THEORY OF PRIMITIVE REVELATION. fabrication of impurities, the other asserts as strongly the wilful moral CHAP. corruption exhibited in the theogonic narratives of the Greeks. In the inconsistent and repulsive adventures of Zeus or Herakles it sees the perversion of high and mysterious doctrines originally imparted to man, and discerns in the gradations of the Olympian hierarchy vestiges of the most mysterious doctrines embraced in the whole compass of Christian teaching. By this theory all that is contradictory, immoral, or disgusting in Greek mythology is the direct result of human sinfulness and rebellion, and resolves itself into the distortion of a divine revelation imparted to Adam immediately after the Fall. I. 5 a corrupted The revelation thus imparted brought before men, we are told (i), Theory of the Unity and Supremacy of the Godhead; (ii), a combination, with revelation. this Unity, of a Trinity in which the several persons are in some way of coequal honour; (iii), the future coming of a Redeemer from the curse of death, invested with full humanity, who should finally establish the divine kingdom; (iv), a Wisdom, personal and divine, which founded and sustains the world; (v), the connexion of the Redeemer with man by descent from the woman. With this was joined the revelation of the Evil One, as a tempting power among men, and as the leader of rebellious angels who had for disobedience been hurled from their thrones in heaven.1 This true theology, in the hands of the Greeks, was perverted, it is said, into a Trinity of the three sons of Kronos, Zeus, Hades, and Poseidôn, the tradition of the Redeemer being represented by Apollôn, and the Divine Wisdom being embodied in Athênê, while Lêtô, their mother, stands in the place of the woman from whom the Deliverer was to descend. traditions of the Evil One were still further obscured. Evil, as acting by violence, was represented most conspicuously in the Titans and giants as tempting by deceit, in the Atê of Homer, while lastly, the covenant of the rainbow reappears in Iris. The second This theory Mr. Gladstone has traced with great minuteness System of through the tangled skein of Greek mythology. The original idea he aries. finds disintegrated, and a system of secondaries is the necessary consequence. Far above all are exalted Apollôn and Athênê, in their personal purity yet more than in their power, in their immediate action, in their harmony with the will of the Supreme King, and in Juventus Mundi, but in some papers on the Olympian Hierarchy in the Nineteenth Century, 1879. This theory was put forth more than twenty years ago by Mr. Gladstone, in his elaborate work entitled Homer and the Homeric Age. The seriousness of the issue must be pleaded as a reason for examining it here, as Mr. Gladstone has propounded it again not only in BOOK the fact that they alone, among the deities of a second generation, are admitted to equal honour with the Kronid brothers, if not even to higher. But some of their attributes are transferred to other beings, who are simply embodiments of the attribute so transferred and of no other. Thus Athênê is attended by Hermes, Ares, Themis, and Hephaistos; Apollôn by Paiêon and the Muses; as, similarly, we have in Gaia a weaker impersonation of Dêmêtêr, and Nereus as representing simply the watery realm of Poseidôn. In Lêtô, their mother, is shadowed forth the woman whose seed was to bruise the head of the serpent; for Lêtô herself has scarcely any definite office in the Homeric theology, and she remains, from any view except this one, an anomaly in mythological belief." Nature of the doctrines per verted in Greek my thology. On this hypothesis, Greek mythology is no distortion of primary truths which first dawn on the mind of a child or are imparted to it, and which, it might have been supposed, would form the substance of divine truth granted to man during the infancy of his race. It is the corruption of recondite and mysterious dogmas which were not to become facts for hundreds or thousands of years. Zeus, the licentious tyrant, the perjured deceiver, the fierce hater, the lover of revelry and banqueting, who boasts of his immunity from all restraint and law, is the representative of the Eternal Father. He with Hades and Poseidon represents the Christian Trinity; but Hades represents also the power of darkness, and Poseidon shares the attributes of God with those of the devil, while all are children of the dethroned Kronos, in whom again the evil power finds an impersonation. That a theology thus wilfully falsified should be found with a people not utterly demoralised, but exhibiting on the whole a social condition of great promise and a moral standard rising constantly higher, is indeed