Chapter XVII (2)

Nevertheless, there were distinctions deserving of notice, which render the foregoing proposition more absolutely exact with regard to Greece than with regard to the middle ages. The tales of the epic, and the mythes in their most popular and extended signification, were the only intellectual nourishment with which the Grecian public was supplied, until the sixth century before the Christian æra: there was no prose writing, no history, no philosophy. But such was not exactly the case at the time when the epic of the middle ages appeared. At that time, a portion of society possessed the Latin language, the habit of writing, and some tinge both of history and philosophy: there were a series of chronicles, scanty, indeed, and imperfect, but referring to contemporary events and preventing the real history of the past from passing into oblivion: there were even individual scholars, in the twelfth century, whose acquaintance with Latin literature was sufficiently considerable to enlarge their minds and to improve their judgments. Moreover, the epic of the middle ages, though deeply imbued with religious ideas, was not directly amalgamated with the religion of the people, and did not always find favor with the clergy; while the heroes of the Grecian epic were not only linked in a thousand ways with existing worship, practices, and sacred localities, but Homer and Hesiod pass with Herodotus for the constructors of Grecian theology. We thus see that the ancient epic was both exempt from certain distracting influences by which that of the middle ages was surrounded, and more closely identified with the veins of thought and feeling prevalent in the Grecian public. Yet these counteracting influences did not prevent Pope Calixtus II. from declaring the Chronicle of Turpin to be a genuine history.

If we take the history of our own country as it was conceived and written from the twelfth to the seventeenth century by Hardyng, Fabyan, Grafton, Hollinshed, and others, we shall find that it was supposed to begin with Brute the Trojan, and was carried down from thence, for many ages and through a long succession of kings, to the times of Julius Cæsar. A similar belief of descent from Troy, arising seemingly from a reverential imitation of the Romans and of their Trojan origin, was cherished in the fancy of other European nations. With regard to the English, the chief circulator of it was Geoffrey of Monmouth, and it passed with little resistance or dispute into the national faith—the kings from Brute downward being enrolled in regular chronological series with their respective dates annexed. In a dispute which took place during the reign of Edward I. (A. D. 1301) between England and Scotland, the descent of the kings of England from Brute the Trojan was solemnly embodied in a document put forth to sustain the rights of the crown of England, as an argument bearing on the case then in discussion: and it passed without attack from the opposing party,[1045]—an incident which reminds us of the appeal made by Æschinês, in the contention between the Athenians and Philip of Macedôn, respecting Amphipolis, to the primitive dotal rights of Akamas son of Thêseus—and also of the defence urged by the Athenians to sustain their conquest of Sigeium, against the reclamations of the Mitylenæans, therein the former alleged that they had as much right to the place as any of the other Greeks who had formed part of the victorious armament of Agamemnôn.[1046]

[1045] See Warton’s History of English Poetry, sect. iii. p. 131,
note. “No man before the sixteenth century presumed to doubt
that the Francs derived their origin from Francus son of Hector;
that the Spaniards were descended from Japhet, the Britons from
Brutus, and the Scotch from Fergus.” (_Ibid._ p. 140.)

According to the Prologue of the prose Edda, Odin was the
supreme king of Troy in Asia, “in eâ terrâ quam nos Turciam
appellamus.... Hinc omnes Borealis plagæ magnates vel primores
genealogias suas referunt, atque principes illius urbis inter
numina locant: sed in primis ipsum Priamum pro Odeno ponunt,”
etc. They also identified _Tros_ with _Thor_. (See Lexicon
Mythologicum ad calcem Eddæ Sæmund, p. 552. vol. iii.)

[1046] See above, ch. xv. p. 458; also Æschinês, De Falsâ
Legatione, c. 14, Herodot. v. 94. The Herakleids pretended a
right to the territory in Sicily near Mount Eryx, in consequence
of the victory gained by their progenitor Hêraklês over Eryx, the
eponymous hero of the place. (Herodot. v. 43.)

