It was an ancient hypothesis that the Gods are only deified men. A certain EuÊmeros suggested this. His favourite illustration was Zeus; that greatest of the Gods, he said, was a prehistoric king in Crete, as the Cretan legends about him proved. This theory has received a fresh life from the investigations of modern scholars. Historically, it seems to be largely true; psychologically, it explains nothing at all. All men have need of the Gods, says Homer; the religious instinct, that is the important thing, or rather (since the other is important too) that is the fundamental thing. It is also the prior thing, the spring of the religious act. If I want to know why primitive men make a god of one of their number, it seems no answer to assure me that they do so. Yet the historical inquiry has great interest too, and throws a dim and rather lurid light on the development of religion and religious thought. And I could not leave untouched an aspect of the old Greek life so vital as its belief about the gods without illustrating how here also the conflict of Greek and Barbarian worked itself out.

It is almost the other day that we rediscovered (Note123)the old Aegean religion—the immemorially ancient religion of the non-Greek peoples, the Barbarians, who lived about the Aegean Sea. It is now clear that the Hittites, the Phrygians, the ancient peoples of Anatolia generally, worshipped a kind of triad or trinity of Father, Son and Consort. Sometimes, as in the Hittite sculptures, the Father and the Son seem the important members of the group; sometimes, as in the Phrygian religion, the emphasis is chiefly on the Mother and Consort, and the Son. But the third member can always be discovered too, standing pretty obviously in the background. In prehistoric Crete (which, of course, became Greek in historical times) we again recognize the divine Three in the persons of those native divinities whom the Greeks learned to call Kronos, Rhea and Zeus. That is the skeleton of the old religion; the living flesh in which it was clothed was begotten in tribal custom. Primitive peoples fashion their gods after their own image. Their chief god they think of as a greater and more worshipful “king,” swayed by the passions, observing the etiquette, and wearing the regalia of their earthly rulers. Now the primitive king held his place by force or craft or the terror of his rages (his menos)—and by no other tenure. He lived in constant dread of the rival who, younger and stronger, would one day rise against him and seize his throne. The rival might be a stranger, but more frequently he was the king’s own son, who, for one thing, would be thought likely to inherit the magical virtue of his sire. Accordingly, when the Young King was born, the Old King would seek his life. But there he would be apt to meet the opposition of the Queen, (Note124)who would seek to convey the child to a safe retreat. Then, grown at last to manhood, suddenly the Prince would return to challenge the Old King to mortal combat. The Gods behave exactly like that.

The chief depositary in ancient Greece of popular beliefs about the Gods is the curious poem attributed to Hesiod, called the Theogony. Along with certain parts of Homer, it formed what might be called the handbook of orthodoxy, and it tells us with an incomparable authoritativeness what the sacred tradition was. Eldest of all, says the Theogony, was Gaia or Mother Earth, a goddess. Now she bare first starry Ouranos, equal to herself, that he might cover her on every side ... and afterward she lay with him, and bare the deep coil of Okeanos, and Koios, and Krios, and HyperÎon, and Iapetos, and Thea, and Rhea, and Themis, and Mnemosyne, and Phoibe with the gold upon her head, and lovely Tethys. And, after these, youngest was born Kronos the Crooked-Thinker, most dangerous of her sons, who loathed his lusty begetter. There is a fuller account in another place. Next, of Gaia and Ouranos were born three sons, huge and violent, ill to name, Kottos and Briareos and Gyes, the haughty ones. From their shoulders swang an hundred arms invincible, and on their shoulders, upon their rude bodies, grew heads a fifty upon each; irresistible strength crowned the giant forms. Of all the children of Gaia and Ouranos most to be feared were these, and they were hated of their Sire from the first; yea, soon as one was born, he would not let them into the light, but would hide them all away in a hiding-place of Earth, and Ouranos gloried in the bad work. And, being straitened, huge Gaia groaned inwardly; and she thought of a cruel device. Hastily she created the grey flint, and of it fashioned a mighty Sickle, and expounded her thought to her Sons, speaking burning words from an anguished heart. “Sons of me and of an unrighteous Father, if ye will hearken to me, on your Father ye may take vengeance for his sinful outrage, for it was He began the devising of shameful deeds!”

