Greco-Roman mythology

“ The traditions of the Greek mythology survived, endowed with what, in the absence of any new creed, might seem immortal life, in the pages of poets, and in the paintings and other works of art which afforded a refined pleasure to educated men. The national faith of Italy and Rome still kept the outward show of life in many visible symbols, and still retained a hold over the mass of the people. The herds and flocks were still believed to flourish under the kindly protection of Pales and Faunus. ”

“ The thing that was immortal was not the individual but the family. It is thoroughly in keeping with the practical character of the Roman mind that they did not concern themselves with the place in which these spirits of the dead were supposed to reside, but merely with the door through which they could and did return to earth. We have no accounts of the Lower World until Greece lent her mythology to Rome, and imagination never built anything like the Greek palace of Pluto. ”

“ Embracing as they do almost the whole field of Greek myth and legend, the subjects on Greek vases are yet not invariably those most familiar to the classical student or, if the stories are familiar, they are not always treated in accordance with literary tradition. On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that the popular conception of Greek mythology is not always a correct one, for which fact the formerly invariable system of approaching Greek ideas through the Latin is mainly responsible. ”

“ The proposition is strictly inconceivable. Latin Gods must have been imagined very much as were and are those of other barbarous races, who are notoriously thought of as having sex, form, and passions. Greek mythology simply reached the art stage sooner. The cults of Hellas did not start with a mythology full-blown, thereby creating the arts; the mythology grew step by step with and in the arts, in a continuous mutual reaction; many Greek myths being really tales framed to explain the art-figures of other mythologies, Egyptian and Asiatic. ”

“ Christianity offered almost no field for the exercise of Greek anthropomorphism. The latter was closely bound up with polytheism and hero-worship. The Christian Apostles and Saints, who took the place of the pagan Deities, were men who had lived on the earth and whose deeds belonged not to mythology but to history, although at the time the line between history and mythology was not clearly drawn, and history was largely diluted with myth. A few impersonations of nature, such as river-gods, lingered on in the paintings of the Roman catacombs. ”

“ As the primitive Celts, however, were a less civilized people than the Greeks, their mythology was of a more barbarous character, and this circumstance, combined with the fact that the Romans were not gifted with the vivid imagination of their Greek neighbours, leaves its mark on the Roman mythology, which is far less fertile in fanciful conceits, and deficient in all those fairy-like stories and wonderfully poetic ideas which so strongly characterize that of the Greeks. ”

“ This did not mean, however, that men had lost their religious longing. Far from it. For there is abundant proof that under the stimulus of Greek philosophy and mysticism, questionings as to the nature of man, his relation to divinity, and his immortality became more earnest. To these questions the Greco-Roman religion offered no answer.
The oriental gods, however, were of a very different sort from those of Greece and Rome: they required a spiritual devotion on the part of their devotees and they made strong appeals to the religious emotions. ”

“ The Greek mythology was to them, as it is to us, an object of reverence, not because of any inherent truth, but because of the exquisite embodiments it can yield in poetry, in painting, in marble. The existence of those illustrious men who, on account of their useful lives or excellent example, had, by the pious ages of old, been sanctified or even deified, was denied, or, if admitted, they were regarded as the exaggerations of dark and barbarous times. It was thus with Æsculapius, Bacchus, and Hercules. ”

“ Roman mythology, as well as Greek, suffered from literary treatment, and it is only by collecting detached fragments and facts of primitive thought throughout the whole field of classic literature that we are able to get at something beyond the official religion of polished society in Greece and Rome. ”

“ Opinions may differ as to the right interpretation of many of the myths, but whatever explanation we may be disposed to give of them, whether we regard them as allegorical, semi-historical, or purely poetical, they are generally full of human interest, and they were very dear to the Greeks as the embodiment of their earliest thoughts and cherished memories. Embalmed in their poetry, consecrated by their temples, and signalised by many other monuments, the Greek mythology formed for centuries the chief intellectual wealth of the nation. ”

“ The Greeks are a people of such swift constructive imagination that they almost always obscure any problem of origins. So fair and magical are their cloud-capp’d towers that they distract our minds from the task of digging for foundations. There is scarcely a problem in the origins of Greek mythology and religion that has been solved within the domain of Greek thinking only. Ritual with them was, in the case of drama, so swiftly and completely transmuted into art that, had we had Greek material only to hand, we might never have marked the transition. ”

“ Gods figure as kings, heroes, saints, or fairies, and a new mythical past has been created out of the débris of an older mythology. There is little of the limpid clearness of the myths of Hellas, and yet enough to delight those who, in our turbulent modern life, turn a wistful eye upon the past.
To make matters worse, modern writers on Celtic tradition have displayed a twofold tendency. They have resolved every story into myths of sun, dawn, and darkness, every divinity or hero Into a sun-god or dawn-goddess or ruler of a dark world. ”

“ One cannot fail to mark the different light in which we view the mythologies of the Greeks and Romans. If their religious beliefs and speculations had remained a secret until our time, if the high ethical precepts of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius had only now been proclaimed, and Socrates had just been celebrated in glowing verse as the "Light of Greece," there would be no little commotion in the religious world, and thousands with only weak and troubled faith might be disturbed. But simply because we thoroughly understand the mythology of Greece and Rome, we have no fear. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the whole, if we follow the authority of the ancients themselves, we seem bound to conclude that the Roman gods, like those of many other early peoples, were believed to be married and to beget children. It is true that, compared with the full-blooded gods of Greece, the deities of Rome appear to us shadowy creatures, pale abstractions garbed in little that can vie with the gorgeous pall of myth and story which Grecian fancy threw around its divine creations. ”

