Chapter I: Part 1

STUDIES ON HOMER
AND
THE HOMERIC AGE.

BY THE
RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, D.C.L.
M. P. FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. II.

Plenius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore.--HORACE.

OXFORD:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
M.DCCC.LVIII.

STUDIES ON HOMER
AND
THE HOMERIC AGE.

OLYMPUS:
OR,
THE RELIGION OF THE HOMERIC AGE.

BY THE
RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, D.C.L.
M. P. FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.

Plenius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore.--HORACE.

OXFORD:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.
M.DCCC.LVIII.

[_The right of Translation is reserved._]

THE CONTENTS.

OLYMPUS:

OR

THE RELIGION OF THE HOMERIC AGE.

SECT. I.

_On the mixed character of the Supernatural System,
or Theo-mythology of Homer._

Homer’s method not systematic Page 1

Incongruities of his Theo-mythology point to diversity of
sources 2

Remnants of primitive tradition likely to be found in the
Poems 3

Extra-judaical relations between God and man 6

With tradition it combines invention 9

It is a true Theology corrupted 9

It has not its basis in nature-worship 10

It could not have sprung from invention only 13

Sacrifices admitted to be traditional 15

Tendency of primitive religion to decay 17

Downward course of the idea of God 18

Decline closely connected with Polytheism 20

Inducements to Nature-worship 21

The deterioration of religion progressive 23

Paganism in its old age 25

The impersonations of Homer 26

The nature of the myths of Homer 29

Tradition the proper key to many of them 30

He exhibits the two systems in active impact 32

Steps of the downward process 33

Sources of the inventive portions 35

Originality of the Olympian system 37

SECT. II.

_The traditive element of the Homeric Theo-mythology._

The channels of early religious tradition 39

Some leading early traditions of Scripture 40

As to the Godhead 42

As to the Redeemer 42

As to the Evil One 43

Their defaced counterparts in Homer 43

Deities of equivocal position 46

Threefold materials of the Greek religion 48

Messianic traditions of the Hebrews 49

To be learned from three sources 49

Attributes ascribed to the Messiah 51

The deities of tradition in Homer 54

Minerva and Apollo jointly form the key 55

Notes of their Olympian rank 56

Of their higher antiquity 57

The Secondaries of Minerva 59

The Secondaries of Apollo 60

Argument from the Secondaries 63

Picture of human society in Olympus 64

Dignity and precedence of Minerva 66

Of Apollo 69

Minerva’s relations of will and affection with Jupiter 70

Those of Apollo 71

Apollo the Deliverer of Heaven 72

Power of Minerva in the Shades 73

These deities are never foiled by others 74

The special honour of the Trine Invocation 78

They receive universal worship 79

They are not localized in any abode 82

They are objects together with Jupiter of habitual prayer 83

Exempt from appetite and physical limitations 86

Their manner of appreciating sacrifice 88

Their independent power of punishment 90

They handle special attributes of Jupiter 94

They exercise dominion over nature 98

Relation of Apollo (with Diana) to Death 101

Exemption from the use of second causes 104

Superiority of their moral standard 105

Special relation of Apollo to Diana 108

Disintegration of primitive traditions 108

The Legend of Alcyone 111

Place of Minerva and Apollo in Providential government 113

It is frequently ascribed to them 115

Especially the inner parts of it to Minerva 117

Apollo’s gift of knowledge 119

Intimacy of Minerva’s personal relations with man 121

Form of their relation to their attributes 122

The capacity to attract new ones 124

Wide range of their functions 125

Tradition of the Sun 126

The central wisdom of Minerva 129

The three characters of Apollo 130

The opposition between two of them 131

Minerva and Apollo do not fit into Olympus 133

Origin of the Greek names 133

Summary of their distinctive traits 134

Explanation by Friedreich 138

Treatment of Apollo by Müller 141

After-course of the traditions 142

The Diana of Homer 143

Her acts and attributes in the poems 144

The Latona of Homer 147

Her attributes in the poems 149

Her relation to primitive Tradition 153

Her acts in the poems 154

The Iris of Homer 156

The Atè of Homer 158

The ἀτασθαλίη of Homer 162

Other traditions of the Evil One 162

Parallel citations from Holy Scripture 165

The Future State in Homer 167

Sacrificial tradition in Homer 171

He has no sabbatical tradition 171

SECT. III.