astonishing. On the supposition that Greek mythology was a corrupted religious system, it must, to whatever extent, have supplied a rule of faith and practice, and the actions and character of the gods must have furnished a justification for the excesses of human passion. That no such justification is alleged, and that the whole system seems to exercise no influence either on their standard of morality or their common practice, are signs which might appear to warrant the presumption that this mythology was not the object of a moral belief. The whole question, viewed in this light, is so utterly. perplexing, and apparently so much at variance with the conditions of Homeric society, that we are driven to examine more strictly the evidence on which the hypothesis rests; and it must be admitted 4 Ibid. 164. • Ibid. 207. 1 Homer and the Homeric Age, ii. 57. MYTHICAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE HOMERIC POETS. 7 I. that this hypothesis involves the necessity of interpreting mythology CHAP. so as to square with a preconceived system, and carries with it a temptation to lessen or to pass over difficulties which appear to militate against it. The Homeric legends are not so consistent as for such a purpose would seem desirable, and there are the gravest reasons for not inferring from the silence of the poet that he was ignorant of other versions than those which he has chosen to adopt. On the supposition that Athênê and Apollôn represent severally the Divine Redeemer and the Divine Wisdom, their relation of will to the Supreme Father becomes a point of cardinal interest and importance. Without going further than the Iliad,' we have a conspiracy to bind Zeus, in which Athênê is the accomplice of Hêrê and Poseidon. In this plot, the deliverance comes not from Apollôn, whose office it is to be "the defender and deliverer of heaven and the other immortals," but from Thetis, the silver-footed nymph of the sea; and by her wise counsels Zeus wins the victory over one who is with himself a member of the traditive Trinity. The same legend qualifies another statement, that Athênê and Apollôn are never foiled, defeated, or outwitted by any other of the gods; for Athênê here is foiled by Thetis. Elsewhere we have Apollôn, like Poseidon, cheated by Laomedôn whom he had served, and finding a more congenial master, but yet a master, in Admêtos ; while the parentage of the three Kronid brothers and the double character of Poseidôn stand forth as the most astounding contradictions of all. 6 8 4 tween Zeus Athênê. There are other legends which represent Athênê in a light incon- Relations sistent with the personification of the Divine Wisdom. In the tale of of will bePandora, at the instigation of Zeus she takes part in the plot which and results in the increased wickedness and misery of man; in that of Prometheus, she aids in the theft of fire from heaven against the will of Zeus, while one version represents her as acting thus, not from feelings of friendship, but from the passion of love. These legends are not found in our Homer, but it is impossible to prove that the poet was unacquainted with them. He makes no reference to some myths, which are at once among the oldest and the most beautiful; 1 Gladstone's Homer, &c., ii. 70. 2 Ibid. 72. We must not forget that in the myths of Asklepios and Admêtos Apollon draws on himself the wrath and the vengeance of Zeus for slaying the Kyklopes as a requital for the death of his son, the Healer; and we are fully justified in laying stress on this fact, until it can be proved that any one myth must necessarily be re garded as of earlier growth than another, 3 Ibid. 74. • Ibid. 75. Hesiod, Theogon. 573; Works and Days, 63. BOOK I. Peculiar forms of Greek mythology. Consequences involved in the perversion of and he certainly knew of the dethronement of Kronos, as well as of factions in the new dynasty of the gods.1 But if the theory of religious perversion, apart from its moral difficulties, involves some serious contradictions, it altogether fails to explain why the mythology of the Greeks assumed many of its peculiar and perhaps most striking features. It does not show us why some of the gods should be represented pure, others as in part or altogether immoral; it does not tell us why Zeus and Herakles should be coarse and sensual, rather than Athênê and Apollôn; it does not explain why Apollôn is made to serve Admêtos, why Herakles bears the yoke of Eurystheus, and Bellerophôn that of the Kilikian king. It fails to show why Herakles should appear as the type of self-restraint and sensuality, of labour and sluggishness, why names so similar in meaning as Lykâôn, Helios and Phaethôn, should be attached to beings whose mythical history is so