So spake she, but fear seized them all, I ween, neither did one of them utter a word. But mighty Kronos the Cunning took heart of grace, and made answer again to his good Mother. “Mother, I will undertake and will perform this thing, since of our Father (‘Father!’) I reck not; for it was He began the devising of shameful deeds!” So spake he, and mighty Gaia rejoiced greatly in her heart, and hid him in an ambush, and put in his hands the sharp-fanged Sickle, and taught him all the plot.

Great Ouranos came with falling night and cast him broadly over Gaia, desiring her, and outstretched him at large upon her. But that other, his Son, reached out with his left hand from the place of his hiding ... and with his right grasping the monstrous fanged Sickle, he swiftly reaped the privy parts of his Father and cast them to fall behind him.

In calling this story Barbarian, I feel as if I ought to apologize to the Barbarians. Nevertheless it is clearly more in their way than in the way of the Greeks. It excellently illustrates the kind of stuff from which Greek religion refined itself. You will see that it is the old savage stuff of the battle between the Kings. On this occasion it is the Young King who prevails and pushes the Old King from his throne—not to die (for he was a God), but to (Note126)live a shadowy, elemental life. But neither was Kronos able to escape his destiny. For Rhea, subdued unto Kronos, bare shining children, even Hestia, and Demeter, and gold-shod Hera, and strong Hades, that pitiless heart, dwelling under ground, and the roaring Earth-Shaker, and Zeus the Many-Counselled, the Father of Gods and men, by whose thunder the broad earth is shaken. They also—great Kronos was used to swallow them down, as each came from the womb to his holy Mother’s knees, with intent that none other of the proud race of Ouranos should hold the lordship among the Everliving. For he knew from Gaia and starry Ouranos that he was fated to be overcome of his own child.... Therefore no blind man’s watch he kept, but looked for his children and swallowed them; but Rhea grieved and would not be comforted. But when she was at point to bring forth Zeus, then she prayed her own dear parents, Gaia and starry Ouranos, to devise a plan whereby she might bear her Son in secret, and retribution be paid by Kronos the Crafty Thinker for his father’s sake and his children that he gorged. And they truly gave ear to their daughter and obeyed her, and told her all things that were fated to befall concerning Kronos the King and his strong-hearted Son. And they conveyed her to Luktos in the fat land of Crete, when she was about to bring forth the youngest of her sons, great Zeus. Him gigantic Gaia received from her in broad Crete to nurture and to nurse. Thither came Gaia bearing him through the swift black night, to Luktos first; and she took him in her arms and hid him in a lonely cave, withdrawn beneath the goodly land, there where the wild-wood is thick upon the hills of Aigaion. But she wrapped a great Stone in swaddlingclouts, and gave it to the Son of Ouranos so mightily ruling, the Old King of the Gods. And Kronos seized it then with his hands, and put it down in his belly without ruth, nor knew in his own mind that for a Stone his Son was left to him unvanquished and unharmed, that was soon to overcome him by main strength of his hands, and drive him from the sovranty, and be King himself among the Everliving.

For swiftly thereafter mightiness was increased to the Young King and his shining limbs waxed greater, and, as the seasons rounded to their close, great Kronos the Cunning was beguiled by the subtile suggestions of Gaia, and cast up again his offspring; and first he spewed forth the Stone, that he had swallowed last. Zeus planted it where meet the roads of the world in goodly Pytho under the rock-wall of Parnassus, to be a sign and to be a marvel to men in the days to come.

