Mosaics of Grecian History
by Marcius Willson · English · Gutenberg #6841 · 976,494 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mosaics of Grecian History
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Mosaics of Grecian History
Author: Marcius Willson
Robert Pierpont Wilson
Release date: November 1, 2004 [eBook #6841]
Most recently updated: November 21, 2022
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6841
Credits: Robert J. Hall
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOSAICS OF GRECIAN HISTORY ***
Mosaics of Grecian History
BY MARCIUS WILLSON
AND ROBERT PIERPONT WILLSON
PREFACE.
The leading object had in view in the preparation of the present
volume has been to produce, within a moderate compass, a History
of Greece that shall not only be trustworthy, but interesting
to all classes of readers.
It must be acknowledged that our standard historical works, with
all their worth, do not command a perusal by the people at large;
and it is equally plain that our ordinary School Manuals--the
abridgments and outlines of more voluminous works--do not meet
with any greater favor. The mere outline system of historical
study usually pursued in the schools is interesting to those only
to whom it is suggestive of the details on which it is based; and
we have long been satisfied that it is not the best for beginners
and for popular use; that it inverts the natural order of
acquisition; that for the young to master it is drudgery; that
its statistical enumeration, if ever learned by them, is soon
forgotten; that it tends to create a prejudice against the study
of history; that it does not lay the proper foundation for future
historical reading; and that, outside of the enforced study of
the school-room, it is seldom made use of. The people in general--the
masses--do not read such works, while they do read with avidity
historical legends, historical romances, historical poems and
dramas, and biographical sketches. And we do not hesitate to assert
that from Shakspeare's historical plays the reading public have
acquired (together with much other valuable information) a
hundred-fold more knowledge of certain portions of English history
than from all the ponderous tomes of formal history that have ever
been written. It may be said that people ought to read Hume, and
Lingard, and Mackintosh, and Hallam, and Froude, and Freeman,
instead of Shakspeare's "King John," and "Richard II.," and "Henry
IV.," and "Henry VIII.," etc. It is a sufficient reply to say they
do not.
Historical works, therefore, to be read by the masses, must be
adapted to the popular taste. It was an acknowledgment of this
truth that led Macaulay, the most brilliant of historians, to
remark, "We are not certain that the best histories are not those
in which a little of the exaggeration of fictitious narrative
is judiciously employed. Something is lost in accuracy, but much
is gained in effect. The fainter lines are neglected, but the
great characteristic features are imprinted on the mind forever."
If the result to which Macaulay refers be once attained by an
introductory work so interesting that it shall come into general
use, it will, we believe, naturally lead to the reading of some
of the best standard works in the same historical field. In our
attempt to make this a work of such a preparatory character, we
have borne in mind the demand that has arisen for poetic illustration
in the reading and teaching of history, and have given this
delightful aid to historical study a prominent place--ofttimes
making it the sole means of imparting information. And yet we
have introduced nothing that is not strictly consistent with our
ideal of what history should be; for although some of the poetic
selections are avowedly wholly legendary, and others, still, in
a greater or less degree fictitious in their minor details--like
the by-plays in Shakspeare's historic dramas--we believe they do
no violence to historical verity, as they are faithful pictures
of the times, scenes, incidents, principles, and beliefs which
they are employed to illustrate. Aside, too, from their historic
interest, they have a literary value. Many prose selections from
the best historians are also introduced, giving to the narrative
a pleasing variety of style that can be found in no one writer,
even if he be a Grote, a Gibbon, or a Macaulay.
* * * * *
THE PRINCIPAL HISTORIES OF GREECE.
Believing that it may be of some advantage to the general reader,
we give herewith a brief sketch of the principal histories of
Greece now before the public. We may mention, among those of a
comprehensive character, the works of Goldsmith, Gillies, Mitford,
Thirlwall, Grote, and Curtius:
OLIVER GOLDSMITH, "the popular poet, the charming novelist, the
successful dramatist, and the witty essayist," wrote a popular
history of Greece, in two volumes, 8vo, 1774, embracing a period
from the earliest date down to the death of Alexander the Great.
It is an attractive work, elegantly written, but is superficial
and inaccurate.
In 1786 was published a history of ancient Greece, in several
volumes, by DR. JOHN GILLIES, who succeeded Dr. Robertson as
historiographer of Scotland. This is a work of considerable merit
but it is written in a spirit of decidedly monarchical tendencies,
although the author evidently aimed at great fairness in his
political views.
He says: "The history of Greece exposes the dangerous turbulence
of democracy, and arraigns the despotism of tyrants. By describing
the incurable evils inherent in every republican policy, it evinces
the inestimable benefits resulting to liberty itself from the
lawful dominion of hereditary kings, and the steady operation
of well-regulated monarchy."
In the year 1784 appeared the first volume of WILLIAM MITFORD'S
"History of Greece", subsequently extended to eight and ten volumes,
8vo. It is the first history of Greece that combines extensive
research and profound philosophical reflection; but it is "a
monarchical" history, by a writer of very strong anti-republican
principles. "It was composed," says Alison, the distinguished
historian of modern Europe, "during, or shortly after, the French
Revolution; and it was mainly intended to counteract the visionary
ideas in regard to the blessings of Grecian democracy, which had
spread so far in the world, from the magic of Athenian genius."
Says Chancellor Kent: "Mitford does not scruple to tell the truth,
and the whole truth, and to paint the stormy democracies of Greece
in all their grandeur and in all their wretchedness." Lord Byron
said of the author: "His great pleasure consists in praising tyrants,
abusing Plutarch, spelling oddly, and writing quaintly; and--what
is strange, after all--his is the best modern history of Greece
in any language." But this was penned before Thirlwall's and Grote's
histories were published. Lord Macaulay says of Mitford: "Whenever
this historian mentions Demosthenes he violates all the laws of
candor and even of decency: he weighs no authorities, he makes
no allowances, he forgets the best authenticated facts in the
history of the times, and the most generally recognized principles
of human nature." The North British Review, after calling Mitford
"a bad scholar, a bad historian, and a bad writer of English,"
says, farther, that "he was the first writer of any note who found
out that Grecian history was a living thing with a practical
bearing."
The next truly important and comprehensive Grecian history,
published from 1835 to 1840, in eight volumes, 8vo, was written
by CONNOP THIRLWALL, D. D., Bishop of St. David's. It is a scholarly,
elaborate, and philosophical work evincing a thorough knowledge
of Greek literature and of the German commentators. The historian
Grote said that, if it had appeared a few years earlier, he should
probably never have undertaken his own history of Greece. "I
should certainly," he says, "not have been prompted to the task
by any deficiencies such as those I felt and regretted in Mitford."
In comparing Thirlwall's history with Grote's, the North British
Review has the following judicious remarks: "Many persons, probably,
who have no special devotion to Grecian history wish to study its
main outlines in something higher than a mere school-book. To
such readers we should certainly recommend Thirlwall rather than
Grote. The comparative brevity, the greater clearness and terseness
of the narrative, the freedom from diversions and digressions,
all render it far better suited for such a purpose. But for the
political thinker, who regards Grecian history chiefly in its
practical bearing, Mr. Grote's work is far better adapted. The
one is the work of a scholar, an enlarged and practical scholar
indeed, but still one in whom the character of the scholar is
the primary one. The other is the work of a politician and man
of business, a London banker, a Radical M. P., whose devotion
to ancient history and literature forms the most illustrious
confutation of the charges brought against such studies as being
useless and impractical."
"The style of Thirlwall," says Dr. Samuel Warren of England, in
his Introduction to Law Studies, "is dry, terse, and exact--not
fitted, perhaps, for the historical tyro, but most acceptable
to the advanced student who is in quest of things."
GEORGE GROTE, Member of Parliament, and a London banker, who
wrote a history of Greece in twelve volumes, published from 1846
to 1855, has been styled, by way of eminence, the historian of
Greece, because his work is universally admitted by critics to
be the best for the advanced student that has yet been written.
The London Athenæum styles his history "a great literary undertaking,
equally notable whether we regard it as an accession of standard
value in our language, or as an honorable monument of what English
scholarship can do." The London Quarterly Review says: "Errors
the most inveterate, that have been handed down without misgiving
from generation to generation, have been for the first time
corrected by Mr. Grote; facts the most familiar have been presented
in new aspects and relations; things dimly seen, and only partially
apprehended previously, have now assumed their true proportions
and real significance; while numerous traits of Grecian character;
and new veins of Grecian thought and feeling, have been revealed
to the eyes of scholars by Mr. Grote's searching criticism, like
new forms of animated nature by the microscope."
The general character of the work has been farther well summed
up by Sir Archibald Alison. He says: "A decided liberal, perhaps
even a republican, in politics, Mr. Grote has labored to counteract
the influence of Mitford in Grecian history, and construct a
history of Greece from authentic materials, which should illustrate
the animating influence of democratic freedom upon the exertions
of the human mind. In the prosecution of this attempt he has
displayed an extent of learning, a variety of research, a power
of combination, which are worthy of the very highest praise, and
have secured for him a lasting place among the historians of modern
Europe."
We may also mention, in this connection, the valuable and scholarly
work of the German professor, Ernst Curtius (1857-'67), in five
volumes, translated by A. Ward (1871-'74). His sympathies are
monarchical, and his views more nearly accord with those of Mitford
and Thirlwall than with those of Grote.
The work by William Smith, in one volume, 1865, is an excellent
summary of Grecian history, as is also that of George W. Cox, 1876.
The former work, which to a considerable extent is an abridgment
of Grote, has been brought down, in a Boston edition, from the
Roman Conquest to the middle of the present century, by Dr. Felton,
late President of Harvard College. President Felton has also
published two volumes of scholarly lectures on Ancient and Modern
Greece (1867).
The works devoted to limited periods of Grecian history and special
departments of research are very numerous. Among the most valuable
of the former is the History of the Peloponnesian War, by the
Greek historian Thucydides, of which there are several English
versions. He was born in Athens, about the year 471 B.C. His is
one of the ablest histories ever written.
Herodotus, the earliest and best of the romantic historians,
sometimes called the "Father of History," was contemporary with
Thucydides. He wrote, in a charming style, an elaborate work on
the Persian and Grecian wars, most of the scenes of which he
visited in person; and in numerous episodes and digressions he
interweaves the most valuable history that we have of the early
Asiatic nations and the Egyptians; but he indulges too much in
the marvelous to be altogether reliable."
Of the numerous works of Xenophon, an Athenian who is sometimes
called the "Attic Muse," from the simplicity and beauty of his
style, the best known and the most pleasing are the Anab'asis,
the Memorabil'ia of Socrates, and the Cyropedi'a, a political
romance. He was born about 443 B.C. The best English translation
of his works is by Watson, in Harper's "New Classical Library."
The work of the Greek historian, Polybius, originally in forty
volumes, of which only five remain entire covered a period from
the downfall of the Macedonian power to the subversion of Grecian
liberty by the Romans, 146 B.C. It is a work of great accuracy,
but of little rhetorical polish, and embraces much of Roman history
from which Livy derived most of the materials for his account of
the wars with Carthage.
In the first century of our era, Plutarch, a Greek biographer,
wrote the "Parallel Lives" of forty-six distinguished Greeks and
Romans--a charming and instructive work, translated by John and
William Langhorne in 1771, and by Arthur Hugh Clough in 1858.
A history of Greece, in seven volumes, by George Finlay, a British
historian, long resident at Athens, is noted for a thorough knowledge
of Greek topography, art, and antiquity. The completed work embraces
a period from the conquest of Greece by the Romans to the middle
of the present century.
A History of Greek Literature, by J, P. Mahaffy, is the most
polished descriptive work in the department which it embraces.
It is happily supplemented by J. Addington Symonds' Studies of
the Greek Poets. Mr. Mahaffy, in common with many German scholars,
is an unbeliever in the unity of the Iliad.
CONTENTS.
[The names of authors from whom selections are taken are in
CAPITOLS.]
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE GRECIAN STATES AND ISLANDS.
Introductory.--Olympus.--HEMANS.--Pi'e-rus.--POPE.
1. Thessaly.--Tem'pe.-HEMANS.
2. Epi'rus.--Cocy'tus, Ach'eron, Dodo'na.--MILTON: HAYGARTH:
BYRON.
3. Acarna'nia.
4. Æto'lia.
5. Lo'cris.
6. Do'ris.
7. Pho'cis.--Parnassus.--BYRON.--Delphi.--HEMANS.
8. Bœo'tia.--Thebes.--SCHILLER.
9. Attica.--BYRON.
10. Corinth.--BYRON: HAYGARTH.
11. Acha'ia.
12. Arca'dia.
13. Ar'golis.--Myce'næ.--HEMANS.
14. Laco'nia.
15. Messe'nia.
16. E'lis.
17. The Isles of Greece.--BYRON.
Lemnos.--Euboe'a.--Cyc'la-des.--De'los.--Spor'a-des.--
Crete.--Rhodes.--Sal'amis.--Ægi'na.--Cyth'-era.--
"Venus Rising from the Sea."--WOOLNER.
Stroph'a-des.--VIRGIL.--Paxos.--Zacyn'thus.--
Cephalo'nia.--Ith'aca.--Leu'cas or Leuca'dia.--
Corcy'ra or Cor'fu.--"Gardens of Alcin'o-us."
CHAPTER II.
THE FABULOUS AND LEGENDARY PERIOD OF GRECIAN HISTORY.
I. Grecian Mythology.
Value of the Grecian Fables.--J. STUART BLACKIE.
The Battle of the Giants.--HE'SIOD
Hymn to Jupiter.--CLEAN'THES
The god Apollo.--OV'ID.
Fancies of the Greek Mind.--WORDSWORTH: LIDDELL: BLACKIE.
The Poet's Lament.--SCHILLER.
The Creation.--OVID.
The Origin of Evil.--HESIOD.
What Prome'theus Personified.--BLACKIE.
The Punishment of Prometheus.--ÆS'CHYLUS: SHELLEY
Deluge of Deuca'lion.--OVID.
Moral Characteristics of the Gods, etc.--MAHAFFY:
GLADSTONE: HOMER: ÆSCHYLUS: HESIOD.
Oaths.--HOMER: ÆSCHYLUS: SOPH'OCLES: VIRGIL.
The Future State.--HOMER.
1. Story of Tan'talus.--BLACKIE
2. The Descent of Or'pheus.--OVID: HOMER.
3. The Elys'ium.--HOMER: PINDAR.
Hindu and Greek Skepticism.--(Cornhill Magazine).
II. The Earnest Inhabitants of Greece.
The Founding of Athens.--BLACKIE.
III. The Heroic Age.
Heroic Times foretold to Adam.--MILTON
Twelve Labors of Hercules.--HOMER.
Fable of Hercules and Antæ'us.--COLLINS.
The Argonautic Expedition.--PINDAR.
Legend of Hy'las.--BAYARD TAYLOR.
The Trojan War.
1. The Greek Armament.--EURIP'IDES.
2. The name Helen.--ÆSCHYLUS.
3. Ulysses and Thersi'tes.--HOMER. (POPE).
4. Combat of Menela'us and Paris.--HOMER. (POPE).
5. Parting of Hector and Androm'a-che.--HOMER. (POPE).
6. Hector's Exploits and Death of Patro'clus.--HOMER.
(POPE).
7. The Shield of Achilles.--HOMER. (SOTHEBY).
8. Address of Achilles to his Horses.--HOMER. (POPE).
9. The Death of Hector.--HOMER. (BRYANT).
10. Priam Begging for Hector's Body.--HOMER. (COWPER).
11. Lamentations of Andromache and Helen.--HOMER. (POPE).
The Fate of Troy.--VIRGIL: SCHILLER.
Beacon Fires from Troy to Argos.--ÆSCHYLUS.
Remarks on the Trojan War.--THIRLWALL: GROTE.
Fate of the Actors in the Conflict.--ENNIUS: LANDOR: LANG.
IV. Arts and Civilization in the Heroic Age.
Political Life of the Greeks.--MAHAFFY: HEEREN.
Domestic Life and Character.--MAHAFFY: HOMER.
The Raft of Ulysses.--HOMER.
V. The Conquest of Peloponnesus, and Colonies in Asia Minor.
Return of the Heracli'dæ.--LUCAN.
CHAPTER III.
EARLY GREEK LITERATURE, AND GREEK COMMUNITY OF INTERESTS.
Ionian Language and Culture.--FELTON.
I. Homer and his Poems.--ANTIP'ATER: FELTON: TALFOURD: POPE:
COLERIDGE.
II. Some Causes of Greek Unity.
The Grecian Festivals.
1. Chariot Race and Death of Ores'tes.--SOPHOCLES.
2. Apollo's Conflict with the Python.--OVID.
3. The Apollo Belvedere.--THOMSON.
The National Councils.
CHAPTER IV.
SPARTA, AND THE LEGISLATION OF LYCURGUS.
Description of Sparta.--THOMSON.
I. The Constitution of Lycurgus.
Spartan Patriotic Virtue.--TYMNOE'US.
II. Spartan Poetry and Music.
Spartan March.--CAMPBELL.: HEMANS.
Songs of the Spartans.--PLUTARCH: TERPAN'DER: PINDAR: ION.
III. Sparta's Conquests.
War-song.--TYRTOE'US.
CHAPTER V.
FORMS OF GOVERNMENT, AND CHANGES IN GRECIAN POLITICS.
Introductory.--THIRLWALL: LEG'ARÉ.
I. Changes from Aristocracies to Oligarchies.--HEEREN.
II. Changes from Oligarchies to Despotisms.--THIRLWALL: HEEREN:
BULWER: TYRTOE'US.
CHAPTER VI.
THE EARLY HISTORY OF ATHENS.
I. The Legislation of Dra'co.
II. The Legislation of So'lon.--PLUTARCH: A'KENSIDE: SOLON:
THOMSON: SOLON.
III. The Usurpation of Pisis'tratus.
The Usurper and his Stratagem.--AKENSIDE.
Solon's Appeal to the Athenians.--AKENSIDE.
Character of Pisistratus.--THIRLWALL.
Conspiracy of Harmodius and Aristogi'ton.--CALLIS'TRATUS.
IV. Birth of Democracy.--THIRLWALL.
CHAPTER VII.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE GREEK COLONIES.
The Cave of the Cumæ'an Sibyl.--VIRGIL: GROTE.
The'ron of Agrigen'tum.--PINDAR.
Increase among the Sicilian Greeks.--GROTE.
CHAPTER VIII.
PROGRESS OF LITERATURE AND THE ARTS.
I. The Poems of Hesiod.--"Winter."--FELTON: MURE: THIRLWALL:
MAHAFFY.
II. Lyric Poetry.
Calli'nus of Ephesus.--"War Elegy".
Archil'ochus of Pa'ros--SYMONDS: MAHAFFY.
Alc'man.--"Sleep, or Night."--MURE.
Ari'on.--Stesich'orus.--MAHAFFY.
Alcæus.--"Spoils of War."--AKENSIDE.
Sappho.--"Defence of."--SYMONDS: ANTIP'ATER.
Anac'reon.--"The Grasshopper."--AKENSIDE.
III. Early Grecian Philosophy.
The Seven Sages.--(Maxims).-GROTE.
Tha'les, Anaxim'enes, Heracli'tus, Diog'enes,
Anaximan'der, and Xenoph'anes.
Pythag'oras and his Doctrines.--BLACKIE: THOMSON:
COLERIDGE: LOWELL.
The Eleusin'ian Mysteries.--VIRGIL.
IV. Architecture.
The Cyclo'pean Walls.--LORD HOUGHTON.
Dor'ic, Ion'ic, and Corinthian Orders.--THOMSON.
Cher'siphron, and the Temple of Diana.--STORY.
Temples at Pæs'tum.--CRANCH.
V. Sculpture.
Glaucus, Rhoe'cus, Theodo'rus, Dipæ'nus, Scyllis.
Cause of the Progress of Sculpture.--THIRLWALL.
CHAPTER IX.
THE PERSIAN WARS.
I. The Ionic Revolt.
II. The First Persian War.
The Battle of Marathon.
Legends of the Battle.--HEMANS: BLACKIE.
The Death of Milti'ades: his Character.--GROTE: GILLIES.
Aristi'des and Themis'tocles:--THOMSON: PLUTARCH: THIRLWALL.
III. The Second Persian Invasion.
Xerxes at Aby'dos.--HEROD'OTUS.
Bridging of the Hellespont.--JUVENAL: MILTON.
The Battle of Thermop'ylæ.
1. Invincibility of the Spartans.--HAYGARTH.
2. Description of the Contest.--HAYGARTH.
3. Epitaphs on those who fell.--SIMON'IDES.
4. The Tomb of Leon'idas.--ANON.
5. Eulogy on the Fallen.--BYRON
Naval Conflict at Artemis'ium.--PLUTARCH: PINDAR.
The Abandonment of Athens.
The Battle of Salamis.
1. Xerxes Views the Conflict.--BYRON.
2. Flight of Xerxes.--JUVENAL: ALAMANNI.
3. Celebrated Description of the Battle.--MITFORD:
ÆSCHYLUS.
4. Another Account.--BLACKIE.
The Battle of Platæ'a.
1. Description of the Battle.--BULWER.
2. Importance of the Victory.--SOUTHEY: BULWER.
3. Victory at Myc'a-le.--BULWER.
4. "The Wasps."--ARISTOPHANES.
CHAPTER X.
THE RISE AND GROWTH OF THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE.
I. The Disgrace and Death of Themistocles.
Tributes to his Memory.--PLATO: GEMINUS: THIRLWALL.
II. The Rise and Fall of Cimon.
Character of Cimon--THOMSON.
Battle of Eurym'edon.--SIMONIDES.
Earthquake at Sparta, and Revolt of the Helots.--BULWER:
ALISON.
III. The Accession of Pericles to Power.
Changes in the Athenian Constitution.--BULWER.
Tribute to Pericles.--CROLY.
Picture of Athens in Peace.--HAYGARTH.
CHAPTER XI.
THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS, AND THE FALL OF ATHENS.
Speech of Pericles for War.--THUCYD'IDES.
I. The First Peloponnesian War.
Funeral Oration of Pericles.--THUCYDIDES.
