he was right and when he was wrong, in affirmations respecting them:[865] while Pythagoras represents in part the scientific tendencies of his age, in part also the spirit of mysticism and of special fraternities for religious and ascetic observance, which became diffused throughout Greece in the sixth century before the Christian æra. This was another point which placed him in antipathy with the simple, unconscious and demonstrative faith of the old poets, as well as with the current legends.

[863] Aristotel. Metaphys. i. 3.

[864] Plutarch, Placit. Philos. ii. 1; also Stobæus, Eclog.
Physic. i. 22, where the difference between the Homeric
expressions and those of the subsequent philosophers is seen.
Damm, Lexic. Homeric. v. Φύσις; Alexander von Humboldt, _Kosmos_,
p. 76, the note 9 on page 62 of that admirable work.

The title of the treatises of the early philosophers (Melissus,
Dêmokritus, Parmenidês, Empedoclês, Alkmæôn, etc.) was frequently
Περὶ Φύσεως (Galen. Opp. tom. i. p. 56, ed. Basil).

[865] Xenophan. ap. Sext. Empiric. vii. 50; viii. 326.—

Καὶ τὸ μὲν οὖν σαφὲς οὔτις ἀνὴρ ἴδεν, οὔτε τίς ἐστιν
Εἰδὼς ἀμφὶ θεῶν τε καὶ ἅσσα λέγω περὶ πάντων·
Εἰ γὰρ καὶ τὰ μάλιστα τύχοι τετελεσμένον εἰπῶν,
Αὐτος ὅμως οὐκ οἶδε, δόκος δ᾽ ἐπὶ πᾶσι τέτυκται.

Compare Aristotel. De Xenophane, Zenone, et Georgiâ, capp. 1-2.

If these distinguished men, when they ceased to follow the primitive instinct of tracing the phænomena of nature to personal and designing agents, passed over, not at once to induction and observation, but to a misemployment of abstract words, substituting metaphysical _eideôla_ in the place of polytheism, and to an exaggerated application of certain narrow physical theories—we must remember that nothing else could be expected from the scanty stock of facts then accessible, and that the most profound study of the human mind points out such transition as an inevitable law of intellectual progress.[866] At present, we have to compare them only with that state of the Greek mind[867] which they partially superseded, and with which they were in decided opposition. The rudiments of physical science were conceived and developed among superior men; but the religious feeling of the mass was averse to them; and the aversion, though gradually mitigated, never wholly died away. Some of the philosophers were not backward in charging others with irreligion, while the multitude seems to have felt the same sentiment more or less towards all—or towards that postulate of constant sequences, with determinate conditions of occurrence, which scientific study implies, and which they could not reconcile with their belief in the agency of the gods, to whom they were constantly praying for special succor and blessings.

[866] See the treatise of M. Auguste Comte (_Cours de Philosophie
Positive_), and his doctrine of the three successive stages of
the human mind in reference to scientific study—the theological,
the metaphysical, and the positive;—a doctrine laid down
generally in his first lecture (vol. i. p. 4-12), and largely
applied and illustrated throughout his instructive work. It is
also re-stated and elucidated by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his
System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, vol. ii. p. 610.

[867] “Human wisdom (ἀνθρωπίνη σοφία), as contrasted with
the primitive theology (οἱ ἀρχαῖοι καὶ διατρίβοντες περὶ τὰς
θεολογίας),” to take the words of Aristotle (Meteorolog. ii. 1.
pp. 41-42, ed. Tauchnitz).

The discrepancy between the scientific and the religious point of view was dealt with differently by different philosophers. Thus Socratês openly admitted it, and assigned to each a distinct and independent province. He distributed phænomena into two classes: one, wherein the connection of antecedent and consequent was invariable and ascertainable by human study, and therefore future results accessible to a well-instructed foresight; the other, and those, too, the most comprehensive and important, which the gods had reserved for themselves and their own unconditional agency, wherein there was no invariable or ascertainable sequence, and where the result could only be foreknown by some omen, prophecy, or other special inspired communication from themselves. Each of these classes was essentially distinct, and required to be looked at and dealt with in a manner radically incompatible with the other. Socratês held it wrong to apply the scientific interpretation to the latter, or the theological interpretation to the former. Physics and astronomy, in his opinion, belonged to the divine class of phænomena, in which human research was insane, fruitless, and impious.[868]

