The early inhabitants of Greece, and of the islands in the beautiful Ægean, were an active race, sprightly, and highly imaginative. Though, as yet, uncultured and unaided, their vivid conceptions of things natural and supernatural, visible and invisible, found expression in legends that embodied their often crude ideas. After some progress in civilization, and the introduction of letters, these were perfected and embellished by men of poetic genius, to whom we are indebted for many a charming story. Are these stories true? Perhaps not, yet they are true types of the intelligence and thought of the men of that age and country.

Much is unreal. But, if to us with the diviner light, after centuries of progress, and habits of thought so different, some things appear childish, and others inexplicable if not absurdly false, we will not hastily condemn what we fail to understand. Modern writers have done much to remove from our common heritage of mythical tradition what seemed repulsive in it; while they preserve for us the exquisite poetry that breathes especially in Homeric lines, and will survive the most destructive criticism.

COSMOGONY.

The facts and problems of the visible universe have engaged the attention of thoughtful men in all ages. The outer sensuous world exists. Whence came it, and how? The early Greeks had, it seems, no idea of creation, or of an intelligent creator, yet felt bound to account to themselves for what they saw.

According to the most common account, the world, with all its solid, tangible things, was formed from chaos—and by chaos was meant, so far as appears, not a shapeless confused mass of things in any way objective to the senses, but merely space, a dark illimitable void wherein dwelt utter nothingness. As to how the world proceeded thence, there was little agreement. The most popular view is that, in some unaccountable manner, Gea (the earth) issued from the vast womb of chaos. The process once begun the development was surprisingly rapid. Tartarus, the abyss below, immediately severed itself. Eros (the love that forms and binds all things) sprung into existence. Gea then begot, of herself, Uranus (heaven), the mountains, and Pontus (the sea).

Their notions of the structure of the universe are a slight advance on their ideas of its origin. These give their coloring to many of their narratives.

“The Greek poets believed the earth to be flat and circular—their own country occupying the middle of it, the central point being either Mount Olympus, the abode of the gods, or Delphi, so famous for its oracle.” Those in the more remote parts, and having never seen the sacred mountain, supposed its summit quite in the heavens, and occupied by superior beings. Those who were nearer knew better, but fancied the gods, or immortals, often came down and frequented its grand solitudes, holding their councils, or having their pleasures apart from men.

The circular disc of the earth was crossed from east to west and divided into two equal parts by the “sea,” as they called the Mediterranean, and its continuation, the Euxine.

Around the earth flowed the “River Ocean,” its course being from south to north on the western, and in a contrary direction on the eastern side. It flowed in a steady, equable current, as was supposed, unvexed by storm or tempest. The sea and all the rivers on earth received their waters from it.

The northern portion of the earth they supposed inhabited by a happy race named Hyperboreans, dwelling in blissful bowers, and perpetual spring beyond the lofty mountains whose caverns were believed to send forth the piercing blasts of the north-wind, which chilled the people of Hellas (Greece). Their country was inaccessible by land or sea. They lived exempt from disease or old age, from toils and warfare. Moore has given us the “Song of a Hyperborean,” beginning—

On the south side of the earth, close to that fancied stream, or “River Ocean,” dwelt a people happy and virtuous as the Hyperboreans. They were named Æthiopians. The gods favored them highly, and at times left their Olympian abodes, going down to share their sacrifices and banquets.

On the western margin of the earth, fast by the “River Ocean,” spread out a beautiful plain named Elysiam, whither mortals, favored by the gods, were transported without tasting death, to enjoy an immortality of bliss. This happy region was also called by them “Fortunate Fields,” and “Isles of the Blessed.”

It will be borne in mind by the young reader of their fables, or legends, that the Greeks of the mythological period were an isolated people, knowing but little of geography, and nothing of any real people except those to the east and south of their own country, or near the coast of the Mediterranean.

The western portion of this sea, of unknown extent, their imagination peopled with giants and enchantresses, while around them, at unknown distances, and perhaps but remotely connected with their own earthly habitation, they placed communities enjoying the peculiar favor of the gods, having serene happiness and longevity—human, but akin to the immortals.

Of the heavens above them still less was yet known, though they studied astronomy, and noted how some bodies moved, while others were apparently stationary.

Probably they had some vague notion of life and volition in things that move, and when the sun and moon were said to rise from the ocean and drive through the air, giving light to gods and men, the language was, to them, scarcely metaphorical.

Knowing nothing of the revolution of the earth, the succession of days and nights was accounted for by supposing the sun-god to descend into the “River Ocean,” and embark in his winged boat, which carried him swiftly around the northern part of the earth, back to his place of rising in the east.