Comments on the Oration.--CURTIUS.
The Plague at Athens.--LUCRETIUS.
Death of Pericles.--CROLY: THIRLWALL: BULWER.
Character of Pericles.--MITFORD.
II. The Athenian Demagogues.
Cleon, the Demagogue.--GILLIES: ARISTOPH'ANES.
The Peace of Ni'cias.
III. The Sicilian Expedition.
Treatment of the Athenian Prisoners.--BYRON.
IV. The Second Peloponnesian War.
Humiliation of Athens.
Barbarities of the Contest.--MAHAFFY.
CHAPTER XII.
GRECIAN LITERATURE AND ART, FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE PERSIAN
TO THE CLOSE OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS (B.C. 500-403).
LITERATURE.
Introductory.
The Era of Athenian Greatness.--SYMONDS.
I. Lyric Poetry.
Simonides.--"Lamentation of Dan'a-ë."--MAHAFFY.
Pindar.--"Threnos."--THIRLWALL: PRIOR: SYMONDS: GRAY:
POPE: HORACE.
II. The Drama.--BULWER.
1. Tragedy.--Melpom'ene.--AKENSIDE.
Æschylus.--"Death of Agamemnon."--PLUMPTRE: LAWRENCE:
VAN SCHLEGEL: BYRON: MAHAFFY.
Sophocles.--OEd'ipus Tyran'nus."--TALFOURD: PHRYN'ICHUS:
SIM'MIAS.
Euripides.--"Alcestis Preparing for Death."--SYMONDS:
MILTON: MAHAFFY.
The Transitions of Tragedy.--GROTE.
2. Comedy.
Characterization of.
Aristophanes.--Extracts from "The Cloud." "Choral Song from
The Birds."--PLATO: GROTE: SEWELL: MILTON: RUSKIN.
III. History.
Hecatæ'ns.--MAHAFFY: NIEBUHR.
Herodotus.--"Introduction to History."--LAWRENCE.
Herodotus and his Writings.--MACAULAY.
Thucyd'i-des.--MAHAFFY.
Thucydides and Herodotus.--BROWNE.
IV. Philosophy.
Anaxag'oras: his Death.--WILLIAM CANTON.
The Sophists.--MAHAFFY.
Socrates.--"Defence of Socrates."--"Socrates' Views of
a Future State."--MAHAFFY: THOMSON: SMITH: TYLER: GROTE.
ART.
I. Sculpture and Painting.
Phid'ias.--LÜBKE: GILLIES: LÜBKE.
Polygno'tus.--Apollodo'rus.--Zeux'is.--Parrha'sius.
--Timan'thes.
Parrhasius and his Captive.--SENECA: WILLIS.
II. Architecture.
Introductory.--THOMSON.
The Adornment of Athens.--BULWER.
I. The Acrop'olis and its Splendors.
The Parthenon.--HEMANS.
II. Other Architectural Monuments of Athens.
The Temple of The'seus.--HAYGARTH.
Athenian Enthusiasm for Art.--BULWER.
The Glory of Athens.--TALFOURD.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN SUPREMACIES.
I. The Expedition of Cyrus, and the Retreat of the Ten
Thousand.--THOMSON: CURTIUS.
II. The Supremacy of Sparta.
III. The Rise and Fall of Thebes.
Pelop'idas and Epaminon'das.--THOMSON: CURTIUS.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SICILIAN GREEKS.
The Founding of Ætna.--PINDAR.
Hi'ero's Victory at Cu'mæ.--PINDAR.
Admonitions to Hiero.--PINDAR.
Dionysius the Elder.--PLUTARCH.
Damon and Pythias.--The Hostage.--SCHILLER.
Archime'des.--SCHILLER
Visit of Cicero to the Grave of Archimedes.--WINTHROP.
CHAPTER XV.
THE MACEDONIAN SUPREMACY.
I. The Sacred War.--THIRLWALL.
II. Sketch of Macedonia.
III. Interference of Philip of Macedon.
Demosthenes.--"The First Philippic."--GROTE.
Pho'cion.--His Influence at Athens.--GROTE.
IV. War with Macedon.
V. Accession of Alexander the Great.
VI. Alexander Invades Asia.
VII. The Battle of Arbe'la.--Flight and Death of Dari'us.--
GROTE: ÆS'CHINES.
Alexander's Feast at Persep'olis.--DRYDEN.
VI. The Death of Alexander.
His Career and his Character.--LU'CAN.
Reflections on his Life, etc.--JUVENAL: BYRON.
CHAPTER XVI.
FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER TO THE CONQUEST OF GREECE BY THE ROMANS.
I. A Retrospective Glance at Greece.
Oration of Æschines against Ctes'iphon.
Oration of Demosthenes on the Crown.
II. The Wars that followed Alexander's Death.
Character of Ptolemy Philadelphus--THEOC'RITUS.
III. The Celtic Invasion, and the War with Pyrrhus.
Queen Archidami'a.--ANON.
IV. The Achæ'an League.--Philip V. of Macedon.
Epigrams on Philip and the Macedonians.--Alcoe'us.
V. Greece Conquered by Rome.
"The Liberty of Greece."--WORDSWORTH.
Desolation of Corinth.--ANTIPATER.
Last Struggles of Greece.--THIRLWALL: HORACE.
CHAPTER XVII.
LITERATURE AND ART AFTER THE CLOSE OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.
LITERATURE.
I. The Drama.--MAHAFFY.
Phile'mon.--"Faith in God."
Menander.--"Human Existence."--SYMONDS: LAWRENCE.
II. Oratory.--MILTON: CICERO.
Æs'chines and Demosthenes.--LEGARÉ: BROUGHAM: HUME.
III. Philosophy.
Plato.--HAYGARTH: BROUGHAM: KENDRICK: MITCHELL.
Aristotle.--POPE: BROWNE: LAWRENCE: SMITH: MAHAFFY.
Academe.--ARNOLD.
Epicu'rus and Ze'no.--LUCRETIUS.
IV. History.
Xen'ophon.--MITCHELL.
Polyb'ius.
ART.
I. Architecture and Sculpture.
Changes in Statuary.--WEYMAN.
The Dying Gladiator.--LÜBKE: THOMSON.
The La-oc'o-on.--THOMSON: HOLLAND.
II. Painting.
Venus Rising from the Sea.--ANTIPATER.
Apel'les and Protog'enes.--ANTHON.
Protogenes' Picture at Rhodes.--THOMSON.
Concluding Reflections.
The Image of Athens.--SHELLEY.
Immortal Influence of Athens.--MACAULAY: HAYGARTH.
CHAPTER XVIII.
GREECE SUBSEQUENT TO THE ROMAN CONQUEST.
I. Greece under the Romans.
The Revolt.--FINLAY.
Christianity in Greece.--FELTON.
II. Changes down to the Fourteenth Century.
Courts of the Crusading Chieftains.--EDINBURGH REVIEW.
The Duchy of Athens.--FELTON.
The Turkish Invasion.--HEMANS.
III. Contests between the Turks and Venetians.
Past and Present of the Acropolis of Athens.
The Siege and Fall of Corinth.--BYRON.
IV. Final Conquest of Greece by Turkey.
Turkish Oppressions.--TENNENT.
The Slavery of Greece.--CANNING: BYRON.
First Steps to Secure Liberty.--The Klephts.--FELTON.
Greek War-Songs.--RHIGAS: POLYZOIS.
V. The Greek Revolution.
A Prophetic Vision of the Struggle.--SHELLEY'S "Hellas".
Song of the Greeks.--CAMPBELL.
American Sympathy with Greece.--TUCKERMAN: WEBSTER.
The Sortie at Missolon'ghi.--WARBURTON.
A Visit to Missolonghi.--STEPHENS.
Marco Bozzar'is.--HALLECK.
Battle of Navari'no.--CAMPBELL.
VI. Greece under a Constitutional Monarchy.
Revolution against King Otho.--BENJAMIN.
The Deposition of King Otho: Greece under his Rule.
--TUCKERMAN: BRITISH QUARTERLY.
Accession of King George.--His Government.--TUCKERMAN.
Progress in Modern Greece.--COOK.
INDEX
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE GRECIAN STATES AND ISLANDS.
The country called HELLAS by the Helle'nes, its native inhabitants,
and known to us by the name of Greece, forms the southern part
of the most easterly of the three great peninsulas of Southern
Europe, extending into the Mediterranean between the Æge'an Sea,
or Grecian Archipelago, on the east, and the Ionian Sea on the
west. The whole area of this country, so renowned in history, is
only about twenty thousand square miles; which is considerably
less than that of Portugal, and less than half that of the State
of Pennsylvania.
The mainland of ancient Greece was naturally divided into Northern
Greece, which embraced Thessaly and Epi'rus; Central Greece,
comprising the divisions of Acarna'nia, Æto'lia, Lo'cris, Do'ris,
Pho'cis, Breo'tia, and At'tica (the latter forming the eastern
extremity of the whole peninsula); and Southern Greece, which the
ancients called Pel-o-pon-ne'sus, or the Island of Pe'lops, which
would be an island were it not for the narrow Isthmus of Corinth,
which connects it on the north with Central Greece. Its modern
name, the Mo-re'a, was bestowed upon it from its resemblance to
the leaf of the mulberry. The chief political divisions of
Peloponnesus were Corinth and Acha'ia on the north, Ar'golis on
the east, Laco'nia and Messe'nia at the southern extremity of
the peninsula, E'lis on the west, and the central region of Arca'dia.
Greece proper is separated from Macedonia on the north by the
Ceraunian and Cambunian chain of mountains, extending in irregular
outline from the Ionian Sea on the west to the Therma'ic Gulf on
the east, terminating, on the eastern coast, in the lofty summit
of Mount Olympus, the fabled residence of the gods, where, in
the early dawn of history, Jupiter (called "the father of gods
and men") was said to hold his court, and where he reigned supreme
over heaven and earth. Olympus rises abruptly, in colossal
magnificence, to a height of more than six thousand feet, lifting
its snowy head far above the belt of clouds that nearly always
hangs upon the sides of the mountain.
Wild and august in consecrated pride,
There through the deep-blue heaven Olympus towers,
Girdled with mists, light-floating as to hide
The rock-built palace of immortal powers.
--HEMANS.
In the Olympian range, also, was Mount Pie'rus, where was the
Pierian fountain, one of the sacred resorts of the Muses, so
often mentioned by the poets, and to which POPE, with gentle
sarcasm, refers when he says,
A little learning is a dangerous thing:
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.
1. Thessaly.--From the northern chain of mountains, the central
Pindus range, running south, separates Thessaly on the east from
Epi'rus on the west. The former region, enclosed by mountain
ranges broken only on the east, and watered by the Pene'us and
its numerous tributaries, embraced the largest and most fertile
plain in all Greece. On the Thessalian coast, south of Olympus,
were the celebrated mounts Ossa and Pe'lion, which the giants,
in their wars against the gods, as the poets fable, piled upon
Olympus in their daring attempt to scale the heavens and dethrone
the gods. Between those mounts lay the celebrated vale of Tem'pe,
through which the Pene'us flowed to the sea.
Romantic Tempe! thou art yet the same--
Wild as when sung by bards of elder time:
Years, that have changed thy river's classic name,
[Footnote: The modern name of the Pene'us is Selembria
or Salamvria.]
Have left thee still in savage pomp sublime.
--HEMANS.
Farther south, having the sea on one side and the lofty cliffs
of Mount OE'ta on the other, was the celebrated narrow pass of
Thermop'ylæ, leading from Thessaly into Central Greece.
2. Epi'rus.--The country of Epirus, on the west of Thessaly, was
mostly a wild and mountainous region, but with fertile intervening
valleys. Among the localities of Epirus celebrated in fable and
in song was the river Cocy'tus, which the poets, on account of
its nauseous waters, described as one of the rivers of the lower
world--
Cocytus, named of lamentation loud
Heard on the rueful stream.
The Ach'eron was another of the rivers--
Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep--
--MILTON.
which was assigned by the poets to the lower world, and over
which the souls of the dead were said to be first conveyed, before
they were borne the Le'the, or "stream of oblivion," beyond. The
true Acheron of Epirus has been thus described:
Yonder rolls Acheron his dismal stream,
Sunk in a narrow bed: cypress and fir
Wave their dim foliage on his rugged banks;
And underneath their boughs the parched ground,
Strewed o'er with juniper and withered leaves,
Seems blasted by no mortal tread.
As the Acheron falls into the lake Acheru'sia, and after rising
from it flows underground for some distance, this lake also has
been connected by the poets with the gloomy legend of its fountain
stream.
This is the place
Sung by the ancient masters of the lyre,
Where disembodied spirits, ere they left
Their earthly mansions, lingered for a time
Upon the confines of eternal night,
Mourning their doom; and oft the astonished hind,
As home he journeyed at the fall of eve,
Viewed unknown forms flitting across his path,
And in the breeze that waved the sighing boughs
Heard shrieks of woe.
--HAYGARTH.
In Epirus was also situated the celebrated city of Dodo'na, with
the temple of that name, where was the most ancient oracle in
Greece, whose fame extended even to Asia. But in the wide waste
of centuries even the site of this once famous oracle is forgotten.
Where, now, Dodona! is thine aged grove,
Prophetic fount, and oracle divine?
What valley echoes the response of Jove?
What trace remaineth of the Thunderer's shrine?
All, all forgotten!
--BYRON.
3. Acarna'nia.--Coming now to Central Greece, lying northward
of the Corinthian Gulf, we find Acarnania on the far west, for
the most part a productive country with good harbors: but the
Acarnanians, a rude and warlike people, were little inclined to
Commercial pursuits; they remained far behind the rest of the
Greeks in culture, and scarcely one city of importance was embraced
within their territory.
4. Æto'lia, generally a rough and mountainous country, separated,
on the west, from Acarnania by the river Ach-e-lo'us, the largest
of the rivers of Greece, was inhabited, like Acarnania, by a hardy
and warlike race, who long preserved the wild and uncivilized
habits of a barbarous age. The river Achelous was intimately
connected with the religion and mythology of the Greeks. The hero
Hercules contended with the river-god for the hand of De-i-a-ni'ra,
the most beautiful woman of his time; and so famous was the stream
itself that the Oracle of Dodona gave frequent directions "to
sacrifice to the Achelous," whose very name was used, in the
language of poetry, as an appellation for the element of water
and for rivers.
5. Lo'cris, lying along the Corinthian Gulf east of Ætolia, was
inhabited by a wild, uncivilized race, scarcely Hellen'ic in
character, and said to have been addicted, from the earliest
period, to theft and rapine. Their two principal towns were
Amphis'sa and Naupac'tus, the latter now called Lepanto. There
was another settlement of the Locri north of Pho'cis and Bœo'tia.
6. Do'ris, a small territory in the north-eastern angle of Ætolia
proper--a rough but fertile country--was the early seat of the
Dorians, the most enterprising and the most powerful of the Hellenic
tribes, if we take into account their numerous migrations, colonies
and conquests. Their colonies in Asia Minor founded six independent
republics, which were confined within the bounds of as many cities.
From this people the Doric order of architecture--a style typical
of majesty and imposing grandeur, and the one the most employed
by the Greeks in the construction of their temples--derived its
origin.
7. Pho'cis.--On the east of Locris, Ætolia, and Doris was Phocis,
a mountainous region, bordered on the south by the Corinthian
Gulf. In the northern central part of its territory was the famed
Mount Parnassus, covered the greater part of the year with snow,
with its sacred cave, and its Castalian fount gushing forth between
two of its lofty rocks. The waters were said to inspire those who
drank of them with the gift of poetry. Hence both mountain and
fount were sacred to the Muses, and their names have come down
to our own times as synonymous with poetry and song. BYRON thus
writes of Parnassus, in lines almost of veneration, as he first
viewed it from Delphi, on the southern base of the mountain:
Oh, thou Parnassus! whom I now survey,
Not in the frenzy of a dreamer's eye,
Not in the fabled landscape of a lay,
But soaring snow-clad through thy native sky
In the wild pomp of mountain majesty!
Oft have I dreamed of thee! whose glorious name
Who knows not, knows not man's divinest lore:
And now I view thee, 'tis, alas! with shame
That I in feeblest accents must adore.
When I recount thy worshippers of yore
I tremble, and can only bend the knee;
Nor raise my voice, nor vainly dare to soar,
But gaze beneath thy cloudy canopy
In silent joy to think at last I look on thee!
The city of Delphi was the seat of the celebrated temple and
oracle of that name. Here the Pythia, the priestess of Apollo,
pronounced the prophetic responses, in extempore prose or verse;
and here the Pythian Games were celebrated in honor of Apollo.
Here, thought-entranced, we wander, where of old
From Delphi's chasm the mystic vapor rose,
And trembling nations heard their doom foretold
By the dread spirit throned 'midst rocks and snows.
Though its rich fanes be blended with the dust,
And silence now the hallowed haunt possess,
Still is the scene of ancient rites august,
Magnificent in mountain loneliness;
Still Inspiration hovers o'er the ground,
Where Greece her councils held, her Pythian victors crowned.
--MRS. HEMANS.
8. Bœo'tia.--Bœotia, lying to the east of Phocis, bordering
on the Euri'pus, or "Euboe'an Sea," a narrow strait which separates
it from the Island of Euboe'a, and touching the Corinthian Gulf
on the south-west, is mostly one large basin enclosed by mountain
ranges, and having a soil exceedingly fertile. It was the most
thickly settled part of Greece; it abounded in cities of historic
interest, of which Thebes, the capital, was the chief--whose walls
were built, according to the fable, to the sound of the Muses:
With their ninefold symphonies
There the chiming Muses throng;
Stone on stone the walls arise
To the choral Music-song.
--SCHILLER.
Bœotia was the scene of many of the legends celebrated by the
poets, and especially of those upon which were founded the plays
of the Greek tragedians. Near a fountain on Mount Cithæ'ron, on
its southern border, the hunter Actæ'on, having been changed into
a stag by the goddess Diana, was hunted down and killed by his
own hounds. Pen'theus, an early king of Thebes, having ascended
Cithæron to witness the orgies of the Bacchanals, was torn in
pieces by his own mother and aunts, to whom Bacchus made him
appear as a wild beast. On this same mountain range also occurred
the exposure of OEd'ipus, the hero of the most famous tragedy of
Sophocles. Near the Corinthian Gulf was Mount Hel'icon, sacred
to Apollo and the Muses. Its slopes and valleys were renowned
for their fertility; it had its sacred grove, and near it was
the famous fountain of Aganip'pe, which was believed to inspire
with oracular powers those who drank of its waters. Nearer the
summit was the fountain Hippocre'ne, which is said to have burst
forth when the winged horse Peg'asus, the favorite of the Muses,
struck the ground with his hoofs, and which Venus, accompanied
by her constant attendants, the doves, delighted to visit. Here,
we are told,
Her darling doves, light-hovering round their Queen,
Dipped their red beaks in rills from Hippocrene.
[Footnote: Always Hip-po-cre'ne in prose; but it is
allowable to contract it into three syllables in poetry,
as in the example above.]
It was here, also--
near this fresh fount,
On pleasant Helicon's umbrageous mount--
that occurred the celebrated contest between the nine daughters
of Pie'rus, king of E-ma'thi-a (the ancient name of Macedonia),
and the nine Muses. It is said that "at the song of the daughters
of Pierus the sky became dark, and all nature was put out of
harmony; but at that of the Muses the heavens themselves, the
stars, the sea, and the rivers stood motionless, and Helicon
swelled up with delight, so that its summit reached the sky."
The Muses then, having turned the presumptuous maidens into
chattering magpies, first took the name of Pi-er'i-des, from
Pieria, their natal region.
9. Attica.--Bordering Bœotia on the south-east was the district
of Attica, nearly in the form of a triangle, having two of its
sides washed by the sea, and the other--the northern--shut off
from the east of Central Greece by the mountain range of Cithæron
on the north-west, and Par'nes on the east. Its other noted
mountains were Pentel'icus (sometimes called Mende'li), so
celebrated for its quarries of beautiful marble, and Hymet'tus,
celebrated for its excellent honey, and the broad belt of flowers
at its base, which scented the air with their delicious perfume.
It could boast of its chief city, the favored seat of the goddess
Minerva--
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence--
as surpassing all other cities in beauty and magnificence, and
in the great number of its illustrious citizens. Yet the soil
of Attica was, on the whole, exceedingly barren, with the exception
of a few very fertile spots; but olive groves abounded, and the
olive was the most valuable product.
The general sterility of Attica was the great safety of her people
in their early history. "It drove them abroad; it filled them
with a spirit of activity, which loved to grapple with danger
and difficulty; it told them that, if they would maintain themselves
in the dignity which became them, they must regard the resources of
their own land as nothing, and those of other countries as their
own." Added to this, the situation of Attica marked it out in an
eminent manner for a commercial country; and it became distinguished
beyond all the other states of Greece for its extensive commercial
relations, while its climate was deemed the most favorable of
all the regions of the civilized world for the physical and
intellectual development of man. It was called "a sunny land,"
and, notwithstanding the infertility of its soil, it was full
of picturesque beauty. The poet BYRON, in his apostrophe to Greece,
makes many striking and beautiful allusions to the Attica of his
own time:
Yet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild;
Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields,
Thine olive ripe as when Minerva smiled,
And still its honeyed wealth Hymettus yields.
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds,
The freeborn wanderer of thy mountain air;
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds,
Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare;
Art, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair.
10. Entering now upon the isthmus which leads into Southern Greece,
we find the little state of Corinth, with its famous city of the
same name, keeping guard over the narrow pass, with one foot on
the Corinthian Gulf and the other on the Saron'ic, thereby commanding
both the Ionian and Æge'an seas, controlling the commerce that
passed between them, and holding the keys of Peloponnesus. It
was a mountainous and barren region, with the exception of a small
plain north-west of the city. Thus situated, Corinth early became
the seat of opulence and the arts, which rendered her the ornament
of Greece. On a lofty eminence overhanging the city, forming a
conspicuous object at a great distance, was her famous citadel--so
important as to be styled by Philip of Macedon "the fetters of
Greece." Rising abruptly nearly two thousand feet above the
surrounding plain, the hill itself, in its natural defences, is
the strongest mountain fortress in Europe.