[868] Xenoph. Memor. i. 1, 6-9. Τὰ μὲν ἀναγκαῖα (Σωκράτης)
συνεβούλευε καὶ πράττειν, ὡς ἐνόμιζεν ἄριστ᾽ ἂν πραχθῆναι·
περὶ δὲ τῶν ἀδήλων ὅπως ἀποβήσοιτο, μαντευσομένους ἔπεμπεν, εἰ
ποιητέα. Καὶ τοὺς μέλλοντας οἴκους τε καὶ πόλεις καλῶς οἰκήσειν
μαντικῆς ἔφη προσδεῖσθαι· τεκτονικὸν μὲν γὰρ ἢ χαλκευτικὸν ἢ
γεωργικὸν ἢ ἀνθρώπων ἀρχικὸν, ἢ τῶν τοιούτων ἔργων ἐξεταστικὸν,
ἢ λογιστικὸν, ἢ οἰκονομικὸν, ἢ στρατηγικὸν γενέσθαι, πάντα τὰ
τοιαῦτα, μαθήματα καὶ ἀνθρώπου γνώμῃ αἱρετέα, ἐνόμιζεν εἶναι· τὰ
δὲ μέγιστα τῶν ἐν τούτοις ἔφη ~τοὺς θεοὺς ἑαυτοῖς καταλείπεσθαι~,
ὧν οὐδὲν δῆλον εἶναι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις.... Τοὺς δὲ μηδὲν τῶν
τοιούτων οἰομένους εἶναι δαιμόνιον, ἀλλὰ πάντα τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης
γνώμης, δαιμονᾷν ἔφη· δαιμονᾷν δὲ καὶ τοὺς μαντευομένους ἃ τοῖς
ἀνθρώποις ἔδωκαν οἱ θεοὶ μαθοῦσι διακρίνειν.... Ἔφη δὲ δεῖν, ἃ
μὲν μαθόντας ποιεῖν ἔδωκαν οἱ θεοὶ, μανθάνειν· ἃ δὲ μὴ δῆλα τοῖς
ἀνθρώποις ἔστι, πειρᾶσθαι διὰ μαντικῆς παρὰ τῶν θεῶν πυνθάνεσθαι·
τοὺς θεοὺς γὰρ, οἷς ἂν ὦσιν ἵλεῳ, σημαίνειν. Compare also
Memorab. iv. 7. 7; and Cyropæd. i. 6, 3, 23-46.

Physical and astronomical phænomena are classified by Socratês
among the divine class, interdicted to human study (Memor. i.
1,13): τὰ θεῖα or δαιμόνια as supposed to τἀνθρώπεια. Plato
(Phileb. c. 16; Legg. x. p. 886-889; xii. p. 967) held the sun
and stars to be gods, each animated with its special soul: he
allowed astronomical investigation to the extent necessary
for avoiding blasphemy respecting these beings—μέχρι τοῦ μὴ
βλασφημεῖν περὶ αὐτά (vii. 821).

On the other hand, Hippocratês, the contemporary of Socratês, denied the discrepancy, and merged into one those two classes of phænomena,—the divine and the scientifically determinable,—which the latter had put asunder. Hippocratês treated all phænomena as at once both divine and scientifically determinable. In discussing certain peculiar bodily disorders found among the Scythians, he observes, “The Scythians themselves ascribe the cause of this to God, and reverence and bow down to such sufferers, each man fearing that he may suffer the like; and I myself think too that these affections, as well as all others, are divine: no one among them is either more divine or more human than another, but all are on the same footing, and all divine; nevertheless each of them has its own physical conditions, and not one occurs without such physical conditions.”[869]

[869] Hippocratês, De Aëre, Locis et Aquis, c. 22 (p. 78, ed.
Littré, sect. 106 ed. Petersen): Ἔτι τε πρὸς τουτέοισι εὐνούχιαι
γίγνονται οἱ πλεῖστοι ἐν Σκύθῃσι, καὶ γυναικηΐα ἐργάζονται καὶ
ὡς αἱ γυναῖκες διαλέγονταί τε ὁμοίως· καλεῦνταί τε οἱ τοιοῦτοι
ἀνανδριεῖς. Οἱ μὲν οὖν ἐπιχώριοι τὴν αἰτίην προστιθέασι θεῷ καὶ
σέβονται τουτέους τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ προσκυνέουσι, δεδοικότες
περὶ ἑωϋτέων ἕκαστοι. Ἐμοὶ δὲ καὶ αὐτέῳ δοκέει ταῦτα τὰ πάθεα
θεῖα εἶναι, καὶ τἄλλα πάντα, καὶ οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἑτέρου θειότερον
οὐδὲ ἀνθρωπινώτερον, ἀλλὰ πάντα θεῖα· ἕκαστον δὲ ἔχει φύσιν τῶν
τοιουτέων, καὶ οὐδὲν ἄνευ φύσιος γίγνεται. Καὶ τοῦτο τὸ πάθος, ὥς
μοι δοκέει γίγνεσθαι, φράσω, etc.

