Before we try to discover from their literature the feelings of the Greeks for the mountains, we should first trace clearly the origin of our own attitude towards high places.

Nature-worship is a reaction from the life of crowded communities; contrast and change are the essentials of rest. It is only for those whose life is passed in great cities fully to appreciate the mountains; in their own country the hills have no honour, for where men make their living they cannot appreciate life. But we are so much accustomed to accept as absolute our personal standard of beauty, made up of all those things which seem to us beautiful on account of their contrast to our ordinary surroundings, that it is hard to realise the fact that all expressions of beauty depend upon individual perception, and are therefore relative. A converse often illuminates the less obvious side of a question, and the converse of our love for the mountains is strikingly shown by Sir Leslie Stephen, who records that a highly intelligent Swiss guide pronounced the dreary expanse of chimney-pots round the South-Western Railway finer than the view from the top of Mont Blanc. It was a contrast to his ordinary life, and therefore, for him, beautiful. For to the guide, qua guide, a mountain is not a form of the Idea of Beauty, but a problem in higher mathematics, each possible route an indeterminate equation in terms of glacier, rock, ice, and snow; and the great guide is he who can solve most truly in theory and in practice the daily variations of these and other unknown quantities. A mountain to him may be like a great book made odious by being set as a holiday task.

But the guide is hardly a fair example, since he is the product of an artificial demand: let us take, as a less extreme case, the more primitive inhabitants of a mountainous land, whose living comes from the land itself, not indirectly from the great cities through services rendered to their holiday-makers. The peasants of such a country must work the land for their living, not look at it; life comes before Æstheticism, and the artistic temperament is an inadequate remedy for an empty stomach. To such men the mountains do not represent beauty and strength and freedom, but an amazing waste of the surface of the earth, useless deserts, from which every acre of lowland and slope must be redeemed for crops and vineyards.

It was in this light that the Greeks saw their mountains. In their eyes they compared very unfavourably with their great natural rival, the sea. It is true that the sea was mildly reproved by the epithet ?t???et?? for producing no crops, but it made amends, being the good-natured Mediterranean, by helping to transport the produce of other lands, while the mountains were a positive obstacle to commerce.

We may note that in Il. i. 156:—

the mountains and the sea are both alike mentioned as barriers between people and people, although it may be questioned whether the idea is more definite than that of distance, to which the epithet s???e?ta is more appropriate. In this case the mountains are introduced merely to give a concrete horizon to the idea of remoteness conveyed by ??a p???? and s???e?ta.

The sea was commonly regarded by the Greeks as a tie between land and land, the mountains as a barrier. So they damned the mountains with faint praise of their timber, their hunting grounds, and, most unkindest cut, the wider view of the sea from their cliffs. There was no one to tell the primitive Greeks that from the hated mountains, by streams and melting snows, came the very meadows in which they delighted, that the richness of their ideal pasture-lands of Thessaly was produced, not in spite of, but actually by the mountains round. So they continued to regard them as heaps of waste, and it was this view which was primarily responsible for the reticence about the mountains with which we meet in Greek literature. In all the Odyssey there are hardly twenty lines descriptive of the mountains. In one of the most beautiful lines of Homer:—

the picture is of the island, not of its mountains; they are mentioned, but merely because a low-lying island is not visible in ‘misty’ distance.

The first use of the mountains in simile is to represent big, ugly people: of the Cyclops,

and of the queen of the LÆstrygones,

For the most part, the mountains are treated with contemptuous indifference. It is evident that, as a place of outlook over low-lying scenery or the sea, a height of some sort is necessary, and where such an outlook is mentioned by Homer he does not grudge it an epithet; but in such a passage as the following the hill is nothing, the view from it all-important:—

There is only one passage in Homer in which one mountain is seen from another. Poseidon is watching the battle before Troy from the highest crest of wooded Samothrace:—

If we analyse our own pleasure in the ascent of a mountain, giving due importance to the view of other peaks from it, we shall realise how significant it is that this reference is unique in Homer.

