knowledge of the origin of the one is as far beyond our attainment as that of the other.

The Greeks, like most of the ancient nations, were little inclined to regard as mere capricious fiction any of the legends of the different portions of their own race or those of foreign countries. Whatever tales they learned, they interwove into their own system; taking care, however, to avoid contradiction as far as was possible. When, therefore, they found any foreign deities possessing the same attributes as some of their own, they at once inferred them to be the same under different names; but where the legends would not accord, the deities themselves were regarded as being different, even when they were in reality perhaps the same.

"This," says Buttmanna, "was the case when they found traditions of other kings of the gods whom they could not reconcile with their own Zeus, and of queens who could not be brought to agree with their Hera. But a new difficulty here presented itself; for they could not assume several kings and queens reigning at one time. The ancients appear to me to have gotten over this difficulty by saying, that those gods had indeed reigned, but that they had been overcome by their Zeus; and that the goddesses had indeed cohabited with Zeus, but they had not been his lawful wives. And this, if I mistake not, is the true origin of the tale of the Titans being driven out of heaven, and of the concubines of Zeus, who were reckoned among the Titanesses, the daughters of Heaven, and among the daughters of the Titans, such as Metis, Themis, Leto, Demeter, Dione, who were all, according to different legends, spouses of Zeus."

With these views of this most ingenious writer we agree, as far as relates to the consorts of the Olympian king, each of whom we look upon as having been his sole and lawful wife in the creed of some one or other of the tribes of Greece. Of the Titans we shall presently have occasion to speak somewhat differently.

Historic View of Grecian Mythology".

The poets having taken possession of the popular legends, adorned, amplified, added to them, and sought to reduce the whole to a somewhat harmonious systemb. They however either studiously abstained from departing from the popular faith, or were themselves too much affected by all that environed them to dream of anything which might shock the opinions of their auditors. Accordingly we may be certain that the mythes contained in Homer and Hesiod accord with the current creed of their day, and are a faithful picture of the mode of thinking prevalent in those distant ages.

As knowledge of the earth, of nature, her laws and powers, advanced, the false views of them contained in the venerable mythes of antiquity became apparent. The educated sometimes sought to reconcile tradition and truth; but the vulgar still held fast to the legends hallowed by antiquity and sanctioned by governments. A prudent silence therefore became the safest course for those who exceeded their contemporaries in knowledge.

The philosophers of Greece early arrived at the knowledge of one only God, the original cause and support of all. Anaxagoras is said to have been the first who openly taught this truth; and he was in consequence charged with atheism, and narrowly escaped the punishment of death. Philosophers took warning, and truth was no longer brought into public view. But such is the nature and connection of things, so profuse the resemblances which the world presents to view, such is the analogy which runs between the operations of mind and those of matter, that several of the mythes afforded the philosophers an opportunity of holding them forth as the husks in which important moral or physical truths were enveloped; in which in reality many such truths had been studiously enveloped by ancient priests and sagesd.

A

After an intercourse had been opened with Asia and Egypt, b Müller, Proleg. 212.

Heyne ad Apollod. p. 911. seq.

Buttmann, Mythol. i. 45. Müller, Proleg. 171. In Lucian (De Luctu, 2.) may be seen a convincing proof of how firmly the vulgar, even in his time, clung to the old notions.

mysteries came greatly into vogue in Greece. In these it is thoughta, but perhaps not with sufficient evidence, the priests who directed them used, for the credit of the popular religion whose reputation they were solicitous to maintain, to endeavour to show its accordance with the truths established by the philosophers, by representing them as being involved in the ancient mythes, which they modified by the aid of fiction and forgery so as to suit their purposes.

About this time, also, the system of theocrasy (Oeoxpaola), or mixing up, as we may call it, of the gods together, began to be employed. It was thus that the wine-god Dionysos was made one with the sun-god Helios, and this last again, as some think, with the archer-god Phobos Apollo. As we proceed we shall have frequent occasion to notice this principle.

While in the schools of the philosophers, and the temples devoted to the mysteries, the ancient legends were acquiring a new and recondite sense, another class of men, the artists, had laid hold of them. The gods of their forefathers were now presented under a new guise to the Greeks, who, as they gazed on the picture or the statue, saw the metaphors of the poets turned to sense, and wings, for example, adorning those deities and mythic personages to whom the poet had in figurative style applied the expression winged to denote extraordinary swiftnessc.