_The inventive element of the Homeric Theo-mythology._

The character of Jupiter 173

Its fourfold aspect.--1. Jupiter as Providence 174

2. Jupiter as Lord of Air 178

Earth why vacant in the Lottery 179

3. Jupiter as Head of Olympus 181

His want of moral elements 183

His strong political spirit 185

4. Jupiter as the type of animalism 186

Qualified by his parental instincts 189

The Juno of Homer 190

Juno of the Iliad and Juno of the Odyssey 191

Her intense nationality 192

Her mythological functions 193

Her mythological origin 197

The Neptune of Homer 199

His threefold aspect 200

His traits mixed, but chiefly mythological 201

His relation to the Phœnicians 205

His relation to the tradition of the Evil One 206

His grandeur is material 209

The Aidoneus of Homer 210

His personality shadowy and feeble 211

The Ceres or Demeter of Homer 212

Her Pelasgian associations 213

Her place in Olympus 215

Her mythological origin 215

The Proserpine or Persephone of Homer 217

Her marked and substantive character 218

Her connection with the East 220

Her place in Olympus doubtful 223

Her associations Hellenic and not Pelasgian 224

The Mars of Homer 225

His limited worship and attributes 226

Mars as yet scarcely Greek 229

The Mercury of Homer 231

Preeminently the god of increase 233

Mercury Hellenic as well as Phœnician 235

But apparently recent in Greece 237

His Olympian function distinct from that of Iris 238

The poems consistent with one another in this point 241

The Venus of Homer 243

Venus as yet scarcely Greek 244

Advance of her worship from the East 247

Her Olympian rank and character 249

Her extremely limited powers 249

Apparently unable to confer beauty 251

Homer never by intention makes her attractive 252

The Vulcan of Homer 254

His Phœnician and Eastern extraction 255

His marriage with Venus 257

Vulcan in and out of his art 259

The Ἠέλιος of Homer 260

In the Iliad 261

In the Odyssey 262

Is of the Olympian court 263

His incorporation with Apollo 264

The Dionysus or Bacchus of Homer 266

His worship recent 266

Apparently of Phœnician origin 267

He is of the lowest inventive type 269

SECT. IV.

_The Composition of the Olympian Court; and the
classification of the whole supernatural order in Homer._

Principal cases of exclusion from Olympus 271

Case of Oceanus 273

Together with that of Kronos and Rhea 274

The _Dî majores_ of the later tradition 275

Number of the Olympian gods in Homer 275

What deities are of that rank 277

The Hebe and the Paieon of Homer 278

The Eris of Homer 280

Classification of the twenty Olympian deities 282

The remaining supernatural order, in six classes 283

Destiny or Fate in Homer 285

Under the form of Αἶσα 286

Death inexorable to Fate or Deity alike 287

Destiny under the form of Μοῖρα 290

Under the form of μόρος 293

General view of the Homeric Destiny 294

Not antagonistic to Divine will 297

The minor impersonations of natural powers 298

The Ἁρπυῖαι of Homer 300

The Erinues of Homer 302

Their office is to vindicate the moral order 305

Their operation upon the Immortals 306

Their connection with Aides and Persephone 308

Their relation to Destiny 310

Their operation upon man 310

Their occasional function as tempters 312

The translation of mortals 313

The deification of mortals 314

Growth of material for its extension 316

The kindred of the gods (1) the Cyclopes 318

(2) The Læstrygones 319

(3) The Phæacians 320

(4) Æolus Hippotades 322

SECT. V.

_The Olympian Community and its Members considered in
themselves._

The family order in Olympus 325

The political order in Olympus 326

Absence of important restraints upon their collective
action 327

They are influenced by courtesy and intelligence 328

Superiority of the Olympian Immortals 330

Their unity imperfect 331

Their polity works constitutionally 332

The system not uniform 333

They are inferior in morality to men 334

And are governed mainly by force and fraud 335

Their dominant and profound selfishness 337

The cruelty of Calypso in her love 339

Their standard of taste and feeling low 340

The Olympian life is a depraved copy of the heroic 341

The exemption from death uniform 342

The exemption from other limitations partial 345

Sometimes based on peculiar grounds 346

Divine faculties for the most part an extension from the
human 348

Their dependence on the eye 350

Their powers of locomotion 352

Chief heads of superiority to mankind 353

Their superiority in stature and beauty 354

Their libertinism 355

Their keen regard to sacrifice and the ground of it 357

Their circumscribed power over nature 358

Parts of the body how ascribed to them 359

Examples of miracle in Homer 361

Mode of their action on the human mind 363

They do not discern the thoughts 365

SECT. VI.

_The Olympian Community and its Members considered
in their influence on human society and conduct._

Lack of periodical observances and of a ministering class 367

Yet the religion was a real power in life 368

The effect of the corruption of the gods was not yet
fully felt 369

They show little regard to human interests 371

A moral tone is occasionally perceptible 373

Prevalent belief as to their views of man and life 374

It lent considerable support to virtue 377

Their course with respect to Troy 378

Bearing of the religion on social ties 380

And on political relations 382

The Oath 383

Bearing of the religion on the poems 385

As regards Neptune’s wrath in the Odyssey 387

As regards the virtue of purity 388

As regards poetic effect 388

Comparison of its earliest and latest form 390

Gloom prevails in Homer’s view of human destiny 392

The personal belief of Homer 394

SECT. VII.

_On the traces of an origin abroad for the Olympian
Religion._

The Olympian deities classified according to local
extraction 397

Their connection as a body with the Æthiopes 399

Confirms the hypothesis of Persian origin 402

Herodotus on the Scythian religion 402

His report from Egypt about the Greek deities 404

Four several bases of religious systems 405

Anthropophuism in the Olympian religion 406

Nature-worship as described in the Book of Wisdom 406

Its secondary place in the Olympian religion 407

In what sense it follows a prior Nature-worship 409

The principle of Brute-worship 410

Its traces in the Olympian religion 411

Chief vestige: oxen of the Sun 412

Xanthus the horse of Achilles 414

SECT. VIII.