The Stone was there all right, for the French excavators have found it, looking highly indigestible. But it is unfair to treat Hesiod in this spirit. In fact, to read in him such passages as I have quoted is to give oneself quite a different emotion. There is the most curious conflict between one’s moral and one’s Æsthetic reactions to them. You have a matter which it is poor to call savage, which is more like some atavistic resurrection of the beast in man; and you find it told in a style which is like some obsolescent litany full of half-understood words and immemorial refrains. The most primitive-minded is also the most literary poet in Greek, if by “literary” one means influenced by a tradition in style. He is full of the epic clichÉs, and he repeats them in a helpless, joyless way, as if he had no choice in the matter. If you wish to be unkind, you may (Note128)describe his style as the epic jargon. But you will be unjust if you do not admit a certain grandeur arising (it would almost seem) out of its very formalism. Even in its decay the epic style is a magnificent thing. The singing-robes of Homer have faded and stiffened, but they are still dimly gorgeous, and it is with gold that they are stiff. The poet of the Theogony—I call him Hesiod without prejudice—wears them almost like a priest. But if you have to tell a story like those I have quoted, what other manner is possible than just such a conventional, half-ritualistic style, which acts like a spell to move the religious emotions and suspend the critical judgment? I am not quite finished with Hesiod, and I want the reader to have a little more patience with him and with me.

Before he was cast out of his throne, Ouranos, having conceived a hatred of his Sons, Briareos and Kottos and Gyes, strongly bound them, being jealous of their overbearing valour, their beauty and stature, and fixed their habitation under the wide-wayed earth, where they were seated at the world’s end and utmost marge, in great grief and indignation of mind. Natheless the Son of Kronos, and the rest of the immortal Gods that deep-haired Rhea bare in wedlock with Kronos, brought them up to the light again by the counsels of Gaia, who told them all the tale, how they would gain the victory and bright glory with the aid of those. In another place we read that Briareos and Kottos and Gyes were grateful for that good service, and gave Zeus the thunder and the burning bolt and the lightning-flash, that aforetime vast Gaia concealed; in them he puts his trust as he rules over mortals and immortals. (Note129)He required them almost at once in his battle with the Titans. The word “Titans” seems to mean nothing more or less than “Kings.” They were the Old Kings at war with the Young Kings (who, because they lived on Mount Olympus in Thessaly, came to be called the “Olympians”) with Zeus at their head. Naturally the Old Kings took the side of Kronos, but after a ten years’ war they were beaten in a terrific battle, and Zeus reigned supreme. And then how do we find him behaving? Like this. And Zeus King of the Gods took to wife first Metis, that was wisest of Gods and men. And when indeed she was about to bring forth the blue-eyed Goddess Athena, he beguiled her with cunning words, and put her down into his belly, by the counsels of Gaia and starry Ouranos, who counselled him so, lest some other of the ever-living Gods should hold the sovranty in the stead of Zeus, for of her it was fated that most wise children should be born, first the bright-eyed Maid Tritogeneia, of equal might with her Sire and of a wise understanding, and after her I ween she was to bear a high-hearted Son, that would be King of Gods and men. So he clutched her and put her down in his belly, in fear that she would bear a stronger thing than the Thunderbolt.

Now, of course, the Greeks once believed this sort of thing; otherwise you would not have Hesiod solemnly repeating it. But they very early repudiated it; and it is just the earliness and the thoroughness of their repudiation wherein they show themselves Greek. For the surrounding Barbarians kept on believing myths hardly less damnable, and kept acting on their faith; whereas as early as Homer you find the Greek protest. In (Note130)Homer it is silent; he simply leaves Hesiod’s rubbish out. But the Ionian philosophers were not silent; indeed they included in their condemnation Homer himself. Heraclitus said that Homer deserved to be scourged out of the assemblies of men, and Archilochus likewise. XenophanÊs said, Homer and Hesiod attribute to the Gods all things that are scandals and reproach among men—to thieve, to be adulterers, and to deceive one another. Pindar (a very moral poet) is indignant at the suggestion that an immortal god would eat boiled baby. Naturally, however, the poets and the philosophers approached the myths in a different spirit, which led to what in Plato’s time was already “a standing quarrel.” The philosophers objected to them altogether; the poets made them so beautiful in the telling that they passed beyond the sphere of the moralist. Even the Theogony in parts achieves nobility; even in the Theogony the Hellenizing process is at work on the Barbarian matter.

