421 T LECTURE IX. THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE GREEKS. NO those who are acquainted with the history of Greece, and have learnt to appreciate the intellectual, moral, and artistic excellencies of the Greek mind, it has often been a subject of wonderment how such a nation could have accepted, could have tolerated for a moment, such a religion. What the inhabitants of the small city of Athens achieved in philosophy, in poetry, in art, in science, in politics, is known to all of us; and our admiration for them increases tenfold if, by a study of other literatures, such as the literatures of India, Persia, and China, we are enabled to compare their achievements with those of other nations of antiquity. The rudiments of almost everything, with the exception of religion, we, the people of Europe, the heirs to a fortune accumulated during twenty or thirty centuries of intellectual toil, owe to the Greeks; and, strange as it may sound, but few, I think, would gainsay it,-to the present day the achievements of these our distant ancestors and earliest masters, the songs of Homer, the dialogues of Plato, the speeches of Demosthenes, and the statues of Phidias stand, if not unrivalled, at least unsurpassed by anything that has been achieved by their descendants and pupils. How the Greeks came to be what they were, and how, alone of all other nations, they opened almost every mine of thought that has since been worked by mankind; how they invented and perfected almost every style of poetry and prose which has since been cultivated by the greatest minds of our race; how they laid the lasting foundation of the principal arts and sciences, and in some of them achieved triumphs never since equalled, is a problem which neither historian nor philosopher has as yet been able to solve. Like their own goddess Athene, a people seems at Athens to spring full armed into the arena of history, and we look in vain to Egypt, Syria, or India for more than a few of the seeds that burst into such marvellous growth on the soil of Attica. But the more we admire the native genius of Hellas, the more we feel surprised at the crudities and absurdities of what is handed down to us as their religion. Their earliest philosophers knew as well as we that the Deity, in order to be Deity, must be either perfect or nothing-that it must be one, not many, and without parts and passions; yet they believed in many gods, and ascribed to all of them, and more particularly to Jupiter, almost every vice and weakness that disgraces human nature. Their poets had an instinctive aversion to everything excessive or monstrous; yet they would relate of their gods what would make the most savage of the Red Indians creep and shudder:-how that Uranos was maimed by his son Kronos-how Kronos swallowed his own children, and, after years of digestion, vomited out alive his whole progeny-how Apollo, their fairest god, hung Marsyas on a tree and flayed him alivehow Demeter, the sister of Zeus, partook of the shoulder of Pelops who had been butchered and roasted by his own father, Tantalus, as a feast for the gods. I will not add any further horrors, or dwell on crimes that have become unmentionable, but of which the most highly cultivated Greek had to tell his sons and daughters in teaching them the history of their gods and heroes. It would indeed be a problem, more difficult than the problem of the origin of these stories themselves, if the Greeks, such as we know them, had never been startled by this, had never asked, How can these things be, and how did such stories spring up? But be it said to the honour of Greece,-although her philosophers did not succeed in explaining the origin of these religious fables, they certainly were, from the earliest times, shocked by them. Xenophanes, who lived, as far as we know, before Pythagoras, accuses' Homer and Hesiod of having ascribed to the gods everything that is disgraceful among men-stealing, adultery, and deceit. He remarks that men seem to have created their gods, and to have given to them 1 Πάντα θεοῖς ἀνέθηκαν "Ομηρός θ' Ησίοδός τε, ὅσσα παρ' ἀνθρώποισιν ἀνείδεα καὶ ψόγος ἐστίν. Ως πλεῖστ ̓ ἐφθέγξαντο θεῶν ἀθεμίστια ἔργα, Cf. Sextus Emp. adv. Math. i. 289, ix. 193. 