_The Morals of the Homeric Age._

The general type of Greek character in the heroic age 417

The moral sense in the heroic age 418

Use of the words ἀγαθός and κακός 421

Of the word δίκαιος 423

Religion and morals were not dissociated 425

Moral elements in the practice of sacrifice 427

Three main motives to virtue. 1. Regard to the gods 427

2. The power of conscience 428

3. Regard for the sentiments of mankind 430

The force and forms of αἰδὼς 431

Other cognate terms 435

Homicide in the heroic age 436

Eight instances in the poems 437

Why viewed with little disfavour 440

Piracy in the heroic age 442

Its nature as then practised 443

Mixed view of it in the poems 444

Family feuds in the heroic age 446

Temperance in the heroic age 447

Self-control in the heroic age 448

Absence of the vice of cruelty 450

Savage ideas occasionally expressed 451

These not unfamiliar to later Greece 453

Wrath in Ulysses 454

Wrath in Achilles 455

Domestic affections in the heroic age 456

Relationships close, not wide 459

Purity in the heroic age 460

Lay of the Net of Vulcan 461

Direct evidence of comparative purity 465

Treatment of the human form 466

Treatment of various characters 467

Outline of Greek life in the heroic age 468

Its morality, and that of later Greece 471

Points of its superiority 472

Inferior as to crimes of violence 475

Some effects of slavery 476

Signs of degeneracy before Homer’s death 477

SECT. IX.

_Woman in the heroic age._

The place of Woman generally, and in heroic Greece 479

Its comparative elevation 480

1. State of the law and custom of marriage 481

Marriage was uniformly single 483

2. Conceived in a spirit of freedom 483

Its place in the career of life 485

Mode of contraction 486

3. Perpetuity of the tie of marriage 487

Adultery 488

Desertion 489

4. Greek ideas of incest 489

5. Fidelity in married life 492

Treatment of spurious children 494

Case of Briseis 495

Mode of contracting marriage 496

Concubinage of Greek chieftains in Troas 497

Dignity of conjugal and feminine manners 499

Social position of the wife 500

Force of conjugal attachments 502

Woman characters of Homer 503

The province of Woman well defined 505

Argument from the position of the goddesses 506

Women admitted to sovereignty 507

And to the service of the gods 509

Their household employments 511

Their service about the bath 512

Explanation of the presumed difficulty 515

Proof from the case of Ulysses in Scheria 517

Subsequent declension of Woman 518

SECT. X.

_The Office of the Homeric Poems in relation to that
of the early Books of Holy Scripture._

Points of literary resemblance 521

Providential functions of Greece and Rome 523

Of the Early records of Holy Scripture 524

The Sacred Books are not mere literary works 525

Providential use of the Homeric poems 527

They complete the code of primitive instruction 529

Human history had no visible centre up to the Advent 531

Nor for some time after it 532

A purpose served by the whole design 533

OLYMPUS,

OR

THE RELIGION OF THE HOMERIC AGE.

SECT. I.

_On the Mixed Character of the Supernatural System, or Theo-Mythology, of Homer._

Though the poems of Homer are replete, perhaps beyond any others, with refined and often latent adaptations, yet it may be observed in general of the modes of representation used by him, that they are preeminently the reverse of systematic. Institutions or characters, which are in themselves consistent, probably gain by this method of proceeding, provided the execution be not unworthy of the design. For it secures their exhibition in more, and more varied, points of view, than can possibly be covered by the more didactic process. But the possession of this advantage depends upon the fact, that there is in them a harmony, which is their base, and which we have only to discover. Whereas, if that harmony be wanting, if in lieu of it there be a groundwork of fundamental discrepancy, then the conditions of effect are wholly changed. The multiplied variety of view becomes a multiplication of incongruity; each new aspect offers a new problem: and the more masterly the hand of the artist, the more arduous becomes the attempt to comprehend and present in their mutual bearings the pictures he has drawn, and the suggestions he has conveyed.

Thus it has been with that which, following German example, I have denominated the Theo-mythology of Homer. By that term it seems not improper to designate a mixture of theology and mythology, as these two words are commonly understood. Theology I suppose to mean, a system dealing with the knowledge of God and the unseen world: mythology, a system conversant with the inventions of man concerning them. In the Homeric poems I find both of these largely displayed: but with this difference, that the first was in visible decline, the second in such rapid and prolific development, that, while Homer is undoubtedly a witness to older fable, which had already in his time become settled tradition, he is also in this department himself evidently and largely a Maker and Inventor, and the material of the Greek mythology comes out of his hands far more fully moulded, and far more diversified, than it entered them.

Of the fact that the Homeric religion does not present a consistent and homogeneous whole, we have abundant evidence in the difficulties with which, so soon as the literary age of Greece began, expositors found themselves incumbered; and which drove them sometimes upon allegory as a resource, sometimes, as in the case of Plato, upon censure and repudiation[1].

[1] Döllinger Heid. u. Jud. v. 1. p. 254.

~_Extended relations of God to man._~

I know not whether it has been owing to our somewhat narrow jealousies concerning the function of Holy Scripture, or to our want of faith in the extended Providence of God, and His manifestations in the world, or to the real incongruity in the evidence at our command, or to any other cause, but the fact, at least, seems to me beyond doubt, that our modes of dealing with the Homeric poems in this cardinal respect have been eminently unsatisfactory. Those who have found in Homer the elements of religious truth, have resorted to the far-fetched and very extravagant supposition, that he had learned them from the contemporary Hebrews, or from the law of Moses. The more common and popular opinion[2] has perhaps been one, which has put all such elements almost or altogether out of view; one which has treated the Immortals in Homer as so many impersonations of the powers of nature, or else magnified men, and their social life as in substance no more than as a reflection of his picture of heroic life, only gilded with embellishments, and enlarged in scale, in proportion to the superior elevation of its sphere. Few, comparatively, have been inclined to recognise in the Homeric poems the vestiges of a real traditional knowledge, derived from the epoch when the covenant of God with man, and the promise of a Messiah, had not yet fallen within the contracted forms of Judaism for shelter, but entered more or less into the common consciousness, and formed a part of the patrimony of the human race[3].