The whirlwind's wrath, the earthquake's shock,
Have left untouched her hoary rock,
The key-stone of a land which still,
Though fallen, looks proudly on that hill,
The landmark to the double tide
That purpling rolls on either side,
As if their waters chafed to meet,
Yet pause and crouch beneath her feet.
--BYRON.
The ascent to the citadel, in the days of Corinthian glory, was
lined on both sides with temples and altars; but temples and
altars are gone, and citadel and city alike are now in ruins.
Antip'ater of Sidon describes the city as a scene of desolation
after it had been conquered, plundered, and its walls thrown down
by the Romans, 146 B.C. Although the city was partially rebuilt,
the description is fully applicable to its present condition. A
modern traveller thus describes the site of the ancient city:
The hoarse wind sighs around the mouldering walls
Of the vast theatre, like the deep roar
Of distant waves, or the tumultuous rush
Of multitudes: the lichen creeps along
Each yawning crevice, and the wild-flower hangs
Its long festoons around each crumbling stone.
The window's arch and massive buttress glow
With time's deep tints, whilst cypress shadows wave
On high, and spread a melancholy gloom.
Silent forever is the voice
Of Tragedy and Eloquence. In climes
Far distant, and beneath a cloudy sky,
The echo of their harps is heard; but all
The soul-subduing energy is fled.
--HAYGARTH.
11. Adjoining the Corinthian territory on the west, and extending
about sixty-five miles along the southern coast of the Corinthian
Gulf, was Acha'ia, mountainous in the interior; but its coast
region for the most part was level, exposed to inundations, and
without a single harbor of any size. Hence the Achæ'ans were never
famous for maritime enterprise. Of the eleven Achæan cities that
formed the celebrated Achæan league, Pal'træ (now Patras') alone
survives. Si'çy-on, on the eastern border of Achaia, was at times
an independent state.
12. South of Achaia was the central region of Arcadia, surrounded
by a ring of mountains, and completely encompassed by the other
states of the Peloponnesus. Next to Laconia it was the largest
of the ancient divisions of Greece, and the most picturesque and
beautiful portion (not unlike Switzerland in its mountain
character), and without either seaports or navigable rivers. It
was inhabited by a people simple in their habits and manners,
noted for their fondness for music and dancing, their hospitality,
and pastoral customs. With the poets Arcadia was a land of peace,
of simple pleasures, and untroubled quiet; and it was natural that
the pipe-playing Pan should first appear here, where musical
shepherds led their flocks along the woody vales of impetuous
streams.
13. Ar'golis, east of Arcadia, was mostly a rocky peninsula lying
between the Saron'ic and Argol'ic gulfs. It was in great part a
barren region, with the exception of the plain adjoining its
capital city, Argos, and in early times was divided into a number
of small but independent kingdoms, that afterward became republics.
The whole region is rich in historic associations of the Heroic
Age. Here was Tir'yns, whose massive walls were built by the
one-eyed Cy'clops, and whence Hercules departed at the commencement
of his twelve labors. Here, also, was the Lernæ'an Lake, where
the hero slew the many-headed hydra; Ne'mea, the haunt of the
lion slain by Hercules, and the seat of the celebrated Ne'mean
games; and Myce'næ, the royal city of Agamemnon, who commanded
the Greeks in the Trojan War--now known, only by its ruins and
its legends of by-gone ages.
And still have legends marked the lonely spot
Where low the dust of Agamemnon lies;
And shades of kings and leaders unforgot,
Hovering around, to fancy's vision rise.
--HEMANS.
14. At the south-eastern extremity of the Peloponnesus was Laconia,
the fertile portions of which consisted mostly of a long, narrow
valley, shut in on three sides by the mountain ranges of Ta-yg'etus
on the west and Parnon on the north and east, and open only on
the south to the sea. Through this valley flows the river Euro'tas,
on whose banks, about twenty miles from the sea, stood the capital
city, Lacedæ'mon, or Sparta, which was unwalled and unfortified
during its most flourishing period, as the Spartans held that the
real defence of a town consists solely in the valor of its citizens.
The sea-coast of Laconia was lined with towns, and furnished with
numerous ports and commodious harbors. While Sparta was equaled
by few other Greek cities in the magnificence of its temples and
statues, the private houses, and even the palace of the king,
were always simple and unadorned.
15. West of Laconia was Messe'nia, the south-western division of
Greece, a mountainous country, but with many fertile intervening
valleys, the whole renowned for the mildness and salubrity of
its climate. Its principal river, the Pami'sus, rising in the
mountains of Arcadia, flows southward to the Messenian Gulf through
a beautiful plain, the lower portion of which was so celebrated
for its fertility that it was called Maca'ria, or "the blessed;"
and even to this day it is covered with plantations of the vine,
the fig, and the mulberry, and is "as rich in cultivation as can
be well imagined."
16. One district more--that of E'lis, north of Messenia and west
of Arcadia, and embracing the western slopes of the Achaian and
Arcadian mountains--makes up the complement of the ancient
Peloponnesian states. Though hilly and mountainous, like Messenia,
it had many valleys and hill-sides of great fertility. The river
Alphe'us, which the poets have made the most celebrated of the
rivers of Greece, flows westward through Elis to the Ionian Sea,
and on its banks was Olympia, the renowned seat of the Olympian
games. Here, also, was the sacred grove of olive and plane trees,
within which were temples, monuments, and statues, erected in
honor of gods, heroes, and conquerors. In the very midst stood
the great temple of Jupiter, which contained the colossal gold
and ivory statue of the god, the masterpiece of the sculptor
Phidias. Hence, by the common law of Greece Elis was deemed a
sacred territory, and its cities were unwalled, as they were
thought to be sufficiently protected by the sanctity of the
country; and it was only when the ancient faith began to give
way that the sacred character of Elis was disregarded.
17. The Isles of Greece.--
The Isles of Greece! the Isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung--
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all except their sun is set.
--BYRON.
The main-land of Greece was deeply indented by gulfs and almost
land-locked bays, and the shores were lined with numerous islands,
which were occupied by the Grecian race. Beginning our survey of
these in the northern Æge'an, we find, off the coast of Thessaly,
the Island of Lemnos, which is fabled as the spot on which the
fire-god Vulcan--the Lucifer of heathen mythology--fell, after
being hurled down from Olympus. Under a volcano of the island be
established his workshop, and there forged the thunder-bolts of
Jupiter and the arms of the gods and of godlike heroes.
Of the Grecian islands proper, the largest is Euboe'a, a long
and narrow island lying east of Central Greece, from which it
is separated by the narrow channel of the Euri'pus, or Euboe'an
Sea. South-east of Euboea are the Cyc'la-des, [Footnote: From
the Greek word kuklos, a circle.] a large group that kept guard
around the sacred Island of Delos, which is said to have risen
unexpectedly out of the sea. The Spor'a-des [Footnote: From the
Greek word speiro, to sow; scattered, like seed, so numerous were
they. Hence our word spore.] were another group, scattered over
the sea farther east, toward the coast of Asia Minor. The large
islands of Crete and Rhodes were south-east of these groups. In
the Saron'ic Gulf, between Attica and Ar'golis, were the islands
of Sal'amis and Ægi'na, the former the scene of the great naval
conflict between the Greeks on the one side and the Persians,
under Xerxes, on the other, and the latter long the maritime rival
of Athens.
Cyth'era, now Cer'igo, an island of great importance to the
Spartans, was separated by a narrow channel from the southern
extremity of Laconia. It was on the coast of this island that
the goddess Venus is fabled to have first appeared to mortals
as she arose out of the foam of the sea, having a beautifully
enameled shell for her chariot, drawn by dolphins, as some paintings
represent; but others picture her as borne on a shining seahorse.
She was first called Cyth-er-e'a, from the name of the island.
The nymphs of ocean, of the land, and the streams, the fishes
and monsters of the deep, and the birds of heaven, with rapturous
delight greeted her coming, and did homage to the beauty of the
Queen of Love. The following fine description of the scene, truly
Grecian in spirit, is by a modern poet:
Uprisen from the sea when Cytherea,
Shining in primal beauty, paled the day,
The wondering waters hushed, They yearned in sighs
That shook the world--tumultuously heaved
To a great throne of azure laced with light
And canopied in foam to grace their queen.
Shrieking for joy came O-ce-an'i-des,
And swift Ner-e'i-des rushed from afar,
Or clove the waters by. Came eager-eyed
Even shy Na-i'a-des from inland streams,
With wild cries headlong darting through the waves;
And Dryads from the shore stretched their long arms,
While, hoarsely sounding, heard was Triton's shell;
Shoutings uncouth, bewildered sounds,
And innumerable splashing feet
Of monsters gambolling around their god,
Forth shining on a sea-horse, fierce and finned.
Some bestrode fishes glinting dusky gold,
Or angry crimson, or chill silver bright;
Others jerked fast on their own scanty tails;
And sea-birds, screaming upward either side,
Wove a vast arch above the Queen of Love,
Who, gazing on this multitudinous
Homaging to her beauty, laughed. She laughed
The soft, delicious laughter that makes mad;
Low warblings in the throat, that clinch man's life
Tighter than prison bars.
--THOMAS WOOLNER.
Off the coast of Elis were the two small islands called the
Stroph'a-des, noted as the place of habitation of those fabled
winged monsters, the Harpies. Here Æne'as landed in his flight
from the ruins of Troy, but no pleasant greetings met him there.
"At length I land upon the Strophades,
Safe from the dangers of the stormy seas.
Those isles are compassed by th' Ionian main,
The dire abode where the foul Harpies reign:
Monsters more fierce offended Heaven ne'er sent
From hell's abyss for human punishment.
We spread the tables on the greensward ground;
We feed with hunger, and the bowls go round;
When from the mountain-tops, with hideous cry
And clattering wings, the hungry Harpies fly:
They snatch the meat, defiling all they find,
And, parting, leave a loathsome stench behind."
--VIRGIL'S Æneid, B. III.
North of the Strophades, along the western coast of Greece, were
the six Ionian islands known in Grecian history as Paxos,
Zacyn'thus, Cephalo'nia, Ith'aca (the native island of Ulysses),
Leu'cas (or Leuca'dia), and Corcy'ra (now Corfu), which latter
island Homer calls Phæa'cia, and where he places the fabled gardens
of Alcin'o-us. It was King Alcinous who kindly entertained Ulysses
in his island home when the latter was shipwrecked on his coast.
He is highly praised in Grecian legends for his love of agriculture;
and his gardens, so beautifully described by Homer, have afforded
a favorite theme for poets of succeeding ages. HOMER'S description
is as follows:
Close to the gates a spacious garden lies,
From storms defended and inclement skies;
Four acres was the allotted space of ground,
Fenced with a green enclosure all around;
Tall thriving trees confessed the fruitful mould,
And reddening apples ripen here to gold.
Here the blue fig with luscious juice o'erflows;
With deeper red the full pomegranate glows;
The branch here bends beneath the weighty pear,
And verdant olives flourish round the year.
The balmy spirit of the western gale
Eternal breathes on fruits untaught to fail;
Each dropping pear a following pear supplies;
On apples apples, figs on figs arise:
The same mild season gives the blooms to blow,
The buds to harden, and the fruits to grow.
Here ordered vines in equal ranks appear,
With all the united labors of the year;
Some to unload the fertile branches run,
Some dry the blackening clusters in the sun,
Others to tread the liquid harvest join,
The groaning presses foam with floods of wine.
Here are the vines in early flower descried,
Here grapes discolored on the sunny side,
And there in Autumn's richest purple dyed.
Beds of all various herbs, forever green,
In beauteous order terminate the scene.
Two plenteous fountains the whole prospect crowned:
This through the garden leads its streams around,
Visits each plant, and waters all the ground;
While that in pipes beneath the palace flows,
And thence its current on the town bestows.
To various use their various streams they bring;
The people one, and one supplies the king.
--Odyssey, B. VII. POPE'S Trans.
CHAPTER II.
THE FABULOUS AND LEGENDARY PERIOD OF GRECIAN HISTORY.
I. GRECIAN MYTHOLOGY.
As the Greeks, in common with the Egyptians and other Eastern
nations, placed the reign of the gods anterior to the race of
mortals, Grecian mythology--which is a system of myths, or fabulous
opinions and doctrines respecting the universe and the deities
who were supposed to preside over it--forms the most natural and
appropriate introduction to Grecian history.
Our principal knowledge of this system is derived from the works
of Homer, He'si-od, and other ancient writers, who have gathered
the floating legends of which it consists into tales and epic
poems, many of them of great power and beauty. Some of these legends
are exceedingly natural and pleasing, while others shock and disgust
us by the gross impossibilities and hideous deformities which they
reveal. Yet these legends are the spontaneous and the earliest
growth of the Grecian mind, and were long accepted by the people
as serious realities. They are, therefore, to be viewed as exponents
of early Grecian philosophy,--of all that the early Greeks believed,
and felt, and conjectured, respecting the universe and its government,
and respecting the social relations, duties, and destiny of
mankind,--and their influence upon national character was great.
As a Scotch poet and scholar of our own day well remarks,
Old fables these, and fancies old!
But not with hasty pride
Let logic cold and reason bold
Cast these old dreams aside.
Dreams are not false in all their scope:
Oft from the sleepy lair
Start giant shapes of fear and hope
That, aptly read, declare
Our deepest nature. God in dreams
Hath spoken to the wise;
And in a people's mythic themes
A people's wisdom lies.
--J. STUART BLACKIE.
According to Grecian philosophy, first in the order of time came
Cha'os, a heterogeneous mass, containing all the seeds of nature.
This was formed by the hand of an unknown god, into "broad-breasted
Earth" (the mother of the gods), who produced U'ranus, or Heaven.
Then Earth married Uranus, or Heaven; and from this union came a
numerous and powerful brood--the Ti'tans, and the Cyclo'pes, and
the gods of the wintry season Kot'-tos, Bria're-us, and Gy'ges,
who had each a hundred hands), supposed to be personifications
of the hail, the rain, and the snow.
The Titans made war upon their father, Uranus, who was wounded
by Chro'nos, or Saturn, the youngest and bravest of his sons.
From the drops of blood which flowed from the wound and fell upon
the earth sprung the Furies, the Giants, and the Me'lian nymphs;
and from those which fell into the sea sprang Venus, the goddess
of love and beauty. Uranus being dethroned, Saturn was permitted
by his brethren to reign, on condition that he would destroy all
his male children. But Rhe'a (his wife), unwilling to see her
children perish, concealed from him the birth of Zeus' (or Jupiter),
Pos-ei'don (or Neptune), and Pluto.
THE BATTLE OF THE GIANTS.
The Titans, informed that Saturn had saved his children, made war
upon him and dethroned him; but he was soon restored by his son
Jupiter. Yet Jupiter soon afterward conspired against his father,
and after a long war with him and his giant progeny, that lasted
full ten years, he drove Saturn from the kingdom, which he held
against the repeated assaults of all the gods, who were finally
destroyed or imprisoned by his overmastering power. This contest
is termed "the Battle of the Giants," and is very celebrated in
Grecian mythology. The description of it which HESIOD has given
in his Theogony is considered "one of the most sublime passages
in classical poetry, conceived with great boldness, and executed
with a power and force which show a masterly though rugged genius.
It will bear a favorable comparison with Milton's 'Battle of the
Angels,' in Paradise Lost." We subjoin the following extracts from
it:
The immeasurable sea tremendous dashed
With roaring, earth resounded, the broad heaven
Groaned, shattering; huge Olympus reeled throughout,
Down to its rooted base, beneath the rush
Of those immortals. The dark chasm of hell
Was shaken with the trembling, with the tramp
Of hollow footsteps and strong battle-strokes,
And measureless uproar of wild pursuit.
So they against each other through the air
Hurled intermixed their weapons, scattering groans
Where'er they fell.
The voice of armies rose
With rallying shout through the starred firmament,
And with a mighty war-cry both the hosts
Encountering closed. Nor longer then did Jove
Curb down his force, but sudden in his soul
There grew dilated strength, and it was filled
With his omnipotence; his whole of might
Broke from him, and the godhead rushed abroad.
The vaulted sky, the Mount Olympus, flashed
With his continual presence, for he passed
Incessant forth, and lightened where he trod.
Thrown from his nervous grasp the lightnings flew,
Reiterated swift; the whirling flash,
Cast sacred splendor, and the thunder-bolt
Fell. Then on every side the foodful earth
Roared in the burning flame, and far and near
The trackless depth of forests crashed with fire;
Yea, the broad earth burned red, the floods of Nile
Glowed, and the desert waters of the sea.
Round and round the Titans' earthy forms
Rolled the hot vapor, and on fiery surge
Streamed upward, swathing in one boundless blaze
The purer air of heaven. Keen rushed the light
In quivering splendor from the writhen flash;
Strong though they were, intolerable smote
Their orbs of sight, and with bedimming glare
Scorched up their blasted vision. Through the gulf
Of yawning chaos the supernal flame
Spread, mingling fire with darkness.
The whirlwinds were abroad, and hollow aroused
A shaking and a gathering dark of dust,
Crushing the thunders from the clouds of air,
Hot thunder-bolts and flames, the fiery darts
Of Jove; and in the midst of either host
They bore upon their blast the cry confused
Of battle, and the shouting. For the din
Tumultuous of that sight-appalling strife
Rose without bound. Stern strength of hardy proof
Wreaked there its deeds, till weary sank the war.
--Trans. by ELTON.
Thus Jupiter, or Jove, became the head of the universe; and to
him is ascribed the creation of the subsequent gods, of man, and
of all animal life, and the supreme control and government of
all. His supremacy is beautifully sung in the following hymn by
the Greek philosopher CLE-AN'THES, said to be the only one of
his numerous writings that has been preserved. Like many others
of the ancient hymns of adoration, it presents us with high
spiritual conceptions of the unity and attributes of Deity; and
had it been addressed to Jehovah it would have been deemed a grand
tribute to his majesty and a noble specimen of deep devotional
feeling.
Hymn to Jupiter.
Most glorious of th' immortal powers above--
O thou of many names--mysterious Jove!
For evermore almighty! Nature's source,
That govern'st all things in their ordered course,
All hail to thee! Since, innocent of blame,
E'en mortal creatures may address thy name--
For all that breathe and creep the lowly earth
Echo thy being with reflected birth--
Thee will I sing, thy strength for aye resound!
The universe that rolls this globe around
Moves wheresoe'er thy plastic influence guides,
And, ductile, owns the god whose arm presides.
The lightnings are thy ministers of ire,
The double-forked and ever-living fire;
In thy unconquerable hand they glow,
And at the flash all nature quakes below.
Thus, thunder-armed, thou dost creation draw
To one immense, inevitable law;
And with the various mass of breathing souls
Thy power is mingled and thy spirit rolls.
Dread genius of creation! all things bow
To thee! the universal monarch thou!
Nor aught is done without thy wise control
On earth, or sea, or round the ethereal pole,
Save when the wicked, in their frenzy blind,
Act o'er the follies of a senseless mind.
Thou curb'st th' excess; confusion to thy sight
Moves regular; th' unlovely scene is bright.
Thy hand, educing good from evil, brings
To one apt harmony the strife of things.
One ever-during law still binds the whole,
Though shunned, resisted, by the sinner's soul.
Wretches! while still they course the glittering prize,
The law of God eludes their ears and eyes.
Life then were virtue, did they this obey;
But wide from life's chief good they headlong stray.
Now glory's arduous toils the breast inflame;
Now avarice thirsts, insensible of shame;
Now sloth unnerves them in voluptuous ease,
And the sweet pleasures of the body please.
With eager haste they rush the gulf within,
And their whole souls are centred in their sin.
But oh, great Jove! by whom all good is given--
Dweller with lightnings and the clouds of heaven--
Save from their dreadful error lost mankind!
Father, disperse these shadows of the mind!
Give them thy pure and righteous law to know,
Wherewith thy justice governs all below.
Thus honored by the knowledge of thy way,
Shall men that honor to thyself repay,
And bid thy mighty works in praises ring,
As well befits a mortal's lips to sing;
More blest nor men nor heavenly powers can be
Than when their songs are of thy law and thee.
--Trans, by ELTON.
Jupiter is said to have divided the dominion of the universe
between himself and his two brothers, Neptune and Pluto, taking
heaven as his own portion, and having his throne and holding his
court on Mount Olympus, in Thessaly, while he assigned the dominion
of the sea to Neptune, and to Pluto the lower regions--the abodes
of the dead. Jupiter had several wives, both goddesses and mortals;
but last of all he married his sister Juno, who maintained
permanently the dignity of queen of the gods. The offspring of
Jupiter were numerous, comprising both celestial and terrestrial
divinities. The most noted of the former were Mars, the god of
war; Vulcan, the god of fire (the Olympian artist who forged the
thunder-bolts of Jupiter and the arms of all the gods); and Apollo,
the god of archery, prophecy, music, and medicine.
"Mine is the invention of the charming lyre;
Sweet notes, and heavenly numbers I inspire.
Med'cine is mine: what herbs and simples grow
In fields and forests, all their powers I know,
And am the great physician called below."
--Apollo to Daphne, in OVID'S Metam. PRYDEN'S Trans.
Then come Mercury, the winged messenger, interpreter and ambassador
of the gods; Diana, queen of the woods and goddess of hunting,
and hence the counterpart of her brother Apollo; and finally,
Minerva, the goddess of wisdom and skill, who is said to have
Sprung full-armed from the brain of Jupiter.
Besides these divinities there were many others--as Ceres, the
goddess of grain and harvests; and Vesta, the goddess of home
joys and comforts, who presided over the sanctity of the domestic
hearth. There were also inferior gods and goddesses innumerable--such
as deities of the woods and the mountains, the meadows and the
rivers--some terrestrial, others celestial, according to the places
over which they were supposed to preside, and rising in importance
in proportion to the powers they manifested. Even the Muses, the
Fates, and the Graces were numbered among Grecian deities.