The tenacity with which this early series of British kings was defended, is no less remarkable than the facility with which it was admitted. The chroniclers at the beginning of the seventeenth century warmly protested against the intrusive scepticism which would cashier so many venerable sovereigns and efface so many noble deeds. They appealed to the patriotic feelings of their hearers, represented the enormity of thus setting up a presumptuous criticism against the belief of ages, and insisted on the danger of the precedent as regarded history generally.[1047] How this controversy stood, at the time and in the view of the illustrious author of Paradise Lost, I shall give in his own words, as they appear in the second page of his History of England. After having briefly touched upon the stories of Samothes son of Japhet, Albion son of Neptune, etc., he proceeds:—

[1047] The remarks in Speed’s Chronicle (book v. c. 3. sect.
11-12), and the preface to Howes’s Continuation of Stow’s
Chronicle, published in 1631, are curious as illustrating this
earnest feeling. The Chancellor Fortescue, in impressing upon
his royal pupil, the son of Henry VI., the limited character of
English monarchy, deduces it from Brute the Trojan: “Concerning
the different powers which kings claim over their subjects, I am
firmly of opinion that it arises solely from the different nature
of their original institution. So the kingdom of England had its
original from Brute and the Trojans, who attended him from Italy
and Greece, and became a mixed kind of government, compounded of
the regal and the political.” (Hallam, Hist. Mid. Ages, ch. viii.
P. 3, page 230.)

“But now of Brutus and his line, with the whole progeny of kings to the entrance of Julius Cæsar, we cannot so easily be discharged: descents of ancestry long continued, laws and exploits not plainly seeming to be borrowed or devised, which on the common belief have wrought no small impression: _defended by many, denied utterly by few_. For what though Brutus and the whole Trojan pretence were yielded up, seeing they, who first devised to bring us some noble ancestor, were content at first with Brutus the Consul, till better invention, though not willing to forego the name, taught them to remove it higher into a more fabulous age, and by the same remove lighting on the Trojan tales, in affectation to make the Briton of one original with the Roman, pitched there: _Yet those old and inborn kings, never any to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least some part of what so long hath been remembered, cannot be thought without too strict incredulity._ For these, and those causes above mentioned, that which hath received approbation from so many, I have chosen not to omit. Certain or uncertain, be that upon the credit of those whom I must follow: _so far as keeps aloof from impossible or absurd_, attested by ancient writers from books more ancient, I refuse not, as the due and proper subject of story.”[1048]

[1048] “Antiquitas enim recepit fabulas fictas etiam nonnunquam
incondite: hæc ætas autem jam exculta, præsertim eludens omne
quod fieri non potest, respuit,” etc. (Cicero, De Republicâ, ii.
10, p. 147, ed. Maii.)

Yet in spite of the general belief of so many centuries—in spite of the concurrent persuasion of historians and poets—in spite of the declaration of Milton, extorted from his feelings rather than from his reason, that this long line of quasi-historical kings and exploits could not be _all_ unworthy of belief—in spite of so large a body of authority and precedent, the historians of the nineteenth century begin the history of England with Julius Cæsar. They do not attempt either to settle the date of king Bladud’s accession, or to determine what may be the basis of truth in the affecting narrative of Lear.[1049] The standard of historical credibility, especially with regard to modern events, has indeed been greatly and sensibly raised within the last hundred years.

[1049] Dr. Zachary Grey has the following observations in his
Notes on Shakspeare (London, 1754, vol. i. p. 112). In commenting
on the passage in King Lear, _Nero is an angler in the lake of
darkness_, he says, “This is one of Shakspeare’s most remarkable
_anachronisms_. King Lear succeeded his father Bladud anno mundi
3105; and Nero, anno mundi 4017, was sixteen years old, when he
married Octavia, Cæsar’s daughter. See Funcii Chronologia, p. 94.”

Such a supposed chronological discrepancy would hardly be pointed
out in any commentary now written.

The introduction prefixed by Mr. Giles, to his recent translation
of Geoffrey of Monmouth (1842), gives a just view both of the
use which our old poets made of his tales, and of the general
credence so long and so unsuspectingly accorded to them. The
list of old British kings given by Mr. Giles also deserves
attention, as a parallel to the Grecian genealogies anterior to
the Olympiads.