Again, sect. 112. Ἀλλὰ γὰρ, ὥσπερ καὶ πρότερον ἔλεξα, θεῖα μὲν
καὶ ταῦτά ἐστι ὁμοίως τοῖσι ἄλλοισι, γίγνεται δὲ κατὰ φύσιν
ἕκαστα.

Compare the remarkable treatise of Hippocratês, De Morbo Sacro,
capp. 1 and 18, vol. vi. p. 352-394, ed. Littré. See this opinion
of Hippocratês illustrated by the doctrines of some physical
philosophers stated in Aristotle, Physic. ii. 8. ὥσπερ ὕει ὁ
Ζεὺς, οὐχ ὅπως τὸν σῖτον αὐξήσῃ, ἀλλ᾽ ἐξ ἀνάγκης, etc. Some
valuable observations on the method of Hippocratês are also found
in Plato, Phædr. p. 270.

A third distinguished philosopher of the same day, Anaxagoras, allegorizing Zeus and the other personal gods, proclaimed the doctrine of one common pervading Mind, as having first established order and system in the mundane aggregate, which had once been in a state of chaos—and as still manifesting its uninterrupted agency for wise and good purposes. This general doctrine obtained much admiration from Plato and Aristotle; but they at the same time remarked with surprise, that Anaxagoras never made any use at all of his own general doctrine for the explanation of the phænomena of nature,—that he looked for nothing but physical causes and connecting laws,[870]—so that in fact the spirit of his particular researches was not materially different from those of Demokritus or Leukippus, whatever might be the difference in their general theories. His investigations in meteorology and astronomy, treating the heavenly bodies as subjects for calculation, have been already noticed as offensive, not only to the general public of Greece, but even to Socratês himself among them: he was tried at Athens, and seems to have escaped condemnation only by voluntary exile.[871]

[870] See the graphic picture in Plato, Phædon. p. 97-98 (cap.
46-47): compare Plato, Legg. xii. p. 967; Aristotel. Metaphysic.
i. p. 13-14 (ed. Brandis); Plutarch, Defect. Oracul. p. 435.

Simplicius, Commentar. in Aristotel. Physic. p. 38. καὶ ὅπερ
δὲ ὁ ἐν Φαίδωνι Σωκράτης ἐγκαλεῖ τῷ Ἀναξαγόρᾳ, τὸ ἐν ταῖς τῶν
κατὰ μέρος αἰτιολογίαις μὴ τῷ νῷ κεχρῆσθαι, ἀλλὰ ταῖς ὑλικαῖς
ἀποδόσεσιν, οἰκεῖον ἦν τῇ φυσιολογίᾳ. Anaxagoras thought that the
superior intelligence of men, as compared with other animals,
arose from his possession of hands (Aristot. de Part. Animal. iv.
10. p. 687, ed. Bekk.).

[871] Xenophôn, Memorab. iv. 7. Socratês said, καὶ παραφρονῆσαι
τὸν ταῦτα μεριμνῶντα οὐδὲν ἧττον ἢ Ἀναξαγόρας παρεφρόνησεν, ὁ
μέγιστον φρονήσας ἐπὶ τῷ τὰς τῶν θεῶν μηχανὰς ἐξηγεῖσθαι, etc.
Compare Schaubach, Anaxagoræ Fragment. p. 50-141; Plutarch,
Nikias, 23, and Periklês, 6-32; Diogen. Laërt. ii. 10-14.