But while, undoubtedly, the great mass of the Grecian people
believed that their divinities were real persons, who presided
over the affairs of men, their philosophers, while encouraging
this belief as the best adapted to the understanding of the people,
took quite a different view of them, and explained the mythological
legends as allegorical representations of general physical and
moral truths. Thus, while Jupiter, to the vulgar mind, was the
god or the upper regions, "who dwelt on the Summits of the highest
mountains, gathered the clouds about him, shook the air with his
thunder, and wielded the lightning as the instrument of his wrath,"
yet in all this he was but the symbol of the ether or atmosphere
which surrounds the earth; and hence, the numerous fables of this
monarch of the gods may be considered merely as "allegories which
typify the great generative power of the universe, displaying itself
in a variety of ways, and under the greatest diversity of forms."
So, also, Apollo was, in all likelihood, originally the sun-god
of the Asiatic nations; displaying all the attributes of that
luminary; and because fire is "the great agent in reducing and
working the metals, Vulcan, the fire-god, naturally became an
artist, and is represented as working with hammer and tongs at
his anvil. Thus the Greeks, instead of worshipping Nature,
worshipped the Powers of Nature, as personified in the almost
infinite number of their deities.
The process by which the beings of Grecian mythology came into
existence, among an ardent and superstitious people, is beautifully
described by the poet WORDSWORTH as very naturally arising out
of the
Teeming Fancies of the Greek Mind.
The lively Grecian, in a land of hills,
Rivers, and fertile plains, and sounding shores,
Under a copse of variegated sky,
Could find commodious place for every god.
In that fair clime the lonely herdsman, stretched
On the soft grass through half a summer's day,
With music lulled his indolent repose;
And in some fit of weariness, if he,
When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear
A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds
Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetch'd
Even from the blazing chariot of the sun
A beardless youth, who touched a golden lute,
And filled the illumined groves with ravishment.
The night hunter, lifting a bright eye
Up toward the crescent moon, with grateful heart
Called on the lovely wanderer who bestow'd
That timely light to share his joyous sport.
And hence a beaming goddess, with her nymphs,
Across the lawn, and through the darksome grove
(Not unaccompanied with tuneful notes,
By echo multiplied from rock or cave),
Swept in the storm of chase, as moon and stars
Glance rapidly along the clouded heaven
When winds are blowing strong. The traveller slacked
His thirst from rill or gushing fount, and thank'd
The Naiad. Sunbeams, upon distant hills
Gliding apace, with shadows in their train,
Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed
Into fleet Oreads sporting visibly.
The Zephyrs fanning, as they passed, their wings,
Lacked not for love fair objects, whom they wooed
With gentle whisper. Withered boughs grotesque,
Stripped of their leaves and twigs by hoary age,
From depth of shaggy covert peeping forth
In the low vale, or on steep mountain side--
And sometimes intermixed with stirring horns
Of the live deer, or goat's depending beard--
These were the lurking Satyrs, a wild brood
Of gamesome deities; or Pan himself,
The simple shepherd's awe-inspiring god.
Similar ideas are expressed in an article on the Nature of Early
History, by a celebrated English scholar, [Footnote: Henry George
Liddell, D. D., Dean of Christchurch College, Oxford.] who says:
"The legends, or mythic fables, of the Greeks are chiefly connected
with religious ideas, and may mostly be traced to that sort of
awe or wonder with which simple and uneducated minds regard the
changes and movements of the natural world. The direct and easy
way in which the imagination of such persons accounts for marvelous
phenomena, is to refer them to the operation of Persons. When the
attention is excited by the regular movements of sun, and moon,
and stars, by the alternations of day and night, by the recurrence
of the seasons, by the rising and falling of the seas, by the
ceaseless flow of rivers, by the gathering of clouds, the rolling
of thunder, and the flashing of lightning, by the operations of
life in the vegetable and animal worlds--in short, by any exhibition
of an active and motive power--it is natural for uninstructed
minds to consider such changes and movements as the work of divine
Persons. In this manner the early Greek legends associate themselves
with personifications of the powers of Nature. All attempts to
account for the marvels which surround us are foregone; everything
is referred to the immediate operation of a god. 'Cloud-compelling
Zeus' is the author of the phenomenon of the air; 'Earth-shaking
Pos-ei'don,' of all that happens in the water under the earth;
Nymphs are attached to every spring or tree; De-me'ter, or Mother
Earth, for six months rejoices in the presence of Proserpine,
[Footnote: In some legends Proserpine is regarded as the daughter
of Mother Earth, or Ceres, and a personification of the growing
corn.] the green herb, her daughter, and for six months regrets
her absence in dark abodes beneath the earth.
"This tendency to deify the powers of Nature is due partly to a
clear atmosphere and sunny climate, which incline a people to
live much in the open air in close communion with all that Nature
offers to charm the senses and excite the imagination; partly to
the character of the people, and partly to the poets who in early
times wrought these legendary tales into works which are read with
increased delight in ages when science and method have banished
the simple faith which procured acceptance for these legends.
"Among the Greeks all these conditions were found existing. They
lived, so to say, out-of-doors; their powers of observation were
extremely quick, and their imagination singularly vivid; and their
ancient poems are the most noble specimens of the old legendary
tales that have been preserved in any country."
This tendency of the Grecian mind is also very happily set forth
in the following lines by PROFESSOR BLACKIE:
The old Greek men, the old Greek men--
No blinking fools were they,
But with a free and broad-eyed ken
Looked forth on glorious day.
They looked on the sun in their cloudless sky,
And they saw that his light was fair;
And they said that the round, full-beaming eye
Of a blazing GOD was there!
They looked on the vast spread Earth, and saw
The various fashioned forms, with awe
Of green and creeping life,
And said, "In every moving form,
With buoyant breath and pulses warm,
In flowery crowns and veined leaves,
A GODDESS dwells, whose bosom heaves
With organizing strife."
They looked and saw the billowy sea,
With its boundless rush of water's free,
Belting the firm earth, far and wide,
With the flow of its deep, untainted tide;
And wondering viewed, in its clear blue flood,
A quick and scaly-glancing brood,
Sporting innumerous in the deep
With dart, and plunge, and airy leap;
And said, "Full sure a GOD doth reign
King of this watery, wide domain,
And rides in a car of cerulean hue
O'er bounding billows of green and blue;
And in one hand a three-pronged spear
He holds, the sceptre of his fear,
And with the other shakes the reins
Of his steeds, with foamy, flowing manes,
And coures o'er the brine;
And when he lifts his trident mace,
Broad Ocean crisps his darkling face,
And mutters wrath divine;
The big waves rush with hissing crest,
And beat the shore with ample breast,
And shake the toppling cliff:
A wrathful god has roused the wave--
Vain is all pilot's skill to save,
And lo! a deep, black-throated grave
Ingulfs the reeling skiff."
Anon the flood less fiercely flows,
The rifted cloud blue ether shows,
The windy buffets cease;
Poseidon chafes his heart no more,
His voice constrains the billows' roar,
And men may sail in peace.
[Footnote: Pos-ei'don, another name for Neptune, the sea-god.]
In the old oak a Dryad dwelt;
The fingers of a nymph were felt
In the fine-rippled flood;
At drowsy noon, when all was still,
Faunus lay sleeping on the hill,
And strange and bright-eyed gamesome creatures,
With hairy limbs and goat-like features,
Peered from the prickly wood.
[Footnote: The Sa'tyrs.]
Thus every power that zones the sphere
With forms of beauty and of fear,
In starry sky, on grassy ground,
And in the fishy brine profound,
Were, to the hoar Pelasgic men
That peopled erst each Grecian glen,
GODS--or the actions of a god:
Gods were in every sight and sound
And every spot was hallowed ground
Where these far-wandering patriarchs trod.
But all this fairy world has passed away, to live only as shadows
in the realms of fancy and of song. SCHILLER gives expression to
the poet's lament in the following lines:
Art thou, fair world, no more?
Return, thou virgin-bloom on Nature's face!
Ah, only on the minstrel's magic shore
Can we the footsteps of sweet Fable trace!
The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life;
Vainly we search the earth, of gods bereft;
Where once the warm and living shapes were rife
Shadows alone are left.
The Latin poet OV'ID, who lived at the time of the Christian era,
has collected from the fictions of the early Greeks and Oriental
nations, and woven into one continuous history, the pagan accounts
of the Creation, embracing a description of the primeval world,
and the early changes it underwent, followed by a history of the
four eras or ages of primitive mankind, the deluge of Deuca'lion,
and then onward down to the time of Augustus Cæsar. This great
work of the pagan poet, called The Metamorphoses, is not only the
most curious and valuable record extant of ancient mythology, but
some have thought they discovered, in every story it contains, a
moral allegory; while others have attempted to trace in it the
whole history of the Old Testament, and types of the miracles and
sufferings of our Savior. But, however little of truth there may
be in the last of these suppositions, the beautiful and impressive
account of the Creation given by this poet, of the Four Ages of
man's history which followed, and of the Deluge, coincides in so
many remarkable respects with the Bible narrative, and with
geological and other records, that we give it here as a specimen
of Grecian fable that contains some traces of true history. The
translation is by Dryden:
Account of the Creation.
Before the seas, and this terrestrial ball,
And heaven's high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of Nature--if a face--
Rather, a rude and indigested mass;
A lifeless lump, unfashioned and unframed,
Of jarring elements, and CHAOS named.
No sun was lighted up the world to view,
Nor moon did yet her blunted horns renew,
Nor yet was earth suspended in the sky,
Nor, poised, did on her own foundations lie,
Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown;
But earth, and air, and water were in one.
Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable,
And water's dark abyss unnavigable.
No certain form on any was impressed;
All were confused, and each disturbed the rest.
Thus disembroiled they take their proper place;
The next of kin contiguously embrace,
And foes are sundered by a larger space.
The force of fire ascended first on high,
And took its dwelling in the vaulted sky;
Then air succeeds, in lightness next to fire,
Whose atoms from inactive earth retire;
Earth sinks beneath and draws a numerous throng
Of ponderous, thick, unwieldy seeds along.
About her coasts unruly waters roar,
And, rising on a ridge, insult the shore.
Thus when the god--whatever god was he--
Had formed the whole, and made the parts agree,
That no unequal portions might be found,
He moulded earth into a spacious round;
Then, with a breath, he gave the winds to blow,
And bade the congregated waters flow.
He adds the running springs and standing lakes,
And bounding banks for winding rivers makes.
Some parts in earth are swallowed up; the most,
In ample oceans disembogued, are lost.
He shades the woods, the valleys he restrains
With rocky mountains, and extends the plains.
Then, every void of nature to supply,
With forms of gods Jove fills the vacant sky;
New herds of beasts sends the plains to share;
New colonies of birds to people air;
And to their cozy beds the finny fish repair.
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man designed;
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire formed and fit to rule the rest;
Whether with particles of heavenly fire
The God of nature did his soul inspire,
Or earth, but new divided from the sky,
And pliant, still retained the ethereal energy.
Thus while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.
FOUR AGES OF MAN.
The poet now describes the Ages, or various epochs in the
civilization of the human race. The first is the Golden Age, a
period of patriarchal simplicity, when Earth yielded her fruits
spontaneously, and spring was eternal.
The GOLDEN AGE was first, when man, yet new,
No rule but uncorrupted reason knew,
And, with a native bent, did good pursue.
Unforced by punishment, unawed by fear.
His words were simple and his soul sincere;
Needless were written laws where none oppressed;
The law of man was written on his breast.
No suppliant crowds before the judge appeared,
No court erected yet, nor cause was heard,
But all was safe, for conscience was their guard.
No walls were yet, nor fence, nor moat, nor mound;
Nor drum was heard, nor trumpet's angry sound;
Nor swords were forged; but, void of care and crime,
The soft creation slept away their time.
The teeming earth, yet guiltless of the plough,
And unprovoked, did fruitful stores allow;
The flowers, unsown, in fields and meadows reigned,
And western winds immortal spring maintained.
The next; or the Silver Age, was marked by the change of seasons,
and the division and cultivation of lands.
Succeeding times a SILVER AGE behold,
Excelling brass, but more excelled by gold.
Then summer, autumn, winter did appear,
And spring was but a season of the year;
The sun his annual course obliquely made,
Good days contracted, and enlarged the bad.
Then air with sultry heats began to glow,
The wings of wind were clogged with ice and snow;
And shivering mortals, into houses driven,
Sought shelter from the inclemency of heaven.
Those houses then were caves or homely sheds,
With twining osiers fenced, and moss their beds.
Then ploughs for seed the fruitful furrows broke,
And oxen labored first beneath the yoke.
Then followed the Brazen Age, which was an epoch of war and
violence.
To this came next in course the BRAZEN AGE;
A warlike offspring, prompt to bloody rage,
Not impious yet.
According to He'siod, the next age is the Heroic, in which the
world began to aspire toward better things; but OVID omits this
altogether, and gives, as the fourth and last, the Iron Age, also
called the Plutonian Age, full of all sorts of hardships and
wickedness. His description of it is as follows:
Hard steel succeeded then,
And stubborn as the metal were the men.
Truth, Modesty, and Shame the world forsook;
Fraud, Avarice, and Force their places took.
Then sails were spread to every wind that blew;
Raw were the sailors, and the depths were new:
Trees rudely hollowed did the waves sustain,
Ere ships in triumph plough'd the watery plain.
Then landmarks limited to each his right;
For all before was common as the light.
Nor was the ground alone required to bear
Her annual income to the crooked share;
But greedy mortals, rummaging her store,
Digged from her entrails first the precious ore;
(Which next to hell the prudent gods had laid),
And that alluring ill to sight displayed:
Thus cursed steel, and more accursed gold,
Gave mischief birth, and made that mischief bold;
And double death did wretched man invade,
By steel assaulted, and by gold betrayed.
Now (brandished weapons glittering in their hands)
Mankind is broken loose from moral bands:
No rights of hospitality remain;
The guest by him who harbored him is slain;
The son-in-law pursues the father's life;
The wife her husband murders, he the wife;
The step-dame poison for the son prepares,
The son inquires into his father's years.
Faith flies, and Piety in exile mourns;
And Justice, here oppressed, to heaven returns.
The Scriptures assert that the wickedness of mankind was the cause
of the Noachian flood, or deluge. So, also, we find that, in Grecian
mythology, like causes led to the deluge of Deuca'lion. Therefore,
before giving Ovid's account of this latter event, we give, from
Hesiod, a curious account of
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL, AND ITS INTRODUCTION INTO THE WORLD.
It appears from the legend that, during a controversy between
the gods and men, Pro-me'theus, [Footnote: In most Greek proper
names ending in 'eus', the 'eus' is pronounced in one syllable;
as Or'pheus, pronounced Or'phuse.] who is said to have surpassed
all his fellow-men in intellectual vigor and sagacity, stole fire
from the skies, and, concealing it in a hollow staff, brought it
to man. Jupiter, angry at the theft of that which had been reserved
from mortals for wise purposes, resolved to punish Prometheus, and
through him all mankind, to show that it was not given to man to
elude the wisdom of the gods. He therefore caused Vulcan to form
an image of air and water, to give it human voice and strength,
and make it assume the form of a beautiful woman, like the immortal
goddesses themselves. Minerva endowed this new creation with
artistic skill, Venus gave her the witchery of beauty, Mercury
inspired her with an artful disposition, and the Graces added
all their charms. But we append the following extracts from the
beautifully written account by Hesiod, beginning with the command
which Jupiter gave to Vulcan, the fire-god:
Thus spoke the sire, whom heaven and earth obey,
And bade the fire-god mould his plastic clay;
In-breathe the human voice within her breast;
With firm-strung nerves th'elastic limbs invest;
Her aspect fair as goddesses above--
A virgin's likeness, with the brows of love.
He bade Minerva teach the skill that dyes
The wool with color's as the shuttle flies:
He called the magic of Love's charming queen
To breathe around a witchery of mien;
Then plant the rankling stings of keen desire
And cares that trick the limbs with pranked attire:
Bade Her'mes [Footnote: Mercury.] last impart the Craft refined
Of thievish manners, and a shameless mind.
He gives command--the inferior powers obey--
The crippled artist [Footnote: Vulcan.] moulds the tempered clay:
A maid's coy image rose at Jove's behest;
Minerva clasped the zone, diffused too vest;
Adored Persuasion and the Graces young
Her tapered limbs with golden jewels hung;
Round her smooth brow the beauteous-tressed Hours
A garland twined of Spring's purpureal flowers.
The whole attire Minerva's graceful art
Disposed, adjusted, formed to every part;
And last, the winged herald [Footnote: Mercury.] of the skies,
Slayers of Argus, gave the gift of lies--
Gave trickish manners, honeyed words instilled,
As he that rolls the deepening thunder willed:
Then by the feathered messenger of Heaven
The name PANDO'RA to the maid was given;
For all the gods conferred a gifted grace
To crown this mischief of the mortal race.
Thus furnished, Pandora was brought as a gift from Jupiter to
the dwelling of Ep-i-me'theus, the brother of Prometheus; and
the former, dazzled by her charms, received her in spite of the
warnings of his sagacious brother, and made her his wife.
The sire commands the winged herald bear
The finished nymph, th' inextricable snare.
To Epimetheus was the present brought:
Prometheus' warning vanished from his thought--
That he disdain each offering of the skies,
And straight restore, lest ill to man arise.
But he received, and, conscious, knew too late
Th' insidious gift, and felt the curse of fate.
In the dwelling of Epimetheus stood a closed casket, which he
had been forbidden to open; but Pandora, disregarding the
injunction, raised the lid; when lo! to her consternation, all
the evils hitherto unknown to mortals poured out, and spread
themselves over the earth. In terror at the sight of these monsters,
Pandora shut down the lid just in time to prevent the escape of
Hope, which thus remained to man, his chief support and consolation
amid the trials of his pilgrimage.
On earth, of yore, the sons of men abode
From evil free, and labor's galling load;
Free from diseases that; with racking rage,
Precipitate the pale decline of age.
Now swift the days of manhood haste away,
And misery's pressure turns the temples gray.
The Woman's hands an ample casket bear;
She lifts the lid--she scatters ill in air.
Hope sole remained within, nor took her flight--
Beneath the vessel's verge concealed from light;
Issued the rest, in quick dispersion buried,
And woes innumerous roamed the breathing world:
With ills the land is full, with ills the sea;
Diseases haunt our frail humanity;
Self-wandering through the noon, at night they glide
Voiceless--a voice the power all-wise denied:
Know, then, this awful truth: it is not given
To elude the wisdom of omniscient Heaven.
--Trans. by ELTON.
PROFESSOR BLACKIE has made this legend the subject of a pleasing
poem, from which we take the following extracts, beginning with
the acceptance by Epimetheus of the gift from Jupiter. The deluded
mortal exclaims--
"Bless thee, bless thee, gentle Hermes!
Once I sinned, and strove
Vainly with my haughty brother
'Gainst Olympian Jove.
Now my doubts his love hath vanquished;
Evil knows not he,
Whose free-streaming grace prepared
Such gift of gods for me.
Henceforth I and fair Pandora,
Joined in holy love,
Only one in heaven will worship--
Cloud-compelling Jove."
Thus he; and from the god received
The glorious gift of Jove,
And with fond embracement clasped her,
Thrilled by potent love;
And in loving dalliance with her
Lived from day to day,
While her bounteous smiles diffusive
Scared pale care away.
By the mountain, by the river,
'Neath the shaggy pine,
By the cool and grassy fountain
Where clear waters shine,
He with her did lightly stray,
Or softly did recline,
Drinking sweet intoxication
From that form divine.
One day, when the moon had wheeled
Four honeyed weeks away,
From her chamber came Pandora
Decked with trappings gay,
And before fond Epimetheus
Fondly she did stand,
A box all bright with lucid opal
Holding in her hand.
"Dainty box!" cried Epimetheus.
"Dainty well may't be,"
Quoth Pandora--"curious Vulcan
Framed it cunningly;
Jove bestowed it in my dowry:
Like bright Phoebus' ray
It shines without; within, what wealth
I know not to this day."
It will be observed in what follows that the poet does not strictly
adhere to the legend as given by Hesiod, in which it is stated
that Pandora, probably under the influence of curiosity, herself
raised the lid of the mysterious casket. The poet, instead,
attributes the act to Epimetheus, and so relieves Pandora of the
odium and the guilt.
"Let me see," quoth Epimetheus,
"What my touch can do!"
And swiftly to his finger's call
The box wide open flew.
O heaven! O hell! What Pandemonium
In the pouncet dwells!
How it quakes, and how it quivers;
How it seethes and swells!
Misty steams from it upwreathing,
Wave on wave is spread!
Like a charnel-vault, 'tis breathing
Vapors of the dead!
Fumes on fumes as from a throat
Of sooty Vulcan rise,
Clouds of red and blue and yellow
Blotting the fair skies!
And the air, with noisome stenches,
As from things that rot,
Chokes the breather--exhalation
From the infernal pot.
And amid the thick-curled vapors
Ghastly shapes I see
Of dire diseases, Epimetheus,
Launched on earth by thee.
A horrid crew! Some lean and dwindled,
Some with boils and blains
Blistered, some with tumors swollen,
And water in the veins;
Some with purple blotches bloated,
Some with humors flowing
Putrid, some with creeping tetter
Like a lichen growing
O'er the dry skin scaly-crusted;
Some with twisted spine
Dwarfing low with torture slow
The human form divine;
Limping some, some limbless lying;
Fever, with frantic air,
And pale consumption veiling death
With looks serenely fair.
All the troop of cureless evils,
Rushing reinless forth
From thy damned box, Pandora,
Seize the tainted earth!
And to lay the marshalled legions
Of our fiendish pains,
Hope alone, a sorry charmer,
In the box remains.
Epimetheus knew the dolors,
But he knew too late;
Jealous Jove himself, now vainly,
Would revoke the fate.
And he cursed the fair Pandora,
But he cursed in vain;
Still, to fools, the fleeting pleasure
Buys the lasting pain!
WHAT PROMETHEUS PERSONIFIED.
PROFESSOR BLACKIE says, regarding Prometheus, that the common
conception of him is, that he was the representative of freedom
in contest with despotism. He thinks, however, that Goethe is
nearer the depth of the myth when, in his beautiful lyric, he
represents Prometheus as the impersonation of that indefatigable
endurance in man which conquers the earth by skilful labor, in
opposition to and despite; those terrible influences of the wild,
elemental forces of Nature which the Greeks supposed were
concentrated in the person of Jove. Accordingly, PROFESSOR BLACKIE,
in his Legend of Prometheus; represents him as proclaiming, in the
following language, his empire on the earth, in opposition to the
powers above:
"Jove rules above: Fate willed it so.
