Greek mythology

“ Max Muller says, "the silly, senseless, and savage element," that makes mythology the puzzle which men have so long found it. For, observe, Greek myth does not represent merely a humorous play of fancy, dealing with things religiously sacred as if by way of relief from the strained reverential contemplation of the majesty of Zeus. Many stories of Greek mythology are such as could not cross, for the first time, the mind of a civilised Xenophanes or Theagenes, even in a dream. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Our appreciation of Greek mythology may suffer in the same way, unless we can keep the keen edge of our appreciative faculty: the Greek myth has often its striking {16} affinities with the Arunta or the Pawnee, and it is necessary for comparative folk-lore and anthropology to point this out, and often to insist on the beauty of the legend and the dignity of the religious thought among savages: but it is unfortunate if these studies should result in our loss of the perception that Greek mythology, after all, is the most beautiful of any of which we have record. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It has been remarked with justice that, when we use the word mythology, we are too apt to think of a Pantheon, of a well-defined hierarchy of gods and demigods and heroes, all fabulous indeed, but all arranged in one coherent system. This conception of Greek mythology arises partly from the fact that we learn to know it in dictionaries, compiled from the works of authors who lived long after the age in which myths were produced, and partly from the fact that the conditions under which myth-making was a possibility are so far removed from us as to be almost unintelligible. ”

“ When, therefore, we say that Greek mythology is Hellenic and original, we are admitting this unconscious, silent, steady, irresist [Pg 59] ible faculty of the mind to fashion gods in its own image, to come to a knowledge of itself in its divinities, to create a glorified likeness of all that it admires in its own nature, to deify its truest and its best, and to invest its thought in an imperishable form of art. Nor will it here again avail to demur that Zeus was originally the open sky, Pallas the dawn, Phœbus and Artemis the sun and moon. ”

“ But more important than the Greek mythology was the Greek philosophy, which was indeed in many ways its antidote. If the mythology of Greece appeared to sanction an infinite number of gods and goddesses, her philosophers taught with equal persuasiveness that the divine reality is one, though its forms be many. A remarkable synthesis was thus gradually accomplished, though it will always be a question whether the stronger tendency was to philosophise mythology or to mythologise philosophy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At once we recall the almost incredibly vast and almost wildly “Romantic” mythology of Greece, the material and the inspiration of Greek poetry as it was the material and inspiration of Keats. Now the genuine mythology of Hellas first gathered shape in an age which believed in obvious magic, in the transformation of men and women into birds and beasts and trees and flowers, and in the living holiness of natural objects. ”

“ We have already adverted to the knowledge of the allusions to the ancient mythology acquired by the study of the Greek and Latin authors, a knowledge which can only be fully acquired in this mode, and which is of inestimable use to the student, not only in understanding the writings even of modern times, but in learning to write himself. The ardent imagination of the East has produced nothing more beautiful than the splendid mythology of the Greeks—a mythology which abounds in powerful imagery and poetic conception. ”

“ All these gods had wives resembling the goddesses in the Greek mythology,--some beneficent, some cruel; rendering aid to men, or pursuing them with their anger. And here one cannot resist the impression that the earliest forms of the Greek mythology were derived from the Babylonians and Phoenicians, and that the Greek poets, availing themselves of the legends respecting them, created the popular religion of Greece. ”

“ The Greek was full of humanity, and he could not help making his gods and goddesses simply larger and more beautiful men and women. What is the soul of that amazingly beautiful and seemingly fantastic mythology of the Greeks? ”

“ In them, therefore, we find illustrated the theory which explains mythology by the analogy of poetry. That the mediæval myths which have been mentioned never attained the importance of Greek mythology is immediately accounted for by the fact that they sprang up, as it were, under the shadow of philosophy, religion, and history. They belonged to the popular consciousness; and this popular consciousness had no need or opportunity of converting its creatures into a body of beliefs, because both science and orthodoxy existed. ”

“ Imagination led these early inhabitants to discover, not only in the general phenomena of vegetation, the unfolding and death of the leaf and flower, and in the moist and dry seasons of the year, but also in the peculiar physical character of certain districts, a sign of the alternately hostile or peaceful, happy or ill-omened interference of certain deities. There are still preserved in the Greek mythology many legends of charming and touching simplicity, which had their origin at this period, when the Greek religion bore the character of a worship of the powers of nature. ”