[2] See Heyne ad Il. i. 603; Terpstra, Antiquitas Homerica, i. 3. And so late as the Cambridge Essays 1856. p. 149.

[3] See ‘Homerus, pt. i.’ by Archdeacon Williams: ‘Primitive Tradition,’ 1843, by the same; Edinb. Rev. N^o. 155, art. Homerus, and the reference, p. 50, to Cesarotti’s Ragionamento Storico-Critico.

But surely there is nothing improbable in the supposition, that in the poems of Homer such vestiges may be found. Every recorded form of society bears some traces of those by which it has been preceded: and in that highly primitive form, which Homer has been the instrument of embalming for all posterity, the law of general reason obliges us to search for elements and vestiges belonging to one more primitive still. And, if we are to inquire in the Iliad and the Odyssey for what belongs to antecedent manners and ideas, on what ground can it be pronounced improbable, that no part of these earlier traditions should be old enough to carry upon them the mark of belonging to the religion, which the Book of Genesis represents as brought by our first parents from Paradise, and as delivered by them to their immediate descendants in general? The Hebrew Chronology, considered in connection with the probable date of Homer, would even render it difficult or irrational to proceed upon any other supposition: nor if, as by the Septuagint or otherwise, a larger period is allowed for the growth of our race, will the state of this case be materially altered. For the facts must remain, that the form of society exhibited by Homer was itself in many points essentially patriarchal, that it contains, in matter not religious, such, for instance, as the episode of the Cyclops, clear traces of a yet earlier condition yet more significant of a relation to that name, and that there is no broadly marked period of human experience, or form of manners, which we can place between the great trunk of human history in Holy Scripture, and this famed Homeric branch, which of all literary treasures appears to be its eldest born. Standing next to the patriarchal histories of Holy Scripture, why should it not bear, how can it not bear, traces of the religion under which the patriarchs lived?

The immense longevity of the early generations of mankind was eminently favourable to the preservation of pristine traditions. Each individual, instead of being as now a witness of, or an agent in, one or two transmissions from father to son, would observe or share in ten times as many. According to the Hebrew Chronology, Lamech the father of Noah was of mature age before Adam died: and Abraham was of mature age before Noah died. Original or early witnesses, remaining so long as standards of appeal, would evidently check the rapidity of the darkening and destroying process.

Let us suppose that man now lived but twenty years, instead of fourscore. Would not this greatly quicken the waste of ancient traditions? And is not the converse also true?

~_Sufficiently proved from Holy Scripture._~

Custom has made it with us second nature to take for granted a broad line of demarcation between those who live within the pale of Revelation, and the residue of mankind. But Holy Scripture does not appear to recognise such a severance in any manner, until we come to the revelation of the Mosaic law, which was like the erection of a temporary shelter for truths that had ranged at large over the plain, and that were apparently in danger of being totally absorbed in the mass of human inventions. But before this vineyard was planted, and likewise outside its fence, there were remains, smaller or greater, of the knowledge of God; and there was a recognised relation between Jehovah and mankind, which has been the subject of record from time to time, and the ground of acts involving the admonition, or pardon, or correction, or destruction, of individuals or communities.

The latest of these indications, such as the visit of the Wise Men from the East, are not the most remarkable: because first the captivity in Babylon, and subsequently the dissemination of Jewish groups through so many parts of the world, could not but lead to direct communications of divine knowledge, at least, in some small degree. From such causes, there would be many a Cornelius before him who became the first-fruits of the Gentiles. Yet even the interest, which probably led to such communications from the Jew, must have had its own root in relics of prior tradition, which attested the common concern of mankind in Him that was to come. But in earlier times, and when the Jewish nation was more concentrated, and was certainly obscure, the vestiges of extra-patriarchal and extra-judaical relations between God and man are undeniable. They have been traced with clearness and ability in a popular treatise by the hand of Bishop Horsley[4].

[4] Horsley’s Dissertation on the Prophecies of the Messiah dispersed among the heathen. See also Mr. Harvey’s Observations on the Gnostic System, pp. iii and seqq., prefixed to his S. Irenæus, Cambridge, 1857. Williams’s Primitive Tradition, p. 9.

Let us take, for instance, that case of extreme wickedness, which most severely tries the general proposition. The punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins was preceded by a declaration from the Most High, importing a direct relation with those guilty cities[5]; and two angels, who had visited Abraham on the plains of Mamre, ‘came to Sodom at even.’ Ruth the Moabitess was an ancestress, through king David, of our Lord. Rahab in Jericho, ‘by faith,’ as the Apostle assures us, entertained the spies of the Israelites. Job, living in a country where the worship of the sun was practised, had, as had his friends, the knowledge of the true God. Melchizedek, the priest of On, whose daughter Joseph married, and Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, are other conspicuous instances. Later in time, Nineveh, the great Assyrian capital, received the message of the prophet Jonah, and repented at his preaching. Here the teaching organ was supplied from among the Jews: but Balaam exhibits to us the gift of inspiration beyond their bounds. Once more; many centuries after the Homeric manners had disappeared, and during the captivity, we find not only a knowledge of God, but dreams and signs vouchsafed to Assyrian kings, and interpreted for them by the prophet Daniel. We have, in short, mingling with the whole course of the Old Testament, a stream of evidence which shows the partial remnants of the knowledge of God, apart from that main current of it which is particularly traced for us in the patriarchal and Mosaic histories. Again, many centuries after Homer, when all traces of primitive manners had long vanished, still in the Prometheus of Æschylus, and in the Pollio of Virgil, we have signs, though I grant they are faint ones, that the celestial rays had not even then ‘faded into the light of common day’ for the heathen world. It would really be strange, and that in a high degree, if a record like that of Homer, with so many resemblances to the earliest manners in other points, had no link to connect it with them in their most vital part.