We shall be better instructed, however, if we observe the process in a later poet and a much greater artist. It so happens that the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, like the Theogony, deals with the relations between the Old King and the New. The drama which we know as the Prometheus Bound is only a part of what ancient scholars called a trilogy, which is a series of three plays developing a single theme; and we cannot even be certain whether it is the first part or the second. Of the other members of the trilogy we possess little more than the titles, which are Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus the Fire-Carrier. Most students are now strongly disposed to believe that the Fire-Carrier received its name from the circumstance that the play had for its theme, or part of its theme, the foundation of the Prometheia or Festival of Prometheus at Athens, the culmination of which was a torch-race engaged in by youthful fire-carriers. Every year the Athenian ephÊbi, running with lit torches in relays of competitors, contended which should be the first to kindle anew the fire upon the common altar of Prometheus and Hephaistos in the Academy. If this conjecture regarding the theme of the Fire-Carrier is just, then we may be sure that this play came last in the series, because it celebrates the triumph of the hero. Accordingly it is usual to arrange the trilogy in the order: Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound, Prometheus the Fire-Carrier.

The Prometheus Bound deals with the punishment of Prometheus by Zeus. It is commonly said that the hero of the play is punished because he had stolen fire, which Zeus had hidden away, and bestowed it upon mortals, who are represented as hitherto uncivilized. There is a certain amount of truth in this view, for in the opening scene of the play, when Prometheus is nailed to his rock, the fiend Kratos repeats that the reason for this torture is the theft of fire. But the proper theme of the Prometheus Bound is not so much the binding of the Titan as the keeping him in bonds; and the reason for the prolongation of his torture is quite different from the reason for beginning it. The new reason is the refusal of Prometheus to reveal a secret, known to him but not to Zeus. All that Zeus knows is that one day he is fated to be superseded by his own son. What he does not, and what Prometheus does know, is who must be the mother of that son. On the withholding and the final revelation of this secret revolves the whole plot, not only of the Prometheus Bound, but also of the lost plays of the trilogy. To get the truth Zeus patiently tortures his immortal victim for three myriads of years, himself tortured by the old dynastic terror. It is the recurring situation of the Theogony renewing itself once more.

Such crude material lay before Aeschylus. But his genius and his time alike required from him a different treatment from that which does not dissatisfy us in the archaic chronicle of Hesiod. The genius of the Athenian poet is of course essentially dramatic, and he lived in an age which had woken to the need for what I will simply call a better religion. Therefore he chose the subject of Prometheus, and therefore he treated it dramatically. Now for the poet and his audience what is most dramatic is, or ought to be, what is felt by them as most human; and what is most human is simply what is most alive and real to them; for drama aims at the illusion of reality. So Aeschylus could not handle his matter with the hieratic simplicity of the Theogony. The issues could not be so simple for the dramatist, because they are never so simple in actual life. If Aeschylus was to make Prometheus his hero, he would have to make him “sympathetic.” And so, in Prometheus Bound, he does; Prometheus engages all our sympathy, while Zeus appears a tyrant in the modern, and not merely the ancient, sense of the word. But that is not the conclusion of the matter. We know that in the last play of the trilogy the tormentor and the tormented were reconciled. To the uncompromising Shelley this was intolerable; and so he wrote his “Prometheus Unbound.” And nearly every one who in modern times has written on the subject, whatever explanation or apology he may have put forward in behalf of Aeschylus, has wished in his heart that the Greek had felt like the Englishman.

That he did not, is just the curious and disconcerting thing we should like explained.

The tradition, of course, counts for much. Aeschylus did not invent his story. He found it already in existence, and he found it ending in a certain way. We cannot tell if it ended precisely in the way that Aeschylus represented. But we can be perfectly sure that it did not end in an unqualified victory for Prometheus. The tradition appears to be dead against him. Aeschylus therefore was so far bound by that. Then the problem presented itself to him with this further complication, that as a matter of knowledge Zeus was reigning now. So the justification of Zeus against the rebel Titan becomes a justification of the moral governance of the universe. Yet although Aeschylus felt the restraint of the myth and the restraint of the moral issue, it is to be believed that he submitted to them with full, and even passionate, acceptance. Like the great artist, like the great dramatic poet he is, he begins by stating the case for Prometheus as strongly as he can—more strongly, it would seem, than the existing legends quite allowed—and even in the end the Titan is not shorn of his due honour. But as against the Olympians, Aeschylus argues (with the Greek poets in general), the Titans were in the wrong. The sin of the Titans was lawlessness. Prometheus, in bringing to mortals the gift of fire, broke the law which forbade them its use. The question whether the dealings of God with man were “just” or no, was not to be decided by your feelings (as Prometheus judged), but by cool and measured reflection as to what was best in the end for mankind, or rather for the universe, of which they formed after all so small a part.