Of rock-climbers Homer had a very poor opinion: he would be a very bold man now who would say of any rock peak in the world:—

Baedeker himself could not more vehemently warn of a novice from a dangerous face; but there was little chance that the climb in question would ever become ‘an easy day for a lady,’ as it led past the cave of Scylla, whose six heads would have required a toll likely to leave an appreciable gap in the largest party.

Once only in the Iliad a rock is chosen as a type of steadfastness:—

But to the Greeks rocky cliffs appeared as a rule pitiless, inhuman, and heartless, rather than steadfast in a good sense, as above. We may notice the famous passage in which Patroclus rebukes Achilles for his hardness of heart:—

If Homer is disappointing, Hesiod is far more so. If anywhere in Greek literature we should expect some recognition of the grandeur of the mountains, it is undoubtedly in descriptions of their birth. A poet could hardly hope to find a more Titanic subject than that mighty travailing of the Earth; but this is all Hesiod finds to say:—

‘Long’ of all mountain epithets! ‘Graceful’ is insult added to injury! We must suppose that Hesiod would have preferred Amicombe Hill to Great Mis Tor, the curves of the Downs to the towers of the Dolomites.

It is not surprising that the Nymphs should have stuck in the throat of certain commentators, who propose to expunge the second line. Certainly a real mountain is the least suitable habitation for a Nymph, and it is a pity that no artistic member of the Alpine Club could have been present to astonish Hesiod with a lightning sketch of large troups of Nymphs—in the days when Jaeger was unknown, and furs still clothed their natural owners—shivering like angels on the needle-point of the Charmoz or on the more appropriate summit of the Jungfrau. There is one possible explanation, hinted at in the Clouds of Aristophanes, namely, that the Oceanids were identified with clouds; but this is probably a later rationalist theory, which would have astonished the early poets themselves.

There is not one line in Hesiod which shows a real appreciation of the mountains: some few allusions to Olympus are the nearest approach to enthusiasm, but the seat of the gods also proves a broken reed to those who would portray the Greeks as mountain-lovers. It was necessary that the gods should be able to look down on the earth, yet the anthropomorphic tendencies of the age subjected them to the same disadvantage as modern aviators, namely, inability to remain motionless in the air. It therefore became necessary for them to take possession of the highest fixed support, Olympus.

Olympus is a real mountain, but for the benefit of its divine tenants, more especially perhaps of the goddesses, the poets idealised it almost out of recognition. We have Homer’s description of the summit:—

This process of describing an ideal and then locating it in a definite accessible spot has many parallels, though few in which access and its consequent disillusionment were so easy; we may compare Atlantis, Avernus, King Arthur’s Cave on Lliwedd, and the superstition which was not uncommon a few years ago, that a subtropical Paradise would be found beyond the outer ice of the Arctic Circle.

Another passage, quoted from Lucian in a paper by Mr. Douglas Freshfield, on ‘Mountains and Mankind,’28 as showing that the Greeks loved their mountains, is not altogether convincing: Hermes takes Charon, when he has a day out from Hell, to the twin-crested summit, and shows him the panorama of land and sea, of rivers and famous cities. The first impulse is to reject this allusion as proving, not Lucian’s love for the mountains, but his excellent taste in contrast, for the holiday of the dweller below the earth should rightly be spent in its high places. This is true as far as it goes, but apart from the personal tastes of Lucian, to which we have no more guide in his works than to those of Shakespeare or any other true dramatist, we must admit that he here gives us the nearest parallel to those conditions from which we escape to the contrast of the mountains. London duties, it is true, compare favourably with those of Charon, but our reward in escaping from them is greater, just in so far as the Alps are greater than Parnassus. The principle and the scale of contrast are the same: this passage would therefore seem to be nearer akin to our modern mountain-worship than might at first appear. But here again it may be claimed that the mountain is not made of much account except as the means of obtaining a wider view of the more fashionable beauties of nature.