Milton, in his “Comus,” thus translates their philosophy on the subject:

THE GODS OF OLYMPUS.

Zeus (Jupiter) was the supreme god of both Greek and Roman mythology. In our English literature on the subject the Latin names occur more frequently, are more familiar, and are used without further explanation.

Before Homer wrote the “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” Jupiter had come to be regarded by the Greeks as the father of all gods and men, but he had not always that distinction. The earlier myths gave his descent, and according to some legends there was a time when Cronos, father of Jupiter, was supreme; but even he was not first in the order of the gods. The imaginary line of their descent stretched far back till lost in deepest mystery, but it led not to the Everlasting Self-existent One. According to Hesiod their highest gods were really earth born. The first beings were Chaos and Gea. The latter gave birth to Uranus—whence sprang a race of twelve Titans, six males—Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Japetus, and Cronus; six females—Thia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Thetis.

The interpretation of these divinities is difficult, but they doubtless represented some real or supposed elementary forces of nature.

The different stories respecting things, not known but imagined, were often at variance, nor need we attempt to harmonize them, as each district or city had its own version. From other sources it would be possible to construct a different genealogy, but that here given was somewhat generally accepted.

Ouranos, or Uranus, is the heaven which is spread like a vail over the earth, and was much the same to the Greeks as the old Hindu god Varuna, whose name has a verbal root meaning to vail or conceal.

Having attributed some kind of intelligence and personality to the vast expanse stretching itself overhead, they represent this sovereign, Ouranos, as hurling the Cyclops with Bronte, Sterope (thunder and lightning), and other children of Gea, into the abyss called Tartarus; and that Gea, in her grief and anger, urged her other children to insurrection against their father, and to set Cronos instead on his throne.

When Cronos (time) became king he is represented as so voracious and cruel that all his children were devoured soon after each was born. The basis of this legendary fact is evident, as time swallows up the days and weeks, months and years, as they come each in its order, and thus “bears all its sons away.”

These acts of Cronos, the reputed cannibal among such as interpret the fable literally, connect with the history of Jupiter. Rhea, his wife, and the mother of Jupiter, anxious to save her child, having already lost five, determined to save her next son from a cruel fate by stratagem. A stone was given to the husband, wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he swallowed without examination or suspicion, and the little Jupiter, thus rescued, was reared by the nymphs in a cave on Mount Diete, or Ida, in Crete. He was nourished on goat’s milk, and the bees brought him honey to eat. That the cries of the child might not betray his presence, and the mother’s strategy, the Curetes, or attendant priests of Rhea, drowned his voice by the clashing of their weapons.

Jupiter thus remained hidden till he speedily became a young, but very powerful god. He then attacked and overthrew his father Cronos, whom he also compelled by a device of Gea, to bring forth the children he had already devoured. Some of the Titans, as Oceanus, Themis, Mnemosyne, and Hyperion, at once submitted to the dominion of the new ruler of the world. The others refused allegiance. But after a contest of years Jupiter, with the help of the Cyclops and Centimani, overthrew them. As a punishment they were cast into Tartarus, which was then closed by Poseidon with brazen gates.

Thessaly, which bears evident traces of having suffered much from natural convulsions, was supposed to have been the scene of this mighty war.

Jupiter and his adherents fought from Olympus, the Titans from the opposite mountain of Othrys. Thenceforward the victor shared the empire of the world with his two brothers, Poseidon and Hades. The former he made ruler of the ocean and waters, the latter he set over the infernal regions. This new order of things, however, was by no means at once securely established. The resentment of Gea led her to produce a younger and most powerful son, the great Typhoeus, a monster with a hundred fire-breathing heads, whom she sent to attack the thunder-bearer. A great battle took place which shook heaven and earth, but Jupiter, by means of his crushing thunderbolts, at length overcame his antagonist, and cast him into Tartarus, or, according to others, buried him beneath Mount Ætna, in Sicily, whence at times he still breathes out fire and flames toward heaven.

“Some tell of another rebellion of the giants against the dominion of Jupiter. From the plains of Phlegra they sought to scale and storm Olympus, by piling, through their great strength, Pelion on Ossa; but after a bloody battle they too were overpowered, and shared the fate of the Titans. After that no hostile attack ever disturbed the peaceful ease of the inhabitants of Olympus.”