Such doctrine falls chillingly on the modern spirit. But that is largely because we realize so ill what it means. The Prometheus-trilogy was a dramatization of the conflict of Pity and Justice embodied in two superhuman wills. Before you condemn the solution of Aeschylus, perhaps you are bound to answer the question if this is not the conflict which the modern world is trying with blood and tears to solve. In the end (so the old poet fabled) Zeus the rigid Justicer learned mercy, while his passionate enemy came to recognize the sovereignty of Law. A compromise, if you like; but if you are sorry for it, it only means that you are sorry for human life. I daresay Aeschylus was sorry too, but then he was not going to be sentimental. Life is after all governed by a compromise between Justice and Pity. And if it comes to a mere question of emotional values, does not one love Prometheus all the more because at the last he had, like any man, to give up a little of his desire?

Even so we shall not have done complete justice to the Greek position, until we have renewed in our minds the Greek emotion about law, order, measure, limitation—the things we are engaged in criticizing and, most of us, in disparaging. We must for our purpose accept the Hellenic paradox. We must see with the Greek that it was not the wilderness, but the ploughed field and the ordered vineyard that was truly romantic. And in the moral reign it was Temperance, Self-Discipline, Sophrosyne; in the sphere of art the strict outline, the subjugation of excess, that filled the Greek with the pleasurable excitement we find in the exotic, the crude, the violent, the bizarre. The explanation is engagingly simple. To the ancient world law and order were the exception—the wild, romantic, hardly attainable exception; while us they interest about as much as a couple of boiled potatoes. We are for the Open Road and somewhere east of Suez. But the attraction then and now is exactly the same. It is the attraction of the unfamiliar.

We could understand the Hellenic paradox better if we had to live in an unsettled country. We should then receive the thrill which words like Nomos and Thesmos and Kosmos, the watchwords of civilization, awakened in the Greek bosom. We should understand the longing for a clue in the maze of the lawless, a saving rule to guide one through the thickets of desperate and degrading confusion. But as it is we are so hedged about by the barbed-wire entanglements of Government regulations and social conventions that our desires are chiefly concentrated on breaking through—breaking through, let us admit, at but a little point and for but a little time, for we are really rather fond of our prison-house and care not to be too long out of it. Yes, I think with a little effort we can understand. We can believe that the sense of home is strongest in the wanderer. He wanders to find (Note136)his home, and when he has found it, he cannot make it “home-like” and conventional enough.

So to the ancients Greek civilization had the flavour of a high and rare adventure. It was a crusade, the conquest of the Barbarian—the Barbarian without and within. Viewed in this light, the conflict between Zeus and Prometheus assumes an aspect novel enough to us. Zeus represents the Law—unjust in this instance if you will, unjust as perhaps Zeus himself came in the end partly to admit—but still the Law. Prometheus represents Anarchy. In this he shows himself truly a Titan, for the Titans embodied the lawless forces of nature and an undisciplined emotionality. Our fatigued spirits love to gamble a little with these excitements. But the Greeks had just escaped from them, and were horribly afraid of them. There is nothing their art loved to depict like the victory of the disciplined will—fairly typified in Zeus, perfectly in Athena—over unchained passion. Hence those endless pictures of Olympians warring against Titans, against Giants—of Greeks against Amazons—of Heracles, of Theseus against the monsters. They are records of a spiritual victory won at infinite cost.

