permission to act as you please. But bear this in mind, that if I should afterwards choose to destroy any of the races peculiarly favoured by you, you will then have no ground of complaint. Of all the cities and nations in existence, none has paid me such constant and sincere honours as sacred Troy, its king Priam, and the whole valiant race of the Trojans ; none has ever bestowed such lavish sacrifices upon our altars." Yet this well-deserving race the just deity is ready to sacrifice to the hatred of his wife, in order to procure domestic peace. The answer of Juno is the exact counterpart to the speech of her lord. The goddess replies :-"Three cities are more beloved by me than all the others upon earth,-Argos, Sparta, and Mycene with broad streets. Take them, and destroy them: I make no objection, so as I may only wreak my hate upon Troy."" Never was a fairer offer made, nor ever one more obligingly accepted; and well were the Trojans repaid for their holocausts to Jupiter, and the Argives and Lacedemonians for the bullocks and he-goats which they had burnt on the altars of the implacable Juno. But Homer is not satisfied with rendering the gods hateful; he also contrives to make them contemptible. There was once (according to the greatest of poets) a war in heaven, in which Juno, Neptune, and Minerva (the wife, the brother, and the daughter of Jupiter!) feeling the reign of that tyrant intolerable, joined their forces against him, and seizing the ruler of the gods, bound him fast with chains! Ruined was the great autocrat of heaven on this occasion had it not been for Thetis. The silverfooted goddess called to his assistance the enormous Briareus, with the hundred hands, and conducted the monster up to Olympus. The immensity and terrible figure of Briareus alarmed all the hostile gods, who, unable to contend against him, unbound the tyrant, whose reign they detested." Another unpleasant discovery of the weakness of the Olympian deities, is made in the fifth book of the Iliad. Venus, endeavouring to withdraw her wounded son Æneas from the combat, is herself wounded by Diomed. The unfortunate goddess borrows the chariot of Mars to ascend to heaven, and relates her sufferings to her mother Dionè. The maternal goddess exhorts her to bear the calamity quietly, although she admits it is certainly vexing. To comfort her, she reminds her that the human race, and the gods, had mutually inflicted great evils on each other. Many griefs had mankind caused the gods; many in return they had suffered from their hands. The god of war himself,-the Ibid., iv., 50-54. Iliad, iv., 39-49. ย Ibid., i., 396-406. 24 strong and armipotent Mars,-had been seized by Otus and Ephialtes, and thrown, bound with strong chains, into a brazen dungeon, where he remained eighteen months (for in these matters Homer is usually circumstantial); "nay, he would perhaps have perished," if Mercury had not delivered him by stealth. So that (although Homer, in common phrase, terms the gods "immortal") it appears that they were no more immortal in his mythology, than the or genii of the Arabs. جن The good Dionè also cites the example of Juno, who had a three-forked arrow fixed in her right breast by Hercules; and of the terrible Pluto, through whose shoulder the same hero discharged another of his arrows, and laid him helpless on the pavement of Hades, like one of his own ghostly subjects,-the dead. To get cured of the wound, he was obliged to ascend to Olympus, and place himself under the hands of Paan. Such is the general impression which Homer (according to Herodotus, one of the inventors of the Grecian theology) gives of the virtues and power of the inhabitants of Olympus. The tragic poets take up the subject with interest. In the Prometheus Chained, Eschylus exerts himself with extraordinary vigour to expose the depraved tyranny of the ruler of Olympus. Prometheus (the beneficent principle) is dragged by "Strength" and "Force" to the craggy side of Mount Caucasus. Vulcan is employed to chain him with adamantine fetters to the rock. While the god of fire is unwillingly fettering the kindred deity, the two ruffianly monsters, Force and Strength, insult him by brutal reproaches. To all this, the indignant deity makes no reply. It is not till the three are retired, that he bursts out into the noblest soliloquy which is to be found in the reliques of the Grecian drama. The chorus of ocean-nymphs then approaches-a sympathizing band. To their friendly ears Prometheus declares his wrongs, and relates the indelible obligations which Jupiter had received at his hands. When this god was contending with his father Saturn for the dominion of heaven, Prometheus declares that it was to his counsels that the Cretan god was indebted for his triumph. The benefits Prometheus had conferred on man had effaced in the breast of the inexorable tyrant the memory of these unparalleled services. The whole drama is in the same strain. Euripides, in a more easy and quiet manner, contrives to present an equally detestable picture of the deities. His beautiful tragedy of Hippolytus is opened by the goddess w Iliad, v., 381-402. Prometh. Vinct., 88-113. Venus, who introduces the story. The Paphean goddess announces it to be her invariable principle, to overthrow every one who treats her worship with neglect: "For even the immortal gods receive with pleasure The honours paid them by man's humbler race." As an example of this rule of action, which she has adopted, she instances the case of Hippolytus, the son of Theseus, who invariably speaks of her as the worst of the goddesses, and prefers the friendship and society of the huntress-goddess Diana. To punish this, and effect her revenge, she has inspired his beautiful mother-in-law Phædra with a violent passion for him. The innocent Phædra (who had committed no offence, but, on the contrary, always treated the goddess with honour) struggles vainly, in the utmost misery, against the irresistible impulse :"The wretched victim groans beneath the pangs Of torturing love; and struggling with her doom, "But" (exclaims the goddess), "the matter shall not end thus: I will reveal the affair to Theseus, which shall cause the death of Hippolytus. It is true Phædra (an admirable princess) will also perish, but I care little for her calamities, so long as I can revenge myself upon Hippolytus." This is an excellent counterpart to the dialogue between Jupiter and Juno, in the fourth book of the Iliad. The great lesson which the chief masters