The character of the acknowledged chief of their deities, who is supposed against all opposition to control and rule the universe, is not drawn, in the earlier myths, as one of untarnished excellence. Yet the good predominates, and he is confessed a beneficent ruler. He was, in time, reverenced as Jupiter-pater, the source of all life in nature, and the almoner of abundant blessings for his obedient subjects and children. All the phenomena of the air were supposed to proceed from him. “He gathers and disperses the clouds, casts forth the lightnings, stirs up his thunder, sends down rain, hail, snow, and fertilizing dew upon the earth. With his Ægis he produces storm and tempest, and at his pleasure stills the warring elements.”

“The ancients, however, were not content to regard Jupiter as merely a personification of nature. They regarded him also from an ethical stand-point, from which side he appears far more important and awful. They saw in him a personification, so to speak, of that principle of undeviating order and harmony, which pervades both the physical and moral world. The strict, unalterable laws, by which he rules the community of the gods, form a strong contrast with the capricious commands of his father Cronos.”

Hence Jupiter is regarded as the protector and defender of political order. From him the kings of the earth receive their sovereignty and their rights; to him they are responsible for a conscientious fulfillment of their duties. Those of them who pervert justice he never fails to punish. He also presides over their assemblies, keeps watch over their orderly course, and suggests to them wise counsels.

One of the most important props of political society is the oath; and accordingly he watches over oaths, and punishes perjury.

He also watches over boundaries, and accompanies the youths of the land as they go out to defend the borders of their country, and gives them victory over the invaders. All civil and political communities enjoy his protection; but he watches particularly over that association which is the basis of the political fabric—the family.

The head of every household was, therefore, in a certain sense, the priest of Jupiter, and presented his offerings in the name of the family. As Jupiter hospitalis, he protects the wanderer, and punishes those who violate the ancient laws of hospitality by mercilessly turning the helpless stranger from their door.

The superstition of early times saw in all physical phenomena manifestations of the divine will, and this, their earliest and chief deity, was naturally regarded as the source of inspiration, revealing his will to men in the thunder, lightning, flight of birds, and dreams. He not only had his oracle at Dodona, which was the most ancient in Greece, but also revealed the future by the mouth of his favorite son, Apollo. In hours of real trouble and grief, Achilles and other Achaians prayed to Jupiter, not only as irresistible in might, but also as just and righteous.

Yet others, and possibly the same persons under other circumstances, and in different moods, represented him as partial, unjust, fond of pleasure, changeable in his affections, and unfaithful in his love.

Greater inconsistencies and contradictions in character can scarcely be conceived of. How such confused and contradictory notions could occupy the same mind, may seem inexplicable. The Greek name of their deity, a corporeal being, was used by men having many excellent qualities, to express all they thought of, or felt, toward God, the greatest and best, worthy to be trusted and worshiped, but anthropomorphic still, having human instincts and passions, in the essential elements of his exalted nature, “altogether like unto themselves.” Their ethical conceptions were marred by unconsciously projecting their common humanity into the field of view in which their god was contemplated.

But the name that became sacred also meant the physical heaven, the sky with its clouds and vapor, and all embracing atmosphere; and as the earth by a beautiful metaphor was spoken of as the bride of the sky, which was said to overshadow the earth with his love, in every land causing the birth of all things that live and grow, so this idea of production—its primary application forgotten by a people gross and sensual—transferred to a deity of human form and passions, grew up into strange stories of license, or unlawful love. It is by no means certain that the poets and moralists, or ethical writers accepted the grosser myths as true or expressive of their own conceptions. The probability is against it. For, while Hesiod, following the popular theology describes the descent of the gods, their earthly loves, intrigues and gross immoralities, yet he, at times, turns sharply away from all such things as loathsome, to “thoughts of that pure and holy Zeus (Jupiter), who looks down from heaven to see if men will do justice, love mercy, and seek after God.”

Some regard the conceded goodness of the supreme beings as sufficient reason for misbelieving all the stories that were to their discredit; or if the stories were credited they would disprove their supposed divinity.

Euripides said:

The great poets did not invent the myths, but found them the only embodiment of the crude theology that was current among the masses, perfected them by eliminating some of the grosser parts, and sought to use them in the cause of virtue and civilization.

Even those seeming most irrational, when traced to their primary source and analyzed, were found to have something of truth, and the glimmer of their light was welcomed where without it the darkness had been yet more profound.

Dr. Ziller in his lecture on the development of Monotheism in Greece says: “The great Greek poets were her first thinkers, her sages, as they were afterward called. They sang of Zeus (Jupiter), and exalted him as the defender of righteousness, the representation of moral order.