Professor Palgrave asserts that the dramatists seldom show appreciation of scenery, but we must add to his exceptions Euripides’ description of the sunrise glow on the mountains:—

An excellent test of the impression made on the Greek mind by any class of natural phenomenon is to observe to what extent representatives of that class have been personified; if we apply this test to the case of the mountains, we shall be amazed at the Greek disregard for them. When in the case of so abstract a conception as that of time we find personification, not only of the idea as a whole, but also of its sub-divisions (??a?), we may naturally expect, not only a great Personal representative of mountains in general, as Poseidon represented the sea, but also particular personifications of great peaks or ranges, which in our eyes have at least as marked an individuality as rivers or winds.

Yet, with the single exception of Atlas, no mountain in Greek literature has been represented as an animate being. It is possible that Tennyson had some precedent for his ‘Mother’ Ida; ?t??a ?????30 is the Homeric phrase. Certainly a close connection exists between Taÿgetus and Taÿgete, daughter of Atlas, and there is some suggestion of malevolent personality in the inhospitable behaviour of the ‘Wandering Rocks.’ But these are ill-defined and isolated instances, which, even if numbered by scores, instead of by scattered units, would not materially affect the argument.

About Atlas we have many different stories. In the earliest account he is one of the older family of gods, father of Calypso, ????f???,31 wizard Atlas, knowing the depths of every sea; and to him are entrusted the pillars which keep heaven and earth apart.

According to Hesiod, he was the son of the Titan Iapetus, and brother of Menoetius, Prometheus, and Epimetheus, all of whom incurred the anger of Zeus—Prometheus and Menoetius for active hostility to him, Epimetheus and Atlas apparently for no more personal reason than that their father was one of the hated Titans: for this offence Atlas was punished by the task of holding up the whole weight of heaven on his shoulders. It does not seem to have occurred to the early writers that the extreme edge of an inverted hemisphere is a most unsymmetrical position for the sole supporter of its weight.

The mountain, Atlas, was evidently the Peak of Teneriffe,32 of which the Phoenicians may well have brought a description to Greece. It was afterwards supposed to be in North Africa, and in consequence dwindled to a comparatively insignificant range containing no conspicuous peak. The Titanid and the mountain were ingeniously connected in later times by the introduction of Perseus with the head of Medusa, which he showed to Atlas at his own request, thus turning him to stone.

A variation of this story marks an intermediate stage towards the rationalisation of the myth: in it Atlas is represented as a king who refuses to show hospitality to Perseus on account of a prophecy of danger to himself from a son of Zeus; he is turned into stone by the same means, but as a punishment for his churlishness.

The completely rationalised version represents him as a king in the far West, skilled in astronomy, and the inventor of the globe. This story may have had its origin in Homer’s ‘wizard’ Atlas, and was probably connected with the far older myths of Atlantis and the Garden of the Hesperides.

It is evident that we have to thank the Phoenicians for bringing one great mountain so prominently before the Greeks that alone of all mountains in their literature it is endued with personality. But it is lamentable to observe how the affairs of Atlas, once released from Phoenician control, descend into the bourgeois rut of semi-divine nonentity. He proceeded to marry a nymph, who bore him seven other nymphs, of whom Maia, mother of Hermes, is alone conspicuous. These nymphs lived together on Mount Cyllene until forced to fly from Orion, whom they escaped by the conventional stage-device of metamorphosis, becoming first doves (pe?e?ade?) and then the constellation of the Pleiades.

Mr. Bury33 traces a connection between the epithet ??e??? as applied to the Pleiades and the name ?a????, translating

by ‘It is meet that the rising of the Mountain Hunter should not be far from the Mountain Pleiades.’ This would be unique among Greek references to the mountains if the remotest etymological connection could be traced between ?a???? and ????; but this is rather a B in ‘Both’ derivation, and it may be mentioned for what it is worth that the name Orion is otherwise explained for us by Ovid.34

One alone of the Pleiad nymphs is justified, to a follower of Mr. Bury, in her mountain abode. If we accept ??????? as a personification of ????,35 we must certainly allow her to enthrone herself on the highest peaks of the ancient world, provided, of course, that she was not so presumptuous as to sit on her father.