of Grecian poetry endeavour to inculcate is, that the morals of Olympus were such as even a community of cut-throats, or the denizens of lupanaria, would. be ashamed of upon earth. Let any one read over (if disgust does not render it impossible) the mythological history of Jupiter, and he will see that no miscreant ever expired on the gallows, or the wheel, who was guilty of a hundredth part of the crimes imputed by the poets to the father of the gods, and the ruler of Olympus. The general character given by Pope of the gods of antiquity, in the Essay on Man, is as true, as it is spirited and poetical: "Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or lust; We say nothing of the unbridled licentiousness of the comic poets, respecting the deities worshipped in Greece. So unprincipled a writer as Aristophanes could not be expected to have venerated the deities of his country, if they had been faultless models of virtue and benevolence. The comic writers, especially those of the old comedy (if we may judge from Aristophanes), resembled, with respect to the deities, the Roman slaves in the Saturnalia; and without one particle of the point, wit, humour, and good sense of Lucian, exceeded that writer in the boldness of their attacks upon those very gods to whom the city was raising, at a vast expense, the most superb monuments. The toleration of the excesses of the comic drama shewed that the Greeks worshipped the gods only from fear and superstition; and that, while they bent before their altars, they at once hated and despised them. In truth, if the deities of the Hellenic mythology had been genuine gods, the conduct of Greece would, in a great degree, have justified their treatment of the human race. A thousand temples, a thousand superb statues were erected. to Zeus (or Jupiter),—the malevolent principle of Grecian Polytheism. To Prometheus,-the just, the beneficent, the noble, the self-devoted,-not a single temple was raised in all Greece. The only honours paid him were a solitary altar in the Academy at Athens, and annual torch-races in the Ceramicus. There was (it is true) one statue in Phocis, which a few well-minded persons supposed to represent Prometheus, but which others contended, with greater probability, to be a statue of Esculapius. All the arts, which the thankless Grecians acknowledged to have received from Prometheus, were employed to celebrate the honours of his persecutor. Under such circumstances, the impudence of the Greeks was great to complain that the gods were disturbers of mankind. The ridiculous worshippers of these gods were fit subjects only for a "reign of terror." Sect. II. The Hades of the Greek Theology, as depicted by Homer. Having shewn how gloomy a view of the influence of the gods on human life is inculcated by Homer, Hesiod, and the tragic poets of Greece, let us next inquire into the poetical view of a future state, as exhibited in the picture of the Grecian Hades. The Erebus of the Greeks is evidently derived from the Phoenician 'Ereb (evening, hesperus, vesper, or the west). Greece borrowed the name and the idea equally from the Phoenicians. The latter people (who planted colonies in Bætica at a very early period) appear to have invented all those fables respecting the west, which afterwards amused the Grecian poets." In the Atlantic Ocean (as lying beyond what had pre The familiarity of the early Greek poets with the myth of Atlas and his daughters, and the important part performed by this family in the fabulous legends of Greece, must have been remarked by every one who has critically viously been deemed the limits of the world) they planted their "Islands of the Blest." On its African shore were the fabled gardens of the Hesperides; and in Mauritania, or in the island of Teneriffe, was Mount Atlas, the supporter of heaven. Hesperus (the father of the guardians of the golden apples) was the brother of Atlas, and the country which derived its name from him, seems to have been placed in Bætica and Lusitania, between the Bætis, and the Sacred promontory. This therefore was the land of evening, or the sun-set; and wonderful were the fables which the Phoenicians related of this magic and terrible land, to alarm the credulous Greeks, and to deter them from venturing to the richest and most beautiful country of the ancient world. They were told that when the sun sank into ocean, beyond the sacred promontory, a hissing noise was heard throughout the seas, like the quenching of redhot iron in water; that as night approached, the gods and demons took possession of the country round the promontory; and that, after sun-set, it was impossible for any human being to approach it. This then was the original Erebus, the Hesperian land of the Greeks. Opposite to it, in the Atlantic, were the islands of the Blest; and the cloud-capped Atlas, the supporter of heaven, if (as some writers contend) that mountain is to be identified with the Peak of Teneriffe. The Romans, even after the time of Augustus, treated that part of Spain, which lay west of the columns of Hercules, as beyond the limits of the world ("extra orbem "); we may therefore well suppose that, in the age of Homer, this was exactly the place in which the Grecians would locate "the world after death." It is true that Hesiod may be deemed by some to have spoken of Erebus as an abode located under the earth (though the word he uses is ambiguous); but this was not the Homerian idea, as we shall shew in the sequel. Homer adhered more closely to the pure myths of the Phoenicians. Notwithstanding studied the Hellenic mythology for ethnological purposes. At the time when the tale of Atlas and his progeny became first familiar in Greece, it seems certain that no Grecian vessel had ever penetrated to the extreme western limits of the Mediterranean. All these tales must have been borrowed from the Phoenicians, who certainly seem to have furnished the larger part of the fabulous history of the Greek divinities. Gibbon, speaking of the Grove of Daphne, near Antioch, observes, "The spot was ennobled by fiction, and the fancy of the Syrian poets had transported the amorous tale from the banks of the Peneus to those of the Orontes" (Decline and Fall, c. 23). We believe the truth to be that the myth of Apollo and Daphne, like that of Venus and Adonis, was of Syrian origin. The resemblance between the vale of Tempe and that of the Orontes (between Antioch and Seleucia) has often been remarked. Strabo, iii. a Pliny, Nat. Hist., v., 19. |