The poets soon began to regard the ancient legends as mere materials. The belief in their truth having in a great measure vanished, the poets, especially the later dramatists, thought themselves at liberty to treat them in whatever manner they deemed best calculated to produce the meditated effect on the feelings of their audienced. They added, abstracted, united, separated, at their pleasure; ideas imported from Egypt were

a

This is the theory of Voss. We share the doubts of Lobeck (Aglaoph. 1295.) respecting its soundness. The Exegetes, or guides, were more probably the persons who gave explanations of this kind to strangers.

Lobeck, Aglaoph. 78, 79, 614, 615. Müller, Proleg. 91.

Voss, Myth. Br. passim.

Müller, Proleg. 89-91, 209. Orchomenos, 269. Dorians, i. 59. Welcker, Tril. 462, 469. "Quam fecunda tragicorum ingenia in fabulis variandis, per tot exempla edocti, fuisse putabimus!"-Heyne ad Apollodor. p. 859. Id. ib. 920.

mixed up with the old tales of gods and heroes; and the fable to be represented on the stage often varied so much from that handed down by tradition, that, as is more especially the case with Euripides, the poet appears at times to have found it necessary to inform his audience in a long prologue of what they were about to witness.

Such was the state of the ancient mythology of Greece in her days of greatest intellectual culture. Few of the mythes remained unaltered. Priests, philosophers, and poets combined to vary, change, and modify them. The imagination of these various classes produced new mythes, and the local tales of foreign lands were incorporated into the Grecian mythic cycle.

When the Ptolemies, those munificent patrons of learning, had assembled around them at Alexandria the scholars and the men of genius of Greece, the science of antiquity was, by the aid of the extensive royal library, assiduously cultivated; and the ancient mythology soon became a favourite subject of learned investigation. Some worked up the mythes into. poems; others arranged them in prose narratives; several occupied themselves in the explication of them.

At this time what is named Pragmatism, or the effort to reduce the mythes to history, began greatly to prevaila. It is probable that this took its rise from the Egyptian priests, who, as we may see in Herodotus, represented their gods as having dwelt and reigned on earth. Hecatæus of Miletus, one of the earliest Grecian historians, would seem to have laboured to give a rational form to the old legends; and we may observe in the explanation given by Herodotus, after the Egyptian priests, of the legend of the soothsaying pigeon of Dodona, and in other places of that historian, a similar desired. This mode of rationalising was carried to a much greater extent by Ephorus: but the work which may be regarded as having contributed by far the most to give it vogue,

* Müller, Proleg. 97-99. Lobeck, Aglaoph. 987. seq. Buttmann, i. 197. Herodotus, ii. 144.

* Hecatæus began his work in these words: "I write as it appears to me to be true; for the narratives of the Hellenes are very various and ridiculous, as it seems to me." He said that Cerberos was a serpent that lay at Tænaron.

d Herod. ii. 54-57.

was the Sacred History (Iepǹ 'Avaypapń) of Euhemerus, which was so celebrated in antiquity that we shall here stop to give a brief account of ita.

Euhemerus said, in this work, that having had occasion to make a voyage in the Eastern ocean, after several days' sail he came to three islands, one of which was named Panchaia. The inhabitants of this happy isle were distinguished for their piety, and the isle itself for its fertility and beauty, in the description of which the writer exerted all the powers of his imagination. At a distance of several miles from the chief town, he says, lay a sacred grove, composed of trees of every kind, tall cypresses, laurels, myrtles, palms, and every species of fruit-tree, amidst which ran rivulets of the purest water. A spring within the sacred district poured forth water in such abundance as to form a navigable river, named the Water of the Sun", which meandered along, fructifying the whole region, and shaded over by luxuriant groves, in which during the days of summer dwelt numbers of men, while birds of the richest plumage and most melodious throats built their nests in the branches, and delighted the hearer with their song. Verdant meads, adorned with various flowers, climbing vines, and trees hanging with delicious fruits, everywhere met the view in this paradise. The inhabitants of the island were divided into priests, warriors, and cultivators. All things were in common except the house and garden of each. The duty of the priests was to sing the praises of the gods, and to act as judges and magistrates: a double share of everything fell to them. The task of the military class was to defend the island against the incursions of pirates, to which it was exposed. The garments of all were of the finest and whitest wool, and they wore rich ornaments of gold. The priests were distinguished by their raiment of pure white linen, and their bonnets of gold tissue.

a The chief remains of this work are to be found in the fifth book of Diodorus (42. seq.), and in the fragment of the sixth book preserved by Eusebius in his Evangelic Preparation. There are fragments remaining of the Latin translation of Ennius; and the work is frequently referred to by Sextus Empiricus and the Fathers of the Church.

b This name is borrowed from the Fount of the Sun (kpývŋ 'Hλíov) at the temple of Ammon. Herod. iv. 181.