'Tis well; Prometheus rules below.
Their gusty games let wild winds play,
And clouds on clouds in thick array
Muster dark armies in the sky:
Be mine a harsher trade to ply--
This solid Earth, this rocky frame
To mould, to conquer, and to tame--
And to achieve the toilsome plan
My workman shall be MAN.
"The Earth is young. Even with these eyes
I saw the molten mountains rise
From out the seething deep, while Earth
Shook at the portent of their birth.
I saw from out the primal mud
The reptiles crawl, of dull, cold blood,
While winged lizards, with broad stare,
Peered through the raw and misty air.
Where then was Cretan Jove? Where then
This king of gods and men?
"When, naked from his mother Earth,
Weak and defenceless, man crept forth,
And on mis-tempered solitude
Of unploughed field and unclipped wood
Gazed rudely; when; with brutes, he fed
On acorns, and his stony bed
In dark, unwholesome caverns found,
No skill was then to tame the ground,
No help came then from him above--
This tyrannous, blustering Jove.
"The Earth is young. Her latest birth,
This weakling man, my craft shall girth
With cunning strength. Him I will take,
And in stern arts my scholar make.
This smoking reed, in which hold
The empyrean spark, shall mould
Rock and hard steel to use of man:
He shall be as a god to plan
And forge all things to his desire
By alchemy of fire.
"These jagged cliffs that flout the air,
Harsh granite rocks, so rudely bare,
Wise Vulcan's art and mine shall own
To piles of shapeliest beauty grown.
The steam that snorts vain strength away
Shall serve the workman's curious sway,
Like a wise child; as clouds that sail
White-winged before the summer gale,
The smoking chariot o'er the land
Shall roll at his command.
"'Blow, winds, and crack your checks!' my home
Stands firm beneath Jove's rattling dome,
This stable Earth. Here let me work!
The busy spirits that eager lurk
Within a thousand laboring breasts
Here let me rouse; and whoso rests
From labor, let him rest from life.
To 'live's to strive;' and in the strife
To move the rock and stir the clod
Man makes himself a god!"
THE PUNISHMENT OF PROMETHEUS.
Regarding the punishment of Prometheus for his daring act, the
legend states that Jupiter bound him with chains to a rock or
pillar, supposed to be in Scythia, and sent an eagle to prey
without ceasing on his liver, which grew every night as much as
it had lost during the day. After an interval of thirty thousand
years Hercules, a hero of great strength and courage, slew the
eagle and set the sufferer free. The Greek poet ÆS'CHYLUS, justly
styled the father of Grecian tragedy, has made the punishment of
Prometheus the basis of a drama, entitled Prometheus Bound, which
many think is this poet's masterpiece, and of which it has been
remarked:
"Nothing can be grander than the scenery in which the poet has
made his hero suffer. He is chained to a desolate and stupendous
rock at the extremity of earth's remotest wilds, frowning over
old ocean. The daughters of O-ce'a-nus, who constitute the chorus
of the tragedy, come to comfort and calm him; and even the aged
Oceanus himself, and afterward Mercury, do all they can to persuade
him to submit to his oppressor, Jupiter. But all to no purpose;
he sternly and triumphantly refuses. Meanwhile, the tempest rages,
the lightnings flash upon the rock, the sands are torn up by
whirlwinds, the seas are dashed against the sky, and all the
artillery of heaven is leveled against his bosom, while he proudly
defies the vengeance of his tyrant, and sinks into the earth to
the lower regions, calling on the Powers of Justice to avenge his
wrongs."
In trying to persuade the defiant Prometheus to relent, Æschylus
represents Mercury as thus addressing him:
"I have indeed, methinks, said much in vain,
For still thy heart, beneath my showers of prayers,
Lies dry and hard! nay, leaps like a young horse
Who bites against the new bit in his teeth,
And tugs and struggles against the new-tried rein,
Still fiercest in the weakest thing of all,
Which sophism is--for absolute will alone,
When left to its motions in perverted minds,
Is worse than null for strength! Behold and see,
Unless my words persuade thee, what a blast
And whirlwind of inevitable woe
Must sweep persuasion through thee! For at first
The Father will split up this jut of rock
With the great thunder and the bolted flame,
And hide thy body where the hinge of stone
Shall catch it like an arm! and when thou hast passed
A long black time within, thou shalt come out
To front the sun; and Zeus's winged hound,
The strong, carnivorous eagle, shall wheel down
To meet thee--self-called to a daily feast--
And set his fierce beak in thee, and tear off
The long rags of thy flesh, and batten deep
Upon thy dusky liver!
"Do not look
For any end, moreover, to this curse,
Or ere some god appear to bear thy pangs
On his own head vicarious, and descend
With unreluctant step the darks of hell,
And the deep glooms enringing Tartarus!
Then ponder this: the threat is not growth
Of vain invention--it is spoken and meant!
For Zeus's mouth is impotent to lie,
And doth complete the utterance in the act.
So, look to it, thou! take heed! and nevermore
Forget good counsel to indulge self-will!
To which Prometheus answers as follows:
"Unto me, the foreknower, this mandate of power,
He cries, to reveal it!
And scarce strange is my fate, if I suffer from hate
At the hour that I feel it!
Let the rocks of the lightning, all bristling and whitening,
Flash, coiling me round!
While the ether goes surging 'neath thunder and scourging
Of wild winds unbound!
Let the blast of the firmament whirl from its place
The earth rooted below--
And the brine of the ocean, in rapid emotion,
Be it driven in the face
Of the stars up in heaven, as they walk to and fro!
Let him hurl me anon into Tartarus--on--
To the blackest degree,
With necessity's vortices strangling me down!
But he cannot join death to a fate meant for me!"
--Trans. by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
THE SUFFERINGS OF PROMETHEUS.
We close this subject with a brief extract from the Prometheus
Bound of the English poet SHELLEY, in which the sufferings of
the defiant captive are vividly portrayed:
"No change, no pause, no hope! yet I endure.
I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?
I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
Heaven's ever-changing shadow, spread below,
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever!
The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears
Of their moon-freezing crystals; the bright chains
Eat with their burning gold into my bones.
Heaven's winged hound, polluting from thy lips
His beak in poison not his own, tears up
My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by--
The ghastly people of the realm of dream
Mocking me; and the Earthquake fiends are charged
To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds
When the rocks split and close again behind;
While from their loud abysses howling throng
The genii of the storm."
Returning now to the poet Ovid, we present the account which he
gives of the Deluge, or the destruction of mankind by a flood,
called by the Greeks,
THE DELUGE OF DEUCALION.
Deucalion is represented as the son of Prometheus, and is styled
the father of the Greek nation of post-diluvian times. When Jupiter
determined to destroy the human race on account of its impiety,
it was his first design, OVID tells us, to accomplish it with fire.
But his own safety demanded the employment of a less dangerous
agency.
Already had Jove tossed the flaming brand,
And rolled the thunder in his spacious hand,
Preparing to discharge on seas and land;
But stopped, for fear, thus violently driven,
The sparks should catch his axle-tree of heaven--
Remembering, in the Fates, a time when fire
Should to the battlements of heaven aspire,
And all his blazing worlds above should burn,
And all the inferior globe to cinders turn.
His dire artillery thus dismissed, he bent
His thoughts to some securer punishment;
Concludes to pour a watery deluge down,
And what he durst not burn resolves to drown.
In all this myth, it will be seen, Jupiter may very properly be
considered as a personification of the elemental strife that
drowned a guilty world. Deucalion, warned, by his father, of the
coming deluge, thereupon made himself an ark or skiff, and, putting
provisions into it, entered it with his wife, Pyrrha. The whole
earth is then overspread with the flood of waters, and all animal
life perishes, except Deucalion and his wife.
The northern breath that freezes floods, Jove binds,
With all the race of cloud-dispelling winds:
The south he loosed, who night and horror brings,
And fogs are shaken from his flaggy wings.
From his divided beard two streams he pours;
His head and rheumy eyes distil in showers.
The skies, from pole to pole, with peals resound;
And showers enlarged come pouring on the ground.
Nor from his patrimonial heaven alone
Is Jove content to pour his vengeance down:
Aid from his brother of the seas he craves,
To help him with auxiliary waves.
The watery tyrant calls his brooks and floods,
Who roll from mossy caves, their moist abodes,
And with perpetual urns his palace fill;
To whom, in brief, he thus imparts his will:
Small exhortation needs; your powers employ,
And this bad world (so Jove requires) destroy.
Let loose the reins to all your watery store;
Bear down the dams and open every door."
The floods, by nature enemies to land,
And proudly swelling with their new command,
Remove the living stones that stopped their way,
And, gushing from their source, augment the sea.
Then with his mace their monarch struck the ground:
With inward trembling Earth received the wound,
And rising stream a ready passage found.
The expanded waters gather on the plain,
They float the fields and overtop the grain;
Then, rushing onward, with a sweepy sway,
Bear flocks and folds and laboring hinds away.
Nor safe their dwellings were; for, sapped by floods,
Their houses fell upon their household gods.
The solid hills, too strongly built to fall,
High o'er their heads behold a watery wall.
Now seas and earth were in confusion lost--
A world of waters, and without a coast.
One climbs a cliff; one in his boat is borne,
And ploughs above where late he sowed his corn.
Others o'er chimney-tops and turrets row,
And drop their anchors on the meads below;
Or, downward driven, they bruise the tender vine,
Or, tossed aloft, are hurled against a pine.
And where of late the kids had cropped the grass,
The monsters of the deep now take their place.
Insulting Ner'e-ids on the cities ride,
And wondering dolphins o'er the palace glide.
On leaves and masts of mighty oaks they browse,
And their broad fins entangle in the boughs.
The frighted wolf now swims among the sheep,
The yellow lion wanders in the deep;
His rapid force no longer helps the boar,
The stag swims faster than he ran before.
The fowls, long beating on their wings in vain,
Despair of land, and drop into the main.
Now hills and vales no more distinction know,
And levelled nature lies oppressed below.
The most of mortals perished in the flood,
The small remainder dies for want of food.
Deucalion and Pyrrha were conveyed to the summit of Mount Parnassus,
the highest mountain in Central Greece. According to Ovid, Deucalion
now consulted the ancient oracle of Themis respecting the restoration
of mankind, and received the following response:
"Depart from the temple, veil your heads, loosen your girded
vestments, and cast behind you the great bones of your parent." At
length Deucalion discovered the meaning of the oracle--the bones
being, by a very natural figure, the stones, or rocky heights, of
the earth. The poet then gives the following account of the
abatement of the waters, and of the appearance of the earth:
"When Jupiter, surveying earth from high,
Beheld it in a lake of water lie--
That, where so many millions lately lived,
But two, the best of either sex, survived--
He loosed the northern wind: fierce Boreas flies
To puff away the clouds and purge the skies:
Serenely, while he blows, the vapors driven
Discover heaven to earth and earth to heaven;
The billows fall while Neptune lays his mace
On the rough sea, and smooths its furrowed face.
Already Triton [Footnote: Son of Neptune.] at his call appears
Above the waves: a Tyrian robe he wears,
And in his hands a crooked trumpet bears.
The sovereign bids him peaceful sounds inspire,
And give the waves the signal to retire.
The waters, listening to the trumpet's roar,
Obey the summons, and forsake the shore.
A thin circumference of land appears,
And Earth, but not at once, her visage rears,
And peeps upon the seas from upper grounds:
The streams, but just contained within their bounds,
By slow degrees into their channels crawl,
And earth increases as the waters fall:
In longer time the tops of trees appear,
Which mud on their dishonored branches bear.
At length the world was all restored to view,
But desolate, and of a sickly hue:
Nature beheld herself, and stood aghast,
A dismal desert and a silent waste.
When the waters had abated Deucalion left the rocky heights behind
him, in obedience to the direction of the oracle, and went to
dwell in the plains below.
MORAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GODS, AND OF THEIR RULE OVER MANKIND.
It is a prominent feature of the polytheistic system of the Greeks
that the gods are represented as subject to all the passions and
frailties of human nature. There were, indeed, among them
personifications of good and of evil, as we see in A'te, the
goddess of revenge or punishment, and in the Erin'nys (or Furies),
who avenge violations of filial duty, punish perjury, and are the
maintainers of order both in the moral and the natural world; yet
while these moral ideas restrained and checked men, the gods seem
to have been almost wholly free from such control. "The society
of Olympus, therefore," says MAHAFFY, "is only an ideal Greek
society in the lowest sense--the ideal of the school-boy who
thinks all control irksome, and its absence the greatest good--the
ideal of a voluptuous man, who has strong passions, and longs for
the power to indulge them without unpleasant consequences. It
appears, therefore, that the Homeric picture of Olympus is very
valuable, as disclosing to us the poet's notion of a society freed
from the restraints of religion; for the rhapsodists [Footnote:
Rhapsodist, a term applied to the reciters of Greek verse.] were
dealing a death-blow (perhaps unconsciously) to the received
religious belief by these very pictures of sin and crime among
the gods. Their idea is a sort of semi-monarchical aristocracy,
where a number of persons have the power to help favorites, and
thwart the general progress of affairs; where love of faction
overpowers every other consideration, and justifies violence or
deceit. [Footnote: "Social Life in Greece," by J. P. Mahaffy.]
MR. GLADSTONE has given us, in the following extract, his views
of what he calls the "intense humanity" of the Olympian system,
drawn from what its great expounder has set forth in the Iliad
and the Odyssey. "That system," he says, "exhibits a kind of royal
or palace life of man, but on the one hand more splendid and
powerful, on the other more intense and free. It is a wonderful
and a gorgeous creation. It is eminently in accordance with the
signification of the English epithet--rather a favorite, apparently,
with our old writers--the epithet jovial, which is derived from
the Latin name of its head. It is a life of all the pleasures of
mind and body, of banquet and of revel, of music and of song; a
life in which solemn grandeur alternates with jest and gibe; a
life of childish willfulness and of fretfulness, combined with
serious, manly, and imperial cares; for the Olympus of Homer has
at least this one recommendation to esteem--that it is not peopled
with the merely lazy and selfish gods of Epicurus, but its
inhabitants busily deliberate on the government of man, and in
their debates the cause of justice wins.
"I do not now discuss the moral titles of the Olympian scheme;
what I dwell upon is its intense humanity, alike in its greatness
and its littleness, its glory and its shame. As the cares and
joys of human life, so the structure of society below is reflected,
by the wayward wit of man, on heaven above. Though the names and
fundamental traditions of the several deities were wholly or in
great part imported from abroad, their characters, relations, and
attributes passed under a Hellenizing process, which gradually
marked off for them special provinces and functions, according to
laws which appear to have been mainly original and indigenous,
and to have been taken by analogy from the division of labor in
political society. The Olympian society has its complement of
officers and servants, with their proper functions. He-phæs'tus
(or Vulcan) moulds the twenty golden thrones which move
automatically to form the circle of the council of the gods, and
builds for each of his brother deities a separate palace in the
deep-folded recesses of the mighty mountain. Music and song are
supplied by Apollo and the Muses; Gan-y-me'de and He'be are the
cup-bearers, Hermes and Iris are the messengers; but Themis, in
whom is impersonated the idea of deliberation and of relative
rights, is the summoner of the Great Assembly of the gods in the
Twentieth Iliad, when the great issue of the Trojan war is to be
determined." [Footnote: Address to the Edinburgh University,
November 3, 1865.]
But, however prone the gods were to evil passions, and subject
to human frailties, they were not believed to approve (in men)
of the vices in which they themselves indulged, but were, on
the contrary, supposed to punish violations of justice and
humanity, and to reward the brave and virtuous. We learn that
they were to be appeased by libations and sacrifice; and their
aid, not only in great undertakings, but in the common affairs
of life, was to be obtained by prayer and supplication. For
instance, in the Ninth Book of HOMER'S Iliad the aged
Phoe'nix--warrior and sage--in a beautiful allegory personifying
"Offence" and "Prayers," represents the former as robust and fleet
of limb, outstripping the latter, and hence roaming over the earth
and doing immense injury to mankind; but the Prayers, following
after, intercede with Jupiter, and, if we avail ourselves of them,
repair the evil; but if we neglect them we are told that the
vengeance of the wrong shall overtake us. Thus, Phoenix says of
the gods,
"If a mortal man
Offend them by transgression of their laws,
Libation, incense, sacrifice, and prayer,
In meekness offered, turn their wrath away.
Prayers are Jove's daughters,
Which, though far distant, yet with constant pace
Follow Offence. Offence, robust of limb,
And treading firm the ground, outstrips them all,
And over all the earth before them runs,
Hurtful to man. They, following, heal the hurt.
Received respectfully when they approach,
They yield us aid and listen when we pray;
But if we slight, and with obdurate heart
Resist them, to Saturinian Jove they cry.
Against us, supplicating that Offence
May cleave to us for vengeance of the wrong."
--COWPER'S Trans.
In the Seventeenth Book, Men-e-la'us is represented going into
battle, "supplicating, first, the sire of all"--that is, Jupiter,
the king of the gods. In the Twenty-third Book, Antil'ochus
attributes the ill-success of Eu-me'lus in the chariot-race to
his neglect of prayer. He says,
"He should have offered prayer; then had be not
Arrived, as now, the hindmost of us all."
Numerous other instances might be given, from the works of the
Grecian poets, of the supposed efficacy of prayer to the gods.
The views of the early Greeks respecting the dispensations of an
overruling Providence, as shown in their belief in retributive
justice, are especially prominent in some of the sublime choruses
of the Greek tragedians, and in the "Works and Days" of Hesiod.
For instance, Æschylus says,
The ruthless and oppressive power
May triumph for its little hour;
But soon, with all their vengeful train,
The sullen Furies rise,
Break his full force, and whirl him down
Thro' life's dark paths, unpitied and unknown.
--POTTER'S Trans.
The following extracts from Hesiod illustrate the certainty with
which Justice was believed to overtake and punish those who pervert
her ways, while the good are followed by blessings. They also
show that the crimes of one are often "visited on all."
Earth's crooked judges--lo! the oath's dread god
Avenging runs, and tracks them where they trod.
Rough are the ways of Justice as the sea,
Dragged to and fro by men's corrupt decree;
Bribe-pampered men! whose hands, perverting, draw
The right aside, and warp the wrested law.
Though while Corruption on their sentence waits
They thrust pale Justice from their haughty gates,
Invisible their steps the Virgin treads,
And musters evil o'er their sinful heads.
She with the dark of air her form arrays,
And walks in awful grief the city ways:
Her wail is heard; her tear, upbraiding, falls
O'er their stained manners and devoted walls.
But they who never from the right have strayed--
Who as the citizen the stranger aid--
They and their cities flourish: genial peace
Dwells in their borders, and their youth increase;
Nor Jove, whose radiant eyes behold afar,
Hangs forth in heaven the signs of grievous war;
Nor scath, nor famine; on the righteous prey--
Peace crowns the night, and plenty cheers the day.
Rich are their mountain oaks: the topmost tree
The acorns fill, its trunk the hiving bee;
Their sheep with fleeces pant; their women's race
Reflect both parents in the infant face:
Still flourish they, nor tempt with ships the main;
The fruits of earth are poured from every plain.
But o'er the wicked race, to whom belong
The thought of evil and the deed of wrong,
Saturnian Jove, of wide-beholding eyes,
Bids the dark signs of retribution rise;
And oft the deeds of one destructive fall--
The crimes of one--are visited on all.
The god sends down his angry plagues from high--
Famine and pestilence--in heaps they die!
Again, in vengeance of his wrath, he falls
On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls;
Scatters their ships of war; and where the sea
Heaves high its mountain billows, there is he!
Ponder, O Judges! in your inmost thought
The retribution by his vengeance wrought.
Invisible, the gods are ever nigh,
Pass through the midst, and bend th' all-seeing eye.
The man who grinds the poor, who wrests the right,
Aweless of Heaven, stands naked to their sight:
For thrice ten thousand holy spirits rove
This breathing world, the delegates of Jove;
Guardians of man, their glance alike surveys
The upright judgments and the unrighteous ways.
A virgin pure is Justice, and her birth
August from him who rules the heavens and earth--
A creature glorious to the gods on high,
Whose mansion is yon everlasting sky.
Driven by despiteful wrong she takes her seat,
In lowly grief, at Jove's eternal feet.
There of the soul unjust her plaints ascend:
So rue the nations when their kings offend--
When, uttering wiles and brooding thoughts of ill,
They bend the laws, and wrest them to their will.
Oh! gorged with gold, ye kingly judges, hear!
Make straight your paths, your crooked judgments fear,
That the foul record may no more be seen--
Erased, forgot, as though it ne'er had been.
--Trans. by ELTON.
OATHS.
As in the beginning of the foregoing extract, so the poets
frequently refer to the oaths that were taken by those who entered
into important compacts, showing that then as now, and as in Old
Testament times, some overruling deity was invoked to witness
the agreement or promise, and punish its violation. Sometimes
the person touched the altar of the god by whom he swore, or the
blood that was shed in the ceremonial sacrifice, while some walked
through the fire to sanctify their oaths. When Abraham swore unto
the King of Sodom that he would not enrich himself with any of
the king's goods, he lifted up his hand to heaven, pointing to
the supposed residence of the Deity, as if calling on him to
witness the oath. When he requires his servant to take an oath
unto him he says, "Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh: and
I will make thee swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth;"
and Jacob requires the same ceremony from Joseph when the latter
promises to carry his father's bones up out of Egypt.
When the goddess Vesta swore an oath in the very presence of
Jupiter, as represented in Homer's hymn, she touched his head,
as the most fitting ceremonial.
Touching the head of Ægis-bearing Jove,
A mighty oath she swore, and hath fulfilled,
That she among the goddesses of heaven
Would still a virgin be.