The Ionic philosophy, from which Anaxagoras receded more in
language than in spirit, seems to have been the least popular
of all the schools, though some of the commentators treat it as
conformable to vulgar opinion, because it confined itself for the
most part to phænomenal explanations, and did not recognize the
_noumena_ of Plato, or the τὸ ἓν νοητὸν of Parmenidês,—“qualis
fuit Ionicorum, quæ tum dominabatur, ratio, vulgari opinione
et communi sensu comprobata” (Karsten, Parmenidis Fragment,
De Parmenidis Philosophiâ, p. 154). This is a mistake: the
Ionic philosophers, who constantly searched for and insisted
upon physical laws, came more directly into conflict with the
sentiment of the multitude than the Eleatic school.

The larger atmospheric phænomena were connected in the most
intimate manner with Grecian religious feeling and uneasiness
(see Demokritus ap. Sect. Empiric. ix. sect. 19-24. p. 552-554,
Fabric.): the attempts of Anaxagoras and Demokritus to explain
them were more displeasing to the public than the Platonic
speculations (Demokritus ap. Aristot. Meteorol. ii. 7; Stobæus,
Eclog. Physic. p. 594: compare Mullach, Democriti Fragmenta, lib.
iv. p. 394).

The three eminent men just named, all essentially different from each other, may be taken as illustrations of the philosophical mind of Greece during the last half of the fifth century B. C. Scientific pursuits had acquired a powerful hold, and adjusted themselves in various ways with the prevalent religious feelings of the age. Both Hippocratês and Anaxagoras modified their ideas of the divine agency so as to suit their thirst for scientific research. According to the former, the gods were the really efficient agents in the production of all phænomena,—the mean and indifferent not less than the terrific or tutelary. Being thus alike connected with all phænomena, they were specially associated with none—and the proper task of the inquirer was, to find out those rules and conditions by which (he assumed) their agency was always determined, and according to which it might be foretold. And this led naturally to the proceeding which Plato and Aristotle remark in Anaxagoras,—that the all-governing and Infinite Mind, having been announced in sublime language at the beginning of his treatise, was afterward left out of sight, and never applied to the explanation of particular phænomena, being as much consistent with one modification of nature as with another. Now such a view of the divine agency could never be reconciled with the religious feelings of the ordinary Grecian believer, even as they stood in the time of Anaxagoras; still less could it have been reconciled with those of the Homeric man, more than three centuries earlier. By him Zeus and Athênê were conceived as definite Persons, objects of special reverence, hopes, and fears, and animated with peculiar feelings, sometimes of favor, sometimes of wrath, towards himself or his family or country. They were propitiated by his prayers, and prevailed upon to lend him succor in danger—but offended and disposed to bring evil upon him if he omitted to render thanks or sacrifice. This sense of individual communion with, and dependence upon them was the essence of his faith; and with that faith, the all-pervading Mind proclaimed by Anaxagoras—which had no more concern with one man or one phænomenon than with another,—could never be brought into harmony. Nor could the believer, while he prayed with sincerity for special blessings or protection from the gods, acquiesce in the doctrine of Hippocratês, that their agency was governed by constant laws and physical conditions.

That radical discord between the mental impulses of science and religion, which manifests itself so decisively during the most cultivated ages of Greece, and which harassed more or less so many of the philosophers, produced its most afflicting result in the condemnation of Socratês by the Athenians. According to the remarkable passage recently cited from Xenophôn, it will appear that Socratês agreed with his countrymen in denouncing physical speculations as impious,—that he recognized the religious process of discovery as a peculiar branch, coördinate with the scientific,—and that he laid down a theory, of which the basis was, the confessed divergence of these two processes from the beginning—thereby seemingly satisfying the exigencies of religious hopes and fears on the one hand, and those of reason, in her ardor for ascertaining the invariable laws of phænomena, on the other. We may remark that the theory of this religious and extra-scientific process of discovery was at that time sufficiently complete; for Socratês could point out, that those anomalous phænomena which the gods had reserved for themselves, and into which science was forbidden to pry, were yet accessible to the seekings of the pious man, through oracles, omens, and other exceptional means of communication which divine benevolence vouchsafed to keep open. Considering thus to how great an extent Socratês was identified in feeling with the religious public of Athens, and considering moreover that his performance of open religious duties was assiduous—we might wonder, as Xenophôn does wonder,[872] how it could have happened that the Athenian dikasts mistook him at the end of his life for an irreligious man. But we see, by the defence which Xenophôn as well as Plato gives for him, that the Athenian public really considered him, in spite of his own disclaimer, as homogeneous with Anaxagoras and the other physical inquirers, because he had applied similar scientific reasonings to moral and social phænomena. They looked upon him with the same displeasure as he himself felt towards the physical philosophers, and we cannot but admit that in this respect they were more unfortunately consistent than he was. It is true that the mode of defence adopted by Socratês contributed much to the verdict found against him, and that he was further weighed down by private offence given to powerful individuals and professions; but all these separate antipathies found their best account in swelling the cry against him as an over-curious sceptic, and an impious innovator.