But in regard to ancient Grecian history, the rules of evidence still continue relaxed. The dictum of Milton, regarding the ante-Cæsarian history of England, still represents pretty exactly the feeling now prevalent respecting the mythical history of Greece: “Yet those old and inborn kings (Agamemnôn, Achilles, Odysseus, Jasôn, Adrastus, Amphiaräus, Meleager, etc.), never any to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least some part of what so long hath been remembered, cannot be thought without too strict incredulity.” Amidst much fiction (we are still told), there must be some truth: but how is such truth to be singled out? Milton does not even attempt to make the severance: he contents himself with “keeping aloof from the impossible and the absurd,” and ends in a narrative which has indeed the merit of being sober-colored, but which he never for a moment thinks of recommending to his readers as true. So in regard to the legends of Greece,—Troy, Thêbes, the Argonauts, the Boar of Kalydôn, Hêraklês, Thêseus, Œdipus,—the conviction still holds in men’s minds, that there must be something true at the bottom; and many readers of this work may be displeased, I fear, not to see conjured up before them the Eidôlon of an authentic history, even though the vital spark of evidence be altogether wanting.[1050]

[1050] The following passage, from the Preface of Mr. Price
to Warton’s History of English Poetry, is alike just and
forcibly characterized; the whole Preface is, indeed, full of
philosophical reflection on popular fables generally. Mr. Price
observes (p. 79):—

“The great evil with which this long-contested question appears
to be threatened at the present day, is an extreme equally
dangerous with the incredulity of Mr. Ritson,—a disposition to
receive as authentic history, under a slightly fabulous coloring,
every incident recorded in the British Chronicle. An allegorical
interpretation is now inflicted upon all the marvellous
circumstances; a forced construction imposed upon the less
glaring deviations from probability; and the usual subterfuge
of baffled research,—erroneous readings and etymological
sophistry,—is made to reduce every stubborn and intractable text
to something like the consistency required. It might have been
expected that the notorious failures of Dionysius and Plutarch,
in Roman history, would have prevented the repetition of an
error, which neither learning nor ingenuity can render palatable;
and that the havoc and deadly ruin effected by these ancient
writers (in other respects so valuable) in one of the most
beautiful and interesting monuments of traditional story, would
have acted as sufficient corrective on all future aspirants.
The favorers of this system might at least have been instructed
by the philosophic example of Livy,—if it be lawful to ascribe
to philosophy a line of conduct which perhaps was prompted by
a powerful sense of poetic beauty,—that traditional record can
only gain in the hands of the future historian by one attractive
aid,—the grandeur and lofty graces of that incomparable style in
which the first decade is written; and that the best duty towards
antiquity, and the most agreeable one towards posterity, is to
transmit the narrative received as an unsophisticated tradition,
in all the plenitude of its marvels and the awful dignity of its
supernatural agency. For, however largely we may concede that
real events have supplied the substance of any traditive story,
yet the amount of absolute facts, and the manner of those facts,
the period of their occurrence, the names of the agents, and the
locality given to the scene, are all combined upon principles so
wholly beyond our knowledge, that it becomes impossible to fix
with certainty upon any single point better authenticated than
its fellow. Probability in such decisions will often prove the
most fallacious guide we can follow; for, independently of the
acknowledged historical axiom, that ‘le vrai n’est pas toujours
le vraisemblable,’ innumerable instances might be adduced, where
tradition has had recourse to this very probability to confer
a plausible sanction upon her most fictitious and romantic
incidents. It will be a much more useful labor, wherever it can
be effected, to trace the progress of this traditional story in
the country where it has become located, by a reference to those
natural or artificial monuments which are the unvarying sources
of fictitious events; and, by a strict comparison of its details
with the analogous memorials of other nations, to separate
those elements which are obviously of a native growth, from the
occurrences bearing the impress of a foreign origin. _We shall
gain little, perhaps, by such a course for the history of human
events_; but it will be an important accession to our stock of
knowledge on the _history of the human mind_. It will infallibly
display, as in the analysis of every similar record, the
operations of that refining principle which is ever obliterating
the monotonous deeds of violence that fill the chronicle of a
nation’s early career, and exhibit the brightest attribute in
the catalogue of man’s intellectual endowments,—a glowing and
vigorous imagination,—bestowing upon all the impulses of the
mind a splendor and virtuous dignity, which, however fallacious
historically considered, are never without a powerfully redeeming
good, the ethical tendency of all their lessons.”

I presume to think that our great poet has proceeded upon mistaken views with respect to the old British fables, not less in that which he leaves out than in that which he retains. To omit the miraculous and the fantastic, (it is that which he really means by “the impossible and the absurd,”) is to suck the lifeblood out of these once popular narratives,—to divest them at once both of their genuine distinguishing mark, and the charm by which they acted on the feelings of believers. Still less ought we to consent to break up and disenchant in a similar manner the mythes of ancient Greece,—partly because they possess the mythical beauties and characteristics in far higher perfection, partly because they sank deeper into the mind of a Greek, and pervaded both the public and private sentiment of the country to a much greater degree than the British fables in England.