We find a military oath described by Æschylus in the drama of
"The Seven Chiefs against Thebes":
O'er the hollow of a brazen shield
A bull they slew, and, touching with their hands
The sacrificial stream, they called aloud
On Mars, Eny'o, and blood-thirsty Fear,
And swore an oath or in the dust to lay
These walls, and give our people to the sword,
Or, perishing, to steep the land in blood!
That there was sometimes a fire ordeal to sanctify the oath, we
learn from the Antig'o-ne of SOPHOCLES. The Messenger who brought
tidings of the burial of Polyni'ces says,
"Ready were we to grasp the burning steel,
To pass through fire, and by the gods to swear
The deed was none of ours, nor aught we knew
Of living man by whom 'twas planned or done."
In the Twelfth Book of VIRGIL'S Æne'id, when King Turnus enters
into a treaty with the Trojans, he touches the altars of his
gods and the flames, as part of the ceremony:
"I touch the sacred altars, touch the flames,
And all these powers attest, and all their names,
Whatever chance befall on either side,
No term of time this union shall divide;
No force nor fortune shall my vows unbind,
To shake the steadfast tenor of my mind."
The ancient poets and orators denounce perjury in the strongest
terms, and speak of the offence as one of a most odious character.
THE FUTURE STATE.
The future state in which the Greeks believed was to some extent
one of rewards and punishments. The souls of most of the dead,
however, were supposed to descend to the realms of Ha'des, where
they remained, joyless phantoms, the mere shadows of their former
selves, destitute of mental vigor, and, like the spectres of the
North American Indians, pursuing, with dreamlike vacancy, the
empty images of their past occupations and enjoyments. So cheerless
is the twilight of the nether world that the ghost of Achilles
informs Ulysses that it would rather live the meanest hireling
on earth than be doomed to continue in the shades below, even
though as sovereign ruler there. Thus Achilles asks him--
"How hast thou dared descend into the gloom
Of Hades, where the shadows of the dead,
Forms without intellect, alone reside?"
And when Ulysses tries to console him by reminding him that he
was even there supreme over all his fellow-shades, he receives
this reply:
"Renowned Ulysses! think not death a theme
Of consolation: I would rather live
The servile hind for hire, and eat the bread
Of some man scantily himself sustained,
Than sovereign empire hold o'er all the shades."
--Odyssey, by COWPER, B. XI.
But even in Hades a distinction is made between the good and the
bad, for there Ulysses finds Mi'nos, the early law-giver of Crete,
advanced to the position of judge over the assembled shades--
absolving the just, and condemning the guilty.
High on a throne, tremendous to behold,
Stern Minos waves a mace of burnished gold;
Around, ten thousand thousand spectres stand,
Through the wide dome of Dis, a trembling band;
Whilst, as they plead, the fatal lots he rolls,
Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty souls.
--Odyssey, by POPE, B. XI.
The kinds of punishment inflicted here are, as might be expected,
wholly earthly in their nature, and may be regarded rather as
the reflection of human passions than as moral retributions by
the gods. Thus, Tan'talus, placed up to his chin in water, which
ever flowed away from his lips, was tormented with unquenchable
thirst, while the fruits hanging around him constantly eluded
his grasp. The story of Tantalus is well told by PROFESSOR BLACKIE,
as follows:
Tantalus.
O Tantalus! thou wert a man
More blest than all since earth began
Its weary round to travel;
But, placed in Paradise, like Eve,
Thine own damnation thou didst weave,
Without help from the devil.
Alas! I fear thy tale to tell;
Thou'rt in the deepest pool of hell,
And shalt be there forever.
For why? When thou on lofty seat
Didst sit, and eat immortal meat
With Jove, the bounteous Giver,
The gods before thee loosed their tongue,
And many a mirthful ballad sung,
And all their secrets open flung
Into thy mortal ear.
The poet then goes on to describe the gossip, and pleasures, and
jealousies, and scandals of Olympus which Tantalus heard and
witnessed, and then proceeds as follows:
But witless he such grace to prize;
And, with licentious babble,
He blazed the secrets of the skies
Through all the human rabble,
And fed the greed of tattlers vain
With high celestial scandal,
And lent to every eager brain
And wanton tongue a handle
Against the gods. For which great sin,
By righteous Jove's command,
In hell's black pool up to the chin
The thirsty king doth stand:
With-parched throat he longs to drink,
But when he bends to sip,
The envious waves receding sink,
And cheat his pining lip.
Like in character was the punishment inflicted upon Sis'y-phus,
"the most crafty of men," as Homer calls him. Being condemned to
roll a huge stone up a hill, it proved to be a never-ending,
still-beginning toil, for as soon as the stone reached the summit
it rolled down again into the plain. So, also, Ix-i'on, "the Cain
of Greece," as he is expressly called--the first shedder of kindred
blood--was doomed to be fastened, with brazen bands, to an
ever-revolving fiery wheel. But the very refinement of torment,
similar to that inflicted upon Prometheus, was that suffered by
the giant Tit'y-us, who was placed on his back, while vultures
constantly fed upon his liver, which grew again as fast as it was
eaten.
THE DESCENT OF OR'PHEUS.
Only once do we learn that these torments ceased, and that was
when the musician Orpheus, lyre in hand, descended to the lower
world to reclaim his beloved wife, the lost Eu-ryd'i-ce. At the
music of his "golden shell" Tantalus forgot his thirst, Sisyphus
rested from his toil, the wheel of Ixion stood still, and Tityus
ceased his moaning. The poet OVID thus describes the wonderful
effects of the musician's skill:
The very bloodless shades attention keep,
And, silent, seem compassionate to weep;
Even Tantalus his flood unthirsty views,
Nor flies the stream, nor he the stream pursues:
Ixion's wondrous wheel its whirl suspends,
And the voracious vulture, charmed, attends;
No more the Bel'i-des their toil bemoan,
And Sisyphus, reclined, sits listening on the stone.
--Trans. by CONGREVE.
Pope's translation of this scene from the Iliad is peculiarly
melodious:
But when, through all the infernal bounds
Which flaming Phleg'e-thon surrounds,
Love, strong as death, the poet led
To the pale nations of the dead,
What sounds were heard,
What scenes appeared,
O'er all the dreary coasts!
Dreadful gleams,
Dismal screams,
Fires that glow,
Shrieks of woe,
Sullen moans,
Hollow groans,
And cries of tortured ghost!!!
But hark! he strikes the golden lyre;
And see! the tortured ghosts respire!
See! shady forms advance!
Thy stone, O Sisyphus, stands still,
Ixion rests upon his wheel,
And the pale spectres dance;
The Furies sink upon their iron beds,
And snakes uncurled hang listening round their heads.
The Greeks also believed in an Elys'ium--some distant island of
the ocean, ever cooled by refreshing breezes, and where spring
perpetual reigned--to which, after death, the blessed were conveyed,
and where they were permitted to enjoy it happy destiny. In the
Fourth Book of the Odyssey the sea god Pro'teus, in predicting
for Menelaus a happier lot than that of Hades, thus describes the
Elysian plains:
But oh! beloved of Heaven! reserved for thee
A happier lot the smiling Fates decree:
Free from that law beneath whose mortal sway
Matter is changed and varying forms decay,
Elysium shall be thine--the blissful plains
Of utmost earth, where Rhadaman'thus reigns.
Joys ever young, unmixed with pain or fear,
Fill the wide circle of the eternal year.
Stern Winter smiles on that auspicious clime;
The fields are florid with unfading prime;
From the bleak pole no winds inclement blow,
Mould the round hail, or flake the fleecy snow;
But from the breezy deep the blest inhale
The fragrant murmurs of the western gale.
--POPE'S Trans.
Similar views are expressed by the lyric poet PINDAR in the
following lines:
All whose steadfast virtue thrice
Each side the grave unchanged hath stood,
Still unseduced, unstained with vice--
They, by Jove's mysterious road,
Pass to Saturn's realm of rest--
Happy isle, that holds the blest;
Where sea-born breezes gently blow
O'er blooms of gold that round them glow,
Which Nature, boon from stream or strand
Or goodly tree, profusely showers;
Whence pluck they many a fragrant band,
And braid their locks with never-fading flowers.
--Trans. by A. MOORE.
There is so much similarity between the mythology of the early
Greeks and that of many of the Asiatic nations, that we give
place here to the supposed meditations of a Hindu prince and
skeptic on the great subject of a future state of existence,
as a fitting close of our brief review of the religious beliefs
of the ancients. Among the Asiatic nations are to be found accounts
of the Creation, and of multitudes of gods, good and evil, all
quite as pronounced as those that are derived from the Grecian
myths; and while the wildest and grossest of superstitious fancies
have prevailed among the common people, skepticism and atheistic
doubt are known to have been nearly universal among the learned.
The poem which we give in this connection, therefore, though
professedly a Hindu creation, may be accepted not only as
portraying Hindu doubt and despondency, but also as a faithful
picture of the anxiety, doubt, and almost utter despair, not only
of the ancient Greeks; but of the entire heathen world, concerning
the destiny of mankind.
The Hindu skeptic tells us that ever since mankind began their
race on this earth they have been seeking for the "signs and
steps of a God;" and that in mystical India, where the deities
hover and swarm, and a million shrines stand open, with their
myriad idols and, legions of muttering priests, mankind are still
groping in darkness; still listening, and as yet vainly hoping
for a message that shall tell what the wonders of creation mean,
and whither they tend; ever vainly seeking for a refuge from the
ills of life, and a rest beyond for the weary and heavy-laden, He
turns to the deified heroes of his race, and though long he watches
and worships for a solution of the mysteries of life, he waits in
vain for an answer, for their marble features never relax in
response to his prayers and entreaties; and he says, mournfully,
"Alas! for the gods are dumb." The darts of death still fall as
surely as ever, hurled by a Power unseen and a hand unknown; and
beyond the veil all is obscurity and gloom.
I.
All the world over, I wonder, in lands that I never have trod,
Are the people eternally seeking for the signs and steps of a God?
Westward across the ocean, and northward beyond the snow,
Do they all stand gazing, as ever? and what do the wisest know?
II.
Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and swarm
Like the wild bees heard in the tree-tops, or the gusts of a
gathering storm;
In the air men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks are seen,
Yet we all say, "Whence is the message--and what may the
wonders mean?"
III.
A million shrines stand open, and ever the censer swings,
As they bow to a mystic symbol or the figures of ancient kings;
And the incense rises ever, and rises the endless cry
Of those who are heavy-laden, and of cowards loath to die.
IV.
For the destiny drives us together like deer in a pass of the hills:
Above is the sky, and around us the sound and the shot that kills.
Pushed by a Power we see not, and struck by a hand unknown,
We pray to the trees for shelter, and press our lips to a stone.
V.
The trees wave a shadowy answer, and the rock frowns hollow and grim,
And the form and the nod of the demon are caught in the
twilight dim;
And we look to the sunlight falling afar on the mountain crest--
Is there never a path runs upward to a refuge there and a rest?
VI.
The path--ah, who has shown it, and which is the faithful guide?
The haven--ah, who has known it? for steep is the mountain-side.
For ever the shot strikes surely, and ever the wasted breath
Of the praying multitude rises, whose answer is only death!
VII.
Here are the tombs of my kinsfolk, the first of an ancient name--
Chiefs who were slain on the war-field, and women who died in flame.
They are gods, these kings of the foretime, they are spirits who
guard our race:
Ever I watch and worship--they sit with a marble face.
VIII.
And the myriad idols around me, and the legion of muttering priests--
The revels and rites unholy, the dark, unspeakable feasts--
What have they wrung from the silence? Hath even a Whisper come
Of the secret--whence and whither? Alas! for the gods are dumb.
Getting no light from the religious guides of his own country,
he turns to the land where the English--the present rulers of
India--dwell, and asks,
IX.
Shall I list to the word of the English, who come from the
uttermost sea?
"The secret, hath it been told you? and what is your message to me?
It is naught but the wide-world story, how the earth and the
heavens began--
How the gods are glad and angry, and a deity once was man.
And so he gathers around him the mantle of doubt and despondency;
he asks if life is, after all, but a dream and delusion, while
ever and ever is forced upon him that other question, "Where
shall the dreamer awake?"
X.
I had thought, "Perchance in the cities where the rulers of
India dwell,
Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth with
a spell,
They have fathomed the depths we float on, or measured the
unknown main--"
Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the quest is
vain.
XI.
Is life, then, a dream and delusion? and where shall the dreamer
awake?
Is the world seen like shadows on water? and what if the mirror
break?
Shall it pass as a camp that is struck, as a tent that is gathered
and gone
From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morning are
level and lone?
XII.
Is there naught in the heaven above, whence the hail and the
levin are hurled,
But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the rolling
world--
The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to silence
and sleep,
With the dirge and the sounds of lamenting, and voices of
women who weep?
--The Cornhill Magazine.
What a commentary on all this doubt and despondency are the
meditations of the Christian, who, "sustained and soothed by an
unfaltering trust," approaches his grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams!
--BRYANT.
* * * * *
II. THE EARLIEST INHABITANTS OF GREECE.
The earliest reliable information that we possess of the country
called Greece represents it in the possession of a number of rude
tribes, of which the Pelas'gians were the most numerous and
powerful, and probably the most ancient. Of the early character
of the Pelasgians, and of the degree of civilization to which
they had attained before the reputed founding of Argos, we have
unsatisfactory and conflicting accounts. On the one hand, they
are represented as no better than the rudest barbarians, dwelling
in caves, subsisting on reptiles, herbs, and wild fruits, and
strangers to the simplest arts of civilized life. Other and more
reliable traditions, however, attribute to them a knowledge of
agriculture, and some little acquaintance with navigation; while
there is a strong probability that they were the authors of those
huge structures commonly called Cyclopean, remains of which are
still visible in many parts of Greece and Italy, and on the western
coast of Asia Minor.
Argos, the capital of Ar'golis, is generally considered the most
ancient city of Greece; and its reputed founding by In'achus, a
son of the god O-ce'anus, 1856 years before the Christian era,
is usually assigned as the period of the commencement of Grecian
history. But the massive Cyclopean walls of Argos evidently show
the Pelasgic origin of the place, in opposition to the traditionary
Phoenician origin of Inachus, whose very existence is quite
problematical. Indeed, although many of the traditions of the
Greeks point to a contrary conclusion, the accounts usually given
of early foreign settlers in Greece, who planted colonies there,
founded dynasties, built cities, and introduced a knowledge of
the arts unknown to the ruder natives, must be taken with a great
degree of abatement. The civilization of the Greeks and the
development of their language bear all the marks of home growth,
and probably were little affected by foreign influence. Still,
many of these traditions are exceedingly interesting, and have
attained great celebrity. One of the most celebrated is that
which describes the founding of Athens, one of the renowned
Grecian cities.
THE FOUNDING OF ATHENS.
Ce'crops, an Egyptian, is said to have led a colony from the
Delta to Greece, about the year 1556 B.C. Two years later he
proceeded to Attica, which had been desolated by a deluge a century
before, and there he is said to have founded, on the Cecropian
rock--the Acrop'olis--a city which, under the following
circumstances, he called Athens, in honor of the Grecian goddess
Athe'na, whom the Romans called Minerva.
It is an ancient Attic legend that about this time the gods had
begun to choose favorite spots among the dwellings of man for
their own residence; and whatever city a god chose, he gave to
that city protection, and there that particular deity was
worshipped with special homage. Now, it happened that both Neptune
and Minerva contended for the supremacy over this new city founded
by Cecrops; and Cecrops was greatly troubled by the contest, as
he knew not to which deity to render homage. So Jove summoned a
council of the gods, and they decided that the supremacy should
be given to the one who should confer the greatest gift upon the
favored city. The story of the contest is told by PROFESSOR BLACKIE
in the following verses.
Mercury, the messenger of the gods, being sent to Cecrops, thus
announces to him the decision of the Council:
"On the peaks of Olympus, the bright snowy-crested,
The gods are assembled in council to-day,
The wrath of Pos-ei'don, the mighty broad-breasted,
'Gainst Pallas, the spear-shaking maid, to allay.
And thus they decree--that Poseidon offended
And Pallas shall bring forth a gift to the place:
On the hill of Erech'theus the strife shall be ended,
When she with her spear, and the god with his mace,
Shall strike the quick rock; and the gods shall deliver
The sentence as Justice shall order; and thou
Shalt see thy loved city established forever,
With Jove for a judge, and the Styx for a vow."
So the gods assembled, in the presence of Cecrops himself, on
the "hill of Erechtheus"--afterward known as the Athenian
Acropolis--to witness the trial between the rival deities, as
described in the following language. First; Neptune strikes the
rock with his trident:
Lo! at the touch of his trident a wonder!
Virtue to earth from his deity flows;
From the rift of the flinty rock, cloven asunder,
A dark-watered fountain ebullient rose.
Inly elastic, with airiest lightness
It leapt, till it cheated the eyesight; and, lo!
It showed in the sun, with a various brightness,
The fine-woven hues of the heavenly bow.
"WATER IS BEST!" cried the mighty, broad-breasted
Poseidon; "O Cecrops, I offer to thee
To ride on the back of the steeds foamy-crested
That toss their wild manes on the huge-heaving sea.
The globe thou shalt mete on the path of the waters,
To thy ships shall the ports of far ocean be free;
The isles of the sea shall be counted thy daughters,
The pearls of the East shall be gathered for thee!"
Thus Neptune offered, as his gift--symbolized in the salt spring
that he caused to issue from the rock--the dominion of the sea,
with all the wealth and renown that flow from unrestricted commerce
with foreign lands.
But Minerva was now to make her trial:
Then the gods, with a high-sounding pæan,
Applauded; but Jove hushed the many-voiced tide;
"For now with the lord of the briny Æge'an
Athe'na shall strive for the city," he cried.
"See where she comes!" and she came, like Apollo,
Serene with the beauty ripe wisdom confers;
The clear-scanning eye, and the sure hand to follow
The mark of the far-sighted purpose, were hers.
Strong in the mail of her father she standeth,
And firmly she holds the strong spear in her hand;
But the wild hounds of war with calm power she commandeth,
And fights but to pledge surer peace to the land.
Chastely the blue-eyed approached, and, surveying
The council of wise-judging gods without fear,
The nod of her lofty-throned father obeying,
She struck the gray rock with her nice-tempered spear.
Lo! from the touch of the virgin a wonder!
Virtue to earth from her deity flows:
From the rift of the flinty rock, cloven asunder,
An olive-tree, greenly luxuriant, rose--
Green but yet pale, like an eye-drooping maiden,
Gentle, from full-blooded lustihood far;
No broad-staring hues for rude pride to parade in,
No crimson to blazon the banners of war.
Mutely the gods, with a calm consultation,
Pondered the fountain and pondered the tree;
And the heart of Poseidon, with high expectation,
Throbbed till great Jove thus pronounced the decree:
"Son of my father, thou mighty, broad-breasted
Poseidon, the doom that I utter is true;
Great is the might of thy waves foamy-crested
When they beat the white walls of the screaming sea-mew;
Great is the pride of the keel when it danceth,
Laden with wealth, o'er the light-heaving wave--
When the East to the West, gayly floated, advanceth,
With a word from the wise and a help from the brave.
But earth--solid earth--is the home of the mortal
That toileth to live, and that liveth to toil;
And the green olive-tree twines the wreath of his portal
Who peacefully wins his sure bread from the soil,"
Thus Jove: and to heaven the council celestial
Rose, and the sea-god rolled back to the sea;
But Athena gave Athens her name, and terrestrial
Joy from the oil of the green olive-tree.
Thus Jove decided in favor of the peaceful pursuits of industry
on the land, as against the more alluring promises but uncertain
results of commerce, thereby teaching this lesson in political
economy--that a people consisting of mere merchants, and neglecting
the cultivation of the soil, never can become a great and powerful
nation. So Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, and patroness of all
the liberal arts and sciences, became the tutelary deity of Athens.
The contest between her and Neptune was represented on one of the
pediments of the Parthenon.
Of the history of Athens for many centuries subsequent to its
alleged founding by Cecrops we have no certain information; but
it is probable that down to about 683 B.C. it was ruled by kings,
like all the other Grecian states. Of these kings the names of
The'seus and Co'drus are the most noted. To the former is ascribed
the union of the twelve states of Attica into one political body,
with Athens as the capital, and other important acts of government
which won for him the love of the Athenian people. Consulting the
oracle of Delphi concerning his new government, he is said to have
received the following answer:
From royal stems thy honor, Theseus, springs;
By Jove beloved, the sire supreme of kings.
See rising towns, see wide-extended states,
On thee dependent, ask their future fates!
Hence, hence with fear! Thy favored bark shall ride
Safe o'er the surges of the foamy tide.
About half a century after the time of Cecrops another Egyptian,
named Dan'a-us, is said to have fled to Greece, with a family
of fifty daughters, and to have established a second Egyptian
colony in the vicinity of Argos. He subsequently became king of
Argos, and the inhabitants were called Dan'a-i. About the same
time Cadmus, a Phoenician, is reported to have led a colony into
Bœo'tia, bringing with him the Phoenician alphabet, the basis
of the Grecian; and to have founded Cadme'a, which afterward
became the citadel of Thebes. Another colony is said to have been
led from Asia by Pe'lops, from whom the southern peninsula of
Greece derived its name of Peloponne'sus, and of whom Agamemnon,
King of Myce'næ, was a lineal descendant. About this time a people
called the Helle'nes--but whether a Pelasgic tribe or otherwise
is uncertain--first appeared in the south of Thessaly, and,
gradually diffusing themselves over the whole country, became,
by their martial spirit and active, enterprising genius, the ruling
class, and impressed new features upon the Grecian character. The
Hellenes gave their name to the population of the whole peninsula,
although the term Grecians was subsequently applied to them by the
Romans.
In accordance with the Greek custom of attributing the origin
of their tribes or nations to some remote mythical ancestor,
Hel'len, a son of the fabulous Deuca'lion and Pyrrha, is
represented as the father of the Hellen'ic nation. His three
sons were Æ'o-lus, Do'rus, and Xu'thus, from the two former of
whom are represented to have descended the Æo'lians and Do'rians;
and from Achæ'us and I'on, sons of Xuthus, the Achæ'ans and
Io'nians. These four Hellen'ic or Grecian tribes were
distinguished from one another by many peculiarities of language
and institutions. Hellen is said to have left his kingdom to
Æolus, his eldest son; and the Æolian tribe spread the most
widely, and long exerted the most influence in the affairs of
the nation; but at a later period it was surpassed by the fame
and the power of the Dorians and Ionians.