The true theme of the Prometheus-trilogy is the Reign of Law. Law in the realm of affairs, Sophrosyne in morals, form in art. There is nothing tame or negative about the doctrine. The Greek spirit was not tame or negative; it would be difficult to say how much it was not that! Indeed the inspiration of their creed was just the desire of the Greeks to extract the full value of their emotions. None knew better the danger lest one (Note137)

And, from the point of view of art—always so important for them—the rule of “measure” becomes the art of concentration. So Law stands revealed as Beauty. As Keats says, the final condemnation of the Titans was that, compared with the Olympians, they failed in Beauty:

The evolution of Greek religion is thus largely an artistic process. It would be obstinate to deny that the process may have been carried, at last, too far. Greek art begins as almost a form of religion; Greek religion ends as almost a form of art. Yet it would certainly be still more obstinate to deny that more was gained than lost. There was gained, for instance, the Greek mythology. And what simplicity and sincerity that were lost were not more than made up for by that Greek religion—no longer of the State but of the individual—which we find in Plato and (as we have begun to see) in so much of the New Testament?

How much, and with what immense justification, the Greek religious spirit was a spirit of beauty transforming Barbarism, could hardly be more aptly illustrated than by a story in Herodotus. It is the tale of Atys the son of Croesus. How beautiful it is, every reader will confess. But how instructive it is, hardly any but the special student will recognize. For he finds in it the unmistakable features of an ancient myth. Atys, the brilliant, early-dying prince whom Herodotus, repeating the legend as he heard it, calls the son of the historical Croesus, is no other than Attis, brother and son and spouse—the ambiguity is in the myth—of the Mountain Mother of Phrygia. Atys, slain in hunting the boar, is Attis, who was a hunter, and scarcely distinguishable from Adonis. The matter is explained at length by Sir James Frazer in his Attis, Adonis and Osiris. The myth arose out of the worship of the Asiatic goddess variously named by the Greeks KybelÊ, KybÊbÊ, Rhea, and other titles, though in reality a nameless deity, a holy Mother and Bride wedded at the right season of the year to her son, Attis, that its fruits might be renewed through the magic of that ritual. There was a temple of “KybelÊ” near Sardis—still stand a column or two—where the PaktÔlos rushes from its mountain gorge. That helps to explain why a prince of Sardis has entered into her myth. It is even possible that actual princes of Sardis, did anciently personate once a year the consort of the great goddess of the region. This at least accords with analogy, and best explains the origin of the story in Herodotus. For the rest it is a Phrygian tale. Olympus, where the fabled boar is hunted, was in Mysia, which was in Phrygia. Adrastos, “He from whom there is no Escape,” is certainly connected with the goddess Adrasteia, much worshipped in the Phrygian Troad. Above all it was in Phrygia that the Mountain Mother was chiefly worshipped. In spring the Phrygians fashioned an image of the young Attis, and mourned over it with ritual dirges, recalling his doom. Thus gradually we may dig down to the roots of the myth.

What we find there is a thing of horror. Nana, daughter of the River Sangarios, saw an almond-tree, which had sprung from the blood of a son of KybelÊ, whom the gods in fear of his strength had mutilated. (Here is the Hesiodic motif again.) She conceived and bare a child, which she exposed. At first the wild goats nurtured him; then shepherds of the mountain. At last Attis was grown so beautiful that Agdistis (who is but a form of KybelÊ) loved him, and when he would not answer her love, drove him mad, so that he fled to the hills and there under a pine-tree unmanned himself. From his blood sprang violets to hang about the tree.

But for the unexpected sweetness of wild violet and mountain pine at the close, the story is curiously unlovely. But what really gives one a shudder is the reflection that the story mirrors a fact. The priests of KybelÊ ... what I would say is that they behaved like Attis.

You would guess none of these things from Herodotus. What has happened to the myth that it is transmuted to the exquisite and piteous tale he has related? We can only say that it has suffered the Greek magic. The Hellenic spirit, dreaming on the old dark fantasy, robs it a little of its wild, outrageous beauty (which was to reappear later in the Attis of Catullus), but keeps much of its natural magic, and by introducing the figure of the father adds overwhelmingly to the dramatic value of the story. Most of all it steeps the whole in a wonderful rightness of emotion. The gift which has achieved this is, as I have hinted, a dramatic gift; the magic is the same as that which pervades the Attic Tragedy. So much is this the case that the Tale of Atys in Herodotus reads like a Greek tragic drama in prose. The explanation is that ancient Tragedy arose out of just such a ritual as that from which sprang the Atys story. That story, so far as I know, was never made the subject of an actual drama. It seems a pity. What a subject it would have been for Euripides!