different. If for these and other anomalies there is a method of interpretation which gives a clear and simple explanation, which shows how such anomalies crept into being, and why their growth was inevitable—if this method serves also as a key, not merely to the mythology of Greece, but to that of the whole Aryan race, nay, even to a wider system still, a presumption at least is furnished, that the simpler method may after all be the truest. Yet more, the hypothesis of a corrupted revelation involves some further consequences, which have a material bearing on the question. That which is so perverted cannot become clearer and more definite an original in the very process of corrupt developement. Not only must the revelation, positive truths, imparted at the first, undergo distortion, but the ideas involved in them must become weaker and weaker. If the Unity of God formed one of those primitive truths, then the personality and the power of Zeus would be more distinct and real in the earliest times than in the later. The ideas of the Trinity, of the Redeemer, and of the Divine Wisdom, would be more prominent in those first stages of belief in the case of a people who confessedly were not sustained by new or continued revelations. The personality of a Divine Wisdom is not a dogma which men in a thoroughly rude society could reason out for themselves; and if it formed part of an original revelation, the lapse of time would tend to weaken, not to strengthen Similarly, the Iliad says nothing about the death of Achilleus yet the poet is aware that his life is to be short. μῆτερ, ἐπεί μ' ἔτεκές γε μινυνθάδιόν περ ἐόντα is the frequent reproach of Achilleus to his mother Thetis. But the truth is that our Iliad and Odyssey presuppose everywhere on the part of the hearer or reader an acquaintance with legends or stories which are referred to merely in passing, and sometimes with a bare allusion. reversed. MYTHOLOGY AND MORALITY. it. If, again, this corrupting process had for its cause a moral corruption going on in the hearts and lives of men, then this corruption would be intensified in proportion to the degree in which the original revelation was overlaid. In the Hellenic mythology this process is Even as it appears in the poems which we call Homeric it must have undergone a developement of centuries; but if it is impossible to measure, by any reference to an older Greek literature, the personality and attributes of each god as compared with the conceptions of a previous age, it is obvious that the general tone of feeling and action, and the popular standard of morality had not been debased with the growth of their mythology. Whether the Hesiodic poems belong to a later period than our Iliad and Odyssey is a question into which it is unnecessary here to enter: but it must be admitted that if their theology is more systematised, and their theogony more repulsive, their morality and philosophy is immeasurably higher and more true. With the growth of a mythology and its more systematic arrangement the perception of moral truth has be come more keen and intense; and the same age which listened to the book of the generations of Zeus, Kronos, and Aphroditê, learnt wisdom from the pensive precepts of the "Works and Days.” CHAP. I. son of the Vedic my It is perhaps difficult to determine how far the characters of CompariPhoibos and Athênê have been drawn out and systematised by the Homeric genius and moral instinct of the poet himself. We have no evidence, with the in any extant literature, of the precise state in which he found the thology. national mythology; but it seems unlikely that he had what may be termed a theological authority for every statement which he makes and every attribute which he assigns to the one or the other. It is certain that Athênê once conspired against the freedom of Zeus ;1 but we cannot tell how far the poet himself intensified the general harmony of her will to that of the King of gods and men, nor can we forget that Ushas is as dear to gods and men as Athênê herself, and that Ushas is undeniably nothing but the morning. But language has furnished evidence, which it is impossible to resist, of the gradual process which imparted to these mythical deities both their personality and their attributes. The literature of another branch of the same Aryan race exhibits a mythology whose substantial identity with that of the Greeks it is impossible to dispute; but in that mythology beings, whose personality in our Homeric poems is sharply drawn and whose attributes are strictly defined, are still dim and shadowy. Even the great Olympian king has not received the passions and appetites, and certainly not the form of man. Nay, in that older mythology their 1 Iliad, i. 400. |