[872] Xenophôn, Memorab. i. 1.

Now the scission thus produced between the superior minds and the multitude, in consequence of the development of science and the scientific point of view, is a fact of great moment in the history of Greek progress, and forms an important contrast between the age of Homer and Hesiod and that of Thucydidês; though in point of fact even the multitude, during this later age, were partially modified by those very scientific views which they regarded with disfavor. And we must keep in view the primitive religious faith, once universal and unobstructed, but subsequently disturbed by the intrusions of science; we must follow the great change, as well in respect to enlarged intelligence as to refinement of social and ethical feeling, among the Greeks, from the Hesiodic times downward, in order to render some account of the altered manner in which the ancient mythes came to be dealt with. These mythes, the spontaneous growth of a creative and personifying interpretation of nature, had struck root in Grecian associations at a time when the national faith required no support from what we call evidence. They were _now_ submitted, not simply to a feeling, imagining, and believing public, but also to special classes of instructed men,—philosophers, historians, ethical teachers, and critics,—and to a public partially modified by their ideas[873] as well as improved by a wider practical experience. They were not intended for such an audience; they had ceased to be in complete harmony even with the lower strata of intellect and sentiment,—much more so with the higher. But they were the cherished inheritance of a past time; they were interwoven in a thousand ways with the religious faith, the patriotic retrospect, and the national worship, of every Grecian community; the general type of the mythe was the ancient, familiar, and universal form of Grecian thought, which even the most cultivated men had imbibed in their childhood from the poets,[874] and by which they were to a certain degree unconsciously enslaved. Taken as a whole the mythes had acquired prescriptive and ineffaceable possession: to attack, call in question, or repudiate them, was a task painful even to undertake, and far beyond the power of any one to accomplish.

[873] It is curious to see that some of the most recondite
doctrines of the Pythagorean philosophy were actually brought
before the general Syracusan public in the comedies of
Epicharmus: “In comœdiis suis personas sæpe ita colloqui fecit,
ut sententias Pythagoricas et in universum sublimia vitæ præcepta
immisceret” (Grysar, De Doriensium Comœdiâ, p. 111, Col. 1828).
The fragments preserved in Diogen. Laërt. (iii. 9-17) present
both criticisms upon the Hesiodic doctrine of a primæval chaos,
and an exposition of the archetypal and immutable ideas (as
opposed to the fluctuating phænomena of sense) which Plato
afterwards adopted and systematized.

Epicharmus seems to have combined with this abstruse philosophy
a strong vein of comic shrewdness and some turn to scepticism
(Cicero, Epistol. ad Attic. i. 19): “ut crebro mihi vafer ille
Siculus Epicharmus insusurret cantilenam suam.” Clemens Alex.
Strom. v. p. 258. Νᾶφε καὶ μέμνασ᾽ ἀπιστεῖν· ἄρθρα ταῦτα τῶν
φρενῶν. Ζῶμεν ἀριθμῷ καὶ λογισμῷ· ταῦτα γὰρ σώζει βροτοὺς. Also
his contemptuous ridicule of the prophetesses of his time who
cheated foolish women out of their money, pretending to universal
knowledge, καὶ πάντα γιγνώσκοντι τῷ τηνᾶν λόγῳ (ap Polluc. ix.
81). See, about Epicharmus. O. Müller, Dorians, iv. 7, 4.

These dramas seem to have been exhibited at Syracuse between
480-460 B. C., anterior even to Chionidês and Magnês at Athens
(Aristot. Poet. c. 3): he says ~πολλῷ~ πρότερος, which can hardly
be literally exact. The critics of the Horatian age looked upon
Epicharmus as the prototype of Plautus (Hor. Epistol. ii. 1. 58).

[874] The third book of the republic of Plato is particularly
striking in reference to the use of the poets in education:
see also his treatise De Legg. vii. p. 810-811. Some teachers
made their pupils learn whole poets by heart (ὅλους ποιητὰς
ἐκμανθάνων), others preferred extracts and selections.