Two courses, and two only, are open; either to pass over the mythes altogether, which is the way in which modern historians treat the old British fables, or else to give an account of them as mythes; to recognize and respect their specific nature, and to abstain from confounding them with ordinary and certifiable history. There are good reasons for pursuing this second method in reference to the Grecian mythes; and when so considered, they constitute an important chapter in the history of the Grecian mind, and indeed in that of the human race generally. The historical faith of the Greeks, as well as that of other people, in reference to early and unrecorded times, is as much subjective and peculiar to themselves as their religious faith: among the Greeks, especially, the two are confounded with an intimacy which nothing less than great violence can disjoin. Gods, heroes, and men—religion and patriotism—matters divine, heroic, and human—were all woven together by the Greeks into one indivisible web, in which the threads of truth and reality, whatever they might originally have been, were neither intended to be, nor were actually, distinguishable. Composed of such materials, and animated by the electric spark of genius, the mythical antiquities of Greece formed a whole at once trustworthy and captivating to the faith and feelings of the people; but neither trustworthy nor captivating, when we sever it from these subjective conditions, and expose its naked elements to the scrutiny of an objective criticism. Moreover, the separate portions of Grecian mythical foretime ought to be considered with reference to that aggregate of which they form a part: to detach the divine from the heroic legends, or some one of the heroic legends from the remainder, as if there were an essential and generic difference between them, is to present the whole under an erroneous point of view. The mythes of Troy and Thêbes are no more to be handled objectively, with a view to detect an historical base, than those of Zeus in Krête, of Apollo and Artemis in Dêlos, of Hermês, or of Promêtheus. To single out the Siege of Troy from the other mythes, as if it were entitled to preëminence as an ascertained historical and chronological event, is a proceeding which destroys the true character and coherence of the mythical world: we only transfer the story (as has been remarked in the preceding chapter) from a class with which it is connected by every tie both of common origin and fraternal affinity, to another with which it has no relationship, except such as violent and gratuitous criticism may enforce.

By drawing this marked distinction between the mythical and the historical world,—between matter appropriate only for subjective history, and matter in which objective evidence is attainable,—we shall only carry out to its proper length the just and well-known position long ago laid down by Varro. That learned man recognized three distinguishable periods in the time preceding his own age: “First, the time from the beginning of mankind down to the first deluge; a time wholly unknown. Secondly, the period from the first deluge down to the first Olympiad, which is called _the mythical period_, because many fabulous things are recounted in it. Thirdly, the time from the first Olympiad down to ourselves, which is called _the historical period_, because the things done in it are comprised in true histories.”[1051]

[1051] Varro ap. Censorin. de Die Natali; Varronis Fragm. p. 219,
ed. Scaliger, 1623. “Varro tria discrimina temporum esse tradit.
Primum ab hominum principio usque ad cataclysmum priorem, quod
propter ignorantiam vocatur ἄδηλον. Secundum, a cataclysmo priore
ad Olympiadem primam, quod quia in eo multa fabulosa referuntur,
_Mythicon_ nominatur. Tertium a primâ Olympiade ad nos; quod
dicitur _Historicon_, quia res in eo gestæ veris historiis
continentur.”

To the same purpose Africanus, ap. Eusebium, Præp. Ev. xx.
p. 487: Μέχρι μὲν Ὀλυμπιάδων, οὐδὲν ἀκριβὲς ἱστόρηται τοῖς
Ἕλλησι, πάντων συγκεχυμένων, καὶ κατὰ μηδὲν αὐτοῖς τῶν πρὸ τοῦ
συμφωνούντων, etc.

Taking the commencement of true or objective history at the point indicated by Varro, I still consider the mythical and historical periods to be separated by a wider gap than he would have admitted. To select any one year as an absolute point of commencement, is of course not to be understood literally: but in point of fact, this is of very little importance in reference to the present question, seeing that the great mythical events—the sieges of Thêbes and Troy, the Argonautic expedition, the Kalydônian boar-hunt, the Return of the Hêrakleids, etc.—are all placed long anterior to the first Olympiad, by those who have applied chronological boundaries to the mythical narratives. The period immediately preceding the first Olympiad is one exceedingly barren of events; the received chronology recognizes four hundred years, and Herodotus admitted five hundred years, from that date back to the Trojan war.