[5] See Genesis xviii. 1, 20. xx. 1. Heb. xi. 31.

~_The question one of history._~

The general proposition, that we may expect to find the relics of Scriptural traditions in the heroic age of Greece, though it leads, if proved, to important practical results, is independent even of a belief in those traditions, as they stand in the scheme of revealed truth. They must be admitted to have been facts on earth, even by those who would deny them to be facts of heavenly origin, in the shape in which Christendom receives them: and the question immediately before us is one of pure historical probability. The descent of mankind from a single pair, the lapse of that pair from original righteousness, are apart from and ulterior to it. We have traced the Greek nation to a source, and along a path of migration, which must in all likelihood have placed its ancestry, at some point or points, in close local relations with the scenes of the earliest Mosaic records: the retentiveness of that people equalled its receptiveness, and its close and fond association with the past made it prone indeed to incorporate novel matter into its religion, but prone also to keep it there after its incorporation.

If such traditions existed, and if the laws which guide historical inquiry require or lead us to suppose that the forefathers of the Greeks must have lived within their circle, then the burden of proof must lie not so properly with those who assert that the traces of them are to be found in the earliest, that is, the Homeric, form of the Greek mythology, as with those who deny it. What became of those old traditions? They must have decayed and disappeared, not by a sudden process, but by a gradual accumulation of the corrupt accretions, in which at length they were so completely interred as to be invisible and inaccessible. Some period therefore there must have been, at which they would remain clearly perceptible, though in conjunction with much corrupt matter. Such a period might be made the subject of record, and if such there were, we might naturally expect to find it in the oldest known work of the ancient literature.

If the poems of Homer do, however, contain a picture, even though a defaced picture, of the primeval religious traditions, it is obvious that they afford a most valuable collateral support to the credit of the Holy Scripture, considered as a document of history. Still we must not allow the desire of gaining this advantage to bias the mind in an inquiry, which can only be of value if it is conducted according to the strictest rules of rational criticism.

~_Invention combined with tradition._~

We may then, in accordance with those rules, be prepared to expect that the Hellenic religion will prove to have been in part constructed from traditional knowledge. The question arises next, Of what other materials in addition was it composed? The answer can be but one; Such materials would be supplied by invention. But invention cannot absolutely create; it can only work upon what it finds already provided to its hand. The provision made in this instance was simply that with which the experience of man supplied him. It was mediate or immediate: mediate, where the Greek received matter from abroad, and wrought upon it: immediate, where he conceived it for himself. That experience lay in two spheres--the sphere of external nature, and the sphere of life. Each of these would afford for the purpose the elements of Power, Grandeur, Pleasure, Beauty, Utility; and such would be the elements suited to the work of constructing or developing a system that was to present objects for his worship. We may therefore reasonably expect to find in the religion features referable to these two departments for their origin;--first, the powerful forces and attractive forms of outward nature; secondly, the faculties and propensities of man, and those relations to his fellow-men, amidst which his lot is cast, and his character formed.

If this be so, then, in the result thus compounded out of tradition purporting to be revealed, and out of invention strictly human, we ought to recognise, so long as both classes of ingredients are in effective coexistence, not strictly a false theology, but a true theology falsified: a true religion, into which falsehood has entered, and in which it is gradually overlaying and absorbing the original truth, until, when the process has at length reached a certain point, it is wholly hidden and borne down by countervailing forces, so that the system has for practical purposes become a false one, and both may and should be so termed and treated.

I admit that very different modes of representing the case have been in vogue. Sometimes by those to whom the interest of Christianity is precious, and sometimes in indifference or hostility to its fortunes, it is held that the basis of the Greek mythology is laid in the deification of the powers of nature. The common assumptions have been such as the following: That the starting-point of the religion of the heroic age is to be sought only in the facts of the world, in the ideas and experience of man. That nature-worship, the deification of elemental and other physical powers, was the original and proper basis of the system. That this system, presumably self-consistent, as having been founded on a given principle, was broken up by the intervention of theogonic revolutions. That the system, of which Jupiter was at the head, was an imperfect reconstruction of a scheme of divine rule out of the fragments of an earlier religion, and that it supplanted the elder gods. In short, the Greek mythology is represented as a corrupt edition, not of original revealed religion, but of a Nature-worship which, as it seems to be assumed, was separated by a gulf never measured, and never passed, from the primitive religious traditions of our race. Further it seems to be held, that the faults and imperfections of the pagan religion have their root only in a radical inability of the human mind to produce pure deity; that they do not represent the depravation of an ancient and divine gift, but rather the simple failure of man in a work of invention. Indeed, we need not wonder that it should fail in a process which, critically considered, can mean little else than mere exaggeration of itself and from its own experience[6], and which must be so apt to become positive caricature.

[6] See Nägelsbach, Homerische Theologie, i. 1. ii. 1. Also (if I understand it rightly), Döllinger’s Heidenthum und Judenthum, ii. 1. §. 1. p. 54.