For these reasons the anti-mythic vein of criticism was of no effect as a destroying force, but nevertheless its dissolving decomposing and transforming influence was very considerable. To accommodate the ancient mythes to an improved tone of sentiment and a newly created canon of credibility, was a function which even the wisest Greeks did not disdain, and which occupied no small proportion of the whole intellectual activity of the nation.

The mythes were looked at from a point of view completely foreign to the reverential curiosity and literal imaginative faith of the Homeric man; they were broken up and recast in order to force them into new moulds such as their authors had never conceived. We may distinguish four distinct classes of minds, in the literary age now under examination, as having taken them in hand—the poets, the logographers, the philosophers, and the historians.

With the poets and logographers, the mythical persons are real predecessors, and the mythical world an antecedent fact; but it is divine and heroic reality, not human; the present is only half-brother of the past (to borrow[875] an illustration from Pindar in his allusion to gods and men), remotely and generically, but not closely and specifically, analogous to it. As a general habit, the old feelings and the old unconscious faith, apart from all proof or evidence, still remain in their minds; but recent feelings have grown up which compel them to omit, to alter, sometimes even to reject and condemn, particular narratives.

[875] Pindar, Nem. vi. 1. Compare Simonidês, Fragm. 1 (Gaisford).

Pindar repudiates some stories and transforms others, because they are inconsistent with his conceptions of the gods. Thus he formally protests against the tale that Pelops had been killed and served up at table by his father, for the immortal gods to eat; he shrinks from the idea of imputing to them so horrid an appetite; he pronounces the tale to have been originally fabricated by a slanderous neighbor. Nor can he bring himself to recount the quarrels between different gods.[876] The amours of Zeus and Apollo are no way displeasing to him; but he occasionally suppresses some of the simple details of the old mythe, as deficient in dignity: thus, according to the Hesiodic narrative, Apollo was informed by a raven of the infidelity of the nymph Korônis: but the mention of the raven did not appear to Pindar consistent with the majesty of the god, and he therefore wraps up the mode of detection in vague and mysterious language.[877] He feels considerable repugnance to the character of Odysseus, and intimates more than once that Homer has unduly exalted him, by force of poetical artifice. With the character of the Æakid Ajax, on the other hand, he has the deepest sympathy, as well as with his untimely and inglorious death, occasioned by the undeserved preference of a less worthy rival.[878] He appeals for his authority usually to the Muse, but sometimes to “ancient sayings of men,” accompanied with a general allusion to story-tellers and bards,—admitting, however, that these stories present great discrepancy, and sometimes that they are false.[879] Yet the marvellous and the supernatural afford no ground whatever for rejecting a story: Pindar makes an express declaration to this effect in reference to the romantic adventures of Perseus and the Gorgon’s head.[880] He treats even those mythical characters, which conflict the most palpably with positive experience, as connected by a real genealogical thread with the world before him. Not merely the heroes of Troy and Thêbes, and the demigod seamen of Jasôn and the ship Argô, but also the Centaur Cheirôn, the hundred-headed Typhôs, the giant Alkyoneus, Antæus, Bellerophôn and Pegasus, the Chimæra, the Amazons and the Hyperboreans—all appear painted on the same canvas, and touched with the same colors, as the men of the recent and recorded past, Phalaris and Krœsus; only they are thrown back to a greater distance in the perspective.[881] The heroic ancestors of those great Æginetan, Thessalian, Thêban, Argeian, etc. families, whose present members the poet celebrates for their agonistic victories, sympathize with the exploits and second the efforts of their descendants: the inestimable value of a privileged breed and of the stamp of nature is powerfully contrasted with the impotence of unassisted teaching and practice.[882] The power and skill of the Argeian Theæus and his relatives as wrestlers, are ascribed partly to the fact that their ancestors Pamphaês in aforetime had hospitably entertained the Tyndarids Kastôr and Pollux.[883] Perhaps however the strongest proof of the sincerity of Pindar’s mythical faith is afforded when he notices a guilty incident with shame and repugnance, but with an unwilling confession of its truth, as in the case of the fratricide committed on Phôkus by his brothers Pêleus and Telamôn.[884]

[876] Pindar, Olymp. i. 30-55; ix. 32-45.

[877] Pyth. iii. 25. See the allusions to Semelê, Alkmêna, and
Danaê, Pyth. iii. 98; Nem. x. 10. Compare also _supra_, chap. ix.
p. 245.