It is clear, therefore, that the Greeks owed the introduction of the mountain into the Titan story to the Phoenicians’ description of Teneriffe, and that they elaborated the myth with very little regard for geography and none at all for consistency. In spite of Mr. Bury’s gallant salvage work, we must confess that the mountain element is lost from the story as soon as it is left in the hands of the Greeks, who treat it as a hen treats the duckling she has hatched: an adaptable duckling, for as a metamorphosis story it has made a very good chicken, though in the process it shames its proper parents.

In Theocritus we find an exception to the absence of mountain personification in Menalkas’ ??t?a, ?te? ?a,36 but it stands alone: the Cyclops, who was quite as much the child of Ætna, seems to regard the mountain merely as an ice-box providing him with cool water:—

It would be hard, in speaking of the snows of a mountain, to find a less appropriate epithet than p???d??d?e??.

There is little else in Theocritus about the mountains except that Daphnis

If we compare Pindar’s descriptions of the mountains with those of any other Greek poet, it is not hard to make ourselves believe that he knew something of their secrets. But as soon as we set these passages side by side with the rest of his own work, we see them sink back into insignificance. He wrote four or five great mountain lines, but for each of these he wrote ten for the valleys, fifty for the stars, a hundred for the sea.

Still, we cannot often find a mountain honoured in Greek with such an epithet as ????d??,39 usually applied to Zeus alone; and Pindar also makes the first mention of the ‘age’ of the hills:—

It is not clear why a hill should in general be considered older than a plain: they are said to have emerged from the Deluge within quite a short time of each other. But it would be pedantic to summon scientists and insist on accuracy at the cost of such hoary phrases as ‘the eternal hills,’ which are still the delight of those pessimists who habitually allude to mankind as ?f????de?.

Among Pindar’s descriptive phrases we may notice ????? ?s?a?, of the headland of Caria. The word, to a Greek, could not but suggest its naval use, the ‘prow’ of Asia riding unmoved upon the waves.

Actual references to mountaineering are so rare that we are tempted to find an exception in

by supposing it to be the only surviving record of a first ascent by the Theban Heracles, who claimed in consequence the right to name the summit ascended. Paley would add to the dangers and credit of the expedition by finding in ‘???et? p???? ??f?d?’ ‘a curious and noteworthy tradition of a glacial or post-glacial period!’

But all other mountain scenes in Pindar, whether adorned with glaciers or not, pale before the description of the eruption of Ætna:—

We need not enjoy this description any the less for feeling that Pindar is not thinking of Ætna the mountain, nor even of Ætna the volcano, but only of the eruption, which is not in his eyes an eruption of Ætna but of the monstrous breath of Typhoeus. The mountain is dismissed with little more than the usual trite epithets—???? ???a??a, ??f??ssa, p??ete? ?????? ??e?a? t????a,43 of which the last phrase conveys an even more false suggestion than the similar ?????t??f?? ???a????.44

Although references to the mountains are even more rare in drama, this particular eruption is ‘foretold’ by Prometheus:—

Here Ætna has neither part nor lot in the eruption: Typhoeus is made responsible for the whole, in spite of the fact that he has already been reduced to ashes.

The mountains which form the setting of the Prometheus Vinctus are regarded solely as a bleak, inhospitable, and, above all, inhuman, background for the sufferings of the Titan. It is amazing to us that when he is left alone and calls upon the forms of nature around, only the mountains have no place in the circle of silent witnesses to whom he cries:—

The rushing of winged winds, the sources of the rivers, the multitudinous laughter of the distant sea, Earth, the Mother of All, and the all-seeing orb of the Sun—all these are to look upon his torments; but the mountains are degraded by their omission below the very springs which rise upon them.