~_The basis was not in Nature-worship._~

Again, Dean Prideaux, in his Connection of Sacred and Profane History, gives the following genesis of the Greek mythology. From the beginning, he says, there was a general notion among men, founded on a sense that they were impure, of the necessity of a mediator with God. There being no mediator clearly revealed, man chose mediators for himself, and took the sun, moon, and stars, as high intelligences well fitted for the purpose. Hence we find Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Apollo, Mercury, Venus, and Diana, to be first ranked in the polytheism of the ancients: for they were their first gods[7].

[7] Prideaux, i. 3. vol. i. p. 198.

This theory is not in correspondence with the facts of the heroic age. There is no sense whatever of an impurity disabling men from access to God; no clear or general opinion of the necessity of mediation; no glimpse even of a god superior to Jupiter and the rest with whom they were on behalf of man to mediate.

And, again, the opinion, that the origin of the religion lay in Nature-worship, has had the support both of high and also of recent authorities. The eminent and learned Dr. Döllinger, in his ‘Heidenthum und Judenthum,’ says, that the deification of Nature, its forces, or the particular objects it offered to the senses, constituted the groundwork of the Greek, as well as of the other heathen religions. The idea of God continued to be powerful even when it had been darkened, and the godhead was felt as present, and active everywhere in the physical order. In working out his general rule for each mythological deity in particular, this author conceives the original form of their existence to have been that of a Nature-power, even where the vestiges of such a conception have, under subsequent handling, become faint or imperceptible. Thus Juno, Minerva, Latona, Diana, and others in succession, are referred to such an origin[8].

[8] Heidenthum und Judenthum, b. ii. sect. 1, 2. pp. 54-81.

Now in dealing with this hypothesis, I would ask, what then has become of the old Theistic and Messianic traditions? and how has it happened they have been amputated by a process so violent as to make them to leave, even while the state of society continued still primitive, no trace behind them? But further. I would urge with confidence that the ample picture of the religion of the heroic ages, as we have it in Homer, which is strictly for this purpose in the nature of a fact, cannot be made to harmonize with the hypothesis which refers it to such a source. The proof of this statement must depend mainly on the examination which we have to institute in detail: but I am anxious at once to bring it into view, and to refer briefly to some of the grounds on which it rests, because it is susceptible of demonstration by evidence as contradistinguished from theory. On the other hand, when I proceed farther, evidence and theory must of necessity be mixed up together; and dissent from a particular mode of tracing out the association between the traditional and inventive elements of the system might unawares betray the reader into the conclusion, that no such distinct traditional elements were to be found, but that all, or nearly all, was pure fable. I say, then, there is much in the theo-mythology of Homer, which, if it had been a system founded in fable, could not have appeared there. It stands before us like one of our old churches, having different parts of its fabric in the different styles of architecture, each of which speaks for itself, and which we know to belong to the several epochs in the history of the art, when their characteristic combinations were respectively in vogue.

~_Nor is the system from invention only._~

While on the one hand it has deities, such as Latona, without any attributes at all, on the other hand, we find in it both gods and goddesses, with an assemblage of such attributes and functions as have no common link by which invention could have fastened them together. They are such, likewise, as to bring about cross divisions and cross purposes, that the Greek force of imagination, and the Greek love of symmetry, would have alike eschewed. How could invention have set up Pallas as the goddess at once of peace and its industries, of wisdom, and of war? Its object would clearly have been to impersonate attributes; and to associate even distinct, much less conflicting attributes, in the same deity, would have been simply to confuse them. How again could it have combined in Apollo, who likewise turns the courses of rivers by his might, the offices of destruction, music, poetry, prophecy, archery, and medicine? Again, if he is the god of medicine, why have we Paieon? if of poetry, why have we the Muses? If Minerva be (as she is) goddess of war, why have we Mars? if of the work of the Artificer, why have we also Vulcan? if of prudence and sagacity, and even craft[9], why Mercury?

[9] Il. xxii. 247.

And again, the theory is, that the chief personages of the mythology are representatives of the great powers of the physical universe. I ask, therefore, how it happens that in the Homeric, or, as we may call it, primitive form of the system, these great powers of the universe are for the most part very indistinctly and partially personified, whereas we see in vivid life and constant movement another set of figures, having either an obscure or partial relation, or no relation at all, to those powers? Such a state of the evidence surely strikes at the very root of the hypothesis we are considering: but it is the state of the evidence which we actually find before us. Take for instance Time, Ocean, Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars, Air; all these prime natural objects and agents are either not personified at all in Homer, or so indistinctly and mutely personified that they are the mere zoophytes of his supernatural world, of which the gorgeous life and brilliant movement are sustained by a separate set of characters. Of these more effective agents, some are such as it is impossible rationally to set down for mere impersonations of ideas; while others are plainly constituted as lords over, and not beings derivative from, those powers or provinces of nature, with which they are placed in special relations. It cannot for instance rationally be said that the Homeric Jupiter is a mere impersonation of the air which he rules, or the Homeric Neptune of the sea, or the Homeric Aidoneus (or Aides) of the nether world. For to the first of these three, many functions are assigned having no connection with the air. As for example, when he gives swiftness of foot to Æneas on Mount Ida, that he might escape the pursuit of Achilles[10]. In the case of the second, there is a rival figure, namely, Nereus, who never that we know of leaves the sea, who is the father of the Sea-nymphs, and who evidently fulfils the conditions of Sea impersonated far better than does Neptune; Neptune, who marched upon the battle-field in Troas, and who, with Apollo, had himself built the walls of Ilium. Besides all this, the sea, to which Neptune belongs, is itself not one of the great elemental powers of the universe, but is derived, like rivers, springs, and wells, from Father Ocean, who fears indeed the thunderbolt of Jupiter, but is not bound to attendance even in the great chapter of Olympus[11]. As to Aidoneus, he can hardly impersonate the nether world, because in Homer he does not represent or govern it, but only has to do with that portion of it, which is inhabited by the souls of departed men. For, as far beneath his realm as Earth is beneath Heaven, lies the dark Tartarus of Homer, peopled with Κρόνος and his Titans. Nor, on the other hand, do we know that the Elysian fields of the West were subject to his sway. The elemental powers are in Homer, though not altogether, yet almost altogether, extrinsic to his grand Olympian system.