2 ̓Αλλὰ βροτοὶ δοκέουσι θεοὺς γεγενῆσθαι, τὴν σφετέρην τ' αἴσθησιν ἔχειν φωνήν τε δέμας τε. . Αλλ' εἴτοι χεῖράς γ' εἶχον βόες ἠὲ λέοντες, ἢ γράψαι χείρεσσι καὶ ἔργα τελεῖν ἅπερ ἄνδρες, καί κε θεῶν ἰδέας ἔγραφον καὶ σώματ ̓ ἐποίουν τοιαῦθ ̓ οἷόν περ καὐτοὶ δέμας εἶχον ὁμοῖον, ἵπποι μέν θ ̓ ἵπποισι, βόες δέ τε βουσίν ὁμοῖα. Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. v. p. 601 C. ... their own mind, voice, and figure; that the Ethiopians made their gods black and flat-nosed, the Thracians red-haired and blue-eyed-just as cows or lions, if they could but draw, would draw their gods like cows and lions. He himself declares, in the most unhesitating manner-and this nearly 600 years before our era-that God3 is one, the greatest among gods and men, neither in form nor in thought like unto men.' He calls the battles of the Titans, the Giants, and Centaurs, the inventions of former generations (πλάσματα τῶν προτέρων), and requires that the Deity should be praised in holy stories and pure strains. Similar sentiments were entertained by most of the great philosophers of Greece. Heraclitus seems to have looked upon the Homeric system of theology, if we may so call it, as flippant infidelity. According to Diogenes Laertius, Heraclitus declared that Homer, as well as Archilochus, deserved to be ejected from public assemblies and flogged. The same author relates a story that Pythagoras saw the soul of Homer in the lower world hanging on a tree, and surrounded by serpents, as a punishment for what he had said of the gods. No doubt the views. 3 Εἷς θεὸς ἔν τε θεοῖσι καὶ ἀνθρώποισι μέγιστος, οὔ τι δέμας θνητοῖσι ὁμοίιος οὐδὲ νόημα. Ct. Clem. Alex. ibid. ↑ Cf. Isocrates, ii. 38 (Nägelsbach, p. 45). 5 Τόν θ' Ομηρον ἔφασκεν ἄξιον ἐκ τῶν ἀγώνων ἐκβάλλεσθαι και ῥαπίζεσθαι, καὶ ̓Αρχίλοχον ὁμοίως.—Diog. Laert. ix. 1. Ησέβησε εἰ μὴ ἠλληγόρισε, "Ομηρος. Bertrand, Les Dieux Protecteurs p. 143. • Φησὶ δ ̓ Ἱερώνυμος κατελθόντα αὐτὸν εἰς ᾅδου τὴν μὲν Ἡσιόδου ψυχὴν ἰδεῖν πρὸς κίονι χαλκῷ δεδεμένην καὶ τρίζουσαν, τὴν δ ̓ Ὁμήρου κρεμαμένην ἀπὸ δένδρου καὶ ὄφεις περὶ αὐτὴν ἀνθ' ὧν εἶπον περὶ θεῶν.—Diog. Laert. viii. 21. of these philosophers about the gods were far more exalted and pure than those of the Homeric poets, who represented their gods as in many cases hardly better than men. But as religion became mixed up with politics, it was more and more dangerous to profess these sublimer views, or to attempt to explain the Homeric myths in any but the most literal sense. Anaxagoras, who endeavoured to give to the Homeric legends a moral meaning, and is said to have interpreted the names of the gods allegorically— nay, to have called Fate an empty name, was thrown into prison at Athens, from whence he only escaped through the powerful protection of his friend and pupil Pericles. Protagoras, another friend of Pericles," was expelled from Athens, and his books were publicly burnt, because he had said that nothing could be known about the gods, whether they existed or no. Socrates, though he never attacked the sacred traditions and popular legends," was suspected of being no very strict believer in the ancient Homeric theology, and he had to suffer martyrdom. After the death of Socrates greater freedom of thought was permitted at Athens in exchange for the loss of political liberty. Plato declared that many a myth * Δοκεῖ δὲ πρῶτος, καθά φησι Φαβωρίνος ἐν παντοδαπῇ ἱστορίᾳ, τὴν Ομήρου ποίησιν ἀποφήνασθαι εἶναι περὶ ἀρετῆς καὶ δικαιοσύνης· ἐπὶ πλέον δὲ προστῆναι τοῦ λόγου Μητρόδωρον τὸν Λαμψακηνόν, γνώριμον ὄντα αὐτοῦ, ὃν καὶ πρῶτον σπουδάσαι τοῦ ποιητοῦ περὶ τὴν φυσικὴν Tрayμarelav. Diog. Laert. ii. 11. • Περὶ μὲν θεῶν οὐκ ἔχω εἰδέναι οὔθ ̓ ὡς εἰσίν, οὔθ ̓ ὡς οὐκ εἰσίν· πολλὰ γὰρ τὰ κωλύοντα εἰδέναι, ἤ τ' ἀδηλότης καὶ βραχὺς ὢν δ βίος τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. Διὰ ταύτην δὲ τὴν ἀρχὴν τοῦ συγγράμματος ἐξεβλήθη πρὸς ̓Αθηναίων· καὶ τὰ βιβλία αὐτοῦ κατέκαυσαν ἐν τῇ ἀγορᾷ, ὑπὸ κήρυκος ἀναλεξάμενοι παρ' ἑκάστου τῶν κεκτημένων.-Diog. Laert. ix. 51. Cicero, Nat. Deor. i. 23, 63. Grote, History of Greece, vol. i. p. 504. |