“ Was not that very phrase of All for Love used of the Greek Cleopatra, who is one of the world’s famous lovers? Did not Medea leave all for love’s sake, and Orpheus, and the shepherd Daphnis, whose legend is the more significant because it appears to be pure folk-story? Have not all poets of Romantic love turned instinctively to Greek mythology as the inexhaustible quarry of their lore? That they treat the myths in their own way is not to be denied. ”

“ In Rome, where alone could be found a career for a creative artist, he had gradually to submit to the genius loci. The artificers of the empire must have long remained Greeks, and all Roman art bears the stamp of Hellenic origin, but at the same time Greek art is changed along the lines of pictorial illusion and pure realism in portraiture. It loses all touch with Greek idealism and serves to express Roman narrative history. Its gods, its myths, and its outlook are changed. It becomes Roman, just as Gothic art became national in each country which it invaded. ”

“ It is historically true that attempts were made from time to time by patriotic Romans to preserve the old Latin faith in its original purity from foreign invasion. The introduction of Greek gods was at first vigorously opposed, but the 73exquisite beauty of Greek sculpture, the irresistible influence of Greek literature, and the overwhelming fascination of Greek myths, finally destroyed this opposition, and placed Apollo and Æsculapius in the Roman pantheon beside Jupiter and Minerva.
At another time the senate declared war on the Egyptian worship which was gradually making its way into Rome. ”

“ Glimpse into the interior of the Pantheon at Rome showing statues of the gods and the marvelous effects of lighting.
Like mankind, the gods were divided into two sexes; namely, gods and goddesses. They married and had children. Often a god became enamored of a mortal woman, or a goddess was smitten with the charms of a handsome youth, and these love tales form a large portion of Grecian mythology.
To make the resemblance between gods and men more complete, the Greeks ascribed to their deities all human passions, both good and evil. ”

“ With us these aërial beings, or spectres of crime, too commonly assume an aspect grotesque or devilish, but they nevertheless keep alive in the popular mind the spirit of romance and poetry, one of the never-failing handmaids of religion. Mythology rarely penetrates down to these primitive superstitions, which, however, constitute the basis of the whole science, and in Greece assumed, in many cases, forms of beauty analogous to its loftier and more poetic fables. ”

“ It is man's prerogative and duty to act, not blindly, but in the light of the past and the future.
There is trace in Greece, as everywhere else in the ancient world, of a worship of nature, which grovelled in the material slime. This appears in the mythology as monsters, especially as serpents which some hero, personifying or concentrating in himself the genius of some Grecian tribe, destroys. Perhaps one hideous form of earth-worship had its seat, in very early times, at Delphusa and Delphi, and was expelled thence by a Dorian colony, who settled there, and built the temple of Apollo. ”

“ There is, perhaps, nothing in the history of human intelligence to compare with the dazzling 'swiftness of its development or the rapidity of its decline. War was followed by pillage and devastation, and victorious Roman generals, mere depredators and plunderers, crowded Rome with the stolen treasures of Greece, with the result that Greek art and Greek influence soon made themselves felt in-the imperial city, and for generations its artists were almost exclusively Greeks, chiefly portrait painters and decorators. ”

“ But it was as impossible for the Roman drama to reproduce the inner spirit of the noblest type of Greek tragedy as to rival its artistic excellence. Greek tragedy, in its mature glory, was not only a purely Greek creation, but was the artistic expression of a remarkable phase through which the human mind has once passed;—a phase in which the vivid fancies and emotions of a primitive age met and combined with the thought, the art, the social and political life of the greatest era of ancient civilisation. ”

“ But these lays and legends must not be compared to those of Greece, which had probably taken an epic form long before they furnished the groundwork of the Iliad and the Odyssey. In Roman tradition there are no traces of elevated genius or poetical inspiration. The religious sentiment was the fertile source of Greek fancy, which gave a supernatural glory to the effusions of the bard, painted men as heroes, and heroes as deities; and, whilst it was the natural growth of the Greek intellect, twined itself round the affections of the whole people. ”

“ In truth, it is for want of comprehensive perception that we take so readily for granted the limited scope of this glorious art. There is in the Grecian mythology alone a remarkable variety of character and expression, as perpetuated by the statuary; and when to her deities we add the athletes, charioteers, and marble portraits, a realm of diverse creations is opened. Indeed, to the average modern mind, it is the statues of Grecian divinities that constitute the poetic charm of her history; abstractly, we regard them with the poet:—
"Their gods? ”

“ It is now proposed briefly to relate how this line was lost, when the politeness and philosophy, the literature and the Art of Greece were chained to the triumphal cars of Roman conquerors,—and how it seems to have been found again in our own day, after slumbering so long in ruined temples, broken statues, and cinerary urns.
The scholar who studies the aesthetical anatomy of Greek Art has a melancholy pleasure, like a surgeon, in watching its slow, but inevitable atrophy under the incubus of Rome. ”

“ But while Greek mythology is richer far than any other in beautiful legend, and is thronged with lovely and majestic forms of gods and goddesses, nymphs and oreads ideally fair, none the less a very large proportion of its legends is practically on a level with the myths of Maoris, Thlinkeets, Cahrocs and Bushmen. ”

“ Whatever may have been the reason, whether the common longing for mystic assurance of safety and salvation had come naturally to the front in the Roman and Italian mind, or whether the large number of Greeks, slaves, traders, and other members of the lower and immigrant classes had moved the natives by mystic practices which they had brought with them, certain it is that a considerable part of the Romans found no satisfaction for their deeper longings in the traditional religion, and turned to a form of the Greek mysteries. ”