* * * * *
III. THE HEROIC AGE.
The period from the time of the first appearance of the Hellenes
in Thessaly to the return of the Greeks from the expedition against
Troy--a period of about two hundred years--is usually called the
Heroic Age. It is a period abounding in splendid fictions of
heroes and demi-gods, embracing, among others, the twelve wonderful
labors of Hercules; the exploits of the Athenian king The'seus,
and of Mi'nos, King of Crete, the founder of Grecian law and
civilization; the events of the Argonautic expedition; the Theban
and Argol'ic wars; the adventures of Beller'ophon, Per'seus, and
many others; and concluding with the Trojan war and the supposed
fall of Troy. These seem to have been the times which the archangel
Michael foretold to Adam when he said,
For in those days might only shall be admired,
And valor and heroic virtue called:
To overcome in battle, and subdue
Nations, and bring home spoils with infinite
Manslaughter, shall be held the highest pitch
Of human glory; and, for glory done,
Of triumph to be styled great conquerors,
Patrons of mankind, gods, and sons of gods--
Destroyers rightly called, and plagues of men.
--Paradise Lost, B. XI.
THE LABORS OF HERCULES.
The twelve arduous labors of the celebrated hero Hercules, who
was a son of Jupiter by the daughter of an early king of Mycenæ,
are said to have been imposed upon him by an enemy--Eurys'theus--to
whose will Jupiter, induced by a fraud of Juno and the fury-goddess
A'te, and unwittingly bound by an oath, had made the hero
subservient for twelve years. Jupiter grieved for his son, but,
unable to recall the oath which he had sworn, he punished Ate by
hurling her from Olympus down to the nether world.
Grief seized the Thunderer, by his oath engaged;
Stung to the soul, he sorrowed and he raged.
From his ambrosial head, where perched she sate,
He snatched the fury-goddess of debate:
The dread, the irrevocable oath he swore,
The immortal seats should ne'er behold her more;
And whirled her headlong down, forever driven
From bright Olympus and the starry heaven:
Thence on the nether world the fury fell,
Ordained with man's contentious race to dwell.
Full oft the god his son's hard toils bemoaned,
Cursed the dire folly, and in secret groaned.
--HOMER'S Iliad, B. XIX. POPE'S Trans.
The following, in brief, are the twelve labors attributed to
Hercules: 1. He strangled the Ne'mean lion, and ever after wore
his skin. 2. He destroyed the Lernæ'an hydra, which had nine
heads, eight of them mortal and one immortal. 3. He brought into
the presence of Eurystheus a stag famous for its incredible
swiftness and golden horns. 4. He brought to Mycenæ the wild
boar of Eryman'thus, and slew two of the Centaurs, monsters who
were half men and half horses. 5. He cleansed the Auge'an stables
in one day by changing the courses of the rivers Alphe'us and
Pene'us. 6. He destroyed the carnivorous birds of the lake
Stympha'lus, in Arcadia. 7. He brought into Peloponnesus the
prodigious wild bull which ravaged Crete. 8. He brought from
Thrace the mares of Diome'de, which fed on human flesh. 9. He
obtained the famous girdle of Hippol'y-te, queen of the Amazons.
10. He slew the monster Ge'ry-on, who had the bodies of three
men united. 11. He brought from the garden of the Hesper'i-des
the golden apples, and slew the dragon which guarded them. 12. He
went down to the lower regions and brought upon earth the
three-headed dog Cer'berus.
The favor of the gods had completely armed Hercules for his
undertakings, and his great strength enabled him to perform them.
This entire fable of Hercules is generally believed to be merely
a fanciful representation of the sun in its passage through the
twelve signs of the zodiac, in accordance with Phoenician mythology,
from which the legend is supposed to be derived. Thus Hercules
is the sun-god. In the first month of the year the sun passes
through the constellation Leo, the lion; and in his first labor
the hero slays the Nemean lion. In the second month, when the
sun enters the sign Virgo, the long-extended constellation of
the Hydra sets--the stars of which, like so many heads, rise
one after another; and, therefore, in his second labor, Hercules
destroys the Lernæan hydra with its nine heads. In like manner
the legend is explained throughout. Besides these twelve labors,
however, Hercules is said to have achieved others on his own
account; and one of these is told in the fable of Hercules and
Antæ'us, in which the powers of art and nature are supposed to
be personified.
FABLE OF HERCULES AND ANTÆUS.
Antæ'us--a son of Neptune and Terra, who reigned over Libya, or
Africa, and dwelt in a forest cave--was so famed for his Titanic
strength and skill in wrestling that he was emboldened to leave
his woodland retreat and engage in a contest with the renowned
hero Hercules. So long as Antæus stood upon the ground he could
not be overcome, whereupon Hercules lifted him up in the air,
and, having apparently squeezed him to death in his arms, threw
him down; but when Antæus touched his mother Earth and lay at
rest upon her bosom, renewed life and fresh power were given him.
In this fable Antæus, who personifies the woodland solitude and
the desert African waste, is easily overcome by his adversary,
who represents the river Nile, which, divided into a thousand
arms, or irrigating canals, prevents the arid sand from being
borne away and then back again by the winds to desolate the fertile
valley. Thus the legend is nothing more than the triumph of art
and labor, and their reclaiming power over the woodland solitudes
and the encroaching sands of the desert. An English poet has very
happily versified the spirit of the legend, to which he has appended
a fitting moral, doubtless suggested by the warning of his own
approaching sad fate.[Footnote: This gifted poet, Mortimer Collins,
died in 1876, at the age of forty-nine, a victim to excessive
literary labor and anxiety.]
Deep were the meanings of that fable. Men
Looked upon earth with clearer eyesight then,
Beheld in solitude the immortal Powers,
And marked the traces of the swift-winged Hours.
Because it never varies, all can bear
The burden of the circumambient air;
Because it never ceases, none can hear
The music of the ever-rolling sphere--
None, save the poet, who, in moor and wood,
Holds converse with the spirit of Solitude.
And I remember how Antæus heard,
Deep in great oak-woods, the mysterious word
Which said, "Go forth across the unshaven leas
To meet unconquerable Hercules."
Leaving his cavern by the cedar-glen,
This Titan of the primal race of men,
Whom the swart lions feared, and who could tear
Huge oaks asunder, to the combat bare
Courage undaunted. Full of giant grace,
Built up, as 'twere, from earth's own granite base.
Colossal, iron-sinewed, firm he trod
The lawns. How vain against a demi-god!
Oh, sorrow of defeat! He plunges far
Into his forests, where deep shadows are,
And the wind's murmur comes not, and the gloom
Of pine and cedar seems to make a tomb
For fallen ambition. Prone the mortal lies
Who dared mad warfare with the unpitying skies,
But lo! as buried in the waving ferns,
The baffled giant for oblivion yearns,
Cursing his human feebleness, he feels
A sudden impulse of new strength, which heals
His angry wounds; his vigor he regains--
His blood is dancing gayly through his veins.
Fresh power, fresh life is his who lay at rest
On bounteous Hertha's kind creative breast.
[Footnote: Hertha, a goddess of the ancient Germans,
the same as Terra, or the Earth. Her favorite retreat
was a sacred grove in an island of the ocean.]
Even so, O poet, by the world subdued,
Regain thy health 'mid perfect solitude.
In noisy cities, far from hills and trees,
The brawling demi-god, harsh Hercules,
Has power to hurt thy placid spirit--power
To crush thy joyous instincts every hour,
To weary thee with woes for mortals stored,
Red gold (coined hatred) and the tyrant's sword.
Then--then, O sad Antæus, wilt thou yearn
For dense green woodlands and the fragrant fern;
Then stretch thy form upon the sward, and rest
From worldly toil on Hertha's gracious breast;
Plunge in the foaming river, or divide
With happy arms gray ocean's murmuring tide,
And drinking thence each solitary hour
Immortal beauty and immortal power,
Thou may'st the buffets of the world efface
And live a Titan of earth's earliest race.
--MORTIMER COLLINS.
THE ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION.
From what was probably a maritime adventure that plundered some
wealthy country at a period when navigation was in its infancy
among the Greeks, we get the fable of the Argonautic Expedition.
The generally accepted story of this expedition is as follows:
Pe'lias, a descendant of Æ'o-lus, the mystic progenitor of the
Great Æol'ic race, had deprived his half-brother Æ'son of the
kingdom of Iol'cus in Thessaly. When Jason, son of Æson, had
attained to manhood, he appeared before his uncle and demanded
the throne. Pelias consented only on condition that Jason should
first capture and bring to him the golden fleece of the ram which
had carried Phrix'us and Hel'le when they fled from their stepmother
I'no. Helle dropped into the sea between Sigæ'um and the
Cher'sonese, which was named from her Hellespon'tus; but Phrixus
succeeded in reaching Col'chis, a country at the eastern extremity
of the Euxine, or Black Sea. Here he sacrificed the ram, and
nailed the fleece to an oak in the grove of Mars, where it was
guarded by a sleepless dragon.
Joined by the principal heroes of Greece, Hercules among the
number, Jason set sail from Iolcus in the ship Argo, after first
invoking the favor of Jupiter, the winds, and the waves, for the
success of the expedition. The ceremony on this occasion, as
descried by the poets, reads like an account of the "christening
of the ship" in modern times, but we seem to have lost the full
significance of the act.
And soon as by the vessel's bow
The anchor was hung up,
Then took the leader on the prow
In hands a golden cup,
And on great father Jove did call;
And on the winds and waters all
Swept by the hurrying blast,
And on the nights, and ocean ways,
And on the fair auspicious days,
And sweet return at last.
From out the clouds, in answer kind,
A voice of thunder came,
And, shook in glistening beams around,
Burst out the lightning flame.
The chiefs breathed free, and, at the sign,
Trusted in the power divine.
Hinting sweet hopes, the seer cried
Forthwith their oars to ply,
And swift went backward from rough hands
The rowing ceaselessly.
--PINDAR. Trans. by Rev. H. F. CARY.
After many adventures Jason reached Col'chis, where, by the aid
of magic and supernatural arts, and through the favor of Me-de'a,
daughter of the King of Colchis, he succeeded in capturing the
fleece. After four months of continued danger and innumerable
hardships, Jason returned to Iolcus with the prize, accompanied
by Medea, whom he afterward deserted, and whose subsequent history
is told by the poet Euripides in his celebrated tragedy entitled
Medea.
Growing out of the Argonautic legend is one concerning the youth
Hy'las, a member of the expedition, and a son of the King of
Mys'ia, a country of Asia Minor. Hylas was greatly beloved by
Hercules. On the coast of Mysia the Argonauts stopped to obtain
a supply of water, and Hylas, having gone from the vessel alone
with an urn for the same purpose, takes the opportunity to bathe
in the river Scaman'der, under the shadows of Mount Ida. He throws
his purple chlamys, or cloak, over the urn, and passes down into
the water, where he is seized by the nymphs of the stream, and, in
spite of his struggles and entreaties, he is borne by them "down
from the noonday brightness to their dark caves in the depths
below." Hercules went in search of Hylas, and the ship sailed
from its anchorage without him. We have a faithful and beautiful
reproduction of this Greek legend, both in theme and spirit, in
a poem by BAYARD TAYLOR, from which the following extracts are
taken:
Hylas.
Storm-wearied Argo slept upon the water.
No cloud was seen: on blue and craggy Ida
The hot noon lay, and on the plains enamel;
Cool in his bed, alone, the swift Scamander.
"Why should I haste?" said young and rosy Hylas;
The seas are rough, and long the way from Colchis.
Beneath the snow-white awning slumbers Jason,
Pillowed upon his tame Thessalian panther;
The shields are piled, the listless oars suspended
On the black thwarts, and all the hairy bondsmen
Doze on the benches. They may wait for water
Till I have bathed in mountain-born Scamander."
He saw his glorious limbs reversely mirrored
In the still wave, and stretched his foot to press it
On the smooth sole that answered at the surface:
Alas! the shape dissolved in glittering fragments.
Then, timidly at first, he dipped, and catching
Quick breath, with tingling shudder, as the waters
Swirled round his limbs, and deeper, slowly deeper,
Till on his breast the river's cheek was pillowed;
And deeper still, till every shoreward ripple
Talked in his ear, and like a cygnet's bosom
His white, round shoulder shed the dripping crystal.
There, as he floated with a rapturous motion,
The lucid coolness folding close around him,
The lily-cradling ripples murmured, "Hylas!"
He shook from off his ears the hyacinthine
Curls that had lain unwet upon the water,
And still the ripples murmured, "Hylas! Hylas!"
He thought--"The voices are but ear-born music.
Pan dwells not here, and Echo still is calling
From some high cliff that tops a Thracian valley;
So long mine ears, on tumbling Hellespontus,
Have heard the sea-waves hammer Argo's forehead,
That I misdeem the fluting of this current
For some lost nymph"--again the murmur, "Hylas!"
The sound that seemed to come from the lilies was the voice of
the sea-nymphs, calling to him to go with them where they wander--
"Down beneath the green translucent ceiling--
Where, on the sandy bed of old Scamander,
With cool white buds we braid our purple tresses,
Lulled by the bubbling waves around us stealing."
To all their entreaties Hylas exclaims:
"Leave me, naiads!
Leave me!" he cried. "The day to me is dearer
Than all your caves deep-spread in ocean's quiet.
I would not change this flexile, warm existence,
Though swept by storms, and shocked by Jove's dread thunder,
To be a king beneath the dark-green waters.
Let me return! the wind comes down from Ida,
And soon the galley, stirring from her slumber,
Will fret to ride where Pelion's twilight shadow
Falls o'er the towers of Jason's sea-girt city.
I am not yours--I cannot braid the lilies
In your wet hair, nor on your argent bosoms
Close my drowsed eyes to hear your rippling voices.
Hateful to me your sweet, cold, crystal being--
Your world of watery quiet. Help, Apollo!"
But the remonstrances and struggles of Hylas unavailing:
The boy's blue eyes, upturned, looked through the water
Pleading for help; but heaven's immortal archer;
Was swathed in cloud. The ripples hid his forehead;
And last, the thick, bright curls a moment floated,
So warm and silky that the stream upbore them,
Closing reluctant as he sank forever.
The sunset died behind the crags of Imbros.
Argo was tugging at her chain; for freshly
Blew the swift breeze, and leaped the restless billows.
The voice of Jason roused the dozing sailors,
And up the mast was heaved the snowy canvas.
But mighty Hercules, the Jove-begotten,
Unmindful stood beside the cool Scamander,
Leaning upon his club. A purple chlamys
Tossed o'er an urn was all that lay before him;
And when he called, expectant, "Hylas! Hylas!"
The empty echoes made him answer--"Hylas!"
THE TROJAN WAR.
Of all the events of the Heroic period, however, the Trojan war
has been rendered the most celebrated, through the genius of
Homer. The alleged causes of the war, briefly stated, are these:
Helen, the most beautiful woman of the age, and the daughter of
Tyn'darus, King of Sparta, was sought in marriage by all the
Princes of Greece. Tyndarus, perplexed with the difficulty of
choosing one of the suitors without displeasing all the rest,
being advised by the sage Ulysses, bound all of them by an oath
that they would approve of the uninfluenced choice of Helen, and
would unite to restore her to her husband, and to avenge the
outrage, if ever she was carried off. Menela'us became the choice
of Helen, and soon after, on the death of Tyndarus, succeeded to
the vacant throne of Sparta.
Three years subsequently, Paris, son of Priam, King of Ilium,
or Troy, visited the court of Menelaus, where he was hospitably
received; but during the temporary absence of the latter he
corrupted the fidelity of Helen, and induced her to flee with
him to Troy. When Menelaus returned he assembled the Grecian
princes, and prepared to avenge the outrage. Combining their
forces under the command of Agamem'non, King of Myce'næ, a brother
of Menelaus, they sailed with a great army for Troy. The
imagination of the poet EURIPIDES describes this armament as
follows:
With eager haste
The sea-girt Aulis strand I paced,
Till to my view appeared the embattled train
Of Hellas, armed for mighty enterprise,
And galleys of majestic size,
To bear the heroes o'er the main;
A thousand ships for Ilion steer,
And round the two Atridæ's spear
The warriors swear fair Helen to regain.
After a siege of ten years Troy was taken by stratagem, and the
fair Helen was recovered. On the fanciful etymology of the word
Helen, from a Greek verb signifying to take or seize, the poet
ÆCHYLUS indulges in the following reflections descriptive of the
character and the history of this "spear-wooed maid of Greece:"
Who gave her a name
So true to her fame?
Does a Providence rule in the fate of a word?
Sways there in heaven a viewless power
O'er the chance of the tongue in the naming hour?
Who gave her a name,
This daughter of strife, this daughter of shame,
The spear-wooed maid of Greece!
Helen the taker! 'tis plain to see,
A taker of ships, a taker of men,
A taker of cities is she!
From the soft-curtained chamber of Hymen she fled,
By the breath of giant Zephyr sped,
And shield-bearing throngs in marshalled array
Hounded her flight o'er the printless way,
Where the swift-flashing oar
The fair booty bore
To swirling Sim'o-is' leafy shore,
And stirred the crimson fray.
--Trans. by BLACKIE.
According to Homer, the principal Greek heroes engaged in the
siege of Troy, aside from Agamemnon, were Menelaus, Achilles,
Ulysses, Ajax (the son of Tel'amon), Di'omed, Patro'clus, and
Palame'des; while among the bravest of the defenders of Troy
were Hector, Sarpe'don, and Æne'as.
The poet's story opens, in the tenth year of the siege, with an
account of a contentious scene between two of the Grecian chiefs
--Achilles and Agamemnon--which resulted in the withdrawal of
Achilles and his forces from the Grecian army. The aid of the
gods was invoked in behalf of Achilles, and Jupiter sent a
deceitful vision to Agamemnon, seeking to persuade him to lead
his forces to battle, in order that the Greeks might realize
their need of Achilles. Agamemnon first desired to ascertain the
feeling or disposition of the army regarding the expedition it
had undertaken, and so proposed a return to Greece, which was
unanimously and unexpectedly agreed to, and an advance was made
toward the ships. But through the efforts of the valiant and
sagacious Ulysses all discontent on the part of the troops was
suppressed, and they returned to the plains of Troy.
Among those in the Grecian camp who had complained of their
leaders, and of the folly of the expedition itself, was a brawling,
turbulent, and tumultuous character named Thersi'tes, whose
insolence Ulysses sternly and effectively rebuked. The following
sketch of Thersites reads like a picture drawn from modern
life; while the merited reproof administered by Ulysses is in
the happiest vein of just and patriotic indignation:
Ulysses and Thersites.
Thersites only clamored in the throng,
Loquacious, loud, and turbulent of tongue;
Awed by no shame, by no respect controlled,
In scandal busy, in reproaches bold;
With witty malice, studious to defame;
Scorn all his joy, and censure all his aim;
But chief he gloried, with licentious style,
To lash the great, and monarchs to revile.
His figure such as might his soul proclaim:
One eye was blinking, and one leg was lame;
His mountain shoulders half his breast o'erspread,
Thin hairs bestrew'd his long misshapen head;
Spleen to mankind his envious heart possessed,
And much he hated all--but most, the best.
Ulysses or Achilles still his theme;
But royal scandal his delight supreme.
Long had he lived the scorn of every Greek,
Vext when he spoke, yet still they heard him speak:
Sharp was his voice; which, in the shrillest tone,
Thus with injurious taunts attacked the throne.
Ulysses, in his tent, listens awhile to the complaints, and censures,
and scandals against the chiefs, with which Thersites addresses
the throng gathered around him, and at length--
With indignation sparkling in his eyes,
He views the wretch, and sternly thus replies:
"Peace, factious monster, born to vex the state
With wrangling talents formed for foul debate,
Curb that impetuous tongue, nor, rashly vain,
And singly mad, asperse the sovereign reign.
"Have we not known thee, slave! of all our host
The man who acts the least, upbraids the most?
Think not the Greeks to shameful flight to bring;
Nor let those lips profane the name of King.
For our return we trust the heavenly powers;
Be that their care; to fight like men be ours.
"But grant the host, with wealth our chieftain load;
Except detraction, what hast thou bestowed?
Suppose some hero should his spoil resign,
Art thou that hero? Could those spoils be thine?
Gods! let me perish on this hateful shore,
And let these eyes behold my son no more,
If on thy next offence this hand forbear
To strip those arms thou ill deserv'st to wear,
Expel the council where our princes meet,
And send thee scourged and howling through the fleet."
--B. II. POPE'S Trans.
COMBAT OF MENELAUS AND PARIS.
The opposing armies being ready to engage, a single combat is
agreed upon between Menelaus, and Paris son of Priam, for the
determination of the war. Paris is soon vanquished, but is rescued
from death by Venus; and, according to the terms on which the
combat took place, Agamemnon demands the restoration of Helen.
But the gods declare that the war shall go on. So the conflict
begins, and Diomed, assisted by the goddess Pallas (or Minerva),
performs wonders in this day's battle, wounding and putting to
flight Pan'darus, Æneas, and the goddess Venus, even wounding
the war-god Mars, who had challenged him to combat, and sending
him groaning back to heaven.
Hector, the eldest son of Priam King of Troy, and the chief hero
of the Trojans, leaves the field for a brief space, to request
prayers to Minerva for assistance, and especially for the removal
of Diomed from the fight. This done, he seeks a momentary interview
with his wife, the fair and virtuous Androm'a-che, whose touching
appeal to him, and his reply, are both, perhaps, without a parallel
in tender, natural solicitude.
Parting of Hector and Andromache.
"Too daring prince! ah, whither dost thou run?
Ah, too forgetful of thy wife and son!
And think'st thou not how wretched we shall be,
A widow I, a helpless orphan he?
For sure such courage length of life denies,
And thou must fall, thy virtue's sacrifice.
Greece in her single heroes strove in vain;
Now hosts oppose thee, and thou must be slain!