“Archilocus says that ‘Zeus weighs and measures all the actions of good and evil men, as well as those of animals.’ ‘He is,’ said Terpandros somewhat later, ‘the source and ruler of all things.’ According to Simonides, ‘the principle of all created things rests with him, and he rules the universe by his will.’”

Thus, as time went on, ideas of the divinity were elevated, and Zeus, whose parentage and birth are chronicled as after the manner of men, became, in the general conception, the personification of the world’s government, which was delivered from the fatality of destiny, and from the promptings of caprice.

Destiny, which according to the early mythical representation, it was impossible to escape, is resolved into the will of Zeus, and the other gods, which were at first supposed to be able to oppose him, became his faithful ministers. Such is the teaching of Solon and Epicharmos.

“Be assured that nothing escapes the eyes of the divinities. God watches over us, and to him nothing is impossible.” This impulse of the imaginative faculty combined with the process of reason is most plainly seen in the conceptions of the three great poets of the fifth century, Pindar, Æschylus, and Sophocles. In the words of Pindar: “All things depend on God alone; all which befalls mortals, whether it be good or evil fortune, is due to Zeus; he can draw light from darkness, and can vail the sweet light of day in obscurity. No human action escapes him; happiness is found only in the way which leads to him; virtue and wisdom flow from him alone.”

We need not multiply quotations to show that as the Greeks advanced in civilization the earlier barbaric notions were left for those more elevating, and though mostly polytheists till visited by Christian teachers, their theology, or what was believed respecting the divine beings, was more worthy of them and had in general an elevating influence on their character. Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Hermes, Athene, Poseidon, Hera, Hephaistus, Hestia, Demeter, Aphrodite and Jupiter himself formed the body which in the days of Thucydides was worshiped, and called “the twelve gods of Olympus.”

This ordering or classification is not recognized in the poems of Homer. Hesiod more particularly describes the manner of their birth and the attributes of the Olympic gods, and hence that poem is called a Theogony.

Having mentioned the chief, the others may be briefly noticed in their order. Phoebus Apollo was called Phoebus, as being the god of light; in Homeric phrase the “Far glancing Apollo”—the last name meaning, some say, destroyer, because his rays, when powerful, can destroy the life of animals and plants. At first the name meant the sun, but in later times he was regarded as the god of light who was not confined to his habitation in the sun. “He is called the son of Zeus, because the sun, like Athene, or the dawn, springs in the morning from the sky—and son of Leto because the night, as going before his rising, may be considered as mother of the sun.”

One legendary story of his birth runs as follows: Leto, distressed, wandered through many lands seeking in vain for a resting place. At last she came to Delos (the bright land), and said if she could there find shelter it should become glorious as the birthplace of Phoebus, and that men should come from all parts to enrich his temple with their gifts. Here, then, Phoebus was born; heaven was propitious and the floating Delos, a hard and stony land, was anchored and covered itself with verdure and golden flowers. The nymphs clothed him with a spotless robe, and when Themis fed him with nectar and ambrosia, the food of gods, hating all things impure, he was at once prepared to battle with and drive away the evil powers of darkness.

With his bright arrows he slew the giant Tityus, and the Python, a monster near Delphi, that destroyed both men and cattle.

These and similar myths respecting his matchless conquering power forcibly declare the influence of the sun’s rays in scattering the night and dark gloom of winter. But though Phoebus Apollo thus appears as the foe of all that is evil or impure, other myths represent him as a terrible god of death, sending pestilences and dealing out destruction to men and animals by means of the arrows he scatters abroad.

Remembering the natural significance of the name this is perfectly consistent with the genial influence attributed to him. The sun’s rays do indeed put to flight the darkness of night and the cold of winter, but their intense heat also causes disease and death.

This is beautifully portrayed in the fable of the death of Hyacinthus that will be given in the next number. His reputation as a god of health, all powerful to protect against physical maladies is not damaged, though, in exceptional cases, his rays smite and destroy. But the healing that he brings is not alone for the outward “ills that flesh is heir to.” Diseases of the mind he cures or mitigates. Sin and crime flee from the light, and troubled souls, that escape from guilt, find consolation.

Even those pursued by the Furies he sometimes receives with tenderness and pity—a fine instance of which is found in the oft told story of Orestes.

Much of his healing power connects with his character as god of music, and from the fact of its soothing, tranquilizing influence on the soul of man.

His favorite instrument was the lyre, on which he played with masterly skill at the banquets of the gods, while the Muses accompanied him with their wondrous strains. He was regarded as the leader of the Muses and all the great singers of antiquity, as Orpheus and Linus, are mythically represented as his sons.

Of his prophetic character, statues, temples, and worship we will speak hereafter.