[878] Pindar, Nem. vii. 20-30; viii. 23-31. Isthm. iii. 50-60.

It seems to be sympathy for Ajax, in odes addressed to noble
Æginetan victors, which induces him thus to depreciate Odysseus;
for he eulogizes Sisyphus, specially on account of his cunning
and resources (Olymp. xiii. 50) in the ode addressed to Xenophôn
the Corinthian.

[879] Olymp. i. 28; Nem. viii. 20; Pyth. i. 93; Olymp. vii. 55;
Nem. vi. 43. φάντι δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων παλαιαὶ ῥήσιες, etc.

[880] Pyth. x. 49. Compare Pyth. xii. 11-22.

[881] Pyth. i. 17; iii. 4-7; iv. 12; viii. 16. Nem. iv. 27-32;
v. 89. Isthm. v. 31; vi. 44-48. Olymp. iii. 17; viii. 63; xiii.
61-87.

[882] Nem. iii. 39; v. 40. συγγενὴς εὐδοξία—πότμος συγγενής; v.
8. Olymp. ix. 103. Pindar seems to introduce φύᾳ in cases where
Homer would have mentioned the divine assistance.

[883] Nem. x. 37-51. Compare the family legend of the Athenian
Dêmocrates, in Plato, Lysis, p. 295.

[884] Nem. v. 12-16.

Æschylus and Sophoklês exhibit the same spontaneous and uninquiring faith as Pindar in the legendary antiquities of Greece, taken as a whole; but they allow themselves greater license as to the details. It was indispensable to the success of their compositions that they should recast and group anew the legendary events, preserving the names and general understood relation of those characters whom they introduced. The demand for novelty of combination increased with the multiplication of tragic spectacles at Athens: moreover the feelings of the Athenians, ethical as well as political, had become too critical to tolerate the literal reproduction of many among the ancient stories.

Both of them exalted rather than lowered the dignity of the mythical world, as something divine and heroic rather than human. The Promêtheus of Æschylus is a far more exalted conception than his keen-witted namesake in Hesiod, and the more homely details of the ancient Thêbaïs and Œdipodia were in like manner modified by Sophoklês.[885] The religious agencies of the old epic are constantly kept prominent, and the paternal curse,—the wrath of deceased persons against those from whom they have sustained wrong,—the judgments of the Erinnys against guilty or foredoomed persons, sometimes inflicted directly, sometimes brought about through dementation of the sufferer himself (like the Homeric Atê),—are frequent in their tragedies.[886]

[885] See above, chap. xiv. p. 368. on the Legend of the Siege of
Thêbes.

[886] The curse of Œdipus is the determining force in the
Sept. ad Thêb., Ἀρά τ᾽, Ἐριννὺς πατρὸς ἡ μεγασθενής (v. 70);
it reappears several times in the course of the drama, with
particular solemnity in the mouth of Eteoklês (695-709, 725, 785,
etc.); he yields to it as an irresistible force, as carrying the
family to ruin:—

Ἐπεὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα κάρτ᾽ ἐπισπέρχει θεὸς,
Ἴτω κατ᾽ οὖρον, κῦμα Κωκυτοῦ λαχὸν,
Φοίβῳ στυγηθὲν πᾶν τὸ Λαΐου γένος.
· · · · ·
Φίλου γὰρ ἐχθρά μοι πατρὸς τέλει᾽ ἄρα
Ξηροῖς ἀκλαύστοις ὄμμασιν προσιζάνει, etc.