[10] Il. xx. 92.

[11] Il. xxi. 195-9. xx. 7.

Without, then, anticipating this or that particular result from the inquiry into the mode and proportions in which traditional and inventive elements are combined in the poems of Homer, it may safely be denied that his picture of the supernatural world could have been drawn by means of materials exclusively supplied by invention from the sources of nature and experience.

~_Traditive origin of Sacrifice._~

And indeed there is one particular with respect to which the admission will be generally made, that the Greek mythological system stood indebted at least to a primitive tradition, if not to a direct command; I mean the institution of sacrifice. This can hardly be supposed to have been an original conception in every country; and it distinctly points us to one common source. Sacrifice was, according to Dr. Döllinger[12], an inheritance which descended to the Greeks from the pristine time before the division of the nations. Without doubt the transmission of ritual, depending upon outward action, is more easy than that of ideas. But the fact that there was a transmission of something proves that there was a channel for it, open and continuous: and the circumstances might be such as to allow of the passage of ideas, together with institutions, along it.

[12] Heid. u. Jud. iv. 5. p. 202.

It cannot be necessary to argue on the other side in any detail in order to show, that for much of his supernatural machinery, Homer was indebted to invention, whether his own or that of generations, or nations, which had preceded him. Had his system been one purely traditional in its basis, had it only broken into many rays the integral light of one God, it would have presented to us no such deity as Juno, who is wholly without prototype, either abstract or personal, in the primitive system, and no such mere reflections of human passions as are Mars and Venus: not to speak of those large additions, which we are to consider as belonging not so much to the basis and general outline of the system, as to the later stages of its development.

Let us now endeavour to inquire what mental, moral, and physical influences would be likely, in early times, to give form and direction to that alterative process, which the primitive ideas of religion, when removed beyond the precinct of Revelation and the knowledge of the Sacred Records, had to undergo.

This law of decline we may examine, first ideally, according to the influences likely to operate on the course of thought with respect to religion: and then with reference to that which is specifically Greek, by sketching in outline the actual mode of handling the material at command, which resulted in the creation of the Homeric or Olympian system. The first belongs to the metaphysical genesis of the system: the second to its historical formation.

~_Tendency of primitive religion to decay._~

So long as either the Sacred Records, or the Light which supplied them, remained within reach, there were specific means either in operation, or at least accessible, which, as far as their range extended, would serve to check error, whether of practice or speculation, and to clear up uncertainty, as the sundial verifies or corrects the watch. But the stream darkened more and more, as it got farther from the source. The Pagan religion could boast of its unbroken traditions; like some forms of Christianity, and like the government of France until 1789. But its uninterrupted course was really an uninterrupted aberration from the line of truth; and to boast of the evenness of its motion was in effect to boast of the deadness of the conscience of mankind, which had not virtue enough even to disturb progressive degeneracy by occasional reproach. In later times, the Pagan system had its three aspects: it was one thing for the populace, another for statesmen, and a third for philosophers. But in Homer’s time it had suffered no criticism and no analysis: the human self-consciousness was scarcely awakened; introspection had not begun its work. Imagination and affection continually exercised their luxuriant energies in enlarging and developing the system of preternatural being and action. However copiously the element of fiction, nay, of falsehood, entered into it, yet for the masses of mankind it was still subjectively true[13].

[13] Grote, Hist. Greece, vol. i. p. 467.

All was forward movement. Man had not, as it were, had time to ask himself, is this a lie? or even, whither does it tend? His soul, in those days of infancy, never questioned, always believed. Logical inconsistency, even moral solecism, did not repel it, nor slacken the ardour of its energies in the work of construction: construction of art, construction of manners, construction of polity, construction of religion. This is what we see, in glowing heat, throughout the poems of Homer, and it is perhaps the master key to their highest interest. They show us, in the province we are now considering, heroes earning their title to the Olympian life, mute nature everywhere adjusting herself to the scheme of supernatural impersonations, and religion allied to the human imagination, as closely as it was afterwards by Mahomet wedded to the sword. Everywhere we see that which is properly called myth, in the process of formation. Early mythology is the simple result of the working of the human mind, in a spirit of belief or of credulity, upon the material offered to it by prior tradition, by the physical universe, by the operations of the mind, and by the experience of life.

We may, as follows, accompany the vicious series through which thought might probably be led, with respect to the theory of religion.

If we begin with the true and pure idea of God, it is the idea of a Being infinite in power and intelligence, and though perfectly good, yet good by an unchangeable internal determination of character, and not by the constraint of an external law.

Such was the starting-point, from which the human mind had to run its career of religious belief or speculation. But the maintenance subjectively of the original form of the image in its clearness depended, of course, upon the condition of the observing organ; and that organ, again, depended for its health on the healthiness of the being to whom it belonged. Hence we must look into the nature of man, in order to know what man would think respecting the nature of God.