It may be suggested, as an explanation, that motion formed an essential part of the Greek idea of beauty; for motion is the outward and visible sign of life. We may observe that the words d??? a???? make the air for a moment the medium of thought, expressed in which ‘wind’ is the pure and abstract idea of motion.

Prometheus, then, calls for sympathy there alone where motion (or, in the case of Earth, motherhood) gives promise of life and sympathy.

It is interesting, in view of the fact that brightness was also an element in the Greek conception of beauty, to notice that no phase of the sea so combines these two qualities of brightness and motion as its ‘multitudinous laughter.’ The path of gold of the rising sun may be brighter, a storm more swift in motion, but the perfect combination of the two ideals is here described.

It is natural that brightness or light should be held in such honour, but it is more surprising that beauty should be associated with motion in many cases in which the connection seems to us extremely remote.

The winds are the most conspicuous case of this: the Greeks personified more winds than they could name points of the compass, and Greek poetry is almost as full of the winds as of the sea.

This is especially marked in the Iliad, where anything which shows the movement of the wind, whether snow, the sea, a cornfield, mist, or clouds, is described again and again, while still air is only mentioned in a few scattered passages.

In one of these snow is described falling through a calm46 to represent the same showers of stones which had just been compared to snow driven by a tempest; so it is evident that no importance attaches to the calmness, but both passages convey the sense of motion, though in a slightly different degree.

In another very remarkable passage Homer makes use of stationary clouds round a mountain-top as a type of steadfastness:—

But for the most part the mists and the clouds, and even the sea, must be stirred to motion by the wind before they are considered worthy of a Greek poet’s attention.

The allusions to the wind-stirred sea are innumerable; the eddies of war are often compared to a whirlwind; the misty clouds are broken apart by the wind to reveal, now the dark waves of the sea, now the black peaks of a mountain:—

But here the unmoved rock is merely a background of darkness, in contrast to the light of the clouds, as in the Prometheus it is a background of stillness to the motion of the drama.

We have also, in the theory that motion was essentially connected with the ancient ideal of beauty, some explanation of the fact that rounded heights, clothed with leafy woods where the wind could

seemed more beautiful to the Greeks than scarps of naked rock; and it is natural that the poets of such an ideal, superficial though it may seem to us, should pass by the silent majesty of Ætna with careless customary epithets until the fires within burst their bounds and poured ostentatiously to the sea in ‘eddies of blood-red flame.’

It would seem that the Greeks felt fear and awe alone of the great mountains, as was natural; for they had no intimate knowledge of them, nor ever sought in the mountains the emotions reserved for those who match their strength against the great forces of nature. These sensations, in the Greek, were inspired by the sea. But for us the spell of the mountains has grown stronger than that of the waves, for the days are gone in which the sea alone was the home of peril and mystery. We follow the spirit of the Greeks, not the letter of their song; for though they sang of the sea, it was of her freedom and strength, of her secrets and dangers, and of these much has passed from her. Though we may still cross the seas on which the Argo sailed, the greater part of their romance is dead, and the Admiralty charts are its epitaph. Scylla and Charybdis are mapped; there is, for the vandal to read, a latitude and a longitude of Tyre.

We have still with us the seas of romance, of the Sagas, of the Odyssey, of the Ancient Mariner; we may still look from

But these are armchair adventures, fireside voyages: these we must share with the cripple and the old. We who are young may find in the mountains new worlds of adventure and romance of which the Greeks knew nothing; but though the beauties, the perils, the rewards are changed, the spirit is the same. No sea hero of the Greeks would be long a stranger among mountaineers: where now but in the mountains should Odysseus wander, p???t?a?, p????t??, first in every quest of perilous glory, crowning the hopes of long years of wanderers?

Our mountain-worship is then no new creed, nor artificial dogma, but a new epiphany of the spirit of Hellas; and the spirit will be the same, even though the men of later ages find their romance beneath the seas whereon the Greeks sought it, or above the mountains in which our quest is set.