It seems to me a legitimate procedure, in an essay of this kind, to indicate the affinity between the tale in Herodotus and the normal structure and method of Attic Tragedy by treating the narrative portions of the tale as so many stage-directions, and the dialogue as we treat the dialogue in a play, assigning every speech to its proper speaker. Let me only add that all the dialogue, and practically all of the stage-directions, are literally translated.

THE DEATH OF ATYS

[The scene is Sardis in Lydia. It is a populous settlement of reed-thatched houses clustering about a wonderful, sheer, enormous rock crowned by the great walls of the Citadel. Over against it, to the south, rises the neighbouring range of TmÔlos, whence issues the famous little stream of the PaktÔlos, which, emerging from a gorge, rolls its gold-grained sand actually through the market-place of Sardis into the Hermos. Some miles away, by the margin of a lake, appear the vast grave-mounds of the Lydian kings. Within the Citadel is the ancestral Palace of Croesus. Any one entering the palace would observe its unwonted splendour—silver and gold and electrum everywhere. He would also be struck by the circumstance that the walls of the great Hall are bare of the swords and spears and quivers, which it was customary to hang there. At present the weapons are piled in the women’s chambers.

Croesus is seen clad in a great purple-red mantle, and carrying a long golden sceptre tipped with a little eagle in gold. He is surrounded by his bodyguard of spearmen, who wear greaves and breastplates of bronze, and helmets crested with the tails of horses.

A Stranger in the peaked cap, embroidered dress, and tall boots of a Phrygian noble enters with drawn sword, and with looks of haste and horror. Seeing Croesus, he utters no word, but, running forward, sits down by the central hearth of the house, strikes his sword into the floor, and covers his face. By this proceeding he confesses at once that he is a homicide, and that he desires absolution from his sin. In silence also the King approaches and gazes on the man. Then he goes through the elaborate and displeasing ritual of purification from bloodshed, calling aloud on the God of Suppliants to sanctify the rite. At last he is free to question the Stranger.]

Croesus. Man sitting at my hearth, who art thou and whence comest thou out of Phrygia? What man or what woman hast thou slain?

Stranger. O King, I am the son of Gordias the son of Midas, and my name is Adrastos. Behold here one that by unhappiness hath slain his own brother, and my father hath driven me out, and all hath been taken from me.

Croesus. Now art thou among friends, for there is friendship between our houses. Here wilt thou lack nothing, so long as thou abidest in my house. Strive to forget thy mischance; that will be best for thee.

[The man Adrastos enters the Palace with Croesus. Meanwhile arrive certain messengers. They are mountaineers, dressed in skins and carrying staves hardened at the point by fire. They come from Mount Olympus in Mysia.]

Mysians. Lord, a very mighty boar hath revealed himself in our land, the which layeth waste our tillage, neither can we by any means slay him. Now therefore we beseech thee, send thy son with us, and chosen young men, and dogs, that we may destroy him out of the land.

Croesus. As for my son, make ye no mention of him hereafter; I will not send him with you; for he hath lately married a wife, and is occupied with this. Yet will I send chosen men of the Lydians, and all the hunt, and straitly charge them very zealously to aid you in destroying the beast out of the land.

[Enters now the young man, Atys, the son of Croesus. He is dressed much in the Greek fashion, but with such ornaments of gold and embroidery of flowers upon him as beseem a prince of the House of the Mermnadae. He has heard of the prayer of the Mysians, and now pleads with his father that he may be permitted to go with them.]

Atys. Father, aforetime when I would be going to battle and the chase and winning honour therein, that was brave and beautiful. But now hast thou shut me out alike from war and from the hunt, albeit thou hast not espied in me any cowardice or weakness of spirit. And now with what countenance must I show myself either entering or departing from the assembly of the people? What shall be deemed of me by the folk of this city and my newly married wife? What manner of husband will she suppose is hers? Therefore either suffer me to go upon this hunting, or else persuade me that thy course is better.