~_Downward course of the idea of God._~

Now man, the prey of vicious passions, though he holds deeply rooted within himself the witness to an extrinsic and objective law of goodness, which he needs in order to develop what he has of capacity for good, and to bring into subjection the counteracting and rebellious elements, is nevertheless prevailingly under the influence of these last. Hence, in the absence of special and Divine provision for the remedy of his inward disease, although both conscience and also the dispensations of Providence shadow forth to him a law of goodness from without, yet the sense of any internal law of goodness in himself becomes, with the lapse of time, more and more dim and ineffectual.

Thus, as he reflects back upon his own image conceptions of the Deity, the picture that he draws first fails in that, wherein he himself is weakest. Now, the perception of mere power depends upon intellect and sense: and as neither intellect nor sense have received through sin the same absolutely mortal wound which has reached his spiritual being, he can therefore still comprehend with clearness the idea and the uses of power, both mental and physical. Accordingly, the Godhead is for him preternaturally endowed with intelligence and force. But how was he to keep alive from his own resources the moral elements of the divine ideal? Coercive goodness, goodness by an external law, goodness dependent upon responsibility, was, by the nature of the case, inapplicable to Deity as such: while of goodness by an internal law, he had lost all clear conception, and he could not give what he had not got.

Of course it is not meant, that this was a conscious operation. Rarely indeed, in reflective and critical periods, does it happen that man can keep a log-book of wind, weather, and progress, for the mind, or tell from what quarter of the heavens have proceeded the gales that impel it on its course.

But, by this real though unconscious process, goodness would soon disappear from his conception of the Godhead, while high power and intelligence might remain. And hence it is not strange, if we find that Homer’s deities, possessed of power beyond their faculty of moral direction, are for the most part, when viewed in the sphere of their personal conduct, on a lower level than his heroes.

When therefore these latter charge, as is not unfrequent with them, upon the gods the consequences, and even in a degree the facts, of their own fault or folly, the proceeding is not so entirely illogical as we might at first suppose. For that great conception of an all-good and all-wise Being had undergone a miserable transmutation, bringing it more and more towards the form of an evil power. Hence, perhaps, it is that we find these reproaches to the Deity put into the mouth even of Menelaus, one of the noblest and purest characters among the heroes of Homer[14].

[14] Il. iii. 365, and xiii. 631-5.

Again, this degradation of the divine idea was essentially connected with the parcelling it out into many portions, according to the system of polytheism. That system at once brought down all the attributes from their supreme perfection to scales of degree: established finite and imperfect relations in lieu of the perfect and infinite: carried into the atmosphere of heaven an earthy element. The disintegration of the Unity of God prepared the way for the disintegration of His several attributes, and especially for weakening and effacing those among them, which man had chiefly lost his capacity to grasp.

When once we have substituted for the absolute that which is in degree, and for the perfect that which is defective, we have brought the divine element within the cognizance of the human: the barrier of separation is broken down, and, without any consciousness of undue license, we thenceforward insensibly fashion it as we please. Each corruption, as it takes its place in the scheme of popular ideas, is consolidated by the action of new forces, over and above those which, even if alone, were sufficient to engender it: for the classes, who worked the machinery both of priestly caste, and of civil government, found their account in accumulating fable up to a mountain mass. Each new addition found a welcome: but woe to him, who, by shaking the popular persuasion of any one article, endangered the very foundations of the whole.

Such is an outline, though a faint and rude one, of what may be called the _rationale_, or the law of cause and effect, applicable to the explanation of the progressive and, at length, total corruption of the primitive religion.

~_Inducements to Nature-worship._~

We may also endeavour to trace the motives which might determine the downward movement of the human mind in the direction, partially or wholly according to circumstances, of what is called Nature-worship.

On the one side lay the proposition handed down from the beginning--there is a God. On the other side arose the question--where is He? It was felt that on the whole He was not in man, though there was in man what was of Him. It was obvious to look for Him in the mighty agencies, and in the sublime objects of Nature, which, though (so thought might run,) they did not reveal Him entirely, yet disclosed nothing that was not worthy to belong to Him. Here is a germ of Nature-worship. Hence it is that we find Aristotle, at a period when thought was alike acute, deliberate, and refined, declare it to be beyond all doubt that the heavenly bodies are far more divine than man[15].

[15] Καὶ γὰρ ἀνθρώπου ἄλλα πολὺ θειότερα τὴν φύσιν, οἷον τὰ φανερώτατά γε, ἐξ ὧν ὁ κοσμὸς συνέστηκεν. Eth. Nicom. VI. vii. 4.

Now this germ could not be one only. Trains of thought and reasoning, essentially alike, would, according to diversities of minds and circumstances, lead one to place the God in one natural sphere or agency, and another to place him in another. There was no commanding principle either to confine or to reconcile these variations; thus the same cause, which brought deity into natural objects, would also tend to exhibit many gods instead of one.

Such was the path by which man might travel from Theism to Nature-worship. But other paths, starting from other points, would lead to the same issue.

Suppose now the case of the mind wholly without the tradition of a God. To such a mind, the vast and overmastering but usually regulated forces, and the beautiful and noble forms of nature, would of themselves suggest the idea of a superior agency; yet, again, not of one superior agent alone, but of many. Thus some men would build upwards, while others, so to speak, were building downwards, and they would meet on the way.