Oh grant me, gods! ere Hector meets his doom,
All I can ask of heaven, an early tomb!
So shall my days in one sad tenor run,
And end with sorrows as they first begun.
"No parent now remains my griefs to share,
No father's aid, no mother's tender care.
The fierce Achilles wrapp'd our walls in fire,
Laid The'be waste, and slew my warlike sire!
By the same arm my seven brave brothers fell;
In one sad day beheld the gates of hell.
My mother lived to bear the victor's bands,
The queen of Hippopla'cia's sylvan lands.
"Yet, while my Hector still survives, I see
My father, mother, brethren, all in thee:
Alas! my parents, brothers, kindred, all
Once more will perish, if my Hector fall.
Thy wife, thy infant, in thy danger share:
Oh, prove a husband's and a father's care!
That quarter most the skilful Greeks annoy,
Where yon wild fig-trees join the walls of Troy;
Thou from this tower defend the important post;
There Agamemnon points his dreadful host,
That pass Tydi'des, Ajax, strive to gain,
And there the vengeful Spartan fires his train.
Thrice our bold foes the fierce attack have given,
Or led by hopes, or dictated from heaven.
Let others in the field their arms employ,
But stay my Hector here, and guard his Troy."
The chief replied: "That post shall be my care,
Nor that alone, but all the works of war.
How would the sons of Troy, in arms renown'd,
And Troy's proud dames, whose garments sweep the ground,
Attaint the lustre of my former name,
Should Hector basely quit the field of fame!
My early youth was bred to martial pains,
My soul impels me to the embattled plains:
Let me be foremost to defend the throne,
And guard my father's glories and my own.
"Yet come it will, the day decreed by fates;
(How my heart trembles while my tongue relates!)
The day when thou, imperial Troy! must bend,
Must see thy warriors fall, thy glories end.
And yet no dire presage so wounds my mind,
My mother's death, the ruin of my kind,
Not Priam's hoary hairs defiled with gore,
Not all my brothel's gasping on the shore,
As thine, Andromache! thy griefs I dread.
"I see thee trembling, weeping, captive led!
In Argive looms our battles to design,
And woes, of which so large a part was thine!
To bear the victor's hard commands, or bring
The weight of waters from Hype'ria's spring.
There, while you groan beneath the load of life,
They cry: 'Behold the mighty Hector's wife!'
Some haughty Greek, who lives thy tears to see,
Embitters all thy woes by naming me.
The thoughts of glory past, and present shame,
A thousand griefs shall waken at the name!
May I lie cold before that dreadful day,
Pressed with a load of monumental clay!
Thy Hector, wrapt in everlasting sleep,
Shall neither hear thee sigh, nor see thee weep."
Thus having spoke, the illustrious chief of Troy
Stretched his fond arms to clasp the lovely boy.
The babe clung crying to his nurse's breast,
Scared at the dazzling helm and nodding crest.
With secret pleasure each fond parent smiled,
And Hector hasted to relieve his child;
The glittering terrors from his brows unbound,
And placed the beaming helmet on the ground.
Then kissed the child, and, lifting high in air,
Thus to the gods preferred a father's prayer:
"O thou! whose glory fills the ethereal throne,
And all ye deathless powers! protect my son!
Grant him, like me, to purchase just renown,
To guard the Trojans, to defend the crown,
Against his country's foes the war to wage,
And rise the Hector of the future age!
So when triumphant from successful toils,
Of heroes slain he bears the reeking spoils,
Whole hosts may hail him with deserved acclaim,
And say, 'This chief transcends his father's fame;'
While pleased, amidst the general shouts of Troy,
His mother's conscious heart o'erflows with joy."
He spoke, and fondly gazing on her charms,
Restored the pleasing burden to her arms;
Soft on her fragrant breast the babe he laid,
Hush'd to repose, and with a smile survey'd.
The troubled pleasure soon chastised by fear,
She mingled with the smile a tender tear.
The soften'd chief with kind compassion view'd,
And dried the falling drops, and thus pursued:
"Andromache, my soul's far better part,
Why with untimely sorrows heaves thy heart?
No hostile hand can antedate my doom,
Till fate condemns me to the silent tomb.
Fix'd is the term to all the race of earth;
And such the hard condition of our birth,
No force can then resist, no flight can save--
All sink alike, the fearful and the brave.
No more--but hasten to thy tasks at home,
There guide the spindle and direct the loom:
Me, glory summons to the martial scene--
The field of combat is the sphere of men;
Where heroes war, the foremost place I claim,
The first in danger, as the first in fame."
Thus having said, the glorious chief resumes
His towery helmet black with shading plumes.
His princess parts with a prophetic sigh,
Unwilling parts, and oft reverts her eye,
That stream'd at every look; then, moving slow,
Sought her own palace and indulged her woe.
There, while her tears deplored the godlike man,
Through all her train the soft infection ran:
The pious maids their mingled sorrows shed,
And mourn the living Hector as the dead.
--B. VI. POPE'S. Trans.
HECTOR'S EXPLOITS, AND DEATH OF PATRO'CLUS.
Hector hastened to the field, and there his exploits aroused the
enthusiasm and courage of his countrymen; who drove back the
Grecian hosts. Disheartened, the Greeks sent Ulysses and Ajax
to Achilles to plead with that warrior for his return with his
forces to the Grecian camp. But Achilles obstinately refused to
take part in the conflict, which was continued with varying
success, until the Trojans succeeded in breaking through the
Grecian wall, and attempted to fire the Greek ships, which were
saved by the valor of Ajax. In compliance with the request of
the aged Nestor, however, of whom the poet YOUNG tells us that--
When Nestor spoke, none asked if he prevailed;
That god of sweet persuasion never failed--
Achilles now placed his own armor on Patroclus, and, giving him
also his shield, sent him to the aid of the Greeks. The Trojans,
supposing Patroclus to be the famous Achilles, became panic-stricken,
and were pursued with great slaughter to the walls of Troy.
Apollo now goes to the aid of the Trojans, smites Patroclus,
whose armor is strewn on the plain, and then the hero is killed
by Hector, who proudly places the plume of Achilles on his own
helmet.
His spear in shivers falls; his ample shield
Drops from his arm; his baldric strews the field;
The corslet his astonished breast forsakes;
Loose is each joint; each nerve with horror shakes;
Stupid he stares, and all assistless stands:
Such is the force of more than mortal hands.
Achilles' plume is stained with dust and gore:
That plume which never stooped to earth before,
Long used, untouched, in fighting fields to shine,
And shade the temples of the mad divine.
Jove dooms it now on Hector's helm to nod;
Not long--for fate pursues him, and the god.
--B. XVI.
Then ensued a most terrific conflict for the body of the slain
warrior, in which Ajax, Glaucus, Hector, Æneas, and Menelaus
participated, the latter finally succeeding in bearing it off
to the ships. The grief of Achilles over the body of his friend,
and at the loss of his wonderful armor, is represented as being
intense; and so great a blow to the Greeks was the loss of the
armor considered, that Vulcan formed for Achilles a new one, and
also a new shield. Homer's description of the latter piece of
marvelous workmanship--which is often referred to as a truthful
picture of the times, and especially of the advanced condition
of some of the arts and sciences in the Heroic, or post-Heroic,
age--is too long for insertion here entire; but we proceed to
give sufficient extracts from it to show at least the magnificent
conception of the poet.
How Vulcan Formed the Shield of Achilles.
He first a vast and massive buckler made;
There all the wonders of his work displayed,
With silver belt adorned, and triply wound,
Orb within orb, the border beaming round.
Five plates composed the shield; these Vulcan's art
Charged with his skilful mind each varied part.
There earth, there heaven appeared; there ocean flowed;
There the orbed moon and sun unwearied glowed;
There every star that gems the brow of night--
Ple'iads and Hy'ads, and O-ri'on's might;
The Bear, that, watchful in his ceaseless roll
Around the star whose light illumes the pole,
Still eyes Orion, nor e'er stoops to lave
His beams unconscious of the ocean wave.
There, by the god's creative power revealed,
Two stately cities filled with life the shield.
Here nuptials--solemn rites--and throngs of gay
Assembled guests; forth issuing filled the way.
Bright blazed the torches as they swept along
Through streets that rung with hymeneal song;
And while gay youths, swift circling round and round,
Danced to the pipe and harp's harmonious sound,
The women thronged, and wondering as they viewed,
Stood in each portal and the pomp pursued.
Next on the shield a forum met the view;
Two men, contending, there a concourse drew:
A citizen was slain; keen rose the strife--
'Twas compensation claim'd for loss of life.
This swore, the mulct for blood was strictly paid:
This, that the fine long due was yet delayed.
Both claim'd th' award and bade the laws decide;
And partial numbers, ranged on either side,
With eager clamors for decision call,
Till the feared heralds seat and silence all.
There the hoar elders, in their sacred place,
On seats of polished stone the circle grace;
Rise with a herald's sceptre, weigh the cause,
And speak in turn the sentence of the laws;
While, in the midst, for him to bear away
Who rightliest spoke, two golden talents lay.
The other city on the shield displayed
Two hosts that girt it, in bright mail arrayed;
Diverse their counsel: these to burn decide,
And those to seize, and all its wealth divide.
The town their summons scorned, resistance dared,
And secretly for ambush arms prepared.
Wife, grandsire, child, one soul alike in all,
Stand on the battlements and guard the wall.
Mars, Pallas, led their host: gold either god,
A golden radiance from their armor flowed.
Next, described as displayed on the shield, is a picture of spies
at a distance, an ambuscade, and a battle; the scene then changes
to ploughing and sowing, and the incidents connected with the
gathering of a bountiful harvest; then are introduced a vineyard,
the gathering of the grapes, and a merrymaking by the youths at
the close of the day; then we have a wild outlying scene of
herdsmen with their cattle, the latter attacked by two famished
lions, and the tumult that followed. The description closes as
follows:
Now the god's changeful artifice displayed
Fair flocks at pasture in a lovely glade;
And folds and sheltering stalls peeped up between,
And shepherd-huts diversified the scene.
Now on the shield a choir appear'd to move,
Whose flying feet the tuneful labyrinth wove;
Youths and fair girls there, hand in hand, advanced,
Timed to the song their steps, and gayly danced.
Round every maid light robes of linen flowed;
Round every youth a glossy tunic glowed;
Those wreathed with flowers, while from their partners hung
Swords that, all gold, from belts of silver swung.
Train'd by nice art each flexile limb to wind,
Their twinkling feet the measured maze entwined,
Fleet as the wheel whose use the potter tries,
When, twirl'd beneath his hand, its axle flies.
Now all at once their graceful ranks combine,
Each rang'd against the other, line with line.
The crowd flock'd round, and, wondering as they view'd,
Thro' every change the varying dance pursued;
The while two tumblers, as they led the song,
Turned in the midst and rolled themselves along.
Then, last, the god the force of Ocean bound,
And poured its waves the buckler's orb around.
--B. XVIII. SOTHEBY'S Trans.
Achilles Engages in the Fight.
Desire to avenge the death of Patroclus proves more powerful
in the breast of Achilles than anger against Agamemnon, and,
clad in his new armor, he is with difficulty restrained from
rushing alone into the fight while his comrades are resting.
Turning and addressing his horses, he reproaches them with the
death of Patroclus. One of them is represented as being
Miraculously endowed with voice, and, replying to Achilles,
prophesies his death in the near future; but, with unabated rage,
the intrepid chief replies:
"So let it be!
Portents and prodigies are lost on me.
I know my fate: to die, to see no more
My much-loved parents and my native shore.
Enough--when Heaven ordains I sink in night.
Now perish Troy!" he said, and rushed to fight.
Jupiter now assembles the gods in council, and permits them to
assist either party. The poet vividly describes the terrors of
the combat and the tumult that arose when "the powers descending
swelled the fight." Achilles first encounters Æne'as, who is
preserved by Neptune; he then meets Hector, whom he is on the
point of killing, when Apollo rescues him and carries him away
in a cloud. The Trojans, defeated with terrible slaughter, are
driven into the river Scamander, where Achilles receives the aid
of Neptune and Pallas.
This Death of Hector.
Vulcan having dried up the Scamander in aid of the Trojans, all
those who survive, save Hector, seek refuge in Troy. This hero
alone remains without the walls to oppose Achilles. At the
latter's advance, however, Hector's resolution and courage fail
him, and he flees, pursued by Achilles three times around the
city; At length he turns upon his pursuer, determined to meet
his fate; and the account of the meeting and contest with Achilles,
as translated by BRYANT, is as follows:
He spake, and drew the keen-edged sword that hung,
Massive and finely tempered, at his side,
And sprang--as when an eagle high in heaven
Through the thick cloud darts downward to the plain,
To clutch some tender lamb or timid hare.
So Hector, brandishing that keen-edged sword,
Sprang forward, while Achilles opposite
Leaped toward him, all on fire with savage hate,
And holding his bright buckler, nobly wrought,
Before him. As in the still hours of night
Hesper goes forth among the host of stars,
The fairest light of heaven, so brightly shone,
Brandished in the right hand of Pe'leus' son,
The spear's keen blade, as, confident to slay
The noble Hector, o'er his glorious form
His quick eye ran, exploring where to plant
The surest wound. The glittering mail of brass
Won from the slain Patroclus guarded well
Each part, save only where the collar-bones
Divide the shoulder from the neck, and there
Appeared the throat, the spot where life is most
In peril. Through that part the noble son
Of Peleus drave his spear; it went quite through
The tender neck, and yet the brazen blade
Cleft not the windpipe, and the power to speak
Remained.
And then the crested Hector faintly said:
"I pray thee, by thy life, and by thy knees,
And by thy parents, suffer not the dogs
To tear me at the galleys of the Greeks.
Accept abundant store of brass and gold,
Which gladly will my father and the queen,
My mother, give in ransom. Send to them
My body, that the warriors and the dames
Of Troy may light for me the funeral pile."
The swift Achilles answered, with a frown:
"Nay, by my knees entreat me not, thou cur,
Nor by my parents. I could even wish
My fury prompted me to cut thy flesh
In fragments and devour it, such the wrong
That I have had from thee. There will be none
To drive away the dogs about thy head,
Not though thy Trojan friends should bring to me
Tenfold and twentyfold the offered gifts,
And promise others--not though Priam, sprung
From Dar'danus, should send thy weight in gold.
Thy mother shall not lay thee on thy bier,
To sorrow over thee whom she brought forth;
But dogs and birds of prey shall mangle thee."
And then the crested Hector, dying, said:
"I know thee, and too clearly I foresaw
I should not move thee, for thou hast a heart
Of iron. Yet reflect that for my sake
The anger of the gods may fall on thee
When Paris and Apollo strike thee down,
Strong as thou art, before the Scæ'an gates."
Thus Hector spake, and straightway o'er him closed
The light of death; the soul forsook his limbs,
And flew to Hades, grieving for its fate,
So soon divorced from youth and youthful might.
The great achievement of Achilles was followed by funeral games
in honor of Patroclus, and by the institution of various other
festivities. At their close Jupiter sends The'tis to Achilles to
influence him to restore the dead body of Hector to his family,
and sends Iris to Priam to encourage him to go in person to treat
for it. Priam thereupon sets out upon his journey, and, having
arrived at the camp of Achilles, thus appeals to his compassion:
Priam Begging for the Body of Hector.
"Think, O Achilles, semblance of the gods,
On thine own father, full of days like me,
And trembling on the gloomy verge of life.
Some neighbor chief, it may be, even now
Oppresses him, and there is none at hand,
No friend, to succor him in his distress.
Yet, doubtless, hearing that Achilles lives,
He still rejoices, hoping day by day
That one day he shall see the face again
Of his own son, from distant Troy returned.
But me no comfort cheers, whose bravest sons,
So late the flowers of Ilium, are all slain.
"When, Greece came hither I had fifty sons;
But fiery Mars hath thinned them. One I had--
One, more than all my sons, the strength of Troy,
Whom, standing for his country, thou hast slain--
Hector. His body to redeem I come
Into Achaia's fleet, bringing, myself,
Ransom inestimable to thy tent.
Rev'rence the gods, Achilles! recollect
Thy father; for his sake compassion show
To me, more pitiable still, who draw
Home to my lips (humiliation yet
Unseen on earth) his hand who slew my son!"
--COWPER'S Trans.
Achilles, moved with compassion, granted the request of the
grief-stricken father, and sent him home with the body of his
son. First to the corse the weeping Androm'ache flew, and thus
spoke:
Lamentation of Andromache.
"And oh, my Hector! Oh, my lord! (she cries)
Snatched in thy bloom from these desiring eyes!
Thou to the dismal realms forever gone!
And I abandoned, desolate, alone!
An only son, once comfort of our pains,
Sad product now of hapless love, remains!
Never to manly age that son shall rise,
Or with increasing graces glad my eyes;
For Ilion now (her great defender slain)
Shall sink a smoking ruin on the plain.
"Who now protects her wives with guardian care?
Who saves her infants from the rage of war?
Now hostile fleets must waft those infants o'er
(Those wives must wait them) to a foreign shore:
Thou too, my son, to barbarous climes shalt go,
The sad companion of thy mother's woe;
Or else some Greek whose father pressed the plain,
Or son, or brother, by great Hector slain,
In Hector's blood his vengeance shall enjoy,
And hurl thee headlong from the towers of Troy."
[Footnote: Such was the fate of Astyanax, Hector's
son, when Troy was taken:
"Here, from the tower by stem Ulysses thrown,
Andromache bewailed her infant son."
--MERRICK'S Tryphiodo'rus.]
The death of Hector was also lamented by Helen, and her
lamentation is thus spoken of by COLERIDGE: "I have always
thought the following speech, in which Helen laments Hector, and
hints at her own invidious and unprotected situation in Troy, as
almost the sweetest passage in the poem. It is another striking
instance of that refinement of feeling and softness of tone which
so generally distinguish the last book of the Iliad from the rest."
Helen's Lamentation.
"Ah, dearest friend! in whom the gods had joined
The mildest manners with the bravest mind,
Now twice ten years (unhappy years) are o'er
Since Paris brought me to the Trojan shore;
(Oh, had I perished ere that form divine
Seduced this soft, this easy heart of mine!)
Yet was it ne'er my fate from thee to find
A deed ungentle, or a word unkind:
When others cursed the authoress of their woe,
Thy pity checked my sorrows in their flow:
If some proud brother eyed me with disdain,
Or scornful sister, with her sweeping train,
Thy gentle accents softened all my pain.
For thee I mourn; and mourn myself in thee,
The wretched source of all this misery.
The fate I caused forever I bemoan;
Sad Helen has no friend, now thou art gone!
Through Troy's wide streets abandoned shall I roam!
In Troy deserted, as abhorred at home!"
--POPE'S Trans.
THE FATE OF TROY.
Homer's Iliad ends with the burial of Hector, and gives no
account of the result of the war and the fate of the chief actors
in the conflict. But in VIRGIL'S Æne'id, which gives an account
of the escape of Æne'as, from the flames of Troy, and of his
wanderings until he reaches the shores of Italy, the way in which
Troy is taken, soon after the death of Hector, is told by Æneas
to Dido, the Queen of Carthage. By the advice of Ulysses a huge
wooden horse was constructed in the Greek camp, in which he and
other Grecian warriors concealed themselves, while the remainder
burned their tents and sailed away to the island of Ten'edos,
behind which they secreted their vessels. Æneas begins his account
as follows:
"By destiny compelled, and in despair,
The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war,
And by Minerva's aid a fabric reared
Which like a steed of monstrous height appeared.
The sides were planked with pine: they feigned it made
For their return, and this the vow they paid.
Thus they pretend, but in the hollow side
Selected numbers of their soldiers hide;
With inward arms the dire machine they load,
And iron bowels stuff the dark abode.
"In sight of Troy lies Tenedos, an isle
(While Fortune did on Priam's empire smile)
Renowned for wealth; but since, a faithless bay,
Where ships exposed to wind and weather lay.
There was their fleet concealed. We thought for Greece
Their sails were hoisted, and our fears release.
The Trojans, cooped within their walls so long,
Unbar their gates, and issue in a throng,
Like swarming bees, and with delight survey
The camp deserted where the Grecians lay.
The quarters of the sev'ral chiefs they showed--
Here Phoenix, here Achilles, made abode;
Here joined the battles; there the navy rode.
"Part on the pile their wond'ring eyes employ--
The pile by Pallas raised to ruin Troy.
Thymoe'tes first ('tis doubtful whether hired,
Or so the Trojan destiny required)
Moved that the ramparts might be broken down
To lodge the monster fabric in the town.
But Ca'pys, and the rest of sounder mind,
The fatal present to the flames designed,
Or to the wat'ry deep; at least to bore
The hollow sides, and hidden frauds explore.
"The giddy vulgar, as their fancies guide,
With noise say nothing, and in parts divide.
La-oc'o-on, followed by a num'rous crowd,
Ran from the fort, and cried, from far, aloud:
'O wretched countrymen! what fury reigns?
What more than madness has possessed your brains?
Think you the Grecians from your coasts are gone?
And are Ulysses' arts no better known?
This hollow fabric either must enclose,
Within its blind recess, our hidden foes;
Or 'tis an engine raised above the town
T' o'erlook the walls, and then to batter down.
Somewhat is sure designed by fraud or force--
Trust not their presents, nor admit the horse.'
"Thus having said, against the steed he threw
His forceful spear, which, hissing as it flew,
Pierced through the yielding planks of jointed wood,
And trembling in the hollow belly stood.
The sides, transpierced, return a rattling sound,
And groans of Greeks enclosed came issuing through the wound;
And, had not Heaven the fall of Troy designed,
Or had not men been fated to be blind,
Enough was said and done t' inspire a better mind.
Then had our lances pierced the treacherous wood,
And Ilion's towers and Priam's empire stood."
Deceived by the treachery of Sinon, a captive Greek, who represents
that the wooden horse was built and dedicated to Minerva to secure
the aid that the goddess had hitherto refused the Greeks, and
that, if it were admitted within the walls of Troy, the Grecian
hopes would be forever lost, the infatuated Trojans break down
a portion of the city's wall, and, drawing in the horse, give
themselves up to festivity and rejoicing. Æneas continues the
story as follows:
"W
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/6841