So again at the opening of the Agamemnôn, the μνάμων μῆνις
τεκνόποινος (v. 155) and the sacrifice of Iphigeneia are dwelt
upon as leaving behind them an avenging doom upon Agamemnôn,
though he took precautions for gagging her mouth during the
sacrifice and thus preventing her from giving utterance to
imprecations—Φθόγγον ἀραῖον οἴκοις, Βίᾳ χαλινῶν τ᾽ ἀναύδῳ μένει
(κατασχεῖν), v. 346. The Erinnys awaits Agamemnôn even at the
moment of his victorious consummation at Troy (467; compare
762-990, 1336-1433): she is most to be dreaded after great
good fortune: she enforces the curse which ancestral crimes
have brought upon the house of Atreus—πρώταρχος ἄτη—παλαιαὶ
ἁμαρτίαι δόμων (1185-1197, Choëph. 692)—the curse imprecated by
the outraged Thyestês (1601). In the Choëphoræ, Apollo menaces
Orestês with the wrath of his deceased father, and all the
direful visitations of the Erinnyes, unless he undertakes to
revenge the murder (271-296). Αἶσα and Ἐριννὺς bring on blood
for blood (647). But the moment that Orestês, placed between
these conflicting obligations (925), has achieved it, he becomes
himself the victim of the Erinnyes, who drive him mad even at
the end of the Choëphoræ (ἕως δ᾽ ἔτ᾽ ἔμφρων εἰμὶ, 1026), and who
make their appearance bodily, and pursue him throughout the third
drama of this fearful trilogy. The Eidôlon of Klytæmnêstra impels
them to vengeance (Eumenid. 96) and even spurs them on when they
appear to relax. Apollo conveys Orestês to Athens, whither the
Erinnyes pursue him, and prosecute him before the judgment-seat
of the goddess Athênê, to whom they submit the award; Apollo
appearing as his defender. The debate between “the daughters of
Night” and the god, accusing and defending, is eminently curious
(576-730): the Erinnyes are deeply mortified at the humiliation
put upon them when Orestês is acquitted, but Athênê at length
reconciles them, and a covenant is made whereby they become
protectresses of Attica, accepting of a permanent abode and
solemn worship (1006): Orestês returns to Argos, and promises
that even in his tomb he will watch that none of his descendants
shall ever injure the land of Attica (770). The solemn trial and
acquittal of Orestês formed the consecrating legend of the Hill
and Judicature of Areiopagus.

This is the only complete trilogy of Æschylus which we possess,
and the avenging Erinnyes (416) are the movers throughout the
whole—unseen in the first two dramas, visible and appalling in
the third. And the appearance of Cassandra under the actual
prophetic fever in the first, contributes still farther to impart
to it a coloring different from common humanity.

The general view of the movement of the Oresteia given in Welcker
(Æschyl. Trilogie, p. 445) appears to me more conformable to
Hellenic ideas than that of Klausen (Theologumena Æschyli, pp.
157-169), whose valuable collection and comparison of passages
is too much affected, both here and elsewhere, by the desire to
bring the agencies of the Greek mythical world into harmony with
what a religious mind of the present day would approve. Moreover,
he sinks the personality of Athênê too much in the supreme
authority of Zeus (p. 158-168).

Æschylus in two of his remaining pieces brings forward the gods as the chief personages, and far from sharing the objection of Pindar to dwell upon dissensions of the gods, he introduces Promêtheus and Zeus in the one, Apollo and the Eumenidês in the other, in marked opposition. The dialogue, first superinduced by him upon the primitive Chorus, gradually became the most important portion of the drama, and is more elaborated in Sophoklês than in Æschylus. Even in Sophoklês, however, it still generally retains its ideal majesty as contrasted with the rhetorical and forensic tone which afterwards crept in; it grows out of the piece, and addresses itself to the emotions more than to the reason of the audience. Nevertheless, the effect of Athenian political discussion and democratical feeling is visible in both these dramatists. The idea of rights and legitimate privileges as opposed to usurping force, is applied by Æschylus even to the society of the gods: the Eumenidês accuse Apollo of having, with the insolence of youthful ambition, “ridden down” their old prerogatives[887]—while the Titan Promêtheus, the champion of suffering humanity against the unfriendly dispositions of Zeus, ventures to depict the latter as a recent usurper reigning only by his superior strength, exalted by one successful revolution, and destined at some future time to be overthrown by another,—a fate which cannot be averted except through warnings communicable only by Promêtheus himself.[888]

[887] Eumenidês, 150.—

Ἰὼ παῖ Διὸς, ἐπίκλοπος πέλει,
Νέος δὲ γραίας δαίμονας καθιππάσω, etc.

The same metaphor again, v. 731. Æschylus seems to delight in
contrasting the young and the old gods: compare 70-162, 882.

The Erinnyes tell Apollo that he assumes functions which do not
belong to him, and will thus desecrate those which do belong to
him (715-754):—

Ἀλλ᾽ αἱματηρὰ πράγματ᾽, ~οὐ λαχὼν~, σέβεις,
Μαντεῖα δ᾽ οὐκ ἔθ᾽ ἁγνὰ μαντεύσει μένων.