Croesus. O son, I do not this because I have espied cowardice or any unlovely thing in thee at all. But the vision of a dream came to me in sleep, and said that thy life was not for long; by an iron edge thou wouldest perish. Therefore I was urgent for thy marrying, because I had regard unto this vision, and therefore I will not send thee upon this emprise, being careful if by any means I may steal thee from death, while I am living. For thou art mine only son, not counting the other, the dumb.

Atys. I blame thee not, father, that having beheld such a vision thou keepest ward over me. But what thou perceivest not neither understandest the significance thereof in thy dream, meet is it that I tell thee. Thou sayest that the dream told that I should be slain by an iron edge. But a boar—what hands hath it, or what manner of iron edge which thou fearest? Had the dream made mention of a tusk or the like, needs must thou do as now thou doest; but it said an edge. Seeing therefore that it is not against men that I go to fight, let me go.

Croesus. My son, herein thou dost convince my judgement by thine interpretation of the dream. Wherefore being thus persuaded by thee I do now change my thought and suffer thee to go to the hunting.

[The King now sends for Adrastos and they speak as follows.]

Croesus. Adrastos, when a foul mischance smote thee (I reproach thee not therewith), I cleansed thee of thy sin, and received thee in my house, and have furnished thee with abundance of all things. Now therefore (for thou owest me a kindness) keep ward over my son that goeth forth to the chase, lest evil thieves appear to your hurt. Moreover for thyself also it is right that thou go where thou shalt win glory by thy mighty deeds; for so did thy fathers before thee; and moreover thou art a mighty man.

Adrastos. For another reason, O King, I would not have gone on such a venture. For neither is it seemly, nor do I wish, that one so afflicted mingle among his fortunate peers; yea, for manifold reasons I would have refrained. But now, since thou art urgent thereto and I am bound to perform thy pleasure—for I owe thee return of kindness—I am ready to do this thing: thy son, whom thou straitly chargest me to guard, expect thou to return home without hurt, so far as I am able to guard him.

In this manner, continues Herodotus, did he then make answer to Croesus. And after that they set forth with service of chosen young men and of dogs. And when they had come to the mountain Olympus, they began to quest for the beast; and having found him they stood round about him, and cast their javelins at him. Then the stranger, the man that had been purged of the stains of blood, even he that was named Adrastos, cast his spear at the boar, and missed him, and smote the son of Croesus instead. And he so smitten by the edge of the spear fulfilled the saying of the nightly vision. But one ran to tell Croesus that which had befallen; and when he was come to Sardis he declared to him the manner of the fight and the slaying of his son. And Croesus being mightily troubled by the death of the young man complained the more vehemently for that he had been killed by that very one whom he had purified of a manslaying. And in the passion of his grief he cried aloud with a great and terrible voice on Zeus of Purification, calling him to bear witness what recompense he had received at the hands of the stranger; and he named him moreover God of the Hearth and God of Companionship, naming him by the former name because receiving the stranger into his house he had unwittingly given meat and drink to the slayer of his child, and by the latter name because having sent him with his son to guard him he now found him his greatest enemy.

And now the Lydians came bearing the dead body, and behind them followed the slayer. And he standing before the dead yielded himself up to Croesus, stretching forth his hands, bidding him slay him over the body, making mention of his former calamity, and how now he had besides brought destruction upon the man that had purified him, neither was it meet that he should live. Croesus hearing has pity on Adrastos, albeit in so great sorrow of his own, and says to him: Guest, I have all I may claim of thee, since thou dost adjudge thyself to death. Not thee I blame for this ill, save as thou wert the unwilling doer thereof; nay but some god methinks is the cause, who even aforetime showed me that which should come to pass.

Then did Croesus honourably bury his son. But Adrastos the son of Gordias the son of Midas, even the man that had killed his own brother, and had killed the son of him that washed away his offence, after the people had left the tomb and there was silence, deeming in his own heart that of all men that he knew himself was most calamitous, slew himself upon the grave.

(Note147)