“ THE SOURCES AND THE EVIDENCE The foundation of a serious and scientific study of Greek religion, as distinct from the mere mythology of Hellas, may almost be said to have been an achievement of the last generation of scholars. And it is only through recent research that the Hellenic spirit, so creative and imperial in the domains of literature, art and science, can be recognised as manifesting itself not unworthily in the sphere of religion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are few places in Europe where the poetic truth of Greek mythology is more apparent than here upon the coast between Etna and the sea. Of late, philosophers have been eager to tell us that the beautiful legends of the Greeks, which 286 contain in the coloured haze of fancy all the thoughts afterwards expressed by that divine race in poetry and sculpture, are but decayed phrases, dead sentences, and words whereof the meaning was forgotten. ”

“ If such traditions existed, and if the laws which guide historical inquiry require or lead us to suppose that the forefathers of the Greeks must have lived within their circle, then the burden of proof must lie not so properly with those who assert that the traces of them are to be found in the earliest, that is, the Homeric form of the Greek mythology, as with those who deny it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Classical study and literature are regarded as so important in education, and a knowledge of Greek mythology is so obviously necessary to a full understanding of the best Greek authors, that many works have been published on the subject. The writers have either merely stated the fables as reported among the ancients, or in addition have sought to trace them to their origin, either by making conjectures of allegorical, historical and physical meanings in the stories, or deriving them from the events of the early ages, recorded in the Bible. ”

“ On the other hand Greek mythology, despite all the varied and oft repeated use that has been made of it since the revival of the arts and learning, has never fully come home to the general sense of modern emotions and in various degrees in the plastic arts and still more in poetry, despite its very extensive influence here, has failed to arouse real enthusiasm. ”

“ The probability seems to be that in the first instance most pagan nations worshipped the sun and other heavenly bodies, and afterwards those heroes, or secondary gods, whose history they borrowed from tradition, and improved by poetic fables, till they formed the elegant system of the Greek mythology. ”

“ It is not only that his recognition of the permanently significant and beautiful embodiment of the central facts of life in the Greek stories led him to select some of them as the subjects for several of his most important poems; but his whole feeling, notably his feeling for Nature, seems almost precisely that of the Greeks, especially, perhaps, of the earlier generations among whom their mythology took shape. To him also Nature appears alive with divinities. ”

“ According to him the Greek mythical gods, Apollo, Helios, and Hephaestos, were fire under different aspects: Hera was the air; Posidon, the water; Artemis, the moon, and so on. Other learned Greeks followed in his footsteps and saw much the same things. For example, three hundred years later, Aristotle said that myths were the attempt of the world before his time to express philosophical speculations, and Plutarch four hundred and sixty years later said that myths were metaphysical statements in disguise. ”

“ The Homeric and Hesiodic poems were interposed between the reflective consciousness of the Greeks in the historic age and the mass of myths already existent in Hellas at the time of their composition, and thus mythology passed into the more advanced stage of art. ”

“ We owe most of the stories of the ancient mythology to the wit and fancy of the Greeks, more playful and imaginative, who seized from Egypt and from the East such legends as pleased them, and adapted them in their own way. It often happens that such stories, resembling each other in their foundation, are found in the Greek and Roman authors in several different forms. ”

“ Philology can, however, furnish no more than the prolegomena to mythology. After hearing its report, the student of Greek art and literature must take the Greek myths at a Greek valuation—must consider what they were for the Athenians, for example, and not what they had once been. ”

“ Only with very great difficulty can we discover the threads of belief which made out of the newcomer a gracious lord of the vintage, a dispeller of care and teacher of mirth, a prophet, a guide in all the arts of civilization and, more mysteriously still, a suffering god, both redeemer and redeemed, a companion at Eleusis of Demeter and Persephone. Because, however, of the persistent clarity of the Greek imagination, the god now and again emerges from amid the chaos of functions and attributes in a concrete form of beauty. ”

“ 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. ”